MOVING IN: Soviet
troops take the airport in Kabul
Dec. 12, 1979
Soviet Folly in Afghanistan
By Johanna McGeary
The
Afghan department in the Soviet foreign ministry was one of the quietest
spots in the U.S.S.R.'s diplomatic service. But when Afghanistan's
nonalignment policy began to slip, the Soviet leadership panicked. Three
members of the Kremlin inner circle—Foreign Minister Andrei
Gromyko, KGB chief Yuri Andropov and Defense Minister Dmitri
Ustinov—feared that the Afghans would tilt toward the U.S. unless
stern "measures" were taken.
Late on the night of Dec. 12, ailing
Communist Party chairman Leonid Brezhnev called the three to a secret
meeting to hear their proposal. To keep the U.S. from installing a
friendly regime, they said, Moscow must send in troops. The military
operation, Brezhnev was told, would be over in three or four weeks.
Two weeks later, the Soviets began an invasion that was to last
nearly a decade and chill U.S.-Soviet relations for years. By the law of
unintended consequences, the U.S. decision to back an anti-Soviet
guerrilla force of mujahedin was to rebound disastrously with the rise
of Islamic terrorism, when Osama bin Laden eventually found in the
shattered Afghanistan a vital haven.
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