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Soviet assault on Afghan president remembered
Published: 27 December, 2009, 08:27
Edited: 06 January, 2010, 22:40
TAGS: Anniversary, Conflict, Military
Thirty years ago thousands of Soviet troops were deployed to Afghanistan. Within a few days they launched a special operation storming the Presidential palace and toppling the then-Afghan leader.
On December 27, 1979, three days after five thousand Soviet troops had been airlifted into Afghanistan, three Soviet battalions started making their way towards the Darul Aman Palace where President Hafizullah Amin had recently moved his offices.
The KGB at that time had accused President Amin of ousting the opposition, pretending to be loyal to Moscow while secretly seeking partnerships with Pakistan and China. Top Soviet leaders had even suspected Amin of being a CIA spy, and claimed they had the papers to prove it. Thus, due to the fears that the Communist regime of Afghanistan could be overthrown, Soviet leaders decided to replace Amin with a man of their choice.
The advance of the Soviet special forces marked the beginning of Operation Storm333 that lasted just 43 minutes and is considered by some to have been one of the most successful Soviet operations in Afghanistan.
“In each vehicle, we had four to five Alpha officers, the crew of the vehicle – the commander, the driver and the gunner. And in addition to that, we had Afghans riding with us,” recalled Alpha Commander Oleg Balashov.
“In my car we had the future Afghan Defense Minister. I assigned one of my men to look after him. I told him: Guard this man with your life. No matter what happens, he must stay alive."
The Muslim Battalion that consisted of soldiers from the Soviet Central Asian republics who looked and sounded like Afghan locals provided cover for the special forces involved in the assault on the Palace.
“We were told that [Hafizullah Amin] had been a bloody dictator responsible for the deaths of thousands of people,” recalled Rustam-Khadzha Tursunkulov, retired colonel of the Muslim Battalion. “We had to overthrow the bloody regime and back up the Afghan people to come to power.”
However, the costs were high for the Soviet troops and the odds were stacked against them.
“To understand this massacre you had to have seen it,” explains Balashov. “We were shooting to protect our fighters because the gunfire was terrible. The enemy was shooting from the roof, from the windows, and they were protected by the walls while our fighters were on open ground and could be easily shot down. What I still remember and what impressed me was the number of soldiers defending the palace, the number of our enemies.”
There were 24 Soviet soldiers against 300 Afghan Palace guards. Balashov was one of the many wounded. Two Alpha and three Zenith commanders were killed. As many as 200 Afghan security and military personnel were killed, including Amin and his son.
“We received information that tonight something would happen. Amin called all of his commanders to the Palace as he wanted to be prepared to command all his troops against the Russians,” says Mohammed Akbar, Afghan Army veteran. “But the Russians had already recruited a cook who put poison in the food. Amin was still alive when the Russian special troops got to him. Later, when we came here, we couldn’t find any of his remains.”
Amin was the third Afghan President to be toppled in just twenty months. Babrak Karmal, supported by the Soviet Union, immediately became president of Afghanistan. The success of the operation did not, however, prevent an open conflict, and the nine-year long Soviet-Afghan war had effectively begun thereafter.
26.12.2009, 22:59
Massive village brawl ends up in arson in Russia’s southHundreds of villagers set fire to a local man’s home in the Russian republic of Dagestan, following a dispute over the rights to a poultry farm owned by the man’s father. |
27.12.2009, 09:08
2 comments
Top secret Soviet operation was “for the sake of Afghan people”The storming Afghan president Hafizullah Amin’s palace in 1979 by a group of Soviet special forces was one of history’s most audacious special unit operations. |
marzipan6, First of all, I absolutely support Eesti existence as an Estonian state and the home of the Kalev people. I am just concerned that some, if not most Estonians, are too emotional about Russia and Russians, and this bodes ill for Estonia.
It could be, Kihnu, that some other Estonians who appear to you to be anti-Russian are also not so much anti-Russian as anti Russian politics. You seem to understand Estonians and know why their country is so important to them. You know that they are motivated not by some chauvinistic desire to lord it over others, much less some by feeling of superiority, but by a quietly desperate wish to survive as a people. Their long history tells them that they have always lived on the brink of national extinction at the hands of stronger neighbours. Their main defence has never been spears or swords or guns, but rather, their own culture and language, which has provided a defensive shield around them. Because of this, Estonians are extremely protective of their culture, and view any erosion of it with alarm. In the context of Moscow’s unfriendly policies, it is easy for Estonians to misinterpret any less than 100% perfection by local Russians as evidence of collusion with such politics, and a negative reaction becomes automatic. Just as it is automatic for local Russians, who are also overshadowed by Moscow’s politics, to misinterpret Estonians’ reactions as being evidence of hatred of Russians, when probably it is not that at all. Since Moscow isn’t about to change, I believe it is important for local Russians to clearly differentiate themselves from Moscow’s politics, so that they can be evaluated just as a person on their own merits, and not as an extension of the Kremlin. Rejoice with Estonians on February 24, mourn with them on June 14, never lose what is precious to you of your own Russian heritage, but also, never make it a secret exactly where you disagree with Moscow’s politics. If enough people of Russian heritage do this consistently enough, then mutual misunderstandings and unfair cross-communal judgments can gradually fall away. Estonians and Russians are fated to live together, and they owe it to their children to make their common home a happy one.
I agree, Kihnu, that Estonian sentiments about Russia are too sensitive, as Estonian politicians themselves admit from time to time. But I also believe such raw feelings are unavoidable. The crimes that Soviet Russia committed against Estonia are quite unparalleled in Estonia’s long history, and they are still within living memory. To make matters worse, Russia effectively denies them, and blames Estonia, the victim, for those crimes. This makes normal recovery very, very hard. I clearly understand that the position of Russians themselves, both in Estonia and in Russia, is also hard, inasmuch as they have seen all that they have believed in crumble before their eyes, and they have comprehensively lacked the kind of leadership that would have been needed to help them through the transition. There is no Russian Nelson Mandela. And so they and their leaders keep clinging to myths of the past, and these myths are the very knives that keep the wounds of Soviet victims open and prevent them from healing. A rotten business all round. The Kremlin is unlikely to change, but Russian media, including RT, perhaps can, and can begin setting a different tone. I wonder do they have the insight to do so? Running an article entitled, “Soviet Assault on Baltic Presidents Remembered” could be a great start. But then, RT is meant for foreign consumption, and the world at large already knows about the Baltics. Such articles need to be run in Russia.