Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 60 - Soviet Afghan War 6: Taking Your Ball and Going Home

Episode Date: July 22, 2019

On part 6 the Soviet Union has to figure out how to pull their army out of Afghanistan while the entire country collapses around them while new journalistic freedoms show everyday Soviet citizens the horrors of war for the first time. Support the show and get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Buy a shirt: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store Buy Joe's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Citizen-Earth-Galaxy-Fire-Book-ebook/dp/B07NSMFSHN/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1563803263&sr=8-1

Hello and welcome to yet another episode of Lions Led by Donkeys. I'm Joe. With me is Nick. Unpredictable. And we are at part six of the Soviet-Afghan war. That's crazy. God.

We're almost to the end, I promise. Almost. Homestretch. So, we left you last week. The Soviet Union was looking for a way out of Afghanistan and the only way they found was to prop up the teetering Afghan government.

Now being led by the bloodthirsty Mohammad Najibullah. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union, and he had a ton of reforms in mind that he worried simply would not work if Soviet soldiers were still trapped in Afghanistan. For instance, Gorbachev allowed a certain amount of freedom of the press. As most people have heard uh before this there absolutely was no free press in the soviet union he was looking to change that and that would have um some pretty serious backlash i mean that's pretty dope uh there was a magazine called ogonyak uh probably butchering that uh but it's something of like a Soviet version of Life magazine. Okay.

Began publishing terrifying firsthand accounts of soldiers lives in Afghanistan, as well as showing regular citizens for the first time, the horrible conditions that their loved ones are forced to live in thousands of miles away from home. He allowed that. It was part of his reforms. That's actually kind of cool. I mean, solid on Gorbachev's part also it definitely had a huge amount to do by the soviet union fell apart

um you know when you think everybody has it as bad as you you're probably like i'll suck it up and everything will be fine but when you realize like a lot of people have it much better than you, you're like, man, this fucking sucks. And this gradual allowance of freedom called Pastroika and Glasnost had a pretty heavy hand in the end of the Soviet Union. But there's no massive anti-war movement in the Soviet Union like there was in the US during the Vietnam War. But people are still getting pissed.

Whether they intended to or not, the Soviets tend to deploy far more soldiers from the satellite republics rather than Russia itself. The growing number of returning wounded soldiers began to galvanize nationalist sentiments within these areas, further stressing the now incredibly fragile soviet union um one thing that um i mean we're not exactly talking about the fall of soviet union in the series but it's definitely a character in the series um one of the things that kept a lot of these republics in line was the idea that the soviet army was was absolutely unbeatable if they had any ideas uh the red army is going to come storming through and like you know dissent was pointless but then they realized like army's fucking falling

apart um so like maybe the army isn't the strong like it's it was the ties that bound the soviet union together everybody was serving hypothetically alongside one another, everybody working towards one goal. And this is really the first time in the history of the Soviet Union that that was stressed. Obviously, during World War II, that was kind of like the binding moment

of Soviet society because it came very close to falling apart. And this is the first time that it's been tested since then uh and it didn't go quite so well um gorbachev gave his military leaders two years to make some kind of progress in afghanistan and he took away any kind of restrictions as far as like troop numbers or weapons they could bring into the country on a deadline sucks yeah well it was like both working on a deadline,

but also they were giving a blank check. think of this as the Soviet version of the search. It worked about as well. all right. Uh, kind of a spoiler alert. It didn't go well. Um,

but so Gorbachev also began to pressure Najibola on the political side of the house, because I mean, all these, these victories would mean nothing if the Afghan people didn't have a functioning government. We're going to talk about that later. We're going to talk

about the military side of things first. Now, with the military leaders being given a blank check, they decided to launch one of the largest operations of the entire war in 1997. It's called Operation Magistral. Not that cool. It might mean something cool in Russian. It's called Operation Magistral. Not that cool. Not cool at all. It might mean something

cool in Russian. So if anybody speaks Russian, let us know. Let us know. Hopefully it's cool. So it was an effort to break the siege of the city of Kost. The city of Kost had been under one siege or another since around 1981. This forced the Soviets to supply

theirs and the Afghan soldiers via helicopter, which became a bit more difficult now around 1981. This forced the Soviets to supply theirs and the Afghan soldiers via helicopter, which became a bit more difficult now that Stingers were in the battlefield. Stinging them. Not only was it hard to operate in the area, but it's hard to prop up a government when the government can't even control a city.

And that's supposed to be the strong point. Like, well, the Mujahideen control the rural areas, but control the cities. They didn't. So they wanted to try to help them. Before the Soviets turned to military operations, however, they let the Afghan government attempt to win over locals.

It was the Jadran tribe that controlled the area. This is part of the new plan. Did you say Zad or? Jad. Jad, okay. Jadran, yeah. I heard Chad as well. The Chad tribe.

Yeah, they just wear backward hats. Backwards hats and frosted tips and shit. Why is everybody wearing monster hats? This is fucking stupid. Fuck, all these walls have punch holes in it. God damn it, mom. Everybody's listening to Nickelback and Blink-182.

I feel like I stopped describing a Chad and started describing the early 2000s in my high school, which I guess they're both interchangeable. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're pretty close in similarity. So the Soviets finally kind of accepted this was you

know what is now known as hearts and minds or counterinsurgency it was a competition uh between the kabul government and the mujahideen over the the people um and the people who could win over the most or the government form they can remember most people wins the war unfortunately it took them almost eight years to fucking figure this out um but this is what they're trying to do is um so they attempted to like win over the jadran tribe with piles of food supplies fuel um like just whatever they could give them i just see a shitty pile like here's your food you know it probably wasn't a lot because like they didn't have a ton of supplies in the country in the first place. It was kind of like a pyramid scheme.

Well, I imagine logistics. It's a reverse one. Like you said, logistics were shit. They were really bad. So I can only imagine that they were for the civilians. Like, here's a bag of what do we got? Rat fucked MREs. I got the school pocket knife.

