Read The World Was Going Our Way Online
Authors: Christopher Andrew
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #True Accounts, #Espionage, #History, #Europe, #Ireland, #Military, #Intelligence & Espionage, #Modern (16th-21st Centuries), #20th Century, #Russia, #World
The World Was Going Our Way (70 page)
Within the Politburo the main pressure for invasion came from Andropov and his two habitual allies, Ustinov and Gromyko. Though Ustinov was probably the first to become persuaded of the need for Soviet military intervention, the most influential voice was that of Andropov, who suffered from what some of his colleagues termed a ‘Hungarian complex’. As Soviet ambassador in Budapest, he had witnessed the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 at first hand. His insistence then on the supreme necessity of defeating counter-revolution had helped to persuade an initially reluctant Khrushchev to agree to Soviet military intervention. Thereafter Andropov was obsessed with the need to stamp out ‘ideological sabotage’ wherever it reared its head within the Soviet bloc. In 1968, a year after he became Chairman of the KGB, he was one of the chief advocates of the invasion of Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring. At a KGB conference in March 1979 he reiterated his view that every outbreak of ideological subversion represented a danger which could not be ignored:
We simply do not have the right to permit even the smallest miscalculation here, for in the political sphere any kind of ideological sabotage is directly or indirectly intended to create an opposition which is hostile to our system . . . and, in the final analysis, to create the conditions for the overthrow of socialism.
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By the autumn of 1979 Andropov was convinced that Afghanistan, like Czechoslovakia eleven years earlier, was threatened with ‘ideological sabotage’ and that only Soviet military intervention could prevent ‘the overthrow of socialism’.
Before the invasion could go ahead, however, Andropov and his colleagues on the Politburo Afghanistan Commission had first to win over the ailing Brezhnev. In order to ensure support for the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Andropov had fed the Politburo with misleading intelligence reports.
37
During the final months of 1979 he was once again economical with the truth. In order not to alarm Brezhnev, Andropov deliberately underplayed the scale of the Soviet military involvement which would be required - initially giving the misleading impression that the overthrow of Amin would be carried out by the Afghan opposition to him rather than by Soviet forces, who would merely provide back-up. He wrote to Brezhnev after the meeting of the Afghan leaders in exile: ‘In order to carry out their political programme, the healthy forces of the PDPA intend to come to power by overthrowing the regime. A military committee to plan the military and political operation to eliminate H[afizullah] Amin has been set up.’ All that would be involved would be ‘a rapid military operation in the capital’. It was therefore in the interests of the USSR to give secret advice and material aid to the ‘healthy forces’ who were preparing to come to power.
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Early in December, Andropov sent Brezhnev a further letter, reporting ‘alarming information [intelligence] about Amin’s secret activities, forewarning of a possible shift to the West’, which would result in both the end of Communist rule and a catastrophic loss of Soviet influence. Though still unwilling to mention the possibility of a full-scale Soviet invasion, Andropov reported that Karmal and his comrades had ‘raised the question of possible [Soviet] assistance, in case of need, including military’ in overthrowing the Amin regime. Andropov added that, though Soviet forces already in Kabul should be ‘entirely sufficient for a successful operation’, ‘as a precautionary measure in the event of unforeseen complications, it would be wise to have a military group close to the [Afghan] border’.
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37
During the final months of 1979 he was once again economical with the truth. In order not to alarm Brezhnev, Andropov deliberately underplayed the scale of the Soviet military involvement which would be required - initially giving the misleading impression that the overthrow of Amin would be carried out by the Afghan opposition to him rather than by Soviet forces, who would merely provide back-up. He wrote to Brezhnev after the meeting of the Afghan leaders in exile: ‘In order to carry out their political programme, the healthy forces of the PDPA intend to come to power by overthrowing the regime. A military committee to plan the military and political operation to eliminate H[afizullah] Amin has been set up.’ All that would be involved would be ‘a rapid military operation in the capital’. It was therefore in the interests of the USSR to give secret advice and material aid to the ‘healthy forces’ who were preparing to come to power.
