In response to the Soviet takeover, numerous states including the USA, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan provided military assistance to the Afghan resistance groups collectively known as the Mujahidin. My research focuses on the response of Margaret Thatcher and her government to the crisis in Afghanistan, and Britain’s own decision to carry out covert action in aid of the anti-Soviet rebels in that country. Some of the declassified evidence from the UK National Archives can be found in the declassified archival evidence from the Prime Minister’s Office
In hindsight – following not only 9/11 but NATO’s protracted and bloody embroilment in the war against the Taliban – the collective decision by Western states and other foes of the USSR to aid the mujahidin has been treated by some writers as an example of ‘blowback’. Aside from avoiding simplistic links such a thesis draws between the Afghan insurgents of the 1980s and those of today, we should also bear in mind that the governments concerned had no means of predicting that a decade beginning with apparent Soviet adventurism, would end with a series of democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe, and the USSR’s eventual collapse.
US, British, French, Pakistani and other officials did not have a close insight into the processes of Soviet decision-making, and could only guess at the intentions of the USSR’s leader Leonid Brezhnev and his peers in the Politburo. My analysis of this crisis from the British perspective sought to treat the Thatcher government’s response in its strategic context, addressing how it interpreted Moscow’s objectives in Afghanistan, and why it decided to extend covert aid to the Mujahidin.
Thatcher assumed office in May 1979, with a reputation for being firmly anti-Soviet - the nickname ‘The Iron Lady’ was first coined in an article in the Soviet military newspaper Red Star, and was intended as an insult. In her first speech on foreign affairs as Leader of the Opposition at Kensington Town Hall 16 January 1976 she not only condemned the USSR’s military expansionism and its involvement in Third World conflicts such as Angola, but castigated the Labour government for its cuts in defence expenditure. At this point in her political career, Thatcher saw détente as a sham which enabled the Soviet bloc to wage the Cold War by other means, and professed in her memoirs that the intervention in Afghanistan came as no surprise.
The declassified archival evidence from the Prime Minister’s Office, the Cabinet Office, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) sheds important light on how the British interpreted the reasons behind Soviet actions in Afghanistan. There was a clear distinction drawn between interventions in the USSR’s sphere in Eastern Europe, such as the suppressions of the Hungarian revolution in 1956 and the ‘Prague Spring’ in 1968, which the UK considered to be deplorable but not destabilising, and a military takeover of a non-aligned neighbouring state, which was deemed by the UK to be both.
It is however striking to note that the nightmare scenario of the USSR seeking to expand Southwards – into Iran and Pakistan – in order to invade the Persian Gulf, was not regarded as a serious prospect in Whitehall. The common conclusion was that intervention was a last resort to save the Afghan Communist regime in Kabul from being overthrown by the Mujahidin. This judgment was subsequently confirmed by the limited declassification of the Russian archives after the USSR’s collapse.
British officials did, however, consider it possible that Moscow might subsequently exploit opportunities to destabilise fragile South Asian states to expand their influence within them. This prospect was deemed likely not just with Pakistan, with the internal challenges to General Zia ul-Haq’s military regime, but also the ongoing revolution in Iran and the potential risk that it could be hijacked by the Tudeh (the Iranian Communist Party).
It is also significant that the decision to support anti-Soviet and anti-Communist resistance was made by Prime Minister Thatcher, the Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington and the Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong shortly after the intervention, in mid-to-late January 1980. Any overt military action to counter the USSR was out of the question, not just because of the risks of escalation, but the severe limitations on the UK’s military capabilities which made a British version of the Carter Doctrine a pipe dream.
Furthermore, Britain’s dire economic situation was such that even the MoD’s budget was subject to cuts, and the 1981 Defence Review reduced the UK’s capacity for global power projection even further. The Conservative government’s conclusions here were that focus of the British armed forces should be on Europe and the risks of conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact; a judgment that at the time was reinforced by the Solidarity crisis in Poland in 1980-1981.
Covert action therefore became the default response, and this involved not only assistance to publicise Afghan resistance to the Soviet interlopers, but also initial contacts with Mujahidin groups to provide more practical paramilitary support. It is here that I ran into difficulties with my research. The declassified evidence was insufficient to trace a link between the decision to provide aid to the rebels, and the process by which the British identified their key Mujahidin partner, the Tajik commander Ahmed Shah Massoud. I suspect that much of this evidence still remains classified in the Secret Intelligence Service’s archive.
What was however evident was that the FCO struggled during the first year of the USSR’s intervention to develop their awareness of the situation on the ground. Which Mujahidin factions were involved in the fight against the Soviets? How effective and powerful were they? Were their reports of successful ambushes and battles against the USSR’s 40th Army and Afghan government sources accurate? Or were they simply propaganda boasts made by armchair warriors who were better at lobbying foreign governments for aid than they were at waging guerrilla operations in the field?
A further point emerging from declassified and published government papers was a sense that it was not only sound politics, in the words of HM High Commissioner in New Delhi, to “demonstrate to the Russians that invasions do not pay”, but that it was morally right to help the Afghan rebels fight for their freedom. The Deputy Head of the FCO’s Planning Staff noted in November 1980 that acquaintances of his who were of left-wing persuasion – and by no means Thatcher’s supporters – “say that they darn well hope we are aiding the Resistance’ and that ‘it would be shameful if we were not”. Post-9/11 hindsight blinds us to the fact that at the time the public perception in the West was that the Mujahidin had justice on its side, and this sentiment was very much reflected in popular film franchises of the 1980s.
My research on Afghanistan has highlighted future lines of inquiry, notably as to whether Britain’s support for Massoud caused frictions with the USA and Pakistan (who backed the Tajik commander’s main enemy in the resistance, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar), and as to whether what thought – if any – was given to the post-war order as the conflict raged over the decade which followed the USSR’s intervention. Hopefully, future archival disclosures will enable scholars to address and answer these questions.
This piece is part of a series of blogs produced by scholars from the School of Security Studies Military and Political History research theme.