The Soviet–Afghan War was fought in Afghanistan from December 1979 to February 1989. Soviet forces intervened to prop up a communist government facing a widespread rebellion and spent nine years fighting mujahideen guerrillas armed by the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and others. The war devastated Afghanistan, cost the Soviet Union heavily, and shaped the conflicts that followed.
The communist coup
In April 1978 the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan seized power in the Saur Revolution, killing President Mohammad Daoud Khan. The new government pushed through radical land reform and secular measures and arrested and executed many opponents. Revolts broke out in the countryside, and the army began to fall apart. The party itself was split between factions, and in September 1979 Hafizullah Amin ousted and killed the leader, Nur Muhammad Taraki.
The intervention
Distrustful of Amin and fearing the loss of a neighbouring ally, the Soviet Union sent troops across the border from 25 December 1979. On 27 December Soviet special forces stormed Amin's palace in Kabul and killed him, installing Babrak Karmal in his place. The invasion was widely condemned, including by the UN General Assembly, and the United States led a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
A guerrilla war
The Soviet Fortieth Army, which reached a strength of about 115,000 troops in the mid-1980s, held the cities and main roads, but much of the countryside was in the hands of mujahideen, an array of Islamist and tribal resistance groups. Many were based in Pakistan, whose intelligence service channelled weapons and money from the United States and Saudi Arabia; thousands of foreign Muslim volunteers also joined. Soviet and Afghan government forces responded with air attacks and sweeps that destroyed villages and crops across large areas. From 1986 the guerrillas received American Stinger missiles, which made Soviet helicopters and aircraft more vulnerable.
Withdrawal
Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985, came to see the war as a costly drain and looked for a way out. In 1986 Mohammad Najibullah replaced Karmal and offered national reconciliation. Under the Geneva Accords of April 1988, the Soviet Union agreed to leave, and the last Soviet troops crossed back over the Amu Darya on 15 February 1989.
The toll
About 15,000 Soviet soldiers died, according to official figures, though some estimates are higher. Afghan deaths are far less certain; estimates range from around half a million to two million or more, mostly civilians. Around five million Afghans fled abroad, chiefly to Pakistan and Iran, and millions more were displaced inside the country.
Aftermath
Najibullah's government survived until April 1992, when, deprived of Soviet aid after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it fell to the mujahideen. The victors then fought one another in a civil war, from which the Taliban emerged in the mid-1990s. The war's cost in lives, money and prestige is often seen as one of the strains that weakened the Soviet system in its last years.
On our maps
Our 1985 map shows Afghanistan in the middle of the war, bordering the Soviet Union, and the 1994 map shows it after the Soviet collapse.
In pictures
4 images · scroll →From the atlas
Soviet–Afghan War in time and on the map
Soviet–Afghan War lasted from 1979 to 1989. Borders of Time has one world map from those years: 1985. The nearest maps from before and after are 1960 and 1994; compare them side by side.
Living through it, among others on this site: Augusto Pinochet (1915–2006), Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997), Desmond Tutu (1931–2021), Elizabeth II (1926–2022), Ferdinand Marcos (1917–1989), Fidel Castro (1926–2016), Hafez al-Assad (1930–2000), Hirohito (1901–1989), Idi Amin (1925–2003) and John Rawls (1921–2002).
Other events of the same years: Satsuma Rebellion (1877–2005), Nahda (1900–2000), Cold War (1945–1991), Dirty War (1955–1989), The Troubles (1960–1998), Second-wave feminism (1960–1980), Guatemalan Civil War (1965–1996), Cambodian genocide (1975–1979), Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) and Angolan Civil War (1975–2002).
Next to it in time on this site: before, Iran hostage crisis (1979–1981) and Salvadoran Civil War (1979–1992); after, Three Mile Island accident (1979) and Gwangju Uprising (1980).
Quick answers
- When did Soviet–Afghan War happen?
- It began in 1979 and ended in 1989, lasting 10 years.
- Where did Soviet–Afghan War take place?
- Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
- How did the map change?
- Compare the atlas’s maps of 1960 and 1994 side by side.