Soviet wars were different from today’s.
Afghanistan’s Soviet folly was very similar to today’s folly.
Yet different only, in that the Mujahed enemy then, used primitive mines rather than today’s more sophisticated, remotely triggered roadside bombs. Russian outposts were easy to overrun without night vision goggles. The Soviet Russian roops travelled in long tank-led columns that were easy targets for ambush and picked apart. Even the Soviets had more of a legitimacy to prop up a sympathetic regime… But the basic parameters of an asymmetrical war between the western robotic and hi-tech machinery against and omnipresent and agile guerrilla force, have not changed. It’s just that the US and UK mainly forces and a few Nato troops rely more on flying pilot-less drones rather than helicopters to fire its missiles and to kill scores of civilians. Children still get hit and large family gatherings such as weddings and funerals are often targeted. A new way to win hearts and minds…cut down the number of weddings and funerals. A sure fire way -literally- to be loved by the natives.
Nor is there much difference between Nato’s prized techniques of “cultural awareness” and Soviet practice. They gave soldiers a small piece of paper telling them what to do and what not to do and a little dictionary. That is it.
Ten commandments:
Don’t fraternise. Don’t look at women. Don’t go into cemeteries. Don’t go into mosques. Don’t go close to Afghan men. Don’t shop at the bazaars. Don’t buy drugs from children. Don’t drink in public. Don’t leave your bases unassisted….
The British , Americans and Russians’ contempt for their local allies, the Afghan army, sounds just like that of the Afghans for the infidels, visiting terror on their land.
Many Afghan army recruits are cowards or survivors depending who is talking. If the Talib ”ghosts” shoot, the army runs away.
Afghan soldiers when asked what they would do when their conscript service ended? They said they would join the ghosts. They usually pay better.
Nato’s war aims echo the Soviets goals. To prop up a Democratic and secular government against the threat from the religious fundamentalist tyranny. The Soviet advantage was that they were operating in an age when nation building by foreigners was far more fashionable.
The Kremlin did not have to rely on the spurious claim that terrorism had to be stopped in Kabul in order to keep it from the streets of Moscow. Washington, London, Manchester or Minsk…
The big difference, so far, is that after years of remorseless losses the Soviet leadership realised the war was unwinnable. Visionary and realist Mikhail Gorbachev tried talking to the enemy to form a coalition Afghan government. Similar to the current palindrome of leaders wailing: “Do we talk to the Taliban?”
This debate, is old but when the amujaheddin (see Taliban) and their western backers refused, Gorbachev pulled out anyway without loss of face.
What does Obama have to learn from this?
Does he have the sense to do the same? In early 1989 the Russians completed their withdrawal and the manner of their departure was friendly and honourable … What led to the withdraw was the same combination of factors: the political mistakes of their Afghan allies such as the corrupt Karzai government, the awareness that the Soviet troops had turned a civil war into a holy crusade, and lastly the crucial recognition that the mujahideen could not be defeated.
It required a new visionary realistic leadership in Moscow to accept what Russians had privately known for any years…
What kind of leadership would it take in Washington to do the same ?
Isn’t this the new visionary realistic leadership of Obama that can handle the tough choices?
