![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ↠| Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 |
(I have taken the liberty of moving this to a separate section) Guccisamsclub ( talk) 15:42, 10 October 2016 (UTC)
I have done a new revision of my edit:
Guccisamsclub, I can't access the Halliday essay. Can you post a relevant excerpt here? GPRamirez5 ( talk) 03:09, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
As far as aid to anti-communist forces is concerned, the US role varied. It provided substantial aid in the Third World ‘Reagan Doctrine’ case, to limited financial and political assistance in the case of some Eastern European states, most notably Poland, and virtually nothing as far as nationalist groups inside the Soviet Union itself was concerned. When nationalist rioting broke out in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan in the late 1980s, the CIA had excellent photographs of the demonstrations, but no political intelligence on what the demonstrators were saying. Gates ascribes a significant role to the cultural, economic, and diplomatic offensive waged by both the Carter and Reagan administrations.Still, something like this easily undermines the Zbig quote you just gave, though it may not undermine more serious sources (not that I know of any on the issue of Zbig and Soviet southern republics). You have to consider that politicians are not always telling it like it is. Guccisamsclub ( talk) 03:38, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
GPRamirez5 ( talk) 07:03, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
No factual error. The SCC was a subsidiary component of the NSC established by President Carter. It's already mentioned under the history of the US NSC article (which we can link to), so I don't see any need to mention it here and muddy the waters further. And as I've documented repeatedly, numerous scholars have quoted it and believe that it was a statement of policy. GPRamirez5 ( talk) 18:49, 18 October 2016 (UTC)
What you lack as a historian, TTAa-C, you almost make up for as a copyeditor. Bravo! But the chronology here comes from the secondary source of Galster at the National Security Archive, who considers a Brzezinski NSC/SCC meeting "weeks after the Herat Uprising" of early March to be the beginning of covert action, not the July Carter memo:
It pays to look at independent sources, rather than just CIA officials who worked for ZB like Riedel. GPRamirez5 ( talk) 03:03, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
Guccisamsclub, I hope these interference plays aren't the reason your revision is taking so long.. No GPRamirez5, I just got lazy.
References
Hello, great Wikipage. Very small point, can we please change, "and hostile populous to outsiders" to, "and hostile populace to outsiders." Or better yet, "and populace hostile to outsiders." Since "populous" is an adjective it's incorrect; the noun "populace" fits here. Thank you so much. Freethinnker ( talk) 02:44, 28 December 2016 (UTC)freethinnker 27 Dec 2016 Freethinnker ( talk) 02:44, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
So the Soviets invaded Afghanistan to kill 2 million civilians? Is there a reliable source to back this nonsense? About the rape, there has never been a single report about Russians raping Afghan people. Where did this come from? -- Zako.deen ( talk) 03:20, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on Soviet–Afghan War. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
{{
dead link}}
tag to
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JAP/is_2_13/ai_n15623829/pg_7When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 08:08, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
Gaddafi supported the Mujahideen.-- 95.113.206.142 ( talk) 16:36, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
The claims that Soviet allies participated in this war were not supported by reliable source. One was effectively unverified claims made in a newspaper and not confirmed at any time since. The other was on quite a different subject and mentioned it only in passing. Considering that there no known casualties of any of those countries and there are sources explicitly denying their participation (for example here), much better sources should be found for this information to be reinserted in the article. Kostja ( talk) 21:46, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
GPRamirez5 recently asserted that
"lethal aid begins in September (1979)": "By September 1979, Zia Al-Huq had applied further pressure for US military aid, and the CIA complied, sending lethal equipment to the mujahideen via Pakistani officials. President Carter then amended his July directive to include weaponry."
However, after carefully reading through GPRamirez5's
source, it has become apparent that this shocking claim—which many scholars have long sought to verify, and which is found nowhere in seminal works on this topic such as
Steve Coll's
Ghost Wars—is almost certainly false. There are several gaping holes in GPRamirez5's theory:
"According to the authoritative work of author Steve Coll and his book, Ghost Wars, President Carter's still classified July 3, 1979 'Presidential Finding' was not only meant to help the Resistance Movement, but it also intended to deter any further Soviet aspirations in Third World countries. So with some of the constraints on conducting covert warfare promptly removed by the stroke of President Carter's pen just weeks before leaving office, the American intelligence network was free to secretly ship weapons to the Mujahidin by using the word 'harassment' as a cover to describe their goal of raising the 'costs' of Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. ... Coll's work draws attention to how Carter amended his earlier July 3, 1979 'Presidential Finding' in late December of that year because the administrative had 'collectively' come to the conclusion that the Mujahidin forces could not win a war against the Soviet's military without the United States providing weaponry to them in some form or fashion."
