Soviet-Afghan War

Article Outline

Introduction; Causes of the War; The Military Coup in Afghanistan; The Conduct of the War; The End of the War; The Aftermath of the War

Introduction

Print this section

Soviet-Afghan War, war between military forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and anti-Communist guerrillas in Afghanistan, beginning in 1979 and ending with the USSR’s withdrawal in 1989. With an estimated population of 15.5 million people at the war’s start, Afghanistan may have suffered as many as 1 million deaths during the war, mostly civilians killed in indiscriminate bombing of villages.

Soviet troops entered the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan on December 27, 1979. The entry of Soviet troops was precipitated by a rivalry between two factions of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). The PDPA was a Communist party that had taken power in Afghanistan following a military coup by left-wing military officers in 1978. The rivalry involved the hardline Khalq (people) faction of the PDPA and the supposedly more moderate Parcham (banner) faction.

After the execution of Communist leader Hafizullah Amin from the Khalq faction of Afghan Communists, the Soviet Union formed a government led by Babrak Karmal of the Parcham faction. Karmal returned to Afghanistan from exile in the USSR to lead a regime that the Soviet leadership hoped would end the revolts that had broken out in various parts of the country. The USSR also wanted to frustrate what it feared were attempts by the United States, its Cold War rival at the time, to establish a bridgehead in the region. The United States had recently lost an important ally in neighboring Iran, when the shah was overthrown in the Iranian revolution earlier that year, and needed more allies in that area of the world.

The Soviet invasion sparked a massive reaction domestically and internationally. Revolt spread. United States president Jimmy Carter approved a new program of military assistance to Afghanistan’s Islamic resistance, known as the mujahideen. The United States spent an estimated total of nearly $10 billion on weapons and other aid from the time of the Soviet invasion to the fall of the USSR at the end of 1991.

Causes of the War

Print this section

Since the arrival of the Russian and British empires on its borders in the 1800s, Afghanistan had been involved in the struggle for control of Eurasia between Russia and the West. Both the First Anglo-Afghan War (1838-1842) and the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1879-1882) derived from Britain’s fear of Russian encroachment on its Indian empire. After the second war, Afghanistan became a self-governing buffer state whose foreign affairs were controlled by the British Government of India. The Anglo-Russian agreement of 1905 formalized this arrangement, until Afghanistan won full independence in the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919.

In the 1950s Afghanistan’s nationalist government under Prime Minister Muhammad Daud sought to train a modern army. The United States refused Afghanistan’s request for aid out of concern for its ally Pakistan. This concern stemmed from claims Afghanistan had on territories inside Pakistan. With no U.S. aid forthcoming, Afghanistan turned to the USSR. Under Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, the USSR was cultivating ties with nonaligned postcolonial countries. In 1956 Soviet aid to Afghanistan began, and in 1959 Khrushchev paid a state visit. The USSR trained most of the officer corps and provided most of the equipment for the new Afghan army.

After 1956, the United States and the USSR, together with their allies, competed peacefully for influence in Afghanistan by aiding different parts of the country. From 1956 to 1978, the USSR provided about $1.27 million in economic aid and $1.25 million in military aid, while the United States provided $533 million in economic aid. The two Cold War protagonists also helped Afghanistan build its road system. The USSR built the northern sections linking the two countries, while the United States constructed the southern sections linking Afghanistan to U.S. allies Pakistan and Iran.

Afghanistan's geopolitical position became more important after the rise in oil prices in 1973 and the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979. The rise in oil prices focused renewed attention on the strategic importance of the Persian Gulf region, which contains 66 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves and 36 percent of total natural gas reserves. Western nations quickly realized that a sharp increase in oil prices could induce a recession and harm Western economies. The establishment of an Islamic republic in Iran, which was hostile to the United States because of its support for Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, raised even more concern. Iran borders the Strait of Hormuz, through which most of the Persian Gulf’s oil passes. Furthermore, the split of Pakistan in 1971 had raised the stakes for Pakistan and its U.S. ally, as that key country was now more vulnerable. With the fall of the shah in Iran, Pakistan took on a new importance in U.S. policy toward the Persian Gulf, which the United States defined as an area of vital national interest.

For all these reasons, a change in power in Afghanistan, which was one of the world's poorest, most remote, and least influential states, quickly took on added importance. This importance had little to do with the stakes for the Afghans themselves and much more to do with the contest for control of the Persian Gulf and, ultimately, over the future of the Soviet Union.

III

The Military Coup in Afghanistan

Print this section

The assassination of a Parchami leader, on April 17, 1978, led to massive demonstrations in Kābul, the capital of Afghanistan. President Daud responded to the protests by ordering the arrests of the PDPA leaders. In response to these arrests, military officers affiliated with the PDPA launched a coup on April 27, 1978. These officers handed power over to the Revolutionary Council of the PDPA, which proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA).

Conflict soon broke out again between the PDPA’s Parcham and Khalq factions. Khalq proceeded with a program of radical social change and mass repression. The imposition of these measures sparked local revolts and set off mutinies of major army garrisons. In March 1979 the regime lost control of Herāt, a major trading center in western Afghanistan, for an entire week. It regained control only after a massive bombing campaign, reportedly carried out by the Soviet air force from bases in Central Asia.

These developments caused concern in the Soviet Union, which had signed a treaty of “friendship and cooperation” with the PDPA regime in December 1978. In a meeting of the Soviet Politburo on March 17, 1979, during the Herāt uprising, Soviet premier Aleksey Kosygin complained that the Khalq leaders were “concealing from us the true state of affairs” and “have continued to execute people who do not agree with them.”

