In 1921, after three wars, Afghanistan finally won its independence in the struggle against the British. However, its extremely important strategic geographical location, the flames of war on Afghan soil will continue to burn.
The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan "perfectly"
In the early hours of December 28, 1979, as the sound of gunfire and explosions in the Daru Aman Palace in Kabul subsided, well-armed Soviet troops were crossing the border toward Afghanistan on the Soviet-Afghan border, about 500 kilometers north of Kabul.
The large-scale invasion of the Soviet Union was carried out by two campaign assault groups, the East and the West.
The East Road Campaign Assault Group consisted of 3 motorized infantry divisions, 2 independent regiments and several directly subordinate support detachments, and was assigned to the Fighter Aviation Regiment, the Gunship Regiment and the Multi-Purpose Helicopter Regiment 2 each.
(Above) Soviet invasion of Afghanistan offensive map
Lieutenant General Panfilov, commander-in-chief of the Assault Group of the Battle of the Eastern Road, was a 46-year-old Tashkent from Central Asia of the Soviet Union, a long-term employee in Central Asia of the Soviet Union, a graduate of the Suvorov Military Academy and the Frunze Military Academy, and was an expert specializing in the study of special operations issues in the Central Asian region.
During the invasion of Afghanistan, he was appointed by the soviet highest military authorities as the commander-in-chief of the Eastern Campaign Assault Group, commanding 50,000 troops and undertaking the main offensive task. The campaign assault plan he drew up for the Eastern Route Campaign Assault Group was: with the elite 360th Motorized Infantry Division as the spearhead, starting from Termez in the Soviet Union, going south through the Mazar-e-Sharif and Saran Pass in northern Afghanistan, attacking Kabul in the shortest possible time, and after rendezvousing with the Soviet 105th Airborne Division that controlled Kabul earlier, continued to advance to the southern city of Kandahar. The 16th and 201st Motorized Infantry Divisions followed Kabul and its north, with the exception of some troops advancing to Jalalabad, the Khyber Pass and Khost, to control strategic roads and nearby key points to prevent attacks by Afghan Muslim forces.
At 5 a.m. on December 28, 1979, the soviet, Termez, and 360th Motorized Infantry Division were brightly lit and busy; the whistle of the troops gathering and the roar of tank engines sounded in unison. After nearly 2 and a half hours of preparation, the team was assembled and the tanks were ready to go. At 7:30 a.m., the sun rose and the 360th Motorized Infantry Division, the vanguard of the Assault Group of the Battle of the Eastern Route, took the lead in setting out from Termez. The T-72 tank column, which was more than 10 kilometers long, moved forward along the road along the Purchi River. In the sunlight, the red stars and scythes on the grass-green tank turrets were particularly dazzling.
At 8 a.m., the command car of Major General Bagramyan, commander of the 360th Motorized Infantry Division, drove across the Puchi River Bridge. He connected the signalman to the forward headquarters of the army group on the military jeep, and reported to Panfilov, commander-in-chief of the East Road Campaign Assault Group, that the 360th Motorized Infantry Division had all left the country and that everything was going well. It is expected to reach the first target at noon , Mazar-i-Sharif.
Mi-24 helicopters fighting in Afghanistan (above).
Almost at the same time that the East Road Campaign Assault Group began to attack, the West Road Battle Assault Group, assembled on the west side of the Soviet-Afghan border, also began to cross the border.
The West Road Campaign Assault Group, composed of troops of the Turkestan Military District of the USSR, consisted of 3 motorized infantry divisions with a total of more than 40,000 men, commanded by Lieutenant General Shevchenko. The plan of action he was responsible for formulating was that the entire campaign assault group would be divided into two echelons, starting from Kushka on the Soviet-Afghan border, crossing the Kushka River, passing through the Zelmas Pass, Herat to Sindanda, and then advancing to Kandahar, and its advance force advancing to Sping Burdak to block the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Tasked with the first echelon of the Assault Group in the Battle of the West Road was the 357th Motorized Infantry Division, commanded by Major General Milyutin. According to the plan of shevchenko, commander-in-chief of the campaign assault group, the 357th Motorized Infantry Division must occupy Herat, 180 kilometers away, before sunset that day. Therefore, Major General Milyutin has been ordering the troops to accelerate their advance. The sound of the engines of hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles, and trucks overwhelms the nomadic Afghan tribes scattered in the mountains.
On December 30, the 360th Motorized Infantry Division of the Soviet East Road Campaign Assault Group had entered Kabul after two days and two nights of continuous advance, and the 357th Motorized Infantry Division of the West Road Battle Assault Group had also reached Sindant and Fara, creating a miracle in the history of the Soviet Army to advance the speed of offensive campaigns.
The Rapid progress of the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan was due to the low combat effectiveness of the Afghan Government forces, in addition to careful planning and adequate preparation. The Afghan Government Army was organized with 3 corps, 11 infantry divisions, 3 armored divisions, 3 mountain infantry brigades, 4 artillery brigades and 4 paratrooper regiments, but due to the successive civil wars and the brutal intra-party struggle within the Afghan People's Democratic Party, the combat effectiveness had been greatly weakened, and by the time the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, it had been reduced from 110,000 to about 50,000 people; Therefore, when a large number of Soviet troops marched into Afghanistan, it was completely like no man's land.
