NEW EVIDENCE on the WAR in AFGHANISTAN Introduction

COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETIN, ISSUE 14/15 NEW EVIDENCE ON THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN Introduction By Christian Friedrich Ostermann hat was behind the Soviet decision in December a substitute foothold in Afghanistan and worried about main- 1979 to invade Afghanistan? And when and why taining its credibility with communist world allies. Soviet lead- Wdid Mikhail Gorbachev decide to pull out Soviet ers were genuinely concerned that Afghan strongman troops nearly ten years later? What was the role of the US Hafizullah Amin was either a US agent or prepared to sell out covert assistance program, in particular the Stinger missiles? to the United States. At the CWIHP conference, former US What role did CIA intelligence play? How did the Afghan Charge d’Affaires J. Bruce Amstutz as well as other partici- War’s history, a key step in the rise of militant Islam, intersect pants forcefully refuted allegations of Agency links to Amin. with the history of the final decade of the Cold War? These In his five conversations with Amin in the fall of 1979, Amstutz were among the questions addressed at a major international remembered, the Afghan leader did not in any way suggest conference, “Towards an International History of the War in that he was interested in allying himself with the United States. Afghanistan,” organized in April 2002 by the Cold War Inter- US relations with successive communist regimes in Af- national History Project (CWIHP) in cooperation with the ghanistan had been volatile since the April 1978 communist Woodrow Wilson Center’s Asia Program and Kennan Insti- coup, the “Saur Revolution.” The accessible KGB record re- tute, George Washington University’s Cold War Group, and mains garbled on a key event in the downward spiral of the the National Security Archive.2 Designed as a “critical oral US-Afghan relationship prior to the Soviet invasion of 1979: history” conference, the discussions between policy veter- the still-mysterious February 1979 abduction and subsequent ans—former Soviet officials and former National Security killing of US Ambassador Adolph Dubs. The materials, pro- Council (NSC), State Department, and Central Intelligence vided to CWIHP by defected KGB archivist Vasiliy Mitrokhin Agency (CIA) officials from the Carter, Bush, and Reagan (published as “The KGB in Afghanistan,” CWIHP Working administrations—and scholarly experts centered on newly Paper No. 40, available at http://cwihp.si.edu), suggest that released and translated US, Russian, Bulgarian, German, the Amin regime, against the advice of the US embassy in Czech, and Hungarian documents on the war, a selection of Kabul, had authorized the storming of the hotel where the which are printed below.3 In addition to those mentioned ambassador was held by three terrorists associated with a below, conference participants included former RAND ana- radical Islamic group. It remains unclear why the KGB recom- lyst Alexander Alexiev, former CIA officials George Cave mended the execution of the only terrorist who survived the and Charles Cogan, Ambassador Raymond L. Garthoff, hotel storming of the hotel before US embassy personnel former Kabul University professor M. Hassan Kakar, Am- could interrogate him. Dubs had in fact advocated a wait- bassador Dennis Kux, Ambassador William Green Miller, and-see policy toward Kabul and had favored the resump- former Carter NSC staffer Jerrold Schecter, President George tion of Afghan officer training in the United States, which H. W. Bush’s Special Afghanistan Envoy Peter Tomsen, and had been suspended after the communist take-over in 1978, former Reagan administration Assistant Secretary of State eager as other State Department officials to avoid forcing for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Nicholas A. Veliotes. Kabul to rely solely on the USSR. The available Russian documents—including a set of But by early 1979 relations between the two countries materials provided to CWIHP by Russian military expert A. A. were rapidly declining. Following a meeting with Amin , Carter Lyakhovsky—revealed how one-sided official reporting from Administration NSC official Thomas P. Thornton recounted Afghanistan severely limited Soviet policy options between providing a negative assessment of the regime that influ- March 1979, when an uprising in Herat and calls for Soviet enced the US to suspend its assistance program to Afghani- intervention first surfaced during discussions in Moscow, stan, a decision reinforced by the “Dubs Affair.” In mid-1979, and the final decision-making process on intervention the Carter administration began to provide non-lethal aid to that fall.4 Russian scholar Svetlana Savranskaya argued that the Afghan resistance movement. The Reagan administra- the Soviet leaders’ almost exclusive reliance on alarmist KGB tion would indeed inherit an active program of covert military assessments of a quickly deteriorating situation in Afghani- aid to the Mujahaddin that had begun in December 1979 stan in the fall of 1979—at the expense of more cautious (though some conference