Air University Review, March-April 1981

The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

The foreign policy of the Brezhnev Politburo, consistent since 1965, has four major interconnected elements: détente with the West, defined as the pursuit of mutually beneficia1 trade and strategic arms control; consolidation and coordination of the Socialist community of communist nations under Soviet leadership; military growth of all types of forces; and expansion of Soviet and allied Socialist influence and presence in Asia and Africa as opportunity allows.¹

Popular American opinion to the contrary, the first three elements have been considerably more successful than the last. In the late 1970s, as evidence of the military and expansionist character of Soviet policy mounted, several Soviet-connected Asian and African nations have cooled toward the Soviets or defected outright. China, the most important developing nation, now leads the anti-Soviet crusade. In the Islamic world the list of former Soviet friends is long and growing: Sudan, Egypt, Eritrea, Somalia, Guinea, Nigeria, Iraq, Bangladesh, and now Afghanistan.²

Times Have Changed:
The Militarization of Soviet Policy

Since Lenin and the first Congress of the Peoples of the East in August 1920, Soviet political and ideological appeal has assumed a mutual interest against Western imperialism between Third World peoples and the Soviet Union. But as Asian and African nations achieve independence and gradually consolidate control over their national economies, internal and local conflicts emerge to replace anti-imperialism as the dominant issues.³ By the 1970s, Soviet policies relying on community of interest against the West and bolstered by Soviet aid had assured no permanent Socialist gains; nationalist such as Gamal Nasser, Ben Bella, Sékou Touré, and Mao Zedong used Soviet aid and political support for their own ends and then rejected it when convenient. Stronger policies binding Asian and African states to a permanent Soviet orientation would have to be developed. At the same time, Soviet military power made a Soviet connection highly desirable for governments and movements needing military protection or the resources to win civil or local wars.

Soviet emphasis on military intervention began with Soviet aid to Cuba and Vietnam. Both countries faced confrontations against the United States. Military aid to Egypt, Syria, and Iraq was directed at Israel, considered an outpost of American imperialism. The Angolan intervention of 1975 began to blur the anti-imperialist justification. While the Angolan opponents of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) were supported by the United States, China, and South Africa, they were also African liberation movements in their own right, as the Organization of African Unity acknowledged. The next intervention, in Ethiopia, brought Soviet power into a local war. Ethiopia was fighting Soviet-aided Somalia and a Marxist Eritrean secessionist movement, and Soviet betrayal of the Moslem Somalis and the Moslem Eritreans did their image little good in the Middle East. Fidel Castro tried and failed to mediate the conflict and promote a Marxist revolutionary federation among Ethiopia, Somalia, and South Yemen. The Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea, in January 1979, showed Soviet military support against communist allies of China, and Soviet commentary at the time left no doubt that China itself might become a legitimate (in Soviet eyes) victim of Soviet attack.⁴ Finally, in Afghanistan in December 1979 the Soviet army was sent to repress a popular revolt against a revolutionary government without immediate invitation. The only remaining escalation of the contexts of Soviet military intervention would be direct attack against a noncommunist country that had never invited a Soviet presence.

The Soviets now claim that their military power is the necessary condition for the liberation of anyone else.⁵ "The changing correlation of forces" has become almost a synonym for Soviet military superiority, and in the Soviet view this shift in the world balance of power is all-important. Unlike earlier eras, the Soviet Union claims to defend local revolutions against external enemies (always assumed to be some form of ‘‘imperialist aggression") and internal opposition—even against the vast majority of the people if necessary, as Soviet sources acknowledge.⁶ In addition to external and internal defense, the Soviet Union and its Socialist allies are to provide direct assistance in party-building and in ideological development, toward the transition from military rule to government by a vanguard party.⁷

Nothing so far indicates that where they have undertaken a strong internal presence (Cuban troops, East German security police training, Soviet advisers) the Soviets and their allies have found some magic key which transforms Third World friends into communist members of the Socialist community, Cuba may be the model, but other Asian and African national leaders, including national Marxists or communists, continue to seek independence of foreign control when their need for protection diminishes.⁸ Soviet proclamations about the tighter bonds of "socialist orientation" do not change that unless the tighter bonds are somehow enforced.

Soviet policy has been increasingly squeezed into a narrow military mold because, as military capabilities grow and grow, other capabilities diminish. The Soviet economy is in consistent, long-term, and perhaps accelerating decline,⁹ and one of the many ramifications of this overwhelmingly important fact is that the Soviets are limited in providing economic or even military aid to their friends on concessional terms. Even the poorest "socialist orientation" countries such as Ethiopia are pushed to repay Socialist aid with hard currency earned by exports to the West. Soviet subsidies to Cuba (perhaps $3 billion a year) and Vietnam (perhaps $1 billion a year) in support of counterinsurgency wars reduce the amounts available for other, more peaceful purposes.

In undertaking military interventions in Africa, Indochina, and now Afghanistan, the Soviets wished to create the image of overwhelming clout and victory. They have gambled that demonstrating "the changing correlation of forces" might encourage more regimes "of socialist orientation," and the creation of new allied military forces capable of undertaking "defense of the gains of Socialism" on a broader and broader scale.¹⁰ What actually has happened is that the Cubans are bogged down in Angolan garrisons against the Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), and in Ethiopian garrisons against the Eritreans and the Somali guerrillas of the Ogaden. The Vietnamese have some 200,000 troops in Kampuchea and are continuing to maintain, even intensify, a militarized garrison state to sustain the conquest of Indochina.¹¹ Now Afghanistan caps the image of Soviet policy as imperialism against growing people's resistance, an image increasingly shared by Africans, Southeast Asians, and Islamic nations of the Middle East. This was not what the Soviets had in mind. But the Afghanistan invasion was necessary to preserve any hope of success for the policy of world prestige based on victory and "the changing correlation of forces."

