Afgantsy

by Rodric Braithwaite

  Najibullah was not without his critics. A GRU analysis of April 1986 showed, once again, the divergence of views between parts of the Soviet military, who favoured the Khalq faction and their officers in the army, and the KGB, who favoured the Parcham faction represented by Karmal and Najibullah. Speculating on rumours that Najibullah might succeed Karmal, the GRU analysts said that Afghan politicians regarded him as a strong personality. But they feared the power he had exercised through the KhAD, which he had exploited for his own purposes, and whose brutalities he had done nothing to mitigate. Under his regime, the Pul-i Charkhi prison had filled up with Khalqists. He was notoriously a Pushtun nationalist. He was regularly accused of allowing theft, bribery, and corruption on a scale previously unknown. The GRU were not at all sure of his loyalty to the Soviet Union: he had not studied there and, unlike many other Afghan Communist leaders, he had no military experience. The GRU concluded, ‘He will not be able to unite the party, the army, and the people to bring about peace.’16

  These views were not shared by General Varennikov, the most senior soldier in Afghanistan at the time. Najibullah’s candidature was also favoured by Kryuchkov. His Pushtun nationalism undermined his ability to persuade the Tajiks and others of the virtues of his Policy of National Reconciliation—an inability which was to prove fatal in the civil war which followed the Soviet withdrawal. But there were no other obvious candidates. And whatever Najibullah’s weaknesses, most observers, then and since, agreed that he had many of the qualities of an effective leader: he was able, energetic, willing to try new ideas, and a good public speaker. Kryuchkov and Shevardnadze, the Soviet Foreign Minister, became his particular advocates in Moscow, and were strongly critical of the way he was eventually abandoned by the Soviet and later the Russian regime. Their commitment to Najibullah led to many conflicts within the Politburo in the last year of the war.

  But however able Najibullah was as a leader, the real power had still not shifted sufficiently. The bloated body of Soviet advisers in Afghanistan—two and a half thousand of them in 1986—continued to get in Najibullah’s way. ‘We’re still doing everything ourselves,’ complained Gorbachev. ‘That’s all our people know how to do. They’ve tied Najibullah hand and foot.’ Gorbachev grumbled that Tabeev, the Soviet Ambassador, was acting like a governor general, telling Najibullah that it was he who had made him General Secretary.17 Tabeev was recalled in July 1986. But despite his determination that the Afghans should take responsibility for their own fate, even Gorbachev could not resist trying to micromanage Afghan politics. And the Russians soon began to have doubts about Najibullah too. ‘It’s difficult to build a new building out of old material,’ Gorbachev remarked to the Politburo. ‘I hope to God that we haven’t made a mistake with Najibullah.’

  The problem was that Najibullah’s aims were almost diametrically opposed to those of the Russians. It was in his interest, by fair means or foul, to get the Soviet soldiers to remain. For how else were he and his government to survive once they left, as the rebels got stronger and his own forces teetered on the brink of dissolution? He accepted that some negotiation and compromise with the opposition side was unavoidable: his Policy of National Reconciliation was designed to bring moderate representatives of the political opposition and the mullahs into government. But Najibullah was determined that the PDPA should keep the key political and administrative posts, including the ministries of Defence, Internal Affairs and Security; and he was unwilling to cooperate with non-Pushtun politicians. This was not all that different from the policy which Karmal had attempted to pursue. Najibullah pursued it with greater energy and was more willing to try to win over the mujahedin commanders. But the rebels were as suspicious of him as of his predecessor, and his olive branch found few takers.

  Many Russians no longer cared much about the composition of the government in Kabul anyway. For them the most important thing was to create a respectable cover for withdrawal, in the meanwhile cutting down the scope of military operations and reducing casualties to a minimum.18 The Soviet generals were not too happy about that. They had a war to fight and the restrictions which were now placed on them went against their instincts. For the most part they gritted their teeth and did what they were told. But the old conflicts of interest between the main Soviet institutions in Moscow—the army, the KGB, the Party, and the government—and their representatives in Kabul continued to dog the course of the Soviet withdrawal, at times raising serious doubts over its timing and manner. Najibullah exploited the differences with skill.

