Dushmans and allies
In the official chronicles and reference books of 15, February 1989 of the year is considered the date of the end of the Afghan war, which, as is commonly believed, began on December 25 of the year 1979, with the appearance of Soviet soldiers on Afghan soil.
Almost all Russians live willingly or unwittingly under the shadow of the memory of the war, which took place in a Muslim country so far from us. But not all of them clearly formulated for themselves why Moscow needed to send troops there, and if they did, why they did. The political, social and religious specifics of Afghanistan, as before, remain a terra incognita for a layman.
On the Afghan war 1979 - 1989, the events that followed and the current Afghan realities, Tomorrow was discussed by the leading researcher of the MGIMO Institute of International Studies, Mikhail Konarovsky, in the 2002 - 2004 years ambassador of the Russian Federation in Afghanistan, in 1984 - 1988 years, advised the USSR Embassy in the Democratic Party Republic of Afghanistan.
"TOMORROW". Mikhail Alekseevich! A year ago, in an interview with Ekho Moskvy, the ex-president of Ingushetia, Ruslan Aushev, called the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan a political mistake. This was said not only by a politician and a man, but by a participant in hostilities in Afghanistan, who received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for Afgan. Aushev’s opinion is still authoritative for many “Afghans” and researchers of that war. Tell me, was it necessary in the 1979 year to introduce our troops into this Central Asian country?
Mikhail KONAROVSKY. Until now, politicians and your colleagues, journalists, argue about whether to make such a decision. If you look from the position of today's geopolitics, today's realities and the alignment of world forces, as well as with today's borders of Russia, which now does not directly border with Afghanistan, in this case the deployment of troops in 1979 could be considered a mistake. But current conditions and those of that time are completely different things. In the 1979 year, in an atmosphere of brutal bipolar confrontation between the West and the Soviet bloc, in the conditions of their mutual rejection of the other from the leadership of the Kremlin, it was impossible to expect. Few people know that in Moscow for a long time did not decide on the introduction of troops, there are many recently declassified documents that testify to this.
"TOMORROW". And what objective reasons have pushed the top leadership of the USSR to the withdrawal of troops from the territory of Afghanistan?
Mikhail KONAROVSKY. The socio-political and economic experiment that the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) has conducted in Afghanistan since 1978 has been tragic and unsuccessful. I think that the first to think about this was not even Gorbachev, but the chairman of the KGB of the USSR Yuri Andropov, as well as Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, and, probably, Leonid Brezhnev himself. Unfortunately, the logic by which events developed, did not allow the idea of withdrawal to materialize, and the logic of further buildup within the Afghan struggle and civil confrontation did not allow this to happen. The United States itself was interested and did everything in their power to make the Soviet Union as militarily deeper as possible in Afghanistan, and Moscow paid dearly for its stay in the zone that the States considered to be “their own”. Washington’s staying of its enemy in Afghanistan was also beneficial because in this way Washington tried to weaken our country to the maximum in economic terms.
I want to say that the leadership of Afghanistan did not want the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the territory of their country, sometimes even hindered it. I heard from our generals about some not quite correct points. As a “shuravi” who did not want to leave, the Kabul government entered into secret agreements with the field commanders of the Mujahideen, in particular, with Ahmad Shah Massoud. In the end, Kabul was forced to accept our departure, and no Masud could help here.
The withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan began in the winter of the 1988 year, lasted for a year and took place in two stages. The second one ended 15 February 1989 of the year. The conclusion was made on the basis of a political decision taken in 1985 by the Soviet leadership, as well as the Geneva Agreements, which were signed shortly before the start of the withdrawal. The adoption of a political decision in Moscow was dictated by the objective development of the situation both in the USSR and in Afghanistan at that time.
As for the negotiations in Geneva, they have been held since 1982, with the mediation of the UN Secretary General. Their main goal on the part of the USSR is to ensure a decent way for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and for internal security and stability in that country after the withdrawal. On the other hand, the contours of further relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan on the basis of mutual non-intervention were outlined in Geneva. This line was confirmed by guarantees from the USSR and the USA.
"TOMORROW". You say that the Geneva talks on Afghanistan have been going on since 1982. How would you describe their implementation?
Mikhail KONAROVSKY. About the impeccability of negotiations can not speak. But if they were strictly adhered to, they could provide a solution to the external aspects of the problem. As I have already said, in parallel with the withdrawal of troops, the negotiations provided for the prevention of outside interference in Afghan affairs. In essence, the Geneva Agreements did not provide for the supply of weapons to the US by the United States, which, however, continued to do so, including through Pakistan and the countries of the Persian Gulf.
At the same time, the very adoption of a political decision on the withdrawal of troops gave the opponents of Moscow an additional psychological trump card for holding a fairly tough line at the talks. The weakness of the documents was the fact that outside the Geneva process were the main military-political opponents of Kabul, that is, the Mujahideen.