Militarization of policy must include the home front, and the domestic policies of the later years of the Brezhnev Politburo provide ample evidence that the economy, the legitimization of the regime, and the very concept of Soviet citizenship are taking a more military cast. In spite of economic difficulties, and obviously in response to domestic critics of military spending, Brezhnev and his colleagues have remained adamant that the Soviet military budget is not to be touched. As Brezhnev put it in 1976:

Nor should there be any doubt in anyone’s mind that our Party will do everything to have the splendid Armed Forces of the Soviet Union provided, in the future as well, with all the necessary means for filling their responsible task of standing on guard over the Soviet people’s peaceful labor and acting as the bulwark of world peace.¹²

Politburo spokesmen have since constantly reiterated the sanctity of the military budget, citing NATO rearmament and nuclear missiles for Europe, Chinese aggressive designs, and now the world outcry over Afghanistan. Massive diversion of resources to military production accelerates Soviet economic decline; opportunity costs include the diversion of technical manpower and creativity as well as resources away from the civilian economy, and the disruption which occurs when civilian production is arbitrarily interrupted to fill shortfalls in defense industry. Soviet leaders take pride in the efficiency of the military economy, which has become the leading example of the economic capability of socialism.

The Soviet citizenry is increasingly restless. Everyone from dissidents to the Politburo cites laziness and apathy among the workers as an overwhelming problem; workers have recently begun to form illegal unions and mount strikes.¹³ National tensions persist, although they should not be overemphasized as an imminent danger to Soviet stability.¹⁴ The intelligentsia persist in refusing to be inspired by shopworn Soviet Marxism. None of these circumstances can be quickly or easily changed without basic reforms that the present leadership is unwilling to consider. So the regime increasingly relies on patriotism and national security for its legitimacy. Since 1976, when Brezhnev called for glorification of Soviet military exploits in the Great Patriotic War against the Nazis, propaganda celebrating the military "guardians of peaceful labor" has proliferated. Soviet world prestige linked to military prowess has been emphasized: Soviet citizens are told, simply, that their country cannot be pushed around any more.

The constitution of 1977 proclaims military service as a "sacred duty" of all citizens. The constitution also mentions Soviet patriotism in a way that indicates its function of integrating the nationalities. General Aleksandr Altunin’s civil defense program seems more another means of inculcating national security consciousness among citizens than a prelude to nuclear attack. Other measures, such as oath-taking at military induction ceremonies and the activities of military reservists in the schools, reinforce the military flavor of Soviet patriotism and communist legitimacy.

The internal prestige of the Communist Party and its leadership would suffer, perhaps severely, if in its first campaign since World War II the Soviet Army were to fail to subdue ill-armed and disorganized Afghan tribesmen. That the Soviet people are told that the Afghan people are really on the Soviet side just compounds the problem; victory should be easy. To the extent it is not easy, "imperialist aggression," not local resistance, must be put forward as the reason, and this too must heighten internal pressures toward the garrison state and a new cold war.

Thus the rebellion in Afghanistan, about to topple and replace the revolutionary regime of "socialist orientation" established in April 1978, presented the Soviet leadership with an immensely important decision affecting Soviet credibility and the success or failure of past and current policies. Unlike Africa or Indochina, Afghanistan was clearly the Soviets’ own show and sole responsibility— in Afghanistan ‘‘proletarian internationalism" meant that the Soviets must carry the burden. If the Soviet Union touted its military might as the necessary condition for the triumph of socialism in the Third World, then failed to use it in a neighboring country of long-standing predominant Soviet influence when "socialist orientation" was about to be defeated, the consequences within the Soviet-led Socialist community and among its "socialist orientation" allies might be immense. Cuba and Vietnam could easily draw the conclusion that in spite of their bluster the Soviets were willing to defend the gains of socialism only to the last Cuban or the last Vietnamese. Well before the Afghanistan invasion Soviet writers had mentioned rollback of socialist orientation, particularly in Africa, as a serious problem.¹⁵ If the "April revolution" in Afghanistan were defeated by rebels favored by China, the West, and anti-Soviet Islamic nations, the example might be contagious. Ultimately, "the changing correlation of forces" could be reversed, thus bringing down the whole recent edifice of Soviet policy.

In this context, discussion of the offensive or defensive nature of Soviet policy misses the point. The Soviets were pushed into opting for "defense of the gains of socialism" by the only means available, an invasion by Soviet troops.

Relations of a New Type among
Equal and Independent States

The invasion of Afghanistan was undertaken to uphold credibility and save a position in which a great deal has been invested. But it stretched Soviet claims that Soviet power is used only to defend threatened peoples against imperialism when invited to do so. Earlier claims for Cuba, Vietnam, Angola, and even Ethiopia were credible (although less and less so) in that regard. Afghanistan was not. By sending an invasion force to depose and replace the existing government, by taking over administration of the country, and by lying about the circumstances, the Soviets, willy-nilly, crossed a major policy threshold.

The direct use of Soviet combat troops outside the Warsaw Pact countries broke a precedent of Soviet restraint upheld since World War II and naturally raised fears of a new policy of Soviet conquest. But the more serious change in the rules of the game was Soviet intervention apparently without an invitation from the existing Afghan government of President Hafizullah Amin. The invitation, or lack of it, distinguishes legally sanctioned intervention from international aggression.

The Soviets say that "the USSR acceded to a request which the Afghan government had repeatedly made during 1977-78; a request for military aid in response to armed intervention by imperialist forces which began immediately after the April revolution and which is continuing to this day."¹⁶ This statement does not claim an immediate invitation, only a "repeated" one made at least a year before when Afghanistan’s government was led by Prime Minister Taraki, not Amin. As far as "imperialist aggression" is concerned, the growing internal rebellion certainly received sanctuary and some aid via Pakistan but little from elsewhere.¹⁷ A Soviet article of March 1979 contains a reasonable description of the rebellion, if the usual rhetoric is discounted:

A "holy war" has been proclaimed against the Revolution by the so-called Moslim Brothers, a reactionary terrorist grouping of a conservative Moslim orientation. Demagogically exploiting "Islamic" slogans, the Afghan Moslim Brothers, who have extensive ties with similar groupings in other countries of the East, are trying to exert pressure on the socially backward masses of working people in both town and village. . . . They serve the interest of the reactionaries in the region and are being exploited by imperialist circles to conduct activities directed against the national interests and the people’s Revolution of Afghanistan.¹⁸

Postinvasion statements now attribute the rebellion almost entirely to "Imperialist aggression," citing the United States, Britain, China, and Pakistan as the sources of the rebellion and claiming that conflict would cease the minute the outside agitators stopped their activities.

