Decision-Making and the Soviet War in Afghanistan from Intervention to Withdrawal

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Decision-Making and the Soviet War in Afghanistan From Intervention to Withdrawal

✣ Artemy Kalinovsky

Like many other Cold War conºicts in the Third World, the So- viet war in Afghanistan had reverberations that are still being felt today. Al- though the opening of some important East-bloc archives after the collapse of the Soviet Union allowed scholars to explore why the Soviet Union decided to invade Afghanistan in December 1979, the decision-making process during the rest of the Soviet intervention has gone largely unexamined.1 What makes this period interesting is that despite signiªcant pressure within the highest organs of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the Soviet armed forces to limit direct Soviet involvement, policymakers in fact persisted with the Soviet military intervention. Several factors explain why. First, throughout the Soviet Union’s involvement in Afghanistan, policymaking was dominated by a narrow circle within the CPSU Politburo. These ofªcials formed a consensus among themselves, and their seniority and closeness to the CPSU General Secretary allowed them to sideline most critics of their policies. Second, senior foreign policy ofªcials as well as the General Secre- taries under whom they served shared a concern that a failure in Afghanistan would damage the Soviet Union’s position and authority as leader of the Communist movement and supporter of “national liberation” movements.

1. Analyses of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in general are limited. Two important works have appeared that draw primarily on published materials and interviews: Sarah E. Mendelson, Changing Course: Ideas, Politics, and the Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); and Andrew Bennett, Condemned to Repetition? The Rise, Fall, and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Military Interventionism, 1973–1996 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999). Both books focus on Soviet decision-making in light of “learning theory” and tend to give more weight to “new thinking” in the evolution of Soviet decision-making than I do. Of great value is the book coauthored by United Nations (UN) mediator Diego Cordovez and journalist Selig Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). Also valuable is the account by Pakistani negotiator Riaz M. Khan, Untying the Afghan Knot: Negotiating Soviet With- drawal (Durham, NJ: Duke University Press, 1991).

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Third, involvement in Afghanistan was extended by Moscow’s belief in its ability to transform Afghanistan, stabilize the government there, and achieve broad international recognition of the Communist regime in Kabul. Positive reporting from ofªcials on the ground often bolstered this belief. On numerous occasions the Politburo agreed to extend the presence of Soviet troops to give them a chance to succeed. Finally, the Soviet authorities were unable to coordinate the efforts of their various organizations on the ground. Competi- tion among the military, the Committee for State Security (KGB), Ministry of Foreign Affairs ofªcials, and political advisers led to a partial and often in- accurate understanding in Moscow of what was happening in Afghanistan, as well as confused and often contradictory policy implementation. The still limited archival access for this period makes an “anatomy of decision-making” approach difªcult. Instead, this article identiªes key trends in the decision-making mechanism from 1979 to 1989 and explores how these trends affected the conduct of the war. The article begins with a review of what is known about the decision-making that led to the intervention in 1979. The article then discusses how the pre-intervention period shaped the formation of policy on Afghanistan during the early years of the war, during Mikhail Gorbachev’s ªrst years as CPSU General Secretary (1985–1986), and during the withdrawal itself. The study of Soviet decision-making in this period is methodologically challenging. Archival access is patchy in Russia, which, unlike most other former East-bloc countries, has not systematically declassiªed any documents from the 1970s and 1980s, including CPSU Politburo transcripts, protocols, and other memoranda. Scholars interested in the Soviet Union’s involvement in Afghanistan must make do with selectively declassiªed documents from archives,2 memoirs, oral history, and the documentation and “notes” collected at the Gorbachev Foundation.3 Few documents on the work of the KGB or the numerous political advisers who went to Afghanistan have been declass-

2. Many of these were declassiªed by Boris Yeltsin’s administration in the early 1990s as a way to em- barrass the Soviet government. A number of relevant documents, mostly from Fonds (F.) 5 and 89 at the Russian State Archive of Modern History (RGANI) in Moscow, were collected in an edited vol- ume: Pierre Allan et al., eds., Sowjetische Geheimdokumente zum Afghanistankrieg 1978–1991 (Zurich: vdf Hochschulverlag AG an der ETH, 1995). Another selection of documents from RGANI and the Gorbachev Foundation Archives were translated for the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP). See the document collection “Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan” and the document reader for the 2002 conference “Towards an International History of the War in Afghanistan,” at the CWIHP Virtual Archive, http://www.cwihp.org/. 3. These are compiled handwritten notes, not a formal transcript. However, where I have been able to cross-reference them with records available in state archives, they have been fairly consistent. Some of these were recently compiled (at times in abridged form) in A. Chernyaev ed., V Politbyuro TsK KPSS: Po zapisyam Anatoliya Chernyaeva, Vadima Medvedeva, Georgiya Shakhnazarova (Moscow: Al’pina Biznes-Buks, 2006). See also Chernyaev’s recently published diary, Anatolii Chernyaev, Sovestnyi iskhod: Dnevnik dvukh epokh (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2008).

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iªed. Nevertheless, the materials that are now available, when carefully as- sessed, do allow us to gain signiªcant insights into Soviet decision-making regarding Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. In an earlier article, I explored the intersection between the improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations in 1987–1988 and the culmination of the United Na- tions (UN)–sponsored “Geneva talks” that led to the start of the Soviet troop withdrawal.4 The present article examines how decisions on Afghanistan were made from the initial intervention in 1979 to the withdrawal of troops in 1989.

Decision-Making and the Invasion

The general outline of how the decision to invade Afghanistan was reached began to appear in the years after the Soviet withdrawal was completed in 1989, in part reºecting an ofªcial policy to investigate the origins of the war and to cast it as a failure.5 Documents declassiªed in the early years after the collapse of the Soviet Union sparked new revelations as well as the appearance of several key works in both Russian and English.6 This research permits several general observations regarding the mechanics of decision-making on Af- ghanistan from the Saur revolution in April 1978, which brought the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) to power, through the start of the Soviet intervention in December 1979. First, the invasion was the result of a decision reached by several key foreign policy decision-makers within the Politburo, not the Politburo as a whole. This was characteristic of decision-making during the late Brezhnev era. With Brezhnev himself ailing, foreign policy was dominated by four people: Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Defense Minister Dmitrii Ustinov, KGB Chairman Yurii Andropov, and long-time Politburo member Mikhail Suslov (who, however, did not usually play a salient role on Afghanistan).7 At

4. Artemy Kalinovsky, “Old Politics, New Diplomacy, and the Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan: From the Washington Summit to the Geneva Accords,” Cold War History, Vol. 8, No. 3 (August 2008), pp. 381–404. 5. This included a “parliamentary commission” launched in February 1989 as well as a number of arti- cles in the Soviet press claiming early opposition to the war. See, for example, Oleg Bogomolov’s article “Kto zhe oshibalsya,” Literaturnaya gazeta, No. 7 (16 February 1988), p. 10. The ªrst attempt at a comprehensive account, still very useful, is David Gai and Vladimir Snegirev, Vtorzhenie: Neizvestnie stranitsyi neobiavlennoi voiny’’ (Moscow: IKPA, 1991). 6. A key Russian source is Aleksandr Lyakhovskii, Tragediya i doblest’ Afgana (Moscow: Nord, 2004). Lyakhovskii includes numerous documents, including excerpts of Soviet Politburo transcripts kept at the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation (APRF) in Moscow, many of which are not ac- cessible to most researchers. 7. The three leaders took several measures to make sure that the decision had the appearance of una-

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the same time, other advisers to the General Secretary, such as Brezhnev’s foreign policy aide Andrei Aleksandrov-Agentov, at times exerted considerable inºuence on decisions.8 At the request of the Communist government of Afghanistan, the Soviet Politburo ªrst considered sending in troops in March 1979, after an uprising in the eastern city of Herat unnerved PDPA leaders in Kabul. Ustinov, Gromyko, and Andropov originally supported armed intervention at a Polit- buro meeting on 17 March, believing that the risks of engaging Soviet troops outweighed those of losing Afghanistan. By the time the Politburo next met, however, the situation had changed—intervention was seen as inadvisable both from the point of view of the situation in Afghanistan as well as the threat it would pose to détente. Brezhnev’s foreign policy adviser, Andrei Aleksandrov-Agentov, reportedly played a key role in urging his boss to override Ustinov’s, Gromyko’s, and Andropov’s enthusiastic support for intervention.9 These three leaders, along with the head of the CPSU International Department, Boris Ponomarev, formed the Politburo’s Commission on Af- ghanistan, reinforcing their dominance over decision-making in this area.10 The decision to invade, taken in December 1979, was likewise an example of how Andropov, Gromyko, and Ustinov dominated Soviet foreign policymaking. By this point Brezhnev himself had become more amenable to the

