Why didn't the Soviet Union invade Pakistan in the 80s with India's help?

Let us look at the title of the "Why didn't the Soviet Union invade Pakistan in the 80s with India's help?"

The Soviet-Afghan alliance did in fact carry out attacks inside Pakistan, but there was never an official invasion of Pakistan by the USSR.

Let me quote from Wikipedia:

Excerpt from the book Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Robert Kaplan:
SovietAfghanAttacksInPakistan.jpg

Now the question is, why did not India and USSR jointly invade Pakistan? From what I feel, it was pretty much an Indian reluctance that prevented something like that from happening. We never had nerves of steel to do something like that.

KHAD was the secret service of the Afghani Government.

Not really a classical attack as is understood.

The CIA carries out many such activities around the world and so do the Delta Force and SAS. They are classified as clandestine/ covert actions.

There were reports of Soviet snipers sitting on the hills close to the Afghan Refugee Camps in the Pakistani side of the border and they would attack wanted leaders of the anti-Soviet Afghan resistance, at that time called the Mujahideen.

Soviet Tactics:
Their typical tactics were sending a squadron of Mi-24 Krokodil helicopter gunship-and-troop-transporters, drop off snipers near the refugee camps and then bombard these refugee camps. As the mujahideen leaders would try to flee, the snipers would ambush them and take them out. A similar scenario is nicely documented in the videos posted below that does not specifically state Pakistan (check last portion of first and first portion of second video):

Russia did not attack as it would have been a bigger quagmire,. USA may have actually wanted Russia to attack and turn it into a bigger Vietnam for Soviet Union then it actually was! Also SU was weak financially and there was always a looming food crisis. SU used to bomb Pakistan almost regularly. Pakistan is used to be bombed by SU, India and now by USA

The USSR invasion of afganistan the real idea people misinterpret it was not to capture afganistan the USSR did in iran what he wanted to do in afganistan also but the weak regime needed some support the invasion of afganistan was to support and hold onto a friendly govt, it was in sync with the breznev's policy to assist any socialist movement and what people forget is the invasion with its aims were different and enjoyed success can be gauzed from the fact that the socialist govt there outlived the ussr and only after the breakdown of the CCCP did it collapse in 1995 also the ussr suffering economic losses but militarily their troop functioning and withdrawl technique and the whole operation is deemed a lesson in itself with none other than the US studying the whole processing and praising it


details of this military operation and the US study views of it can be found in military analysis section of the forum read the full soviet military operations detailed in ebook format to get a even better picture of the military success

Goodness gracious what are we talking about.Did Soviets attack Afghanistan for land or resources or its opium fields.
The point is that US pakistan alliance wanted to weaken Moscow's hold over Central Asia.
so in order to prevent that Afghanistan was attacked.

The mighty Russian Army could barely hold on to Afghanistan SO what purpose would have been SERVED by attacking Pakistan .

Instead OIC ,Iran would have turned against SU

Soviets used heavy handed measures and one million people died. There is some thing called GLOBAL opinion.

Soviet COIN in Afghanistan Lester Grau Briefing 11May2010

this is an american source may 11 2010 briefing for US troops and possible future withdrawl and see how the US and left their narrow mindset and looked at this positively now all analysis and opinions before this were biased because of the other side of the story was non existent when the US got their fingures burnt they understood the real achievement of the USSR and are looking to follow thier mode of troop withdrawl in the future


also same associated thread on dfi is here

http://www.defenceforum.in/forum/mil...ysis/10456.htm

read the whole powerpoint presentation

Well said. The very term "Soviet-Afghan War" is a misnomer and it was coined by western (NATO) nations.

If one asked me, I would say "There was never a Soviet-Afghan War".

The term "Soviet-Afghan War" implies Soviets on one side and Afghans on the other side. That is not quite true. Besides, there was no Soviet invasion, rather an Afghan invitation to the Red Army to defend the government against mujahideen and insurgents who were carrying out attacks against the Afghan Government since long before 1979 when the USSR Army entered Afghanistan.

The real description would be, Afghans on one side and Afghans on the other side fighting against each other and USSR helping one side and USA, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia helping the other side.

This is the correct evaluation of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

I would like to point out that the USSR and Afghan Armies did ensure some significant successes before the withdrawal of the Soviet forces. The Soviets and Afghan Armies managed to capture Khost (Operation Magistral). It was handed over to the Afghan Army who failed to maintain the gained grounds soon after Soviet withdrawal.

Source:
Operation Magistral - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The whole reason for Soviet downfall was their 10 year obsession with taking Afghan territory. And the decade-long occupation is what drained Soviet economy coupled by Gorbachev's blunder in trying to change the Communist economy into Capitalist in a few years. A better strategy for Soviet Union could have been what USA came up with: Rather than hold onto Afghanistan, they should have stayed in Tajikistan and mounted secret raids across Afghan border through Badakhshan strip and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK). Small but prickly raids of heavily armed SPETSNAZ units in both Afghanistan and Pakistan would have done severe damage to both US and Pakistan. What's more, if it had been a secret and small scale invasion attack rather than USSR sending their 13 million soldiers in full force, Af-Pak would have been constantly confused about what to do and who is attacking them.

This along with a bit of planning where Soviet commanders could have discussed with Indian generals on how to coordinate strikes in POK. Not air strikes but special forces strikes by storming mujahideen camps and Kashmiri jihadist camps in the late 80s. If this strategy was considered then by Russians and us, Today Afghanistan would have been Afghan SSR and we would have got back POK with ease and US bewildered on what to do for its blue eyed baby, Pakistan. Our stupid military neutrality and USSR's lack of thinking properly, ruined the show.

Remember that Zia ul Haq was at that time close to Americans. It was at his beckoning that CIA intensified its operations in Afghan during the Soviet invasion.

A war with Pakistan would mean that Soviet would want India to join in and India would for sure joined for 2 reasons since Pak a natural enemy and Soviet said so. The Americans would have then intervened, the matters would have got very messy, but it would have been limited to covert operations. But for sure Pakistan may have not existed if it happened.

basic flaw in argument soviet union was not interested in afgan territory and any other following argument does not whole ground and the SU had no idea to make afganistan into one of the republics see my previous post the idea was on the lines of what happened in iran and the aim of the SU was never pakistan but was to reach IOR via afgan and iran

This was the perfect opportunity for India to take POK and access Central Asia but I don't know if any leaders thought about things like this at that time??

I came across an article at that time India (Indira Ghandi) did have some 'strategic synergy' with USSR over Afghanistan. After Afghan, the next should have been Pak.

Yet, Mujahideen and US+PAK+China ruined the plan. It was said US bought weapons from China, which were routed from Xinjiang to Pak (as white glove), then carried to Afghan warriors by donkeys.

So now China wants credit for this too?? stop riding on USA's coattails.