A History of Afghanistan from 1973 to 1989

Afghanistan has always been known for being on the cutting edge of military technology

Afghanistan has, since the 1980's when Operation Cyclone began, been a series of American policy failures committed by the Reagan, Bush Senior, Clinton, Bush Junior, and, most recently, Obama administrations--the failures on the parts of the first three led to the September 11th attacks, whereas the failures of the latter two have led us to a questionable future for joint Afghan and American security.

Therefore, I have decided to start on the first post of a saga dedicated to the very unique situation of Afghanistan: A History of Afghanistan from 1973 to 1989, History of Afghanistan from 1989 to September 11th, 2001, Analyzing the Failures of the Afghan War from 2001 to Today, and Creating a Viable Post-2014 Afghan Strategy. Remember, I am NOT an expert on Afghanistan, and I would suggest you read some kind of book on the history of Afghanistan if given the chance. With that said, enjoy.

Lead Up to the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979

Most Americans know little about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, even fewer know about the events preceding the Soviet intrusion (or, depending on how you look at it, intervention), and a very minuscule amount know about anything before that.

Basically, for a very, very, very long time, Afghanistan was united under a monarch--that is, a king. Yes, Afghanistan had a royal family. In fact, it still has one today (in a sense; I attached a link to the current head of Barakzai House below). Actually, before the United States established a new Afghan government after the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, we seek'd out and received the graces of the previously exiled ruler, King Zahir Shah (1914-2007), whom we viewed as the official head of the Afghan state at the time. What happened, though? How was he exiled, and why?

In the summer of 1973, King Zahir Shah was enjoying the luxury of, well, being the head of the Afghan state. While playing a friendly game of volleyball, Zahir was accidentally hit in the eye, requiring him to be flown into London to receive treatment for the subsequent eye hemorrhage. After the operation was complete, Zahir decided to take a well deserved vacation. While the recovering monarch was in Italy, Daoud Khan, the former Prime Minister of Afghanistan and retired military officer, took advantage of the King's leave of absence to painlessly overthrow the regime in a bloodless coup after receiving the backing of the Afghan Army.

Over the next 5 years, the situation of Afghanistan deteriorated quickly. Daoud tried to maintain the government as a strong, central force that efficiently ran the country. Unfortunatrely for Daoud, though, his efforts produced few fruits. The very basis of the Afghan government for 50 years before Daoud was one that was Pashtun led. His coup shook the very foundations of the political structure of the entire country. Government relies on the people respecting authority (either through fear or admiration), which Daoud was unable to create in the unstable political climate of the country.

In April 1978, Daoud's luck ran out when a famous Communist leader, Mir Akbar Khyber, was assassinated by government forces. In response, over 15,000 activists attended Mir's funeral, protesting and demanding justice for his death. Daoud responded in the worst way possible: by infuriating even more people. Afraid, he began to round up various leaders within communist communities, inciting even further outrage.

In response to all this, a small corp of Army and Air Force officers organized the second coup of the decade (called the Saur Revolution), this time with more blood. During the short rebellion, Daoud was killed, and the military handed control of the country to the Revolutionary Council headed by Nur Mohammad Taraki on April 30th. Taraki's first decree was reestablishing the government as the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Alas, another communist country now graced the earth, and the Afghan people lived happily ever after, united by a picture of Lenin in every of home.

If only.

Moscow responded to this change in power by sending the fledging communist government a myriad of various weapons: AK-47s, pistols, Armored Personnel Carriers, etc. The overall goal of the Kremlin was to stabilize the internal situation within Afghanistan by giving the D.R.A. the proper tools and resources to maintain control. However, factional warfare become widespread, and Taraki began utilizing military forces to brutally crush revolts, conduct mass arrests, torture civilians, and preform executions on a colossal level (Hm, looks like he really got the Commie thing down pat, huh?). One by one, the Kunar Province, Hindu Kush, and Badakshan Province became fortresses for anti-government Pashtun fighters unhappy with the change in the status quo.

As security continued to deteriorate, Afghanistan soon became a hellish place; even for those that lived behind the physical and figurative walls of immunity: Ambassadors. In 1979, Adolph Dubs, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan was captured by Islamic militants and killed after a botched attempt by Afghan policemen to rescue the diplomat.

Finally, after the 17th Afghan Division, sent to contain a series of violent demonstrations in Herat, became nonexistent in all but name due to mass desertions, Taraki pleaded with the U.S.S.R. for military assistance. The Soviets responded by promising weapons and military advisors to be sent into the country.