"TOMORROW". Does this mean that the United States used the non-participation of representatives of the Mujahideen in the negotiations as a map against the USSR in the Afghan "game"? If the Mujahideen do not participate in the negotiations, and the United States supplies them weaponIt turns out that the Americans transferred responsibility to the Mujahideen, while they themselves remained “not in the business”?
Mikhail KONAROVSKY. You're right. This was especially evident after reaching an agreement between Moscow and Washington on the mutual cessation of military assistance by both parties with 1 in January 1992. Simply put, Moscow no longer helps Kabul, and Washington no longer helps the mojahedin. As a result, the Najibullah regime remained alone with the irreconcilable regime of its armed opposition. And the opposition, in turn, continued to receive appropriate support from the same US through Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and a number of other states. But the Kabul regime held, as you know, only until the spring of the year 1992.
"TOMORROW". I will ask, perhaps, a silly question. Tell me, why did Moscow, although it perfectly saw the dishonest game of the Americans, agreed to leave Afghanistan?
Mikhail KONAROVSKY. In making such a decision, the then new leadership of Russia proceeded from a new political philosophy, the realization of which was aimed at the full-fledged rapprochement with the West led by the United States, even to the detriment of the country's geopolitical interests. Yeltsinists, as before Gorbachev’s entourage, tried to change our country according to Western patterns, not taking into account many aspects of the country's geopolitical interests that cannot be put into any ideological concept. Yeltsinists neglected the main axiom of any independent state: the interests of the state are much more important and objective than ideological tenets and therefore unchanged.
Russia, having agreed on 1992 in January on US conditions on Afghanistan, made a big mistake. We are paying for it so far and, unfortunately, we will pay for a long time.
I will add an important thing. My western partners, with whom I often met during the last decades, often told me: Najibullah, who in the West was then considered “Soviet”, would now be the most promising and negotiable leader for Afghanistan for the West. Our opponents in the "cold war" have seen enough of the Taliban, Hamid Karzai, and others ... Sane Western politicians and diplomats already have a persistent inoculation with bitter experience about Afghanistan.
Why did the West initially reject Najib, and then contribute to its overthrow. The fact is that Dr. Najibullah, having become the President of Afghanistan in 1986, immediately proclaimed a course towards national reconciliation and began to pursue a more realistic policy than his predecessors, in particular, turning Afghanistan to face the Islamic world. Najib went to establish contacts with the armed opposition, tried to involve its representatives in the Afghan government structure. Of course, he didn’t involve people like Rabbani or Hekmatyar, but those with whom he could reach a compromise and understanding on key issues. The result was obvious. Afghanistan 1978 of the Year, where the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) imposes its political platform, which is inconvenient for the people and the country, and Afghanistan in the early nineties are two different countries.
By the way, Najibullah carried out the policy of national reconciliation not without the Soviet Union. The very formula of this reconciliation was not an Afghan invention, but good advice from Moscow. The Kremlin understood the need to expand the social base of the regime.
At that time, Rabbani, Hekmatyar, Geylani and even Ahmad Shah Masood were more concerned with personal ambitions and did not make compromises with Kabul. They could not and did not want to live under the same roof with Najibullah, because they themselves wanted all the power in Afghanistan. In the end, the leaders of the Mujahideen received power, but they couldn’t enslave for long, because they couldn’t divide the power among themselves. The victory of the Taliban was possible only because the Mujahideen were engaged in more civil strife than state affairs.
"TOMORROW". You called the political platform of the PDPA uncomfortable for Afghanistan and the Afghan people. Explain why the ideology of this party friendly to the Soviet Union turned out to be “unfriendly” and alien for Afghanistan?
Mikhail KONAROVSKY. The political, ideological, and economic postulates that the PDPA clumsily embraced the Afghan people were unclear to the Afghan people and simply unacceptable. A striking example of this is the land reform of 1978, conducted under the leadership of Nur Mohammad Taraki. It would seem that the ideal of social equality: all people who did not have land before will now receive it. But if this postulate was beautiful, then perhaps only in its idealism. The dekhkans did not want to accept the land, believing that Allah granted it to the former owners, and who disputes the will of Allah, he serves Iblis, Satan.
I will retreat. At the beginning of the 20 of the last century, the wife of the Soviet Plenipotentiary in Kabul, Fyodor Raskolnikov, Larisa Reisner, an old Bolshevik and ardent revolutionary, tried to find the driving force of the world proletarian revolution in Afghan dehkans, but she never found it. In Afghanistan, the 70s, as in the times of Reisner, also had no class consciousness of the working peasantry and the working class in the Marxist-Leninist sense, although there were workers, peasants and even the revolutionary intelligentsia. Why is that? Because the complexity of the Afghan realities cannot be laid in any Marxism, as in any other Western "ism".
