The war derives from a 1978 coup when Afghanistan's communist party took power, initiating a series of radical modernization reforms throughout the country. These reforms were deeply unpopular among the more traditional rural population and established power structures.[page needed] The repressive nature of Soviet Afghanistan, which vigorously suppressed opposition including the execution of thousands of political prisoners, led to the rise of anti-government armed groups and by April 1979 large parts of the country were in open rebellion. The ruling party itself experienced deep rivalries, and in September 1979 the President, Nur Mohammad Taraki, was murdered under orders of the second-in-command, Hafizullah Amin, which soured relations with the Soviet Union. Eventually the Soviet government, under leader Leonid Brezhnev, decided to deploy the 40th Army on December 24, 1979. Arriving in the capital Kabul, they staged a coup, killing president Amin and installing Soviet loyalist Babrak Karmal from a rival faction. The deployment had been variously called an "invasion" (by Western media and the rebels) or a legitimate supporting intervention (by the Soviet Union and the Afghan government) on the basis of the Brezhnev Doctrine.
In January 1980, foreign ministers from 34 nations of the Islamic Conference adopted a resolution demanding "the immediate, urgent and unconditional withdrawal of Soviet troops" from Afghanistan. The UN General Assembly passed a resolution protesting the Soviet intervention by a vote of 104 (for) to 18 (against), with 18 abstentions and 12 members of the 152-nation Assembly absent or not participating in the vote; only Soviet allies Angola, East Germany and Vietnam, along with India, supported the intervention. Afghan insurgents began to receive massive amounts of support through aid, finance and military training in neighbouring Pakistan with significant help from the United States and United Kingdom. They were also heavily financed by China and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Soviet troops occupied the cities and main arteries of communication, while the mujahideen waged guerrilla war in small groups operating in the almost 80 percent of the country that was outside government and Soviet control, almost exclusively being the rural countryside. The Soviets used their air power to deal harshly with both rebels and civilians, levelling villages to deny safe haven to the mujahideen, destroying vital irrigation ditches, and laying millions of land mines.
The international community imposed numerous sanctions and embargoes against the Soviet Union, and the U.S. led a boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics held in Moscow. The boycott and sanctions exacerbated Cold War tensions and enraged the Soviet government, which later led a revenge boycott of the 1984 Olympics held in Los Angeles. The Soviets initially planned to secure towns and roads, stabilize the government under new leader Karmal, and withdraw within six months or a year. But they were met with fierce resistance from the guerillas, and were stuck in a bloody war that lasted nine years. By the mid-1980s, the Soviet contingent was increased to 108,800 and fighting increased, but the military and diplomatic cost of the war to the USSR was high. By mid-1987 the Soviet Union, now under reformist leader Mikhail Gorbachev, announced it would start withdrawing its forces after meetings with the Afghan government. The final troop withdrawal started on May 15, 1988, and ended on February 15, 1989, leaving the government forces alone in the battle against the insurgents, which continued until 1992 when the former Soviet-backed government collapsed. Due to its length, it has sometimes been referred to as the "Soviet Union's Vietnam War" or the "Bear Trap" by the Western media. The Soviets' failure in the war is thought to be a contributing factor to the fall of the Soviet Union.
Background
In 1885, Russian forces seized the disputed oasis at Panjdeh south of the Oxus River from Afghan forces, which became known as the Panjdeh Incident. The border was agreed by the joint Anglo-Russian Afghan Boundary Commission of 1885–87. The Russian 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 1947, Prime Minister of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, had rejected the Durrand Line, which was accepted as international border by successive Afghan governments for over a half a century. The British Raj also came to an end and British Crown colony of India was partitioned into the new nations of India and Pakistan, the latter which inherited the Durrand Line as its frontier with Afghanistan. Daoud Khan's irredentist foreign policy to reunite the Pashtun homeland caused much tension with Pakistan, a nation that allied itself with the United States. Daoud Khan's irredentist policy was fueled by his desire to unite his divided country. To unite his divided country, Daoud Khan started emulating policies of Emir Abdur Rahman Khan and for that he needed a popular cause (a Pashtun homeland) to unite the Afghan people divided along the tribal lines and a modern, well equipped Afghan army which would be used to surpass anyone who would oppose the Afghan government. Daoud Khan's policy to annex Pashtun areas of Pakistan had also angered Non-Pashtun population of Afghanistan. Similarly, Pashtun population in Pakistan were also not interested in having their areas being annexed by Afghanistan. In 1951, the United States's State Department urged Afghanistan to drop its claim against Pakistan and accept the Durrand Line. In 1954, the United States began selling arms to Pakistan while refusing an Afghan request to buy arms out of the fear that the Afghans would use any weapons they had purchased against America's ally Pakistan. As a consequence, Afghanistan, through officially neutral in the Cold War, drew closer to India and the Soviet Union, which unlike the United States, was willing to sell Afghanistan weapons. In 1962, China defeated India in a border war, and as a result, China formed an alliance with Pakistan against their common enemy, India. The Sino-Pakistani alliance pushed Afghanistan even closer to India and the Soviet Union.