You want some dip? So what happened was is actually a lot what happens to this day. The Soviets would pump literally tons of supplies into Afghanistan with very little oversight. And they would give them to area commanders. Area commanders would give them

to the Afghan government. Normally they would give them to whatever their corresponding rank was, like a general or whatever um and then that would start a chain of rat fucking from the very top right they would take what they wanted and then they'd pass it down to the next sub commander who'd take what they wanted pass it on the next sub commander and they'd go down i imagine they probably had an overrated mre as we do. I don't know. If it's anything like the Soviet soldiers were eating, it was like sleep for dinner. Yeah.

They just opened the MRE. Oh, cool. Sleep. It's an empty paper bag. Yeah. They didn't have to shit in it. Yeah. And by the time it got down to the lowest level,

it was virtually nothing. Like a Doritos bag when you open it. Yeah. You could echo in that bitch. Hello, hello. Fuck. That's what they were trying to do to win over this tribe. Also, they

handed over massive amounts of Afghanis, the local currency, which you'll find out means a whole lot of nothing very shortly. How come everything with money in this episode, the whole series, means nothing? I think so.

I can't speak for Soviet culture, Soviet economics. I just don't know about them. But I know from what my understanding of how the Afghan government was ran was that nobody had any idea what they were doing. It seems like. The Minister of Economics and Najibullah himself had real no education on how to run any of this.

And the Soviets weren't really helping them on that front. They were just trying to build this military. So we have to get a functioning economy. The Soviets are like, just shut the fuck up and take our money. We'll figure this out later. And they were just kind of kicking the can down the road. I mean, Afghanistan has a ton of mineral wealth and natural gas and stuff. Yeah. out later and that was they were just kind of like kicking the can down the road i mean afghanistan has a ton of mineral wealth and natural gas and stuff yeah um and they were shipping a ton of it

to the soviet union because right across the border and the soviet union is giving them tons and tons of money um that will change which we'll talk about in a little bit um so the while these talks were going at the tribe that the tribe kept showing up like, yes, yes, we'll be your friend. This stuff's great. But what they're actually doing was simply buying time. Oh, yes. They had never had any intention on joining the government side or even being friends with them. They did intend on taking their sweet new gifts, though.

The Soviets fast pivot towards appeasing the locals. You have to remember, it came after years and years of murder, oppression, and war crimes. So horrible that some people have actually argued they committed genocide in Afghanistan. So this like sudden face turn, it looked like some smiles and bags of rice and shit, isn't going to change anybody's mind. So it makes you wonder why was the tribe buying time? Well, the Mujahideen were digging in, and they dug the fuck in.

They dug in at the mouth of the Satyukandav Pass, which was the only way through the mountains between Gardez and Kos, also the only way the Soviets were going to come from. The rebels placed three kilometers of mines and explosive devices. They also placed anti-aircraft guns at the highest points of the valley.

This was to shoot down Soviet aircraft as well as shoot down on Soviet soldiers. It turned the area effectively into an entire valley-sized kill zone. The Mujahideen also had several BM-12 multiple rocket launcher systems, kind of like the Soviet Katyushas from World War II, just slightly different. Sorry, that was the Soviet Stalin's organs from World War II.

Oh, yes, yes. Katyushas are rather newer. So our boy Haqqani, who's the Mujahideen commander in the area, said it was, quote, an unassailable bastion on which the Russians will break their teeth. He was not entirely wrong. The Soviets deployed nearly 30,000 men to break the siege. The problem was absolutely nobody knew where the hell the Mujahideen were dug in. Remember, they're not using satellite imagery imagery they're not flying spy craft over they're not really doing any recon flights because they want to get shot down um so the soviets did something that in comparison to the

rest of the stuff we have been talking about in the last eight hours um was actually fucking clever. Oh, they did something good? Yes. A broken-ass clock is right twice a day or whatever. The Soviets finally found a way to be like, well done. Well done. So they flew aircraft over the valley and chucked

out dozens of fake paratroopers directly into the valley. They're effectively mannequins wearing Soviet uniforms with parachutes on them. I remember playing with those toys when I was a child where you could just throw them up in the air and they'd come back down. Yeah, those were really fun.

Yeah, they did that except they were person-sized and also with an entire airlift wing. When the Mujahideen saw these paratroopers, they thought the shit was on and started lighting them up. It's time for action. So they opened fire from their concealed positions. That was when scout aircraft,

also finally employed here, immediately relayed their coordinates back to firing lines for waiting artillery, helicopters, and jets. So knowing the Mujahideen would move their positions almost immediately after they engaged those paratroopers especially after finding out they weren't fucking real uh the soviets wasted no time and began firing within minutes um this started a four hour long barrage into the valley just fucking turning the whole thing into the surface of the moon

now if you've been listening to our podcast long enough to remember when we talked about the battle of the psalm over a year ago now um the sir douglas haig episode this had a virtually the same effect it did nothing um the only thing is solid yeah and the only thing it did is the mujahideen moved um because remember they've they've been moving in caves and under rocks and things like that um they've they're very well known for digging tunnel systems thanks to osama bin laden um so they just retreated for a bit and waited for it to be over um the soviets just figured they would have won they're like who would have just walk into the valley? Yeah, that's kind of what they did.

Yeah. Um, a motor, a motorized rifle regiment stormed into the valley and was immediately bogged down by enemy fire. Oh, fucking regiment. Man, you thought, uh, according to the book, the bear went over the mountain regimental commanders. Get it out. Go ahead. Get went over the mountain regimental commanders get it out the bear went over the mountain that sounds like a child's fucking

well it's a play on the fact that the soviets are always envisioned as bear not that kind of bear but like an actual bear yeah an actual bear actual motorized bears motorized bear regiment which would be pretty cool probably wouldn't fit in their APCs though that would just be like Motorized bears. Yeah, motorized bear regiment, which would be pretty cool.

Probably wouldn't fit in their APCs, though. That would just be like a pickup truck full of bears. Or mounted bicyclist bears, because they already taught them how to ride unicycles. Now that's just sad. So according to the book, The Bear Went Over the Mountain, regimental commanders couldn't figure out what to do once they were actually inside the valley

because nobody told them. They just kind of sat there like, all right, fuck, we're in the valley. What now? Why did nobody plan further than that? That's fucking awesome. And I know we have talked about that before where everything is top-heavy.