The PDPA conducted its own Marxist-like reforms in a feudal society. So, feudal in essence, the Afghan society continues to remain today. This society has long stood and continues to still stand on clan and tribal relations, with all the circumstances arising from this. When the PDPA called for help Soviet weapons, it blatantly ignored an important feature of the Afghan folk psychology - any external military presence has long caused an open allergy and complete rejection of Afghans. For an Afghan, any foreign soldier who appeared on his land is an enemy, a dushman.
The experience of our first failures in Afghanistan taught us an important lesson: we must be extremely careful in dealing with the peculiarities of the country with which you are dealing. It is this thing that Americans understand and respect, cannot and do not want to do, because of what they are so negatively perceived all over the world. Democracy, freedom of speech, the emancipation of women, it may be beautiful, but it is Americanized Western concepts. And for Afghans, for example, the notion of higher democracy is to collect the Loya Jirga, that is, the national assembly, where, as a rule, the elders of the main tribes and groups of the population gather. And who can be elected to her deputies in a tribal society with its rigid hierarchy of moral and physical seniority and influence? The answer, I think, is understandable, and it does not depend on the desire of some external sponsor. The desire of enlightened foreigners to see the “other” Afghanistan is always divided on the real possibilities of this country, and this should be taken for granted.
"TOMORROW". Could the Najibullah regime survive without the help of the USSR?
Mikhail KONAROVSKY. Subsequently, Najibullah tried to survive under the conditions created around him in the light of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the DRA. He understood well: as soon as the last Soviet soldier leaves Afghanistan, his regime will have to live face to face with the whole world in the new conditions. With proper implementation of the provisions of the Geneva Agreements, the Najib regime and the policies pursued by the Afghan leader could have survived without the help of shuravi. As we see, it was worth the “shuravi” to leave, the regime of Dr. Najibullah fell in an unequal battle with three times the superior forces of the enemy.
A big negative role in the fate of the Kabul regime was played by the fact that Kabul relied on material assistance from the USSR, which was then stopped. After the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the DRA, Najibullah, perhaps, needed to be helped and assisted. But in the 1989 year, the already in need of modernization, the economic system of the USSR was brought to the hands of the "geniuses" of perestroika. In the 1991, the Soviet Union was gone, and Russia was completely different. The Kremlin confidently followed the path of creating special, priority relations with the United States and the West, and Washington had a serious influence on the political leadership of then-Russia. Since the Americans openly expressed their negative attitude towards Najibullah, the Kremlin deprived its former ally of assistance in weapons and fuel. Of course, I may not know many details, because I personally did not attend the conversations between Yeltsin, Kozyrev and others. But according to the logic of the current and subsequent events, most likely it was just that.
After all, the new foreign policy doctrine of "democratic" Russia has revised not only the previous relations between Moscow and Kabul. All previous priorities have been revised. New priorities lined up according to ranking: first the West, then the former Soviet republics, and then selectively the rest of the world. Of course, in all foreign policy issues, the Kremlin and the Russian Foreign Ministry were obliged to keep equal to the West.
"TOMORROW". Najibullah in 1996 was executed by the Taliban - members of the religious-fundamentalist organization "Taliban", which ruled in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, and has waged a war against Americans in Afghanistan and Waziristan since that time. Remind our readers history the emergence of the Taliban.
Mikhail KONAROVSKY. The birthplace of the Taliban is Pakistan, although formally this movement is considered Afghan. The literal translation of the Pashtun word "Talib" is a student of a religious school. In fact, the leaders of the Taliban and its first militants are graduates and students of Islamic schools in Pakistan, mainly Peshawar. In these Pakistani schools, many Afghan boys and youths studied before 1992. Of these boys, external forces known to all created the fundamentalist Taliban movement, and then sent the Taliban with weapons to their native Afghanistan for them to establish a “true Islam” society there and exterminate the Mujahideen, who allegedly perverted this “true Islam”. By external forces, I mean, of course, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Approximately in the same conditions, al-Qaeda was created, which had a mouth teeth on teeth. From 1978 until the collapse of the USSR, the main US strategic goal was to drown the USSR in the swamp of the Afghan armed confrontation, but at the same time to do so that the Americans did not climb into this swamp. To this end, Washington has provided military and material assistance to various groups of the Mujahideen. The apogee of such a policy was a real flow of Arab volunteers who came to a completely alien region for the sake of holy war against the infidels. A wealthy Arab from Saudi Arabia, named Osama bin Laden, controlled the flow of mojaheds.
