#Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

[possumcollege]

A faculty member in my building has this hand-woven Afghan war rug from the 90s featuring Russian military hardware. It's pretty wild and festively grim.

#war rug #Afghanistan #soviet afghan war #invasion of Afghanistan

[travazap]

Imagine getting paid to write an “analysis” like this. Imagine having the historical knowledge of a newborn child.

#vietnam war korean war greek civil war sino-soviet split algerian war iran-iraq war afghanistan war yugoslav wars congo wars #bangladesh independence war invasion of iraq cuban revolution iranian revolution syrian war lebanese war war on drugs ethiopian civil war #nothing happened between august of 45 and february of 22 #history is over after all

[the-railroad-earth]

"Afghan guerrillas, armed and equipped with motorcycles prepare for action with Soviet and government forces, in the mountainous western region of Afghanistan on January 14, 1980. The guerrillas were able to slip in and out of neighboring Iran, where they re-supplied from Muslims who sympathized with their struggle." [source]

#afghan soviet war #afghanistan #mujahideen #resistance #soviet invasion

[hylaversicolor]

many of him

snake eater 1 + 2 (age 20): self explanatory. military buzzcut. parade dress. scarf. with and without beret, for funsies. iconic.

portable ops (age 26): i drew him once before in this outfit but i think he was doing three piece suits throughout the latter half of the 60s and into the early 70s. and he kept the sides of his head shaved but started growing out the top part a little. i know portable ops isn’t technically canon but i think that he definitely killed the DCI to get the other half of the legacy for zero. pomade era!

les enfants terribles project (age 28): baby’s first facial hair. in my mind this was around the time he first got into drugs because the situation was so stressful and also it was the 70s.

early 9 yr gap (30s): i don’t have a specific timeframe for this but the point of this entry and the next are to juxtapose what his hair looks like when he takes care of it and what it looks like when he just lets it grow out and get awful. in my head if he were to style his hair in any of the upcoming entries it would have those swoopy wavy 70s curls just like here.

soviet invasion of afghanistan (age 35): i think this is where he first started getting Bad. he makes a few references to the invasion in the mgsv tapes and he just sounds so sick and tired of it.

1982 (age 38): i just stuck this in for my own personal enjoyment but in my mind he let his hair get so long and ratty and nasty before finally hacking it all off with kitchen shears over the sink just before mgsv. (insert post: love this character. love to see them at the lowest point in their life)

phantom pain (age 40): i think all instances of the scarf are the same one he’s had since the 60s. he takes good care of his clothing

foxhound 199X (50s): to be honest i have NO idea what ocelot was doing in the 90s. hopefully he got clean. i think it would be funny if he stopped by foxhound every so often moonlighting as like a horseback riding instructor or something. kaz would love that i’m sure

shadow moses (61): in my mind his hair is curled so beautifully in mgs1, it just is to me

stealing ray (63): i think it would be funny if liquid made him pierce his ears. i love giving him a braid when i draw mgs2 ocelot i KNOW he doesn’t have one but in my mind he does

guns of the patriots (70): no red in his outfit tragic. also i think he straightened his hair for this game. slay?

#mgs #revolver ocelot #scribble #i tried to find a balance btwn his mgs1-3+4 facemold and the v facemold...... #anyway yeah. i think 1979-1984 hit him like a freight train #PLEASE ASK ME ABOUT THESE if you feel inclined. i have so many thoughts

[somerabbitholes]

book recs masterpost

an ever-updating masterpost of books i've recommended. please check these before you ask for recommendations in case they've been covered —

fiction

"the tragedy still happened, but it was important that the love was there"

japanese literature

korean literature [1], [2]

gothic writing

spooky adult horror gothic

some favourites

marathi books

some ruskin bond

indian fiction [1], [2], historical fiction, stories, [3], [4]

