NARRATOR: Afghanistan.
A war which cost the lives
of nearly 15,000 young Soviet conscripts
and an estimated one million Afghans.
[speaking Russian ]
It was the Soviet Union's Vietnam syndrome,
so to speak.
It was impossible for a great superpower
to run away from this wild country.
The United States supplied billions of dollars
of weapons to unlikely allies --
Islamic Fundamentalists.
It is entirely true that this was a war
that was fought with our gold
but with their blood.
P?
NARRATION: The Panjshir Valley
in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan --
a rural, traditionally Islamic country
of 15 million people.
Foreign nations had tried to conquer it for centuries.
None succeeded.
But civil war and years of Cold War Conflict
would bring the people of Afghanistan
a terrible toll of death and destruction.
In the 1970s,
Afghanistan became a focus
for superpower rivalry.
Close to the Persian Gulfs oil
and the Indian Ocean ports,
it bordered Iran in the West
and Pakistan in the South and East.
In the North,
it shared a border with the Muslims
of the Soviet Union's Central Asian republics.
To Moscow,
a friendly Afghanistan was vital.
Kabul, Afghanistan,
April 1978.
A military coup brings a left-wing regime to power.
Soviet cameras portray it
as a romantic popular revolution.
Crowds were organized
to celebrate the change of power.
Nut Mohammed Taraki,
Afghanistan's new leader,
looked to the Soviet Union for support.
Moscow sent hundreds of Soviet advisers
to advance socialism.
[speaking Afghan ]
The vast majority of Afghan people had no jobs.
Afghanistan was an agricultural country.
We thought it was best to introduce land reforms
and give land to the landless.
It would enable them to work their own land
and raise their standard of living.
NARRATION: The left-wing regime set about
reforming Afghanistan by decree.
Land was taken from large owners
and handed to the peasants who worked it.
Women were encouraged to stop wearing veils
and were put into literacy classes
alongside men.
[chanting in Afghan]
In the countryside, the reforms were seen
to threaten ancient customs
and the authority of the Islamic priests,
the mullahs.
[chanting continues]
[speaking Afghan ]
The Communists were trying to change
the law of God.
They wanted to destroy Islamic traditions --
to rid Afghanistan of poverty
and make everyone equal.
This is against the law of Islam.
God has decided who is rich and who is poor.
It can't be changed by communists.
It's beyond imagination.
NARRATION: To counter Communists' efforts
to spread their new doctrine,
opponents of the reforms burnt down schools
and universities.
Thousands of Afghans fled to Pakistan
to avoid the revolutionary turmoil.
Resistance was growing throughout the country.
[speaking Russian ]
Brezhnev and the Politburo tried
to talk sense into Kabul.
We couldn't understand now they could build socialism
in just five years.
We said, "You can't do that.
We've been building socialism for 60 years
and we're still not finished."
But they thought it was us
that had got it wrong.
Naiveté was coming out of their every orifice.
It was in their every word.
[crowds chanting ]
NARRATION: In neighboring Iran,
crowds joined the call of the Afghan resistance
for a jihad, or holy war,
against the godless Communists.
Other Islamic countries took up the cry.
[ Chanting ]
In Washington,
National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brezezinski
was convinced the left-wing regime in Afghanistan
was a major threat.
Yeah.
And that will deal first with Iran,
then with Afghanistan
and the regional implications.
NARRATION: Brzezinski told President Carter that
Moscow might use the Afghan crisis to move south
and seize the oil of the Persian Gulf.
BRZEZINSKI: Well, I have essentially four items
I'd like to go over with you.
[ Shouting ]
Brzezinski' s fears for the stability of the region
gained weight when mass demonstrations in Tehran
led to the overthrow of the Shah of Iran.
The Shah's fall lost America
its most important ally in the region.
BRZEZINSKI: We were faced with the possibility
that one way or another,
before too long, we may have
either a hostile Iran
on the northern shore of the Persian Gulf facing us,
or we might even have the Soviets there.
[ Overlapping conversations ]
NARRATION: The Islamic groups fighting the Communists
received covert American aid
for the first time in July 1979.