  In July 1986 Gorbachev withdrew six regiments from Afghanistan. That showed, he told the Politburo, that the USSR did not intend to stay in Afghanistan or to ‘break through to the warm ocean’. The Soviet Union was matching deeds to words. Najibullah needed to understand that and to take matters into his own hands. This was a genuine reduction of fifteen thousand in the 40th Army’s strength. It brought the Russians no credit in the outside world, where it was dismissed as a propaganda stunt.19

  In November 1986 Gorbachev spelled out the issues to the Politburo yet again. ‘We’ve been fighting for six years already! Some people are saying that if we go on like this, the war could last for twenty or thirty years… People are beginning to ask, Are we going to sit there for ever? Or should we finish off this war? If we don’t, we will cover ourselves with shame in every respect. The strategic objective is to finish off the war in one or at the most two years and withdraw our forces.’ Shevardnadze added that the Soviets needed to decide who was in charge on their own side: was it the army or was it the KGB?

  The military situation was clearly still unsatisfactory. The Russians had failed to close the Afghan frontier. The rebels had changed tactics and gone underground. Akhromeev, by now the Chief of the General Staff, said what many of his soldiers had been telling him for some time: ‘In the past seven years Soviet soldiers have had their boots on the ground in every square kilometre of the country. But as soon as they left, the enemy returned and restored everything the way it was before. We have lost this war. The majority of the Afghan people support the counter-revolution. We have lost the peasantry, who have got nothing from the revolution. Eighty per cent of the country is in the hands of the counter-revolution. And the position of the peasants there is better than it is in the territory controlled by the government.’

  The Politburo agreed that the aim was no longer to build socialism in Afghanistan, but to withdraw half of the Soviet troops in one year and the remainder in two; to broaden the political and social base of the regime; and then leave them to get on with it. Gorbachev proposed direct negotiations with Pakistan.20

  The Politburo’s next discussion in January 1987 was a gloomy occasion. The difficulty of withdrawing with honour had become increasingly apparent. As Gorbachev said, ‘We could leave quickly, without worrying about the consequences, and blame everything on our predecessors. But that we cannot do. We have not given an account of ourselves to the people. A million of our soldiers have passed through Afghanistan. [He was badly briefed: it was about six hundred thousand.] And it looks as if they did so in vain. So why did those people die?’

  Shevardnadze had just visited Kabul. He reported that the traditional goodwill towards the Soviet Union had gone. Too many people had died. ‘[W]e went in without knowing anything at all about the psychology of the people, and that’s a fact. And everything we have done and are doing in Afghanistan is incompatible with the moral basis of our country.’ Najibullah made a good impression, but his support was crumbling. The military situation was getting worse. It was impossible to close the border with Pakistan. The war could not be won by military means. Summing up, Gorbachev pointed out that in Poland, despite ideological misgivings, the Soviet Union had accepted the position of the Church, private agriculture, political pluralism. One had to face reality. It was better to pay with treasure than with blood.

  In January a Deputy Foreign Minister, Anatoli Kovalev, went to Pakistan to talk to President Zia ul-Haq. In February Gorb
achev re-emphasised the importance of involving the Americans and suggested that he might invite Zia ul-Haq for talks to Tashkent. When Gromyko argued that there was no alternative to a military withdrawal, Gorbachev replied sharply, ‘There is an alternative. We could bring in two hundred thousand more troops. But that would lead to the collapse of our whole cause.’21

  The Politburo met again in May 1987, with senior officials from Kabul in attendance, including Varennikov. By now, they lamented, the Afghan army was falling apart; the Americans and the Pakistanis were doing all they could to undermine the Policy of National Reconciliation; and Najibullah was failing to get a grip. Akhromeev argued that making Najibullah the centrepiece of a new political line-up would simply lead to endless fighting. Gorbachev said that there was no one else. The Russians would be accused of treachery if they simply abandoned him: ‘We won’t be able to explain that to our own people. And in Afghanistan the supporters of the mujahedin will remember for a long time how we destroyed them, and the supporters of Najibullah will remember how we left them in the same boat as their enemies. We will be left with an unfriendly Afghanistan. But at the same time we can’t go on with this war for ever.’

