History UsefulNotes / SovietInvasionOfAfghanistan

* In [[Creator/{{HBO}} HBO's]] ''Series/{{Chernobyl}}'', episode four has Bacho, one of the liquidators assigned to "animal control," the killing of pets and livestock so they won't spread radiation outside the containment zone, reassigned to the Chernobyl exclusion zone after his tour of duty in Afghanistan ended.
* The ''Series/MacGyver'' episode "To Be a Man" has Mac parachute into the country to destroy a crashed spy satellite. KirksRock makes a prominent appearance.

The beginning of the Soviet War in UsefulNotes/{{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 [[UsefulNotes/RedsWithRockets 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 in 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.

* ''Film/TheLivingDaylights'' is not quite as horribly dated as it seems at first glance. The Mujahiadeen leader Bond hooks up with turns out to be a westernized Oxford alum, and thus very unlikely to be a future supporter of the Taliban.

[[caption-width-right:350:''First Sting'', oil on canva painting representing the "first Stinger Missile kill" in 1986.]]

The beginning of the Soviet War in UsefulNotes/{{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 in 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.

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 in 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.

By the mid-1980s, Soviets recognized that Afghanistan had become 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 the Case-Church Amendment of June 1973 cut off further US support). Afghanistan's civil war continues to this day, as part of TheWarOnTerror.

* Though barely mentioned in the ''Literature/TheKiteRunner'', the war played a significant role in the lives of the main cast. Amir, the main character, and Baba, his father an influential and respected businessman in [[Main/TheSeventies early 1970s']] Kabul live a comfortable life as part of the ruling class. However, soon after the war starts, Amir, Baba, and Rami Khan, a close friend of Baba, escape by way of Pakistan. Rami Khan stays in Pakistan, while Amir and Baba make their way to San Francisco as refugees, and where Baba works as a mere gas station attendant.

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 school!) and authoritarian rule (while Afghanistan had never been democratic, the communists employed state oppression on a much grander scale than any previous government) 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.)

!!Tropes Associated with this conflict
* BalanceOfPower: Surprisingly, China was among the countries that financed the Afghan rebels with weapons, training and supplies despite it being a Communist power like the Soviet Union. They reason why they supported the ''mujhadeen'' goes back to the Sino-Soviet Split that happened in the 50s between ideological disagreements, since China had no interest to playing satellite state to the USSR and wanted to prevent them from encircling their territory if Afghanistan became another Soviet puppet.
* 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.
* ColonelBadass: Colonel Muhammad Yousaf, the Pakistani ISI officer in charge of training the ''mujahideen'' and overseeing special forces operations in Afghanistan. Of 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 put 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. Some of these mujahideen factions later allied with al-Qaeda and the Taliban after the Communists were overthrow.
* FromBadToWorse: The Soviet Union collapsed two years after withdrawing. Afghanistan got the 1990s Civil War, Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the 2001 U.S. invasion still going on in 2014.
* 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 (though less severe) situation to the Soviets.
* MildlyMilitary: The Soviets are often portrayed as this in mass media and popular history. While they certainly had their share of problems such as difficulty with logistics, rising desertion rates, in reality the Soviets also acted as a genuinely professional military force often winning major battles against great odds. Contraire to news images, Soviets were not always the superior one in technological and military edge but often faced scenarios that would put any army to hell such as low ammo supplies, etc but still manage to win against such difficult, if sometimes impossible odds. Special mention goes to the various Spetsnaz units (in particular the paratroopers) who often went far into enemy territory alone with nightmarish logistics against a foes who often numbered 3 times or more yet still succeeded in their missions.
** 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 Soviet 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.
* PyrrhicVictory: For the Afghans. Yes, they 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.
* 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 SimpleYetAwesome 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.
* ShockingDefeatLegacy: Afghanistan still is at war and has seen its society destroyed and two generations and counting have suffered the privations of war. While the Soviet Union's collapse was not directly caused by this war; it definitely had a hugely negative impact. 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 [[UsefulNotes/TheChechnyaWars Chechen rebels]], including their first leader, Dzhokhar Dudayev, were veterans of the Afghan War.
* ThemeParkVersion: The War, its factions, the political, social, economic and cultural issues that led to it, the motivations of all participants are so complex that almost all representations of it even in serious works and media have to be this.
** One particularly common trend since 2001 has been to simplify the mujahideen into being the "proto-Taliban", when in reality the various Afghan rebel groups were a diverse bunch, with many different ideologies. In fact, many of them would later wind up fighting against the Taliban.
* WeAreStrugglingTogether: The Red Army and the Kabul government didn't really trust each other too much. The various Afghan rebel groups are an even bigger example, running the entire gamut of ideology and often divided by petty tribal and ethnic disputes.

* ''TabletopGames/TwilightStruggle'' represents the Invasion with the US card "[[https://twilightstrategy.com/2012/09/19/bear-trap/ Bear Trap]]" (whose picture depicts Mujahadeen fighters), which can potentially paralyze the Soviet player for several turns. The parallels to Vietnam are also shown by the Soviet card "Quagmire" (which shows a Vietnam era American chopper), which does the exact same thing to the US.

* FourStarBadass: Many, from all sides in the war.
** For starters the Commander of the ISI, General Akhtar Abdul Rehman, who oversaw a plan which caused the defeat of a superpower.
** Ahmad Shah Massoud. Leader of Shura-e Nazar, an alliance of rebel groups in Northern Afghanistan, Massoud is widely regarded as one of the War's most effective commanders. He greatly expanded his forces over the course of the war, despite facing frequent offensives by the Soviets. The Soviets launched a total of nine offensives into the Panjshir valley, Massoud's stronghold, all of which failed to secure the region, and were eventually forced to cede the area to Massoud. This enabled Massoud to expand his operations, overrunning Afghan government positions across the northern provinces.
** 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.

