What Happened in 1979 to Cause the Cold War to Flare Up Again
On Christmas Eve 1979, the Soviet Marriage began an invasion of Afghanistan, its Cardinal Asian neighbour to the south. Beginning, it air-dropped elite troops into principal Afghan cities. Soon afterwards, it deployed motorized divisions beyond the border. Within days, the KGB, which had infiltrated the Afghan presidential palace, poisoned the president and his ministers, helping launch a Moscow-backed coup to install a new boob leader, Babrak Karmal. The invasion triggered a fell, nine-year-long Afghan ceremonious state of war.
By the time the last Soviet troops pulled out in early 1989, rumbling back across the ironically named "Friendship Span," the conflict had cost the lives of an estimated 1 one thousand thousand civilians and some 125,000 Afghan, Soviet and other combatants. The war wreaked havoc non only on Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, simply on the Soviet Matrimony, whose economy and national prestige took a astringent drubbing. The military misadventure would contribute significantly to the USSR'south subsequently collapse and breakup.
So why did Moscow practise it?
Afghanistan Had Long Held Strategic Importance
A political cartoon of Nicholas 2 and General Obruchev looking over a 'War Map' with 'Russian federation' on one side, 'England' on the other, and 'Afghanistan' between them; beneath the table, having come through a trap door, is 'the Herald's Special Correspondent,' c. 1885.
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From the early nineteenth century onward, Afghanistan became a geopolitical pawn in what came to exist known as "The Great Game" between the empires of Tsarist Russia and Uk. Fearful that Tsarist Russia'southward expansion into Cardinal Asia would bring it perilously close to the border of India, their imperial jewel, Britain fought three wars in Afghanistan to maintain a buffer against Russian encroachment.
Neither the Russian Revolution of 1917 nor the end of British colonial rule in Republic of india contradistinct Afghanistan's geopolitical significance. In 1919, the year Afghans won independence to conduct their ain strange policy, the Soviet Matrimony became the first country to establish diplomatic relations with Afghanistan—which, in turn, was ane of the first to formally recognize the Bolshevik government. Over subsequent decades, the USSR offered both economical and military aid to a neutral Afghanistan. When the British empire declined afterward Earth War Two and the United States emerged as a dominant world ability, Afghanistan remained on the Cold War front lines.
Moscow Struggled to Lock in Afghan Allegiance
In 1973, Afghanistan's last king was ousted in a coup by his cousin and blood brother-in-constabulary, Mohammed Daoud Khan, who proceeded to establish a democracy. The USSR welcomed this shift to the left, but their delight soon faded equally the disciplinarian Daoud Khan refused to be a Soviet puppet. During a private 1977 meeting, he told Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev he would proceed to utilise foreign experts from countries beyond the USSR. "Afghanistan shall remain poor, if necessary, just gratuitous in its acts and decisions." Unsurprisingly, Soviet leaders disapproved. In 1978, the communist People's Democratic Party of Transitional islamic state of afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew Daoud Khan in what became known every bit the Saur Revolution. Daoud Khan and eighteen family members died.
Despite Afghanistan'southward nominally communist leadership, Soviet leaders nevertheless couldn't relax. The new PDPA regime, divided and unstable, faced fierce cultural resistance from conservative and religious leaders, and opposition throughout much of the Afghan countryside to the communists' radical agrarian reforms. In the fall of 1979, revolutionary Hafizullah Amin orchestrated an internal PDPA coup that killed the party's starting time leader and ushered in his brief, but barbarous reign. National unrest soared, and Moscow's hand-wringing intensified.
Gyre to Go along
Moscow Feared Growing U.S. Interest
Soviet troops in Kabul, Afghanistan on Dec 29, 1979
Francois Lochon/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images
Afghanistan's chaos alarmed Soviet leadership primarily because it increased the odds that Afghan leaders might turn to the U.s. for help. Height Politburo members warned Brezhnev in belatedly Oct 1979 that Amin sought to pursue a more "counterbalanced policy" and that the United States was detecting "the possibility of a change in the political line of Afghanistan."
Only weeks later, KGB head Yuri Andropov joined the USSR's foreign minister Andrei Gromyko and its defense minister Dmitri Ustinov in sounding the alarm. They persuaded Brezhnev that even if the Americans weren't actively trying to undermine Soviet influence in Afghanistan, Amin's ruthless but unstable regime would create weaknesses the U.S. could later exploit. Moscow, they argued, would accept to act.
The Soviets Upheld the 'Brezhnev Doctrine'
Those warnings likely vicious on receptive ears. A decade earlier, in 1968, Brezhnev introduced his new dogma: All socialist (read: Moscow-friendly communist) regimes had a responsibleness to uphold others, using military force if necessary. The "Brezhnev doctrine" was a response to the "Prague Spring," a cursory menstruation of liberalization nether the leadership of Czechoslovakia'southward new leader, Alexander Dubček. Fifty-fifty Dubček's modest steps away from hardcore communism offered reason enough for the Soviets to invade Czechoslovakia and abduct him.
By 1979, Afghanistan, a unpleasing, once-friendly regime, provided another hazard for the USSR to militarily enforce the Brezhnev doctrine. Failing to act, leaders realized, might call into question Soviet willingness to uphold other regimes on its side of the so-chosen "Atomic number 26 Curtain," the physical and ideological edge dividing the USSR from the rest of Europe afterwards Globe War 2.
Afghanistan Might Exacerbate the USSR's 'Nationalities Problem'
Afghan Mujahideen fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan during the 1980s.
Pascal Manoukian/Sygma/Getty Images
Throughout its history, Russia's massive territory encompassed a wide swath of national and ethnic groups inhabiting their historical homelands. During the Soviet era, which overlaid a repressive arrangement of centralized power, communist leaders worried about internal challenges erupting in its satellite states—specially the fast-growing Muslim-bulk Central Asian ones. While propaganda portrayed Soviet life as a happy, multi-ethnic melting pot where different traditions thrived within the context of national unity, the reality for some groups involved purges, deportations and labor camps. To the Soviets, whatsoever dissent or shift in brotherhood from Afghans—fifty-fifty those professing to be communists—posed the risk of sparking similar moves in next states like Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, which all shared ethnic identity, religion and history with Afghanistan.
With 20/twenty hindsight, it'south piece of cake to conclude that launching an invasion of Transitional islamic state of afghanistan to prop up an unpopular regime was a foolish, doomed venture. To Soviet leaders in Moscow during the short winter days of Dec 1979, however, the decision to do just that seemed logical—and inescapable.
Source: https://www.history.com/news/1979-soviet-invasion-afghanistan
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