The Soviet deployment in Afghanistan triggered a 10-year conflict that changed the world. This film unveils the full story of this war, which marked the beginning of the fall of the USSR.
In April 1978, Afghanistan’s President Mohammed Daoud Khan was overthrown and murdered in a coup d'état led by communist rebels. But not everyone in the conservative country welcomed the communist reforms, and a number of insurgencies arose against the new government. In an attempt to prop up the regime, Leonid Brezhnev sent Soviet troops to Kabul. It was supposed to be a short deployment. But the conflict with the anti-communist Muslim guerrillas, the mujahedeen, intensified, and the Red Army ended up remaining in Afghanistan for almost ten years.
This was a time when America had an interest in weakening the Soviet Union’s economy and military. After Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1981, the United States increased its military aid to the mujahideen, using Pakistan and its intelligence service as a go-between. Thus, Soviet troops were not only fighting the mujahideen. Afghanistan became a proxy battleground for the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The boots are Soviet made, no, maybe Czech. The trousers are Soviet. The weapon, Soviet. The belt, Soviet. The jacket, Soviet, you can see from the buttons. The magazine Soviet. The backpack, Soviet. The Pakol, the Afghan cap. And this here’s a real Afghan!
We got up and went outside and we saw thousands of tanks coming into Afghanistan via the North Road. And that went on for days and days. From the information that I was given and that I could gather, 100,000 Soviet troops had just invaded Afghanistan. The Soviet intervention didn’t just happen by chance. Afghanistan was a buffer state trapped between the USSR in the north, Iran in the West, Pakistan to the south and east, and China in the north-east. The Soviet Union and Afghanistan had traditionally been on friendly terms. Lenin’s Russia had been the first country to recognize Afghanistan’s independence in 1919. Afghanistan was the first to recognize the Soviet Union in 1922. The two nations had long maintained a close relationship. The Soviets supported Afghanistan in a variety of areas, such as agriculture, the development of infrastructure and training the Afghan army. Moscow was Kabul’s leading economic partner, but Afghanistan remained an independent, sovereign state. It was a marriage of both love and practicality.
But it ended — paradoxically — on the 27th of April, 1978, the day the Afghan communists came to power in a bloody coup d’état in Kabul. At the start, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was against an armed intervention in Afghanistan. He wasn’t against sending aid, including in the form of “military advisors.” Afghanistan fell into a bloody and chaotic civil war. It wasn’t clear how the crisis in the ruling Communist Party might be resolved. Between March 1979 and December 1979 when the Soviet Union does invade, several things change. One is that the tensions within the ruling party become much worse. And not only are many of the Party members being increasingly sidelined, but even the two ruling leaders, Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin are increasingly at odds with each other. Several things would change Brezhnev’s opinion. Peace efforts were in decline — and peace was his “baby.” From the American perspective the Soviet Union is also using this period of detente to expand its it influence in the third world.
In 1975 of course we have the downfall of South Vietnam and then the reunification of Vietnam as a communist state. And Afghanistan then seems to fit into this pattern. I think the problem for Brezhnev personally, the reason he becomes so amenable to the idea of removing Amin, is that his embrace of Taraki was very public. He made a point of saying don’t worry, you’ll be okay, well support you when he visits Moscow in 1979. He sees him off at the airport, Taraki goes back, and then he’s arrested and killed. And so then Brezhnev also sees this not just as a political insult to the Soviet Union, but as a personal insult to himself. Once his rival was out of the way, Hafizullah Amin undertook new “revolutionary” reforms in the country. They took no account of traditional culture or Islam, and were
widely misunderstood by the public. Far from sticking to Brezhnev’s doctrine, Amin provoked the Soviets by installing a dictatorship in Afghanistan and oppressing the people. Many of the Afghan military deserted and joined the Mujahideen. In the Soviet mindset of the fall of 1979, where they were worried about the United States taking advantage of the situation in Afghanistan, it almost seems like Amin is deliberately destabilizing the country and deliberately destabilizing the leadership.
