The End of the Soviet-Afghan War

proposal

Takeshi Yuasa

Introduction

The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan (1979-1989) and Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine (since 2022) are comparable in that they are acts of invasion by the Soviet Union/Russia perpetrated or being perpetrated against a neighboring country, involving years of military operations.

The configuration of international politics has no doubt been transformed between the Cold War era and today's increasingly multipolar world. While the current war in Ukraine is a clash of states, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was an asymmetric war against non-state actors, plagued by guerrilla warfare waged by the mujahideen.

Despite these differences, the two wars share numerous intriguing similarities. First, in launching these invasions, the Soviet Union/Russia justified military intervention by brandishing a cause based on ideology and statism. Moreover, when the Soviet/Russian leadership decided on military intervention, they had an optimistic prospect for a swift settlement; they continued or are continuing military intervention in defiance of international condemnation.

As was the case with the Soviet-Afghan intervention, the war in Ukraine has dragged on, distortions in Russian society have gradually multiplied. Meduza, a Latvia-based independent Russian news site, reported in July 2024 that Russian soldiers returning from the battlefields in Ukraine are unable to resume their social life due to the psychological trauma they suffer and that some commit crimes. (In the current war, Russia has overtly conscripted former criminals, and it is highly likely that after repatriation, they will again approach underworld groups and resort to crimes.) This is what happened in Soviet society of the 1980s.¹ A similar phenomenon is reemerging in contemporary Russia; the Putin administration is said to call the returned soldiers the "New Afghantsy" and considers them to be troublesome.²

History does not simply repeat itself. Nevertheless, an examination of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan could point to something that has important implications for contemporary Russia engaging in the war in Ukraine. This paper traces the termination process of the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. It examines the decision-making process, efforts to seek an exit strategy from the conflict, and factors that shaped the background.

1. The War Termination Process and Domestic Developments in the Soviet Union

(1) Background and the War Situation

In the first place, the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan aimed to settle the internal strife of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government, which had, since the 1978 coup, been introducing radical socialism reminiscent of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, thereby establishing a stable, pro-Soviet government. Another motivation for intervention was the suspicion of the Soviet leadership, led by Leonid Brezhnev, that the PDPA government might distance itself from the Soviet Union and approach the United States. In later years in Russia, Mikhail Gorbachev, who called the 1970s and early 1980s a period of stagnation and formulated innovative policies, and Boris Yeltsin, who dismantled the Soviet Union, emphasized the political responsibility of Brezhnev and his colleagues. They also criticized the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan as a misstep decided in secret by a small clique of gerontocrats. To be sure, Brezhnev and his cohorts may not escape responsibility for committing such a grave policy error. Yet, they represented the ministries and agencies in charge of security—the KGB, the Foreign Ministry, and the Defense Ministry—and were in a position in the Politburo to make decisions based on intelligence and analysis provided by the related departments and sections. Their decision to intervene in Afghanistan was a final conclusion made by their organization.³

The Soviet military invasion began on the night of December 24, 1979. Eight months earlier than this, the Soviet leadership had been reluctant about military intervention, stating that it would bring a "devastating effect on Soviet national interests." However, to deal with the political turmoil in Afghanistan that erupted in September 1979 following the fall and assassination of PDPA General Secretary Nur Muhammad Taraki, they decided to launch a military invasion against the country. The planned troop level was 75,000 to 80,000―low compared to more than the hundred thousand personnel deployed along the Ukrainian border during the months leading up to the February 24, 2022 invasion—and was insufficient to carry out coordinated tactical actions.⁴

After the invasion began, the Soviet Union supported the newly formed Afghan government headed by Babrak Karmal. The April 1980 interim constitution was consistent in its "pro-Sovietism" and aimed at establishing a Soviet-type government.⁵ However, the prolonged turmoil in the country and the rise of anti-Soviet sentiment frustrated this initiative.

