Civil war, was elected president of the Revolutionary Coun.... soviet parti

By early 1980 several regional groups, collectively known as (from Arabic mujahidun , those who engage in jihad), had united inside Afghanistan, or across the border in Peshawar, Pakistan, to resist the Soviet invaders and the Soviet-backed Afghan army. Pakistan's exclusion of secular groups from any role in the struggle fit the ideological temper of the military regime of which played heavily on Islamic symbols for legitimacybut also suited Pakistan's determination that no aid would go to Afghan nationalists who might harbour long-standing territorial designs on Pakistan. (A young Saudi Arabian, , was among them, and, while he saw little military action, his personal wealth enabled him to fund high-profile mujahideen activities and gain a widely favourable reputation among his colleagues.) The bulk of the fighting was undertaken by small units that crossed into Afghanistan from Pakistan and engaged mostly in brief hit-and-run operations. Among the other Peshawar-based parti! es were Abd al-Rasul Sayyaf's militant Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan (Etti?ad-e Eslami Bara-ye Azad-e Afghanistan), which derived its support largely from foreign Islamic groups, and three parties headed by traditional religious leaders, including the most pragmatic of the mujahideen parties, the National Islamic Front (Ma?az-e Melli-ye Eslami), led by Ahmad Gailani. But the party receiving the most material support from the ISI was the extremist and virulently anti-American Islamic Party (?ezb-e Eslami; one of two parties by that name) loyal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Other than the Afghan fighters themselves, few had faith that the mujahideen could prevail in a military conflict with the Soviet Union. After years of bedevilment by the Soviet military's use of helicopter gunships and jet bombers, the mujahideen's prospects improved greatly toward the end of 1986 when they began to receive more and better weapons from the outside worldparticularly from the Un! ited States, the United Kingdom, and Chinavia Pakistan, the mo! st important of these being shoulder-fired ground-to-air missiles. Despite renewals of the official cease-fire, Afghan resistance to the Soviet presence continued, and the effects of the war were felt in neighbouring countries: Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran numbered more than five million. During the 1980s, talks between the foreign ministers of Afghanistan and Pakistan were held in Geneva under auspices, the primary stumbling blocks being the timetable for the withdrawal of Soviet troops and the cessation of arms supplies to the mujahideen. Soviet General Secretary subsequently carried out an earlier promise to begin withdrawing Soviet troops in May of that year; troops began leaving as scheduled, and the last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan in February 1989. The mujahideen formed an interim government in Pakistan, steadfastly resisting Najibullah's reconciliation efforts, and disunity among the mujahideen parties contributed to their inability to dislodge the commu! nist government. soviet parti