President Carter began by sending
communications equipment.
The rebels called themselves the Mujahedin,
the Soldiers of God.
They were mostly peasants
organized by village mullahs and landowners.
Many of their weapons were captured
from the Communist regime.
From the refugee camps in Pakistan,
recruits for the jihad
walked for days across the mountains
to reach the fighting.
Ranged against the Mujahedin
was a mechanized, Soviet-trained Afghan army.
Soviet film depicted
a highly motivated fighting force.
In fact, each month,
thousands of soldiers deserted.
Kabul pleaded with Moscow to send Soviet troops.
In the Kremlin,
Soviet leaders repeatedly met
to discuss the Afghan crisis.
After mobs massacred Soviet advisers
and their families in Herat,
Kabul' s request for Soviet troops
moved up the agenda.
[speaking Russian ]
The Afghans wanted us to introduce
a limited contingent of Soviet troops
to guard military bases.
They just couldn't cope with the Mujahedin themselves.
At first they spoke about a battalion,
then about a brigade.
They kept insisting and pushing for Soviet troops
but we kept refusing and refusing and refusing.
NARRATION: President Taraki had an apparently devoted
Prime Minister, Hafizullah Amin.
Amin was the regime's strong man.
In spite of the unrest
he was determined to drive on with the reforms.
Amin launched a campaign of terror.
He had opponents arrested and shot.
[speaking Russian ]
I said to Amin that his policies were too harsh,
that they were turning the Muslim population
against him.
Like the land reforms which did not
take into account Afghan traditions.
But he used to reply
"Did Stalin make the revolution
in white gloves?
NARRATION: Afghan President Taraki flew to Moscow
to discuss with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev
how to curb Amin' s excesses.
They decided to oust him,
hoping the Kabul government
could get popular support by slowing the reforms
and ending the terror.
Moscow's secret plans leaked out.
When President Taraki returned to Kabul,
Amin had him seized and executed.
Amin realized the Soviets wanted him out.
He began to seek better ties with the West.
The KGB even imagined Amin might be
a CIA agent.
[speaking Russian ]
Andropov, the head of the KGB,
became very concerned about Amin
flirting with the Americans.
Andropov felt that if we didn't introduce Soviet troops,
Amin would claim that
Moscow hadn't fulfilled its obligations.
He would then turn to the Americans for help
and they would put their own troops in.
NARRATION: In Moscow the arguments were mounting
in favor of using an invasion to remove Amin.
In the past, Soviet military action
to topple troublesome foreign leaders
had worked in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
In Europe,
the nuclear arms race was gathering speed.
NATO wanted to counter the Soviet Union's
mobile missiles.
On December 12, 1979
the West announced it would deploy
hundreds of cruise missiles in response.
Moscow now felt it had little to lose internationally
by intervening in Afghanistan with troops.
That evening the Politburo held an emergency meeting.
[speaking Russian ]
Our major concern
was the security of the southern borders
of the Soviet Union.
We also feared the spread of Islamic fundamentalism
into Afghanistan from Iran.
[speaking Russian ]
I said that military intervention in Afghanistan
would be very difficult for our army.
It would not necessarily lead to success.
One only has to consider the conditions in Afghanistan,
its geography, its history
and especially the independent nature
of the Afghans.
[speaking Russian ]
We also felt
that if we didn't go into Afghanistan
then some other countries would.
The intervention of these states could
destabilize the situation on the Soviet-Afghan border
and in the region as a whole.
NARRATION: The Politburo took its fateful decision.
By December 25, 1979,
tens of thousands of men in tanks and trucks
started to trundle across the border.
Moscow hoped they could complete their mission
within weeks.
The old royal palace on the edge of Kabul
was Prime Minister Amin' s favorite residence.
KGB special forces stormed the building.
Amin tried to hide,
but they shot him dead.
Moscow replaced Amin with a more manageable leader,
Babrak Karmal.
Since the Cold War started,
the Soviet Union had never invaded a country
beyond the borders of the Warsaw Pact.
Now Soviet forces were stepping across the line.
The implications
of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
could pose a more serious threat to the peace
since the second World War.
