Editing Soviet–Afghan War (section)

== Soviet deployment, 1979 ==
{{Further|History of Afghanistan (1978–1992)}}
[[File:Evstafiev-40th army HQ-Amin-palace-Kabul.jpg|thumb|The headquarters of the [[40th Army (Soviet Union)|Soviet 40th Army]] in [[Tajbeg Palace]], [[Kabul]], 1987. Before the Soviet intervention, the building was the presidential palace, where [[Hafizullah Amin]] was assassinated.]]

The Amin government, having secured a treaty in December 1978 that allowed them to call on Soviet forces, repeatedly requested the introduction of troops in Afghanistan in the spring and summer of 1979. They requested Soviet troops to provide security and to assist in the fight against the mujahideen ("Those engaged in [[jihad]]") rebels. After the [[1979 Herat uprising|killing of Soviet technicians in Herat]] by rioting mobs, the Soviet government sold several [[Mil Mi-24|Mi-24 helicopters]] to the Afghan military. On 14 April 1979, the Afghan government requested that the USSR send 15 to 20 helicopters with their crews to Afghanistan, and on 16 June, the Soviet government responded and sent a detachment of tanks, [[BMP-1|BMPs]], and crews to guard the government in Kabul and to secure the [[Bagram Air Base|Bagram]] and [[Shindand Air Base|Shindand]] air bases. In response to this request, an airborne battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel A. Lomakin, arrived at Bagram on 7 July. They arrived without their combat gear, disguised as technical specialists. They were the personal bodyguards for General Secretary Taraki. The paratroopers were directly subordinate to the senior Soviet military advisor and did not interfere in Afghan politics. Several leading politicians at the time such as [[Alexei Kosygin]] and [[Andrei Gromyko]] were against intervention.

After a month, the Afghan requests were no longer for individual crews and subunits, but for regiments and larger units. In July, the Afghan government requested that two motorized rifle divisions be sent to Afghanistan. The following day, they requested an airborne division in addition to the earlier requests. They repeated these requests and variants to these requests over the following months right up to December 1979. However, the Soviet government was in no hurry to grant them.

{{quote box|align=left|width=30%|quote =We should tell Taraki and Amin to change their tactics. They still continue to execute those people who disagree with them. They are killing nearly all of the [[Parcham]] leaders, not only the highest rank, but of the middle rank, too.<br />– Kosygin speaking at a Politburo session.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Harrison, Selig S. |author2=Cordovez, Diego |title=Out of Afghanistan: the Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal|url=https://archive.org/details/outafghanistanin00cord |url-access=limited |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|year=1995|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/outafghanistanin00cord/page/n48 36]–37|isbn=978-0-19-506294-6}}</ref>}}

Based on information from the [[KGB]], Soviet leaders felt that Prime Minister [[Hafizullah Amin]]'s actions had destabilized the situation in Afghanistan. Following his initial coup against and killing of [[Nur Muhammad Taraki|Taraki]], the KGB station in Kabul warned Moscow that Amin's leadership would lead to "harsh repressions, and as a result, the activation and consolidation of the opposition."<ref>{{cite book|first=Martin|last=Walker|year=1994|title=The Cold War – A History|publisher=Stoddart|location=Toronto, Canada}}</ref>

The Soviets established a special commission on Afghanistan, comprising the [[List of chairmen of the KGB|KGB chairman]] [[Yuri Andropov]], [[Boris Ponomarev]] from the [[Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Central Committee]] and [[Dmitry Ustinov]], the [[Minister of Defence (Soviet Union)|Minister of Defence]]. In late April 1979, the committee reported that Amin was purging his opponents, including Soviet loyalists, that his loyalty to Moscow was in question and that he was seeking diplomatic links with Pakistan and possibly the People's Republic of China (which at the time had [[Sino-Soviet split|poor relations with the Soviet Union]]). Of specific concern were Amin's supposed meetings with the U.S. chargé d'affaires, [[J. Bruce Amstutz]], which were used as a justification for the invasion by the [[Kremlin]].{{sfn|Coll|2004|p=48}}<ref name="auto2">{{cite book|author=James G. Blight|title=Becoming Enemies: U.S.-Iran Relations and the Iran-Iraq War, 1979-1988|publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]] Publishers|year=2012|isbn=978-1-4422-0830-8|page=70}}</ref><ref name="auto1">{{cite book|author=Seth G. Jones|author-link=Seth Jones (political scientist)|title=In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan|url=https://archive.org/details/ingraveyardofemp00jone_0|url-access=registration|publisher=[[W. W. Norton & Company]]|year=2010|isbn=9780393071429|pages=[https://archive.org/details/ingraveyardofemp00jone_0/page/16 16]–17|quote='It was total nonsense,' said the CIA's [[Graham E. Fuller|Graham Fuller]]. 'I would have been thrilled to have those kinds of contacts with Amin, but they didn't exist.'}}</ref>

