COUPS AND KILLINGS IN KABUL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000303410007-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 6, 2010
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: November 22, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/06: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303410007-5
ARTICLE LPiJi,.Tr.D TIME MAGAZINE
ON PAGE, 22 NCVEMBER 1982
soups and Killings in Kabt
A KGB defector tells how Afghanistan became Brezh~
Vladimir Kuzichkin. 35, a former KGB major whose presence in Britain
was announced by the British government last month, has given an ex-
traordinary account of Soviet involvement in Afghanistan-perhaps the
greatest blot on Brezhnev's career-as seen by the KGB. Kuzichkin, who
defected to the British last June, had served under cover in Iran for five
years. He was in the ultrasecret "Directorate S
"which controls "ille
als "
,
g
,
Soviet-born agents abroad. In an exclusive interview in London last week with TIME's
Frank Melville, Kuzichkin said: 1) Brezhnev himself overruled repeated advice from
Yuri Andropov 's KGB not to turn Afghanistan into a Soviet satellite, 2) Afghan President
Babrak Karmal is a KGB agent of long standing, 3) Karmal 's predecessor was murdered
in his palace by a specially trained, KGB-led Soviet assault group. Kuzichkin's account.-
enior KGB officers rarely let their
hair down about politics. But Af-
ghanistan has exasperated many.
As a former boss [a KGB general] put it
late one night: "Afghanistan is our Viet
Nam. Look at what has happened. We
began by simply backing a friendly
regime; slowly we got more deeply
involved; then we started manipu-
lating the regime-sometimes us-
ing desperate measures-and now?
Now we are bogged down in a war
we cannot win and cannot aban-
don. It's ridiculous. A mess. And
but for Brezhnev and r-mmnanv Tvo
ghan Communists were in a desperate po-
sition. They consulted the Soviet embassy
in Kabul. Moscow quickly confirmed that
we would support their proposed coup
against Daoud. Just before it was too
late, the Communist leaders ordered the
Daoud as a legitimate ruler. An openly
Communist regime would arouse hostil-
ity that would then be directed against
the Soviet Union.
It was clearly of the utmost impor-
tance that Afghanistan should have the
right leader. The choice was between
Karmal, who headed the Parcham faction
in the Afghan Communist party, and
[Noor Mohammed] Taraki, who headed
the Khalq faction. We knew a lot about
both men. In the papers we put to the
Politburo, we scrupulously assessed their
strengths and weaknesses. Our assess-
ment made it clear that Taraki would be a
disastrous choice. He was savage by tem-
perament, had little feel for handling
complex political issues, and would be
easily influenced by his cronies, but
not by us. Karmal, on the other
hand, we said, understood the need
for subtle policies. Moreover, he
had been a KGB agent for many
years. He could be relied upon to
what many of us involved with Af- ,.. TT Baia ne T Knew I . ara?la pe_rsonal-
and outside-felt but would -n-n.7 r si good job! Things started going off
stick our necks out to say. 9" L110 razes almost at once. Taraki
not encouraged them to overthrow vau Lu W V1 se. inc anan nao fallen in
Iran. Taraki's policies seemed cer-
the Kind. Nonetheless the rea rr;nn
tam to ensure there would also be a
in the Soviet leadership was that
massive Muslim insurrection in Af-
this change was for the good. Brezhnev welcoming Babrak Karmal to Moscow in 1980 ghanistan. Taraki's response was to
Our relations with Daoud were slaughter any opposition within his
never very good. He was keen to keep coup-in fact, from their prison cells. reach. Moscow tried to persuade him open his links with the West. He did The coup succeeded, and Afghani- this was a recipe for disaster, he should tnot
not wish to become too closely involved stan went Communist. But Mr. Brezh- repeat Stalin's errors. Taraki told Moscow
with us. Those of us who knew Afghani- nev and his colleagues brushed aside the to mind its own business.
