Soviet–Afghan War

• 1. Introduction

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  The Soviet-Afghan War began on the 25th of December 1979, when the Soviet 40th Army crossed into Afghanistan under the pretext of extending 'international aid' to a puppet government it had helped install. What followed was nearly a decade of grinding conflict across mountain terrain, contested valleys, and shattered villages. Between one and three million Afghans died. Millions more fled across borders into Pakistan and Iran. And by the time the last Soviet column crossed back into the Uzbek SSR on the 15th of February 1989, the war had consumed enough of the Soviet Union's military, economic, and political resources that scholars now cite it as a significant factor in the dissolution of the Soviet state itself. How did a superpower, which had spent decades cultivating ties with Afghanistan, end up fighting a decade-long war it could not win? What miscalculations, ideological fears, and Cold War calculations drove Moscow into a country it barely understood? And what did that war unleash on the world that still shapes events today?

• 2. A Relationship Turned Catastrophic

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  Russian economic aid to Afghanistan had begun as early as 1919, shortly after the Russian Revolution. By 1956, Soviet-Afghan military cooperation was operating on a regular basis, and between 1954 and 1977, the Soviet Union provided Afghanistan with economic aid worth approximately one billion rubles. The USSR began importing Afghan natural gas from 1968 onwards. This was not a relationship of strangers. When the Marxist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan came to power in the Saur Revolution of April 1978, Moscow saw it as a natural ally. A treaty of friendship was signed between the two countries on the 5th of December 1978. The trouble was that the PDPA was consuming itself from within. The party had split in 1967 into two rival factions: the radical Khalq faction headed by Nur Muhammad Taraki, and the moderate Parcham faction led by Babrak Karmal. After taking power, the Khalqis immediately began persecuting the Parchamis. The Khalq state executed between 10,000 and 27,000 people, mostly at Pul-e-Charkhi prison, before the Soviet intervention even began. Political scientist Olivier Roy estimated that between 50,000 and 100,000 people disappeared during the Taraki-Amin period alone. In September 1979, Deputy Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin seized power from Taraki, arresting and killing him. The Soviet leadership was alarmed. A KGB commission comprising KGB chairman Yuri Andropov, Boris Ponomarev from the Central Committee, and Defense Minister Dmitry Ustinov reported that Amin was purging Soviet loyalists and possibly seeking diplomatic links with Pakistan and China. Information forged by the KGB from agents in Kabul eventually provided what the troika needed: the claim, widely discredited, that Amin himself was a CIA agent. By the fall of 1979, Soviet special forces had already covertly deployed a battalion of Central Asian troops dressed in Afghan Army uniforms to Kabul.

• 3. The Decision to Invade

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  Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, Chief of the Soviet Army General Staff, warned the decision-makers in Moscow about the possibility of a protracted guerrilla war. His concerns were dismissed. The troika of Andropov, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, and Defense Minister Ustinov pressed Leonid Brezhnev toward intervention, insisting any occupation would be short and relatively painless. What they envisioned was a targeted swap: remove the erratic Amin, install the moderate Parchami communist Babrak Karmal, stabilize the situation, and withdraw within a year. On the 31st of October 1979, Soviet informants relayed instructions to Afghan Armed Forces to undergo maintenance cycles for their tanks, while telecommunications links outside Kabul were quietly severed. On the 27th of December, approximately 700 Soviet troops dressed in Afghan uniforms, including KGB and GRU special forces from the Alpha Group and Zenith Group, occupied major governmental, military, and media buildings across Kabul. At 19:00, the KGB-led Zenith Group destroyed Kabul's communications hub. At 19:15, Operation Storm-333 began: the assault on the Tajbeg Palace where Amin had relocated. Amin was assassinated as planned. Radio Kabul announced that Afghanistan had been 'liberated' from his rule. The initial Soviet force that entered the country amounted to roughly 1,800 tanks, 80,000 soldiers, and 2,000 armored fighting vehicles. In the second week alone, Soviet aircraft made approximately 4,000 flights into Kabul. British journalist Patrick Brogan, writing in 1989, offered one of the cleaner assessments: '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.'

• 4. Cold War at Full Pitch

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  On the 2nd of January 1980, President Carter withdrew the SALT-II treaty from Senate consideration. On the 3rd of January, he recalled US Ambassador Thomas J. Watson from Moscow. On the 15th of January, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution by a vote of 104-18 protesting the Soviet intervention. On the 29th of January, foreign ministers from 34 Muslim-majority countries adopted a resolution at the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation demanding 'the immediate, urgent and unconditional withdrawal of Soviet troops' from Afghanistan. Carter placed a trade embargo on Soviet grain shipments and led a 66-nation boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. China's Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping warmly praised the 'heroic resistance' of the Afghan people and warned that the invasion marked the worst escalation of Soviet expansionism in over a decade. The American response was not merely symbolic. In July 1979, before the invasion even began, President Carter had signed two presidential findings permitting the CIA to spend $695,000 on non-military assistance to anti-Soviet forces. Operation Cyclone, the CIA program that funnelled support through Pakistani intelligence services, would grow dramatically. The US clandestinely purchased all of Israel's captured Soviet weapons and channelled them to the mujahideen. Egypt upgraded its own army's weapons and sent the older ones to the militants. Turkey sold its World War II stockpiles. Britain and Switzerland provided Blowpipe missiles and Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns respectively. China provided what the source describes as the most relevant weapons, keeping meticulous records of all shipments. Combined US, Saudi, and Chinese aid totaled between six and twelve billion dollars.

