The
Soviet War in Afghanistan, also known as the
Soviet–Afghan War, was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union
, supporting the Marxist
government of the Democratic Republic of
Afghanistan at their own request, against the Islamist Mujahideen Resistance.
The Afghan
government was also supported by India
, while the
mujahideen found other support from a variety of sources including
the United
States
, Saudi
Arabia
, Pakistan
, and other
Muslim nations through the context of the Cold War and the regional India-Pakistan
conflict.
The initial
Soviet
deployment of the
40th
Army in Afghanistan began on December 24, 1979 under the
leadership of Soviet President
Leonid
Brezhnev. The final
troop withdrawal
started on May 15, 1988, and ended on February 15, 1989 under the
last Soviet leader
Mikhail
Gorbachev. Due to the interminable nature of the war, the
conflict in Afghanistan has often been referred to as the Soviets'
Vietnam; in relation to the
Vietnam
War.
Background
Afghanistan demographics
Having
seen many cultures come and go throughout the centuries, the region
today known as Afghanistan
has been predominantly Muslim
since 882. The country's nearly
impassable
mountains and
desert terrain have
contributed to its
ethnically and
linguistically diverse
population.
Pashtuns are the largest
ethnic group in the country; however the
national population also consists of
Tajiks,
Hazara,
Aimak,
Uzbeks,
Uyghur,
Turkmen
and
other small
groups.
Many
Soviet Muslims in Central Asia had tribal kinship relationships
in both Iran
and
Afghanistan.
Russian military
involvement in Afghanistan has a long history, going back to
Tsarist
expansions
in the so-called "Great Game" between
Russia and Britain
.
This began
in the 19th century with such events as the Panjdeh Incident, a military skirmish that
occurred in 1885 when Russian forces seized Afghan territory south
of the Oxus
River
around an oasis at Panjdeh. This interest in the region
continued on through the
Soviet era, with
billions in economic and military aid sent to Afghanistan between
1955 and 1978.
In
February 1979, the Islamic
Revolution ousted the US
-backed
Shah from Afghanistan's neighbor Iran and the
United States ambassador to Afghanistan was kidnapped and killed by
Islamic militants, despite attempts by the
Afghan security forces and Soviet advisers to free
him.
The United
States then deployed twenty ships to the Persian Gulf
and the Arabian Sea
including two aircraft
carriers, and there was a constant stream of threats of warfare
between the US and
Iran.
March 1979 marked the signing of the US-backed
peace agreement between Israel and
Egypt. The Soviet leadership saw the agreement as a major
advantage for the United States.
One Soviet newspaper stated
that Egypt and Israel were now “gendarmes of the Pentagon
”. The Soviets viewed the treaty not only as
a peace agreement between their erstwhile allies in Egypt and the
US-supported Israelis but also as a military pact.
In addition, the US
sold more than 5,000 missiles to
Saudi
Arabia and also supplied the Royalists in the North Yemen Civil War against the
communist rebellion. Also, the Soviet
Union's previously strong relations with Iraq
had recently
soured. In June 1978, Iraq began entering into
friendlier relations with the Western
world and buying French
and Italian-made
weapons, though the vast majority still came from
the Soviet Union, their Warsaw Pact
allies and China
.
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
Before the national reconciliation talks in 1987 the official name
of the country was the
Democratic Republic of
Afghanistan (Persian: جمهوری افغانستان). The republic was a
self-declared
communist state
established by the Afghan communist party, the
People's Democratic
Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and then leader
Nur Muhammad Taraki in the 1978
Saur Revolution. From the start, the
republic ran into conflict with the local mujahideen which started
what is known as the
Afghan civil
war. In 1979, the Soviet Union entered the country to help the
communist government and did not leave until 1989.
After the Soviet withdrawal, the Afghan government continued to
deal with attacks from the mujahideen. It received funding and arms
from the Soviet Union until 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed.
For
several years, the government army had actually increased their
effectiveness past levels ever achieved during the Soviet military
presence, but the government was dealt a major blow when Abdul Rashid Dostum, a leading general,
switched allegiances to the mujahideen in 1992, and together they
captured the city of Kabul
. Much
of the republic and the PDPA's work in Afghanistan from 1978-1992
has been forgotten over the years by the international community
and the Afghan people, due to mujahideen and
Taliban forces who destroyed much of the
infrastructure established during the fourteen years of communist
rule. Under the DRA, the Afghan economy, health care system,
educational system and law enforcement system, among other
elements, entered a peak.[2]
The Saur Revolution
King
Mohammed Zahir Shah acceded
to
the throne
and reigned from 1933 to 1973. Zahir's cousin,
Mohammad Daoud Khan, served as
Prime Minister from 1954 to
1963. The
Marxist PDPA party's strength grew
considerably in these years. In 1967, the PDPA split into two rival
factions, the
Khalq (Masses) faction headed by
Nur Muhammad Taraki and
Hafizullah Amin and the
Parcham (Flag) faction led by
Babrak Karmal.
Former Prime Minister Daoud seized power in a military
coup on July 17, 1973, after charges of
corruption and poor economic
conditions against the King's government. Daoud put an end to the
monarchy but his time in power was widely
unpopular. Intense opposition from factions of the PDPA was sparked
by the repression imposed on them by Daoud's regime and the death
of a leading PDPA member,
Mir Akbar
Khyber.
The mysterious circumstances of Khyber's
death sparked massive anti-Daoud demonstrations in Kabul, which
resulted in the arrest of several prominent PDPA
leaders.
On April 27, 1978, the
Afghan army,
which had been sympathetic to the PDPA cause, overthrew and
executed Daoud along with members of his family. Nur Muhammad
Taraki,
Secretary General of the
PDPA, became
President of the
Revolutionary Council and Prime Minister of the newly established
Democratic Republic
of Afghanistan.
