A KGB defector tells how Afghanistan became Brezhnev's Viet Nam
Vladimir Kuzichkin, 35, a former KGB major whose presence in Britain was announced by the British government last month, has given an extraordinary account of Soviet involvement in Afghanistan—perhaps the greatest blot on Brezhnev's career—as seen by the KGB. Kuzichkin, who defected to the British last June, had served under cover in Iran for five years. He was in the ultrasecret "Directorate S, "which controls "illegals," Soviet-born agents abroad. In an exclusive interview in London last week with TIME's Frank Melville, Kuzichkin said: 1) Brezhnev himself overruled repeated advice from Yuri Andropov's KGB not to turn Afghanistan into a Soviet satellite, 2) Afghan President Babrak Karmal is a KGB agent of long standing, 3) Karmal's predecessor was murdered in his palace by a specially trained, KGB-led Soviet assault group. Kuzichkin's account:
Senior KGB officers rarely let their hair down about politics. But Afghanistan has exasperated many.
As a former boss [a KGB general] put it late one night: "Afghanistan is our Viet Nam. Look at what has happened. We began by simply backing a friendly regime; slowly we got more deeply involved; then we started manipulating the regime—sometimes using desperate measures—and now? Now we are bogged down in a war we cannot win and cannot abandon. It's ridiculous. A mess. And but for Brezhnev and company we would never have got into it in the first place." The general had said what many of us involved with Afghanistan—in the KGB, the army and outside—felt but would not stick our necks out to say.
It all began innocently enough with a lucky accident. Over the past 50 years we had never had any serious problems with the Afghan kings. Then, in 1973, [Mohammed] Daoud overthrew the monarchy with the help of the leftists. Although the leftist officers had been trained in the Soviet Union, we had not encouraged them to overthrow the King. Nonetheless, the reaction in the Soviet leadership was that this change was for the good.
Our relations with Daoud were never very good. He was keen to keep open his links with the West. He did not wish to become too closely involved with us. Those of us who knew Afghanistan were convinced no harm would come of that. The Afghans would slaughter each other for generations, regardless of whether they claimed to be Communists.
It was inconceivable to us that Afghanistan could do any credit to the Soviet Union, let alone "Communism." The Afghans, we told each other, should be left to stew in their own juice. We could never control them, but neither could anyone else. We had our first taste of things to come in 1978. Daoud turned against the Communists who had helped him to power. Not only did he arrest the leaders of the Afghan Communist party, but he planned to execute them. The Afghan Communists were in a desperate position. They consulted the Soviet embassy in Kabul. Moscow quickly confirmed that we would support their proposed coup against Daoud. Just before it was too late, the Communist leaders ordered the coup—in fact, from their prison cells.