AFGHANISTAN SITUATION REPORT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85T01058R000507120001-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 15
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 27, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: December 3, 1985
• Content Type: REPORT

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Directorate of -~~ ~_
Afghanistan Situation Report
79-81 I!!C/CB
NESA M 85-]0226CX
ecem er I S
ropy 0 81
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SOVIETS ACTIVE IN THE PANJSHER, JALALABAD, QANDAHAR,
AND HERAT
Soviet forces have conducted operations throughout
Afghanistan this past week, with heavy fighting
occurring in the Panjsher Valley, Qandahar,
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GORBACHEV AND AFGHANISTAN: A SCHOLAR'S VIEW 6 25X1
Soviet leader Gorbachev may be willing to make
minor concessions on Afghanistan for the sake of
improving the atmospherics of US-Soviet relations,
but he is unlikely to move Moscow in the direction
of withdrawal and is, in fact, more likely to
increase the Soviets' military effort in
Afghanistan.
This document is prepared weekly by the Office of
Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis and the
Office of Soviet Analysis. Questions or comments
on the issues raised in the publication should be
3 December 1985
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SOVIETS ACTIVE IN THE PANJSHER, JALALABAD, QANDAHAR, AND HERAT
Soviet operations during the past week have been heavy
in several regions of Afghanistan, including the
Panjsher Valley.
According to the US Embassy
in Islamabad, the insurgents attacked the Afghan
garrison at Peshghowr and nine other Soviet posts,
capturing eight Afghan officers.
Significant Soviet Air Force assets were also deployed
to Qandahar by mid-November to support a large combined
Soviet-Af han combat o eration there.
(Soviet grown orces a re urne o e
Qandahar garrison and most air assets had returned to
their bases by the end of the month, the presence of
SU-25 ground attack aircraft and signals equipment
indicates that air operations were continuing as of
1 December.
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Afghanistan
International boundary
-'-' Province boundary
* National capital
0 Province capital
`~ Railroad
--- Road
0 50 100 150 200 Kllometera
F r' i r r
0 50 100 ' 160 200 Mllee
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learned that
some mothers of Soviet soldiers ki led in
Afghanistan recently demonstrated in Moscow against
the war. were
summoned to break up t e protest, w is was held
near a Moscow cemetery some time last month.
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-- Soviet experience in Afghanistan may have
encouraged the use of counterinsurgency battalions
in Nicaragua,
Doctrinal training for Nicaraguan
units greatly emphasizes Soviet lessons in
Afghanistan and Cuban experience in Africa and
Central America.
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GORBACHEV AND AFGHANISTAN: A SCHOLAR'S VIEW*
by an Eternal Contractor
Soviet leader Gorbachev will more likely sponsor an
increase in the Soviet military effort in Afghanistan
and a hardening of related Soviet policies than take
the risks of a truly accommodating approach. His
reputed pragmatism, together with his apparent desire
to improve at least the atmospherics of US-Soviet
relations, may, however, move him toward a pose of
public reasonableness vis-a-vis Afghanistan and a
greater willingness to negotiate limited, essentially
cosmetic concessions.
Gorbachev--Unfettered but Cautious?
Gorbachev at least in theory has more flexibility
concerning Afghanistan than Brezhnev, Andropov, and
Chernenko. Because he was not a full member of the
Politburo when it voted in 1979 to invade, he is
relatively free of any onus attached to that decision,
and he presumably could alter the decision without
personal embarrassment. In his public statements,
Gorbachev has not as yet declared, as did Brezhnev,
that the Afghan revolution is irreversible; nor, like
his predecessors, has he literally invoked the Brezhnev
Doctrine, a move which would make Soviet withdrawal
from Afghanistan virtually impossible.**
Overall, Gorbachev's record suggests a Soviet leader
who is certainly no radical. He is perhaps
realistically aware of the needs of his society and
prepared to address them with more energy than, say, a
Chernenko, but he is more an intelligent party
politician and careerist than an innovator and
statesman. He appears to be at least as conscious of
*This article was prepared by a contractor who relied exclusively
on unclassified literature. It was not coordinated within this
Agency. The views expressed are those of the author.
**The Brezhnev Doctrine posits the right of the USSR to invervene
in socialist states threatened by "counterrevolution." The
Soviets have never counted Afghanistan as a socialist state.
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the needs of his constituency--the party bureaucracy,
the military, et al--as he is of the requirements of
Thus, for a man much heralded as dynamic, he has been
cautious in his approach to problems. For example,
concerning the troubled Soviet economy, he advocates a
reform program but fails to define its particulars,
shuns truly new approaches, and proceeds slowly and--as
far as we can tell--very carefully. In the major areas
of foreign policy, he appears more adroit than his
predecessors and has relaxed policy somewhat on the
surface, but so far he has sidestepped any very
meaningful changes in substance.
