History UsefulNotes / SovietInvasionOfAfghanistan

Soviet intervention was preceded by a series of political upheavals in 1970s Afghanistan that supplanted the old monarchy that enjoyed only loose allegiance of various tribespeople in the rural periphery and, eventually, by the end of the decade, left a band of communist revolutionaries in nominal charge of the country, with little effective control beyond a handful of cities. The Afghan communist leaders, who had only taken power through a coup in 1978, were fanatical ideologues whose attempts at modernization (such as forcing girls to attend schools!) were making the bad situation even more complicated by further offending the religious and the tribal populations of the country (not always the same: not all religious were tribal and not all tribal were religious, although many were both), among whom there was already an ongoing, endemic insurgency against the central government(s) in Kabul even before the coup. The insurgency reached a peak with the Herat Uprising in March, 1979, in which thousands of government officials, school teachers, non-religious in general, as well as several Soviet advisers to the Afghan government (and, possibly, their families) were massacred by Islamist rebels (which included a substantial number of mutinying government troops led by Ismail Khan, who would become a leading ''mujahideen'' commander later. To confuse the matters further, these rebels were mostly aligned with Iran and were largely ethnic Hazara who were Shi'ites, not Sunni Pashtuns with connections with Pakistan who would later make up much of ''mujahideen'', and later, Taliban forces.)

The United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and several other countries provided arms and money to the rebels, known as the ''mujahideen'', [[NiceJobBreakingItHero inadvertently creating Al-Qaeda in the process]]. The Soviets ended up in a UsefulNotes/VietnamWar-style quagmire, not helped at all by brutal tactics that may or may not have involved the use of lethal chemical weapons (the US made frequent claims on the matter, but never quite managed to prove it).

* EvilFormerFriend: The American's worst enemy at the time were the Soviets, so they aided various ''mujahideen'' factions and conservative Afghani tribes to help overthrow the Communist regime. One horrible terrorist attack later by the same militants they helped create (or at least their more radical, fundamentalist descendants) and the most common perception of America's worst enemy are now Islamic terrorists.
* FourStarBadass: Many from all participants in the war. For starters he Commander of the ISI, General Akhtar Abdul Rehman. Oversaw a plan which caused the defeat of a superpower. Ahmad Shah Masood. Even Abdul Rashid Dostum, one of leading government generals who became a semi-independent warlord in the north of the country after Soviets pulled out. The Soviets generals in this war were often veterans of relatively obscure bushfire wars during the Cold War period and many often went through the hellish Spetsnaz training. The Americans sent their own share of special forces leaders who trained a rag tag tribal army into a badass group of commandos within weeks.

* HistoryRepeats: Twice. First is that the Soviets could not take on the rag tag Mujahadeen like how the Americans couldn't on the Viet Cong, and the Americans would later find themselves in Afghanistan in a similar situation to the Soviets.

** The Afghani government soldiers gets stereotyped as this time much like the ARVN in Vietnam. It was said that every year, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan lost 15,000 troops. 5,000 to battle (killed, wounded, captured), and 10,000 to desertion. It should be noted however that after the Soviets left, the puppet government left actually lasted far longer than anyone else in the world expected and so long as the Soviets continued giving military supplies, the Afghani government could (and often did) win battles against the Mujahideen. In fact prior to Sivet intervention, they were holding guerrilla jihadists on their own and it was mainly when the Afghanis began to become more unified and fight through conventional warfare that the Afghani government realized they lacked the necessary infrastructure to fight such a war and hence called the Soviets.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Soviets intervened because while the Puppet Afghani government had good intents, their attempts at reform and modernizing the countries were executed rather poorly and although they could handle guerrillas, their lack of proper national development meant they were in a clusterfuck of a situation when the Afghanis finally decided to set aside traditional feuds and unite against the Puppet government. It doesn't help that although their assassinations of radical Afghani imam and religious leaders was actually the correct step to take, the Afghani government failed to find an balance between modernizing and keeping traditions that the Afghani majority would accept.
* PyrrhicVictory: For the Afghans. Yes they had held on to their independence. But, well just see current day headlines to see what was the price. Pakistan had orchestrated the defeat of a superpower, but, at the costs of having millions of refugees coming into the country, heavy radicalization in parts of society, economic slowdown which was not reversed until...2000, just before the sequel.

