Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan

Significance

Pursuant to the Geneva Accords of April 1988, the Soviet Union completed the withdrawal of its 40th Army from Afghanistan between May 1988 and February 1989, with Boris Gromov leading the final exit into the Central Asian Union Republics. The withdrawal formally ended nearly a decade of Soviet military involvement in Afghanistan. Rather than resolving the conflict, the departure removed the principal external force holding the existing order together, directly precipitating the First Afghan Civil War as competing mujahideen factions — among them those led by Ahmad Shah Massoud and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar — contested control of the country. The withdrawal thus marked both the terminus of the Soviet-Afghan War and the opening condition of the civil war that followed.

Commanders (4)