"The revelations of Robert Gates go on to further reveal that by the end of August Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq had applied enough pressure on the United States for arms and other advanced equipment, that then CIA Director [Stansfield] Turner responded with having communications gear, and most significantly, lethal equipment sent to the insurgents via Pakistani handlers."If true, this may have violated Carter's July order, but it appears that Tadman based this allegation on a careless misreading of his source, Gate's From the Shadows pp. 146–147, which actually states:
"By the end of August, Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq was pressuring the United States for arms and equipment for the insurgents in Afghanistan. ... Separately, the Pakistani intelligence service was pressing us to provide military equipment to support an expanding insurgency. When Turner heard this, he urged the DO [Directorate of Operations] to get moving in providing more help to the insurgents. They responded with several enhancement options, including communications equipment for the insurgents via the Pakistanis or Saudis, funds for the Pakistanis to purchase lethal military equipment for the insurgents, and providing a like amount of lethal equipment ourselves for the Pakistanis to distribute to the insurgents."Significantly, and contrary to both Tadman and The Real News, Gates does not elaborate on which, if any, of these "enhancement options" were ultimately approved. However, Gates goes on to strongly suggest that no arms were sent until after the Soviet invasion:
"On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, 1979, the Soviets intervened massively in Afghanistan. A covert action that began six months earlier funded at just over half a million dollars would, within a year, grow to tens of millions, and most assuredly included the provision of weapons."Later in the same article, Tadman contradicts himself:
"The Politburo's decision to invade Afghanistan ... offered the Carter administration an opportunity to enhance their initial efforts by eventually supplying lethal aid to the Mujahidin forces once the war began."
"So US support for the mujaheddin only begins after the Russians invade, not before?"
"With arms? Absolutely afterwards. No question about it. Show me some documents to the contrary."
"There were no lethal provisions given to the Afghans before the Soviet invasion. There was a little propaganda, communication assistance, and so on at the instigation of the ISI. But after the Soviet invasion everything changed. The first [U.S.] weapons for the Afghans arrived in Pakistan on the tenth of January, fourteen days after the invasion. Shortly after the invasion, we got into the discussions with the Saudis that you just mentioned. And then when [William J.] Casey became DCI under Reagan at the beginning of 1981, the price tag went through the ceiling."—Source: Blight, James G.; et al. (2012). Becoming Enemies: U.S.-Iran Relations and the Iran-Iraq War, 1979-1988. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 66. ISBN 978-1-4422-0830-8.
What should we make of this discrepancy? Tadman appears to have misread Gates—possibly influenced by Jay's earlier error, given that Tadman cites The Real News interview with Brzezinski as one of his sources, in which case we are dealing with textbook citogenesis. Meanwhile, both the leading architect of the Carter administration's Afghan policy at the NSC (Brzezinski) and the CIA officer directly responsible for implementing that policy (Cogan) are adamant that no arms were provided until January 1980, which is consistent with Coll's observation that Carter amended his earlier finding to finally include lethal provisions in late December 1979. Tadman doesn't notice that his claims are contradictory, whereas GPRamirez5's assertion that Carter's finding was amended in September is flat-out false—or, at least, not supported by Tadman, leaving it unclear where GPRamirez5 is getting his information. Of course, in the unlikely scenario that GPRamirez5 can produce this September 1979 revised presidential finding supposedly disproving Brzezinski, Cogan, and Coll, I will happily accept the correction. Otherwise, Tadman's WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim should certainly not stand unchallenged, and I think the best course of action would be to remove the sentence entirely. TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 18:00, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
Within days of the invasion, President Carter made a series of symbolic gestures to invoke American outrage ... No longer skittish about a direct American role in providing weapons support to the Afghan resistance, Carter also gave the CIA the green light for an American–orchestrated covert assistance program to be financed in part by congressional appropriations and in part with Saudi Arabian help.
As the president was jogging on February 12, 1980, his press secretary, Jody Powell, interrupted his run to tell him that the Washington Post had a story in the works about the CIA's operation to feed arms to the mujahideen rebels through Pakistan. In short, less than a month after the first arms arrived in Karachi, the secret was about to be published by the media. As Carter noted, the Pakistanis 'would be highly embarrassed.' Secretary Vance appealed to the Post to hold the story, but it ran a few days later, watered down a bit.
![]() | This
edit request to
Soviet–Afghan War has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
The article about the Soviet-Afghan war claims :
"The government's Stalinist-like nature and brutality[38] - vigorously suppressing opposition, executing thousands of political prisoners and ordering massacres against unarmed civilians, led to the rise of anti-government armed groups"
The only reference reported to justify this, is this one: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-babrak-karmal-1313192.html
This reference does not prove anything. Is an opinion piece for an obituary of one Afghan leader. It is not a primary nor even a peer-reviewed nor academic nor actually consistently journalistic source that could provide factual support for the claim.
I merely ask the "[reference needed]" tag to be put at the end of this claim, as there is no reference that proves this claim. Thank you. 130.223.86.252 ( talk) 13:59, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
There is only a newspaper source (!) and even that says that Germany only tried to get soviet wapons.
Please add a source or delete.
-- 92.196.32.125 ( talk) 12:21, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
The article's name is misleading, it was not a war between the Soviet Union and Afganistan but a military intervention in support of its leadership. Here is the introduction of the Russian version of the article: "Afgan war (1979 — 1989) (Soviet war in Afganistan) — military conflict on the territory of Democratic Republic of Afganistan (Republic of Afganistan from 1987) between the government forces of Afganistan with support from Limited contingent of Soviet troops from one side and armed formations of Afgan mujahideen ("dushmans") that were using political, finance, material and military support of leading NATO states and conservative Islamic world from the other side". -- 178.69.111.32 ( talk) 01:34, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
The title of this article, "Soviet–Afghan War," contains a Unicode character for an en-dash, U+2013, which displays in text boxes as %E2%80%93 . I'm opposed to using non-ASCII characters in URL names, as they mess up linking and make readability more difficult. The name should have used an ordinary hyphen. Pooua ( talk) 23:33, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 08:33, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
"Taraki was murdered" I think should be "Taraki was assassinated".
-- 100.4.144.104 ( talk) 13:03, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
"However, despite suffering heavily, the mujahideen were able to remain in the field, mostly because they received thousands of new volunteers daily, and continued resisting the Soviets."
Really? Thousands per day? Source?
Where were they all going if "thousands per day" were coming in? Desertion?
63.155.53.122 ( talk) 14:16, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request to
Soviet–Afghan War has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
The existing text under one of the images says "Charlie Wilson (D-TX), 2nd from the left, dressing in Afghan clothing (armed with AK-47) with the local Afghan mujahideen." The rifle that Charlie Wilson is holding is actually an AKS-74U ( /info/en/?search=AK-74#AKS-74U). This can be seen by comparing the muzzle device on the end of the barrel to those of AK47s and AKS-74Us in the above linked article. TheGreatBamboozle ( talk) 06:56, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request to
Soviet–Afghan War has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
the following statement is wrong," According to political scientist Gilles Kepel, the Soviet intervention or "invasion" was "viewed with horror" in the West, considered to be a "fresh twist" on the geo-political "Great Game" of the 19th Century in which Britain feared that Russia sought access to the Indian Ocean and posed "a threat to Western security", explicitly violating "the world balance of power agreed upon at Yalta" in 1945. " the great game is a reference to the 19th century, thus the 1800's not the 20th century, the picture associated also shows the listed conference at Yalta, or close enough, that did happen in the 20th. 2602:30A:2EDE:A380:9519:7CBD:B644:8BBA ( talk) 08:16, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request to
Soviet–Afghan War has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
{{subst:trim|1=
{{Infobox military conflict
|conflict = Soviet–Afghan War
|partof = the
Cold War and the continuous
Afghanistan conflict
|image =
|caption = Mujahideen fighters in the
Kunar Province of Afghanistan in 1987
|date = December 24, 1979 – February 15, 1989
(9Â years, 1Â month, 3Â weeks and 1Â day)
|place =
Afghanistan
|result = Mujahideen victory
|combatant1 = Â
Soviet Union
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
|combatant2 =
Sunni Mujahideen:
203.78.120.191 ( talk) 11:11, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
References
britannica2001
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).britannica1978
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Oily
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).![]() | This
edit request to
Soviet–Afghan War has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Â
China
[1]
203.78.120.191 (
talk)
11:19, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
References
Section "Perception in the former USSR" should be renamed "Perception of Russian federation" as it does quote only Russian politicians and decisions of Russian parlament. Only official stance of Russia is represented. No oppinions from other parts of former USSR are represented nor from Russian general public. -- Kyng ( talk) 11:37, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
The Background section tends to repeat itself several times. I'm tempted to give it a good hard edit so it forms a single narrative. Dan100 ( Talk) 22:20, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
In fact I think it's worst article I've seen, it's an impenetrable mess of text Dan100 ( Talk) 22:33, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
"Despite having failed to implement a sympathetic regime in Afghanistan, in 1988 the Soviet Union signed an accord with the United States, Pakistan, and Afghanistan and agreed to withdraw its troops. The Soviet withdrawal was completed on February 15, 1989, and Afghanistan returned to nonaligned status." britannica There are communists trying to change history, soviets who lost a war and did not win, withdrawal means loss, like the Vietnam War, which is a victory for the vet Kong. Uryon988 ( talk) 11:38, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request to
