In March 1979, a revolt erupted in the desert town of Herat, Afghanistan, near the Iranian border. Rebels in the Afghan military mercilessly massacred Russian advisers and their families stationed in the border town. Though the incumbent communist government pulverised the rebellion using Soviet bomber jets, killing thousands of civilians, the mutiny quickly spread to the towns and countryside. The rebellion was led by Mullahs (religious priests) and Mujahedeen (holy warriors), sworn enemies of the atheistic, secular and communist regime of Afghanistan, sponsored economically and militarily by the erstwhile Soviet Union.
Despite the grave misgivings expressed by the Soviet military Chief of Staff, Nikolai Ogarkov, the Soviet Politburo, influenced by the KGB, decided to invade Afghanistan. The Soviet leadership was apprehensive that an anti-Soviet regime in Kabul—backed by the United States and supported by Islamic states of Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia—would threaten their communist foothold in the Islamic Central Asian republics. And so, on 24 December 1979, brushing aside the warnings of pragmatic policymakers in Moscow, thousands of Soviet soldiers crossed the Oxus River and began the invasion of Afghanistan.
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