The Reason Behind The 9/11 Attacks

When the Shah of Iran stepped down in 1978, the U.S. lost a key ally in the Middle East. Several months previously, Mohammed Daud, the king of Afghanistan, was overthrown by the socialist leaning “People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA)”. After the king was overthrown, Soviet troops began to gather at Afghanistan’s northern border. This is when the U.S. made a huge mistake. In their panic to prevent the Soviets from controlling the Middle East, they began to provide massive funding to a backward and unstable country. They did not stop to think about what the consequences of providing weapons (such as anti- aircraft missiles) to a group of people who the world had ignored for sixty years. They were blinded by their fear of the Soviets. There was no consideration as to what the Afghan’s intentions were. The U.S. provided training, guns, and money to whoever needed it; however, no one cared what the Afghans did with the supplies, as long as they used them to fight their enemy when the time came. It was considered to be tactically efficient to have other people fight in the Proxy Wars rather than actual Americans. The Americans gave no thought as to what the Afghan people did with their weapons once the battles were over.

When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the Mujahideen (faith based rebel fighters) with U.S. funding were ready to fight them. The Soviets were able to capture the capital Kabul, but they were constantly attacked by the rebel forces. The U.S. also funded nearby Pakistan with millions of dollars in order to prevent a Soviet invasion there. As the years progressed, more funding and advanced weaponry were given to the Mujahideen rebels. In 1984, they received advanced anti-armor missiles that were used against the U.S. years later. By 1987, almost 700 million dollars and 65,000 tons of arms were being sent yearly to Afghanistan operations (Harvery). The reason given to the public for this investment in Afghanistan was that the world had to be safe for democracy everywhere. These words are almost identical to those that Woodrow Wilson used when the U.S. was deciding to declare war on Germany in WWI. They are also the same words that George Bush would use twenty years later when he said that he would never give up in his “War on Terror” (Carlin).

The war in Afghanistan lasted for nine years before the Soviets pulled out of the region. In the United States, government officials were congratulating each other on a mission accomplished. In Afghanistan, the people were suffering. There had been over one million casualties, and three million people were homeless. Unfortunately, as soon as the war ended, so did the flow of money. The funding went from millions to nothing in less than a month. This is the time period when the Afghans needed U.S. support the most. When the funding stopped, the Afghans viewed this as a betrayal. In the words of an American worker in the area named Rashid, “ To many Afghans, the U.S. withdrawal constituted a major betrayal, while Washington’s refusal to harness international pressure to help broker a settlement between the warlords was considered a double betrayal” (Harvery).