Factions inside the PDPA
After the
revolution, Taraki assumed the
Presidency, Prime Ministership and
General Secretary of the PDPA. The
government was divided along factional lines, with President Taraki
and Deputy Prime Minister
Hafizullah
Amin of the Khalq faction against Parcham leaders such as
Babrak Karmal and
Mohammad
Najibullah. Within the PDPA, conflicts resulted in
exiles,
purges and executions of
Parcham members.
During its first 18 months of rule, the PDPA applied a Soviet-style
program of modernizing reforms. Decrees setting forth changes in
marriage customs and
land reform were
not received well by a population deeply immersed in tradition and
Islam, particularly by the powerful land
owners who were harmed economically by the abolition of
usury and the cancellation of farmers' debts. By
mid-1978, a
rebellion started with rebels
attacking the local military
garrison in
the
Nuristan region of eastern Afghanistan
and soon
civil war spread throughout the
country. In September 1979,
Deputy
Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin seized power after a palace
shootout that resulted in the death of
President Taraki. Over two months of instability overwhelmed Amin's
regime as he moved against his opponents in the PDPA and the
growing rebellion.
Soviet-Afghan relations
The USSR had provided aid to Afghanistan as early as 1919, shortly
after
Russian Revolution
and when the regime was facing the
Russian Civil War. Provisions were given
in the form of
small arms, ammunition, a
few
aircraft, and (according to debated
Soviet sources) a million gold
rubles to
support the resistance during the
Third Anglo-Afghan War.
In 1924, the USSR
again moved to strengthen the Afghan army, by providing small arms
and aircraft, and establishing training centres in Tashkent
(Uzbek
Soviet). Soviet-Afghan military cooperation began on a
regular basis in 1956, and further agreements were made in the
1970s, which saw the USSR send advisers and specialists. A final
pre-war treaty, signed in December 1978, allowed the PDPA to call
upon the Soviet Union for military support.
Initiation of the insurgency
In June 1975, militants from the
Jamiat
Islami party attempted to overthrow the government.
They
started their rebellion in the Panjshir valley
, some 100 kilometers north of Kabul, and in a
number of other provinces
of the country. However, government forces easily defeated
the insurgency and a sizable portion of the insurgents sought
refuge in Pakistan where they enjoyed the support of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's government, which
had been alarmed by Daoud's revival of the Pashtunistan issue.
In 1978 the Taraki government initiated a series of reforms,
including modernization of the civil and especially marriage law,
aimed at "uprooting
feudalism" in Afghan
society. The government brooked no opposition to the reforms and
responded with violence to
unrest.
Between
April 1978 and the Soviet invasion of December 1979, thousands of
prisoners, perhaps as many as 27,000, were executed at the
notorious Pul-e-Charkhi prison
, including many village mullahs and headmen. Other members of the
traditional elite, the religious establishment and
intelligentsia fled the country.
Large parts of the country went into open rebellion. The Parcham
Government claimed that 11,000 were executed during the Amin/Taraki
period in response to the revolts. The revolt began in October
among the
Nuristani tribes of the
Kunar Valley, and rapidly spread among
the other ethnic groups. The Afghan army fought back violently, but
couldn't subdue the large insurgency. By the spring of 1979, 24 of
the 28 provinces had suffered outbreaks of violence.
The rebellion began
to take hold in the cities: in March 1979 in Herat
, rebels led
by Ismail Khan killed approximately 10
soldiers. The
Afghan Air
Force retaliated with a bombing campaign that killed 24,000
inhabitants of the city. Despite these drastic measures, by the end
of 1980, out of the 80,000 soldiers strong Afghan Army, more than
half had either deserted or joined the rebels.
1979: Soviet deployment
The Afghan government, having secured a treaty in December 1978
that allowed them to call on Soviet forces, repeatedly requested
the introduction of troops in Afghanistan in the spring and summer
of 1979. They requested Soviet troops to provide security and to
assist in the fight against the mujahideen rebels.
On April 14, 1979,
the Afghan government requested that the USSR send 15 to 20
helicopters with their crews to Afghanistan, and on June 16, the
Soviet government responded and sent a detachment of tanks,
BMPs, and crews to guard the government in
Kabul and to secure the Bagram
and Shindand
airfields. In
response to this request, an airborne battalion, commanded by
Lieutenant Colonel A.
Lomakin, arrived at the Bagram Air
Base
on July 7. They arrived without their combat
gear, disguised as technical specialists. They were the personal
bodyguards for President Taraki. The paratroopers were directly
subordinate to the senior Soviet military advisor and did not
interfere in Afghan politics.
After a month, the Afghan requests were no longer for individual
crews and subunits, but for regiments and larger units. In July,
the Afghan government requested that two motorized rifle divisions
be sent to Afghanistan. The following day, they requested an
airborne division in addition to the earlier requests. They
repeated these requests and variants to these requests over the
following months right up to December 1979. However, the Soviet
government was in no hurry to grant them.
The
anti-communist rebels garnered support from the United States. As stated by the former director of the
Central Intelligence
Agency and current
US
Secretary of Defense,
Robert Gates,
in his memoirs
From the Shadows, the US
intelligence
services began to aid the rebel factions in Afghanistan six
months before the Soviet deployment. On July 3, 1979,
US President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order
authorizing the CIA to conduct
covert propaganda
operations against the communist regime.
Carter advisor
Zbigniew
Brzezinski stated: "According to the official version of
history, CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is to
say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, December 24, 1979.