On top of that they’re receiving some signals that Amin had met with Americans, and of course there’s the fact that Amin had studied in the US. So, suddenly these aspects of his biography and his behavior which on their own would not even be that suspicious, start to come together and start to point to the idea that Amin might be working with the CIA. In total secrecy, the Red Army invaded Afghanistan at the end of December, 1979. The Soviets assassinated Amin and replaced him with a Kremlin loyalist, Babrak Karmal. An air-bridge to Kabul marked the start of a bloody conflict, one that was to be the final engagement of the Cold War. It would seal the fate of the Communist bloc and the Soviet Union. It would change the world. This is a callous violation of international law and the UN Charter. It is a deliberate effort of a powerful atheistic government to subjugate an independent Islamic people. There was a meeting between Brezhnev and his closest advisors, when they decided to intervene in Afghanistan. The only document we now have about it is titled “The Situation in A”. And the letter “A” is in quotation marks. So, there was a climate of secrecy, it was conspiratorial. Even some of the Politburo were not told immediately and wouldn’t learn about it until early 1980. The Soviet people would learn from press reports that a limited contingent of troops had been sent at the request of the Afghan government, to help them re-establish order? and that this contingent would not stay long and that it was for a friendly country and they were there to help them as they’d been doing for years, etc.
The Soviets had wanted to get out of Afghanistan almost from the moment they went in. They were there from 1979 to 1989 but they had never intended to be there for 10 years. And they were looking for a way out very early on, so already in 1980. When they decided this, they made a mistake: they didn’t
talk about the duration of the occupation. How long would our troops stay there: a month, a year, two years, three years? In my opinion that was very important, as the events that followed proved. The intervention and the deployment of troops was warmly welcomed by the Americans. They wanted the Soviet Union to intervene militarily somewhere or other. When that happened in Afghanistan, they were well pleased. The United States and other western countries wanted the Soviet Union to get involved in a war that would weaken the country economically, militarily and politically. And that’s exactly what happened.
The military, the professional military, as far as we know, was not very happy with this decision and they actually warned the civilian leadership that it would be a big mistake. We had good relations with the Afghans. The deployment of our troops was welcomed by the population. But soon began the so-called “Resistance.” I stress the words “so-called.” Because they quickly started to receive lots of money from Pakistan. It was clear the Americans were giving money to the Mujahedeen through Pakistan. They didn’t care who they made war against. It was normal for them. They were always at war with someone. We were a group of about 20 or maybe 30 mujahedeen, and many were very young men. I had some very good friends in that group. May they rest in peace and may God be merciful to them. They are martyrs. We planned the attack well. I asked them, “Have you got incendiary bullets?” They replied, “Yes, we have.” I asked them to find out which vehicle in the Soviet convoy was carrying the reserve fuel, and to tell me if it was in the front or the middle of the convoy. We waited on a slope for the convoy to arrive and then we fired at the fuel- tanker. After that the convoy was blocked. The armored cars caught fire and the Russians were all killed.
That’s how it happened. After that attack, we seized 30 or 40 weapons. One of our units was caught in an ambush. One of my friends had command of the unit. The fighting was very brutal. Some were beheaded or had their eyes put out. The first thing you feel when your friend is dead, is a desire for revenge. I thought about the magazine in my weapon and I wanted to empty it into my enemies. This desire for revenge overrides everything else. The Soviet reaction was a sort of genocide by deportation. The populations that lived along the big roads connecting Afghan cities to the borders of Pakistan and Iran were uprooted and pushed out of the country. This was Moscow’s strategy in Central Asia in the 1920s and early 1930s: surround, isolate, and destroy.
Three million Afghans fled to Pakistan. Two million to Iran. Both Pakistan and Iran were pursuing their own interests in the region and played a big role in the Afghan resistance. The Soviet public was kept in the dark about what was going on in Afghanistan. Soviet media was under the complete control of the Communist party. The press, radio, television? they only reported on what was happening abroad in a very limited and filtered way. Even before the intervention, the Soviet regime was not very popular. There was a general disinterest in politics and a lack of belief in communism. What’s more, the regime couldn’t ensure supplies of basic necessities. People thought: if they can’t even do that, what good are
they at all?
