The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

external hostile forces to falsify the nature of Soviet assistance to Afghanistan, and toconduct anti-government and anti-Soviet propaganda among the Afghan population. Pleaseemphasize that during March and April of this year, the DRA has already been providedwith twenty-five military helicopters…Please convince H. Amin that the military helicopterswith Afghan crews are capable…of the tasks required to suppress any counterrevolutionaryactions.”Through thick and thin, Amin with renewed enthusiasm continued to put morepressure on the Soviet advisers, who in response proposed a sort of compromise. Thecompromise was to create a large military training center in Afghanistan modeled aftersuch a center built in Cuba. The key to the compromise was that the Cuban center had beenbuilt around a Soviet motor rifle brigade that had deployed to the island. AmbassadorPuzanov, Chief Military Adviser Gorelov, and KGB Representative Ivanov signed the cableaddressed to Moscow that proposed “studying the possibility” of organizing such a center.One should admit that Afghan leaders had serious causes for anxiety in the springand summer of 1979. Despite large-scale measures to strengthen the army, police, andsecurity services, and provide broad economic assistance, the situation in the country wasbecoming not better, but worse. Chief Party Adviser Veselov, who also had not neglectedthe “class-based approach,” reported this to the Central Committee: “The foundation of thecounter-revolution consists of feudal lords and prominent landlords, moneylenders,reactionary clergy, Maoists, and other groups united into a front for national liberation thatis financed and supported by the USA, Saudi Arabia, and China.”This ideological cliché about “feudal lords, reactionary clergy, and Maoists” wouldfor many years dominate the discussion in documents explaining the successes of the417