In late December 1979, the Soviet Union launched an invasion of Afghanistan, deploying troops to support the Afghan communist government in its conflict against anti-communist Muslim guerrillas during the Afghan War (1978–1992).
This intervention marked the beginning of a prolonged and costly conflict, with Soviet forces remaining in the country until mid-February 1989.
The war soon reached a stalemate. Over 100,000 Soviet troops maintained control over urban centers, major towns, and key garrisons, while the mujahideen operated freely in the rural countryside.
Athough employing various strategies to suppress the insurgency, including large-scale assaults, the Soviets were unable to decisively defeat the guerrillas.
A militant in training scrabbles through an obstacle course. The 1979 Soviet invasion was widely condemned at the United Nations and helped fuel one of the most expensive CIA operations in history.
In an effort to weaken their opposition, the Soviets targeted civilian populations, bombing and depopulating rural areas.
These tactics triggered a humanitarian crisis, with millions fleeing their homes. By 1982, approximately 2.8 million Afghans had sought refuge in Pakistan, and another 1.5 million had crossed into Iran.
The mujahideen, aided by the United States’ supply of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, managed to counter Soviet air superiority, further prolonging the conflict.
Members of the anti-Soviet “mujahedin,” as the jihadist fighters opposing the Soviets became known, with stacks of weaponry. Reportedly beginning in 1979, the CIA began secretly funding the Muslim militant groups that would spend the next decade fighting against the Soviets.
As the war dragged on, it became a severe strain on the Soviet Union, which was already grappling with internal challenges by the late 1980s.
The conflict claimed the lives of around 15,000 Soviet troops and left many more wounded. Athough their efforts, the Soviets failed to establish a stable, pro-communist regime in Afghanistan.
In 1988, under mounting pressure, the Soviet Union signed an accord with the United States, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, agreeing to withdraw its forces. This withdrawal was completed on February 15, 1989, leaving Afghanistan to revert to a nonaligned status.
U.S. President Ronald Reagan meeting with Afghan mujahedin leaders in 1983. Soon the United States, together with Saudi Arabia, was funneling hundreds of millions of dollars each year to anti-Soviet militants in Afghanistan in an effort to “bleed” the Soviet Union.
The war left a profound and lasting impact on Afghanistan, reshaping its society and introducing a pervasive culture of guns, drugs, and terrorism.
Traditional power structures were dismantled, giving way to the rise of powerful Mujahideen militias.
The militarization transformed the society in the country, leading to heavily armed police, private bodyguards, and openly armed civil defense groups becoming the norm in Afghanistan both during the war and decades thereafter.
A mujahedin fighter scans the sky after an air strike.
The war also altered the ethnic balance of power in the country.
While Pashtuns were historically politically dominant since the modern foundation of the Durrani Empire in 1747, many of the well-organized pro-Mujahideen or pro-government groups consisted of Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras.
With Pashtuns increasingly politically fragmented, their influence on the state was challenged.
A photographer snaps a portrait of mujahedin. Beginning in 1985, American journalists began training Afghans in visual reporting.
Scholars Rafael Reuveny and Aseem Prakash argue that the Soviet-Afghan War played a significant role in the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union.
They highlight how the conflict damaged the reputation of the Red Army as an unbeatable force, eroded the legitimacy of the Soviet regime, and spurred the emergence of new political dynamics.
However, the financial burden of the war was relatively modest when compared to the Soviet Union’s other obligations.
The CIA estimated in 1987 that the war accounted for only about 2.5% of the USSR’s annual military expenditures.
The Afghan Media Resource Center (AMRC) handed out some 50 cameras to teams embedded with mujahedin groups to document what had become a “hidden” war because of the obstacles to foreign reporting. The photographs in this gallery are some of the 94,000 images made during the project.
Historian Sergey Radchenko supports this view, noting that there is no evidence to suggest the war caused financial insolvency for the Soviet Union.
Between 1984 and 1987, the USSR spent approximately $7.5 billion on the conflict—a minor figure when weighed against its annual military budget of roughly $128 billion.
The eventual decision to withdraw from Afghanistan stemmed from a combination of political considerations rather than purely economic ones.
Historians Stephen Kotkin and Vladislav Zubok, in their studies on the Soviet Union’s collapse, emphasize domestic factors as the primary drivers of its downfall, mentioning the Afghanistan war only briefly as a contributing factor.
A Soviet field base.
Mujahedin during a meeting in Parwan Province.
A Soviet helicopter thunders low over a village.
A Soviet-made missile being fired by the mujahedin. Most of the CIA-funded weapons supplied to the Islamic militants were made in the U.S.S.R.
Mujahedin fighters firing a recoilless rifle. A U.S. official recalled that the CIA bought such weapons from various sources, including a corrupt unit of the Soviet Army in Afghanistan.
Money changers in Peshawar.
Soviet weaponry depicted on a carpet woven by Afghan refugees.
An air strike shatters an Afghan village. Much of the fighting was a brutal back-and-forth with mujahedin ambushes on Soviet convoys followed by Soviet aircraft wiping out villages near the sites of the attacks.
A mujahedin fighter holds the remains of a parachute bomb. The design allows ground-attack jets to drop bombs at low altitude without being caught up by the explosion.
Dummies of Soviet soldiers. The sign reads, “The sisters of Shahr-e Naw” — a neighborhood in Kabul — “are crying, while the sisters of communists are prettying up their eyes.”
A rare picture of Soviet soldiers with Afghan men. One soldier bitterly recalled being told that “we were helping the Afghan people to end feudalism and build a wonderful socialist society.”
A defaced communist mural.
Alcohol seized by a mujahedin group, probably before being destroyed.
A fighter at a heavy machine gun. Some of the mujahedin groups financed by the CIA were radical Islamists that would later form groups designated as “terrorist organizations.” Although Osama bin Laden fought against the Soviets, it is disputed whether he ever received U.S. assistance.
A “butterfly mine” lying in wait for a victim. Millions of the cellphone-sized devices were dropped from Soviet aircraft across Afghanistan. The jungle-colored mines were easily spotted and avoided by fighters, but many injured curious children.
Soviet soldiers prod for land mines on a road in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Province. One troop recalled, “There was no such thing as a peaceful population, they were all guerrilla fighters.”
An Afghan man wielding an Italian-made antitank mine.
A captured identity card for a Soviet soldier named Ivan Zavarzin.
A soldier who had defected from the Soviet Army and converted to Islam. By the end of the war, some 200 Soviet troops who had deserted or been captured remained behind in Afghanistan, where several still live today.
Soviet soldiers on patrol. Accusations of atrocities during the war further tarnished the Soviet Union’s image. After catching Afghan children torturing wounded comrades, one soldier admitted rounding up several women and children, pouring kerosene on them, and burning them alive.
(Photo credit: Afghan Media Resource Center via RFE/RL).