LITMIR.BIZ

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      The Great Game spilled into Afghanistan when British forcesinvaded during the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839–1842). Britainclaimed that the invasion was supposed to counter Russian influence.After hard fighting, the British withdrew. By 1869, the Russianempire reached the banks of the Amu Darya (Oxus) river—the north- .ern border of Afghanistan. This caused additional British concern. In1878, the arrival of a special Russian diplomatic mission to Kabul ledto another British invasion and the Second Anglo-Afghan War. TheBritish Army again withdrew. In the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1907,the Russians agreed that Afghanistan lay outside its sphere of inter-est and agreed to confer with Britain on all matters relating toRussian-Afghan relations. In return, Britain agreed not to occupy orannex any part of Afghanistan nor interfere in the internal affairs ofthat country. Although the Amir of Afghanistan refused to recognizethe treaty, Russia and Britain agreed to its terms and honored them 5 Jalali,1 6 Section derived from Richard F. Nyrop and Donald M. Seekins (editors), Afghanistan: ACountry Study, Fifth edition, Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1986, 22–73 andPeter Hopkirk, The Great Game, New York: Kodansha International, 1994. XV until 1919 when Afghan troops crossed into British India, seized avillage and attempted to raise a popular revolt in the area. TheBritish responded with yet another invasion and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. The political settlement resulted in Afghanistan's fullindependence from Great Britain. Afghanistan's foreign policy from 1919 until 1978 balanced thedemands of her immediate neighbors, and external powers such as theUnited States, Germany and Great Britain. Normal relations with hernorthern neighbor, the Soviet Union, led to increased Soviet invest-ment and presence in Afghanistan.

      In April 1978, a small leftist group of Soviet-trained Afghan officersseized control of the government and founded the Democratic Republicof Afghanistan, a client state of the Soviet Union. Civil war broke outin Afghanistan. The putsch installed President Nur M. Taraki, aMarxist who announced sweeping programs of land distribution,changed status for women and the destruction of the old Afghanistansocial structure. Disregarding the national social structure and mores,the new government enjoyed little popular support. The wobbly Tarakigovernment was almost immediately met by increased armed resis-tance as the Mujahideen ranks grew. In 1978, religious leaders, inresponse to popular uprisings across Afghanistan, issued statements ofjihad (holy war) against the communist regime. This was an appeal to the supranational identity of all Afghans--a fight to defend the faith ofIslam. The combat readiness of the Army of the Democratic Republicof Afghanistan plunged as government purges swept the officer corps.Soldiers, units and entire regiments deserted to the resistance and bythe end of 1979, the actual strength of the Afghan Army was less thanhalf of its authorized 90,000. In March 1979, the city of Herat revolt-ed and most of the Afghan 17th Infantry Division mutinied and joinedthe rebellion. Forces loyal to Taraki reoccupied the city after theAfghan Air Force bombed the city and the 17th Division. Thousands ofpeople reportedly died in the fighting, including some Soviet citizens.

Soviet Intervention

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      The Soviet-Afghan War began over the issue of control. TheDemocratic Republic of Afghanistan was nominally a socialist stategoverned by a communist party. However, the state only controlledsome of the cities, while tribal elders and clan chiefs controlled thecountryside. Furthermore, the communist party of Afghanistan wassplit into two hostile factions. The factions spent more time fighting each other than trying to establish socialism in Afghanistan. InSeptember 1979, Taraki's Prime Minister, Hafizullah Amin, seizedpower and murdered Taraki. Amin's rule proved no better and theSoviet Union watched this new communist state spin out of control.Meanwhile, units of the army mutinied, civil war broke out, cities andvillages rose in revolt and Afghanistan began to slip away fromMoscow's control and influence. Leonid Brezhnev, the aged SovietGeneral Secretary, saw that direct military intervention was the onlyway to prevent his client state from disintegrating into complete chaos.He decided to intervene.

