reached in late spring and summer 1987’ (Mendelson, 1998: 125).
But this conclusion is flatly at odds with what we know about the
November 1986 meeting. Mendelson is aware of the meeting, and
indeed quotes from the transcript (Mendelson, 1998: 112), but
seems not to grasp its full implications for her case. While that
meeting did not address all the complexities involved in with-
drawing Soviet troops or overcome all resistance to withdrawal
(see Bradsher, 1999: 280–3), it indisputably involved a decision
‘in principle’ to withdraw, and within a specific time frame of
two years. All in all, her ‘tactical learning’ explanation, suitably
modified to encompass not just military defeat but the deeper
notion of political failure, seems far more effective in explaining
the Soviet withdrawal. Here, it is worth highlighting Marshal
Sergei Akhromeev’s fundamental insight, which he expressed dur-
ing the November meeting: ‘We have lost the battle for the
Afghan people’ (My proigraly bor’bu za afganskii narod)
(Grossman, 1993: 25).
The decision to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan was
not, however, a decision to abandon Dr Najibullah. November
1989, when in effect the USSR surrendered its Eastern European
surrogates to their fate through what Gennadi Gerasimov some-
what flippantly called ‘the Sinatra doctrine’ (Brown, 1996: 240),
was still years away. At the November 1986 meeting, Gorbachev
repeated the need to pursue a ‘widening of the social base of the
regime’ (Grossman, 1993: 26). Shevardnadze stated that Najibullah
‘needs practical support’ (Grossman, 1993: 24). The American
Sovietologist Jerry F. Hough rightly argued just two months after
the November 1986 meeting that ‘There are a great many indica-
tions that Gorbachev, despite all the talk of flexibility and of a
coalition government, will not accept anything less than a “coali-
tion” that is dominated by the communists and a recognition of
their rule in Afghanistan.’ Unfortunately, Hough then went on to
claim that ‘Gorbachev has a winning hand in Afghanistan’ and that
‘When Gorbachev begins reducing the number of Soviet troops, it
is a sign not of retreat but of victory’ (Hough, 1987). The leader-
ship in Moscow knew better.
The Road to Soviet Withdrawal 133