stan were convinced no harm would come vitally important warnings that the KGB One day things began to look
of that. The Afghans would slaughter was giving them-and disaster ensued. brighter. A man called [Hafizullah] Amin
each other for generations, regardless of At the outset the Politburo felt it now seemingly emerged from nowhere to be
whether they claimed to be Communists. had a chance to make some real head- Taraki's deputy. He was a cultivated Ori-
It was inconceivable to us that Af- way in Afghanistan. It would pour in ental charmer. Quietly, Amin began to
ghanistan could do any credit to the Sovi- money and advisers. Afghanistan's links take control away from Taraki. More im-
et Union. let alone "Communism." The with the West would be gradually sev- portant, he persuaded Moscow that he
Afghans. we told each other, should be ered. Afghanistan would be not only a would be able to defuse the Muslim
left to stew in their own juice. We could neighboring country with whom we had threat. We at the KGB, though, had doubts
never control them, but neither could good relations, like Finland, but a new about Amin from the start. Our investiga-
anyone else. We had our first taste of member of the "Communist family." tions showed him to be a smooth-talking
things to come in 1978. Daoud turned The KGB tried to explain tactfully fascist who was secretly pro-Western (he
against the Communists who had helped that a Communist takeover in Afghani- had been educated in the United States)
him to power. Not only did he arrest the stan presented hair-raising problems. and had links with the Americans. We
leaders of the Afghan Communist party, We pointed out that despite all his also suspected that he had links with the
but he planned to execute them. The Af- slaughter, the tribes had accepted CIA. but we had no roof In short tote
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/06: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303410007-5
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/06: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303410007-5
KGB was pointing to a danger that
Amir.-if he could ride the tiger of Mus-
'im insure-cy and come out on top as the
leader of an Islamic Afghanistan-not
only would turn to the West but would
also expel the Soviet Union-lock, stock
and barrel-from Afghanistan. On politi-
cal grounds, the KGB argued, it would be
better, even at this late hour, to put Kar-
mal in as President.
Despite our warnings. and to our com-
plete amazement. Mr. Brezhnev
backed Amin. Taraki was invited to
Moscow. Secretly. Mr. Brezhnev and his
Politburo colleagues had agreed with
Amin that Amin would arrange for Taraki
to step down as President on his return to
Kabul. Amin carried out the agreement in
spirit, if not to the letter: Taraki stepped
straight from the presidency to his grave.
Moscow was willing to turn a
Along the road the column was
stopped at an Afghan checkpoint. Afghan
troops gathered round to find out what
was happening. Suddenly the flaps of the
front vehicle went up and the Afghans
were machine-gunned to the ground. The
column rolled on. When it reached the
palace, the special troops attacked from
three sides, while Colonel Bayerenov (the
head of the KGB'S terrorist-training
school) led the assault on the palace. The
attack got off to a good start. It would
have been even better had the leading ar-
mored vehicle not got caught up in the
palace gates. Moscow wanted no Afghans
left to tell the tale of what had happened
in the palace. No prisoners were to be tak-
en. Anybody leaving the building was to
be shot on sight. Amin was found drink-
ing in a bar on the top floor of the palace.
He was shot without question. So was the
blind eye to that. It was only
weeks, however. before the
smooth-talking Amin made
the KGB argument seem cor-
rect. Amin did not honor spe-
cific promises made to the So-
viet Union. he complained
about the KGB's activities in
Afghanistan. and he wanted
Soviet officials who had had
the "effrontery" to advise him
recalled. Moreover, things in
Afghanistan were looking
blacker and blacker. Terrible
reports were coming in of
what Muslim insurgents were
doing to any Soviet advisers
sions of such a blow to our prestige would
be unpredictable. The Soviet Union could
not run such a risk. The. Politburo was de-
termined to show that the Soviet Union
would not be pushed about.
Now the military came to the fore. The
army had not been happy about the way
our military involvement in Afghanistan
had been handled. Some had argued that
troops. not advisers, should have been sent
in in 1978. before things got out of hand.
But in December 1979, the general staff
felt that 80.000 or so Soviet troops could
get the situation under control.
There was now a new Afghan leader, a
KGB agent at that, and substantial Soviet
support. The Afghan army, we believed,
would go over to the offensive. The insur-
gents themselves would be reluctant to
take on such odds. Soviet troops were just
supposed to provide the initial stiffener.
