Meanwhile, the mujahideen benefited from expanded foreign military support from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Muslim nations. The US tended to favor the Afghan resistance forces led by Ahmed Shah Massoud, and US support for Massoud's forces increased considerably during the Reagan administration in what US militaryand intelligence forces called "Operation Cyclone".Sony VAIO VGN-BZ11MN Battery
Primary advocates for supporting Massoud included two Heritage Foundation foreign policy analysts, Michael Johns and James A. Phillips, both of whom championed Massoud as the Afghan resistance leader most worthy of US support under the Reagan Doctrine. Sony VAIO VGN-BZ11XN Battery
The arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev on the scene in 1985 and his 'new thinking' on foreign and domestic policy was probably the most important factor in the Soviets' decision to leave. Gorbachev was attempting to change the stagnant years of Brezhnev and reform the Soviet Union's economy and image across the board with Glasnost and Perestroika. Sony VAIO VGN-BZ12VN Battery
Gorbachev was also trying to ease cold war tensions by signing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987 with the U.S. and withdrawing the troops from Afghanistan whose presence had garnered so much international condemnation. Sony VAIO VGN-BZ12XN Battery
Gorbachev regarded confrontation with China and resulting military build ups on that border as one of Brezhnev's biggest mistakes.Beijing had stipulated that a normalization of relations would have to wait until Moscow withdrew its army from Afghanistan (among other things) and in 1989 the first Sino-Soviet summit in 30 years took place.[94] Sony VAIO VGN-BZ31VT Battery
At the same time, Gorbachev pressured his Cuban allies in Angola to scale down activities and withdraw even though Soviet allies were faring somewhat better there.[95] The Soviets also pulled many of their troops out of Mongolia in 1987 where they were also having a far easier time than in Sony VAIO VGN-BZ31XT Battery
Afghanistan and restrained the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea to the point of an all out withdrawal in 1988.[96] This mass withdrawal of Soviet forces from contested areas shows that the Soviet government's decision to leave Afghanistan was based on a general change over in Soviet foreign policy. Sony VAIO VGN-BZ560 Battery
In the last phase, Soviet troops prepared and executed their withdrawal from Afghanistan. They limited offensive operations, and were content to merely defend against mujahideen raids.
The one exception was Operation Magistral, a successful sweep that cleared the road between Gardez and Khost. Sony VAIO VGN-BZ560N24 Battery
This operation did not have any lasting effect, but it allowed the Soviets to symbolically end their presence with a victory.[97]
The first half of the Soviet contingent was withdrawn from May 15 to August 16, 1988 and the second from November 15 to February 15, 1989. Sony VAIO VGN-BZ560N30 Battery
In order to ensure a safe passage the Soviets had negotiated ceasefires with local mujahideen commanders, so the withdrawal was generally executed peacefully,[98] except for the operation "Typhoon".
General Yazov, the Defense Minister of Soviet Union, ordered the 40th Army to violate the agreement with Ahmed Shah Masood, Sony VAIO VGN-BZ560P Battery
who commanded a large force in the Panjshir Valley, and attack his relaxed and exposed forces. The Soviet attack was initiated to protect Najibullah, who did not have a cease fire in effect with Masood, and who rightly feared an offensive by Masood's forces after the Soviet withdrawal.[99Sony VAIO VGN-BZ560P20 Battery
] General Gromov, the 40th Army Commander, objected the operation, but reluctantly obeyed the order. "Typhoon" began on January 23 and continued for three days. To minimize their own losses the Soviets abstained from close-range fight, instead they used long-range artillery, Sony VAIO VGN-BZ560P22 Battery
surface-to-surface and air-to-surface missiles. Numerous civilian casualties were reported. Masood had not threatened the withdrawal to this point, and did not attack Soviet forces after they breached the agreement.[100] Overall, the Soviet attack represented a defeat for Masood's forces, who lost 600 fighters killed and wounded.[99] Sony VAIO VGN-BZ560P28 Battery
After the withdrawal of the Soviets the DRA forces were left fighting alone and had to abandon some provincial capitals, and it was widely believed that they would not be able to resist the mujahideen for long. However, in the spring of 1989 DRA forces inflicted a sharp defeat on the mujahideen at Jalalabad, and as a result, the war remained stalemated. Sony VAIO VGN-BZ560P30 Battery
The government of President Karmal, a puppet regime, was largely ineffective. It was weakened by divisions within the PDPA and the Parcham faction, and the regime's efforts to expand its base of support proved futile. Moscow came to regard Karmal as a failure and blamed him for the problems. Sony VAIO VGN-BZ560P34 Battery
Years later, when Karmal's inability to consolidate his government had become obvious, Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, said:
"The main reason that there has been no national consolidation so far is that Comrade Karmal is hoping to continue sitting in Kabul with our help".Sony VAIO VGN-BZ561 Battery
In November 1986, Mohammad Najibullah, former chief of the Afghan secret police (KHAD), was elected president and a new constitution was adopted. He also introduced in 1987 a policy of "national reconciliation," devised by experts of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Sony VAIO VGN-BZ561N20 Battery
and later used in other regions of the world. Despite high expectations, the new policy neither made the Moscow-backed Kabul regime more popular, nor did it convince the insurgents to negotiate with the ruling government.
