We know that Afghanistan is a country in Central Asia, and 97% of the country's territory is Gobi and hills, which is not suitable for agricultural development at all. Since ancient times, the economy of Afghanistan has been in a bad mess, because the food produced here is not enough to meet the needs of population development, which has made Afghanistan one of the poorest countries in the world today.
Geographically, Afghanistan's geographical location is very important, connecting the central part of the Soviet Union in the north, the Indian Ocean in the south, the oil-producing countries of the Middle East in the west, and the northwest region of China in the east. Occupying such a dangerous geographical location, Afghanistan is known as the "crossroads" of Asia, and because it occupies the pivotal position of the Eurasian land bridge, it has always been a place for great power games. In the history of the expansion of Western powers in modern times, Afghanistan has become a region where Russian forces compete with British forces, and Britain, which took the lead in completing the industrial revolution, controlled Afghanistan by relying on its strong scientific and technological strength.
After the end of World War II, due to the heavy losses suffered by Britain in the war and a wave of national independence around the world, Britain's national strength at this time fell sharply and it was no longer able to continue to control Afghanistan. After the British withdrew, the Soviet Union took advantage of the situation to make up for the gap left by the British and used large-scale assistance to win over Afghanistan, hoping that Afghanistan would become its little brother. The Soviet Union was very interested in Afghanistan's strategic location, and it needed Afghanistan's geopolitical space to use Afghanistan as a springboard to step into the Indian Ocean and control its access to the sea in the Indian Ocean.
However, after the end of World War II, Afghanistan has always adhered to the development policy of "non-alignment, independent development", but all this changed with the rise of Daoud. In 1963, King Zahir of Afghanistan amended his constitution to stipulate that "members of the royal family shall not participate in the affairs of the country." However, this order seriously violated the interests of Daoud, a cousin of the king, and the ambitious Daoud certainly did not sit still.
In order to one day return to power, Daoud continues to plot secretly. When he saw the Soviet Union throwing an olive branch, he thought that this was a golden opportunity, and secretly sent people to the Soviet Union to match, so that the Soviet Union could become his backer. Subsequently, Daoud, with the help of the Soviets, took advantage of the opportunity for King Zahir to seek medical treatment abroad, took the opportunity to launch a coup d'état, established the Republic of Afghanistan, and seized the power of the country.
Of course, the Soviets were not philanthropists. Since Daoud came to power, he has continuously carried out all-round penetration into Afghanistan, and because of his blatant performance, he has been opposed by many Afghans. Unwilling to be a puppet, Daoud began to purge pro-Soviet forces in 1975 and actively sought help from international forces outside the Soviet Union.
In 1977, Daoud visited the Soviet Union, during which the supreme leader of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev, personally advised him to "go astray and return", hoping to improve the situation of Afghanistan's alienation from the Soviet Union.
After Daoud returned home from his visit to the Soviet Union, he immediately arrested seven leaders cultivated by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, but this also brought death to Daoud's family. Since Daoud was not used by the USSR, it was necessary to raise the next obedient puppet. With the support of the Soviet Union, after the military-turned-Takira staged a coup d'état and shot the Daoud family, with the support of the Soviet Union, Takira came to power.
Of course, Takira was single-handedly cultivated by the Soviets and will not forget the kindness of the Soviets. As soon as he came to power, he pursued various policies in favor of the Soviet Union, and everything was only the Soviet Union's lead. However, Takira has forgotten the reality of Afghanistan, which appears to be a country on the surface, but in fact it is a tribal alliance, and the leaders of each tribe are equivalent to the "soil emperors" sitting on one side. While Takira spared no effort to pursue a policy favorable to the Soviets, he seriously violated the interests of these "soil emperors".
In the face of Takira's aggressive policies, these earth emperors certainly did not sit still, and in order to defend their interests, tribal leaders united to launch a rebellion, and the situation became increasingly serious. By January 1971, the rebels controlled 70 percent of the country, while Takira had a limited population of about 6 million people. At this time, there was already a voice within the Soviet Union to send troops directly to help Takira take care of household chores, but considering that Afghanistan is a sovereign country, rashly sending troops will leave a tongue for Western countries, naturally this proposal did not pass.
