Soviet Policy Toward Afghanistan Prior to the Invasion of 1979 - Case Study Example

Running Head: SOVIET AFGHAN POLICY Soviet Policy Toward Afghanistan Prior to the Invasion of 1979 Introduction: Why Soviet Policy Toward Afghanistan and the Invasion of the Country Were Critical Events in Modern History On Christmas Eve, 1979, elements of the Soviet Special Forces seized the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan in the first action of a massive invasion by three airborne and four ground divisions of the Red Army. (ACED, 2000) Within days, the Soviet invaders captured the seat of the government and installed a puppet president, but soon found themselves mired in a bitter struggle with rebels known as the mujahadin, who were receiving covert support from the United States and other countries. After ten years of war and thousands of casualties, and with the Soviet Union on the verge of collapse, the invaders agreed to withdraw, having never really been able to put Afghanistan under their control. The war, described by former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski as “the Soviets’ Vietnam” (Mid-East Realities, 2001, and Baxter, 2001), had far-reaching effects. Afghanistan, a poor and economically-struggling country to begin with, was wrecked by the conflict. An estimated one to one-and-a-half million Afghanis perished in the war, along with 15,000 or more Soviet servicemen. (Tarzi, 2003) An estimated one-third of Afghanistan’s pre-war population was displaced, mostly into refugee areas in Pakistan and Iran. (Galster, 1990) A bitter civil war between the victorious mujahadin factions followed the Soviet withdrawal, leading to the eventual rise of the Taliban in the mid-1990’s. (Katzman, 2004) The “quagmire” of Afghanistan is generally regarded as a significant factor in the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. (Warner, 1999) And for America, the Soviet invasion would have equally serious implications: As Amin Tarzi (2003) states, “If the events leading to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States are viewed historically, their origins are inextricably linked to the events of 27 December 1979” [the date of the capture of the palace in Kabul by Soviet special forces]. This report will examine the policy of the Soviet Union leading to the invasion of Afghanistan, which at the time seemed to catch the government of the United States by surprise. (Tockman, 2005) Using recently-published internal memos and records from the Soviet administration in the period leading up to the invasion, the planning and decisions of the Soviets will be compared to what the American assessment of their policy was, both in terms of what was made public at the time and what was revealed later about the depth of U.S. awareness of Soviet intentions. The historical records show that the decision to intervene in Afghanistan was a complex and difficult one for the Soviets, and one that the Soviet leadership resisted making for a long time. Other records show that, far from being surprised by the invasion, the American government was well aware of developments, yet failed, perhaps intentionally, to try to prevent the war. Historical Background of Soviet Relations with Afghanistan Afghanistan’s historical relationship with Russia dates back to 1868, when the Amir of Bukhara signed a “peace treaty” with the Tsar that extended Russian control to the banks of the Amu Darya River, the northern border of Afghanistan. (Baxter, 2001) For much of the 19th century, Afghanistan was in the middle of the rivalry between Great Britain and Russia; the British wished to protect their Indian colony to the south and east, while the Russians, challenging British dominance in Europe, were steadily advancing their control southward through Central Asia. By 1878, however, much of the tension between Britain and Russia was relieved by the Congress of Berlin. Russia agreed to respect Afghanistan’s borders and regard the country as being within Britain’s sphere of influence, but nonetheless sent an uninvited diplomatic mission to Kabul. (Baxter, 2001) Afghanistan achieved independence from Britain in 1921 after the Third Anglo-Afghan War, when Britain agreed to let Afghanistan handle its own foreign affairs. Even earlier, however, Afghanistan’s King Habibullah established friendly relations with the new Communist leadership of the Soviet Union, trading emissaries with Lenin’s government in 1919. Both sides had ulterior motives in this. The Afghanis were taking advantage of the breakdown in British-Russian relations that followed the 1917 October Revolution in Russia to break the British hold on Afghanistan, while the Soviets on the other hand were eager to establish friendly relations with neighboring Muslim countries, to prevent unrest among their own large Muslim populations in their Central Asian