Afghanistan deja-vu: Lessons from the Soviet experience

[WoodPeckr]

Letting Afghanistan slide back into a Islamofacist state, because of a precipitous withdrawal will prove disastrous.

If you are so concerned then you, your friends and your children should sign up and go over there and save them from that happening instead of preaching BS here on Terb...

As IKE said, "When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it."

 

[Rockslinger]

Been analyzed to death. The standard explanation for Malaya is that the revolutionaries were largely ethnic Chinese who were culturally and linguistically distinct from the majority Malays and that their credo never spread.

Malaysia is an interesting case study. When the Brits were ready to grant Malaysia independence, the minority ethnic Chinese said that these folks can't get along with anybody. The Brits wisely carved Singapore out of Malaysia and said that this belongs to the Chinese. It is amazing that Singapore and Hong Kong are two of the most successful societies on Earth.

 

[Aardvark154]

Been analyzed to death. The standard explanation for Malaya. . . .

Indeed there were differences between Malaya and Vietnam, and in the same way there are huge differences between Vietnam and anywhere else.

The past holds lessons for the present. That does not mean that history is a road map or set of traffic directions.

 

[WoodPeckr]

This just shows you are no student of history....

 

[Malibook]

If you are so concerned then you, your friends and your children should sign up and go over there and save them from that happening instead of preaching BS here on Terb...

Are you against violent crimes?
By your logic, you should volunteer to do the job that the police are paid and trained to do.

Perhaps people who are concerned about fires should volunteer to do the job that firemen are paid and trained to do too.

Nobody in the armed forces has been drafted.

The mission in Afghanistan is in response to 9/11 and there is no distinction between the terrorists and those who harboured them.
It was a decision made by governments that were elected by their people.
The mission continues with the support of governments that have since been newly elected and re-elected by their people.
Of course everybody longs for the day when our troops come home but that reality has not been reached.
When it should be reached is debatable and up to our elected governments to decide.

 

[Aardvark154]

Are you against violent crimes?
By your logic, you should volunteer to do the job that the police are paid and trained to do.

Perhaps people who are concerned about fires should volunteer to do the job that firemen are paid and trained to do too.

Nobody in the armed forces has been drafted.

It also presumes:

That others have not already served.

Further that service is the be all and end all.

Under this logic either The President of the United States, nor the Prime Ministers of Canada or the U.K. (and their past several predecessors) (leaving aside the Constitutional niceties) had any legitimacy in committing or continuing to commit the military to action, since none of them had served in the military. An utterly nonsensical position.

 

[chiller_boy]

It also presumes:

That others have not already served.

Further that service is the be all and end all.

Under this logic either The President of the United States, nor the Prime Ministers of Canada or the U.K. (and their past several predecessors) (leaving aside the Constitutional niceties) had any legitimacy in committing or continuing to commit the military to action, since none of them had served in the military. An utterly nonsensical position.

OK. lets put it another way. Would you want your son(or grandson) to join the army and fight in Afganistan? And, if the answer is genuinely NO, would you then want someone else's son or grandson to do the fighting??

And note that previous wars like ww11, WW1 and Korea and Vietnam all had drafts. So do you think as Barney Frank proposed, that we should institute a daft for wars like Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

[Aardvark154]

note that previous wars like ww11, WW1 and Korea and Vietnam all had drafts.

For clarification. Korea and Vietnam were both during the period of the Cold War, and National Service was very much the mood in most places. However, in both the First and Second World Wars the draft was only instituted after there were not enough volunteers (and generally was for the Army only, not many, if any draftees in the Navy and Air Force).

It is interesting that Representative Frank is “hot to trot” on this since many of those in his Congressional District are those who in years previous argued about how conscription was immoral, you don't suppose that he believes they are more likely to be upset with the Military, than turn him out of office.

 

[Malibook]

OK. lets put it another way. Would you want your son(or grandson) to join the army and fight in Afganistan?

No but that is irrelevant as they are free to choose their own career.

I wouldn't want my son to be a cop who is being shot at either but if that was the profession that he chose and that is the job that he is being paid to do, that is reality.

 

[fuji]

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB292/index.htm

This document entirely overlooks the reality of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, which was the reality that it was in fact a war with the United States.

The Soviet military position in Afghanistan deteriorated proportionally with the number of hundreds of millions of dollars the US Congress authorized in terms of arms shipments, training, and other support for the Afghan resistance.

US military analysts would go into Afghanistan and look at what the Soviet tactics were, then return with the appropriate weapons and train the resistance on how to use them.

They did not kill soviets using primitive pipe bombs, they had all sorts of advanced anti-tank weapons, anti-aircraft missiles, and other doodads provided by the United States.

In the current war there is NOTHING like that.

The Taliban have money from drug sales to buy arms, but they do not have a sophisticated military standing behind them advising them of their every step, and making sure their weapons and tactics are well adapted to the enemy.

