SOVIET STRATEGIES

  Following frequent terrorist attacks taking place against them, in the cities, and the failure to re-establish the Kabul regime, the Soviets transferred the focus of the war
to the civilians and the countryside.  Their main goal was to depopulate remote villages.  The means by which the inhabitants disappeared, whether
they fled to other villages under Soviet control, left the country, or simply died, was not important.  Land mines were used to make the land uninhabitable, and
also to maim and cripple civilians.  The Soviets employed a pure evil method of elimination to entice children to their deaths.  They scattered brightly colored plastic toys 
that exploded when picked.  There is also evidence that the troops engaged in the use of chemical weapons.


                                                    

                                          a land mine victim in Kabul, Afghanistan

THE AFTERMATH

  

Before the war, the population of Afghanistan was over 15 million people.

• over 5 million people, 1/3 of the country, became refugees in mainly Pakistan and Iran, a phenomenon deemed "migratory genocide" by the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees
• millions became refugees within Afghanistan
• around one million people were killed as a result of fighting, massacres, and starvation
• tens of thousands of people were crippled by land mines

One might assume that the influx of so many refugees to neighboring Pakistan and Iran had negative effects on
those countries and the people. On the contrary, many of the refugees dramatically improved their lives by
fleeing the war in Afghanistan, and their presence actually improved Afghan erlations with these countries.
The majority of the refugees were religious people.  As a result, the Muslims in Pakistan dnd Iran accepted them, depsite
the econtinuiuing efforts by those countries to usher in the fall of the communist regime in Kabul.

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