5
The Najibullah-Gorbachev
Period 1986–1989
The fall of Babrak Karmal led to a period of what Goodson calls
‘Resistance gains and Soviet withdrawals’, marked by high and sta-
ble intensity (Goodson, 1998: 478). It concluded in February 1989
when the withdrawal of Soviet combat troops from Afghanistan was
completed. While the next chapter examines in detail the specific
processes by which the Soviet leadership decided to undertake the
withdrawal, and the orchestration and conduct of the withdrawal,
this chapter is concerned with the wider developments in both
Afghanistan and the USSR which left the Soviet leadership with
little taste for its Afghan commitment. A key theme which emerges
is that while Afghanistan was more public a preoccupation in the
Soviet Union during this period than it had been previously, the real
interest of the Soviet leadership in its Afghan clients was declining
sharply as it focused inward on domestic political reforms such as
glasnost’, perestroika, and demokratizatsiia, the very changes which
ultimately were to eat away the foundations of Soviet power. The
reality of failure in Afghanistan was finally grasped in Moscow, and
as the composition of the Soviet leadership changed, so did its com-
mitment to adventures abroad.
The chapter is divided into three sections. The first examines the
regime’s increased use of militias, and then briefly looks at mili-
tary activities between 1986 and 1989 in the regions that were dis-
cussed in Chapter 4. As in the Karmal period, there was a dearth
of large, set-piece battles to tip the scale in either direction, but
rather a large number of clashes which did not deliver a decisive