Their communication sucks. Their communication's terrible, but even if it was good like they would still await orders. They're like okay we're in the valley what now? And then you know they're playing the game of telephone all the way back to some fuckhead in Kos or Gardez.

It just comes back down. Yes. Okay. Keep pushing. Keep pushing to where? Yeah. And that's pretty much what happened. They just kind of sat there. It goes on to state that many commanders became literally paralyzed with fear when they saw what they had been deployed against.

Because remember, they had been digging in for weeks, and the barrage did nothing. And just because this is our show, you know it gets worse. The divisional commander made a fatal calculation. You see, throughout the war, the Soviets had a bad supply problem, which we have talked about at length, from everything from fuel to ammunition.

Soldiers would only get ammunition under strict limits because, as we pointed out, everybody knew the soldiers would go sell it. So that meant commanders had to make calculations based on how long fallout yeah kind of uh except i think fallout was still more generous um yes so the commander who was not at the battlefield mind you and probably not fought a battle at all um had to make a calculation

based on how long they thought the battle would go on go on for and how much the soldiers would shoot. And then they would give out how much ammo they thought the soldiers would need for that hypothetical battle. So this is the projected amount of rounds I think you'll fire. You should also know, and I'm sure many people do,

that Soviet infantry training did not stress marksmanship. It stressed an overwhelming fire superiority. So if you watch clips of them operating in Afghanistan, you see virtually every engagement they're in. People are literally just hosing their weapons out in full automatic. But that notion apparently escaped their own commanders. As you can imagine,

most commanders thought their well-trained soldiers of the glorious Soviet army would easily steamroll these simple rebels. Yes. This commander in particular thought so highly of his soldiers, he only issued them about half of the ammunition they would need for the battle.

In reality, it's actually probably because he just sold it too because remember like this the the foot soldiers aren't the only ones being corrupt and selling everything their commanders are doing the same thing so there's a good chance he sold that shit off either way it ended up being a bunch of soldiers running out of ammo and hiding behind rocks until the mujahideen pretty much just walked up and shot them in the face. Oh, God. Yeah. The overall commander of the attack, General Boris Gromov, quickly deployed Afghan commandos

and an entire airborne battalion into the mountains to chase the Afghans from the high ground and force them into the valley floor where the Soviets were still hanging on. And it worked. It actually did work. Oh, okay.

The airborne assault caught the Mujahideen completely by surprise and combined with the main push into the valley, which at this point was just a pile of corpses, the Mujahideen almost ended up in an encirclement. So they had to run away so fast that they had to leave their own weapons

behind so they could run faster. As they were doing this, soviet stage a breakout attack from cost forcing the mujahideen to finally give up the siege um they had been i mean now you think the the mujahideen had been standing toe to toe with a world superpower and holding them in check in that area for the better part of a month and you know they finally had to like all right guys we gotta go we gotta leave this we. We're losing. That's insane. Fuck.

I mean, the Soviets outnumbered the Mujahideen by significant margins and then still managed to fight them in an open battle of attrition and barely win. Um, but the last thing the Soviets had to do was take critical high points. So the Mujahideen couldn't just move right back in and start to see Jocasta.

Right. Um, one of those points was a nondescript hilltop named Hill 3234, simply named for how many meters tall it was on the Soviet military maps. That was where 9th Company of the 345th Independent Guards Regiment would be dropped off and told to hold on. Now, I have to correct something here. The Soviets deployed an entire infantry company,

which should have been around 130-140 men. But in reality, there's only about 39 men left after magistral. It is not known if the Soviets knew that before, and they ordered them to go anyway, or they were just the Soviet commanders

weren't keeping track, or whatever. Either way, they told a company to go and hardly a platoon. It's not hard to believe that they would fuck that up. Yeah. What is known, however, is that almost as soon as the soldiers were dropped off from the hilltop,

or to the hilltop, rather, they came under a crushing barrage of rockets, mortars, and artillery from the Mujahideen. While the Soviet troops were pinned down, several hundred Mujahideen fighters dressed in all black crawled through the mountains toward them at all sides as the barrage lifted the fighters jumped up and in unison began attacking the soviets so the thing is at this point there is a you know how we started off with like no veteran

corps of the soviet army because everybody's rotating out yeah that's still mostly true but a lot of commanders have stuck around so they've seen some shit they fought the mujahideen enough to know like holy fuck this is new one of those guys was a major friends klitschewich um who had fought the the mujahideen so often they're like this is not the mujahideen and And he was right. Oh, ninjas kind of, um, they were not fighting just any group, uh,

of Afghan rebels. They were actually fighting Pakistani special forces. What? Um, along with, when did they come into play? Oh, they have been there the whole time.

Um, they were, they also had with them specialized groups of Mujahideen fighters. They had been training in special operations warfare. Uh, so these 39 guys are probably fucked, right? Yeah.

For once we are wrong. Uh, and this actually ends up being one of the craziest battles of the whole war. Uh, the combined force of the Pakistanis and the Afghans got so close to Soviet lines it could be heard yelling out taunts in Russian as well as demanding that they surrender. The Soviet soldiers answered back with

swear words, insults, and hand grenades. Nice. Their line was broken on several occasions because remember several hundred against thirty-nine. There's going to be some gaps. But the small band of soldiers held throughout the night with Klitschewicz beating several

of the enemy fighters to death with his bare hands after he pistol whipped some of them. His piece of shit Makarov surface pistol broke in half on somebody's skull. Jesus, Scott. Takarov.

