Nation: How the Soviet Army Crushed Afghanistan

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Between Dec. 24 and 27, at least 350 Soviet aircraft landed at Kabul International Airport and at Bagram airbase, 25 miles north of the capital. The planes had been mustered from bases throughout the Soviet Union; they carried an airborne division from near Moscow and support troops from Turkestan. On Dec. 27, Russian airborne troops stormed the Darulaman Palace. Amin was captured and shot, along with some of his relatives. The only other serious clash was a skirmish outside Radio Afghanistan, just across from the U.S. embassy. In both fights, Afghan troops loyal to Amin resisted as best they could and inflicted about 250 casualties, but they were no match for the Soviets. By the next day, Dec. 28, the capital was entirely in Soviet hands. Amin, whom the Soviet press had treated with respect until only a few days earlier, was now being described as "a man who was in the service of the CIA" and a "usurper" who condemned former President Taraki to death.

The second phase of the onslaught, the invasion by Soviet ground forces, took place between Dec. 29 and 31. One Soviet motorized rifle division, with at least 12,000 men, rolled down the western route from Kushka, in the Soviet Union, to Kandahar. Another streamed in from the Soviet city of Termez over the road that passes through the Salang Pass to Bagram and Kabul. At the time the Soviets built this second route about 15 years ago, some Afghans had noted that the highway seemed strong and wide enough to accommodate tanks and troop carriers.

Other Soviet units moved east from conquered Kabul toward the Khyber Pass and into Paktia province, a center of the Muslim insurgence. The Soviet command post is at Termez, where they have built a satellite communications station to give them a direct link to Moscow. The Soviets now have two airborne divisions and two motorized infantry divisions in Afghanistan, plus support troops, to bring their total strength to 50,000 men.

In the capital all resistance appears to have been crushed. Some Soviet units have set up their headquarters near the airport, with mess tents, field hospitals and huge, balloon-like fuel depots. In the early days, Russian soldiers patrolled the snow-covered streets and manned checkpoints throughout the city. By night they cruised the area in armored cars, sporadically firing into the starry sky. "The object of the shooting," said a traveler who managed to leave Kabul on the daily bus to Pakistan, "was to keep people frightened and inside their homes."

Kabul had already become an armed camp after 20 months of rising civil war throughout the country; now it is a Soviet garrison town as well. The Afghan police force has, for the most part, been disarmed; Afghan army units, when visible at all, can occasionally be seen squatting along the roads outside town, always in the company of heavily armed Soviet troops. Roadblocks prevent the populace from moving about the city.