Kovalyov also pointed to the central role of the FSB—the KGB’s successor organization—in
starting the First Chechen War. The FSB was not only in the forefront before the war, but equally during the war. “In the early months of the intervention, up to early February 1995,” wrote
Vicken Cheterian, “it was the generals of the FSB—the intelligence services—who were
obliged to lead the military operations, with catastrophic consequences.”[43] An invisible red line connects, therefore, the war in Afghanistan with the first
war in Chechnya, that is, the leading role of the KGB/FSB in instigating and conducting both wars. We will see in the next chapter
how the spooks of the Russian secret services equally played an important role in
the preparation of the Second Chechen War, which started as Yeltsin’s war, but was,
in fact, Putin’s war.
Notes
1.
George F. Kennan, “Russia: Seven Years Later,” in Memoirs 1925–1950, ed. George F. Kennan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967), 521.
2.
Kennan, “Russia: Seven Years Later,” 521–522.
3.
Mr. X (George F. Kennan), “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs 25, no. 4 (July 1947). This article was an elaboration of his “Long Telegram” of
February 22, 1946, to the US Treasury Department. In this telegram he answered the
question of the US Treasury to the US Embassy in Moscow why the Soviet Union did not
support the recently founded World Bank and International Monetary Fund. In the telegram
Kennan wrote that the Soviet Union was “impervious to the logic of reason,” but that
it was “highly sensitive to the logic of force.”
4.
Cf. Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism (London: Vintage Books, 2010), 353.
5.
Andreï Kozovoï, Les services secrets Russes: Des tsars à Poutine (Paris: Tallandier, 2010), 253.
6.
J. Michael Waller, Secret Empire: The KGB in Russia Today (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), 127.
7.
Artyom Borovik, The Hidden War: A Russian Journalist’s Account of the Soviet War in Afghanistan (New York: Grove Press, 1990), 9.
8.
Svetlana Savranskaya, ed., “The September 11th Sourcebooks, Volume II: Afghanistan:
Lessons from the Last War: The Soviet Experience in Afghanistan: Russian Documents
and Memoirs,” National Security Archive (October 9, 2001), 1. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB57/soviet.html.
9.
“Personal Memorandum, Andropov to Brezhnev, n.d. [early December 1979],” Cold War International History Project Bulletin 8–9, (Winter 1996–97), 159–60. In this memorandum Andropov wrote that “alarming information
started to arrive about Amin’s secret activities, forewarning of a possible political
shift to the West.” Andropov said to have been “contacted by [a] group of Afghan communists
abroad.” He mentioned the name of Babrak Karmal, “who had worked out a plan for opposing
Amin and creating new party and state organs. But Amin, as a preventive measure, had
begun mass arrests of ‘suspect persons’ (300 people have been shot).” His conclusion
was that the situation was urgent. “We have two battalions stationed in Kabul,” wrote
Andropov. “It appears that this is entirely sufficient for a successful operation.”
He added that “it would be wise to have a military group close to the border. In case
of the deployment of military forces we could at the same time decide various questions
pertaining to the liquidation of gangs.” The implementation of the given operation
“would allow us to decide the question of defending the gains of the April revolution.”
10.
Savranskaya, ed., “The September 11th Source Books, Volume II,” 5.
11.
Thierry Wolton, Le KGB au pouvoir: Le système Poutine (Paris: Gallimard, 2008), 24.
12.
Alexander Lyakhovsky, The Tragedy and Valor of Afghan, translated by Svetlana Savranskaya (Moscow: GPI Iskon, 1995), 109–112. The author,
Major General Lyakhovsky, served during the war in Afghanistan as assistant to General
V. Varennikov, commander of the Operative Group of the Defense Ministry. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/.
13.
Georgy M. Kornienko, The Cold War: Testimony of a Participant, translated by Svetlana Savranskaya (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnie otnosheniya, 1994), 193.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/.
14.