But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely
otherwise." Brzezinski himself played a fundamental role in
crafting US policy, which, unbeknownst even to the mujahideen, was
part of a larger strategy "to induce a Soviet military
intervention." In a 1998 interview with
Le Nouvel
Observateur, Brzezinski recalled: "We didn't push the
Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability
that they would...That secret operation was an excellent idea. It
had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap ... The
day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to
President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the
Soviet Union its
Vietnam War."
Additionally, on July 3, 1979, Carter signed a presidential finding
authorizing funding for
anticommunist
guerrillas in Afghanistan. As a part of the Central Intelligence
Agency program
Operation Cyclone,
the massive arming of Afghanistan's mujahideen was started.
Based on
information from the KGB
, Soviet
leaders felt that Amin destabilized the situation in
Afghanistan. Following Amin's initial coup against and
killing of President Taraki, the KGB station in Kabul warned that
his leadership would lead to "harsh repressions, and as a result,
the activation and consolidation of the opposition."
The Soviets established a special commission on Afghanistan, of KGB
chairman Yuri
Andropov,
Boris Ponomarev from
the
Central Committee and
Dmitry Ustinov, the
Minister of Defense.
In late
April 1978, they reported that Amin was purging his opponents,
including Soviet loyalists; his loyalty to Moscow was in question;
and that he was seeking diplomatic links with Pakistan and possibly the People's
Republic of China
. Of specific concern were Amin's secret
meetings with the US chargé d'affaires J. Bruce Amstutz, which,
while never amounting to any agreement between Amin and the United
States, sowed suspicion in the
Kremlin.
Information obtained by the KGB from its agents in Kabul provided
the last arguments to eliminate Amin. Supposedly, two of Amin's
guards killed the former president Nur Muhammad Taraki with a
pillow, and Amin was suspected to be a CIA agent. The latter,
however, is still disputed: Amin repeatedly demonstrated official
friendliness to the Soviet Union. Soviet
General Vasily Zaplatin, a political advisor at that
time, claimed that four of President Taraki's ministers were
responsible for the destabilization. However, Zaplatin failed to
emphasize this enough.
Also during the 1970s, the Soviet Union reached the peak of its
political influence in comparison to the U.S. as the
SALT I treaty was created to cooperate in
matters of nuclear weapons and technology between the two nations.
A second round of talks between communist leader
Brezhnev and president Carter yielded the
SALT II treaty in June 1979, which
the
U.S. Senate though, failed to ratify. This process
would eventually culminate and lead up to the buildup and invasion
of Afghanistan in December 1979 to preserve, stabilize and
militarily intervene on behalf of the communist regime there.
1979: Soviet invasion
The Soviet invasion
On December 7, 1979, Soviet informants to the
Afghan Armed Forces who were under
orders from the inner circle of advisors under Soviet leader
Brezhnev, relayed information for them to undergo maintenance
cycles for their tanks and other crucial equipment. Meanwhile,
telecommunications links to areas outside of Kabul were severed,
isolating the capital. With a deteriorating security situation,
large numbers of
Soviet airborne
forces joined stationed ground troops and began to land in
Kabul on December 25. Simultaneously, Amin moved the offices of the
president to the
Tajbeg Palace,
believing this location to be more secure from possible threats.
According to Colonel General Tukharinov and Merimsky, Amin was
fully informed of the military movements, having requested Soviet
military assistance to northern Afghanistan on December 17. His
brother and General Dmitry Chiangov met with the commander of the
40th Army before Soviet
troops entered the country, to work out initial routes and
locations for Soviet troops.
On
December 27, 1979, 700 Soviet troops dressed in Afghan uniforms,
including KGB and GRU special force officers
from the Alpha Group and
Zenith Group, occupied major governmental, military and
media buildings in Kabul, including their primary target - the
Tajbeg Presidential
Palace.
That operation began at 19:00 hr., when the Soviet
Zenith
Group destroyed Kabul's communications hub, paralyzing Afghan
military command.
At 19:15, the assault on Tajbeg Palace
began; as planned, president Hafizullah Amin was
killed. Simultaneously, other objectives were occupied (e.g.
the
Ministry of Interior at
19:15). The operation was fully complete by the morning of December
28, 1979.
The
Soviet military command at Termez
, Uzbek SSR, announced on Radio Kabul that Afghanistan had been
"liberated" from Amin's rule. According to the Soviet
Politburo they were complying with the
1978
Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good
Neighborliness and Amin had been
"executed by a tribunal
for his crimes" by the Afghan Revolutionary Central Committee.
That
committee then elected as head of
government former Deputy Prime Minister Babrak Karmal, who had been demoted to the
relatively insignificant post of ambassador to Czechoslovakia
following the Khalq takeover, and that it had
requested Soviet military assistance.
Soviet ground forces, under the command of
Marshal Sergei
Sokolov, entered Afghanistan from the north on December 27.
In the
morning, the 103rd Guards 'Vitebsk
' Airborne
Division landed at the airport at Bagram
and the deployment of Soviet troops in Afghanistan was
underway. The force that entered Afghanistan, in addition to
the 103rd Guards Airborne Division, was under command of the
40th Army and consisted of
the 108th and 5th Guards Motor Rifle Divisions, the 860th Separate
Motor Rifle Regiment, the 56th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade,
the 36th Mixed Air Corps. Later on the 201st and 58th Motor Rifle
Divisions also entered the country, along with other smaller units.
In all, the initial Soviet force was around 1,800
tanks, 80,000 soldiers and 2,000
AFVs. In the second week alone,
Soviet aircraft had made a total of 4,000 flights into Kabul. With
the arrival of the two later divisions, the total Soviet force rose
to over 100,000 personnel.
December 1979-February 1980: Occupation
The first phase began with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and
their first battles with various opposition groups.
