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Yalta Conference drafts Post-Wat plan (February 1945)

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Yalta Conference drafts Post-Wat plan (February 1945)

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A meeting between FDR (United States), Winston Churchill, (England), and Joseph Stalin (Russia) was held during World War II to discuss strategy and what would happen after the war. At the Yalta Conference, Russia promised to enter the war against Japan in exchange for some territory in Asia and an economic sphere of influence in China.

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Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6th-9th, 1945)

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Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6th-9th, 1945)

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After the Potsdam Conference between the US, England, and Russia, the U.S. decided to drop the first atomic bomb named "Little Boy" on a Japanese city named Hiroshima. With Japan still deciding not to surrender, the U.S. decided to drop a second bomb named "Fat Man" on a Japanese city named Nagasaki. These two bombs resulted in devasting casualties for Japan. The ultimate reason for the U.S. dropping these atomic bombs on Japan is still unclear but one main reason was Japan's unwillingness to surrender.

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Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech in Fulton, MO (March 5th, 1946)

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Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech in Fulton, MO (March 5th, 1946)

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The Iron Curtain speech given by Winston Churchill was given to stress the need for the United States and Britain to join forces against the communist terrors of the Soviet Union. Winston Churchill used the metaphor "iron curtain" to describe the political and military barrier that the Soviet Union put between itself and the rest of the world following World War II. It was significant because it later allowed the West to wage and win the Cold War.

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Truman Doctrine First Applied in the Greek Civil War (March 12th, 1947)

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Truman Doctrine First Applied in the Greek Civil War (March 12th, 1947)

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The U.S feared that communism would spread across other countries, like Greece. This made Harry S. Truman go to Greece to give his famous speech. The Truman Doctrine speech explains to the Greeks that if communism spreads to a country with a civil war, give the non-communists weapons and military aid so that they could win the war and stop the spread of communism. This was also considered the United States's first investment outside of the western hemisphere, as the US was giving aid to Greece to maintain its containment policy against communism.

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Marshall Plan is announced to rebuild Europe (June 1947)

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Marshall Plan is announced to rebuild Europe (June 1947)

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George C. Marshall, a military general, suggested that we give millions of money to help rebuild Europe. General Marshall also advised a plan that would help stop the spread of communism. The Marshall Plan is like a vaccine compared to the Truman Doctrine. It stops the spread of communism before it can even happen. With the money that was given to Europe by the US, the deal was that those countries were only allowed to buy American products with the money given. This was a huge success for the American market.

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Mao Zedong wins Chinese Civil War and creates the People's Republic of Chine (Oct 1, 1949)

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Mao Zedong wins Chinese Civil War and creates the People's Republic of Chine (Oct 1, 1949)

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The last dynasty of China was overthrown during the Chinese Civil War and Sun Yat-sen created the Republic of China. Within about 20 years of the Republic, there were mixed emotions based on different Chinese morals. Eventually, a new Civil War is created between communist China and non-communist China after the death of Sun Yat-sen. Mao Zedong was the communist leader in China, getting weapons and aid from the Soviet Union, while Chiang Kai-Shek who was the non-communist leader was getting aid from the United States through the Truman Doctrine. The communists win and send the United States into a panic. This civil war also causes China to split into two, communist and non-communist. The non-communists are living in Taiwan, a non-independent country known as the Republic of China, and claim that they run the government of China, while the communists claim that the non-communists are still in rebellion and have no control over the government of China.

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Berlin Blockade and Airlift Begins (June 1948)

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Berlin Blockade and Airlift Begins (June 1948)

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The Berlin Blockade was a major international crisis caused by the Cold War. In post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked roads, railways, and canals that the Western Allies used to get to Berlin and also put Berlin in complete control of the communist Soviet Union. This blockade l lasted a year until the Western Allies (The U.S and Great Britain) were able to finally get resources to Berlin by using aircraft, this is known as the Berlin Airlift, as well as a win for the Western Allies.

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NATO, also known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was created to guarantee the freedom and security of its members politically and militarily. Several countries joined NATO, such as France, Italy, Denmark, and several more European countries. NATO was also considered a counterweight to all Soviet Union soldiers still stationed in Central and Eastern Europe after World War II. Countries have different roles in the formation of NATO, but overall the main goal is to dismiss the chance of another world war through political and military treaties created through NATO.

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Russia tests its first atomic bomb (Aug 20, 1929)

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Russia tests its first atomic bomb (Aug 20, 1929)

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At a remote and safe location, Russia successfully explodes its first atomic bomb. They named this bomb, " First Lightning" in honor of their very first atomic explosion. Russians put in a lot of work in order to be able to test out these atomic bombs successfully. First, they constructed bridges and buildings and many more structures in the vicinity of the bomb. Also, they put birds in cages close enough to the explosion that they could study the effect of nuclear radiation on mammals. The bomb destroyed a handful of buildings and killed many animals, deeming the first atomic bomb created by Russians a success.

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McCarthyism and the Red Scare takes holds in the US (Feb 1950)

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McCarthyism and the Red Scare takes holds in the US (Feb 1950)

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The Red Scare was a time period when the United States was in constant paranoia due to its terrors of communism from the Soviet Union. Everyone thought everyone was a communist spy giving information to the Soviets. McCarthy is a senator who uses his accusation of communist spies for his political campaign. He eventually accuses some top US generals of being communist spies which causes him to lose credit.

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H-Bomb tested by USA on Bikini Atoll (March 1, 1954)

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H-Bomb tested by USA on Bikini Atoll (March 1, 1954)

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Tested by the United States in the South Pacific. They used a hydrogen bomb that was a thousand times more powerful than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. They tested this bomb due to competition with the Soviet Union, and it eventually became an arms race between the US and the Soviet Union. These bombs are being tested on beautiful beaches and on ships in the Pacific. The hydrogen bomb was a combination of nuclear fusion and fission, which is what made it so powerful compared to other bombs.

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After Japan's surrender in World War II, Korea was split into two. The United States controlled the southern half while the Soviet Union controlled the northern half. The divide between the two was known as the 38th parallel. The United States was scared that the Soviet Union was planning World domination with communist North Korea, so when the North Korean army invaded the south, President Truman believed he had no choice but to go to war. The war was miserable for all soldiers, as most died from disease, malnutrition, and frostbite. A stalemate between the two occurred when U.S. general Mcarther was fired, although both sides were fighting on air and land. Once Dwight Eisenhower took office and Joseph Stalin died a peace negotiation was finally signed. Although the Korean War was short, it was costly for both sides and ended in no real victory.

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The KGB was known as the main source of security and intelligence for the Soviet Union. This agency served many roles for the Soviet Union internationally and nationally. The KGB also helped the Soviets to spread their communist views to the rest of the world. The KGB was established to protect the Soviet Union during this time of war with the United States. People feared the KGB during the Cold War, as the agency was known for its brutal tactics as well as widespread global espionage.

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CIA helps overthrow unfriendly governments in Iran and Guatemala (March 1954)

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CIA helps overthrow unfriendly governments in Iran and Guatemala (March 1954)

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Mosaddeq, Iran's leader at the time, began attacks on British oil companies. His harsh actions got him and his country into conflict with the pro-Western elites of Iran. Massive public riots broke out in Iran, and this made the US grow suspicious of Mosaddeq and his leadership. Through the CIA, the US came to the conclusion that Mossadeq had communist leanings and would move Iran into the Soviet orbit if allowed to stay in power. Working with the Shah, the CIA and British intelligence began to engineer a plot to overthrow Mossadeq. On August 19, 1953, the military, backed by street protests organized and financed by the CIA, overthrew Mossadeq. The Shah quickly returned to take power and, thanks for the American help, signed over 40 percent of Iran’s oil fields to U.S. companies. Overall, Nationalism, not communism, proved to be the most serious threat to U.S power in Iran.

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The Warsaw Pact was a defense treaty established by the Soviet Union and seven other countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Formally known as the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance, the Warsaw Pact was created on 14 May 1955, immediately after the accession of West Germany to the Alliance. The Warsaw Pact was basically just NATO, the only difference between these treaties is the location of them. NATO and the Warsaw Pact were ideologically opposed and, over time, built up their own defenses starting an arms race that lasted throughout the Cold War.

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The US and the Soviet Union are competing to find new elements on the periodic table. Dubna University in the Soviet Union and UC Berkeley in the US are the two schools competing in this research race. These elements are not naturally made, they are lab-made by scientists. There is also a rivalry on who gets to name these new elements.

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On October 23rd, 1956, Hungary started to revolt against communist rule. This revolt was known as the first armed uprising against the USSR in history. The control of the USSR over countries like Hungary started to anger the public, beginning revolts. Students demanded a new government based on democracy, and protestors demanded a change in public radios also. Once the armed revolt began, they tried to calm down the protestors by renaming Nagy as prime minister. After 5 days of revolting, Nagy called for a ceasefire, and quickly after Nagy called for a new cabinet of representatives to be established and that Hungary would be withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact.

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The Soviet Union is launching the first intercontinental ballistic missile. The US and the Soviet Union are now fighting for the best tactic to drop a bomb on another country. The ICBM is a way to fire a missile underground and then it will come up and shoot through outer space. The missiles can fly around continents and fly at the speed of a bullet. ICBMs are also how we got people on the moon for the first time.

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Sputnik launched into orbit (Oct 4th, 1957)

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Sputnik launched into orbit (Oct 4th, 1957)

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On October 4th, 1957, the Soviet Union launched a beach-ball-sized satellite into space. This satellite was the first man-made one to be entered into orbit. The purpose of launching this satellite into space was to test the method of placing an artificial satellite into Earth's orbit. The satellite was very successful for the Soviet Union as it completed around 1400 orbits. This launch sent the United States into panic as they now thought that this satellite gave the Soviet Union the ability to deliver nuclear warheads from a long distance. The launch also forced the US to continue in its pursuit of space travel while also pushing for a new level of space exploration.

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Fidel Castro takes power in Cuba (Jan 1959)

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Fidel Castro takes power in Cuba (Jan 1959)

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During the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro and an associated group of revolutionaries toppled the ruling government of Fulgencio Batista, forcing Batista out of power. Castro was a young lawyer and activist, who had been running for Congress as part of the Cuban People’s Party before Batista seized power. The United States was one of the first countries to recognize Castro’s government in Cuba, but relations between the two countries quickly deteriorated as Castro implemented a communist regime and forged close ties with the Soviet Union, the U.S. enemy in the Cold War.

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U2 spy plane shot down over the USSR (May 1960)

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U2 spy plane shot down over the USSR (May 1960)

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U-2 was a high-altitude jet aircraft flown by the United States for intelligence gathering and surveillance, The plane was used by the CIA and US Air Force to monitor electronic emissions, to sample the upper atmosphere for evidence of nuclear weapons tests, and to photograph sites deep within the territory of the Soviet Union, China, and other Cold War enemies. U-2 was shot down over the Soviet Union by Soviet Air Defence Forces. The spy plane was able to get photographs that confirmed the presence of Soviet nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba.

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Failed Bay of Pigs Invasion (April 1961)

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Failed Bay of Pigs Invasion (April 1961)

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The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed mission performed by the CIA, the purpose of the invasion was to push communist leader, Fidel Castro, out of power in Cuba. One of the main reasons the invasion failed was simply because the invaders were widely outnumbered by Castro's troops. The Americans also were unaware that Castro had knowledge of the invasion, so he was already on the defensive side ready to strike on the invaders. The invasion resulted in several casualties for the invaders and was overall a waste of time, men, and resources for the U.S.

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Construction of Berlin Wall Begins (Aug 17, 1961)

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Construction of Berlin Wall Begins (Aug 17, 1961)

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The Berlin Wall was built almost overnight to stop their people from fleeing to freedom in the West. Thankfully, almost two million East Germans were able to escape before the construction of the wall began, but there were still millions left stuck behind the wall before it came down. The wall was built very strategically so people could not escape or easily die trying to. East German soldiers even had lookout towers, it was basically a prison controlled by communists.

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The Cuban Missile Crisis was a 13-day confrontation in October 1962 between the United States and the Soviet Union over the installation of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. U.S. spy planes discovered the missile sites under construction, President Kennedy imposed a naval blockade around Cuba and made preparations for a possible invasion. Both sides refused to back down and the world fearing nuclear war, a tense stalemate ensued. Finally, the Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. The crisis was a decisive moment in the Cold War and is regarded as the closest the two superpowers came to direct military conflict and potentially nuclear war.

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Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Ratified (July 1963)

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Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Ratified (July 1963)

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The treaty was made for the purpose of prohibiting nuclear weapons tests or other nuclear explosions underwater, in the atmosphere, or in outer space, and also prohibited nuclear weapons tests or other nuclear explosions underwater, in the atmosphere, or in outer space. Both countries led signatories to work towards complete disarmament, an end to the armaments race, and an end to the contamination of the environment by radioactive substances. Thirty-three years later, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Signed by 71 nations, including those possessing nuclear weapons, the treaty prohibited all nuclear test explosions including those conducted underground.

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Gulf of Tonkin incident and resolution (Auguest 1964)

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Gulf of Tonkin incident and resolution (Auguest 1964)

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In early August 1964, two U.S. destroyers stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam radioed that they had been fired upon by North Vietnamese forces. In response to these reported incidents, President Lyndon B. Johnson requested permission from the U.S. Congress to increase the U.S. military presence in Indochina. Later on, congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia.

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US Marines sent to Dominican Republic to fight communism (April 1965)

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US Marines sent to Dominican Republic to fight communism (April 1965)

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In 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson sent over 20,000 troops to the Dominican Republic under the idea that America and its nations would not allow a communist government to foster in the Western hemisphere. However, by acting unilaterally and through Johnson's "Johnson Doctrine" the United States had violated the OAS prohibition on any American state from intervention of any kind on any other state for any reason.

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US announcement to dispatch 200,000 US troops to Vietnam (July 1965)

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US announcement to dispatch 200,000 US troops to Vietnam (July 1965)

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President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that he has ordered an increase in U.S. military forces in Vietnam in order to fight communism in Vietnam. He pointed out that to fill the increase in military manpower needs, the monthly draft calls would be raised from 17,000 to 35,000. There was an immediate reaction throughout the world to this latest escalation, with communist leaders attacking Johnson for his decision to send more troops to Vietnam. This decision to send more troops was regarded as a major turning point, as it effectively guaranteed U.S. military leaders a blank check to pursue the war.

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B-52s Bomb N. Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder (1966)

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B-52s Bomb N. Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder (1966)

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After troops were sent to Vietnam, America launched the biggest military mission ever performed known as Operation Rolling Thunder. The U.S was now attacking the homeland, which President Johnson says is justified since we pledged to help and defend South Vietnam from communist North Vietnam. This bombing lasted for over three years between Vietnam and the U.S. Troops continued to be shipped to Vietnam, bombs were sent off, and many people died in this war.

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Red Army crushes Czechoslovakian revolt (August 1968)

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Red Army crushes Czechoslovakian revolt (August 1968)

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Czechoslovakians living under Communism got to enjoy newfound freedoms in a period known as the “Prague Spring.” But in August of that year, tanks from the Soviet Union and allied Warsaw Pact nations quickly crushed the reforms. On August 20, 1968, the Soviet Union led Warsaw Pact troops in an invasion of Czechoslovakia to crack down on reformist trends in Prague. The Soviet Union's action successfully halted the pace of reform in Czechoslovakia.

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Apollo 11 lands on the moon (July 20, 1969)

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Apollo 11 lands on the moon (July 20, 1969)

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Apollo 11, U.S. spaceflight during which commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Edwin Aldrin, Jr became the first people to land on the Moon and walk the lunar surface. Apollo 11 was a massive national commitment by the United States to beat the Soviet Union in putting people on the Moon. Almost every major aspect of the flight of Apollo 11 was witnessed via television by hundreds of millions of people in nearly every part of the globe.

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Publication of the Pentagon papers (1971)

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Publication of the Pentagon papers (1971)

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The Pentagon Papers, officially titled "Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force", was commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1967. In June of 1971, small portions of the report were leaked to the press and widely distributed. However, the publications of the report that resulted from these leaks were incomplete and suffered from many quality issues. The Pentagon Papers revealed that the United States had expanded its war with the bombing of Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corps attacks, none of which had been reported by the American media.

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Great Wall of China, Huairou District, China

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President Nixon goes to the Great Wall and meets with the communist Chinese government. Richard Nixon starts the process of re-establishing diplomatic relations and trade deals with China. This is when China's economic rise starts to begin. This is an example of "Detente" which means a lessening of tensions. Nixon does this as a way to court communist China away from communist Russia. Nixon makes a name for himself as the anti-communist hardliner.

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A limitation treaty that puts a cap on the number and type of nuclear weapons that each country could have. Countries can also no longer test nuclear weapons above the ground. Russia and the US both signed the treaty. Another example of "Detente" by lessening tensions. There are more treaties signed after that limit nuclear weapons but today none of those treaties are still in place.

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US-supported coup overthrows Chilean government (Sept 1973)

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US-supported coup overthrows Chilean government (Sept 1973)

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Fifty years ago in Chile, the United States worked to end the presidency of an elected Marxist and, in turn, helped usher in an authoritarian right-wing dictatorship. Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile in 1970 as the candidate of a leftist coalition. Under Nixon, the U.S. actively worked to undermine Allende's government through economic pressure, propaganda, and covert operations by the CIA. On September 11, 1973, the Chilean military led by General Augusto Pinochet bombed the presidential palace and seized power in a violent coup. While not directly orchestrating it, the U.S. covertly supported the forces that carried out the violent overthrow of Chile's government.

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US supported coup overthrows Chilean government (Sept 1973)

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Egypt and Syria attack Israel; Egypt requests Soviet Aid (Oct 1973)

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Egypt and Syria attack Israel; Egypt requests Soviet Aid (Oct 1973)

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Egypt and Syria launched coordinated surprise attacks against Israel from the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights. This caught Israel off-guard initially but as the war progressed, Israel was able to regroup and push back against the Egyptian and Syrian advances after urgent military mobilization. Egypt did request military aid from the Soviet Union, which was a key backer of Arab states against Israel. The Soviets began a massive airlift operation to resupply Egypt and Syria with weapons, equipment, and personnel to support their war efforts against Israel. This raised tensions with the United States, which was firmly backing Israel and conducted its own resupply efforts. It brought the two Cold War superpowers dangerously close to direct confrontation.

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South Vietnam falls to Communist North Vietnam (April 17, 1975)

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South Vietnam falls to Communist North Vietnam (April 17, 1975)

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After years of fighting between North Vietnamese forces and the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government, the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973, leading to a withdrawal of U.S. troops. However, fighting continued between North and South Vietnam despite the ceasefire. South Vietnamese forces, lacking U.S. ground troops and air support after the American withdrawal, were unable to withstand the North Vietnamese onslaught. North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon as South Vietnam's government capitulated. This marked the official Fall of Saigon to communist North Vietnamese forces.

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South Vietnam falls to Communist North Vietnam 

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Soviet and Cuban forces help to install Communist government in Angola (Feb 1976)

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Soviet and Cuban forces help to install Communist government in Angola (Feb 1976)

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oviet and Cuban forces played a major role in helping install a communist government in Angola after years of civil war following Angola's independence from Portugal. After Portugal withdrew from Angola in 1975, three main factions began fighting for control - the MPLA, UNITA, and FNLA. With massive Soviet and Cuban military aid, the MPLA was able to gain the upper hand and capture Luanda, the capital, in early 1976. Angola remained an ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War under MPLA rule.

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Soviet and Cuban forces help to install Communist government in Angola (Feb 1976)

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Smithsonian National Zoological Park, Connecticut Avenue Northwest, Washington, DC, USA

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The US and China officially established diplomatic relations and trade & Panda Diplomacy (Jan 1979)

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The US and China officially established diplomatic relations and trade & Panda Diplomacy (Jan 1979)

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The US now has fully established diplomatic ties with China just like any other country. The Chinese like to loan out their pandas to the US now that they have trade relations. The US wanted pandas in their zoo so China would sell them for $1 million dollars a panda. The two countries also became dependent on each other for economic success.

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A war was fought between China and Vietnam. One of the leaders in Cambodia known as Pol Pot, was an extreme communist and opposed to any Western culture. If you speak a foreign language, have any Western dental fillings, if you play any Western music, you are murdered. Communist Vietnam invaded Cambodia and overthrew Pol Pot, and China was an ally of Cambodia so they decided to invade Vietnam. These invasions turn into a border war between the two. 

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Shah of Iran overthrown; Iran Hostage Crisis begins (Nov. 1979)

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Shah of Iran overthrown; Iran Hostage Crisis begins (Nov. 1979)

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The United States wanted oil from Iran, they also did not want them to be communist so the US decided to promote the Shah. He promoted Western culture but the people of Iran hated him because he was a dictator. He was overthrown and fled to the US to get cancer treatment. The new government of Iran was anti-American and became a theocracy ruled by religious leaders. The new religious leader wants to execute the Shah but the US will not turn him over. Some Iranian college students decide to storm the American embassy and they take 60 American citizens and hold them hostage for a year and a half. Jimmy Carter says they will not trade the Shah for the American hostages so he finally decides to launch a rescue mission. The helicopter and airplane crashed into each other and ended in many Navy seal deaths. Within three hours of Ronald Reagan's presidency, he got the American hostages back. To this day, America and Iran do not get along and are considered enemies.

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Soviet forces invade Afghanistan (Dec. 1979)

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Soviet forces invade Afghanistan (Dec. 1979)

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Afghanistan had a communist government until conservative Muslims overthrew the communist government. The Soviet Union stepped in directly and invaded Afghanistan. The Soviet Union has been there for years, they spent a lot of money and lost a lot of soldiers, but ultimately they left unseccessful. The US is giving aid to the Aghanistan members to fight against communism.

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Soviet forces invade Afghanistan (Dec. 1979)

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US Hockey defeats USSR at winter olympics in Lake Placid, NY (Feb 22, 1980)

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US Hockey defeats USSR at winter olympics in Lake Placid, NY (Feb 22, 1980)

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The US pro hockey players were unable to compete in the Olympics so the US team was made up of college players, while the USSR's team was made up of their best players. The US was the underdog but pulled out a win against the USSR. This was known as the "miracle" since the USSR was expected to win.

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US Hockey defeats USSR at winter olympics 

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In one of the most dramatic upsets in Olympic history, the underdog U.S. hockey team defeats the Soviets at the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York

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US Boycotts Summer Olympics in Moscow (June-Aug 1980)

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US Boycotts Summer Olympics in Moscow (June-Aug 1980)

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The summer Olympics are being held in Moscow. But since the Soviet Union had just invaded Afghanistan, many countries including the US decided not to go. They sit out our Olympics 4 years later to show the tensions between the two.

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US Boycotts Summer Olympics in Moscow (June-Aug 1980)

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Reagan proposes SDI or “Star Wars” (1983)

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Reagan proposes SDI or “Star Wars” (1983)

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President Reagan proposes a strategic defense initiative or "nuke" defensive initiative. Nuclear bombs can be tracked using laser beams and other high technology to destroy the bombs before they can hit the US. Critics nicknamed it "Star Wars" because of the high technology. The SDI was almost successful. It shot down about 80% of incoming missiles.

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US Troops invade and overthrow the regime in Grenada (Oct 1983)

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US Troops invade and overthrow the regime in Grenada (Oct 1983)

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The invasion of Grenada in October 1983 was a major military operation carried out by the United States and allied forces from several Caribbean nations. The reasons for the invasion were to protect American citizens there after a military coup had unseated the government, and to address concerns over the construction of a new airport which the U.S. suspected could be used by Soviet or Cuban military forces. The invasion drew considerable international criticism, including from some U.S. allies, who viewed it as an unjustified violation of Grenada's sovereignty.

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This piece appeared in the Fall 2023 issue of NACLA's quarterly print magazine, the NACLA Report. Subscribe in print today!

As U.S. troops headed to Grenada in October 1983, most had no idea where they were going. Many had never even heard of Grenada, the smallest place the United States has ever invaded. Fewer still knew of the popular revolution that had taken root there and ultimately imploded just days before. What possible threat could a 12-by-21-mile island with a population of barely 100,000 pose to the most powerful country in the history of the world?

October 25, the 40th anniversary of "Operation Urgent Fury," offers an occasion not just to remember the invasion but to reconsider how we remember it. While the invasion has been extensively documented, albeit predominantly from U.S. points of view, the revolutionary events leading up to it have received much less attention. An internationalist critique of empire demands a contestation of empire's memory.

On March 13, 1979, five years after Grenada's independence from Britain, the New Jewel Movement (NJM) mounted an armed attack against the increasingly erratic and authoritarian Prime Minister Eric Gairy. The NJM had helped unite urban and rural working-class opposition to Gairy. But both Gairy's repression and the history of U.S. interference in the region's elections had foreclosed an electoral path to power. In a matter of hours, 46 men with scarcely 21 weapons seized power, and Grenadians from across the political spectrum came out in support of the NJM, which took power as the People's Revolutionary Government.

The charismatic lawyer Maurice Bishop emerged as NJM's popular leader. Equally eloquent in the language of law courts and Creole, Bishop had been a major defender of the nurses in their 1970 strike and led the symbolic 1973 "People's Trial" of British landowner Lord Brownlow, who had denied Grenadians access to public lands and beaches. Bishop gained further allegiance after he and other opposition members were attacked in 1973 and his father was killed in 1974 by Gairy's paramilitary forces. Once the People's Revolution Government took power, Bishop became prime minister. Bernard Coard, an economist and key NJM party strategist, became finance minister and deputy prime minister.

With the Revolution, the tiny isle known for nutmeg and other spices, tourism, and a medical school was suddenly thinking big. It made strides in education, literacy, health, arts, and culture. The fledgling Revolution was talking about economic diversification and modernization, free education, and expanded civic participation, governmental accountability, and regional integration. Seeking increased economic and political self-determination, it explored locally practicable paths, often breaking with traditional socialist models that nationalized industry.

Accordingly, the People's Revolutionary Government remained pragmatic about the necessary role of tourism, business, and foreign investment. It championed a longstanding pre-revolutionary plan to replace the old airport at Pearls with a new, larger, modern international airport at Point Salines, in the south of the island, that could land larger planes. This infrastructural improvement would bring Grenada's airport up to par with other Caribbean airports and was integral to the island's plans for economic development. Construction began in 1980 with immense popular support, massive assistance from Cuba, and involvement of several other countries including Canada and Britain.

Internal Aggression: Self-inflicted Wounds

By 1981, the Revolution had run into internal problems. Like many revolutionary groups forced to operate in secrecy because of political repression, it had opted for a vanguard party. Once in power, the NJM had to grapple with how to resolve the fundamental contradictions between the logic of armed struggle that enabled the seizure of state power and the logic of democracy; between force and persuasion, military hierarchy and democratic equality. The Revolution drifted toward popular authoritarianism. Increasingly, it curtailed free expression, militarized society, and imprisoned dissenters. It forgot that the centralized vanguard party and the bubbling popular energies of the Revolution were not one and the same.

In October 1983, the NJM settled its own internal differences by force, too. The party machinery had gradually marginalized its more democratic voices. Amid a developing rift and internal struggle over the leadership of the Revolution, the party voted in September 1983 to redefine responsibilities, explicitly dividing them between Coard and Bishop. Opinions differ as to whether this vote for "joint leadership" merely formalized an existing division of labor, increased the party's power, or reduced Bishop's power. But the proposal was pitched as promoting "democratic centralism" over "onemanism."

When Bishop did not accept the party's vote for joint leadership, he was put under house arrest. This heavy-handed response ignored a key point: the majority will of the party did not represent the majority will of the people. Seven days later, on October 19, 1983, crowds of Grenadians stormed past the guards and freed Bishop amid chants of "No Bishop, No Revo." They followed him up to Fort Rupert, the headquarters of the People's Revolutionary Army, where pro-Coard forces opened fire. Bishop and seven comrades were killed as a result of orders of members of their own party.

A Revolutionary Military Council took over and declared a shoot-on-sight curfew. The country reeled. For Grenadians, the Revolution had died with Bishop, and its killers were now in power. That is why the very Grenadians who a few days earlier would have fought U.S. forces to defend the Revolution now welcomed the invasion. Most said they approved of the U.S. intervention because it saved them from Coard; only 2 percent said it saved them from communism.

For much of the Caribbean, too, it was a moment of anguish. The Grenada Revolution had carried the hopes of progressive sectors across the region. The fall of the Revolution dashed those hopes, resulting in mass disillusionment and a retreat from all organized politics, all "isms." As the late Trinidadian calypsonian Black Stalin put it, "every ism is just schism."

External Aggression: Pretexts and Opportunities for Empire

The internal rift and fratricide within the Revolution were a gift to the United States. Washington had been wary of the Revolution from the start. But after President Ronald Reagan entered office in 1981, the rhetoric escalated. The new Point Salines airport became the center pin of U.S. war talk. Though the airport would merely put Grenada's air capabilities on par with several other Caribbean tourist destinations, Reagan claimed it was part of a Cuban-Soviet plot to turn Grenada into a military base for exporting revolution and terrorism. The United States also inflated the numbers of Cubans present on the island and mischaracterized them as military and paramilitary forces. By March 1983, Reagan could declare without any apparent sense of irony: "It isn't nutmeg that's at stake in the Caribbean and Central America. It is the U.S. national security."