[[File:SovietafghanwarTanksHelicopters.jpg|thumb|upright|Soviet ground forces in action, supported by [[Mil Mi-24|Mi-24 helicopters]] and [[T-62|T-62 tanks]], while conducting an offensive operation against the Afghan mujahideen in 1984]]

Information forged by the KGB from its agents in Kabul provided the last arguments to eliminate Amin. Supposedly, two of Amin's guards killed the former General Secretary Nur Muhammad Taraki with a pillow, and Amin himself was portrayed as a CIA agent. The latter is widely discredited, with Amin repeatedly demonstrating friendliness toward the various delegates of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and maintaining the pro-Soviet line.<ref name="auto3">{{harvnb|Coll|2004|pp=47–49}}: "Frustrated and hoping to discredit him, the KGB initially planted false stories that Amin was a CIA agent. In the autumn these rumors rebounded on the KGB in a strange case of "[[Blowback (intelligence)|blowback]]," the term used by spies to describe planted propaganda that filters back to confuse the country that first set the story loose."</ref> Soviet General [[Vasily Zaplatin]], a political advisor of [[Premier of the Soviet Union|Premier]] Brezhnev at the time, claimed that four of General Secretary Taraki's ministers were responsible for the destabilization. However, Zaplatin failed to emphasize this in discussions and was not heard.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://zavtra.ru/cgi/veil/data/zavtra/99/316/61.html|title=Генерал-майор Василий Заплатин __ ДО ШТУРМА ДВОРЦА АМИНА|date=21 October 2000|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20001021025053/http://zavtra.ru/cgi/veil/data/zavtra/99/316/61.html|archive-date=21 October 2000}}</ref>

During meetings between General Secretary Taraki and Soviet leaders in March 1979, the Soviets promised political support and to send military equipment and technical specialists, but upon repeated requests by Taraki for direct Soviet intervention, the leadership adamantly opposed him; reasons included that they would be met with "bitter resentment" from the Afghan people, that intervening in another country's civil war would hand a propaganda victory to their opponents, and Afghanistan's overall inconsequential weight in international affairs, in essence realizing they had little to gain by taking over a country with a poor economy, unstable government, and population hostile to outsiders. However, as the situation continued to deteriorate from May–December 1979, Moscow changed its mind on dispatching Soviet troops. The reasons for this complete turnabout are not entirely clear, and several speculative arguments include: the grave internal situation and inability for the Afghan government to retain power much longer; the effects of the [[Iranian Revolution]] that brought an Islamic theocracy into power, leading to fears that religious fanaticism would spread through Afghanistan and into Soviet Muslim Central Asian republics; Taraki's murder and replacement by Amin, who the Soviet leadership believed had secret contacts within the [[Embassy of the United States, Kabul|American embassy in Kabul]] and "was capable of reaching an agreement with the [[United States]]";<ref>[[John K. Cooley]] (2002) ''[[Unholy Wars]]''. [[Pluto Press]]. p. 8. {{ISBN|978-0745319179}}</ref> however, allegations of Amin colluding with the Americans have been widely discredited and it was revealed in the 1990s that the [[KGB]] actually planted the story;<ref name="auto3"/><ref name="auto2"/><ref name="auto1"/> and the deteriorating ties with the United States after [[NATO Double-Track Decision|NATO's two-track missile deployment decision]] in response to Soviet nuclear presence in Eastern Europe and the failure of Congress to ratify the [[SALT II]] treaty, creating the impression that [[détente]] was "already effectively dead."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/e-dossier_4.pdf |title=Documents on the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan e-Dossier No. 4. |date=November 2001 |publisher=Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars |access-date=17 April 2016 |archive-date=7 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160307091927/https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/e-dossier_4.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>

The British journalist Patrick Brogan wrote in 1989: "The simplest explanation is probably the best. They got sucked into Afghanistan much as the United States got sucked into Vietnam, without clearly thinking through the consequences, and wildly underestimating the hostility they would arouse".{{sfn|Brogan|1989|p=122}} By the fall of 1979, the Amin regime was collapsing with morale in the Afghan Army having fallen to rock-bottom levels, while the mujahideen had taken control of much of the countryside. The general consensus amongst Afghan experts at the time was that it was not a question of if, but when the mujahideen would take Kabul.{{sfn|Brogan|1989|p=122}}

