Feb. 15, 1989 A day uncelebrated by most, marked the departure of the last of the 115,000 Soviet soldiers from Afghanistan after ten years of military engagement. Many in the secretive government inner-circles of Washington, Riyadh and Islamabad did not mind the general lack of festivity that Wednesday morning. For them, the last battle of the Cold War had just been called over, and they had won. The defeat of the Red Army by such hands, though they had never officially fought, was probably enough to commemorate anyway. The U.S-Saudi-Pak troika had dug the grave of the Soviet Union in the mountains of Afghanistan, even though the USSR had not officially expired.

But all the credit for the ouster of the Soviets cannot go to a bunch of hushed-up spy types. The USSR"s grave had been dug by undertakers, the mighty Mujahideen, who Reagan would laud as "freedom fighters" in his State of the Union addresses. Armed, financed and trained by the U.S. inspired troika, these rag-tag heroes would eventually sprout a group whose name sounds so familiar these days: the Taliban.

The Back Burner Monster

The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan probably the ultimate goal of the U.S. strategy there and a laid-back Gorbachev in the Kremlin lead to Afghanistan being left out of the U.S. "national interest" paradigm. For the lethally armed and battle-hardened Mujahideen, the ten-year long military, intelligence and finance based relationship with America now seemed like a one night stand, with the U.S. walking away almost as soon as its goals in the region were satisfied. The political vacuum in the country was imminent, and so it came. The fall of the USSR in late 1991 gave another impetus to this group, who were now trying to come to terms with power-sharing basically fighting for the crumbs over the table the Russians had left.

Inevitably, violence ensued. Battle lines were drawn between groups, mostly split along religious lines. All armed up with no one to fight but themselves, the former Mujahideen found Afghanistan in a civil war, drought, a refugee exodus, and the overthrow of the quasi-government which was a de-facto successor after the Soviets followed. By 1996, the Taliban, student-warriors from seminaries in Pakistan, the same seminaries which had been the hot-bed for recruiting the Mujahideen for the anti-Soviet Jihad in the "80s, were ruling over the capital, Kabul. C"est la vie.

The Spill-Over Effect

The story of the Soviet invasion the U.S. involvement, the Saudi and Pakistani connection, the political and military vacuum after the Soviet withdrawal is not just about Afghanistan. The whole escapade has caused a spill-over effect which not only affected New Yorkers and Pentagon officials on September 11th, but which has also steered the Central Asian and South Asian region into bitter conflict and instability.

The Daily met with Javed Nazir, a journalism fellow at the University and an outspoken journalist from Pakistan. Nazir"s personal life seems intertwined with the volatile events of the region. As founder and editor of the Frontier Post, a liberal Pakistani daily, Nazir found himself out of a job last year when his newspaper was burnt down for publishing a controversial letter. Radicalized Islamist elements opposed to a liberal press were believed responsible for the attack. Currently working on a book about the minorities in Pakistan, Nazir"s insight has much to offer American readers about the precariousness in the region.

The crux of what Nazir has to say inspired the title for this piece. The second coming, from a U.S. perspective, is indicative of this second instance the U.S. is getting involved in Afghanistan. Like last time, the involvement will not be limited to that country alone. Spill-over effects are as threatening extra-region context this time as they were in the "80s.

The First Coming

Eerily familiar are the circumstances which envelope the nations involved. Central again to the issue is Pakistan. An Islamic republic of a hundred and fifty million, Pakistan seems to be at the same cross-roads as it was in 1979. Pervaiz Musharraf , the current President, is a military dictator. As the commander in chief of the armed forces, Musharraf came to power in 1999 in a bloodless coup, oustering the popularly elected but thoroughly retrogressive and corrupt government of Nawaz Sharif. Now, Musharraf is getting into the same courting dance which another dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq had been seduced into by the U.S. in the 80"s.

Haq had grabbed the reigns of power in the 1977 when he engineered a coup to oust the first democratically elected prime minister, Zulfi Bhutto. Seeking foreign and domestic legitimacy, Haq was interested in creating a popular base for his regime by merging Islam into politics.