non-fiction

general assorted ones i like

some favourites

about people living through crises

on geopolitics, foreign policy, international affairs

on political philsophy

vaguely sociology

biographies

on economic history

on the silk route

on prisons, convict labour

on afghanistan, soviet invasion, terror

capitalism

on language and linguistics

on the ancient and prehistoric world

just a bunch on india

the indus valley

indian aestheticism, art

gupta empire

sangam literature

on the northeast

india and southeast asia

nur jahan, mughal women | more

islamic conquest and state-making

on kashmir

assorted nonfiction

colonisation and aftereffects

on nationalism

on cities

on mumbai

on bollywood in bombay

on cities

on delhi

on kolkata

essays

history, migration, labour

art, reading, travel, gender, sports

nature, climate, some history

political economy, environmental and urban history, cartography and space

my comfort books

light reading

books that have got me out of my slumps

on art, photography, aesthetics, design [1], [2], [3]

on the environment

just some story and essay collections

#booklr #masterpost #book recs #book blog #reading list #reading #essays #literature #academia #faq #gaaaandaaaalf #book list #historyblr

[collapsedsquid]

Located at the western edge of the famed Khyber Pass, Torkham has seen generations of Afghans flee and return during the tumultuous four decades of war that have blighted the nation. Many fled the Soviet invasion in the 1980s and the mujahideen’s long, eventually successful fight back. Others took flight during the civil war that erupted following the Soviet retreat that led to the Taliban’s initial rise. A new generation went to Pakistan in the aftermath of September 11 attacks, ebbing and flowing during the near two decades of conflict that followed. The Taliban’s return to power in 2021 following the United States’ chaotic withdrawal sparked another wave of some 600,000 refugees. Now Afghans from all those different generations are being told to go back. Pakistan’s caretaker Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti has previously said security concerns were behind the deportation order, claiming that Afghan nationals had carried out 14 of the 24 major terrorist attacks that have taken place in Pakistan this year.

Been trying to check if the refugees fled Afghanistan due to some sort of ethnic hatred but haven't seen that mentioned as a reason so far.

[tamamita]

Whats the diff bewteen daesh & Al-qaeda?

Al-Qaeda sprung out as a rebel group against the pro-soviet communist government of Afghanistan with the leadership of Bin Ladin. Al-Qaeda is far more concerned about the interest of Muslims in SWANA and seek to overthrow the Muslim governments which they consider corrupt. Bin Ladin was more concerned about building up an islamist vanguard against the Western powers and its "Jewish" elite, and favoured large-scale, dramatic attacks against strategic or symbolic targets, such as the twin towers. While Al-Qaeda adopts some sectarian policies, they do not carry out attacks against Muslims of different branches.

DAESH is a global jihadist group concerned with the establishment of a global caliphate. It began initially as al-Qaeda of Iraq (not affiliated with Al-Qaeda despite its name) following the illegal invasion of Iraq. Composed of Iraqi Baathists, tribal Sunni leaders, etnical groups and Salafists. Al-Zarkawi was the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and would encourage his followers to carry out attacks against any group that did not swear allegience to their cause. As a precursor group to ISIS, they were far more sectarian and sought to establish an Islamic emirate in Iraq and its environs, often with the sole purpose of eliminating the local Shi'as, non-Muslims and Sunni "apostates". When Zarqawi was killed following a US lead operation, Abu Bakr al-BAghdadi, a former Guantanamo inmate, would shore up support due to the brutal policies of the Iraqi PM Nour al-Maliki, which affected Iraq's Sunni minority, ultimately leading to the formation of ISIS. The Islamic State embraces some of al-Qaeda's goals, but see expansionism as an effective tool to recruit new fighters and while also carrying out indiscriminate bombings against its enemies. As opposed to al-Qaeda, ISIS is also known for its atrocity propaganda, which it sees as an effective tool for mass recruitment.

In short: Al-Qaeda is concerned with the enemies from far away (the west). ISIS is concerned with the enemies nearby (literally everyone.).

[afghanbarbie]

The sex-based apartheid against women in Afghanistan cannot be reduced to, "Afghan men saw Afghan women enjoying freedom and got mad, so they established extremist religious governments to stop it." I am really tired of seeing this misconception and oversimplification spread around by leftists, liberals and feminists – it's racist, and simply not fucking true.

The majority of Afghans want a secular government and for the oppression of women to end. The Taliban represent a minority of Afghanistan's people. The deterioration of Afghan society – in particular, women's rights and freedoms – directly results from decades of foreign intervention, imperialism and occupation. Afghans did not destroy Afghanistan, the United States did, and the USSR paved the way for them to do so.

