The circumstances that led to the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan are analyzed, and the international and domestic political situation in Afghanistan after the coup d’état and the announcement by the new authorities of the course towards building socialism, as well as contradictions between the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) factions, are examined. The development of the combat actions of the Soviet troops is studied, and the difficulties that the military had to face in the conditions of resistance from a significant part of the country’s population are considered. The support of the actions of the troops by official Soviet propaganda, including hushing up real losses, is considered in detail. Of considerable interest are data on an ideological confrontation: attempts by the Western allies of the Mujahideen to influence the Soviet military contingent.
Referring to archival materials and historiography, the authors of this article examine the circumstances behind the development of principles regulating the presence of a limited contingent of Soviet troops in Afghanistan (1979–1989), its nature, and scope. It is concluded that Soviet military strategy in Afghanistan initially set itself limited goals and assumed limited obligations. It also used a narrow set of expert assessments, mainly those that fitted into the usual picture of a “cold” confrontation and the established paternalistic model of interaction with countries in the zone of the USSR’s ideological and political influence. The study shows that the Soviet state machine was largely focused on solving geopolitical problems, and the militarist directions of defence and law enforcement agencies and provided society with very limited information. The long-term consequences of the Afghanistan policy (especially internal and economic) at the time of the decision to send troops were practically not calculated, since the initial strategy was aimed at appeasing Afghanistan with the help of limited forces without active military operations. The contradictions between the geopolitical thinking of the Soviet leadership and the peculiarities of the Afghanistan military campaign, which did not fit into the expected strategy of full-scale military operations but at the same time immediately went beyond the “limited” impact, gives contemporaries a reason to deny the victory or defeat of the Soviet troops, but does not give them an opportunity to doubt the reality of hostilities and their negative impact on the relationship between the Soviet state and society.
Afghanistan’s cultural heritage sites have been at risk for more than 40 years, being deliberately and recklessly destroyed, robbed, illegally exported and sold on the black market. Anecdotal reports of the destruction of cultural heritage sites could be observed in real time, with the destroyers openly displaying photographs and video footage emphasizing their disregard for international humanitarian law, as it was with the destruction of two giant Buddha statues in Bamiyan province. It is impossible to name the exact number of destroyed cultural objects and missing values in Afghanistan, since there is no reliable information about this, and the access of observers is associated with a risk to life. The need to preserve historical and cultural monuments in Afghanistan has repeatedly drawn the attention of the international community and UNESCO. However, the problem of their preservation in Afghanistan is far from real solution. The article gives a classification and periodization of military conflicts in Afghanistan in 1978–2021, clarifies the composition of the participants in each of the periods under consideration, shows the negative consequences of each of the periods of the conflict for the preservation of the country’s cultural heritage. The military conflict in Afghanistan (1978–2021) is a series of civil wars that were fought, including the participation of foreign military contingents, which caused significant and sometimes irreparable damage to the Afghan society and the country’s cultural heritage. The author identifies five main stages of the military conflict in Afghanistan, when civil wars were fought in the country with many participants. In each of the stages of the military conflict, hostilities were conducted with varying degrees of intensity, as a result of which damage was inflicted to museums, archives, libraries, and archaeological sites. The main reasons for the destruction and looting of cultural monuments were: Intense hostilities in the areas where museums, archives, libraries, archaeological sites are located, the consequences of artillery shelling and bombing, the deliberate destruction of monuments, the activities of “black” archaeologists in the absence of the ability to control the areas where excavations were carried out, the lack of protection of cultural heritage monuments and funding for their repair, restoration and maintenance.
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