Soviet Union Can Be Traced to the Invasion of Afghanistan 25 Years Ago

Moscow’s Fatal The thunderous collapse of the Soviet Union can be traced to the invasion of Afghanistan 25 years ago. Soviet soldiers who fought in Afghanistan leave for home. The Soviet Union fought a decade-long conflict that proved a miscalculation of historic proportion. Corbis photo by Sergei Karpukhin 72 AIR FORCE Magazine / December 2004 Military Adventure By Walter J. Boyne N SEPT. 12, 1979, the some 280 aircraft, transported crack, president of Afghani- combat-ready Soviet troops to Kabul. stan, Nur Mohammad Once in Kabul, Soviet forces moved OTaraki, was deposed and then mur- out swiftly, seizing key targets, and dered. Hafizullah Amin, a commu- on Dec. 25, the city was declared nist and a Soviet puppet who led the secure. coup, replaced Taraki and set about The Kremlin, however, had not trying to quell an anti-Soviet Mus- played its final card. On Dec. 27, an lim revolt. elite Soviet Spetsnaz unit raided the In this, Amin was no more suc- president’s Darulaman Palace with cessful than Taraki, and Moscow orders to kill Amin and every living before long was seeking a more radi- soul with him. The unit, commanded cal solution. by Lt. Gen. Viktor Paputin, did just Within months, a worried Krem- that. lin had launched an outright inva- In Amin’s place, the Soviets in- sion of Afghanistan. It marked the stalled another puppet, Babrak Kar- first direct use of Soviet military mal, as the new head of govern- power outside of Eastern Europe ment. Other units crossed the border since World War II. and fanned out to occupy air bases The attack, set in motion 25 years and cities. ago this month, led to what some The new regime immediately call “the Soviet Vietnam,” but that launched a pro-Muslim charm of- does not convey the magnitude of fensive and moved to blame all pre- the disaster that befell the USSR. vious problems on the former rul- Vietnam, after all, did not destroy ers. Russia’s leaders hoped that America, but Afghanistan did cause these measures and a potent Soviet the collapse of the Soviet Union. occupation force would guarantee In 1979, Soviet power seemed to be peace on the USSR’s highly sensi- at its peak. With a huge force of multi- tive southern border. warhead ICBMs, Moscow matched or It was, of course, a miscalculation exceeded the US in overall strategic of historic proportion. nuclear might. The 3.6 million-strong Over the next 10 years, a curi- Soviet forces enjoyed numerical su- ous, three-sided conflict unfolded periority in conventional forces. in Afghanistan. One side comprised Politically, the Soviet Union seemed Soviet conventional forces, which stable. Moreover, America’s exit from were strong, well-equipped, and Vietnam seemed to mark the start of a well-trained—but for a war in Eu- long-term retrenchment of US power rope, not Afghanistan. A second around the world. side centered on the armed forces Soviet leaders, in short, saw little of the Soviet-backed Kabul regime. risk in its Afghanistan adventure. The Afghan Army suffered from The Red Army invasion force se- internal divisions and dislike of cretly began mobilizing in October the invaders, who were also their 1979. Airborne battalions arrived at main patrons. On the third side was Bagram Air Base that December. the fractious Afghan resistance, These units moved to cover the vital united only in its allegiance to Is- Salang Pass, the invasion route of lam and its hatred of any imposed the Soviet Red Army’s 360th and outside influence. 375th Motor Rifle Divisions. Estimates of the strength of the In mid-December, a well-timed and Afghan resistance ranged from 90,000 well-executed military airlift, using up to 700,000 in the 10 years of the AIR FORCE Magazine / December 2004 73 war, but of these only a small por- tion was effective in modern guerrilla war or was even in the field at any time. The war ebbed and flowed through the years, but it was increased West- ern support of the Afghans—including introduction of shoulder- AP photo by David Stewart-Smith fired anti-aircraft weapons such as the SA-7 and the Stinger—that forced the Red Army to pack up and leave. Early Advances, 1980-82 At the onset of the conflict, the Soviets expected the army of the Kabul regime to make large-scale sweeps against resistance forces, with the Soviets supplementing the domestic efforts. This did not work out, for desertions seriously weak- An Afghan guerrilla readies a Stinger heat-seeking missile. The mujahedeen ened the ill-trained and ill-motivated used such weapons to bring down helicopters and low-flying airplanes that Afghan Army. When asked to fire had become central in the Soviet battle plans. on demonstrators, its soldiers often declined and defected to the resis- trained. Ominously, 