After Bishop's murder, the military exercises that the United States had been practicing in Puerto Rico since 1981 could be carried out for real in Grenada--but now in the name of a rescue mission. Washington claimed that the 700 or so U.S. medical students at St. George's University were at risk. Dominica's Eugenia Charles, chief of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), and two other heads of Caribbean states, Edward Seaga of Jamaica and Tom Adams of Barbados, obligingly invited the United States to intervene in a nominally joint operation. Moreover, as chance would have it, an otherwise war-weary U.S. public was suddenly galvanized to sympathy with the military when 241 U.S. servicemen were killed in a terrorist attack in Beirut on October 23, 1983, two days before the Grenada invasion.

The armed intervention violated the OECS charter and international law and was overwhelmingly condemned by both the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly. The narrative about the medical students ran counter to students' own perceptions and the Grenadian government's own interests. Indeed, as CIA-officer Duane Clarridge put it in his 1997 memoir: "Besides nutmeg, the school and its students were the island's only 'cash crop.'" Even the Pentagon, long versed in covert and overt interventions across the Caribbean and Latin America, had cautioned against the invasion on grounds that the mission was unclear.

What possible military threat could Grenada pose to the United States? Was the mission about rescuing the medical students? Restoring law and order? Regime change? Evacuating supposed hostages and saving U.S. lives? Stopping the airport from being built? Ridding the island of Cuban influence? Or, perhaps the most far-fetched, "pre-emptive self-defense"? Moreover, couldn't any of these goals have been addressed by non-military means? If the United States genuinely believed the medical students were at risk, why not just evacuate them, as the Pentagon had advised? And even if a military solution were warranted, how could an island of 100,000 people possibly require 7,000 troops with another 20,000 stationed just offshore?

The real reasons for the invasion lay elsewhere. After the humiliating U.S. defeat in its protracted war against Vietnam, military morale and public sympathy for the military were low. As several U.S. government sources admitted, Washington sought to salvage its credibility as a superpower and to restore public support for the troops, in part to justify the near doubling of the military budget between 1980 and 1985 amid U.S. interference in Central America. A short, resounding military victory offered an answer. The invasion of Grenada was theater, pure and simple. Tiny Grenada became the shiny button that held together the fraying military uniform of a superpower, the glistening medal that reflected back to the United States its military might. (In fact, the United States awarded over 19,000 medals for the mission.)

The need for muscle-flexing also helps explain why the United States fobbed off Grenada's requests for aid in 1979 with an offer of $5,000 yet chose to spend $134 million on the invasion and another $157 million in aid to Grenada in the five years following. The United States also went on to complete the very airport it had so opposed being built. How resonant are the words of the late Jamaican dub poet Jean "Binta" Breeze: "Aid travels with a bomb, watch out!"

Today, the invasion of Grenada stands as a reminder that the Cold War was only cold for the superpowers. It was scaldingly hot in many smaller places around the globe.
Read the rest of this article, available open access for a limited time.
Shalini Puri is professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of The Grenada Revolution in the Caribbean Present: Operation Urgent Memory and maintains the website urgentmemory.com. With Lara Putnam, she co-edited Caribbean Military Encounters. Her current research is on Caribbean poetics for freshwater justice.

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Remembering Grenada's Revolution Beyond Cold War Narratives

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Forty years after the U.S. invasion, centering Caribbean perspectives on the rise and demise of a revolutionary movement holds the possibility of stepping out from empire's shadow and imagining alternative futures.

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Eastern Bloc boycotts LA Summer Olympics (July-Aug 1984)

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Eastern Bloc boycotts LA Summer Olympics (July-Aug 1984)

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In 1984, 14 Eastern Bloc countries boycotted the Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles, California. It was initiated by the Soviet Union, which stated the reason was security concerns and alleged anti-Soviet sentiments in the U.S. It was viewed as a retaliatory move after the U.S. had led a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In addition to the Soviet Union itself, the full list of boycotting nations included East Germany, Cuba, Bulgaria, Hungary, Laos, Mongolia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, South Yemen, Vietnam, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan. Major Olympic powers like the Soviet Union, East Germany, and Cuba missing the Games severely dented their competitive standing, especially in sports like gymnastics, weightlifting, and boxing.

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Gorbachev begins "glasnost" and "perestroika" in efforts to reform the USSR. (1985)

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Gorbachev begins "glasnost" and "perestroika" in efforts to reform the USSR. (1985)

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Gorbachev is the leader of the Soviet Union in the 80s, during a rough economy. He initiated the reforms that he called "glasnost" and "perestroika" to help preserve the USSR and help the people. "Glasnost" translates to openness as in more freedom of speech, and press, as well as more openness with Western culture. He is trying to help the people and the country as a whole. "Perestroika" translates to restructuring, he wants to restructure the economy. Manufacturing, and banking, and he even wants to restructure communism so that it can compete industrially and financially with capitalism. He is doing all of this to make the people of the USSR happy so that the USSR as a country can help recover. It is too late though, the USSR does collapse later and Gorbachev is the last leader of the Soviet Union.

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Soviet Troops withdraw from Afghanistan (Jan 1989)

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Soviet Troops withdraw from Afghanistan (Jan 1989)

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The withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989 marked the end of the Soviet-Afghan War, which had begun in 1979 when Soviet forces intervened in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States signed the Geneva Accords, which called for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Despite the troop withdrawal, the Soviet Union continued to provide military aid to the PDPA government.

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Soviet Troops withdraw from Afganistan (Jan 1989)

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Soviet-Afghan War

Part of the Cold War and the Afghan conflict

Date

24 December 1979 - 15 February 1989
(9 years, 1 month, 3 weeks and 1 day)

Location

Result

Mujahideen victory

Belligerents

Soviet Union
Afghanistan

Afghan Mujahideen
Afghan Interim Government (from 1988)

Commanders and leaders

Soviet Union:

Afghanistan:

Sunni Mujahideen:

Shia Mujahideen:

Units involved

Sunni Mujahideen Shia Mujahideen

Strength

Soviet Union:

620,000 total personnel[7] 115,000 (1986 estimate)[8] 120,000 (1987 estimate)[9]

Afghanistan:

250,000 total personnel (1989, including Sarandoy and Khad)[10]

Mujahideen:

Casualties and losses

Total: 86,470-98,017 Soviet Union:

14,453[14]-26,000[15] killed

9,500 killed in combat[14]

4,000 died from wounds[14]

1,000 died from disease and accidents[14]

53,753 wounded[14]

264 missing

451 aircraft lost (including 333 helicopters)

147 tanks lost

1,314 IFVs/APCs lost

433 artillery guns and mortars lost

11,369 cargo and fuel tanker trucks lost

Afghanistan:

41,951 killed (1985-1989)[16]

Total: 162,579-192,579+Mujahideen:

150,000-180,000 casualties (tentative estimate)[17]

Pakistan:
Total killed: 80,775-95,775+

Civilian casualties (Afghan):

The Soviet-Afghan War was a protracted armed conflict fought in the Soviet-controlled Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) from 1979 to 1989. The war was a major conflict of the Cold War as it saw extensive fighting between the DRA, the Soviet Union and allied paramilitary groups against the Afghan mujahideen and their allied foreign fighters. While the mujahideen were backed by various countries and organizations, the majority of their support came from Pakistan, the United States (as part of Operation Cyclone), the United Kingdom, China, Iran, and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. The involvement of the foreign powers made the war a proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Combat took place throughout the 1980s, mostly in the Afghan countryside. The conflict led to the deaths of between 562,000 and 2,000,000 Afghans, while millions more fled from the country as refugees; most externally displaced Afghans sought refuge in Pakistan and in Iran. Approximately 6.5% to 11.5% of Afghanistan's erstwhile population of 13.5 million people (per the 1979 census) is estimated to have been killed over the course of the conflict. The Soviet-Afghan War caused grave destruction throughout Afghanistan and has also been cited by scholars as a significant factor that contributed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, formally ending the Cold War.

The Soviet government had initially planned to swiftly secure Afghanistan's towns and road networks, stabilize the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government, and withdraw all of their military forces in a span of six months to one year. However, they were met with fierce resistance from Afghan guerrillas and experienced great operational difficulties on the rugged mountainous terrain. By the mid-1980s, the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan had increased to approximately 115,000 troops and fighting across the country intensified; the complication of the war effort gradually inflicted a high cost on the Soviet Union as military, economic, and political resources became increasingly exhausted. By mid-1987, reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announced that the Soviet military would begin a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. The final wave of disengagement was initiated on 15 May 1988, and on 15 February 1989, the last Soviet military column occupying Afghanistan crossed into the Uzbek SSR. With continued external Soviet backing, the PDPA government pursued a solo war effort against the mujahideen, and the conflict evolved into the Afghan Civil War. However following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, all support to the Republic was pulled, leading to the toppling of the Homeland Party's Isolated Republic at the hands of the mujahideen in 1992 and the start of another Afghan Civil War.

In Afghanistan, the war is usually called the Soviet war in Afghanistan ( Pashto: په افغانستان کې شوروی جګړه, romanized: Pah Afghanistan ke Shuravi Jagera; Dari: جنگ شوروی در افغانستان, romanized: Afghan war ( Jang-e Shuravi dar Afghanestan). In Russia and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, it is usually called the Russian: Афганская война; Ukrainian: Війна в Афганістані; Belarusian: Афганская вайна; Uzbek: Afgʻon urushi); it is sometimes simply referred to as " Afgan" (Russian: Афган), with the understanding that this refers to the war (just as the Vietnam War is often called "Vietnam" or just "'Nam" in the United States). It is also known as the Afghan jihad, especially by the non-Afghan volunteers of the Mujahideen.

Background

Russian interest in Central Asia

In the 19th century, the British Empire was fearful that the Russian Empire would invade Afghanistan and use it to threaten the large British colonies in India. This regional rivalry was called the " Great Game". In 1885, Russian forces seized a disputed oasis south of the Oxus River from Afghan forces, which became known as the Panjdeh Incident. The border was agreed by the joint Anglo-Russian Afghan Boundary Commission of 1885-87. The Russian interest in Afghanistan continued through the Soviet era, with billions in economic and military aid sent to Afghanistan between 1955 and 1978.

Following Amanullah Khan's ascent to the throne in 1919 and the subsequent Third Anglo-Afghan War, the British conceded Afghanistan's full independence. King Amanullah afterwards wrote to Russia (now under Bolshevik control) desiring for permanent friendly relations. Vladimir Lenin replied by congratulating the Afghans for their defence against the British, and a treaty of friendship between Afghanistan and Russia was finalized in 1921. The Soviets saw possibilities in an alliance with Afghanistan against the United Kingdom, such as using it as a base for a revolutionary advance towards British-controlled India.

The Red Army intervened in Afghanistan to suppress the Islamic Basmachi movement in 1929 and 1930, supporting the ousted king Amanullah, as part of the Afghan Civil War (1928-1929). The Basmachi movement had originated in a 1916 revolt against Russian conscription during World War I, bolstered by Turkish general Enver Pasha during the Caucasus campaign. Afterwards, the Soviet Army deployed around 120,000-160,000 troops in Central Asia, a force similar to the peak strength of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in size. By 1926-1928, the Basmachis were mostly defeated by the Soviets, and Central Asia was incorporated into the Soviet Union. In 1929, the Basmachi rebellion reignited, associated with anti- forced collectivization riots. Basmachis crossed over into Afghanistan under Ibrahim Bek, which gave a pretext for the Red Army interventions in 1929 and 1930.

Soviet-Afghan relations post-1920s

The Soviet Union (USSR) had been a major power broker and influential mentor in Afghan politics, its involvement ranging from civil-military infrastructure to Afghan society. Since 1947, Afghanistan had been under the influence of the Soviet government and received large amounts of aid, economic assistance, military equipment training and military hardware from the Soviet Union. Economic assistance and aid had been provided to Afghanistan as early as 1919, shortly after the Russian Revolution and when the regime was facing the Russian Civil War. Provisions were given in the form of small arms, ammunition, a few aircraft, and (according to debated Soviet sources) a million gold rubles to support the resistance during the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919. In 1942, the USSR again moved to strengthen the Afghan Armed Forces by providing small arms and aircraft and establishing training centers in Tashkent, Uzbek SSR. Soviet-Afghan military cooperation began on a regular basis in 1956, and further agreements were made in the 1970s, which saw the USSR send advisers and specialists. The Soviets also had interests in the energy resources of Afghanistan, including oil and natural gas exploration from the 1950s and 1960s. The USSR began to import Afghan gas from 1968 onwards.

Afghanistan-Pakistan border

The British Raj also came to an end, and the Dominion of Pakistan gained independence from British India and inherited the Durand Line as its frontier with Afghanistan.

Under the regime of Daoud Khan, Afghanistan had hostile relations with both Pakistan and Iran. Like all previous Afghan rulers since 1901, Daoud Khan also wanted to emulate Emir Abdur Rahman Khan and unite his divided country.

Daoud Khan's irredentist foreign policy to reunite the Pashtun homeland caused much tension with Pakistan, a state that allied itself with the United States. The policy had also angered the non-Pashtun population of Afghanistan, and similarly, the Pashtun population in Pakistan were also not interested in having their areas being annexed by Afghanistan. In 1951, the U.S. State Department urged Afghanistan to drop its claim against Pakistan and accept the Durand Line.

1960s-1970s: Proxy war

In 1954, the United States began selling arms to its ally Pakistan, while refusing an Afghan request to buy arms, out of fear that the Afghans would use the weapons against Pakistan. As a consequence, Afghanistan, though officially neutral in the Cold War, drew closer to India and the Soviet Union, which were willing to sell them weapons. In 1962, China defeated India in a border war, and as a result, China formed an alliance with Pakistan against their common enemy, India, pushing Afghanistan even closer to India and the Soviet Union.

In 1960 and 1961, the Afghan Army, on the orders of Daoud Khan following his policy of Pashtun irredentism, made two unsuccessful incursions into Pakistan's Bajaur District. In both cases, the Afghan army was routed, suffering heavy casualties. In response, Pakistan closed its consulate in Afghanistan and blocked all trade routes through the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. This damaged Afghanistan's economy and Daoud's regime was pushed towards closer alliance with the Soviet Union for trade. However, these stopgap measures were not enough to compensate the loss suffered by Afghanistan's economy because of the border closure. As a result of continued resentment against Daoud's autocratic rule, close ties with the Soviet Union and economic downturn, Daoud Khan was forced to resign by the King of Afghanistan, Mohammed Zahir Shah. Following his resignation, the crisis between Pakistan and Afghanistan was resolved and Pakistan re-opened the trade routes. After the removal of Daoud Khan, the King installed a new prime minister and started creating a balance in Afghanistan's relation with the West and the Soviet Union, which angered the Soviet Union.

Ten years later, in 1973, Daoud Khan, supported by Soviet-trained Afghan army officers, seized power from the King in a bloodless coup, and established the first Afghan republic. Following his return to power, Daoud revived his Pashtunistan policy and for the first time started proxy warring against Pakistan by supporting anti-Pakistani groups and providing them with arms, training and sanctuaries. The Pakistani government of prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was alarmed by this. The Soviet Union also supported Daoud Khan's militancy against Pakistan as they wanted to weaken Pakistan, which was an ally of both the United States and China. However, it did not openly try to create problems for Pakistan as that would damage the Soviet Union's relations with other Islamic countries, hence it relied on Daoud Khan to weaken Pakistan. They had the same thought regarding Iran, another major U.S. ally. The Soviet Union also believed that the hostile behaviour of Afghanistan against Pakistan and Iran could alienate Afghanistan from the west, and Afghanistan would be forced into a closer relationship with the Soviet Union. The pro-Soviet Afghans (such as the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA)) also supported Daoud Khan's hostility towards Pakistan, as they believed that a conflict with Pakistan would induce Afghanistan to seek aid from the Soviet Union. As a result, the pro-Soviet Afghans would be able to establish their influence over Afghanistan.

In response to Afghanistan's proxy war, Pakistan started supporting Afghans who were critical of Daoud Khan's policies. Bhutto authorized a covert operation under MI's Major-General Naseerullah Babar. In 1974, Bhutto authorized another secret operation in Kabul where the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Air Intelligence of Pakistan (AI) extradited Burhanuddin Rabbani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmad Shah Massoud to Peshawar, amid fear that Rabbani, Hekmatyar and Massoud might be assassinated by Daoud. According to Baber, Bhutto's operation was an excellent idea and it had hard-hitting impact on Daoud and his government, which forced Daoud to increase his desire to make peace with Bhutto. Pakistan's goal was to overthrow Daoud's regime and establish an Islamist theocracy in its place. The first ever ISI operation in Afghanistan took place in 1975, supporting militants from the Jamiat-e Islami party, led by Ahmad Shah Massoud, attempting to overthrow the government. They started their rebellion in the Panjshir valley, but lack of support along with government forces easily defeating them made it a failure, and a sizable portion of the insurgents sought refuge in Pakistan where they enjoyed the support of Bhutto's government.

The 1975 rebellion, though unsuccessful, shook President Daoud Khan and made him realize that a friendly Pakistan was in his best interests. He started improving relations with Pakistan and made state visits there in 1976 and 1978. During the 1978 visit, he agreed to stop supporting anti-Pakistan militants and to expel any remaining militants in Afghanistan. In 1975, Daoud Khan established his own party, the National Revolutionary Party of Afghanistan and outlawed all other parties. He then started removing members of its Parcham wing from government positions, including the ones who had supported his coup, and started replacing them with familiar faces from Kabul's traditional government elites. Daoud also started reducing his dependence on the Soviet Union. As a consequence of Daoud's actions, Afghanistan's relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated. In 1978, after witnessing India's nuclear test, Smiling Buddha, Daoud Khan initiated a military buildup to counter Pakistan's armed forces and Iranian military influence in Afghan politics.

Saur Revolution of 1978

The Marxist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan's strength grew considerably after its foundation. In 1967, the PDPA split into two rival factions, the Khalq (Masses) faction headed by Nur Muhammad Taraki and the Parcham (Flag) faction led by Babrak Karmal. Symbolic of the different backgrounds of the two factions were the fact that Taraki's father was a poor Pashtun herdsman while Karmal's father was a Tajik general in the Royal Afghan Army. More importantly, the radical Khalq faction believed in rapidly transforming Afghanistan, if necessary even using violence, from a feudal system into a Communist society, while the moderate Parcham faction favored a more gradualist and gentler approach, arguing that Afghanistan was simply not ready for Communism and would not be for some time. The Parcham faction favored building up the PDPA as a mass party in support of the Daoud Khan government, while the Khalq faction were organized in the Leninist style as a small, tightly organized elite group, allowing the latter to enjoy ascendancy over the former. In 1971, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul reported that there had been increasing leftist activity in the country, attributed to disillusionment of social and economic conditions, and the poor response from the Kingdom's leadership. It added that the PDPA was "perhaps the most disgruntled and organized of the country's leftist groups."

Intense opposition from factions of the PDPA was sparked by the repression imposed on them by Daoud's regime and the death of a leading PDPA member, Mir Akbar Khyber. The mysterious circumstances of Khyber's death sparked massive anti-Daoud demonstrations in Kabul, which resulted in the arrest of several prominent PDPA leaders. On 27 April 1978, the Afghan Army, which had been sympathetic to the PDPA cause, overthrew and executed Daoud along with members of his family. The Finnish scholar Raimo Väyrynen wrote about the so-called "Saur Revolution": "There is a multitude of speculations on the real nature of this coup. The reality appears to be that it was inspired first of all by domestic economic and political concerns and that the Soviet Union did not play any role in the Saur Revolution". After this the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) was formed. Nur Muhammad Taraki, General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, became Chairman of the Revolutionary Council and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the newly established Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. On 5 December 1978, a treaty of friendship was signed between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan.

"Red Terror" of the revolutionary government

After the revolution, Taraki assumed the leadership, prime ministership and general secretaryship of the PDPA. As before in the party, the government never referred to itself as " communist". The government was divided along factional lines, with Taraki and Deputy Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin of the Khalq faction pitted against Parcham leaders such as Babrak Karmal. Though the new regime promptly allied itself to the Soviet Union, many Soviet diplomats believed that the Khalqi plans to transform Afghanistan would provoke a rebellion from the general population, which was socially and religiously conservative. Immediately after coming to power, the Khalqis began to persecute the Parchamis, not the least because the Soviet Union favored the Parchami faction whose "go slow" plans were felt to be better suited for Afghanistan, thereby leading the Khalqis to eliminate their rivals so the Soviets would have no other choice but to back them. Within the PDPA, conflicts resulted in exiles, purges and executions of Parcham members. The Khalq state executed between 10,000 and 27,000 people, mostly at Pul-e-Charkhi prison, prior to the Soviet intervention. Political scientist Olivier Roy estimated between 50,000 and 100,000 people disappeared during the Taraki-Amin period:

There is only one leading force in the country - Hafizullah Amin. In the Politburo, everybody fears Amin.

During its first 18 months of rule, the PDPA applied a Soviet-style program of modernizing reforms, many of which were viewed by conservatives as opposing Islam. Decrees setting forth changes in marriage customs and land reform were not received well by a population deeply immersed in tradition and Islam, particularly by the powerful landowners harmed economically by the abolition of usury (although usury is prohibited in Islam) and the cancellation of farmers' debts. The new government also enhanced women's rights, sought a rapid eradication of illiteracy and promoted Afghanistan's ethnic minorities, although these programs appear to have had an effect only in the urban areas. By mid-1978, a rebellion started, with rebels attacking the local military garrison in the Nuristan region of eastern Afghanistan and soon civil war spread throughout the country. In September 1979, Deputy Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin seized power, arresting and killing Taraki. More than two months of instability overwhelmed Amin's regime as he moved against his opponents in the PDPA and the growing rebellion.

Affairs with the USSR after the revolution

Even before the revolutionaries came to power, Afghanistan was "a militarily and politically neutral nation, effectively dependent on the Soviet Union." A treaty, signed in December 1978, allowed the Democratic Republic to call upon the Soviet Union for military support.

We believe it would be a fatal mistake to commit ground troops. [...] If our troops went in, the situation in your country would not improve. On the contrary, it would get worse. Our troops would have to struggle not only with an external aggressor, but with a significant part of your own people. And the people would never forgive such things.
- Alexei Kosygin, the Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, in response to Taraki's request for Soviet presence in Afghanistan

Following the Herat uprising, the first major sign of anti-regime resistance, General Secretary Taraki contacted Alexei Kosygin, chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers and asked for "practical and technical assistance with men and armament". Kosygin was unfavorable to the proposal on the basis of the negative political repercussions such an action would have for his country, and he rejected all further attempts by Taraki to solicit Soviet military aid in Afghanistan. Following Kosygin's rejection, Taraki requested aid from Leonid Brezhnev, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Soviet head of state, who warned Taraki that full Soviet intervention "would only play into the hands of our enemies - both yours and ours". Brezhnev also advised Taraki to ease up on the drastic social reforms and to seek broader support for his regime.

In 1979, Taraki attended a conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana, Cuba. On his way back, he stopped in Moscow on 20 March and met with Brezhnev, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and other Soviet officials. It was rumoured that Karmal was present at the meeting in an attempt to reconcile Taraki's Khalq faction and the Parcham against Amin and his followers. At the meeting, Taraki was successful in negotiating some Soviet support, including the redeployment of two Soviet armed divisions at the Soviet-Afghan border, the sending of 500 military and civilian advisers and specialists and the immediate delivery of Soviet armed equipment sold at 25 percent below the original price; however, the Soviets were not pleased about the developments in Afghanistan and Brezhnev impressed upon Taraki the need for party unity. Despite reaching this agreement with Taraki, the Soviets continued to be reluctant to intervene further in Afghanistan and repeatedly refused Soviet military intervention within Afghan borders during Taraki's rule as well as later during Amin's short rule.

Lenin taught us to be merciless towards the enemies of the revolution, and millions of people had to be eliminated in order to secure the victory of the October Revolution.

-  Taraki's reply to the Soviet ambassador Alexander Puzanov, who asked Taraki to spare the lives of two Parchamites sentenced to death.

Initiation of the rebellion

In 1978, the Taraki government initiated a series of reforms, including a radical modernization of the traditional Islamic civil law, especially marriage law, aimed at "uprooting feudalism" in Afghan society.[page needed ] The government brooked no opposition to the reforms and responded with violence to unrest. Between April 1978 and the Soviet Intervention of December 1979, thousands of prisoners, perhaps as many as 27,000, were executed at the notorious Pul-e-Charkhi prison, including many village mullahs and headmen. Other members of the traditional elite, the religious establishment and intelligentsia fled the country.

Large parts of the country went into open rebellion. The Parcham Government claimed that 11,000 were executed during the Amin/Taraki period in response to the revolts. The revolt began in October among the Nuristani tribes of the Kunar Valley in the northeastern part of the country near the border with Pakistan, and rapidly spread among the other ethnic groups. By the spring of 1979, 24 of the 28 provinces had suffered outbreaks of violence. The rebellion began to take hold in the cities: in March 1979 in Herat, rebels led by Ismail Khan revolted. Between 3,000 and 5,000 people were killed and wounded during the Herat revolt. Some 100 Soviet citizens and their families were killed. By August 1979, up to 165,000 Afghans had fled across the border to Pakistan. The main reason the revolt spread so widely was the disintegration of the Afghan army in a series of insurrections. The numbers of the Afghan army fell from 110,000 men in 1978 to 25,000 by 1980. The U.S. embassy in Kabul cabled to Washington the army was melting away "like an ice floe in a tropical sea". According to scholar Gilles Dorronsoro, it was the violence of the state rather than its reforms that caused the uprisings.

Pakistan-U.S. relations and rebel aid

Pakistani intelligence officials began privately lobbying the U.S. and its allies to send materiel assistance to the Islamist rebels. Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's ties with the U.S. had been strained during Jimmy Carter's presidency due to Pakistan's nuclear program and the execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in April 1979, but Carter told National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance as early as January 1979 that it was vital to "repair our relationships with Pakistan" in light of the unrest in Iran. According to former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official Robert Gates, "the Carter administration turned to CIA ... to counter Soviet and Cuban aggression in the Third World, particularly beginning in mid-1979." In March 1979, "CIA sent several covert action options relating to Afghanistan to the SCC [ Special Coordination Committee]" of the United States National Security Council. At a 30 March meeting, U.S. Department of Defense representative Walter B. Slocombe "asked if there was value in keeping the Afghan insurgency going, 'sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire?'" When asked to clarify this remark, Slocombe explained: "Well, the whole idea was that if the Soviets decided to strike at this tar baby [Afghanistan] we had every interest in making sure that they got stuck." Yet a 5 April memo from National Intelligence Officer Arnold Horelick warned: "Covert action would raise the costs to the Soviets and inflame Moslem opinion against them in many countries. The risk was that a substantial U.S. covert aid program could raise the stakes and induce the Soviets to intervene more directly and vigorously than otherwise intended."

In May 1979, U.S. officials secretly began meeting with rebel leaders through Pakistani government contacts. After additional meetings Carter signed two presidential findings in July 1979 permitting the CIA to spend $695,000 on non-military assistance (e.g., "cash, medical equipment, and radio transmitters") and on a propaganda campaign targeting the Soviet-backed leadership of the DRA, which (in the words of Steve Coll) "seemed at the time a small beginning."

Soviet deployment, 1979

The headquarters of the Soviet 40th Army in Tajbeg Palace, Kabul, 1987. Before the Soviet intervention, the building was the presidential palace, where Hafizullah Amin was assassinated.

The Amin government, having secured a treaty in December 1978 that allowed them to call on Soviet forces, repeatedly requested the introduction of troops in Afghanistan in the spring and summer of 1979. They requested Soviet troops to provide security and to assist in the fight against the mujahideen ("Those engaged in jihad") rebels. After the killing of Soviet technicians in Herat by rioting mobs, the Soviet government sold several Mi-24 helicopters to the Afghan military. On 14 April 1979, the Afghan government requested that the USSR send 15 to 20 helicopters with their crews to Afghanistan, and on 16 June, the Soviet government responded and sent a detachment of tanks, BMPs, and crews to guard the government in Kabul and to secure the Bagram and Shindand air bases. In response to this request, an airborne battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel A. Lomakin, arrived at Bagram on 7 July. They arrived without their combat gear, disguised as technical specialists. They were the personal bodyguards for General Secretary Taraki. The paratroopers were directly subordinate to the senior Soviet military advisor and did not interfere in Afghan politics. Several leading politicians at the time such as Alexei Kosygin and Andrei Gromyko were against intervention.

After a month, the Afghan requests were no longer for individual crews and subunits, but for regiments and larger units. In July, the Afghan government requested that two motorized rifle divisions be sent to Afghanistan. The following day, they requested an airborne division in addition to the earlier requests. They repeated these requests and variants to these requests over the following months right up to December 1979. However, the Soviet government was in no hurry to grant them.

We should tell Taraki and Amin to change their tactics. They still continue to execute those people who disagree with them. They are killing nearly all of the Parcham leaders, not only the highest rank, but of the middle rank, too.
- Kosygin speaking at a Politburo session.

