Afghanistan: The Soviet War

Ed Girardet

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136626098
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politique et relations internationales
• Categoría: Politique

First published in 1985, this is a book written at the height of the Sovietwar in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Based on five clandestine trips into Afghanistan with the resistance, the book examines why the Sovietsinvaded in 1979 and what they were seeking to defend. The authoranalyses their deliberate policyof migratory genocide through a combination of aerial bombardments, political repression and economic blockades.

The book is written by thejournalist Ed Girardet, one of the world'sleading authorities on the conflict, whose particular strength is his dispassionate reporting style and his firsthand proximity to the conflict. He interviewed many of the leaders of theAfghanresistance, both inside Afghanistan andin the refugee camps and he explains in depth the nature of the Afghan Islamic anti-communist struggle for independence.

This is a book in the finest tradition of warreporting on the front line and the reissue is essential reading for all those interested in the history of the conflict in Afghanistan.

1	The Soviet Invasion

‘The world’s attention span has been reckoned at 90 days, which unhappily, is probably right. Afghanistan has all but slipped from sight … But still the war goes on. The Russians, incredibly, are no nearer victory than at the start, when experts blandly forecast that their modern army would subdue primitive tribesmen in months. It is bigger news than a bored world realizes.’ (New York Times editorial, June 1 1982).

The first Soviet Antonov heavy transport planes, carrying 4,000 rapid deployment troops, began rumbling into Kabul international airport on Christmas Eve, 1979. Nearly three days later, a special KGB hit team supported by Soviet airborne commandos assassinated President Hafizullah Amin, thus officially setting in motion the USSR’s occupation of Afghanistan. Whereas initial sketches for the invasion of this nonaligned sovereign country had littered Red Army military drawing boards as early as March that year, preparations for its eventual takeover, or at least its total political and economic domination, had been in the making for several years.

Watching the planes dip in through the low cloud cover over the historic Bala Hissar fort, many Kabulis assumed that they were only part of a general airlift bringing in more military advisers and equipment to help combat the rapidly expanding anti-communist insurgency. Unbeknown to them, similar operations were being carried out at Bagram airbase to the north, Jalalabad to the east, Kandahar to the south and Shindand to the southwest. Shortly after Christmas, columns of T-54 and T-64 tanks, heavy artillery, trucks and fuel tankers of Field Marshal Sergei L,eonidovich Sokolov’s 40th army, which had been massing along the USSR’s southern frontier, began crossing the Oxus River (Amu Daraya) on pontoon bridges into Afghanistan.

At the time of the invasion, some 50,000 troops of the defection-ridden Afghan army, many of them half-heartedly engaged in fighting the rebels, were deployed in various parts of the country. A garrison sufficiently capable of wreaking havoc remained in and around the capital. But the Soviets had begun taking precautions already, prior to the airlift. By means of often ingenious ruses and with the aid of reliable Afghan party members and supporters, they rendered helpless virtually all the potentially disruptive forces.

In one case, Soviet advisers told soldiers guarding the strategically vital Kabul radio station with twenty tanks that these were to be replaced by newer models. Unfortunately, they explained, diesel was short. What was already inside the fuel tanks would have to be siphoned off and transferred in order to bring in the new vehicles. Facing little opposition, Soviet airborne troops moved in to take the station, which was unconcernedly broadcasting a radio play. Similarly, both the tank-supported 7th and 8th Afghan army divisions managed never to fire a shot. At one base, the Soviets duped the Afghan commanders into carrying out inventories of ‘faulty’ ammunition, which meant taking out all the shells, while at Pul-e-Charkhi on the outskirts of Kabul, they instructed tank crews to remove the batteries from 200 vehicles for ‘winterisation.’ The sabotage operations succeeded almost everywhere. Only a few minor incidents were reported, with sections of at least one Afghan army battalion and two brigades defecting with light weapons to the rebels.

Curiously, as late as 26 December, President Amin showed no indication of recognising what the Soviets were up to. Judging by an interview given to an Arab journalist on the morning before the coup, he may still have believed that the military transports, now landing and taking off at ten-minute intervals on the other side of town, were indeed there to aid his rebel-besieged government. Whether blind to reality or obstinately convinced that the Soviets would never dare take such a step, he continued to insist that Moscow would respect Afghanistan’s independence and sovereignty. But he must have had some doubts. Three days prior to the coup, General Victor Seminovitch Paputin, who, as first Deputy Minister of the Interior, had arrived towards the end of November, had tried unsuccessfully to persuade or threaten him into signing a document officially requesting Moscow to intervene militarily. As it later turned out, Paputin was acting as overseer in charge of laying the political groundwork for the invasion forces.