The Soviet War in Afghanistan

Damn camels.

While Soviet officials were mulling over a possible intervention staged by military forces, the situation in Herat continued to spiral downwards. Rebels had seized control of the city, and began a brutish hunt for government officials and weapons stockpiles. When Afghan Army finally managed to secure the city again after 3 days of brutal fighting, casualties on all sides had neared the 5,000 mark.

In September, Taraki was arrested and summarily executed by Hafizullah Amin, an Afghan politician. Amin subsequently rose to power as the new Afghani President. Unfortunately for him, the tenure wouldn't last long. Previously, Soviet Union had made it publicly aware that they did not wish to see Amin lead Afghanistan through Pravda (the official government newspaper). While in private, Russian officials agree'd that he was too lenient towards the west, and believed (very incorrectly) that he had contacts with the C.I.A. The distrust finally came to an epitaph when, after weeks of deliberation, the Soviet Union finally sent an intervening force to Afghanistan on Christmas Eve of 1979.

By December 27th, 50,000 Russian troops were in the Afghanistan theater of war. The proverbial snowball accumulated fast and took down all who stood in the disgruntled bear's way. KGB special forces infiltrated and then attacked the Afghan presidential palace, killing Amin. Quickly, the Soviet Union put in place Brabrak Karamal to lead the government, who addressed the nation shortly after Amin was killed via radio.

Moscow and Kabul initially tried to unite the Afghan peoples, and win their alligience through deeds of goodwill. Karamal released thousands of political prisoners who were unfairly arrested by Taraki and Daoud, restored the religiously significant green stripe to the Afghan flag, appointed non party members to government, and swore alliegence to Islam. However, Soviet and D.R.A. attempts at forging unity and implementing a long term state building plan were futile in effort. U.S. intelligence officials concluded the Afghan government and its people were separated by "a vast [cultural and a geographic] gulf" Worse, economic conditions in the country quickly attenuated after the Soviet invasion.

For me, I think the aspect that most people ignore while studying this war is the economic conditions that fermented under the Soviet watch. Absolutely no successful efforts were made to foster economic vitality in the infant government, resulting in the stunting of the Afghan economy. Major demographic movements (brought on by violence in the rural areas) harmed agricultural markets and supply when many former farmers moved to the cities. The healthcare system was overburdened, resulting in high rates of sickness to occur. And, to make matters even worse, skilled laborers and academics quickly left the country en masse to protect themselves and their families.

While the social and economic situations in the country continued to degrade, the Soviets began implementing their security plan to improve to ability of the Afghan government to establish and maintain control. The plan was modeled off the Soviet's recipe for success in the realm of domestic surpression: to create a strong military force, and a robust secret police corps.

Much like ISAF forces today, the Soviets dealt with a local military that was plagued by factionalism and low morale, creating an inefficiency that prevented the army from being an operationally capable force. The largest loss of manpower wasn't even from combat most of the time, it was from desertion. Each year, the Afghan military lost 20,000 soldiers to desertion. According to the head of the Afghan Beurea for ISI (Pakistani intelligence services, basically), the Soviets were relying on an indeginious army that had to lock their soldiers in to prevent them from deserting. By the mid 80's, the Afghan Army was a hollowed force, standing at a mere 30,000 out of their original 90,000 soldiers.

The failures of Afghanistan's army to properly deal with the muhjideen problem prompted a military surge by Russian commanders in 1980. Soviet forces flooded into major cities to establish control over the troubled country. However, stabilization was not the end result. Instead, it began what is considered to be the most successful insurgency in modern times.

The Soviets managed to secure major Afghan cities, creating a safe haven for Afghan and Russian soldiers. However, the Soviet Union failed in creating a secure environment around the more rural. Areas, even after 2 years of fighting, the D.R.A. controlled less than 15% of rural territory (remember that large "gulf" U.S. analysts were talking about?).

The Soviets struggled to even militarily control these rural areas, with military "success" generally coming the machine guns of an Mi-24. Helicopters are incapable of controlling ground, for that, you need ground soldiers. However, Soviet incursions into these areas were oftentimes meet with humiliating defeat. For example, Soviet commanders longed tried to control the Panjshir Valley, but every attempt to go in a wrestle control from the "Lion of the Panjshir" (aka Ahmed Massoud) ended in a long line of smoldering armored vehicles and dead soldiers.

