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The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan started much the same way that World War I broke out—a political assassination set off a chain reaction of military and political misjudgment. Once events were set in motion, the Soviet Union could not stop the momentum. The more it struggled to fix the problem, the more its war party pushed it into the mire of its own “Vietnam.”

The analogy to the June, 28, 1914, assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the April 11, 1978, murder of Mir Akbar Khyber, a founder of Afghanistan’s Communist Party (the Peoples’ Democratic Party of Afghanistan or PDPA) and vocal critic of the government of President Muhammad Daoud Khan. His assassin is thought to have been the minister of the interior.

Eleven days afterward, the PDPA assaulted the presidential palace, killing Daoud and most of his family. On April 25, Nur Mohammed Taraki, leader of the PDPA’s Khalq (People’s) faction, was named chairman of the Revolutionary Council and the President of the renamed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

The Soviet Union moved quickly to take advantage of the coup, which became known as the Saur (April) Revolution. The plan was to turn

Afghanistan into a communist-run buffer state between pro-American Pakistan and Islamic Iran, thereby enhancing Soviet security. In December, Moscow signed a new bilateral treaty of friendship and cooperation, and drastically increased its military assistance program.

Under Daoud, Afghan-Soviet relations had been merely correct, because Daoud sought to carve out an independent foreign policy. Even though leftists helped him in 1973 to overthrow the monarchy of his cousin Zahir Shah—who was in Italy on a European visit—Daoud was not interested in sharing power. By the end of 1975, the two communists who had been appointed to cabinet posts had been purged, and the following year Daoud founded the National Revolutionary Party to control all political affairs. The next year, the Republic of Afghanistan’s new constitution established one- party presidential rule. The assassination of Mir Akbar Khyber was seen as part of Daoud’s attempt to destroy the PDPA.

After the coup, Taraki became president, and fellow Khalq member Hafizullah Amin became both prime minister and defense minister. Babrak Karmal, leader of the hard-line Parcham (Banner) faction was appointed deputy prime minister. Staunch Soviet support for Taraki is reflected in this May 31, 1978, political letter from Ambassador A. Puzanov in Kabul to the Soviet Foreign Ministry:

Daoud expressed the interests and class position of bourgeois landowners and rightist nationalist forces, and therefore was not capable of carrying out a reformation “in the interests of the broad laboring masses,” primarily agricultural reform.

In conditions of a worsening economic situation in the country and Daoud’s departure from the programmatic declaration of 1973, which led to “a constant growth in the dissatisfaction of broad strata of the population,” Daoud huddled ever more closely with the “domestic reaction,” which was supported by the ‘reactionary Islamic regimes” and by “American imperialism,” and followed a course toward the “strengthening of a regime of personal power.” …

The Taraki government’s program (declaration of 9 May 1978) is worked out on the basis of the PDPA program of 1966. The main task is providing for the interests of the working population on the basis of fundamental perestroika [restructuring] of the social-economic structures of society, and “the liquidation of the influence of neocolonialism and imperialism.”…

The situation in the country “overall is stabilizing more and more,” the government is controlling all its regions and is taking measures ‘to cut off… the demonstrations of the domestic reaction.’ The most important factor for the further strengthening of the new power will be the achievement of unity in the leadership of the PDPA and the government. But “the tension so far has not totally been cleared away.”

3. The Mujahid

The embassy jointly with a group of Party advisors is undertaking measures to overcome the disagreements in the Afghan leadership.5

Of course, Puzanov’s Marxist-Leninist sloganeering utterly ignored the largely rural, tradition-bound and fiercely independent Afghan people, who would never accept rule by atheistic communists. Puzanov did acknowledge the factional infighting within the PDPA, but could not appreciate how this would doom Soviet policy. The two Marxist factions were supposed to put their differences aside to form a government, but within months Taraki had exiled Parcham government members to ambassadorial posts (Karmal went to Czechoslovakia), and had others killed or imprisoned. Political infighting ensured that the PDPA would never form a stable government.

A second threat to political stability was the mujahedin. Taraki’s reforms, such as women’s emancipation and land reform, trampled on centuries of Afghan rural tradition, and in June the mujahedin declared jihad against the Taraki government. Amin brutally suppressed popular riots and mutinies within the army, thus creating a state of war between the government and the people. Given this virtual absence of popular support, the Taraki regime increasingly looked to Moscow for protection and advice. In March 1979, the townspeople of Herat massacred hundreds of government officials and Soviet advisors who were introducing a women’s literacy program. The townspeople were joined by most of the Afghan army’s 17th Infantry Division.

Taraki’s forces won the battle but at the cost of more than 5,000 dead, including 100 Soviets. That month, Taraki placed a desperate call to Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin.

TA R A K I: The situation is bad and getting worse.

KOSY GIN: Do you have support among the workers, city dwellers, the

petty bourgeoisie, and the white-collar workers in Herat? Is there still anyone on your side?

TA R A K I: There is no active support on the part of the population. It is almost wholly under the influence of Shi’ite slogans -- follow not the heathens, but follow us. The propaganda is underpinned by this.

KOSY GIN: Are there many workers there?

TA R A K I: Very few -- between 1,000 and 2,000 people in all.

KOSY GIN: What are the prospects?

TA R A K I: We are convinced that the enemy will form new units and will develop an offensive.

KOSY GIN: Do you not have the forces to rout them?

