317. Article in the President’s Daily Brief1
AFGHANISTAN: THE MILITARY SITUATION
**In the 10 months since the invasion, combat between Soviet and insurgent forces in Afghanistan has increased considerably. Neither side probably will be able to inflict any major military setback before the end of good weather in late October. If insurgent claims of impending food shortages for the resistance are accurate, the winter combat season could pose more problems for them than for the Soviets.**
The Insurgents
**The information on the condition and morale of the insurgents is hard to come by and our judgments are necessarily somewhat tentative.**
**Some Pakistani officials believe the insurgents may be losing their will to resist, but this view is not shared by Zia and is not borne out by the evidence available to us. To be sure, the insurgents are no better organized than when the fighting began, and they are taking heavier casualties. But there are also more of them, they have better weapons, and they have learned how to use them. Moreover, they usually confront the Soviets only when they enjoy the military advantage.**
*Government control in many of Afghanistan’s provincial cities is more tenuous than before the invasion. US journalists who visited Herat in the last week of August, for example, confirmed [1 line not declassified] that the [Page 851] city virtually belongs to the insurgents. Insurgent activity in or near Jalalabad, Qandahar, and Ghazni has been intense, despite the government’s imposition of martial law. Soviet forces have been used to blockade provincial towns but security in the towns themselves has been left primarily to the Afghans, who usually have failed at the task.**
The Afghan Army
[1½ lines not declassified] there have been roughly 30,000 Afghan Army desertions or defections out of a preinvasion total of 80,000. Afghan Government casualties since December reportedly have been only 1,800—at least a third lower than our most conservative estimate of Soviet casualties. This suggests that even those troops remaining have been reluctant to fight.**
**The Soviets are upgrading the Afghans’ equipment and have stepped up political and military training, but improvement is likely to be slow. Last month the Soviets reportedly were again forced to confiscate equipment—particularly antitank and antiaircraft weapons—because too much of it was falling into insurgent hands. Moscow has also had to scrap—for the time being—plans to expand the Afghan Army. It is also reorganizing existing divisions because of the dearth of Afghan manpower.**
The Soviets
**The decline in Afghan Army performance and the increase in insurgent activity has forced the USSR to assume more and more of the burden of counterinsurgency. Beginning last June, Soviet forces stepped up operations, presumably hoping to bring the Afghan Government some surcease from insurgent pressure.**
**The Soviets had not operated long in Afghanistan before they concluded that their forces were inadequately organized, trained, and equipped for a guerrilla conflict. [8 lines not declassified]
**Helicopters have been valuable. The number in use in Afghanistan has quadrupled to some 240 since the invasion.*
**The insurgents initially were terrified of the helicopter gunships, but in recent months they appear to have improved their tactics. In July they reportedly shot down at least 14. The Soviets are improving the armor and weaponry on the helicopters and are using flares to divert heat-seeking missiles. [4 lines not declassified]
**Soviet efforts to curtail insurgent traffic have been concentrated along the Pakistani border in the Konar Valley region. They have laid more than 60 minefields, established an acoustic sensor detection system, and conducted two major and several minor sweep operations. Even so, insurgents in the area still are quite active.**
**Since early August, Soviet units have been conducting their most sustained effort to date to seal the Iranian-Afghan border near Herat and to eliminate insurgent bands in northwestern Afghanistan. The forces appear to [Page 852] have run into more resistance than anticipated; three additional battalions have been sent to the area since the operation began.**
**Other Soviet sweep operations are currently under way in the Panjshir Valley northeast of Kabul and near Soviet garrisons in Ghazni, Jalalabad, Feyzabad, Qandahar, and Qonduz.**
Prospects
**The last two winters in Afghanistan brought the government no relief from insurgent pressures; in fact the insurgency grew steadily. The coming winter probably will impair the activity of both sides. Soviet forces will confront the insurgents with a kind of sustained military pressure not heretofore experienced. This, coupled with possible food shortages, could ultimately affect the insurgents’ ability to continue the struggle at its present level.**
- Source: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of the Director of Central Intelligence, Job 81B00401R: Subject Files of the Presidential Briefing Coordinator for DCI (1977–81), Box 7, Afghanistan Crisis—September 1980, PDBs. Top Secret; For the President Only. The full version of this President’s Daily Brief was not filed with this collection. The article printed here was found in this form.↩