MILITARY AND INFORMATION AND PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS OF THE MUJAHIDEEN ON SOVIET TERRITORY DURING THE AFGHAN WAR OF THE USSR (1979–1989)

Abstract

For the first time in Ukrainian historiography, the military and information-psychological operations of the Afghan mujahideen on the territory of the Soviet republics of Central Asia has been examined, as well as their results, their military-political and propaganda influence on the unfolding of the Soviet-Afghan war, internal political processes in the USSR, and international relations in the region and the world at the final stage of the Cold War. Historical sources of various origins indicate that combat operations during the Soviet-Afghan war from 1979 to 1989 periodically took place on its territory. This was part of the mujahideen's tactics and, at the same time, the strategy of the United States and Pakistan, which sought to force Moscow to “pay dearly for Afghanistan”. While such actions were spontaneous until the mid-1980s, in 1986–1987 they became carefully planned, larger in scale, and therefore more effective. This was facilitated by increased financial and military assistance to the Afghan opposition from the US and its allies, closer cooperation between the CIA and the ISI, and coordination of the mujahideen's combat activities with Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence. The military operations of Afghan insurgents on the territory of the Soviet Union can be divided into two types. The first was shelling of the Soviet Central Asian border from the territory of Afghanistan, which was carried out more frequently. The other type consisted of sabotage “raids” on Soviet territory itself. In addition to the military component, these raids also had an informational and psychological component: during such actions, the mujahideen distributed Islamic, anti-Soviet, and other propaganda leaflets, literature, etc. to the territory of the Soviet republics of Central Asia. Such pinpoint operations on Soviet territory, like all other mujahideen combat operations in Afghanistan, could not have a decisive impact on the course of the Afghan war, let alone cause significant damage to the Soviet military machine. It was rather part of the “death by a thousand cuts” tactic, which had repeatedly proven itself during the guerrilla war. Along with the military consequences, the actions of Afghan rebels in the Central Asian borderlands undermined the USSR's authority as an almighty superpower in the eyes of both its ideological opponents in the Cold War and its satellites in the “socialist camp”. In addition, this threatened to increase anti-government sentiment and even centrifugal tendencies in the republics of Central Asia. Although the military and political consequences of the mujahideen's combat and information-psychological operations on the territory of the USSR during the Afghan War of 1979–1989 were minimal, they were one of the factors in the military and political defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and in the Cold War in general.