* ShockingDefeatLegacy: Afghanistan still is at war and has seen its society destroyed and two generations and counting have suffered the privations of war. The Soviet Union's collapse was actually not precipitated by this war; Gorbachev deciding to try to sober up the USSR did by cutting the government revenues drastically. The citizens of the non-Russian Republics had disproportionate casualties and that caused resentment [[note]] the heavy use of non-Russian troops was motivated not just for cannon fodder purposes, but for political reasons. Many Southern Soviet Republics had kin in Afghanistan and it was hoped that use of such troops would make it more palatable for the locals. It did not. [[/note]] which contributed to secessionist tendencies. In particular, many Soviet Muslims, who provided disproportionate number of troops who served in Afghanistan (in the hope of offending Afghans less) were themselves radicalized and became involved in unrest within Russia itself. For example, many Chechen rebels, including their first leader, Dzhokhar Dudayev, were veterans of the Afghan War.

* WeAreStrugglingTogether: The Red Army and the Kabul government didn't really trust each other too much.

* ''ComicBook/ThePunisherMAX'' villain [[GeneralRipper General Nikolai]] Zakharov served in the war alongside his Black Sea Marines. What's more, later on we learn exactly ''[[MoralEventHorizon how they fought]]''. Hint: It involves genocide and '''''infanticide'''''.

* ''Film/RamboIII''. These days it's pretty ironic to see one of the iconic movie series that support a Type 1 EagleLand include a dedication to those brave Afghan rebels (it was slightly altered post 9/11).

* ''Film/CharlieWilsonsWar'', based on a book.

* ''Literature/TheKiteRunner''

* ''ComicBook/ThePunisherMAX'' villain [[GeneralRipper General Nikolai]] Zakharov served in the war alongside his Black Sea Marines.

* RockBeatsLaser: Zigzagged. Afghans in sandals and pajamas, armed with Kalashnikovs, [=RPGs=], a few advanced missiles from elsewhere, and various small arms dating back to World War 1, managed to kill 15,000 Soviet soldiers and blow up 400 Soviet aircraft, plus 147 tanks, 1,300 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers, and 430 artillery pieces. The Afghans and their foreign allies in turn lost about 60,000 men in fights with the Soviets (plus another 20,000 men vs the Afghan Communists, compared to 18,000 dead Afghan Communist troops), but still. A 4:1 death-kill ratio is quite impressive when your enemy's functional firepower and training advantage is that huge. That's much better than the far superior (in terms of equipment, training, and numbers) Viet Cong inflicted on the Americans. Dushman never won a single battle, and not even being given a few lasers themselves did much to help. For the record, the lasers didn't succeed half the time, not that it mattered too much, because they found it was more effective to sell said lasers in exchange for heaping lumps of cash, use that cash to buy lots of SimpleButAwesome rocks, and then tell their laser dealers all about the huge successes they were having with the lasers. Indeed, the terrorists managed to rig a nice little racket for themselves like this. This is why westerners are overwhelmingly of the opinion that the Stinger somehow managed to unilaterally win Afghanistan thanks to shooting down thousands of Soviet aircraft, whereas everybody else, going off of actual military records instead of unsubstantiated reports, think the Stingers were only really good for propaganda.

The United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and several other countries provided arms and money to the rebels, known as the ''mujahideen'', [[NiceJobBreakingItHero inadvertently creating Al-Qaeda in the process]]. The Soviets ended up in a VietnamWar-style quagmire, not helped at all by brutal tactics that may or may not have involved the use of lethal chemical weapons (the US made frequent claims on the matter, but never quite managed to prove it).

* [[ComicBook/ThePunisher Punisher]] villain [[GeneralRipper General Nikolai]] [[CompleteMonster Zakharov]] served in the war alongside his Black Sea Marines.

* EvilFormerFriend: The American's worst enemy at the time were the Soviets, so they aided various ''mujahideen'' factions and conservative Afghani tribes to help overthrow the Communist regime. One horrible terrorist attack later by the same militants they helped create (or at least their descendants) and the most common perception of America's worst enemy are now Islamic terrorists.

* TheGreatestHistoryNeverTold: This conflict doesn't show up a lot in modern media, considering that Russia views this conflict as a stalemate that led to the Soviet Union's collapse while the Taliban the Americans aided would later become their most hated enemy.

* HarsherInHindsight: Considering the modern WarOnTerror, any Western Cold War era film that depicts the Taliban fighting the Soviets as heroic villagers will more or less result in a MindScrew.

-> Blood spilt and machines destroyed are not the measure of this war. This is our Jihad, we are the mujaheddin and thusly we are invincible, for God is Great!

