Afghanistan deja-vu: Lessons from the Soviet experience
- Thread starter seth gecko
- Start date
Wasn't the objective of the Soviet invasion to try and gain a warm water port even though Afganhistan is a land locked country?
Those old hardline commies are probably laughing their arses off at how the nutzy neocons were repeating the same mistakes the late Soviets did!
Funny how conservative minds think alike be they Ruskies or neocons....
Marshall Sergey Fyodorovich Akhromeyev, Chief of the Soviet General Staff cites the critical difference between then and now:
“We have lost this battle. The majority of the Afghan people support the counter-revolution now.
We lost the peasantry, who has not benefited from the revolution at all. 80% of the country is in the hands of the counter-revolution, and the peasant’s situation is better there than in the government-controlled areas.” November 13, 1986
Add to that the fact that almost all afghans hated the Soviets, thus far most of them still believe that NATO is a help.
“We have lost this battle. The majority of the Afghan people support the counter-revolution now.
We lost the peasantry, who has not benefited from the revolution at all. 80% of the country is in the hands of the counter-revolution, and the peasant’s situation is better there than in the government-controlled areas.” November 13, 1986
Add to that the fact that almost all afghans hated the Soviets, thus far most of them still believe that NATO is a help.
I am afraid this is one of the cases where "if I say it enough times, I will believe it".
If a majority loved the Nato forces, they would not be shot at so much.
Gorbachev Says Obama Should Start Afghan Withdrawal
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aP_6NUKjFaSM
Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, drawing on his experience of military failure in Afghanistan in the 1980s, said the U.S. can’t win the conflict there and should begin pulling out its soldiers.
Afghanistan, where U.S. and NATO forces are battling a Taliban-led insurgency, is too fragmented between clans to be controlled militarily, Gorbachev, 78, said in an interview today in Berlin. While he said President Barack Obama would be unlikely to take his advice, Gorbachev said he saw no chance of success even with more U.S. troops.
“I believe that there is no prospect of a military solution,” Gorbachev said in Russian through a translator. “What we need is the reconciliation of Afghan society -- and they should be preparing the ground for withdrawal rather than additional troops.”
Gorbachev, who became general secretary of the ruling Communist Party in 1985, at age 54, initiated a restructuring program known as perestroika that eventually led to the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. He spoke a day after he joined Chancellor Angela Merkel and current world leaders in the German capital to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago.
As Soviet leader, Gorbachev pursued a policy of detente with the U.S. while overseeing the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in 1989 after grappling with an unsuccessful decade- long presence in the country.
Disputed Election
Obama is considering a military request to send as many as 40,000 more U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan, on top of the 68,000 due to be stationed there by the end of the year. Other North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces, comprising personnel from 42 countries, number about 36,000.
The U.S. troop review has been complicated by increased Taliban attacks and by a disputed victory for the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, in this year’s presidential election.
Speaking in Berlin yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded that Karzai step up efforts to tackle corruption. Karzai was re-appointed president by Afghanistan’s electoral commissioners Nov. 2 following former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah’s decision to pull out of a runoff election.
In response to an Oct. 28 attack on United Nations staff by Taliban militants that killed five of the agency’s workers in a Kabul guesthouse, the UN last week announced it would move about 600 of its international staff members and remove some from the country.
Brezhnev’s Gamble
Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev sent tanks into Afghanistan to support a Marxist regime in 1979, betting superior firepower from the ground and air would keep the country within Moscow’s fold. Soviet aims were thwarted by an Islamist mujahedeen movement supported by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the U.S.
While there was support in the Moscow establishment, Gorbachev as the general secretary of the Communist Party concluded that Soviet objectives couldn’t be achieved.
“We thought that that would lead nowhere,” Gorbachev said. “So we started to disengage our troops from any kind of hostilities in Afghanistan.”
The pullout began in 1988 and ended in February of 1989, nine months before the Berlin Wall fell.
The Taliban, an outcrop of the mujahedeen that dominated Afghanistan in the 1990s, took control of most of the country in 1996. The U.S.-led invasion five years later, following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was meant to displace the Taliban, accused of harboring the terrorist group al-Qaeda.
