Reagan sitting with people from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in February 1983.
(Image by Wikipedia (commons.wikimedia.org), Author: Michael Evans, see stamp and name on roll #C12820) Details Source DMCA
What about the Afghan Women? The U.S. has cynically used "the women" of Afghanistan for propaganda, and worse.
[The following is an excerpt from a longer article I wrote in January 2015. President Obama had announced in December of 2014 that the war in Afghanistan was over for the U.S. and NATO--- responsibility was being turned over to the "Afghan forces", President Obama said. The following portion of the article is a brief history of Afghanistan, and how and why the U.S. has been tormenting that country, its people, and especially its women since the 1970s.]
"Tomorrow, we will mark an important milestone in our country's history: After more than 13 years of war, our combat mission in Afghanistan is coming to a responsible end."--- Barack Obama, December 27, 2014.
The source of America's current misery in Afghanistan goes back to the early 1970s. During the Cold War there were several hot proxy wars, with the US backing one side and the Soviets backing the other side. The most painful proxy war for the US was the Vietnam War.
The US withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975 was a humiliating defeat in a long, bloody and costly war. The psychological scars from that war would persist and affect US foreign policy up to the present.
In the later 1970s the US saw in Afghanistan what it thought would be a chance to pay back the Soviet Union for its support of North Vietnam against the US. The US also hoped that in Afghanistan it could make strategic gains against the Soviet Union in their own backyard.
Prior to 1973 Afghanistan was a monarchy ruled by King Mohammed Zahir Shah. Officially the King had close ties with the Soviet Union but maintained enough neutrality to play the Cold Warriors against each other for his and Afghanistan's benefit.
In 1973 the King was overthrown by his cousin and former Prime Minister Mohammed Daoud Khan. President Khan's government was secular, progressive, encouraged the advancement of women's rights and maintained neutrality between the US and the Soviet Union. Khan was the self-declared president until his assassination in 1978 in what is known as the Saur Revolution. (HERE)
The Saur Revolution ushered in a faction of the Communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). That faction was in turn overthrown by another faction of the communist PDPA in 1979. Regardless of which faction of the PDPA was in charge, they all had strong ties to the Soviet Union and promoted socialist ideologies.
Of particular interest, the communist's PDPA promoted equality for women, which angered Islamic fundamentalists. It was this anger and rebellion against the equality of the sexes, and anger against "godless communism" that the US exploited for its own purposes.
Despite what the US says is its concern for women's rights, it sided with the anti-feminists Islamic fundamentalists for geopolitical reasons. A chance to cause trouble for the Soviet Union was just too tempting to let women's welfare get in the way. Afghanistan was a chance to pay the Soviet Union back for Vietnam.
President Carter, with the advice from his National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, launched a secret operation called Operation Cyclone to overthrow the communist government in Afghanistan. This was before, not after, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. That invasion occurred afterwards on December 24, 1979. Once the Soviets invaded, Brzezinski says that he sent a memo to President Carter saying that:
"We have the chance to give the Soviets their Vietnam."
In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Zbigniew Brzezinski reportedly said that he and Carter intentionally drew the Soviets into a Vietnam-style trap.
In answer to one question from Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski reportedly said:
"... it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention." (HERE)
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