Ghosts in the Mountains: The Soviet-Afghan War – Part 3

Conflicted: A History Podcast

Zach Cornwell

Education, History, Society & Culture

4.8 • 610 Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2021

⏱️ 122 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As the CIA wages a covert proxy war against the Soviet 40th Army, the Mujahideen are showered with billions of dollars and cutting-edge weaponry. An old animosity between two prominent Mujahideen commanders – Ahmed Shah Massoud and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar - turns into a bitter, deadly rivalry. Meanwhile, Soviet reformers led by Mikhail Gorbachev attempt to extricate the USSR from Afghanistan with a shred of dignity intact. After the Soviet withdrawal, the world turns it back on Afghanistan as a civil war rages between the Mujahideen factions – and the Taliban emerges. SOURCES: Ahmadi-Miller, Enjeela. The Broken Circle: A Memoir of Escaping Afghanistan. 2019. Alexievich, Svetlana. Zinky Boys. 1989. 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. Gall, Sandy. Afghan Napoleon: The Life of Ahmed Shah Massoud. 2021. Grad, Marcela. Massoud: An Intimate Portrait of the Legendary Afghan Leader. 2009. 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. Sands, Chris. Qazizai, Fazelminallah. Night Letters: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Afghan Islamists Who Changed the World. 2019. 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.
0:09.5	Conflicted is a member of the Evergreen Podcast Network, and as always, I'm your host, Zach Cornwell.
0:15.6	You are listening to Part 3 of a multi-part series on the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, which took
0:22.7	place from 1979 to 1989. And now it goes without saying that the ideal way to listen to this series,
0:29.3	or any series, for that matter, is in order. So if you haven't listened to Part 1 and 2 yet,
0:35.0	please go do that. That said, I realize that it's been a few weeks since the last episode dropped, so
0:40.3	let's refresh our memories on what we've covered so far.
0:43.8	In part 1, we talked about how the Soviets got involved in Afghanistan in the first place.
0:48.8	We discussed how the dynamics of the Cold War made Afghanistan a hotspot on the geopolitical chessboard. We learned about
0:55.6	the Afghan communists who took over the government in 1978 and how the reforms that they tried
1:00.6	to implement absolutely infuriated the country's conservative Muslim majority, which in turn
1:06.9	prompted the rise of a guerrilla insurgency, the Mujahideen.
1:16.3	And things got so bad, so fast that the Soviet Union felt it had to invade to stabilize the situation on its southern border.
1:18.5	In part two, we spent the majority of our time on the ground in Afghanistan, trying to understand
1:23.3	what the war was like for the people who experienced it firsthand.
1:27.0	The civilian refugees, the Soviet soldiers in the 40th Army, the conscripts, the Mujahadine,
1:32.4	all that good stuff.
1:34.1	In part two was basically the journalist episode, for lack of a better label.
1:38.3	If you'll recall, we spent a lot of time with Jan Goodwin,
1:41.5	the executive editor of Ladies Home Journal, who snuck into Afghanistan to
1:45.2	travel with the Mujahideen guerrillas and report on the war. Through Jan's eyes, we came to
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