American ‘Perestroika’
Gorbachev said that relations between Russia and the U.S. are improving as America undergoes its own perestroika, or rebuilding, which he said had begun with the election of Obama as president last year.
“America should implement perestroika in the context of American society,” Gorbachev said. “I believe that people of America, most of them who voted in these elections -- and most of them voted for Obama -- did vote for change.”
Asked whether Obama could trust Russia’s current leadership, President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the former Soviet leader said it would have to be a process. He cited his first meeting with former President Ronald Reagan in Geneva in 1985; after the two leaders met one-on-one, they shared their thoughts on each other with their delegations.
“He’s a real dinosaur, a man from the past,” Gorbachev remembered saying. “Do you think that Reagan had a better view of me? He said: ‘Gorbachev is a die-hard Bolshevik.’ So that was the beginning.”
By Chris Burns and Patrick Donahue
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aP_6NUKjFaSM
Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, drawing on his experience of military failure in Afghanistan in the 1980s, said the U.S. can’t win the conflict there and should begin pulling out its soldiers.
Afghanistan, where U.S. and NATO forces are battling a Taliban-led insurgency, is too fragmented between clans to be controlled militarily, Gorbachev, 78, said in an interview today in Berlin. While he said President Barack Obama would be unlikely to take his advice, Gorbachev said he saw no chance of success even with more U.S. troops.
“I believe that there is no prospect of a military solution,” Gorbachev said in Russian through a translator. “What we need is the reconciliation of Afghan society -- and they should be preparing the ground for withdrawal rather than additional troops.”
Gorbachev, who became general secretary of the ruling Communist Party in 1985, at age 54, initiated a restructuring program known as perestroika that eventually led to the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. He spoke a day after he joined Chancellor Angela Merkel and current world leaders in the German capital to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago.
As Soviet leader, Gorbachev pursued a policy of detente with the U.S. while overseeing the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in 1989 after grappling with an unsuccessful decade- long presence in the country.
Disputed Election
Obama is considering a military request to send as many as 40,000 more U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan, on top of the 68,000 due to be stationed there by the end of the year. Other North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces, comprising personnel from 42 countries, number about 36,000.
The U.S. troop review has been complicated by increased Taliban attacks and by a disputed victory for the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, in this year’s presidential election.
Speaking in Berlin yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded that Karzai step up efforts to tackle corruption. Karzai was re-appointed president by Afghanistan’s electoral commissioners Nov. 2 following former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah’s decision to pull out of a runoff election.
In response to an Oct. 28 attack on United Nations staff by Taliban militants that killed five of the agency’s workers in a Kabul guesthouse, the UN last week announced it would move about 600 of its international staff members and remove some from the country.
Brezhnev’s Gamble
Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev sent tanks into Afghanistan to support a Marxist regime in 1979, betting superior firepower from the ground and air would keep the country within Moscow’s fold. Soviet aims were thwarted by an Islamist mujahedeen movement supported by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the U.S.
While there was support in the Moscow establishment, Gorbachev as the general secretary of the Communist Party concluded that Soviet objectives couldn’t be achieved.
“We thought that that would lead nowhere,” Gorbachev said. “So we started to disengage our troops from any kind of hostilities in Afghanistan.”
The pullout began in 1988 and ended in February of 1989, nine months before the Berlin Wall fell.
The Taliban, an outcrop of the mujahedeen that dominated Afghanistan in the 1990s, took control of most of the country in 1996. The U.S.-led invasion five years later, following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was meant to displace the Taliban, accused of harboring the terrorist group al-Qaeda.
American ‘Perestroika’
Gorbachev said that relations between Russia and the U.S. are improving as America undergoes its own perestroika, or rebuilding, which he said had begun with the election of Obama as president last year.
“America should implement perestroika in the context of American society,” Gorbachev said. “I believe that people of America, most of them who voted in these elections -- and most of them voted for Obama -- did vote for change.”
Asked whether Obama could trust Russia’s current leadership, President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the former Soviet leader said it would have to be a process. He cited his first meeting with former President Ronald Reagan in Geneva in 1985; after the two leaders met one-on-one, they shared their thoughts on each other with their delegations.