In another incident, the entire line shattered, leaving one private named Andrei Melnikinov behind to fend for himself with a machine gun. The 19-year-old single-handedly held the line by himself, allowing the rest of the company to reform, and it killed him. That happened on a few occasions. The Soviet line would break and try to run to a higher part of the hill and leave behind one guy to hold off everybody. And you got this, bro?

the hill uh and leave behind one guy to hold off everybody bro and normally you know all the firsthand accounts don't put it that way like the way you just put it but it's probably what happened yeah for sure yeah um like but either way each time it worked like the one guy they left behind bought them enough time so they could reform a line and each one of them you know is hero of the soviet union or whatever but like it's kind of crazy that like a 19 year old who'd probably never fired his goddamn machine gun before held off oh like a literal two companies ninjas yeah yeah you can never see the pakistani ninjas going so around the same time the soviets ran out of ammunition the fighters decided they had enough for the night and pulled back the soviets sent ammunition to their stranded men in a few flights uh like helicopters would fly in low kick off a whole bunch of ammo and haul ass out before they got

shot was it a whole bunch of ammo it was enough i mean remember now it's about 30 guys oh so they could fuck their numbers hey we have a whole company still here. 30 guys, whole company. So you remember back during our episode on Operation Storm 333 when I talked about a lieutenant named Valerie Vestroiten? Well, he's now a regimental commander and he's in charge of this regiment. He's also a colonel.

He decided that the guys in the mountain were pretty much fucked and that continued flights into the air were way too dangerous for helicopters, which were worth more than soldiers. Oh, man. I can see where this is going. And it must be noted, Americans have made the same choice at some point in our military history.

The Battle of Ayodhyang Valley is a good one. So he said that no more flights could go out to pull out the wounded the dying or resupply the men would simply have to fight on for what they had and if they were still alive in the morning vistroit would come and pick them up unfortunately for the men on the hilltop they had no way of knowing this um this totally ignored multiple wounded soldiers that the company would just die uh with die without medical intervention. That was when several Soviet pilots had fucked that and flew off the hilltop anyway. This is pretty surprising.

I mean, it's shocking to me in the U.S. military when people just ignore orders. It's even more shocking to me in the Soviet military when people ignore orders because they will ruin your goddamn life yeah i feel like that's like a death wish i mean we're we're far past the time of like political commissar shooting people in the face but like they'll send your ass to siberia for a duty station for sure yeah that sucks yeah i mean remember we've talked about before that uh if you pissed people off you'd just be deployed to Afghanistan. Yeah. So like, eh, whatever. They flew in, picked up a whole bunch of wounded soldiers,

dropped off crates of ammo, and then hauled ass back. Now the pilots assumed they would be in a lot of trouble, but Vestroit refused to punish them, which leads me to believe he actually knew how big of an asshole he was being.

Yeah. The fighting picked up once again in the middle of the night and went on until morning. By that point, punishing Soviet artillery strikes had begun to slam into the special forces guys, and the replenished ammunition

stocks made it clear that they combined special operations and Mujahideen forces that their window for victory has closed, and they retreated. They won. The Soviets won something. God damn. Yes. You think they got a chalkboard up? Like, fuck yeah.

Tally mark. Yeah, we finally did it, boys. Fly the flag. Yeah. It's like when the Lions win a playoff game. That hasn't happened since I've been alive. So for their actions, two of the Soviet soldiers are posthumously awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union Medal,

while everybody else is given the Order of the Red Banner and the Order of the Red Star. To close out the Battle of Hill 3234 is something I think best tells the entire story of the Soviet venture in Afghanistan, or pretty much everybody else's ventures into Afghanistan, ours or the British, either time. That is when the Soviets left the area. The Mujahideen simply moved right back into it. The city of Akkas was once again placed under siege. It was all for nothing. Nice.

Battle of Magistral, or Operation Magistral, was pointless. What the fuck? I mean, it was bound to happen. I mean, that was the only way it was going to end. The Soviets couldn't stay there. Exactly. But still. Yeah, it was going to end. The Soviets couldn't stay there. Exactly. But still. Yeah, it's like, fuck.

And for the most part, a lot of Soviet soldiers thought that they were... I mean, they had been getting pretty disillusioned by the war for years. But that was like the icing on the cake. It's like, it's really a waste of time. Now, we have to pivot to the exciting side of things. Politics! Nice. Yeah. time uh now we have to pivot to the exciting side of things politics nice yeah um so domestically the soviet union knew that the najibullah government needs some work the bad part was najibullah seemingly never learned how to run a government um he he actually seemingly tried to

do the opposite of that at any time which is weird because you put a fucking smooth-brained thug in charge of a government, and the only reason that you liked him is because he was good at killing people. Weird how those things don't transfer. For instance, Afghanistan started having problems exporting natural gas and minerals. Their only way they were making money

because the Taliban started blowing up pipelines and attacking trucks and making roads impassable. Saboteur. Yeah. Now, he started not having money to run the government. How do you think he got around that? Did he ask for a loan from the Russians? No, he simply printed more money.

Sweet. Now, anybody who is taking an elementary course on, I don't know, economics, Google, any basilar education on economics, you know you don't fucking just print more money. Why? We have all the paper. Yeah. Just put it on the paper. Then we have more money. Yeah.

He caused hyperinflation like they said it reached somewhere up to 200 which is a lot but uh i should put out the zimbabwe actually managed to create hyperinflation so bad that it was like over 1 000 percent really yes holy shit yeah people are bringing what happened. They did this. This is exactly what they did. I don't know how you. All right. OK. And God, it's hot in here.

So the the the point of at this point, there have been a few Afghans who had managed to save up money. All their life savings is worthless now because now Afghanis are worth nothing. Pretty much, yeah. At one point they attempted to pivot towards the ruble the Soviet currency. But the Soviets were like, nah, why don't you stay in the Afghani? We don't want you bringing our shit back.

We don't want you bringing our house down too, motherfucker. And I mean it didn't take much longer until the ruble So they switched to bottle caps. Afghanistan is fallout. How many caps for that AK, super mutant? Seven. Fuck! I'm actually convinced that Najibul is a ghoul.

A 14-foot reptile? Fuck, what are they called? Death Claws. Yes. Now, if the Soviet Union deployed Death Claws into Afghanistan, I like their chances. Which, actually, I was watching a Netflix show called, what is it, Robot? Where are you going with this? Oh, okay.

