execution. Information to facilitate military operations was gath-
ered in a number of different ways. Helicopters were of course
used for reconnaissance purposes (McMichael, 1991: 84).
However, once it became necessary to collect more detailed
‘human intelligence’ (HUMINT), the Soviet force ran into difficul-
ties, largely because of its dependence on instrumentalities of the
Afghan regime, although these improved over time as the regime’s
secret police, KhAD, became more effectively consolidated with
KGB support. The USSR also established four ‘signals intelli-
gence’ (SIGINT) in Afghanistan: near Kabul, in Herat, at
Garmushki near the Iranian border, and in Qasideh in the Wakhan
corridor (Ball, 1989: 30). However, the two latter stations were
focused on Iranian, Chinese, and Pakistani military signals
(Richelson, 1986: 101), and the resistance in Afghanistan tended to
use human messengers and made limited use of radios (Cordesman
and Wagner, 1990: 123) which denied to the sophisticated Soviet
SIGINT capability a signal to trace. The USSR’s own radio com-
munications in Afghanistan left much to be desired. Radio sets
issued to troops in the field tended to have limited ranges, and
coped poorly with mountainous terrain. However, procedures were
also cumbersome and inefficient, prompting an observer to issue
the following scathing assessment: ‘One cannot help but conclude
that the widespread deficiencies in tactical communications are
fully reflective of endemic Soviet inflexibility, lack of imagination,
compartmentalisation of even basic technical skills to specialists,
and reluctance to depart from rote, textbook procedures, even
when they don’t work’ (McMichael, 1991: 103).
Operational relations with the Afghan Army
Finally, if the USSR hoped to engage in an ‘Afghanisation’ pro-
gramme, its objectives were thwarted by the weaknesses of its
Afghan allies in both political and military spheres. I have already
noted the scale of the problems involved in turning the Afghan
Army into a fighting force. Here, I would simply add that this had
direct implications at the operational level as well. The Afghan
52 The Afghanistan Wars