The Mujihideen was finding itself increasingly victorious against their Communist foes, a fact that always strike'd me as interesting. The Mujihideen wasn't necessarily a singular, cohesive movement. Rather, it was a loose conglomerate of 7 major parties (nicknamed the Peshawar Seven) that mostly dispised each other. Unfortunately for the Soviet Union, the one thing they hated more than each other were the Russian aggressors that had invaded their homeland (or, for many members who were foreign born, their muslim brother's homeland). Of course, a majority of this military victory was spurred by the continuous supply flooding in from Pakistan and the United States.

For Pakistan, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan was apart of what they viewed as a much larger plan to establish another sphere of regional control. The ISI General Akhtar Khan told Pakistani president Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq that Afghanistan was the stepping stone towards invading his precious country. Moved by the existential prophecy of destruction, Zia-ul-Haq authorized a massive expansion of the ISI and allowed them to launch a variety of cover operations into Afghanistan. Special Paki teams swarmed the country, covertly supply, training, and aiding the Mujihideen in their ongoing struggle against their unholy foe.

Primarily, the Mujihideen's "holy" struggle relied on two tactics. The first of which was the raid, and the second of which was the ambush. The guerrilla strategy of "Death by a thousand cuts", as Mohammad Yousaf called it, was the only way for an ill trained and equipped group of Afghan tribesman to defeat the Eurasian superpower. Trained primarily for a conventional war against NATO, Soviet conscripts were extremely vulnerable to frequent and deadly attacks by the Afghan "ghosts".

The Soviet's overall strategy in the embattled country hinged on military might, which was extremely inefficient and ineffective. The majority of military analysts now say that in order for the Soviets to have had even a remote chance of military victory against the Mujihideen, they would have needed more than 300,000 soldiers actively conducting operations.

Further stacking the cards against the Soviet Union were the victories made by the Mujihideen in gathering popular support in the local areas. Soviet commanders continued to alienate the local population, failing to ever win even the remotest amounts of support. Arguably, this was the greatest failure of the Soviet military, as they failed to recognize the overall question of an insurgency: "Who deserves to have political rule?" Insurgents rely heavily on local support in order to sufficiently operate, to take away this support is to remove their operational lifeline.

If the Soviets were to have taken anything from the experiences of the United States in Vietnam, it should have been the strategy employed by the United States Marine Corps to undermine the Viet Cong early on into the war. In order to weaken the hold the V.C. had on South Vietnamese villages, commanders placed in every village a Marine squad to erect and support a local village fighting for to counter V.C. in the area. Of course, in order to do that, one must first when over these communities, which is easier said than done. However, attempting to improve economic conditions and refraining from killing Afghans and/or their property en masse would have been a good start.

In 1985, the United States, thanks to the eccentric Charlie Wilson, increased its support of the Mujihideen to $250,000,000 in military equipment, with most influential of this support coming from the infamous Stinger missile. The FIM-92 Stinger missile undermined the only thing the Soviets had going for them: air support.  Equipped with large amounts of these anti air weapons, the Mujihideen was able to adequately fight the deadly Hinds with devastating effectiveness.

Well armed by Pakistani and U.S. agencies, the Peshawar Seven became a very slow bleed on the Soviet economy. Very limited resources were pooled together and sent towards winning the losing fight in Afghanistan, leaving empty shelves of food and other essential goods for citizens back in the Motherland. Finally, in 1988, the Soviet Union began a massive pull out of Afghanistan, with all forces withdrawn by February of 1989. Of course, the vicious Afghan fighters never gave the Soviets the benefit of the doubt, launching continual attacks on Soviet forces as they withdrew from the country, inflicting upwards to over 500 killed in action on Russian forces.

I want to point out a reoccurring theme in all of these escapades by both internal and external forces in the country: the attempt to create a central government that successfully exerted control over all corners of the country. The basis of an Afghan government that's successful, in my opinion, is one that accepts the realistic condition of warlordism in the tribal areas and Southern Afghanistan. In other words, the Afghan government must convince various tribal chiefs and warlords to align themselves to the Afghani government in exchange for money and semi-autonomy. But more on that later.

- Tom

Sources
 In the Graveyard of Empires by Seth Green
 Afghanistan: An Entire Military History from Alexander the Great to the Taliban by Stephan Tanner
Various websites that I will link to later