The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

was burning our hearts. We simply could not watch it and do nothing about it. But, havingbegun our struggle, we entered a deep, dark forest. And each one of us had to blindly findour own paths. Some eventually made it to a wide, clear road, while some got lost. If weonly knew early on how dark and sometimes impassable that forest would turn out to be.”Even though he resided at a balneological thermal springs mountain resort, Karmalfelt worse day by day. The mineral water with healing properties could not heal the newlyopened wounds of his soul. Karmal listened to the BBC every night and eagerly awaited thenews from Afghanistan. He became more and more depressed.Karmal could not know that Moscow had begun to think of him again, thatKryuchkov’s and Andropov’s operatives were watching his every step, and that soon hisforced inactivity would come to an end.***In the middle of August, the Soviet minister of defense sent his representative toKabul. General I.G. Pavlovsky, deputy defense minister and commander of Soviet groundforces, was accompanied by an impressive group of generals and senior officers who, uponarrival, traveled to different provinces of the country. Their goal was to clarify the situationand evaluate the military capabilities of the Afghan armed forces and the degree of dangerposed by the rebels.Before departing for Afghanistan, General Pavlovsky called the Soviet minister ofdefense, who was on vacation in Sochi, and asked him if there were any plans to begin aSoviet military intervention in Afghanistan. “Under no circumstances,” Ustinov firmlyassured him.Pavlovsky did have experience in military intervention in a sovereign country on his494