The tenuous hope of rapprochement with the West was ended by the intervention in Afghanistan. The consequences were clear. There were sanctions against the Soviet Union: an embargo on cereals and technology, and the boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980. In terms of image, Afghanistan was absolutely catastrophic for the Soviet Union. Then Brezhnev died. I remember the absolutely soporific spectacle, these old fossils carrying the coffin, leaders of the Politburo who were all over 70 years old. The images of the funeral were images of a regime on its deathbed. The Soviet Union was in its death throes. Yet the old guard choose another sick old man to succeed Brezhnev: Yuri Andropov. Yuri Andropov was a man of the KGB. He headed the KGB, the secret service and secret police, from 1967 to 1982. He embodied the “golden age” of the KGB with its vast operations abroad, in Latin America and Africa. But he also represents a time when dissidents were arrested and put in psychiatric hospitals, a period of repression.
Andropov wanted dialogue with the United States. But when he came to power, Soviet-American relations were very bad. Or rather, east-west relations. It was a phase that couldn’t be called a Cold War anymore. A “chilly” war, maybe. East-West relations had again deteriorated, though not because of Andropov’s rise to power. The process had begun in the second half of the 1970s. I’m a pilot in the Soviet Air Force. My name is Vladimir Kolesnikov. Before coming here to Afghanistan, I only knew what I’d been told; which in reality means absolutely nothing. Naturally, I had my doubts. I knew that if I came here, anything could happen to me. As time went on, doubts grew. Because there were huge losses and the soldiers who came back alive began to talk about the atrocities they’d suffered or that they’d inflicted, because both sides were violent. And all that began to attract criticism.
My mission today was to seek out caravans and targets to strike. I think the only people who could understand how I feel and what we experience here are those who were in the Vietnam war. They lived
through the same thing and were exposed to the same dangers that we are. In all countries, in all societies, people look out for themselves, their own daily problems. And in the Soviet Union, people don’t know about what goes on in Afghanistan. When we go back, there are people who will ask us questions. But I know now that they won’t understand anything about our life here. This is a really dirty war. The famous zinc coffins, in which the dead were transported home, were sealed so the families couldn’t see their loved ones, and they suffered because they imagined the worst. More and more, the war was no longer seen as legitimate by the Soviet people. They started asking questions, and there was anger when they found out they’d been lied to. Sometimes we had to transport coffins. I have to say, that was the most difficult part of our mission, bringing back those coffins. Not one single mother accepted our explanation that her son had fulfilled his duty and had been a good soldier. Such words had no meaning for a mother’s heart. Nothing could replace the son who’d been killed. Trying to comfort them was the hardest thing for us.
The arrival of these zinc coffins changed public opinion, the opinion of civil society. The fallen soldiers’ wives and mothers would come to embody the rejection of this war in Afghanistan. But for the United States, the war in Afghanistan was a godsend. It allowed the country to justify its own foreign policy. In 1981, Ronald Reagan became US president. In 1983, he delivered his famous “Evil Empire” speech. He gave the speech to evangelical Christians. Reagan knew that many religious people in the US were pacifists who might become an obstacle to his aggressive policies against the Soviet Union? to ignore the facts of history and the aggression of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a big misunderstanding, and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, and good and evil. As in Vietnam, the Soviets were hoping... The Americans Vietnam... were always hoping that it would be the South Vietnamese who would deal with the Communist insurgency. And that the Americans would just be there in supporting roles carrying out some operations but mostly focusing on intelligence and training, etc.
And in a very similar way, this is what the Soviets were hoping that their military could do in Afghanistan. Also as the case was in Vietnam, it was very hard to maintain security once an operation was finished. So the American forces would pull back to their forward bases, and once again the terrain would be open. And of course both shared a kind of materialistic idea of what it would take to win the majority of the population over to their own side. The Soviets also though, Okay, we need to do economic development, we need to provide aid, we need to provide food and medicine, all of these things. And that will make people more amenable to the Communist government in Afghanistan. And so they’d spend a lot of resources on this, but of course in the end that wasn’t enough. For Andropov, who was very ill at the time, it was proof that his worst fears were true. A series of events supported Andropov’s belief that the United States wanted to provoke a war.
We are going to go by the town of Sharika. It’s highly dangerous here. From here onwards is the most dangerous zone in the region. We control this route, from 8 o’clock to 6 o’clock, but at night it’s controlled by the Mujahedeen. They watch us and sometimes fire at US during the day too. Look out! Take cover, they’re firing up ahead. A rocket landed right in front of our tank. Congratulations, comrade capitalists, if the Mujahedeen aimed your weapons a bit better, nobody would ever see your film!