38
Early in December, Andropov sent Brezhnev a further letter, reporting ‘alarming information [intelligence] about Amin’s secret activities, forewarning of a possible shift to the West’, which would result in both the end of Communist rule and a catastrophic loss of Soviet influence. Though still unwilling to mention the possibility of a full-scale Soviet invasion, Andropov reported that Karmal and his comrades had ‘raised the question of possible [Soviet] assistance, in case of need, including military’ in overthrowing the Amin regime. Andropov added that, though Soviet forces already in Kabul should be ‘entirely sufficient for a successful operation’, ‘as a precautionary measure in the event of unforeseen complications, it would be wise to have a military group close to the [Afghan] border’.
39
On 12 December, gathering in Brezhnev’s office before a Politburo meeting, the members of the Afghanistan Commission - Andropov, Ustinov, Gromyko and Ponomarev - obtained the General Secretary’s support for Soviet military intervention. The Politburo then authorized Andropov, Ustinov and Gromyko to oversee the implementation of the decision. The whole affair was treated with such extraordinary secrecy that the document recording this decision was handwritten to avoid informing the Politburo typists, euphemistically entitled ‘Concerning the Situation in “A” ’, and even more euphemistically phrased without any explicit reference either to Afghanistan or to troops. The Politburo members then scrawled their signatures across the handwritten document.
40
While Marshal Akhromeyev and the General Staff operations group in charge of the invasion established their headquarters near the Afghan border in Uzbekistan, the heads of FCD Directorate S (Illegals), Vadim Kirpichenko, and of its Department 8 (‘Special Operations’), Vladimir Krasovsky, flew secretly into Kabul to supervise the overthrow of Amin (operation AGAT [‘Agate’]). Day-to-day control of AGAT was entrusted to Krasovsky’s deputy, A. I. Lazarenko. A team from the KGB Seventh (Surveillance) Directorate flew in to monitor Amin’s movements. Meanwhile, just as before the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, elaborate attempts were made to avoid arousing suspicion that invasion was imminent. In an attempt to reassure Amin, his latest requests for military supplies were granted and two radio stations were constructed for him.
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While Marshal Akhromeyev and the General Staff operations group in charge of the invasion established their headquarters near the Afghan border in Uzbekistan, the heads of FCD Directorate S (Illegals), Vadim Kirpichenko, and of its Department 8 (‘Special Operations’), Vladimir Krasovsky, flew secretly into Kabul to supervise the overthrow of Amin (operation AGAT [‘Agate’]). Day-to-day control of AGAT was entrusted to Krasovsky’s deputy, A. I. Lazarenko. A team from the KGB Seventh (Surveillance) Directorate flew in to monitor Amin’s movements. Meanwhile, just as before the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, elaborate attempts were made to avoid arousing suspicion that invasion was imminent. In an attempt to reassure Amin, his latest requests for military supplies were granted and two radio stations were constructed for him.
41
Even more secret than the preparations for military intervention was the plan to assassinate Amin drawn up by Department 8. Andropov doubtless hoped that by the time Soviet troops arrived to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan, Amin would be dead and Karmal would have issued an appeal for fraternal assistance from the Red Army to legitimize the invasion. In keeping with the usual procedure for authorizing assassination, Brezhnev was almost certainly informed of the plan. A year earlier the Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov, had been killed in London with a poison pellet fired by a silenced gun concealed inside an umbrella. The poison (ricin) had been provided by the poisons laboratory attached to the KGB OUT (Operational Technical) Directorate, which was under Andropov’s personal control.
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The plan to kill Amin involved the same laboratory, though the poison was different and it was to be administered differently. Department 8 succeeded in infiltrating the illegal Mutalin Agaverdioglu Talybov (codenamed SABIR) into the kitchens of Amin’s presidential palace, where he was employed as a chef. As an Azerbaijani brought up close to the Iranian border, Talybov was a fluent Farsi speaker and had previously operated in both Iran and Chechnya-Ingushetiya with Iranian identity documents in the name of Ikhtiar Kesht. In Kabul, he posed as a Farsi-speaking Afghan. While working as a chef, Talybov succeeded in poisoning some of the food prepared for Amin and his immediate entourage.
