Following an arms shipment in 1955 from Moscow’s Warsaw Pact
satellite Czechoslovakia, the USSR in July 1956 agreed to a loan
of $32.4 million to Afghanistan for military purposes (Bradsher,
1985: 28). By 1979, according to CIA estimates cited by Bradsher,
Soviet military aid to Afghanistan had totalled $1.25 billion.
Further, 3725 Afghan personnel had received military training in
the USSR, Russian was the technical language of the Afghan
armed forces, and Afghanistan was heavily dependent upon Soviet
sources for spare parts (Bradsher, 1999: 2). The second sphere of
penetration was economic. Afghanistan came to occupy a position
behind only India and Egypt as a recipient of Soviet economic aid,
which by 1979 cumulatively totalled approximately $1.265 billion.
In the year of the communist coup, some 2000 Soviet technical
and economic experts were at work in Afghanistan (Noorzoy,
1985: 159–60). The net effect was to promote those industries
which would most readily market their output in the USSR, such
as fruits and natural gas. In this way, the Afghan economy become
increasingly dependent upon the Soviet.
The Soviet cultivation of Afghan communists
The question of whether the communist movement which was to
affect Afghanistan in such devastating fashion from 1978 was large-
ly homegrown or merely a piece in a larger jigsaw remains difficult
to answer. The role of the Soviet Union in promoting communist
movements elsewhere had long been clear; indeed, the Communist
International or Comintern, which functioned from 1919 to 1943,
provided institutional foundations for the exercise of such influence.
However, the inspiration provided by communism did not derive
simply from Soviet-backed organisations. For those who dwelt in
impoverished societies such as Afghanistan, the appeal of a simplis-
tic Marxist rhetoric could be profound, notwithstanding the deep
flaws in logic and analysis on which it rested (see Kolakowski,
1978; Walicki, 1995). The vulgarised precepts of Marxism-Leninism
were a heady brew for circles of Afghanistan’s urban youth, and
their leaders. Even without Soviet inspiration, a Marxist movement
The Road to War 21