The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

“Any military action will result in full-scale war,” confirmed Varennikov. “Themodest number of troops that we have planned to introduce will be incapable of dealingwith the Afghan reaction, which means that we will have to increase our military presenceto bring in additional forces. According to our estimates, we will have to allocate more than200,000 troops in order to control the situation, which is absolutely unrealistic, given ourcurrent resources.”“But the leadership has a very serious argument,” remarked Akhromeev. “There areconcerns about possible betrayal by Amin. Andropov’s shop is convinced that he is secretlycollaborating with the Americans. It looks as though Amin is living out his last days at thetop positions in the Afghan government, and our comrades in the Central Committee areworried about the transfer of power. Whom would the Afghan army support? Would therebels take advantage of the situation in order to strengthen their positions? You know theposition of the KGB better than I do,” he turned to Ogarkov.“I am aware of it,” he nodded.Pavlovsky waved his hand in frustration. “This means that the KGB got the upperhand here. In Kabul, they tried to convince us that Amin was a CIA agent. But was any proofcited along with this claim? The only argument was that he was the head of an Afghanethnic community during his studies at an American university, as if the Americans wouldrecruit such people automatically, no matter who they are. That’s all there was to it. Ireiterate that I met with Amin many times, spoke with him for many hours, and was firmlyconvinced that this was a person who was loyal to the Soviet Union. He asked the Sovietleadership time and time again to receive him during his tenure as premier and later as the675