After the Saur Revolution in 1978, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was formed on April 27, 1978. The government was one with a pro-poor, pro-farmer socialist agenda. It had close relations with the Soviet Union. On December 5, 1978, a treaty of friendship was signed between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan.
In February 1979, the United States Ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs, was kidnapped by Setami Milli militants and was later killed during an assault carried out by the Afghan police, assisted by Soviet advisers. Dubs' death led to a major deterioration in Afghanistan–United States relations.
In Southwestern Asia, drastic changes were taking place concurrent with the upheavals in Afghanistan. In February 1979, the Iranian Revolution ousted the American-backed Shah from Iran, losing the United States as one of its most powerful allies. The United States then deployed twenty ships in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea including two aircraft carriers, and there were constant threats of war between the U.S. and Iran. March 1979 marked the signing of the U.S.-backed peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. The Soviet leadership saw the agreement as giving a major advantage to the United States. A 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. 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, its Warsaw Pact allies, and China.
Saur Revolution
King Mohammed Zahir Shah ascended 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 People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan's (PDPA'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. The leaders of the Khalq faction tended to be Pashtuns from a poorer background while the leaders of the Parcham faction were usually Farsi-speakers from the Tajik and Hazara ethnic groups who came from well-off backgrounds. Symbolic of the different backgrounds of the two factions were the fact that Taraki's father was a poor Pashtun herdsman while Karmal's father was a Tajik general in the Royal Afghan Army. More importantly, the radical Khalq faction believed in rapidly transforming Afghanistan by violence if necessary from a feudal nation into a Communist nation while the moderate Parcham faction favored a more gradualist and gentler approach, arguing that Afghanistan was simply not ready for Communism and would not be for some time. The Parcham faction favored building up the PDPA as a mass party in support of the Daoud Khan government while the Khalq faction were organized in the Leninist style as a small, tightly organized elite group, allowing the latter to enjoy ascendancy over the former.
Former Prime Minister Daoud seized power in a military coup on July 17, 1973 after allegations of corruption and poor economic conditions against the king's government. Daoud put an end to the monarchy, and his time in power was marked by unpopularity as the abolition of the monarchy was not widely approved of in a conservative society. Daoud Khan billed himself as a reformer, but few of his reforms were ever implemented and his rule grew more repressive as the 1970s went on. In 1975, both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia began to support Islamic fundamentalist groups committed to overthrowing the Daoud Khan regime and establishing an Islamist theocracy in its place.
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. The Finnish scholar Raimo Väyrynen wrote about the so-called "Saur Revolution": "There is a multitude of speculations on the real nature of this coup. The reality appears to be that it was inspired first of all by domestic economic and political concerns and that the Soviet Union did not play any role in the Saur Revolution". 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 Secretaryship of the PDPA. The government was divided along factional lines, with President Taraki and Deputy Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin of the Khalq faction pitted against Parcham leaders such as Babrak Karmal and Mohammad Najibullah.
