Afghan Communist N/A.
The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a nine-year conflict involving Soviet forces supporting Afghanistan's Marxist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government against the laregly Islamic fundamentalist Mujahideen insurgents that were fighting to overthrow Soviet rule. The Soviet Union supported the government while the rebels found support from a variety of sources including the United States, Pakistan and other Muslim nations in the context of the Cold War. This conflict was concurrent to the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War.
The initial Soviet deployment of the 40th Army in Afghanistan began on December 25, 1979. The final troop withdrawal began on May 15, 1988, and ended on February 15, 1989. Due to the high cost and ultimate futility of this conflict for this Cold War superpower, the Soviet war in Afghanistan has often been referred to as the equivalent of the United States' Vietnam War.
Some observers believe the economic and military cost of the war contributed significantly to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. However the main cause was insufficient production of food leading to a negative balance of payments and eventual bankruptcy.
Background
Main article: Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
Afghan king Mohammad Zahir Shah succeeded to the throne and reigned from 1933 to 1973. Zahir's cousin, Mohammad Daoud Khan, served as Prime Minister from 1953 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 (Banner) faction led by Babrak Karmal.
Former Prime Minister Daoud seized power in an almost bloodless military coup on July 17, 1973 through charges of corruption and poor economic conditions against the King's government. Daoud put an end to the monarchy but his attempts at economic and social reforms were unsuccessful. Intense opposition from the 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. 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.
The Saur Revolution
After the revolution, Taraki assumed the Presidency, Prime Ministership and General Secretary of the PDPA. In reality, the government was divided along faction 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 reforms. Decrees setting forth changes in marriage customs and land reform were not received well by a population deeply immersed in tradition and Islam. By mid-1978, a popular rebellion backed by the local military garrison began 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 2 months of instability overwhelmed Amin's regime as he moved against his opponents in the PDPA and the growing rebellion.
Factions inside the PDPA
After the Russian Revolution, as early as 1919, the Soviet government gave Afghanistan gratuitous aid in the form of a million gold rubles, small arms, ammunition, and a few aircraft to support the Afghan resistance to the British. In 1924, the USSR again gave military aid to Afghanistan. It received small arms, aircraft and Red Army military training in the Soviet Union for Afghan Army officers. Soviet-Afghan military cooperation began on a regular basis in 1956, when both countries signed another agreement. The Soviet Minister of Defense was now responsible for training all Afghan military officers.
In 1972, up to 100 Soviet military consultants and technical specialists were sent on detached duty to Afghanistan to train the Afghan armed forces. In May 1978, the governments signed another international agreement, sending up to 400 Soviet military advisors to Afghanistan. In December 1978, Moscow and Kabul signed a bilateral treaty of friendship and cooperation that permitted Soviet deployment in case of an Afghan request. Soviet military assistance increased and the PDPA regime became increasingly dependent on Soviet military equipment and advisors.
With Afghanistan in a dire situation during which the country was under assault by an externally supported rebellion, the Soviet Union deployed the 40th Army in response to an official request from the government of Afghanistan. The 40th Army, which was under the command of Marshal Sergei Sokolov, consisted of three motorized rifle divisions, one airborne division, one assault brigade, two independent motorized rifle brigades and five separate motorized rifle regiments. In all, the Soviet force was comprised of around 1,800 T-62 tanks, 80,000 soldiers and 2,000 AFVs.
The Afghan government repeatedly requested the introduction of Soviet forces 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 14 April 1979 the Afghan government requested that the USSR send 15 to 20 helicopters with their crews to Afghanistan, and on 16 June 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 7 July. They arrived without their combat gear disguised as technical specialists. They were the personal bodyguards for President Taraki. The paratroopers were directly subordinated to the senior Soviet military adviser and did not interfere in Afghan politics.
After a month, the Afghan requests were no longer for individual crews and subunits, but were for regiments and larger units. On 19 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 these requests.
Soviet-Afghan relations
In June of 1975, militants from the Jamiat Islami party attempted to overthrow the Daoud government. They started the 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, that had been alarmed by Daoud's revival of the Pashtunistan issue.