satellites. (Baxter, 2001) This policy is generally believed to be at the heart of the Soviets’ later decision to invade the country. (Dick, 1987, and Baxter, 2001) In addition, virulently anti-Bolshevik British sentiment during the Russian Civil War that followed the October Revolution gave the Soviet leaders justifiable cause to worry about support for their enemies coming through British India. (Baxter, 2001) Indian independence and the partition of the former British colony into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan in 1947 led to a large increase in Soviet influence in Afghanistan. Between 1950 and 1955, the so-called Pashtunian Crisis, caused by the arbitrary split in Pashtun tribal homelands by the new Pakistani border, led to a near-war between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan closed the border between the two countries, virtually cutting off land-locked Afghanistan’s trade. Afghanistan sought assistance from the U.S., but Pakistan was, as a member of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), already a U.S. ally, and so Afghanistan turned to the Soviet Union. (Dick, 1987) A relationship of trade, economic, and military assistance was established between the two countries that lasted until the final collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. (Baxter, 2001) Internal Unrest in Afghanistan Prior to the Soviet Invasion In July 1973, former Afghan Prime Minister Sadar Mohammed Daoud seized power in Kabul while King Mohammed Zahir Shah was out of the country seeking medical treatment in Italy. (Baxter, 2001) This put an end to Afghanistan’s monarchy; even though Daoud was a descendant of the royal line, he took the title of President rather than King. Daoud’s coup marked the beginning of the internal political deterioration of the country that would lead to the Soviet invasion and occupation. Daoud initially maintained a close relationship with the Soviet Union and cooperated to some extent with one of the two rival factions of the Communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). The PDPA was split into two groups, the Khalq (Masses) led by Nur Mohammed Taraki, and the Parcham (Banner) led by Barbrak Karmal. The Khalqis were made up of mostly Pashtuns from the rural areas while the Parchami were mostly urban people, with a large number of non-Pashtun members. (Baxter, 2001) Karmal pragmatically worked with Daoud as a way for him and his party to get closer to power, while Taraki and the Khalqi felt they were still resisting the same old government with a new face. (MacEachin, 2007) The Parchami held some positions in Daoud’s government, but by 1975, Daoud had begun to carefully purge them from the administration. At the same time, he began to rely less exclusively on Soviet help, and entered into a series of agreements with India, Iran, and some of the Persian Gulf countries. (Dick, 1987) In 1976, Daoud formed his own political party, the National Revolutionary Party, and in 1977 was able to get a loya jirga (an assembly of Afghanistan’s important tribal, provincial, and religious leaders) to approve a new constitution, which provided for one-party rule. This effectively outlawed the PDPA, and helped set the stage for Daoud’s overthrow the next year. The Soviets were disturbed by Daoud’s actions, and began pressing the two factions of the PDPA to reconcile their differences. They preferred Karmal and the Parcham, considering Taraki’s Khalq to be dangerously radical, but the Afghan military was dominated by Khalqi officers, so it was important for the two sides to work together. (MacEachin, 2007) The Soviets were able to encourage the PDPA leadership to patch up their differences to some degree, well enough at least that they were able to cooperate in the overthrow of Daoud in April 1978. The assassination of a prominent Parchami leader, Mir Akbar Khyber, led to huge demonstrations against Daoud, who responded by cracking down on the Communists. But, possibly because of Communist sympathizers in the armed forces, the arrest of the PDPA leaders was slow; Karmal and Taraki were imprisoned, but Taraki’s deputy, Hafizullah Amin, was only placed under house arrest, giving him a chance to pass orders for a coup. Daoud was killed in the subsequent revolt, which saw the PDPA take control of the government under an arrangement to share power between the two factions, but with Taraki as leader. (Baxter, 2001) Within a few months, however, Taraki, just as Daoud had done before, began to eliminate his opposition, sending Karmal and most of the other Parcham politicians to ambassador posts away from the country. (MacEachin, 2007) At about the same time, a resistance movement among Islamic leaders and tribesmen opposed to the Communists began to form and received assistance from sympathizers in Iran and Pakistan. Concerned about the stability of the country, the