Afghan Resistance Leaders: Zia (left) and Massoud (right)

Michael Hughes: Anthropologist Jesse Barfield argued that throughout history Afghans never “united” in the strict sense of the term to oust an invader, they actually scattered and became ungovernable, while attacking the enemy from all different directions. This fundamental disunity embedded seeds of future discord. Of course when the infidel began exiting during the anti-Soviet jihad, the insurgents quickly turned the guns on each other, as we noted in AOP four years ago.

“The last remaining thread that had bound the mujahideen into a marriage of convenience broke when they no longer had a common enemy,” Barfield wrote in Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History. “Its leaders had no clear goals because their unity had been based on resistance against the Soviet Union and its client Afghan government, not any popular political platform.”

The current fragmented resistance suffers from these same defects and more. Click here to read more.