Russians started to deal through locals rather than Russians, these informal networks came into their own, together with a corruption that oiled the wheels. When the USSR finally collapsed, the last generation of Communist bosses quite easily took on national dress, and religion, to become presidents of the new Central Asian republics. At any rate, no-one in Moscow seems to have thought that running Afghanistan would be especially difficult. As regards her foreign affairs, the country was a sort of Asiatic Finland. Her ruler had been grateful for support against the British, and had recognized the Bolsheviks early on. He then initiated a modernization drive not unlike Ataturk’s in Turkey, and since the USSR was also modernizing backward Central Asian tribal peoples, there was much over which to collaborate. In the sixties aid came from the USSR, the usual cement and chemical works, and a gas pipeline took two thirds of Afghan natural gas to the north.
Even its considerable internal problems were familiar, in the sense that, with every Islamic society, you feel you are dealing with the same pack of cards, though the distribution of suits and honour cards greatly varies. Here, in a population of 15 million, modernization brought about the usual troubles. There was a Persian-speaking upper class, which was eroded by population growth and the de — localization of politics. Women’s emancipation in a Sunni Islam context of, in places, considerable conservatism was not straightforward: in Herat the men used henna as make-up (the Turkish slang for ‘homosexual’ is
Once this happened, politics became less local, and factions contended for central power. A famine in 1972, and a supposedly shameful treaty with Iran, brought discontent, and while the monarch was abroad, he was overthrown, by a ‘modernizer’, Mohammed Dowd, with help from two factions of Communists in the wings. Dowd proceeded with modernization, on the whole leaning towards the USSR in much the same way as other ‘Third World’ leaders of the era. As happened in Iran, Islamists began to surface as political opposition in the 1970s, and were driven abroad. To lessen his dependence on the Communists, Dowd took a loan from Iran, and this prompted Moscow to connive in his overthrow. One of the Communist factions, led by Nur Mohammed Taraki, a writer, seized power in 1978 and launched what was described as the ‘April [‘Saur’] revolution’. It was strongly anti-religious, and there was cruel persecution; the prisons, hideous, were full, with 27,000 deaths, by official figures, in one of them alone (the governor said that, in order to set up socialism, he would leave, if necessary, only a million Afghanis alive, as that number would suffice for its construction). Agrarian reform was launched, and neglected the all- important matter of access to water, which was controlled by the village elders. It also took land from religious foundations (as the Shah had done) and tribal chieftains.
The party itself split, and, true to form, the rival Communist leader, Babrak Karmal, much grander in social origin, and from a different clan, was packed off to Prague as ambassador (where he was kept in waiting as Moscow’s man). In the short term, a Communist regime could indeed manage to suppress Islam, because Islam lacked an international organization (such as the Vatican) and would only manage a united front of resistance if forced to. It was forced to. Herat rebelled, despite savage repression and 100,000 killings. Meanwhile, the Pakistanis were giving training in guerrilla warfare to Islamists who had taken refuge there: that way, they could control ‘Pushtunistan’ agitation. In other words, complications within complications, and not a place to invade.
Nevertheless, Soviet clients were in trouble, and the problem landed on Brezhnev’s desk. Taraki appealed for help to Moscow. To start with, he met reluctance, and was told on the telephone that direct intervention was not possible. Kosygin showed how much the Politburo understood the situation when he said, ‘Could you not recruit from among the working class?’ and had the apposite answer, ‘I am afraid that there is not much of a working class in Afghanistan.’ Taraki was sent a hundred barrels of incendiary liquid. However, the men of experience, Andropov for the KGB and Gromyko for the foreign ministry, warned against any direct intervention. Without intervention, Taraki himself soon lost control, and was overthrown after barely a year, in September 1978, by Hafizullah Amin, a rival who had been trained in the USA, latterly at Columbia. Taraki was tied down to a bed and suffocated with a cushion; Brezhnev is said to have broken down in tears when he heard. But in any event Amin had been rebellious not just locally, but as far as the USSR was concerned: he had defied the advisers, and four of Taraki’s men had even had to be smuggled out via the Soviet embassy, in nailed-down boxes. Soon, Amin was sending ‘frantic’ messages for Pakistan to offer some support, as he knew that the Soviets were suspicious of him. That made them more suspicious still, since Pakistan entertained good relations with China. More atrocities followed — 12,000 of the most qualified people, under Taraki and then again under Amin. Amin then tried to mend fences with Islam, which Taraki had treated with contempt.
Moscow’s ‘Third World’ expansionism, very promising after the Americans’ defeat in Vietnam, was in any case considerable. There was now Soviet emplacement in Africa, particularly in Ethopia, on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula. The Americans’ ally, the Shah, had fallen early in 1979, as had Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua a little later; there was even a proto-Cuba forming up in tiny Grenada. Besides, the Carter administration in Washington generally invited contempt. It had lost the way over ‘human rights’, denouncing South Africa and Chile rather than the Soviet Union; its economic performance was woeful; the German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, looked on Carter with derision. American Intelligence did not even notice Soviet troop concentrations a month before the invasion; nor did it understand the significance of the occupation specialist General Ivan Pavlovsky’s transfer to Kabul. From Moscow’s viewpoint, it was an obvious opportunity — get rid of a few obscurantist clerics, as had been done before in Communist history, and show who was boss. There was the usual puppet for such occasions — Babrak Karmal (a pseudonym, meaning ‘people’s flag’, though he was of tribal leadership stock), who was prepared for some kind of accommodation with Islam, though himself a whisky drinker. After the Christmas slaughter in the Tadj-Bek palace, he was installed as president, with instructions to behave with moderation.
It was the start of a long nightmare, a war that, for the Soviets, turned out to be unwinnable. In the first place, the American reaction was much harsher than Moscow had supposed: not just sanctions of various sorts, including a boycott of the Moscow Olympics, which Brezhnev had planned as a showcase of Soviet professionalism, but non-ratification of SALT II, a resumption of the arms race, and the adoption of a strategic partnership with Pakistan. This was dangerous territory. Pakistan was pioneering a nuclear bomb, in pursuit of her troubles with India, Moscow’s ally in the area. But there were also Islamic elements, some of which had even burned down the American embassy just before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Saudis (and various other Islamic states) condemned the USSR, and sent help to Pakistan; to its subsequent regret, the USA then gave training and help to the Islamic element. The USSR was isolated, and could not even sway the UN, which, apart from Greece and a few other countries, offered overwhelming condemnation. A few Europeans demurred, saying that militant Islam was worse than Communism, but Brezhnev’s blundering meant that they had no real influence.
There was unquestionably much to be said for what the Soviets were trying to do: the dead, irrational world of small-town and tribal Islam, with its endless children, its terrible oppression of women, and its hostility to minorities, needed to be escaped from. However, the battling had already caused disruption, and in the Amin period there had been devastating disruption — 100,000 deaths and 500,000 refugees. History showed decisively that Afghans united against foreign invasion, if on nothing else. Maybe if the country had been isolated, resistance would have been destroyed, as had happened in Central Asia. But Afghanistan bordered on Iran and Pakistan, and mountains made connections over the border impossible for the Soviets — they had 100,000 men only — to control. Seven Sunni Islam resistance groups supported from Pakistan emerged, and so did eight separate Shia Islamic ones based on Iran — forces numbering up to 200,000 men. In the old days, Islamic resistance to European empires had been hopelessly weak (except in the case of Turkey) because it had no base at all in technology. Now, technology was well within reach. Trotsky had said that Stalin had been ‘Genghiz Khan with a telephone’. Communism came to an end, at least in part, because the real modern-day Genghiz Khans had an understanding of surface-to-air
