The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

Fear of potential failure played a decisive role during the operation. The sharedperception of failure meant the collapse of Soviet positions in Afghanistan, the loss ofinfluence over the country, the conclusive eradication of the PDPA, and the potentialdestruction of the Soviet embassy in Kabul. The operation’s leaders in both Moscow andKabul didn’t seem to seriously entertain hopes for garnering support from local PDPAmembers. An organized underground did not yet exist. There were separate, unconnectedgroups of Parchamis and Khalqis who were displeased with Amin, but not disposed tocooperate with one another. There were also very few heroes who were prepared tosacrifice themselves for the sake of saving the April Revolution. Such assertions can beverified by the situation after the command to halt had been issued late on December 14.Avenues of communication to relay this command throughout the underground did notexist, yet, to the surprise of the KGB operatives, there were no armed incidents during theevening or through the night in Kabul. This pointed to the fact that there was never anyintention on the part of the dedicated opposition to move forward with the coup d’état.At 9 p.m., all of the electricity in the capital went out. The city was drowned indarkness. The initial plan had called for an “accident” that would take down the grid. Thisaction turned out to be unnecessary under the circumstances.Close to midnight, General Kirpichenko brought together senior intelligence officersfor a meeting at the resident’s office. He was visibly irritated. He had just spoken with theCenter. Both Kryuchkov and Andropov expressed their dissatisfaction that the plan toremove Hafizullah Amin using readily available sources in Kabul had failed.The deputy head of intelligence confirmed that all KGB operatives and agents thathad participated in the operation had to return to their regular work routine until receiving696