  Summing up a somewhat despairing discussion, Gorbachev concluded that the UN and the Americans needed to be more fully involved. The UN could provide a neutral framework for negotiation. The Americans were by far the largest suppliers of arms to the mujahedin, and no guarantee of non-interference would hold without them.22 Najibullah should be given more economic aid, but be firmly told that the Russians intended to finish with the Afghan question in eighteen months. Ways should be found of associating with the government, the mujahedin, the exiled king, Zahir Shah, and moderates such as Rabbani.23

  The Diplomatic Manoeuvring

  The next ten months were taken up with diplomatic manoeuvring in Geneva, Islamabad, Moscow, New York, and Washington, against the background of the UN negotiations, which had sputtered on since 1982. The Americans had in fact been involved from the earliest days of the Reagan presidency. Jack Matlock, the US Chargé d’Affaires in Moscow in 1981, was instructed to tell the Russians that the Americans would ‘discuss ways to ensure the security of the Soviet Union’s southern border and also make a commitment not to use the territory of Afghanistan against the Soviet Union’. The message received no response. After the Geneva Summit, Reagan wrote to Gorbachev on 28 November 1985 saying, ‘I want you to know that I am prepared to cooperate in any reasonable way to facilitate [a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan] in a manner which does not damage Soviet security.’24 This letter too received no response.

  Now, in 1987, Moscow stepped up the tempo. In September Shevardnadze told US Secretary of State George Shultz (1920–) that ‘we will leave Afghanistan. It may be in five months or a year.’25 Shultz was struck with this news, but believed that it would fall foul of the right-wingers in Reagan’s cabinet. He kept it to himself for weeks, for fear he would be accused of going soft on Moscow.26

  Three months later Gorbachev told Reagan that he agreed that Afghanistan should be neutral, independent, and pluralistic. Afghanistan was not a socialist state. How it developed was a matter for the Afghans themselves. The Soviet Union needed a friendly Afghanistan, but was not seeking bases there. Both the Americans and the Russians should back the process of National Reconciliation. The Americans should cease their support for the mujahedin. Once there was an agreed date for the withdrawal of Soviet forces, they would no longer participate in military operations. But the two men did not settle on any matter of substance. Reagan even suggested—bizarrely—that the Kabul government should disband its army.27 Gorbachev left Washington with the impression that the Americans were happy to leave the Russians to flounder and even to hamper the departure of their troops.

  The Russians and the Americans later disagreed on what had passed at this meeting, each believing that the other had failed to take the opportunity to make a positive move. The Russians believed that Reagan had indicated that he was willing to cut off supplies to the mujahedin. Shevardnadze so informed Najibullah—and, rather incautiously, the Afghan press—in January 1988. Shultz issued a furious denial. The Soviet Foreign Ministry asked Jack Matlock, by then ambassador in Moscow, for a clarification. After consulting Washington, he replied that the Americans would refrain from supplying the mujahedin if the Soviets cut off military supplies to the Kabul government. This was not of course a deal that the Russians could easily accept, and in the event both sides continued to supply their protégés. The Russians retained an obscure feeling that they had been somehow double-crossed.