It is interesting to compare the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan with Soviet aid to North Vietnam a decade before. Soviet vocabulary has not changed at all: defense against "imperialist aggression’’ justifies aid to threatened governments as a duty of "proletarian internationalism." Circumstances have changed entirely: in 1972 Soviet surface-to-air missiles were shooting down B-52s over Hanoi, but in 1980 Soviet forces cross an international boundary without invitation and are instrumental (the details remain murky) in the murder of a friendly president, with no "imperialists" anywhere in sight.

The Soviet leadership was not willing to say that they could not afford to lose, and that they now considered Afghanistan their turf and would not tolerate a hostile government, which would be a true if not commendable explanation. Instead, the Soviets have resorted to stonewalling by propaganda and to a degree of lying unheard since Stalin’s time. The genuflection now required from Soviet friends as part of "proletarian internationalism" hurts the credibility of those who fall into line, for example the French Communist Party. Cuba, notably, has remained largely silent.

Until Afghanistan, only communist countries had been subject to a Soviet veto backed by force of arms over their internal evolution. "Limited socialist sovereignty" was first applied to the nationalities of the Soviet Union and their ostensibly separate Republics; later to Eastern Europe (the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine). The invasion of Kampuchea to remove an unbelievably brutal regime, like the Hungarian and Czechoslovakian interventions in Europe, was justified as restoring true socialism in a communist country. But Third World countries "of socialist orientation" were presumably free to change their orientation, as Egypt and Somalia and now Iraq have done. The Afghanistan precedent indicates that the Soviet Union will now decide when and where "socialist orientation" is to be made "irreversible" by intervention.

Article 4 of the Soviet-Afghan Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation of December 1978 provides for military cooperation, and Soviet Ambassador Troyanovsky cited this article to the Security Council as a basis for intervention. Another article of that treaty provides for mutual consultation and appropriate action—presumably whatever the two parties agree to—in the event of a threat to the peace. All the Soviet treaties of friendship and cooperation contain almost identical language, and nothing in any of them implies any unilateral action. In the past, these treaties intimated Soviet backing for local wars; India’s 1971 treaty preceded by four months the war with Pakistan over Bangladesh, Egypt’s 1971 treaty preceded the 1973 October War, and Vietnam’s November 1978 treaty preceded the January 1979 invasion of Kampuchea.* Afghanistan was the first use of these treaties to justify unilateral Soviet action. (See Table I.)

*Vietnam has similar treaties with Laos and Kampuchea. The April 1980 visit of Heng Samrin and Pen Sovan did not produce a Soviet-Kampuchean treaty.

The Politburo has made no proclamations about the universal "irreversibility’’ of ‘‘socialist orientation" and will choose "irreversibilities’’ according to specific circumstances. For example, Mozambique is now adopting a more capitalist economic policy, and the new Zimbabwe government of Robert Mugabe which was helped to power by Soviet and Cuban arms shows every sign of joining Zambia and Tanzania in nonalignment. The Soviet Union has at present neither the capability nor the intention of controlling political events in southern Africa. But the Afghanistan precedent must unsettle Mengistu of Ethiopia or dos Santos of Angola, where large Cuban forces are already present, or the regime in South Yemen. The fate of Hafizullah Amin serves as a warning—or as an incentive to establish security independent of Soviet power.

Geopolitics: Preventing Encirclement
and Opening Possibilities

Geopolitics is often a refuge for the lazy analyst, and American writers generally overemphasize geopolitical and military-strategic explanations for Soviet policy. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a response to the

Afghan rebellion, and no available evidence indicates any Soviet master plan or timetable for conquest of the Middle East or of Asia. Soviet policy generally responds to opportunities and accepts setbacks as they arise. The style of Soviet policy is also generally to focus on one country at a time rather than on regions. Nevertheless, the invasion of Afghanistan was prompted in part by strategic considerations, and its consequences certainly include military threats to neighboring countries and the possibility of further Soviet adventures.

 What the Soviets fear is the grand encirclement of the Soviet Union linking China, Japan, the United States, and Western Europe. The most serious change that has occurred in the world position of the Soviet Union over the past twenty years has been the defection of China and, now, the rapidly burgeoning Chinese-Japanese-NATO entente cordiale. Today, China is singled out as the most evil adversary, not only "the 16th member of NATO" but the equivalent of Nazi Germany.¹⁹ Soviet policies designed to split China from Japan and the West and to isolate China in Asia have failed completely. Japan opted for a Chinese connection in spite of Soviet pressure by signing the Japanese-Chinese friendship treaty of August 1978, which contained the anti-Soviet hegemony clause.²⁰ Soviet initiatives to create an Asian security treaty isolating the Chinese failed to win Indian or Southeast Asian support. In this as in other areas the Soviets then turned more toward military means, encouraging and aiding the Vietnamese to conquer Kampuchea and eliminate the Pol Pot government allied to China.

The Chinese response to the Kampuchea invasion, which the Chinese now tout as a prelude by proxy to the Afghan one, was invasion of North Vietnam and demonstration of will against Soviet threats and acceleration of the rapprochement with the United States to a point just short of military alliance. Chinese-Soviet talks failed in September 1979. The response of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was stiffened opposition to the Vietnamese and the Soviet Union.

On the other front, NATO finally decided in December 1979 to counter Soviet military supremacy in Europe with new American theater nuclear weapons. Soviet efforts failed to persuade West Germany to reject the new weapons, which would have aborted the decision. Secretary Brezhnev’s gesture of withdrawing troops from East Germany was spurned. The increased pressure against East Europe dissidents, notably the Prague Charter 77 trials in October 1979, had no effect. Thus, in Europe as with China, Soviet efforts to pressure, influence, or divide the enemy coalition had failed.