nimity, presumably to stave off later criticism of a decision they knew could have serious consequences. Thus, in the days that followed the decision on 12 December, the other Politburo members were asked to sign. In June 1980 a special CPSU Central Committee plenum was held to confer ofªcial approve on the Politburo decision. Andropov referred to this later when, having succeeded Brezhnev, he was forced to confront unrest within the Politburo. See Politburo Meeting, 10 March 1983, in Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI), Moscow, F. 89, Perechen (P.) 42, Delo (D.) 51, transcribed in Allen et al., eds., Sowjetische Geheimdokumente, pp. 406–412. 8. Mikhail Suslov, the long-serving ideology specialist, and Konstantin Chernenko, an old friend of Brezhnev’s who held sway in organizational matters, played important roles in policymaking, but on the question of Afghanistan, the “troika”—Andropov, Gromyko, and Ustinov—had access to Brezh- nev, seniority, and major institutional support in the form of the KGB, the Foreign Ministry, and the Defense Ministry respectively. 9. Vladislav Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Cha- pel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), pp. 260–261; Odd Arne Westad, Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 288–330; and Karen Brutents, Tridsat’ let na Staroi ploshchadi (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniya, 1998), p. 465. Andrei Aleksandrov-Agentov was a long-serving foreign policy aide to Brezhnev’. He was particularly important because the General Secretary, with little knowledge of foreign affairs but carrying enormous responsibility, relied on someone to interpret the problems and proposed solutions brought before him. Aleksandrov-Agentov in his memoirs barely mentions his involvement with deliberations on Afghanistan. He claims to have learned of the invasion after the fact, which does not exclude the possibility that he was involved in the prior discussions throughout 1979. See A. M. Aleksandrov-Agentov, Ot Kollontai do Gorbacheva: Vospominaniya diplomata, sovetnika A. A. Gromyko, pomoshchnika L. I. Brezhneva, Yu. V. Andropova, K. U. Chernenko, i M. S. Gorbacheva (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniya, 1994), pp. 246–247. 10. Ponomarev was a member of the commission but did not have the same clout as Andropov, Gromyko, and Ustinov, nor the same proximity to Brezhnev. When Andropov and Ustinov began pushing for intervention, they effectively sidestepped Ponomarev.

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idea of intervention, as had Aleksandrov-Agentov. The failure of the U.S. congress to consent to ratiªcation of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II) in the summer of 1979, heralding a turn away from détente on the part of the United States, was one reason. The anticipated decision to deploy Pershing II intermediate-range missiles in Europe (a decision formally approved on the same day that the Soviet authorities decided to invade Afghani- stan) was another. The murder of Nur Taraki by his rival Haªzullah Amin, despite Brezhnev’s pledge of support, helped convince Brezhnev that Amin had to be removed from power. Growing suspicion that Amin might be con- sidering a turn toward the United States contributed to this belief.11 When Andropov and Ustinov pressed for intervention in December, they cited the above arguments, pointing out that a Western-oriented Afghanistan could become a base for short-range nuclear missiles targeted at the USSR. Brezhnev no longer objected to intervention.12 Second, dissenting voices from within the Soviet bureaucracy were regu- larly silenced by the Gromyko-Ustinov-Andropov troika, and Brezhnev did not seek to obtain a wide range of views. According to Karen Brutents, Aleksandrov-Agentov in the late fall of 1979 pressured those who were against the intervention to abandon their position.13 Similarly, senior military ofªcers who tried to object to the operation were told to mind their own business and “not teach the Politburo.” Once Gromyko, Ustinov, and Andropov had come to an agreement among themselves and managed to secure Brezhnev’s support, other senior ofªcials felt compelled to accept their decision.14 Third, those who supported the decision to invade did so because they felt that the “loss” of Afghanistan would be an unacceptable setback and a blow to Soviet prestige. At the same time, their support for an invasion did not mean that they had completely abandoned détente. Brezhnev’s commitment to détente was strong, as was that of Gromyko. Nevertheless, their sup-

11. Amin did have some contacts with U.S. ofªcials in 1979, but these were of a preliminary nature and did not lead to even the seeds of a relationship. See Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), pp. 46–49. 12. Zubok, A Failed Empire, pp. 262–264; and Odd Arne Westad, “Concerning the Situation in ‘A.’: New Russian Evidence on the Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Issue 8–9 (Winter 1996/1997), pp. 128–132. 13. According to Brutents (who was then ªrst deputy head of the CPSU International Department), when Aleksandrov-Agentov learned that he was writing a memorandum arguing against intervention, the latter said, “So, do you suggest giving Afghanistan to the Americans?” His memorandum was ex- cluded from materials presented to the Politburo. See Westad, “Concerning the Situation in ‘A,’” p. 131. 14. Zubok, A Failed Empire, pp. 262–264; and Westad “Concerning the Situation in ‘A,’” pp. 128– 132. Westad also points out that Aleksei Kosygin, who had voiced his opposition to an intervention in March, was absent from the key CPSU Politburo meeting on 12 December, thus removing a key re- straining voice.

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port for détente did not override other concerns they shared as leaders of a great power that had client states around the globe and was in a perpetual contest with the United States and China for inºuence, particularly in the Third World. The fact that détente had seemed to hit a low point after the U.S. Congress delayed any vote on SALT II in the summer of 1979 served as a catalyst for supporters of the invasion. The “loss” of Afghanistan would be particularly embarrassing at a moment when the Soviet Union’s main adver- sary seemed to be abandoning détente. Later efforts to extricate the Soviet Union from Afghanistan generally moved with the ebb and ºow of Moscow’s relationship with the United States.

Decision-Making and the First Years of the War

Soviet leaders did not expect a protracted and costly involvement in Afghani- stan when they approved the Soviet military intervention in December 1979. Nor was such an outcome preordained. Rather, key decisions made in the ªrst months of 1980 fully committed Soviet troops to the survival of the PDPA regime in Kabul and set the pattern for a long-term Soviet presence. Available evidence suggests that Andropov, Gromyko, and Ustinov formed a consensus that they were able to maintain without serious challenge. The months following the invasion were key in turning the intervention into a decade-long war. Following the use of a limited contingent of Soviet troops to put down an Afghan army mutiny at the beginning of January, So- viet forces were drawn into skirmishes with increasing frequency. Soviet ofªcers and soldiers noticed anti-Soviet propaganda spreading quickly throughout the towns and villages, and by the end of the month the only pro- Soviet Afghans seemed to be those who worked for the PDPA.15 Gromyko, Ustinov, and Andropov did not see this as a reason to terminate the intervention. Gromyko told his colleagues that world opinion was divided and not at all solidly in the U.S. camp. Andropov noted the major effort by Babrak Karmal to create unity within the party and to reach out to tribes and certain members of the clergy. Over the previous few weeks, he pointed out, the Afghan government had seemed more solid, acquiring “all the necessary organs of party and state leadership.”16 The new government needed time, he said, and the CPSU Politburo should not be hasty in calling back the troops. Similarly, Gromyko and Ustinov helped to defend the Soviet presence in

15. Boris V. Gromov, Ogranichenniyi Kontingent (Moscow: Progress, 1994), p. 118. 16. Record of Politburo Meeting, 17 January 1980, in Archive of the President of the Russian Federa- tion (APRF), Moscow, Fond (F.) 3, Opis (Op.) 120, D. 44, transcribed in Lyakhovskii, Tragediya i doblest’, pp. 334–335.

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Afghanistan within the CPSU Politburo. At the end of January 1980 Andropov traveled to Kabul to assess the situation and report on it to the Po- litburo. Unfortunately, documents relating to the visit itself are unavailable. However, a fragment of the Politburo discussion that followed the trip is ac- cessible. The conversation makes clear that someone had suggested the possibility of withdrawing troops. Ustinov and Gromyko spoke against this. The former suggested it would take at least a year to pacify the opposition; the latter seemed even more pessimistic. Gromyko pointed out that it would be dan- gerous to leave before achieving some written agreement between Afghanistan and the countries supplying the opposition with arms. “We will never have a complete guarantee, I think, that no hostile country will ever again attack Af- ghanistan. That is why we need to provide for Afghanistan’s complete security.”17 On the one hand, Gromyko seemed to be suggesting the need to begin working on a diplomatic track to help secure Afghanistan’s position through bilateral agreements; on the other hand, he was arguing for an essentially open-ended commitment to maintain the PDPA regime’s position through the use of Soviet troops. Up to this point Soviet troops in Afghanistan had been involved in only small-scale defensive operations and in helping to put down isolated army mutinies. In theory, Soviet involvement could have remained at this limited level. A series of events and protests, however, convinced the CPSU Commis- sion on Afghanistan that Soviet troops should be allowed to engage the enemy directly. According to General Aleksandr Liakhovskii, a senior Soviet ofªcer who served in Afghanistan and has written several books on Moscow’s involvement there, both Marshal Sergei Sokolov and General Sergei Akhro- meev, the two highest Soviet commanders in Afghanistan, had been able in the ªrst few months to avoid the commitments Karmal was requesting. In- creasing hostility to the presence of Soviet troops and the Democratic Repub- lic of Afghanistan (DRA) government eventually convinced Moscow that So- viet troops would have to engage the enemy directly. On 20 February, a major protest broke out in Kabul. Three days later, opposition militants attacked the Soviet embassy in Kabul as well as several Soviet encampments.18 These events unnerved local Soviet representatives as well as the DRA leadership, who sent urgent requests to Moscow that Soviet troops be allowed to “liquidate the enemy.”19 A directive followed from Moscow ordering the Soviet Ground

17. Record of Politburo Meeting, 7 February 1980, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 120, D. 144, in Lyakhovskii, Tragediya i doblest’, p. 357. 18. Gromov, Ogranichennyi Kontingent, p. 118. 19. Gai and Snegirev, Vtorzhenie, p. 116.

