Operation Storm-333
The Tajbeg Palace
| date | 27.-28. December 1979 |
|---|---|
| place | Kabul , Afghanistan |
| output | Capture of Kabul by Soviet troops. Killing of President Hafizullah Amin |
| consequences | Continuation of the Afghan Civil War |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
|
Hafizullah Amin † |
|
| Troop strength | |
 KGB
|
2,500 |
| losses | |
|
19 killed |
200 killed, including Hafizullah Amin and his son |
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The Operation Storm-333 ( russian операция Шторм-333 , pronounced Schtorm ) led the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union one. The aim of the operation was to eliminate the political and military leadership of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and to occupy the capital Kabul so that the Soviet-compliant Babrak Karmal could be installed as the new president.
The operation was carried out on December 27, 1979 and resulted in the death of Afghan President Hafizullah Amin .
prehistory
After the Saur Revolution in April 1978 by the leaders of the previously illegal Khalq Party (People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, DVPA), Nur Muhammad Taraki , Hafizullah Amin and Babrak Karmal began to develop the country into a socialist state through land reform and other measures . In particular, the secularization and the expulsion of formerly privileged groups led to widespread resistance. From 1978 to 1979 around 30 mujahideen groups were founded.
Overwhelmed by the increasing violence, Taraki tried to get the Soviet Union to intervene militarily, but this was rejected by the Soviet Politburo .
There were also disputes within the DVPA about the political goals. With the murder of Taraki, Hafizullah Amin took power in September 1979 and tried to put down the resistance. As a result, the civil war escalated.
The Soviet Union initially did not react to the bloody change of government in Kabul. Amin was loyal to the Soviet Union, but could not contain the growing unrest in the country. The Soviet side feared that Amin could eventually turn to the United States and ask for support there, which could have led to the direct stationing of US forces on Afghanistan's northwestern border with the Soviet Union. The Politburo therefore decided on December 11, 1979 to liquidate Amin and dissolve his government. Amin was to be replaced by the leader of the rival Parcham faction of the DVPA Karmal. He had been secretly brought from his exile in Czechoslovakia to Afghanistan before the Politburo decided.
There had been coup attempts by the Afghan army before . As a result, the KGB's ALFA and the 154th Independent SpetsNaz Department were stationed at the Soviet embassy in Kabul. Officially, they were supposed to "protect" the president. Presumably, the original intention was to carry out the operation only with these forces and only after the commanders on the spot found this to be too dangerous, the decision to invade stronger Soviet troops. The latter could be justified with Amin's repeated demands for the stationing of Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Concerns of the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Nikolai Ogarkov, and other high-ranking generals, that massive Soviet intervention could turn into a costly and image-damaging failure, were brushed aside by Defense Minister and Politburo member Ustinov .
The KGB had managed to smuggle one of their agents into the presidential palace as a cook. He was supposed to try to poison Hafizullah Amin, his nephew Asadullah Amin and the head of counterintelligence Mohammed Yaqub. This plan initially failed on December 16. Only Asadullah Amin was flown to Moscow with symptoms of poisoning . Attempts to kill the president by snipers while he was driving were also unsuccessful.
As a result of the events, Amin moved his residence to the Tajbeg Palace, which was better guarded on the outskirts of Kabul.
The units of the KGB were also relocated near the palace, as they had the official task of guarding the president. At the same time, however, they spied out the area, as the Soviet Union did not have precise maps of the area around the palace at that time.
course
On the afternoon of December 25, 1979, units of the 40th Army began to march into Afghanistan. The operation against Amin, originally scheduled for that day, was postponed to December 27 to await the arrival of the 103rd Airborne Division and other parts of the 345th Independent Airborne Regiment at Kabul airport . During the air transfer, the pilot, 37 paratroopers and nine other soldiers died on the first day of the invasion when an Il-76 military transport aircraft crashed on a mountain near Kanzak (northeast of Kabul).
