The World Was Going Our Way

by Christopher Andrew

  The report submitted to the Politburo, ‘On the Events in Afghanistan on 27 and 28 December 1979’, by its Afghanistan Commission (Andropov, Ustinov, Gromyko and Ponomarev) on 31 December was so disingenuous that it effectively amounted to an active measure designed to mislead the rest of the Soviet leadership about the harsh reality of the Afghan situation. Probably composed chiefly for Brezhnev’s benefit, the report maintained the fiction that the assassination of Amin had been chiefly the work of the Afghans themselves rather than KGB special forces:

  On the wave of patriotic feelings which had overcome fairly broad sections of the Afghan population following the introduction of Soviet troops which was carried out in strict accordance with the Soviet-Afghan treaty of 1978, the forces opposed to H. Amin carried out an armed attack during the night of 27 to 28 December which ended in the overthrow of the regime of H. Amin. This attack was widely supported by the working masses, the intelligentsia, a considerable part of the Afghan army and the state apparatus which welcomed the establishment of the new leadership of the DRA [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan] and the PDPA.1

  The reality was starkly different. So far from receiving widespread support from both working masses and intelligentsia, the Soviet invasion provoked immediate opposition. Demonstrations against the presence of Soviet troops began in Kandahar on 3 1 December.2 The Afghanistan Commission also gave the Politburo an extraordinarily optimistic assessment of the prospects for the new Babrak Karmal government:

  Babrak can be described as one of the best-trained leaders of the PDPA theoretically. He is able to take a sober and objective view of the situation in Afghanistan. He has always been noted for his sincere goodwill towards the Soviet Union and is held in great respect in the Party and throughout the country. In this light it is possible to be sure that the new leadership of the DRA will be able to find an effective way to stabilize completely the situation in the country.3

  If, after the Afghan turmoil of the preceding twenty months, Andropov and his colleagues seriously supposed that the Karmal regime had the capacity ‘to stabilize completely the situation’, they were living in a fantasy world. That, however, was where Brezhnev preferred to live. The Afghanistan Commission, he declared, ‘did its work well’. At his proposal, the Politburo agreed that the Commission should ‘continue its work in the same spirit as it conducted it up until now’ and ‘submit to the Politburo issues which require a decision’.4

  The Centre’s confidence in Karmal’s ‘sincere goodwill towards the Soviet Union’ derived chiefly from his long career as a KGB agent. His mood on taking power appeared reassuringly sycophantic. He asked senior KGB officers in Kabul to assure Comrade Andropov that, as Afghan President, he would unswervingly follow his advice. Karmal was fulsome in his praise for the heroism shown by the KGB special forces who had stormed the Darulaman Palace and other Soviet troops: ‘As soon as we have decorations of our own, we would like to bestow them on all the Soviet troops and Chekists [KGB officers] who took part in the fighting. We hope that the government of the USSR will award orders to these comrades.’

  Babrak called for the ‘severest punishment’ of Amin’s former associates and the execution of those responsible for the deaths of Soviet troops. He also requested the installation of direct telephone lines to connect him not merely with Brezhnev but also with the four members of the Politburo’s Afghanistan Commission (Andropov, Ustinov, Gromyko and Ponomarev) and Kryuchkov.5 Ponomarev informed the Politburo, ‘Babrak Karmal listens very attentively to the advice of our comrades. The leadership of the [Afghan] Party now has a backbone.’6

  At the beginning of February 1980 Andropov visited Kabul for talks with Karmal and the main members of his regime. It is clear from the tone of his report to the Politburo on his return that Andropov consistently talked down to his fraternal Party comrades: ‘. . . I stressed . . . the necessity of a quick correction of all the shortcomings and mistakes which had been tolerated earlier . . . I particularly pointed to the correct distribution of his responsibilities by every comrade.’ Encouraged by the obsequious tone of the Afghan comrades, Andropov returned in optimistic mood:

  First of all, it is necessary to note directly that the situation in Afghanistan is stabilizing now. This is evident from all the data. In the conversation which I had with Com[rade] Karmal, he cited in great detail what has been done in the month since the removal of Amin from power. Although the situation in the country does continue to be complex, and demands the most urgent and pressing measures aimed at its stabilization, the main thing is that now the leadership of Afghanistan understands its fundamental tasks and is doing everything possible so that the situation really does stabilize.