The Iranian revolution drastically increased the stakes in Afghanistan. While the demise of the Shah was a major Soviet gain, Iran had the wrong revolution. In the long run, Islamic resurgence and self-assertion pose a major threat to the Soviets, blocking opportunities for Soviet influence and carrying the possibility of dissent among 50 million Soviet Moslems.²¹ An anti-Soviet Islamic Afghanistan, complemented and aided by Islamic governments in Pakistan and Iran, would create an anti-Soviet Islamic bloc on the border of the Central Asian Soviet republics. A link between that bloc and China or the West or both—a role played by Pakistan since the mid-1960s—would complete encirclement of the Soviet Union from Norway to Japan.

Conversely, the Iranian revolution might be strongly influenced by a Soviet demonstration of will and authority, which the Soviets could contrast to American weakness, vacillation irresolution and incompetence. The Soviets are avid, sometimes too avid, students of history who realize that Iranian foreign policy has traditionally bent toward external pressure, be it Russian, British, or American. A Soviet Afghanistan demonstrating Soviet resolution and power and the inability of Islamic forces to contain the Soviet military juggernaut could lead to numerous future opportunities to steer Iran, or Pakistan, or both, in a Soviet direction. Soviet aid to the Baluchis in Pakistan and Iran could be used as a lever to pressure those countries or divide them.²² Iran or Pakistan might accept the sort of Soviet aid and friendship provided Afghanistan in the twenty years before the 1978 coup, perhaps with ultimately similar results.

Thus, Soviet efforts to split the encirclement or achieve a favorable detente in Europe or with China had already failed. The West Europeans and Chinese had made their decisions. The Americans had decided to "gamble on the Peking card"²³ and were moving toward rearmament, with the rest of NATO reluctantly in tow. The record of the Carter administration and its necessary preoccupation with the hostages in Teheran would imply an ineffective American response. These circumstances, plus the threat from Islamic Afghanistan and the favorable possibilities of Soviet Afghanistan, impelled the invasion.

One widely held view sees the invasion of Afghanistan as part of a military pincer movement designed to encircle the Persian Gulf with the other part of the pincers in Ethiopia and South Yemen. Afghanistan may eventually be useful in that regard. But if the Soviet game was control of Gulf oil, why not concentrate on Iran or Iraq and do the job direct1y? Why frighten and alienate all the Gulf nations without arriving there? Afghanistan is a landlocked country far from the water and relatively far from the oil fields. Alienating Iran and accelerating Iraq’s shift to a European orientation hardly helps the Soviets control the Gulf. The demonstration of European communist soldiers shooting devout Moslems has not helped the Soviet cause on the Arabian peninsula either. Saudi Arabia has recently patched up its quarrel with North Yemen. The Soviet Union has reportedly advised Mengistu of Ethiopia to start seriously negotiating with the Eritreans—yet another sign that the Soviets must now placate anti-Soviet Islamic opinion and policy. All the talk of warm-water ports notwithstanding (much of it originates in China),²⁴ Afghanistan seems the wrong place to invade as part of a strategy of military control of Persian Gulf oil.

Will the Soviets’ own oil needs impel more invasions? Depending on whose estimate is accepted,²⁵ and understanding that exploration and the marginal costs of increasing production are as variable and unpredictable in the Soviet Union as anywhere else, the Soviets will probably be short of oil sometime during the 1980s. They have several options: cut domestic consumption, cut back on deliveries to Eastern Europe, buy more oil, or expropriate oil on the cheap by military conquest of an oil field and the nation that happens to contain it.

The last alternative seems the most unlikely. The Soviet nuclear energy program is designed to provide an alternative energy source. The Soviets buy many essential goods now from nations of all political persuasions—Moroccan phosphates, Iranian natural gas, Malaysian rubber, American, Canadian, and Argentine grain. Opportunities to make favorable deals for oil with sympathetic regimes "of socialist orientation" would certainly be welcome. The Soviet Union will certainly try to encourage friendly or allied governments among the oil states, probably to guarantee supply to Eastern Europe while Soviet oil is consumed at home. Certainly the temptation to persuade, pressure, or intimidate oil states may increase as Soviet military power grows and the economic squeeze intensifies. But the Soviets have shown no inclination so far to disrupt the world oil business, of which they are now a major and interconnected part.

Soviet control of Europe’s oil supply is worth worrying about, but that control is not likely to come by direct military conquest—or to be deterred by commitments against invasion. Put differently the Ayatollah Khomeini’s efforts to purge the University of Teheran probably have far more bearing on Soviet control of the Persian Gulf than do the American aircraft carriers standing offshore.

Soviet-Afghan Relations
and the Rebellion

Richard Newell wrote in 1972 that "Afghanistan has served as a showcase for Russia’s good intentions in her dealings with Moslem nations." Further,

Probably most important to Russia have been the political profits gained by treating Afghanistan with generosity and careful respect. Friendly relations and assistance have demonstrated to the rest of the Muslim world, especially Turkey, Iran, and the Arab states, that the Russians are willing to help a Muslim people whom they could easily conquer or exploit.²⁶

Newell is not wrong; for the period 1919 to 1978, he is quite right. Times change.

Soviet-Afghan contacts began when Amir Amanullah Khan expelled British control during the Third Afghan War, a minor affair lasting some three weeks in May 1919. Amanullah invited Soviet envoys to Kabul and hoped to rely on the new Soviet power as a counter to the British. From the Soviet side, cooperation with Afghanistan was part of the general effort to incite the Moslem world against the British, who were then supplying the White Russian armies in the Russian civil war. The keystone of Soviet policy was alliance with the Turkish nationalist movement of Kemal Pasha, later Atatürk, who, like the Soviets, wanted the British out of Constantinople, the Transcaucasus, Iran, Afghanistan, and even India. Amanullah of Afghanistan thus developed cordial relations with both Kemalist Turkey and Soviet Russia, promoted by the propaganda of the Comintern encouraging nationalism and liberation of the peoples of the East from British imperialism.

