Seth Jones - In the Graveyard of Empires - America's War in Afghanistan

In many ways, Babrak Karmal was the antithesis of Taraki. He was born into a wealthy family in a small village outside of Kabul, and his father was a well-connected army general. He attended law school at Kabul University and quickly gained a reputation as an activist in the university’s student union. A Soviet dossier on Karmal hinted that he was sometimes more show than substance. “He is a skilled orator, emotional, and inclined to abstraction to the detriment of a specific analysis,” but he had “a poor grasp of economic issues which interest him at a general level.” 31Karmal became increasingly involved in Marxist political activities, which led to his imprisonment for five years. His pro-Moscow leftist views strengthened while in prison through interaction with several other inmates, such as Mir Muhammad Siddiq Farhang. After his release, he ran for office and was elected to a seat in the lower house of the National Assembly, where he would be a controversial figure for many years. When he died in 1996 at the age of sixty-seven, the Afghan radio station Voice of Sharia summarized his life with little affection: “Babrak Karmal committed all kinds of crimes during his illegitimate rule. God inflicted on him various kinds of hardship and pain. Eventually he died of cancer in a hospital belonging to his paymasters, the Russians.” 32

Violence between the rival factions continued in the fall of 1978, with revolts in rural areas by Islamist opponents of the regime. Taraki conducted mass arrests, tortured prisoners, and held secret executions on a scale Afghanistan had not seen in nearly a century. At a government rally in October 1978 in Kabul, for instance, government leaders unveiled a new Afghan flag, jettisoning the traditional design, which had combined deep black, green, and red. Demonstrating their Marxist pedigree, Afghan leaders unfurled a red flag with a wreath of wheat and a yellow star at the top. Revolts broke out across the country. Pashtun tribesmen in the eastern mountains grabbed their rifles to fight the government, and several areas of the east—such as Kunar Province, the Hindu Kush, and Badakshan Province—became anti-government strongholds. The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan responded with widespread oppression and even more arrests and executions, but soldiers deserted by the thousands and the Afghan Army began to melt away. Concerned by the rising violence, Soviet leaders sent additional KGB agents into Afghanistan. 33

In 1979, the situation grew worse. In February, U.S. Ambassador Adolph Dubs was kidnapped by armed Islamists posing as police. His captors barricaded themselves in a room in the Kabul Hotel and tried to bargain with the Afghan government. After two hours, Afghan security forces stormed the room, and Dubs was killed in the melee. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, lamented that Dubs’s death was “a tragic event which involved either Soviet ineptitude or collusion.” 34The next month, violent demonstrations erupted in Herat. The Afghan Army’s 17th Division, which was ordered to quell the riots, mutinied en masse. As a Top Secret Soviet assessment concluded, the 17th Division “has essentially collapsed. An artillery regiment and one infantry regiment comprising that division have gone over to the side of the insurgents.” The assessment also reported that insurgent leaders were “religious fanatics” motivated by ideology, and it was “under the banner of Islam that the soldiers are turning against the governmen” 35Prime Minister Taraki begged the Soviets for emergency military assistance, and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin promised to send weapons, ammunition, and military advisers. 36

But the Soviets were hesitant to send troops. Kosygin told Taraki: “If our troops were introduced, the situation in your country would not only not improve, but would worsen.” Somewhat ironically, Kosygin noted that the local Afghan population would probably rise up against Soviet forces, as might Afghanistan’s neighbors, such as Pakistan and China, who would receive help from the United States. 37The Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) sent a Top Secret memo to Alexander Puzanov, the Soviet ambassador in Afghanistan, contending that while the deployment of Soviet troops “was considered in much detail,” it “would be used by hostile forces first of all to the detriment of the interests of the [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan]” 38Politburo member and future Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko noted that if the Soviets deployed troops and “beat down the Afghan people then we will be accused of aggression for sure. There’s no getting around it here.” 39

For three days the rebels held Herat, plundering weapons stockpiles and hunting down government officials. Taraki ordered Afghan forces from Kandahar to cordon off the city while he dispatched two armored brigades from Kabul. He then struck parts of Herat and 17th Division headquarters with IL-28 bombers from Shindand Air Base. By the time the rebellion was finally crushed, as many as 5,000 people had died, including one hundred Soviet advisers and their families, whose heads were mounted on poles and paraded around the city by the insurgents. News of the events in Herat accelerated desertions and mutinies in the Afghan military. In May, for example, a motorized column from the 7th Division went over to the rebels in Paktia Province, located along the Pakistan border in eastern Afghanistan. 40

Governance was collapsing in Afghanistan. In June 1979, fearful of an all-out civil war, the Soviet leadership deployed a special detachment of KGB paramilitary officers disguised as service personnel to defend the Soviet Embassy in Kabul. 41Revolts continued, and in September Taraki was summoned to Moscow for consultations. On his return to Kabul, he was arrested by his deputy, Hafizullah Amin, and executed.

Amin, a Pashtun from the town of Paghman, not far from Kabul, had a master’s degree in education from Columbia University in New York. According to his Soviet intelligence dossier, Amin was “marked by great energy, a businesslike nature, a desire to get to the heart of the issue, and firmness in his views and actions. He also has the talent of attracting people to him who have subordinated themselves to his influence.” 42Soviet leaders felt that Amin was too close to the United States, and they believed that Amin wanted a more “balanced policy” with the West. A Top Secret analysis warned Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev: “It is known, in particular, that representatives of the USA, on the basis of their contacts with the Afghans, are coming to a conclusion about the possibility of a change in the political line of Afghanistan in a direction which is pleasing to Washington.” 43A series of KGB reports to the Politburo expressed concern that Amin would likely turn to the Americans for help. 44But CIA officials strongly denied having any such contacts. “It was total nonsense,” said the CIA’s Graham Fuller. “I would have been thrilled to have those kinds of contacts with Amin, but they didn’t exist.” 45

On December 8, 1979, Brezhnev held a meeting in his private office with a narrow circle of senior Politburo members: ideologue Mikhail Suslov, KGB chief Yuri Andropov, Defense Minister Dmitriy Ustinov, and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Andropov and Ustinov expressed grave concerns that the United States was trying to increase its role in Afghanistan and that Pakistan would try to annex Pashtun areas of Afghanistan. By the end of the meeting, the group had tentatively decided to move on two fronts. The first was to have the KGB remove Amin and replace him with Babrak Karmal; the second was to seriously consider sending Soviet troops to Afghanistan to stabilize the country. 46

On December 10, 1979, Ustinov gave an oral order to the General Staff to start preparations for deployment of one division of paratroopers and five divisions of military-transport aviation. He also ordered increased readiness of two motorized rifle divisions in the Turkestan Military District and an increase in the staff of a pontoon regiment. 47Nikolai Ogarkov, chief of the General Staff, was outraged by the decision, responding that the troops would not be able to stabilize the situation and calling the decision “reckless.”