Love's Death Robot or something like that. Yes. And the episode that the army deployed werewolves to Afghanistan. Oh, that was the shit. I loved it. Oh, oh my god and then he had to fight a taliban werewolf oh it was great yeah um that was the part like i like it's like deploy werewolves fuck it let's deploy werewolves um also i feel like if the civil union deployed werewolves they would just join the mujahideen because they're like man you guys suck no dog food this is horse shit that my fucking handler boris doesn't even take me for walks

um yeah so boris is probably just dead holding on to the leash get fucking stabbed in the face by a mujahideen fighter. So no matter how much money the Soviets pumped into Afghanistan, and they were pumping a lot of money into Afghanistan, Najibullah hemorrhaged it about as fast as he could get it. Oh, man. Finally, the Soviet foreign minister threw his hands up and kind of... Hooray! Not like that, Like in quitting.

And said what everybody else was thinking. He said, quote, in essence, we are fighting the peasantry. The state apparatus isn't functioning and any advice or help we give is totally ignored. Yeah. Now it's the important part of that quote is the Soviets finally realized they're

fighting the peasantry, which is like, that's what communism is the opposite finally realized they're fighting the peasantry, which is like, that's what communism is. Is the opposite of is empowering the, the, the, the proletariat to overthrow everybody else and, and control the means of production. Uh, they had been doing a whole lot of not that,

um, did they start seeing that? Uh, well, Gorbachev finally came to the conclusion that one of the problems at the heart of the war was this whole communism thing. Really? Wow.

He said he told Najib like, maybe you guys shouldn't be communists anymore. Hey, you guys just aren't for us. Well, that's the whole point of the war. It really is. I mean, I get it. You see some parallels of that now in the american effort in afghanistan we're like well maybe we should invite the taliban into the government which like that's the only way americans are ever going to leave afghanistan but at the same time like i don't

know how else you louder admit defeat like the whole reason they went to afghanistan was to prop up communism right another like well maybe we just can't do communism in Afghanistan. Like, they were a shitty pyramid scheme. But they couldn't fucking work with it. Like, holy fuck, you guys just suck that bad. Like, guys, we made Armenia work. You guys are fucked. I can say that.

I'm Armenian. It's the only country in the Soviet bloc I can directly shit on. You wear grape leaves as shoes. I'm actually making us a wonderful Armenian dinner on Sunday. Apparently, I have to help. Yeah, you're just going to help me buy booze. What the fuck? I've never done anything Armenian in my life, except for fucking touch you.

Sensually. Just like Dad used to. All right, moving on um so he rolled out what was uh known as the national reconciliation policy which was drawn off by gorbachev and forced on naji bola because he didn't want to reconcile with shit um it was a comprehensive plan all right so i need to put i need to say this first this is actually a good plan. For real? Yeah, it's actually an alright plan. It's alright. If you think about it.

If you squint hard enough, you can see it working. It was a comprehensive plan that called for a nationwide ceasefire, elections, amnesty for political prisoners, and even a power-sharing agreement with the opposition. Which is kind of what we're doing right now in Afghanistan. Najibullah even announced Islam as a state religion, which no fucking shit, because communism is nominally atheists.

But he's pivoting back towards Islam. The country's name was changed back to the Republic of Afghanistan, and Najibullah dropped all pretenses of Marxism or Communism and changed the Communist Party's name. That's it? This was like a policy of doing, of like listening, literally listening to everybody's grievances that started the war.

Right. And like, look, look, we'll fix it all. The problem was it had been fucking eight years. Now the main problem with the government was the Soviets and the government. They they're just doubling back they're just like let's just bring it back yeah uh i mean unfortunately a lot of these changes required najibola to go with them um because gorbachev kind of thought najibola was a shithead but didn't trust anybody else so while he tried all these plans Najibullah was like nah fam this is still my country

uh the party's policy regardless of his name should suit the Watan party not important um I'm just doing whatever the fuck Najibullah wanted to remain firmly in effect um it also so another

thing that it tried to do was bridge the gap it wanted to bring the mujahideen into the government and into the government also included into the army which never happened the mujahideen's like fuck no really yeah um as you can imagine none of this happened uh najib will refuse to give up any real power. The only opposition figures he allowed into the government were not opposition figures. They just happened to not be a member of his party. And also they had no power.

And completely under his thumb. Just fucking there. When elections were held, the Mujahideen sensed the government's desperation and simply boycotted the whole thing and a single member of the opposition ever sat in parliament um and i can see where the mujahideen is coming from they're like you know after years and years and years of kicking their

fucking ass they're starting to change i think we're winning like at this point why would they throw in with the government like at any point that a reconciliation could have feasibly happened would have been like, 84. Maybe. We're talking 87 now. Yeah, I mean... Another factor on the Soviet withdrawal was the international stage.

Because this had been an international war for most of the span of the war. The Soviets knew their boy in Kabul could only survive if they could get assurances from the United States, Pakistan,. The Soviets knew their boy in Kabul could only survive if they could get assurances from the United States, Pakistan, and everybody else with their hands in the game that they would stop supporting the Mujahideen and let the Afghan army, with heavy Soviet backing, beat it.

The U.S. and Pakistan, for their part, kind of went back and forth on the issue. But most importantly, they refused to put on paper that they would stop. A lot of the ways that it's framed now is that the Americans and the Pakistanis and the Chinese, everybody else, were like, yeah, yeah, dude, we'll totally stop. And then just changed their mind. It's like an under the table type deal.

That's not what happened. It was not in the agreement. Right. Okay. And it's really stupid that they took their word for it but Gorbachev decided to play hardball and he put forward a possible withdrawal date of Soviet forces if the Americans would come around on these arms shipments that ended up being really really stupid the Americans laughed it off because it not only meant the Soviets were so desperate to get out of the country they already

had plans to do so but that they already had plans to do so, but that they already had plans to do so whether the U.S. stopped arms shipments or not. I mean, these plans had to be drawn up and they had to show the plans. As you can imagine, this tanked the bargaining power of the Soviets at the negotiation table. They had no leverage anymore.