A reception was held in Amin's palace on December 27th, which was also attended by several ministers and members of the DVPA Politburo. Amin was enthusiastic about the invasion of Soviet troops and intended to make a televised address to the nation on the same day. However, the food had been poisoned by the Soviet cooks, and those present soon showed severe signs of intoxication. Amin's life was saved by two summoned Soviet doctors, one of whom later died while storming the palace. However, some of Amin's employees and family members died as a result of the poisoning.
Shortly afterwards, Soviet soldiers of the 9th Company of the 345th Independent Paratrooper Regiment and the units of the 154th Independent Spetsnaz Division stormed the area around the palace and initially killed Amin's guard. The groups SENIT ("Zenit") and GROM ("Donner") of the KGB unit ALFA broke into the palace and killed Amin and one of his sons with a hand grenade.
In the final phase of Operation Storm-333, the commanding officer of the KGB troops deployed, Colonel Grigory Ivanovich Boyarinov, was killed by self- fire by the Soviet forces.
In the course of the day, the Bagram airfield , the Afghan interior and foreign ministries and the general staff building were also occupied, the central exchange in Kabul was blown up and several members of the government were arrested. The resistance of the regular Afghan army units in these actions was mostly low. The fighting lasted until the following day, after which the Afghan army surrendered in Kabul.
consequences
While the Tajbeg Palace was being stormed, a previously recorded speech by Babrak Karmal was read on the radio, in which the latter stated that the Soviet Union had "liberated Afghanistan from Amin's regime" .
The Soviet Union said it had to act on the basis of the "Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good Neighborhood" signed by President Taraki. The execution of Amin was carried out at the request of the Afghan Revolutionary Committee . The same committee later elected Babrak Karmal as President of Afghanistan.
Storm-333 was the first violent military action by the Soviet Union in a non- Eastern bloc country since 1945 and followed the Brezhnev doctrine across the board . The doctrine was based on the "limited sovereignty " of the socialist states and derived from this the right to intervene if socialism were threatened in one of these states.
The operation marked the beginning of the bloody Soviet-Afghan war . The operation carried out with highly specialized forces was a complete success compared to the subsequent operations, which were mostly carried out by units of the Soviet Army consisting mainly of conscripts . Amin's government was dissolved and Babrak Karmal, favored by the Soviet Union, was installed as president.
The action met with violent backlash both in Afghanistan itself and abroad. In Afghanistan a feeling of foreign occupation quickly arose among the population , which drove many young men to join the mujahideen. The West responded with the boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.
The US President Jimmy Carter reacted with the Carter Doctrine , which provided that all activities by foreign powers in the Gulf region would be seen as aggressive acts against the interests of the US and would be punished accordingly - including militarily. He and his successor Ronald Reagan also approved the CIA's strong involvement in the Soviet-Afghan war.
Web links
- Alexander Antonowitsch Ljachowski: Inside the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Seizure of Kabul, December 1979 (PDF; 2.8 MB), Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars , 2007.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gregory Feifer: THE GREAT GAMBLE . HarperCollins , 2006, ISBN 0-06-114318-9 , Invasion Considered, pp. 21st ff . (English: The Great Gamble .).
- ↑ Feifer, 2006, p. 58
- ↑ Feifer, 2006, pp. 52 ff. And 58
- ↑ Feifer, 2006, p. 61
- ↑ Aviation Safety Network ( Memento of the original from September 22, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Feifer, 2006, pp. 70 ff.
- ↑ Feifer, 2006, p. 72 ff.
- ↑ Feifer, 2006, p. 78 ff.
- ^ Ron Kenner, Soviet Army Spetsnaz. The Red Elite from the Hysteria of the 1980s to the present, in: Journal for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies (JIPSS) 4 (2010), 1, pp. 91-105, here pp. 99-100 available online on acipss. org - Austrian Center for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies (accessed on March 4, 2014)
- ↑ Feifer, 2006, pp. 80 ff.