The Soviets established a special commission on Afghanistan, comprising the KGB chairman Yuri Andropov, Boris Ponomarev from the Central Committee and Dmitry Ustinov, the Minister of Defence. In late April 1979, the committee reported that Amin was purging his opponents, including Soviet loyalists, that his loyalty to Moscow was in question and that he was seeking diplomatic links with Pakistan and possibly the People's Republic of China (which at the time had poor relations with the Soviet Union). Of specific concern were Amin's supposed meetings with the U.S. chargé d'affaires, J. Bruce Amstutz, which were used as a justification for the invasion by the Kremlin.

During meetings between General Secretary Taraki and Soviet leaders in March 1979, the Soviets promised political support and to send military equipment and technical specialists, but upon repeated requests by Taraki for direct Soviet intervention, the leadership adamantly opposed him; reasons included that they would be met with "bitter resentment" from the Afghan people, that intervening in another country's civil war would hand a propaganda victory to their opponents, and Afghanistan's overall inconsequential weight in international affairs, in essence realizing they had little to gain by taking over a country with a poor economy, unstable government, and population hostile to outsiders. However, as the situation continued to deteriorate from May-December 1979, Moscow changed its mind on dispatching Soviet troops. The reasons for this complete turnabout are not entirely clear, and several speculative arguments include: the grave internal situation and inability for the Afghan government to retain power much longer; the effects of the Iranian Revolution that brought an Islamic theocracy into power, leading to fears that religious fanaticism would spread through Afghanistan and into Soviet Muslim Central Asian republics; Taraki's murder and replacement by Amin, who the Soviet leadership believed had secret contacts within the American embassy in Kabul and "was capable of reaching an agreement with the United States"; however, allegations of Amin colluding with the Americans have been widely discredited and it was revealed in the 1990s that the KGB actually planted the story; and the deteriorating ties with the United States after NATO's two-track missile deployment decision in response to Soviet nuclear presence in Eastern Europe and the failure of Congress to ratify the SALT II treaty, creating the impression that détente was "already effectively dead."

The British journalist Patrick Brogan wrote in 1989: "The simplest explanation is probably the best. They got sucked into Afghanistan much as the United States got sucked into Vietnam, without clearly thinking through the consequences, and wildly underestimating the hostility they would arouse". By the fall of 1979, the Amin regime was collapsing with morale in the Afghan Army having fallen to rock-bottom levels, while the mujahideen had taken control of much of the countryside. The general consensus amongst Afghan experts at the time was that it was not a question of if, but when the mujahideen would take Kabul.

In October 1979, a KGB Spetsnaz force Zenith covertly dispatched a group of specialists to determine the potential reaction from local Afghans to a presence of Soviet troops there. They concluded that deploying troops would be unwise and could lead to war, but this was reportedly ignored by the KGB chairman Yuri Andropov. A Spetsnaz battalion of Central Asian troops, dressed in Afghan Army uniforms, was covertly deployed to Kabul between 9 and 12 November 1979. They moved a few days later to the Tajbeg Palace, where Amin was moving to.

In Moscow, Leonid Brezhnev was indecisive and waffled as he usually did when faced with a difficult decision. The three decision-makers in Moscow who pressed the hardest for an invasion in the fall of 1979 were the troika consisting of Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko; the Chairman of KGB, Yuri Andropov, and the Defense Minister Marshal Dmitry Ustinov. The principal reasons for the invasion were the belief in Moscow that Amin was a leader both incompetent and fanatical who had lost control of the situation, together with the belief that it was the United States via Pakistan who was sponsoring the Islamist insurgency in Afghanistan. Andropov, Gromyko and Ustinov all argued that if a radical Islamist regime came to power in Kabul, it would attempt to sponsor radical Islam in Soviet Central Asia, thereby requiring a preemptive strike. What was envisioned in the fall of 1979 was a short intervention under which Moscow would replace radical Khalqi Communist Amin with the moderate Parchami Communist Babrak Karmal to stabilize the situation. Contrary to the contemporary view of Brzezinski and the regional powers, access to the Persian Gulf played no role in the decision to intervene on the Soviet side.

The concerns raised by the Chief of the Soviet Army General Staff, Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov who warned about the possibility of a protracted guerrilla war, were dismissed by the troika who insisted that any occupation of Afghanistan would be short and relatively painless. Most notably, though the diplomats of the Narkomindel at the Embassy in Kabul and the KGB officers stationed in Afghanistan were well informed about the developments in that country, such information rarely filtered through to the decision-makers in Moscow who viewed Afghanistan more in the context of the Cold War rather than understanding Afghanistan as a subject in its own right. The viewpoint that it was the United States that was fomenting the Islamic insurgency in Afghanistan with the aim of destabilizing Soviet-dominated Central Asia tended to downplay the effects of an unpopular Communist government pursuing policies that the majority of Afghans violently disliked as a generator of the insurgency and strengthened those who argued some sort of Soviet response was required to a supposed "outrageous American provocation." It was assumed in Moscow that because Pakistan (an ally of both the United States and China) was supporting the mujahideen that therefore it was ultimately the United States and China who were behind the rebellion in Afghanistan.

Amin's revolutionary government had lost credibility with virtually all of the Afghan population. A combination of chaotic administration, excessive brutality from the secret police, unpopular domestic reforms, and a deteriorating economy, along with public perceptions that the state was atheistic and anti-Islamic, all added to the government's unpopularity. After 20 months of Khalqist rule, the country deteriorated in almost every facet of life. The Soviet Union believed that without intervention, Amin's government would have been disintegrated by the resistance and the country would have been "lost" to a regime most likely hostile to the USSR.

Soviet invasion and palace coup

On 31 October 1979, Soviet informants under orders from the inner circle of advisors around Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev relayed information to the Afghan Armed Forces for them to undergo maintenance cycles for their tanks and other crucial equipment. Meanwhile, telecommunications links to areas outside of Kabul were severed, isolating the capital.

The Soviet 40th army launched its initial incursion into Afghanistan on 25 December under the pretext of extending "international aid" to its puppet Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. On 25 December, Soviet Defence Minister Dmitry Ustinov issued an official order, stating that "[t]he state frontier of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan is to be crossed on the ground and in the air by forces of the 40th Army and the Air Force at 1500 hrs on 25 December". This was the formal beginning of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Subsequently, on December 27, Soviet troops arrived at Kabul airport, causing a stir among the city's residents.

Simultaneously, Amin moved the offices of the General Secretary to the Tajbeg Palace, believing this location to be more secure from possible threats. According to Colonel General Tukharinov and Merimsky, Amin was fully informed of the military movements, having requested Soviet military assistance to northern Afghanistan on 17 December. His brother and General Dmitry Chiangov met with the commander of the 40th Army before Soviet troops entered the country, to work out initial routes and locations for Soviet troops.

On 27 December 1979, 700 Soviet troops dressed in Afghan uniforms, including KGB and GRU special forces officers from the Alpha Group and Zenith Group, occupied major governmental, military and media buildings in Kabul, including their primary target, the Tajbeg Palace. The operation began at 19:00, when the KGB-led Soviet Zenith Group destroyed Kabul's communications hub, paralyzing Afghan military command. At 19:15, the assault on Tajbeg Palace began; as planned, General Secretary Hafizullah Amin was assassinated. Simultaneously, other key buildings were occupied (e.g., the Ministry of Interior at 19:15). The operation was fully complete by the morning of 28 December 1979.

The Soviet military command at Termez, Uzbek SSR, announced on Radio Kabul that Afghanistan had been "liberated" from Amin's rule. According to the Soviet Politburo, they were complying with the 1978 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good Neighborliness, and Amin had been "executed by a tribunal for his crimes" by the Afghan Revolutionary Central Committee. That committee then installed former Deputy Prime Minister Babrak Karmal as head of government, who had been demoted to the relatively insignificant post of ambassador to Czechoslovakia following the Khalq takeover and announced that it had requested Soviet military assistance.

Soviet ground forces, under the command of Marshal Sergey Sokolov, entered Afghanistan from the north on 27 December. In the morning, the 103rd Guards 'Vitebsk' Airborne Division landed at the airport at Bagram and the deployment of Soviet troops in Afghanistan was underway. The force that entered Afghanistan, in addition to the 103rd Guards Airborne Division, was under command of the 40th Army and consisted of the 108th and 5th Guards Motor Rifle Divisions, the 860th Separate Motor Rifle Regiment, the 56th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade, and the 36th Mixed Air Corps. Later on, the 201st and 68th Motor Rifle Divisions also entered the country, along with other smaller units. In all, the initial Soviet force was around 1,800 tanks, 80,000 soldiers and 2,000 AFVs. In the second week alone, Soviet aircraft had made a total of 4,000 flights into Kabul. With the arrival of the two later divisions, the total Soviet force rose to over 100,000 personnel.

International positions on Soviet invasion

The invasion of a practically defenseless country was shocking for the international community, and caused a sense of alarm for its neighbor Pakistan. Foreign ministers from 34 Muslim-majority countries adopted a resolution which condemned the Soviet intervention and demanded "the immediate, urgent and unconditional withdrawal of Soviet troops" from the Muslim nation of Afghanistan. Soviet military activities were met with strong criticism internationally, including some of its allied states at the UN General Assembly. The UN General Assembly passed a resolution protesting the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan by a vote of 104-18. According to political scientist Gilles Kepel, the Soviet intervention or invasion was viewed with "horror" in the West, considered to be a fresh twist on the geo-political " Great Game" of the 19th century in which Britain feared that Russia sought access to the Indian Ocean, and posed a threat to Western security, explicitly violating the world balance of power agreed upon at Yalta in 1945.

The general feeling in the United States was that inaction against the Soviet Union could encourage Moscow to go further in its international ambitions. President Jimmy Carter placed a trade embargo against the Soviet Union on shipments of commodities such as grain, while also leading a 66-nation boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. The invasion, along with other concurrent events such as the Iranian Revolution and the hostage stand-off that accompanied it showed the volatility of the wider region for U.S. foreign policy:

Massive Soviet military forces have invaded the small, nonaligned, sovereign nation of Afghanistan, which had hitherto not been an occupied satellite of the Soviet Union. [...] This is a callous violation of international law and the United Nations Charter. [...] If the Soviets are encouraged in this invasion by eventual success, and if they maintain their dominance over Afghanistan and then extend their control to adjacent countries, the stable, strategic, and peaceful balance of the entire world will be changed. This would threaten the security of all nations including, of course, the United States, our allies, and our friends.

-  U.S. President Jimmy Carter during the Address to the Nation, January 4, 1980

Carter also withdrew the SALT-II treaty from consideration before the Senate, recalled the US Ambassador Thomas J. Watson from Moscow, and suspended high-technology exports to the Soviet Union.

Ba'athist Syria, led by Hafez al-Assad, was one of the few states outside the Warsaw Pact that publicly favoured the invasion. Soviet Union expanded its military support to the Syrian government in return. The Warsaw Pact Soviet satellites (excluding Romania) publicly supported the intervention; however, a press account in June 1980 showed that Poland, Hungary and Romania privately informed the Soviet Union that the invasion was a damaging mistake.

Military aid

Weapons supplies were made available through numerous countries. Before the Soviet intervention, the insurgents received support from the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya and Kuwait, albeit on a limited scale. After the intervention, aid was substantially increased. The United States purchased all of Israel's captured Soviet weapons clandestinely, and then funnelled the weapons to the Mujahideen, while Egypt upgraded its army's weapons and sent the older weapons to the militants. Turkey sold their World War II stockpiles to the warlords, and the British and Swiss provided Blowpipe missiles and Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns respectively, after they were found to be poor models for their own forces. China provided the most relevant weapons, likely due to their own experience with guerrilla warfare, and kept meticulous record of all the shipments. The US, Saudi and Chinese aid combined totaled between $6 billion and $12 billion.

State of the Cold War

In the wider Cold War, drastic changes were taking place in Southwestern Asia concurrent with the 1978-1979 upheavals in Afghanistan that changed the nature of the two superpowers. In February 1979, the Iranian Revolution ousted the American-backed Shah from Iran, losing the United States as one of its most powerful allies. The United States then deployed twenty ships in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea including two aircraft carriers, and there were constant threats of war between the U.S. and Iran.

American observers argued that the global balance of power had shifted to the Soviet Union following the emergence of several pro-Soviet regimes in the Third World in the latter half of the 1970s (such as in Nicaragua and Ethiopia), and the action in Afghanistan demonstrated the Soviet Union's expansionism.

March 1979 marked the signing of the U.S.-backed peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. The Soviet leadership saw the agreement as giving a major advantage to the United States. A Soviet newspaper stated that Egypt and Israel were now " gendarmes of the Pentagon". The Soviets viewed the treaty not only as a peace agreement between their erstwhile allies in Egypt and the US-supported Israelis but also as a military pact. In addition, the US sold more than 5,000 missiles to Saudi Arabia, and the USSR's previously strong relations with Iraq had recently soured, as in June 1978 it began entering into friendlier relations with the Western world and buying French and Italian-made weapons, though the vast majority still came from the Soviet Union, its Warsaw Pact satellites, and China.

The Soviet invasion has also been analyzed with the model of the resource curse. The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran saw a massive increase in the scarcity and price of oil, adding tens of billions of dollars to the Soviet economy, as it was the major source of revenue for the USSR that spent 40-60% of its entire federal budget (15% of the GDP) on the military. The oil boom may have overinflated national confidence, serving as a catalyst for the invasion. The Politburo was temporarily relieved of financial constraints and sought to fulfill a long-term geopolitical goal of seizing the lead in the region between Central Asia and the Gulf.

December 1979 - February 1980: Occupation and national unrest

The first phase of the war began with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and first battles with various opposition groups. Soviet troops entered Afghanistan along two ground routes and one air corridor, quickly taking control of the major urban centers, military bases and strategic installations. However, the presence of Soviet troops did not have the desired effect of pacifying the country. On the contrary, it exacerbated nationalistic sentiment, causing the rebellion to spread further. Babrak Karmal, Afghanistan's new leadership, charged the Soviets with causing an increase in the unrest, and demanded that the 40th Army step in and quell the rebellion, as his own army had proved untrustworthy. Thus, Soviet troops found themselves drawn into fighting against urban uprisings, tribal armies (called lashkar), and sometimes against mutinying Afghan Army units. These forces mostly fought in the open, and Soviet airpower and artillery made short work of them.

The Soviet occupation provoked a great deal of fear and unrest amongst a wide spectrum of the Afghan populace. The Soviets held the view that their presence would be accepted after having rid Afghanistan of the "tyrannical" Khalq regime, but this was not to be. In the first week of January 1980, attacks against Soviet soldiers in Kabul became common, with roaming soldiers often assassinated in the city in broad daylight by civilians. In the summer of that year, numerous members of the ruling party would be assassinated in individual attacks. The Soviet Army quit patrolling Kabul in January 1981 after their losses due to terrorism, handing the responsibility over to the Afghan army. Tensions in Kabul peaked during the 3 Hoot uprising on 22 February 1980, when the Soviet soldiers murdered hundreds of protesters. The city uprising took a dangerous turn once again during the student demonstrations of April and May 1980, in which scores of students were killed by soldiers and PDPA sympathizers.

According to the Mitrokhin Archive, the Soviet Union deployed numerous active measures at the beginning of the intervention, spreading disinformation relating to both diplomatic status and military intelligence. These efforts focused on most countries bordering Afghanistan, on several international powers, the Soviet's main adversary, the United States, and neutral countries. The disinformation was deployed primarily by "leaking" forged documents, distributing leaflets, publishing nominally independent articles in Soviet-aligned press, and conveying reports to embassies through KGB residencies. Among the active measures pursued in 1980-1982 were both pro- and anti-separatist documents disseminated in Pakistan, a forged letter implying a Pakistani-Iranian alliance, alleged reports of U.S. bases on the Iranian border, information regarding Pakistan's military intentions filtered through the Pakistan embassy in Bangkok to the Carter Administration, and various disinformation about armed interference by India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Indonesia, Jordan, Italy, and France, among others.

Operations against the guerrillas, 1980-1985

The war now developed into a new pattern: the Soviets occupied the cities and main axis of communication, while the Afghan mujahideen, which the Soviet Army soldiers called 'Dushman,' meaning 'enemy', divided into small groups and waged a guerrilla war in the mountains. Almost 80 percent of the country was outside government control. Soviet troops were deployed in strategic areas in the northeast, especially along the road from Termez to Kabul. In the west, a strong Soviet presence was maintained to counter Iranian influence. Incidentally, special Soviet units would have[clarification needed ] also performed secret attacks on Iranian territory to destroy suspected Mujahideen bases, and their helicopters then got engaged in shootings with Iranian jets. Conversely, some regions such as Nuristan, in the northeast, and Hazarajat, in the central mountains of Afghanistan, were virtually untouched by the fighting, and lived in almost complete independence.

Periodically the Soviet Army undertook multi- divisional offensives into Mujahideen-controlled areas. Between 1980 and 1985, nine offensives were launched into the strategically important Panjshir Valley, but government control in the area did not improve. Heavy fighting also occurred in the provinces neighbouring Pakistan, where cities and government outposts were constantly besieged by the Mujahideen. Massive Soviet operations would regularly break these sieges, but the Mujahideen would return as soon as the Soviets left. In the west and south, fighting was more sporadic, except in the cities of Herat and Kandahar, which were always partly controlled by the resistance.

The Soviets did not initially foresee taking on such an active role in fighting the rebels and attempted to play down their role there as giving light assistance to the Afghan army. However, the arrival of the Soviets had the opposite effect as it incensed instead of pacified the people, causing the Mujahideen to gain in strength and numbers. Originally the Soviets thought that their forces would strengthen the backbone of the Afghan army and provide assistance by securing major cities, lines of communication and transportation. The Afghan army forces had a high desertion rate and were loath to fight, especially since the Soviet forces pushed them into infantry roles while they manned the armored vehicles and artillery. The main reason that the Afghan soldiers were so ineffective, though, was their lack of morale, as many of them were not truly loyal to the communist government but simply wanting a paycheck.[citation needed ] Once it became apparent that the Soviets would have to get their hands dirty, they followed three main strategies aimed at quelling the uprising. Intimidation was the first strategy, in which the Soviets would use airborne attacks and armored ground attacks to destroy villages, livestock and crops in trouble areas. The Soviets would bomb villages that were near sites of guerrilla attacks on Soviet convoys or known to support resistance groups. Local peoples were forced to either flee their homes or die as daily Soviet attacks made it impossible to live in these areas. By forcing the people of Afghanistan to flee their homes, the Soviets hoped to deprive the guerrillas of resources and safe havens. The second strategy consisted of subversion, which entailed sending spies to join resistance groups and report information, as well as bribing local tribes or guerrilla leaders into ceasing operations. Finally, the Soviets used military forays into contested territories in an effort to root out the guerrillas and limit their options. Classic search and destroy operations were implemented using Mil Mi-24 helicopter gunships that would provide cover for ground forces in armored vehicles. Once the villages were occupied by Soviet forces, inhabitants who remained were frequently interrogated and tortured for information or killed.

Afghanistan is our Vietnam. Look at what has happened. We began by simply backing a friendly regime; slowly we got more deeply involved; then we started manipulating the regime - sometimes using desperate measures - and now? Now we are bogged down in a war we cannot win and cannot abandon. [.,.] but for Brezhnev and company we would never have got into it in the first place. - Vladimir Kuzichkin, a KGB defector, 1982

To complement their brute force approach to weeding out the insurgency, the Soviets used KHAD (Afghan secret police) to gather intelligence, infiltrate the Mujahideen, spread false information, bribe tribal militias into fighting and organize a government militia. While it is impossible to know exactly how successful the KHAD was in infiltrating Mujahideen groups, it is thought that they succeeded in penetrating a good many resistance groups based in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. KHAD is thought to have had particular success in igniting internal rivalries and political divisions amongst the resistance groups, rendering some of them completely useless because of infighting. The KHAD had some success in securing tribal loyalties but many of these relationships were fickle and temporary. Often KHAD secured neutrality agreements rather than committed political alignment. The Sarandoy, a KHAD-controlled government militia, had mixed success in the war. Large salaries and proper weapons attracted a good number of recruits to the cause, even if they were not necessarily "pro-communist". The problem was that many of the recruits they attracted were in fact Mujahideen who would join up to procure arms, ammunition and money while also gathering information about forthcoming military operations.

In 1985, the size of the LCOSF (Limited Contingent of Soviet Forces) was increased to 108,800 and fighting increased throughout the country, making 1985 the bloodiest year of the war. However, despite suffering heavily, the Mujahideen were able to remain in the field, mostly because they received thousands of new volunteers daily, and continued resisting the Soviets.

Reforms of the Karmal administration

Karmal called his regime "a new evolutionary phase of the glorious April Revolution," but he failed at uniting the PDPA. In the eyes of many Afghans, he was still seen as a " puppet" of the Soviet Union.

Mujahideen insurrection

Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province became a base for the Afghan resistance fighters and the Deobandi ulama of that province played a significant role in the Afghan 'jihad', with Darul Uloom Haqqania becoming a prominent organisational and networking base for the anti-Soviet Afghan fighters. As well as money, Muslim countries provided thousands of volunteer fighters known as " Afghan Arabs", who wished to wage jihad against the atheist communists. Notable among them was a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden, whose Arab group eventually evolved into al-Qaeda. Despite their numbers, the contribution has been called a "curious sideshow to the real fighting," with only an estimated 2000 of them fighting "at any one time", compared with about 250,000 Afghan fighters and 125,000 Soviet troops.

Their efforts were also sometimes counterproductive, as in the March 1989 battle for Jalalabad, when they showed the enemy the fate awaiting infidels in the form of a truck filled with dismembered bodies of their comrades chopped to pieces after surrendering to radical non-Afghan salafists. Though demoralizing by the abandonment of them by the Soviets, the Afghan Communist government forces rallied to break the siege of Jalalabad and to win the first major government victory in years. "This success reversed the government's demoralization from the withdrawal of Soviet forces, renewed its determination to fight on, and allowed it to survive three more years."

Afghanistan's resistance movement was born in chaos, spread and triumphed chaotically, and did not find a way to govern differently. Virtually all of its war was waged locally by regional warlords. As warfare became more sophisticated, outside support and regional coordination grew. Even so, the basic units of Mujahideen organization and action continued to reflect the highly segmented nature of Afghan society.

Roy also describes regional, ethnic and sectarian variations in Mujahideen organization. In the Pashtun areas of the east, south and southwest, tribal structure, with its many rival sub-divisions, provided the basis for military organization and leadership. Mobilization could be readily linked to traditional fighting allegiances of the tribal lashkar (fighting force). In favorable circumstances such formations could quickly reach more than 10,000, as happened when large Soviet assaults were launched in the eastern provinces, or when the Mujahideen besieged towns, such as Khost in Paktia province in July 1983. But in campaigns of the latter type the traditional explosions of manpower-customarily common immediately after the completion of harvest-proved obsolete when confronted by well dug-in defenders with modern weapons. Lashkar durability was notoriously short; few sieges succeeded.

Mujahideen mobilization in non-Pashtun regions faced very different obstacles. Prior to the intervention, few non-Pashtuns possessed firearms. Early in the war they were most readily available from army troops or gendarmerie who defected or were ambushed. The international arms market and foreign military support tended to reach the minority areas last. In the northern regions, little military tradition had survived upon which to build an armed resistance. Mobilization mostly came from political leadership closely tied to Islam. Roy contrasts the social leadership of religious figures in the Persian- and Turkic-speaking regions of Afghanistan with that of the Pashtuns. Lacking a strong political representation in a state dominated by Pashtuns, minority communities commonly looked to pious learned or charismatically revered (saints) for leadership. Extensive Sufi and maraboutic networks were spread through the minority communities, readily available as foundations for leadership, organization, communication and indoctrination. These networks also provided for political mobilization, which led to some of the most effective of the resistance operations during the war.

The Mujahideen favoured sabotage operations. The more common types of sabotage included damaging power lines, knocking out pipelines and radio stations, blowing up government office buildings, air terminals, hotels, cinemas, and so on. In the border region with Pakistan, the Mujahideen would often launch 800 rockets per day. Between April 1985 and January 1987, they carried out over 23,500 shelling attacks on government targets. The Mujahideen surveyed firing positions that they normally located near villages within the range of Soviet artillery posts, putting the villagers in danger of death from Soviet retaliation. The Mujahideen used land mines heavily. Often, they would enlist the services of the local inhabitants, even children.

They concentrated on both civilian and military targets, knocking out bridges, closing major roads, attacking convoys, disrupting the electric power system and industrial production, and attacking police stations and Soviet military installations and air bases. They assassinated government officials and PDPA members, and laid siege to small rural outposts. In March 1982, a bomb exploded at the Ministry of Education, damaging several buildings. In the same month, a widespread power failure darkened Kabul when a pylon on the transmission line from the Naghlu power station was blown up. In June 1982 a column of about 1,000 young communist party members sent out to work in the Panjshir valley were ambushed within 30 km of Kabul, with heavy loss of life. On 4 September 1985, insurgents shot down a domestic Bakhtar Airlines plane as it took off from Kandahar airport, killing all 52 people aboard.

Mujahideen groups used for assassination had three to five men in each. After they received their mission to kill certain government officials, they busied themselves with studying his pattern of life and its details and then selecting the method of fulfilling their established mission. They practiced shooting at automobiles, shooting out of automobiles, laying mines in government accommodation or houses, using poison, and rigging explosive charges in transport.

In May 1985, the seven principal rebel organizations formed the Seven Party Mujahideen Alliance to coordinate their military operations against the Soviet Army. Late in 1985, the groups were active in and around Kabul, unleashing rocket attacks and conducting operations against the communist government.

Raids inside Soviet territory

In an effort to foment unrest and rebellion by the Islamic populations of the Soviet Union, starting in late 1984 Director of CIA William Casey encouraged Mujahideen militants to mount sabotage raids inside the Soviet Union, according to Robert Gates, Casey's executive assistant and Mohammed Yousef, the Pakistani ISI brigadier general who was the chief for Afghan operations. The rebels began cross-border raids into the Soviet Union in spring 1985. In April 1987, three separate teams of Afghan rebels were directed by the ISI to launch coordinated raids on multiple targets across the Soviet border and extending, in the case of an attack on an Uzbek factory, as deep as over 16 kilometres (10 mi) into Soviet territory. In response, the Soviets issued a thinly-veiled threat to invade Pakistan to stop the cross-border attacks, and no further attacks were reported.

Media reaction

Those hopelessly brave warriors I walked with, and their families, who suffered so much for faith and freedom and who are still not free, they were truly the people of God. - Journalist Rob Schultheis, 1992

International journalistic perception of the war varied. Major American television journalists were sympathetic to the Mujahideen. Most visible was CBS News correspondent Dan Rather, who in 1982 accused the Soviet Union of genocide, comparing them to Hitler. Rather was embedded with the Mujahideen for a report. In 1987, CBS produced a full documentary special on the war.

Reader's Digest took a highly positive view of the Mujahideen, a reversal of their usual view of Islamic fighters. The publication praised their martyrdom and their role in entrapping the Soviets in a Vietnam War-style disaster.

Leftist journalist Alexander Cockburn was unsympathetic, criticizing Afghanistan as "an unspeakable country filled with unspeakable people, sheepshaggers and smugglers, who have furnished in their leisure hours some of the worst arts and crafts ever to penetrate the occidental world. I yield to none in my sympathy to those prostrate beneath the Russian jackboot, but if ever a country deserved rape it's Afghanistan." Robert D. Kaplan on the other hand, thought any perception of Mujahideen as "barbaric" was unfair: "Documented accounts of mujahidin savagery were relatively rare and involved enemy troops only. Their cruelty toward civilians was unheard of during the war, while Soviet cruelty toward civilians was common." Lack of interest in the Mujahideen cause, Kaplan believed, was not the lack of intrinsic interest to be found in a war between a small, poor country and a superpower where a million civilians were killed, but the result of the great difficulty and unprofitability of media coverage. Kaplan noted that "none of the American TV networks had a bureau for a war", and television cameramen venturing to follow the Mujahideen "trekked for weeks on little food, only to return ill and half starved". In October 1984, the Soviet ambassador to Pakistan, Vitaly Smirnov, told Agence France Presse "that journalists traveling with the mujahidin 'will be killed. And our units in Afghanistan will help the Afghan forces to do it.'" Unlike Vietnam and Lebanon, Afghanistan had "absolutely no clash between the strange and the familiar", no "rock-video quality" of "zonked-out GIs in headbands" or "rifle-wielding Shiite terrorists wearing Michael Jackson T-shirts" that provided interesting "visual materials" for newscasts.

Soviet exit and change of Afghan leadership, 1985-1989

Foreign diplomatic efforts

As early as 1983, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry began working with the Soviet Union to provide them an exit from Afghanistan, initiatives led by Foreign Minister Yaqub Ali Khan and Khurshid Kasuri. Despite an active support for insurgent groups, Pakistanis remained sympathetic to the challenges faced by the Soviets in restoring the peace, eventually exploring the possibility of setting up an interim system of government under former monarch Zahir Shah, but this was not authorized by President Zia-ul-Haq due to his stance on the issue of the Durand line. In 1984-85, Foreign Minister Yaqub Ali Khan paid state visits to China, Saudi Arabia, Soviet Union, France, United States and the United Kingdom in order to develop a framework. On 20 July 1987, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the country was announced.

