austin-murphy-the-triumph-of-evil

68 THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL
Stinger missiles (Zaloga, 1995), had been an average year for civilian
deaths in the 1979-89 war, the total would be 225,000 civilians killed
in the war. Since the USA-reported reported civilian kill rate in 1987
was probably very biased upward (given that it no doubt includes civil­
ian death tolls grossly exaggerated by the rebels for propaganda pur­
poses), and since civilian casualties may have been abnormally high in
1987 due to decreased accuracy of Soviet aerial bombings that year,
the number of civilian deaths was unquestionable far less than 225,000,
but that figure can be used as an upward bound. Since the rebels did
engage in widespread bombings of civilian targets that had destroyed
over a thousand schools and hospitals in rural areas covering 90% of
the country in the first few years of the war (Bradsher, 1983), since the
rebels frequently conducted rocket attacks and bombings on residential
areas of heavily populated cities (Blum, 1995), since the rebels assassi­
nated virtually every government official and communist party member
they could (as well as most communist supporters and sympathizers,
and frequently any unknown or uncooperative people), with one unit ·
of 1200 rebels in one Afghan city assassinating 600 people in a 2-year
period alone (Girardet, 1995), since the rebels even murdered Western
journalists in order to be able to steal their cameras (Urban, 1990), since
the rebels had such heavy weaponry that they could not even be labeled
a traditional guerrilla fo rce (Jalali and Grau, 1995), since the rebels had
about as many soldiers (approximately 200,000) as the Soviet/Afghan
communists (Girardet, 1985), and since the rebels often engaged in
inter-group feuding that may have directly led to the deaths tens of
thousands of people (Urban, 1990), it is likely that the rebels may have
ki lled at least half of the civilians, leaving the communists with respon­
sibility for less than 1 15,000 civilian deaths.
Given survey evidence (of Afghan refugees in Pakistan) indicating
that aerial bombings of civilian targets caused the deaths of under 50%
of the civilians killed by communist fire (U .S. State Dept., 1987), and
given that most of the remaining deaths were likely to have been unin­
tentional battlefield casualties (i.e., the result of ground forces actually
fighting armed rebels), it is probable that the communists deliberately
killed less than half the civilians for whose deaths they were respon­
sible. Because many of the reports of heavy communist bombings of
civilian areas in Afghanistan had no truth to them, being clearly fabri-
CHAPTER J
cated by the rebels for propaganda purposes (Urban, 1990), and because
many of the other stories of alleged communist atrocities were also
invented by the rebels and their CIA supporters (Blum, 1995), it is
likely that the number of civilians deliberately killed by the communists
in Afghanistan was only a very small fraction of 1 15,000 (and definitely
far less than 60,000).
Further evidence on this issue is provided by the fact that it wasn't
until l984 that the communist air fo rce uti lized any high-level strategic
bombers such as TU- 16 aircraft (Girardet, 1985), which, like the USA
B-52 bombers in Vietnam, result in more indiscriminate killings via
saturation bombings. Communist air power in Afghanistan, which con­
sisted largely of about 1000 helicopters, MIG fighters, and SU-25 tacti­
cal bombers (McMichael, 1999), was generally used to support ground
troops (Girardet, 1985). Even the Soviet strategic bombers were effec­
tively used to assist combined ground/air offensives as opposed to
engaging in mass killings/terrorizing of civilians (Urban, 1990). Some
Western analysts were astounded that the communists rarely even made
pure aerial attacks on supply lines, which were vital to the rebels (Girar­
det, 1985), or on other targets far in the rear of enemy troops (Kuper­
man, 1999). The failure of the communists to use air power alone to
attack such important targets, which were so important to the Afghan
rebels, and which the Soviets did instead block or ambush with air-lifted
ground forces at various times (Girardet, 1985), provides evidence of
the inhibitions the communists had about potentially attacking innocent
civilians. Even in cases where pure aerial attacks were launched against
rebel-controlled villages in reprisal for rebel atrocities, there is evidence
(from anticommunist sources) that the Soviets had a standard policy of
warning the civilians (by loudspeaker) to leave the villages before-hand
(Alexiev, 1988).
. Similarly, despite allegations of some limited communist use of chem­
Ical weapons in the war and despite a Western perception that chemi­
cal weapons would have been very effective militarily in the Afghan
terrain if widely employed against populated rebel positions, the Sovi­
e!s a�parently believed they created too much risk of "many collateral
.
ctvthan and friendly casualties" (McMichael, 1991 ). A leading British
expert journalist has called the allegations of any Soviet use of chemi­
cal weapons "a complete lie ... a CIA fabrication" (Urban, 1990). All
69