* GeneralFailure: Subverted. The popular perception of the Soviet and Afghani government forces plays the trope straight with movies in the 80s and Western news reel footage from the war portraying Soviet generals as stubborn and incompetent, even being outright sadistic to the point of actually torturing Afghani leaders and American spies and commandos themselves. However from a Clausewitzan point of view, the Soviet generals were quite skilled, winning battle after battle. The Soviet army never faced a single defeat throughout the entire war and even the Afghani government forces lasted far longer than any other factions (including the Soviets and to their irritation, the Mujahideen factions) expected with Afghani government troops still able to win victories in pitch battles on their own without Soviet intervention during the hopeless last days of the war. Basically the Soviets were not so much a case of GeneralFailure and more of a case of being restricted by politics in the Soviet government in its handling of the war.

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 school) and authoritarian rule (while Afghanistan had never been democratic, the communists employed state oppression on a much grander scale than any previous government) 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.)

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 and authoritarian rule (while Afghanistan had never been democratic, the communists employed state oppression on a much grander scale than any previous government) 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.)

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 [[PokeThePoodle such as forcing girls to attend schools]] and authoritarian rule (while Afghanistan had never been democratic, the communists employed state oppression on a much grander scale than any previous government) 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.)

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!) and authoritarian rule (while Afghanistan had never been democratic, the communists employed state oppression on a much grander scale than any previous government) 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.)

* BalanceOfPower: Surprisingly, China was among the countries that financed the Afghan rebels with weapons, training and supplies despite it being a Communist power like the Soviet Union. They reason why they supported the ''muhjhadeen'' goes back to the Sino-Soviet Split that happened in the 50s between ideological disagreements, since China had no interest to playing satellite state to the USSR and wanted to prevent them from encircling their territory if Afghanistan became another Soviet puppet.

* ShockingDefeatLegacy: Afghanistan still is at war and has seen its society destroyed and two generations and counting have suffered the privations of war. While the Soviet Union's collapse was not directly caused by this war; it definitely had a hugely negative impact. 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.

* The Creator/TomClancy novel ''[[Literature/JackRyan The Cardinal of the Kremlin]]'' is partly set in Afghanistan. The mujaheddin are mostly portrayed as righteous but naive, while the {{CIA}} officer in charge of aiding them frequently notes that they're being used (in internal monologue). The Soviets, on the other hand, are portrayed sympathetically as well.

* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: The Soviets began large-scale intervention by killing Amin, who was actually their strongest ally in Afghanistan and had 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, to dry because they didn't want to spend money propping him up.

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 ''mujahideen'' as noble, heroic [[FanOfUnderdog underdogs]] versus said EvilEmpire, which can be a bit jarring [[TheGreatPoliticsMessUp in light of current events]].

* ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOps2'': One of the missions take place during the invasion.
* Tachanka from RainbowSixSiege is one of the oldest operators in the game, and is thus the only Spetsnaz operator to have served in the Soviet army while it was in Afghanistan.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Soviets intervened because while the Puppet Afghani government had good intentions (at least from a communist perspective), 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.

* [[UsefulNotes/PakistanisWithPanters Pakistanis With Panters]]: Pakistani Special Forces trained most of the rebels and fought in many battles. In the early years any successes the Mujahideen had were usually when there was a large cadre of Pakistani "advisers" with them. The Soviet attacks inside Pakistan led to the Pakistan Air Force being used to defend its airspace and for the most part the Soviets were roughly treated.

* YoungFutureFamousPeople: Many, both in real life and in pretty much every major media depiction of it. Most especially Osama Bin Laden (future villain), and Ahmad Shah Massoud (future hero).
** Most of the Taliban Leaders like Mullah Umer earned their spurs here.
** Several Russians who rose to prominence in the 1990s and 2000s fought in the war.
*** [[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]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q8eWpzEi68 war and]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtEaG4Pk328 its veterans.]]
** Pervez Musharraf, future Pakistani President, was a commando at the time.
** Dzhokhar Dudayev, the future Chechen rebel leader, served as a Soviet Air Force pilot in Afghanistan.

* CrowningMomentOfAwesome: For the Pakistan Air Force. It engaged the Soviet aviators on many occasions and won pretty much all encounters.
** The 7th Panjshir Offensive, in 1985, was this for Ahmed Shah Massoud, one of the key mujahideen leaders. The Panjshir Valley in Northern Afghanistan had become a hotbed of resistance, and to counter this, Soviet forces decided to make an example of the region with a scorched earth campaign. However, Massoud was tipped off to the operation and pre-empted it by evacuating ''the entire civilian population of the valley''. The ensuing Soviet offensive proved a strategic failure, and Soviet troops retreated from the valley after five months of fighting.

** A large chunk of ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidVThePhantomPain'' takes place in 1984 Afghanistan, right in the thick of the invasion. Since Diamond Dogs is an army without a nation, they don't try to take sides during the conflict. However, while both the Soviets and the Islamic Unity of Afghanistan Mujahideen get [[ObligatoryWarCrimeScene Obligatory War Crime Scenes]] as part of the game's [[CycleOfRevenge central theme]], Venom Snake finds himself fighting the Soviet Guards Airborne Regiment and rescuing Mujahideen most of the time anyway.