Afghanistan: Proxy Aggression as a Way Forward

So I have been dreadfully short on time here recently. Subsequently I have been unable to thoroughly research the information on US proxy intervention in Afghanistan. However, for the sake of continuing to write I am going to proceed without all the data I need.

The United States of America conducted covert operations in Afghanistan from 1979 until 1992 (Pike, John E. "Covert Operations." 2 May 2007. http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/ops/covert-ops.htm). Why? The US government was firmly entrenched with the USSR in the Cold War. Afghanistan was just one other US country used to strategically weaken the USSR. One question I have is regarding the sequence of events. Had the Russians invaded Afghanistan already or did the US proxy strategy entice the Russians into Afghanistan? Regardless, the US government covertly supported the Mujahideen via the CIA. During the Carter and Reagan administrations the radical Jihadists (Mujahideen) were funded and trained by the CIA so that they could undermine the 'atheistic' communist government.

The Russians were unsuccessful in their battles for Afghanistan largely due to CIA covert operations with the Mujahideen. Due to the huge cost of operations in Afghanistan the Russians left the country in 1989. The CIA then stopped its Afghanistan involvement in 1992. From that time until 1996 power struggles ensued between conflicting Mujahideen groups. In 1996 the Taliban seized control of Kabul and began its rule of the country. It was also in 1996 that the Taliban invited Osama Bin Laden to stay in their country. Osama Bin Laden had been trained by the CIA as a part of the Mujahideen. He came to Afghanistan from Sudan where he was being hunted by none other than the US government for his role in the US embassy bombings and the bombing of the US Cole.

On September 11th of 2001 a handful of radical Muslim men flew planes into two New York skyscrapers and the Pentagon. These men were trained by Bin Laden in Afghanistan. Anticipating the Al Qaeda success in September one Shaykh said this, “There will be a great hit and people will go out by hundreds to Afghanistan” (Shaykh Salih Al-Shuaybi as quoted by an unnamed Shaykh in a November, 2001 video with Usama Bin Laden.). Al Qaeda had been training for years with this plot and its success startled the Bush administration as well as the entire US population.

One of the Al Qaeda training manuals found in Afghanistan contains this quote:

"These young men realized that an Islamic government would never be established except by the bomb and rifle. Islam does not coincide or make a truce with unbelief.,. but rather confronts it. The confrontation that Islam calls for with these godless and apostate regimes, does not know Socratic debates, Platonic ideals nor Aristotelian diplomacy. But it knows the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing, and destruction, and the diplomacy of the canon and the machine-gun." (Al-Qaeda training manual).

The result of US proxy intervention in Afghanistan from 1979-1992 was the decline of the USSR and the rise of Al Qaeda.