The vast majority of nations on earth
have condemned this latest Soviet attempt
to extend its colonial domination of others.
[ Applause ]
CARTER: I had to put restraints on the Soviet Union.
One of them was to issue a public statement
that if the Soviets did invade
either Pakistan or Iran
or Iran out of Afghanistan,
that I would consider this a personal threat
to the security of the United States of America
and I would take whatever action I desired
or considered appropriate to respond.
And I let it be known that this would not exclude
a nuclear reaction.
MAN: The military intervention of the Soviet Union
cannot be justified.
There can be no question of any country
other than the Soviet Union having interfered
in Afghanistan's internal affairs.
NARRATION: At the United Nations
the Soviet invasion was widely condemned.
President Carter blocked grain deliveries
to the Soviet Union,
launched a boycott of the Olympic games in Moscow,
and stepped up US spending on arms.
Détente was over.
US National Security Adviser Brzezinski
flew to Pakistan
to set about rallying resistance.
He wanted to arm the Mujahedin
without revealing America's role.
On the Afghan border near the Khyber pass,
he urged the Soldiers of God
to redouble their efforts.
BRZEZINSKI: We know of their deep belief in God.
And we are confident
that their struggle will succeed.
[man speaking Afghan]
That land over there is yours.
You will go back to it one day
because your fight will prevail
and you'll have your homes and your mosques back again
because your cause is right
and God is on your side.
[ Applause ]
BRZEZINSKI: The purpose of coordinating with the Pakistanis
would be to make the Soviets bleed
for as much and as long as is possible.
Do we know if any Soviet units have reached the border?
They're holding back? - They are holding back.
BRZEZINSKI: We started providing weapons to the Mujahedin,
from various sources again.
Some, for example, some Soviet arms
from the Egyptians and the Chinese.
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 Mujahedin
from the Soviet army in Afghanistan,
because that army was increasingly corrupt.
NARRATION: Brzezinski sought the help of General Zia-ul-Haq,
Pakistan's military ruler.
Pakistan always had a keen interest
in Afghanistan.
Pakistan wanted a friendly and strongly Islamic neighbor.
The US Congress had earlier out
US military aid to Pakistan.
General Zia had a bad human rights record.
He was developing a nuclear bomb.
He had failed to curb drugs trading.
Now, the Americans set aside their displeasure.
I think we had a double standard
with respect to the Pakistanis.
And we knew that there were big problems with drugs,
and that there were big problems with nukes
and we were prepared in various ways,
in any way that we had to,
to turn Nelson's eye to those problems,
as long as the Afghan resistance was being supported
via the government of Pakistan --
and that's what we did.
NARRATION: In Afghanistan,
the Red Army guarded cities, roads, and airports,
leaving the Afghan army free for combat.
By 1980, almost 100,000 Soviet troops
would be deployed around the country.
It was a civil war,
but many of the Soviet conscripts were told
they were coming to Afghanistan to confront Americans.
[ Man speaking Russian ]
After we took our first Afghan prisoners,
we started to realize that the Americans were hot there.
We said, "Americans? What Americans?
They're not here."
But the KGB officers said, "Oh, they're in the rear.
They are advising Mujahedin,
just like we advised in Cuba.
Maybe they are teaching them how to fight."
But the more operations we carried out,
the more we realized that the Americans were not there.
NARRATION: Against their wishes,
the Soviets were soon sucked into combat.
They started with textbook sweep offensives
devised to defeat NATO in Europe,
and Chinese troops on the plains of Manchuria.
In mountainous terrain
against guerilla fighters,
their approach was a disaster.
Well, I would say 99% of all the battles
that we fought in Afghanistan
were won by the Soviet side.
But the problem is that the next morning
we had the same old situation
as if there was no battle --
Mujahedin were again in that village
where they were --
we thought we destroyed them just the other day.
So it was an absolutely useless war.
ARCHIVE - RONALD REAGAN: I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear...
...that I will faithfully execute the office
of President of the United States.
...that I will faithfully execute the office
of President of the United States.
NARRATION: A fervent anti-Communist,
Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election
with an image of forceful leadership
and a promise to re-build US military might.