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Forces’ 40th Army to conduct joint operations with DRA soldiers.20 By March 1980, Soviet troops were involved in large-scale efforts to repulse guerrillas advancing on Asadabad, the capital of Kunar Province.21 The behavior of Soviet leaders was somewhat paradoxical. They saw their goal in Afghanistan as providing the security necessary for the Karmal regime to take root and be able to withstand both military and political challenges. At the same time, they did not see their Afghan protégés, either in the party or in the military, as capable of surviving on their own. As in January 1980, oral and written statements by members of the Afghanistan commission noted that considerable progress had been made by the Karmal government in re- storing the authority of the state but that it was too early to think about withdrawing Soviet troops. A memorandum prepared by the commission and approved by the Politburo on 10 March 1980 stated that although the government was taking the proper measures with regard to its position do- mestically as well as internationally, the process was “moving slowly.” At the same time, the memorandum said, “the ªghting ability of the Afghan troops remains low.”22 The assessment afªrmed the decision to intervene and replace the government, as well as the continued Soviet investment in the country. A memorandum dated 7 April l listed the multitude of beneªts the Soviet invasion had brought to Afghanistan as well as to the Soviet Union’s security.23 The memorandum’s authors argued that the Soviet Union had invested too much in Afghanistan to withdraw prematurely. Soviet troops would have to play a leading role. The 10 March 1980 memorandum clearly stated that a Soviet military presence would be required for a long time: “The successful resolution of internal problems and the strengthening of the new order in Afghani- stan will take signiªcant effort and time, during the course of which Soviet troops will continue to be the key stabilizing factor.”24 In fact, the USSR’s

20. Ibid; and Lyakhovskii, Tragediya i doblest’, p. 358. 21. At the same time, thousands of Soviet advisers were sent to help develop the military, government ministries, and the PDPA. Over the next six years they played a dominant role in all aspects of Afghan government, often drafting documents and preparing policy. See my paper for the London School of Economics IDEAS/Cold War Studies Centre Seminar Series: “The Blind Leading the Blind: Soviet Advisers, Counter-insurgency, and Nation-Building in Afghanistan,” London School of Economics, February 2009. See also Ilya Elvartynov, Afganistan—Glazami ochevidtsa (zapiski sovetnika) (Elista, Russia: Kalmykskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 2000); Yurii Sal’nikov, Zapiski sovetnika posol’stva (Volgograd: Kommitet po pechati, 2005); and Bennett, Condemned to Repetition, p. 231. 22. Memorandum, Afghanistan Commission of the CPSU Central Committee, 10 March 1980, in RGANI, F. 89, D. 5, P.34, List (L.) 5 (also in Allen et al., eds., Sowjetische Geheimdokumente, p. 304). 23. “The Situation around Afghanistan and the Role of Soviet Troops,” 7 April 1980, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 120, D. 144, in Lyakhovskii, Tragediya i doblest’, p. 359. 24. Memorandum, CPSU Politburo Commission on Afghanistan, 10 March 1980.

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40th Army was increasingly assuming the responsibilities of a national army in Afghanistan, as the April memorandum made clear:

Our troops in Afghanistan will have to continue fulªlling the task of defending the revolutionary order of the DRA, defending the borders of the country, providing securities in key centers as well as transportation links....Onlywith the stabilization of the internal situation in Afghanistan, as well as the improvement of conditions around it, would it be possible, at the request of the DRA leadership, to consider the question of a gradual withdrawal of Soviet troops from the DRA.25

Within several months of the invasion any hope of a quick turnaround had evaporated. Soviet troops had entered Afghanistan to save a revolutionary government from an erratic leader and to make sure an ally did not go over to the U.S. camp. Now they were staying to make sure a new government installed through that intervention could stay in power.

The Afghan Commission, Its Critics, and a Search for a Diplomatic Solution, 1980–1983

The Afghanistan commission was able to sideline or silence critics of its policies outside the Politburo. Georgii Kornienko, a Soviet deputy foreign minister who later became directly involved in Afghan affairs, wrote that at the June 1980 plenum no one had spoken out against the invasion or even raised a question about it. Perhaps, he suggests, if someone had openly challenged the policy, the Politburo would have started looking for a way out earlier.26 In fact, although no one at the plenum had opposed the invasion, by June 1980 certain party ofªcials and leading ªgures of the academic world had made their concerns known to Brezhnev and others in the leadership.27 Dissatisfac- tion was also growing in the military, not just among those who had opposed

25. “The Situation around Afghanistan and the Role of Soviet Troops,” Lyakhovskii, Tragediya i doblest’, pp. 359–361. According to Aleksandrov-Agentov, Brezhnev was distraught over what seemed to be developing into a drawn-out conºict with major international consequences, and he even chided Andropov and Ustinov for convincing him to support the decision to invade. Nevertheless, available records of CPSU Politburo meetings show him supporting the Afghanistan commission and their proposals in the early months of 1980. Brezhnev may have had misgivings about the effect of the war but probably agreed that the stakes were now too high to risk failure. See Aleksandrov-Agentov, Ot Kollontai do Gorbacheva, p. 247. 26. Georgii M. Kornienko, Kholodnaya voina: Svidetelstvo ee uchastnika (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnie Otnosheniya, 2001), pp. 249–250. 27. The academic voices primarily hailed from institutes whose function was to advise the CPSU Cen- tral Committee departments.

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the invasion in the ªrst place but among those who had been to Afghanistan and taken part in the ªghting. The winter and spring 1980 diary entries of Anatolii Chernyaev, a deputy head of the CPSU International Department who later became Gorbachev’s foreign policy aide, record the disgust and worry among his circle of “party intellectuals”—a group of historians and others with academic training who worked in the International Department, the Academy of Sciences institutes, and elsewhere.28 Although most of these people never made their views known outside a small circle of friends, a few appealed to the Central Com- mittee and even to the General Secretary himself.29 Those who traveled abroad experienced ªrsthand the strength of the international reaction against the Soviet intervention. After Georgii Arbatov, an institute director and occa- sional adviser to Brezhnev and Andropov, and Pravda correspondent Yurii Zhukov, returned from a trip to Italy where they were meeting with American academics, they secured a meeting with Brezhnev in May 1980 in which they tried to convince him of the damage the invasion had done to U.S.-Soviet relations.30 Arbatov had raised this issue with International Department head Boris Ponomarev even earlier.31 In fact, criticism of the invasion came as early as 20 January, when the In- stitute of Economics of the World Socialist System, an Academy of Sciences think tank, sent a memorandum to the CPSU Central Committee as well as the KGB. The memorandum, signed by Academician Oleg Bogomolov, argued that the invasion had done great damage to Soviet interests and détente and had given new stimulus to the Afghan opposition, which was now able to call the population to resistance “against a foreign invader.” Coming at a time when the extent of resistance was perhaps not yet clear, the memorandum included a prophetic note: the leadership needed to maneuver for a way out prior to the start of spring, when warmer weather would bring increased attacks and Soviet troops would be drawn into the ªghting.32 These were not the only petitions to reach the Central Committee. Simi-

28. Anatolyi Chernyaev, “Afganskii vopros,” Svobodnaya Mysl’, Vol. 21, No. 11 (2000), pp. 66–68. 29. Vadim Kirpichenko, at the time a deputy chief of the First Main Directorate of the KGB, notes that even those in the upper echelons of the KGB had a sense that the invasion had been a mistake. See Vadim Kirpichenko, Razvedka: Litsa i lichnosti (Moscow: Geia, 1998), p. 358. 30. Georgii Arbatov, Chelovek sistemy: Nablyudeniya i razmyshleniya ochevidtsa ee raspada, (Moscow: Vagrius, 2002), p. 292. 31. Chernyaev diary entry for 21 June 1980, in Chernyaev, Sovestnyi iskhod, pp. 209–211; and Chernyaev, “Afganskii vopros,” p. 73. 32. The memorandum is excerpted, almost in full, in Lyakhovskii, Tragediya i doblest’, pp. 337–340. Bogomolov later told Gai and Snegirev that he was not sure the memorandum had ever reached Brezhnev’s eyes. See Gai and Snegirev, Vtorzhenie, p. 115.

