Soviet war in Afghanistan

The Soviet War in Afghanistan was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist-Leninist puppet government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistanagainst the indigenous Afghan Mujahideen and foreign "Arab–Afghan" volunteers. The mujahideen found other support from a variety of sources including the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Egypt, China and other nations. The Afghan war became a proxy war in the broader context of the late Cold War.

The initial Soviet deployment of the 40th Army in Afghanistan began on December 24, 1979 under Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev. The final troop withdrawal started on May 15, 1988, and ended on February 15, 1989 under the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Due to the interminable nature of the war, the conflict in Afghanistan has sometimes been referred to as the Soviet Union's Vietnam War.

The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was formed after the Saur Revolution on 27 April 1978. The government was one with a pro-poor, pro-farmer and socialistic agenda. It had close relations with the Soviet Union. On 5 December 1978 a friendship treaty was signed with the Soviet Union. Wary of this alliance, the capitalist bloc started conspiring to oust this government. On July 3, 1979 USA's President Jimmy Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. The aim of USA was to drag the Soviet Union into the "Afghan trap" as US Secretary of State Zbigniew Brzezinski termed it.

Russian military involvement in Afghanistan has a long history, going back to Tsarist expansions in the so-called "Great Game" between Russia and Britain. This began in the 19th century with such events as the Panjdeh Incident, a military skirmish that occurred in 1885 when Russian forces seized Afghan territory south of the Oxus River around an oasis at Panjdeh. This interest in the region continued on through the Soviet era, with billions in economic and military aid sent to Afghanistan between 1955 and 1978.

In February 1979, the Islamic Revolution ousted the American-backed Shah from Afghanistan's neighbor Iran and the United States Ambassador to Afghanistan was kidnapped by Setami Milli militants, and was later killed during an assault carried out by the Afghan police, assisted by Soviet advisers. The death of Ambassador Adolph Dubs led to a major degradation in Afghanistan – United States relations.

The United States then deployed twenty ships to the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea including two aircraft carriers, and there was a constant stream of threats of warfare between the US and Iran.

March 1979 marked the signing of the US-backed peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. The Soviet leadership saw the agreement as a major advantage for the United States. One Soviet newspaper stated that Egypt and Israel were now "gendarmes of the Pentagon". The Soviets viewed the treaty not only as a peace agreement between their erstwhile allies in Egypt and the US-supported Israelis but also as a military pact.In addition, the US sold more than 5,000 missiles to Saudi Arabia and also supplied the Royalists in the North Yemen Civil War against the communist rebellion. Also, the Soviet Union's previously strong relations with Iraq had recently soured. In June 1978, Iraq began entering into friendlier relations with the Western world and buying French and Italian-made weapons, though the vast majority still came from the Soviet Union, their Warsaw Pact allies and China.

ROSSANA HERNANDEZ

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan