Vladimir Kuzichkin, 35, a former KGB major whose presence in Britain

was announced by the British government last month, has given an

extra-ordinary account of Soviet involvement in Afghanistan -perhaps

the greatest blot on Brezhnev's career - as seen by the KGB.

Kuzichkin, who defected to the British last June, had served under

cover in Iran for five years. He was the ultra-secret "Directorate S",

which controls the "illegals," Soviet-born agents abroad. In an

exclusive interview in London last week with Time's Frank Melville,

Kuzichkin said: 1) Brezhnev himself overruled repeated advice from

Yuri Andropov's KGB not to turn Afghanistan into a Soviet satellite,

2) Afghan President Karmal is a KGB agent of long standing, 3)

Karmal's predecessor was murdered in his palace by a specially trained

KGB-led Soviet assault group. Kuzichkin's account:

Senior KGB officers rarely let their hair down about politics. But

Afghanistan has exasperated many. As a former boss [a KGB general] put

it late one night: "Afghanistan is our Viet Nam. Look at what

happened. We began simply by backing a friendly regime; slowly we got

more involved; then we started manipulating the regime - sometimes

using desperate measures - and now? Now we are bogged down in a war we

cannot win and cannot abandon. It's ridiculous. A mess. And but for

Brezhnev and company we would never have gotten into it in the first

place." The general had said what many of us involved with Afghanistan

- in the KGB, the army and outside - felt but would not stick out our

necks to say.

It all began innocently enough with a lucky accident. Over the past 50

years we had never had any serious problems with the Afghan kings.

Then, in 1973, [Mohammad] Daoud overthrew the monarchy with the help

of the leftists. Although the leftist officers had been trained in the

Soviet Union, we had not encouraged them to overthrow the king.

Nevertheless, the reaction of the Soviet leadership was that this

change was for the good.

Our relations with Daoud were never very good. He was keen to keep

open his lines with the West. He did not wish to be too closely

involved with us. Those of us who knew Afghanistan were convinced no

harm would come from that. The Afghans would slaughter each other for

generations regardless of whether they claimed to be Communists.

It was inconceivable to us that Afghanistan could do any credit to the

Soviet Union, let alone "Communism". The Afghans we told each other

should be left to stew in their own juice. We could never control

them, but neither could anybody else. We had our first taste of things

to come in 1978. Daoud turned against the Communists who had helped

him to power. Not only did he arrest leaders of the Afghan Communist

Party, but he planned to execute them. The Afghan Communists were in a

desperate position. They consulted the Soviet Embassy in Kabul. Moscow

quickly confirmed that we would support their proposed coup against

Dauod. Just before it was too late, the Communist leaders ordered the

coup - in fact, from their prison cells.

The coup succeeded and Afghanistan went Communist. But Mr. Brezhnev

and his colleagues brushed aside the vitally important warnings that a

Communist takeover in Afghanistan presented hair-raising problems. We

pointed out that despite all his slaughter, the tribes had accepted

Daoud as a legitimate ruler. An openly Communist regime would arouse

hostility that would then be directed against the Soviet Union.

It was clearly of the utmost importance that Afghanistan should have

the right leader. The choice was between Karmal, who headed the

Parcham faction of the Afghan Communist Party, and [Noor Mohammed]

Taraki who headed the Khalq faction. We knew a lot about both men. In

the papers we put to the Politburo, we scrupulously assessed their

strengths and weaknesses. Our assessment made clear that Taraki would

be a disastrous choice. He was savage by temperament, and had little

feel for complex political issues, and would be easily influenced by

his cronies, but not by us. Karmal, on the other hand, understood the

need for subtle policies. Moreover, he had been a KGB agent for many

years. He could be relied upon to accept our advice.

The Politburo decided to back Taraki because Mr. Brezhnev said he knew

Taraki personally. He was sure Taraki would do a good job! Things

started going off the rails almost at once. Taraki shipped Karmal off

to Prague as ambassador. He then set about killing Karmal's supporters

(many of whom were our own informers). Brezhnev would do nothing to

stop this slaughter - and Karmal, who was already disgruntled, began

to bear a bitter grudge against the Soviet Union. Things soon went

from bad to worse. The Shah had fallen in Iran. Taraki's policies

seemed certain to insure that there would be a Muslim insurrection in

Afghanistan. Taraki's response was to slaughter any opposition within

his reach. Moscow tried to persuade him that this was a recipe for

disaster, he should not repeat Stalin's errors. Taraki told Moscow to

mind its own business.

One day things began to look brighter. A man called Hafizullah Amin

seemingly emerged from nowhere to be Taraki's deputy. He was a

cultivated Oriental charmer. Quietly, Amin began to take control away

from Taraki. More important, he persuaded Moscow that he would be able

to diffuse the Muslim threat. We at the KGB, though, had doubts about

Amin from the start. Our investigations showed him to be a

smooth-talking fascist who was secretly pro-Western (he had been

educated in the United States) and had links with the Americans. We

also suspected that he had links with the CIA, but we had no proof. In

short, the KGB was pointing to a danger that Amin - if he could ride

the tiger of Muslim insurgency and come out on top as the leader of an

Islamic Afghanistan - not only would turn to the West but would also

expel the Soviet Union - lock, stock and barrel - from Afghanistan. On

political grounds, the KGB argued, it would be better, even at this

late hour, to put in Karmal as President.