All through the years intervention, Soviet troops spent most of their efforts in addressing mujahideen guerrilla warfare. In addition to the special airborne units and motorized rifle division of the 40th Army of the Soviet Ground Forces, special forces under the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), the KGB, and the Ministry of the Interior played a crucial role in the anti-guerrilla operation. The GRU especially deployed the largest-scale special forces in Afghanistan.⁶ The GRU's authorized history, published after the Putin administration came to power, refers specifically to the period of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan as the organization's "zenith."⁷ These Spetsnaz teams continued to fight under harsh climatic conditions to disrupt supply routes of support for the mujahideen provided by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) through Pakistan. Except for some remarkable successes, the mujahideen supply convoys they could intercept accounted for only 15-20% of the total.⁸

(2) Public Opinion in the Soviet Union

In the early stages of the war, information on the war situation in Afghanistan, especially on the adverse battles, and negative opinions about the Brezhnev administration were not covered by the mass media due to Moscow's strict information control. Yet, immediately after the military intervention began, not only regime dissenters but also intellectuals close to the regime aired doubts about and opposition to the intervention. Andrei Sakharov, a leading dissenter, was exiled to Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) on the Volga for criticizing Soviet military action in Afghanistan. Even during his exile, he participated in interviews with the Western media and argued for Soviet troops' withdrawal from Afghanistan.⁹

As the war dragged on, critical public opinion spread in Soviet society among former soldiers or Afghantsy and the bereaved families of fallen soldiers. This move seems to have been noted even before the Gorbachev administration took office. The more stubborn the authorities were in their attempts to conceal the facts from the eyes of the public, the more a mood of war-weariness permeated Soviet society. Every Soviet citizen came to know that the war in Afghanistan had turned into a "quagmire," even before the Gorbachev administration's "glasnost" made gradual progress in the disclosure of information and freedom of speech.

(3) The Afghanistan Question amid the Gorbachev Reforms¹⁰

The Soviet leaders in the pre-Gorbachev period were not necessarily incompetent in their efforts to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Toward his final days, Brezhnev visited Tashkent in the Republic of Uzbekistan and delivered a speech (March 14, 1982) in which he not only mentioned the Afghanistan question but also proposed efforts to stabilize Asia, including the improvement of relations with China, with which the Soviet Union was then in conflict. Yuri Andropov, who succeeded Brezhnev as general secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR (November 12, 1982), strengthened support for the Karmal administration and continued fighting in Afghanistan toward establishing Soviet-type governance. He sought an "exit strategy" advantageous to the Soviet Union and the interests of his previous area of responsibility, the KGB. Meanwhile, as of March 1983, Andropov gave up on Afghanistan as something like a feudal state with a dysfunctional central government and sought for a way out by contacting Pakistan and Western countries. The Andropov administration pursued a pragmatic policy of reviewing the enormous costs of the intervention in Afghanistan and other third-world countries.¹¹ However, the subsequent administration under General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko (inaugurated on February 13, 1984) and a string of short-lived administrations that followed failed to handle the withdrawal question, which was taken over unresolved by the Gorbachev administration.

During a Politburo meeting on October 17, 1985, the Gorbachev leadership discussed the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. This fact indicated that they placed the issue on the agenda before the onset of perestroika. During the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the USSR in February 1986, Gorbachev articulated a conditioned withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. The conditions included arrangements to ensure the ending of Western military involvement in Afghanistan's internal affairs and some political solutions to ensure that the same would not happen again. On the other hand, PDPA General Secretary Karmal, a guest of honor at the 27th Congress, continued to call for massive support from the Soviet Union; he was not pleased with the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

Afterward, the Gorbachev administration abandoned Karmal and worked on the reform of the Afghan government. It was, as it were, an Afghan version of perestroika. Muhammad Najibullah, a former security minister, led a new Afghan government. His administration, inaugurated in May 1986, aimed under the watchword of "national reconciliation" at a more tolerant governance conciliatory to various social forces, including armed militants, instead of emphasizing the establishment of Soviet-type socialism. In January 1987, the Najibullah administration unilaterally proposed a cease-fire with the mujahideen.¹² However, these lines of reform did not help strengthen Najibullah's political base.

