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The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan
Compiled by: Syed Muhammad Bokreta
Algiers, Algeria
On the 24th of December 1979, The Soviets began their invasion of Afghanistan and within two days, they had secured Kabul, deploying a special Soviet assault unit against Dar Al Aman Palace, where elements of the Afghan army loyal to President Hafizullah Amin put up a fierce, but brief resistance, with Amin's death at the palace, Babrak Karmal, a Moscow exiled leader of the Parcham faction of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) was installed by the Soviets as Afghanistan' s new head of government.
Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
Mujahideen fighters in Kunar Province of Afghanistan in 1987
It was impossible for both World decision makers and political Analysts to believe that they had been totally unaware of the struggle of the Mujahideen against the Taraki and Amin regimes, and how close to success they were when Brezhnev moved his troops to save his puppets a number of theories have been advanced for the Soviet action, these interpretations of Soviet motives do not always agree, what is known for certain is that the decision was influenced by many factors, that in Brezhnev’s words the decision to invade Afghanistan was truly “no simple decision”.
Two factors were certain to have figured heavily in Soviet calculations, the Soviet Union, always interested in establishing a cordon sanitaire of subservient or neutral states on its frontiers, was increasingly alarmed at the unstable, unpredictable situation on its southern border, and most important was the major event in that area which took place only nine months ago, the huge triumph of the Islamic Revolution in neighbouring Iran and the genuine fear of the eventual “contamination”.
To make further parallels, as Nicholas II, who made the great mistake of attacking the seemingly “weaker” opponent Japan in 1904, thus suffering a disastrous defeat Nicholas faced waves of strikes which paralyzed the economy; the same scenario was to be repeated by Brezhnev when he invaded the “easy” Afghanistan, totally ignoring local history and high Islamic traditional patterns.
Whatever the Soviet goals may have been, the international response was sharp and swift, the US President Jimmy Carter, reassessing the strategic situation in his State of the Union address in January, 1980, identified Pakistan as a “front-line state” in the global Struggle against communism as it is now a “front line state” against the so called “war on terror”.
He reversed his stand of a year earlier that aid to Pakistan be terminated as a result of its nuclear program and offered Pakistan a military and economic assistance package if it would act as a conduit for United States and other assistance to the Mujahideen, Pakistani president Zia ul-Haq refused Carter’s package but later a larger aid offer from the Reagan administration was accepted, questions about Pakistan’s nuclear program were, for the time being, set aside ,assistance also came from China, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia; also forth coming was international aid to help Pakistan deal with more than 3 million fleeing Afghan refugees.
The Soviet invasion had a devastating effect on the Afghan people, because the rural population fed and housed the Mujahideen, the Soviets tried to eliminate or remove civilian populations from the countryside where resistance was based, in this connection, Soviet bombing destroyed entire villages, crops and irrigation, leaving millions of people dead, homeless or starving, land mines maimed unsuspecting Afghans, especially children who mistook them for toys.
Refugee camps around Peshawar, Pakistan sprang up and quickly became overcrowded, unsanitary and insufficiently supplied; in addition, many internal refugees fled from their region, the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan elicited a strong reaction from all over the world, the Soviets grossly underestimated the huge cost of the Afghan venture which was described at that time, as the Soviet Union’s Vietnam, international opposition also became increasingly vocal.
The foreign ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference deplored the invasion and demanded Soviet withdrawal at a meeting in Islamabad in January 1980, action by the United Nations (UN) Security Council was impossible because the Soviets were armed with veto power, but the UN General Assembly regularly passed resolutions opposing the Soviet occupation.
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, 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 more clear that the Soviet Union wished to find a face-saving way to withdraw from Afghanistan.
The Afghan quagmire resulted in huge casualties; it costs both sides a great deal, many Afghans, perhaps as many as five million, or one-quarter of the country's population, fled to Pakistan and Iran where they organized into guerrilla groups to effectively strike Against soviet troops, thanks to the newly US supplied Stinger anti-aircraft missiles which severely reduced the effectiveness of Soviet air cover.
Proximity talks in Geneva continued, and on April 14, 1988, Pakistan and Afghanistan reached an agreement providing for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in nine months, the creation of a neutral Afghan state, and the repatriation of the Afghan refugees, the United States and the Soviet Union would act as guarantors of the agreement. The treaty was less well-received by many Mujahideen Groups who demanded Najibullah's departure as the price for advising their refugee followers to return to Afghanistan.
Nevertheless the agreement on withdrawal held, and on February 15, 1989, the last Soviet troops departed on schedule from Afghanistan, their exit, however, did not bring either lasting peace or the refugee’s resettlement as Afghanistan went from one civil war to another and becoming now a patch work for the NATO Forces and truly reflecting the ancient idiom of “Muslims can win War, but lose Peace”.
Economically speaking, the cost of the war varies, according to the varying Soviet figures, but the most agreeable figure is given as $8.2 billion per year, as for casualties, it too is an arguable topic, due to the strict censorship of the soviet Union, the official 15,000 dead is a gross underestimation, Experts agree that at least 40,000 - 50,000 Soviets lost their lives in action, besides the wounded, suicides, and murders.
Deeply probing the under-table confessions of this aggressive war against the Valiant people of Afghanistan is an interview with the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, the former US national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, made a stunning confession: “According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan , December 24, 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul . And that very day, I wrote a note to the President in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention… We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would”. [Le Nouvel Obervateur, Blum, Bill (translator) , “Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski”, January 15-21, 1998]
Afghanistan was a major factor in breaking the myths which had surrounded the Soviet Empire for decades acknowledging the speedy implementation of Perestroika and Glasnost, coupled with a breakdown of the economics and changing Soviet ideology were elements breaking apart the Soviet Union, the USSR was also affected greatly by its failure. It lost more than fifty thousand troops, but the true damage done was in the degradation of its image, and the billions of dollars it spent during the war, this fall from invincibility and vast expenditure of money to finance the invasion in part caused the USSR to fall apart in the early 1990s.
Surely the effects of the civil war and Soviet invasion had an impact well beyond Afghanistan' s boundaries, as most observers consider Afghanistan a major step along the road to the eventual dissolution of the once Soviet Union and the US purpose of sponsoring Jihad in Afghanistan was not to spread the Islamic faith, defend Muslims or reap rewards in the hereafter, if it were so on the Islamic concept, it should have been launched and sponsored by the US simultaneously in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, Mindanao and in the other oppressed Muslim Nations!!!!! !!
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