3 Preparation for intervention

• October 1979 - General Pavloskiy and his staff depart from Afghanistan. The Soviet Union begins mobilization of Category 2 divisions in southern Soviet Socialist Republics ( SSR's).
• October 10, 1979 - The Kabul Times reports that Taraki has died due to an illness. Other reports suggest death in a shootout, by strangulation, or execution; none can be proven.
• November 7, 1979 - In an issue celebrating Soviet National Day, the Kabul Times reports Afghanistan's role in the “continuation of the Great October Revolution”. Many view this statement as acceptance by the PDPA of the Brezhnev Doctrine in regards to Afghanistan.
• November 28, 1979 - Lt. General Viktor Paputin, the Soviet Union's deputy minister of interior, arrives in Kabul for a meeting concerning “mutual cooperation and other issues of interest”. Many speculate he is the top KGB official responsible for coordinating invasion.
• December 1979 - Several Tashkent based Soviet airborne battalions with heavy weapons are deployed to Bagram air base.
• December 17, 1979 - The head of the Afghan intelligence service, Assadullah Amin – Amin's nephew, is seriously wounded in an assassination attempt and leaves the country to receive medical aid in Tashkent.
• December 18, 1979- Airborne units stationed in Bagram move to cover the Salang Pass . This move supports the upcoming border crossing of the 357th Motorized Rifle Division, based in Tashkent.

4 Start of Intervention

• December 21, 1979 - A reinforced Soviet airborne regiment is airlifted to Bagram.
• December 22, 1979 - Soviet advisors to the Armed Forces of Afghanistan, advise the Afghans to undergo maintenance cycles for tanks and other crucial equipment. Telecommunications links to areas outside of Kabul are severed, isolating the capital. Amin moves the offices of the president to the Dar-ul-aman Palace, believing this location to be more defensible during invasion.
• December 24, 1979 - Three Soviet division-sized units take control of all airfields in and around Kabul. Spetnaz commandos seize control of the telecommunications complex in Kabul, controlling all intra-city communication.
• December 26, 1979 - Additional Soviet regiment and division-sized units move southward toward the Afghan border.
• December 27, 1979 - Soviet interior advisors host a party for Afghan government officials at the Intercontinental Hotel , at its conclusion all are arrested. Soviet military advisers host a party for their Afghan counterparts, at its conclusion all are imprisoned.
• December 27, 1979 - 700 KGB spetsnaz special forces troops, Alpha Group, in Afghan uniforms storm the Presidential Place in Kabul, taking heavy casualties, killing President Hafizullah Amin.
• December 28, 1979 - Three additional Soviet motorized rifle divisions cross the Afghan border, supported by four reserve divisions in the Southern Soviet Union, just across the border.
• December 29, 1979 - Babrak Karmal, leader of the Parcham faction of the PDPA appoints himself President and Prime Minister of the DRA, and General Secretary of the PDPA. Over 50,000 Soviet troops are stationed in Afghanistan.

5 Political and military motivations

A number of theories have been advanced for the Soviet action. Some believe the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was intended to prevent constituent SSRs in the southern Soviet Union from breaking away. At the time of the invasion, Iran had recently staged an Islamic revolution, deposing a United States-supported government. The newly instituted government was no more friendly to the Soviet Union than to the United States. This signified an additional axis of power in Eurasian politics (along with the Soviet Union itself, the People's Republic of China, and NATO), much to the Soviets' dismay.

After its revolution, Iran had sufficient religious, political, and economic motivations to expand revolution northward into the Soviet Union and/or eastward into Afghanistan. A similar Islamist revolution appeared to have been developing in Afghanistan. Iran (with a population of 65 million) was technologically sophisticated and well armed with Western (particularly American) military technology. Invasion of an impoverished, technologically unsophisticated Afghanistan that supplied an eastern flank to Iran was considered by most political and military strategists to be preferable for the Soviet Union to any overt action against Iran.

Both theses are supported by public statements made by Leonid Brezhnev at the time declaring the Soviet Union had a right to come to the assistance of an endangered fellow socialist country (and presumably its own fellow SSRs). This assertion of a right is now known as the Brezhnev Doctrine.

Western analysts at the time also believed that the Soviet Union's presence in Afghanistan was motivated by a desire to bring its forces closer to a strategic choke-point: the mouth of the Persian gulf, the conduit for most of the world's oil supertankers. Afghanistan is separated from the Arabian Sea by the sparsely populated Pakistani province of Baluchistan. Had there been a breakup of Pakistan or a favorable regime change, Soviet forces would have access to Baluchi or Pakistani ports. This is consistent with accounts from the Mitrokhin archive, according to which the KGB had supported seccessionist/nationalist groups in Pakistan, and intensified its support after the invasion.

6 Political and military goals

Afghanistan is primarily rural and agrarian. The political form of government at the time was tribalistic. Strong tribal ties held the social order together. The Soviet Union had two major options for successful control:

• Drive the resistance ( mujahadeen) out of Afghanistan, depopulating the rural areas and providing control of the cities to the Soviet-backed government.
• Use the shock power of mechanized combat to break the will of the resistance, causing so much destruction and dislocation that the civilian population could no longer resist.

Either goal supported the Brezhnev Doctrine, solidified the southern frontier of the Soviet Union, and provided a strategic counter-point to a hostile Iran.

7 War tactics and history

Afghans used the heliograph as a secure low-tech communication method.

8 Summary

Soviet tactics utilized the following military and economic efforts.

• The deployment of the 40th Soviet Army (over 100,000 ground troops). With air support, logistics, MVD troops, and other miscellaneous troops, the total number is estimated by some observers at approximately 175,000 troops total. This represented almost 20% of the category 1 (front-line) divisions possessed by the Soviet Union at the time.
• More than 20 million anti-personnel mines were dropped by the Soviet Union.
• Russian costs (in 1986 dollars) were approximately US$20 Billion / yr.

These tactics accomplished the following results:

• Approximately 90,000 Afghan combatants killed ( mujahadeen and government), and 90,000 wounded. Including civilian casualities, estimates are that 10% of the total population and 13.5% of the male population was killed, 1.5 million killed overall.
• Approximately 22,000 Soviets were killed and 75,000 wounded.
• Approximately 6 million refugees were driven into surrounding countries.
• Damages of approximately $50 Billion US to Afghanistan, about 1/3 to 1/2 the net worth of the country.
• Agricultural production reduced by 50%, livestock losses of 50%.
• 70% of paved roads destroyed.
• Of 15,000 villages in the country, 5,000 were destroyed outright or made economically unsupportable by destruction of all economic resources such as fields, wells or roads.

9 See also

• Invasions of Afghanistan
• For the history of the Soviet Union's presence in the country, see: Democratic Republic of Afghanistan

The Beast (movie) was a movie made in 1989 about a Soviet tank during the invasion of Afghanistan, set in 1981.

10 External links

• Other sources
• U.N resolution A/RES/37/37 over the Intervention in the Country

Cold War

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