building up and strengthening the combat readiness of the Afghan
armed forces’. The report continued: ‘Only when the situation in
Afghanistan stabilizes, and the situation around the country
improves, and only upon a request of the DRA leadership, may we
consider the question of the eventual withdrawal of our troops from
the DRA’ (Hershberg, 1996–97: 171).
Securing centres of political importance was an obvious objec-
tive from the moment of the invasion. Of greatest importance was
Kabul. Capital cities are not necessarily of fundamental military or
economic importance, but their significance as a matter of political
symbolism is profound. The fall of Berlin in 1945, the fall of
Peking in 1949, and the fall of Saigon in 1975 all brought major
conflicts to a close. Thus, the securing of Kabul was of indis-
putable importance. However, other urban centres were also vital
to control: Herat, which had already been the source of much
heartache, along with Kandahar, Jalalabad, and Mazar-e Sharif.
Despite the existence of airports in all these cities, the maintenance
of control over them effectively required the control of the roads
connecting them as well. By the 1970s, Afghanistan had 1553
miles of paved road, and a further 10,750 miles of ‘other
motorable roads’ (Ispahani, 1989: 127). A vast, if incomplete, ‘ring
road’ linked Herat, Kandahar, Kabul, and Mazar-e Sharif, with the
Salang Tunnel cutting through the Hindu Kush to the north of
Kabul between Charikar and Pul-e Khumri. Important side-roads
linked Kabul to the Khyber Pass and Pakistan via Jalalabad,
Kandahar to the Chaman Pass and Pakistan via Spin Baldak, and
Mazar-e Sharif to the Soviet Union via Hairatan (see Cordesman
and Wagner, 1990: 106–7). To protect these roads, and the traffic
moving along them, was a large and complex task, but one of
enormous importance.
Turning the Afghan Army into a fighting force on behalf of the
regime was an equally large and complex task. The armed forces
were certainly supplied with a great deal of equipment (much of it
inappropriate, as things turned out, to the needs of counter-
insurgency), but their problems of personnel and morale proved
intractable. In highly institutionalised political systems, a frame-
44 The Afghanistan Wars