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lar efforts were reportedly undertaken by others, including specialists on the region.33 The effect of these early petitions was minimal at best. Even the most respected academics could not compete with the party’s senior leaders. The academics’ assessments of foreign policy were too easy to write off as the views of the intelligentsia, never to be fully trusted when matters of state in- terest were concerned.34 It was more difªcult to shrug off the worries of the military. Senior commanders had expressed their opposition even before the invasion. As early as 1980 Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, General Valentin Varennikov, and General Sergei Akhromeev concurred that there was no military solution to the un- folding situation in Afghanistan.35 Yet such negative assessments did not generally reach the Politburo because Ustinov, who as defense minister could lay down the line to Ogarkov, Varennikov, and Akhromeev, was a supporter of the invasion. General V. A. Merimskii, deputy chief of the Ministry of De- fense operational group in Afghanistan, who was in Afghanistan in the early years of the war, writes that although Sergei Sokolov, then deputy chief of the General Staff, agreed with the assessments of ªeld commanders who thought there was no military solution, the Politburo was not willing to consider a pullout.36 During this period there was a tendency for positive reporting from ofªcials on the ground. Even reports that contained critical information might lead with several pages noting improvements in the situation.37 The tendency for optimistic reporting was particularly marked among the thousands of party advisers sent to Afghanistan both before and after the invasion to help the PDPA in organizational and government matters. Their reporting on the condition of the party was overwhelmingly positive and no doubt helped justify the argument of those who insisted that Soviet troops should remain in Afghanistan to see the job through.38 The scarceness of documentation makes it difªcult to determine the overall mood in the CPSU Politburo on the question of the Limited Contin-

33. Kirpichenko, Razvedka, pp. 358–359. See also Yurii Gankovskii, “Afghanistan: From Intervention to National Reconciliation,” Iranian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Spring 1992), pp. 134–135. 34. For Andropov’s comment to Boris Ponomarev following Arbatov’s conversation with Brezhnev, see Chernyaev “Afganskii vopros,” p. 73. 35. Gankovskii, “Afghanistan,” p. 133. 36. V. A. Merimskii, “Afganistan: Uroki i vivody,” Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, No. 1 (January 1994), p. 29. 37. See, for example, the otherwise critical letter to the CC CPSU from a Pravda correspondent, dated 12 November 1981, in RGANI, F. 5, Op. 84, D. 855. 38. Interview with Andrei Urnov, CC International Department ofªcial responsible for Afghanistan, 25 March 2008, Moscow.

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gent of Soviet Troops, as it was called. However, the evidence suggests that some leaders did feel genuine concern about the consequences of keeping troops in Afghanistan. The focus in the available memoranda on the necessity of keeping the 40th Army in Afghanistan indirectly conªrms that proposals were being ºoated for the troops to be withdrawn. Lyakhovskii cites a document from late February 1980 that suggests Brezhnev brought up the question of a withdrawal and that the possibility was rejected by Ustinov and Andropov.39 Perhaps Brezhnev was unhappy with the possibility of an indeªn- ite presence of Soviet troops in Afghanistan; however, earlier in the month he had brought up the possibility of sending more troops.40 In any event, he supported the members of the Afghanistan commission when they argued for es- chewing withdrawal. The Afghanistan commission developed the idea for the intervention and was the key policymaking body in the ªrst years of the invasion. The public knew very little, and the wider party organization was not involved in any decision-making. But as it became clear that Soviet troops would have to stay in Afghanistan for a longer time, leaders realized that they would need to go through the formality of securing party endorsement of Soviet policy in Af- ghanistan. At a special Central Committee plenum convened in June 1980, Gromyko delivered a speech defending Soviet policy in Afghanistan. The So- viet Union, he said, would not apologize for sending in troops; indeed, “the ones who should be apologizing are those are behind the aggression against Afghanistan, who carried out criminal plans with regard to this country.” Echoing an earlier statement by Brezhnev, Gromyko insisted that it was necessary to keep the troops there.41 The plenum, as usual, followed the Pol- itburo’s lead and voted its “full approval” of the actions taken by the leadership.42 Both the initial invasion and the continuing presence of the 40th Army in Afghanistan thus had the ofªcial support of the party. A waning of optimism on the part of the Afghan commission members was what ªnally brought about a change. By early 1981, members of the commission had started to doubt their own policies. At ªrst, they harbored only individual doubts, not necessarily reºective of a broader consensus. Ustinov, who had rejected the military ofªcers’ concerns before the invasion, belatedly started to take them to heart. He was the one receiving assessments directly

39. Lyakhovskii writes that the document, from the archive of the General Staff, is still classiªed and thus cannot be quoted. Lyakhovskii, Tragediya i doblest’, p. 358. 40. Politburo Meeting, 7 February 1980, in Lyakhovskii, Tragediya i doblest’, p. 357. 41. Speech by Andrei Gromyko, CPSU Central Committee plenum, 23 June 1980, in Allen et al., eds., Sowjetische Geheimdokumente, p. 382. 42. “Resolution of the CPSU Central Committee Regarding the International Position and Foreign Policy of the Soviet Union,” 23 June 1980, in Allen et al., eds., Sowjetische Geheimdokumente, p. 384.

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from senior commanders in Afghanistan and presumably understood the difªculties they were facing.43 In February 1981, Ustinov circulated a letter to fellow Politburo members stating that “no military solution to the war was possible” and that it was necessary to ªnd a political and diplomatic way out. However, no one on the Politburo backed Ustinov, and the letter was never put on the agenda of a Politburo meeting.44 From January 1980 through the end of 1981 there were plenty of indica- tions that the war was going poorly and that the intervention had not been worth the strain it had placed on the Soviet Union’s relationship with the United States, other Western countries, and the Muslim world. The concerns of mid-level ofªcers and senior-level generals and marshals had ªltered through to the Minister of Defense, while party members and intellectuals had made their concerns clear to the leadership, sometimes appealing directly to the Politburo. The country’s leaders were also becoming aware that the bogged-down operation had grown into a war and that it would be difªcult to keep the scale of Soviet involvement from the public. Although signs of wide- spread opposition to the war were almost non-existent, the public mood was not irrelevant to leaders in Moscow. In 1982, when Andropov listed for United Nations (UN) mediator Diego Cordovez the problems the Soviet intervention had caused, the Soviet leader included in his count the damage it was doing to Soviet society.45 All these factors encouraged Soviet leaders to look more favorably at options they had earlier rejected, including UN-mediated talks. Starting in early 1981, Moscow gradually opened up to the possibility of UN mediation in the conºict. Although earlier in the year Ustinov’s letter had not even been considered by the Politburo, other members of the Afghanistan commission were now beginning to accept the importance of ªnding a diplomatic solution through negotiations. Kornienko recalls that in the fall of 1981 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with Andropov’s and Ustinov’s support, prepared a memorandum recommending the acceptance of proximity talks between Afghani- stan and Pakistan. The hope was that the resulting agreement would induce Pakistan to cease its support of the opposition in Afghanistan. The proposal

43. In an interview with journalist David Gai, General Norat Ter-Grigoryants recalled a meeting with Ustinov in early 1981 when the latter asked, “in all honesty, when will we end the war there?” Ter- Grigoryants replied that it was impossible to “resolve the Afghan problem by military means” and rec- ommended the formation of a coalition government. See Cordovez and Harrison, Out of Afghanistan, p. 65; and David Gai, “Afganistan: Kak Eto Bylo: Voina Glazami Ee Uchastnikov,” Vechernyaya Moskva, 30 October 1989, p. 4. 44. Quoted in Cordovez and Harrison, Out of Afghanistan, p. 65. 45. G. M. Kornienko and S. F. Akhromeev, Glazami marshala i diplomata (Moscow: Mezhdun- arodnye otnosheniya, 1992)p. 49.

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was approved by the Politburo.46 When UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim traveled to Moscow in May 1981, he found Brezhnev and Grom- yko more open to diplomacy and even to a prominent role for the UN.47 Al- though Gromyko said that the Secretary-General’s efforts should continue “at a cautious pace,” he added that Moscow supported his efforts and was prepared to accept the participation of a special representative in the negotiating process. He also stressed that the Soviet Union “would cooperate with those efforts by advising the Afghan Government to act likewise in this direction.”48 Negotiators had made considerable progress at the “Geneva talks” by the time of Yurii Andropov’s death in 1984. The Soviet leadership saw U.S. support for the mujahideen as a key factor making continued Soviet involvement necessary.49 As Andropov put it to his Politburo colleagues in March 1983: “The problem is not Pakistan’s position. It is American imperialism that is giving us a ªght...wecannot retreat.”50 There could be no agreement with Pakistan until there was an accommodation with the United States. Unfortu- nately, U.S.-Soviet relations soon hit another rough spot with the downing of Korean Airlines ºight 007 in September 1983. The strong condemnation from the United States and the inept response of Soviet leaders, along with other events in the last few months of 1983, kept U.S.-Soviet relations at a high level of tension throughout the year.

