Relations Between Soviet Union and Afghanistan During the Cold War

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-509-6_66How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Soviet Union; Collapse of USSR; Afghanistan; Taliban

Abstract

This paper explores how the Soviet Union’s economic collapse in 1991 created long-term structural conditions that enabled the Taliban to gain and sustain power in Afghanistan. Rather than viewing their rise due to ideological fervor or foreign abandonment lone, this study argues that the Soviet-built state was inherently unsustainable. During the occupation from 1979 to 1989, Afghanistan’s governance was centralized, militarized, and made dependent on soviet aid. Local institutions were dismantled, leaving Kabul’s ministries as the sole source of authority, they ceased to function once Soviet financial and logistical support vanished. When Moscow withdrew military aid in 1989 and cut economic aid by 1991, the Afghan state disintegrated. Warlord rule and an illicit economy emerged in the vacuum, but both lacked coherence and legitimacy. In contrast, the Taliban offered a unified, harsh but functional model of governance that restored basic order. Their ascent was not a surprise but a structural consequence of soviet constructed collapse. This paper reframed the rise of the Taliban as the outcome of institutional fragility not merely geopolitical neglect, highlighting the enduring costs of foreign imposed state-building without local foundations.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Tianyue Zhao
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/15
TI  - Relations Between Soviet Union and Afghanistan During the Cold War
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 International Conference on Mental Growth and Human Resilience (MGHR 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 610
EP  - 615
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-509-6_66
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-509-6_66
ID  - Zhao2025
ER  -