Instead of fighting with advanced, modern military hardware as against the soviets they are fighting with light arms and home-made pipe bombs.

You can clearly see the differences in the casualty figures.

The Soviet Union *bled* in Afghanistan, significantly, losing many, many, many troops to the heavily armed, well trained Taliban that the US put into the field against them.

American casualties there today are, by contract, a series of little pin pricks.

It's ridiculous to compare the two.

Yes, it's true that in both cases there was no ultimate military solution to the problem. The solution will have to be a political solution in the end, obviously.

However the United States was able to inflict far heavier casualties on the Soviets while they sought that political solution, than anybody today is inflicting on coalition forces in Afghanistan.

 

[WoodPeckr]

However the United States was able to inflict far heavier casualties on the Soviets while they sought that political solution, than anybody today is inflicting on coalition forces in Afghanistan.

True.
Still it remains a war of empire and nothing worth taking pride in....

 

[mandrill]

Indeed there were differences between Malaya and Vietnam, and in the same way there are huge differences between Vietnam and anywhere else.

My problem is that the similarities between Afghanistan and Viet Nam seem to outweigh the differences. In both countries, you have a nationalist movement which is opposed to the US and supported - or at least acquiesced in - by the bulk of the people. In both countries, the issue seems to be whether this nationalist movement can be subdued by any reasonably proportionate use of Western power.

I am prepared to listen to your list of strategically significant differences.

 

[Rockslinger]

The mission in Afghanistan is in response to 9/11 and there is no distinction between the terrorists and those who harboured them.

There must be less costly and more efficient ways of curtailing the Taliban and Al Qaeda than to try and turn a 12th century country into a modern democracy. The SAS and/or Delta Force could probably have killed or captured OBL by now. Also, the Taliban are only interested in subjugating their own people, they had no quarrels with the West.

 

[onthebottom]

And Iraq was Vietnam right?

OTB

 

[Malibook]

There must be less costly and more efficient ways of curtailing the Taliban and Al Qaeda than to try and turn a 12th century country into a modern democracy. The SAS and/or Delta Force could probably have killed or captured OBL by now. Also, the Taliban are only interested in subjugating their own people, they had no quarrels with the West.

Delta Force had a good chance to take out Bin Laden at Tora Bora but their plans were thwarted by higher ups.

The Hunt For Bin Laden-60 Minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmtPBTybQ9k

I don't think the Taliban were directly involved with 9/11 but they provided a safe haven for Al-Qaeda and harboured Bin Laden.
They had the choice of handing over Bin Laden or face the consequences.

If the US stayed out of Iraq and focused on Afghanistan, the mission would have been much more successful and the World would be a much better place.
It would have been nice to have some real support from more NATO countries too.

 

[WoodPeckr]

There must be less costly and more efficient ways of curtailing the Taliban and Al Qaeda than to try and turn a 12th century country into a modern democracy. The SAS and/or Delta Force could probably have killed or captured OBL by now. Also, the Taliban are only interested in subjugating their own people, they had no quarrels with the West.

There is!
However the MIC and the Merchants of Death wouldn't make as much money off that and them making money is what this is all about.....

 

[seth gecko]

Summary -- With its new policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Obama administration has taken ownership of an orphaned conflict. But can it achieve victory, and how?

MILTON BEARDEN served as CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, where he was responsible for that agency's covert action program in support of the Afghan resistance to the Soviet-supported government.

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Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires
Milton Bearden
The first engagement in the new war on terrorism -- with Osama bin Ladin in Afghanistan -- poses severe challenges for the United States. Rooting out bin Ladin's network will require military success in a country that the Soviet Union could not conquer in ten years of trying, as well as support from unstable surrounding nations. Washington may be tempted to try to oust the Taliban regime, but doing so could rekindle Afghanistan's brutal civil war. The United States must proceed with caution -- or end up on the ash heap of Afghan history.
Since the United States first dispatched troops to Afghanistan in October 2001, the war in Afghanistan has been an orphan of U.S. policy. But with the release last week of a revamped U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, the conflict has, by default, become Barack Obama's war.

In a Foreign Affairs essay from November/December 2001, I chronicled the disasters that have befallen all foreign invaders of Afghanistan, from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union. Now, more than seven years into the U.S. intervention, the Obama administration must confront many of the same problems faced by all previous occupiers of this rugged land. How the United States manages its presence there over the next year will determine if it can break the pattern.

When Obama announced his policy for the region, he did not speak of a U.S. exit strategy -- a wise decision, as doing so would have diminished the United States' already limited ability to influence events in either Pakistan or Afghanistan. In Pakistan, Washington's allies are deeply suspicious that the United States will once again retire from the field, leaving them holding the bag. In Afghanistan, meanwhile, those fighting the United States are prepared to hunker down and wait for when they sense a U.S. withdrawal policy is in the wind. If the United States were to declare an exit strategy up front, it would only play to those instincts and make the already long odds of success even longer.