The beginning of the Soviet War in Afghanistan is shrouded in paradoxes. The invasion supposedly began on Christmas Day 1979, with the arrival of KGB and Spetsnaz operatives in Kabul to overthrow the government of Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin. In two days, they would duly carry out their mission and were joined by a large force of Soviet conventional troops that crossed the border into Afghanistan. Yet, small numbers of Soviet troops had already been present in the country for half a year already, to support the Amin government in its fight against the growing insurgency waged by traditionalist rural populations that had been ongoing on some form for years. These troops, moreover, had been deployed at the express request of Amin himself, who considered himself until his last days to be a close ally of the Soviet Union. Even without Amin, the insurgency would continue to escalate, with the Soviets shouldering the main burden of fighting. Eventually, Soviet forces would leave a decade later, having wasted a great deal of treasure and blood and having been grossly humiliated, with the Soviet Union itself falling apart shortly thereafter. On the whole, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was a complicated affair that was difficult to define clearly and left a great deal of mess that remains unresolved today.

Soviet intervention was preceded by a series of political upheavals in 1970s Afghanistan that supplanted the old monarchy that enjoyed only loose allegiance of various tribespeople in the rural periphery and, eventually, by the end of the decade, left a band of communist revolutionaries in nominal charge of the country, with little effective control beyond a handful of cities. The Afghan communist leaders, who had only taken power through a coup in 1978, were fanatical ideologues whose attempts at modernization (such as forcing girls to attend schools!) were making the bad situation even more complicated by further offending the religious and the tribal populations of the country (not always the same: not all religious were tribal and not all tribal were religious, although many were both), among whom there was already an ongoing, endemic insurgency against the central government(s) in Kabul even before the coup. The insurgency reached a peak with the Herat Uprising in March, 1979, in which thousands of government officials, school teachers, non-religious in general, as well as several Soviet advisers to the Afghan government (and, possibly, their families) were massacred by Islamist rebels (which included a substantial number of mutinying government troops led by Ismail Khan, who would become a leading mujaheddin commander later. To confuse the matters further, these rebels were mostly aligned with Iran and were largely of ethnic Hazara who were Shi'ites, not Sunni Pashtuns with connections with Pakistan who would later make up much of mujeheddin, and later, Taliban forces.)

Shocked by the magnitude of the incident and the fact that thousands of its troops defected to the rebels, the Afghan government requested presence of Soviet troops in April, 1979 (because Afghan troops could no longer be relied upon to support the government, in light of the mass defection at Herat), and after declining initially, the Kremlin deployed small contingents, mostly special forces and air force, which were in place by June. However, KGB determined that not only was the Afghan government making the situation worse through their ideological extremism that alienated the mostly traditionally minded population of Afghanistan, there was a serious danger that they might turn to other countries (China, Pakistan, or even the West) if they did not get the kind of aid they were demanding from the Soviets (such switches in alliances had already taken place by 1970s with a number of former Soviet client regimes, including Egypt, Albania, Somalia, etc.). In attempt to stabilize the situation, Soviets decided to decapitate the regime by assassinating Hafizullah Amin and install a more pliable regime in its place. Soviet special forces operatives and KGB agents arrived in Kabul on Christmas Day, under cover that they were simply to reinforce the troops already in the country. After a failed assassination attempt via poisoning, they assaulted the presidential palace two days later and killed Amin, although with much difficulty because of the large number of bodyguards who protected him. At the same time, a large reinforcement of Soviet conventional forces entered Afghanistan from the north and Babrak Kamal was installed in Kabul as the new leader while the Soviets proclaimed the "liberation" of the country from the misrule of the Amin regime. From this point on, the Soviets became the main participant in the conflict in Afghanistan, as the unrest became even more intense and some Afghan army units openly mutinied against what they saw as a heavy-handed act of foreign aggression. The forcible removal of Amin, rather than calming the situation down, actually grossly exacerbated the crisis and trapped the Soviets in a long term large scale intervention that they hadn't planned for.

The net result of this invasion was to kill the already seriously wounded détente and start what became known as the "Second UsefulNotes/ColdWar". A large scale boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics followed, as well as an embargo on U.S. grain sales to the USSR.

The United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and several other countries, provided arms and money to the rebels, known as the mujaheddin, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero inadvertently creating Al-Qaeda in the process]]. The Soviets ended up in a VietnamWar-style quagmire, not helped at all by brutal tactics that may or may not have involved the use of lethal chemical weapons (the US made frequent claims on the matter, but never quite managed to prove it).