Calculating Alternatives
The gains of a genuinely accommodating policy would
probably seem little more than marginal to most of the
Soviet leadership. Soviet casualties in the Afghan
fighting--although worrisome principally because of
their possible long-term effects on public morale--have
not been large enough to have any particular
significance. The rubles spent on the conflict appear
insufficient to cause any major headaches in the
exchequer, especially when balanced against the
benefits of combat training for the troops. The ending
of the military stalemate must have its appeal, but the
General Staff may see other ways--such as a major
buildup of Soviet strength--less painful than
withdrawal to accomplish this.
Better relations with, and a less menacing image, in
countries critical of the Soviet position in
Afghanistan could also be seen as attractive, but the
Kremlin almost certainly does not believe its policy
toward Afghanistan to be a prime determinant of the
USSR's international status or reputation. It might
concede that Afghanistan is an irritant in the USSR's
relations with the West, but it surely would not expect
the removal of that irritant by itself to alter greatly
the character of those relations.
To Gorbachev and his colleagues, moreover, the costs of
a significant concession in Afghanistan, in our view,
loom quite large.
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Within certain Soviet elites, such as the military,
opposition would probably be strong to a genuinely
concessionary policy. Such a turn would probably
also generate disaffection among conservative
and/or ideologically inclined party figures and
possibly within the KGB, and it might stimulate
existing opponents of Gorbachev's economic reform
program into more vigorous activity.
Some Soviets would almost certainly view a
Gorbachev-engineered withdrawal that appeared in
any way to represent a surrender to pressures from
the West as a betrayal of Soviet interests, the
Afghan revolution, and the Communist cause at
large--an event comparable to Khrushchev's bowing
to US resolve during the Cuban missile crisis of
1962.
Withdrawal from Afghanistan under any circumstances
other than those wholly consistent with Soviet
goals would, in the view of many Soviets, severely
damage Soviet prestige, detract from the USSR's
image as a superpower, and leave behind in
Afghanistan at best only partial control by the
pro-Soviet People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
(PDPA), and at worst anarchy or the assumption of
power by forces actively hostile to Marxism and the
Soviet Union.
Moscow faces, in addition, the very real problem of
just who would sit on the other side of the table
should it one day decide to enter into a serious
negotiating process. Would Soviet willingness to
negotiate be interpreted by the insurgents as a
sign of weakness and in this way invoke stronger
insurgent demands and perhaps fiercer fighting?
And who ultimately would govern in Kabul--could a
coalition (including the PDPA) function effectively
or even be established? Practical questions such
as these could forestall negotiations altogether or
run them off the rails once underway.
Bottom Lines
Gorbachev will not be disposed to offer the Afghan
opposition and its international allies any concessions
other than the purely cosmetic.
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Militarily, the USSR has as yet to go all out in
Afghanistan. In the absence of any hard evidence,
we must allow for the possibility that influential
Soviets may feel that after six years of
inconclusive warfare a much greater effort is both
feasible and desirable. Economic costs would not,
we think, seem very large in Gorbachev's mind if
military benefits promised to be rapid and
substantial.
Politically, the Soviet leadership, while
apparently not now anxious, is almost certainly
apprehensive about the consequences of the war on
domestic popular opinion over the long term--hence
the campaign to glorify the conflict in the public
press. But Gorbachev's apprehension could pull the
leaders in two directions, toward constraint or
toward new ways to end the fighting decisively and
quickly. True, Gorbachev appears to be concerned
that Afghanistan not prove an obstacle to
developments in post-summit diplomacy with the US,
but he almost certainly hopes that the appearance
of a softening Soviet attitude, rather than a real
shift in substance, would suffice for the time
being.
The Soviets have surely pondered ways and means of
ending or reducing outside aid to the Afghan
rebels. Gorbachev's talk with President Zia at
Chernenko's funeral earlier this year hinted at
heavier pressures to come on Pakistan. If Moscow
came to believe that, short of war, Pakistan could
somehow be coerced into stopping or restricting the
flow of arms to the insurgents and also was
persuaded that such supplies were crucial to the
insurgents' war effort, then it would almost
certainly give serious consideration to mounting a
forceful campaign of intimidation against
In Sum...
The equation for Gorbachev is quite simple if not
altogether attractive: He has much to lose--including
perhaps the security of his own political position--if
he turns away from existing policy toward a more
accommodating position and little to gain.
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