The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

leaders were convinced that the Soviets would soon be defeated and would cease to existas a unified state, making it possible for Afghanistan to expand its territories at the expenseof the Central Asian Soviet republics.The Germans needed Afghanistan as a platform for the realization of their plans toattack India. To counter the Nazis’ successful intelligence network, Moscow and London—recent rivals—combined their efforts to counter the German presence in Afghanistan.The confrontation of special services in this region continued with the advent of theCold War. In the mid-1950s, Soviet military intelligence sent a group of fifty-six agents whohad been recruited in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to Afghanistan. The group was tasked withconducting covert activities against the United States and its allies in Afghanistan in case ofthe beginning of a new world war. However, as soon as the group settled in Afghanistan, itsdeputy head and its communications specialist immediately turned themselves in andconfessed to espionage to local authorities, compromising the identities of the other groupmembers. The Afghan authorities didn’t appreciate this confession. They were absolutelydisinterested in the nature and origins of the group. Afghans understood that the covertactivities of potential saboteurs were not directed against their regime.Nobody prosecuted the failed agents. There was not one publication relating theirfailed undertaking in the media. Soon they were all imprisoned, and the two traitors foundthemselves sharing cells with those whom they had betrayed. The Soviet Union denied anyconnection with this group, claiming it to be a provocation on behalf of special servicesfrom Western countries. The former group members spent ten years or more in theDehmazang Prison in Kabul. Everyone forgot about them, both Soviet authorities andAfghans. But when a period of détente began, the head of the Counterintelligence Residency220