Soviet troops entered Afghanistan along two ground routes and one
air corridor, quickly taking control of
the major urban centers, military bases and strategic
installations. However, the presence of Soviet troops did not have
the desired effect of pacifying the country. On the contrary, it
exacerbated a
nationalistic feeling,
causing the rebellion to spread even more. Babrak Karmal,
Afghanistan's new president, charged the Soviets with causing an
increase in the unrest, and demanded that the 40th Army step in and
quell the rebellion, as his own army had proved untrustworthy.
Thus, Soviet troops found themselves drawn into fighting against
urban uprisings, tribal armies (called
lashkar), and
sometimes against mutinying Afghan Army units. These forces mostly
fought in the open, and Soviet airpower and artillery made short
work of them.
March 1980-April 1985: Soviet offensives
The war now developed into a new pattern: the Soviets occupied the
cities and main axis of communication, while the mujahideen,
divided into small groups, waged a
guerrilla war. Almost 80 percent of the
country escaped government control.
Soviet troops were deployed in strategic
areas in the northeast, especially along the road from Termez to
Kabul. In the west, a strong Soviet presence was
maintained to counter Iranian
influence. Conversely, some regions such as
Nuristan and
Hazarajat
were virtually untouched by the fighting, and lived in almost
complete independence.
Periodically the Soviet Army undertook multi-
divisional offensives into
mujahideen-controlled areas.
Between 1980 and 1985, nine offensives were launched into the
strategically important Panjshir Valley
, but government control of the area did not
improve. Heavy fighting also occurred in the
provinces neighbouring Pakistan, where cities and government outposts were
constantly under siege by the mujahideen. Massive Soviet
operations would regularly break these sieges, but the mujahideen
would return as soon as the coast was clear.
In the west and
south, fighting was more sporadic, except in the cities of Herat and Kandahar
, that were always partly controlled by the
resistance.
On his arrival in power in March 1985, the new Soviet
General
Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev
expressed his impatience with the Afghan conflict. He demanded that
a solution be found before a one-year deadline. As a result, the
size of the LCOSF (Limited Contingent of Soviet Forces) was
increased to 108,800 and fighting increased throughout the country,
making 1985 the bloodiest year of the war. However, despite
suffering heavily, the mujahideen were able to remain in the field
and continue resisting the Soviets.
1980s: Insurrection
In the
mid-1980s, the Afghan resistance
movement, assisted by the United States, Pakistan, Saudi
Arabia, the United
Kingdom, PRC
and others,
contributed to Moscow
's high
military costs and strained international relations. The US
viewed the conflict in Afghanistan as an integral
Cold War struggle, and the CIA provided assistance
to anti-Soviet forces through the
Pakistani intelligence
services, in a program called
Operation Cyclone.
A similar movement occurred in other Muslim countries, bringing
contingents of so-called
Afghan Arabs,
foreign fighters who wished to wage
jihad
against the
atheist communists. Notable
among them was a young Saudi named
Osama
bin Laden, whose
Arab group eventually
evolved into
al-Qaeda.
In the course of the guerrilla war, leadership came to be
distinctively associated with the title of "commander". It applied
to independent leaders, eschewing identification with elaborate
military
bureaucracy associated with
such ranks as
general. As the war produced
leaders of reputation, "commander" was conferred on leaders of
fighting units of all sizes, signifying pride in independence,
self-sufficiency, and distinct ties to local communities. The title
epitomized Afghan pride in their struggle against a powerful foe.
Segmentation of power and religious leadership were the two values
evoked by nomenclature generated in the war. Neither had been
favored in the ideology of the former Afghan state.
Afghanistan's resistance movement was born in chaos, spread and
triumphed chaotically, and did not find a way to govern
differently. Virtually all of its war was waged locally by regional
warlords. As warfare became more
sophisticated, outside support and regional coordination grew. Even
so, the basic units of mujahideen organization and action continued
to reflect the highly segmented nature of Afghan society.
Olivier Roy estimates that after four
years of war, there were at least 4,000 bases from which mujahideen
units operated. Most of these were affiliated with the seven
expatriate parties headquartered in Pakistan, which served as
sources of supply and varying degrees of supervision. Significant
commanders typically led 300 or more men, controlled several bases
and dominated a district or a sub-division of a province.
Hierarchies of organization above the bases were attempted.
Their
operations varied greatly in scope, the most ambitious being
achieved by Ahmad Shah Massoud of
the Panjshir
valley north of Kabul. He
led at least 10,000 trained troops at the end of the Soviet war and
had expanded his political control of
Tajik-dominated areas to Afghanistan's northeastern
provinces under the Supervisory Council of the North.
Roy also describes regional, ethnic and sectarian variations in
mujahideen organization. In the
Pashtun
areas of the east, south and southwest, tribal structure, with its
many rival sub-divisions, provided the basis for military
organization and leadership. Mobilization could be readily linked
to traditional fighting allegiances of the tribal
lashkar
(fighting force).
In favorable circumstances such formations
could quickly reach more than 10,000, as happened when large Soviet
assaults were launched in the eastern provinces, or when the
mujahideen besieged towns, such as Khost
in Paktia province in July 1983. But in campaigns
of the latter type the traditional explosions of
manpower—customarily common immediately after the completion of
harvest—proved obsolete when confronted by well dug-in defenders
with modern weapons. Lashkar durability was notoriously short; few
sieges succeeded.
Mujahideen mobilization in non-
Pashtun
regions faced very different obstacles. Prior to the invasion, few
non-Pashtuns possessed firearms. Early in the war they were most
readily available from army troops or
gendarmerie who defected or were ambushed. The
international arms market and foreign military support tended to
reach the minority areas last. In the northern regions, little
military tradition had survived upon which to build an armed
resistance. Mobilization mostly came from political leadership
closely tied to
Islam. Roy convincingly
contrasts the social leadership of religious figures in the
Persian- and
Turkish-speaking regions of Afghanistan
with that of the Pashtuns. Lacking a strong political
representation in a state dominated by Pashtuns, minority
communities commonly looked to pious learned or charismatically
revered
pirs (saints) for leadership.
