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Along the road the column was stopped at an Afghan checkpoint. Afghan troops gathered round to find out what was happening. Suddenly the flaps of the front vehicle went up and the Afghans were machine-gunned to the ground. The column rolled on. When it reached the palace, the special troops attacked from three sides, while Colonel Bayerenov (the head of the KGB's terrorist-training school) led the assault on the palace. The attack got off to a good start. It would have been even better had the leading armored vehicle not got caught up in the palace gates. Moscow wanted no Afghans left to tell the tale of what had happened in the palace. No prisoners were to be taken. Anybody leaving the building was to be shot on sight. Amin was found drinking in a bar on the top floor of the palace. He was shot without question. So was the exceedingly beautiful young woman with him. The Soviet objective had been achieved. But the plan was not without its weaknesses. No one had expected Amin's bodyguard to put up such ferocious resistance within the palace. Resistance was so stiff that Colonel Bayerenov stepped out of the door to call for reinforcements. He had forgotten about the orders to the troops outside and was shot.
Anyway, Amin was now dead. Earlier, Karmal had been located in Europe and brought to Moscow. He agreed to be the President of Afghanistan and to invite Soviet troops in to protect his regime. Even before that announcement was made, tens of thousands of our ground troops were moving into Afghanistan.
The Western press attributed several motives to Moscow. Some said we were worried about the impact on Soviet Muslims that an upsurge of Islamic fundamentalism in Iran and Afghanistan could have. Others said that we insisted on having "our own man" or that we were inflamed by the terrible deaths that Afghan insurgents were inflicting on Soviet advisers. There is something in these interpretations. But they miss the real point.
What moved the Politburo was the thought that the Muslim revolution in Afghanistan could succeed and that, as a result, the Soviet Union would actually be thrown out of Afghanistan. The repercussions of such a blow to our prestige would be unpredictable. The Soviet Union could not run such a risk. The Politburo was determined to show that the Soviet Union would not be pushed about.
Now the military came to the fore. The army had not been happy about the way our military involvement in Afghanistan had been handled. Some had argued that troops, not advisers, should have been sent in in 1978, before things got out of hand. But in December 1979, the general staff felt that 80,000 or so Soviet troops could get the situation under control.
There was now a new Afghan leader, a KGB agent at that, and substantial Soviet support. The Afghan army, we believed, would go over to the offensive. The insurgents themselves would be reluctant to take on such odds. Soviet troops were just supposed to provide the initial stiffener.