afghanistan
The response by the usa and Western nations, however, was swift and
sharp. There were the usual diplomatic protests and un Security Council
resolutions, while President Carter called General Secretary Leonid
Brezhnev on the hotline and informed him that, ‘neither superpower can
arrogate to itself the right to displace or overturn a legally constituted
government in another country by force of arms. Such a precedent is a
dangerous one; it flouts all the accepted norms of international conduct.’ 43
Brezhnev, though, dismissed the invasion as ‘a small police action designed
to restore order to a country that appealed for our assistance... under the
provisions of our friendship treaty’. Brezhnev’s inner circle, however, had
underestimated the negative impact the Soviet Union’s intervention would
have on its international relations, not just with the usa and European
countries, but also in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
After studiously cultivating the image of a nation that supported
self-determination and anti-colonialism, many developing countries now
accused the ussr of acting as imperialistically as Britain, France, Germany
or the usa. The usa, European and Arab countries refused to recognize
the government of Babrak Karmal, withdrew their expatriate workers and
cut off funding for development programmes. All but a handful of Western
nationals left and most non-governmental organizations (ngos) closed
their operations. Instead, dozens of ngos opened up offices in Peshawar,
Quetta and Islamabad to meet the needs of what eventually became the
worst refugee crisis of the era. The ussr therefore had to bear not only the
escalating costs of its military campaign, but the burden of propping up an
economy in freefall. At the height of the conflict between 15 and 20 per cent
of the ussr’s Gross National Product was consumed by the Afghanistan
intervention. An even greater loss of face followed the decision of the usa
and many Western nations to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
America, Pakistan and the Peshawar-based mujahidinOn Boxing Day 1979, while Soviet troops were still pouring into
Afghanistan, President Carter held an emergency meeting of Pentagon,
cia and State Department officials and agreed, in principle, to fund and
arm the Afghan resistance in order to prevent ‘a quick, effective Soviet
operation to pacify Afghanistan’, since this ‘would be extremely costly to
our image in the region’. The objective of the operation was ‘to make the
operation as costly as possible for the Soviets’, 44 or, as Howard Hart, head
of the cia’s Islamabad operations, succinctly put it, ‘raise hell... and kill
Soviets’. 45 Whether the White House realized it or not, the usa had now