Through the new regime promptly allied itself to the Soviet Union, many Soviet diplomats believed that the Khalqi plans to transform Afghanistan would provoke a rebellion in a deeply conservative and Muslim nation. Immediately after coming to power, the Khalqis began to persecute the Parchamis, not the least because the Soviet Union favored the Parchami faction whose "go slow" plans were felt to be better suited for Afghanistan, thereby leading the Khaqis to eliminate their rivals so the Soviets would have no other choice, but to back them. Within the PDPA, conflicts resulted in exiles, purges and executions of Parcham members. The PDPA executed between 10,000 and 27,000 people, mostly at Pul-e-Charkhi prison prior to the Soviet intervention.
During its first 18 months of rule, the PDPA applied a Soviet-style program of modernizing reforms, many of which were viewed by conservatives as opposing Islam. 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 landowners who were harmed economically by the abolition of usury (although usury is prohibited in Islam) and the cancellation of farmers' debts. The new government also enhanced women's rights, sought a rapid eradication of illiteracy and promoted Afghanistan's ethnic minorities, although these programs appear to have had an effect only in the urban areas. 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, arresting and killing 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 Soviet Union (USSR) had been a major power broker and influential mentor in Afghan politics. Its involvement ranging from civil-military infrastructure to Afghan society. Since 1947, Afghanistan had been under the influence of the Soviet government and received large amounts of aid, economic assistance, military equipment training and military hardware from the Soviet Union. Economic assistance and aid had been provided to Afghanistan as early as 1919, shortly after the 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 1919. In 1942, the USSR again moved to strengthen the Afghan Armed Forces by providing small arms and aircraft, and establishing training centers in Tashkent (Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic). 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.
In 1978, after witnessing India's nuclear test, Smiling Buddha, President Daud Khan initiated a military buildup to counter Pakistan's armed forces and Iranian military influence in Afghan politics. A final pre-war treaty, signed in December 1978, allowed the PDPA to call upon the Soviet Union for military support.
Following the Herat uprising, President Taraki contacted Alexei Kosygin, chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, and asked for "practical and technical assistance with men and armament". Kosygin was unfavorable to the proposal on the basis of the negative political repercussions such an action would have for his country, and he rejected all further attempts by Taraki to solicit Soviet military aid in Afghanistan. Following Kosygin's rejection, Taraki requested aid from Leonid Brezhnev, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Soviet head of state, who warned Taraki that full Soviet intervention "would only play into the hands of our enemies – both yours and ours". Brezhnev also advised Taraki to ease up on the drastic social reforms and to seek broader support for his regime.
In 1979, Taraki attended a conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana, Cuba. On his way back, he stopped in Moscow on March 20 and met with Brezhnev, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and other Soviet officials. It was rumoured that Karmal was present at the meeting in an attempt to reconcile Taraki's Khalq faction and the Parcham against Amin and his followers. At the meeting, Taraki was successful in negotiating some Soviet support, including the redeployment of two Soviet armed divisions at the Soviet-Afghan border, the sending of 500 military and civilian advisers and specialists and the immediate delivery of Soviet armed equipment sold at 25 percent below the original price; however, the Soviets were not pleased about the developments in Afghanistan and Brezhnev impressed upon Taraki the need for party unity. Despite reaching this agreement with Taraki, the Soviets continued to be reluctant to intervene further in Afghanistan and repeatedly refused Soviet military intervention within Afghan borders during Taraki's rule as well as later during Amin's short rule.