They're like, well, you're leaving, so I don't have to do shit. At one point, there was a meeting, a CIA station chief, I believe it was in Pakistan, between the KGB chief and the CIA station chief. And they were just begging the CIA officer

to please get a handle on this shit. He's like, I did what I could. And he's like, you have to stop these attacks on our soldiers. And he's like, well, they'll stop attacking them when you leave. Ooh. And that's when they realized, like, give a fuck. Like, the Americans had, there was no purpose for the Americans to negotiate this at all.

purpose for the americans to negotiate yeah at all um though the geneva accords did include a provision that stopped cross-border shipments from pakistan into afghanistan if and if you remember that was how the mujahideen was getting supplied in the first place right so the soviets kind of thought they were being clever because while the u.s did not and the u.s and pakistan did not agree to stop supplying the Mujahideen they if by shutting off Pakistan they thought they found like a loophole so they signed the agreement the Soviets

clearly underestimated everybody's ability to just ignore the agreement they just signed now it could be said that it's not sure if everybody was still openly supporting the Mujahideen. Well, that is clearly possible. But another thing that's possible is that the Pakistani government and the American government had completely lost control of their proxies in the theater.

And I think that is more likely, especially looking at recent history. I mean, AI takes over. Well, they formed all these proxy groups, gave them these large stretches of land and endless amounts of cash. They effectively created a state within a state. And they really had no onus to listen to anybody. Why would they? They're like, we can just keep doing this. And Pakistan no longer controlled

their own border. And that has erupted into multiple small wars in the frontier provinces since then. But, I mean, they really did not have control of the borders at this point anymore. And the U.S. never really had control of the Mujahideen anyway. No.

So, they're just going to do what they're going to do. Whatever. Yeah. And the Soviets saw all these violations way no so they're just gonna do what they're gonna do whatever yeah um and the soviets saw all these violations immediately and they report them to the un which is probably the most laughable part of this entire series the un was taxed tasked with monitoring uh people's compliance with the geneva accords right and like pretty much every other agreement the UN has ever tasked with monitoring, they couldn't do anything to actually enforce it. And the UN just kind of threw their hands up like, I could write an angry letter.

Yeah. So slowly the Soviets began handing over garrisons to the Afghan army and exiting the country. The plan was Afghan soldiers took over where the Soviet soldiers left off with vast Soviet logistical systems in place, supplying the Afghans to continue the fight. The process did not go smoothly. Does it ever?

No. Yeah. In May of 1988 was the first Soviet garrison to hand over control to the Afghans. It was in Jalalabad. the afghans it was in jalalabad uh the 60th motor rifle brigade left their base to the afghan comrades in full operational order and stocked a three months worth of ammo fuel and supplies nice um by noon of that same day however the base had been totally and completely stripped bare even the doors and window frames are torn out and sold off to anybody with money i don't know how rich that market is yeah i got frames got hot

fresh frames you're not gonna get these motherfuckers anywhere else just like your mama likes some hot fresh frames uh so the afghan commander now the way the system is going to work is the afghan commanders requisition their supplies through the soviets because the afghans have no system yes so the afghan commander who was just put in charge of Jalalabad immediately sent a request to the Soviets for a resupply. Really? Yeah. It's immediately.

It's a fucking like it's a hustle. It's a fucking hustle. After that experience, the Soviets videotaped all of their turnovers. Wow. It's like a bad divorce. It is literally what is happening now in Afghanistan. The shit. Okay.

You can't stop that grift, motherfucker. The hustle is hard, man. You know, I've said a lot. I said a lot of mean things about Afghan soldiers and policemen in my book, but you can't hate on the hustle. It's true. I mean, motherfuckers got to eat somehow. God. Half of them aren't getting paid by their commanders anyway, so I mean, they got to get their money somehow.

True. Half of them aren't getting paid by their commanders anyway, so they've got to get their money somehow. True. So you're probably thinking, how in the hell was hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers simply going to drive out of Afghanistan without getting attacked? Yes. Good old-fashioned bribery.

Oh. I was going for something a little bit more colorful. A little disguise. Just like family guy dressed up like a clown. They're going to be looking for soldiers. You idiots. I was thinking more of the fake sunglasses and the mustache and nose. Unfortunately, that's just

how some of the Soviets looked anyway. Oh, they're fucked. They just put it on over. Fuck! I look the same! So the Soviet 40th Army, which was the name of the group of soldiers in Afghanistan. And the 40th Army, which was the name of the group of soldiers in Afghanistan.

It was called the limited contingent of Afghanistan, but then it became the 40th Army. Unimportant, but I didn't want to confuse anybody. Sent their commanders a six-point list of things to promise the Mujahideen commanders in order to secure a safe passage.

The Soviets would promise not to launch any offensives against them. They would turn a blind eye against looting, and a hugely profitable drug trade. And Nikolai will suck your commander's dick right now. If that doesn't work, anal Angus. He'll do it in two minutes or less.

Watch, time him, do it. If people are unaware, the area around Afghanistan is like the number one supplier of the world's heroin and opium you're going with bj it's like number one supply it's it's actually where the main dick sucking factory is built it's just outside jalalabad people you know people work that so hard and they're they're just their work is never acknowledged some people pour one out knock their own teeth out to give

good gum jobs. Warm marshmallows. I fucking hate you. Next. I'm just saying while you're listening to this, pour one out for the brave workers of the Jalalabad dick sucking factory. My dick sucking factory union position has actually expired recently

okay i'm done can't do it anymore um so outside of just turning a blind eye to them stripping the country parents selling drugs um there's also a fair amount of just like just regular old bribery like giving them tons and tons of money yeah um now the afghani as we talked about was useless and now we are we are on the yeah what are they the tipping point of the soviet union falling apart so the ruble is also largely useless um so they had to actually give them u.s dollars? Yeah. They also made tons of really bad faith promises about a future political power, which remember,

was not going to happen. Fucking IOUs? Well, I mean, they gave them stacks and stacks of US dollars, which I mean, think about that in your head. It's kind of funny.

The people who had supplied the Mujahideen to kill the Soviets, the Soviets were now using their money to bribe the Mujahideen into not killing them. It Soviets were now using their money to bribe the Mujahideen into not killing them. It's a circle. Man, these guys are getting fat stacks.