Soviet–Afghan War has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
In the second paragraph of "Factions inside the PDPA", there is a typo. Please change "Through" to "Though" 107.77.200.94 ( talk) 04:36, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
This war did not end with a "Mujahideen victory", as the article has claimed for a couple of years because somebody changed it from "stalemate", as it said before, to "Mujahideen victory". The Mujahideen did win the Afghan civil war in 1992, but the article has decided to limit the timeframe of this war from 1979-1989 (the Soviet phase), and the Mujahideen did not win in 1989. On the contrary, the government they were fighting to overthrow remained in power and it remained so for three more years (it actually lasted longer than the Soviet Union did). They were also able to win the Battle of Jalalabad in 1989 and keep control over the main cities for a couple of years. If this war was a Soviet/DRA defeat, the Iraq War and the US Afghan War would also be considered US defeats. This is obviously incorrect - if you withdraw from a country in which you have troops, you have not necessarily been defeated (although you have not won either if the war continues). While we can't use counterfactuals on Wikipedia, the Najibullah government would likely have survived even longer if the Soviet Union had not dissolved, as the fall of the USSR led to a halt of supplies to the government (e.g. the Afghan Air Force didn't even have fuel by January 1992). If the timeframe had been extended to 1978-1992 in a manner similar to the Vietnam War article (which dates the war as 1955-1975, although the phase of active US involvement only lasted from 1964 to 1973), it would have been a Mujahideen victory, but as long as the article considers only the Soviet phase of the war to be war, this is clearly incorrect. Neither the Afghan Army nor the Soviet Union had lost in 1989. For sure, most of the countryside and even parts of Kandahar and Herat were under Mujahideen control, but otherwise all the big cities were controlled by the government. The government in Kabul was pretty safe. The way the Soviet withdrawal was arranged clearly did not indicate defeat. The withdrawal was part of a plan and was conducted gradually in order to give the Afghan Army time to adapt. The USSR also increased aid to the Afghan government in order to make it more able to defend itself. They also conducted several offensives during the withdrawal. Operation Magistral was one of the largest operations of the war, involving 20 000 Soviet troops and 8000 Afghan Army troops, and it managed to clear the road from Gardez to Khost in order to ease the deliveries of supplies to Khost. If the Soviets had been defeated, they would not have carried out such an offensive at the same time as they were withdrawing. They continued to deliever supplies to Najibullah until the August coup. The government's early campaigns after the Soviet withdrawal were also quite successful, surprising the US who expected a soon Mujahideen victory. The Najibullah government was even able to survive for 8 months after the Soviet coup which resulted in a complete stop of Soviet aid.
So I suggest that this midleading claim is changed, as it is clearly incorrect. In 1989, the DRA and the USSR were absolutely not defeated although they had failed to quell the uprising. The Mujahideen victory didn't come before 1992. Stalemate, as the article said before, would be more correct. The Mujahideen could be said to have gained a strategic victory, but by the time this war is said to have ended (1989), it was still very unclear what would happen in the long term. Najibullah remained firmly in power and the Soviets were backing him, refusing to see its buffer zone to anti-Soviet countries like China, Pakistan and Iran disappear. -- Te og kaker ( talk) 18:27, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
This is a clear bias. The Soviets failed to control Afghanistan and suffered heavy losses. This is called victory for the mujahideen Ryuan9iu98 ( talk) 20:55, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
MYTH NUMBER FOUR: The USSR suffered a massive military defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of the mujahedin. This is one of the most persistent myths of Afghan history. It has been regularly trumpeted by every former mujahedin leader, from Osama bin Laden and Taliban commanders to the warlords in the current Afghan Government. It is also accepted unthinkingly as part of the Western narrative of the war, repeated by politicians in Europe and the United States as well as analysts like Zbigniew Brzezinski. [...] The reality is that the Afghan mujahedin did not defeat the Soviets on the battlefield. [...] Just as the mujahedin failed to beat the Soviets, the Soviets did not defeat the mujahedin. The Soviets left Afghanistan when they calculated that the war had become a stalemate and was no longer worth the high price in money, men and international prestige that they were having to pay to keep it going.