In 1985, it became clear to the US that the resistance would last. The Muslim world had realized that this wasn’t just a proxy war between the Soviets and the Americans, but a justified Muslim resistance.
The Reagan administration sensed that it now had political cover to supply anti-aircraft weapons to resistance groups, together with its Pakistani allies. But were the Americans aiding the right side? While the Mujahedeen declared “Jihad”, or Holy War, to drive the Soviet occupiers out of their country, other extremist groups took advantage of the situation. Together with the Pakistani secret service, they tricked the Americans. A large portion of the American military aid fell into the hands of radical fundamentalist groups. Including one led by a certain Osama bin Laden. There were also resistance fighters for whom no US help arrived. Like those in Punisher, a valley in the north-east of the country. They had to fend for themselves, doing whatever they could to secure weapons. Here, in the valley of Punisher, we have nothing but Soviet weapons, weapons captured from the enemy.
Leading the Punisher Mujahedeen was a 28-year-old commander, Ahmad Shah Massoud. With no support from the US, he managed the impossible: he resisted the Red Army, reputedly the most powerful force in the world. We have no direct or indirect relations with the Americans. During the last attack, no one came to our aid. The articles in American newspapers are lies. They aren’t true. Mastoid’s charm, his natural charisma and his military exploits against the Soviets made him a symbol of the Afghan resistance. He was respected as a commander and loved as a person. But apart from his strategic and military talents, he was known in Punisher for establishing a community based on respect for Islam. Even today he remains a legendary figure. Ahmad Shah Massoud was young, tall, handsome, with fine features. He was very charismatic, and well-spoken. He had a big effect on people, he was friendly. There’s no doubt that he was a gifted military strategist and an exceptional talent. But I want to stress his humanistic values. He was a great humanist. He was the most peaceful man I ever knew, but he found himself in the worst of circumstances: war. Even while Afghanistan was at war with the Soviets, he was thinking about the future. About the schools that should be built. About the education of the next generation.
I can only say positive things about Massoud. He was intelligent, sophisticated, and he never made irrational decisions. He always kept his word, however difficult that might be. He did a great deal for his people. While Massoud fought the Red Army, life in Moscow continued as normal. Until the day when the aged Konstantin Tchernenko, who had succeeded Andropov, died. In March, 1985, a younger man came to power. A new face in the Kremlin. The fate of Afghanistan, and of the Soviet Union, would change forever. The hour had come for Mikhail Gorbachev, the heir apparent to Andropov. He became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. No one knew then that he would be the last. He was different from his predecessors, much younger: 54. He was born in 1931 near Stavropol in the Caucasus. He had humble origins. His father and grandfather were peasants. He would prove to be a good authority on agricultural matters — that was his “trademark.” That’s why he was called to Moscow. In 1980 he became a member of the politburo.
His rapid rise was due to his charisma, and also his age and his easy manner. He could give speeches without notes, he improvised. For the Soviet people observing his demeanor, it was something completely new. He liked appearing in public, which was also unusual. His predecessors had had very little direct contact with the people. Gorbachev visited factories, spoke with people, was interested in everyday problems. There was a sense that a new era was beginning. I don’t know what this war is about, why there have to be millions of deaths. What are we fighting for?
This is their country and I think that they can take the responsibility for it themselves. They can decide their future and vote for the parties they want. Our being here makes no sense, it’s a mistake. 1985 was the most atrocious year of the war in Afghanistan. Gorbachev came to power and the generals wanted to persuade him that winning was still possible. But it meant pulling out all the stops before the resistance fighters got American anti-aircraft weapons. In 1985, tens of thousands of peasants and their livestock were killed. But it was too late. The Mujahedeen were equipped with those American anti- aircraft guns. They were suddenly able to shoot down, on average, one Soviet plane and one Soviet helicopter per day. And no Soviet pilot wanted to be part of that statistic. The result was that from 1986, the resistance fighters were also active during the day. Soviet air operations only took place at night, because the pilots were afraid of being shot down. So, the ground troops lost their air support, and the Soviet occupation was doomed.
