Osprey - Men-at-Arms 178 Russia's War in Afghanistan[Osprey MaA 178].pdf

(3215 KB) Pobierz
Published in 1986 by
Osprey Publishing Ltd
Member company of the George Philip Group
12-14 Long Acre. London WC2E 9LP
© Copyright 1986 Osprey Publishing Ltd
This book is copyrighted under the Berne
Convention. All rights reserved. Apart from any fair
dealing for the purpose of private study, research,
criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright
Act, 1956, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the
prior permission of the copyright owner. Enquiries
should be addressed to the Publishers.
Acknowledgements and author's note:
I
would like to thank Karen McKay of the
Committee for a Free Afghanistan, Peter Abbott, and
Steven Zaloga for their help in providing illustrations
and information. I would also like to thank many
journalists and specialists, whose knowledge of
Afghanistan is much deeper and broader than mine.
But above all I wish to record my gratitude
to
the
Afghans: the generosity and hospitality,
and the
willingness to share information, which I
have
been
shown in Washington, in Peshawar, and in
the
field
have left me with the greatest admiration
and
respect
for all those on
jihad.
A percentage of the proceeds from this book will be
donated to two charitable groups that continue to do
excellent work for the Afghans: Afghanistan Support
Committee, 18 Charing Cross Road, London, VVC2N
oHR; and the Committee For a Free Afghanistan,
480 Massachusetts Avenue NE, Washington, DC,
20002.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Isby, David C.
Russia's war in Afghanistan.—(Men-at-arms series;
178)
1. Soviet Union—Armed Forces—Afghanistan—
Equipment—History 2. Soviet Union—Armed
Forces—Afghanistan—Uniforms—History
I. Title
II. Series
355.8'0947
UC465.S/
ISBN 0-85045-691-6
Filmset in Great Britain
Printed through Bookbuilders Ltd, Hong Kong
Artist's note
Readers may care to note that the original paintings
from which the colour plates in this book were
prepared are available for private sale. All
reproduction copyright whatsoever is retained by the
publisher. All enquiries should be addressed to:
Ronald B. Volstad
PO Box 1577
Main Post Office
Edmonton
Alberta
Canada T5J 2N9
The publishers regret that they can enter into no
correspondence upon this matter.
Russia'sWarinAfghanistan
The Afghan's homeland is green and pleasant
only in the memory of exiles. Summers are hot and
dry and winters bitter, especially in the high
country, and from November to mid-March snow
makes travel difficult. The rains, when they come,
fall from December to February. The countryside is
largely mountain and desert. The Hindu Kush
slices across the country, east to west, cresting in the
Yefretor—private
first class—of Soviet Air Assault troops
posing with carefully drilled local children for photo which no
doubt appeared over a caption extolling his dedication to his
'internationalist duty'. He wears shined buttons; shoulder
boards, collar patches and beret of VDV light blue; the
desantnik's
striped naval-style undershirt; the Soviet Army
cypher and single yellow bar of this rank on his shoulders;
and—just visible—the white collar lining which the Soviet
soldier has to sew into his tunics at regular intervals. The
weapon is the 5.45mm AKS.
The Land and the People
No one since Alexander the Great has conquered
Afghanistan. No conqueror could ever extract
enough advantage from its occupation, either
strategically or economically, to make it worth
having to defeat the Afghans. There were about
15.5 million Afghans before the 1979 invasion. The
population is divided between the Pashto-speaking
Pathans of the east and south (42 per cent of the
population) and the Dari-speaking Tadjiks of the
north and west (23 per cent), as well as Mongol-
descended Hazaras, Kuchi and Aimaq nomads,
Persians, Baluchis, Turkic-speaking Uzbeks and
Turkomen, many of them refugees or children of
refugees from Stalin's Russia, and the Nuristanis—
an ancient people of unknown origin.
While these peoples have cultures many centuries
old, Afghanistan as a nation is young, established in
the capital of Kabul only in 1747 by the first Pathan
king, Ahmad Shah Durrani. Yet Afghanistan was
always politically decentralised, due both to its
predominantly mountainous or desert terrain, poor
communications (in 1979, there were no railroads
and a limited paved road network), and to the
wishes of its people. Traditional authority—
decision-making by meeting
(jirga),
and the local
khan, malik,
or
mullah
(headman, chief, or religious
teacher)—remains strong outside the cities.