You are wrong, the Viet Kung losses are higher and they won the war, the Russians lost 30,000 soldiers and many fighting vehicles even though they are superior militarily compared to the Mujahideen. Imagine that an army that defeated Germany was defeated by some of the peasants with AK-47 machine guns. I think you do not know what victory and defeat are. In a war, in order to achieve victory, you must destroy your enemy to become incapable of fighting. This did not happen in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and even America lost a war because it could not eliminate the Taliban. Uryon988 ( talk) 10:31, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
Also, the Soviets did not lose a battle on a land because it was a guerrilla war, the Communists lost this war, and you cannot rewrite history because you are in love with Stalin Uryon988 ( talk) 10:42, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
I'm sure this has been discussed already, but I'd like to express my opinion, too: the title comes across as subjective and a bit misleading. The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan regime was internationally recognized, and had a seat in the UN. Hence 'Soviet-Afghan War' sounds odd, because Soviets merely offered strong support for an increasingly unpopular but technically legitimate regime. They never attacked Afghanistan as its recognized government had been begging for Soviet help for many months, contrary to what the current title would imply. Wouldn't Soviet war in Afghanistan be a better fit (I selected the title that Afghans (Pushtus, Tajiks) themselves use, cf. Persian wiki: جنگ شوروی در اÙغانستان=Soviet War in Afghanistan). Thoughts? Can we discuss this?-- Potugin ( talk) 20:08, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ↠| Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 |
(I have taken the liberty of moving this to a separate section) Guccisamsclub ( talk) 15:42, 10 October 2016 (UTC)
I have done a new revision of my edit:
Guccisamsclub, I can't access the Halliday essay. Can you post a relevant excerpt here? GPRamirez5 ( talk) 03:09, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
As far as aid to anti-communist forces is concerned, the US role varied. It provided substantial aid in the Third World ‘Reagan Doctrine’ case, to limited financial and political assistance in the case of some Eastern European states, most notably Poland, and virtually nothing as far as nationalist groups inside the Soviet Union itself was concerned. When nationalist rioting broke out in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan in the late 1980s, the CIA had excellent photographs of the demonstrations, but no political intelligence on what the demonstrators were saying. Gates ascribes a significant role to the cultural, economic, and diplomatic offensive waged by both the Carter and Reagan administrations.Still, something like this easily undermines the Zbig quote you just gave, though it may not undermine more serious sources (not that I know of any on the issue of Zbig and Soviet southern republics). You have to consider that politicians are not always telling it like it is. Guccisamsclub ( talk) 03:38, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
GPRamirez5 ( talk) 07:03, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
No factual error. The SCC was a subsidiary component of the NSC established by President Carter. It's already mentioned under the history of the US NSC article (which we can link to), so I don't see any need to mention it here and muddy the waters further. And as I've documented repeatedly, numerous scholars have quoted it and believe that it was a statement of policy. GPRamirez5 ( talk) 18:49, 18 October 2016 (UTC)
What you lack as a historian, TTAa-C, you almost make up for as a copyeditor. Bravo! But the chronology here comes from the secondary source of Galster at the National Security Archive, who considers a Brzezinski NSC/SCC meeting "weeks after the Herat Uprising" of early March to be the beginning of covert action, not the July Carter memo:
It pays to look at independent sources, rather than just CIA officials who worked for ZB like Riedel. GPRamirez5 ( talk) 03:03, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
Guccisamsclub, I hope these interference plays aren't the reason your revision is taking so long.. No GPRamirez5, I just got lazy.
References
Hello, great Wikipage. Very small point, can we please change, "and hostile populous to outsiders" to, "and hostile populace to outsiders." Or better yet, "and populace hostile to outsiders." Since "populous" is an adjective it's incorrect; the noun "populace" fits here. Thank you so much. Freethinnker ( talk) 02:44, 28 December 2016 (UTC)freethinnker 27 Dec 2016 Freethinnker ( talk) 02:44, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
So the Soviets invaded Afghanistan to kill 2 million civilians? Is there a reliable source to back this nonsense? About the rape, there has never been a single report about Russians raping Afghan people. Where did this come from? -- Zako.deen ( talk) 03:20, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on Soviet–Afghan War. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
{{
dead link}}
tag to
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JAP/is_2_13/ai_n15623829/pg_7When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 08:08, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
Gaddafi supported the Mujahideen.-- 95.113.206.142 ( talk) 16:36, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
The claims that Soviet allies participated in this war were not supported by reliable source. One was effectively unverified claims made in a newspaper and not confirmed at any time since. The other was on quite a different subject and mentioned it only in passing. Considering that there no known casualties of any of those countries and there are sources explicitly denying their participation (for example here), much better sources should be found for this information to be reinserted in the article. Kostja ( talk) 21:46, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
GPRamirez5 recently asserted that
"lethal aid begins in September (1979)": "By September 1979, Zia Al-Huq had applied further pressure for US military aid, and the CIA complied, sending lethal equipment to the mujahideen via Pakistani officials. President Carter then amended his July directive to include weaponry."
However, after carefully reading through GPRamirez5's
source, it has become apparent that this shocking claim—which many scholars have long sought to verify, and which is found nowhere in seminal works on this topic such as
Steve Coll's
Ghost Wars—is almost certainly false. There are several gaping holes in GPRamirez5's theory:
"According to the authoritative work of author Steve Coll and his book, Ghost Wars, President Carter's still classified July 3, 1979 'Presidential Finding' was not only meant to help the Resistance Movement, but it also intended to deter any further Soviet aspirations in Third World countries. So with some of the constraints on conducting covert warfare promptly removed by the stroke of President Carter's pen just weeks before leaving office, the American intelligence network was free to secretly ship weapons to the Mujahidin by using the word 'harassment' as a cover to describe their goal of raising the 'costs' of Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. ... Coll's work draws attention to how Carter amended his earlier July 3, 1979 'Presidential Finding' in late December of that year because the administrative had 'collectively' come to the conclusion that the Mujahidin forces could not win a war against the Soviet's military without the United States providing weaponry to them in some form or fashion."