By mid-1980s, Soviets recognized that Afghanistan became a heavy drain on their resources without any obvious end in sight. They became resentful of Kamal, the leader that they themselves installed, as he did not appear to be making significant attempt to develop an "independent" support base for the regime other than reliance on continued Soviet presence. Eventually, in 1985, Kamal was deposed in favor of Mohammed Najibullah by the Soviets as the preliminary step towards reducing their presence in Afghanistan. Finally, the Soviets pulled out in 1989 and, much like the United States in South Vietnam, left behind a government which sustained itself for only a few years before collapsing in 1992. The Soviet-backed government in Kabul fought to a successful stalemate until the funding dried up during the Yeltsin presidency (Much like the government of South Vietnam, which was able to blunt North Vietnamese offensive with continued military aid and air support from United States until Case-Church Amendment of June 1973 cut off further US support). Afghanistan's civil war continues to this day, as part of TheWarOnTerror.

This became a rather popular setting for Western media in the 1980s, as for many the proof that the Soviet Union was an Evil Empire was [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Girl_(photo) an orphaned girl in a Pakistani refugee camp]]. This usually led to portrayals of any mujaheddin as noble, heroic [[FanOfUnderdog underdogs]] versus said EvilEmpire, which can be a bit jarring [[TheGreatPoliticsMessUp in light of current events]].

* BatmanGambit: According to some [[http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-17/brzezinski2.html initially vague statements]] made by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski that he [[http://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview later expounded upon]], which are also supported by [[http://www.ncoic.com/cia_info.htm#Appendix_I other sources]], the United States anticipated the likelihood of a Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan before it occurred and, in Brzezinski's words, "knowingly increased the probability that [the Soviets] would [intervene]" by covertly aiding mujahideen groups six months in advance of the invasion proper.
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: Soviets began large scale intervention by killing Amin, who was actually their strongest ally in Afghanistan who asked for Soviet troops in the first place. They forced out Babrak Kamal in 1985, after having installed him in power only five years ago because they thought "Comrade Kamal is hoping to continue staying in Kabul with our help," i.e. he was too dependent on Soviet help. The Soviets then hung out Kamal's successor, Mohammed Najibullah, out to dry because they didn't want to spend money propping him up.
* ColonelBadass: Colonel Muhammad Yousaf, the Pakistani ISI officer in charge of training the Mujahiadeen and overseeing special forces operations in Afghanistan. To note, he was not trained as a spy or an SF operator.

* DepopulationBomb: Before the war, Afghanistan had a population of 13.2 million. Over the course of the war, 1.3 million civilians were killed and another 5-6 million were driven out of the country and turned into refugees in Iran and Pakistan- nearly half the pre-war population. Hundreds of thousands more Afghans died of disease and starvation as refugees, and a couple million more were internally displaced. It got so bad that, by the end of the war, Afghanistan's population was only 11.2 million- which may not sound like that big of a drop, but remember that ''50%'' of these 11.2 million were 13 years old or younger. This only improved after the NATO alliance occupied the country in 2001, which was followed by the return of about 5 million refugees.
* DidntThinkThisThrough: America's arming of the conservative Afghani tribes (who already held Islamic views similar to the later Talban) would later come back to haunt them years later and drag them into a similar war the Soviets went through as well as help lead to the circumstances that created the factions that launched the war on the terror.. Even more jarring is how Americans overlooked relatively pro-American and moderate Afghani tribes and factions in the war, even ignoring their pleas for aid in the years following the war as internal strife puts the country in further ruins.
* EvilFormerFriend: The American's worst enemy at the time were the Soviets, so they aided various Mujahideen factions and conservative Afghani tribes to help overthrow the Communist regime. One horrible terrorist attack later by the same militants they helped create (or at least their descendents) and the most common perception of America's worst enemy are now Islamic Terrorists.

* CrowningMomentofAwesome: For the Pakistan Air Force. It engaged the Soviet aviators on many occasions and won pretty much all encounters.

** Somewhat justified because a large percentile of the civilian population was not only harboring Afghani insurgents and even directly taking in attacks on Soviet soldiers in cowardly ways (such as sending kids to commit bayonet charges on friendly Soviets visiting a town) but the majority of the Afghanis were quite sexist, backwards, zealot, and racists in their views on modernizing the country. Many Afghan tribes engaged in human slave trade and enforced prostitution that often included underage girls and young boys and in addition to assassinating innocent unarmed Soviet civilians intending to give the children of the country a modern education simply because their teachings contradict fundamentalist Islam, they were not above committing murders and other crimes among themselves. There were even minority groups that were on the verge of extinction because of genocidal policies from some tribes and they joined the Soviets and eagerly fought for them as a result. So despite the population lowering greatly, its not as if the Afghanis as a whole were innocent victims being wiped out from the face of Earth akin to the Jews during the Holocaust.