To many Americans,
Carter's foreign policy had seemed weak.
Reagan stepped up aid to the Afghan rebels.
The Mujahedin were made up of numerous factions.
They were split on tribal and ethnic lines.
When the Mujahedin weren't fighting the Soviets,
they sometimes fought each other.
[speaking Afghan ]
The Mujahedin often captured military equipment
in working order,
but were so disorganized that within hours
it would be made useless by looting.
[ Overlapping conversations ]
ANDERSON: I made the comment that gratitude
in the Afghan dictionary
is gonna be found somewhere after "gimme" and "gotcha."
[ gunshots ]
On the other hand, there was a constant
undercurrent of understanding
that while we were providing the means
to wage this war,
they were waging it
and that it is entirely true that this was a war
that was fought with our gold but with their blood.
NARRATION: The Reagan administration increased
its covert military supplies to the Mujahedin.
Money and arms were channeled
through camps in Pakistan.
By controlling the way aid was distributed,
the Pakistanis hoped to install a fundamentalist regime
in Afghanistan.
They favored the extremist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
ELIE KRAKOWSKI: The Pakistanis -- they needed to have people
that they could manipulate.
It is for that reason that American aid,
whatever it was,
and in the early period it was minimal,
later it became more significant,
was essentially directed by the Pakistanis
to Gulbuddin at the expense of other groups.
[speaking Afghan ]
The arms were not distributed fairly.
Despite our military successes,
Pakistan only gave us eight missiles.
For two years, they out all aid to my group.
The Pakistanis had their own agenda.
They gave the lion's share of weapons
to the hard-liner, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
NARRATION: Inside Afghanistan,
the ferocity of the civil war increased.
[ Gunfire, explosions]
After heavy casualties,
the Red Army changed tactics.
They abandoned massive armored sweeps
and took to the air.
Soviet commandos would be dropped in
by helicopters
to out the Mujahedin' s escape routes.
While more weapons poured into Afghanistan,
the United Nations sought a diplomatic solution.
Under-Secretary Diego Cordovez
tried to broker a deal
for the Soviet Union to withdraw
if military aid to the Mujahedin was stopped.
His shuttle diplomacy made little headway
with Afghan President, Babrak Karmal.
Moscow. November 1982.
After 18 years in power,
Brezhnev is dead.
The state funeral was used
for a new Afghan initiative.
After the ceremony,
Yuri Andropov, the new Soviet President,
told Pakistan's foreign minister
that he might accept the United nations plan.
But the Americans didn't trust Andropov.
We never considered that the Soviets would
actually back out of Afghanistan
and negotiate their way out.
It didn't seem a credible thing
for them to do because we didn't think
that they were at all disposed to do that.
So naturally when we talked with the Pakistanis,
we pressed them always
to continue the pressure.
ARCHIVE - RONALD REAGAN: The Bible tells us there will be a time for peace
but so far in this century,
mankind has failed to find it.
In these times...
NARRATION: The United States and Pakistan were not ready
for a deal with Moscow.
For Washington, the UN's peace plan
was a sideshow.
REAGAN: The peace-loving nations of the world
must condemn aggression.
Throughout Afghanistan,
Soviet aircraft were now bombing indiscriminately.
They pummeled village after village
into oblivion.
In a typical attack on April 8, 1985,
the villages of Kats and Mindrawar
on the Kabul-Jalalabad highway were bombed,
then overrun by Soviet troops.
[woman speaking Afghan ]
INTERPRETER: The Soviets destroyed the whole village.
It's impossible to count how many they killed.
The men were dragged out of their houses
and sent off to the Afghan army.
Those who refused were taken aside and gunned down --
butchered.
[man speaking Afghan]
INTERPRETER: The Russians took 14 of us
and made us stand in a line near this wall.
Two Russian soldiers stood in front of us
with machine guns.
We began reciting the Holy Kalima
from the Holy Koran,
because we knew we were about to die.
They machine-gunned every one of us.
I fell.
There was a pile of bodies,
all on top of me.
The bullets missed me.
The soldiers searched us and took our money.