On January 1, 1980, the Soviet 360th Motorized Infantry Division of the Eastern Road Campaign Assault Group continued to advance, successfully occupying important cities such as Jalalabad, Gadez, and Ghazni, and blocking the main passage from eastern Afghanistan to Pakistan.
On 2 January, the vanguard of the Assault Group of the East-West Campaign was deployed in Kandahar, a major town in southern Afghanistan. During the siege, the Soviet 360th Motorized Infantry Division and the 357th Motorized Infantry Division attacked the Afghan defenders with strong ground-to-air fire, crushing the weak resistance of the 15th Infantry Division of the Afghan Government Army.
On 3 January, Soviet forces blockaded the Khogak Pass in southern Afghanistan leading to Pakistan. At this point, the Soviet army completed the entire military invasion operation. In just one week, the Soviet army, with the cooperation of the troops who had parachuted into Kabul in the early stage, penetrated the entire territory of Afghanistan with wide frontal, large depth and high speed campaign maneuvers, and achieved military occupation of this small Central Asian country.
On the evening of 27 December, after the Soviets captured Kabul, a radio station in the Tashkent region of Central Asia of the Soviet Union used radio kabul frequencies to broadcast the Appeal issued by Babrak Karmail on behalf of the Central Committee of the Afghan People's Democratic Party, the Revolutionary Committee of Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
Our compatriots who have suffered a lot of disasters:
After suffering brutally and bitterly, the days of freedom and revival of all fraternal afghan nations have finally arrived. Today, the regime of Amin and his followers— the executioners who brutally killed our parents and siblings— has been overthrown, and this bloodthirsty machine has completely collapsed.
Under the banner of genuine freedom of the great April Revolution, the true freedom of all afghan peoples has been realized. The Great April Revolution, achieved in accordance with the inviolable will of the heroic Afghan people and with the help of the invincible intifada of the Afghan army, has entered a new phase, and the Afghan People's Democratic Party has formed a broad united front with all the peoples of our country. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan and the Revolutionary Committee of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan have firm confidence. I proudly declare that the real people's power has been established, and I congratulate my compatriots throughout the country. At the same time, I declare that defending the achievements of the Great April Revolution and defending the national independence and sovereignty of the motherland is not only the sacred duty of the Party and the state, but also the sacred duty of all the Afghan people.
Compatriots, heroic friends and comrades! With pure patriotic will, we have once again raised the banner of the holy national war, the banner of the Great April Revolution, which is our just war for democracy and independence, peace and happiness, equality and fraternity. Dear compatriots, wherever you are, unite and courageously fight against enemies at home and abroad and defend the Party and the Revolutionary Committee. Under the banner of the Great April Revolution, in the struggle for a new free and independent Afghanistan, victory will surely belong to our people!
Babrak Karlelor
After Karl Mayr spoke on the radio, the citizens of Kabul woke up from a dream. The Afghans immediately realized that the coup was very different from the past, because the Soviets were coming. The Soviet Foreign Ministry declared that soviet troops had entered Afghanistan "at the request of the leadership of the new party and state, headed by Karl Mel," and that only limited forces had been used in military operations. At the same time, a meeting of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee approved instructions to soviet embassies abroad that it must be stated to the host countries that the Soviet side "decided to send a limited number of Soviet troops to Afghanistan in accordance with the Soviet-Afghan treaty of friendship, in accordance with its internationalist duties, taking into account the request of the new Afghan leadership for assistance in countering foreign aggression."
The embassies of various countries in Afghanistan contacted each other on the same day, hoping to meet the new president at the first time. Karlmer was in Moscow until calm was restored in Kabul, when he was allowed to return to Afghanistan from the Soviet Union. Accompanied by senior officials of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs, he flew back to Kabul. KarlMayle had a heavy mission: to build a new Afghanistan with the "help" of the Soviet Union.
This article is excerpted from The Graveyard of Empires: A Complete History of the War in Afghanistan
#pgc-card .pgc-card-href { text-decoration: none; outline: none; display: block; width: 100%; height: 100%; } #pgc-card .pgc-card-href:hover { text-decoration: none; } /*pc 样式*/ .pgc-card { box-sizing: border-box; height: 164px; border: 1px solid #e8e8e8; position: relative; padding: 20px 94px 12px 180px; overflow: hidden; } .pgc-card::after { content: " "; display: block; border-left: 1px solid #e8e8e8; height: 120px; position: absolute; right: 76px; top: 20px; } .pgc-cover { position: absolute; width: 162px; height: 162px; top: 0; left: 0; background-size: cover; } .pgc-content { overflow: hidden; position: relative; top: 50%; -webkit-transform: translateY(-50%); transform: translateY(-50%); } .pgc-content-title { font-size: 18px; color: #222; line-height: 1; font-weight: bold; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; } .pgc-content-desc { font-size: 14px; color: #444; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; padding-top: 9px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.2em; display: -webkit-inline-box; -webkit-line-clamp: 2; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; } .pgc-content-price { font-size: 22px; color: #f85959; padding-top: 18px; line-height: 1em; } .pgc-card-buy { width: 75px; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 50px; color: #406599; font-size: 14px; text-align: center; } .pgc-buy-text { padding-top: 10px; } .pgc-icon-buy { height: 23px; width: 20px; display: inline-block; background: url(https://lf6-cdn-tos.bytescm.com/obj/cdn-static-resource/pgc/v2/pgc_tpl/static/image/commodity_buy_f2b4d1a.png); }
Graveyard of Empires: A Complete History of the Afghan War ¥38.39 To buy