Personal Memorandum from Yurii Andropov to Leonid Brezhnev Early December 1979 1 After the coup and the murder of Taraki in September of this year the situation in Afghanistan began to undertake an undesirable tum for us The situation in the party the army and the government apparatus has become more acute as they were essentially destroyed as a result of the mass repressions carried out by Amin At the same time alarming information started to arrive about Anlin's secret activities forewarning of a possible political shift to the West These included Contacts with an American agent about issues which are kept secret from us Promises to tribal leaders to shift away from USSR and to adopt a policy of neutrality Closed meetings in which attacks were made against Soviet policy and the activities of our specialists The practical removal of our headquarters in Kabul etc The diplomatic circles in Kabul are widely talking of Amin's differences with Moscow and his possible anti-Soviet steps All this has created on the one hand the danger oflosing the gains made by the April 1978 revolution the scale of insurgent attacks will increase by spring within the country while on the other hand - the threat to our positions in Afghanistan right now there is no guarantee that Amin in order to protect his personal power will not shift to the West There has been a growth of anti-Soviet sentiments within the population 2 Recently we were contacted by group of Afghan communists abroad In the course of our contact with Babrak Karmal and Asadullah Sarwari it became clear and they informed us of this that they have worked out a plan for opposing Amin and creating new party and state organs But Amin as a preventive measure has begun mass arrests of suspect persons 300 people have been shot In these conditions Babrak and Sarwari without changing their plans of opposition have raised the question of possible assistance in case of need including military We have two battalions stationed in Kabul and there is the capability of rendering such assistance It appears that this is entirely sufficient for a successful operation But as a precautionary measure in the event of unforeseen complications 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 ofthe given operation would allow us to decide the question of defending the gains of the April revolution establishing Leninist principals in the party and state leadership of Afghanistan and securing our positions in this country Source Cold War International History Project Virtual Archive http www wilsoncenter org index cfm topic id 1409 fuseaction va2 document identifier 5034DB5A-96B6- 175C-9D886C24443BD2D4 sort Collection item Soviet%20Invasion%200fOIo20Afghanistan Original source Archive of the President of the Russian Federation from notes taken by A F Dobrynin and provided to the Norwegian Nobel Institute provided to CWllIP by Odd Arne Westad Director of Research Nobel Institute translated for CWllIP by Daniel Rozas This document is from the holdings of The National Security Archive Suite 701 Gelman Library The George Washington University 2130 H Street NW Washington D C 20037 Phone 202 994-7000 Fax 202 994-7005 nsarchiv@gwu edu