This Soviet-Islamic alliance of mutual interest had a Central Asian flaw. In the aftermath of the revolution, Central Asian Moslems rose in revolt against the reestablishment of Russian rule. The Russian settlers and the Soviets called the rebels basmachi—bandits—and sent forces to suppress them. Turkish and Soviet aspirations clashed when Enver Pasha, leader of the Turkish triumvirate during the world war, was sent by the Soviets to Central Asia to organize Moslem forces against the British. Enver went over to the basmachi instead but was killed in April 1922 before he could mold an effective force against the Russians. The Red Army drove the basmachi out of their city bases at Bokhara and Khiva (sites of the khanates conquered by Russia in 1868 and 1873) and away from the valleys, then gradually suppressed rebellion in the hills. Mopping-up campaigns against the basmachi including Soviet forays against sanctuaries in Afghanistan continued until 1931.

Amanullah treated with the Central Asian leaders at Bokhara as well as with the Soviets, but the Soviets refused to respond with hostility. The Soviet-Afghan friendship treaty of February 1921 even recognized the independence of Bokhara and Khiva "in accordance with the wishes of the people"²⁷— wishes which turned out to be those of the Soviet troops. In return, Amanullah promised not to actively aid the basmachi. While historical parallels must be treated carefully, they are interesting in this case. The Soviets use the term basmachi in speaking of the Afghan rebels²⁸ and are following much the same counterinsurgency strategy. They also are trying to gain friendship and neutrality from Pakistan despite Pakistani sympathies, ethnic links, and sanctuary for the Afghans.

Taking Kemal’s secular nationalist Turkey as his model, Amanullah attempted reform and modernization in the 1920s with Soviet aid. The 1921 treaty included a Soviet subsidy of a million rubles a year and provisions for technical assistance. The Soviets provided a small air force whose purpose was to put down rebellion by the tribesmen opposed to unveiling of women, secular education, and other reforms. A British official reported that "the so-called Afghan Air Force is to all intents and purposes a Russian service and may indeed be regarded as a Russian advanced base."²⁹ Amanullah was overthrown in 1928 by rebellion sparked by announcement of measures against corruption and the local authority of the mullahs and by the unveiling of the queen. The British were probably involved (Colonel T. E. Lawrence was then serving on the northwest frontier under the alias of "Airman Shaw"), and the Soviets did not intervene. Half a century later, in somewhat similar circumstances, the Soviet Union did intervene to prevent Islamic conservatives and the tribes from deposing another friendly antitraditional Afghan regime. This illustrates rather precisely what the Soviets have in mind by "the changing correlation of forces."

Soviet influence again became paramount after the rise to power of Prince Daud, which coincided with the death of Stalin in 1953. Daud chose political dictatorship and economic development and turned to the Soviets as his main source of help. Political energies were diverted to the cause of greater Pushtunistan, reuniting Pushtuns across the Pakistan border with the Afghan kingdom. Pakistan’s membership in the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) made a tilt toward the Soviet Union logical. Khrushchev and Bulganin stopped in Kabul on their 1955 tour, which opened an active Soviet foreign policy in Asia on the basis of economic aid and political support for "national democrats." The Afghan army became Soviet supplied and trained; by 1976, a total of 3725 Afghan officers had received Soviet training.³⁰ (That so many have recently deserted is one more testimony that instruction does not ensure political loyalty.) Modern roads were built from Central Asia to Kabul and Kandahar and the Kabul airport also. Newell says the Soviet aid program was generally efficient and unobtrusive.

The Soviets accepted Daud’s removal in 1963 and Daud’s return in 1973 in the Coup that toppled the monarchy and Zahir Shah. In 1975 a major credit of $437 million was extended, equal to about one-fourth of all previous Soviet aid. When the April 1978 coup occurred, Soviet influence was already established. Soviet involvement in the coup is uncertain; Hannah Negaran raises the possibility that Soviet pilots may have flown the planes that tipped the battle against Daud’s forces.³¹

The two Marxist factions which cooperated to overthrow Daud were Khalq (masses) and Parcham (flag). Both groups grew from a common organization founded in early 1965.³² According to Negaran, Khalq is based among Pushtuns, the largest ethnic group, and Parcham among Tadzhiks, the largest minority who share nationality with the Tadzhiks of the Soviet Union. Parcham was stronger among students at Kabul University and among military officers, while Khalq had more rural support.³³ The revolutionary government after the coup was a coalition with Taraki of Khalq as President and Hafizullah Amin, also of Khalq, as foreign minister. Babrak Karmal, Leader of Parcham, became vice president. In the ensuing purge of Parchamis, Karmal was exiled as Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, then recalled. He elected to stay in eastern Europe to return in December 1979 with the Soviet forces.

Soviet advisers operated throughout the Afghan army and the government from the first year of the new regime. Many civilian advisers were Tadzhiks and Uzbeks (also a minority in Afghanistan). The Soviet Central Asians were recalled in summer 1979 as rebellion grew. Strident Marxist secularism and too many Russians bred rebellion in a pattern like that of the 1920s. The September 1979 coup that replaced Taraki with Amin led to even more direct repression and coercion (for example, the village massacre widely reported in the Western press), which accelerated army desertions and the breakdown of administration. As Amin’s army and the Afghan government withered away and Kabul itself became insecure, the decision to invade was taken in Moscow.

Karmal has tried to placate and conciliate as much of the opposition as possible, presenting himself and his Parcham government as more gentle and reasonable. In contrast to Taraki and Amin, who jailed and executed recalcitrant mullahs, Karmal promises religious freedom from persecution. His officials begin speeches with readings from the Koran. Political prisoners were released from Kabul prison in January; the crowds turned the release into an anti-Russian riot. Ethnic out-groups such as the Hazaras of central Afghanistan have been promised more equitable treatment. But such efforts to defuse hostility do not overcome the resistance to the foreign occupation on whose back the Karmal government exists, nor do they create an effective army or administration. As army and administrative cadres continue to defect, they are replaced by Soviets, which worsens the problem. Recreating an Afghan army and administration will take a long time even if open rebellion recedes. Soviet occupation may be accepted and Afghanistan become another Mongolia, with Soviet advisers including Central Asians permeating the government and Soviet soldiers permanently stationed in the country. True legitimacy allowing the Karmal government to survive without a substantial permanent Soviet presence seems out of the question.

