Ghosts in the Mountains: The Soviet-Afghan War – Part 2

Conflicted: A History Podcast

Zach Cornwell

Education, History, Society & Culture

4.8 • 610 Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2021

⏱️ 106 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Soviet 40th Army invaded Afghanistan in the closing days of 1979. They would not leave for another nine years. Exhausted and frustrated by their inability to decisively crush the elusive freedom fighters in the mountains – the Mujahideen – the Soviets turn to atrocity and criminal violence to achieve their objectives. Meanwhile, adrenaline-seeking journalists and idealistic Western reporters illegally sneak into the war zone to uncover the truth behind the war. SOURCES: Ahmadi-Miller, Enjeela. The Broken Circle: A Memoir of Escaping Afghanistan. 2019. Ansari, Mir Tamim. Games Without Rules: The Often-Interrupted History of Afghanistan. 2012. Barfield, Thomas. Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History. 2010. Borovik, Artyom. The Hidden War. 1990. Braithewaite, Rodric. Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979-1989. 2011. Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to 2001. 2004. Dobbs, Michael. Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire. 1997. Feifer, Gregory. The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan. 2009. Fremont-Barnes, Gregory. The Soviet-Afghan War, 1979-89. 2012. Galeotti, Mark. Storm-333: KGB and Spetsnaz Seize Kabul. 2021. Goodwin, Jan. Caught in the Crossfire. 1987. Grau, Lester W. The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics In Afghanistan. 1996. Hosdon, Peregrine. Under a Sickle Moon: A Journey Through Afghanistan. 1986. Kalinovsky, Artemy. A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan. 2011. Kaplan, Robert D. Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 2001. Rosen, Ethan. The Bear, The Dragon, & the AK-47. 2017. Tanner, Stephen. Afghanistan: A Military History of Afghanistan from Alexander the Great to the War Against the Taliban. 2009. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Conflicted, the history podcast where we talk about the struggles that shaped us,
0:05.4	the tough questions that they pose, and why we should care about any of it.
0:09.3	Conflicted is a member of the Evergreen Podcast Network, and as always, I'm your host, Zach Cornwell.
0:15.3	You are listening to Part 2 of a multi-part series on the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, which took
0:22.3	place from 1979 to 1989.
0:25.4	Now, if you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, it would probably be a good idea to go ahead and
0:29.1	do that before diving into this one.
0:31.0	But hey, you're an adult.
0:31.9	If you want to eat Flaming Hot Cheetos for breakfast or listen to History Podcast in a random
0:35.9	order, that is your decision, and I respect
0:38.5	it. But just in case you need a refresher on what the hell happened last time, let's take a quick
0:43.5	second to run through the highlight reel. When we last left off, Soviet tanks were rumbling
0:48.3	into the Afghan capital of Kabul, just a few days after Christmas, 1979. The brutal communist leader of Afghanistan, Hafizullah Amin, was dead.
0:58.2	An elite team of Soviet special forces, the infamous Spetsnaz, had murdered Amin in the night.
1:04.2	And the truth was, the assassination had been a long time coming.
1:07.7	Amin may have been a fellow Marxist, but he was a loose cannon, and the Kremlin had grown
1:11.7	tired of his incompetent and bloodthirsty style. Since their takeover of Afghanistan's government in
1:17.4	1978, Amin and his fellow homegrown communists had managed to provoke a full-scale insurgency in
1:23.8	the countryside, mainly by enraging the rural, conservative Islamic majority with socialist
1:29.4	reforms at the point of a gun. As many as 50,000 Afghans were murdered by Amin's government in an
1:36.1	effort to make the changes stick. But to no avail. Land reform, equal rights for women,
1:41.6	and compulsory atheist education programs had given rise to
	...

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