Other incidents also should have warned Amin. In the second half of December, a series of terrorist acts had erupted in the capital, killing certain communist party officials as well as one or two Soviet advisers. Shortly before Christmas, Amin’s own nephew and son-in-law, Assadullah, the Afghan security chief, was attacked and severely injured by an Afghan army officer. Apparently not suspecting the beginnings of a Soviet plot, Amin sent him to Moscow for treatment. Three days later, he returned: in a coffin. Whether some of the Kabul attacks were committed with Moscow’s blessing, or were the work of rebels, remains unclear. For his own ‘protection’, however, the Russians advised Amin to move from his city residence to the more fortified Darulaman Palace situated on a 600-foot-high hill not far from the Soviet embassy and five miles from the centre of the capital.

There have been numerous conflicting reports concerning the coup d’etat at Darulaman. According to several sources including Amin’s mistress and his nephew, Zalmai, the original plan had been to remove the Afghan dictator quietly to the USSR were he would be kept in political ‘cold storage’ in case he was needed again. During an elaborately planned banquet, Amin was drugged by his Russian cooks. But the kidnap plan failed when at least one of the presidential bodyguards did not eat the contaminated food and, armed with a Kalashnikov, prevented Soviet advisers in the building from approaching Amin. The Russians, with Paputin in command, then attacked the palace in the late afternoon with an armoured column of several hundred Soviet airborne troops wearing Afghan army uniforms, plus a small contingent of KGB officers.

In a partial stupour, Amin now realised what was happening. While groups of Khalqi faithful put up bitter resistance, the Afghan president desperately tried to reach Radio Kabul as well as the Ministry of the Interior by telephone. But two of the three telephone exchanges in the capital had already been blown up by Soviet demolition teams. The Interior Ministry, a renowned Khalqi bastion, had also been stormed by troops of the 105th Division and taken. During the palace battle, which lasted four hours, Amin’s bodyguard fired on Paputin, slicing him in two. At this, the Russian assault troops went wild. Breaking into Amin’s quarters, they shot him dead as he stood by the bar drinking, and, in an attempt to leave no witnesses, machine gunned most if not all his family members present, including seven children.

A somewhat different story has emerged from other quarters. If the testimony of Major Vladimir Kuzichkin, an alleged KGB defector, is to be believed the Soviets had no intention of taking the Khalqi president alive. At one point prior to the invasion, they tried to get rid of him by poisoning his food, but as if expecting an attempt on his life, Amin himself switched the adulterated meal at the last moment. According to this account, the assault on Darulaman was led by a certain Colonel Bayerenov, head of the KGB terrorist-training school, rather than Paputin. In a similar effort to leave no witnesses, the KGB officer had instructed his soldiers remaining outside the palace to shoot anyone trying to leave. When Khalqi resistance proved stronger than expected, Bayerenov stepped out of the main entrance to call reinforcements and was instantly killed by his own men.

Whatever the true circumstances, most versions agree that an important senior Soviet officer was killed during the coup. It has been reported that on his return to the USSR Paputin may have committed suicide in disgrace for having bungled his dealings with Amin; a theory reinforced by the absence of Brezhnev’s signature to the general’s obituary.

In any event, at 9.15 pm local time, the Russians broadcast a pre-recorded statement by Babrak Karmal, who was most probably in the Soviet Union at the time, from a transmitter in Tashkent but using a wavelength close to that of Radio Kabul. In it, the Parcham leader declared that he had taken over the government and was appealing for Soviet military assistance. Meanwhile, Radio Kabul continued broadcasting normally, making no mention of the country’s change of leadership. Only early next morning did the official Afghan broadcasting network announce Amin’s overthrow. Amin, it said, had been tried and found guilty by a ‘Revolutionary Tribunal,’ and executed for his ‘crimes against the people’. The radio also repeated Karmal’s earlier statement. Over the next few days, close Khalqi supporters not killed during the coup were thrown into the Pul-e-Charkhi prison, the notorious Afghan detention centre on the outskirts of the capital.

