The 1989–1992 Afghan Civil War took place between the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of the Soviet–Afghan War on 15 February 1989 until 27 April 1992, ending the day after the proclamation of the Peshawar Accords proclaiming a new interim Afghan government which was supposed to start serving on 28 April 1992.
Mujahideen groups, some of them more or less united as part of the "Afghan Interim Government", in the years 1989–1992 proclaimed as their conviction that they were battling the hostile "puppet regime" of the Republic of Afghanistan in Kabul. In March 1989, the "Afghan Interim Government" in cooperation with the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) attacked the city of Jalalabad but they were defeated by June in what is now known as the Battle of Jalalabad. Hekmatyar's Hezbi Islami would pull their support for the Afghan Interim Government following the loss in Jalalabad.
In March 1991, a mujahideen coalition quickly conquered the city of Khost. In March 1992, having lost the last remnants of Soviet support, President Mohammad Najibullah agreed to step aside and make way for a mujahideen coalition government. One mujahideen group, Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin, refused to confer and discuss a coalition government under the Pakistani sponsored Peshawar Peace Accords and invaded Kabul with the help of Khalqist Generals. This triggered a civil war, starting on 25 April 1992, between initially three, but within weeks five or six mujahideen groups or armies.
Background (1978–89)
In October 1978, opponents of the reforms of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government, including modernizing traditional Islamic civil and marriage laws, changing the national flag to a Soviet-style red flag, and forcing land reform, started a revolt, and called themselves 'mujahideen'.
The Soviet Union, that had been supporting Afghanistan economically and militarily since 1919 (see Soviet–Afghan War#Soviet–Afghan relations post-1920s) and early 1979 had sent hundreds of military and civilian advisers into Afghanistan after a request from President Nur Muhammad Taraki, in December 1979 intervened in Afghanistan with its 40th Army, around 75,000 strong, killing the new President Hafizullah Amin with the help with Parchamites and Taraki loyalist Khalqists, and installed Soviet loyalist Babrak Karmal as president of a Soviet-organised and –backed PDPA-regime.
In spite of a UN General Assembly resolution condemning the 1979 USSR invasion and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation demanding immediate Soviet withdrawal, the Russians stayed until early 1989. They managed to take control of major cities and strategic installations, thus acerbating nationalistic feelings among rebels who drew Soviet troops into war with urban uprisings and tribal armies. The Soviets leveled villages, destroyed irrigation ditches and laid millions of mines in an attempt to root out the mujahideen rebels. In those nine years, between and 2 million Afghans were killed and millions were displaced, and in large numbers fled into neighboring countries. The new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, taking charge in 1985, pressured by the People's Republic of China, in 1987 announced his intention to withdraw from Afghanistan, which withdrawal took place between May 1988 and February 1989.
The mujahideen resistance movement had started chaotically in 1978 and had always stayed highly segmented along regional, ethnic, tribal and religious lines: after four years the mujahideen operated from an estimated 4,000 bases, a typical commander leading a few hundred men. In 1985, seven larger Sunni Islamic rebel groups had coordinated their fight against the Soviets, who were also known as the Pakistani backed Peshawar 7 Mujahideen Alliance. After the Soviets had left Afghanistan in February 1989, some smaller groups put down arms or joined the government however the larger mujahideen groups continued their fight against the PDPA-government of President Mohammad Najibullah, who was still massively supported by the Soviet Union, and establish a Islamist government. Many of these larger Mujahedeen groups such as Jamiat had existed years before the PDPA seized power. Leaders such as Ahmad Shah Massoud and Jalaluddin Haqqani attempted uprisings (with Pakistani support) in 1974 against the government of Daoud Khan. These uprisings failed and many of these groups fled to Pakistan to be trained by the ISI in a future insurgency against the Daoud Khan government, which would be overthrown by PDPA military officers only 4 years later.
Attacks between mujahideen groups (1987–89)