A Former Soviet General's View on Afghanistant - CI Centre Professor Oleg Kalugin

CI Centre Op-Ed, 20 September 2001

A Former Soviet General’s View on Afghanistan

By CI Centre Professor Oleg Kalugin who is a retired KGB Major General and a former People’s Deputy of the USSR

The Soviet generals defeated in Afghanistan after nine years of futile efforts to impose a Soviet-style regime on that country are attempting now to scare the US by prospects of “another Vietnam” and “sea of bloodshed” if America retaliates militarily to the terrorist attacks on its soil and crush the Moslem extremists and their sponsors in their hideouts.

By drawing a parallel between the USSR and the USA in the Afghan context and suggesting the US will lose the war, the Soviet comrades either forget or deliberately distort historic facts.

1. Several months after April 1978 when the Afghan communists staged a coup in Kabul, the Noor Taraki government enjoyed considerable support among the Afghan people. The promised reforms created the atmosphere of hope and expectations.

The first official KGB visit to Kabul to sign a treaty of cooperation with the Afghan security service took place in August of that year and we, members of the Soviet delegation, could walk and travel around freely. The only trip by car we were advised against by the Afghan security was to Jalalabad, a hundred miles east of Kabul, where sporadic outbursts of violence were reported. Otherwise, the countryside was quiet. Things started to change when the militant atheists in the Kabul government launched a major campaign against Islam which resulted in the executions of hundred of mullahs across the country.

This campaign culminated in the brutal murder on the night of January 22, 1979, of the Chief mullah (Murid) of Afghanistan Hazrat Mojadeddi, his four sons and six nephews. The Chief of the Afghan security service Sarvari personally executed the whole family. Ever since, it became clear that the Moslems will never forgive the Soviets, the Communists, the Atheists their atrocities. They will die, but never give up in their fight against the godless nation. That’s how the Holy war against the infidels in Kabul and their sponsors in Moscow started. The Afghan freedom fighters were not terrorists. They defended their faith, their way of life, their homeland.

Unlike the Soviets two decades ago, the US and the entire civilized world are challenged today by Moslem extremists and bigots who have desecrated and defiled their own faith by murdering thousands of innocent civilians, viciously attacking the country which has been generously providing economic and humanitarian aid to dozens of foreign lands, granting refuge, shelter and opportunities for decent life to millions of immigrants irrespective of their race, faith or creed.

2. In the early fighting, the Afghan mujaheddins were armed mainly with primitive rifles, but as the war progressed, they acquired modern weapons including rockets that they used to attack the Soviet troops, their aircraft, and Afghan government installations. It was the USA and other Western powers that supplied the rebels with arms and ammunition. It was their multimillion-dollar material and worldwide moral support which allowed the Afghan resistance movement to dramatically increase pressure on the Soviets, inflict heavy casualties on their army, and eventually make them withdraw from the country. [CI Centre note: a recent article in a newspaper said that the US spent $3.5 billion helping the resistance]

Who is going to provide military assistance to the terrorists this time? Russia, China? No. Iran? Unlikely. Iraq? Possibly, but then it will have to pay a heavy price. In the meantime, sealing off the Afghan borders and strictly enforced international arms embargo will help stop the shipment of arms to the terrorists and frustrate their resistance.

Incidentally, had the North Vietnamese not received heavy moral, military and economic aid from the USSR and China, they would have never won the war.

3. The Soviet model of economic development perceived by many developing nations as a way to speedy solution of their miseries proved to be a dangerous illusion. Had the Soviets offered the Afghan people some semblance of economic viability, the tide of events that followed could have been quite different. But what kind of economic assistance or inspiration could the Kremlin give to other nations when the Soviet people themselves barely made their ends meet and the Soviet economy was on the brink of collapse?

Let’s look back into history. After the defeat, by the Allied Forces, of Nazi Germany and militaristic Japan in 1945, the USA initiated a comprehensive program of economic reconstruction of war-ravaged nations. The Marshall Plan along with de-Nazification of Germany transformed not only the conquered country, but also Europe, turned its Western part into a prosperous and peaceful continent averse to communist and other forms of extremism.

Occupied Japan, with America’s help, became a leading industrial power, free of revenge-seeking sentiments.

In this context, destitute, devastated Afghanistan is no match to Nazi German or Japan and it’s the Soviets who bear historic responsibility for what happened to that country after they intervened militarily. So, there is after all a difference between the US and the Soviet approach to the same problems the world has been facing since World War II. Or comrades generals prefer to ignore it?

I’m not an admirer of Russian President Putin, but he was right when he compared the crimes committed by the Moslem extremists with those of the Nazis. It is precisely for this reason that the civilized world should treat these savages as Nazis. The plague of the 21^st Century must be stamped out before it plunges the human race into an abyss.

September 20, 2001