      The obvious models for intervention were Hungary in 1956 andCzechoslovakia in 1968. The Soviet General Staff planned theAfghanistan invasion based on these models. However, there was asignificant difference that the Soviet planners missed. Afghanistanwas embroiled in a civil war and a coup de main would only gaincontrol of the central government, not the countryside. Althoughparticipating military units were briefed at the last minute, the SovietChristmas Eve invasion of 1979 was masterfully planned and well-executed. The Soviets seized the government, killed the president andput their own man in his place. According to some Russian sources,they planned to stabilize the situation, strengthen the army and thenwithdraw the majority of Soviet forces within three years. The SovietGeneral Staff planned to leave all fighting in the hands of the army ofthe Democratic Republic. But Afghanistan was in full revolt, thedispirited Afghan army was unable to cope, and the specter of defeatfollowing a Soviet withdrawal haunted the. Politburo. Invasion andoverthrow of the government proved much easier than fighting thehundreds of ubiquitous guerrilla groups. The Soviet Army wastrained for large-scale, rapid-tempo operations. They were nottrained for the platoon leaders' war of finding and closing with small,indigenous forces which would only stand and fight when the terrainand circumstances were to their advantage.

      Back in the Soviet Union, there was no one in charge and all deci-sions were committee decisions made by the collective leadership.General Secretary Brezhnev became incapacitated in 1980 but did notdie until November 1982. He was succeeded by the ailing YuriAndropov. General Secretary Andropov lasted less than two years andwas succeeded by the faltering Konstantin Chernenko in February1984. General Secretary Chernenko died in March 1985. Althoughthe military leadership kept recommending withdrawal, during this "twilight of the general secretaries" no one was making any major deci-sions as to the conduct and outcome of the war in Afghanistan. Thewar bumped on at its own pace. Finally, Mikhail Gorbachev came topower. His first instinct was to order military victory in Afghanistanwithin a year. Following this bloodiest year of the war, Gorbachev real-ized that the Soviets could not win in Afghanistan without unaccept-able international and internal repercussions and began to castabout for a way to withdraw with dignity. United Nations negotiatorsprovided that avenue and by 15 October 1988, the first half of theSoviet withdrawal was complete. On 15 February 1989, the last Sovietforces withdrew from Afghanistan. Soviet force commitment, initiallyassessed as requiring several months, lasted over nine years andrequired increasing numbers of forces. The Soviet Union reportedlykilled 1.3 million people and forced 5.5 million Afghans (a third of theprewar population) to leave the country as refugees. Another 2 millionAfghans were forced to migrate within the country. The country hasyet to recover.

      Initially the Mujahideen were all local residents who took arms and banded together into large, rather unwieldy, forces to seize the localdistrict capitols and loot their arms rooms. The DRA countered theseefforts where it could and Mujahideen began to coalesce into muchsmaller groups centered around the rural village. These small groupswere armed with a variety of weapons from swords and flintlock mus-kets to British bolt-action rifles and older Soviet and Soviet-blocweapons provided to Afghanistan over the years. The guerrillacommanders were usually influential villagers who already had aleadership role in the local area. Few had any professional militaryexperience. Rebellion was wide-spread, but uncoordinated since theresistance was formed along tribal and ethnic lines.

      The Soviet invasion changed the nature of the Mujahideen resis-tance. Afghanistan's neighbors, Pakistan and Iran, nervously regard-ed the advance to the Soviet Army to their borders and began provid-ing training and material support to the Mujahideen. The UnitedStates, Peoples Republic of China, Britain, France, Italy, Saudi Arabia,Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates began funneling military,humanitarian and financial aid to the Mujahideen through Pakistan.Pakistan's assessment was that the Soviet Union had come toAfghanistan to stay and it was in Pakistan's best interests to supportthose Mujahideen who would never accept the Soviet presence. ThePakistan Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) began to funnel aid through various Afghan political factions headquartered in Pakistan.Eventually there were seven major Afghan factions receiving aid. Thepolitics of these factions were determined by their leaders' religiousconvictions—three of which were Islamic moderates and four of whichwere Islamic fundamentalists. Pakistan required that the variousethnic and tribal Mujahideen groups join one of the factions in order toreceive

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