Initiation of the insurgency
The Soviet deployment
The Soviet Union decided to intervene militarily in Afghanistan in order to preserve the communist regime. Soviet leaders, based on information from the KGB, felt that Amin destabilized the situation in Afghanistan. The KGB station in Kabul had warned following Amin's initial coup against and killing of President Taraki that his leadership would lead to "harsh repressions, and as a result, the activation and consolidation of the opposition."
The last arguments to eliminate Amin were information obtained by the KGB from its agents in Kabul; 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 always and everywhere showed 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. [2]
Decision for intervention
On December 22, 1979, the Soviet advisors to the Afghan Armed Forces advised 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 25th. 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 17th.
Soviet invasion
U.S President Jimmy Carter indicated that the Soviet incursion was "the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War." Carter later placed a trade embargo against the Soviet Union on shipments of groceries such as grain. 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 gulf, effectively brought about the end of détente. A USMC Marine Expeditionary Unit was ready to be sent in case of further actions.
The international diplomatic response was severe, ranging from stern warnings to a boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. The invasion, along with other events, such as the revolution in Iran 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, and the rise of Middle East-born terrorism against the West, contributed to making the Middle East an extremely violent and turbulent region during the 1980s.
Babrak Karmal's government lacked international support from the beginning. Action by the United Nations Security Council was impossible because the Soviets had veto power, but the United Nations General Assembly regularly passed resolutions opposing the Soviet occupation. The foreign ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference deplored the entrance and demanded Soviet withdrawal at the sixth emergency special session meeting in Islamabad held January 10–14, 1980. The United Nations General Assembly voted by 104 to 18 with 18 abstentions for a resolution (A/ES-6/2, GA/6172) which "strongly deplored" the "recent armed intervention" in Afghanistan and called for the "total withdrawal of foreign troops" from the country "as to enable its people to determine their own destiny and without outside interference or coercion."
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. [3]
Only some allied, friend and satellite countries supported the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, which includes Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Libya, Ethiopia, Angola, Madagascar, Syria, South Yemen, India, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Nicaragua, etc.
Most countries condemned the "invasion", including the US, Canada, the UK, West Germany, all Western countries, Romania, Greece, Albania, Turkey, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti, Chad, Sudan, Zaire, Kenya, Senegal, Swaziland, Somalia, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan, China, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Papua New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, etc.
World reaction
The Soviet war
The initial force entering the country consisted of three motor rifle divisions (including the 201st), one separate motor rifle regiment, one airborne division, 56th Separate Air Assault Brigade, and one separate airborne regiment. Following the deployment, the Soviet troops were unable to establish authority outside Kabul. As much as 80% of the countryside still escaped effective government control. The initial mission, to guard cities and installations, was expanded to combat the anti-communist Mujahideen forces, primarily using Soviet reservists.
Early military reports revealed the difficulty that the Soviet forces encountered in fighting in mountainous terrain. The Soviet Army was unfamiliar with such fighting, had no counter-insurgency training, and their weaponry and military equipment, particularly armoured vehicles and tanks, were sometimes ineffective or vulnerable in the mountainous environment. Heavy artillery was extensively used when fighting rebel forces.
The Soviets used helicopters as their primary air attack force, (including Mil Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships which were regarded as the best helicopters in the world), supported with fighter-bombers and bombers, ground troops and special forces.
The inability of the Soviet Union to break the military stalemate, gain a significant number of Afghan supporters, and to rebuild the Afghan Army, required the increasing direct use of its own forces to fight the rebels. Soviet soldiers often found themselves fighting against civilians due to the elusive tactics of the rebels. They repeated one of the American Vietnam mistakes by winning almost all of the major battles, but failing to control the countryside.
Soviet operations
See also: Mujahideen
By the mid-1980s, the Afghan resistance movement, receptive to assistance from the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, China, 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 secret services, in a program called Operation Cyclone.
The Mujahideen leaders paid great attention to sabotage operations. The more common types of sabotage included damaging power lines, knocking out pipelines, 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 mine warfare heavily. Often, they would enlist the services of the local inhabitants and 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. They 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 party members sent out to work in the Panjshir valley were ambushed within 30 km of Kabul, with heavy loss of life. On 4 September 1985, insurgents shot down a domestic Bakhtar Airlines plane as it took off from Kandahar airport, killing all 52 people aboard.