Soviet-managed counterinsurgency in Afghanistan is a combination of politics, propaganda, and firepower designed to stabilize the Karmal regime. Its major elements seem to be the following:

• Isolation of the cities from the countryside by military control of urban areas. This seems reasonably well in hand following the suppression of the general strike in Kabul in late February.

• Creation of a political organization to control the population, within the urban and settled areas. The earliest model in Soviet experience is the Red Guards of the Russian revolution; later models are the Ethiopian kebelle, or revolutionary committees organized as armed cells in urban neighborhoods and in villages under party control.

• Disruption of the rural bases of revolt, by tank and helicopter attacks that do not risk heavy casualties to Soviet troops. The Soviets seem to accept that the end of the revolt in rural areas need not come quickly. A strategy of slowly isolating the mujahiddin from settled areas implies a long Soviet stay in Afghanistan but also allows the number of troops, recently estimated at some 85,000 within Afghanistan and another 30,000 on the Afghan-Soviet border, to be kept as low as possible.³⁴ The origins of such a strategy in Russian military history extend even beyond the basmachi campaign to the Russian campaigns against Shamil’s Islamic resistance movement in the Caucasus in the mid-nineteenth century.

• Depopulation, if necessary, of some rural areas and the consequent creation of a refugee population in Pakistan. The rural areas are the bastions of reactionary opposition and one way to eliminate the sixteenth century life-style on which that opposition rests is physically to remove the population before eventual rural resettlement and development. By summer 1980 there were about 600,000 Afghan refugees in Pakistan; 500,000 (largely Pushtuns) in the Northwest Frontier Province and another 100,000 in Baluchistan.³⁵ By late 1980 the number was closer to one million. The refugees may serve as a recruitment base for the guerrillas, but without an effective central guerrilla organization the camps may become centers of political rivalry inhibiting the resistance. Most important, the refugees destabilize Pakistan and thus increase Pakistan’s willingness to come to terms with Soviet Afghanistan and send them home.

• Intensive radio propaganda designed to impose Soviet definitions of reality. The major message is that the rebellion represents American, British, Chinese, and Pakistani aggression, combined with the underlying message that the Soviet Union has won and will impose its will regardless. This basic message can be widely received if constantly repeated.

• Use of Afghans from one area or tribe to repress others. This is, of course, the classical technique of imperial conquest and control.

• Diplomacy to isolate the rebellion from outside support. The propaganda about foreign inspiration for the resistance is one way to do this; any country effectively aiding the rebels will thus confirm the Soviet view. Talks between Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko and India’s Mrs. Indira Gandhi, between the Soviets and the Pakistanis, and the Cuban Foreign Minister’s March 1980 visit to Pakistan and India were all designed to gain Pakistani acceptance of the Karmal regime and the Soviet presence supporting it in return for Soviet and Indian guarantees to Pakistan. Soviet proposals that Ethiopia negotiate with the Eritreans and possible moves toward defusing the potential confrontation in the Yemen may be part of a diplomatic strategy to appease the Saudis and Iraqis and others and divert them from providing encouragement or assistance.

• Containment of disaffection among the Soviet population by minimizing casualties and by focusing public attention on the American grain embargo, the Olympic boycott, and other anti-Soviet acts to put Soviet reaction in the context of national solidarity directed at the West.

How effective will Soviet counterinsurgency be, and how effectively will Soviets be at sealing off major outside aid to the guerrillas? As of mid-April 1980, Drew Middleton reported that approximately 100,000 guerrillas are in the field, that the border with Pakistan cannot be effectively sealed, and that Soviet tactics are roadbound and therefore unable to eliminate the guerrillas.³⁶ One evident conclusion is that the insurgency will he strong and widespread enough to receive effective aid if anyone is willing to provide it and Pakistan is willing to allow the transit of arms.

Who are the insurgents? Those fighting in Afghanistan are called simply mujahiddin, soldiers of Islam. As the case with most insurgencies divisions exist among political exile groups based in Pakistan and between the exile politicians and the guerrilla commanders, although we have little information about the commanders. Among the exile groups, the largest is Hezb i Islami, the Islamic Party, led by Gulbuddin Hakmatyar. Like Karmal, Hakmatyar’s political training came in student politics at Kabul University, but on the other side; Hakmatyar led a successful student movement to oust Parcham and Khalq control of Kabul University student council in 1973.³⁷ Hezb i Islami claims that most of the mujahiddin belong to its movement. In Pakistan, Hezb i Islami is opposed by a coalition of five other groups, of which the strongest is Jamiat Islami, the Islamic Society, led by Burhaniddin Rabanni, also formerly at Kabul University as professor of Islamic law. So far Hakmatyar and Rabanni have been unable to agree on sharing of power between Hezb i Islami and Jamiat Islami and its partners. This division could easily become a pattern of allegiance to different national sources of money and arms or alliance with opposed groups and factions within Pakistan. Rabanni is reported working with the Saudis, while some anti-American statements of Hezb i Islami sound much like Iranian ones. A split between Iranian-supported and Saudi- and Iraqi-supported rebel factions could introduce, and perhaps already has introduced, the fundamental Iranian-Arab conflict within Middle East Islamic politics into the Afghan rebellion.

Islamic Self-Determination,
Soviet Imperialism, and
American Response

In Afghanistan, the increasing Soviet reliance on military means of policy has spilled over into international aggression. While the invasion involves the clash of Soviet and American principles and interests and has changed American perceptions of Soviet policy, the people most affected are the Afghans and their neighbors. Ayatollah Khomeini’s remark that the danger of communist powers is not less than that of America means two things. First, the Soviet threat is recognized in Iran and throughout southwest Asia and the Middle East. Second, the Islamic peoples and their governments want self-determination against any and all outside forces. Thus, one subtle yet crucial distinction for United States policy is between aiding Islamic resistance to Soviet imperialism and uses of American power that ignore interests of Islamic nations.

