The Soviets invade Afghanistan
Act of aggression shatters hopes of USSR–US detente
Christmas Day 1979, and President Jimmy Carter was at Camp David with his family. It was, he noted in his diary, a “relatively lonely” day, the highlight being his daughter Amy’s excitement at her presents, which she had insisted on opening at 5.30am. +P VJG GXGPKPI VJG[ YCVEJGF VJG NO The Black Stallion then, quietly, they went to bed.
Just a few hours later Carter learned that during the night of Christmas Eve, even before Amy had opened her gifts, huge Soviet planes had landed at Kabul airport, airlifting some 8,000 Red Army troops into the capital of the landlocked country. On the Amu Darya river that marked the Soviet Union’s southern border, pontoon bridges were creaking beneath the YGKIJV QH VJG VJ /QVQTK\GF 4KʚG &KXKUKQP heading south towards Kabul. It was, Carter wrote later, an act of “direct aggression by the Soviet armed forces against a freedom-loving people”, and a major step towards the Kremlin’s goal of world domination.
Actually, the Christmas invasion was a bit more complicated than that. Afghanistan had been a Soviet client for years, while the Kabul regime had been pestering Moscow for months to send troops to help them crush tribal rebels. For a long time the Kremlin hesitated. At last, convinced that their puppet president,
*C \WNNCJ #OKP JCF EQORNGVGN[ NQUV EQPVTQN they had decided to act. They would indeed send troops – but Amin himself had to go.
Two days after Christmas, KGB commandos stormed the Tajbeg palace and killed Amin. On 28 December, Radio Kabul announced that the ruling Revolutionary Council had issued an invitation to the Soviet Union for further military assistance, and that the Kremlin had accepted.
But far from restoring order, as the Soviet leadership hoped, the invasion provoked even
GTEGT VTKDCN TGUKUVCPEG +V CNUQ UJCVVGTGF CP[ lingering hopes of detente with the Americans. As Jimmy Carter wrote in his diary, he was “determined to make [the Russians] pay for their unwarranted aggression”. After all, they had almost ruined his Christmas.