• 5. Guerrillas in the Mountains

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  Almost 80 percent of Afghanistan's territory was outside government control from early in the war. Soviet troops held the major cities and the main arteries of communication; the mujahideen held the rugged, mountainous countryside. The Soviet Army soldiers called their opponents 'Dushman,' meaning enemy. Between 1980 and 1985, nine separate offensives were launched into the strategically important Panjshir Valley north of Kabul, yet government control of the area did not improve. Ahmad Shah Massoud of the Panjshir commanded at least 10,000 trained fighters by the end of the war and had extended political control over Afghanistan's northeastern provinces under the Supervisory Council of the North. The mujahideen favoured sabotage. In the border region with Pakistan, they launched around 800 rockets per day at times. Between April 1985 and January 1987, they carried out over 23,500 shelling attacks on government targets. On the 4th of September 1985, insurgents shot down a domestic Bakhtar Airlines plane as it took off from Kandahar airport, killing all 52 people aboard. The seven principal rebel organizations formed the Seven Party Mujahideen Alliance in May 1985 to coordinate military operations. The mujahideen were not alone. Director of CIA William Casey personally visited Pakistan numerous times to meet with ISI officers managing the mujahideen, and personally observed guerrilla training. In spring 1985, with help from Britain's MI6, rebels began cross-border raids into Soviet territory itself, including rocket attacks on villages in Tajikistan and raids on Soviet airfields in Uzbekistan. In August 1985, Afghan mujahideen bombed a Soviet military airbase in Krasnovodsk, Turkmenistan. The CIA also supplied thousands of Korans and books documenting Soviet atrocities in Uzbekistan, hoping to foment unrest in Soviet Muslim republics. These were described as the first direct Western attacks on Soviet territory since the 1950s.

• 6. The Human Cost

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  Based on the 1979 census, Afghanistan had a population of 13.5 million people. Between 6.5 and 11.5 percent of that population is estimated to have been killed over the course of the war. The destruction was not incidental. The Soviets used their aerial power to level villages, deny safe haven to the mujahideen, and destroy vital irrigation ditches through tactics of scorched earth. They also laid millions of landmines across Afghanistan. By the summer of 1979, before the formal invasion, up to 165,000 Afghans had already fled across the border to Pakistan. By the time the war ended, millions of Afghans had fled the country; most sought refuge in Pakistan and Iran. The Afghan Army melted away in the early years of the conflict. From a strength of 110,000 men in 1978, its numbers fell to around 25,000 by 1980. The US embassy in Kabul cabled Washington that the army was vanishing 'like an ice floe in a tropical sea.' Desertions were driven by poor morale; many soldiers were not loyal to the communist government but simply wanted a paycheck, and the mujahideen exploited this, with some joining government forces specifically to procure weapons, ammunition, and money. In the first week of January 1980 alone, attacks against Soviet soldiers in Kabul became common, with soldiers frequently assassinated in broad daylight. The Soviet Army quit patrolling Kabul in January 1981 because of losses from such attacks. On the 22nd of February 1980, the 3 Hoot uprising saw Soviet soldiers kill hundreds of protesters. Student demonstrations in April and May 1980 resulted in scores more killed. By 1985, when the size of the Limited Contingent of Soviet Forces reached 108,800, fighting intensified across the entire country, making 1985 the bloodiest year of the war.

• 7. Withdrawal and Aftermath

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  By mid-1987, reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announced that the Soviet military would begin a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. The exit strategy had actually been forming since at least 1983, when Pakistan's Foreign Ministry began working with the Soviet Union on providing an off-ramp. Pakistan's Foreign Minister Yaqub Ali Khan paid state visits to China, Saudi Arabia, the Soviet Union, France, the United States, and the United Kingdom in the 1984-85 period to develop a framework. On the 20th of July 1987, the withdrawal of Soviet troops was formally announced. Under Soviet guidance before the pullout, the DRA armed forces had been built up to an official strength of 302,000 in 1986, divided among different branches to minimize the risk of a coup. On the 15th of February 1989, the last Soviet military column crossed into the Uzbek SSR. The PDPA government fought on alone, sustained by continued Soviet backing until December 1991, when the dissolution of the Soviet Union ended all support. The mujahideen toppled the government in 1992, beginning the first Afghan Civil War. Among those who had fought on the mujahideen side was a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden, whose Arab group eventually evolved into al-Qaeda. The source notes that the foreign volunteer fighters' contribution to the actual fighting was called 'a curious sideshow to the real fighting,' with only an estimated 2,000 of them fighting at any one time compared with roughly 250,000 Afghan fighters. What they left behind, however, was a network, a cause, and an organizational structure that would extend far beyond the mountains where the war was fought.