While the invasion of Afghanistan was probably not part of a preplanned Soviet strategy to control Persian Gulf oil, a stabilized Soviet Afghanistan indeed would be a step in that direction. Should a line be drawn and, if so, where? Lest we become mesmerized by spaces on maps, the obvious point is that any threshold requires cooperative relations with the people who live, and those who rule, in Pakistan, in Iran, and throughout the Arab Middle East. As Iran demonstrates most vividly, these nations may have conflicts with the United States quite apart from the relations of either with the Soviet Union. Be the issue hostages, Pakistani nuclear plans, or the Palestinian question, the United States must decide what is more important than what else.

Afghanistan is now engaged in people’s war against a foreign invasion that has become a brutal counterinsurgency campaign. American principles upholding self-determination imply direct aid to the resistance. Feasibility is another matter. Direct assistance acts to confirm the Soviet claim that the Afghan mujahiddin are merely extensions of "imperialist aggression" against socialism. But lack of effective assistance leaves moot the unspoken Soviet claim that in southwest Asia they are the only ones with the power to control events and the will to make their decisions stick. Will the example of Soviet conquest stiffen Islamic resistance to further imperialist adventures or impel Islamic nations to bend toward the side of superior local power?

Apart from the specific importance of the Middle East and southwest Asia, the invasion of Afghanistan raises a more general question: Under what circumstances, for what reasons, and to what extent will the United States act in support of those resisting Soviet and allied military intervention? The other current cases include Kampuchea, Eritrea, the Somali guerrillas of the Ogaden, and UNITA in Angola. What if armed resistance develops in Poland or elsewhere in Eastern Europe? A coherent policy demands criteria for making these decisions.

Ultimately, United States response depends on perception of Soviet policy and the nature of the Soviet regime. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn argues that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is a united faction so ingrained in its hostility to all other forces, so wedded to the use of coercion, and so impermeable to outside influence that the only choice for any reasonable policy future is to wage war, hot or cold, against it. Soviet power will be used to its limits for repression and expansion, hence the only variable is the strength and will of the forces opposing Soviet communism.³⁸ The other view holds that while Soviet leaders are confirmed Leninists they are relatively rational people, perhaps unfortunately tempted by a recent absence of clear signal concerning détente or the international rules of the game. The Politburo can accept a range of different policies as it evolves from the Brezhnev era (as it must, for Brezhnev and other key figures such as Suslov and Kirilenko will retire; Kosygin now is gone). While the recent trend has been toward an increasingly Russian nationalist and militarist policy,³⁹ Soviet behavior can be altered by what the United States and other nations do.

Evidence including the origins of the invasion of Afghanistan indicates that within basic Leninist precepts Soviet foreign policy is pragmatic in the search for opportunities and reactive to circumstances. It is not necessary to force Soviet communists to renounce Lenin to get them to pursue gains of socialism by means other than military aggression. The aim must be to dissuade the Soviets from their present militarist course.

The photographs were taken by Galen L. Geer, courtesy of Soldier of Fortune magazine.

1. See Secretary Brezhnev’s Report of the CPSU Central Committee: XXVth Congress of the CPSU (Moscow, 1976), pp. 5-41; also N. I. Lebedev and N. M. Nikol’skii, editors, The Foreign Policy of the Soviet Union (Moscow, 1976, in Russian). Brezhnev’s speech and its official exegesis are divided into sections on the Socialist community, national liberation, and relations with the West (détente), with a final section that integrates them as part of "the world revolutionary process.’’

2. "Soviet Geopolitical Momentum: Myth or Menace?" The Defense Monitor, January 1980, provides generally accurate short country surveys and some interesting charts of Soviet influence over time, worldwide. See also Seth Singleton, "Soviet Policy and Socialist Expansion in Asia and Africa," Armed Forces and Society, Spring 1980, pp. 339-69.

3. Soviet publications have begun to acknowledge the shift from anti-imperialism to local conflicts; see, for example, E. Tarabrin, "Africa in a New Round of the Liberation Struggle," World Politics and International Relations, February 1979, p. 36 (in Russian).

4. As the Soviets threatened "hands off Socialist Vietnam!" in radio broadcasts and in the press Pravda said that the Pol Pot government had been overthrown because it was a Chinese-type regime and therefore violated Socialist principles. The author was "Aleksandrov," the name over which Politburo pronouncements appear.

5. "The decisive success in the struggle for freedom and independence which the national liberation movement in Asia and Africa attained were predetermined by the growth of the might of the USSR." Emphasis added. This quotation, from The Foreign Policy of the Soviet Union, p. 101, is representative of many similar statements, usually linked to Cuba, Vietnam, Angola.

6. Soviet General V. F. Samoilenko, in a paper delivered in 1978 entitled "Social Essence of Modern Wars and the Armies," argued that the function of the army in countries "of socialist orientation" is "to oppress organized and nonorganized resistance" of any capitalist or precapitalist group. This would certainly include more than 90 percent of the population of Afghanistan.

7. Boris Ponomarev, "Practical Socialism and Its International Significance," Communist, No. 2, January 1979 (in Russian) provides the CPSU’s authoritative definition of socialist orientation and assistance to it, which emphasizes building a vanguard party and also effective development.

8. Mozambique is a current example. Now that the Zimbabwe war is over, Mozambique may be expected to reduce Cuban and East German presence and concentrate on economic development.

9. Gregory Grossman, "The Domestic Economy," pp. 59-64 in Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies Occasional Paper #38, "The USSR and the Sources of Soviet Policy." Pravda did not publish its annual statistics on the growth in early 1980, perhaps because growth was negative.

10. Samoilenko, "Social Essence of Modern Wars and the Armies," states that " . . . the external function of these armies of countries of socialist orientation . . . is secondly, to render possible military support and help to other peoples struggling for their political independence."

11. Beijing Review, 14 April 1980, pp. 9-10.

12. Brezhnev, Report of the CPSU Central Committee, p. 99.

13. See Amnesty International, Prisoners of Conscience in the USSR: The Treatment and Conditions, second edition, 1980, pp. 21-22.

14. The recent rediscovery of the national question in the Soviet Union by American analysts and the informed public has exaggerated the presumed degree of animosity among the nationalities. Isolated terrorist acts such as the 1978 Moscow subway bombing by an Armenian group may occur but are very infrequent. The now widely reported fact that Tadzhik and Uzbek Soviets cadres were withdrawn from Afghanistan in summer 1979 may have been due more to Afghan resentment of their modernized ethnic compatriots than to sympathy of the Soviets for Afghan resistance.