Initiation of the insurgency
Afghanistan, under the regime of Mohammed Daoud Khan, had hostile relations with both Pakistan and Iran. Like all previous Afghan rulers since 1901, Daoud Khan also wanted to emulate Emir Abdur Rahman Khan and unite his divided country. To do that, he needed a popular cause to unite the Afghan people divided along the tribal lines (Pashtunistan policy) and a modern, well equipped Afghan army which would be used to surpass anyone who would oppose the Afghan government. His Pashtunistan policy was to annex Pashtun areas of Pakistan, and he used this policy for his own benefit. Daoud Khan's Pashtunistan policy had angered both Pakistan and Non-Pashtun population of Afghanistan. In 1960 and 1961, Afghan army, on the orders of Daoud Khan, made two unsuccessful incursions into Pakistan's Bajaur District. In both the attempts, Afghan army was routed after suffering heavy casualties. In response, Pakistan closed its consulate in Afghanistan and blocked all trade routes running through the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. This damaged Afghanistan's economy and Daoud's regime was pushed towards closer alliance with Soviet Union for trade. However, these stopgap measures were not enough to compensate the loss suffered by Afghanistan's economy because of border closure. As a result of continued resentment against Daoud's autocratic rule, close ties with the Soviet union and economic downturn, Daoud Khan was forced to resign. Following his resignation, crisis between Pakistan and Afghanistan was resolved and Pakistan re-opened the trade routes. After the removal of Daoud Khan, King Zahir Shah took control of Afghanistan and he started creating a balance in Afghanistan's relation with west and Soviet Union, which angered the Soviet Union. Zahir Shah also ended all anti-Pakistani propaganda and improved his country's relation with Pakistan. In 1973, Daoud Khan supported by Soviet-trained Afghan army officers seized power from his cousin, King Zahir Shah, in a bloodless coup. Soviet Union welcomed the coup as they were unhappy with Zahir's liberal regime and friendly ties with the United States. Following Daoud's return to power, Daoud revived his Pashtunistan policy and for the first time started proxy war against Pakistan by supporting anti-Pakistani groups and providing them with arms, training and sanctuaries. Daoud Khan also provided key government positions to Parcham faction of PDPA, which was led by Babrak Karmal. During the coup against Zahir Shah, Paracham had supported Daoud Khan.
Soviet Union also supported Daoud Khan militancy against Pakistan. Soviets wanted to weaken Pakistan which was an ally of United States and China. However, it did not openly try to create problems for Pakistan as that would damage the Soviet Union relations with other Islamic countries. Hence, it relied on Daoud Khan to weaken Pakistan. Similarly, Soviet Union also wanted to weaken Iran, which was another major U.S. ally, but without hurting its relations with Islamic countries. Soviet Union also believed that the hostile behaviour of Afghanistan against Pakistan and Iran could alienate Afghanistan from the west and Afghanistan would be forced to into a closer relationship with Soviet Union. The pro-Soviet Afghans also supported Daoud Khan hostility towards Pakistan, as they believed that a conflict with Pakistan would promote Afghanistan to seek aid from Soviet Union. As a result, the pro-Soviet Afghans would be able to establish their influence over Afghanistan.
Aid to insurgents
In response to Afghanistan's proxy war, Pakistan started supporting Afghans who were critical of Daoud Khan's policies. Pakistan's Prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto authorized a covert operation under MI's Major-General Naseerullah Babar. In 1974, Bhutto authorized another secret operation in Kabul where the ISI and the AI extradited Burhanuddin Rabbani, Gulbadin Hekmatyar and Ahmed Shah Massoud to Peshawar, amid fear that Rabbani, Hekmatyar and Massoud might be assassinated by Daoud. According to Baber, Bhutto's operation was an excellent idea and it had hard-hitting impact on Daoud and his government which forced Daoud to increase his desire to make peace with Bhutto.
The first ever Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) operation in Afghanistan took place in 1975. Before 1975, ISI did not conduct any operation in Afghanistan and it was in retaliation to Daoud Khan's proxy war against Pakistan. In June 1975, militants from the Jamiat Islami party, led by Ahmed Shah Massoud, attempted to overthrow the government. They started their rebellion in the Panjshir valley (a part of the greater Parwan province), in the present day Panjshir province, 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.
The 1975 rebellion though unsuccessful, had shaken Daoud Khan to the core and made him realize that a friendly Pakistan was in his best interest. Pakistani Pashtuns were also not interested in having their areas being annexed by Afghanistan. As a result, Daoud started improving his country's relations with Pakistan and made two state visit to Pakistan in 1976 and 1978. During his 1978 visit to Pakistan, Daoud Khan agreed to stop supporting anti-Pakistan militants and to expel any remaining militant in Afghanistan. In 1975, Daoud Khan, established his own party named National Revolutionary Party and outlawed all other parties like Parcham and Khalq. He then started removing members of the Parcham party from the government positions, including the ones who had supported his coup, and started replacing them with familiar faces from Kabul's traditional government elites. Daoud also started lowering his dependence on Soviet Union. As a consequence of Daoud's actions, Afghanistan's relations with Soviet Union deteriorated. Following the death of one of the leader of Parcham faction, Mir Akbar Khyber, Saur Revolution took place and Daoud Khan was removed from power by Afghan armed forces and killed. Daoud Khan was replaced by Nur Muhammad Taraki.