April 1985 - January 1987: Exit strategy

The first step of the Soviet Union's exit strategy was to transfer the burden of fighting the Mujahideen to the Afghan armed forces, with the aim of preparing them to operate without Soviet help. During this phase, the Soviet contingent was restricted to supporting the DRA forces by providing artillery, air support and technical assistance, though some large-scale operations were still carried out by Soviet troops.

Under Soviet guidance, the DRA armed forces were built up to an official strength of 302,000 in 1986. To minimize the risk of a coup d'état, they were divided into different branches, each modeled on its Soviet counterpart. The ministry of defence forces numbered 132,000, the ministry of interior 70,000 and the ministry of state security ( KHAD) 80,000. However, these were theoretical figures: in reality each service was plagued with desertions, the army alone suffering over 10% annual losses, or 32,000 per year.

The decision to engage primarily Afghan forces was taken by the Soviets, but was resented by the PDPA, who viewed the departure of their protectors without enthusiasm. In May 1987 a DRA force attacked well-entrenched Mujahideen positions in the Arghandab District, but the Mujahideen managed to hold their ground, and the attackers suffered heavy casualties. Meanwhile, the Mujahideen benefited from expanded foreign military support from the United States, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and other Muslim-majority countries. Two Heritage Foundation foreign policy analysts, Michael Johns and James A. Phillips, championed Ahmed Shah Massoud as the Afghan resistance leader most worthy of US support under the Reagan Doctrine.

May 1986-1988: Najibullah and his reforms

The government of President Karmal, a puppet regime, was largely ineffective. It was weakened by divisions within the PDPA and the Parcham faction, and the regime's efforts to expand its base of support proved futile. Moscow came to regard Karmal as a failure and blamed him for the problems. Years later, when Karmal's inability to consolidate his government had become obvious, Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, said, "The main reason that there has been no national consolidation so far is that Comrade Karmal is hoping to continue sitting in Kabul with our help." Karmal's consolidation plan only involved those who had not raised arms against the regime, and even demanded Soviet troops to seal the border with Pakistan before any negotiations with Mujahideen. Eventually, the Soviet Union decided to dispose of Karmal from the leadership of Afghanistan.

President Najibullah launched the " National Reconciliation" program at the start of 1987, the goal of which was to unite the nation and end the war that had enveloped the nation for seven years. He expressed willingness to negotiate with the Mujahideen resistance, allow parties other than the PDPA to be active, and indicated that exiled King Zahir Shah could be part of the process. A six-month ceasefire also began in December 1986. His administration was also more open to foreign visitors outside the Soviet bloc. In November 1987, Najibullah convened a selected by the authorities which successfully passed a new constitution for Afghanistan, creating a presidential system with an elective bicameral parliament. The constitution declared "the sacred religion of Islam" the official religion, guaranteed the democratic rights of the individual, made it legal to form "political parties", and promoted equality between the various tribes and nationalities. Despite high expectations, the new policy only had limited impact in regaining support from the population and the resistance, partly because of the high distrust and unpopularity of the PDPA and KHAD, as well as Najibullah's loyalty to Moscow.

As part of the new structure, national parliamentary elections were held in 1988 to elect members of the new National Assembly, the first such elections in Afghanistan in 19 years.

Negotiations for a coalition

Negotiations continued and in 1988 through 1989, The Interim Afghan Government was formed in Pekhawar as an alliance of various Mujahadeen groups including Hezbi Islami and Jamiat, and would be involved in Operation Arrow and the siege of Khost.

April 1988: The Geneva Accords

Following lengthy negotiations, the Geneva Accords was signed in 1988 between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Supported by the Soviet Union and the United States respectively, the two Asian countries agreed to refrain from any form of interference in each other's territory. They also agreed to give Afghan refugees in Pakistan to voluntarily return. The two superpowers agreed to halt their interference in Afghanistan, which included a Soviet withdrawal.

January 1987 - February 1989: Withdrawal

The promotion of Mikhail Gorbachev to General Secretary in 1985 and his 'new thinking' on foreign and domestic policy was likely an important factor in the Soviets' decision to withdraw. Gorbachev had been attempting to remove the Soviet Union from the economic stagnation that had set in under the leadership of Brezhnev, and to reform the Soviet Union's economy and image with the Glasnost and Perestroika policies. Gorbachev had also been attempting to ease cold war tensions by signing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with the U.S. in 1987 and withdrawing the troops from Afghanistan, whose presence had garnered so much international condemnation. Beijing had stipulated that a normalization of relations would have to wait until Moscow withdrew its army from Afghanistan (among other things), and in 1989 the first Sino-Soviet summit in 30 years took place. At the same time, Gorbachev pressured his Cuban allies in Angola to scale down activities and withdraw even though Soviet allies were faring somewhat better there. The Soviets also pulled many of their troops out of Mongolia in 1987, where they were also having a far easier time than in Afghanistan, and restrained the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea to the point of an all-out withdrawal in 1988. This massive withdrawal of Soviet forces from such highly contested areas shows that the Soviet government's decision to leave Afghanistan was based upon a general change in Soviet foreign policy - from one of confrontation to avoidance of conflict wherever possible.

In the last phase, Soviet troops prepared and executed their withdrawal from Afghanistan, whilst limiting the launching of offensive operations by those who had not withdrawn yet.

By mid-1987 the Soviet Union announced that it would start withdrawing its forces. Sibghatullah Mojaddedi was selected as the head of the Interim Islamic State of Afghanistan, in an attempt to reassert its legitimacy against the Moscow-sponsored Kabul regime. Mojaddedi, as head of the Interim Afghan Government, met with then-Vice President of the United States George H. W. Bush, achieving a critical diplomatic victory for the Afghan resistance. Defeat of the Kabul government was their solution for peace. This confidence, sharpened by their distrust of the United Nations, virtually guaranteed their refusal to accept a political compromise.

The first half of the Soviet contingent was withdrawn from 15 May to 16 August 1988, and the second from 15 November to 15 February 1989. In order to ensure a safe passage, the Soviets had negotiated ceasefires with local Mujahideen commanders. The withdrawal was generally executed peacefully except for the operation "Typhoon".

CGen of 40th Army, Boris Gromov, announcing the withdrawal of Soviet contingent forces

General Yazov, the Defense Minister of Soviet Union, ordered the 40th Army to violate the agreement with Ahmed Shah Massoud, who commanded a large force in the Panjshir Valley, and attack his relaxed and exposed forces. The Soviet attack was initiated to protect Najibullah, who did not have a ceasefire in effect with Massoud, and who rightly feared an offensive by Massoud's forces after the Soviet withdrawal. General Gromov, the 40th Army Commander, objected to the operation, but reluctantly obeyed the order. "Typhoon" began on 23 January and continued for three days. To minimize their own losses, the Soviets abstained from close-range fight. Instead, they used long-range artillery, surface-to-surface and air-to-surface missiles. Numerous civilian casualties were reported. Massoud had not threatened the withdrawal to this point and did not attack Soviet forces after they breached the agreement. Overall, the Soviet attack represented a defeat for Massoud's forces, who lost 600 fighters killed and wounded.

Causes of withdrawal

Some of the causes of the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan leading to the Afghanistan regime's eventual defeat include

The Soviet Army of 1980 was trained and equipped for large scale, conventional warfare in Central Europe against a similar opponent, i.e., it used armored and motor-rifle formations. This was notably ineffective against small scale guerrilla groups using hit-and-run tactics in the rough terrain of Afghanistan. Also, the Soviet Army's large formations were not mobile enough to engage small groups of Mujahideen fighters that easily merged back into the terrain. The set strategy also meant that troops were discouraged from "tactical initiative", essential in counter insurgency, because it "tended to upset operational timing".

The Soviets used large-scale offensives against Mujahideen strongholds, such as in the Panjshir Valley, which temporarily cleared those sectors and killed many civilians in addition to enemy combatants. The biggest shortcoming here, though, was the fact that once the Soviets engaged the enemy with force, they failed to hold the ground, as they withdrew once their operation was completed. The killing of civilians further alienated the population from the Soviets, with bad long-term effects.

The Soviets did not have enough men to fight a counter-insurgency war (COIN), and their troops had low morale. The peak number of Soviet troops during the war was 115,000, but the bulk of these troops were conscripts, which led to poor combat performance in their Motor-Rifle Formations. However, the Soviets did have their elite infantry units, such as the famed Spetsnaz, the VDV, and their recon infantry. The problem with their elite units was not combat effectiveness, but that there were not enough of them and that they were employed incorrectly.

Intelligence gathering, essential for successful COIN, was inadequate. The Soviets overly relied on less-than-accurate aerial recon and radio intercepts rather than their recon infantry and special forces. Although their special forces and recon infantry units performed very well in combat against the Mujahideen, they would have better served in intelligence gathering.

The concept of a "war of national liberation" against a Soviet-sponsored "revolutionary" regime was so alien to the Soviet dogma that the leadership could not "come to grips" with it. This led to, among other things, a suppression by the Soviet media for several years of the truth about how bad the war was going, which caused a backlash when it was unable to hide it further.

Fall of Najibullah government, 1992

Aerial engagements

Afghan and Soviet warplanes in Pakistani airspace

Soviet Union and Democratic Republic of Afghanistan Air Force jet fighters and bombers would occasionally cross into Pakistani airspace to target Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. To counter the Soviet jets, the United States started providing F-16 jets to Pakistan. These F-16 jets lacked the capability to fire radar-guided beyond-visual range missiles, and thus they were required to get close to their opponents in order to use their AIM-9P and more advanced AIM-9L Sidewinder heat-seeking or their 20-millimeter Vulcan cannons. On 17 May 1986, two Pakistan Air Force (PAF) F-16 jets intercepted two Su-22M3K belonging to Democratic Republic of Afghanistan Air Force (DRAAF) near the Pakistani airspace. Pakistani officials insisted that both the fighter jets belonging to DRAAF were shot down while Afghan officials confirmed loss of only one fighter jet. Following the engagement, there was a major decline in the number of attacks on Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. On 16 April 1987, a group of PAF F-16s again chased down two DRAAF Su-22 and managed to shoot down one of them and capture its pilot. In 1987, the Soviet Union reported that Pakistani fighter jets were roaming in Afghan airspace, harassing attempts to aerial resupply the besieged garrisons like the one in Khost. On 30 March 1987, two PAF F-16s shot down an An-26 cargo plane, killing all 39 personnel on board the aircraft. In the coming years, PAF claimed credit for shooting down several Mi-8 transport helicopters, and another An-26 which was on a reconnaissance mission in 1989. Also in 1987, two PAF F-16 jets ambushed four Mig-23 which were bombing Mujahideen supply bases. In the clash, one PAF F-16 was lost after it was accidentally hit by an AIM-9 Sidewinder fired by the second PAF F-16. The PAF pilot landed in Afghanistan territory and was smuggled back to Pakistan along with wreckage of his aircraft by the Mujahideen. However, some Russian sources claim that the F-16 was shot down by a Mig-23, though the Soviet Mig-23 were not carrying air-to-air missiles.

On 8 August 1988, Colonel Alexander Rutskoy was leading a group of Sukhoi Su-25 fighter jets to attack a refugee camp in Miramshah, Pakistan. His fighter jet was intercepted and shot down by two PAF F-16. Colonel Alexander Rustkoy landed in Pakistani territory and was captured. He was later exchanged back to the Soviet Union. A month later, around twelve Mig-23 crossed into Pakistani airspace with the aim to lure into ambush the Pakistani F-16s. Two PAF F-16s flew towards the Soviet fighter jets. The Soviet radars failed to detect the low flying F-16s, and the Sidewinder fired by one of the F-16s damaged one of the Mig-23. However, the damaged Mig-23 managed to return home. Two Mig-23 engaged the two PAF F-16s. The Pakistani officials state that both Mig-23 planes were shot down. However, Soviet records show that no additional aircraft were lost that day. The last aerial engagement took place on 3 November 1988, in which one Su-2M4K belonging to DRAAF was shot down by a Pakistani Air Force jet.

During the conflict, Pakistan Air Force F-16 had shot down ten aircraft, belonging to Soviet Union, which had intruded into Pakistani territory. However, the Soviet record only confirmed five kills (three Su-22s, one Su-25 and one An-26). Some sources show that PAF had shot down at least a dozen more aircraft during the war. However, those kills were not officially acknowledged because they took place in Afghanistan's airspace and acknowledging those kills would mean that Afghan airspace was violated by PAF. In all, Pakistan Air Force F-16s had downed several MiG-23s, Su-22s, a Su-25, and an An-24 while losing only one F-16.

Stinger missiles and the "Stinger effect"

Whether the introduction of the personal, portable, infrared-homing surface-to-air " Stinger" missile in September 1986 was a turning point in the war is disputed. Many Western military analysts credit the Stinger with a kill ratio of about 70% and with responsibility for most of the over 350 Soviet or Afghan government aircraft and helicopters downed in the last two years of the war. Some military analysts considered it a "game changer" and coined the term "Stinger effect" to describe it. Congressman Charlie Wilson claimed that before the Stinger the Mujahideen never won a set piece battle with the Soviets, but after it was introduced, the Mujahideen never again lost one.

However, these statistics are based on Mujahideen self-reporting, which is of unknown reliability. A Russian general claimed the United States "greatly exaggerated" Soviet and Afghan aircraft losses during the war. According to Soviet figures, in 1987-1988, only 35 aircraft and 63 helicopters were destroyed by all causes. The Pakistan Army fired twenty-eight Stingers at Soviet aircraft near the border without a single kill.

Many Russian military analysts tend to be dismissive of the impact of the Stinger. Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev decided to withdraw from Afghanistan a year before the Mujahideen fired their first Stinger missiles; Gorbachev was motivated by U.S. sanctions, not military losses. The Stingers did make an impact at first but within a few months' flares, beacons, and exhaust baffles were installed to disorient the missiles, while night operation and terrain-hugging tactics tended to prevent the rebels from getting a clear shot. By 1988 the Mujahideen had all but stopped firing them. Stingers also forced Soviet helicopters and ground attack planes to bomb from higher altitudes with less accuracy but did not bring down many more aircraft than Chinese heavy machine guns and other less sophisticated anti-aircraft weaponry. Gorbachev stated in an interview in 2010 that the Stinger did not influence his decision-making process.

Several historians and scholars went further, stating that the Afghans were victims of genocide by the Soviet Union. These include American professor Samuel Totten, Australian professor Paul R. Bartrop, scholars from Yale Law School including W. Michael Reisman and Charles Norchi, writer and human rights advocate Rosanne Klass, and scholar Mohammed Kakar. Louis Dupree stated that Afghans were victims of "migratory genocide" implemented by Soviet military.

The army of the Soviet Union killed large numbers of Afghans to suppress their resistance. In one notable incident the Soviet Army committed mass killing of civilians in the summer of 1980. To separate the Mujahideen from the local populations and eliminate their support, the Soviet army killed many civilians, drove many more Afghans from their homes, and used scorched-earth tactics to prevent their return. They used booby traps, mines, and chemical substances throughout the country. The Soviet army indiscriminately killed combatants and non-combatants to terrorize local populations into submission. The provinces of Nangarhar, Ghazni, Laghman, Kunar, Zabul, Kandahar, Badakhshan, Logar, Paktia and Paktika witnessed extensive depopulation programmes by the Soviet forces.

The Soviet forces abducted Afghan women in helicopters while flying in the country in search of Mujahideen. In November 1980 a number of such incidents had taken place in various parts of the country, including Laghman and Kama. Soviet soldiers as well as KhAD agents kidnapped young women from the city of Kabul and the areas of Darul Aman and Khair Khana, near the Soviet garrisons, to rape them. Women who were taken and raped by Soviet soldiers were considered 'dishonoured' by their families if they returned home. Deserters from the Soviet Army in 1984 also reported the atrocities by Soviet troops on Afghan women and children, including rape.

Scorched-earth tactics and Wanton destruction

Irrigation systems, crucial to agriculture in Afghanistan's arid climate, were destroyed by aerial bombing and strafing by Soviet or government forces. In the worst year of the war, 1985, well over half of all the farmers who remained in Afghanistan had their fields bombed, and over one quarter had their irrigation systems destroyed and their livestock shot by Soviet or government troops, according to a survey conducted by Swedish relief experts.

Everything was the target in the country, from cities, villages, up to schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, factories and orchards. Soviet tactics included targeting areas which showed support for the Mujahideen, and forcing the populace to flee the rural territories the communists were unable to control. Half of Afghanistan's 24,000 villages were destroyed by the end of the war.

Use of chemical weapons

Amnesty International concluded that the communist-controlled Afghan government used widespread torture against inmates (officials, teachers, businessmen and students suspected of having ties to the rebels) in interrogation centers in Kabul, run by the KHAD, who were beaten, subjected to electric shocks, burned with cigarettes and that some of their hair was pulled out. Some died from these harsh conditions. Women of the prisoners were forced to watch or were locked up in the cells with the corpses. The Soviets were accused of supervising these tortures.

The Soviet soldiers were looting from the dead in Afghanistan, including stealing money, jewelry and clothes. During the Red Army withdrawal in February 1989, 30 to 40 military trucks crammed with Afghan historical treasures crossed into the Soviet Union, under orders from General Boris Gromov. He cut an antique Tekke carpet stolen from Darul Aman Palace into several pieces and gave it to his acquaintances.

Foreign involvement

The Afghan mujahideen were backed primarily by Pakistan, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom making it a Cold War proxy war. Out of the countries that supported the Mujahideen, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia offered the greatest financial support. However, private donors and religious charities throughout the Muslim world-particularly in the Persian Gulf-raised considerably more funds for the Afghan rebels than any foreign government; Jason Burke recounts that "as little as 25 per cent of the money for the Afghan jihad was actually supplied directly by states." Saudi Arabia was heavily involved in the war effort and matched the United States' contributions dollar-for-dollar in public funds. Saudi Arabia also gathered an enormous amount of money for the Afghan mujahideen in private donations that amounted to about $20 million per month at their peak.

Other countries that supported the Mujahideen were Egypt, China, and even Israel. Iran on the other hand only supported the Shia Mujahideen, namely the Persian speaking Shiite Hazaras in a limited way. One of these groups was the Tehran Eight, a political union of Afghan Shi'a. They were supplied predominately by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but Iran's support for the Hazaras nevertheless frustrated efforts for a united Mujahideen front.

Soviet personnel strengths and casualties

Between 25 December 1979, and 15 February 1989, a total of 620,000 soldiers served with the forces in Afghanistan (though there were only 80,000-104,000 serving at one time): 525,000 in the Army, 90,000 with border troops and other KGB sub-units, 5,000 in independent formations of MVD Internal Troops, and police forces.[citation needed ] A further 21,000 personnel were with the Soviet troop contingent over the same period doing various white collar and blue-collar jobs.

The total official fatalities of the Soviet Armed Forces, frontier, and internal security troops came to 14,453. Other estimates give a figure of 26,000 killed Soviet soldiers. Soviet Army formations, units, and HQ elements lost 13,833, KGB sub-units lost 572, MVD formations lost 28, and other ministries and departments lost 20 men. During this period 312 servicemen were missing in action or taken prisoner; 119 were later freed, of whom 97 returned to the USSR and 22 went to other countries.

Material losses were as follows:

In early 1987 a CIA report estimated that, from 1979 to 1986, the Soviet military spent 18 billion rubles on the war in Afghanistan (not counting other costs incurred to the Soviet state such as economic and military aid to the DRA). The CIA noted that this was the equivalent of US$50 billion ($115 billion in 2019 USD). The report credited the relatively low cost to the small size of the Soviet deployment and the fact that the supply lines to Afghanistan were very short (in some cases, easier and cheaper than internal USSR lines). Military aid to the DRA's armed forces totaled 9.124 billion rubles from 1980 to 1989 (peaking at 3.972 billion rubles in 1989). Financial and economic aid were also significant; by 1990, 75% of the Afghan state's income came from Soviet aid.

Casualties and destruction in Afghanistan

Civilian death and destruction from the war was massive and detrimental. Estimates of Afghan civilian deaths vary from 562,000 to 2,000,000. By one estimate, at least 800,000 Afghans were killed during the Soviet occupation. 5 million Afghans fled to Pakistan and Iran, 1/3 of the prewar population of the country, and another 2 million were displaced within the country, making it one of the largest refugee crises in history. In the 1980s, half of all refugees in the world were Afghan. In his report, Felix Ermacora, the UN Special Rapporteur to Afghanistan, enumerated 32,755 killed civilians, 1,834 houses and 74 villages destroyed, and 3,308 animals killed in the first nine months of 1985. Data cited by the World Bank shows that Afghanistan's population declined from 13.4 million (1979) to 11.8 million (1989) during the decade of Soviet occupation.

R. J. Rummel, an analyst of political killings, estimated that Soviet forces were responsible for 250,000 democidal killings during the war and that the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan was responsible for 178,000 democidal killings. He also assumed that overall a million people died during the war. There were also a number of reports of large scale executions of hundreds of civilians by Soviet and DRA soldiers. Noor Ahmed Khalidi calculated that 876,825 Afghans were killed up until 1987. Historian John W. Dower somewhat agrees with this estimate, citing 850,000 civilian fatalities, while the military fatalities "certainly totaled over 100,000". Marek Sliwinski estimated the number of war deaths to be much higher, at a median of 1.25 million, or 9% of the entire pre-war Afghan population. Scholars John Braithwaite and Ali Wardak accept this in their estimate of 1.2 million dead Afghans. However, Siddieq Noorzoy presents an even higher figure of 1.71 million deaths during the Soviet-Afghan war. Overall, between 6.5%-11.5% of Afghanistan's population is estimated to have perished in the war. Anti-government forces were also responsible for some casualties. Rocket attacks on Kabul's residential areas caused more than 4,000 civilian deaths in 1987 according to the UN's Ermacora.

Along with fatalities were 1.2 million Afghans disabled (Mujahideen, government soldiers and noncombatants) and 3 million maimed or wounded (primarily noncombatants).

A PFM-1 mine, often mistaken for a toy by children. The mine's shape was dictated by aerodynamics.[276]

The population of Afghanistan's second largest city, Kandahar, was reduced from 200,000 before the war to no more than 25,000 inhabitants, following a months-long campaign of carpet bombing and bulldozing by the Soviets and Afghan communist soldiers in 1987. Land mines had killed 25,000 Afghans during the war and another 10-15 million land mines, most planted by Soviet and government forces, were left scattered throughout the countryside. The International Committee of the Red Cross estimated in 1994 that it would take 4,300 years to remove all the Soviet land mines in Afghanistan, which continued to kill hundreds of people on yearly basis.

Before the war, Afghanistan was already one of the world's poorest countries. The prolonged conflict left Afghanistan ranked 170 out of 174 in the UNDP's Human Development Index, making Afghanistan one of the least developed countries in the world.

Once the Soviets withdrew, US interest in Afghanistan slowly decreased over the following four years, much of it administered through the DoD Office of Humanitarian Assistance, under the then Director of HA, George M. Dykes III. With the first years of the Clinton Administration in Washington, DC, all aid ceased. The US decided not to help with reconstruction of the country, instead handing the interests of the country over to US allies Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Pakistan quickly took advantage of this opportunity and forged relations with warlords and later the Taliban, to secure trade interests and routes. The ten years following the war saw much ecological and agrarian destruction-from wiping out the country's trees through logging practices, which has destroyed all but 2% of forest cover country-wide, to substantial uprooting of wild pistachio trees for the exportation of their roots for therapeutic uses, to opium agriculture.

Captain Tarlan Eyvazov, a soldier in the Soviet forces during the war, stated that the Afghan children's future is destined for war. Eyvazov said, "Children born in Afghanistan at the start of the war... have been brought up in war conditions, this is their way of life." Eyvazov's theory was later strengthened when the Taliban movement developed and formed from orphans or refugee children who were forced by the Soviets to flee their homes and relocate their lives in Pakistan. The swift rise to power, from the young Taliban in 1996, was the result of the disorder and civil war that had warlords running wild because of the complete breakdown of law and order in Afghanistan after the departure of the Soviets.

The CIA World Fact Book reported that as of 2004, Afghanistan still owed $8 billion in bilateral debt, mostly to Russia, however, in 2007 Russia agreed to cancel most of the debt.

5.5 million Afghans were made refugees by the war-a full one third of the country's pre-war population-fleeing the country to Pakistan or Iran. Another estimate states 6.2 million refugees. By the end of 1981, the UN High Commission for Refugees reported that Afghans represented the largest group of refugees in the world.

A total of 3.3 million Afghan refugees were housed in Pakistan by 1988, some of whom continue to live in the country up until today. Of this total, about 100,000 were based in the city of Peshawar, while more than 2 million were located in other parts of the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (then known as the North-West Frontier Province). At the same time, close to two million Afghans were living in Iran. Over the years Pakistan and Iran have imposed tighter controls on refugees which have resulted in numerous returnees. In 2012 Pakistan banned extensions of visas to foreigners. Afghan refugees have also settled in India and became Indian citizens over time. Some also made their way into North America, the European Union, Australia, and other parts of the world. The photo of Sharbat Gula placed on National Geographic cover in 1985 became a symbol both of the 1980s Afghan conflict and of the refugee situation.

Effect on Afghan society

The legacy of the war introduced a culture of guns, drugs and terrorism in Afghanistan. The traditional power structure was also changed in favor of the powerful Mujahideen militias:

"In present-day Afghanistan the groups of clergy, community elders, intelligentsia, and the military cannot be seen."

Fall of the Soviet Union

According to scholars Rafael Reuveny and Aseem Prakash, the war contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union by undermining the image of the Red Army as invincible, undermining Soviet legitimacy, and by creating new forms of political participation. On the other hand, the costs for the Soviet Union were not overwhelmingly large compared to other commitments. The CIA estimated in 1987 that the costs amounted to about 2.5 percent of the Soviet military spending per year. According to historian Sergey Radchenko there is no evidence that the Afghanistan war bankrupted the USSR. The Soviet Union spent about $7.5 billion between 1984 and 1987 but this number was negligible compared to the annual military budget of roughly $128 billion. The decision to withdraw was made based on a number of political factors. The studies about the dissolution of the Soviet Union by historians Stephen Kotkin and Vladislav Zubok identify mainly internal reasons for the collapse and mention the Afghanistan war only in passing.

The war created a cleavage between the party and the military in the Soviet Union, where the efficacy of using the Soviet military to maintain the USSR's overseas interests was now put in doubt. In the non-Russian republics, those interested in independence were emboldened by the army's defeat. Some Russian leaders began to doubt the ability to put down anti-Soviet resistance militarily (as it had in Czechoslovakia in 1968, Hungary in 1956, and East Germany in 1953). As the war was viewed as "a Soviet war fought by non Soviets against Afghans", outside of the Soviet Union it undermined the legitimacy of the Soviet Union as a trans-national political union. The war created new forms of political participation, in the form of new civil organizations of war veterans ( Afgantsy), which weakened the political hegemony of the communist party. It also started the transformation of the press and media, which continued under glasnost.

Two Soviet T-55 tanks formerly belonging to the Afghan Army lie rusting in a field near Bagram Airfield, in 2002

The war did not end with the withdrawal of the Soviet Army. The Soviet Union left Afghanistan deep in winter, with intimations of panic among Kabul officials. The Afghan mujahideen were poised to attack provincial towns and cities and eventually Kabul, if necessary. General Secretary Mohammed Najibullah's government, though failing to win popular support, territory, or international recognition, was able to remain in power until 1992. Ironically, until demoralized by the defections of its senior officers, the Afghan Army had achieved a level of performance it had never reached under direct Soviet tutelage. Kabul had achieved a stalemate that exposed the Mujahideen's weaknesses, political and military. But for nearly three years, while Najibullah's government successfully defended itself against Mujahideen attacks, factions within the government had also developed connections with its opponents.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989 proposed a peace plan in cooperation with the leader of Afghanistan, Mohammad Najibullah, for the joint cutoff of Soviet and American aid to the government and guerrillas respectively, to result in a ceasefire and peace negotiations. Najibullah sought American cooperation in achieving a political solution. However the newly elected administration of George H. W. Bush rejected the plan, expecting to win the war through battle. Almost immediately after the Soviet withdrawal, the Mujahideen attacked the eastern city of Jalalabad in a plan instigated by Hamid Gul of Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI). Both the Americans and Pakistanis expected Jalalabad to rapidly fall to the guerrillas and lead to a final victorious attack in Kabul. The Afghan Army proved their capability without Soviet troops as they managed to restrain the Mujahideen attack, resulting in a major defeat for the Mujahideen.

In December 1990, the United States and the Soviet Union came close to an agreement to end arms supplies to the sides in the civil war, but a date could not be agreed. Two years after the Soviet withdrawal, the guerrillas only gained one provincial capital, Tarinkot, and its surrender was arranged by local tribal leaders. However, in March 1991, the guerrillas managed to win over a city for the first time: Khost, which was nicknamed "Little Russia" due to the city's high support of local communist officials. However the guerrillas were unable to fully defeat the Afghan Army as expected by the United States and Pakistan, and neither could the Najibullah government win on the battlefield. This situation ended following the 1991 August Coup in the Soviet Union - according to Russian publicist Andrey Karaulov, the main trigger for Najibullah losing power was Russia's refusal to sell oil products to Afghanistan in 1992 for political reasons (the new Boris Yeltsin government did not want to support the former communists), which effectively triggered an embargo.[citation needed ] In April, Najibullah and his communist government fell to the Mujahideen, who replaced Najibullah with a new governing council for the country.

