I was aware that the Soviets were a brutal occupying force. However, I was having a discussion with a friend about Afghanistan, and he argued that in enforcing atheist policies and purging numerous figures involved in what he described as a "rich culture and tradition", the Soviets left us with the barbaric tribalism that exists there today.
How accurate are these claims from a historical perspective? How did the Soviets enforce these policies?
First off, to say that the Soviets “purged numerous figures” is pretty incorrect. These purges were carried out by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), and actually ended up being used by the Soviets as justification for their invasion in 1979. Between the first two Khalqi Afghan Presidents Taraki and Hafizullah Amin, literally thousands of Afghans were killed. A good chunk of these purged Afghans were actually indeed members of the PDPA, though they were mostly from the other side of the party, the Parcham. This brings up a follow up point, in that the PDPA was less a natural creation and more of a fusing together of two hostile factions in the 1960s and 70s by the KGB, according to the author of The Wars of Afghanistan, Peter Tomsen. This would be again repeated by the ISI and CIA in 1989 when trying to forge together the Afghan Interim Government (AIG).
Next, your friend saying “rich culture and tradition” is kind of an odd and quite broad choice of words. Assuming he means the liberal, reformist, government of the Musahiban Dynasty, which did legalize the practice of not wearing a hijab, this is again way off the mark. According to author of Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History Thomas Barfield, to even suggest that the government of Afghanistan had control outside of major population centers such as Mazar-i-Sharif, Kabul, Heart, or Kandahar, is usually pretty suspect factually. Rather, you saw a plethora of rich tribal culture, especially in the Pashtun south and eastern regions. Not only did the Soviets not destroy this rich culture and tradition, it could be argued that they even furthered it. The Soviet-Afghan War and following civil war have undone any and all centralization of the government carried out in Afghanistan by figures such as Abdur Rahman “The Iron Amir”, Habibullah, Nadir Shah, and Mohammad Daoud Khan and his cousin, Zahir Shah.
Sources:
The Wars of Afghanistan by Peter Tomsen
Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History by Thomas Barfield