43
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The plan to kill Amin involved the same laboratory, though the poison was different and it was to be administered differently. Department 8 succeeded in infiltrating the illegal Mutalin Agaverdioglu Talybov (codenamed SABIR) into the kitchens of Amin’s presidential palace, where he was employed as a chef. As an Azerbaijani brought up close to the Iranian border, Talybov was a fluent Farsi speaker and had previously operated in both Iran and Chechnya-Ingushetiya with Iranian identity documents in the name of Ikhtiar Kesht. In Kabul, he posed as a Farsi-speaking Afghan. While working as a chef, Talybov succeeded in poisoning some of the food prepared for Amin and his immediate entourage.
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On 13 December Karmal and five members of his future government were secretly flown from Moscow to Bagram airbase, ready to take over as soon as Amin had been liquidated.
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On the 17th Amin’s nephew and son-in-law, Asadullah Amin, who was also head of the security service, was taken seriously ill with acute food poisoning and, ironically, flown to Moscow for urgent medical treatment.
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Talybov’s main target, however, escaped. According to Vladimir Kuzichkin, then a Line N (illegal support) officer at the Tehran residency, ‘[Hafizullah] Amin was as careful as any of the Borgias. He kept switching his food and drink as if he expected to be poisoned.’
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It is quite possible that Asadullah Amin had eaten a dish prepared for Hafizullah. Karmal and his colleagues were forced to fly back from Bagram airbase to the Soviet Union to await the next attempt to overthrow Amin. Since poisoning had failed, the only option which remained was to shoot Amin at the beginning of Soviet military intervention.
44
On the 17th Amin’s nephew and son-in-law, Asadullah Amin, who was also head of the security service, was taken seriously ill with acute food poisoning and, ironically, flown to Moscow for urgent medical treatment.
45
Talybov’s main target, however, escaped. According to Vladimir Kuzichkin, then a Line N (illegal support) officer at the Tehran residency, ‘[Hafizullah] Amin was as careful as any of the Borgias. He kept switching his food and drink as if he expected to be poisoned.’
46
It is quite possible that Asadullah Amin had eaten a dish prepared for Hafizullah. Karmal and his colleagues were forced to fly back from Bagram airbase to the Soviet Union to await the next attempt to overthrow Amin. Since poisoning had failed, the only option which remained was to shoot Amin at the beginning of Soviet military intervention.
On 20 December Amin moved his headquarters to the Darulaman Palace on the outskirts of Kabul, having apparently been persuaded by Soviet advisers that it offered him greater security.
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The advisers, however, had in mind not Amin’s security but the fact that an attack on the Darulaman Palace, conveniently close to the Soviet embassy, would avoid the need for street fighting in the centre of Kabul.
48
On 23 December, the Kabul residency reported that Amin’s suspicions had been aroused both by Western reports of Soviet troop movements and by the frequent flights into the Soviet airbase at Bagram. The main invasion began at 3 p.m. local time on 25 December. Two days later 700 members of the KGB Alpha and Zenith special forces, dressed in Afghan uniforms and travelling in military vehicles with Afghan markings, stormed the Darulaman Palace.
49
As the sound of gunfire reverberated from the outskirts of the city, frightened PDPA members at Kabul Radio hid their Party cards behind radiators or flushed them down lavatories in the belief that Amin’s government was under attack from anti-Communist
mujahideen
. They were further bemused when they heard a broadcast at 8.45 p.m. purporting to come from their own radio station but, in reality, from the Red Army headquarters at Termez, announcing that Babrak Karmal had assumed power and requested fraternal Soviet military assistance. Fifteen minutes later Soviet paratroops arrived at Kabul Radio and told the confused staff that they had come ‘to save the revolution’.
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47
The advisers, however, had in mind not Amin’s security but the fact that an attack on the Darulaman Palace, conveniently close to the Soviet embassy, would avoid the need for street fighting in the centre of Kabul.
48
On 23 December, the Kabul residency reported that Amin’s suspicions had been aroused both by Western reports of Soviet troop movements and by the frequent flights into the Soviet airbase at Bagram. The main invasion began at 3 p.m. local time on 25 December. Two days later 700 members of the KGB Alpha and Zenith special forces, dressed in Afghan uniforms and travelling in military vehicles with Afghan markings, stormed the Darulaman Palace.