Well before Amin's murder,
two divisions. specially made
up of Farsi-speaking troops
from neighboring Tadzhiki-
stan and Uzbekistan, had
been assembled along the
frontier. They all had Afghan
uniforms. They were sup-
posed to make our interven-
tion go more smoothly. In ret-
rospect, it was an error. In no
time at all they were black-
7
marketeering (including sell-
ing army equipment). buying
Korans and robbing the local
population (for which many
were executed). They showed
little interest in fighting
A trio of dead Afghan leaders: Daoud, Taraki and Amin
"Now we are bogged down in a war we cannot win and cannot abandon. "
they caught. Worse, though the uprising
was spreading. Amin seemed to be doing
nothing to combat it.
The Politburo now really was con-
vinced that the KGB argument had been
right: Arvin was planning to turn Afghan-
istan against the Soviet Union. So the Po-
litburo decided Amin had to go. Prefera-
bly quietly-but certainly dead. At first,
we-that is. the KGB-were given the job.
We had an ofcer, an illegal who passed
as an Afghan and had for some time been
one of Amit;'s personal cooks. He was or-
dered to poison Amin. But Amin was as
careful as any of the Borgias. He kept
switching his food and drink as if he ex-
pected to be poisoned. The illegal's nerves
began to fray as his attempts.
The failures annoyed Moscow. The
Politburo accepted a less quiet way of get-
ting rid of Amin. This time special Soviet
troops were to storm the presidential pal-
ace. The day after Christmas 1979, Soviet
paratroopers began arriving at the Kabul
airport. They strengthened the substan-
tial garrison we had quietly been building
up there. The next day an armored col-
umn moved out of the airport toward the
palace. It consisted of a few hundred Sovi-
et commandos, plus a specially trained as-
sault group of KGB officers-rather like
the U.S. Green Berets. They were all in
Afghan uniforms, and their vehicles had
Afghan markings.
exceedingly beautiful young woman with
him. The Soviet objective had been
achieved. But the plan was not without its
weaknesses. No one had expected Amin's
bodyguard to put up such ferocious resis-
tance within the palace. Resistance was
so stiff that Colonel Bayerenov stepped
out of the door to call for reinforcements.
He had forgotten about the orders to the
troops outside and was shot.
Anyway, Amin was now dead. Earli-
er, Karmal had been located in Europe
and brought to Moscow. He agreed to be
the President of Afghanistan and to invite
Soviet troops in to protect his regime.
Even before that announcement was
made, tens of thousands of our ground
troops were moving into Afghanistan.
The Western press attributed several
motives to Moscow. Some said we were
worried about the impact on Soviet Mus-
lims that an upsurge of Islamic funda-
mentalism in Iran and Afghanistan could
have. Others said that we insisted on hav-
ing "our own man" or that we were in-
flamed by the terrible deaths that Afghan
insurgents were inflicting on Soviet advis-
ers. There is something in these interpre-
tations. But they miss the real point.
What moved the Politburo was the
thought that the Muslim revolution in Af-
ghanistan could succeed and that, as a re-
sult, the Soviet Union would actually be
thrown out of Afghanistan. The repercus-
"their neighbors," the Afghans. European
troops were soon brought to replace the
Tadzhiks and Uzbeks.
We made two major errors of judg-
ment: we overestimated the willingness of
the Afghan army to fight and underesti-
mated the upsurge of Afghan resistance.
As a result we sent in too few troops. The
trouble is that Moscow cannot correct this
error. When we began to get bogged
down, of course, the army argued for more
troops. The Soviet general staff wanted at
least twice as many-to seal off the fron-
tier with Pakistan and get better control
along the border with Iran. But the Polit-
buro ruled that out. By then, it feared pro-
voking a serious Western reaction.
Now no one in the U.S.S.R. is happy.
Soviet troops are bogged down. Karmal
has not established effective leadership.
Like his predecessors, Karmal is proving
somewhat truculent in his dealings with
Moscow. Given the way he was treated.
that is hardly surprising. By the spring of
this year, the Politburo was already con-
sidering having him replaced-but decid-
ed to give him a bit more time.
Nobody can really see a way out.
There is no prospect that the Soviet
Union will withdraw from Afghanistan in
the foreseeable future. For those of us who
know what really happened, it is all a
stark reminder of how the Soviet leader-
ship deals with foreign policy. ^
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/06: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303410007-5