Extensive
Sufi and
maraboutic networks were spread through the
minority communities, readily available as foundations for
leadership, organization, communication and indoctrination. These
networks also provided for political mobilization, which led to
some of the most effective of the resistance operations during the
war.
The mujahideen favoured
sabotage
operations. The more common types of sabotage included damaging
power lines, knocking
out
pipelines and radio stations,
blowing up government
office
buildings,
air terminals, hotels,
cinemas, and so on. From 1985 through 1987, an average of over 600
"
terrorist acts" a year were recorded. In
the border region with Pakistan, the mujahideen would often launch
800
rockets per day. Between April 1985 and
January 1987, they carried out over 23,500
shelling attacks on government targets. The
mujahideen surveyed firing positions that they normally located
near villages within the range of Soviet artillery posts, putting
the villagers in danger of death from Soviet retaliation. The
mujahideen used
land mines heavily.
Often, they would enlist the services of the local inhabitants,
even children.
They concentrated on both civilian and military targets, knocking
out bridges, closing major roads, attacking
convoys, disrupting the electric power system and
industrial production, and attacking police stations and Soviet
military installations and air bases. They
assassinated government officials and PDPA
members, and laid siege to small rural
outposts. In March 1982, a bomb exploded at the
Ministry of
Education, damaging several buildings. In
the same month, a widespread
power
failure darkened Kabul when a pylon on the transmission line
from the Naghlu power station was blown up. In June 1982 a column
of about 1,000 young
communist party
members sent out to work in the Panjshir valley were ambushed
within 30 km of Kabul, with heavy loss of life. On September
4, 1985, insurgents shot down a domestic Bakhtar Airlines plane as
it took off from Kandahar airport, killing all 52 people
aboard.
Mujahideen groups used for
assassination had three to five men in each.
After they received their mission to kill certain government
officials, they busied themselves with studying his pattern of life
and its details and then selecting the method of fulfilling their
established mission. They practiced shooting at
automobiles,
shooting out of
automobiles, laying mines in government accommodation or
houses, using poison, and rigging explosive charges in transport.
The areas where the different
mujahideen forces operated in 1985.
In May 1985, the seven principal rebel organizations formed the
Seven Party Mujahideen
Alliance to coordinate their military operations against the
Soviet army. Late in 1985, the groups were active in and around
Kabul, unleashing rocket attacks and conducting operations against
the communist government.
By mid-1987 the Soviet Union announced it would start withdrawing
its forces.
Sibghatullah
Mojaddedi was selected as the head of the Interim Islamic State
of Afghanistan, in an attempt to reassert its legitimacy against
the Moscow-sponsored Kabul regime. Mojaddedi, as head of the
Interim Afghan Government, met with then
Vice President of the United
States George H. W. Bush,
achieving a critical diplomatic victory for the Afghan resistance.
Defeat of the Kabul government was their solution for peace. This
confidence, sharpened by their distrust of the
United Nations, virtually guaranteed their
refusal to accept a political compromise.
Foreign involvement and aid to the mujahideen
The Afghans were supported by a number of other countries, with the
US and Saudi Arabia offering the greatest financial support.
However,
the Afghans were also aided by others: the UK
, Egypt
, China, Iran, and
Pakistan. Ground support, for political reasons, was limited
to regional countries.
The United States began training insurgents in, and directing
propaganda broadcasts into Afghanistan from Pakistan in 1978. Then,
in early 1979, U.S. foreign service officers began meeting
insurgent leaders to determine their needs. According to the then
US
National
Security Advisor Zbigniew
Brzezinski, CIA aid to the insurgents within Afghanistan was
approved in July 1979, six months before the Soviet Invasion.
United
States President Jimmy Carter insisted
that what he termed "Soviet aggression" could not be viewed as an
isolated event of limited geographical importance but had to be
contested as a potential threat to US influence in the Persian Gulf region. The US was also worried about the USSR
gaining access to the Indian Ocean
by coming to an arrangement with
Pakistan.
After the Soviet deployment, Pakistan's military ruler General
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq started
accepting
financial aid from the
Western powers to aid the mujahideen.
In 1981,
following the election of US President Ronald Reagan, aid for the mujahideen through
Zia's Pakistan significantly increased, mostly due to the efforts
of Texas
Congressman Charlie Wilson and CIA officer
Gust Avrakotos.
US "Paramilitary Officers" were instrumental in training, equipping
and sometimes leading
Mujihadeen forces
against the
Red Army.
Although the CIA in
general and Charlie
Wilson, a Texas Congressman, have
received most of the attention, the key architect of this strategy
was Michael G. Vickers, a young Paramilitary Officer
from the CIA's infamous
Special Activities Division.
Michael Pillsbury, a senior
Pentagon official overcame bureaucratic resisistance in 1985-1986
and persuaded President Reagan to provide hundreds of Stinger
missiles.
The United States, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia became
major financial contributors, the United States donating "$600
million in aid per year, with a matching amount coming from the
Persian Gulf states." The People's Republic of China also sold
Type 59 tanks,
Type 68 assault rifles,
Type 56 assault rifles,
Type
69 RPGs, and much more to mujahideen in co-operation with the
CIA, as did Egypt with assault rifles. Of particular significance
was the donation of US-made
FIM-92
Stinger anti-aircraft
missile systems, which caused a small increase in aircraft
losses of the
Soviet Air Force. The
main impact that it made, however, was the change it led to in
Soviet tactics – helicopters increasing stayed over friendly forces
and limited daytime flights, jetcraft were forced to fly much
higher, and other contingency measures were put in place.