Afghanistan was a thorn in Gorbachev’s side. It was referred to as the Russian Vietnam. It was a war with big losses and for which the people suffered. It also presented a foreign policy problem. If Gorbachev couldn’t find a solution to the problem, the West would see him as no different to his predecessors. Because as far as the West was concerned, if the affair went on unresolved, it meant nothing had changed in the Soviet Union. He really had to show that his policy had changed and that the Soviet Union was moving into a new era. He had to draw a line under it. It wouldn’t be easy, because the Americans were quite standoffish to begin with. They weren’t sure who they were dealing with. But slowly he was able to build up confidence, by making a lot of concessions. The concessions were mostly on his side. I was sent back to Afghanistan as commander of the 40th army and head of all Soviet forces in Afghanistan. My mission was clear: to bring home all our troops. How could a little valley with only five thousand men and seven hundred weapons stop the Red Army, reputed to be the most powerful in the world?
It’s thanks to the structure of the valley with its mountains and rivers. That was good for us, and bad for the enemy. Massoud defied the Soviets for ten years. They never managed to take his stronghold, the Panjshir Valley. He also held the key to a successful withdrawal of Soviet troops, because his Mujahedeen controlled part of the route linking Kabul and the USSR. His relationship to Gromov was respectful, almost friendly. I never met Massoud in Panjshir, always on neutral territory. For example, on the main road from Kabul to the Salang Pass, where the Panjshir valley begins. We agreed on a particular site. I arrived by helicopter and he came on horseback or by Jeep, accompanied by his bodyguards. When I was on the bridge, I didn’t expect to be greeted by my eldest son. I was overcome by emotions. I felt relief, but also despair. As if I suddenly became aware of all the responsibility that I had carried all those years. The nervous tension was immense, because the situation had been very hard and complicated. I had a feeling of total emptiness as I crossed the bridge. I had the impression that my life was over. I was completely burnt out.
During the 1980s, everything had revolved around Afghanistan, just like it had for hundreds of thousands of Soviet families, and for my own friends and family. Suddenly, after this war, the 1990s began. Difficult years that destroyed our country. The mood in the Soviet Union turned. Voices critical of Gorbachev and the ruling elite grew louder. People called for him to resign. They wanted real change. Gorbachev’s “Glasnost” and “Perestroika” failed. The economic crisis hit the country hard. Shops were empty. The people no longer believed in Gorbachev, or the future of communism. But his policies had opened Pandora’s box. There was no stopping the course of history. Nine months after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Berlin Wall fell. Even in Moscow, statues were toppled. They started with that of Felix Dzerzhinski, the founder of the Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB.
The growing discontent grew became more and more focused on those in power in the Kremlin. One after another, Soviet Socialist Republics declared independence. The days of communism and the Soviet Union were numbered. The Afghanistan war was the catalyst for the fall of the USSR. It played an important role. For one thing, it exposed the military weakness of the Red Army, which wasn’t able to control the situation on the ground. Also, the war showed that the Soviet economy was no longer strong enough to finance such a conflict. It shone a light on the structural problems of the regime. And it undermined the myth of proletarian internationalism, the idea that the powerful Soviet Union should help developing countries. One small country was able to defy a superpower. That led the USSR to question its identity, including its capacity to go toe-to-toe with the United States. The war in Afghanistan raised some States. The war in Afghanistan raised some very painful questions in the Soviet Union. February 1989 marked the end of what’s known as the “Soviet invasion of Afghanistan” or the “Afghanistan War”, or as Moscow called it, “Sending a limited contingent to aid a brother country”. The end of the conflict brought great relief to the multi-ethnic populations of both Afghanistan and the Soviet Union.
It was to be the last armed conflict of the Cold War. But it had taken a heavy toll: around two million dead on the Afghan side, fifteen thousand Soviet soldiers killed, and millions wounded. There were countless victims of landmines. And there was mass population displacement, with around 6 million people fleeing to Pakistan and Iran. It was a war that would change the face of the world. A devastated Afghanistan fell into a bloody civil war in which the Islamist Taliban would emerge as sponsors of a new sort of international terrorism. It’s no coincidence that the country is known as the “Graveyard of Empires”. That’s certainly true when it comes to the Soviet Union: two and a half years after withdrawing its troops, in December 1991, it ceased to exist.
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