The Soviet leadership sought to remove Amin in September 1979, but the plan failed. Fearful of the collapse or defection of their Afghan clients, and of the ability of the United States to exploit either outcome, the Politburo decided on December 12, 1979, to intervene militarily in order to install a more pliant government.

The Conduct of the War

Print this section

The war was a political as well as military operation. While Soviet troops supported and then took on themselves a counterinsurgency effort in the countryside, the Soviet secret police, known as the KGB, and other civilian institutions set about building an Afghan Communist state in Kābul and other cities. The system was enforced by the Afghan State Information Services (Afghanistan’s secret police), known as KhAD. Led by Muhammad Najibullah, who replaced Babrak Karmal as party leader in 1985 and as president in 1986, KhAD had a larger budget than even the military. It operated under the guidance of KGB advisers.

The Soviet leadership did not intend to fight in Afghanistan for a prolonged period. It planned on an operation similar to that in Czechoslovakia in 1968, leading to a quick stabilization. Initially it secured the main towns and supply routes while leaving counterinsurgency to Afghan troops. It also engaged in massive and indiscriminate aerial bombardments of areas along infiltration routes near the Pakistani and Iranian borders, as well as in a few other resistance strongholds, such as the Panjsher Valley. These bombardments resulted in many civilian casualties. They forced about a third of the population—an estimated 5 million Afghans—to flee the country. The 3 million Afghans in Pakistan and the 2 million in Iran became the world’s largest refugee population in the 1980s.

When this strategy proved a failure, the Soviets sent in Special Forces, known as spetsnaz, starting in 1984. The spetsnaz undertook aggressive operations, mainly against the same areas that had been targeted in the bombing campaign. These operations began with the surrounding of an area by armored vehicles, usually at night. The Soviets then bombarded the area from the air or with artillery. Spetsnaz, often transported by helicopters, then invaded the villages, often fighting house to house and killing large numbers of civilians. The result was the emptying and destruction of villages. The destruction included the placement of antipersonnel mines in houses, agricultural land, and irrigation canals, in order to prevent the return of the population.

The use of antipersonnel mines was widespread. So-called butterfly mines distributed from helicopters had wings that enabled them to flutter to the ground. Camouflaged in the color of dust or vegetation, they were laid along infiltration routes that also served as herding paths and routes for refugees. These mines, which maim rather than kill, were largely responsible for the large numbers of handicapped persons in Afghanistan.

When Gorbachev came to power in 1985, he instituted a review of Afghan policy. He signaled his concern by calling Afghanistan a “bleeding wound” at a Communist Party Congress in March 1986. He gave the military a year to try to win; when they failed, the Soviet Politburo decided at a meeting in November 1986 to withdraw. The withdrawal took place under the UN-mediated Geneva Accords. In preparation for the withdrawal, the Soviets retrenched and started focusing on strengthening the Afghan regime under President Najibullah.

A core of their strategy for doing so was the program of “National Reconciliation,” which involved recognizing the power of armed commanders in various regions of the country as long as they supported or at least did not fight the government. These militias became more powerful than the government administration, especially in northern Afghanistan, where they protected the Soviet supply line to Kābul. Some contemporary political figures, such as Abdul Rashid Dostum, started as commanders of these militias, whose growth foreshadowed the collapse of the Afghan state and military in 1992.

The armed mujahideen opposition initially involved relatively spontaneous local revolts, but it was soon taken over by political-military party organizations based in Pakistan and Iran. After the Soviet withdrawal, some of these organizations exercised control over territory and populations.

The vast majority of the fighters were Afghans, but some Pakistani Pashtuns participated in the fighting as well. Starting in the mid-1980s, Arabs and other Muslims also participated. These included some Islamic extremists, such as the Saudi Osama bin Laden, and Egyptians involved with the 1981 assassination of Anwar al-Sadat. These militants formed the al-Qaeda organization at a meeting in eastern Afghanistan in 1988.

These organizations received assistance from foreign governments and other non-Afghans. The government of Pakistan recognized seven Sunni Muslim parties as official representatives of the refugees and the mujahideen. In order for commanders to receive official military assistance through the main channels, they had to register with the military committee of one of the seven parties, which brokered relations with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate. The ISI was primarily responsible for delivering the weapons paid for by the United States and Saudi Arabia and transported to Pakistan by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

In March 1985 the U.S. government adopted National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 166, which set a goal of military victory for the mujahideen. Aid increased in quantity and quality, including the provision of Stinger antiaircraft missiles from September 1986. In addition, a number of major Afghan commanders began to receive aid directly from the CIA through what were called ”unilateral” channels.The CIA also exercised a greater degree of control over the distribution of Stingers, which were U.S.-manufactured.

After 1985 the CIA and ISI placed greater pressure on the mujahideen to attack regime strongholds. Under direct instructions from Director of Central Intelligence William Casey, the CIA initiated programs for training Afghans in techniques such as car bombs and assassinations and in engaging in cross-border raids into the USSR.

The resistance, especially the more radical Islamist elements, also received aid from private Islamist donors such as bin Laden, who was a multimillionaire. Abdullah Azam, a Palestinian member of the Muslim Brotherhood, established the Maktab al-Khidamat (Office of Services) in Peshāwar, a Pakistani city that bordered Afghanistan, to coordinate private Islamic aid to the jihad. Overall the U.S. government looked favorably on the Arab recruitment drives, and Abdullah Azam opened an office in Tucson, Arizona, in 1986.

Windows Live® Search Results

Introduction

Causes of the War

The Military Coup in Afghanistan

The Conduct of the War