Grain production declined an average of 3.5% per year between 1978 and 1990 due to sustained fighting, instability in rural areas, prolonged drought, and deteriorated infrastructure. Restoration of gas production has been hampered by internal strife and the disruption of traditional trading relationships following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Extremism and international terrorism

The Soviet strategy of " rubblization" returned the country to the Dark Ages, paving the way for a radicalization of the survivors (many of whom joined the now infamous Taliban movement) that would be realized in the decade after the Soviet departure in 1988.
Samuel Totten & Paul Bartrop

Following the Soviet withdrawal, some of the foreign volunteers (including Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda) and young Afghan refugees, went on to continue violent jihad in Afghanistan, Pakistan and abroad. Some of the thousands of Afghan Arabs who left Afghanistan went on to become "capable leaders, religious ideologues and military commanders," who played "vital roles" as insurgents or terrorists in places such as Algeria, Egypt, Bosnia and Chechnya. Tens of thousands of Afghan refugee children in Pakistan were educated in madrassas "in a spirit of conservatism and religious rigor", and went on to fill the ranks and leadership of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Sipah-e-Sahaba in Pakistan. The groups embodied new varieties of Political Islam - " Salafi jihadism" among the foreign volunteers, and a "hybrid" Deobandi jihadism among the madrassa-educated.

Afghanistan's General Secretary Najibullah, before his ouster by the Mujahideen in 1992, told a visiting US academic that "Afghanistan in extremist hands would be a center of instability." It has been claimed that the chaos could have been avoided had the Bush administration been willing to support the Najibullah and Soviet proposals of a coalition government with the guerrillas, instead of a total military solution. Najibullah also told the International Herald Tribune that "if fundamentalism comes to Afghanistan, war will continue for many years. Afghanistan will be turned into a center of terrorism."

As many as 35,000 non-Afghan Muslim fighters went to Afghanistan between 1982 and 1992. Thousands more came and did not fight but attended schools with "former and future fighters". These "Afghan-Arabs" had a marginal impact on the jihad against the Soviets, but a much greater effect after the Soviets left and in other countries. (After the Soviets left, training continued and "tens of thousands" from "some 40 nations" came to prepare for armed insurrections "to bring the struggle back home". )

When back in the volunteer camps and training centers that he helped set up around Peshawar, Pakistan, Azzam exercised a "strong influence". He preached the importance of jihad: "those who believe that Islam can flourish [and] be victorious without Jihad, fighting, and blood are deluded and have no understanding of the nature of this religion"; of not compromising: "Jihad and the rifle alone: no negotiations, no conferences and no dialogues"; and that Afghanistan was only the beginning: jihad would "remain an individual obligation" for Muslims until all other formerly-Muslim lands-" Palestine, Bukhara, Lebanon, Chad, Eritrea, Somalia, the Philippines, Burma, South Yemen, Tashkent, Andalusia"-were reconquered.

The volunteers also influenced each other. Many "unexpected" religious-political ideas resulted from the "cross-pollination" during the "great gathering" of Islamists from dozens of countries in the camps and training centers. One in particular was a "variant of Islamist ideology based on armed struggle and extreme religious vigour", known as Salafi jihadism.

When the Soviet Union fell shortly after their withdrawal from Afghanistan, the volunteers were "exultant", believing that-in the words of Osama bin Laden-the credit for "the dissolution of the Soviet Union ... goes to God and the mujahideen in Afghanistan ... the US had no mentionable role," (Soviet economic troubles and United States aid to Mujahideen notwithstanding). They eagerly sought to duplicate their jihad in other countries.

Three such countries were Bosnia, Algeria and Egypt. In Bosnia the Salafi jihadist Afghan Arabs fought against Bosnian Serb and Croat militias but failed to establish a Salafi state. In Algeria and Egypt thousand of volunteers returned and fought but were even less successful. In Algeria Salafi jihadist helped lead and fight for the GIA, deliberately killing thousands of civilians. In Egypt the Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya killed more than a thousand people between 1990 and 1997 but also failed to overthrow the government.

Spread of extremism in Pakistan

Pakistani soldiers conducting clearance operations in Mirali, North Waziristan, c. 2015. Pakistan has sought to expel remnants of the Afghan Mujahideen from its borders since the end of the Soviet-Afghan War.

Among the approximately three million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, thousands of children were educated in madrasa boarding schools financed by aid from the US and Gulf monarchies. Since that aid was distributed according to the conservative Islamist ideological criteria of Pakistan's President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and Saudi Arabia (and ignoring native Afghan traditions), the schools were part of networks of the favored Hizb-e-Islami party and the Pakistan Deobandi. (Iran provided similar help to Shia Islamist groups and punishments to moderate Shia nationalist Afghans.)

Cut off from families and local traditions, the madrassa students were "educated to put Deobandi doctrines into action through obedience to the fatwas produced in the madrassas in a spirit of conservatism and religious rigor." As the Afghan students came of age, they formed "the mainstay" of the Taliban in Afghanistan and of the anti-Shia Sipah-e-Sahaba Sunni terror group in Pakistan. But unlike the traditionally non-violent Deobandi, this "hybrid movement" embraced the violence of jihad, and unlike the Islamists of Hizb-e-Islami they were uninterested in "islamizing modernity" of western knowledge or in western knowledge at all. The culture of religious purification, absolute obedience to leaders, and disinterest in anything else, is thought to explain the willingness of Hizb-e-Islami-trained soldiers to bombard Kabul with artillery and kill thousands of civilians, reassured by their commander that the civilians they killed would "be rewarded" in heaven if they were "good Muslims". From 2008 to 2014 "thousands of Shia" have been killed by Sunni extremists according to Human Rights Watch.

"Blowback" of the U.S.

Blowback, or unintended consequences of funding the Mujahideen, was said to have come to the United States in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the September 11 attacks. In the 1993 bombing, all of the participants in the bombing "either had served in Afghanistan or were linked to a Brooklyn-based fund-raising organ for the Afghan jihad" that was later "revealed to be al-Qaeda's de facto U.S. headquarters". Principals in the 2001 attack - Osama Bin Laden, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - had both fought in Afghanistan, and bin Laden was a lieutenant of Abdullah Azzam. His group, al-Qaeda, returned to Afghanistan to take refuge with the Taliban after being expelled from Sudan. Before the 9/11 attack, al-Qaeda had bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, and nearly sank the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. However, no direct U.S. aid to Bin Laden or any of his affiliates has ever been established.

Media and popular culture

Within Afghanistan, war rugs were a popular form of carpet designs woven by victims of the war.

Perception in Afghanistan

Role of the United States

Pro-Mujahideen Afghans had seen the United States as the main power to help their cause in the Soviet-Afghan War. However, after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, a growing number of Afghans started blaming the United States for miseries. This was cited as a result of continued American arming and funding of rebels against the pro-Soviet administration in Kabul. Throughout 1989 and 1990, many rebel rocket attacks were fired, nowhere near military targets, that killed dozens of Afghan civilians. Many Afghans also reportedly felt that the U.S. caused the rise of the Taliban by sending billions of dollars in funding for the rebels while leaving the country in Pakistan's hands after 1992. One Afghan ex-prisoner who was affiliated with the U.S. Embassy in Kabul told the Chicago Tribune in 2001:

Afghan people have good memories of the Americans. During the Russian invasion everybody knows that America helped us to get the Russians out. But when Russia collapsed, they had no more interest and they left us alone

Perception in the former Soviet Union

The war left a long legacy in the former Soviet Union and following its collapse. Along with losses, it brought physical disabilities and widespread drug addiction throughout the USSR.

The remembrance of Soviet soldiers killed in Afghanistan and elsewhere internationally are commemorated annually on 15 February in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Veterans of the war are often referred to as афганцы ( Afgantsy) in Russian.

Russian Federation

Duma member Semyon Bagdasarov (socialist A Just Russia) advocated that Russia had to reject Western calls for stronger assistance to the US-led ISAF-coalition in Afghanistan and also had to establish contacts with the "anti-Western forces"; the Taliban, in case they regain power.

Uzbekistan

The war affected many families in post-Soviet Uzbekistan who had lost children. Some 64,500 young men from the Uzbek SSR were drafted in the war. At least 1,522 were killed and more than 2,500 left disabled. The former Uzbekistani president Islam Karimov described the Afghan war as a "major mistake" of the Soviet Union.

Around 12,500 residents of the Moldavian SSR served during the war. Of those, 301 Moldovans died in the war. The Union of Veterans of the War in Afghanistan of the Republic of Moldova is a veteran's group based in Moldova that advocates for the well-being of veterans. On 15 May 2000, after the Government's initiative to abolish benefits for veterans of the war in Afghanistan, sympathizers went to Great National Assembly Square. In 2001, the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova, which came to power, radically changed the position of all veterans in the country. 15 February is celebrated as the Day of Commemoration of those killed in the War in Afghanistan. The main ceremony is held at the memorial "Sons of the Motherland - Eternal Memory".

References

1. ^ "The top leader is believed to be Maulvi Mohammad Umar Amir, who was born in the village of Nodeh in Kandhar, and is now settled in Singesar. He was wounded four times in the battles against the Soviets and his right eye was permanently damaged. He took part in the "Jehad" under the late Hizb-e-Islami Khalis Commander Nek Mohammad". Indian Defence Review. 10: 33. 1995.

2. ^ Nyrop, Richard F.; Seekins, Donald M. (January 1986). Afghanistan: A Country Study (PDF). Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. pp. xviii-xxv. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 November 2001.

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13. "Afghanistan: Lessons from the Last War".

14. ^ Hilali, A. Z. (2005). "The Soviet Penetration into Afghanistan and the Marxist Coup". The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. 18 (4): 709. doi:10.1080/13518040500354984. S2CID 145101689.

15. ^ Atkinson, Darren. "From Communism to Nationalism? The Trajectory of "Post-Communist" Ideology in Afghanistan" (PDF). psa.ac.uk.

16. The April 1978 Coup d'état and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan - Library of congress country studies(Retrieved 4 February 2007)

17. ^ The Russian General Staff (2002). Grau, Lestwer W.; Gress, Michael A. (eds.). The Soviet Afghan-War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost. University Press of Kansas. p. 10. ISBN 978-0-7006-1186-7.

18. ^ Bennett Andrew(1999); A bitter harvest: Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and its effects on Afghan political movements(Retrieved February 4, 2007)

19. ^ "U.S. Library of Congress - "The April 1912 Coup d'etat and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan"". Countrystudies.us.

20. "The Rise and Fall of the Taliban", by Neamatollah Nojumi, published in ^ The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan, ed by Robert D Crews and Amin Tarzi, pub by Harvard University Press, 2008

21. ^ "Intensification of Warfare between Government Forces and Moslem Rebels - Government Changes - Alleged Involvement of Foreign Powers". Keesing's Record of World Events (PDF). Vol. 25. Keesing's Worldwide, LLC. October 1979. p. 29878.

22. ^ Riedel, Bruce (2014). What We Won: America's Secret War in Afghanistan, 1979-1989. Brookings Institution Press. pp. 98-99. ISBN 978-0-8157-2595-4.

23. Gates, Robert (2007). From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War. Simon & Schuster. pp. 142, 144-145. ISBN 978-1-4165-4336-7.

24. ^ Tobin, Conor (April 2020). "The Myth of the "Afghan Trap": Zbigniew Brzezinski and Afghanistan, 1978-1979". Diplomatic History. Oxford University Press. 44 (2): 237-264. doi:10.1093/dh/dhz065.

25. ^ Harrison, Selig S.; Cordovez, Diego (1995). Out of Afghanistan: the Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 36-37. ISBN 978-0-19-506294-6.

26. Seth G. Jones (2010). In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 16-17. ISBN 9780393071429. 'It was total nonsense,' said the CIA's Graham Fuller. 'I would have been thrilled to have those kinds of contacts with Amin, but they didn't exist.'

27. Coll 2004, pp. 47-49: "Frustrated and hoping to discredit him, the KGB initially planted false stories that Amin was a CIA agent. In the autumn these rumors rebounded on the KGB in a strange case of "blowback," the term used by spies to describe planted propaganda that filters back to confuse the country that first set the story loose."

28. ^ "Генерал-майор Василий Заплатин __ ДО ШТУРМА ДВОРЦА АМИНА". 21 October 2000. Archived from the original on 21 October 2000.

29. ^ Amstutz, J. Bruce (1986). Afghanistan: The First Five Years of Soviet Occupation (PDF). Washington, D.C.: National Defense University. Archived (PDF) from the original on 27 May 2019.

30. ^ "The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979: Failure of Intelligence or of the Policy Process?" (PDF). p. 7. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 July 2006.

31. Ye. I. Malashenko, ^ Movement to contact and commitment to combat of reserve fronts, Military Thought (military-theoretical journal of the Russian Ministry of Defence), April-June 2004

32. Brown, James D. J. (1 January 2013). "Oil Fueled? The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan". Post-Soviet Affairs. 29 (1): 56-94. doi:10.1080/1060586X.2013.778543. ISSN 1060-586X.

33. ^ Afghanistan Task Force (10 January 1980). "Afghanistan: Soviet Invasion and U.S. Response Issue Brief Number IB80006" (PDF). Library of Congress Congressional Research Service.

34. ^ Borshchevskaya, Anna (2022). "2: The Soviet Union in the Middle East and the Afghanistan Intervention". Putin's War in Syria. 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK: I. B. Tauris. pp. 24, 25. ISBN 978-0-7556-3463-7.

35. Kinsella, Warren. "Unholy Alliances", Lester Publishing, 1992

36. ^ Goldman, Minton (1984). Soviet Military Intervention in Afghanistan: Roots & Causes.

37. ^ Yousaf, Mohammad & Adkin, Mark (1992). Afghanistan, the bear trap: the defeat of a superpower. Casemate. p. 159. ISBN 0-9711709-2-4.

38. ^ Report from Afghanistan Archived 28 January 2017 at the Wayback Machine Claude Malhuret

39. ^ Grau, Lester W. (1 March 2004). "The Soviet-Afghan War: A Superpower Mired in the Mountains". The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. 17 (1): 129-151. doi:10.1080/13518040490440692. S2CID 144778383.

40. ^ Haroon, Sana (2008). "The Rise of Deobandi Islam in the North-West Frontier Province and Its Implications in Colonial India and Pakistan 1914-1996". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 18 (1): 66-67. doi:10.1017/s1356186307007778. JSTOR 27755911. S2CID 154959326.

41. ^ "Did the U.S. "Create" Osama bin Laden?(2005-01-14)". US Department of State. Archived from the original on 1 December 2008.

42. ^ Temple-Raston, Dina. "Western Fighters Answer Mideast Extremists' Clarion Call". NPR. The last great call to arms for Muslim fighters was in the 1980s, after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. About 20,000 foreign fighters traveled there, most of them from the Gulf states.

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44. ^ ""Think tank fosters bloodshed, terrorism," The Daily Cougar, August 25, 2008". thedailycougar.com. 22 August 2008.

45. ^ Kakar, Hassan; Kakar, Mohammed (1997). Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979-1982. University of California Press. p. 74. ISBN 978-0-520-20893-3.

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48. ^ Kuperman, Alan J. (January-February 2002). "Stinging Rebukes". Foreign Affairs. 81 (January/February 2002): 230-231. doi:10.2307/20033070. JSTOR 20033070.

49. ^ Kakar 1997, p. 224

While military operations in the country were going on, women were abducted. While flying in the country in search of mujahideen, helicopters would land in fields where women were spotted. While Afghan women do mainly domestic chores, they also work in fields assisting their husbands or performing tasks by themselves. The women were now exposed to the Soviets, who kidnapped them with helicopters. By November 1980 a number of such incidents had taken place in various parts of the country, including Laghman and Kama. In the city of Kabul, too, the Soviets kidnapped women, taking them away in tanks and other vehicles, especially after dark. Such incidents happened mainly in the areas of Darul Aman and Khair Khana, near the Soviet garrisons. At times such acts were committed even during the day. KhAD agents also did the same. Small groups of them would pick up young women in the streets, apparently to question them but in reality to satisfy their lust: in the name of security, they had the power to commit excesses.

50. ^ The War Chronicles: From Flintlocks to Machine Guns. Fair Winds. 2009. p. 393. ISBN 978-1-61673-404-6. A final weapon of terror the Soviets used against the mujahideen was the abduction of Afghan women. Soldiers flying in helicopters would scan for women working in the fields in the absence of their men, land, and take the women captive. Soviet soldiers in the city of Kabul would also steal young women. The object was rape, although sometimes the women were killed, as well. The women who returned home were often considered dishonored for life.

51. ^ Sciolino, Elaine (3 August 1984). "4 Soviet Deserters Tell of Cruel Afghanistan War". The New York Times. 'I can't hide the fact that women and children have been killed,' Nikolay Movchan, 20, a Ukrainian who was a sergeant and headed a grenade-launching team, said in an interview later. 'And I've heard of Afghan women being raped.'

52. ^ Schwartzstein, Stuart j. d. (Winter 1982-83). "Chemical Warfare in Afghanistan: An Independent Assessment". World Affairs. 145 (3): 267-272. JSTOR 20671950.

53. ^ Hegghammer, Thomas (2011). "The Rise of Muslim Foreign Fighters: Islam and the Globalization of Jihad". International Security. 35 (3): 62. doi:10.1162/ISEC_a_00023. S2CID 40379198. The United States and Saudi Arabia did provide considerable financial, logistical, and military support to the Afghan mujahideen.

54. Cornwell, Rupert (13 February 2010). "Charlie Wilson: Congressman whose support for the mujahideen helped force the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 24 May 2022.

55. Ruttig, T. ^ Islamists, Leftists - and a Void in the Center. Afghanistan's Political Parties and where they come from (1902-2006) [1]

56. Anton Minkov and Gregory Smolynec. ^ Economic Development in Afghanistan During the Soviet Period, 1979-1989: Lessons Learned from the Soviet Experience in Afghanistan. Archived 2 July 2019 at the Wayback Machine DRDC Centre for Operational Research & Analysis, Canada. Page 4.

57. Sliwinski, Marek (1989). "Afghanistan: Decimation of a People". Orbis. 33 (1): 39-56. PMID 11617850. S2CID 211172972.

58. ^ Braithwaite, John; Wardak, Ali (2013). "Crime and War in Afghanistan: Part I: The Hobbesian Solution" (PDF). The British Journal of Criminology. 53 (2): 179-196. doi:10.1093/bjc/azs065. JSTOR 23640010.

59. Bhutta, Z. A. (2002). "Children of war: The real casualties of the Afghan conflict". BMJ: British Medical Journal. 324 (7333): 349-352. doi:10.1136/bmj.324.7333.349. PMC . PMID 11834566.

60. ^ Pakistan Restricts Afghan Refugees by Donatella Lorch for New York Times. 16 November 1988.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Soviet-Afghan War Part of the Cold War and the Afghan conflict Date 24 December 1979 - 15 February 1989(9 years, 1 month, 3 weeks and 1 day) Location Result Mujahideen victory Belligerents Soviet Union Afghanistan Afghan Mujahideen Afghan Interim Government (from 1988) Commanders and leaders Soviet Union: Afghanistan: Sunni Mujahideen:

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Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania oust Communist governments (1989)

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Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania oust Communist governments (1989)

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In 1989, a wave of revolutions swept across several countries in Eastern Europe, leading to the overthrow of long-standing Communist governments and the end of over 40 years of Soviet domination in the region. In Poland, the Polish United Workers' Party (Communist Party) agreed to hold partially free elections, leading to the formation of the first non-Communist government in the Eastern Bloc. In Hungary, the Hungarian Communist Party had been disbanded, and the country held its first multi-party elections in 1990. In Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel became the first non-Communist president of Czechoslovakia since 1948. In Bulgaria, The Bulgarian Communist Party gave up its guaranteed right to rule, and the country held its first free elections in 1990. In Romania, The Romanian Revolution began in December 1989 with protests in Timisoara against the repressive regime of Nicolae Ceausescu.

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The wave of strikes in the summer of 1980 and its consequence, the birth of NSZZ Solidarity started the deepest phase of the crisis of the communist state in Poland. The economic crisis, growing since 1976, had led to a destabilisation of the political system based on hegemonic position of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) in 1980. The creation of NSZZ Solidarity and its over year long period of legal functioning significantly altered the social awareness, a change which could no longer be reversed by the so-called politics of normalisation, which began after the introducing of martial law in Poland in December 1981. The banning of Solidarity and the pacification of civil protests, which peaked on the 31 st of August 1982 when demonstrations of supporters of the union took place in 66 cities, had not stopped the economic, social and political changes which put the People's Republic of Poland (PRL) in a state of chronic crisis and, after a change of the international situation, led to its downfall. Below I will try to enumerate the most important factors which, in my opinion, made the crisis grow and, in consequence, led to the breakdown of the system in 1989.

1. Changes in the USSR. This factor appeared last, only after the proclamation of the politics of perestroika by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986 but has to be mentioned first as it played a crucial role in inclining the team of general Wojciech Jaruzelski to begin changes in the political system, which, eventually, led to its complete breakdown. In July 1986, during a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev said, that the countries of Middle and Eastern Europe "can no longer be carried on our back. The main reason - the economy". This meant that in the Kremlin opinion was prevalent, that the model of cooperation within the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, which was based on the transferable ruble, needed to be changed. The supply of petroleum and natural gas - the main export articles of the USSR - to the Comecon countries at set prices had no longer been profitable for the Soviet economy. It also was not a coincidence that one of Moscow's most important postulates after the government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki had been formed was the transition to USD as currency in mutual trade.

Although the knowledge remains limited regarding the plans of the Soviet leadership in the second half of the 1980s, Andrzej Paczkowski was probably right to say that "Gorbachev did something like an amputation on the Brezhnev >Doctrine<, which lost its ideological sense and became more of a geopolitical rule. The former pressure Moscow put on Warsaw subsided no later than 1987-1988 and was replaced by extensive conformity of intentions and actions". General Wojciech Jaruzelski's team's hands were bound at that time as far as system reforms go, but that did not prevent it from using the Soviet deterrent in contacts with the West, the opposition and the Church until the end of its regime. French researcher Jacques Levesque even claims, that Jaruzelski for a long time was not using the freedom which Gorbachev had given him.

2. The state of the economy. Although in 1983 economic growth was recorded for the first time in five years, it had not been the result of real changes in the economic system, but of the return of the economy to the old ruts, from which it had been removed first by Gierek's team's mistakes, later by the strikes of 1980-81 and finally by the militarisation of many companies and the economic sanctions undertaken by the Western countries against Poland. Already in 1985 economic growth slowed down because, according to one of the party's analyses, "the material-resource barrier, [...] resulting from insufficient national reserves and low import possibilities, became very apparent".

Repeated by Jaruzelski's team after the introduction of martial law, declarations that the continuation of economic reforms, which officially began in 1981, is needed, quickly proved to be propaganda fiction. As general Jaruzelski correctly observed in 1982: "A paradoxical phenomenon accompanies the reform: on the one hand the liberalisation of the rules governing the economy and on the other the rigor of martial law". The rigor of martial law had not been the main reason why the introduction of a real reform of the inefficient economic system of PRL was a failure, however. In fact the system could not be reformed, what was made clear by the unrelenting resistance of the people governing the economy. The situation is well illustrated by the example of closing down 106 unions of state-owned companies in 1982 in a reform which brought in their place 103 unions, different only in name. "Essentially there is no institutionalised force, which would comprehensibly introduce the reform into economic practice, there is no approach to the reform as a political-economic complex" - it was said in a lengthy analysis of the socio-political situation made in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ordered by general Czesław Kiszczak in May 1984.

According to Władysław Baka, the government's representative for the reform, during the meetings of the Council of Ministers in July 1983 and June 1984 plans aiming to openly "thwart the reform" were forced. One of their main supporters was supposedly Deputy Prime Minister Zbigniew Messner, who argued that "brought to completion, the model of socio-economic reform outlined by minister Władysław Baka means in essence the change of socio-political system" i.e. the fall of socialism. The continuation of the reform was defended, according to Baka, by Jaruzelski, but he changed his mind a year later on a National Council in Poznań and supported Messner's limited option instead. After a couple of months, in November 1985, the latter became Prime Minister and the office of government's representative for the reform was removed. Real reforms had not begun until 1988-89 when Mieczysław Rakowski's cabinet introduced regulations guaranteeing freedom of economic activity and liberalising the rules of sales with foreign countries. If the political system had not followed, Rakowski's reforms could have lead to the realisation of the so-called Chinese model of transformation, that is the introduction of market economy with the maintaining of authoritarian political system.

3. Instances of state privatisation. Compared to the general economic decay of the 1980s, the rise of the private sector in the economy was a curious occurrence. In the years 1981-1985 it had increased its production level by nearly 14% while the production of the national sector decreased by 0,2%. Private enterprise was still highly limited, however, and many key members of the PZPR criticised the instances of "certain groups getting richer without grounds". However, gradually, especially in mid-level state apparatus, belief was getting stronger that without development of the private sector the deficit on the market of consumer goods could not be satisfied.

The so-called Polonia (Polish diaspora) companies had a special position within the private sector. Foreigners of Polish descent were taking part in their establishment on the basis of the law from July 1982. "Polonia companies steal highly qualified cadre from the national sector. Some of the employees leave from foreign trade offices, they possess information which is a business and national secret. [...] Cases of informal contacts with the employees of departments in charge of the Polonia companies are also frequent" - was the alert in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in May 1984.

The Polonia companies became a sort of a testing ground for the authorities and especially for the secret service (both the SB and military). The behaviour of entities functioning within market mechanisms was tested and used in operational activities. What followed was a gradual acquaintance of part of the government elite with the thought of a need for radical breaking off with the economic system based on national property, originating in the 1940s. In such a way a climate appropriate for the reforms of the Rakowski government was beginning to appear, with the side-effect of the process of so-called nomenclature enfranchisement.

4. Deregulation of the political system. Its main symptom became the weakening of the position of the PZPR, hitherto playing a hegemonic role in the political system of PRL. The crisis of the years 1980-1981 and the martial law left the PZPR with about 1 million members less. Only in the middle of the decade had the party stopped shrinking and the number of members stabilised at 2.1 million. The process of aging of the party had not been stopped however, and the proportion of people under 29 years of age decreased from the level of 15% in 1981 to only 6.9% in 1986, while the average age of a PZPR member raised to 46 years of age. A similar process began to threaten also the ranks of the party apparatus, over 12 thousand functionaries strong. Personnel review of the members of Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party from 1984 showed that in the years 1985-1986 as many as 23% of its employees would reach retirement age. At the same time only 6% of over six hundred political employees of the Central Committee were younger than 35 years of age.

The communist party was becoming old and was losing its influence, becoming less of a core of the political system and more of a tool of various pressure groups operating within the government apparatus. The most important of these groups was a part of the officers' corps of the Armed Forces. In the first year of martial law 32 officers were delegated to high positions in the party apparatus, and 88 more to national administration. Among them were 11 Ministers and Deputy Ministers, 13 voivodes and vice-voivodes and 9 secretaries of the Executive Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party. Furthermore 108 "lawyers in uniforms" were delegated to work in the prosecution service and civil judiciary.

Besides the military men the role of higher functionaries of the Security Service (SB) and other people working in the economy apparatus also increased in the 1980s. All of them were obviously members of the PZPR but in reality often opposed many decisions and solutions forced by the functionaries of the PZPR apparatus. The leaders of the All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions (OPZZ) were also members of the communist party. The Alliance was supposed to replace Solidarity in public consciousness. For this to happen, the leaders of the PZPR had decided, that leaders of the OPZZ had to receive a much wider autonomy than all the other socio-political organisations were given before, including the allied parties United People's Party and the Democratic Party. "We must include different opposing elements from the party itself [...] controlling us from our system positions, constantly stinging us in our bottoms" - said general Jaruzelski about OPZZ in December 1986. Still, OPZZ with nearly 7 million members, in time became a force, which, especially in the late 1980s, contributed significantly to the limiting of the level of control of the PZPR over state apparatus and especially over the part, which governed the economy.

5. Evolution of social moods. After the introducing of martial law, the social moods became relatively stable. In 1983 nearly 40% of pollees believed that the economic situation would become better, 8% that it would become worse and the rest, over 50%, thought that it would remain the same or did not have an opinion. This state of a kind of waiting began to change in the middle of the decade in a direction very unfavourable for the authorities. While in December 1985 46% of the pollees described the economic situation as bad, in the following months the figure grew quite consistently: 55% in April, 58.5% in December 1986 and as much as 69.1% in April 1987. In the following months it was becoming even worse and that significantly affected the consciousness of the elite of the authorities. A team of three general Jaruzelski's advisors, the Secretary of the Central Committee of the PZPR Stanisław Ciosek, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Władysław Pożoga and the government spokesperson Jerzy Urban wrote in a memorial in January 1988 this about the matter: "The moods are below the red line, which means the critical point of explosion has been passed. There is no explosion because the tendencies are suppressed in the society by various stabilisers (historic experience, mainly of the 13 th of December 1981, the role of the Church, lower influence of the opposition, apathy)". The assessment was that such a state affected the authorities in a bad way and part of the apparatus "as usual in decadent times, begins to question the leadership, plot intrigues, plan future personal configurations. In time it will begin to plot". It was therefore proposed to "make a drastic turn, in which there would be few words, many actions". Ultimately such a turn of action, in the form of the Round Table Talks, happened a year later.