"The revelations of Robert Gates go on to further reveal that by the end of August Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq had applied enough pressure on the United States for arms and other advanced equipment, that then CIA Director [Stansfield] Turner responded with having communications gear, and most significantly, lethal equipment sent to the insurgents via Pakistani handlers."If true, this may have violated Carter's July order, but it appears that Tadman based this allegation on a careless misreading of his source, Gate's From the Shadows pp. 146–147, which actually states:
"By the end of August, Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq was pressuring the United States for arms and equipment for the insurgents in Afghanistan. ... Separately, the Pakistani intelligence service was pressing us to provide military equipment to support an expanding insurgency. When Turner heard this, he urged the DO [Directorate of Operations] to get moving in providing more help to the insurgents. They responded with several enhancement options, including communications equipment for the insurgents via the Pakistanis or Saudis, funds for the Pakistanis to purchase lethal military equipment for the insurgents, and providing a like amount of lethal equipment ourselves for the Pakistanis to distribute to the insurgents."Significantly, and contrary to both Tadman and The Real News, Gates does not elaborate on which, if any, of these "enhancement options" were ultimately approved. However, Gates goes on to strongly suggest that no arms were sent until after the Soviet invasion:
"On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, 1979, the Soviets intervened massively in Afghanistan. A covert action that began six months earlier funded at just over half a million dollars would, within a year, grow to tens of millions, and most assuredly included the provision of weapons."Later in the same article, Tadman contradicts himself:
"The Politburo's decision to invade Afghanistan ... offered the Carter administration an opportunity to enhance their initial efforts by eventually supplying lethal aid to the Mujahidin forces once the war began."
"So US support for the mujaheddin only begins after the Russians invade, not before?"
"With arms? Absolutely afterwards. No question about it. Show me some documents to the contrary."
"There were no lethal provisions given to the Afghans before the Soviet invasion. There was a little propaganda, communication assistance, and so on at the instigation of the ISI. But after the Soviet invasion everything changed. The first [U.S.] weapons for the Afghans arrived in Pakistan on the tenth of January, fourteen days after the invasion. Shortly after the invasion, we got into the discussions with the Saudis that you just mentioned. And then when [William J.] Casey became DCI under Reagan at the beginning of 1981, the price tag went through the ceiling."—Source: Blight, James G.; et al. (2012). Becoming Enemies: U.S.-Iran Relations and the Iran-Iraq War, 1979-1988. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 66. ISBN 978-1-4422-0830-8.
What should we make of this discrepancy? Tadman appears to have misread Gates—possibly influenced by Jay's earlier error, given that Tadman cites The Real News interview with Brzezinski as one of his sources, in which case we are dealing with textbook citogenesis. Meanwhile, both the leading architect of the Carter administration's Afghan policy at the NSC (Brzezinski) and the CIA officer directly responsible for implementing that policy (Cogan) are adamant that no arms were provided until January 1980, which is consistent with Coll's observation that Carter amended his earlier finding to finally include lethal provisions in late December 1979. Tadman doesn't notice that his claims are contradictory, whereas GPRamirez5's assertion that Carter's finding was amended in September is flat-out false—or, at least, not supported by Tadman, leaving it unclear where GPRamirez5 is getting his information. Of course, in the unlikely scenario that GPRamirez5 can produce this September 1979 revised presidential finding supposedly disproving Brzezinski, Cogan, and Coll, I will happily accept the correction. Otherwise, Tadman's WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim should certainly not stand unchallenged, and I think the best course of action would be to remove the sentence entirely. TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 18:00, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
Within days of the invasion, President Carter made a series of symbolic gestures to invoke American outrage ... No longer skittish about a direct American role in providing weapons support to the Afghan resistance, Carter also gave the CIA the green light for an American–orchestrated covert assistance program to be financed in part by congressional appropriations and in part with Saudi Arabian help.
As the president was jogging on February 12, 1980, his press secretary, Jody Powell, interrupted his run to tell him that the Washington Post had a story in the works about the CIA's operation to feed arms to the mujahideen rebels through Pakistan. In short, less than a month after the first arms arrived in Karachi, the secret was about to be published by the media. As Carter noted, the Pakistanis 'would be highly embarrassed.' Secretary Vance appealed to the Post to hold the story, but it ran a few days later, watered down a bit.
![]() | This
edit request to
Soviet–Afghan War has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
The article about the Soviet-Afghan war claims :
"The government's Stalinist-like nature and brutality[38] - vigorously suppressing opposition, executing thousands of political prisoners and ordering massacres against unarmed civilians, led to the rise of anti-government armed groups"
The only reference reported to justify this, is this one: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-babrak-karmal-1313192.html
This reference does not prove anything. Is an opinion piece for an obituary of one Afghan leader. It is not a primary nor even a peer-reviewed nor academic nor actually consistently journalistic source that could provide factual support for the claim.
I merely ask the "[reference needed]" tag to be put at the end of this claim, as there is no reference that proves this claim. Thank you. 130.223.86.252 ( talk) 13:59, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
There is only a newspaper source (!) and even that says that Germany only tried to get soviet wapons.
Please add a source or delete.
