From Afghanistan to the First Chechen War
Over the past sixty-five years—not counting the armed interventions of the Warsaw
Pact in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968)—the Soviet Union/Russia has fought
five wars:
The Cold War (1945–1989)
The War in Afghanistan (1979–1989)
The First Chechen War (1994–1996)
The Second Chechen War (1999–2009)
The war with Georgia (2008)
The first three wars were lost; the last two were won. The two last wars were Putin’s
wars: these military actions were carefully prepared, meticulously planned, and ruthlessly
conducted by the Putin regime. Why did Putin succeed where his predecessors failed?
What are the differences between these wars? And—an even more important question—what
role does war play in Putin’s overall strategy? I will try to answer these questions
here and in the following chapters.
Much has been written about the origins of the Cold War. In September 1944—only three
months after the Allied invasion in Normandy and eight months before the capture of
Berlin by the Red Army—the American diplomat and Kremlin watcher George Kennan predicted
with great foresight not only the advent of the East-West conflict, but he also indicated
its origin. Writing about “the Russian aims in Eastern and Central Europe,” Kennan
wrote: “Russian efforts in this area are directed to only one goal: power. The form
this power takes, the methods by which it is achieved: these are secondary questions.”
[1]
And he continued:
For the smaller countries of Eastern and Central Europe, the issue is not one of communism
or capitalism. It is one of the independence of national life or of domination by
a big power which has never shown itself adept at making any permanent compromises
with rival power groups. . . . Today, in the autumn of 1944, the Kremlin finds itself
committed by its own inclination to the concrete task of becoming the dominant power
of Eastern and Central Europe. At the same time, it also finds itself committed by
past promises and by world opinion to a vague program which Western statesmen—always
so fond of quaint terms agreeable to their electorates—call collaboration. The first
of these programs implies taking. The second implies giving. No one can stop Russia
from doing the taking, if she is determined to go through with it. No one can force
Russia to do the giving, if she is determined not to go through with it. In these
circumstances others may worry.
[2]
That there were, indeed, reasons to worry would soon become clear when Stalin’s Soviet
Russia began to install grim communist dictatorships in the countries that fell into
its sphere of influence. In July 1947, eight months before the communist coup d’état
in Prague, George Kennan published in
Foreign Affairs
his famous anonymous article, signed “Mr. X,” on “The Sources of Soviet Conduct.”
[3]
In this article he formulated the principles of what was to become the “containment”
policy. This policy would be adopted by President Truman and would lead, two years
later—on April 4, 1949—to the foundation of NATO. The origins of the Cold War were
the unprecedented territorial expansionist greed of Soviet Russia, the undisguised,
unfettered imperialism of Stalin’s totalitarian regime that refused to respect the
right of national self-determination of its new “brother nations.” For forty years
it led to a huge military buildup by the two superpowers. And it ended, quite suddenly
and unexpectedly, with the collapse of the Soviet Empire. This collapse was experienced
by the Russians as a defeat and by many in the West as a victory (even if, for reasons
of expediency, they did not always say so openly).
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, this was interpreted by
the West as a new phase of Soviet imperialist expansion. It was considered a war of
conquest with the aim to add new territory to the Soviet bloc. But, with hindsight,
things were more complicated. Initially, there was not so much a
push
from the Russian side to intervene militarily, as a
pull
by Afghan communist factions to draw the Soviet Union into an internal, Afghan conflict.
The Afghan Communist Party (PDPA) had seized power in April 1978. Although the plot
had been directed and steered by the KGB, it soon became clear that for the Soviet
Union the communist coup d’état was an ambiguous event. The Soviet government had
always enjoyed a good relationship with the former, noncommunist Afghan governments—not
only when Afghanistan was still a monarchy, but also after the king, Zahir Shah, had
been deposed by General Mohammad Daoud in July 1973. Communist insurgents killed Daoud
in April 1978, and it was the radical
Khalq
faction of the Afghan Communist Party—led by Nur Mohammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin—that
came to power. Amin became prime minister, and Taraki became president. It was, however,
the second faction in the Communist Party, the more moderate
Parcham
faction led by Babrak Karmal, which had the favor of Moscow. The
Khalq
soon came to persecute this faction
.