Soviets began to take an even greater interest in what was going on in Afghanistan. (Baxter, 2001) The U.S. View of Events in Afghanistan In August 1979, U.S. intelligence began reporting on increasing military activity near Afghanistan, which coincided with a rapidly-deteriorating political situation in the country. The Islamic/anti-Communist insurgency was spreading rapidly, and the growing rivalry between Taraki and his deputy Amin was hindering the Afghan government’s ability to manage the situation. The overall U.S. assessment was that the Soviets probably wished to replace the Taraki-Amin government with a more effective one, or at least one that could be better controlled, in order to stop the collapse of Communism in Afghanistan. (MacEachin, 2007) By September, U.S. intelligence was warning that the Soviets seemed likely to intervene militarily to preserve the Communist regime and their own sizeable investment in Afghanistan. (Tockman, 2005) Yet despite the obvious buildup of heavy combat forces near the country, the official assessment was that the Soviets would probably intervene incrementally, increasing the number of advisors and technicians in Afghanistan and providing more weapons and equipment to the Afghan army; in other words, providing a stabilizing presence to prop up the regime while the Afghan forces did the dirty work of fighting the insurgency. (Tockman, 2005, and MacEachin, 2007) Yet when the invasion finally happened during Christmas 1979, the scale of Soviet intervention seemed to surprise the U.S. government. Intelligence and military analysts had discounted the possibility of a large invasion, and thus had made no contingency to address the situation. (Tockman, 2005) Had they truly been fooled by the Soviets? A look at some of the decision-making process within the upper levels of the Soviet government might provide a clue. Discussions about Afghanistan within the Soviet Government and the Decision to Invade The orthodox American view toward the invasion of Afghanistan was recalled by Thomas Guttiere, an expert on Afghanistan from the University of Nebraska, in 1999 on a Voice of America broadcast commemorating the 20th anniversary of the war: “History seemed to be going their [the Soviets’] way, and they wanted to extend their reach toward the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. Control of Afghanistan would help them get there. They had an excuse to intervene because the pro-Soviet government in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, seemed on the verge of collapse.” (Warner, 1999) In other words, the Soviet Union was simply being aggressive, taking advantage of a situation that presented itself in order to further their own expansionist goals. The truth, however, was a little more complicated than that. A memorandum to the Soviet Politburo on 1 April 1979, which was signed by Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Defense Minister Dmitrii Ustinov, KGB chief Yurii Andropov, and Central Committee International Department head Boris Ponomarev made this assessment: “It is clear that due to the internal nature of the antigovernmental opposition, the use of Soviet troops in repressing the Afghan counterrevolution would seriously damage the international authority of the USSR and would set back the process of disarmament [referring to the talks then ongoing with the U.S. over nuclear weapons].... Therefore, our decision to refrain from satisfying the request of the leadership of DRA [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan] to send Soviet military units to Afghanistan was correct and this policy should be continued further...” (CWIHP, 2001, p. 9) This discussion took place after the Afghan government, with much difficulty, had put down a serious uprising in the city of Herat in March, which had come on the heels of the kidnapping and murder of the U.S. Ambassador in Kabul, Adolph Dubs, in February – reportedly by Shi’ite terrorists, but under circumstances that made the U.S. suspicious of Afghan government or even Soviet involvement. (Baxter, 2001, and Tockman, 2005) The Soviets were in an extremely delicate situation. Their prestige and influence among the other countries they supported and indeed within the diverse ethnic groups in their own empire could be seriously damaged if they were perceived to be letting the client government of the DRA down; by the same token, the strides they had made towards easing tensions with the U.S. and Europe could be seriously damaged if they were perceived to be pursuing an aggressive policy in Afghanistan. Gromyko and his colleagues did note with some hopefulness that the existing level of Soviet support for the Afghan government – money, equipment, and advisory personnel – had been sufficient, at least for the present, to put down the uprising in Herat, and therefore there was no obvious