Hans Binnendijk
Director, Institute for National Strategic Studies
Acknowledgements
Many people contributed to this book. Colonel General Fedor M. Kuzmin, the Commandant of the Frunze Academy, made this book possible. Other Frunze Academy officers who helped me immensely were General Major Ivan N. Vorob’ev and Colonel Analtoli Malin. Mary Fitzgerald of the Hudson Institute suggested the present book layout. Michael Orr of the United Kingdom’s Combat Studies Research Centre in Sandhurst and Allen Curtis of the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California read and commented on the manuscript. Colonel (Ret) Dave Glantz, the former director of the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO), read and commented on the manuscript and wrote the introduction. My directors, Colonel Tod Milton and Colonel Charles Johnston, and my co-workers at FMSO, Dr. Graham Turbiville, Colonel (Ret) Bill Mendel, Dr. Jacob Kipp, LTC (Ret) Tim Thomas, LTC (Ret) Bill Connor, LTC John Sray, LTC Geoff Demerest, Major Brian Dando, Major Ray Finch and Major Steve Button read and commented on the manuscript. Randy Love of FMSO and my good friend Michael Gress painstakingly checked my translation. Stephen Stewman of FMSO did a fantastic job on the maps. General Yahya M. Nawroz, former Chief of Operations of the Afghanistan Ministry of Defense, mujahideen strategist, and interim Minister of Defense, read and corrected my manuscript and identified and corrected place names. Colonel Ali Ahmad Jalali, former Afghan Army and mujahideen commander and noted author, also read and corrected my manuscript and identified and corrected place names. SPC Marcin Wiesiolek cleaned up and scrubbed the graphics. Peter D. Neufville provided good counsel and direction based on his experience in Afghanistan and research on the Panjsher operations. James H. Brusstar and Fred Kiley guided the manuscript through the acceptance process at National Defense University. Richard Stewart of the Special Operations Command at Ft. Bragg found additional publication funds, and Jonathan Pierce of NDU Press did the final edit and design. Finally, Gina Grau, my bride of 29 wonderful years, helped with encouragement and understanding. Thank you all for your help. The mistakes are mine, the product is ours.
Introduction
Sixteen years after its commencement and six years after its cessation, the Soviet-Afghan War remains an enigma for Westerners. Set against the backdrop of earlier successful Soviet military interventions in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), and Czechoslovakia (1968), and occasional Soviet military pressure on Poland, the stark military power of the Soviet state seemed to be an irresistible tool of indefatigable Soviet political power. Ever concerned about the specter of a Soviet theater strategic offensive across the plains of Europe, the West was thankful that nuclear deterrence maintained the Cold War balance, and was conditioned to accept, albeit reluctantly, the results of Soviet intervention within its Socialist commonwealth or in Soviet border regions. Having suffered through the trauma of Vietnam, Americans, in particular, watched curiously to see how the vaunted Soviet military machine would deal with the ill-equipped tribesmen of this inhospitable region. A few recollected the Afghan experiences of the British in the late Nineteenth Century, when British imperial power was humbled by the ancestors of these very same tribesmen. Few Westerners, however, doubted that the Soviets would ultimately prevail. Some even projected their European fears to Asia, and pondered the applicability of the Soviet theater-strategic offensive to southern Asia. More than a few strategic pundits and military planners envisioned a bold Soviet strategic thrust from southern Afghanistan to the shores of the Persian Gulf, to challenge Western strategic interests and disrupt Western access to critical Middle Eastern oil.
Despite these fears and dire warnings, the Soviet Afghan military effort soon languished as the British experience began to repeat itself. Although appearing to have entered Afghanistan in seemingly surgical fashion and with overwhelming force, the Soviet military commitment was, in reality, quite limited, and the immense and stark territory of Afghanistan swallowed the invaders up. Across the largely barren landscape, guerrilla fighters multiplied, and, within months, the hitherto curious word mujahideen took on new meaning. The anticipated short sharp struggle became prolonged as the West watched transfixed, wondering when the Soviet military machine would prevail. In time, the question of prevalence imperceptibly faded, and was replaced by doubts over whether the Soviets would prevail at all. In the end, ironically, even the Soviets could not cope, and the disease of the Afghan adventure infected Soviet society and the Soviet body politic itself. What began as yet another step in the expansion of Soviet power ended in a welter of systemic institutional self-doubt that exposed the corruption within the Soviet system and ultimately brought that system and its parent state to ruin.
To this day the Western view of the Afghan War has been clouded in mystery and shadows. Soviet writers have presented Westerners with a mixture of political diatribe, military fable, allegory, and analogy, set against the backdrop of few facts. Westerners have recounted the war based on this Soviet material, sketchy mujahideen accounts, the reports of the occasional Western war correspondents in Afghanistan, and pure supposition. This volume, the first factual material to shed real light on the conflict, represents a unique first step in setting the Afghan record straight.
Several stark realities immediately emerge which place the Afghan War in proper perspective and permit its proper assessment in the context of Soviet military, political, and social development. First, although violent and destructive, the war was a limited one, in particular, in comparison with other notable recent local wars. Its ferocity and decisiveness did not match that of the series of short Arab-Israeli wars which scarred the Cold War years. It lacked the well-defined, large-scale military operations of the Korean War and the well-defined political arrangements that terminated that war. It also differed significantly from the oft-compared U.S. war in Vietnam. In Vietnam, American military strength rose to over 500,000 troops and the Americans resorted to many divisional and multi-divisional operations. By comparison, in Afghanistan, a region five times the size of Vietnam, Soviet strength varied from 90–104,000 troops. The Soviet’s five divisions, four separate brigades and four separate regiments, and smaller support units of the 40th Army strained to provide security for the 21 provincial centers and few industrial and economic installations and were hard-pressed to extend this security to the thousands of villages, hundred of miles of communications routes, and key terrain features that punctuated and spanned that vast region.
Second, faced with this imposing security challenge, and burdened with a military doctrine, strategy, and operational and tactical techniques suited to theater war, the Soviet Army was hard pressed to devise military methodologies suited to deal with the Afghan challenges. Afghanistan aside, the 1980’s were a challenging period militarily for the Soviet Union as it struggled to come to grips with changing political-military and military-technical realities. The burgeoning arms race and increasing military strength of western democracies placed undue and unprecedented strains on the already weakening Soviet economy and forced the Soviets to face increased military expenditures at a time when the older policy of “Detente” had increased popular contacts with and knowledge of things Western and raised expectations of Soviet consumers. Soviet military authorities were increasingly unable to cope with military-technical realities in the form of a technological revolution in weaponry, which produced the looming specter of a proliferation of costly high-tech precision weaponry. In the short term, while an economic and technological solution was being sought, the military was forced to adjust its operational and tactical concepts and its military force structure to meet the new realities. Coincidentally, this was done while the military searched for appropriate ways to fight the Afghan War.