The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

general secretary’s motorcade with a combination of grenade launcher and sniper rifle.Specialists from the Eighth Department offered their creative means of elimination, butwhen they began to sort through the details of their proposals, one hundred percentsuccess could not be guaranteed, so they did not go anywhere.At some point, Boris Semyonovich Ivanov lost his temper. “I will go myself,” hesuggested to his astonished colleagues. “Give me an unmarried interpreter who is preparedto sacrifice his life to fulfill his mission. We will come up to Amin and bomb the three of usinto smithereens.”Certainly, the Center would never sanction this sort of plan, and General Ivanovhimself got carried away in those final days of endless reprimands from Moscow,acrimonious exchanges between colleagues, and total uncertainty.Certainty arrived on December 25, when, via a military bridge that had been builtacross the Amu Darya, the 108th Motor Rifle Division entered Afghan territory.Paratroopers of the 103rd Airborne Division were flown in simultaneously. Units of theFifth Motor Rifle Division left Kushka, headed towards Herat and Kandahar. Another motorrifle detachment and paratrooper assault brigade, as well as a number of other militarydetachments, began to advance on Afghanistan. The issue of uncertainty became moot. Thefull-scale assault became inevitable.Babrak Karmal and the other members of the future leadership were once again inBagram.On December 26, members of the Politburo Commission on Afghanistan, plusChernenko, convened at Zarechie, at Brezhnev’s dacha. The minister of defense debriefedthe group on the troops’ advance. Aside from an Il-76 heavy cargo plane flying705