Mujahideen groups had three to five men in each. After they received their mission to kill this or that government official, 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.
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 UN, virtually guaranteed their refusal to accept a political compromise.
Afghan insurrection
United States President Jimmy Carter had accepted the view that "Soviet aggression" could not be viewed as an isolated event of limited geographical importance but had to be contested as a potential threat to the Persian Gulf region. The uncertain scope of the final objective of Moscow in its sudden southward plunge made the American stake in an independent Pakistan all the more important.
After the Soviet deployment, Pakistan's military dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq started accepting financial aid from the Western powers to aid the Mujahideen. The United States, the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia became major financial contributors to General Zia, who, as ruler of a neighboring country, greatly helped by ensuring the Afghan resistance was well-trained and well-funded. The People's Republic of China also sold Type 69 RPGs to Mujahideen in co-operation with the CIA, as did Egypt with assault rifles. Of particular significance was the donation of American-made FIM-92 Stinger anti-aircraft missile systems, which increased aircraft losses of the Soviet Air Force.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (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 against the Soviets. After Ronald Reagan became the new United States President in 1981, aid for the Mujahideen through Zia's Pakistan significantly increased. In retaliation, the KHAD, under Afghan leader Mohammad Najibullah, carried out (according to the Mitrokhin archives and other sources) a large number of operations against Pakistan, which also suffered from an influx of weaponry and drugs from Afghanistan.
In the 1980s, as the front-line state in the anti-Soviet struggle, Pakistan received substantial aid from the United States and took in millions of Afghan (mostly Pashtun) refugees 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 — into several other regions had a heavy impact on Pakistan and its effects continue to this day. Despite this, Pakistan played a significant role in the eventual withdrawal of Soviet military personnel from Afghanistan.
Pakistani involvement and aid
The toll in casualties, economic resources, and loss of support at home increasingly felt in the Soviet Union was causing criticism of the occupation policy. Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982, and after two short-lived successors, Mikhail Gorbachev assumed leadership in March 1985. As Gorbachev opened up the country's system, it became clearer that the Soviet Union wished to find a face-saving way to withdraw from Afghanistan.
The government of President Karmal, established in 1980 and identified by many as 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:
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 U.S. and Soviet non-intervention with 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.
Official Soviet personnel strengths and casualties
Over 1 million Afghans were killed.
Damage to Afghanistan
Democratic Republic of AfghanistanAfghan king Mohammad Zahir Shah succeeded to the throne and reigned from 1933 to 1973. Zahir's cousin, Mohammad Daoud Khan, served as Prime Minister from 1953 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 (Banner) faction led by Babrak Karmal.
Former Prime Minister Daoud seized power in an almost bloodless military coup on July 17, 1973 through charges of corruption and poor economic conditions against the King's government. Daoud put an end to the monarchy but his attempts at economic and social reforms were unsuccessful. Intense opposition from the 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. 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.
The Saur Revolution
After the revolution, Taraki assumed the Presidency, Prime Ministership and General Secretary of the PDPA. In reality, the government was divided along faction 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 reforms. Decrees setting forth changes in marriage customs and land reform were not received well by a population deeply immersed in tradition and Islam. By mid-1978, a popular rebellion backed by the local military garrison began 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 2 months of instability overwhelmed Amin's regime as he moved against his opponents in the PDPA and the growing rebellion.
Factions inside the PDPA
After the Russian Revolution, as early as 1919, the Soviet government gave Afghanistan gratuitous aid in the form of a million gold rubles, small arms, ammunition, and a few aircraft to support the Afghan resistance to the British. In 1924, the USSR again gave military aid to Afghanistan. It received small arms, aircraft and Red Army military training in the Soviet Union for Afghan Army officers. Soviet-Afghan military cooperation began on a regular basis in 1956, when both countries signed another agreement. The Soviet Minister of Defense was now responsible for training all Afghan military officers.