Initiatives, Expectations, Disappointments: 1985–1988

Almost no documentation is available regarding decision-making on Afghani- stan during the Chernenko interregnum.51 However, no signiªcant policy changes were undertaken in this period.52 The Geneva process remained at an

46. Kornienko, Kholodnaya voina, p. 250. 47. Cordovez and Harrison, Out of Afghanistan, p. 77. 48. “The Soviet Position as It Emerged during the Secretary-General’s Visit to Moscow, May 4–7, 1981,” 21 May 1981, in Secretary General’s File, S-1067-1-1, United Nations Archives, New York. 49. See Cordovez and Harrison, Out of Afghanistan, pp. 73–184; and Riaz M. Khan, Untying the Afghan Knot: Negotiating the Soviet Withdrawal (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991). 50. Politburo Meeting, 10 March 1983, p. 410. 51. Konstantin Chernenko succeeded Andropov as CPSU General Secretary upon the latter’s death in February 1984. Chernenko himself lived only until March 1985. Throughout this period he was often ill and unable to attend CPSU Politburo meetings. 52. Chernyaev’s recently published diary discloses that at least one Politburo meeting chaired by Gorbachev was held during this period to discuss Afghanistan. Ustinov and Viktor Chebrikov, back in Moscow after talks with Babrak Karmal, painted a devastating picture of affairs there. The Afghan

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impasse, and no other signiªcant diplomatic initiatives were made. This was the situation that Gorbachev inherited when he was elected General Secretary in March 1985. Apparently, Gorbachev decided either before or soon after taking ofªce that Soviet troops needed to be brought home, but that this had to be done in stages. He faced the same dilemma that Andropov, Ustinov, and Gromyko did once they contemplated withdrawing Soviet troops. A way had to be found that did not undermine Soviet prestige and authority as a world power and leader of the Communist world. Crucially, Gorbachev did not have a plan for Afghanistan in March 1985. Even after securing the Polit- buro’s support to work toward a withdrawal in October 1985, he moved cautiously in developing an Afghan policy, preferring to try a number of proposals to stabilize the situation before bringing Soviet troops home.53 Sometime in March or early April 1985, Gorbachev requested a policy review from the sitting Afghan commission, now composed of Marshal Sokolov (elevated to minister of defense after Ustinov’s death in late 1984), Gromyko, and Viktor Chebrikov, the head of the KGB. The commission was told to look into “the consequences, pluses, and minuses of a withdrawal.”54 In the meantime, Gorbachev’s rhetoric regarding Afghanistan sometimes echoed the Brezhnev era. In May 1985 he told Italian Prime Minister Benedetto Craxi that “there is a certain process underway in this country, the point of which is to get rid of centuries-old backwardness. It is difªcult to say when this will be completed.”55 Gorbachev further defended the Soviet war: “Some- one decided to interfere in Afghanistan’s internal affairs. Under these conditions the USSR . . . introduced a limited contingent of its troops.”56 For the next few months the new General Secretary continued to discuss the Afghan problem with conªdants as well as with Foreign Ministry and military ofªcials. Crucially, détente-minded policy intellectuals and some leading military commanders agreed that the war was hopeless. A report from General Varennikov, who had become head of the Defense Ministry’s Operational

ofªcer corps was still torn by the Khalq/Parcham split, almost half the border with Pakistan was a “hole,” and 80 percent of the territory was controlled by the “bandits.” Yet, neither Ustinov, Chebrikov, nor any other member of the Politburo suggested a radical change of course was necessary. With the political situation uncertain, matters were allowed to drift. Chernyaev, Sovetsnyi iskhod, pp. 570–571. 53. This was typical of Gorbachev, who often moved cautiously on both domestic and foreign policy reforms. Since the end of the Cold War, scholars have debated Gorbachev’s genuineness and style as a reformer. My own research into his handling of the Afghan problem agrees most closely with that of Zubok, who sees Gorbachev as procrastinating on Third World issues in his ªrst few years. See Zubok, A Failed Empire, pp. 297–298. 54. Politburo Meeting, 10 March 1983, p. 410. See also Lyakhovskii, Tragediya i doblest’, p. 521. 55. M. S. Gorbachev’s Conversation with B. Craxi, 29 May 1985, in Gorbachev Foundation Archive (GFA), Moscow, Doc. 4771. 56. Ibid.

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Group in Afghanistan, noted that the military successes had no long-term effect on the opposition, which continued to grow. The DRA government failed in the key counterinsurgency strategy of establishing a presence in an area cleared of guerrillas. As a result, “combat actions for stabilizing the situation in the country can have only a temporary character. With time the insur- gents in these districts are capable of re-establishing lost positions.”57 In June 1985 Gorbachev asked for a proposal to be drafted on “resolving the Afghan question.”58 His reactions to his aides’ proposals on Afghanistan also changed. Whereas previously he had told Arbatov that he was “thinking” about the Afghan problem, he now said that he agreed that a quick withdrawal was necessary. One morning in the third week of June, Gorbachev even summoned Arbatov for a one-hour conversation that focused primarily on Afghanistan.59 Gorbachev spent the summer of 1985 pondering and soliciting advice on the Afghan problem. By the fall he was ready to start implementing a strategy for withdrawal. In October 1985, following a meeting with Babrak Karmal, Gorbachev addressed the CPSU Politburo and secured his colleagues’ approval to work toward a withdrawal. Gorbachev not only cited letters telling of crippled soldiers and mothers grieving over the loss of their sons, he also quoted from letters that directly blamed the Soviet leaders: “The Politburo made a mistake that should be rectiªed, the sooner the better because every day is taking lives.” He concluded with a phrase that conveyed his disappoint- ment in the Afghan leader: “With or without Karmal we will follow this line ªrmly, which must in a minimally short amount of time lead to our withdrawal from Afghanistan.” No objection was voiced to what Gorbachev said, and Defense Minister Sokolov supported moving toward a withdrawal.60 Still, no ªrm decision had been made on how Afghan policy should be conducted in order to facilitate a Soviet withdrawal. In fact, the ªghting in

57. Report by General Valentin Varennikov, 6 June 1985, Personal Archive of General Varennikov, transcribed in Lyakhovskii, Tragediya i doblest’, pp. 513–514. This did not mean that the Soviet army was failing as such. Indeed, by 1985 it had become much more adept at ªghting in local conditions than it had been in 1980. Varennikov and others had been arguing, however, that such ªghting could go on indeªnitely unless a political solution was found. 58. Diary entry for 20 June 1985, in Chernyaev, Sovetsnyi iskhod, pp. 634–635. Chernyaev records that Georgii Kornienko, the deputy foreign minister, made this comment to Brutents, who was a personal friend. 59. Ibid. 60. Diary entry for 17 October 1985, in Chernyaev, Sovetsnyi iskhod, pp. 649–650. See also Chernyaev, Six Years with Gorbachev, pp. 42–43. Anatolii Dobrynin, still ambassador to Washington but in Moscow at the time and present at the meeting, writes that “there was no objection and no strong endorsement, but rather reluctant silent agreement. That was the crucial session that decided in principle our withdrawal from Afghanistan, although it did not yet ªx any concrete dates.” Anatolii Dobrynin, In Conªdence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), p. 447.

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Afghanistan in Gorbachev’s ªrst years continued with the same intensity as before.61 A decision to withdraw in principle, which the Politburo had approved in October 1985, was neither a strategy nor a plan in practice. In fact, while Gorbachev clearly wanted to move Soviet policy toward a withdrawal, he did not yet have any particular scheme in mind. He operated on the as- sumption that the Soviet Union needed to leave Afghanistan, but without “losing face.”62 In April 1986, two months after labeling the war a “bleeding wound” at a party congress, Gorbachev told a special Politburo meeting that a rushed withdrawal from Afghanistan would do great harm to Soviet ties with other client states: “We must under no circumstances just clear out from Af- ghanistan, or we will damage our relations with a large number of foreign friends.”63 With the weight of the Soviet Union’s commitments to the Com- munist world on his shoulders, Gorbachev feared acting precipitately. As he put it in a February 1987 Politburo meeting:

We could leave quickly...andblame everything on the previous leadership, which planned everything. But we can’t do that. They’re worried in India; they’re worried in Africa. They think that this will be a blow to the authority of the So- viet Union in the national-liberation movement. Imperialism, they say, if it wins in Afghanistan, will go on the offensive.64

Thus, the period from October 1985 to April 1988 (when the Geneva Accords were signed) was spent trying various policies to make a Soviet withdrawal as free of political cost as possible. Soviet leaders pursued a two-track strategy. First, they encouraged changes within Afghanistan that would make a withdrawal justiªable. Second, they tried to revive the international diplomacy that had stalled in 1983. In pursuing the ªrst strategy, the Soviet Union began by effecting a change of leadership within Afghanistan and launching national reconciliation, a policy that was supposed to entice various tribes and parties to support the government—a step that would be essential for the success of the DRA. In March 1986 Karmal was forced to share power with Mohammad Najib Ahmadzai (later known simply as Najibullah), a KGB-selected candidate who

61. It is far from clear, however, that Gorbachev “authorized” an escalation, as some authors have as- serted. The increase in troop numbers that did occur likely was a result of a new strategy that sought to decrease attacks from the air and focus on special operations with ground troops—a strategy that began before Gorbachev. See Alan J. Kuperman, “The Stinger Missile and U.S. Intervention in Afghani- stan,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 114, No. 2 (Summer, 1999), pp. 237–239; and Lyakhovskii, Tragediya i doblest’, pp. 518–519. 62. Interview with Yulii Vorontsov, former Soviet ambassador, in Moscow, 11 September 2007. 63. See Lyakhovskii, Tragediya i doblest’, p. 523. Unfortunately, the record of this meeting is unavailable. 64. Politburo Meeting, 23 February 1987, in GFA, Politburo Records (PB), 1987, p. 114.