“He’s a real dinosaur, a man from the past,” Gorbachev remembered saying. “Do you think that Reagan had a better view of me? He said: ‘Gorbachev is a die-hard Bolshevik.’ So that was the beginning.”
By Chris Burns and Patrick Donahue
Gorbachev and company tried to take over the country and got their butts kick . The current effort is to stabalize the country, it may seem like a small difference but it entails haveing the locals govern themselves. ( corruption and all)
The problem is nobody has bothered to do a reasonable time line for this or they have and don't want to publish it , it will take probably 20 years nobody wants to admit this for obvious reasons . As soon as people come to the realization that the voting public does in fact like information as opposed to what teh powers that be decide is good for us large numebrs of things will go much smnoother
The problem is nobody has bothered to do a reasonable time line for this or they have and don't want to publish it , it will take probably 20 years nobody wants to admit this for obvious reasons . As soon as people come to the realization that the voting public does in fact like information as opposed to what teh powers that be decide is good for us large numebrs of things will go much smnoother
I am not able to see much difference. The soviets put in a quisling government also.
The difference is the people actually voted for this one some of them several times as a matter of fact.
As I pointed out this process will take a generation there is no easy way to deal with the issues, time is the only way. As people start graduating from schools and a real middle class developes the country will settle down as the urge to upset the apple cart disappears. If you have a vested interest in the apple cart you don't want it upset.
The problem now is he vested interests are the old power brokers they need to go, the problem is there will not be anybody to replace them for a long time.
As I pointed out this process will take a generation there is no easy way to deal with the issues, time is the only way. As people start graduating from schools and a real middle class developes the country will settle down as the urge to upset the apple cart disappears. If you have a vested interest in the apple cart you don't want it upset.
The problem now is he vested interests are the old power brokers they need to go, the problem is there will not be anybody to replace them for a long time.
You are right, thinks could change in a generation. But there is no way in
this world that the western powers will stay in Afghanistan that long.
They are not being shot at so much.
Getting into fire fights with NATO forces is a reckless stupid thing to do.
Even if they were being shot at so much, it takes a very small percentage of the population to do the shooting and this is in no way an indication of the popular support of the civilians.
That is similar logic to saying that if one of my neighbors were to murder me, that therefore I must not have been very popular in the area where I live.
That is utterly different from the police having interviewed the neighborhood saying in the aftermath 'all but one person in the entire town despised him.'
Good thing the Russians are not arming the Taliban with weapons like Stinger missiles.
the russian version of the stinger sucked huge, it killed more russians with launch explosions than it did enemy.
The Nato forces are not really being shot at much, IEDF's are a different thing they can be placed without much risk and detonated from a distance.
You pop up and shot at an LAV you are going to get a whole pile of really pissed off infantry doing their best to explain the error of your ways to you, in a manor that will stay with you for ever or the next 20 seconds which ever comes first....
The Nato forces are not really being shot at much, IEDF's are a different thing they can be placed without much risk and detonated from a distance.
You pop up and shot at an LAV you are going to get a whole pile of really pissed off infantry doing their best to explain the error of your ways to you, in a manor that will stay with you for ever or the next 20 seconds which ever comes first....
If you want to use that analogy, which by the way is poor, you would have to
add the circumstance that other of your neighbours were aiding and abating
the one who murdered you.
A guerilla force cannot exist without the support of a good portion of the
population. Read Mao.
That however, doesn't mean actively like or support, so much as it means not willing to "rat out."
The point, which obvious went straight over your head, is that the war would be going much worse now if the Russians were interfering like the West did to them.
Unless the Russians are intervening now, it is not a fair comparison.
Lack of resistance does not mean support.
Given the free choice, I'd say that the vast majority of human beings are in favour of freedom and human rights.
I think it is also safe to say that the vast majority of Afghan women are also in favour of women's rights.
And I think it is safe to say that the vast majority of Afghan people are against the
occupation by foreign troops.
read what even the puppet president says about foreigners in Afghanistan:
Letting Afghanistan slide back into a Islamofacist state, because of a precipitous withdrawal will prove disastrous.
