So why did Moscow do it? Afghanistan Had Long Held Strategic ImportanceĪ political cartoon of Nicholas II and General Obruchev looking over a 'War Map' with 'Russia' on one side, 'England' on the other, and 'Afghanistan' between them beneath the table, having come through a trap door, is 'the Herald's Special Correspondent,' c. The military misadventure would contribute significantly to the USSR’s later collapse and breakup. The war wreaked havoc not only on Afghanistan, but on the Soviet Union, whose economy and national prestige took a severe drubbing. The invasion triggered a brutal, nine-year-long Afghan civil war.īy the time the last Soviet troops pulled out in early 1989, rumbling back across the ironically named “Friendship Bridge,” the conflict had cost the lives of an estimated 1 million civilians and some 125,000 Afghan, Soviet and other combatants. Within days, the KGB, which had infiltrated the Afghan presidential palace, poisoned the president and his ministers, helping launch a Moscow-backed coup to install a new puppet leader, Babrak Karmal. Soon after, it deployed motorized divisions across the border. First, it air-dropped elite troops into principal Afghan cities. On Christmas Eve 1979, the Soviet Union began an invasion of Afghanistan, its Central Asian neighbor to the south.
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