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Soviet leaders hoped would do a better job of uniting the party and making peace with various elements in Afghan society. In November 1986 the CPSU Politburo decided to back Najibullah’s bid for uncontested power and pushed Karmal to resign from his remaining government posts. The decision reºected Soviet leaders’ faith in their new choice. Najibullah had earned the support of the people who had emerged as the new “Afghani- stan commission”: Anatolii Dobrynin, Marshal Sokolov, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, and KGB Chairman Viktor Chebrikov. Referring to Najibullah, a note submitted to the CPSU Politburo in November 1986 by Dobrynin, Sokolov, Shevardnadze, and Chebrikov said “it is clear that he is disposed to ªnding real approaches to the problem [of national reconciliation]. He needs our support in this, especially because indeed far from everyone in the PDPA accepts the idea of reconciliation.”65 Several months later, following a visit to Kabul, Shevardnadze told the Politburo, “[Najibullah] cre- ates a very good impression, he is taking the initiative into his own hands.”66 Gorbachev did try to change the Soviet decision-making process on Af- ghanistan. There was a signiªcant difference in how policy toward Afghani- stan was discussed at CPSU Politburo meetings during the Gorbachev years as opposed to the Brezhnev and Andropov periods. Unfortunately, the lack of a complete set of records from any of these periods makes a deªnitive judgment difªcult, but the available documentation suggests that a far more open discussion took place at Politburo meetings under Gorbachev than what was typical for the early 1980s, when policy was dominated by Andropov, Gromyko, and Ustinov. Even members of the Politburo who were not directly involved in foreign affairs were invited to offer their opinions and ask ques- tions.67 Gorbachev also tried to address the problem of internecine ªghting between rival agencies. Over the years, a rift had developed between senior KGB and military ofªcials on how to conduct policy in Afghanistan. Gorbachev appointed Yulii Vorontsov, a veteran diplomat, to coordinate the work of the various institutions involved in Afghanistan—the KGB, military, Foreign Ministry, and party advisors. Gorbachev was aware that the relationships among these groups were testy and that their recommendations often contra-

65. CC CPSU Memorandum, 13 November 1986, in RGANI, Op. 14, D. 41, L. 8, in Soviet Inva- sion of Afghanistan, CWIHP Virtual Archive, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id?1409 &fuseaction?va2.document&identiªer?5034DF42-96B6-175C-94B37A1064349E42&sort?Collec tion&item?Soviet%20Invasion%20of%20Afghanistan. 66. Notes of Politburo Meeting, 21 January 1987, in GFA, PB, 1987, p. 60. 67. This change was true not just of the Politburo’s approach to Afghan policy but of its general func- tioning during this period. Gorbachev could not yet dominate the Politburo the way his predecessors had. As a new leader he was also more vulnerable politically. Achieving policy consensus was thus all the more important.

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dicted each other. Vorontsov was given a “mandate” to coordinate their work and provide the Politburo with recommendations that everyone could agree on. The work was difªcult—the representatives of the various institutions could become quite forceful in their disagreements. But the “mandate from the General Secretary” helped.68 Yet these efforts failed, in the long term, to resolve the underlying problems in the decision-making process. The rift between the military and the KGB was not bridged. In fact, it grew worse in the months before the withdrawal and during the withdrawal itself. Similarly, although Politburo meetings included extended discussion of Afghanistan, policy was soon largely controlled by several key individuals who had Gorbachev’s ear and were able to sideline dissenters.

Decision-Making and the Shift to Withdrawal

The year 1987 was a turning point in the war. Month by month, Soviet leaders realized the depth of the Afghan problem from which, to some extent, they had been shielded before. Even more important, they were becoming aware that their plans for saving the DRA government, conceived in 1986, were insufªcient. The economy was ruined, Najibullah was isolated in the government, and a withdrawal was no closer than it had been in October 1985. The length of time for withdrawal discussed in January and February 1987, two years, was almost the same as what Gorbachev had called for a year-and-a-half earlier, after Karmal’s visit in 1985. Although the CPSU Politburo gradually moved toward a consensus regarding the infeasibility of accomplishing much in Afghanistan prior to a withdrawal, key members continued to ªnd reasons to prolong the involvement of Soviet troops. On numerous occasions, Gorbachev pointed out to his colleagues that a hasty withdrawal would mean the loss of Soviet prestige in the Third World. Shevardnadze and Vladimir Kryuchkov, meanwhile, formed a sort of “Najibullah lobby” within the Politburo, arguing that Soviet policy had to be based on ªrm support for the recently installed leader.69 These points of view had serious consequences during the withdrawal. By the middle of 1987 the consensus in the Politburo on what could be achieved in Afghanistan had changed dramatically. Most leaders were willing

68. Interview with Vorontsov, in Moscow, 11 September 2007. 69. For more on the Kryuchkov-Shevardnadze position, see Kalinovsky, “Old Politics, New Diplo- macy,” pp. 383–385.

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to accept a secondary role for Moscow’s client within a future Afghan government.70 Gorbachev was coming around to the view that the situation on the ground in Afghanistan would not signiªcantly change before Soviet forces withdrew. Talks with Najibullah had left him disappointed, he told the Polit- buro on 23 July.71 Although Soviet policy in Afghanistan seemed to be failing, there was still some cause for optimism. U.S.-Soviet relations were improving. At the 23 July Politburo meeting Gorbachev suggested that a three-party meeting of the United States, the USSR, and Afghanistan was necessary.72 The effort to get the United States on board for an agreement would charac- terize Moscow’s policy in Afghanistan from the fall of 1987 until the signing of the Geneva Accords in April 1988.73 The changes in Moscow’s approach to the Afghan problem in 1987 and 1988 were related to broader changes in the Politburo’s handling of foreign policy problems. This was the period in which, thanks to Gorbachev’s efforts, like-minded reformers were brought into the Politburo and conservative politicians, including Andrei Gromyko, were pushed out. The slow pace of change in Gorbachev’s ªrst two years induced him to pursue more radical approaches, and he increasingly tied the success of his foreign policy to an improvement of relations with the West.74 This served as an added incentive to ªnd a way out of Afghanistan, even at the risk of abandoning the key prin- ciples that had kept Brezhnev, Andropov, and even Gorbachev from reversing the intervention. The period 1987–1988 saw the most profound change in Soviet policy toward Afghanistan since the intervention. But the change was not irreversible. Once the withdrawal had actually begun and the long- feared collapse in Kabul appeared imminent, Gorbachev again began to

70. The new consensus in the Politburo was that the PDPA would be only one of the political forces in power after Soviet troops left. Even Kryuchkov agreed that reconciliation would have to take place not around the PDPA but with its participation. Gromyko, too, said that the PDPA should be one of the parties in the government but not the leading one. See Politburo Meeting, 22 May 1987, in GFA, PB, 1987, p. 319. 71. Notes from Politburo Meeting, 23 July 1987, in GFA, PB, 1987, p. 429. To Gorbachev, Karmalism meant “elements of Marxism combined with dependence on the USSR.” 72. Ibid. 73. Gorbachev hoped to secure U.S. and Pakistani agreement to stop supplying arms to the mujahideen. This would have given political cover for the withdrawal and given Najibullah a much better chance of surviving the Soviet withdrawal. Following talks with Reagan and U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz during the Washington summit of December 1987, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze thought they had secured the Americans’ agreement. However, Reagan later denied that he had made any such agreement. Ultimately, Moscow decided to sign the Geneva Accords even though the matter had not been settled. For this phase of Moscow’s effort to withdraw from Afghanistan, see Kalinovsky, “Old Politics, New Diplomacy,” pp. 381–404. 74. See Vladislav Zubok, “Gorbachev and the End of the Cold War,” Cold War History, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2002), pp. 79–82, 92–93.

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support more aggressive policies, even at the risk of aggravating relations with the West.