Mujahideen largely bought in, though attacks did continue because there isn't one like contiguous Mujahideen central command. Right. They're all commanded by warlords, so they got a couple here and there. The Soviets begged the US and Pakistan to tell their proxies to

stop attacking. And they told the Soviets they totally did, but they weren't listening. Like we said before, you can take this one of two ways. They were lying to the Soviets, which shouldn't surprise anybody, or they had lost control of their proxies in the region, which going off recent history suggests is also

probably true. I imagine the US couldn't even communicate with them. I feel like it true. I imagine the U.S. couldn't even communicate with them. I feel like it's a combination of the two. The Americans, there was nothing. Like I said before, there was no point of Americans doing any favors for the Soviets. They knew they were winning. I imagine they did the old, oh, you want me to tell them to stop communicating? They did the old, like, put the phone on the shoulder.

Hey, stop. Told them, you're good. Yeah, stop. Told him. You're good. Yeah, it's weird. They're not listening. Yeah. And attacks continued to tick upwards. Somewhere north of, I think it was 500 or 600 Soviet soldiers died just trying to leave Afghanistan. That's what disguises are for.

In one case, a brigade was trying to leave Kandahar when it was ambushed by Mujahideen so fiercely they were unable to actually leave as it was planned. It took the brigade three tries and two whole goddamn months to withdraw from Afghanistan. That sucks so fucking bad. Oh my god. The Mujahideen who did abide by the ceasefire were not stupid, nor did they actually think they were going to get any political power. They knew this was something to breathe through to try to steal and gather as many weapons and a surplus of cash as they could in preparation for the final battle of the Afghan government once the Soviets were finally gone.

Things were so lax that Soviet soldiers and Mujahideen fighters openly met in markets and traded guns, booze, and liquor. That's awesome. The Soviets also took the time to loot the country's bazaars of everything that wasn't nailed down before catching a ride out of the country. If they can get out of the country. If they can.

Also, there's a lot of inner infighting between the Mujahideen at this point. Different warlords are fighting other warlords, trying to take their areas over. They know the end is near. They're trying to better position themselves, which, which yeah why not the Soviets

however did not have the same faithfulness towards their agreement one Mujahideen commander pissed off Najibullah and his Soviet masters more than just about anybody else can you guess who it was just go ahead our boy Ahmad Shah Massoud

really remember he had I mean remember he had been the one they couldn't pin down they never really be yeah he just popped out of his valley to fuck him up whatever he wanted and you know they had been advocating these ceasefires with other Mujahideen groups but Najibullah did not want a ceasefire from a suit he

wanted fucking disarmament. He wanted Masood to surrender. That was his deal. Even though Masood had not lost. Yeah. Like, look, we know you've been literally just kicking us in the balls for a fucking decade, but how about you hand over your weapons? I imagine he didn't take that deal. No, he fucked

off back to his valley. Back to the shadows, he's just like, fuck off. peace out bitches smoke bomb yeah uh there's also a little bit more to it Najibullah probably had his his feelings hurt a bit because one of the time so back during the reconciliation period before it was abandoned 20 minutes later somebody forgot his birthday oh definitely yeah get him a box full of nothing uh but they had one of the opposition figures that they had offered a job to was masood they offered him the position of minister of defense masood said no i mean i

don't fucking blame him yeah he's like this government's got like a month to live i'm getting the fuck out of here uh so he was probably like you know personally slighted by that and wanted to get revenge. Really? Yeah. That's it. I mean, the Soviets feared that Massoud turned down the position because Massoud knew he was strong enough to beat the government as soon as the Soviets were gone by himself. So in order to neutralize him,

the Soviets launched Operation Typhoon. Okay. Completely ignoring their own ceasefire. The Soviets began bombarding the dog shed of him with rockets, airstrikes, and artillery. Now, they were a bit skittish when it came to committing ground troops. Now, remember, as far as Gorbachev was concerned, all offensive operations had ended. He probably didn't even know about this. In the end, Massoud lost around 600 people in the operation,

and the only thing the Soviets managed to do was piss Massoud off, who ordered his forces to fuck the Soviet shit up. Fuck. Now, if you remember, we talked about why Massoud's position was so beneficial and such a huge thorn in the side of the 40th Army.

That's because the main Soviet route to withdraw cut straight through Massoud's territory and through the dreaded Salang Pass. Ooh. Things started getting so bad in the area, Massoud's fighters started propping up Soviet bodies on the sides of the road to remind them that whose

fucking valley it was. That's a power move. Big Massoud energy. Yeah. Jesus. As the Soviet withdrawal sped up, things got worse, as they always do. In many cases, as soon as the Soviet withdrawal sped up, things got worse, as they always do. In many cases, as soon as the Soviet left the area, entire Afghan

army garrisons would just desert in mass. Just, fuck it, I guess, mom's gone! Yeah! In one occasion, when the Soviets evacuated the city of Kunduz, the Mujahideen simply walked in and took it without a fight.

In another place, the Mujahideen began fighting each other, attempting to put themselves in a better position. None of this, however, would slow the Soviet withdrawal down. On February 15th, the last official Soviet soldier, General Boris Gromov himself,

crossed the Friendship Bridge into Uzbekistan. Yes, the Friendship Bridge. He said that, I am the last Soviet soldier, like there's no Soviet soldiers behind me. There's literally hundreds. Yes, the friendship bridge. He said that I am the last Soviet soldier. There's no Soviet soldiers behind me. There's literally hundreds. Yeah, get fucked, dude. There's hundreds of advisors and Spetsnaz behind him, not to mention the

five or six hundred dudes who are still in captivity. There are people that were left behind. There's documentaries about it. They're still there. Don't worry. That's what the next episode's about. Oh, okay. Can I guest on that one? What's okay. Can I guest on that one? What's that? Can I guest on that episode?

We'll see. Okay. We'll see if I... My people will talk to your people. I think my dog might be... I don't have people. So, the Soviets pretty much assumed

that as soon as they step foot of Afghanistan, the Afghan government would just collapse into it on themselves. Start selling their own clothes. Najibullah just rips off his own underwear. 20 bucks!

