a house divided, 1933–73unpopular with the Soviet public. In all around 600,000 Soviet citizens
served in Afghanistan and, according to official figures, by the time the last
tank crossed the Amu Darya in February 1989 more than 14,000 Soviet
soldiers and civilians had been killed and 50,000 wounded. Thousands
more suffered from serious or permanent psychological damage, while
others were addicted to hashish, opium and heroin. The harrowing accounts
of returning soldiers, known as Afghantsi, contradicted the Soviet media’s
official line, which portrayed the intervention as a patriotic defence of the
Motherland and an ally in the face of American and Pakistani imperi-
alism. Instead, the veterans related how they found themselves fighting
ordinary Afghans and that the foreign invader was their own country.
Afghantsi also spoke of massacres and other war crimes committed by
Soviet forces, low army morale, appalling living conditions and the harsh
treatment of conscripts by Red Army officers and ncos. 52 Soon Afghantsi
began to openly criticize the Soviet leadership and some published their
memoirs, which portrayed the Red Army’s leadership in a very poor light.
Added to the concern was the fear that the accounts of the Afghantsi
might lead to unrest among the ussr’s Muslim population. During the
Afghan war thousands of Turkic and Tajik peoples from the Caucasus and
the Central Asian Republics, most of them with Muslim heritage, served in
Afghanistan. These men understood the abuse hurled at them by vil lagers
as well as appeals by Afghans to Muslim and ethnic solidarity. Some of
the Central Asian soldiers even had distant relatives in Afghanistan,
descendants of family members who had fled Imperial Russia’s conquest
of Turkistan, the suppression of the basmachi movement and Stalin’s
Collectivization. In the end, Moscow withdrew all Central Asian units
for fear of unrest in Muslim-majority Republics.
Gorbachev gave the Soviet military eighteen months to win the war
in Afghanistan, while at the same time he attempted to negotiate with the
usa for a face-saving withdrawal. The Soviet generals mounted a series of
major offensives but America, Saudi Arabia and nato countries responded
by pouring in more and more arms and cash and supplied key mujahidin
commanders with ground-to-air missiles, undermining Soviet air suprem-
acy. In an attempt to make the Afghan government more broadly based,
in November 1986 President Babrak Karmal was ‘persuaded’ by Soviet
officials to resign. He was replaced by Muhammad Najib Allah, the head
of khad and a Ghilzai Pushtun, in the hope that his appointment might
persuade war-weary mujahidin to lay down their arms and share power.
To this end, Najib Allah instituted a programme of national reconciliation,
drew up a new Constitution and called new Parliamentary elections. He