The KGB-Military Dispute and the Withdrawal

By 1988, the decision-making process vis-à-vis Afghanistan had returned to a pattern resembling that in the months leading up to the intervention and in the ªrst years of the war. Shevardnadze and Kryuchkov (who took over as chairman of the KGB in 1988) concentrated control over Afghan affairs in their hands. Marshal Akhromeev in principle represented the military’s point of view. On occasion, advisers like Anatoly Chernyaev or Aleksandr Yakovlev (whom Gorbachev appointed to the Afghan commission in 1988) could ap- peal to Gorbachev directly. On the whole, however, Gorbachev was more in- clined to listen to Shevardnadze and Kryuchkov. During the war a rift had developed between senior KGB and military ofªcers working in Afghanistan. This was a family quarrel with complex causes that may have included a feeling among the military ofªcers that the KGB had dragged them into an unwinnable war. Over the course of the war they had even begun to take sides in the factional dispute within the PDPA— the military supporting Khalq (which dominated the DRA army) and the KGB supporting Parcham, which they had helped to install in power in 1979.75 In the summer and fall of 1988 these divisions were highlighted in a series of policy debates that were invariably won by the KGB, with Shevard- nadze’s support. Rival DRA leaders tried to take advantage of the divisions among Soviet ofªcials to gain advantage in their own power struggle. Their disagreements echoed uncertainty at the level of the Soviet Politburo, whose members were divided about the best course to pursue in Afghanistan. Shev- ardnadze and Kryuchkov continued to believe that Moscow had to put all its weight behind Najibullah, whereas others were willing to see a PDPA without Najibullah enter into a coalition with opposition movements.76 One of the disputes involved the formation of a personal presidential guard for Najibullah. This was opposed by the Soviet military, which believed

75. Interview with Aleksandr Lyakhovskii, July 2006; and Interview with Leonid Shebarshin, 17 Sep- tember 2007. 76. This confusion is reºected in a conversation between Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Petrovskii and UN Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar on 21 October 1988. Although Moscow seemed to be throwing all its weight behind Najibullah, Petrovskii “indicated that [Najibullah] would leave the scene.” See Record of Conversation, 21 October 1988, in Box 10, Pérez de Cuéllar Papers, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University.

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that the existence of a special guard with a much higher salary than the rest of the Afghan army would merely lead to tension and low morale. With Shevardnadze’s support, however, Najibullah was able to continue developing the guard.77 Similarly, the military-KGB conºict played out during an effort by two senior Afghan military leaders to sideline Najibullah. Shahnawaz Tanai and Mohammad Gulabzoi both approached Soviet military ofªcials for support, pointing out that they would help install a multiparty government and make peace with opposition leaders such as Ahmad Shah Massoud. Military ofªcials, who had been pushing Najibullah to make peace with Massoud and had arranged several truces with him over the years, were intrigued. The KGB, however, strongly opposed challenges to Najibullah’s authority. For months KGB representatives had been aware that a conºict was brewing between Gulabzoi and Najibullah and had tried to convince the former to make peace. Kryuchkov had even met with Gulabzoi. Tanai was open to such arguments, but Gulabzoi was more intransigent. On 6 October, a week after his meetings in Moscow, Gulabzoi was relieved as head of the Kabul garrison. A month later he was sent as ambassador to Moscow, where he could no longer cause Najibullah any trouble.78 The Soviet KGB resented the Soviet military’s efforts to engage in politics. After the Tanai and Gulabzoi incident, an irate Kryuchkov berated one of the Soviet generals who had met with the men: “You are expected to help the army ªght successfully, not engage in politics. Najibullah is supported by our leadership and by Mikhail Sergeevich. We and all of the representatives in Kabul need to support Najibullah.”79 Throughout the fall of 1988 the military continued to push for Najibul- lah to make peace with Ahmad Shah Massoud and give up some control. Their advocates in Moscow were Kornienko and Akhromeev, who were soon sidelined by Shevardnadze and Kryuchkov. According to Kornienko, both he and Akhromeev were removed from the Afghanistan commission for arguing that Najibullah should cede power. Kornienko and Akhromeev pressed this point at an early September 1988 “working group of four” meeting that included Kryuchkov and Vorontsov. Shevardnadze apparently complained to Gorbachev that “Akhromeev and Kornienko were not following the Politburo line.”80 Shortly after this incident Kornienko was sidelined from all Afghan af-

77. Mikhail Sotskov, Dolg i sovest’: Zakrytye stranitsy afganskoi voiny, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: Profes- sional, 2007), Vol. 1, pp. 101–108. 78. Interview with Leonid Shebarshin, in Moscow, 19 March 2008. 79. Sotskov, Dolg i sovest’, p. 120. 80. Kornienko, Kholodnaya voina, p. 260.

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fairs, and Akhromeev received a strong reprimand from Gorbachev.81 Both men left their respective posts before the end of the year. Kornienko was asked to resign, and Akhromeev left of his own volition.82 The removal of Korni- enko and Akhromeev from Afghan affairs silenced the chief voices for a settle- ment for a new government that did not include Najibullah.83 With Kornienko and Akhromeev removed, Shevardnadze and Kryuch- kov reached the peak of their inºuence on Afghan affairs. Gorbachev followed their line not only on policy toward Najibullah but also with regard to the military’s efforts with Ahmad Shah Massoud. Gorbachev expressed his dissat- isfaction with the military and Kornienko to the Politburo: “We must carry out the line of the Politburo and not adapt it to individuals in the General Staff or the working group.”84 At a meeting with Rajiv Gandhi in Delhi on 19 November, Gorbachev told the Indian leader, “our people once tried to un- dertake something by going around Najibullah. This became the subject of a serious investigation, and we have taken measures to eliminate similar [initiatives].”85 This signaled a renewed commitment to Najibullah, one closer to the kind Shevardnadze and Kryuchkov were urging. Shevardnadze’s and Kryuchkov’s control of decision-making on Afghani- stan led to the approval of one of the war’s most pointless operations on the eve of the withdrawal. Throughout the fall of 1988 Najibullah sent requests for a major, “decisive” operation against Massoud. The military opposed it, believing that such an operation would be futile and would undermine their chances of a bloodless withdrawal. Gorbachev’s advisers, including Chernyaev and Vadim Zagladin, also opposed such an operation.86 When Shevardnadze met with Najibullah on 13 January, less than a month before the withdrawal deadline, the latter again requested that a major operation be undertaken

81. Shevardnadze has acknowledged that he and Kornienko had been rivals since 1985 and said that Gorbachev “played games” by involving both men in foreign policy disputes. Shevardnadze’s effort to remove Kornienko in the fall of 1988 may have been the culmination of this long-standing rivalry. In- terview Eduard Shevardnadze, in Tbilisi, 9 May 2008. (The interview was jointly conducted with Sergey Radchenko.) 82. Kornienko, Kholodnaya voina, p. 261. This version of events was conªrmed by Andrei Urnov, who dealt with Afghan policy in the CPSU International Department from 1986 to 1989. Interview with Urnov, in Moscow, 25 March 2008. 83. Kornienko had been at odds with Shevardnadze on Afghan policy earlier in the year, when Kornienko had gone over Shevardnadze’s head and convinced Gorbachev to include a deadline for the withdrawal of troops in a key statement on 8 February. See Kalinovsky, “Old Politics, New Diplo- macy,” pp. 391–392. 84. Politburo Meeting, 18 September 1988, in GFA, PB, 1988 85. Third Conversation of M. S. Gorbachev and R. Gandhi (India) Delhi, 19 November 1988, in Na- tional Security Archive/George Washington University, READD/RADD Collection, Box 9. 86. Chernyaev Memorandum, 16 October 1988, in GFA, Doc. 1553; and Zagladin Memorandum on Afghanistan, January 1989, in GFA, Doc. 7178.

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against Massoud. Shevardnadze promised Najibullah that he would work for such an operation. This would be a major strike, not a small operation: “it is clear that no local or limited measures will be sufªcient to solve the problem of Ahmad Shah [Massoud].”87 Shevardnadze carried this request to Moscow, where he managed to get approval for what would become “Operation Ty- phoon.”88 The military was greatly upset by this decision. Some ofªcers even discussed returning medals won during the war.89 Shevardnadze and Kryuchkov were able to win these policy disputes because they had Gorbachev’s ear and also because their arguments reºected his own belief that the withdrawal must not undermine Soviet prestige. Gorbachev ignored the arguments of close advisers who disagreed with the policy of giving Najibullah absolute support or attacking Massoud right before the withdrawal. The goal of maintaining Soviet prestige in the Third World continued to prevail in his thinking and made him open to Kryuch- kov’s and Shevardnadze’s arguments that Moscow ªrst and foremost had to provide support to its friend.