In 1978, the Taraki government initiated a series of reforms, including a radical modernization of the traditional Islamic civil and especially marriage law, aimed at "uprooting feudalism" in Afghan society.[page needed] The government brooked no opposition to the reforms and responded with violence to unrest. Between April 1978 and the Soviet Intervention 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 in the northeastern part of the country near the border with Pakistan, and rapidly spread among the other ethnic groups. 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 revolted. Between 3,000 and 5,000 people were killed and wounded during the Herat revolt. Some 100 Soviet citizens and their families were killed.
Killing of the U.S. ambassador
In February 1979, the contentious law and order situation led to a serious diplomatic incident involving United States, Soviet Union and Afghanistan when U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Adolph "Spike" Dubs was kidnapped by a mysterious group of militants. They are sometimes alleged to have been part of the radical communist faction, Settam-e-Melli (lit. "National Oppression"), but are also sometimes described as Islamists. The National Oppression reportedly demanded the release of their communist leader Badruddin Bahes, whom the Afghan government denied holding. The government refused categorically to negotiate with the militants, in spite of the U.S. embassy's demands. The U.S. increased pressure on the Afghan government and the Soviet Union, forcefully demanding peaceful negotiations for the release of their ambassador.
Dubs was held in Room 117 of the Kabul Hotel, where the United States sent its embassy and diplomatic staff to negotiate with the communist faction. The Afghan security forces, accompanied by the Soviet advisers, swarmed the hallway and surrounding rooftops of the hotel. When negotiations stalled, there was an intense exchange of fire after Soviet advisers ordered an assault. Documents released from the Soviet KGB bureau archives by Vasily Mitrokhin in the early 1990s suggest that the Afghan government authorized the assault and that the KGB adviser on scene, Sergei Batrukihn, may have recommended the assault, as well as the execution of a kidnapper before U.S. experts could interrogate him. All attempts at negotiation failed, and U.S. Ambassador Adolph Dubs was caught in the crossfire, leading to his death. Afterwards the United States formally expressed to the Soviet Union its disapproval of the assault by the security forces, putting more stress on U.S.-Soviet relations.
U.S. aid to insurgents
In the mid-1970s, Pakistani intelligence officials began privately lobbying the U.S. and its allies to send material assistance to the Islamist insurgents. Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's ties with the U.S. had been strained during Jimmy Carter's presidency due to Pakistan's nuclear program and the execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in April 1979, but Carter told National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance as early as January 1979 that it was vital to "repair our relationships with Pakistan" in light of the unrest in Iran. According to former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official Robert Gates, "the Carter administration turned to CIA ... to counter Soviet and Cuban aggression in the Third World, particularly beginning in mid-1979." In March 1979, "CIA sent several covert action options relating to Afghanistan to the SCC [Special Coordination Committee]" of the United States National Security Council. At a March 30 meeting, U.S. Department of Defense representative Walter B. Slocombe "asked if there was value in keeping the Afghan insurgency going, 'sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire?'" When asked to clarify this remark, Slocombe explained: "Well, the whole idea was that if the Soviets decided to strike at this tar baby [Afghanistan] we had every interest in making sure that they got stuck." Yet an April 5 memo from National Intelligence Officer Arnold Horelick warned: "Covert action would raise the costs to the Soviets and inflame Moslem opinion against them in many countries. The risk was that a substantial U.S. covert aid program could raise the stakes and induce the Soviets to intervene more directly and vigorously than otherwise intended."
In May 1979, U.S. officials secretly began meeting with rebel leaders through Pakistani government contacts. A former Pakistani military official claimed that he personally introduced a CIA official to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar that month (Freedom of Information Act requests for records describing these meetings have been denied). After additional meetings on April 6 and July 3, Carter signed a "presidential 'finding'" that "authorized the CIA to spend just over $500,000" on "non-lethal" aid to the mujahideen, which "seemed at the time a small beginning." Brzezinski later claimed that "We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would." According to Brzezinski, he became convinced by mid-1979 that the Soviets were going to invade Afghanistan regardless of U.S. policy due to the Carter administration's failure to respond aggressively to Soviet activity in Africa, but—despite the risk of unintended consequences—support for the mujahideen could be an effective way to prevent Soviet aggression beyond Afghanistan (particularly in Brzezinski's native Poland).