In March 1985, the
US government
adopted National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 166, which set
a goal of military victory for the mujahideen. After 1985 the CIA
and
Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) placed greater pressure on the mujahideen to
attack government strongholds. Under direct instructions from
Director of Central Intelligence
William
Casey, the CIA initiated programs for training Afghans in
techniques such as
car bombs and
assassinations and in engaging in cross-border raids into the
USSR.
Pakistan's ISI and Special Service Group (SSG) were
actively involved in the conflict, and in cooperation with the CIA
and the United States
Army Special Forces, as well as the British Special Air
Service
, supported the mujahideen.
The theft of large sums of aid spurred Pakistan's economic growth,
but along with the war in general had devastating side effects for
that country.
The siphoning off of aid weapons in the port
city of Karachi
contributed to disorder and violence there, while
heroin entering from Afghanistan to pay for
arms contributed to addiction problems.
In retaliation for Pakistan's assistance to the insurgents, the
KHAD Afghan security service, under leader
Mohammad Najibullah, carried out
(according to the
Mitrokhin
archives and other sources) a large number of operations against
Pakistan. In 1987, 127 incidents resulted in 234 deaths in
Pakistan.
In April 1988, an ammunition depot outside
the Pakistani capital of Islamabad
was blown up killing 100 and injuring more than
1000 people. The KHAD and KGB were
suspected in the perpetration of these acts.
Pakistan took in millions of
Afghan
refugees (mostly
Pashtun) fleeing the
Soviet occupation.
Although the refugees
were controlled within Pakistan's largest province, Balochistan
under then-martial law
ruler General Rahimuddin Khan, the
influx of so many refugees - believed to be the largest refugee
population in the world — spread into several other
regions.
All of this had a heavy impact on Pakistan and its effects continue
to this day. Pakistan, through its support for the mujahideen,
played a significant role in the eventual withdrawal of Soviet
military personnel from Afghanistan.
Pakistan went to the point of maintaining a limited
air war against Afghan/Soviet forces.
April 1985-January 1987: Exit strategy
Soviet soldier in Afghanistan,
1988.
The first step of the exit strategy was to transfer the burden of
fighting the mujahideen to the Afghan armed forces, with the aim of
preparing them to operate without Soviet help. During this phase,
the Soviet contingent was restricted to supporting the DRA forces
by providing
artillery, air support and
technical assistance, though some large-scale operations were still
carried out by Soviet troops.
Under Soviet guidance, the DRA armed forces were built up to an
official strength of 302,000 in 1986. To minimize the risk of a
coup d'état, they were divided into
different branches, each modeled on its Soviet counterpart. The
ministry of defense forces numbered 132,000, the ministry of
interior 70,000 and the ministry of state security (
KHAD) 80,000. However, these were theoretical figures:
in reality each service was plagued with
desertions, the army alone suffering 32,000 per
year.
The decision to engage primarily Afghan forces was taken by the
Soviets, but was resented by the PDPA, who viewed the departure of
their protectors without enthusiasm.
In May 1987 a DRA
force attacked well-entrenched mujahideen positions in the Arghandab
District
, but the mujahideen held their ground, and the
attackers suffered heavy casualties. In the spring of 1986,
an offensive into
Paktia Province
briefly occupied the mujahideen base at
Zhawar only at the cost of heavy losses.
Meanwhile, the mujahideen benefited from
expanded foreign military support from the United States, Saudi
Arabia, Pakistan and other Muslim
nations. The US tended to favor the Afghan resistance forces
led by
Ahmed Shah Massoud, and US
support for Massoud's forces increased considerably during the
Reagan administration in what
US military and
intelligence forces called "
Operation Cyclone." Primary advocates for
supporting Massoud included two
Heritage Foundation foreign policy
analysts,
Michael Johns
and James A. Phillips, both of whom championed Massoud as the
Afghan resistance leader most worthy of US support under the
Reagan Doctrine.
January 1987-February 1989: Withdrawal
In the last phase, Soviet troops prepared and executed their
withdrawal from Afghanistan. They hardly engaged in offensive
operations at all, and were content to defend against mujahideen
raids.
The one
exception was Operation
Magistral, a successful sweep that cleared the road between
Gardez
and
Khost. This operation did not have any lasting
effect, but it allowed the Soviets to symbolically end their
presence with a victory.
The first half of the Soviet contingent was withdrawn from May 15
to August 16, 1988 and the second from November 15 to February 15,
1989. The withdrawal was generally executed peacefully, as the
Soviets had negotiated ceasefires with local mujahideen commanders,
in order to ensure a safe passage. Now fighting alone, the DRA
forces were obliged to abandon some provincial capitals, and it was
widely believed that they would not be able to resist the
mujahideen for long.
However, in the spring of 1989 DRA forces
inflicted a sharp defeat on the mujahideen at Jalalabad
, and as a result, the war remained
stalemated.
The government of President Karmal, a
puppet regime, was largely ineffective. It was
weakened by divisions within the PDPA and the Parcham faction, and
the regime's efforts to expand its base of support proved futile.
Moscow came to regard Karmal as a failure and blamed him for the
problems. Years later, when Karmal’s inability to consolidate his
government had become obvious, Mikhail Gorbachev, then General
Secretary of the
Soviet Communist
Party, said:
Soviet troops withdrawing from
Afghanistan in 1988
- The main reason that there has been no national
consolidation so far is that Comrade Karmal is hoping to continue
sitting in Kabul with our help.