In October 1979, a KGB Spetsnaz force ''Zenith'' covertly dispatched a group of specialists to determine the potential reaction from local Afghans to a presence of Soviet troops there. They concluded that deploying troops would be unwise and could lead to war, but this was reportedly ignored by the KGB chairman [[Yuri Andropov]]. A Spetsnaz [[15th Independent Special Forces Brigade|battalion of Central Asian troops]], dressed in Afghan Army uniforms, was covertly deployed to Kabul between 9 and 12 November 1979. They moved a few days later to the [[Tajbeg Palace]], where Amin was moving to.<ref name="nsarchive2.gwu.edu" />

In Moscow, [[Leonid Brezhnev]] was indecisive and waffled as he usually did when faced with a difficult decision.{{sfn|Gompert|Binnendijk|Lin|2014|p=136}} The three decision-makers in Moscow who pressed the hardest for an invasion in the fall of 1979 were the troika consisting of Foreign Minister [[Andrei Gromyko]]; the Chairman of KGB, [[Yuri Andropov]], and the Defense Minister Marshal [[Dmitry Ustinov]].{{sfn|Gompert|Binnendijk|Lin|2014|p=136}} The principal reasons for the invasion were the belief in Moscow that Amin was a leader both incompetent and fanatical who had lost control of the situation, together with the belief that it was the United States via Pakistan who was sponsoring the Islamist insurgency in Afghanistan.{{sfn|Gompert|Binnendijk|Lin|2014|p=136}} Andropov, Gromyko and Ustinov all argued that if a radical Islamist regime came to power in Kabul, it would attempt to sponsor radical Islam in [[Soviet Central Asia]], thereby requiring a preemptive strike.{{sfn|Gompert|Binnendijk|Lin|2014|p=136}} What was envisioned in the fall of 1979 was a short intervention under which Moscow would replace radical Khalqi Communist Amin with the moderate Parchami Communist [[Babrak Karmal]] to stabilize the situation.{{sfn|Gompert|Binnendijk|Lin|2014|p=136}} Contrary to the contemporary view of Brzezinski and the regional powers, access to the Persian Gulf played no role in the decision to intervene on the Soviet side.<ref>{{cite book |last=Zubok |first=Vladislav M. |author-link=Vladislav Zubok |date=2009 |title=A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3j2VJj1hs1EC&pg=PA228 |location=Chapel Hill (NC) |publisher=The University of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-0-8078-5958-2 |page=228}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/afghanistan-russia-programs/2019-01-29/soviet-invasion-afghanistan-1979-not-trumps-terrorists-nor-zbigs-warm-water-ports |title=The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, 1979: Not Trump's Terrorists, Nor Zbig's Warm Water Ports |date=29 January 2019 |editor-last1=Blanton |editor-first1=Tom |editor-last2=Savranskaya |editor-first2=Svetlana |publisher=Narional Security Archive |access-date=8 January 2022}}</ref>

The concerns raised by the Chief of the Soviet Army General Staff, Marshal [[Nikolai Ogarkov]] who warned about the possibility of a protracted guerrilla war, were dismissed by the troika who insisted that any occupation of Afghanistan would be short and relatively painless.{{sfn|Gompert|Binnendijk|Lin|2014|p=136}} Most notably, though the diplomats of the [[Narkomindel]] at the Embassy in Kabul and the KGB officers stationed in Afghanistan were well informed about the developments in that country, such information rarely filtered through to the decision-makers in Moscow who viewed Afghanistan more in the context of the Cold War rather than understanding Afghanistan as a subject in its own right.{{sfn|Gompert|Binnendijk|Lin|2014|pp=131–132}} The viewpoint that it was the United States that was fomenting the Islamic insurgency in Afghanistan with the aim of destabilizing Soviet-dominated Central Asia tended to downplay the effects of an unpopular Communist government pursuing policies that the majority of Afghans violently disliked as a generator of the insurgency and strengthened those who argued some sort of Soviet response was required to a supposed "outrageous American provocation."{{sfn|Gompert|Binnendijk|Lin|2014|pp=131–132}} It was assumed in Moscow that because Pakistan (an ally of both the United States and China) was supporting the ''mujahideen'' that therefore it was ultimately the United States and China who were behind the rebellion in Afghanistan.

Amin's revolutionary government had lost credibility with virtually all of the Afghan population. A combination of chaotic administration, excessive brutality from the secret police, unpopular domestic reforms, and a deteriorating economy, along with public perceptions that the state was atheistic and anti-Islamic, all added to the government's unpopularity. After 20 months of Khalqist rule, the country deteriorated in almost every facet of life. The Soviet Union believed that without intervention, Amin's government would have been disintegrated by the resistance and the country would have been "lost" to a regime most likely hostile to the USSR.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a187795.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190527052404/https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a187795.pdf |url-status=live |archive-date=27 May 2019 |title=Afghanistan: The First Five Years of Soviet Occupation |last=Amstutz |first=J. Bruce |date=1986 |publisher=National Defense University |location=Washington, D.C.}}{{page needed|date=December 2021}}</ref>