Religion is the great unifying factor of this diverse
nation; Afghanistan is Moslem in religion, culture,
and everyday life. The Afghans are devout; but an
old proverb states 'Each Afghan has
his
God and
his
gun', and he usually resents anyone other than his
own kith and kin telling him what he must do with
either faith or firearm. Predominantly Sunni, with
some Ismailis and a 15—20 per cent Shia minority
among the Hazaras, Persians, and some Pathan
tribes, Afghanistan has never had a strong, central
religious leader.
3
Pamir Mountains of the Wakhan Corridor. North
of the Hindu Kush are yet more mountains, fading
northwards into the arid steppes of Central Asia. In
the west, the Iranian plateau extends to the cities of
Herat and Shindand before rising to merge with the
fastness of the Hindu Kush, ringing like ramparts
the central Hazara Jat area—land of the Hazaras.
The south and south-east are largely desolate, rocky
deserts. The north and west are mountainous,
curving from the Pamirs down to the fringe of the
4
Registan deserts. Agriculture is the primary
occupation of the Afghan people, but it requires
intensive irrigation to grow anything. Less than 15
per cent of the land was arable even in peacetime,
and this was concentrated in the river valleys, as
were the cities. Even in the days of peace,
Afghanistan was one of the world's 20 poorest
nations.
Intrigue and Invasion
The roots of the war go back to the early 19th
century, when two expanding empires arrived on
the borders of Afghanistan—the British and the
Russian. For over a century Afghanistan was more
than a buffer state, it was the main playing field for
the 'Great Game'—the competition between
Britain and Russia for domination of southern Asia
and, beyond that, the Gulf. The game was one of
bluff, diplomacy and deterrence, but war was part
of it as well. Three times the British went to war with
the Afghans, largely to ensure that the government
in Kabul was not pro-Russian. The three Afghan
Wars of 1839-42, 1978-80, and 1919 could all be
interpreted as British victories of sorts, but all were
won at the cost of bloody battlefield setbacks.
The Great Game became more serious with the
Bolshevik Revolution. Afghanistan became the first
neighbouring country to recognise Lenin's regime,
and treaties were signed in 1920 and 1926. The
relationship soured with the brutal Soviet cam-
paigns of the 1920s-30s against the peoples of
Central Asia, which succeeded only after several
Soviet incursions into Afghanistan forced the
Afghan government to stop aiding their fellow
Moslems.
The British left India and Pakistan, and thus the
borders of Afghanistan, in 1947, and by the 1950s
the country was considered to be in the Soviet
sphere of influence. The government, especially the
military, was penetrated by the Soviets and their
sympathisers. Soviet aid poured in: the Soviets built
roads (generously stressing the bridges for 50-ton
loads) and airfields. The Afghan Army was trained
and re-equipped on Soviet lines. The move from an
absolute to a constitutional monarchy started in the
1950s, and political change followed. Two rival
underground Communist parties, the
Khalq
and the
Parchim,
were formed (to be united only on paper as
the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan).
A coup on 17 July 1973 made Prince Mohammed
Daoud prime minister and ended the Afghan
monarchy, King Mohammed Zahir being sent into
exile. Daoud came to power with the help of the
leftist and Communist parties, but he eventually re-
asserted traditional Afghan balance-of-power neu-
trality. To the Soviets and the few (7,000) Afghan
Communists, this was not good enough. On 24
April 1978 Daoud was overthrown and killed by a
left-wing coup—probably organised by the Soviets,
and certainly executed with their knowledge—
which left between 1,000 and 2,000 dead. The
Khalq
party, which took over in a post-coup power
Soviet VDV paratroopers man a roadblock near Kabul soon
after the invasion of 27 December 1979, supported by a BMD-1
airborne infantry fighting vehicle. Even in this blurred photo
they can be seen to wear their leather jump helmets and the
fur-collared winter version of their khaki combat uniform—
cf.Plate D3. (US Information Agency)
5

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin