Tribune. Afghanistan is entering a new turning point in its history with the capture of Kabul by the Taliban, at the end of a lightning military campaign that has met with little resistance.
If the Biafra war (1967-1970) will have been the cradle of borderlessness, with the creation of the Emergency Medico-Surgical Intervention Group (Gimcu) which will become Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Afghanistan will be. , from the Russian occupation in 1979, the real breeding ground with the deployment of other international NGOs including Action Against Hunger, Handicap International, Médecins du monde, Solidarités international… These organizations will work extensively with populations, some of whom live on the territories controlled by the rebel movements, in resistance against the power in place and the troops of its powerful Soviet neighbor.
Money then flows freely for the benefit of the rebellion, for what at the time was the biggest operation of the CIA, which intends to implement the directive of US President Ronald Reagan: ” Afghanistan must be the tomb of the Red Army. “
Also listen How the Taliban took over Afghanistan
The mujahideen, resistance fighters, benefit from this financial windfall, as do the NGOs which then intervene with populations bruised by intense fighting. To swell the ranks of the fighters against the communist regime of Najibullah [1987-1992] and its ally, religion and the enhancement of tribal identities are powerful instruments for mobilizing various rebel groups.
It will take ten years for President Reagan’s formula to become reality, and for the Red Army with all its armada to cross the border, abandoning thousands of vehicles in the Afghan countryside. They will remain visible there for a long time, as if to better remind us that the Afghan warriors, from the British Empire already, remain undefeated by foreign troops.
A taste of déjà vu
So here we are forty years after the entry of the Red Army in this country that political scientist and specialist in Islam Olivier Roy qualifies as that of “Eternity at war”. After the fall of the communist regime, the states which supported the rebellion lost interest in the country. The creature has yet turned against its designer. Religion then recruits against the American “great Satan”.
Afghanistan is coming off the radar screens, but religious radicalism will continue to flourish, to the point of favoring the reception of Osama bin Laden and the sponsors of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, and, in their wake, the entry of the international coalition into the country.
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