Had Afghanistan never been treated like a pawn in the games played by imperialistic powers, had we not been reduced to resources, strategic importance and a tool for weakening the enemy, extremism would have never come to power.

An overview of Afghanistan's recent history:

The USSR wanted to incorporate Afghanistan into Soviet Central Asia and did so by sabotaging indigenous Afghan communist movements and replacing our leaders with those loyal to the USSR. The United States began funding and training Islamic extremists – the Mujahideen – to fight against the Soviet influence and subsequent invasion, and to help the CIA suppress any indigenous Afghan leftist movements. Those Mujahideen won the war, and then spent the next decade fighting for absolute control over Afghanistan.

During that time period, known as the Afghan Civil War, the Mujahideen became warlords, each enforcing their own laws on the regions they controlled. Kabul was nearly destroyed, and the chaos, destruction and death was largely ignored by the United States despite being the ones who caused and empowered it. This civil war era created the perfect, unstable environment needed to give a fringe but strong group like the Taliban a chance to rise to power. And after two decades of war, a singular entity taking control and bringing 'peace' was enticing to all Afghans, even if their views were objectively more extreme than what we had been enduring up to that point.

When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, they allied with the same warlords that had been destroying our country the decade prior and whom they had rallied against the Soviets – these are the people that made up the Northern Alliance. The 'good guys' that America gave us were rapists, pillagers, and violent extremists, no better than the Taliban. And that's not even mentioning the horrible atrocities and war crimes committed by American forces themselves.

So, no, Afghan men did not collectively wake up one day and decide that women had too much freedom and rush to establish an extremist government overnight. No, this is not to excuse the misogyny of men in our society – the extremists had to already exist for Americans to fund and arm them against the Soviets – but rather to redirect the bulk of this racist blame to the actual culprits. The religious extremism and sex-based apartheid would not be oppressing and murdering us today if they hadn't been funded and supported by the United States of America thirty years ago. And despite all the abuses and restrictions, many Afghan women prefer the Taliban's current government to another American occupation. I felt safer walking in Taliban-controlled Kabul than I did being 'randomly searched' (sexually assaulted) by American military police in my village as a child.

Imperialism is inextricably linked with patriarchal violence and women's oppression. You cannot talk about the deterioration of Afghanistan without talking about the true cause of said decline: The United States of America. Americans of all political views, including leftists and feminists, are guilty of reducing or outright ignoring Western responsibility for female oppression in the Global South, finding it much easier to place all blame on the foreign brown man or our supposedly backwards, savage cultures, when the most responsibility belongs with Western governments and their meddling games that forced the most violent misogynists among us into power.

(Most of this information comes from my own experience living as an Afghan Hazara woman in Afghanistan, but Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence covers this in much more detail. If you want more on the Soviet-Afghan war and Afghanistan's socialist history, Revolutionary Afghanistan is an English-language source from a more leftist perspective)

#afghanistan #taliban #anti imperialism #feminism #radfem safe #america is a terrorist state #america is a failed state #global south #western imperialism #hazara genocide

[abstracteddistractions]

Alighiero Boetti, "Tutto" 1990,

Embroidery on Linen, 86 1/2 x 170 1/4 in. (219.7 x 432.4 cm.)

In the spring of 1971, while in search of “something distant”, Alighiero Boetti discovered Afghanistan. This was the beginning of a relationship that tied the man and his work to the Afghan people for 23 years until the artist’s death in 1994.

Boetti maintained these links during the period of exile following the Soviet invasion of 1979, even welcoming some of his assistants into his own family in Italy.

Afghanistan is the scene of the production of many of Alighiero Boetti’s best-known works, including the Mappe (1971-1994), made by female Afghan embroiderers.

His artistic intentions, his experience of the country and his intellectual curiosity give rise to works that act as cultural and geopolitical seismographs.

His work bears witness to the socio-political transformations that affected the Middle East in the 1970s and 1980s, seeing, for example, the embroiderers flee to Peshawar in Pakistan, where some of the last embroideries were produced.

