Behind Afghanistan’s war

Press, 22 October 1983, Page 18

Behind Afghanistan’s war

Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. By Henry S. Bradsher. Duke University Press/Whitehall Books, 1983. 255 pp. Notes, bibliography and index. $28.70. (Reviewed by Naylor Hillary) Since the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve, 1979, that remote and land-locked country has probably had more attention from the outside world than ever before. Even so, difficulties of language, of access, and of rigorous Soviet censorship have made uncommon any thorough appreciation of events in Afghanistan. Nor are the events that led up to the invasion well understood. Documents, the raw stuff of historians, are hard to come by. For many years, Afghanistan went its way with hardly any attention from outsiders. Henry Bradsher, an American journalist turned scholar, is probably as well qualified as anyone to attempt a detailed account of the background to the invasion. He worked there as a journalist in the 19605, made later visits in the 19705, and has a long career as a specialist in Soviet affairs, including a term from 1964 to 1968 as head of the Associated Press bureau in Moscow. He has the ability to draw parallels with what has happened in Afghanistan and what happened in Mongolia under Soviet control in the 19305, or in Tibet since the Chinese invasion in the 19505.

Bradsher argues that during 1978 and 1979 Afghanistan’s population was forced to defend itself against being bullied into a new form of colonial empire ruled from Moscow. Afghanistan fell under communist control in April 1978, but it took two more changes of Government, plus the presence of 100,000 Russian troops, to ensure that the regime in Kabul would be acceptable to Moscow, however unacceptable it continues to be in

Afghanistan. The author notes that this was the first territorial expansion by the direct use of Soviet military power in the 34 years after the end of the Second World War. It also continues the long Russian expansion into central and southern Asia at the expense of local Muslim peoples. Bradsher argues that while the Soviet Union has strong motives for wanting to expand south to the Indian Ocean, through Afghanistan and Iran, the latest advance is “not immediately pertinent to any strategic plan. A more likely motive was the age-old tendency for any powerful nation to seek the territorial limits of its power.” If that is so, the omens should not go unnoticed by the Soviet Union’s other neighbours, from Finland to Japan. Drawing on precedents in Central Asia and Mongolia, Bradsher suggests that a generation of Muslim leaders may have to be murdered in Afghanistan, and another generation raised up to become, effective functionaries of the Soviet system. Until then, the outlook for any settlement is grim. Help from outside for those who resist the Russians has been limited. Bradsher argues that it is not for outsiders to decree whether or not resistance by tribesmen against helicopter gunships is justified. So long

as such people ask for support it should be given, he writes. “But it had to be given with the recognition that the prospects of driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan was very dim and distant. It was conceivable that other factors could cause them to leave, although none was on the horizon in the early 1980 s. Guerrilla resistance alone was not sufficient.” “Afghanistan and the Soviet Union” is a grim and timely book.