After the 27th Party Congress, Gorbachev delivered a policy speech in Vladivostok to renew the Asia-Pacific line of Soviet diplomacy. The policies he outlined in the speech suggest continuity with Brezhnev's Tashkent speech mentioned above. While articulating the partial withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, Gorbachev criticized the intervention of the United States and other Western powers in the country and its surrounding areas. He outlined a position of resolving the Afghanistan question with due emphasis on the national interests of the Soviet Union.

2. Peace Negotiations and the Withdrawal of Soviet Troops

(1) Background of Policy Change

What factors helped the Soviet Union to decide on the withdrawal of its troops?

The first factor was the change of administration in Moscow. With the launch of a "full-fledged administration" led by Gorbachev, the Soviet Union became able to revamp its foreign and security policies ("New Thinking Diplomacy"), including the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. With the change of leadership, the crucial positions in the subordinate orders were occupied by younger people. For example, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko (b. 1909) was replaced by Eduard Shevardnadze (b. 1928), the Georgian Communist Party leader and a person of the same generation as Gorbachev. Boris Ponomarev (b. 1905), chief of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee, was replaced by Anatoly Dobrynin (b. 1919), who served as Soviet ambassador to the United States and was viewed as a "pro-Westerner" in the Russian diplomatic circle.

The second factor was the long-term strategy regarding Afghanistan that successive Soviet administrations had nurtured. Paradoxically, a partial prototype of the moderate Afghan stabilization initiative that was to be later promoted by the Gorbachev administration appeared around as early as 1979, when the then-Soviet leadership deliberated on whether to intervene in Afghanistan. A policy document dated April 1, 1979, jointly signed by Foreign Minister Gromyko, KGB Chairman Andropov, Defense Minister Ustinov, and Chief of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee Ponomarev, stated that Afghanistan was not a country mature enough to achieve a full-scale socialist revolution; that, since the Taraki administration was incompetent, Islamic clergy, the party, the military, and the executive rebelled against it. The document concluded that religious freedom should be ensured for Afghans and that the rule of law should be upheld. These policy measures were identical to those adopted for national reconciliation under the Najibullah administration.¹³ The Gorbachev administration leadership sought to implement reformist initiatives in Afghanistan inspired by past policy documents—although their efforts did not eventually lead to the country's political stabilization.

Third, the Gorbachev reforms revitalized foreign policy and domestic policy debates. As noted above, a mood of war-weariness permeated Soviet society even before the advent of the Gorbachev administration. However, it was Gorbachev's glasnost that helped shape public opinion in favor of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Positioned as part of Gorbachev's New Thinking Diplomacy, the Afghanistan peace negotiations discussed below proceeded in an environment of détente and cooperative diplomacy with the West, symbolized by the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Abolition Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union (December 8, 1987).

Fourth, the apparent relative decline in the Soviet Union's national strength amid changing situations at home and abroad also accelerated the Soviet evacuation from Afghanistan. Even though the Gorbachev administration had, since its inauguration, continued to send additional troops, the war situation in Afghanistan did not become favorable to the Soviet Union. The drop in oil prices in 1986 also contributed to weakening the position of the oil-dependent Soviet Union in the international community.

(2) Peace Negotiations (August 1987-April 1988)

These factors combined to prompt the Gorbachev administration to seek a compromised peace for the Afghanistan question. Even the long-term strategy (the second factor) only provided ad hoc responses and did not help improve the position of the Najibullah administration.