#art #abstract #abstraction #forms #fabric #embrodery #alighiero boetti #all #tutto #tornabuoni art #salman ali #afghanistan #political #afghan #socio-political #middle east #peshawar

[catgirlforeskin]

Just so that everyone is on the same page: if we are going to analogize the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the American invasion of Iraq, Russia is playing the role of America.

Russia is even running the same bullshit "our enemies are fascist" propaganda campaign.

If you're anti war, you should be protesting Russian warmongering, not American aid to those resisting.

I’ve talked extensively about how Russia is doing the “war on terror” routine, and how the invasion, which I oppose, is causing Ukraine to become more fascist in reaction (banning of all opposition parties, welcoming of neonazi militias into the national guard, etc).

I’ve been analogizing to Afghanistan, not Iraq, which if you recall, was also invaded by Russia (then the Soviet Union) and the US trained and armed the mujahideen in response. Something I think we can agree was a bad move, given that the Taliban now controls the country, no?

I do not live in Russia, I can’t meaningfully protest their government, but I can protest mine sending over fucking cluster munitions man. Government officials in the US (and a number of European countries, Germany most recently) have outright said they don’t care if Ukrainians want to surrender, they will keep pushing for total victory. It’s a meat grinder that NATO is pouring Ukrainians into and reaping the benefits of. I want it to end.

#asks

[leroibobo]

inside the former yu aw synagogue in herat, afghanistan. herat was once home to 6 synagogues - yu aw, at about 350 years old, is the last remaining as most of herat's jews (along with many other afghans) began to flee the country following the 1979 soviet invasion. it was restored in 2007, and is undergoing further restoration as of 2022. it currently houses a preschool.

#afghanistan #interior #worship #jewish #mizrahi #persian jews #old & new #my posts #how each individual synagogue was destroyed appropriated etc is probably not something i need to recount on this post #afghanistan and afgans have been through a lot so whatever you're guessing happened probably happened at least once

[vacuouslyfalse]

Blowback is a podcast about US imperialism so it's not surprising which way it leans, but it is kind of wild to me how they told the story of one of the principle examples of Soviet imperialism (the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan) and made it primarily a story about US imperialism.

I mean, it's a valid point of view! I feel like I learned a lot from it! I just feel like it tries to do a lot of work to portray the US as responsible for what was fundamentally a set of stupid and destructive decisions by the USSR with entirely predictable consequences.

#blowback

[uncharismatic-fauna]

To those of you who may be wondering, as I was, what the Jimmy Cart rabbit incident was:

Apparently in 1979, Carter was fishing in Georgie when a swamp rabbit- which is a separate species to the marsh rabbit- approached his boat. Carter believed the animal was "beserk" and splashed it with his paddle. His staff initially did not believe him, as rabbits weren't known to swim, but a photographer had captured the event.

Later, the incident was used to smear Carter as a coward, and some went so far as to blame it for the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran Hostage Crisis.

#jack speaks

[sea-otter148]

Everything is connected to everything, here's how

In 1979, the CIA began Operation Cyclone as a response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which funded and trained the Mujahideen, who were fighting back against the Soviets. A Saudi Arabian millionaire also helped fund and train the Mujahideen. This man was Osama bin Laden, and he would go on to found Al-Qaeda and perpetrate the 9/11 attacks.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, a man walked into his internship at Cartoon Network when he witnessed the Twin Towers fall. He used music to help deal with the trauma and got to founding a band. The man was Gerard Way and the band was My Chemical Romance.

MCR got popular enough that it grabbed the attention of Mormon housewife Stephanie Meyer, who had a dream about a sparkly vampire, who she named Edward Cullen, thus kicking off the Twilight series.

Meanwhile, E. L. James made a Twilight fanfiction called Master of the Universe, which was adapted into a book trilogy called 50 Shades of Grey, and that eventually got a movie deal starring Dakota Johnson in her breakout role.

Dakota Johnson was confronted on the Ellen Show, hosted by Ellen DeGeneres, for not being invited to her 29th birthday party, and Dakota made sure to invite her for her 30th birthday party. However, Ellen never attended the party and instead went to a Dallas Cowboys game with George W. Bush, circling it all back to 9/11. And when Dakota had been invited onto the Ellen Show again, she called Ellen out for not going to her birthday party, and this sparked investigations that revealed the toxic work environment and how Ellen DeGeneres treated her guests and staff. This caused the show to run for a 19th and final season. This is how the CIA is connected to the downfall of Ellen DeGeneres.

