One of the most popular narratives connected with Pakistani trolls’ infowar against Russia over the past week, which is predicated on the false pretext that India is financing the Taliban’s purchase of Belarusian drones with Russia’s approval, is that the 1980s Afghan War triggered the USSR’s dissolution. This claim is popularly accepted as true among many Pakistanis due to the Soviet Union falling apart just two years after it withdrew from Afghanistan. They therefore believe that they can now “Balkanize” Russia.
This is typically expressed through tweets showing a map of the former Soviet Republics and along with a comment to the effect that the same thing will happen again to Russia if Pakistan wants. The likelihood of random Pakistani accounts all pushing the same narrative on the same week and on the same false premise is nil. This is a coordinated attack either to precondition the public for Pakistan arming Ukraine or to distract from the opposition’s march to Islamabad and/or Pakistan’s mission creep in Yemen.
Whatever the motive may be, and Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies that are collectively known as the Establishment have plenty of reasons to weaponize Russophobia, the fact of the matter is that this viral narrative is patently false. The Afghan War, in which Pakistan colluded with the US to defeat the Soviet Union by proxy through the Mujahedeen, didn’t trigger the USSR’s dissolution. This was instead brought about by political-administrative issues that long predate that conflict.
Absolutely none of the former Soviet Republics that declared independence, including the Russian Federation itself, referenced the Afghan War. Moreover, every single one ended up with their Soviet-era administrative borders (apart from post-“Maidan” Ukraine for reasons beyond the scope of this analysis to explain), which brings to mind Putin’s famous accusation against Lenin. He described the Soviet Republics’ right of secessionism as a “time bomb that was planted under the structure of our statehood.”
It was the combination of this right, Gorbachev’s chaotic “glasnost” and “perestroika” (“openness” and “restructuring”) policies, and the economic troubles brought about by ideologically driven mismanagement that resulted in the USSR’s dissolution, not the Soviet Union’s loss in the Afghan War. If any geopolitical development played a role in this event, it was Poland’s Solidarity movement, which was in some sense a Color Revolution that ultimately crushed communism in Central & Eastern Europe.
The most that the Afghan War did was worsen the USSR’s economic troubles, not spark them, nor did it inspire the individual republics to declare independence. Nevertheless, the false perception of Pakistan’s alleged role in the Soviet Union’s dissolution persists, both abroad (mostly in the West) and especially among Pakistanis. It’s being recycled on social media right now to imbue average Pakistanis with false confidence as part of the Establishment’s infowar against Russia for the reasons that were touched upon.
Whatever their Establishment’s motive may be, the pertinence in fact-checking their trolls’ viral claim about Pakistan’s alleged role in the USSR’s dissolution is that it’s a timely opportunity to educate folks who might have already fallen for this false narrative. If anything, Solidarity was the geopolitical trigger that accelerated this process, not the Afghan War. Looking forward, Establishment-backed Pakistani trolls are expected to continue peddling this narrative, which will further worsen people-to-people ties.
