Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume XII, Afghanistan

285. Intelligence Information Cable Prepared in the Central Intelligence Agency¹

[cable number not declassified]

Washington, June 6, 1980, 1532Z

COUNTRY

• Afghanistan/USSR

SUBJECT

• Developing Situation Within Afghanistan [less than 1 line not declassified]

SOURCE

• This is a field appraisal. It represents the views of this Agency’s senior officer on the scene. It is an interpretation based on previously reported information. It is disseminated in the belief that it may be useful to intelligence analysts in their own assessment of the situation.

1. The security situation throughout Afghanistan continues to deteriorate. Main roads leading south and east out of Kabul city are being interdicted by the Islamic nationalist insurgents (INI). The Afghan military continues to experience desertions, and recruiting drives have been unsuccessful. Kabul city has become the scene of repeated assassinations and other terrorist acts. The population of the city appears to be almost totally disaffected from the regime, and there is the potential for serious civil disturbances. Kandahar, Jalalabad, and Herat are contested cities with the government on the defensive. In these latter cities, party workers continue to be attacked and killed. The Afghan military officers corps is coming under increasing pressure by the INI. Officers are now being targeted for assassination throughout the country, including attempted attacks on senior officers in Kabul. Reports indicate that the morale of the Afghan military is crumbling. The Parchamist clique and the Khalqi clique of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) are attacking each other and are in turn attacked by the INI. Party workers live in constant fear for their lives in Kandahar, Jalalabad, and Herat; this pattern is beginning in Kabul. Mazar-i-Sharif is not as chaotic, but the situation in that city is also tense.

2. Afghan Army units are operating in the field, but with decreasing competence. Increasingly, the Soviet forces have been called on to rout the INI from strongholds they occupy. Soviet attacks on the INI have been militarily successful. The Soviets are taking losses, probably at a much higher level than they originally anticipated. But when the INI elects to confront the Soviets in static battles, the Soviets prevail. When the INI has resorted to more classical guerrilla tactics, they have inflicted significant losses on the Soviets. Ambushes, minings and assassinations by the INI are taking a steady toll of Soviet forces. Once the Soviets leave an area from which they have cleared the INI, the insurgents successfully reinfiltrate and cause the returning Afghan Army units considerable grief. The lesson the Soviets must be learning is that if they plan to control an area, they must keep Soviet forces there because the Afghan military cannot handle the job. This leads to the conclusion that the Soviets will have to increase their overall strength levels inside Afghanistan and be prepared to become even more overtly an army of occupation.

Regime’s forces.

3. The INI, while demonstrating sophistication in guerrilla tactics, remain disunited and unable to coordinate their sometimes effective actions against the regime and the Soviets. There appears to be little coordination among the groups in Peshawar and those doing the actual fighting; and there appears to be little coordination within Afghanistan among the groups doing the fighting.

4. The INI continue to make good use of the weapons available to them. The average INI soldier is deadly when using an Enfield 303. The INI have been making good use of mines and anti-tank weapons against both the Soviets and the Afghan regime forces. During the last several weeks, there have been confirmed reports that the INI have successfully shot down Soviet MI–8 and MI–24 helicopters with conventional arms.² The MI–24 gunship helicopter has been particularly harmful to the insurgents, however, and it has proved to be a difficult weapon to destroy in the air by conventional anti-aircraft weapons. If the insurgents can work out a way to destroy MI–24s with some regularity, there is the possibility that the Soviets’ effective use of this weapon can be curtailed.

5. The Soviets have been increasingly barbarous in their responses to INI attacks. There are several reports that the Soviets have killed tribal non-combatants and destroyed villages in areas the Soviets see as still hostile. More of this kind of reprisal is beginning to develop and it appears that village destruction, as retaliation, may be Soviet policy.

6. The Soviets appear to be trying to seal the borders of Afghanistan. When Soviet troops are in the border areas, they appear to be relatively successful in this effort. They can only continue to prevent the movement of most supplies across borders, however, by committing additional men so that they have a permanent force in the border areas. Even with an increase in manpower, the total prevention of cross-border infiltration from Iran and Pakistan will be possible.