There is also the story of how the 2007-08 writer's strike caused Georgia to go blue in 2020, and this may be a wilder ride.

The writer's strike of 2007-08 caused the TV series Supernatural to lose 6 episodes of the back half of its third season, which caused Dean to go to hell due to the show being written into a corner. However, at the beginning of the fourth season, Castiel was introduced, and his profound bond with Dean which saved the latter from perdition caused both a ludicrous amount of unhinged fanfictions and 11 more seasons of Supernatural to be made.

Meanwhile in 2018, Stacey Abrams, a fan of Supernatural, founded the grassroots organization Fair Fight, which helped to end voter suppression in Georgia. This and increased voter turnout was largely credited to Joe Biden securing Georgia in the 2020 election by less than 12,000 votes. However, Stacey Abrams credited this success to being able to calm down after watching Supernatural. And in a beautiful stroke of kismet, Destiel culminated on November 5, 2020, while Georgia was still counting votes.

One more example I want to share is how Star Trek is connected to Obama's election in 2008.

In the 90s, Star Trek: Voyager was not doing too well critically, so the writers introduced a new character played by actress Jeri Ryan, called Seven of Nine. Jeri was married to a prominent politician and Illinois state senator named Jack Ryan, and the juicy details of their eventual divorce in 1999 caused Jack Ryan to lose his chance of getting a US Senate seat in 2004 and get someone else to fill in the Republican candidacy for the Senate election. That someone was former MSNBC host Alan Keyes, who was defeated in a landslide vote by the Democratic candidate Barack Obama. This allowed Obama to get a prominent political position, which ensured his victory in the 2008 presidential election.

Everything is connected to everything.

#butterfly effect #domino effect #destiel #ellen degeneres #mcr #50 shades of gray #supernatural #twilight #history #star trek #politics

[christmasintheloonybin]

Koshiro Tanaka, a Japanese businessman/martial artist who quit his day job and left Japan in order to fight alongside the Mujahideen during the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.

[zvaigzdelasas]

[LRT is Lithuanian State Media]

When Radosław Sikorski last served as Polish Foreign Minister, the relations between Vilnius and Warsaw were marked with animosity, demands, and apologies. He is now returning to the post in the newly formed government of Donald Tusk. What does this mean for Polish-Lithuanian relations? [...]

In 2008, Sikorski compared the situation of Poles in Lithuania to that of the Polish minority in Belarus, where Lukashenko persecuted and imprisoned activists of the Polish Union. This caused an uproar in Lithuania, and it was suggested that Sikorski may have been offended by Lithuania’s failure to support his nomination as NATO Secretary General.[...]

But one of the most unpleasant episodes took place during the visit of Polish President Lech Kaczyński to Vilnius in 2010 when the Seimas rejected the government’s proposal to allow Polish surnames to be written in the original language. Sikorski and other Polish leaders accused Lithuania of failing to address the issues of the country’s Polish minority and limiting education in Polish schools. They complained about infrastructure projects, the treatment of Orlen investors at the Mažeikiai oil refinery, the ban on displaying signs with Polish street names, as well as the alleged disruption of the return of land to people of Polish descent.

At one point, Sikorski even said that Poland was considering economic sanctions against Lithuania, and Polish leaders threatened to “not set foot in Lithuania until the Polish issues in Lithuania are resolved”. The disputes were also noticed abroad. In 2012, The Economist wrote that the Polish-Lithuanian ties are “bafflingly bad and getting dangerously worse”. Both countries reportedly felt that the other side should apologise and make concessions, which was also worrying for the US, NATO, and the EU.[...]

Sikorski is a graduate of Oxford University, and his spouse is the world-renowned historian Anne Applebaum. Earlier, Sikorski worked as a reporter for British publications covering the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and later the conflict in Angola.[...]

Under PiS, Poland had close relations with Vilnius, while the Russian threat and the invasion of Ukraine made it necessary to put grievances aside.

19 Dec 23