-- 92.196.32.125 ( talk) 12:21, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
The article's name is misleading, it was not a war between the Soviet Union and Afganistan but a military intervention in support of its leadership. Here is the introduction of the Russian version of the article: "Afgan war (1979 — 1989) (Soviet war in Afganistan) — military conflict on the territory of Democratic Republic of Afganistan (Republic of Afganistan from 1987) between the government forces of Afganistan with support from Limited contingent of Soviet troops from one side and armed formations of Afgan mujahideen ("dushmans") that were using political, finance, material and military support of leading NATO states and conservative Islamic world from the other side". -- 178.69.111.32 ( talk) 01:34, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
The title of this article, "Soviet–Afghan War," contains a Unicode character for an en-dash, U+2013, which displays in text boxes as %E2%80%93 . I'm opposed to using non-ASCII characters in URL names, as they mess up linking and make readability more difficult. The name should have used an ordinary hyphen. Pooua ( talk) 23:33, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 08:33, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
"Taraki was murdered" I think should be "Taraki was assassinated".
-- 100.4.144.104 ( talk) 13:03, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
"However, despite suffering heavily, the mujahideen were able to remain in the field, mostly because they received thousands of new volunteers daily, and continued resisting the Soviets."
Really? Thousands per day? Source?
Where were they all going if "thousands per day" were coming in? Desertion?
63.155.53.122 ( talk) 14:16, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request to
Soviet–Afghan War has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
The existing text under one of the images says "Charlie Wilson (D-TX), 2nd from the left, dressing in Afghan clothing (armed with AK-47) with the local Afghan mujahideen." The rifle that Charlie Wilson is holding is actually an AKS-74U ( /info/en/?search=AK-74#AKS-74U). This can be seen by comparing the muzzle device on the end of the barrel to those of AK47s and AKS-74Us in the above linked article. TheGreatBamboozle ( talk) 06:56, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request to
Soviet–Afghan War has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
the following statement is wrong," According to political scientist Gilles Kepel, the Soviet intervention or "invasion" was "viewed with horror" in the West, considered to be a "fresh twist" on the geo-political "Great Game" of the 19th Century in which Britain feared that Russia sought access to the Indian Ocean and posed "a threat to Western security", explicitly violating "the world balance of power agreed upon at Yalta" in 1945. " the great game is a reference to the 19th century, thus the 1800's not the 20th century, the picture associated also shows the listed conference at Yalta, or close enough, that did happen in the 20th. 2602:30A:2EDE:A380:9519:7CBD:B644:8BBA ( talk) 08:16, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request to
Soviet–Afghan War has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
{{subst:trim|1=
{{Infobox military conflict
|conflict = Soviet–Afghan War
|partof = the
Cold War and the continuous
Afghanistan conflict
|image =
|caption = Mujahideen fighters in the
Kunar Province of Afghanistan in 1987
|date = December 24, 1979 – February 15, 1989
(9Â years, 1Â month, 3Â weeks and 1Â day)
|place =
Afghanistan
|result = Mujahideen victory
|combatant1 = Â
Soviet Union
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
|combatant2 =
Sunni Mujahideen:
203.78.120.191 ( talk) 11:11, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
References
britannica2001
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).britannica1978
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Oily
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).![]() | This
edit request to
Soviet–Afghan War has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Â
China
[1]
203.78.120.191 (
talk)
11:19, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
References
Section "Perception in the former USSR" should be renamed "Perception of Russian federation" as it does quote only Russian politicians and decisions of Russian parlament. Only official stance of Russia is represented. No oppinions from other parts of former USSR are represented nor from Russian general public. -- Kyng ( talk) 11:37, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
The Background section tends to repeat itself several times. I'm tempted to give it a good hard edit so it forms a single narrative. Dan100 ( Talk) 22:20, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
In fact I think it's worst article I've seen, it's an impenetrable mess of text Dan100 ( Talk) 22:33, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
"Despite having failed to implement a sympathetic regime in Afghanistan, in 1988 the Soviet Union signed an accord with the United States, Pakistan, and Afghanistan and agreed to withdraw its troops. The Soviet withdrawal was completed on February 15, 1989, and Afghanistan returned to nonaligned status." britannica There are communists trying to change history, soviets who lost a war and did not win, withdrawal means loss, like the Vietnam War, which is a victory for the vet Kong. Uryon988 ( talk) 11:38, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request to
Soviet–Afghan War has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
In the second paragraph of "Factions inside the PDPA", there is a typo. Please change "Through" to "Though" 107.77.200.94 ( talk) 04:36, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