participants suggested that a US- military intelligence and diplomatic channels—constituted a funded arms pipeline was in place as early as August 1979— critical factor in the decision to intervene. That year, Soviet an assertion repudiated by some of the CIA officials present). concerns mounted over the possibility of a potential US in- In the early 1980s, under the leadership of CIA Director Wil- tervention in Iran following the ouster of the pro-Western liam Casey, this aid program expanded into a sophisticated Shah. Moscow, moreover, feared that the United States sought coalition effort to train the mujahadin resistance fighters, pro- 139 NEW EVIDENCE ON THE W AR IN AFGHANISTAN vide them with arms, and fund the whole operation. In 1980, (George Washington University) presented evidence from the government of Saudi Arabia decided to share the costs of declassified US documents that in 1986 the Reagan this operation equally with the United States. In its full range Administration’s National Security Council staff tried to fun- of activities, the coalition included the intelligence services nel aid to the mujaheddin through Iran as part of its covert of the United States, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, arms dealings with Tehran—a previously undisclosed as- Pakistan, and China. According to the former CIA station pect of the Iran-Contra affair whose ultimate impact remains chief in Pakistan, Milton Bearden, at the height of the covert unclear.5” Former CIA Iran expert George Cave, a participant assistance program in 1986-1987 the coalition was injecting in the clandestine US-Iran contacts spearheaded by then- some 60,000 tons of weapons, ammunition, and communica- NSC aide Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, confirmed that the US sought tions equipment per year into the Afghan war. to collaborate with the Iranians against the Soviets in Af- Nevertheless, Elie D. Krakowski, former special assis- ghanistan. tant to US assistant secretary of defense for international Based on his notes of CPSU Politburo meetings and security policy during the Reagan administration, argued that conversations between Gorbachev and foreign leaders, US aid and in fact overall American strategy toward Afghani- Anatoly Chernyaev argued that Gorbachev had decided to stan remained half-hearted and inconsistent, mostly due to withdraw from Afghanistan within months of taking power. the fact that Afghanistan policy derived largely from the The Reagan administration’s active program of aid and assis- United States’ relationships with Pakistan and Iran. This, in tance, in coordination with its coalition partners, played an turn, meant allowing the Pakistani ally broad leeway, with the important role in shaping Moscow’s decision to end the war result that US assistance was channeled largely to radical and withdraw. But Chernyaev pointed to the loss of public Islamic resistance groups. Confronted with allegations that support within the Soviet Union—as reflected in demonstra- one third of the Stinger missiles alone were kept by the Paki- tions by the mothers of soldiers, negative press reports on stan intelligence service for its own purposes, the former CIA the campaign, and the high number of desertions—as the officials at the conference asserted that oversight over the paramount impetus for the Gorbachev’s decision to with- aid program was tighter and more discriminate than publicly draw. Gorbachev could not pursue his campaign for perceived. perestroika unless he ended the war in Afghanistan and London-based Norwegian scholar Odd Arne Westad sharply reduced the arms race. But the decision was highly pointed out that Russian documents reveal how quickly the controversial. Now a withdrawal would raise questions about Soviet leadership grew disenchanted with the intervention in Soviet credibility (“they think this would be a blow to the Afghanistan. A narrow circle of leaders had made the deci- authority of the Soviet Union in the national liberation move- sion to intervene, with KGB chief Andropov and Soviet De- ment”)6 and might cause a domestic backlash (“they will say: fense Minister Ustinov playing critical roles. According to they have forgotten about the sacrifices and the authority of Anatoly S. Chernyaev, a former member of the Central the country”).7 Thus it took the new Soviet leader consider- Committee’s International Department and later a key foreign able time to gain approval from the other members of the policy adviser to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, many Politburo and the leadership of the army and the KGB. Soviet officials like him learned of the invasion from the ra- The new evidence illustrates the dilemmas that con- dio. Even at the time, criticism of the decision within the fronted the Soviet leadership. Sensitive to potential fallout Soviet elite was more widespread than often assumed. Not from images similar to those of the US pullout from Vietnam a surprisingly, internal discussion of settlement proposals be- decade earlier, fearful of turning the Afghanistan into a gan as early as spring 1980.

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