49
As the sound of gunfire reverberated from the outskirts of the city, frightened PDPA members at Kabul Radio hid their Party cards behind radiators or flushed them down lavatories in the belief that Amin’s government was under attack from anti-Communist
mujahideen
. They were further bemused when they heard a broadcast at 8.45 p.m. purporting to come from their own radio station but, in reality, from the Red Army headquarters at Termez, announcing that Babrak Karmal had assumed power and requested fraternal Soviet military assistance. Fifteen minutes later Soviet paratroops arrived at Kabul Radio and told the confused staff that they had come ‘to save the revolution’.
50
The satisfaction of the Centre at the success of operation AGAT was reflected in a series of awards and promotions: among them those of the head of FCD Directorate S, Kirpichenko, who had overall charge of the operation, from Major-General to Lieutenant-General, and of Lazarenko, who had day-to-day control of AGAT from Colonel to Major-General. Though the Darulaman Palace had been quickly taken and Amin gunned down with his family, however, his guards had put up stiffer resistance than the Centre had expected. Over 100 of the KGB special forces were killed and wounded. Those who died included their commander, Colonel Grigori Boyarinov, commandant of the Department 8 special operations training school at Balashikha, who was posthumously made a Hero of the Soviet Union. The portraits of KGB officers who were killed during operations were normally displayed in black frames in a place of honour at the Centre. Since the fallen heroes of operation AGAT were so embarrassingly numerous, however, Andropov decided not to put their portraits on display.
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Afghanistan
Part 2: War and Defeat
The report submitted to the Politburo, ‘On the Events in Afghanistan on 27 and 28 December 1979’, by its Afghanistan Commission (Andropov, Ustinov, Gromyko and Ponomarev) on 31 December was so disingenuous that it effectively amounted to an active measure designed to mislead the rest of the Soviet leadership about the harsh reality of the Afghan situation. Probably composed chiefly for Brezhnev’s benefit, the report maintained the fiction that the assassination of Amin had been chiefly the work of the Afghans themselves rather than KGB special forces:
On the wave of patriotic feelings which had overcome fairly broad sections of the Afghan population following the introduction of Soviet troops which was carried out in strict accordance with the Soviet-Afghan treaty of 1978, the forces opposed to H. Amin carried out an armed attack during the night of 27 to 28 December which ended in the overthrow of the regime of H. Amin. This attack was widely supported by the working masses, the intelligentsia, a considerable part of the Afghan army and the state apparatus which welcomed the establishment of the new leadership of the DRA [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan] and the PDPA.
1
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The reality was starkly different. So far from receiving widespread support from both working masses and intelligentsia, the Soviet invasion provoked immediate opposition. Demonstrations against the presence of Soviet troops began in Kandahar on 3 1 December.
2
The Afghanistan Commission also gave the Politburo an extraordinarily optimistic assessment of the prospects for the new Babrak Karmal government:
2
The Afghanistan Commission also gave the Politburo an extraordinarily optimistic assessment of the prospects for the new Babrak Karmal government:
Babrak can be described as one of the best-trained leaders of the PDPA theoretically. He is able to take a sober and objective view of the situation in Afghanistan. He has always been noted for his sincere goodwill towards the Soviet Union and is held in great respect in the Party and throughout the country. In this light it is possible to be sure that the new leadership of the DRA will be able to find an effective way to stabilize completely the situation in the country.
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If, after the Afghan turmoil of the preceding twenty months, Andropov and his colleagues seriously supposed that the Karmal regime had the capacity ‘to stabilize completely the situation’, they were living in a fantasy world. That, however, was where Brezhnev preferred to live. The Afghanistan Commission, he declared, ‘did its work well’. At his proposal, the Politburo agreed that the Commission should ‘continue its work in the same spirit as it conducted it up until now’ and ‘submit to the Politburo issues which require a decision’.
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The Centre’s confidence in Karmal’s ‘sincere goodwill towards the Soviet Union’ derived chiefly from his long career as a KGB agent. His mood on taking power appeared reassuringly sycophantic. He asked senior KGB officers in Kabul to assure Comrade Andropov that, as Afghan President, he would unswervingly follow his advice. Karmal was fulsome in his praise for the heroism shown by the KGB special forces who had stormed the Darulaman Palace and other Soviet troops: ‘As soon as we have decorations of our own, we would like to bestow them on all the Soviet troops and Chekists [KGB officers] who took part in the fighting. We hope that the government of the USSR will award orders to these comrades.’
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