In 1972, up to 100 Soviet military consultants and technical specialists were sent on detached duty to Afghanistan to train the Afghan armed forces. In May 1978, the governments signed another international agreement, sending up to 400 Soviet military advisors to Afghanistan. In December 1978, Moscow and Kabul signed a bilateral treaty of friendship and cooperation that permitted Soviet deployment in case of an Afghan request. Soviet military assistance increased and the PDPA regime became increasingly dependent on Soviet military equipment and advisors.
With Afghanistan in a dire situation during which the country was under assault by an externally supported rebellion, the Soviet Union deployed the 40th Army in response to an official request from the government of Afghanistan. The 40th Army, which was under the command of Marshal Sergei Sokolov, consisted of three motorized rifle divisions, one airborne division, one assault brigade, two independent motorized rifle brigades and five separate motorized rifle regiments. In all, the Soviet force was comprised of around 1,800 T-62 tanks, 80,000 soldiers and 2,000 AFVs.
The Afghan government repeatedly requested the introduction of Soviet forces 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 14 April 1979 the Afghan government requested that the USSR send 15 to 20 helicopters with their crews to Afghanistan, and on 16 June 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 7 July. They arrived without their combat gear disguised as technical specialists. They were the personal bodyguards for President Taraki. The paratroopers were directly subordinated to the senior Soviet military adviser and did not interfere in Afghan politics.
After a month, the Afghan requests were no longer for individual crews and subunits, but were for regiments and larger units. On 19 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 these requests.
Soviet-Afghan relations
In June of 1975, militants from the Jamiat Islami party attempted to overthrow the Daoud government. They started the 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, that had been alarmed by Daoud's revival of the Pashtunistan issue.
Initiation of the insurgency
The Soviet deployment
The Soviet Union decided to intervene militarily in Afghanistan in order to preserve the communist regime. Soviet leaders, based on information from the KGB, felt that Amin destabilized the situation in Afghanistan. The KGB station in Kabul had warned following Amin's initial coup against and killing of President Taraki that his leadership would lead to "harsh repressions, and as a result, the activation and consolidation of the opposition."
The last arguments to eliminate Amin were information obtained by the KGB from its agents in Kabul; 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 always and everywhere showed 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. [2]
Decision for intervention
On December 22, 1979, the Soviet advisors to the Afghan Armed Forces advised 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 25th. 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 17th.
Soviet invasion
U.S President Jimmy Carter indicated that the Soviet incursion was "the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War." Carter later placed a trade embargo against the Soviet Union on shipments of groceries such as grain. 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 gulf, effectively brought about the end of détente. A USMC Marine Expeditionary Unit was ready to be sent in case of further actions.
The international diplomatic response was severe, ranging from stern warnings to a boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. The invasion, along with other events, such as the revolution in Iran 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, and the rise of Middle East-born terrorism against the West, contributed to making the Middle East an extremely violent and turbulent region during the 1980s.
Babrak Karmal's government lacked international support from the beginning. Action by the United Nations Security Council was impossible because the Soviets had veto power, but the United Nations General Assembly regularly passed resolutions opposing the Soviet occupation. The foreign ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference deplored the entrance and demanded Soviet withdrawal at the sixth emergency special session meeting in Islamabad held January 10–14, 1980. The United Nations General Assembly voted by 104 to 18 with 18 abstentions for a resolution (A/ES-6/2, GA/6172) which "strongly deplored" the "recent armed intervention" in Afghanistan and called for the "total withdrawal of foreign troops" from the country "as to enable its people to determine their own destiny and without outside interference or coercion."
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. [3]
Only some allied, friend and satellite countries supported the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, which includes Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Libya, Ethiopia, Angola, Madagascar, Syria, South Yemen, India, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Nicaragua, etc.
Most countries condemned the "invasion", including the US, Canada, the UK, West Germany, all Western countries, Romania, Greece, Albania, Turkey, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti, Chad, Sudan, Zaire, Kenya, Senegal, Swaziland, Somalia, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan, China, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Papua New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, etc.
World reaction
The Soviet war
The initial force entering the country consisted of three motor rifle divisions (including the 201st), one separate motor rifle regiment, one airborne division, 56th Separate Air Assault Brigade, and one separate airborne regiment. Following the deployment, the Soviet troops were unable to establish authority outside Kabul. As much as 80% of the countryside still escaped effective government control. The initial mission, to guard cities and installations, was expanded to combat the anti-communist Mujahideen forces, primarily using Soviet reservists.