While the 105th secured all strategic positions in the capital – the ministries, the post office, the ammunition depots – the main Red army thrust was coming from Termez, where Sokolov had established his field headquarters. Some 300 tanks and APCs of the 360th Motorised Division, followed by a fleet of supply trucks, moved toward Kabul via the ancient Turkestan city of Mazar-i-Sharif along fast, Soviet-constructed highways. Eighty miles to the east at Nizh Piyanszh, another armoured column, that of the 201st Motorised Division, followed by the 16th Motorised Division, made its way toward Kunduz. Here it split in two, with one part of the force swinging towards Faizabad in Badakshan province, where the guerrillas controlled much of the countryside. The other roared south to Baghlan joining the main Kabul highway. While long convoys of oil tankers provided for much of the invasion force’s fuel requirements, Soviet pipe-laying battalions – the only army in the world thus equipped – laid up to 30 kilometres a day of pipe along the Kunduz axis to pump in petrol supplies, a facility such as Rommel could have used to good effect during his North African campaign.

At Kushka to the extreme west, the 66th Motorised Division as well as elements of three other divisions charged southwards toward Herat, Shindand and Farah before swinging east to Kandahar to join up with Soviet troops being airlifted to the American-built airport some 10 miles outside the city. Providing constant protection from guerrilla attack, the equivalent of two Soviet air divisions, totalling more than 400 aircraft, mainly MIG21, 23 and SU-17 jetfighters and Mi-24 helicopter gunships, thundered back and forth over the main invasion axes. With the airlift still droning overhead, the first columns of vehicles of the 306th began rumbling into the northern suburbs of the capital on the morning of the 26th.

By first light on the 28th, the Soviets had taken all important buildings and installations in the capital. They also controlled the strategic Pul-i-Khumri and Salang passes. Soviet troops, Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders and flanked by tanks, guarded intersections or openly patrolled the streets. An 11 pm to 4.30 am curfew was imposed. At the airport, a huge tent city milling with soldiers, supplies and vehicles had materialised along the frozen grass verges of the asphalt runways.

By the end of December, some 15,000 uniformed Soviet troops had established their quarters in and around the city. At the Soviet embassy, the invasion force set up its new field headquarters. After months of scheming and intrigue, the mission was finally able openly to adopt its true role.

The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan had begun.

The First Days of the Occupation

During the first ten days, the Soviets methodically consolidated their position. With striking rapidity, they secured the major towns and strategic points; airports, vital communications centres and military posts. Fatigued Soviet soldiers, wearing long overcoats and grey fur caps with the red star insignia, tried to recover from the sleepless rigours of the invasion. In scenes recalling the trenches of the First World War, they huddled around fires or in shelters carved out of the mud and snow. Scores of empty tank carriers parked by the roadsides attested to the enormous firepower that now fanned out across the country, some 300 tanks in Kabul alone, while the rearing silhouettes of long-range artillery pieces dotted the snow-swept fields.

While armoured vehicles and supply trucks poured in day and night, Antonov transports continued to land at Kabul airport. By the end of the first week of January 1980, more than 4,000 flights had been recorded. Within weeks, between 50,000 and 60,000 Red Army troops had been ferried in by land and by air. This did not include the 4,000 civilian technicians and administrative advisers, who had been brought in to help run the new Babrak Karmal administration.

Despite rumours of intense fighting between the Soviets and the mujahideen as well as rebellious Afghan military units, the speed with which the invaders had swept in took most of the population by surprise. In Kabul, people reacted with sullen disbelief and hatred, but, apart from shouts of abuse or stone-throwing, there was little armed resistance. Moscow had chosen an opportune season to make its move. Not only was Western reaction lulled by the festive Christmas and New Year period, but much of the country was covered in snow and ice, making it difficult for the guerrillas to operate in the rugged hinterland where they maintained their bases. In the capital, the Soviets quickly adopted a low profile during daylight hours, but after dusk their tanks groaned and clanked through the streets in a show of force.

By early January, sporadic and sometimes major civil unrest had broken out in Kandahar, Herat and other urban centres. Faced with an alarming rise in Afghan army desertions, the Soviets were obliged to dis-arm certain disloyal units or, as was the case with the intransigent 26th Afghan Parachute Regiment, suppress them with force. Nevertheless, they still sought to remain discreet and leave the Afghan authorities to deal with local security problems wherever possible.

Kandahar – The Invisible Soviets

Among the first Western reporters to enter Kandahar, French photographer Thierry Boccon-Gibod and I travelled there by bus from the Pakistan border in mid-January. At the sleepy Spin Buldak frontier post, not a Russian was to be seen. In fact, there was no sign whatso-ever of the invasion. A paltry group of unshaven Afghan ‘Askari’ (soldiers) in ill-fitting khaki uniforms lounged by the side of a road barrier resting their assault rifles between their legs. A bored corporal glanced at our passports, both with visas issued by the Afghan embassy in Paris two weeks earlier. Carefully studying mine upsidedown, he made as it to read it, turning the pages from back to front in the Arabic manner. Then he smiled and waved us on.