In November 1986,
Mohammad
Najibullah, former chief of the Afghan
secret police (
KHAD), was
elected president and a new
constitution was adopted. He also introduced in
1987 a policy of "national reconciliation," devised by experts of
the
Communist Party
of the Soviet Union, and later used in other regions of the
world. Despite high expectations, the new policy neither made the
Moscow-backed Kabul regime more popular, nor did it convince the
insurgents to negotiate with the ruling government.
Informal negotiations for a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan had
been underway since 1982. In 1988, the governments of Pakistan and
Afghanistan, with the United States and Soviet Union serving as
guarantors, signed an agreement settling the major differences
between them known as the
Geneva
Accords. The
United Nations set
up a special
Mission
to oversee the process. In this way, Najibullah had stabilized his
political position enough to begin matching Moscow's moves toward
withdrawal. On July 20, 1987, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from
the country was announced. The withdrawal of Soviet forces was
planned out by Lt. Gen.
Boris Gromov,
who, at the time, was the commander of the
40th Army.
Among
other things the Geneva
accords
identified the US and Soviet non-intervention in the internal
affairs of Pakistan and Afghanistan and a timetable for full Soviet
withdrawal. The agreement on withdrawal held, and on
February 15, 1989, the last Soviet troops departed on schedule from
Afghanistan.
Consequences of the war
International reaction
US President
Jimmy Carter claimed that
the Soviet incursion was "the most serious threat to peace since
the Second World War." Carter later placed a trade
embargo against the Soviet Union on shipments of
commodities such as grain and weapons.
The increased
tensions, as well as the anxiety in the West about tens of
thousands of Soviet troops being in such proximity to oil-rich
regions in the Persian
Gulf, effectively brought about the end of détente.
The international diplomatic response was severe, ranging from
stern warnings to a
US-led
boycott of the
1980 Summer
Olympics in Moscow (in which Afghanistan competed).
The
invasion, along with other events, such as the Iranian revolution and the US hostage
stand-off that accompanied it, the Iran–Iraq War, the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the escalating
tensions between Pakistan and India, contributed
to making the Middle East an extremely violent and turbulent region
during the 1980s.
The
Non-Aligned Movement was
sharply divided between those that believed the Soviet deployment
to be legal and others who considered the deployment an illegal
invasion. Among the
Warsaw Pact
countries, the intervention was condemned only by
Romania.
Soviet personnel strengths and casualties
Between
December 25, 1979 and February 15, 1989, a total of 620,000
soldiers served with the forces in Afghanistan (though there were
only 80,000-104,000 serving at one time): 525,000 in the Army,
90,000 with border troops and other KGB sub-units,
5,000 in independent formations of MVD Internal Troops, and police forces. A
further 21,000 personnel were with the Soviet troop contingent over
the same period doing various white collar and blue collar
jobs.
The total irrecoverable personnel losses of the Soviet Armed
Forces, frontier, and internal security troops came to 14,453.
Soviet Army formations, units, and HQ elements lost 13,833, KGB
sub-units lost 572, MVD formations lost 28, and other ministries
and departments lost 20 men. During this period 417 servicemen were
missing in action or taken prisoner; 119 of these were later freed,
of whom 97 returned to the USSR and 22 went to other
countries.
There were 469,685 sick and wounded, of whom 53,753 or 11.44
percent, were wounded, injured, or sustained concussion and 415,932
(88.56 percent) fell sick. A high proportion of casualties were
those who fell ill. This was because of local climatic and sanitary
conditions, which were such that acute infections spread rapidly
among the troops. There were 115,308 cases of infectious
hepatitis, 31,080 of
typhoid fever, and 140,665 of other diseases. Of the
11,654 who were discharged from the army after being wounded,
maimed, or contracting serious diseases, 92 percent, or 10,751 men,
were left disabled.
After the war ended, the Soviet Union published figures of dead
Soviet soldiers:the total was 13,836 men, an average of 1,512 men a
year. According to updated figures, the Soviet army lost 14,427,
the KGB lost 576, with 28 people dead and missing.
Material losses were as follows:
Damage to Afghanistan
Over 1 million Afghans were killed. 5 million Afghans fled to
Pakistan and Iran, 1/3 of the prewar population of the country.
Another 2 million Afghans were displaced within the country. In the
1980s, one out of two refugees in the world was an Afghan.
Along with fatalities were 1.2 million Afghans disabled
(mujahideen, government soldiers and noncombatants) and 3 million
maimed or wounded (primarily noncombatants).
Irrigation systems, crucial to
agriculture in Afghanistan's
arid
climate, were destroyed by
aerial
bombing and
strafing by Soviet or
government forces.
In the worst year of the war, 1985, well
over half of all the farmers who remained in Afghanistan had their
fields bombed, and over one quarter had their irrigation systems
destroyed and their livestock shot by
Soviet or government troops, according to a survey conducted by
Swedish
relief experts
The population of Afghanistan's second largest city, Kandahar, was
reduced from 200,000 before the war to no more than 25,000
inhabitants, following a months-long campaign of
carpet bombing and
bulldozing by the Soviets and Afghan communist
soldiers in 1987.
Land mines had killed
25,000 Afghans during the war and another 10-15 million land mines,
most planted by Soviet and government forces, were left scattered
throughout the countryside.
A great deal of damage was done to the civilian children population
by land mines. A 2005 report estimated 3-4% of the Afghan
population were disabled due to Soviet and government land mines.
In the
city of Quetta
, a survey of
refugee women and children taken shortly after the Soviet
withdrawal found over 80% of the children refugees unregistered and
child mortality at 31%. Of children who survived, 67% were
severely malnourished, with
malnutrition increasing with age.
Critics of Soviet and Afghan government forces describe their
effect on
Afghan culture as working
in three stages: first, the center of customary Afghan culture,
Islam, was pushed aside; second, Soviet patterns of life,
especially amongst the young, were imported; third, shared Afghan
cultural characteristics were destroyed by the emphasis on
so-called nationalities, with the outcome that the country was
split into different ethnic groups, with no language, religion, or
culture in common.
