Soviet Troops Enter Afghanistan

In late December 1979, the Soviet Union launched an armed intervention in neighboring Afghanistan, dispatching combat forces across the border and seizing strategic points in Kabul. The military operation replaced Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin with Babrak Karmal, a more compliant communist leader, in an effort to stabilize a rapidly deteriorating allied administration. Moscow originally anticipated a brief deployment, expected to last six months to a year, that would secure primary transport arteries and major urban centers. Instead, the move entangled the superpower in a grueling nine-year conflict that reshaped Central Asia and drained Soviet resources.

The groundwork for the intervention developed after the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan seized power in the Saur Revolution of April 1978. The revolutionary regime immediately instituted sweeping social reforms and targeted political opponents with widespread arrests and executions. These radical measures provoked deep popular resentment, sparking rural uprisings across most provinces by the spring of 1979. A major revolt in Herat resulted in the deaths of Soviet advisers and exposed the severe weakness of the Afghan army, prompting Kabul to send repeated urgent requests to Moscow for direct military intervention. Soviet leaders initially refused, warning that deploying foreign soldiers would inflame Afghan hostility.