WAR WITHOUT END

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 is widely viewed through the prism of the great Cold War confrontation between east and west. Yet, writes Elisabeth Leake, the occupation also ignited a tinderbox of local grievances that continue to torment the country to this day

- Elisabeth Leake

Afghan fighters on top of a destroyed Soviet helicopter, 1980. The arrival of Soviet forces in Afghanistan the previous year had complicated an already volatile situation

On 3 August 1978, the central council of the Islamic Society of Afghanistan (Jamiati-Islami) wrote an impassioned plea to Kurt Waldheim, secretary-general of the United Nations. In their letter, they decried Afghanistan's political leaders, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), as a "power-thirsty gang" intent on destroying Afghanistan's political and social fabric and lacking any respect for humanitarian norms or human rights. The Council demanded UN intercession, warning that "the continued survival of this group will endanger the peace of this region of the world".

This warning soon came true. On 24 December 1979, the Soviet Politburo issued a public directive justifying the deployment of Soviet troops into Afghanistan to support their allies, the same PDPA. The Soviets, the Politburo claimed, sought "to give international aid to the friendly Afghan people" and to prevent "anti-Afghan actions from neighbouring countries". Within days, 50,000 Soviet troops were on the ground in Afghanistan. They would remain there for almost a decade as part of Soviet efforts to keep their local allies in power.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was one of the moments that defined the 1980s. It took place against the backdrop of the global Cold War, in which the Soviet Union and the United States (as well as China) vied for supremacy. Indeed, so international was the Cold War during the 1970s and early 1980s that, while US and Soviet leaders pursued talks on limiting strategic arms and the balance of power in Europe, Soviet forces backed independence movements in southern and eastern Africa as American troops withdrew from Vietnam.