THE MYTH OF A SOVIET WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP05S00365R000300140002-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 31, 2014
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: February 1, 1988
• Content Type: REPORT

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The Myth of a Soviet Withdrawal
from Afghanistan
by Christina Dame yer
Many Americans currently believe
that the Soviet Union is serious
about withdrawing from Afghani-
stan. Mikhail Gorbachev's much-publicized
characterization of the occupation as a "bleed-
ing wound" and a "running sore" has made
many U.S. observers assume that Moscow
regards it as a grievous blunder and now is
only seeking the best way to extricate itself.
However, little attention has been paid to
contradictory Soviet statements like that of
the Chief of General Staff, Marshal Akhro-
meyev, who was quoted in The New York Times
last October as saying that the Soviet military
believes the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan
,'was not a mistake." Hopes rose especially
high during the December Reagan-Gorbachev
summit, but it produced almost no progress.
At the beginning of 1988, Soviet Foreign
Minister Eduard Shevardnadze told Afghans
that he hoped this would be the last year his
nation's troops are in their country. Afghan
resistance forces and the U.S. have reacted
cautiously to this most dramatic sign to date
that the Soviets plan to withdraw.
They have good reason to be cautious. As
former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger
pointed out with common sense, before the
Shevardnadze announcement, "If they want
Christina Dameyer, a specialist in Afghan
affairs, is a frequent visitor to Afghanistan. Her
articles have appeared in The Christian
Science Monitor, The Columbia Journal-
ism Review, and other publications.
34 ? Middle East Insight
to get out of Afghanistan, it's the easiest thing
in the world. All they have to do is leave." A
Pentagon study has determined that a troop
withdrawal would require no more than 30 to
40 days.
But the Soviets have long insisted on being
allowed 4 years to pull out. Moscow's current
offer to reduce the time frame to 12 months is
contingent on the cessation of U.S. military aid
to the guerrillas, which would then enable the
Soviets to crush the resistance. Gorbachev has
consistently stated that the Afghan problem
can only be solved when"foreign interference"
ends, but he makes no mention of his own
country's interference in Afghanistan for the
past 8 years, resulting in the deaths of more
than a million Afghans and the exodus of a
third of the population.
The token Soviet troop withdrawal in Fall
1986 was not an encouraging model. With
maximum publicity and fanfare, 8,000 Soviet
soldiers returned home. But these were con-
struction and anti-aircraft units whose pres-
ence was superfluous, since their guerrilla
adversaries have no airforce. Even before the
carefully rehearsed farewell ceremony, 6,000
far more dangerous KGB personnel and
Spetsnaz special operations commandos had
arrived in Afghanistan to take their places.
No Comparison to Vietnam
The Afghan resistance fighters, the
Mujahedeen, charge that Soviet allusions to a
complete withdrawal are likewise only a decep-
tive maneuver to placate world opinion and
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undermine international support for the re-
sistance. If the Soviets are sincere about find-
ing a peaceful political solution, Mujahedeen
leaders ask, why are they trying to impose a
military solution? Each round of the Geneva
talks between the Kabul regime and Pakistan
has been accompanied by intensive bombings
and shellings across the Pakistani border to
intimidate Islamabad into closing down the
resistance bases of operation. The Mujahedeen
also observe that each successive Soviet leader
from Andropov to Gorbachev hinted more
broadly at a "new flexibility" or "fresh
approach" to the talks, but Soviet military
operations in Afghanistan escalated drama-
tically with each change of regime. The effec-
tiveness of the attacks has also increased,
partly due to the quadrupling of the number of
the highly trained Spetsnaz forces since 1981.
Yet almost from the beginning, Americans
rushed to label the war "the Soviet Vietnam."
Apart from the tenacious stubbornness of
each guerrilla force, there is little similarity.
The Afghan occupation's general unpopularity
with the Soviet people is highly unlikely to
influence, let alone compel, the totalitarian
Soviet regime to withdraw. Americans have
projected their own reaction to U.S. casualties
in Vietnam onto the Soviets. Since Vietnam it
has become almost a reflex reaction to pull out
U.S. forces when American casualties are
incurred, as in the immediate withdrawal of
the Marines from Lebanon in 1983 after their
barracks were blown up. When 37 crewmen of
the U.S.S. Stark were killed in the Iraqi attack
last May, strong pressures were applied for
the U.S. to abandon its escort operations in the
Persian Gulf.