Despite our warnings and to our complete amazement, Mr. Brezhnev

backed Amin. Taraki was invited to Moscow. Secretly, Mr. Brezhnev and

his Politburo colleges had agreed with Amin that Amin would arrange

for Taraki to step down as president on his return to Kabul. Amin

carried out that agreement in spirit, if not to the letter. Taraki

stepped straight from the presidency to his grave. Moscow was willing

to turn a blind eye to that. It was only weeks, however, before the

smooth-talking Amin made the KGB argument seem correct. Amin did not

honor specific promises he made to the Soviet Union. He complained

about the KGB's activities in Afghanistan, and he wanted the Soviet

officials who had had the "effrontery" to advise him recalled.

Moreover, things in Afghanistan were looking blacker and blacker.

Terrible reports were coming in of what Muslim insurgents were doing

to any Soviet advisers they caught. Worse, though the uprising was

spreading, Amin seemed to be doing nothing to combat it.

The Politburo now really was convinced that the KGB argument had been

right. Amin was planning to turn Afghanistan against the Soviet Union.

So the Politburo decided that Amin had to go. Preferably quietly - but

certainly dead. At first we - that is the KGB - were given the job. We

had an officer, an illegal who passed as an Afghan and had for some

time been one of Amin's personal cooks. He was ordered to poison Amin.

But Amin was as careful as any of the Borgias. He kept switching his

food and drink as if he expected to be poisoned. The illegal's nerves

began to fray as his attempts.

The failures annoyed Moscow. The Politburo accepted a less quiet way

of getting rid of Amin. This time special Soviet troops were to storm

the palace. The day after Christmas 1979, Soviet paratroopers began

arriving at the Kabul airport. They strengthened the substantial

garrison we had quietly been building up there. The next day an

armored column moved out of the airport towards the presidential

palace. It consisted of a few hundred Soviet commandos, plus a

specially trained assault group of KGB officers - rather like the US

Green Berets. They were all in Afghan uniforms, and their vehicles had

Afghan markings.

Along the road the column was stopped at an Afghan checkpoint. Afghan

troops gathered round to find out what was happening. Suddenly the

flaps of the front vehicle went up and the Afghans were machine-gunned

to the ground. The column rolled on. When it reached the palace, the

special troops attacked from three sides, while Colonel Bayerenov (the

hear of the KGB's terrorist-training school) led the assault on the

palace. The attack got off to a good start. It would have been better

had the leading armored vehicle not got caught up in the palace gates.

Moscow wanted no Afghans left to tell the tale of what had happened in

the palace. No prisoners would be taken. Anybody leaving the building

was to be shot on sight. Amin was found drinking in a bar on the top

floor of the palace. He was shot without question. So was the

exceedingly beautiful young woman with him. The Soviet objective had

been achieved. But the plan was not without its weaknesses. No one had

expected Amin's bodyguard to put up such ferocious resistance within

the palace. Resistance was so stiff that Colonel Bayerenov stepped out

of the door to call for reinforcements. He had forgotten about the

orders to the troops out side and so was shot dead.

Anyway, Amin was now dead. Earlier, Karmal had been located in Europe

and brought to Moscow. He agreed to be the President of Afghanistan

and to invite Soviet troops in to protect his regime. Even before that

announcement was made, tens of thousands of our ground troops were

moving into Afghanistan.

The Western press attributed several motives to Moscow. Some said we

were worried about the impact on Soviet Muslims that an upsurge of

Islamic Fundamentalism in Iran and Afghanistan could have. Others said

that we insisted on having "our own man" or that we were inflamed by

the terrible deaths that Afghan insurgents were inflicting on Soviet

advisors. There is something in these interpretations. But they miss

the real point.

What moved the Politburo was the thought that the Muslim revolution in

Afghanistan could succeed and that, as a result, the Soviet Union

would actually be thrown out of Afghanistan. The repercussions of such

a blow to our prestige would be unpredictable. The Soviet Union could

not run such a risk. The Politburo was determined to show that the

Soviet Union could not be pushed around.

Now the military came to the fore. The army had not been happy about

the way our military involvement in Afghanistan had been handled. Some

has argued that troops, not advisers, should have been sent in 1978

before things got out of hand. But in December 1979, the general staff

felt that 80,000 or so Soviet troops could get the situation under

control.

There was not a new Afghan leader, a KGB agent at that, and

substantial Soviet support. The Afghan Army, we believed, would go

over to the offensive. The insurgents themselves would be reluctant to

take on such odds. Soviet troops were just supposed to provide the

initial stiffener. Well before Amin's murder, two divisions, specially

made up of Farsi-speaking troops from neighboring Tadzhikistan and

Uzbekistan had been assembled along the frontier. They all had Afghan

uniforms. They were supposed to make our intervention go more

smoothly. In retrospect, it was an error. In no time at all they were

black-marketeering (including selling army equipment), buying Korans

and robbing the local population (for which many were executed). They

showed little interest in fighting "their neighbors", the Afghans.

European troops were soon brought to replace the Tadzhiks and Uzbeks.

We made two major errors of judgment. We overestimated the willingness

of the Afghan army to fight and underestimated the upsurge of Afghan

resistance. As a result we sent in too few troops. The trouble is that

Moscow cannot correct this error. When we began to get bogged down, of

course, the army argued for more troops. The Soviet general staff

wanted at least twice as many - to seal off the frontier with Pakistan

and to get better control along the boarder with Iran. But the

Politburo ruled that out. By then, it feared provoking a serious

Western reaction.

Now no one in the USSR is happy. Soviet troops are bogged down. Karmal

has not established effective leadership. Like his predecessors,

Karmal is proving somewhat truculent in his dealings with Moscow.

Given the way he was treated, that is hardly surprising. By the Spring

of this year, the Politburo was already considering having him

replaced - but decided to give him a bit more time.

Nobody can really see a way out. There is no prospect that the Soviet

Union will withdraw from Afghanistan in the foreseeable future. For

those of us who know what really happened, it is all a stark reminder