They moved me, but I just pretended to be dead.
[speaking Afghan ]
The rockets were falling all around us
like leaves off a tree.
My daughter's head was smashed open,
Her brains were hanging from a branch.
I lost everything --
my cousins, my nephews --
everybody was killed --
my wife, my four children.
[soldier speaking Russian ]
INTERPRETER: There was no such thing as a "peaceful population."
They were all guerrilla fighters.
I remember how we once rounded up
all the women and children,
poured kerosene over them
and set fire to them.
Yes, it was cruel.
Yes, we did it,
but those kids were torturing our wounded soldiers
with knives.
[speaking Russian ]
When you kill, you don't feel calm.
You just feel indifferent.
You're paranoid. You lose your morality.
You become very cold-blooded.
Your soul grows cold
because you're confronted with something
you don't like doing.
[speaking Russian ]
A young soldier might kill just to test his gun,
or if he's curious to see
what the inside of a human being looks like,
or what's inside a smashed head.
But there is also the fact that if you don't kill,
you'll get killed.
It's a feeling of being drunk on blood.
Often you kill out of boredom
or because you just feel like doing it.
It's like hunting rabbits.
[man speaking Afghan]
INTERPRETER: We have cried so much
that we can no longer cry.
Even if we do cry,
who will wipe away our tears?
So, you see, there's nobody to turn to anyway.
We can only pray to God
to take our revenge for us
because we are helpless.
NARRATION: Thousands of civilians were killed
in similar Soviet atrocities
throughout Afghanistan.
The Mujahedin committed their own war crimes,
often executing Soviet and Afghan prisoners
in cold blood.
[gunfire]
NARRATION: With increasing ruthlessness and daring,
the Mujahedin attacked Soviet convoys --
the lifeline bringing oil and weapons
to the Red Army.
[gunfire]
[ explosion ]
[gunfire continues]
NARRATION: The toll of Soviet dead rose
to as much as 2,000 a year.
♫
Many Soviet conscripts were raw recruits.
Sent to Afghanistan after only three months
of basic training.
Sickness, drunkenness and drug abuse
sapped the army's strength.
The wounded got minimal care.
The war seemed pointless.
[ Man speaking Russian ]
You don't know what you're doing.
You don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow.
Perhaps you're gonna die and for the sake of what?
For the sake of a system that lies to you?
For the sake of a system that turned my father
and all of our parents into alcoholics?
You suddenly realized
that you have been brought up in a system
which only creates evil.
You just want to escape from it,
but you don't know where to run.
You have only got one hope --
to eat half a kilo of opium,
go to sleep and never wake up.
[ Narration in Russian ]
NARRATION: The propaganda was repeated daily
in the Soviet press.
Returning veterans began to reveal
the Soviet troops true role.
But Soviet newspaper readers searched in vain
for accurate reports.
Basically, it was total disinformation
of the Soviet public.
Soviet soldiers were not fighting a war.
The propaganda said they were building schools,
kindergartens, roads,
and guarding caravans with food.
That's it.
NARRATION: In cemeteries across the Soviet Union,
the cost of the invasion became impossible to hide.
Many Russian mothers lost their only child.
[woman speaking Russian ]
INTERPRETER: A military officer came to me.
He said, "Try to be brave.
Your son has died."
I couldn't believe it.
No.
I had only received a letter from him
the day before.
I didn't try to open the coffin myself.
My brother wanted to but we were not allowed.
The funeral was very quick.
They buried him
and that was it.
It's very hard.
I wasn't allowed to write on his gravestone
that he'd died in Afghanistan.
I could only write in small letters at the bottom
that he'd died
"while fulfilling his internationalist duty."
I didn't see him dead,
so to me he's still alive.
At every doorbell I think my son has come back.
I don't believe he died.
NARRATION: In March 1985,
an energetic new leader
took power in the Kremlin.
As Mikhail Gorbachev met crowds of Russians
on tours around the country,
opposition to the war could finally be
expressed in public.
[speaking Russian ]
NARRATION: Thousands of protest letters poured in
to Gorbachev' s office each week.