reason that would compel them to go further. (CWIHP, 2001) So the informed opinion in the Kremlin was that the wider implications for the Soviet Union’s international relations were not worth the political price of going into Afghanistan. While worrying both publicly and privately about the potential danger of instability caused by sources outside Afghanistan, such as the Iranian revolution and meddling by the U.S. and China, among others, the Soviet leadership maintained its position right up to almost the last moment. But on 12 December 1979, a handwritten note from Andropov, Ustinov, and Gromyko, together with Konstantin Chernenko, was approved by Brezhnev, consenting to the implementation of a plan to move 50-75,000 Soviet troops into Afghanistan later that month, and using a 500-man “Spetznaz” (military intelligence special forces) unit already in the country to kill Amin and replace him with Babrak Karmal. A full Politburo meeting was not held to approve the invasion until it had taken place, the memorandum was hand-written to avoid informing typists, and written in indirect language, all signs of the secrecy with which the decision was finally made. (CWIHP, 2001, p. 17) Because the decision was secret, it may never be known exactly why the Soviet leadership changed its mind on intervening in Afghanistan. On the other hand, the secrecy also gives a clue that the decision was not a unanimous one. Publicly, they said that they had been requested by the Afghan government to help fight the insurgency, which was being supported by the U.S., a charge the American government flatly denied at the time. Privately, these same leaders believed that an invasion would be politically disastrous, and had told Taraki as much when he visited Moscow earlier in the year. (CWIHP, 2001, pp. 14-16) Nonetheless, the invasion went ahead. American Meddling: The Real Cause of the Soviet Invasion? In 1998, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser at the time of the Soviet invasion, gave an interview to a French magazine in which he claimed, “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.” (Mid-East Realities, 2001) So it would seem that the Soviet charge of U.S. support to the insurgents was actually correct. President Carter himself almost “let the cat out of the bag” so to speak, in his address to the American public on 4 January 1980, when he said, “It [the invasion] is a deliberate effort of a powerful atheistic government to subjugate an independent Islamic people.” (Carter, 1980) That is an interesting statement, considering that for nearly six years prior to the invasion, the “official” government of Afghanistan, such as it was in its various forms, was not particularly Islamic in nature. On the other hand, the assortment of anti-Communist resistance groups were. The historical records, however, are incomplete concerning the extent of American activity in Afghanistan before the invasion. Even though the Soviets publicly accused the U.S. and others of interfering in Afghanistan, none of the records of their internal discussions and memoranda prior to the invasion mention the subject. The closest they came to that was in the minutes of a Politburo meeting on 1 February 1980, when it was mentioned that CIA and Chinese operatives had been funding, equipping, and training “mercenaries” in neighboring Pakistan since shortly after the April 1978 coup. (CWIHP, 2001, p. 22) This discussion laid out an extensive case for the legitimacy of the Soviet intervention based on Afghanistan’s “request” to help defend it against outside aggression. But its timing, more than a month after the start of the war, calls into question how much that line of reasoning was actually part of the Soviet decision-making process, and how much it was simple spin after the fact to try to give an internationally-acceptable excuse for the invasion. Nonetheless, some of the intelligence information made public by the U.S. government tends to support the Soviets’ assessment of the situation. Although many details remain classified, it is known – ironically, from documents seized by Iranian students in the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Teheran in November 1979 – that U.S. intelligence began meeting with Afghan rebel organizers at least as early as April 1979; this was also confirmed by a Pakistani military official, who claimed he had been asked by the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan who among the resistance groups would make the most effective use of covert assistance. (Galster, 1990) According to Galster (1990), it was Zbiegniew Brzezinski who was behind this initiative, and Galster considers it curious, given the Soviet activity at the time, which was to try to moderate the internal situation in Afghanistan without becoming militarily involved in it. Indeed, at just about the time U.S. intelligence