The full significance of the U.S. sending aid to the mujahideen prior to the intervention is debated among scholars. Some assert that it directly, and even deliberately, provoked the Soviets to send in troops. Bruce Riedel, however, believes that the U.S. aid was intended primarily to improve U.S. relations with Pakistan, while Steve Coll asserts: "Contemporary memos—particularly those written in the first days after the Soviet invasion—make clear that while Brzezinski was determined to confront the Soviets in Afghanistan through covert action, he was also very worried the Soviets would prevail. ... Given this evidence and the enormous political and security costs that the invasion imposed on the Carter administration, any claim that Brzezinski lured the Soviets into Afghanistan warrants deep skepticism." Carter himself has stated that encouraging a Soviet invasion was "not my intention." Gates recounted: "No one in the Carter Administration wanted the Soviets to invade Afghanistan and no one, as I can recall at least, ever advocated attempting to induce them to invade ... Only after the Soviet invasion did some advocate making the Soviets 'bleed' in their own Vietnam." Conversely, Andrew Bacevich writes that "the prospect of inducing conflict on the scale of Vietnam exerted great appeal" in the White House even prior to the Soviet invasion, as "fomenting trouble in Afghanistan would dissuade the Soviets from meddling in the Persian Gulf." Chalmers Johnson considered the Soviet invasion "deliberately provoked" by the U.S.
Although Gates described Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Stansfield Turner and the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO) as contemplating "several enhancement options"—up to and including the direct provision of arms from the U.S. to the mujahideen through the ISI—as early as late August 1979, and an unnamed Brzezinski aide acknowledged in conversation with Selig S. Harrison that the U.S.'s nominally "non-lethal" assistance to the mujahideen included facilitating arms shipments by third-parties, Coll, Harrison, Riedel, and the head of the DO's Near East–South Asia Division at the time—Charles Cogan—all state that no U.S.-supplied arms intended for the mujahideen reached Pakistan until January 1980, after Carter amended his presidential finding to include lethal provisions in late December 1979.
British aid to insurgents
British aid to the Afghan resistance began to flow even before the Soviet invasion began, working with chosen Islamist forces during Afghanistan's close ties to the Soviet Union in the late seventies. During the war Britain played a vital role in support of the US and acted as a de facto covert arm of the US government. While the US provided far more in financial and material terms to the Afghan resistance, the UK played more of a direct combat role - in particular the Special Air Service — practically supporting resistance groups. This turned out to be Whitehall's most extensive covert operation since the Second World War.
Within three weeks of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan cabinet secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong sent a note to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Secretary of State Peter Carrington and "C", the head of MI6 arguing the case for military aid to "encourage and support resistance". This was secretly approved by the British government who then authorised MI6 to conduct operations in the first year of the Soviet occupation, coordinated by MI6 officers in Islamabad in liaison with the CIA and the ISI. MI6 helped the CIA by activating long-established British networks of contacts in Pakistan. MI6 supported one of the hardline Islamic groups commanded by Ahmad Shah Massoud a young commander in the Panjshir Valley. Despite the CIA's doubts on Massoud he nevertheless became a key MI6 ally and would become an effective fighter. They sent an annual mission of two of their officers as well as military instructors to Massoud and his fighters. They stayed for three weeks or more in the mountains moving supplies to Massoud under the noses of the Pakistanis who insisted on maintaining control. The teams most important contribution was help with organisation and communication via radio equipment. The Cheltenham based GCHQ intercepted and translated Soviet battle plan communications which was then relayed to the Afghan resistance. MI6 also helped to retrieve crashed Soviet helicopters from Afghanistan - parts of which were carried on mules.