* DepopulationBomb: '''And how!''' Before the war, Afghanistan had a population of 13.2 million. Over the course of the war, 1.3 million civilians were killed and another 5-6 million were driven out of the country and turned into refugees in Iran and Pakistan- nearly half the pre-war population. Hundreds of thousands more Afghans died of disease and starvation as refugees, and a couple million more were internally displaced. It got so bad that, by the end of the war, Afghanistan's population was only 11.2 million- which may not sound like that big of a drop, but remember that ''50%'' of these 11.2 million were 13 years old or younger. This only improved after the NATO alliance occupied the country in 2001, which was followed by the return of about 5 million refugees.
* DidntThinkThisThrough: Not that they would have known at the time, but America's arming of the conservative Afghani tribes (who already held Islamic views similar to the later Talban) would later come back to haunt them years later and drag them into a similar war the Soviets went through. Even more jarring is how Americans overlooked relatively pro-American and moderate Afghani tribes and factions in the war, even ignoring their pleas for aid in the years following the war as internal strife puts the country in further ruins.f
* EvilFormerFriend: The American's worst enemy at the time were the Soviets, so they aided the Taliban to help overthrow the Communist regime. One horrible terrorist attack later by the same militants they helped and the most common perception of America's worst enemy are Islamic Terrorists.
* FourStarBadass: Many from all participants in the war. For starters he Commander of the ISI, General Akhtar Abdul Rehman. Oversaw a plan which caused the defeat of a superpower. Ahmad Shah Masood. Even Abdul Rashid Dostum, one of leading government generals who became a semi-independent warlord in the north of the country after Soviets pulled out. The Soviets generals in this war were often veterans of relatively obscure bushfire wars during the Cold War period and many often went through the hellish Spetsnaz training. The Americans sent their own share of special forces guerrilla leaders who trained a rag tag tribal army into a badass group of commandos within weeks.

* GeneralFailure: Pretty much all of the commanders on the Soviet and Afghan government side.

** Somewhat justified because a large percentile of the civilian population was not only harboring Afghani insurgents and even directly taking in attacks on Soviet soldiers in cowardly ways (such as sending kids to commit bayonet charges on friendly Soviets visiting a town) but the majority of the Afghanis were quite sexist, backwards, zealot, and racists in their views on modernizing the country. Many Afghan tribes engaged in human slave trade and enforced prostitution that often included underage girls and young boys and in addition to assassinating innocent unarmed Soviet civilians intending to give the children of the country a modern education simply because their teachings contradict fundamentalist Islam, they were not above committing murders and other crimes among themselves. There were even minority groups that were on the verge of extinction because of genocidal policies from some tribes and they joined the Soviets and eagerly fought for them as a result. So despite the population lowering greatly, its not as if the Afghanis as a whole were innocent victims being wiped out from the face of Earth akin to the Jews during the Holocaust.

** Even worse is that the American arming of the Mujahideen factions would later help lead to the creation a harsh Islamic state that would help the terrorists who committed the 9/11 attacks. Much of the current world has been affected directly by the WarOnTerror, which would have been mainly averted had the Taliban not risen to power.

* DepopulationBomb: '''And how!''' Before the war, Afghanistan had a population of 13.2 million. Over the course of the war, 1.3 million civilians were killed (mostly by the Soviets) and another 5-6 million were driven out of the country and turned into refugees in Iran and Pakistan- nearly half the pre-war population. Hundreds of thousands more Afghans died of disease and starvation as refugees, and a couple million more were internally displaced. It got so bad that, by the end of the war, Afghanistan's population was only 11.2 million- which may not sound like that big of a drop, but remember that ''50%'' of these 11.2 million were 13 years old or younger. This only improved after the NATO alliance occupied the country in 2001, which was followed by the return of about 5 million refugees.

* DidntThinkThisThrough: Not that they would have known at the time, but America's arming of the Taliban (a radical Islam group) would later come back to haunt them years later and drag them into a similar war the Soviets went through.
** This whole thing is largely a myth. Not only did the Taliban not even exist at the time (the Americans were mostly arming what would later become the North Alliance), most of the aid they gave was advanced anti-tank/anti-aircraft weaponry that would be more or less useless in Afghan-on-Afghan conflicts. And the American weapons in the country were largely non-functional by 2001 due to lack of maintenance.

