Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 15. februar 2009 / Time Line February 15, 2009
Version 3.514. Februar 2009, 16. Februar 2009
02/15/2009
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No.
272
Edited by Svetlana Savranskaya and Thomas Blanton
Washington D.C., February 15, 2009 - Twenty years ago today, the
commander of the Soviet Limited Contingent in Afghanistan Boris
Gromov crossed the Termez Bridge out of Afghanistan, thus marking
the end of the Soviet war which lasted almost ten years and cost
tens of thousands of Soviet and Afghan lives.
As a tribute and memorial to the late Russian historian, General
Alexander Antonovich Lyakhovsky, the National Security Archive
today posted on the Web (www.nsarchive.org) a series of previously
secret Soviet documents including Politburo and diary notes
published here in English for the first time. The documents suggest
that the Soviet decision to withdraw occurred as early as 1985, but
the process of implementing that decision was excruciatingly slow,
in part because the Soviet-backed Afghan regime was never able to
achieve the necessary domestic support and legitimacy - a key
problem even today for the current U.S. and NATO-supported
government in Kabul.
The Soviet documents show that ending the war in Afghanistan, which
Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev called "the bleeding
wound," was among his highest priorities from the moment he assumed
power in 1985 - a point he made clear to then-Afghan Communist
leader Babrak Karmal in their first conversation on March 14, 1985.
Already in 1985, according to the documents, the Soviet Politburo
was discussing ways of disengaging from Afghanistan, and actually
reached the decision in principle on October 17, 1985.
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