In addition to being overwhelmed by the daily political affairs of the armed rebellion, Takira also had a serious conflict with his assistant Amin. Takira intends to invite Amin to the banquet on the grounds of holding a banquet and take the opportunity to get rid of Amin. Unexpectedly, the news leaked, and Amin took the lead and got rid of Takira.
After coming to power, Amin, in order to consolidate his position, stopped many of the pro-Soviet policies pursued during the Takira administration. Of course, this series of measures caused dissatisfaction among the Soviets, so the Soviet Union sent a special envoy to negotiate with Amin, who was warmly received. Unexpectedly, in the process of intense negotiations, the guards around Amin missed and killed the envoy, and after the Soviet envoy was killed, Amin could only plunge into the arms of the Americans.
In order to win the favor of the Americans, Amin prepared to set aside two military bases for the stationing of American troops. What Amin did, the Soviets will certainly not give up. The special envoy was killed, this is clearly hitting the Soviet in the face, a small country dares to bully the USSR like this, if you do not teach Afghanistan a lesson, then how to continue to take the little brother in the future. Faced with Afghanistan that fell to the United States, the Soviet Union finally decided to send troops to Afghanistan after some internal discussions.
In December 1979, the Soviet Union flew 280 large transport planes in the name of helping the Afghan government suppress the rebels. During the days from the 24th to the 26th, the Soviet 105th Division was delivered by transport aircraft to Kabul International Airport and Balaam Air Base.
On December 27, Soviet agents, armed with 5,000 soldiers, blew up the telecommunications building in the center of Kabul, and with the loud explosion, Soviet tankmen took control of the Afghan capital, Kabul. After a brief exchange, the Soviets rushed Amin and his family to the president's office and forced Amin to sign the "invitation from Afghanistan to send troops from Afghanistan", which Amin refused. The grudging Soviets shot Amin and 4 of his wives, as well as 24 of their children.
With the support of the Soviet Union, at 2:40 a.m. on the 28th, without any explanation, Babrak Karmal announced through Kabul TV as the new president of Afghanistan.
In order to take Afghanistan in one fell swoop, the Soviet army assembled a total of 6 divisions on the border of the two countries, with a total number of up to 160,000 people, and the troops were sent to Afghanistan in two ways, and the 10-year Afghan war officially began. With modern mechanical troops and previous preparations for infiltration into Afghanistan, the Soviets occupied Afghanistan's main cities and their arteries in just one week, and controlled Afghanistan's border with Pakistan and Iran, while the 100,000 troops controlled by Amin's government forces largely surrendered to the new regime without resistance.
During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, all Afghan officials who dared to oppose them were poisoned and killed one by one. After the occupation of Afghanistan, the Soviet Union had the idea of winning the Indian Ocean in one fell swoop, which was a dream that had been formulated during the Tsarist period. Looking west from Afghanistan, you can directly encroach on the Persian Gulf region and control oil production areas. Once the Soviet Union took control of the Middle East's oil regions, the world situation would change dramatically.
Reading this, we wonder why the USSR was so attached to the Afghan region? The reason is as follows: Around 1979 was a crucial period for the hegemony of the United States and the Soviet Union, and Central Asia was a place of contention for the United States and the Soviet Union. After World War II, the Soviet Union has been shrouded in great-power chauvinism and has always had ambitions to dominate the world. The Middle East is the junction of three continents, Europe, Asia and Africa, this region connects the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and is the crossroads of Eurasia, and the Soviet Union must control the Middle East if it wants to dominate the world.
Morally speaking, the USSR was untenable in terms of war morality. Since sending troops to Afghanistan, many countries in the world have condemned this aggression of the Soviet Union. Even when the Soviet Union hosted the Moscow Olympics, it was boycotted by many countries and abandoned its participation in the Olympics.
In order to support the Afghans in resisting the Soviet Union, the United States immediately formulated a set of methods to confront the Soviet Union and decided to impose comprehensive punishment economically, politically, diplomatically, and militarily. It is estimated that during the 10-year war in Afghanistan, the United States spent $6 billion on aid to jihadist groups, helping them train fighters, buy weapons, and provide Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Afghan guerrillas, posing a great threat to Soviet aircraft.
