Corey Metzner 1

Corey Metzner Scheffer English 201-17 11/8/10 Butterflies and the Bear The Soviet intervention of Afghanistan in 1978 was an unjust war because the Soviets invaded under false pretense and proceeded to target Afghani civilians. The USSR employed dirty tactics such as carpet bombing (flying over with a large group of planes while dropping a large amount of bombs to cover a pre-determined area) villages and spreading minefields in well travelled civilian areas or farmland. They originally went in to Afghanistan to help support the acting government; a communist regime called the Peoples Democratic party of Afghanistan (PDPA) but later assassinated the leader that they supported and assumed control. The Soviets were in blatant violation of jus ad bellum, which is the set of qualifications that determine if a side had just cause to go to war. One of the primary tactics to disrupt guerrilla troop movements and to depopulate areas of interest was to lay minefields. However the Soviets took this to a whole new level of mass mining. They would fly over with their gunship helicopters at a couple thousand feet and drop massive amounts of what came to be known as butterfly mines. They got their name from their unique winged design. When dropped from the air, their wings caused them to spin and deaccelerate their fall. The mines armed upon hitting the ground and the eight inch long explosives would detonate if pressure is later applied. These mines were camouflaged and were hard to

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detect, especially at night. These mines were often mistaken as childrens toys by Afghani kids who subsequently lose hands, feet, eyes, or other body parts. There were even reports (however these were never confirmed) that there were dolls with pressure sensitive mines that were deployed to directly target children, the reasoning behind this was that if your brother is injured then it probably wouldnt make you move, but if your kid was then you would think twice. The butterfly mine isnt designed to have a lethal affect because if a soldier is killed then that only takes one fighter out of the combat, but if he has a foot blown off or in half then he has to be carried off by two or three other soldiers and given medical attention. The butterfly mine is believed to have caused more civilian casualties than any other single cause in the whole war. An estimated 10-30 million were deployed throughout the decade and many still remain (Soldiers of God 1-30). This means of indirect warfare is illegal because it isnt targeting enemy combatants. Another example of how the Soviets directly and illegally targeted civilians was the bombing campaigns. There was a reason why the soviet Hind Gunship had 128 rockets and 4 missiles each, these helicopters would run sorties (aerial missions) and incinerate entire villages. Many of these attacks were retaliatory attacks in response to a recent Mujahidin attack. The Kremlin even went as far as to order raids on villages and refugee camps on the Pakistani side of the northwestern frontier. On March 30, 1987 over a hundred and eighty civilians were killed when three villages were bombed (The Soviet War in Afghanistan 94).These attacks are a violation of modern laws of war; the Soviets were purposely targeting noncombatants in an attempt to discourage the real fighters. This didnt work and instead only served to draw sympathy towards the Mujahidin cause. It wasnt until the Mujahidin received shoulder fired anti-air missiles smuggled into the country from places like Egypt (Afghans said to have better

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guns after trip to Egypt New York Times, January 22, 1981). Once the Soviets stopped flying low over in fear of being shot down these attacks became more infrequent and less accurate. One might argue that the Soviet Union had just cause to go into Afghanistan because they had just cause in that they were called upon to fulfill their agreement with the PDPA to support them militarily, that they were answering a call to aid of their allies. However, the Soviets did not have the right to go to war in Afghanistan because they did not have the right intention, correct proportionality, and it was not a last resort option. They did not have the right intention because they went in to back up a communist regime with plans to later make it a Soviet satellite (Fred Halliday, Review of International Studies, 675-691). They supported the leader of the PDPA that called for their aid but later launched a coup against him carried out by the KGB. Their reason for being in Afghanistan was simply imperialism. The Kremlin or the Russian people were hardly in any sort of danger. With the only reason being to create and assimilate a communist state to the south, all the casualties they had sustained was not equal to the gains of the projected end product; which was never achieved. The Soviets also turned their back to the genocidal campaigns of the PDPA. The governments seat of power was in the capital city of Kabul. However their political reach barely went much further. Most of the country is ruled by various tribal leaders and warlords creating a feudal style system. This is the way it had always been so when the PDPA came to power they wanted to change Afghanistan into a western civilization styled communist state. They set up numerous programs to convert people to communism and they modernized certain traditional Islamic civil laws. The government decided it would be beneficial to round up village leaders and other symbols of feudalism or the old way of life as political prisoners. Most of these political prisoners were simply murdered (Craig M. Karp, Foreign Affairs 64.5, 1026-1047).

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This evolved into PDPA death squads that would simply go out and murder anyone they considered to be a danger to the political movement. The infamous Pul-e-Charkhi prison was estimated to have facilitated the executions of as many as 27,000 people (Soldiers of God). This along with several organized revolts caused the birth of the resistance movement which grew to be known as the Mujahidin. The Soviets were in violation of just settlement of the war as well; they did not compensate the Afghani people to compensate for their losses, there was no security system set in place to protect the Afghanis against future attack by the same aggressor, and the Soviets were not brought to trial for any of the many war crimes committed during the war. The only international consequences that the Soviets faced were trade embargos, having the 1980 Olympic games in Moscow boycotted by the U.S. (in which Afghanistan competed), and intense political scrutiny. After all was said and done, the Soviet Union had destroyed generations and caused millions of dollars worth of property, illegally. They used dirty tactics to suppress and kill a people, they gained nothing but stacks of their own dead, and never offered any kind of compensation. This war never should have happened and was entirely unjust. 4