Sources of Internation Power - Essay Example

This angered the most of those in Afghanistan since Muslim belief was a strong belief in the country. Many Muslim leaders got arrested, and others fled the capital and went to the mountains escaping Amin's police. Amin led a government based on communists who rejected religion caused discontent within the government. Most Afghanistan Muslims joined a rebel force for Allah called Mujahideen. They wanted the overthrow of the Amin government. They declared a holy war on Amin’s supporters. This got stretched out to the Russians in Afghanistan attempting to maintain Amin’s power in government (Arnold 1985).

Russians argued that they got invited in by the Amin government and were not attacking the country. Their claim was that their task was to help an authentic government and that their rebel forces were not terrorists. Amin got shot by Russians on December 27th, 1979. He got replaced by Babrak Kamal. For him to head the Afghan government, it was necessary for the Russian military to support him and keep him in power. Most Afghanistan soldiers left for the Mujahedeen. The Kamal government required over 80,000 Russian soldiers for him to be in power.

The Mujahideen were difficult opponents. They had old rifles with no knowledge of the mountains next to Kabal and the expected weather conditions (Clements 2003). The Russians decided to use poison gas, helicopter gunships and napalm against the Mujahideen. Unfortunately, they encountered the same military state the Americans did in Vietnam. The Mujahideen controlled most of Afghanistan by 1982 although they fought the second most powerful military authority in the world. Young Russian soldiers did not match against men with religious beliefs.

Although the Russian army had a strong reputation, the Afghanistan war showed the world how poor it was aside military displays. Army strikes did not last longer than 10 days without failing in this harsh Afghanistan environment. Most Russian soldiers fled to the Mujahideen. Russian tanks did not have any use in the mountain passes. America banned the export of grain to Russia. It also ended SALT talks that were taking place and embargoed the Olympic Games that were to be due to take place in Moscow come 1980.

America also did nothing since they knew Russia got itself into a Vietnam and it provided American Intelligence with a chance of acquiring new Russian military rifles to be used in Afghanistan. The Mujahideen fighters could access American surface-to-air missiles (Collins 1986). Towards the end of 1980's, the Mujahideen was fighting with itself in Afghanistan with hardcore Taliban fighters clutching the whole nation. It imposed strict Muslim law on Afghanistan’s. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was quite Vietnam-like in cruelty, killing millions of Afghans and tearing apart a country with little religious fanaticism and making advances to women.

Afghanistan became a base for terrorists, in the disorder. When Ronald Reagan took office 1981, he upheld the Carter emphasis about the Persian Gulf-Arabian Peninsula sector which followed the Soviet attack of Afghanistan. His approach to the Middle East problems resulting from the assumptions different from initial assumptions of the Carter administration. He held that the major threat to peace in the region was not the Arab-Israeli disagreement but the Russian and its policies. It was necessary to restore American ability and reliability that could be enabled by building