According to Mirosława Marody "three types of experiences of the broadest social reach" were making the mood worse. The first was increasing inflation devaluing "life's work of individuals and their families". The second was the "feeling of disproportion between the effort put into achieving and keeping a decent standard of living and its effects". Its main source were the persistent problems with supplies (especially manufactured goods) and that created a stark contrast with not only the situation in the Western countries but also with often visited Soviet Bloc countries. The third experience generating social frustration according to Marody was "the belief that methods of action offered to the individuals by the system lead to nowhere". This affected mainly the young and the broadly understood intelligentsia, most severely affected by the apathy increasing during the 1980s.

6. Church and political opposition activity. In the 1980s, in front of the eyes of the PRL's authorities, the Catholic Church turned from their main opponent into an important factor stabilising social mood. That is why, not abandoning various behind-the-stage actions aimed against the clergy, of which the kidnapping and killing of the priest Jerzy Popiełuszko by SB functionaries became a symbol, the leadership of the PZPR in practice accepted the unprecedented rise of the Church's potential which took place in the 1980s. It was apparent both in record-breaking number of new priests and temples built (according to government data in 1986 over three thousand churches were being built) as well as in quick development of Catholic press and publishing houses. In the middle of the decade there were 89 Catholic periodicals, with circulation of 1.5 million. Politics of the authorities regarding the founding of new churches and Clubs of Catholic Intellectuals had also been liberalised. Additionally, Church structures played a dominant role in the distribution of charity aid from the West, while its substantial amount constantly worried the authorities.

The authorities expected that the liberal course would bring gradual increased acceptance of the system by the clergy. But the double dealing of the Church hierarchy, calculated for parallel dialogue with the authorities and discreet support of the moderate part of the opposition, disoriented Jaruzelski's team. They knew that the support of the Church would be necessary to introduce the system reform plans maturing since the middle of the decade but they could not determine to what extent the bishops would be willing to endorse them, nor how far they identified themselves with the aims of the opposition.

Meanwhile, the opposition, despite its weakness apparent in the middle of the decade, became a constant factor generating resistance against the system. In late 1985 the Ministry of the Interior assessed that there were over 350 different opposition structures in Poland, over half of them active in the area of just 5 of the 49 then existing voivodeships: Warsaw, Wrocław, Gdańsk, Kraków and Łódź. According to the SB its hard core was 1.5 thousand people while over 10 thousand worked as distributors of newspapers, messengers and printers. The number of "active sympathisers" was estimated to be 22 thousand people, what would give in total "about 34 thousand people directly involved, to a larger or lesser extent, in illegal activity". This opposition was divided into different groups opposing each other, but generally fitted into one of two categories, differing in their attitude to the PRL authorities. While the radical category, in which Fighting Solidarity created in 1982 by Kornel Morawiecki had the most potential, wanted to organise a general strike and overthrow the regime in a revolution, the moderate category, gathered around Lech Wałęsa and Temporary Coordinating Commission of Independent Self-governing Trade Union Solidarity assumed that the deteriorating economic situation and pressure from the West would finally force Jaruzelski's team to begin talks with the opposition. From the point of view of the authorities it was important for the moderate group to be stronger than the radical one and when, in 1988, the leadership of the PZPR finally decided to talk with Wałęsa and his collaborators, the opposition radicals turned out to be too weak to stop the Round Table Talks and later to boycott the contractual parliamentary elections in June 1989.

Prof. Antoni Dudek (born 1966) - political scientist, deals mainly with recent Polish political history. Member of the Council of the Institute of National Remembrance.

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The Year 1989 - The End of Communism in Poland | ENRS

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The wave of strikes in the summer of 1980 and its consequence, the birth of NSZZ Solidarity started the deepest phase of the crisis of the communist state in Poland. The economic crisis, growing since 1976, had led to a destabilisation of the political system based on hegemonic position of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) in 1980.

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In April 1989, students and others began gathering in Tiananmen Square to mourn the death of former Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang and to voice calls for democracy, free speech, and a free press. By mid-May, over a million people had joined the protests across China, making it the largest pro-democracy movement in the country's history. In the early hours of June 4, 1989, the Chinese military moved in with tanks and troops to clear Tiananmen Square of protesters. The crackdown crushed the pro-democracy movement and was condemned internationally as a violation of human rights. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of protesters were arrested in the aftermath, with many leaders receiving lengthy prison sentences.

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1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre

Part of the Cold War, the Revolutions of 1989 and the Chinese democracy movement

From top to bottom, left to right are people protesting near the Monument to the People's Heroes; Chinese tanks after the massacre outside of the United States Embassy; a burned vehicle in Zhongguancun Street in Beijing; Pu Zhiqiang, a student protester at Tiananmen; and a banner in support of the June Fourth Student Movement in Shanghai Fashion Store (formerly the Xianshi Company Building).

Date

15 April 1989 - 4 June 1989
(1 month, 2 weeks and 6 days)

Goals

End of corruption within the Chinese Communist Party, as well as democratic reforms, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of association, social equality, democratic input on economic reforms

Resulted in

Enforcement of martial law declared by Premier Li Peng in certain areas of Beijing executed by force from 3 June 1989 (declared from 20 May 1989 - 10 January 1990, 7 months and 3 weeks)

Civilians - including bystanders, protesters (mainly workers), and rioters barricading the People's Liberation Army (PLA) troops - protesters shot by the PLA and police at multiple sites outside of the square in Beijing

Hundreds to thousands killed, thousands wounded inside and outside Tiananmen Square

Several soldiers killed, thousands wounded by rioters on 3 to 4 June after civilians were killed on 3 June

More protests across China in reaction to the crackdown

Protest leaders and pro-democracy activists later exiled or imprisoned

Rioters charged with violent crimes were executed in the following months

Zhao Ziyang purged from General Secretary and Politburo

Jiang Zemin, previously Party Secretary of Shanghai, promoted to General Secretary and paramount leader by Deng Xiaoping

Western economic sanctions and arms embargoes on the People's Republic of China

Operation Yellowbird started

Market reforms delayed

Media control tightened

Freedom of speech restricted

Political reforms halted

Death(s)

No precise figures exist, estimates vary from hundreds to several thousands, both military and civilians (see death toll section)

The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or in Chinese the June Fourth Clearing or June Fourth Massacre, troops armed with assault rifles and accompanied by tanks fired at the demonstrators and those trying to block the military's advance into Tiananmen Square. The protests started on 15 April and were forcibly suppressed on 4 June when the government declared martial law and sent the People's Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded. The popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests is sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement or the Tiananmen Square Incident.

The protests were precipitated by the death of pro-reform Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Hu Yaobang in April 1989 amid the backdrop of rapid economic development and social change in post-Mao China, reflecting anxieties among the people and political elite about the country's future. The reforms of the 1980s had led to a nascent market economy that benefited some people but seriously disadvantaged others, and the one-party political system also faced a challenge to its legitimacy. Common grievances at the time included inflation, corruption, limited preparedness of graduates for the new economy, and restrictions on political participation. Although they were highly disorganized and their goals varied, the students called for greater accountability, constitutional due process, democracy, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech. Workers' protests were generally focused on inflation and the erosion of welfare. These groups united around anti-corruption demands, adjusting economic policies, and protecting social security. At the height of the protests, about one million people assembled in the square.

As the protests developed, the authorities responded with both conciliatory and hardline tactics, exposing deep divisions within the party leadership. By May, a student-led hunger strike galvanized support around the country for the demonstrators, and the protests spread to some 400 cities. Among the CCP's top leadership, Premier Li Peng and Party Elders Li Xiannian and Wang Zhen called for decisive action through violent suppression of the protesters, and ultimately managed to win over Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping and President Yang Shangkun to their side. On 20 May, the State Council declared martial law. It mobilized as many as ~300,000 troops to Beijing. The troops advanced into central parts of Beijing on the city's major thoroughfares in the early morning hours of 4 June, killing both demonstrators and bystanders in the process. The military operations were under the overall command of General Yang Baibing, half-brother of President Yang Shangkun.

The international community, human rights organizations, and political analysts condemned the Chinese government for the massacre. Western countries imposed arms embargoes on China. The Chinese government made widespread arrests of protesters and their supporters, suppressed other protests around China, expelled foreign journalists, strictly controlled coverage of the events in the domestic press, strengthened the police and internal security forces, and demoted or purged officials it deemed sympathetic to the protests. More broadly, the suppression ended the political reforms begun in 1986 and halted the policies of liberalization of the 1980s, which were only partly resumed after Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour in 1992. Considered a watershed event, reaction to the protests set limits on political expression in China that have lasted up to the present day. Remembering the protests is widely associated with questioning the legitimacy of the CCP and remains one of the most sensitive and most widely censored topics in China.

Chinese conventionally date events by the name or number of the month and the day, followed by the event type. Thus, the common Chinese name for the crackdown is "June Fourth Incident" ( Chinese: 六四事件; pinyin: liùsì shìjiàn ). The nomenclature is consistent with the customary names of the other two great protests that occurred in Tiananmen Square: the May Fourth Movement of 1919 and the April Fifth Movement of 1976. June Fourth refers to the day on which the People's Liberation Army cleared Tiananmen Square of protesters, although actual operations began on the evening of 3 June. Names such as June Fourth Movement (六四运动; liù-sì yùndòng ) and '89 Democracy Movement (八九民运; bā-jiǔ mínyùn ) are used to describe an event in its entirety.

The Chinese Communist Party has used numerous names for the event since 1989, gradually using more neutral terminology. As the events unfolded, it was labeled a " counterrevolutionary riot", which was later changed to simply "riot", followed by "political storm". Finally, the leadership settled on the more neutral phrase "political turmoil between the Spring and Summer of 1989", which it uses to this day.

Outside mainland China, and among circles critical of the crackdown within mainland China, the crackdown is commonly referred to in Chinese as "June Fourth Massacre" (六四屠殺; liù-sì túshā ) and "June Fourth Crackdown" (六四鎮壓; liù-sì zhènyā ). To bypass internet censorship in China, which uniformly considers all the above-mentioned names too "sensitive" for search engines and public forums, alternative names have sprung up to describe the events on the Internet, such as May 35th, VIIV ( Roman numerals for 6 and 4), Eight Squared (i.e. 8 ²=64) and 8964 (i.e. yymd).

Background

Boluan Fanzheng and economic reforms

The Cultural Revolution ended with chairman Mao Zedong's death in 1976 and the arrest of the Gang of Four. That movement, spearheaded by Mao, caused severe damage to the country's initially diverse economic and social fabric. The country was mired in poverty as economic production slowed or came to a halt. Political ideology was paramount in the lives of ordinary people as well as the inner workings of the party itself.

In September 1977, Deng Xiaoping proposed the idea of Boluan Fanzheng ("bringing order out of chaos") to correct the mistakes of the Cultural Revolution. At the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee, in December 1978, Deng emerged as China's de facto leader. He launched a comprehensive program to reform the Chinese economy ( Reforms and Opening-up). Within several years, the country's focus on ideological purity was replaced by a concerted attempt to achieve material prosperity.

To oversee his reform agenda, Deng promoted his allies to top government and party posts. Zhao Ziyang was named Premier, the head of government, in September 1980, and Hu Yaobang became CCP General Secretary in 1982.

Challenges to Reforms and Opening-up

Deng's reforms aimed to decrease the state's role in the economy and gradually allow private production in agriculture and industry. By 1981, roughly 73% of rural farms had been de-collectivized, and 80% of state-owned enterprises were permitted to retain their profits. Within a few years, production increased, and poverty was substantially reduced.

While the reforms were generally well received by the public, concerns grew over a series of social problems which the changes brought about, including corruption and nepotism on the part of elite party bureaucrats. The state-mandated pricing system, in place since the 1950s, had long kept prices fixed at low levels. The initial reforms created a two-tier system where some prices were fixed while others were allowed to fluctuate. In a market with chronic shortages, price fluctuation allowed people with powerful connections to buy goods at low prices and sell at market prices. Party bureaucrats in charge of economic management had enormous incentives to engage in such arbitrage. Discontent over corruption reached a fever pitch with the public; and many, particularly intellectuals, began to believe that only democratic reform and the rule of law could cure the country's ills.

Following the 1988 meeting at their summer retreat of Beidaihe, the party leadership under Deng agreed to implement a transition to a market-based pricing system. News of the relaxation of price controls triggered waves of cash withdrawals, buying, and hoarding all over China. The government panicked and rescinded the price reforms in less than two weeks, but there was a pronounced impact for much longer. Inflation soared: official indices reported that the Consumer Price Index increased by 30% in Beijing between 1987 and 1988, leading to panic among salaried workers that they could no longer afford staple goods. Moreover, in the new market economy, unprofitable state-owned enterprises were pressured to cut costs. This threatened a vast proportion of the population that relied on the " iron rice bowl", i.e. social benefits such as job security, medical care, and subsidized housing.

Social disenfranchisement and legitimacy crisis

In 1978, reformist leaders envisioned that intellectuals would play a leading role in guiding the country through reforms, but this did not happen as planned. Despite the opening of new universities and increased enrollment, the state-directed education system did not produce enough graduates to meet increased demand in the areas of agriculture, light industry, services, and foreign investment. The job market was especially limited for students specializing in social sciences and the humanities. Moreover, private companies no longer needed to accept students assigned to them by the state, and many high-paying jobs were offered based on nepotism and favoritism. Gaining a good state-assigned placement meant navigating a highly inefficient bureaucracy that gave power to officials who had little expertise in areas under their jurisdiction. Facing a dismal job market and limited chances of going abroad, intellectuals and students had a greater vested interest in political issues. Small study groups, such as the "Democracy Salon" ( Chinese: 民主沙龙; pinyin: Mínzhǔ Shālóng ) and the "Lawn Salon" (草坪沙龙; Cǎodì Shālóng ), began appearing on Beijing university campuses. These organizations motivated the students to get involved politically.

The comprehensive and wide-ranging reforms created political differences over the pace of marketization and the control over the ideology that came with it, opening a deep chasm within the central leadership. The reformers ("the right", led by Hu Yaobang) favored political liberalization and a plurality of ideas as a channel to voice popular discontent and pressed for further reforms. The conservatives ("the left", led by Chen Yun) said that the reforms had gone too far and advocated a return to greater state control to ensure social stability and to better align with the party's socialist ideology. Both sides needed the backing of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping to carry out important policy decisions.

1986 student demonstrations

In mid-1986, astrophysics professor Fang Lizhi returned from a position at Princeton University and began a personal tour of universities in China, speaking about liberty, human rights, and the separation of powers. Fang was part of a wide undercurrent within the elite intellectual community that thought China's poverty and underdevelopment, and the disaster of the Cultural Revolution, were a direct result of China's authoritarian political system and rigid command economy. The view that political reform was the only answer to China's ongoing problems gained widespread appeal among students, as Fang's recorded speeches became widely circulated throughout the country. In response, Deng Xiaoping warned that Fang was blindly worshipping Western lifestyles, capitalism, and multi-party systems while undermining China's socialist ideology, traditional values, and the party's leadership.

In December 1986, inspired by Fang and other "people-power" movements worldwide, student demonstrators staged protests against the slow pace of reform. The issues were wide-ranging and included demands for economic liberalization, democracy, and the rule of law. While the protests were initially contained in Hefei, where Fang lived, they quickly spread to Shanghai, Beijing, and other major cities. This alarmed the central leadership, who accused the students of instigating Cultural Revolution-style turmoil.

Political reforms

On 18 August 1980, Deng Xiaoping gave a speech titled "On the Reform of the Party and State Leadership System" ("党和国家领导制度改革") at a full meeting of the CCP Politburo in Beijing, launching political reforms in China. He called for a systematic revision of China's constitution, criticizing bureaucracy, centralization of power, and patriarchy, while proposing term limits for the leading positions in China and advocating " democratic centralism" and " collective leadership." In December 1982, the fourth and current Constitution of China, known as the " 1982 Constitution", was passed by the 5th National People's Congress.

In the first half of 1986, Deng repeatedly called for the revival of political reforms, as further economic reforms were hindered by the original political system with an increasing trend of corruption and economic inequality. A five-man committee to study the feasibility of political reform was established in September 1986; the members included Zhao Ziyang, Hu Qili, Tian Jiyun, Bo Yibo and Peng Chong. Deng's intention was to boost administrative efficiency, further separate responsibilities of the Party and the government, and eliminate bureaucracy. Although he spoke in terms of the rule of law and democracy, Deng delimited the reforms within the one-party system and opposed the implementation of Western-style constitutionalism.

In October 1987, at the 13th National Congress of the CCP, Zhao Ziyang gave a report drafted by Bao Tong on the political reforms. In his speech titled "Advance Along the Road of Socialism with Chinese characteristics" ("沿着有中国特色的社会主义道路前进"), Zhao argued that socialism in China was still in its primary stage and, taking Deng's speech in 1980 as a guideline, detailed steps to be taken for political reform, including promoting the rule of law and the separation of powers, imposing de-centralization, and improving the election system. At this Congress, Zhao was elected to be the CCP General Secretary.

Beginning of the 1989 protests

Death of Hu Yaobang

When Hu Yaobang suddenly died of a heart attack on 15 April 1989, students reacted strongly, most of them believing that his death was related to his forced resignation. Hu's death provided the initial impetus for students to gather in large numbers. On university campuses, many posters appeared eulogizing Hu, calling for honoring Hu's legacy. Within days, most posters were about broader political issues, such as corruption, democracy, and freedom of the press. Small, spontaneous gatherings to mourn Hu began on 15 April around the Monument to the People's Heroes at Tiananmen Square. On the same day, many students at Peking University (PKU) and Tsinghua University erected shrines and joined the gathering in Tiananmen Square in a piecemeal fashion. Small, organized student gatherings also took place in Xi'an and Shanghai on 16 April. On 17 April, students at the China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL) made a large wreath to commemorate Hu Yaobang. Its wreath-laying ceremony was on 17 April, and a larger-than-expected crowd assembled. At 5 pm, 500 CUPL students reached the eastern gate of the Great Hall of the People, near Tiananmen Square, to mourn Hu. The gathering featured speakers from various backgrounds who gave public orations commemorating Hu and discussed social problems. However, it was soon deemed obstructive to the Great Hall's operation, so police tried to persuade the students to disperse.

Starting on the night of 17 April, three thousand PKU students marched from the campus towards Tiananmen Square, and soon nearly a thousand students from Tsinghua joined. Upon arrival, they soon joined forces with those already gathered at the square. As its size grew, the gathering gradually evolved into a protest, as students began to draft a list of pleas and suggestions (the Seven Demands) for the government:

1. Affirm Hu Yaobang's views on democracy and freedom as correct.

2. Admit that the campaigns against spiritual pollution and bourgeois liberalization had been wrong.

3. Publish information on the income of state leaders and their family members.

4. Allow privately run newspapers and stop press censorship.

5. Increase funding for education and raise intellectuals' pay.

6. End restrictions on demonstrations in Beijing.

7. Provide objective coverage of students in official media.

On the morning of 18 April, students remained in the square. Some gathered around the Monument to the People's Heroes, singing patriotic songs and listening to student organizers' impromptu speeches. Others gathered at the Great Hall. Meanwhile, a few thousand students gathered at Xinhua Gate, the entrance to Zhongnanhai, the seat of the party leadership, where they demanded dialogue with the administration. After police restrained the students from entering the compound, they staged a sit-in.

On 20 April, most students had been persuaded to leave Xinhua Gate. To disperse about 200 students that remained, police used batons; minor clashes were reported. Many students felt abused by the police, and rumors about police brutality spread quickly. The incident angered students on campus, where those who were not politically active decided to join the protests. Additionally, a group of workers calling themselves the Beijing Workers' Autonomous Federation issued two handbills challenging the central leadership.

Hu's state funeral took place on 22 April. On the evening of 21 April, some 100,000 students marched on Tiananmen Square, ignoring orders from Beijing municipal authorities that the square was to be closed for the funeral. The funeral, which took place inside the Great Hall and was attended by the leadership, was broadcast live to the students. General Secretary Zhao Ziyang delivered the eulogy. The funeral seemed rushed, lasting only 40 minutes, as emotions ran high in the square.

Security cordoned off the east entrance to the Great Hall of the People, but several students pressed forward. A few were allowed to cross the police line. Three of these students ( Zhou Yongjun, Guo Haifeng, and Zhang Zhiyong) knelt on the steps of the Great Hall to present a petition and demanded to see Premier Li Peng. Standing beside them, a fourth student ( Wu'erkaixi) made a brief, emotional speech begging for Li Peng to come out and speak with them. The larger number of students still in the square but outside the cordon were at times emotional, shouting demands or slogans and rushing toward police. Wu'erkaixi calmed the crowd as they waited for the Premier to emerge. However, no leaders emerged from the Great Hall, leaving the students disappointed and angry; some called for a classroom boycott.

On 21 April, students began organizing under the banners of formal organizations. On 23 April, in a meeting of around 40 students from 21 universities, the Beijing Students' Autonomous Federation (also known as the Union) was formed. It elected CUPL student Zhou Yongjun as chair. Wang Dan and Wu'erkaixi also emerged as leaders. The Union then called for a general classroom boycott at all Beijing universities. Such an independent organization operating outside of party jurisdiction alarmed the leadership.

On 22 April, near dusk, serious rioting broke out in Changsha and Xi'an. In Xi'an, arson by rioters destroyed cars and houses, and looting occurred in shops near the city's Xihua Gate. In Changsha, 38 stores were ransacked by looters. Over 350 people were arrested in both cities. In Wuhan, university students organized protests against the provincial government. As the situation became more volatile nationally, Zhao Ziyang called numerous meetings of the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC). Zhao stressed three points: discourage students from further protests and ask them to go back to class, use all measures necessary to combat rioting, and open forms of dialogue with students at different levels of government. Premier Li Peng called upon Zhao to condemn protestors and recognize the need to take more serious action. Zhao dismissed Li's views. Despite calls for him to remain in Beijing, Zhao left for a scheduled state visit to North Korea on 23 April.

Turning point: 26 April Editorial

Zhao's departure to North Korea left Li Peng as the acting executive authority in Beijing. On 24 April, Li Peng and the PSC met with Beijing Party Secretary Li Ximing and mayor Chen Xitong to gauge the situation at the square. The municipal officials wanted a quick resolution to the crisis and framed the protests as a conspiracy to overthrow China's political system and prominent party leaders, including Deng Xiaoping. In Zhao's absence, the PSC agreed to take firm action against the protesters. On the morning of 25 April, President Yang Shangkun and Premier Li Peng met with Deng at the latter's residence. Deng endorsed a hardline stance and said an appropriate warning must be disseminated via mass media to curb further demonstrations. The meeting firmly established the first official evaluation of the protests, and highlighted Deng's having "final say" on important issues. Li Peng subsequently ordered Deng's views to be drafted as a communique and issued to all high-level Communist Party officials to mobilize the party apparatus against protesters.

On 26 April, the party's official newspaper People's Daily issued a front-page editorial titled " It is necessary to take a clear-cut stand against disturbances". The language in the editorial effectively branded the student movement to be an anti-party, anti-government revolt. The editorial invoked memories of the Cultural Revolution, using similar rhetoric that had been used during the 1976 Tiananmen Incident -an event that was initially branded an anti-government conspiracy but was later rehabilitated as "patriotic" under Deng's leadership. The article enraged students, who interpreted it as a direct indictment of the protests and its cause. The editorial backfired: instead of scaring students into submission, it antagonized the students and put them squarely against the government. The editorial's polarizing nature made it a major sticking point for the remainder of the protests.

27 April demonstrations

The stunning success of the march forced the government into making concessions and meeting with student representatives. On 29 April, State Council spokesman Yuan Mu met with appointed representatives of government-sanctioned student associations. While the talks discussed a wide range of issues, including the editorial, the Xinhua Gate incident, and freedom of the press, they achieved few substantive results. Independent student leaders such as Wu'erkaixi refused to attend.

The government's tone grew increasingly conciliatory when Zhao Ziyang returned from Pyongyang on 30 April and reasserted his authority. In Zhao's view, the hardliner approach was not working, and the concession was the only alternative. Zhao asked that the press be allowed to positively report the movement and delivered two sympathetic speeches on 3-4 May. In the speeches, Zhao said that the students' concerns about corruption were legitimate and that the student movement was patriotic in nature. The speeches essentially negated the message presented by 26 April Editorial. While some 100,000 students marched on the streets of Beijing on 4 May to commemorate the May Fourth Movement and repeated demands from earlier marches, many students were satisfied with the government's concessions. On 4 May, all Beijing universities except PKU and BNU announced the end of the classroom boycott. Subsequently, most students began to lose interest in the movement.

Escalation of the protests

Preparing for dialogue

The government was divided on how to respond to the movement as early as mid-April. After Zhao Ziyang's return from North Korea, tensions between the progressive camp and the conservative camp intensified. Those who supported continued dialogue and a soft approach with students rallied behind Zhao Ziyang, while hardliner conservatives opposed the movement rallied behind Premier Li Peng. Zhao and Li clashed at a PSC meeting on 1 May. Li maintained that the need for stability overrode all else, while Zhao said that the party should show support for increased democracy and transparency. Zhao pushed the case for further dialogue.

In preparation for dialogue, the Union elected representatives to a formal delegation. However, there was some friction as the Union leaders were reluctant to let the delegation unilaterally take control of the movement. The movement was slowed by a change to a more deliberate approach, fractured by internal discord, and increasingly diluted by declining engagement from the student body at large. In this context, a group of charismatic leaders, including Wang Dan and Wu'erkaixi, desired to regain momentum. They also distrusted the government's offers of dialogue, dismissing them as merely a ploy designed to play for time and pacify the students. To break from the moderate and incremental approach now adopted by other major student leaders, these few began calling for a return to more confrontational tactics. They settled on a plan of mobilizing students for a hunger strike that would begin on 13 May. Early attempts to mobilize others to join them met with only modest success until Chai Ling made an emotional appeal on the night before the strike was scheduled to begin.

Hunger strikes begin

Inspired by the events in Beijing, protests and strikes began at universities in other cities, with many students traveling to Beijing to join the demonstration. Generally, the Tiananmen Square demonstration was well ordered, with daily marches of students from various Beijing-area colleges displaying their support of the classroom boycott and the protesters' demands. The students sang The Internationale, the world socialist anthem, on their way to, and while at, the square.

Afraid that the movement would spin out of control, Deng Xiaoping ordered the square to be cleared for Gorbachev's visit. Executing Deng's request, Zhao again used a soft approach and directed his subordinates to coordinate negotiations with students immediately. Zhao believed he could appeal to the students' patriotism. The students understood that signs of internal turmoil during the Sino-Soviet summit would embarrass the nation and not just the government. On the morning of 13 May, Yan Mingfu, head of the Communist Party's United Front, called an emergency meeting, gathering prominent student leaders and intellectuals, including Liu Xiaobo, Chen Ziming, and Wang Juntao. Yan said that the government was prepared to hold an immediate dialogue with student representatives. The Tiananmen welcoming ceremony for Gorbachev would be canceled whether or not the students withdrew-in effect removing the bargaining power the students thought they possessed. The announcement sent the student leadership into disarray.

Mikhail Gorbachev's visit

Press restrictions were loosened significantly from early to mid-May. State media began broadcasting footage sympathetic to protesters and the movement, including the hunger strikers. On 14 May, intellectuals led by Dai Qing gained permission from Hu Qili to bypass government censorship and air the progressive views of the nation's intellectuals in the Guangming Daily. The intellectuals then issued an urgent appeal for the students to leave the square in an attempt to deescalate the conflict. However, many students believed that the intellectuals were speaking for the government and refused to move. That evening, formal negotiations took place between government representatives led by Yan Mingfu and student representatives led by Shen Tong and Xiang Xiaoji. Yan affirmed the student movement's patriotic nature and pleaded for the students to withdraw from the square. While Yan's apparent sincerity for compromise satisfied some students, the meeting grew increasingly chaotic as competing student factions relayed uncoordinated and incoherent demands to the leadership. Shortly after student leaders learned that the event had not been broadcast nationally, as initially promised by the government, the meeting fell apart. Yan then personally went to the square to appeal to the students, even offering himself to be held hostage. Yan also took the student's pleas to Li Peng the next day, asking Li to consider formally retracting the 26 April Editorial and rebranding the movement as "patriotic and democratic"; Li refused.