In the Spring of 1986, the British sent weapons clandestinely to some units of the Mujaheddin, and made sure their origins were open to speculation. The most notable of these was the Blowpipe missile launchers. These had proved a failure in the Falklands War and had been mothballed by the British army, but were available on the international arms market. Around fifty Launchers and 300 Missiles were delivered and the system nevertheless proved ineffective; thirteen missiles were fired for no hits and it was eventually supplanted by the US Stinger missile. Britain also flooded the mujaheddin with hundreds of thousands of old British army small arms, mostly Lee Enfield rifles, some of which were purchased from old Indian Army stocks. They also included limpet mines which proved the most successful, destroying barges on the Soviet side of the Amu River.
In 1983 the Special Air Service were sent in to Pakistan and worked alongside their SSG, whose commandos guided guerrilla operations in Afghanistan in the hope officers could impart their learned expertise directly to the Afghans. Britain also directly trained Afghan forces, much of which was contracted out to private security firms, a policy cleared by the British Government. The main company was Keenie Meenie Services (KMS Ltd) lead by former SAS officers. In 1985 they helped train Afghans in sabotage, reconnaissance, attack planning, arson, how to use explosive devices and heavy artillery such as mortars. One of these men was a key trainer, a former senior officer in the royal Afghan army, Brigadier General Rahmatullah Safi - he trained as many as 8,000 men. As well as sending Afghan commando units to secret British bases in Oman to train; KMS even sent them to Britain. Disguised as tourists selected junior commanders in the mujaheddin were trained in three week cycles in Scotland, northern and Southern England on SAS training grounds.
The UK 's role in the conflict entailed direct military involvement not only in Afghanistan, but the Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union. MI6 organised and executed "scores" of terror strikes in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, on the basis Soviet troop supplies flowed from these areas. These were the first direct Western attacks on the Soviet Union since the 1950s. MI6 also funded the spread of extremist Islamic literature in the Soviet republics.
Soviet operations
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 mujaheddin rebels. After the killing of Soviet technicians in Herat by rioting mobs, the Soviet government sold several Mi-24 helicopters to the Afghan military, and increased the number of military advisers in the country to 3,000. 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. Several leading politicians at the time such as Alexei Kosygin and Andrei Gromyko were against intervention.
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.
Based on information from the KGB, Soviet leaders felt that Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin's actions had destabilized the situation in Afghanistan. Following his initial coup against and killing of President Taraki, the KGB station in Kabul warned Moscow that Amin's 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, comprising KGB chairman Yuri Andropov, Boris Ponomarev from the Central Committee and Dmitriy Ustinov, the Minister of Defence. In late April 1978, the committee reported that Amin was purging his opponents, including Soviet loyalists, that his loyalty to Moscow was in question and that he was seeking diplomatic links with Pakistan and possibly the People's Republic of China (which at the time had poor relations with the Soviet Union). Of specific concern were Amin's secret meetings with the U.S. 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, himself, was suspected to be a CIA agent. The latter, however, is still disputed with Amin repeatedly demonstrating friendliness toward the various delegates of the Soviet Union who would arrive in Afghanistan. Soviet General Vasily Zaplatin, a political advisor of Premier Brezhnev at the time, claimed that four of President Taraki's ministers were responsible for the destabilization. However, Zaplatin failed to emphasize this in discussions and was not heard.
During meetings between President Taraki and Soviet leaders in March 1979, the Soviets promised political support and to send military equipment and technical specialists, but upon repeated requests by Taraki for direct Soviet intervention, the leadership adamantly opposed him; reasons included that they would be met with "bitter resentment" from the Afghan people, that intervening in another country's civil war would hand a propaganda victory to their opponents, and Afghanistan's overall inconsequential weight in international affairs, in essence realizing they had little to gain by taking over a country with a poor economy, unstable government, and population hostile to outsiders. However, as the situation continued to deteriorate from May–December 1979, Moscow changed its mind on dispatching Soviet troops. The reasons for this complete turnabout are not entirely clear, and several speculative arguments include: the grave internal situation and inability for the Afghan government; the effects of the Iranian Revolution that brought an Islamic theocracy into power, leading to fears that religious fanaticism would spread through Afghanistan and into Soviet Muslim Central Asian republics; Taraki's murder and replacement by Amin, who the Soviets feared could become aligned with the Americans and provide them with a new strategic position after the loss of Iran; and the deteriorating ties with the United States after NATO's two-track missile deployment decision and the failure of Congress to ratify the SALT II treaty, creating the impression that détente was "already effectively dead." The British journalist Patrick Brogan wrote in 1989: "The simplest explanation is probably the best. They got sucked into Afghanistan much as the United States got sucked into Vietnam, without clearly thinking through the consequences, and wildly underestimating the hostility they would arouse". By the fall of 1979, the Amin regime was collapsing with morale in the Afghan Army having fallen to rock-bottom levels while the mujahideen ("Those engaged in jihad") had taken control of much of the countryside. The general consensus amongst Afghan experts at the time was that it was not a question of if mujahideen would take Kabul, but only when the mujahideen would take Kabul.
