Retreat from Kabul: the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan teaches many lessons. America's inevitable defeat isn't one of them.

AuthorCaryl, Christian
PositionThe Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan - Book review

The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan

by Gregory Feller

HarperCollins, 336 pp.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a dark comedy of errors right from the beginning. Western propaganda during the Cold War liked to paint the Russians as soulless robots, but, as NPR Moscow correspondent Gregory Feifer describes in his new book, The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan, the reality of Red Army operations during the Soviet takeover was more Keystone Kops than anything else. On the first day of the invasion, December 27, 1979, Soviet special forces converged on the presidential palace in Kabul. Their job was to kill Afghan President Hafizullah Amin, who was suspected by Moscow of treacherous disloyalty. A ruthless Communist, Amin had murdered his predecessor, Nur Muhammad Taraki, along with most of Taraki's family, and sent thousands of opponents to firing squads or jail during his own brief tenure in office.

As Feifer vividly recounts, the Soviet operation was swathed in confusion--perhaps a reflection of the secrecy and bureaucratic timidity with which Leonid Brezhnev's Politburo had ordered the invasion fifteen days earlier. Before the attack, the Soviets had spent billions of dollars propping up pro-Moscow regimes in Kabul. An April 1978 coup by the Afghan Communist Party finally succeeded in installing an overtly revolutionary government--which then immediately foundered as its radical social programs inspired revolt in the countryside. Still, as its subsequent dithering demonstrated, the Kremlin was notably unenthusiastic about direct intervention in Afghanistan. Subsequent events would show that reluctance to be well founded.

The day unfolded as the KGB, with the help of Amin's Russian cook, succeeded in poisoning the Afghan president--this after an earlier attempt had been thwarted by Amin's fondness for Coca-Cola. (The fizz neutralized the toxin--future dictators, take note.) One of Amin's Soviet doctors, who hadn't been tipped off about the poisoning, resuscitated him. Cue the arrival of the Russian commandos, who shot the groggy president in his underwear as soon as they spotted him in a hallway. They then tossed in a hand grenade for extra effect, finishing off not only Amin but also his five-year-old son. Judging by Feifer's account, the elite Soviet spetsnaz troops who staged the attack were lucky to have made it that far. The troops were undeniably "elite" as far as their training was...

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