But the Russian people have long been
accustomed to absorbing large losses of life in
war. One of the 3 most celebrated battles in
Russian history was the fourteenth-century
Battle of Kulikovo against the Tatars, in which
9 out of 10 Russian soldiers were killed. World
War II claimed 20 million Soviet lives. In
contrast, at most only 15,000 troops have died
over the 9 years of the Afghan conflict, some
of them from disease. Considering that this
many lives have been lost in a single year of the
Iran-Iraq war, which has continued nearly as
long, it is clear that these casualties are sustain-
able by the Soviet Union with its far greater pop-
ulation. The majority of the Soviet troops
stationed in Afghanistan see little action: less
than 15% are used in offensive operations,
according to American military sources.
Few War Costs
While the Soviets have a substantial
amount of equipment, most of it is obsolescent.
For instance, the principal tank used in
Afghanistan is the 27-year-old T-55, 3 models
behind the current T-72s. The Red Army has
such vast stocks of equipment?more tanks
than the rest of the world put together?and
the Soviet military machine continues to churn
out so many arms that the losses do not pose a
major problem.
The economic cost of the occupation is
also more affordable than assumed. American
experts on the Soviet military calculate that
Moscow spends no more than 2-3% of its
annual defense expenditure on the Afghan
war. The Soviets partially off-set the expendi-
ture by helping themselves to Afghan natural
gas, minerals, dried fruit, Persian lamb pelts,
carpets and cotton. No payment is made: the
price is merely deducted from Afghanistan's
enormous bill for Soviet aid. The Soviets pipe
95% of Afghanistan's natural gas production
directly to the U.S.S.R., and even sell some of it
abroad. Afghanistan has major deposits of
high-quality copper, iron, chrome (all of far
higher grade than the Soviets have), zinc,
beryl, barite, fluorspar, bauxite, and uranium.
According to one defector, a former official of
the Ministry of Mines and Industry, the
Soviets have confiscated large quantities of
these, especially the uranium. He also said
Moscow sells the prized Afghan lapis lazuli
and emeralds, appropriated without compen-
sation, at high prices on the international
market.
A Soviet expert on Afghanistan, Yuri
Gankovsky, head of the Near and Middle East
department of the Institute of Oriental Studies
at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, went so far
as to boast last year that the war didn't cost the
Kremlin one cent, due to the natural gas and
raw materials Afghanistan supplied. This com-
ment was no doubt exaggerated with the aim
of discouraging the West from trying to drain
the Soviet economy by arming the guerrillas.
But it is clear that the Soviet Union is not acute-
ly suffering financially from the occupation.
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The Case for
Annexation
While most Soviet
spokesmen concentrate
on convincing the
world that they are
tired of the war and
longing to go home,
they assure their Af-
ghan allies the opposite.
An ex-Kabul regime
official told of a meet-
ing where alarmed Af-
ghan Communist Party
officials anxiously asked
a top-level Soviet ad-
viser if Voice of Amer-
ica reports that Mos-
cow was contemplating
withdrawing were true.
The Soviet official re-
sponded,"Don't worry,
we will never leave
your country. We are
one nation."
I-Us words were revealing. Incorporating
Afghanistan into the empire has been a goal of
Soviet Politburos and Russian Czars alike for
centuries. Although the immediate reason for
the invasion was to shore up a sinking com-
munist regime, domination of Afghanistan
was essential for the long-term strategy of
expansionism toward the Persian Gulf and
Arabian Sea. Peter the Great clearly stated his
wish to acquire "the land of Persia and India
and beyond it to the sea to dominate the
world." Warm water ports have become all the
more essential for the modern Soviet Union,
especially since becoming a global sea power.
The Gorchakov Doctrine of 1864 spelled
out the Czarist rationale for conquering and
absorbing the Central Asian khanates in the
move south, and seems to apply to Afghani-
stan: "At times when a big power shares a
frontier with a savage, uncivilized, semi-
nomadic nation, then it becomes necessary to
annex that nation to secure the frontier of the
big power." The Russians justified their expan-
sionism in language identical to that used
about Afghanistan today. The khanate of
Khiva and the emirate of Bokhara, they main-
tained, had requested the "limited contingent
The
Kremlin is on its way
to successfully
Sovietizing
a strategic country.
36 ? Middle East Insight
of troops," which were
only temporarily sta-
tioned there to give
fraternal assistance,
not to conquer, and
would be withdrawn
whenever the govern-
ments desired.
Of course, Moscow
consolidated its rule
and thoroughly Soviet-
ized the empire's new
acquisitions, as it is now
doing in Afghanistan.
Furthermore, just as
Moscow used what be-
came the Uzbekistan,
Tajikistan and Turk-
menistan S.S.R.'s as
bases to penetrate
Afghanistan, sending
agents of those nation-
alities across the border
for espionage and sub-
version, so Afghan
Pashtun tribesmen are being infiltrated into
the Pashtun areas of Pakistan with the same
mission.
'The Resurgence of Islam' Argument
The motivation for the invasion of Afghani-
stan has usually been assumed to be a defen-
sive rather than offensive one: the Soviets fear
that Islamic fundamentalism would spill over
into Soviet Central Asia. But this was at most
only a minor consideration. The Afghans had
had almost no contact with their ethnic cousins
in what the Mujahedeen refer to as "Soviet-
occupied Central Asia" until the war began.
The Afghan Islamic fundamentalist movement
was little threat to Soviet Turkestan. It had
been based in Pakistan since 1973 and was
composed primarily of southern Afghanistan
Pashtuns. The Afghan fundamentalists were
concerned with liberating their country from
communist rule, not with spreading Islam in
the region.
If the Soviets feared an upsurge of Islamic
fundamentalism on their border in 1979, they
would have invaded Iran. At that time, already
under Khomeini's rule for almost a year, Iran
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Different generations of Turkic Uzbeks from northern Afghanistan: Afghan exiles believe the program to
indoctrinate the young is the "single greatest threat to the future of the country."
January/February 1988
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Mujahedeen fighters man anti-aircraft guns, on the alert for Soviet MiG-21s, in Paktia province.
clamored for the export of the Islamic Revolu-
tion and directed inflammatory radio broad-
casts to Central Asia urging Soviet Muslims to
rise up against the atheist government of the
"Lesser Satan."
- Although the Afghans have since launched
minor, sporadic raids across the Soviet border,
this interpretation of the invasion seems more
a reflection of America's own fear of Islamic
fundamentalism. After all, the Chinese annex-
ation of Tibet was never explained by Peking's
fear of the spread of Buddhism to China. Tibet
and Afghanistan were both inward-looking
countries whose inhabitants were devout prac-
titioners of their all-encompassing religions.
As barren, mountainous, undeveloped coun-
tries with semi-feudal societies, they possessed
little inherent value for their great power
neighbors except a strategic location. Although
the Chinese also met with strong opposition in
their attempt to Sinify and communize the
Tibetans, their determination to remain in
Tibet was never doubted by the West. It was
clear that Peking would not consider sur-
rendering its newly acquired territory bor-
dering India.
Strategic Bases
Similarly, the Soviets are unlikely to give
up their strategic position on the road to the
Gulf. They have built up a chain of military
38 ? Middle East Insight
(C. Dameyer)
bases along the western border with Iran,
particularly in the southwest. The air force
base at Shindand has been expanded and is
now highly sophisticated. The Soviets are
building several other bases in the area, includ-
ing one near the corner where Iran, Afghani-
stan and Pakistan meet. All these bases are
clearly not necessary to fight isolated guerilla
bands in the western Afghan deserts. How-
ever, they are conveniently located to support
Soviet offensive action in wartime. Shindand
is only half an hour's flight by jet fighter from
the Straits of Hormuz, which could be attacked
or mined to cut off two-thirds of the West's oil.
For the first time, the Soviets are con-
structing two large permanent bases in the
east near the Pakistan border. Afghans are not
allowed near the sites. Facilities are being
expanded at existing bases throughout the
country like Kiligai, a huge underground, all-
Soviet tank repair depot halfway between
Kabul and the Soviet border. In the north,
especially, landing strips for jet fighters are
being built and airport runways widened. The
Soviets are clearly settling in for a long stay
and, some experts believe, building up the
infrastructure to support military intervention
in the region.
Reportedly, SS-20 missiles, which have a
range of 3,000 miles, are stationed in under-
ground missile bases in the strategic Wakhan
Corridor. This northeastern finger of Afghan
territory reaches out to touch China. It was
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annexed outright soon after the invasion. The
Soviet forces based here are only a few miles
from the Karakoram Highway connecting Paki-
stan and China. If the Soviets were to invade
Pakistan, Western and Pakistani military
analysts say, they could cut off Chinese inter-
vention down the highway, which was con-
structed wide enough for heavy tank traffic.
Central Asian Cuba
As early as 1982, the Afghan then-Minister
of Defense Abdul Qader revealed another
dimension of the enhanced Soviet capabilities
for power projection in Southwest Asia: by
proxy. He stated that the Afghan Army would
I be used as a regional striking force, a sort of
Central Asian Cuba. High-ranking Afghan
Army officers who have defected more recent-
ly say that training for this will begin as soon
as the Soviets consolidate their rule.
In the meantime, Moscow is using more
indirect means to destabilize the region.
