Unhappy that so many of the Afghan mujahidin groups had been portrayed in the West as traditionalist Muslims, Pohly set about to set the record straight. His study ("War and Resistance in Afghanistan") explains the ideological and political differences between the resistance groups, then traces their complex evolution from the April 1978 coup onwards. At base, he holds that fundamentalist Muslims largely dominated the mujahidin, with traditionalists and others marginalized. This argument, obviously, has been thoroughly vindicated by developments in Afghanistan since the communist regime fell in April 1992.
But Pohly does a lot more in this large, original, and important work. He sets the scene with a compelling presentation of the external factors that caused the Soviet intervention, then looks hard at Afghan communism, the military balance during the war, and the refugee communities in Pakistan and Iran. His documenting of "Islam killing," the fratricidal warfare that pitted fundamentalists against non-fundamentalists, is striking and depressing. For these and other reasons, Krieg und Widerstand in Afghanistan stands out as the finest book on Afghan politics, superseding Olivier Roy's Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan (ORBIS, Summer 1987). It urgently needs an English-language translation.
