The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

to the CIA, and his alleged behavior in favor of the United States, all of which pointed to thenecessity of his ousting. This was confirmed by Yasha Semenov, who was next to speak.Yasha put forth a specific military assignment. He listed the license plate numbers ofarmored vehicles and distributed target sites in Kabul for those vehicles to attack. Kurilov’svehicle was in the most “honorable” group, which was tasked with the capture of the ArkPalace.Listening to the instructions, Valery suddenly realized that it all seemed like a baddream. Here they were at an airdrome surrounded by strange foreign mountains, under anunstable tent, their unshaven faces huddled around a faint heater. Most important, ofcourse, was the impossible task that they had been assigned. How could one militarycompany of Army special forces, a group of paratroopers, and two dozen Zenit fighters gaincontrol over the well-guarded Ark Palace in the center of Kabul? They say that twothousand guardsmen loyal to Amin guard the palace. Also to be reckoned with was a closegroup of guards consisting of his relatives, as well as the army brigades based in centralKabul.The plan was as follows: five armored vehicles would break through the gates of thepalace driving at full speed, enter the palace territory, and quickly suppress the defensivepositions before an interpreter would announce via a loudspeaker that Amin’s anti-popularregime had fallen and recommend that the guardsmen lay down their arms and surrender,at which point they would raise their arms and walk out towards their liberators.Valery looked around to see how his comrades had reacted to the instructions. Theywere clearly dismayed. Semenov and Golubev looked sideways. They were obviously veryuncomfortable.693