Conclusion

In Afghanistan, Soviet leaders found themselves in a trap not unlike that of other powers engaged in counterinsurgency campaigns. The longer the campaign went on, the more heavily Moscow became invested in it, and the harder it became to envision an exit that would avoid grave consequences not only abroad but at home as well. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger faced these problems as they plotted a path out of Vietnam. Barack Obama’s ad-

87. Memorandum of Conversation between Najibullah and Shevardnadze, Kabul, 13 January 1989, in Lyakhovskii, Tragediya i doblest’, p. 670. 88. Unfortunately, there is no record available of how this decision was taken. However, the diary of Vitalii Vorotnikov, a member of the CPSU Politburo, does contain notes of a 13 January Politburo meeting at which Shevardnadze talked about an imminent economic blockade of Kabul. According to Vorotnikov’s notes, Gorbachev said: “We must not leave the DRA to its fate. Work. Think about propaganda. But ªrst we leave, and then we act through the UN, Security Council, and others.” See Vorotnikov, A bylo eto tak: Iz dnevnika chlena Politbyuro TsK KPSS (Moscow: Kniga i Bizness, 2003), p. 280. It is difªcult to evaluate Gorbachev’s attitude from this fragment. On the one hand, he seems to be in favor of getting out and using only diplomacy to protect the DRA. On the other hand, he em- phasizes that the USSR has to take responsibility for the DRA. However, because the operation was approved, we must assume that Shevardnadze and Kryuchkov convinced Gorbachev of its necessity. 89. Interview with Lyakhovskii; and interview with Vorontsov. Sotskov later wrote that “almost ten years of the war were reºected as if in a mirror in three days and three nights: political cynicism and military cruelty, the absolute defenselessness of some and the pathological need to kill and destroy of others. Three awful days absorbed in themselves ten years of bloodletting.” See Sotskov, Dolg i sovest’, p. 531.

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ministration is facing similar concerns in Afghanistan.90 By the 1980s, Soviet foreign policymakers operated within a political order in which the USSR was the patron of a vast network of client states and Moscow’s support for Third World states and guerrilla movements was almost as much a part of the Soviet Union’s self-identity (at least in terms of foreign policy) as the victory in the Great Patriotic War. But this support was part of a three-way competition with the United States and China. In this context, the consequences of any perceived failure, such as the collapse of Kabul after a Soviet withdrawal, would be magniªed. Gorbachev worried about this no less than his predecessors had. In Kryuchkov and Shevardnadze he found like-minded thinkers, whereas his more liberal advisers and colleagues pushed him to ignore these concerns and withdraw from Afghanistan as soon as possible.91 What made the dilemma more acute for Gorbachev than for his predecessors was that they had operated during a period of heightened Cold War tensions and in the wake of a collapsed détente. Their hands were untied. For Gorbachev, the war in Afghanistan was an obstacle in the way of his broader foreign policy agenda, and that agenda in turn limited his options in setting policy on Af- ghanistan. The Soviet experience in Afghanistan was the culmination of Moscow’s Third World involvement during the Cold War. For decades the Soviet Union had been offering a version of modernization based largely on its own experience in political organization, management, and technology, and sending its military, political, and technical advisers to emerging states that were socialist or leaning that way. Because the effort in Afghanistan was so grand, the potential for failure was as well. Soviet power and inºuence rested on several pillars: its military might, its technological prowess, and the superiority of its political model for achieving modernization and fending off neocolonialism. The specter of a grand failure, the kind that might reveal the vulnerability of all three pillars, hung over Soviet leaders as they tried to plot a course out of the Afghan quagmire.

90. For a survey of the dilemmas faced by great powers ªghting counterinsurgencies, see David Edelstein, “Occupational Hazards: Why Military Occupations Succeed or Fail,” International Security, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Summer 2004), pp. 49–91, esp. the section titled “The Dilemma of Failing Occupa- tions.” 91. Indeed, Soviet-allied states repeatedly expressed their concerns about the consequences of a hasty withdrawal. In August 1988, for example, just as pressure began to mount from Kabul to halt the withdrawal, a paper from the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) noted that in conversations with Vietnamese leaders the latter had expressed their unhappiness with the hastiness of the Soviet withdrawal: “The Vietnamese are making it known that having taken the path of settling the Afghan problem, the Soviet Union has made excessive concessions to the opposing side. Soviet troops are being withdrawn hastily, despite the unfavorable development of events within Afghanistan and the unceasing aid from the United States and Pakistan.” “Regarding the Foreign Pol- icy of Vietnam,” IMEMO Policy Paper, submitted to the CC-CPSU, 30 August 1988, IMEMO, Moscow.

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A fourth pillar of Soviet power was loyalty to friends, something the country’s leaders truly valued. Abstract notions of honor might also have been involved, particularly in Shevardnadze’s case, but geostrategic factors were also signiªcant. A country that abandoned its allies when the going got tough would not hold on to its global inºuence for long. Individuals like Amin and Karmal were expendable, but entire governments were not. Not surprisingly, the imperative not to abandon Najibullah and concerns over the potential reaction among Soviet allies in the Third World if Moscow did so were repeatedly raised in CPSU Politburo debates. With the minor exception of Gorbachev’s ªrst years in power, policy on Afghanistan was made in Moscow by a small group of men who often shut detractors out of the decision-making process. During the ªrst years of the war in particular, when policy on Afghanistan was dominated by powerful ªgures like Andropov, Ustinov, and Gromyko, they could not be outmaneu- vered. Policy could change only when these leaders had changed their minds, which started to happen in 1981. During the Gorbachev years, attempts to outmaneuver Kryuchkov and Shevardnadze, who had come to shape Afghan policy, were difªcult but not impossible—though such moves could carry serious consequences.92 Soviet leaders’ decisions on Afghanistan were dictated not just by broad considerations of power, status, and worldview. Equally important was their perception of developments within the country. One cannot discount the tendency of positive reporting from junior ofªcials working in Afghanistan. This was a problem in many areas of Soviet bureaucracy, and it almost certainly contributed to Soviet leaders’ understanding of the situation in Afghanistan. Because many reports sent to Moscow reºected not only developments within the Kabul government but also the work of Soviet advisers themselves, the latter had additional incentive to write reports about progress being made in that country. Negative, critical reports were also produced—but even when leaders like Andropov, Gromyko, and Ustinov did not shut such reports out completely, they seemed to balance positive assessments of their Afghan policy against any negative reports. The prevailing line was that although problems still existed, progress was being made, so the right thing to do was to extend the Soviet presence in Afghanistan until the problems would be solved. In any case this was how the policymakers presented their arguments to Politburo

92. As it did for Kornienko in the fall of 1988. Gorbachev was not completely deaf to the entreaties of his advisers who disagreed with Kryuchkov and Shevardnadze. For example, when Najibullah requested Soviet air support to defend Jalalabad against a major mujahideen onslaught in March 1989, he was dissuaded despite the strong endorsement of such a move by Shevardnadze and Kryuchkov. See Chernyaev, “Afganskii vopros,” pp. 49–50; and CPSU Politburo Notes, 10 March 1989, in GFA, PB, 1989, L. 202.

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colleagues. Later on, Kryuchkov and Shevardnadze fell into the same trap, believing that Najibullah was making progress toward forming a more stable government and using this as an argument against curtailing Soviet support for him. Soviet decision-making was also affected by the ongoing rivalry between different agencies working in Afghanistan. The rivalry affected decision- making because whichever agency could ªnd the most effective champion in Moscow would have its point of view represented. In these turf battles the military usually ended up the loser and the KGB the winner, as happened in the fall of 1988. Indeed, Soviet ofªcials were often acting as proxies in the intra-PDPA power struggle, championing the position of their advisees in Moscow. As a result, decisions in Moscow sometimes reºected a preference for an Afghan faction or leader even if that faction or leader did not act in Mos- cow’s broader interests. A ªnal factor, the most subjective in nature and hence most difªcult to evaluate, was the internal politics and power struggles within the CPSU Polit- buro. Andropov, Gromyko, and Ustinov were all among the potential succes- sors to Brezhnev. Any major failure in Afghanistan would reºect poorly on them and jeopardize their chances of becoming General Secretary or of assuming a top post under someone else. Indeed, a post-Brezhnev leadership might well look for scapegoats if faced with a disaster in Afghanistan. For these men the war had become a test of their resolve, their ability not to run from setbacks, to defend Moscow’s allies, and see a foreign policy crisis through to a satisfactory conclusion. Only when they were convinced that their military, economic, and political efforts within Afghanistan were not going to bring the desired result did they turn to UN diplomacy and other chan- nels they had rejected earlier. Gorbachev and Shevardnadze shared similar concerns. As reformers with little foreign policy experience, they would be vulnerable to criticism if their policy led to disaster in Kabul. A Russian anecdote relates the tale of two drunks who debate whether one can ªt a light bulb into his mouth. When the one who insists it is possible tries to do so, he ªnds out that, yes, one can get the light bulb in—but getting it out is very difªcult. One must either bite down and face the prospect of a mouth full of broken glass or ªnd a surgeon to unhinge the jaw. This anecdote is an apt metaphor for the dilemmas faced by political leaders trying to plot their way out of a prolonged counterinsurgency campaign in a foreign country. Leaders who choose intervention abroad are apt to believe that their military and economic superiority will be enough to defeat the enemy. Often they are right, but in other cases when the costs of the war far outweigh the leaders’ initial estimates, they are left with very painful choices.

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Acknowledgments

This article is based on a paper presented at the “Decision-Making and the Cold War” conference held at the Hamburger Institut für Sozial- forschung, 3–5 September 2008, and draws on the author’s research for his Ph.D. thesis. The author would like to thank the conference organizers, the anonymous reviewers at the Journal of Cold War Studies, and Odd Arne Westad for very helpful comments and suggestions.

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