The actions of foreign volunteers and Afghan opponents of the PDPA were called holy war, jihad, and the participants of the war were called jihad warriors and mojaheds. The American special services kept all the Mujahideen under their cap. The CIA had a dossier on Rabbani, Hekmatyar, Masud, and, of course, Bin Laden and his ilk. In this regard, the CIA worked closely with the Pakistani intelligence ISI, although the ISI hid and still hides many important moments of that war and not only it from the USA. But what can the Americans do, since Pakistan is a particularly important US strategic satellite in this part of Asia. Pakistan became especially important to the United States after the pro-American shah regime was overthrown in Iran in February 1979.
"TOMORROW". And what can you say about Ahmad Shah Massoud? During the war years, this man stood on an ideological platform adjacent to the Taliban, since he was devoutly Muslim, but later became the Taliban’s worst enemy.
Mikhail KONAROVSKY. Ahmad Shah, with 1996 up to his death, waged a fierce battle against the Taliban in northern Afghanistan. This territory, almost officially called Masudistan, covered the provinces of Baghlan, Parwan, Takhar, and Badakhshan. The main population of these provinces are Tajiks and Uzbeks. Ahmad himself is a Tajik, and from a noble family. Back in the 1989 year, after the withdrawal of our troops, he began to create a territory completely free of Pashtun influence in the north of the country. And the Taliban’s rise to power has further aggravated Massoud’s rejection of Kabul’s power. After all, the Taliban is, in fact, a Pashtun movement, almost all of the Taliban leaders are Pashtuns, and the Taliban, in fact, built its policy on the basis of the superiority of Pashtuns over the rest of the peoples of Afghanistan. In words, it turned out that all true Muslims were brothers, but in reality there was disguised Pashtun nationalism.
You correctly said that Masud was a deeply religious Muslim. From the beginning of the 70 of the last century, he was a member of the Islamic Society of Afghanistan organization, which did not accept the Saur revolution, and then began an armed struggle against the "godless" power of the PDPA. He headed the "Islamic Society" Burhanuddin Rabbani. Rabbani and Masud, besides rejection of the “godless” PDPA and “shuravi”, united another feature - they are both Tajiks. The PDPA, like the Taliban later, was a Pashtun party, led by Pashtuns. The only exception was Babrak Karmal. Karmal's father was descended from a kind of immigrants from Kashmir who had assimilated into the Tajik environment. But Babrak Karmal called himself Pashtun and spoke only Pashtun.
The well-known confrontation between the factions of the NDPA “Khalk” and “Parcham” was not an ideological confrontation, but a struggle of various Pashtun clans for spheres of influence. Any Pashtun would put the interests of his tribe or clan above ideological considerations, which Soviet ideologists stubbornly refused to notice. The pronounced Pashtun component of the PDPA multiplied by the "godless" party policy, as well as the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan, perceived as an invitation, which the Pashtun nationalists sent to the enemies of the Afghan Muslims and the Islamic faith in general. So simple Afghans believed, and their leaders inspired it.
However, I would not say that Masood was close to the early Taliban, despite the fact that he was a deeply religious Muslim. The Taliban are an artificially created organization, and Massoud’s beliefs, like Rabbani, were sincere. Moreover, Masud was a man of broader political and ideological views than other commanders of the Mujahidi formations, a more secular-oriented politician, looked farther than others. That was his advantage. And after the Taliban took power, the situation was such that the enemies became allies. Masood and even Rabbani were interested in relations with Russia and Russian aid. Russia as far as possible assisted the Northern Alliance.
"TOMORROW". And who, in your opinion, could eliminate Ahmad Shah?
Mikhail KONAROVSKY. Anyone. Al-Qaeda, Pakistanis, Americans ... Ahmad interfered with many things. He was a strong charismatic personality who could play the most significant role in the future alignments of the Afghan history, which could emerge after the overthrow of the Taliban regime.
"TOMORROW". Can the US leave Afghanistan without leaving any influence on this country? And what risks can Russia face in the Afghan direction?
Mikhail KONAROVSKY. I think no. From the point of view of the US strategy in the region, this would be an act that does not meet their interests. But, to what extent this influence can be preserved, I cannot say this. At the beginning of 2000, the majority of the population of Afghanistan treated the US military and Western countries with understanding because the population was still impressed by obscurantism in the form of the Taliban and was appreciative of getting rid of it. But later on, the attitude of the Afghans to a foreign military presence, especially the American one, was drastically changed towards open negativism.
As for Russia, then if the Afghan situation takes the form of terrorism and if this is expressed in the form of export of Islamic extremist ideas and the desire to physically implement these ideas on foreign territory, then yes. For Russia, the problem of illegal deliveries of drugs from Afghanistan to our country is also very sensitive. But if a moderate Islamic regime, ready for cooperation and mutual understanding with other nations and religions, governs the country, this will be quite normal. There is the Islamic regime of Iran, with which you can deal.
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