For the Arab countries, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a naked provocation to the entire Islamic world. Islamic countries have actively provided assistance to Afghanistan. Even Pakistan not only supplied the Afghan guerrillas, but also allowed them to cross the border freely to avoid Soviet attacks.
In order to resist the brutal Soviets, since 1981, Afghan tribes have united to form the Afghan Mujahideen Islamic Alliance, constantly fighting wits and courage with the Soviet army. For the Soviet army, apart from international condemnation, the worst thing was the limitation of Afghanistan's terrain. We know that Afghanistan is located on the Iranian plateau, and more than 90% of the country's land is mountainous, gorges, and deserts, and these harsh terrains have made the Soviet army's mechanized troops useless.
After a long period of fighting with the Soviet army, the Afghan guerrillas knew how to take advantage of the familiar terrain, often using unexpected means to cause trouble for the Soviet army. The partisans also grew in the confrontation with the Soviets, from just over 20,000 in 1980 to more than 300,000 in 1982. Although these guerrillas lacked heavy weapons, the level of light weapons was not bad, such as AK47, Stinger missiles, 107 rocket launchers, etc.
As the war continued, the Soviets also discovered that something was wrong. During the war, the Soviet army captured a variety of trophies, such as American weapons, Japanese medicines, German sleeping bags, British camouflage uniforms, etc., which shows that Afghanistan is not alone.
The most troublesome thing about the Soviet army's battle with the Afghan guerrillas is that the guerrillas often use siege points to fight for aid and mine arrays, for example, as soon as the Soviet gunship landed on the ground, the guerrillas' 107 rockets roared, ran after the fight, and came and went without a trace.
As the war dragged on, the patriotic fervor that had been high within the Soviet Union was shaken. Because of the nature of the Afghan war, there was resistance at all levels, and the Soviet military discipline was seriously corroded. Many soldiers were ashamed of the medals they received from the Afghan battlefield, and the Afghan war also caused the collapse of the highly cohesive Soviet people's heart, and caused a great gap between the army, the people and the alliance center, which could not be repaired by any measure.
From an economic point of view, since the 80s, the economic development of the Soviet Union has experienced a serious crisis, and the country has continued to adopt a policy of excessive force, making the country's people miserable. Some Soviet experts even said, "If this continues, by 1990 Japan will replace the Soviet Union as the world's second largest economic power, and the current Soviet Union's priority is to develop the economy, not to do meaningless things on the Afghan battlefield, you must know that the Afghan battlefield costs 11 million US dollars a day, the Soviet Union has spent more than 20 billion US dollars in many years of war, if the war continues, this will undoubtedly be a terrible disaster for the precarious economy."
Of course, the Soviet leadership also realized that it would be pointless to continue the war. Faced with the deteriorating international environment, the Soviet Union eventually became alone, and from the beginning of the Soviet war, it was sanctioned by many Western countries, causing the Soviet Union to lose its most important source of funds, technology and equipment.
In 1988, the war in Afghanistan ushered in a solution to the problem. With the increasing international aid and the growth of the Afghan guerrillas, the guerrillas launched continuous attacks on important cities controlled by the Soviet army, and even the phenomenon of the Soviet army controlling the cities and the guerrillas controlling the countryside appeared. In this state of stalemate, neither side could win alone, and on April 14, 1988, the Soviet Union was forced to accept the Geneva Accords and decided to withdraw all its troops from Afghanistan by February 15, 1989.
Throughout the war in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union invested 1.5 million troops and spent more than 45 billion rubles, killing 12,210 people, wounding 35,478 and missing 311. The war has lost enormous amounts to Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, 1.3 million people have lost their lives, more than 2 million have been displaced and left homeless, and more than 5 million have fled their homes and fled abroad.
An unjust war brought the Soviet Union to the cusp of the storm and left it to be left alone. Because of the injustice of the war, there was also a rift between the people of all ethnic groups in the country, and the increasing decline of the people's livelihood began to separate the country and the people, which became the last straw that overwhelmed the Soviet Union. In the end, the Soviet Union became the target of the people of the world, including its own people.