operatives began meeting with Afghan rebels in Pakistan, the Soviets had made a firm decision to avoid military action out of consideration for larger international issues. (CWIHP, 2001, see above) Although the secretive way in which the actual decision to launch the invasion was handled internally by the Soviets might imply that there was actually more going on within the Kremlin than is already known, these pieces of information are almost enough on their own to make a convincing case of active American intervention in Afghan internal affairs before the Soviet invasion. Brzenzinski himself provided the final confirmation in his 1998 interview (Mid-East Realities, 2001) when he said, “That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.” Conclusion To whatever degree the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was provoked by the U.S., Soviet expansionism, or concern for the stability of the Islamic populations of Soviet Central Asia that would be affected by the insurgency in Afghanistan, the entire affair, it can be said with some certainty, has not worked out well for anyone. The Soviet Union lost their war; the United States still has not won theirs, which came about as a result of the Soviet invasion; and in the middle, the people and country of Afghanistan has suffered the most. This small, poor, landlocked country has had an enormous effect on world affairs for nearly three decades, but it is probably a distinction the Afghan people would gladly trade for a little peace. Works Cited Baxter, Craig. (2001) ‘Historical Setting’. In Afghanistan: a country study/Federal Research Division, Library of Congress. Baton Rouge: Claitor’s. Also available online from Federal Research Division database at: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/aftoc.html#af0028 Carter, Jimmy. (1980) Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan Address to the Nation, 4 January 1980. Transcript of speech, available from The American Presidency Project, University of California-Santa Barbara. Retrieved from: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=32911 Cold War International History Project (CWIHP). (2001) Documents on the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, November 2001. Retrieved from: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/e-dossier_4.pdf Dick, Maj. Richard J. (1987) Afghanistan: Eight Years After. [research paper]. Quantico, Virginia: U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College. CSC 1987, 4 May 1987. Retrieved from: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1987/DRJ.htm Galster, Steve. (1990) ‘Afghanistan: The Making of U.S. Policy, 1973-1990’. In: Prados, J. & Savranskaya, S., Eds. (2001) Afghanistan: Lessons from the Last War. The September 11 Sourcebooks, Volume II. The National Security Archive, George Washington University. Retrieved from: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB57/essay.html History Corrected – U.S. Wanted Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. (6 October 2001) Reprint of interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski by Le Nouvel Observateur (January 1998) in Mid-East Realities. Available from Hartford Web Publishing World History Archives database at: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27c/467.html Katzman, Kenneth. (2004) Afghanistan: Post-War Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy. CRS Report for Congress, Number RL30588, 25 March 2004. Washington: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress. MacEachin, Douglas. (2007) Predicting the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: The Intelligence Community's Record. Washington: Center for the Study of Intelligence. Retrieved from: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/predicting-the-soviet-invasion-of-afghanistan-the-intelligence-communitys-record/predicting-the-soviet-invasion-of-afghanistan-the-intelligence-communitys-record.html Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan 1979-1988. (16 December 2000) In Armed Conflict Event Database (ACED). Retrieved from: http://www.onwar.com/aced/nation/all/afghan/fussrafghan1979.htm. Tarzi, Amin. (2003) ‘Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in Perspective’. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Afghanistan Reports (2)1, 2 January 2003. Tockman, Christine (Project Coordinator). (2005) The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979: Failure of Intelligence or of the Policy Process? Working Group Report 111, 26 September 2005. Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University. Warner, Ed. (1999) Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan Remembered. Voice of America [radio broadcast transcript], 26 December1999. Retrieved from: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/1999/12/991226-afghan1.htm Read More