This war did not end with a "Mujahideen victory", as the article has claimed for a couple of years because somebody changed it from "stalemate", as it said before, to "Mujahideen victory". The Mujahideen did win the Afghan civil war in 1992, but the article has decided to limit the timeframe of this war from 1979-1989 (the Soviet phase), and the Mujahideen did not win in 1989. On the contrary, the government they were fighting to overthrow remained in power and it remained so for three more years (it actually lasted longer than the Soviet Union did). They were also able to win the Battle of Jalalabad in 1989 and keep control over the main cities for a couple of years. If this war was a Soviet/DRA defeat, the Iraq War and the US Afghan War would also be considered US defeats. This is obviously incorrect - if you withdraw from a country in which you have troops, you have not necessarily been defeated (although you have not won either if the war continues). While we can't use counterfactuals on Wikipedia, the Najibullah government would likely have survived even longer if the Soviet Union had not dissolved, as the fall of the USSR led to a halt of supplies to the government (e.g. the Afghan Air Force didn't even have fuel by January 1992). If the timeframe had been extended to 1978-1992 in a manner similar to the Vietnam War article (which dates the war as 1955-1975, although the phase of active US involvement only lasted from 1964 to 1973), it would have been a Mujahideen victory, but as long as the article considers only the Soviet phase of the war to be war, this is clearly incorrect. Neither the Afghan Army nor the Soviet Union had lost in 1989. For sure, most of the countryside and even parts of Kandahar and Herat were under Mujahideen control, but otherwise all the big cities were controlled by the government. The government in Kabul was pretty safe. The way the Soviet withdrawal was arranged clearly did not indicate defeat. The withdrawal was part of a plan and was conducted gradually in order to give the Afghan Army time to adapt. The USSR also increased aid to the Afghan government in order to make it more able to defend itself. They also conducted several offensives during the withdrawal. Operation Magistral was one of the largest operations of the war, involving 20 000 Soviet troops and 8000 Afghan Army troops, and it managed to clear the road from Gardez to Khost in order to ease the deliveries of supplies to Khost. If the Soviets had been defeated, they would not have carried out such an offensive at the same time as they were withdrawing. They continued to deliever supplies to Najibullah until the August coup. The government's early campaigns after the Soviet withdrawal were also quite successful, surprising the US who expected a soon Mujahideen victory. The Najibullah government was even able to survive for 8 months after the Soviet coup which resulted in a complete stop of Soviet aid.
So I suggest that this midleading claim is changed, as it is clearly incorrect. In 1989, the DRA and the USSR were absolutely not defeated although they had failed to quell the uprising. The Mujahideen victory didn't come before 1992. Stalemate, as the article said before, would be more correct. The Mujahideen could be said to have gained a strategic victory, but by the time this war is said to have ended (1989), it was still very unclear what would happen in the long term. Najibullah remained firmly in power and the Soviets were backing him, refusing to see its buffer zone to anti-Soviet countries like China, Pakistan and Iran disappear. -- Te og kaker ( talk) 18:27, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
This is a clear bias. The Soviets failed to control Afghanistan and suffered heavy losses. This is called victory for the mujahideen Ryuan9iu98 ( talk) 20:55, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
MYTH NUMBER FOUR: The USSR suffered a massive military defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of the mujahedin. This is one of the most persistent myths of Afghan history. It has been regularly trumpeted by every former mujahedin leader, from Osama bin Laden and Taliban commanders to the warlords in the current Afghan Government. It is also accepted unthinkingly as part of the Western narrative of the war, repeated by politicians in Europe and the United States as well as analysts like Zbigniew Brzezinski. [...] The reality is that the Afghan mujahedin did not defeat the Soviets on the battlefield. [...] Just as the mujahedin failed to beat the Soviets, the Soviets did not defeat the mujahedin. The Soviets left Afghanistan when they calculated that the war had become a stalemate and was no longer worth the high price in money, men and international prestige that they were having to pay to keep it going.
You are wrong, the Viet Kung losses are higher and they won the war, the Russians lost 30,000 soldiers and many fighting vehicles even though they are superior militarily compared to the Mujahideen. Imagine that an army that defeated Germany was defeated by some of the peasants with AK-47 machine guns. I think you do not know what victory and defeat are. In a war, in order to achieve victory, you must destroy your enemy to become incapable of fighting. This did not happen in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and even America lost a war because it could not eliminate the Taliban. Uryon988 ( talk) 10:31, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
Also, the Soviets did not lose a battle on a land because it was a guerrilla war, the Communists lost this war, and you cannot rewrite history because you are in love with Stalin Uryon988 ( talk) 10:42, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
I'm sure this has been discussed already, but I'd like to express my opinion, too: the title comes across as subjective and a bit misleading. The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan regime was internationally recognized, and had a seat in the UN. Hence 'Soviet-Afghan War' sounds odd, because Soviets merely offered strong support for an increasingly unpopular but technically legitimate regime. They never attacked Afghanistan as its recognized government had been begging for Soviet help for many months, contrary to what the current title would imply. Wouldn't Soviet war in Afghanistan be a better fit (I selected the title that Afghans (Pushtus, Tajiks) themselves use, cf. Persian wiki: جنگ شوروی در اÙغانستان=Soviet War in Afghanistan). Thoughts? Can we discuss this?-- Potugin ( talk) 20:08, 12 June 2021 (UTC)