The students remained in the square during the Gorbachev visit; his welcoming ceremony was held at the airport. The Sino-Soviet summit, the first of its kind in some 30 years, marked the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations and was seen as a breakthrough of tremendous historical significance for China's leaders. However, its smooth proceedings were derailed by the student movement; this created a major embarrassment ("loss of face") for the leadership on the global stage, and drove many moderates in government onto a more hardline path. The summit between Deng and Gorbachev took place at the Great Hall of the People amid the backdrop of commotion and protest in the square. When Gorbachev met with Zhao on 16 May, Zhao told him, and by extension the international press, that Deng was still the "paramount authority" in China. Deng felt that this remark was Zhao's attempt to shift blame for mishandling the movement to him. Zhao's defense against this accusation was that privately informing world leaders that Deng was the true center of power was standard operating procedure; Li Peng had made nearly identical private statements to US president George H. W. Bush in February 1989. Nevertheless, the statement marked a decisive split between the country's two most senior leaders.

Gathering momentum

The hunger strike galvanized support for the students and aroused sympathy across the country. Around a million Beijing residents from all walks of life demonstrated in solidarity from 17 to 18 May. These included PLA personnel, police officers, and lower party officials. Many grassroots Party and Youth League organizations, as well as government-sponsored labor unions, encouraged their membership to demonstrate. In addition, several of China's non-Communist parties sent a letter to Li Peng to support the students. The Chinese Red Cross issued a special notice and sent in many personnel to provide medical services to the hunger strikers on the square. After the departure of Mikhail Gorbachev, many foreign journalists remained in the Chinese capital to cover the protests, shining an international spotlight on the movement. Western governments urged Beijing to exercise restraint.

The situation seemed intractable, and the weight of taking decisive action fell on paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. Matters came to a head on 17 May during a Politburo Standing Committee meeting at Deng's residence. At the meeting, Zhao Ziyang's concessions-based strategy, which called for the retraction of the 26 April Editorial, was thoroughly criticized. Li Peng, Yao Yilin, and Deng asserted that by making a conciliatory speech to the Asian Development Bank, on 4 May, Zhao had exposed divisions within the top leadership and emboldened the students. Deng warned that "there is no way to back down now without the situation spiraling out of control", and so "the decision is to move troops into Beijing to declare martial law" as a show of the government's no-tolerance stance. To justify martial law, the demonstrators were described as tools of " bourgeois liberalism" advocates who were pulling strings behind the scenes, as well as tools of elements within the party who wished to further their personal ambitions. For the rest of his life, Zhao Ziyang maintained that the decision was ultimately in Deng's hands: among the five PSC members present at the meeting, he and Hu Qili opposed the imposition of martial law, Li Peng and Yao Yilin firmly supported it, and Qiao Shi remained carefully neutral and noncommittal. Deng appointed the latter three to carry out the decision.

On the evening of 17 May, the PSC met at Zhongnanhai to finalize plans for martial law. At the meeting, Zhao announced that he was ready to "take leave", citing he could not bring himself to carry out martial law. The elders in attendance at the meeting, Bo Yibo and Yang Shangkun, urged the PSC to follow Deng's orders. Zhao did not consider the inconclusive PSC vote to have legally binding implications for martial law; Yang Shangkun, in his capacity as Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, mobilized the military to move into the capital.

Li Peng met with students for the first time on 18 May in an attempt to placate public concern over the hunger strike. During the talks, student leaders again demanded that the government rescind the 26 April Editorial and affirm the student movement as "patriotic". Li Peng said the government's main concern was sending the hunger strikers to hospitals. The discussions were confrontational and yielded little substantive progress, but gained student leaders prominent airtime on national television. By this point, those calling for the overthrow of the party and Li Peng and Deng became prominent both in Beijing and in other cities. Slogans targeted Deng personally, for instance calling him the "power behind the throne".

In the early morning of 19 May, Zhao Ziyang went to Tiananmen in what became his political swan song. He was accompanied by Wen Jiabao. Li Peng also went to the square but left shortly thereafter. At 4:50am Zhao made a speech with a bullhorn to a crowd of students, urging them to end the hunger strike. He told the students that they were still young and urged them to stay healthy and not to sacrifice themselves without due concern for their futures. Zhao's emotional speech was applauded by some students. It would be his last public appearance.

Students, we came too late. We are sorry. You talk about us, criticize us, it is all necessary. The reason that I came here is not to ask you to forgive us. All I want to say is that students are getting very weak. It is the 7th day since you went on a hunger strike. You can't continue like this. [...] You are still young, there are still many days yet to come, you must live healthily, and see the day when China accomplishes the Four Modernizations. You are not like us. We are already old. It doesn't matter to us anymore.

-Zhao Ziyang at Tiananmen Square, 19 May 1989

On 19 May, the PSC met with military leaders and party elders. Deng presided over the meeting and said that martial law was the only option. At the meeting, Deng declared that he was "mistaken" in choosing Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang as his successors and resolved to remove Zhao from his position as general secretary. Deng also vowed to deal resolutely with Zhao's supporters and begin propaganda work.

Surveillance of protesters

Outside Beijing

University students in Shanghai also took to the streets to commemorate Hu Yaobang's death and protest against certain government policies. In many cases, these were supported by the universities' own party cells. Jiang Zemin, then-Municipal Party Secretary, addressed the student protesters in a bandage and "expressed his understanding", as he was a student agitator before 1949. Simultaneously, he moved swiftly to send in police forces to control the streets and purge Communist Party leaders who had supported the students.

On 19 April, the editors of the World Economic Herald, a magazine close to reformists, decided to publish a commemorative section on Hu. Inside was an article by Yan Jiaqi, which commented favorably on the Beijing student protests, and called for a reassessment of Hu's 1987 purge. Sensing the conservative political trends in Beijing, Jiang Zemin demanded that the article be censored, and many newspapers were printed with a blank page. Jiang then suspended lead editor Qin Benli, his decisive action earning the trust of conservative party elders, who praised Jiang's loyalty.

On 27 May, over 300,000 people in Hong Kong gathered at Happy Valley Racecourse for a gathering called the Concert for Democracy in China ( Chinese: 民主歌聲獻中華). Many Hong Kong celebrities sang songs and expressed their support for the students in Beijing. The following day, a procession of 1.5 million people, one fourth of Hong Kong's population, led by Martin Lee, Szeto Wah, and other organization leaders, paraded through Hong Kong Island. Across the world, especially where ethnic Chinese lived, people gathered and protested. Many governments, including those of the United States and Japan, issued travel warnings against traveling to China.

Military action

Martial law

The Chinese government declared martial law on 20 May and mobilized at least 30 divisions from five of the country's seven military regions. At least 14 of the PLA's 24 army corps contributed troops. As many as 250,000 troops were eventually sent to the capital, some arriving by air and others by rail. Guangzhou's civil aviation authorities suspended civil airline travel to prepare for transporting military units.

At the same time, internal divisions intensified within the student movement itself. By late May, the students became increasingly disorganized with no clear leadership or unified course of action. Moreover, Tiananmen Square was overcrowded and facing serious hygiene problems. Hou Dejian suggested an open election of the student leadership to speak for the movement but was met with opposition. Meanwhile, Wang Dan moderated his position, ostensibly sensing the impending military action and its consequences. He advocated for a temporary withdrawal from Tiananmen Square to re-group on campus, but this was opposed by hardline student factions who wanted to hold the square. The increasing internal friction would lead to struggles for control of the loudspeakers in the middle of the square in a series of "mini-coups": whoever controlled the loudspeakers was "in charge" of the movement. Some students would wait at the train station to greet arrivals of students from other parts of the country in an attempt to enlist factional support. Student groups began accusing each other of ulterior motives, such as collusion with the government and trying to gain personal fame from the movement. Some students even tried to oust Chai Ling, and Feng Congde from their leadership positions in an attempted kidnapping, an action Chai called a "well-organized and premeditated plot".

On 1 June, Li Peng issued a report titled "On the True Nature of the Turmoil", which was circulated to every member of the Politburo. The report aimed to persuade the Politburo of the necessity and legality of clearing Tiananmen Square by referring to the protestors as terrorists and counterrevolutionaries. The report stated that turmoil was continuing to grow, the students had no plans to leave, and they were gaining popular support. Further justification for martial law came in the form of a report submitted by the Ministry of State Security (MSS) to the party leadership. The report emphasized the danger of infiltration of bourgeois liberalism into China and the negative effect that the West, particularly the United States, had on the students. The MSS expressed its belief that American forces had intervened in the student movement in hopes of overthrowing the Communist Party. The report created a sense of urgency within the party and justified military action. In conjunction with the plan to clear the square by force, the Politburo received word from army headquarters stating that troops were ready to help stabilize the capital and that they understood the necessity and legality of martial law to overcome the turmoil.

On 2 June, with increasing action on the part of protesters, the government saw that it was time to act. Protests broke out as newspapers published articles that called for the students to leave Tiananmen Square and end the movement. Many of the students in the square were not willing to leave and were outraged by the articles. They were also outraged by the Beijing Daily's 1 June article "Tiananmen, I Cry for You", which was written by a fellow student who had become disillusioned with the movement, as he thought it was chaotic and disorganized. In response to the articles, thousands of students lined the streets of Beijing to protest against leaving the square.

Three intellectuals- Liu Xiaobo, Zhou Duo, and Gao Xin-and Taiwanese singer Hou Dejian declared a second hunger strike to revive the movement. After weeks of occupying the square, the students were tired, and internal rifts opened between moderate and hardline student groups. In their declaration speech, the hunger strikers openly criticized the government's suppression of the movement, to remind the students that their cause was worth fighting for, and pushing them to continue their occupation of the square.

On 2 June, Deng Xiaoping and several party elders met with the three PSC members- Li Peng, Qiao Shi, and Yao Yilin-who remained after Zhao Ziyang and Hu Qili had been ousted. The committee members agreed to clear the square so "the riot can be halted and order be restored to the Capital". They also agreed that the square needed to be cleared as peacefully as possible; but if protesters did not cooperate, the troops would be authorized to use force to complete the job. That day, state-run newspapers reported that troops were positioned in ten key areas in the city. Units of the 27th, 65th, and 24th armies were secretly moved into the Great Hall of the People on the west side of the square and the Ministry of Public Security compound east of the square.

On the morning of 3 June, students and residents discovered troops dressed in plainclothes trying to smuggle weapons into the city. The students seized and handed the weapons to Beijing police. The students protested outside the Xinhua Gate of the Zhongnanhai leadership compound, and the police fired tear gas. Unarmed troops emerged from the Great Hall of the People and were quickly met with crowds of protesters. Protesters stoned the police, forcing them to retreat inside the Zhongnanhai compound, while 5,000 unarmed soldiers attempting to advance to the square were forced by protesters to retreat temporarily.

At 4:30pm on 3 June, the three PSC members met with military leaders, Beijing Party Secretary Li Ximing, mayor Chen Xitong, and a member of the State Council secretariat Luo Gan, and finalized the order for the enforcement of martial law:

1. The operation to quell the counterrevolutionary riot began at 9pm.

2. Military units should converge on the square by 1am on 4 June, and the square must be cleared by 6am.

3. No delays would be tolerated.

4. No person may impede the advance of the troops enforcing martial law. The troops may act in self-defense and use any means to clear impediments.

5. State media will broadcast warnings to citizens.

On the evening of 3 June, state-run television warned residents to stay indoors but crowds of people took to the streets, as they had two weeks before, to block the incoming army. PLA units advanced on Beijing from every direction-the 38th, 63rd, and 28th armies from the west; the 15th Airborne Corps, 20th, 26th, and 54th armies from the south; the 39th Army and the 1st Armored Division from the east; and the 40th and 64th armies from the north.

Chang'an Avenue

At about 10pm, the 38th Army began to fire into the air as they traveled east on West Chang'an Avenue toward the city center. They initially intended the warning shots to frighten and disperse the large crowds gathering. This attempt failed. The earliest casualties occurred as far west as Wukesong, where Song Xiaoming, a 32-year-old aerospace technician, was the first confirmed fatality of the night. Several minutes later, when the convoy encountered a substantial blockade east of the 3rd Ring Road, they opened assault rifle fire directly at protesters. The crowds were stunned that the army was using live ammunition and reacted by hurling insults and projectiles. The troops used expanding bullets, prohibited by international law for use in warfare between countries but not for other uses.

At about 10:30pm, the advance of the army was briefly halted at Muxidi, about 5 km west of the square, where articulated trolleybuses were placed across a bridge and set on fire. Crowds of residents from nearby apartment blocks tried to surround the military convoy and halt its advance. The 38th Army again opened fire, inflicting heavy casualties. According to the tabulation of victims by Tiananmen Mothers, 36 people died at Muxidi, including Wang Weiping, a doctor tending to the wounded. As the battle continued eastward, the firing became indiscriminate, with "random, stray patterns" killing both protesters and uninvolved bystanders. Several were killed in the apartments of high-ranking party officials overlooking the boulevard. Soldiers raked the apartment buildings with gunfire, and some people inside or on their balconies were shot. The 38th Army also used armored personnel carriers (APCs) to ram through the buses. They continued to fight off demonstrators, who hastily erected barricades and tried to form human chains. As the army advanced, fatalities were recorded along Chang'an Avenue. By far, the largest number occurred in the two-mile stretch of road running from Muxidi to Xidan, where "65 PLA trucks and 47 APCs ... were totally destroyed, and 485 other military vehicles were damaged."

To the south, the XV Airborne Corps also used live ammunition, and civilian deaths were recorded at Hufangqiao, Zhushikou, Tianqiao, and Qianmen.

Protestors attack the PLA's troopers

Unlike more moderate student leaders, Chai Ling seemed willing to allow the student movement to end in a violent confrontation. In an interview given in late May, Chai suggested that only when the movement ended in bloodshed would the majority of China realize the importance of the student movement and unite. However, she felt that she was unable to convince her fellow students of this. She also stated that the expectation of violent crackdown was something she had heard from Li Lu and not an idea of her own.

The initial killings infuriated city residents, some of whom attacked soldiers with sticks, rocks, and molotov cocktails, setting fire to military vehicles and beating the soldiers inside them to death. On one avenue in western Beijing, anti-government protestors torched a military convoy of more than 100 trucks and armored vehicles. The Chinese government and its supporters have argued that these troops acted in self-defense and referred to troop casualties to justify the escalating use of force; compared to the hundreds or thousands of civilian deaths, the number of military fatalities caused by protesters was relatively few at between 7 and 10 according to Wu Renhua's study and Chinese government report.

On 5 June 1989, The Wall Street Journal reported: "As columns of tanks and tens of thousands of soldiers approached Tiananmen, many troops were set on by angry mobs who screamed, 'Fascists'. Dozens of soldiers were pulled from trucks, severely beaten, and left for dead. At an intersection west of the square, the body of a young soldier, who had been beaten to death, was stripped naked and hung from the side of a bus. Another soldier's corpse was strung up at an intersection east of the square."

Clearing the square

At 8:30pm, army helicopters appeared above the square, and students called for campuses to send reinforcements. At 10pm, the founding ceremony of the Tiananmen Democracy University was held as scheduled at the base of the Goddess of Democracy. At 10:16pm, the loudspeakers controlled by the government warned that troops might take "any measures" to enforce martial law. By 10:30pm, news of bloodshed to the west and south of the city began trickling into the square. At midnight, the students' loudspeaker announced the news that a student had been killed on West Chang'an Avenue near the Military Museum, and a somber mood settled on the square. Li Lu, the student headquarters deputy commander, urged students to remain united in defending the square through non-violent means. At 12:30am, Wu'erkaixi fainted after learning that a female student at Beijing Normal University, who had left campus with him earlier in the evening, had just been killed. Wu'erkaixi was taken away by ambulance. By then, there were still 70,000-80,000 people in the square.

At about 12:15am, a flare lit up the sky, and the first armored personnel vehicle appeared on the square from the west. At 12:30am, two more APCs arrived from the south. The students threw chunks of concrete at the vehicles. One APC stalled, perhaps from metal poles jammed into its wheels, and the demonstrators covered it with gasoline-doused blankets and set it on fire. The intense heat forced out the three occupants, who were swarmed by demonstrators. The APCs had reportedly run over tents, and many in the crowd wanted to beat the soldiers. Students formed a protective cordon and escorted the three men to the medic station by the History Museum on the east side of the square.

Pressure mounted on the student leadership to abandon non-violence and retaliate against the killings. At one point, Chai Ling picked up the megaphone and called on fellow students to prepare to "defend themselves" against the "shameless government"; however, she and Li Lu eventually agreed to adhere to peaceful means and had the students' sticks, rocks, and glass bottles confiscated.

At about 1:30am, the vanguard of the 38th Army, from the XV Airborne Corps, arrived at the north and south ends of the square, respectively. They began to seal off the square from reinforcements of students and residents, killing more demonstrators who were trying to enter the square. Meanwhile, soldiers of the 27th and 65th armies poured out of the Great Hall of the People to the west, and those of the 24th Army emerged from behind the History Museum to the east. The remaining students, numbering several thousand, were completely surrounded at the Monument of the People's Heroes in the center of the square. At 2am, the troops fired shots over the students' heads at the monument. The students broadcast pleadings toward the troops: "We entreat you in peace, for democracy and freedom of the motherland, for strength and prosperity of the Chinese nation, please comply with the will of the people and refrain from using force against peaceful student demonstrators."

At about 2:30am, several workers near the monument emerged with a machine gun they had captured from the troops and vowed to take revenge. They were persuaded to give up the weapon by Hou Dejian. The workers also handed over an assault rifle without ammunition, which Liu Xiaobo smashed against the marble railings of the monument. Shao Jiang, a student who had witnessed the killings at Muxidi, pleaded with the older intellectuals to retreat, saying too many lives had been lost. Initially, Liu Xiaobo was reluctant, but eventually joined Zhou Duo, Gao Xin, and Hou Dejian in making the case to the student leaders for a withdrawal. Chai Ling, Li Lu, and Feng Congde initially rejected the idea of withdrawal. At 3:30am, at the suggestion of two doctors in the Red Cross camp, Hou Dejian and Zhuo Tuo agreed to try to negotiate with the soldiers. They rode in an ambulance to the northeast corner of the square and spoke with Ji Xinguo, the political commissar of the 38th Army's 336th Regiment, who relayed the request to command headquarters, which agreed to grant safe passage for the students to the southeast. The commissar told Hou, "it would be a tremendous accomplishment if you can persuade the students to leave the square."

At 4am, the lights on the square were suddenly turned off, and the government's loudspeaker announced: "Clearance of the square begins now. We agree with the students' request to clear the square." The students sang The Internationale and braced for a last stand. Hou returned and informed student leaders of his agreement with the troops. At 4:30am, the lights were relit, and the troops began to advance on the monument from all sides. At about 4:32am, Hou Dejian took the student's loudspeaker and recounted his meeting with the military. Many students, who learned of the talks for the first time, reacted angrily and accused him of cowardice.

The soldiers stopped about ten meters from the students-the first row of troops armed with machine guns from the prone position. Behind them, soldiers squatted and stood with assault rifles. Mixed among them were anti-riot police with clubs. Further back were tanks and APCs. Feng Congde took to the loudspeaker and explained that there was no time left to hold a meeting. Instead, a voice vote would decide the collective action of the group. Although the vote's results were inconclusive, Feng said the "gos" had prevailed. Within a few minutes, at about 4:35am, a squad of soldiers in camouflaged uniform charged up the monument and shot out the students' loudspeaker. Other troops beat and kicked dozens of students at the monument, seizing and smashing their cameras and recording equipment. An officer with a loudspeaker called out, "you better leave, or this won't end well."

Some of the students and professors persuaded others still sitting on the lower tiers of the monument to get up and leave, while soldiers beat them with clubs and gunbutts and prodded them with bayonets. Witnesses heard bursts of gunfire. At about 5:10am, the students began to leave the monument. They linked arms and marched along a corridor to the southeast, though some departed to the north. Those who refused to leave were beaten by soldiers and ordered to join the departing procession. Having removed the students from the square, soldiers were ordered to relinquish their ammunition, after which they were allowed a short reprieve, from 7am to 9am. The soldiers were then ordered to clear the square of all debris leftover from the student occupation. The debris was either piled and burnt on the square or placed in large plastic bags that were then airlifted away by military helicopters. After the cleanup, the troops stationed at The Great Hall of the People remained confined within for the next nine days. During this time, the soldiers were left to sleep on the floors and daily fed a single packet of instant noodles shared between three men. Officers apparently suffered no such deprivation and were served regular meals apart from their troops.

Just past 6am on 4 June, as a convoy of students who had vacated the square were walking westward in the bicycle lane along Chang'an Avenue back to campus, three tanks pursued them from the square, firing tear gas. One tank drove through the crowd, killing 11 students and injuring scores of others.

Later in the morning, thousands of civilians tried to re-enter the square from the northeast on East Chang'an Avenue, which was blocked by infantry ranks. Many in the crowd were parents of the demonstrators who had been in the square. As the crowd approached the troops, an officer sounded a warning, and the troops opened fire. The crowd scurried back down the avenue, in view of journalists in the Beijing Hotel. Dozens of civilians were shot in the back as they fled. Later, the crowds surged back toward the troops, who opened fire again. The people then fled in panic. An arriving ambulance was also caught in the gunfire. The crowd tried several more times but could not enter the square, which remained closed to the public for two weeks.

5 June and the Tank Man

On 5 June, the suppression of the protest was immortalized outside of China via video footage and photographs of a lone man standing in front of a column of tanks leaving Tiananmen Square via Chang'an Avenue. The Tank Man became one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century. As the tank driver tried to go around him, the Tank Man moved into the tank's path. He continued to stand defiantly in front of the tanks for some time, then climbed up onto the turret of the lead tank to speak to the soldiers inside. After returning to his position in front of the tanks, the man was pulled aside by a group of people.

Although the fate of Tank Man following the demonstration is not known, paramount Chinese leader Jiang Zemin stated in 1990 that he did not think the man was killed. Time later named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.

A stopped convoy of 37 APCs on Changan Boulevard at Muxidi was forced to abandon their vehicles after becoming stuck among an assortment of burned-out buses and military vehicles. In addition to occasional incidents of soldiers opening fire on civilians in Beijing, Western news outlets reported clashes between units of the PLA. Late in the afternoon, 26 tanks, three armored personnel carriers, and supporting infantry took up defensive positions facing east at Jianguomen and Fuxingmen overpasses. Shellfire was heard throughout the night, and the next morning a United States Marine in the eastern part of the city reported spotting a damaged armored vehicle that an armor-piercing shell had disabled. The ongoing turmoil in the capital disrupted everyday life flow. No editions of the People's Daily were available in Beijing on 5 June, despite assurances that they had been printed. Many shops, offices, and factories were not able to open, as workers remained in their homes, and public transit services were limited to the subway and suburban bus routes.

By and large, the government regained control in the week following the square's military seizure. A political purge followed in which officials responsible for organizing or condoning the protests were removed, and protest leaders were jailed.

Protests outside Beijing

After the order was restored in Beijing on 4 June, protests of various sizes continued in some 80 other Chinese cities outside the international press's spotlight. In the British colony of Hong Kong, people again took to wearing black in solidarity with the demonstrators in Beijing. There were also protests in other countries, where many adopted the wearing of black armbands as well.

In Shanghai, students marched on the streets on 5 June and erected roadblocks on major thoroughfares. Railway traffic was blocked. Other public transport was suspended and people were prevented from getting to work. Factory workers went on a general strike and took to the streets. On 6 June, the municipal government tried to clear the rail blockade, but it was met with fierce resistance from the crowds. Several people were killed from being run over by a train. On 7 June, students from major Shanghai universities stormed various campus facilities to erect biers in commemoration of the dead in Beijing. The situation was gradually brought under control without deadly force. The municipal government gained recognition from the top leadership in Beijing for averting a major upheaval.

In the interior cities of Xi'an, Wuhan, Nanjing, and Chengdu, many students continued protests after 4 June, often erecting roadblocks. In Xi'an, students stopped workers from entering factories. In Wuhan, students blocked the Yangtze River Railway bridge and another 4,000 gathered at the railway station. About one thousand students staged a railroad "sit-in", and rail traffic on the Beijing-Guangzhou and Wuhan-Dalian lines was interrupted. The students also urged employees of major state-owned enterprises to go on strike. In Wuhan, the situation was so tense that residents reportedly began a bank run and resorted to panic-buying.

Similar scenes unfolded in Nanjing. On 7 June, hundreds of students staged a blockade at the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge and the Zhongyangmen Railway Bridge. They were persuaded to evacuate without incident later that day, although they returned the next day to occupy the main railway station and the bridges.

The atmosphere in Chengdu was more violent. On the morning of 4 June, police forcibly broke up the student demonstration in Tianfu Square. The resulting violence resulted in the deaths of eight people, with hundreds injured. The most brutal attacks occurred on 5-6 June. Witnesses estimate that 30 to 100 bodies were thrown onto a truck after a crowd broke into the Jinjiang Hotel. According to Amnesty International, at least 300 people were killed in Chengdu on 5 June. Troops in Chengdu used concussion grenades, truncheons, knives, and electroshock weapons against protesters. Hospitals were ordered not to accept students, and on the second night, the ambulance service was stopped by police.

Government's pronouncements

On 9 June, Deng Xiaoping, appearing in public for the first time since the protests began, delivered a speech praising the "martyrs" (PLA soldiers who had died). Deng stated that the goal of the student movement was to overthrow the party and the state. Of the protesters, Deng said: "Their goal is to establish a totally Western-dependent bourgeois republic." Deng argued that protesters had complained about corruption to cover their real motive, replacing the socialist system. He said that "the entire imperialist Western world plans to make all socialist countries discard the socialist road and then bring them under the monopoly of international capital and onto the capitalist road."

The number of deaths and the extent of bloodshed in the square itself have been in dispute since the events. The government actively suppressed discussion of casualty figures immediately after the events, and estimates rely heavily on eyewitness testimony, hospital records, and organized efforts by victims' relatives. As a result, large discrepancies exist among various casualty estimates. Initial estimates ranged from the official figure of a few hundred to several thousand.

Official figures

Official government announcements shortly after the event put the number who died at around 300. At the State Council press conference on 6 June, spokesman Yuan Mu said that "preliminary tallies" by the government showed that about 300 civilians and soldiers died, including 23 students from universities in Beijing, along with some people he described as "ruffians". Yuan also said some 5,000 soldiers and police were wounded, along with 2,000 civilians. On 19 June, Beijing Party Secretary Li Ximing reported to the Politburo that the government's confirmed death toll was 241, including 218 civilians (of which 36 were students), 10 PLA soldiers, and 13 People's Armed Police, along with 7,000 wounded. On 30 June, Mayor Chen Xitong said that the number of injured was around 6,000.

Other estimates

On the morning of 4 June, many estimates of deaths were reported, including from government-affiliated sources. Peking University leaflets circulated on campus suggested a death toll of between two and three thousand. The Chinese Red Cross had given a figure of 2,600 deaths but later denied having given such a figure. The Swiss Ambassador had estimated 2,700. Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times wrote on 21 June that "it seems plausible that about a dozen soldiers and policemen were killed, along with 400 to 800 civilians." United States ambassador James Lilley said that, based on visits to hospitals around Beijing, a minimum of several hundred had been killed. A declassified National Security Agency cable filed on the same day estimated 180-500 deaths up to the morning of 4 June. Beijing hospital records compiled shortly after the events recorded at least 478 dead and 920 wounded. Amnesty International's estimates put the number of deaths at between several hundred and close to 1,000, while a Western diplomat who compiled estimates put the number at 300 to 1,000.

In a 2017 disputed cable sent in the aftermath of the events at Tiananmen, British Ambassador Alan Donald initially stated, based on information from a "good friend" in the China State Council, that a minimum of 10,000 civilians died, claims which were repeated in a speech by Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, but which is an estimated number much higher than other sources provided. After the declassification, former student protest leader Feng Congde pointed out that Donald later revised his estimate to 2,700-3,400 deaths, a number closer to other estimates.

Identifying the dead

The Tiananmen Mothers, a victims' advocacy group co-founded by Ding Zilin and Zhang Xianling, whose children were killed by the government during the crackdown, have identified 202 victims as of August 2011. In the face of government interference, the group has worked painstakingly to locate victims' families and collect information about the victims. Their tally had grown from 155 in 1999 to 202 in 2011. The list includes four individuals who committed suicide on or after 4 June for reasons related to their involvement in the demonstrations.

Former protester Wu Renhua of the Chinese Alliance for Democracy, an overseas group agitating for democratic reform in China, said that he was only able to identify and verify 15 military deaths. Wu asserts that if deaths from events unrelated to demonstrators were removed from the count, only seven deaths among military personnel might be counted as from being " killed in action" by rioters.

Deaths in Tiananmen Square itself

Government officials have long asserted that no one died in the square in the early morning hours of 4 June, during the "hold-out" of students' last batch in the south part of the square. Initially, foreign media reports of a "massacre" on the square were prevalent, though subsequently, journalists have acknowledged that most of the deaths occurred outside of the square in western Beijing. Several people who were situated around the square that night, including former Beijing bureau chief of The Washington Post Jay Mathews and CBS correspondent Richard Roth reported that while they had heard sporadic gunfire, they could not find enough evidence to suggest that a massacre took place on the square.

