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Battle of Jalalabad | |||||||||
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Part of Afghan Civil War (1989–1992), Afghanistan–Pakistan border skirmishes | |||||||||
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The Battle of Jalalabad, also known as Operation Jalalabad or the Jalalabad War, occurred in the spring of 1989, marking the beginning of the Afghan Civil War.[17] The Peshawar-based Seven-Party Union (an alliance of seven Afghan mujahideen groups also known as the Afghan Interim Government or "government-in-exile"),[8][18] supported by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, attacked Jalalabad, which was then under the administration of the Soviet-backed Republic of Afghanistan.[8][11] Though the mujahideen quickly captured the Jalalabad Airport and Samarkhel, the former base of the Soviet 66th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, the Afghan Armed Forces recaptured them and claimed victory.[19]
It also is a setback to the U.S.-Pakistani policy that supports the guerrillas in their fight against the Kabul government of President Najibullah.
Casualties have been high on both sides. Government troops have been reduced by heavy guerrilla shelling and rocketing from 12,000 to 9,000, Western diplomats say....The Afghan Air Force is said to be taking advantage of the fact that, probably for the first time in the war, guerrilla forces are concentrated in static positions, which makes them easier bombing targets.
His commitment to jihad – to an Islamic revolution transcending national boundaries, was such that he dreamed one day the "green Islamic flag" would flutter not just over Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also over territories represented by the (former Soviet Union) Central Asian republics. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, as the director-general of Pakistan's intelligence organization, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate, an impatient Gul wanted to establish a government of the so-called Mujahideen on Afghan soil. He then ordered an assault using non-state actors on Jalalabad, the first major urban center across the Khyber Pass from Pakistan, with the aim of capturing it and declaring it as the seat of the new administration. This was the spring of 1989 and a furious prime minister, Benazir Bhutto – who was kept in the dark by ... Gul and ... Mirza Aslam Beg – demanded that Gul be removed from the ISI.
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