Early military reports revealed the difficulty that the Soviet forces encountered in fighting in mountainous terrain. The Soviet Army was unfamiliar with such fighting, had no counter-insurgency training, and their weaponry and military equipment, particularly armoured vehicles and tanks, were sometimes ineffective or vulnerable in the mountainous environment. Heavy artillery was extensively used when fighting rebel forces.
The Soviets used helicopters as their primary air attack force, (including Mil Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships which were regarded as the best helicopters in the world), supported with fighter-bombers and bombers, ground troops and special forces.
The inability of the Soviet Union to break the military stalemate, gain a significant number of Afghan supporters, and to rebuild the Afghan Army, required the increasing direct use of its own forces to fight the rebels. Soviet soldiers often found themselves fighting against civilians due to the elusive tactics of the rebels. They repeated one of the American Vietnam mistakes by winning almost all of the major battles, but failing to control the countryside.
Soviet operations
See also: Mujahideen
By the mid-1980s, the Afghan resistance movement, receptive to assistance from the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, China, 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 secret services, in a program called Operation Cyclone.
The Mujahideen leaders paid great attention to sabotage operations. The more common types of sabotage included damaging power lines, knocking out pipelines, 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 mine warfare heavily. Often, they would enlist the services of the local inhabitants and 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. They 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 party members sent out to work in the Panjshir valley were ambushed within 30 km of Kabul, with heavy loss of life. On 4 September 1985, insurgents shot down a domestic Bakhtar Airlines plane as it took off from Kandahar airport, killing all 52 people aboard.
Mujahideen groups had three to five men in each. After they received their mission to kill this or that government official, 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.
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 UN, virtually guaranteed their refusal to accept a political compromise.
Afghan insurrection
United States President Jimmy Carter had accepted the view that "Soviet aggression" could not be viewed as an isolated event of limited geographical importance but had to be contested as a potential threat to the Persian Gulf region. The uncertain scope of the final objective of Moscow in its sudden southward plunge made the American stake in an independent Pakistan all the more important.
After the Soviet deployment, Pakistan's military dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq started accepting financial aid from the Western powers to aid the Mujahideen. The United States, the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia became major financial contributors to General Zia, who, as ruler of a neighboring country, greatly helped by ensuring the Afghan resistance was well-trained and well-funded. The People's Republic of China also sold Type 69 RPGs to Mujahideen in co-operation with the CIA, as did Egypt with assault rifles. Of particular significance was the donation of American-made FIM-92 Stinger anti-aircraft missile systems, which increased aircraft losses of the Soviet Air Force.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (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 against the Soviets. After Ronald Reagan became the new United States President in 1981, aid for the Mujahideen through Zia's Pakistan significantly increased. In retaliation, the KHAD, under Afghan leader Mohammad Najibullah, carried out (according to the Mitrokhin archives and other sources) a large number of operations against Pakistan, which also suffered from an influx of weaponry and drugs from Afghanistan.
In the 1980s, as the front-line state in the anti-Soviet struggle, Pakistan received substantial aid from the United States and took in millions of Afghan (mostly Pashtun) refugees 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 — into several other regions had a heavy impact on Pakistan and its effects continue to this day. Despite this, Pakistan played a significant role in the eventual withdrawal of Soviet military personnel from Afghanistan.
Pakistani involvement and aid
The toll in casualties, economic resources, and loss of support at home increasingly felt in the Soviet Union was causing criticism of the occupation policy. Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982, and after two short-lived successors, Mikhail Gorbachev assumed leadership in March 1985. As Gorbachev opened up the country's system, it became clearer that the Soviet Union wished to find a face-saving way to withdraw from Afghanistan.
The government of President Karmal, established in 1980 and identified by many as 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:
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 U.S. and Soviet non-intervention with 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.
Official Soviet personnel strengths and casualties
Over 1 million Afghans were killed.
Damage to Afghanistan
Main article: Afghan Civil War (1989-1992) Media and popular culture
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