Student leader Chai Ling said in a speech broadcast on Hong Kong television that she witnessed tanks arrive at the square and crushed students who were sleeping in their tents, and added that between 200 and 4000 students died at the square. Ling was joined by fellow student leader Wu'er Kaixi who said he had witnessed 200 students being cut down by gunfire, however it was later proven that he had already left the square several hours before the events he claimed to have happened. Records by the Tiananmen Mothers suggest that three students died in the square the night of the army's push into the square. Taiwan-born Hou Dejian was present in the square to show solidarity with the students and said that he did not see any massacre occurring in the square. He was quoted by Xiaoping Li, a former China dissident to have stated: "Some people said 200 died in the square, and others claimed that as many as 2,000 died. There were also stories of tanks running over students who were trying to leave. I have to say I did not see any of that. I was in the square until 6:30 in the morning."

In 2011, three secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing agreed there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square. A Chilean diplomat who had been positioned next to a Red Cross station inside the square told his US counterparts that he did not observe any mass firing of weapons into the crowds in the square itself, although sporadic gunfire was heard. He said that most of the troops who entered the square were armed only with anti-riot gear.

Chinese scholar Wu Renhua, who was present at the protests, wrote that the government's discussion of the issue was a red herring intended to absolve itself of responsibility and showcase its benevolence. Wu said that it was irrelevant whether the shooting occurred inside the square or in adjacent areas, as it was still a reprehensible massacre of unarmed civilians: "Really, whether the fully equipped army of troops massacred peaceful, ordinary folks inside or outside the square make very little difference. It is not even worthwhile to have this discussion at all."

Immediate aftermath

Arrests, punishments, and evacuations

The 21 most-wanted student leaders' faces and descriptions were often broadcast on television as well. Photographs with biographies of the leaders followed in this order: Wang Dan, Wuer Kaixi, Liu Gang, Chai Ling, Zhou Fengsuo, Zhai Weimin, Liang Qingdun, Wang Zhengyun, Zheng Xuguang, Ma Shaofang, Yang Tao, Wang Zhixing, Feng Congde, Wang Chaohua, Wang Youcai, Zhang Zhiqing, Zhang Boli, Li Lu, Zhang Ming, Xiong Wei, and Xiong Yan.

Each of the 21 students faced diverse experiences after their arrests or escapes; while some remain abroad with no intent to return, others have chosen to stay indefinitely, such as Zhang Ming. Only 7 of the 21 were able to escape. Some student leaders, such as Chai Ling and Wuer Kaixi, were able to escape to the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and other Western nations under Operation Yellowbird, which was organized by Western intelligence agencies such as MI6 and CIA from Hong Kong, a British territory at the time. According to The Washington Post, the operation involved more than 40 people and had its roots in the Alliance in Support of Democratic Movements in China formed in May 1989. After the Beijing protest crackdown, this group drew up an initial list of 40 dissidents they believed could form the nucleus of a "Chinese democracy movement in exile".

The remaining student leaders were apprehended and incarcerated. Those who escaped, whether in 1989 or after, generally have had difficulty re-entering China up to this day. The Chinese government has preferred to leave the dissidents in exile. Those who attempt to re-enter, such as Wu'er Kaixi, have been simply sent back but not arrested.

According to the Dui Hua Foundation, citing a provincial government, 1,602 individuals were imprisoned for protest-related activities in early 1989. As of May 2012, at least two remain incarcerated in Beijing, and five others remain unaccounted for. In June 2014, it was reported that Miao Deshun was believed to be the last known prisoner incarcerated for their participation in the protests; he was last heard from a decade ago. All are reported to have mental illnesses.

Leadership changes

The party leadership expelled Zhao Ziyang from the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC). Hu Qili, another PSC member who opposed martial law but abstained from voting, was also removed from the committee. However, he was able to retain his party membership, and after "changing his opinion", he was reassigned as deputy minister in the Ministry for Machinery and Electronics Industry. Another reform-minded Chinese leader, Wan Li, was also put under house arrest immediately after he stepped out of his plane at Beijing Capital Airport upon returning from a shortened trip abroad; the authorities declared his detention to be on health grounds. When Wan Li was released from his house arrest after he finally "changed his opinion", he, like Qiao Shi, was transferred to a different position with equal rank but a mostly ceremonial role. Several Chinese ambassadors abroad claimed political asylum.

Jiang Zemin, the Party Secretary of Shanghai, was promoted to General Secretary of the Communist Party. Jiang's decisive actions in Shanghai involving the World Economic Herald and his having prevented deadly violence in the city won him support from party elders in Beijing. Having put the new leadership team in place and recognizing his weakened position, Deng Xiaoping himself also bowed out of the party leadership-at least officially-by resigning his last leadership position as Chairman of the Central Military Commission later that year. He kept a low profile until 1992. According to diplomatic cables de-classified by Canada, the Swiss ambassador informed Canadian diplomats in confidence that over several months following the massacre, "every member of the Politburo Standing Committee has approached him about transferring very significant amounts of money to Swiss bank accounts."

Media coverage

Official narrative

The official narrative constructed by the Chinese Communist Party on 4 June Incident states that the use of force is necessary to control "political turmoil", and this also ensures the stable society that is necessary for successful economic development. Chinese leaders-including Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, who were general secretaries of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party-consistently reiterated the official narrative of the Chinese Communist Party when being asked about the protests by foreign journalists.

In the meantime, the Chinese government also constantly controlled public narratives about the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. When referring to the protests, the print media were required to be consistent with the Chinese government's account of the 4 June Incident. The Chinese government prepared a white paper to explain the government's views on the protests. Later, anonymous people within the Chinese government shipped the files overseas and published the " Tiananmen Papers" in 2001. At the 30th anniversary of the 4 June Incident, Wei Fenghe, a general of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, said in the Shangri-La Dialogue: "The 4 June Incident was a turmoil and unrest. The Central Government took decisive measures to calm the unrest and stop the turmoil, and it is because of this decision that the stability within the country can be established. For the past three decades, China has undergone tremendous changes under the leadership of the Communist Party."

Chinese media

The suppression of 4 June marked the end of a period of relative press freedom in China, and media workers-both foreign and domestic-faced heightened restrictions and punishment in the aftermath of the crackdown. State media reports in the immediate aftermath were sympathetic to the students. As a result, those responsible were all later removed from their posts. Two news anchors Du Xian and Xue Fei, who reported this event on 4 and 5 June, respectively in the daily Xinwen Lianbo broadcast on China Central Television, were fired because they openly emoted in sympathy with the protesters. Wu Xiaoyong, the son of the former foreign minister Wu Xueqian, was removed from the English Program Department of Chinese Radio International, ostensibly for his sympathies towards protesters. Editors and other staff at the People's Daily, including director Qian Liren and Editor-in-Chief Tan Wenrui, were also sacked because of reports in the paper that were sympathetic towards the protesters. Several editors were arrested.

Foreign media

With the imposition of martial law, the Chinese government cut off Western broadcasters' satellite transmissions such as CNN and CBS. Broadcasters tried to defy these orders by reporting via telephone. Video footage was smuggled out of the country, although the only network that was able to record video during the night of 4 June was Televisión Española of Spain (TVE). During the military action, some foreign journalists faced harassment from authorities. CBS correspondent Richard Roth and his cameraman were taken into custody while filing a report from the square via mobile phone.

Several foreign journalists who had covered the crackdown were expelled in the weeks that followed, while others were harassed by authorities or blacklisted from reentering the country. In Shanghai, foreign consulates were told that the safety of journalists who failed to heed newly enacted reporting guidelines could not be guaranteed.

The Chinese government's response was widely denounced, particularly by Western governments and media. Criticism came from both Western and Eastern Europe, North America, Australia, and some west Asian and Latin American countries. Many Asian countries remained silent throughout the protests; India's government under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi responded to the massacre by ordering the state television to offer only the absolute minimum coverage of the incident to not jeopardize a thawing in relations with China and to empathize with the Chinese government. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) was the only political party in the world to pass a resolution hailing the protests, calling them "an imperialist attempt to internally subvert socialism, [which] was successfully thwarted by the CPC and the PLA."

Cuba, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, among others, supported the Chinese government and denounced the protests.

Longer-term impact

The protests led to a strengthened role for the party in domestic affairs. In its aftermath, many of the freedoms introduced during the 1980s were rescinded, as the party returned to a conventional Leninist mold and re-established firm control over the press, publishing, and mass media. The protests were also a blow to the separation-of-powers model established following the Cultural Revolution, whereby the President was a symbolic position. At the same time, the real centers of power-i.e. the General Secretary of the Communist Party, the Premier, and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission-were intended for different people, to prevent the excesses of Mao-style personal rule.

When President Yang Shangkun asserted his reserve powers from his membership in the Central Military Commission and openly split with general secretary Zhao Ziyang over the use of force, to side with Premier Li Peng and Central Military Commission chairman Deng Xiaoping, the official policy became inconsistent and incoherent, significantly impeding the exercise of power. By 1993, General Secretary, Central Military Commission chairman, and President were consolidated into the same person, a practice that has been continued since.

In 1989, neither the Chinese military nor the Beijing police had sufficient anti-riot gear, such as rubber bullets and tear gas. After the Tiananmen Square protests, riot police in Chinese cities were equipped with non-lethal equipment for riot control. The protests led to increased spending on internal security and to an expanded role for the People's Armed Police in suppressing urban protests.

The restrictions were only loosened after a few years had passed, especially after Deng Xiaoping's southern tour. Privately run print media then again flourished. Private newspapers increased from 250 in the 1980s to over 7,000 by 2003. Provincially-run, satellite TV stations sprang up all over the country and challenged the market share of state-run CCTV. The leadership also stepped away from promoting communism as an all-encompassing belief system. State-approved religious organizations increased their membership significantly, and traditional beliefs suppressed during the Mao era re-appeared. This state-sanctioned plurality also created an environment for unsanctioned forms of spirituality and worship to grow. To reduce the need for controversial methods of state control, Protestants, Buddhists, and Taoists were often used by the state as "approved" denominations to "fight against cults" such as Falun Gong, playing the sects against each other.

As the party departed from the orthodox communism it was founded upon, much of its attention was focused on the cultivation of nationalism as an alternative ideology. This policy largely succeeded in tying the party's legitimacy to China's "national pride", turning domestic public opinion back in its favor. This is perhaps most prominently seen in May 1999, when the United States bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The bombings saw an outpouring of nationalist sentiment and increased support for the party as the foremost advocate of China's national interest.

After the Tiananmen Square protests, many business analysts downgraded their outlook for China's economic future. The violent response to the protests was one of the factors that led to a delay in China's acceptance in the World Trade Organization, which was not completed until twelve years later, in 2001. Furthermore, bilateral aid to China decreased from $3.4 billion in 1988 to $700 million in 1990. Loans to China were suspended by the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and foreign governments; China's credit rating was lowered; tourism revenue decreased from US$2.2 billion to US$1.8 billion; and foreign direct investment commitments were canceled. However, there was a rise in government defense spending from 8.6% in 1986, to 15.5% in 1990, reversing a previous 10-year decline.

In the aftermath of the protests, the government sought again to centralize control over the economy, though the changes were short-lived. Sensing that conservative policies had again taken a foothold within the party, Deng, now retired from all of his official positions, launched his southern tour in 1992, visiting various cities in the country's most prosperous regions while advocating for further economic reforms. Partly in response to Deng, by the mid-1990s the country was again pursuing market liberalization on a scale even greater than those seen in the initial stages of the reforms in the 1980s. Although political liberals were purged from within the party, many of those who were economically liberal remained. The economic shocks caused by the events of 1989, in retrospect, had only a minor and temporary effect on China's economic growth. Indeed, with many previously aggrieved groups now regarding political liberalization as a lost cause, more of their energy was spent on economic activities. The economy would quickly regain momentum into the 1990s.

In Hong Kong, the Tiananmen Square protests led to fears that China would renege on its commitments under one country, two systems, following the impending handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom in 1997. In response, Governor Chris Patten tried to expand the franchise for the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, which led to friction with Beijing. For many Hong Kongers, Tiananmen served as the turning point when they lost trust in the Beijing government. The event, coupled with general uncertainty about the status of Hong Kong after the transfer of sovereignty, led to a sizable exodus of Hong Kongers to Western countries such as Canada and Australia before 1997.

There have been large candlelight vigils attended by tens of thousands in Hong Kong every year since 1989, even after the transfer of power to China in 1997. Despite that, the June 4th Museum closed in July 2016, after only two years in its location. The group that runs the museum, the Hong Kong Alliance, has started to crowdfund money to open the museum in a new location. A virtual version of the museum released online in August 2021 has also been blocked by Chinese telecom companies.

The events of Tiananmen in 1989 have become permanently etched in the public consciousness, perhaps more than anywhere else outside mainland China. The events continue to strongly impact perceptions of China, its government, attitudes towards democracy, and the extent to which Hong Kongers should identify as "Chinese". The events of 4 June are seen as representative of the Chinese brand of authoritarianism, and they are often invoked by pro-democracy politicians in Hong Kong, especially in relation to democratic reform in Hong Kong and the territory's relationship with Beijing. Academic studies indicate that those who supported the Tiananmen Square movement's rehabilitation had a tendency to support democratization in the territory and the election of pro-democracy parties.

In memory of the events among other monuments at 1997 Pillar of Shame with height of 8 meters performed by sculptor Jens Galschiøt was placed in the University of Hong Kong. On 22 December 2021, it was removed by the university authorities, a move that was condemned by survivors of the massacre.

China's image internationally

Although the crackdown hurt relations with Western countries, it had relatively little impact on China's relations with its Asian neighbors. Professor Suisheng Zhao, Director of the Center for China-US Cooperation at the University of Denver, attributes the slight impact to the fact that "the human rights records in most of these countries were not better than China's. To a certain extent, they were sympathetic to China's struggle against pressures from Western countries." Even in the wake of the crackdown, China's foreign relations with its neighbors generally improved.

In the 1990s, China attempted to demonstrate its willingness to participate in international economic and defense institutions to secure investment for continued economic reforms. The government signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1992, the Convention on Chemical Weapons in 1993, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996. Whereas China had been a member of only 30 international organizations in 1986, it was a member of over 50 by 1997. China also sought to diversify its external partnerships, establishing good diplomatic relations with post-Soviet Russia, and welcoming Taiwanese business in lieu of Western investment. China expedited negotiations with the World Trade Organization and established relations with Indonesia, Israel, South Korea, and others in 1992. While China was a net recipient of aid throughout the 1980s, its growing economic and military role transformed it into a net provider of aid.

European Union and the United States arms embargo

The European Union and United States embargo on armament sales to China, put in place due to the violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests, remains in place today. China has been calling for a lift of the ban for years and has had a varying amount of support from European Union members. Since 2004, China has portrayed the ban as "outdated" and damaging to China-European Union relations. In early 2004, French President Jacques Chirac spearheaded a movement within the European Union to lift the ban, his efforts being supported by German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. However, the passing of the Anti-Secession Law of the People's Republic of China, in March 2005, increased tensions between mainland China and Taiwan, damaging attempts to lift the ban; and several European Union Council members retracted their support for a lift of the ban. Moreover, Schröder's successor Angela Merkel opposed lifting the ban. Members of the United States Congress had also proposed restrictions on the transfer of military technology to the European Union if the latter lifted the ban. The United Kingdom also opposed the embargo lifting when it took charge of the European Union presidency in July 2005.

The European Parliament has consistently opposed the lifting of the arms embargo to China. Though its agreement is not necessary for lifting the ban, many argue it reflects the will of the European people better as it is the only directly elected European body. The arms embargo has limited China's options in seeking military hardware. Among the sources that were sought included the former Soviet bloc that it had a strained relationship with as a result of the Sino-Soviet split. Other willing suppliers have previously included Israel and South Africa, but American pressure has restricted this co-operation.

Contemporary issues

Censorship in China

The Chinese government continues to forbid discussions about the Tiananmen Square protests and has taken measures to block or censor related information, in an attempt to suppress the public's memory of the Tiananmen Square protests. Textbooks contain little, if any, information about the protests. After the protests, officials banned controversial films and books and shut down many newspapers. Within a year, 12% of all newspapers, 8% of all publishing companies, 13% of all social science periodicals, and more than 150 films were either banned or shut down. The government also announced that it had seized 32 million contraband books and 2.4 million video and audio cassettes. Access to media and Internet resources about the subject are either restricted or blocked by censors. Banned literature and films include Summer Palace, Forbidden City, Collection of June Fourth Poems, The Critical Moment: Li Peng diaries and any writings of Zhao Ziyang or his aide Bao Tong, including Zhao's memoirs. However, contraband and Internet copies of these publications can still be found.

Print media that contain references to the protests must be consistent with the government's version of events. Domestic and foreign journalists are detained, harassed, or threatened, as are their Chinese colleagues and any Chinese citizens who they interview. Thus, Chinese citizens are typically reluctant to speak about the protests because of potentially negative repercussions. Many young people who were born after 1980 are unfamiliar with the events and are therefore apathetic about politics. Youth in China are sometimes unaware of the events, the symbols which are associated with them such as the Tank Man, or the significance of the date of the massacre 4 June itself. Some older intellectuals no longer aspire to implement political change. Instead, they focus on economic issues. Some political prisoners have refused to talk to their children about their involvement in the protests out of fear of putting them at risk.

While public discussions about the events have become socially taboo, private discussions about them continue to occur despite frequent interference and harassment by the authorities. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo remained in China in order to speak out about Tiananmen in the 1990s despite the fact that he received offers of asylum; he faced constant surveillance. Zhang Xianling and Ding Zilin, the mothers of victims who died in 1989, founded the Tiananmen Mothers organization and were particularly outspoken about the humanitarian aspects of the protests. The authorities mobilize security forces, including members of the People's Armed Police, every year on 4 June in order to prevent public displays of remembrance, with an especially heavy security presence on the anniversaries of major events such as the 20th anniversary of the protests in 2009 and the 25th anniversary of the protests in 2014. On the 30th anniversary of the protests in 2019, the renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei wrote that " autocratic and totalitarian regimes fear facts because they have built their power on unjust foundations" and he also wrote that memory is important: "without it there is no such thing as a civilised society or nation" because "our past is all we have."

Journalists have frequently been denied entry to the square on the anniversaries of the massacre. Also, the authorities are known to have detained foreign journalists and increase surveillance of prominent human rights activists during this time of year. Internet searches on "4 June Tiananmen Square" made within China return censored results or result in temporarily severed server connections. Specific web pages with select keywords are censored while other websites, such as those which support the overseas Chinese democracy movement, are blocked wholesale. The policy is much more stringent with regard to Chinese-language sites than it is with regard to foreign-language ones. Social media censorship is more stringent in the weeks leading up to the anniversaries of the massacre; even oblique references to the protests and seemingly unrelated terms are usually very aggressively patrolled and censored. In January 2006, Google agreed to censor their mainland China site to remove information about Tiananmen and other subjects which are considered sensitive by the authorities. Google withdrew its cooperation on censorship in January 2010.

Calls for the government to reassess

The party's official stance towards the incident is that the use of force was necessary to control a "political disturbance" and that it ensured the stability necessary for economic prosperity. Chinese leaders, including former paramount leaders Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, reiterate this line when questioned by the foreign press.

Over the years, some Chinese citizens have called for a reassessment of the protests and compensation from the government to victims' families. One group in particular, Tiananmen Mothers, seeks compensation, vindication for victims, and the right to receive donations from within the mainland and from abroad. Zhang Shijun, a former soldier who was involved in the military crackdown, published an open letter to President Hu Jintao that sought to have the government reevaluate its position on the protests. He was subsequently arrested and taken from his home.

Although the Chinese government never officially acknowledged relevant accusations when it came to the incident, in April 2006, a payment was made to one of the victims' mother, the first publicized case of the government offering redress to a Tiananmen-related victim's family. The payment was termed a "hardship assistance" and was given to Tang Deying (), whose son Zhou Guocong ( simplified Chinese: 周国聪; traditional Chinese: 周國聰) died at age 15 while in police custody in Chengdu on 6 June 1989, two days after the Chinese Army dispersed the Tiananmen protesters. She was reportedly paid CNY70,000 (approximately US$10,250). This has been welcomed by various Chinese activists. However, some regarded it as a measure to maintain social stability and not believed to herald a changing of the party's official position.

Chinese leaders voicing regret

Before his death in 1998, Yang Shangkun told army doctor Jiang Yanyong that 4 June was the most serious mistake committed by the Communist Party in its history, a mistake that Yang himself could not correct, but one that certainly will eventually be corrected. Zhao Ziyang remained under house arrest until his death in 2005. Zhao's aide Bao Tong has repeatedly called on the government to reverse its verdict on the demonstrations. Chen Xitong, the mayor of Beijing, who read the martial law order and was later disgraced by a political scandal, expressed regret in 2012, a year before his death, for the death of innocent civilians. Premier Wen Jiabao reportedly suggested reversing the government's position on Tiananmen in party meetings before he departed from politics in 2013, only to be rebuffed by his colleagues.

United Nations report

In December 2009, the Chinese government responded to the committee's recommendations by saying that the government had closed the case concerning the "political turmoil in the spring and summer of 1989". It also stated that the "practice of the past 20 years has made it clear that the timely and decisive measures taken by the Chinese Government at the time were necessary and correct". It said that the labeling of the "incident as 'the Democracy Movement'" is a "distortion in the nature of the incident". According to the Chinese government, such observations were "inconsistent with the Committee's responsibilities".

A banner in support of the June Fourth Student Movement in Shanghai Fashion Store (formerly the Xianshi Company Building)

Mourning banners hung near the South Gate of Beijing University taken a few days after the crackdown.

A burned vehicle in Zhongguancun Street in Beijing.

1. Analyst ^ Richard Baum described their actions as "...a mock-ceremonial remonstrance... presenting their scrolled-up demands on hands and knees in the stylized, obsequious manner of an imperial petition." Political scientist Lucian Pye similarly described the act as "...in line with the classic Chinese tradition of aggrieved parties wailing before the Yamen door, of publicly dramatizing their unhappiness by petitioning officialdom... [they] sincerely believed that the officials would have to respond by meeting with them."

2. Ren Jianmin (Victim No. 106), was a farmer from Hebei who was passing through the city and wounded by gunfire in the stomach on 4 June. He was unable to afford medical bills and hanged himself in August because of unbearable pain. Zou Bing (Victim No. 51), a 19-year-old student at the ^ Beijing Broadcasting Institute, hanged herself in September 1989 because of her inability to endure interrogation into her involvement in the protest. Qi Li, (Victim No. 162), a student at the Central Academy of Drama, hanged himself for escaping the pressure of post-protest investigations at his school. Wei Wumin (Victim No. 163), also a student at the Central Academy of Drama, who participated in the hunger strike, committed suicide by standing in front of an oncoming train. List of casualties, Ding Zilin. Retrieved 21 May 2007. (in Chinese)

3. Jay Mathews, former Beijing bureau chief for ^ The Washington Post said that "as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square". He goes on to conclude:

A few people may have been killed by random shooting on streets near the square, but all verified eyewitness accounts say that the students who remained in the square when troops arrived were allowed to leave peacefully. Hundreds of people, most of them workers and passersby, did die that night, but in a different place and under other circumstances.

4. ^ Richard Roth reported that he was held captive by troops in the Great Hall of the People on the west side of the square on the night of 3 June and could hear but not see into the square until dawn when they were driven through the square. He heard a "volley of gunfire" to silence the students' loudspeakers. He added that there is no doubt that many people were killed in the area on the way to and around the square, mostly in western Beijing, which the Communist Party denies.

5. ^ An English translation of the Tiananmen Mothers' Database - Note: contains incorrect English spellings of some victims' names. "Not Forget Us" Accessed 20 June 2013.

References

1. Lin, Chun (2006). The transformation of Chinese socialism. Durham [N.C.]: Duke University Press. p. 211. ISBN 978-0-8223-3785-0. OCLC 63178961.

2. ^ The Tiananmen Papers, edited by Andrew J. Nathan and Perry Link, compiled by Zhang Liang, pp. 468-477, Abacus, 2002

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre - Wikipedia

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1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre Part of the Cold War, the Revolutions of 1989 and the Chinese democracy movement From top to bottom, left to right are people protesting near the Monument to the People's Heroes; Chinese tanks after the massacre outside of the United States Embassy; a burned vehicle in Zhongguancun Street in Beijing; Pu Zhiqiang, a student protester at Tiananmen; and a banner in support of the June Fourth Student Movement in Shanghai Fashion Store (formerly the Xianshi Company Building).

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The Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 by the communist government of East Germany to prevent people from fleeing to democratic West Berlin. For nearly 30 years, the heavily fortified barrier divided the city of Berlin, serving as a powerful symbol of the Iron Curtain between Western and Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe. The East German government unexpectedly allowed citizens to cross the border with West Berlin due to mounting public pressure and protests across East Germany. Over the next few weeks and months, the Berlin Wall was progressively demolished by ordinary citizens. It marked a symbolic end to the decades-long Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union.

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Boris Yeltsin elected as president of Russia (May 1990)

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Boris Yeltsin elected as president of Russia (May 1990)

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Boris Yeltsin was elected as the first president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). He won 57% of the vote in the first direct presidential election in Russian history. Yeltsin's election as Russian president reflected growing democratic aspirations in Russia and a rejection of the ossified Soviet Communist establishment.

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Boris Yeltsin elected as president of Russia (May 1990)

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After World War II, Germany was split into democratic West Germany and communist East Germany, which was controlled by the Soviet Union as part of its Eastern Bloc. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the collapse of East German communism, moves swiftly began to reunite the two Germans. Through a negotiated process involving the four Allied powers of WWII, the two German states agreed on economic and political reunification. It represented the final solidification of West Germany's alignment with Western Europe and the end of Germany's four decades of post-war division.

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The swift and unexpected downfall of the German Democratic Republic was triggered by the decay of the other communist regimes in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The liberalizing reforms of President Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union appalled the Honecker regime, which in desperation was by 1988 forbidding the circulation within East Germany of Soviet publications that it viewed as dangerously subversive. The Berlin Wall was in effect breached in the summer of 1989 when a reformist Hungarian government began allowing East Germans to escape to the West through Hungary's newly opened border with Austria. By the fall, thousands of East Germans had followed this route, while thousands of others sought asylum in the West German embassies in Prague and Warsaw, demanding that they be allowed to emigrate to West Germany. At the end of September, Genscher, still West Germany's foreign minister, arranged for their passage to West Germany, but another wave of refugees from East Germany soon took their place. Mass demonstrations in the streets of Leipzig and other East German cities defied the authorities and demanded reforms.

In an effort to halt the deterioration of its position, the SED Politburo deposed Honecker in mid-October and replaced him with another hard-line communist, Egon Krenz. Under Krenz the Politburo sought to eliminate the embarrassment occasioned by the flow of refugees to the West through Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. On the evening of November 9, Günter Schabowski, a communist functionary, mistakenly announced at a televised news conference that the government would allow East Germans unlimited passage to West Germany, effective "immediately." While the government had in fact meant to require East Germans to apply for exit visas during normal working hours, this was widely interpreted as a decision to open the Berlin Wall that evening, so crowds gathered and demanded to pass into West Berlin. Unprepared, the border guards let them go. In a night of revelry tens of thousands of East Germans poured through the crossing points in the wall and celebrated their new freedom with rejoicing West Berliners.

The opening of the Berlin Wall proved fatal for the German Democratic Republic. Ever-larger demonstrations demanded a voice in government for the people, and in mid-November Krenz was replaced by a reform-minded communist, Hans Modrow, who promised free, multiparty elections. When the balloting took place in March 1990 the SED, now renamed the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), suffered a crushing defeat. The eastern counterpart of Kohl's CDU, which had pledged a speedy reunification of Germany, emerged as the largest political party in East Germany's first democratically elected People's Chamber. A new East German government headed by Lothar de Maizière, a long-time member of the eastern Christian Democratic Union, and backed initially by a broad coalition, including the eastern counterparts of the Social Democrats and Free Democrats, began negotiations for a treaty of unification. A surging tide of refugees from East to West Germany that threatened to cripple East Germany added urgency to those negotiations. In July that tide was somewhat stemmed by a monetary union of the two Germanys that gave East Germans the hard currency of the Federal Republic.

The final barrier to reunification fell in July 1990 when Kohl prevailed upon Gorbachev to drop his objections to a unified Germany within the NATO alliance in return for sizable (West) German financial aid to the Soviet Union. A unification treaty was ratified by the Bundestag and the People's Chamber in September and went into effect on October 3, 1990. The German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic as five additional Länder, and the two parts of divided Berlin became one Land. (The five new Länder were Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia.)

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Germany - Reunification, Berlin Wall, Cold War

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Germany - Reunification, Berlin Wall, Cold War: The swift and unexpected downfall of the German Democratic Republic was triggered by the decay of the other communist regimes in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

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USSR dissolved- 15 republics gain independence, including Russia (Aug, 1991)

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USSR dissolved- 15 republics gain independence, including Russia (Aug, 1991)

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The dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991 was a pivotal geopolitical event that marked the end of the Cold War and the collapse of one of the 20th century's most powerful states. The leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus announced the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). All 15 Soviet republics - Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan - formally regained or declared their independence. The end of the Soviet Union concluded the decades-long Cold War rivalry between the USSR and the West led by the United States.