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President Trump’s claim that the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to get rid of terrorists who were coming over the border is false, according to declassified U.S. and Soviet documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. Just as false, according to the documents, were the repeated U.S. media assertions at the time, driven by President Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, that the Soviet motivation was “the age-long dream of Moscow to have direct access to the Indian Ocean” (Document 8). Soviet Politburo documents that first became available in the 1990s show the real Soviet fear was that the head of the Afghan Communist regime, Hafizullah Amin, was about to go over to the Americans. (Egyptian president Anwar Sadat famously flipped in 1972, ejected thousands of Soviet advisers, and became the second largest recipient, after Israel, of U.S. foreign aid.) Two October 1979 events in particular set off Moscow’s alarms, according to the documents and subsequent analyses by Afghan veteran Gen. Alexander Lyakhovsky and senior Soviet diplomat Georgy Kornienko: Amin’s murder of his predecessor Taraki on October 8, and Amin’s reception of acting American Chargé d’Affaires Archer Blood on October 27. None of the Soviet documents list terrorists going into the USSR as a concern in 1979. The Soviet worry was the incompetence and worse of their Afghan Communist clients, the declining Soviet influence (much less control) in the country, and the possibility of Afghanistan going over to the Americans. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/afghanistan-russia-programs/2019-01-29/soviet-invasion-afghanistan-1979-not-trumps-terrorists-nor-zbigs-warm-water-ports This contradicts the claim of President Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski - “It should by now be generally accepted that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979 was deliberately provoked by the United States. In his memoir published in 1996, the former CIA director Robert Gates made it clear that the American intelligence services began to aid the mujahidin guerrillas not after the Soviet invasion, but six months before it. In an interview two years later with *Le Nouvel Observateur*, President Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski proudly confirmed Gates' assertion. "According to the official version of history," Brzezinski said, "CIA aid to the mujahidin began during 1980, that's to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan. But the reality, kept secret until now, is completely different: on 3 July 1979 President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And on the same day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained that in my opinion this aid would lead to a Soviet military intervention." Asked whether he in any way regretted these actions, Brzezinski replied: "Regret what? The secret operation was an excellent idea. It drew the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? On the day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, saying, in essence: 'We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.'" https://sites.temple.edu/.../brezenski-memoranda-to.../ <https://sites.temple.edu/immerman/brezenski-memoranda-to-carter-on-soviet-intervention-in-afghanistan/?fbclid=IwAR2LumThmPWYjWg5FhjcdiGnqkUpcg4zVjKw5_JFlqNqRf4S0A1JC9b4UIE> https://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview <https://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview?fbclid=IwAR18BweRD4tPD2O34PjeHhSxHxiUlM6fQsFo80Y2iHV7NByQM2F62DQToq8> _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