20 bucks! I soiled myself. He's got real fresh skid marks. That was not the case, however. Not that Najibullah didn't have skid marks. He probably did. He was drunk like a lot. He probably had some drunk poops.

Who hasn't? Najibullah's Afghan army would have fought on far longer than anybody could have even imagined in their wildest dreams their ability to fight got better when the Soviets left. Really? Yes! and the Soviets started pouring

new weapons into the battlefield like MIGs to the Afghans and Scud missiles what? yeah and another thing is now the mujahideen thought the um the government was on its last legs and at this point the afghans really were not trying any offensive operations they were hunkering down around cities and that kind of forced the mujahideen to fight conventionally which caused the af Afghan army to fuck their shit up. Actually fucked him up so bad.

It broke up a lot of Mujahideen working relationships. Wow. A lot of these groups banded together to one of them is Dostum. Rashid Dostum, he'll talk about again in a little bit, but they all banded together with like tens of thousands of them to storm cities and stuff. And they were like attempting to attack Afghan army trench lines,

which remember is the only thing they're ever trained to do is conventional warfare. And they just got lit to shit and broke up and actually cause more Mujahideen infighting. I wouldn't expect that. Honestly, that's crazy. Part of me wants to believe that the Afghan army actually fought better

because they had no choice. Um, like there, they finally had a core of good trained veterans that weren't deserting every fucking three days. Um, and they were fighting for their own country. And maybe part of it was understanding like when we lose,

we're all going to die. Yeah. Like they're not pretty good incentive. They're not gonna just like go ahead and take your uniform off and go home. They're going to kill us. And then sell their uniforms. So

the Republic of Afghanistan would survive so long it would outlive the Soviet Union. With the death of the Soviet Union their weapon pipeline was finally cut off dooming the Afghan army. With the death of the Soviet Union, their weapon pipeline was finally cut off, dooming the Afghan army. Dang. That was what finally made Afghanistan lose,

was the fact that the Soviet Union had to die. To further kick Najibullah while he was down, his favorite militia commander, Rashid Dostum, betrayed him and joined the Mujahideen. Then his own defense minister attempted to kill him. What? Yeah. How?

Good old-fashioned coup. Ah, I was fixing something cooler. With the walls coming down around him, Najibullah was forced from power, but he could not go far, as nobody would allow him to leave the country. Now, here's the craziest part. Masood was like, come north, I'll protect you. After all those years part masood was like come north i'll protect you after all those

years masood's like i can give you safe passage into uzbekistan and towards russia he's fucking with him right no really yeah he had nothing against najibola he just wanted him to be not in charge of the government pretty stand-up guy yeah he was unfortunately get suicide bombed by camera guy yeah um now uh Najibullah turned him down. This probably wasn't anything personal. He didn't hate Masood that much, but it was a racial thing. Najibullah was Pashto.

Masood is Tajik. And so is the vast majority of what is now known as the Northern Alliance. So if he would have ran to him for protection, he would have been like almost like a race traitor. Okay. So yeah, so just good old fashioned racism.

Yeah. Whatever. Um, so while all this is going on, the Taliban forms in Pakistan. Nice. It's where they format. If you're not familiar,

I'm not familiar. No, I'm not in those same American and Saudi-backed religious schools. Wow. Yeah. Oh, now I'm remembering. Yeah, the Taliban. Oh, fuck.

God. They stormed into Afghanistan, sweeping the Mujahideen along with them. Soon, they're at the gates of Kabul. The Taliban stormed the capital city and captured Najibullah. He was tortured, castrated with a bayonet, and shot in the face and then drugged through the streets on the back of a truck. You can see this on YouTube. Oh. Yep. Could have done

without that. Yeah. And immediately afterwards, a new Afghan civil war would begin. Just continuous fighting. Yep. Wow. Now remember, none of this would have ever happened if daoud did not overthrow his fucking cousin see family relationships started all yeah in the fucking 70s here we are in 96 and it's finally over only to begin again so So not over. And now the Soviets are involved.

You got that. So around 620,000 Soviet soldiers served in Afghanistan. According to official accounts, 13,000 died there. Why does that number sound so bullshit? Because it's almost certainly wrong. Many former Soviet generals put the number of dead at around 75,000. Another half million were wounded. Even the unofficial number of Soviet dead pales in comparison to the suffering of the Afghan people, which continues to this day.

A staggering 1.5 million Afghans are thought to have died, with another 7 million displaced, with an entire society left in utter ruin. And this concludes the Soviet Afghan war. Great ending. It's thought that a quarter of the Afghan population just was gone at the end of the war. Dead, displaced.

It's awful. And nobody will really know the numbers to this day because the war just kept on rolling and it continues to this day. Yeah. I'm sad now. Great. So that's the series. We have one more episode next week that will be about the war,

but it won't have, it won't be like the continuous part where the Taliban secures southern Afghanistan and we're not going to go into that. It's going to be about the lives and times of the Soviet conscript and what happened to the hundreds of people that stayed in Afghanistan after the war. I think of it as an addendum

because I feel like it's something that needs to be talked about and it really didn't fit in anywhere else. But thank you for tuning in these last six fucking weeks. Yes. I have really enjoyed it. This is probably my favorite series. I think I like it better than Iran-Iraq. I do too.

I don't know. Maybe you guys tell us which one you like more and we'll get to work on our next one. So thank you for tuning in. Rate and review us on iTunes. If you think what we do is worth a buck, throw us a buck. You get bonus content.

You get early episodes. You get access to our communal Discord, the hell of a way to die. If you donate $5 or up, you get more than one bonus episode a month, and we are trying to pump those out as fast as we can. You can follow us on Twitter at lions underscore bye. You can follow me at jkass99 until I'm finally banned.

Yeah, you've been going a while, Hunts. I'm surprising. I don't know how. I'm trying to get a blue checkmark so they won't ban me. It's not happening well, though. You can follow Nick at NickCassM1. Yes. And until then,

don't get castrated with a bayonet. Yeah. Later.