After the Soviet government decided on the withdrawal policy, disagreements continued among the ministries and agencies concerned over when and how to withdraw the troops. While the Defense Ministry and the General Staff supported unilateral withdrawal, the Foreign Ministry and the KGB, which wanted to back the Najibullah administration, pursued the postponing of the withdrawal, instrumental to political stabilization in Afghanistan, thereby extracting concessions from the United States and others at the negotiating table. They were reluctant to sign a peace agreement document.¹⁴ On February 15, 1988, the Geneva Accords were fundamentally agreed upon between the Najibullah administration and the Pakistani government, with the United States and the Soviet Union as guarantors. However, the US-Soviet conflict did not stop over US involvement in Afghanistan's internal affairs. The mujahideen forces did not participate in the Geneva Accords signed on April 14. There were doubts about whether the promised commitments would be honored. Actually, Pakistan continued its support for the mujahideen; the agreement was repeatedly violated.¹⁵

Conclusion

On February 15, 1989, Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan after more than nine years of military intervention. Although the Soviet Union continued to support the Najibullah administration, the size of its support diminished due to pressing needs to deal with regime change turmoil in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the eruption of ethnic problems and separatist/independence movements in the Soviet Union. Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze, a primary supporter of the Najibullah administration, resigned from his post (December 1990) after criticizing Gorbachev for vacillating between conservatism and perestroika. KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, another key Najibullah protector, joined the August 1991 conservative coup in Moscow as a conspirator and was ousted after the coup was aborted. As the situation in the Middle East grew tense with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the United States and the international community became less concerned about the Afghanistan question. On March 18, 1992, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Najibullah resigned from the presidency, and his administration collapsed. Afghanistan entered a period of civil war and turmoil.

A compromised peace may have been the only option for the Gorbachev administration to terminate the Soviet-Afghan intervention. Yet, it bequeathed to Central Asian countries and Russia a negative legacy―the destabilization of Afghanistan. Afghanistan became not only a destabilizing factor for regional security but also a hotbed for extremist political forces that resist the existing international order. The Soviet military withdrawal from Afghanistan foretold Russia's shrinking sphere of influence. Seen from this perspective, the end of the Soviet war in Afghanistan set in motion a transformation of the international order that still continues.

(Professor, Sophia University)

(Translation by Tsutomu Inuzuka)

[1] Svetlana Alexievich's book Zinky Boys, which compiles testimonies not only of Afghan veterans but also of military personnel, including women who served in Afghanistan, and the bereaved families of fallen soldiers, was first published during the perestroika period and caused a stir both at home and outside Russia.
[2] https://meduza.io/feature/2024/07/19/v-kremle-schitayut-chto-uchastniki-voyny-ploho-adaptiruyutsya-k-mirnoy-zhizni-posle-vozvrascheniya-s-fronta-chinovniki-nazyvayut-ih-novymi-afgantsami-i-boyatsya-rosta-prestupnosti
[3] Rodric Brithwaite, Afghantsy: the Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89, London: Profile Books, p.81.
[4] On December 10, 1979, when Defense Minister Dmitry Ustinov informed him of the Politburo's decision to send troops to Afghanistan, Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Ogarkov expressed discontent with the troop level, because the dispatch was too small to do anything. Ibid., p. 77.
[5] Takeshi Yuasa, International Politics in Contemporary Central Asia: Intervention of Russia, the West, and China and Autonomy of Newly Independent States (in Japanese), Akashi Shoten, 2015, pp. 54-57.
[6] Braithwaite, op. cit., p. 133.
[7] С. Козлов и др. «Спецназ ГРУ Очерки истории, кн.3: Афганистан – звездный час спецназа. 1979-1989 гг.» Москва: «Русская панорама», 2009.
[8] Braithwaite, op. cit., p. 134.
[9] Ibid., p. 237.
[10] Discussion that follows is a reconstruction of what the author described in his op. cit., pp. 60-71.
[11] Andrew Bennett, Condemned to Revolution? The Rise, Fall, and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Military Interventionism, 1973-1996, Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1999, pp. 237-238; Yuasa, op. cit., pp. 57-60.
[12] Bennett, op. cit., p. 283.
[13] Braithwaite, op. cit., p. 52.
[14] Artemy Kalinovsky, "Old Politics, New Diplomacy: the Geneva Accords and the Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan," Cold War History, Vol. 8, No. 3, 2008, pp. 398-399.
[15] Artemy Kalinovsky, A Long Goodbye: the Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, p.150.

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