  Since Andropov did not doubt that he had correctly identified the measures required ‘to liquidate the contradictions which had arisen within the [Afghan] Party and in the country’, it only remained for the Karmal regime to implement these measures. Andropov was ideologically incapable of grasping the fundamental obstacles which stood in the way of the imposition of a Communist regime with very little support on a large, staunchly Muslim state. Ustinov’s comments on Andropov’s report to the Politburo were notably less optimistic. It would, he said, take at least a year, perhaps a year and a half, for the situation in Afghanistan to stabilize.7

  Andropov’s extraordinary misjudgement on the pace of ‘stabilization’ in Afghanistan was quickly exposed by events in Kabul. From 20 to 23 February, only a fortnight after Andropov’s report to the Politburo, there were mass anti-Soviet demonstrations in the capital. Martial law was declared and over 2,000 Soviet troops, more than 1,000 Afghan troops, 73 tanks, 240 personnel carriers (mostly armed) and 207 sorties by Soviet and Afghan aircraft flying low over the city and its environs to intimidate the population were required to restore order. The KGB reported that over 900 demonstrators were arrested.8 According to other reports, hundreds of demonstrators were killed and thousands arrested (and later executed).9

  The Kabul demonstration and mujahideen attacks elsewhere in the country finally destroyed the illusion that Soviet troops would have to do no more than garrison major cities and provide logistical support while Afghan government troops mopped up local pockets of resistance to the Karmal regime. Most of the countryside, it now recognized, was in the hands of the rebels.10 In March the Soviet general staff ordered Marshal Sergei Sokolov, who had commanded the invasion forces, to ‘commence joint operations with [the Afghan army] with the mission of eliminating armed bands of the opposition . . .’ Soviet forces were not equipped for the war which awaited them. They had been trained to fight a modern enemy who would take up defensive positions on the northern European plain. The mujahideen, however, declined to dig in and wait to be attacked by Soviet artillery. Not merely were Soviet forces untrained for the problems of fighting Afghan guerrillas; the general staff had barely studied even their own experience of irregular warfare in the Second World War or against post-war Ukrainian and Baltic partisans - let alone the experience of foreign forces. Boots suitable for mountain combat, like clothing and sleeping bags for winter warfare in temperatures as low as minus 30° centigrade, were in short supply. The most prized trophy of war for a Soviet soldier was to capture a Western-manufactured mujahideen sleeping bag which, unlike his own, was warm, waterproof and lightweight. Though Soviet military equipment improved in the course of the war, health care remained primitive. Eight times as many soldiers died from infectious diseases as died in hospital while being treated for combat wounds. Over 40 per cent of those who served in Afghanistan contracted viral hepatitis.11 There were numerous cases also of addiction to easily available opium-based drugs.

  The reluctant recognition in March 1980 that the Soviet Union was at war was a major personal embarrassment for the previously rashly optimistic Afghanistan Commission of the Politburo and, in particular, for Andropov, who only the month before had insisted that all available intelligence demonstrated that ‘the situation in Afghanistan is stabilizing now’. The Commission repor
t on 7 April made no mention of its earlier errors of judgement. Instead it resorted to specious self-justification. Events since Soviet military intervention had, the Commission insisted, confirmed ‘our assessment that this was a timely and correct action’. The Babrak Karmal regime, ‘with comprehensive assistance from the Soviet Union’, had ‘in general correctly outlined the tasks’ confronting it. As a result of Soviet and Afghan military operations, ‘the counter-revolutionary forces would probably be unable to carry out any large-scale military actions’ and engage instead in ‘terrorist acts and small group actions’ - though there remained the possibility of ‘massive uprisings’ in some parts of the country. Though the Commission did not explicitly disavow its earlier confident assertion ‘that the new leadership of the DRA will be able to find an effective way to stabilize completely the situation in the country’, it acknowledged that no solution was yet in sight:

  The situation in Afghanistan remains complicated and tense. The class struggle, represented in armed counter-revolutionary insurrections, encouraged and actively supported from abroad, is occurring in circumstances where a genuine unity of the PDPA is still absent, where the state and Party apparatus is weak in terms of organization and ideology, which is reflected in the practical non-existence of local government organs, where financial and economic difficulties are mounting, and where the combat readiness of the Afghan armed forces and the people’s militia is still insufficient.

