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The United States has maintained a heavy military presence in Afghanistan for a little more than a decade however; the US has been involved in Afghanistan on and off for over three decades. The 2001 ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan became framed around the goal of saving Afghan women. In order to understand how this framing came about and what the impact of this framing was I study US congressional documents, speeches and other public rhetoric by government officials in the 1980s and early 2000s. Analyzing rhetorical language and reoccurring themes helps us understand what major framing devices and narrative techniques were in play during these time periods. Ultimately I conclude that women’s safety was a post-facto justification for intervention; the framing techniques used during the 2001 were utilized in order to create a clear, coherent narrative that selectively ignores the impact of US involvement in Afghanistan during the Cold War.

In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan with the intention to secure the Afghan communist regime from collapsing. Rebels, called the Mujahideen, began to resist the invasion and the Soviet Union soon found themselves fighting a tedious guerrilla war. The aim of this paper is to examine why the Soviet Union lost this asymmetrical war, even though they had a clear military superiority and stronger actors historically tend to win these types of conflicts. This paper has the ambition to explain in what ways soviet forces lacked proper understanding of not only asymmetrical warfare, but also counterinsurgency warfare, using theories that more closely look at the importance of strategic interactions between actors in asymmetrical wars, and principles of conducting successful counterinsurgencies. The empirical findings can succinctly be summarized by two factors: The Soviet Union was, despite tremendous effort, incapable of breaking Mujahideens will to fight. Insufficient attention was also paid towards cultivating trust with the Afghan populace, nor were strategies employed to rally support for the war against the Mujahideen.