Afghan agents are sent into Pakistan and Iran
for terrorism and sabotage. It was reported
that 2,000 new Afghan secret police (Khad)
members returned from training in the Soviet
Union for this purpose last year. On the
political front, not only Afghans but radical
Middle Easterners are to be used to spread
ideas of communism and revolution in the
region, Afghan analysts assert. They note that
a large percentage of Kabul University's stu-
dent body now consists of Marxists from
Pakistan, Iran, Palestine, Syria, Iraq and even
North Korea.
The Afghans themselves are generally
taken to the Soviet Union, where it is felt they
can be better indoctrinated. However, the
success rate varies markedly with different
age groups, say exiled Afghan intellectuals.
They explain that Afghans in their twenties
and thirties usually are disillusioned with the
difference they find between communist
theory and practice and quickly develop anti-
pathy for the Soviet system. Most hide their
feelings, anticipating a high-salaried govern-
ment position upon return to Kabul or resolv-
ing to escape to Pakistan, but some who are
overheard making critical remarks mysteri-
ously disappear. A Foreign Ministry defector
who dealt with the student and cultural ex-
changes disclosed that more than 50 Afghans
January/February 1988
had been killed or imprisoned in the Soviet
Union, but their relatives were told they had
drowned or died of illness.
However, younger Afghans in their early
teens are far more malleable. Rather than
wasting time reeducating the older generation,
the Soviets are concentrating most on
those aged 15-16. Afghan exiles view this program
as the single greatest threat to the future of
the country. Throughout their stay, the
Afghan boys are plied with good food, large
quantities of vodka and even young women to
weaken their will and are given intensive
indoctrination. Their parents are shocked to
find them hardened, ruthless, and often depen-
dent on alcohol upon return. The boys preach
about communism and atheism and scorn
traditional Afghan and Islamic ways.
Thorough Integration Planned
The Soviets are working hard also among
Afghans at home to extinguish pride in the
national culture and history and awareness of
a national identity, say Afghan and Pakistani_
scholars. Not only have Afghan history books
been rewritten to Soviet taste, but the Soviets
are encouraging a resurgence of nationalistic
feeling in each of numerous Afghan ethnic
groups. Employing the same divide and rule
strategy they used to subdue their own
Central Asian nationalities in the 1920-30s,
the Soviets are stirring up animosities between
the groups so that each can be isolated and
brought under control, says Professor Rasul
Amin, former Dean of Social Sciences at Kabul
University and now head of an exile writers'
organization. Ties between the northern
Afghan groups and corresponding nationali-
ties across the Soviet border are emphasized.
Historically, northern Afghan Tajiks have
more in common culturally with Central Asian
ones than western Tajiks, who are more linked
to Iran. The Turkic Uzbeks, Turkmens and
Kazakhs are more similar to their Soviet
cousins than to the Indo-European Tajiks and
Pashtuns who are dominant in Afghanistan.
This campaign is seen by some observers
as part of a general plan to integrate northern
Afghanistan into the southern Soviet repub-
lics. Not coincidentally, the north has the vast
majority of the country's natural gas and
mineral resources as well as the most fertile
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soil. The Soviets, who dictate Afghan economic
planning, have placed top priority on the
development of energy and mineral resources.
The capital of the north, Mazar-i-Sharif, re-
portedly receives electricity directly from the
Soviet Union. It has become the practice for
trade and cooperation agreements to be made
directly between the Afghan northern prov-
inces and Central Asian S.S.R.'s.
Soviet-Afghanistan trade arrangements
are strongly to the Soviet benefit. For instance,
most of the high-grade fertilizer and cement
produced by Afghan petrochemical plants and
factories is exported to the U.S.S.R. For their
own needs, the Afghans are forced to buy
inferior quality cement from Moscow and
fertilizer from the West. The cement and large
quantities of other imports from the Soviet
bloc (with which three-fourths of Afghani-
stan's foreign trade is conducted) must be paid
for in full at the time of order, but delivery is
often as much as a year late.
Party Rules Supreme
In addition to the integration of the Afghan
economy into the Soviet one, most branches of
the Afghan government are tightly controlled
by the Soviets. An internal passport system
more stringent than the U.S.S.R.'s has been
instituted. Afghans must obtain permission
from the secret police to travel to another
town and show proof of business or relatives
there.
Abdul Ghias Popal, a Supreme Court judge
who sought asylum in Pakistan in late 1986,
disclosed that the chief justice of Afghanistan
is a Soviet adviser. However, the legal system
is irrelevant, he said, since decisions of the
Soviet advisers supercede Afghan law. Cases
involving Russians cannot even be brought to
court, despite frequent crimes committed by
Russian soldiers, the ex-judge stated. Afghan
refugees allege too that that Soviets on patrol
at night often break into shops and storehouses
and steal goods. Guerrillas and refugees relate
stories of having been on buses stopped at
checkpoints by Soviet soldiers who demanded
money and valuables from passengers and
hashish from the drivers.