  The Commission could not bring itself to mention the glaring personal weaknesses of Babrak Karmal, whom it had eulogized only three months earlier.12

  The Kabul residency reported that Karmal had developed an absurd sense of self-importance, claiming to be a major world statesman of even greater stature than Fidel Castro. Yet, at the same time, Karmal was plagued with self-doubt, found it difficult to take decisions and had begun to drink heavily. The KGB also disapproved of the fact that Karmal had made Anahita Ratebzad (the only female member of the Politburo), with whom it believed was having an affair, Minister of Education. Nepotism and favouritism towards friends and relations were, it reported, rife within the Party leadership. The Interior Minister, Sayed Gulabzoy, a long-serving KGB agent, expressed surprise to the Kabul residency that Karmal’s Soviet advisers seemed unwilling to criticize to his face either his alcoholism or his poor performance as Party leader. As the months passed, Karmal made less and less pretence of seeking to reconcile his Parcham faction of the PDPA with the Khalq. He complained to his Soviet advisers: ‘As long as you keep my hands bound and do not let me deal with the Khalq faction, there will be no unity in the PDPA and the government cannot become strong. There can be no organic unity as long as there are Khalqists in the Party. They tortured and killed us. They still hate us. They are the enemies of unity!’

  While in Moscow for medical treatment in December 1980, Niyaz Muhammad, the head of the economic department of the PDPA Central Committee, told the KGB that all Afghan officials had been instructed to assure their Soviet advisers that Party unity had been achieved and that Khalq supporters had been punished for revealing the persistence of chronic divisions. Muhammad gave a damning account of the nepotism and incompetence of the Karmal regime: ‘Government positions are given to friends. The people do not support the Party at all. The leadership thinks that the USSR will solve all the economic and military problems. All they can think about are motor cars, positions and amusements.’13

  The KGB’s main immediate responsibility in Afghanistan after the installation of the Karmal regime was the creation of a new Afghan security service, Khedamat-e Etala’at-e Dawlati (KHAD), to replace Amin’s bloodthirsty secret police. KHAD was trained, organized and largely financed by the KGB.14 In January 1980 the KGB selected as head of KHAD the energetic, brutal thirty-two-year-old Muhammad Najibullah, a man capable of intimidating opponents by his mere physical presence. Codenamed POTOMOK, he had probably previously been recruited as a KGB agent.15 Embarrassed by the reference to Allah in his surname, Najibullah asked to be known instead as ‘Comrade Najib’. Karmal gave a public assurance that KHAD, unlike its predecessor, would not ‘strangle, pressure or torture the people’:

  On the contrary there will be established within the government framework an intelligence service to protect democratic freedoms, national independence and sovereignty, the interests of the revolution, the people and the state, as well as to neutralize under PDPA [Communist Party] leadership the plots hatched by external enemies of Afghanistan.

  KHAD, however, proved even more brutal than its predecessor. In the cruel conditions of an unwinnable counter-insurgency war, the KGB revived on Afghan soil some of the horrors of its Stalinist past.16 Amnesty International assembled evidence of ‘widespread and systematic torture of men, women and children’. A common theme in its reports was the presence of Soviet advisers directing the interrogations, much as they had done during the Stalinist purges in eastern Europe a generation earlier.17 Najibullah sometimes executed prisoners himself. His preferred method, according to survivors of his prisons, was to beat his victims to the ground, then kick them to death.18