In Moscow, Leonid Brezhnev was indecisive and waffled as he usually did when faced with a difficult decision. The three decision-makers in Moscow who pressed the hardest for an invasion in the fall of 1979 were the troika consisting of Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko; the Chairman of KGB, Yuri Andropov and the Defense Minister Marshal Dmitry Ustinov. The principle reasons for the invasion was the belief in Moscow that Amin was a leader both incompetent and fanatical who had lost control of the situation together with the belief that it was the United States via Pakistan who was sponsoring the Islamist insurgency in Afghanistan. Androprov, Gromyko and Ustinov all argued that if a radical Islamist regime came to power in Kabul, it would attempt to sponsor radical Islam in Soviet Central Asia, thereby requiring a preemptive strike. What was envisioned in the fall of 1979 was a short intervention under which Moscow would replace radical Khalqi Communist Amin with the moderate Parchami Communist Babrak Karmal to stabilize the situation. The concerns raised by the Chief of the Red Army General Staff, Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov who warned about the possibility of a protracted guerrilla war were dismissed by the troika who insisted that any occupation of Afghanistan would be short and relatively painless. Most notably, through the diplomats of the Narkomindel at the Embassy in Kabul and the KGB officers stationed in Afghanistan were well informed about the developments in that nation, but such information rarely filtered through to the decision-makers who viewed Afghanistan more in the context of the Cold War rather than understanding Afghanistan as a subject in its own right. The viewpoint that it was the United States that was fomenting the Islamic insurgency in Afghanistan with the aim of destabilizing Soviet Central Asia tended to downplay the effects of an unpopular Communist government pursuing policies that the majority of Afghans violently disliked as a generator of the insurgency and strengthened those who argued some sort of Soviet response was required to what seen as an outrageous American provocation. It was assumed in Moscow that because Pakistan (an ally of both the United States and China) was supporting the mujahideen that therefore it was ultimately the United States and China who were behind the rebellion in Afghanistan.
Soviet intervention and coup
On October 31, 1979, Soviet informants under orders from the inner circle of advisors under Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev relayed information to the Afghan Armed Forces 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 forces 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. The operation began at 19:00, when the KGB-led 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 announced 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, and the 36th Mixed Air Corps. Later on the 201st and 68th 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.
International positions on Soviet intervention
Foreign ministers from 34 Islamic nations adopted a resolution which condemned the Soviet intervention and demanded "the immediate, urgent and unconditional withdrawal of Soviet troops" from the Muslim nation of Afghanistan. The UN General Assembly passed a resolution protesting the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan by a vote of 104–18. According to political scientist Gilles Kepel, the Soviet intervention or "invasion" was "viewed with horror" in the West, considered to be a "fresh twist" on the geo-political "Great Game" of the 19th Century in which Britain feared that Russia sought access to the Indian Ocean and posed "a threat to Western security", explicitly violating "the world balance of power agreed upon at Yalta" in 1945.
Weapons supplies were made available through numerous countries. The United States purchased all of Israel's captured Soviet weapons clandestinely, and then funnelled the weapons to the Mujahideen, while Egypt upgraded its army's weapons and sent the older weapons to the militants. Turkey sold their World War II stockpiles to the warlords, and the British and Swiss provided Blowpipe missiles and Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns respectively, after they were found to be poor models for their own forces. China provided the most relevant weapons, likely due to their own experience with guerrilla warfare, and kept meticulous record of all the shipments.
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