Back into the cauldron

摘要

In february 1989 the last Russian units A withdrew from Afghanistan across the Friendship Bridge into Uzbekistan, then still part of the doomed Soviet Union. To America, this was a moment of triumph. For ten years, by arming and assisting the mujahideen, it had first contained and then reversed what many feared was a Russian drive to the Persian Gulf. Almost immediately, though, America's interest in the region evaporated. Little American, and not much international, effort was expended on stabilising liberated Afghanistan, which immediately lapsed into civil war. Pakistan, which was once a vital ally in the battle for Afghanistan, was disregarded. Only a year later, the administration of George Bush senior declined to certify Pakistan as free of nuclear weapons, thereby freezing weapons sales to the country. Pakistan's nuclear programme had not seemed such a problem in the 1980s. The decade of American disengagement proved devastating to Central Asia. The Afghans, exhausted by warlordism, welcomed the rule of the Taliban. In turn, the Taliban's leaders fell under the sway of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda fighters. Long before the attack on the World Trade Centre, these allied groups attempted to spread jihad throughout the region, assisting radicals in the former Soviet Central Asian republics, in Kashmir and even in China. Pakistan suffered particularly badly. Cast adrift by the West, which now found India more attractive, it too moved ever closer to fundamentalism.