  As well as taking responsibility for Afghan security and intelligence, the KGB also played a direct part in the war through its special forces - especially the KASKAD (‘Cascade’) units, each of 145 men, set up to locate, penetrate and destabilize the mujahideen.19 Probably their most successful tactic was to form bogus mujahideen groups, sometimes by persuading enemy commanders to change sides, and then to use them to ambush genuine mujahideen forces. Early in 1981, for example, a Cascade unit in Herat province made contact through agents with Khoja Shir-Aga Chungara, the Tajik leader of a 250-man enemy force which controlled forty-eight villages and important lines of communication. KGB officers from the unit went unarmed to a meeting with Chungara (henceforth codenamed ABAY) and persuaded him to take up arms against his former associates. Thereafter, Chungara ‘diligently carried out all KGB instructions’, taking part in twenty-one major joint operations with Cascade units and independently carrying out forty ambushes and killing thirty-one mujahideen commanders. Chungara’s forces increased to almost 900 and, in his first two years of collaboration with the KGB, were credited with killing 20,500 ‘enemy’ Afghans. In 1982 Cascade units succeeded in turning round four other mujahideen groups, who operated in ways similar to Chungara.20 By the beginning of 1983 there were eighty-six of what the KGB called ‘false bands’ operating in Afghanistan, posing as mujahideen and disrupting the operations of the genuine resistance movement.21 Some of the clashes between mujahideen which paved the way for the far more serious internecine warfare of the 1990s were generated by the KGB.

  The long drawn-out Afghan War rescued Department 8 (Special Actions) of FCD Directorate S from the doldrums in which it had languished for most of the 1970s. In 1982 its Special Operations Training School at Balashikha set up a ‘Training Centre for Afghanistan’, headed by V. I. Kikot, previously a Line F officer in Havana, who was well informed on Cuban methods of irregular warfare. Department 8 also made a detailed study of methods used by Palestinian guerrillas and terrorists against Israeli targets as well as by the Israelis against Palestinian bases in Lebanon.22 Balashikha made a significant, though unquantifiable, contribution to devising methods of terrorizing the Afghan civilian population - among them incendiary bombs, napalm, poison gas, miniature mines scattered from the air, and booby-trapped toys which were designed to maim the children who picked them up and so demoralize their parents.

  A country riven at the best of times by ethnic and regional rivalry, enduring wartime conditions so terrible that several million of its inhabitants were forced to leave their homes and seek a miserable refuge abroad, was ideal terrain for Service A’s well-practised techniques for stirring up mutual suspicion. In addition to using the Cascade units, the Centre exacerbated divisions within the mujahideen with the help of agents who were able, at least intermittently, to penetrate their bases inside Pakistan.23 At the end of 1980 a forged letter from a member of Gulbuddi
n Hekmatyar’s Hizb-i-Islami left in the headquarters of a rival mujahideen leader, Muhammad Nabi Muhammadi, by an agent either of the KGB or its KHAD surrogate warned Muhammadi that Hekmatyar was planning to get rid of him. Simultaneously, bogus pamphlets by Muhammadi denouncing Hekmatyar were distributed in Afghan refugee camps in the Peshawar region. Among other Service A forgeries were copies of an apparently compromising letter by Hekmatyar which were distributed to both the Pakistani authorities and other mujahideen leaders.24 Though the bitter divisions among the seven main mujahideen groups were not its own creation, the KGB undoubtedly made them more severe. Hekmatyar, in particular, was so prone to attack his rivals that some US intelligence analysts wondered if he might be on the Soviet payroll.25 Even Zia ul-Haq, his main backer, once ordered the ISI to warn Hekmatyar - to no discernible effect - ‘that it was Pakistan who made him an Afghan leader, and it is Pakistan who can equally destroy him if he continues to misbehave’.26

  The KGB’s numerous tactical successes in disrupting mujahideen operations, however, could not disguise the fact that, overall, the war was going badly. The Afghan forces, which Brezhnev had been told before the Soviet invasion would bear the main brunt of the brief and victorious struggle to establish the authority of Babrak Karmal, became a liability. According to KGB statistics, 17,000 Afghans had deserted within four months of the Soviet invasion. There were another 30,000 desertions during 1981 and at least as many again in 1982. The Karmal government itself sometimes felt humiliated by the performance of its troops. One KGB report described the outraged reaction of the Afghan Defence Minister, Muhammad Rafi, when he inspected the 11th Division in February 1981, accompanied by the deputy chief Soviet military adviser, V. P. Cheremnykh. While inspecting a barracks, Rafi picked up a dirty blanket from one of the beds and told the commander of the regiment, Muhammad Nadir, that he would personally ram it down his throat unless he established order among his troops. As the inspection continued Rafi completely lost his temper, struck Nadir and ordered him to be tied up and imprisoned in a doubtless filthy latrine until 4 o’clock in the morning, when he sent him in disgrace back to Kabul.27