‘Cómo empezó todo: Un breve repaso a los orígenes de los conflictos en Afganistán anteriores a 1979’ (How It All Began: An Introduction into the pre-1979 origins of Afghanistan’s Conflicts) is an article by AAN co-director an senior analyst Thomas Ruttig written for issue 119 of the Spanish review ‘PAPELES de relaciones ecosociales y cambio global’ (Madrid).
For most people, it was the Soviet invasion over Christmas 1979 that put Afghanistan on the political map again after many decades. But the origins of the internationalised Afghanistan conflict, currently in its 33rd year and often explained through a Cold War perspective only, goes back much further and one important dimension of the conflict has often been ignored: the domestic factors that had undermined Afghanistan’s internal stability of 40 years leading to the 1973 military coup and the 1979 Soviet invasion – the largely unnoticed but profound change in Afghanistan’s social fabric caused by a rapid growth of the educated class, an ongoing result of Amanullah’s reforms in the 1920s; the political dynamic following the passing of a new constitution in 1964, and finally, an environmental crisis – the drought of 1969–72 – and the inadequate response of the government.
This article (in Spanish) is not available online yet. For copies of the review, please contact here. An updated and more extensive version of the article in English will soon be available as an AAN Occasional paper.
Revisions:
This article was last updated on 9 Mar 2020
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Soviet
Thomas Ruttig