The
Geneva Accords of 1988,
which ultimately led to the withdrawal of the Soviet forces in
early 1989, left the Afghan government in ruins. The accords had
failed to address adequately the issue of the post-occupation
period and the future governance of Afghanistan. The assumption
among most Western diplomats was that the Soviet-backed government
in Kabul would soon collapse; however, this was not to happen for
another three years. During this time the Interim Islamic
Government of Afghanistan (IIGA) was established in exile. The
exclusion of key groups such as refugees and
Shias, combined with major disagreements between the
different mujaheddin factions, meant that the IIGA never succeeded
in acting as a functional government.
Before the war, Afghanistan was already one of the world's poorest
nations. The prolonged conflict left Afghanistan ranked 170 out of
174 in the UNDP's
Human Development Index, making
Afghanistan one of the least developed countries in the
world.
Once the Soviets withdrew, US interest in Afghanistan ceased. The
US decided not to help with reconstruction of the country and
instead they handed over the interests of the country to US allies,
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Pakistan quickly took advantage of this
opportunity and forged relations with
warlords and later the
Taliban, to secure trade interests and routes. From
wiping out the country's trees through
logging practices, which has destroyed all but 2% of
forest cover country-wide, to substantial uprooting of wild
pistachio trees for the exportation of
their roots for therapeutic uses, to
opium
agriculture, the past ten years have
caused much ecological and agrarian destruction.
Captain Tarlan Eyvazov, a soldier in the Soviet forces during the
war, stated that the Afghan children's future is destined for war.
Eyvazov said, "Children born in Afghanistan at the start of the
war... have been brought up in war conditions, this is their way of
life." Eyvazov's theory was later strengthened when the Taliban
movement developed and formed from orphans or refugee children who
were forced by the Soviets to flee their homes and relocate their
lives in Pakistan. The swift rise to power, from the young Taliban
in 1994, was the result of the disorder and civil war that had
warlords running wild because of the complete breakdown of law and
order in Afghanistan after the departure of the Soviets.
The
CIA World Fact Book reported that as of 2004,
Afghanistan still owed $8 billion in bilateral debt, mostly to
Russia, however, in 2007 Russia agreed to cancel most of the
debt.
Civil war
The
civil war continued in Afghanistan
after the Soviet withdrawal. The Soviet Union left Afghanistan deep
in winter with intimations of panic among Kabul officials. The
Afghan mujahideen were poised to attack provincial towns and cities
and eventually Kabul, if necessary.
Najibullah's regime, though failing to win popular support,
territory, or international recognition, was however able to remain
in power until 1992. Ironically, until demoralized by the
defections of its senior officers, the Afghan Army
had achieved a level of performance it had never reached under
direct Soviet tutelage. Kabul had achieved a stalemate that exposed
the mujahideen's weaknesses, political and military. For nearly
three years, Najibullah's government successfully defended itself
against mujahideen attacks, factions within the government had also
developed connections with its opponents.
According
to Russian
publicist Andrey Karaulov, the main reason why
Najibullah lost power was the fact that Russia refused to sell oil
products to Afghanistan in 1992 for political reasons (the new
Yeltsin government did not want to support the former communists)
and effectively triggered an embargo. The
defection of General
Abdul Rashid Dostam and his Uzbek
militia, in March 1992, ultimately
undermined Najibullah's control of the state. In April, Najibullah
and his communist government fell to the mujahideen, who replaced
Najibullah with a new governing council for the country.
Grain production declined an average of 3.5% per year between 1978
and 1990 due to sustained fighting, instability in rural areas,
prolonged drought, and deteriorated infrastructure. Soviet efforts
to disrupt production in rebel-dominated areas also contributed to
this decline. During the withdrawal of Soviet troops, Afghanistan's
natural gas fields were capped to
prevent sabotage. Restoration of gas production has been hampered
by internal strife and the disruption of traditional trading
relationships following the
dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Ideological impact
The Islamists who fought also believed that they were responsible
for the fall of the Soviet Union.
Osama
bin Laden, for example, was asserting the credit for "the
collapse of the Soviet Union ... goes to God and the mujahideen in
Afghanistan ... the US had no mentionable role," but "collapse made
the US more haughty and arrogant." As discussed in 'The power of
Nightmares' many neoconservatives in the US also believed that
through the US aid to the mujahideen the US had caused the collapse
of the USSR.
Media and popular culture
See also
References
Further reading
- Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA,
Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September
10, 2001, ISBN 0-143-03466-9
- Muhammad Ayub,An Army It's Role and Rule (A History of the
Pakistan Army from Independence to Kargil 1947-1999), ISBN
0-8059-9594-3
- The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret
History of the KGB, Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, Basic
Books, 1999, ISBN 0-465-00310-9
- Kurt Lohbeck, Holy War, Unholy Victory: Eyewitness to the
CIA's Secret War in Afghanistan, Regnery Publishing (1993),
ISBN 0-89526-499-4
- George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War: the extraordinary story
of the largest covert operation in history, Atlantic Monthly
Press 2003, ISBN 0-87113-851-4
- Robert D. Kaplan, Soldiers of God: With Islamic
Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan, ISBN 1-4000-3025-0
- Mark Galeotti, Afghanistan: the Soviet Union's last
war, ISBN 0-71468-242-X
- John Prados, Presidents' Secret Wars, ISBN
1-56663-108-4
- Kakar, M. Hassan, Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response,
1979-1982, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
(free online access courtesy of UCP)
- Borovik, Artyom, The Hidden
War: A Russian Journalist's Account of the Soviet War in
Afghanistan, ISBN 0-8021-3775-X
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