7. This has been the wettest spring in Afghanistan in twenty years. The rains were to the INI’s advantage. The wet weather was almost immediately followed by hot weather in the plains. Because of the altitude of most of Afghanistan, the dust and the heat, helicopter operations are difficult in the summer months. Thus, because of weather, the Soviets have not been able to fully utilize this equipment which gives them an advantage. The Soviets are behind schedule in their pacification operations, we believe, because of these weather factors and their miscalculation of the intensity of the INI’s resistance. We have not seen signs that the Soviets have decided to discontinue their pacification plans; rather they have repeatedly gone back into several areas on search and destroy missions where resistance has reemerged.

8. There appears to be little likelihood that the Soviets will agree to a political settlement which includes their withdrawal because if they withdraw, the Babrak Karmal regime will fall and chaos will follow. For the Soviet side, there is nothing to be gained by a withdrawal. The situation would not return to pre-1975; the regime would be destroyed; the Soviets would be isolated from any new government; and the new government would probably be a fundamentalist Islamic government. There is no indication that a compromise government acceptable to both the Soviets and the various factions in the INI could be constituted. The positions of the opposing sides are too divergent at this time; therefore, the Soviets’ only course of action is to destroy the INI forces in the field. A military victory in the field will alleviate the need for a political solution. It is not possible for the INI to defeat the Soviets; rather the INI can only hope to conserve their forces’ while continuing to make the Soviet forces’ situation difficult and painful. To date, the Soviets have not taken unacceptable heavy casualties, relative to their manpower pool and equipment resources. Probably the most painful element has been that the Soviets’ pride has been badly hurt. The Red Army is being hit hard by bands of irregulars and we doubt if the Soviets considered it possible that such groups could operate so successfully against their forces.

9. Given the resources the two sides have at their command, it seems probable that the Soviets will prevail, but the cost will be higher than they calculated both in military and political terms. The longer it drags out, the more painful it becomes for the Soviets.

10. Chargé’s comments: I agree entirely with this appraisal’s description of the current situation in Afghanistan (paras. 1–7) and with the general thrust of paras. 8 and 9. However, I am a little more optimistic than the COS that the Soviets can eventually be brought to the point where totally destroying the INI forces is not their “only course of action.” If the INI can keep enough pressure on the Soviets for a long enough period of time, and if in the meantime the Soviet diplomatic offensive to bring about acceptance of the status quo can be made to fail, the Soviets might reach the point where a compromise solution seems more attractive to them than an endless continuation of the blood-letting. This will probably require that the INI receive more and better military equipment from the outside than it is now getting, and that carries with it the chance that the Soviets might lash out in frustration at Pakistan, Iran or indirectly at the other “aggressors,” including this Embassy.

If the point is eventually reached when the Soviets are ready for a genuine compromise solution, I do not believe their prospects are quite as bleak as para. 9 implies. It is not a given, for instance, that “the Soviets would be isolated from any new government;” Gailani and other resistance leaders have publicly acknowledged that any Kabul government would have to be on good terms with the USSR. Through tribal manipulation and bribery, the Soviets could probably ensure that someone minimally acceptable to them takes over when the point is reached that they are willing to withdraw their troops and the INI is exhausted from years of fighting.

11. [less than 1 line not declassified] Dissem: [5 lines not declassified]

1. Source: Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Brzezinski Material, Country File, Box 2, Afghanistan: 5/80–1/81. Secret; [handling restriction not declassified]. Printed from a copy that was received in the White House Situation Room. In a June 7 covering memorandum to Brzezinski, attached but not printed, Thornton noted that the situation report from the Station Chief in Kabul was “worth reading.” He continued: “It is particularly interesting, incidentally, that the COS’s views have changed quite a bit over the past several months. Previously, he was much more bearish about the near term prospects for the insurgents standing off the Soviets. He is now more in the mainstream of analysis.”
2. An unknown hand underlined “conventional arms.”