15. See V. Vorobyev, "Colonialist Policies in Africa," International Affairs, Moscow, September 1978, p. 48.

16. Survival, March-April 1980, pp. 68-69.

17. Robert Trumbull, "Command Chain of Afghan Revolt Is Network of Exiles in Pakistan," New York Times, April 16, 1979, p. A4; Hannah Negaran, "The Afghan Coup of April 1978," Orbis, Spring 1979, p. 103.

18. L. Mironov and G. Polyakov, "Afghanistan: The Beginning of a New Life," International Affairs, Moscow, March 1979, p. 49.

19. G. Apalin, "Peking, the West, and Deténte," International Affairs, February 1979; V. Borisov, "The Foreign Policy Course of Peking," World Economy and International Relations (in Russian), August 1978; E. Litvin and M. Shmelev, "Gamble on the Peking Card," World Economy and International Relations (in Russian), October 1978.

20. "The Contracting Parties declare that neither of them should seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region and that each is opposed to efforts of any other country or group of countries to establish such hegemony." Text in Peking Review, 18 August 1978.

21. Craig Whitney of the New York Times reports that at present Soviet Central Asians are supportive of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, seeing themselves as modernized and different from their backward and reactionary Afghan fellow Moslems, New York Times, April 11, 1980, pp. Al and A6.

22. Baluchis live in Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan Baluchi guerrillas supported from Afghanistan have held out against Pakistani army forays for several years.

23. The Soviets noted U.S. Secretary of Treasury Morgenrhau’s visit during the Chinese-Vietnamese border war in early 1979 and particularly Vice President Mondale’s August 1979 speech in Peking, when Mondale emphasized mutual security interests as the basis for Chinese-American cooperation. Now the United States is beginning military-related sales following Secretary Brown’s visit.

24. The Chinese emphasize a geopolitical interpretation of Soviet activities that they now call a "dumb-bell strategy" directed at China, with the Strait of Malacca joining the Pacific and Indian Oceans. As for Afghanistan:

A Soviet Afghanistan plus a warm-water port on the Indian Ocean would lead to a grip on the Gulf oil supply lane and a crowning military move to outflank Western Europe.

Beijing Review, 25 February 1980, pp. 8-9. Chinese insistence that the goal of the Soviets is domination of Europe and the crude geopolitical interpretations of Soviet acts serve Chinese purposes by encouraging American and European military responses.

25. The CIA estimate is that Soviet oil production will peak in the mid-l980s; Soviet estimates are much more optimistic. CIA, Prospects for Soviet Oil Production, April 1977, and Prospects for Soviet Oil Production: A Supplemental Analysis, July 1977. In 1979 the rate of increase of oil production dropped sharply: New York Times, November 20, 1979, p. Dl.

26. Richard S. Newell, The Politics of Afghanistan (Ithaca and London, 1972), pp. 187-88.

27. Ludwig W. Adamec, Afghanistan's Foreign Affairs to the Mid-Twentieth Century (Tucson, Arizona, 1974), p. 61; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the U.S.S.R, Soviet-Afghan Relations 1919-1969: Documents and Materials, Moscow, 1971, pp. 28-31 contain the text of the treaty (in Russian).

28. Craig Whitney in the New York Times, April 11, 1980, p. A6. Soviet books commemorating Soviet-Afghan friendship emphasize British support to the basmachi; see L. B. Tepliniskii, Fifty Years of Soviet-Afghan Relations 1919-69, Moscow, 1971, pp. 50-52 (in Russian).

29. Adamec, p. 108; also Gunther Nollau and Hans Wiehe, Russia’s South Flank (New York, 1963), p. 103.

30. CIA, Communist Aid to the Less Developed Countries of the Free World, 1976 (Washington, 1977), p. 6.

31. Hannah Negaran, "The Afghan Coup of April 1978: Revolution and International Security," Orbis, Spring 1979, p. 101.

32. Richard Newell, writing before the 1978 coup, notes the key role of Babrak Karmal in the university-based agitation against governmental corruption of 1965. The Politics of Afghanistan, p. 166.

33. Negaran, p. 97.

34. Drew Middleton, New York Times, April 21, 1980, p. A8.

35. The Times (London), March 18, 1980.

36. Drew Middleton, New York Times, April 21, 1980, p. A8.

37. "The Muslims’ Divided Alliance," Far Eastern Economic Review, February 29, 1980, pp. 21-23. See also The Times (London), January 11, February 2, March 3, and March 18, 1980, for discussion of the exile factions.

38. Most recently, see A. Solzhenitsyn, "Misconceptions about Russia Are a Threat to America," Foreign Affairs, Spring 1980. Solzhenitsyn’s views and similar ones are less easy to dismiss in 1980 than in 1970 or 1960.

39. On the Russian nationalist trend, see Alexander Yanov, The Russian New Right, University of California Press, 1977. While Yanov pessimistically predicts a tightening merger of Soviet communism and traditional Russian nationalist authoritarianism, his analysis is that of various social groups and policy positions that may vary in strength.

War is ordained for Muslims who must fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against them. Fighting for the right cause is an act of worship in Islam. It is our religious duty to prepare for defence, acquire weapons, train and willingly accept any challenge. In fact no act of worship can surpass the sacred duty of bearing arms but all this must be done for the sake of Allah. Our wars are not to be fought for loot or plunder but to preserve our way of life and to promote it.

Wing Commander Javaid S. Butt, P.A.F.,
Shaheen, Journal of the Pakistan Air Force
December 1978, p. 11

Francis Seth Singleton (A.B., Harvard College; M.A., Ph.D., Yale University) is professor of politics and government at Ripon College, Wisconsin. He has taught at Yale and as a visitor at the University of Chicago and the University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and has served in the international division of the Budget Bureau, Executive Office of the President. Dr. Singleton has published articles on Soviet and African affairs in Armed Forces and Society, Slavic Review, Pan-African Journal, and other publications and is the author of Africa in Perspective (1968).

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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