Informal negotiations for a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan had been underway since 1982. Sony VAIO VGN-BZ561P20 Battery
In 1988, the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan, with the United States and Soviet Union serving as guarantors, signed an agreement settling the major differences between them known as the Geneva Accords. The United Nations set up a special Mission to oversee the process. Sony VAIO VGN-BZ562P Battery
In this way, Najibullah had stabilized his political position enough to begin matching Moscow's moves toward withdrawal. On July 20, 1987, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the country was announced. The withdrawal of Soviet forces was planned out by Lt. Gen. Boris Gromov, who, at the time, was the commander of the 40th Army. Sony VAIO VGN-BZ563P Battery
Among other things the Geneva accords identified the US and Soviet non-intervention in the internal affairs of Pakistan and Afghanistan and a timetable for full Soviet withdrawal. The agreement on withdrawal held, and on February 15, 1989, the last Soviet troops departed on schedule from Afghanistan. Sony VAIO VGN-BZAAFS Battery
Carter placed a trade embargo against the Soviet Union on shipments of commodities such as grain and weapons. The increased tensions, as well as the anxiety in the West about tens of thousands of Soviet troops being in such proximity to oil-rich regions in the Persian Gulf, effectively brought about the end of détente. Sony VAIO VGN-BZAAHS Battery
The international diplomatic response was severe, ranging from stern warnings to a US-led boycott of the1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow (in which Afghanistan competed). The intervention, along with other events, such as the Iranian revolution and the US hostage stand-off that accompanied it, the Iran–Iraq War, Sony VAIO VGN-BZAANS Battery
the 1982 Lebanon War, the escalating tensions between Pakistan and India, contributed to making the Middle East and South Asia extremely violent and turbulent regions during the 1980s. The Non-Aligned Movement was sharply divided between those who believed the Soviet deployment to be legal and others who considered the deployment an illegal invasion. Sony VAIO VGN-BZAAPS Battery
Among the Warsaw Pact countries, the intervention was condemned only by Romania.[103] India, a close ally of the Soviet Union, refused to support the Afghan war.[104] though by the end of the hostilities offered to provide humanitarian assistance to Afghan governmentSony VAIO VGN-CS118E/Q Battery
The Afghan Mujahideen were supported by a number of other countries, with the US and Saudi Arabia offering the greatest financial support. United States President Carter insisted that what he termed "Soviet aggression" could not be viewed as an isolated event of limited geographical importance but had to be contested as a potential threat to US influence in the Persian Gulf region. Sony VAIO VGN-CS118E/R Battery
The US was also worried about the USSR gaining access to the Indian Ocean by coming to an arrangement with Pakistan.
National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, known for his hardline policies on the Soviet Union, initiated in 1979 a campaign supporting mujaheddin in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Sony VAIO VGN-CS118E/W Battery
which was run by Pakistani security services with financial support from the Central Intelligence Agency and Britain's MI6.[3] Years later, in a 1997 CNN/National Security Archive interview, Brzezinski detailed the strategy taken by the Carter administration against the Soviets in 1979: Sony VAIO VGN-CS11S/P Battery
We immediately launched a twofold process when we heard that the Soviets had entered Afghanistan. The first involved direct reactions and sanctions focused on the Soviet Union, and both the State Department and the National Security Council prepared long lists of sanctions to be adopted, Sony VAIO VGN-CS11S/Q Battery
of steps to be taken to increase the international costs to the Soviet Union of their actions. And the second course of action led to my going to Pakistan a month or so after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for the purpose of coordinating with the Pakistanis a joint response, the purpose of which would be to make the Soviets bleed for as much and as long as is possible; Sony VAIO VGN-CS11S/W Battery
and we engaged in that effort in a collaborative sense with the Saudis, the Egyptians, the British, the Chinese, and we started providing weapons to the Mujaheddin, from various sources again – for example, some Soviet arms from the Egyptians and the Chinese. Sony VAIO VGN-CS11Z/R Battery
We even got Soviet arms from the Czechoslovak communist government, since it was obviously susceptible to material incentives; and at some point we started buying arms for the Mujaheddin from the Soviet army in Afghanistan, because that army was increasingly corrupt. Sony VAIO VGN-CS120J/P Battery
The supplying of billions of dollars in arms to the Afghan mujahideen militants was one of the CIA's longest and most expensive covert operations.[110] The CIA provided assistance to the fundamentalist insurgents through the Pakistanisecret services, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), in a program called Operation Cyclone. Sony VAIO VGN-CS120J/Q Battery
At least 3 billion in U.S. dollars were funneled into the country to train and equip troops with weapons. Together with similar programs by Saudi Arabia, Britain's MI6 and SAS, Egypt, Iran, and the People's Republic of China,[6] the arms included Stinger missiles, Sony VAIO VGN-CS120J/R Battery
shoulder-fired, antiaircraft weapons that they used against Soviet helicopters. Pakistan's secret service, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was used as an intermediary for most of these activities to disguise the sources of support for the resistance. Sony VAIO VGN-CS190JTB Battery
No Americans trained or had direct contact with the mujahideen.[111] The skittish CIA had fewer than 10 operatives in the region because it "feared it would be blamed, like in Guatemala."[112] Civilian personnel from the U.S. Department of State and the CIA frequently visited the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area during this time. Sony VAIO VGN-CS190JTP Battery
Shortly after the intervention, Pakistan's military ruler General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq called for a meeting of senior military members and technocrats of his military government.[113] At this meeting, General Zia-ul-Haq asked the Chief of Army Staff General Khalid Mahmud Arif and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sony VAIO VGN-CS190JTQ Battery
Staff Admiral Muhammad Shariff to lead a specialized civil-military team to formulate a geo-strategy to counter the Soviet aggression.[113] At this meeting, the Director-General of the ISI at that time, Lieutenant-General Akhtar Abdur Rahman advocated for an idea of covert operation in Sony VAIO VGN-CS190JTR Battery
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