  Matlock believed in later years that agreement on an orderly withdrawal, including a provision for the Americans to cease aid to the mujahedin without the Soviets having to cut off support for Kabul, could have been reached in 1986 or 1987 if Gorbachev had been willing to engage Reagan earlier. Whether the domestic politics of either side would have permitted that is a very open question.28

  On 1 April 1988 the Politburo met to consider the outcome of the Geneva negotiations. The Americans were now ready to sign, provided that there was no mention of military aid to the mujahedin. Chernyaev thought that the issue was now moot: the mujahedin would get their aid whatever the final agreement said, and the Russians were preparing to withdraw their troops whether or not the agreement was signed. Gorbachev asked for views. Everyone agreed that the Soviet Union should sign. Gorbachev gave the news to Najibullah in Tashkent ten days later; he took it with apparent equanimity.29

  The agreements were finally signed in Geneva on 14 April 1988 under the aegis of the United Nations. A bilateral agreement between the Kabul government and Pakistan provided for non-interference and non-intervention. The Russians and the Americans signed a declaration on international guarantees. And there were provisions for the Soviet troops to withdraw in two stages by 15 February 1989. The mujahedin were not a party and refused to accept the terms. This opened the way to the fall of the Najibullah regime and the subsequent murderous civil war: the nightmare that Gorbachev had feared when he confided to Chernyaev in September 1987 that the Soviet withdrawal might be followed by a bloodbath ‘for which we would not be forgiven, either by the Third World, or by the shabby Western liberals who have spent the last ten years lambasting us for occupying the place’.30

  Shevardnadze signed in Geneva with a heavy heart. ‘One would have thought I would have been happy: no more coffins were coming home. We’ll close the account: both of the deaths and of the drain on our resources, which had reached 60 billion roubles… It was hard for me to realise that I was the Foreign Minister who had signed what was certainly not an agreement about a victory. There aren’t many examples of that in Russian or Soviet history. And I couldn’t stop thinking about the people we had trained up, pushed into a revolution, and were now abandoning to face a mortal foe alone.’31 Such sentiments were to affect the policy advice he gave over the next two years.

  ‘We will leave the country in a deplorable situation,’ he told the Politburo on his return, ‘ruined cities and villages, a paralysed economy. Hundreds of thousands of people have died. Our withdrawal will be regarded as a major political and military defeat. Within the Party and among the people the attitude to our departure is ambiguous. We must at least announce that the introduction of our troops was a gross error, that even then the experts and the public were against that adventure… We may not be able to distance ourselves easily from the past by arguing that we do not bear responsibility for our predecessors.’ He suggested that ten to fifteen thousand Soviet troops should be left behind to support the regime, a proposal clearly at odds with the agreement he had just signed. Kryuchkov supported him. Gorbachev reacted strongly to what he called ‘Shevardnadze’s hawkish scream’. It did not matter, he said, whether Najibullah survived or not. The legal basis for the Soviet withdrawal meant that it could not be compared with the way the Americans had bolted from Vietnam. Everything possible had been done to limit the negative consequences of the war.32<
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  Disagreements about how far the Russians should assist Najibullah—if necessary by using military force—continued to bedevil Soviet policymaking until well after the withdrawal was completed. Shevardnadze and Kryuchkov continued their hawkish stance, opposed for the most part by the military.

  The First Phase of the Withdrawal: Summer 1988

  The Defence Minister, General Yazov, had already issued plans for the withdrawal. The total Soviet force now numbered about a hundred thousand. Half would leave by 15 August 1988, the remainder by 15 February 1989. The routes would be the same as those for the original invasion, but in reverse: in the west from Kandahar via Shindand and Herat to Kushka; in the east over the Salang Pass to Khairaton and across the Friendship Bridge to Termez.

  The first move was to bring outlying garrisons into their parent regiments. The garrisons on the eastern border with Pakistan—Jalalabad, Gardez, and Ghazni—were withdrawn completely. So were the southward-facing garrisons in Kandahar and Lashkar Gar. The Russians also pulled out of their positions in the north-east in Kunduz and Faisabad. By the end of the first phase, the Soviet forces were concentrated between Shindand and Kushka in the west, and between Kabul and the great supply base of Khairaton in the east.