Groups of Afghans have been sent to the
Soviet Union for training as judges. Until they
return, Mr. Popal said, Afghan Communist
40 ? Middle East Insight
Party members are filling in because all quali-
fied judges have fled the country. He gave the
example of a tailor appointed in Helmand
province because his idea of implementing
justice was to imprison anyone suspected of
opposing the regime.
Poorly qualified officials chosen solely on
the basis of their Communist Party member-
ship and personal connections are now the
norm in the Kabul regime, defectors further
maintain. One who was with the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs cited as typical a deputy direc-
tor of his ministry with only a high school
education in music. The only foreign language
such officials speak is Russian, he said. He and
two other Foreign Ministry defectors agree
that out of about 300 officials, there are no
more than 10 left who are not Communist
Party members, and some of these are sus-
pected of being government informers. The
former deputy to the Afghan ambassador to
Moscow, Abdul Majid Mangal, maintained
that the diplomats sent to non-communist
countries are nearly all Khad agents, while less
trusted officials are sent to the East bloc where
they are better kept under watch.
Many army officers are illiterate and some
are unable to sign their names, revealed
Colonel Mir Hashamuddin Moh tashemi, who
defected last year. There is runaway title
inflation, he said. A lieutenant was promoted
to general in 8 years; a captain became one in 5
years. Both were conspicuously lacking in abili-
ty but known to be working with the KGB.
Promotions in the armed forces are made entire-
ly by the Soviets, who move their proteges into
positions of power to consolidate their control,
he and other ex-army officers observe.
Of Communists and Kings
If the Soviets can build up the Communist
Party's power enough, they may eventually
take a less overt role in running the country to
allay international criticism. This appears the
only change likely to occur. Until aircraft
losses from the U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles
become far more punishing, there is little to
induce the Soviets even to make concessions
to the Mujahedeen, let alone to withdraw from
Afghanistan. They are extracting many valu-
able resources, especially at a time when the
output of the Soviet Union's mining industry is
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- "
- ? -
i
.111
Afghan guerrillas undergo training courses at camps on the Pakistani-Afghani border.
falling and the quality of its minerals, never as
good as Afghanistan's, is declining.
The diplomatic costs have not been great.
Despite the ritual annual condemnations of
the Soviet invasion by the U.N. General
Assembly, the Organization of the Islamic
Conference, and the Non-Aligned Movement,
Soviet trade with the West has expanded and
contacts with the Islamic world have increased.
With the exception of Saudi Arabia and the
Gulf states, few Arab countries have offered
material or even substantial verbal support for
the Afghan resistance.
Militarily, the Soviets have forced the
Afghan forces to take the vast majority of the
casualties in the fighting, while gaining
valuable experience themselves in counter-
insurgency and mountain warfare.
The Kremlin is on its way to successfully
Sovietizing a strategic country which can be
used as a stepping-stone to the Persian Gulf in
the years ahead.
For their part, the Mujahedeen insist that
the Soviets leave Afghanistan at once without
conditions, since they should not be rewarded
for the subjugation and occupation of a
sovereign country. The option often men-
tioned in the West, that the Soviets could
withdraw once a stable communist-dominated
coalition government is set up, does not exist.
(Reportedly, the Soviets have dropped their
demand for power-sharing by the Communist
(C. Dameyer)
Party after their departure, but the issue
continues to arise in negotiations with Paki-
stan.) The guerrillas say they would not partici-
pate in a regime with even one Marxist. Even if
they did, all sides know that the minute the
Soviets left, the communist members would be
killed and the government overthrown.
The most conceivable compromise figure
to preside over an interim government would
be the former Afghan king, Zahir Shah, who
was overthrown and exiled in 1973. However,
the Mujahedeen are bitterly divided on this
issue. Many, especially the fundamentalists,
rightly hold him responsible for allowing
Russian influence to build up in the country
during the 40 years of his rule. The king's
opponents complain that he has never spoken
out against the Soviet invasion and has spent
the war growing roses in Rome while the
Afghan people have suffered and sacrificed.
But others feel that despite his deficiencies,
the king is the sole authority figure with
widespread acceptability among Afghans and
recognition abroad. His support is strongest
among the older generation and members of
the Sufi religious orders, whose leaders were
tied to the old regime.
Many younger Afghans, however, would
prefer a completely new leadership coming
from the ranks of those who participated in
the military or intellectual struggle to liberate
their country. ?
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