There was little traffic on the main 80 kilometre-long highway, built by the Americans some years earlier, only a few cars, buses and military trucks carrying groups of unenthusiastic conscripts. Twice we were stopped by Afghan army control points. Searching for weapons, they frisked the passengers in a cursory manner but did not bother with us. Unlike the main road between Kabul and Kandahar, there appeared to be no need to ride in armed convoy. Within twelve months, however, the region had deteriorated into a merciless free-fire zone, with the city and its surroundings suffering some of the worst bombardments and fighting of the war.

We arrived just as twilight was falling. Again, the Russians were mysteriously absent. It had been raining for several days and the normally dusty provincial capital, founded by Alexander the Great, was a quagmire of mud. Motorscooter rickshaws, with coloured plastic tassels attached to their windscreens, zipped through the bazaar barely missing the dirt-caked street urchins selling cigarettes, who pestered passers-by with groping hands and shrill voices. Aggravatingly honking their horns, automobiles jockeyed for the right of way with horse-drawn ‘tongas’ (dogcarts). Contradicting earlier reports in Pakistan of food shortages, merchants loudly plyed their trade crouched behind abundant stocks of vegetables and spices. A pall of smoke from burning firewood hung in a languid, blue haze over an otherwise peaceful town.

Astonished at the lack of a Soviet presence, we asked about their whereabouts. A young engineering student sitting in a chaikhana (tea-shop) near the Chahr Souq (Four markets) intersection enlightened us: ‘They’re outside the city. They don’t come into town.’ As in Jalalabad, Farah and other towns, the Soviets preferred to confine themselves to the airports and other major security points rather than enter the downtown areas. Instead, sulky Askari were left lackadaisically to protect the main post office, the banks, the petrol stations and other essential establishments. Only the occasional government jeep or armoured personnel carrier roared through the streets carrying armed soldiers and officers in Afghan army uniforms. Sometimes, however, they would be accompanied by men with European features in civilian clothes.

By eight o’clock, half an hour before the curfew, the town was empty. We found a relatively modern but empty hotel that had obviously seen better days during the pre-1978 tourist boom which had provided Afghanistan with one of its main sources of hard currency. Over the past few months, only occasional groups of foolhardy, or ignorant, Western travellers still stopped by, the owner explained. He also warned us not to go out into the town again, saying it was too dangerous. Outside, the sonorous wailing of a mobile loudspeaker called on the inhabitants to return to their homes. With a stricter curfew, nocturnal Kandahar was considered far more insecure than Kabul. Urban guerrillas controlled the rooftops and back alleys, while Afghan army patrols cruised along the main avenues shooting at anything that moved. But that night the town remained eerily quiet, with only the muffled sounds from radio and TV sets, the barking of dogs and the grinding engine of a passing military vehicle.

Rumours and Violence

According to foreign residents, Kandahar was subdued by a strange calm on the morning after Amin’s overthrow. ‘It was a most unusual coup’, the Indian consul said. ‘There were no observers, no tanks and no excitement.’ This persisted for several days. Soviet aircraft had been landing and taking off in slightly larger numbers at the airport since Christmas, but this was nothing unusual. On New Year’s Eve, however, the city erupted. Gripped by a general panic, merchants abruptly shuttered their shops at nine in the morning, having only just opened them for the day. Huge crowds gathered in the streets and the main squares. At the central bus terminal, mob violence broke out, with people screaming frenzied insults against the Soviet Union and the new Karmal regime. No one had actually seen the invaders, but fantastic rumours of communist executions, rape, looting and other atrocities had spread.

Armed with sticks and stones but reportedly no guns, the crowds surged through the streets attacking anything and anyone representing the regime. Army vehicles were burned or overturned, office windows and furniture were smashed, and the red Khalqi flag was torn to shreds. Under Taraki, the communists had changed the national flag to one more like that of a Soviet Central Asian republic than of a supposedly independent, non-aligned nation. Government troops quickly appeared on the scene and shooting broke out. Unable to quell the rioting, the authorities called in a dozen MIG-17s of the Afghan airforce. The aircraft strafed buildings and open spaces with cannon fire but seemed to be trying to disperse rather than kill the demonstrators. It was later said that the Afghan pilots had refused to shoot at their own people.

Nevertheless, over a dozen deaths were reported by both sides, among them, three unfortunate Soviet technical advisers from a nearby textile mill. Coming into town to do some New Year’s shopping in the bazaar, they were dragged from their jeep and lynched on the spot. Following the incident, Soviet ...