70 percent of Unfortunately for Moscow, it tance. divisional strength was composed lacked light infantry to accompany This lack of loyalty was shown at of reservists with Muslim back- the armor, placing it at an extreme every level of the Kabul regime’s grounds. disadvantage in the rugged terrain forces, including even the suppos- Soviet troop strength grew from in which the guerillas operated. edly elite Afghan pilots flying So- an initial 40,000 to about 120,000 at In another echo of Vietnam, the viet-built MiG-21s. On one occa- its peak and, to its immense misfor- native Afghan opposition studied sion, an entire squadron of MiG-21s tune, was made up largely of con- Soviet tactics and learned how to was destroyed when their pilots blew scripts. isolate, attack, and destroy individual them up and fled to fight on the Initially, the Soviet Union re- units. Moscow’s reaction was to ground with the mujahedeen. sponded to a series of strikes and employ more airpower, particularly The first shock to Soviet sensi- demonstrations in Afghan cities with the effective Hind attack helicopter, bilities came when it was discov- a display of military power, con- which ultimately became the sym- ered that the men of their motor- ducting ground sweeps using mecha- bol both of Soviet oppression and ized rifle divisions were poorly nized forces backed up by airpower. defeat. Some conventional weapons, such as surface-to-air missiles and heavy artillery, were found not to be use- ful for fighting counterinsurgency warfare and were withdrawn. In their place, additional heliborne ground forces were brought in. Corbis photo by Reza Soviet casualties were unaccept- ably high. By time the Soviets with- drew in 1989, they admitted to up to 15,000 killed. This figure has been questioned by a number of sources, including the Russian military. Other observers contend that the number was actually between 40,000 and 50,000, of the some 550,000 personnel who served in the country. The Soviets discovered that big ground offensives were largely ex- ercises in futility, bringing heavy casualties and no perceptible long- Tajik leader Ahmed Shah Massoud played a key role in driving out the Red term gain. The other side of the coin Army, but he later tangled with the Taliban. He was killed Sept. 9, 2001, by was that despite the large number of suicide terrorists loyal to Osama bin Laden. casualties being inflicted on the en- 74 AIR FORCE Magazine / December 2004 emy, this had relatively little effect on the resistance. Soviet Airpower in Afghanistan Trying to Adapt, 1983-85 The Soviet Air Force, unlike the Army, followed a policy of rotating air units through Afghanistan on a six- to nine-month tour basis. Often only part of the unit The Soviets were continually add- would deploy, with the remainder of the regiment staying at its permanent base. ing variations to their theme of com- The Soviet Union used helicopters as its primary air weapon. As many as 650 bined-arms warfare and the use of were fielded. They were lavishly employed, sometimes in massed formations political means. In the Panjshir Val- reminiscent of the Sturmovik attacks of World War II. ley, some 70 miles northeast of The Mi-24 Hind gunship was effective, and the versatile Mi-17 Hip was used to bring troops in and out of the combat zones. A heavily armed and armored version Kabul, a year-long truce was struck of the Hip was used as an attack helicopter. Official Soviet sources indicate that with the local Tajik leader, Ahmed 333 helicopters were lost. Shah Massoud. The truce proved of When the war began, the MiG-21 Fishbed was the most important fighter- more value to Massoud than to the bomber, a role for which it was not particularly effective in the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan. The Sukhoi Su-17 Fitter was more successful at close air support. Soviets, for he continued to con- Smaller numbers of the Su-25 Frogfoot—the Soviet equivalent of the A-10 duct operations in other areas, gath- Warthog—Su-24 Fencer, and MiG-23 Flogger served after 1984. ering greater influence. Beyond providing close air support, fighter-bombers were used in new roles by New Soviet offensive tactics in- the Soviets in their attempts to depopulate areas of Afghanistan and destroy its cluded the depopulation of areas agricultural base. Farmhouses, outbuildings, livestock, and even crops were attacked. where the resistance was most effec- When the fighter-bombers were used as reprisal weapons for terrorist attacks, tive and the concurrent destruction they would level a village. Ground troops would follow up to kill any survivors of of the agricultural basis for their the air attack and also demolish anything of value the fighter-bombers missed.

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