[speaking Russian ]
We had to finish this war,
but in such a way
that the Russian people would understand
why tens of thousands had died,
and tens of thousands had become invalids.
We had to explain what it was all for.
We couldn't just run away from there in shame.
No.
We needed to find a process.
[speaking Russian ]
There was an obstacle, an ideological one.
It was our Vietnam syndrome.
It was impossible for a great superpower
to run away from this wild country,
like the Americans in Vietnam.
It would damage our prestige.
NARRATION: The United Nations envoy, Diego Cordovez,
was told by Gorbachev
that the Soviet Union would consider withdrawing
under a UN agreement.
The emerging issue was
what kind of government would run Afghanistan
if the Soviets left.
Hoping the US and Pakistan would accept
a coalition friendly to Moscow,
Gorbachev chose a new Afghan leader,
Mohammad Najibullah.
Gorbachev instructed Najibullah
to offer talks with the Mujahedin
about forming an Afghan government
of national reconciliation.
Gorbachev and his peace initiatives
were applauded in Moscow,
but not yet accepted in Washington.
WEINBERGER: He was KGB and he was all the old school
and he had some very dubious associations
and all the rest.
He was trying to persuade the old line Communists
that he was with them
and he would appoint them to various positions,
and he would not make major changes in the economy
or in the economic policies
or in the military policies.
NARRATION: On return from his first summit with Gorbachev,
Reagan sensed Moscow wanted a deal
to get out of Afghanistan.
But American hard-liners wanted revenge
for Vietnam.
Pressed by Congress,
Reagan urged the Mujahedin to go for victory.
ANDERSON: It wasn't until really
between about '83 to '85
that the forces in Washington,
who asked the question,
"Well, maybe we can win this."
Let's not put in
$100 million a year worth of weapons,
let's put in a billion dollars a year
worth of weapons.
NARRATION: To combat Soviet air supremacy,
the United States decided to try out its latest missile,
the Stinger.
Field trials like this looked impressive
as the shoulder-fired missile locked onto its target.
By sending state-of-the-art, American-made Stingers
to the Mujahedin,
Washington was making plain that America
was directly involved in the Afghan war.
Spurred on by the increased American aid,
the Mujahedin opposed a UN-brokered peace agreement
that would enable the withdrawal of Soviet troops,
but leave the Kabul regime in place.
Signed in Geneva,
the 1988 peace agreement barred
further military aid to either side
in Afghanistan.
Both superpowers ignored the ban.
The supply of weapons went on.
The Geneva accords did not bring peace.
WEINBERGER: Our basic feeling was that
what the Russians were talking about
was a way to get the resistance
and the opposition of the West
off their backs, so to speak,
and that they then would be free to pursue
other methods of dominating Afghanistan,
and that's what we did not want to have happen.
[speaking Russian ]
The Americans didn't want
a trace of Marxism left.
They wanted to install an anti-Soviet puppet regime
they could control.
The bleeders or the hawks finally won.
Our reason was very simple,
"If you carry on giving aid,
we'll carry on giving aid."
NARRATION: In 1988,
under the terms of the Geneva agreement,
Soviet troops started pulling out.
But instead of peace,
Afghanistan was to endure more years of bloodshed.
Fighting among rival groups of Islamic fundamentalists
continued to destroy the country
long after the Cold War was over.
Since 1979,
five million Afghans were wounded
or forced to flee their homes.
Almost 15,000 Soviet soldiers were killed.
One million Afghans perished.
ANDERSON: I haven't had a bad night.
It's not because I am without feeling for --
or without understanding of now much agony
goes along with war.
It's just that this was such a contribution
to the end of what was otherwise an evil
that inflicted other kinds of pain
on so many other people
that on balance, it was worth it.
[speaking Russian ]
The Afghan people have become the main victims.
The Afghans are now fighting each other.
Of course they have plenty of internal reasons for that.
But at the same time,
it's because of a legacy which started in the 1970s
that they are now fighting each other
with American and Soviet weapons.
[chanting in Afghan]
Subtitles ripped and converted by Juan Claudio Epsteyn
E-mail: epsteyn@hotmail.com