John Gaquin wrote:
....The soviets had been invited into Afghanistan by the Afghan
government to help control the warring factions,

I spent a lot of time working in Afghanistan in 76, 77. That's not quite
the way it happened.


All that is missing is "claimed they" between "soviets" and "had".

But weren't they actually invited ? (after the soviets installed a soviet
friendly government ?)

What I don't quite understand is that it was often said that the soviets
wanted a corridor to be able to ship their oil to a port and sell it to world
markets. But afghanistan doesn't give them access to the ocean because of the
strip of land that belongs to pakistan that covers the shores shouth of
afghanistan. Does this mean that the soviets would have eventually taken that
strip of land ?