WI: The USSR never invaded Afghanistan?

So they gave up that communist regime and moved on, could 9/11 never happen?
Could the Soviets still hold onto the SSRs?
 
The war in Afghanistan was pretty much the Soviet Union's Vietnam. It was a money sink that their tanking economy really couldn't afford in the 1980s, particularly after oil price crashed in '86. If the Soviets avoid Afghanistan or take a more low key approach limited to merely supporting the communist regime instead of invading, they could very well last into the 1990s. Besides that, the Soviet invasion further delegitimized the Afghan communist regime. Without that they may well survive.
 
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Without the strain of the war the USSR will likely survive into the 1990’s.

The wider implications are massive, Ayman al Zawahirai spends years in an Egyptian prison and probably never meets Osama bin Laden. He was one of thousands of Jihadists who were released from jail to go and fight the Soviets as their governments reckoned they’d all get killed.

Radical Islam will still arise due to Hezbollah etc and if the Iran-Iraq War happens then the sequence of events that leads to IS still begins, but without Al Qaeda there’s probably no 9/11.
 

raharris1973

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Besides that, the Soviet invasion further delegitimized the Afghan communist regime. Without that they may well survive.

? This makes it sound like the Soviets invaded just for fun instead of out of a credible fear the Kabul communist regime could not hack it and survive on its own. Isn't collapse of the Afghan Communist regime in the early 80s likelier than Afghan Communist regime survival into the 21st century?
 
? This makes it sound like the Soviets invaded just for fun instead of out of a credible fear the Kabul communist regime could not hack it and survive on its own. Isn't collapse of the Afghan Communist regime in the early 80s likelier than Afghan Communist regime survival into the 21st century?

I'm not saying it would survive into the 21st century, but it's been established that Afghan communist forces fought better and had higher morale after the Soviets were gone. Perhaps they would have done well with just Soviet air strikes, artillery support, arms deliveries, logistical support and trainers instead of the historical invasion in 1979.
 

natalieb

Banned
I'm surprised there was no intervention in Iran. The Soviets and the Americans should have joined forced to take out Khomeini I feel. Also, why would the Soviets want a radical Islamic regime on its southern border?
 
I'm surprised there was no intervention in Iran. The Soviets and the Americans should have joined forced to take out Khomeini I feel. Also, why would the Soviets want a radical Islamic regime on its southern border?

The invasion of Afghanistan and Khomeini's takeover both took place in December 1979, so Moscow couldn't have foreseen the ramifications of that. Who know that his theocratic regime would actually last? After all, other opposition groups like the Tudeh Party were also major contributors to the Iranian Revolution. If they had know what would happen, I'm sure Afghanistan wouldn't have been the politburo's main concern.
 
I'm surprised there was no intervention in Iran. The Soviets and the Americans should have joined forced to take out Khomeini I feel. Also, why would the Soviets want a radical Islamic regime on its southern border?

Soviets and Americans joining forces in the late 1970s/early 1980s. That's unlikely, to put it mildly.

Khomeini was seen by the US, when he came to power, as a figurehead, and as someone who would essentially take a back seat. The Iranian Revolution contained many disparate strands, of which the Islamists were only one. With Khomeini having spent pretty much the entire course of the Revolution in Paris, giving press conferences, and signing agreements with Karim Sanjabi to work together to form a democratic society; with the secularists and the workers and the Communists and the disaffected elements of the Iranian Army (something like 60% of the Iranian Army deserted over the course of the Revolution), it looked to everyone like the aftermath was going to be a mess.

The rapid consolidation of power into the hands of Khomeini was somewhat unexpected. There were many reasons why it happened, many of them very contingent, but the general feeling was the Islamists and the democratic secularists would form a sort of joint working arrangement.

It's easy to look back with hindsight, but hindsight wasn't available to the people at the time.
 
? This makes it sound like the Soviets invaded just for fun instead of out of a credible fear the Kabul communist regime could not hack it and survive on its own. Isn't collapse of the Afghan Communist regime in the early 80s likelier than Afghan Communist regime survival into the 21st century?

I recall a news analysis in late '79 which concluded abandoning the beleagured Afghan regime was the Soviets's best option.
 
It was a money sink that their tanking economy really couldn't afford in the 1980s, particularly after oil price crashed in '86. If the Soviets avoid Afghanistan or take a more low key approach limited to merely supporting the communist regime instead of invading, they could very well last into the 1990s.
Was it really that large of a commitment? I could have sworn I'd read on previous threads that as a percentage of their military and aid budgets it wasn't horrendously massive. Now that's not to say it wouldn't have been better for them to avoid it altogether but was it really that much of a tipping point?
 

raharris1973

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I recall a news analysis in late '79 which concluded abandoning the beleagured Afghan regime was the Soviets's best option.

never said it wasn't. the trick is for Brezhnev to see things the same way.

Was it really that large of a commitment? I could have sworn I'd read on previous threads that as a percentage of their military and aid budgets it wasn't horrendously massive

Well, I know the total troops employed and the number of Soviet casualties was a fraction of the US troop totals and casualties in Vietnam.

Of course, the U.S. & coalition Afghan War has seen smaller numbers of casualties still.
 
the trick is for Brezhnev to see things the same way.

Yeah the Brezhnev doctrine. Wherever communism is established, it stays, at all costs if need be. How ironic that by insisting communism stay in a single remote area, he contributed to its demise nearly everywhere....
 

CaliGuy

Banned
I recall a news analysis in late '79 which concluded abandoning the beleagured Afghan regime was the Soviets's best option.
I wonder if the Soviets could have gotten the Afghan government to hand them over its Uzbek-majority and Tajik-majority areas before it would have collapsed, though.

Yeah the Brezhnev doctrine. Wherever communism is established, it stays, at all costs if need be. How ironic that by insisting communism stay in a single remote area, he contributed to its demise nearly everywhere....
Yep.
 

raharris1973

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I wonder if the Soviets could have gotten the Afghan government to hand them over its Uzbek-majority and Tajik-majority areas before it would have collapsed, though.


Yep.

The Soviet Union could not have gotten such territorial cessions from even a Communist government with an ounce of free will, but, it could have imposed this as a fait accompli at certain moments.

Not that it would have ended well. I think such an attempt would probably have heightened rebellious activity by the Uzbeks and Tajiks in the annexed areas, and they would be offered and willing to take help from Pashtun Mujhadeen interested in jihad, reunifying Afghanistan or protecting the pockets of Pashtuns scattered in the north.

Perhaps, if the USSR did break up later, the independence of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan could have created an occasion for a settlement and end to insurgency. But even there I doubt it. Despite ethnic commonalities, in a wanked Tajikistan ex-communists and Massoud would each fight to be on top, and in a wanked Uzbekistan, ex-communists and Dostam would have struggled to be in the top spot and neither would play second fiddle to the other. There's also genuine cultural differences based on the long separation historically between Afghanistan on the one hand and the Soviet Union (and Russian Empire) on the other.
 
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