* FourStarBadass: Many. The Commander of the ISI, General Akhtar Abdul Rehman. Oversaw a plan which caused the defeat of a superpower. Ahmad Shah Masood. Even Abdul Rashid Dostum, one of leading government generals who became a semi-independent warlord in the north of the country after Soviets pulled out.

* MildlyMilitary: The Soviets, to the point that they made the infamously mild Vietnam War-era US military look downright professional. A lot of this had to do with the supply situation. The Soviets were so strapped for basic supplies that they would often trade with warlords using surplus equipment- usually followed by those same warlords using that same equipment on the Soviets the next week.
** The Afghan Communists too. It was said that every year, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan lost 15,000 troops. 5,000 to battle (killed, wounded, captured), and 10,000 to desertion.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Soviets intervened because the Afghan communists were antagonizing and radicalizing the population through bungled and heavy-handed "reforms." Killing the radical leaders and directly taking over the country made the problem worse.
** Even worse is that the American arming of the Taliban would later help create a harsh Islamic state that would help the terrorists who committed the 9/11 attacks. Much of the current world has been affected directly by the WarOnTerror, which would have been mainly averted had the Taliban not risen to power.

* RockBeatsLaser: Afghans in sandals and pajamas, armed with Kalashnikovs, [=RPGs=], a few advanced missiles from elsewhere, and various small arms dating back to World War 1, managed to kill 15,000 Soviet soldiers and blow up 400 Soviet aircraft, plus 147 tanks, 1,300 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers, and 430 artillery pieces. The Afghans and their foreign allies in turn lost about 60,000 men in fights with the Soviets (plus another 20,000 men vs the Afghan Communists, compared to 18,000 dead Afghan Communist troops), but still. A 4:1 death:kill ratio is quite impressive when your enemy's functional firepower and training advantage is that huge. That's much better than the far superior (in terms of equipment, training, and numbers) Viet Cong inflicted on the Americans.

* RockBeatsLaser: Subveted. Legend says uneducated Afghans in sandals and pajamas, armed with Kalashnikovs, [=RPGs=], and a few missiles from elsewhere making it too expensive for one of the world's greatest militaries to remain by being pains in the Soviet ass. In reality, they never won a single battle, got slaughtered in massive numbers, and hardly even made an impact with the stinger.

*** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLbQ6VKoFY8 Very many]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xl9IzVXnS0 musical acts]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdKNJewKAPs and artists]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-ii2R1GWc8 and songs]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g78mg4AIqYY came from]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80abeblg_iw both the]] war and its veterans.

* RockBeatsLaser: Uneducated Afghans in sandals and pajamas, armed with Kalashnikovs, [=RPGs=], and a few missiles from elsewhere making it too expensive for one of the world's greatest militaries to remain by being pains in the Soviet ass.
* ShockingDefeatLegacy: Afghanistan still is at war and has seen its society destroyed and two generations and counting have suffered the privations of war. The Soviet Union's collapse was precipitated by this war, it emptied the already bare treasury, the citizens of the non-Russian Republics had disproportionate casualties and that caused resentment [[note]] the heavy use of non-Russian troops was motivated not just for cannon fodder purposes, but for political reasons. Many Southern Soviet Republics had kin in Afghanistan and it was hoped that use of such troops would make it more palatable for the locals. It did not. [[/note]] which contributed to secessionist tendencies. In particular, many Soviet Muslims, who provided disproportionate number of troops who served in Afghanistan (in the hope of offending Afghans less) were themselves radicalized and became involved in unrest within Russia itself. For example, many Chechen rebels, including their first leader, Dzhokhar Dudayev, were veterans of the Afghan War.

* Revolver Ocelot from ''Franchise/MetalGear'' served in Afghanistan. And with a nice chunk of ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidVThePhantomPain'' looking to take place in 1984 Afghanistan, right in the thick of the invasion, we may get some more details on that service.

* BatmanGambit: According to some [[http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-17/brzezinski2.html initially vague statements]] made by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski that he [[http://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview later expounded upon]], which are also supported by [[http://www.ncoic.com/cia_info.htm#Appendix_I other sources]], the United States anticipated the likelihood of a SovietInvasionOfAfghanistan before it occurred and, in Brzezinski's words, "knowingly increased the probability that [the Soviets] would [intervene]" by covertly aiding mujahideen groups six months in advance of the invasion proper.