TA R A K I: I wish it were the case. …

5. “About the Domestic Political Situation in the DRA,” May, 31, 1978, The Soviet Union and

Afghanistan, 1978-1989: Documents from the Russian and East German Archives—Cold War International History Project. (CWIHP),

KOSY GIN: Hundreds of Afghan officers were trained in the Soviet Union. Where are they all now?

TA R A K I: Most of them are Muslim reactionaries. We are unable to

rely on them, we have no confidence in them….6

On March 20, 1979, Taraki met with Kosygin and other Politburo members, at which time Kosygin articulated the Soviet Union’s position toward Afghanistan:

I would like to emphasize that the friendship between Soviet Union and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan is not conditional, dictated by some temporary viewpoints, but calculated for ages. We have given and will continue to give you assistance in the fight against all enemies which act against you at the present time and against those enemies with which you may clash in the future.7

Taraki’s biggest enemy would turn out to be Amin, who also led the 1978 assault against Daoud. Amin, a militant Islamist, is said to have first gained notoriety in Kabul for spraying acid at the faces of young girls who went about unveiled. As defense minister, his brutal repression of dissent within the military and among the population alarmed the Soviets, who asked that he and Taraki cut back reforms to broaden their political base of support.

But Amin ignored Moscow and maintained the repression, even though the PDPA’s survival increasingly became dependent upon Soviet military equipment and advisers.In frustration, Moscow sought out former members of the monarchy and other non-communists to moderate the government. It also kept the U.S. embassy informed of its actions, to avoid any misunderstandings.8

The Soviet Union was in an untenable position. It was blindly committed to a government that seemed only capable of waging terror on its own people and destroying itself from within. Retreat seemed impossible because of the potential loss of face and risk of Afghanistan’s Islamist insurgency expanding into the Central Asian Soviet republics. For better or worse, Moscow was stuck with Taraki.

Until now, Moscow treated Taraki and Amin as a duumvirate; now, Amin had to go. In September, en route home from a Nonaligned Movement conference in Cuba, Taraki stopped off in Moscow to discuss Amin’s future.

6. “Transcript of telephone conversation between Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin and Afghan Prime Minister Nur Mohammed Taraki,” March 1979, Cold War, Episode 20, CNN,

September 1998–April 1999,

<europe.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/20/documents/Moscow>.

7. “Record of meeting of A.N.Kosygin, A.A.Gromyko, D.F.Ustinov and B.N.Ponomarev with N.M.Taraki,” March 20, 1979, in CWIHP, op. cit. Although the telephone conversation between Taraki and Kosygin is undated, it’s logical to conclude that it occurred before this meeting, given Kosygin’s reassuring tone.

8. “Afghanistan: The Making of U.S. Policy (1973-1990),” Digital National Security Archive, George Washington University, <nsarchive.chadwyck.com/afessayx.htm#1>.

3. The Mujahid

Amin learned of the stopover and had Taraki arrested upon his arrival on Sept. 16. He was secretly executed on Oct. 9.

October 1979 was the pivotal month. A fact-finding mission on the state of Afghanistan by Gen. Ivan Pavlovsky determined the army’s morale and fighting ability to be low, and that 23 of Afghanistan’s 28 provinces had fallen to anti-government rebels. (By the end of the year, the 90,000-man Afghan army would be reduced to 40,000 and the officer corps halved by purges, executions and defections.) Also that month, Defense Minister Gen. Dimitri Ustinov began preliminary preparations for an invasion.9

As Gen. Valentin Varennikov, deputy head of the Soviet General Staff from 1979-84 and an architect of the invasion, told CNN in 1997:

[The invasion] was supported first of all by Brezhnev ... [partly] because of Taraki’s murder. ... According to [Nikolai] Ogarkov, who was head of the General Staff, more than once he saw Brezhnev speaking in a very agitated way about Amin having acted very badly, and saying that the cruel murder of the general secretary [Taraki] and his comrade couldn’t be allowed. It was a very savage act, in our opinion; and apart from that, Amin not only killed Taraki, but what was worse, he didn’t meet Brezhnev’s proposals halfway….10

In late November, Amin’s demand that Puzanov be replaced as Soviet ambassador convinced the Politburo that military force and the elimination of Amin were necessary. On Dec. 12, the Politburo decided to invade. At 3 a.m. on Dec. 25, the main assault began. Two days later, the palace was taken after heavy fighting, and Amin and his closest aides were executed. Parcham leader Karmal, who had initiated contact with the Politburo member Yuri Andropov, was brought back from exile and installed as president. Varennikov summarized the tragic futility of Soviet policy:

We didn’t set ourselves the task of conquering anyone: we wanted to stabilize the situation through our presence and help the warring parties to reconcile and stop the fighting. We wanted to station the garrisons in the main populated areas without engaging in combat activities. But my opinion is that, not without the participation of the CIA, certain forces provoked us—I mean the Afghan rebel forces, because they would attack us, they would kill our soldiers, they killed our military advisers…. [We] had to fight back against those who were killing us. And it became like a snowball: provocation, retaliation, and on and on and on. And that wave swept across the whole country. …11

9. Odd Arne Westad, “Concerning the situation in ‘A’—New Russian Evidence on the Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan,” CWIHP Bulletin 128-132,

<www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/CWIHP/BULLETINS/b8-9a12.htm>. 10. Interview with CNN in Cold War, Episode 20.