Afghanistan. The initial participants were the governments of Afghanistan and Pak-
istan, whose representatives did not meet face to face, but instead exchanged ideas
through Cordovez in so-called proximity talks, with the diplomats nearby but not in
the same room. By the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union and the United States had joined
the negotiations, but the mujahidin never had direct representation at the talks, rely-
ing on Pakistan and the United States to represent their interests. This lack of a direct
role for the mujahidin proved to be a weakness for the eventual agreement because
the Afghan fighters had no direct ownership of it.
A drawn-out political transition in Moscow—hastened by the failure of the adven-
ture in Afghanistan—became a central factor in the Soviet withdrawal. Soviet leader
Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982 and was succeeded by two short-term replacements, nei-
ther of whom brought any energy or imagination to the task of governing the Soviet
Union in what turned out to be its declining years. In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev
took office as the youngest Soviet leader and gradually launched a series of reforms
intended to bolster the communist system but instead had the effect of exposing its inher-
ent structural weaknesses. By 1987 Gorbachev and his foreign minister, Eduard She-
vardnadze, seemed determined to bring an end to the costly occupation of Afghanistan.
In addition to being a drain on Moscow’s treasury, the occupation was increasingly
unpopular, with thousands of Soviet families burying sons killed in Afghanistan.
At a summit in Washington with President Reagan on December 10, 1987, Gor-
bachev announced that the Soviet Union would withdraw from Afghanistan. His
announcement spurred the UN negotiations toward a final agreement, which was con-
cluded in Geneva on April 14, 1988. The agreement consisted of five major documents
calling for “noninterference” in the internal affairs of Afghanistan and Pakistan by the
Soviet Union and the United States; requiring all regional states to allow Afghan refugees
to return to their homes without fear of persecution; and setting a timetable for the
Soviet Union to withdraw its military forces from Afghanistan by February 15, 1989.
At a news conference shortly after the treaty signing, Shevardnadze drew particular atten-
tion to the noninterference clause. “The entire spectrum of possible activities and actions
to meddle in the affairs of Afghanistan has finally been all blocked,” he said.
The last Soviet soldiers left Afghanistan on the February 15, 1989, a date set by
the Geneva accords. The Soviet military command issued a statement rejecting wide-
spread comparisons between Moscow’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the U.S.
retreat from Vietnam nearly fourteen years earlier. The Kremlin later acknowledged
that more than 14,000 Soviet soldiers had died during the eight years of the Soviet
military occupation, and at least another 11,000 seriously wounded. No official
accounting was ever made of how many Afghan and foreign fighters and civilians died,
but most estimates put the number at 1 million to 1.5 million. In addition, at least
5 million Afghan citizens fled into neighboring countries during the 1980s, most of
them to Pakistan (about 3 million) and Iran (about 2 million). Few of the refugees
returned until after the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 (Rise of the Tali-
ban, p. 593; U.S. Invasion of Afghanistan, p. 598).
Following are three documents, all dated April 14, 1988: the two main agreements,
known as the Geneva Accords, providing for the withdrawal of Soviet military forces
from Afghanistan and excerpts from remarks by Soviet foreign minister Eduard She-
vardnadze at a news conference.582 AFGHANISTAN