When on 24-25 December 1979 Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan, they intended to conduct a neat, surgical intervention to stabilize a client regime on which they had lavished years of attention and aid. The immediate military objectives were to secure the capital, Kabul, and the main lines of communication, especially those leading back to the Soviet border. According to the plan, the small intervention force would complete its mission and assume a low profile, while the Soviet client army of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan restored government authority in the outlying provinces.
At the time, most Western political and military observers believed that, sooner or later, the mighty Soviet Army would subdue any and all resistance in Afghanistan. It would succeed, most calculated, because it would prosecute the war unconstrained by those factors that fatally crippled America's efforts in Vietnam. To begin with, domestic public support of the war in the USSR would never fade because the Soviet regime enjoyed comprehensive control of the press, would ruthlessly stifle any manifestations of dissent, and would never be compelled to negotiate with the resistance.1 Moreover, many observers maintained, the USSR, its political course governed by a clear and ruthless sense of purpose, would remain steadfastly indifferent to international opinion. Thus, the unleashed firepower of a technologically advanced military would make short work of poorly organized, undisciplined third world guerrillas.
What followed, of course, belied predictions. After nearly a decade of futility in Afghanistan, Soviet forces withdrew. Their losses transcended the subsequent loss of a client state and the resultant international embarrassment. The anguish of the war in Afghanistan deepened emerging fissures in Soviet society and contributed to its eventual disintegration.
In its general contours, the Afghan War fits within the elastic theoretical model of compound war, although it exhibited many distinctive features of its own as well. In this light, this essay will establish the ways in which the Soviet misadventure in Afghanistan adhered to the definition of compound war as summarized in the introduction of this volume. At the same time, it will demonstrate that the advantageous effects of compound war can manifest themselves in various forms.
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