The new regime was soon confronted with a growing opposition inside the country. In
March 1979, there was a violent rebellion in Herat, Afghanistan’s third largest city.
During this rebellion several Soviet advisers were executed. The PDPA, fearful of
losing control, turned to Moscow with a demand for military support. A meeting was
arranged in Moscow on March 20, 1979, between President Taraki and four Soviet heavyweights:
Aleksey Kosygin, chairman of the Council of Ministers; Andrey Gromyko, Minister of
Foreign Affairs; Dmitry Ustinov, Minister of Defense; and Boris Ponomarev, head of
the International Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Taraki not only
demanded weapons, but also military personnel, including pilots and tank drivers.
Although Kosygin refused any direct military involvement of Soviet troops on the ground
in Afghanistan, Moscow became more nervous when the KGB hinted at the supposed unreliability
of the Afghan prime minister, Hafizullah Amin. Yury Andropov, the head of the KGB,
feared that Amin could become an “Afghan Sadat,” turning, eventually, to the West.
[4]
“Andropov suspects him to be an agent of the CIA: logical if one knows that Amin
has passed four years at Columbia University.”
[5]
This suspicion led to dramatic events in the late summer of 1979. KGB agents in
Kabul told President Taraki that he should arrest Amin. When, on September 14, Amin
was invited to Taraki’s palace to talk with Soviet representatives, Taraki’s guards
opened fire and tried to kill him. But Amin escaped. He mobilized his own militia
and had Taraki arrested. On October 9, 1979, President Taraki was executed. Hereupon
the Soviet Union decided to intervene and replace Amin with its own favorite, Babrak
Karmal. Amin was killed by
Vympel
Spetsnaz troops. These are KGB special forces consisting of multilingual officers
specializing in combat and sabotage in enemy territory. “Created in 1979,” wrote J.
Michael Waller, “Vympel served as the shock force prior to the invasion of Afghanistan.
In its first foreign operation, Vympel commandos stormed the presidential palace in
Kabul and assassinated the inhabitants, including Afghan President Hafizullah Amin
and seven of his children. This allowed the Soviet protégé, Babrak Karmal, to “invite”
the Soviet army to intervene in his country.”
[6]
Amin’s assassination took place on December 25, 1979. The next day, Karmal declared
himself secretary general of the Afghan Communist Party and prime minister.
The Soviet troops were to stay in Afghanistan for more than a full decade with over
a hundred thousand troops permanently involved. In this period at least twenty-five
thousand Russian troops were killed. Over one million Afghans lost their lives in
the conflict. An important question is who pushed Brezhnev, at that time in poor health,
to take the decision to invade Afghanistan. In the politburo meeting of December 12,
1979, in which the decision was taken, Kosygin, who opposed an intervention, was absent.
Many point to KGB chief Yury Andropov as the main instigator. Artyom Borovik, for
instance, wrote: “Many servicemen and MID [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] workers told
me that the script for the events in Afghanistan was written by the KGB. Initially,
Andropov was against the idea of an invasion, but eventually he followed the same
reflex that he’d learned some twenty years earlier in Hungary, where he served as
an ambassador and where troops had to be sent in 1956.”
[7]
This interpretation is supported by Svetlana Savranskaya, a political analyst.
The decision to send troops was made on the basis of limited information. According
to Soviet veterans of the events, KGB sources were trusted over the military intelligence
(GRU) sources. This partly reflected the growing influence of the KGB chairman Yu.
V. Andropov, who controlled the flow of information to General Secretary Brezhnev,
who was partially incapacitated and ill for most of 1979. KGB reports from Afghanistan
created a picture of urgency and strongly emphasized the possibility of Amin’s links
to the CIA and U.S. subversive activities in the region.
[8]
It seemed, indeed, that the personal memorandum, sent in early December 1979 by Andropov
to Brezhnev, determined Brezhnev’s decision.
[9]
Anatoly Dobrynin, former Soviet ambassador to the United States, shared this view.
[10]
This confirms the observation made by Thierry Wolton that “the Kremlin knew the
external world over the borders as if over the high walls of a citadel through the
prism of what was reported to it by the KGB. The Organs, in this way, could manipulate
the members of the Central Committee and the Politburo, which, in the closed Soviet
universe, was a sacred power.”
[11]
The Soviet military, however, was not happy with the decision to invade Afghanistan.
When, on December 10, 1979, Dmitry Ustinov, the defense minister, informed the chief
of the General Staff, Nikolay Ogarkov, of the plan, the latter ”was surprised and
outraged by such a decision.” He said he was “against the introduction of troops,
calling it ‘reckless.’”
[12]
Georgy M. Kornienko, who at that time was deputy foreign minister under Gromyko,
wrote, referring to the position taken by his boss in the politburo meeting on December
12, 1979: “From my conversations with him, already after the introduction of troops,
I concluded that it was not Gromyko who said ‘A’ in favour of such decision, but that
he was ‘pressured’ into it by Andropov and Ustinov together. Which one of those two
was the first to change their initial point of view and spoke in favour of sending
troops, one may only guess.”
[13]
It is a fair guess to assume that it was ultimately Yury Andropov who pushed his
colleagues in the politburo—including General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev—to take this
decision. It was, eventually, Andropov’s seven hundred special forces of the KGB,
stationed in Kabul, who made the opening move by attacking the presidential palace
and killing Amin. The justification given by the Soviet government for its intervention:
that it had been asked for support by the Afghan government, was rather dubious. It
is true that in March 1979 President Taraki had asked the Soviet Union to intervene
by sending troops. At that time, however, the Soviet leadership had reacted negatively
to this request. In December Taraki was no longer there, and Amin, who had executed
his predecessor and taken his place, was certainly not in favor of a Soviet intervention.
It is, therefore, not surprising to hear that “the Soviet troops . . . suffered from
the confusion about their goals—the initial official mission was to protect the PDPA
regime; however, when the troops reached Kabul, their orders were to overthrow Amin
and his regime.”
[14]
If one reconstructs the events, it becomes clear that neither the Soviet military,
nor the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs, nor even Brezhnev himself, were at the
roots of the fatal—and in the end self-defeating—decision to invade Afghanistan, but
the KGB. The “Sadat” role that Andropov ascribed to Amin was probably a deliberate
attempt at disinformation by this long-serving KGB chief to manipulate the Soviet
leadership. It would not have been the first time. Already in 1956, when he was Soviet
ambassador in Budapest, Andropov was one of the main instigators of the Soviet intervention,
falsely informing Khrushchev, who initially was reluctant to intervene, that the Russian
embassy was being attacked. In 1968 Andropov would again be among the hardliners who
were in favor of sending Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague
Spring.
[15]
Andropov, a highly intelligent man, was an undisputed expert in manipulation. Ion
Mihai Pacepa, a former Romanian two-star general, and the highest intelligence officer
to have ever defected from the Soviet bloc, a man who knew Andropov personally, characterized
him as follows:
Once settled in the Kremlin, Andropov surrounded himself with KGB officers, who immediately
went on a propaganda offensive to introduce him to the West as a “moderate” Communist
and a sensitive, warm, Western-oriented man who allegedly enjoyed an occasional drink
of Scotch, liked to read English novels, and loved listening to American jazz and
the music of Beethoven. In actual fact, Andropov did not drink, as he was already
terminally ill from a kidney disorder, and the rest of the portrayal was equally false.
[16]