Others -- especially the anti-war wing of the Democratic party -- fear that Obama's strategy risks pushing the United States deeper into the bog of Afghanistan. But, in fact, the United States is already about as deep in the Afghan bog as a foreign military enterprise can get. The president's plan and the team that will execute it -- Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, Richard Holbrooke, and David Petraeus -- must have a fresh approach and a touch of boldness if they are to have any chance of success.

The United States is already about as deep in the Afghan bog as a foreign military enterprise can get. At the moment, the snows are melting in the high mountain passes along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the new fighting season will soon find its rhythm. As part of the Obama administration's strategy, the United States will dispatch another 17,000 soldiers to the volatile southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar and an additional 4,000 troops to train Afghan security forces.

These reinforcements will bring the total number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to about 60,000, with NATO countries providing another 30,000 soldiers. Some in Congress -- particularly those who supported the troop "surge" in Iraq -- have called for a similar increase in troop levels in Afghanistan. These calls, however, ignore the harsh constraints all foreign armies in Afghanistan have faced over the centuries -- the nature of Afghanistan's Pashtun fighters and the tortured terrain that offers them a home-field advantage from hell.

The Soviet Union had 120,000 troops in the country for most of its decade-long occupation, from 1979 to 1989. In the end, it lost. After-action assessments conducted in the Soviet Union and United States of the Soviet failure concluded that about 500,000 troops would have been needed to "pacify" Afghanistan. And even if the Red Army could have mustered some of the extra troops, the country's terrain would have blocked their deployment; a labyrinth of roadless mountains and twisting valleys denied the Soviet Union the capacity to effectively supply a force larger than about 120,000 soldiers. Two decades later, these realities have not changed much for the current U.S.-led effort.

In June 2008, General Dan McNeill, the former commander of the International Security Assistance Force, told Der Spiegel that it would take 400,000 troops to mollify Afghanistan. Although McNeill's assertion was challenged at the time by some in the Bush administration, the Pentagon today would probably put the number of troops needed to bring calm to the country -- the military solution -- even higher: at approximately half a million. These numbers are simply beyond contemplation for the United States and NATO.

In early April, NATO members pledged an additional 5,000 troops and trainers for Afghanistan. Even if these numbers actually materialize, however, they will have little effect on the combat tempo of the war. Some Pentagon officials quietly acknowledge that even the planned increase of U.S. troop levels by another 21,000 may only replace departing NATO forces over the next two years.

With a military solution effectively out of reach, the immediate task for the Obama administration will be to redefine its mission. The first step would be to reclassify its adversaries in Afghanistan and the border areas of Pakistan. Committed al Qaeda fighters should be shown no quarter. The Taliban, however, range from irreconcilable Salafist fanatics and narco-traffickers to bored punks carrying Kalashnikovs for less than ten dollars a day. Although a small percentage of hardened fighters may need to be hunted down, most Taliban members and sympathizers should be viewed as targets for reconciliation.

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[seth gecko]

.........During the Bush administration, U.S. efforts at reconciliation with Afghan adversaries were half-hearted at best and either ignorant or dismissive of the rich history of Afghan deal-making. During the Soviet occupation, for example, Ahmad Shah Masoud, a leader in the anti-Soviet resistance, maintained contact with Soviet military intelligence and was able to work out temporary ceasefires when it suited both sides. In recent years, similar agreements between rivals such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former mujahideen leader and now militant commander, and General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a former pro-Soviet warlord and an influential leader of Afghanistan's Uzbek community, suggest that the harshest foes can reconcile, however fleetingly. The United States can provide the security conditions for such reconciliation efforts to work -- indeed, this may become the prime objective of coalition forces in the coming months.

But it is the Afghans, particularly leaders in the Afghan National Army, who will have to lead. National elections are now set for August. Coalition forces must immediately begin to create security conditions that will allow all Afghans -- not just those in the so-called quiet areas -- to go to the polls. Without a significant Pashtun turnout in the east and south, the result of the election will be ethnically skewed and almost certain to fuel a continued sense of disenfranchisement and an armed resistance among the Pashtuns. This is especially dangerous given that the election is already viewed by many Afghans as a product of American manipulation.

The United States has declared that it will not support or oppose any candidate for the Afghan presidency. But these declarations of neutrality are undermined by Washington's enthusiastic endorsement of the Afghan Supreme Court's decision allowing Hamid Karzai to extend his current term from the end of May -- when it expires -- until the August elections. The Obama administration's approval of the court's decision is already being interpreted in Pashtun circles as coded support for Karzai's reelection.

Ideally, the Afghan people will elect as their leader in August an admired Pashtun figure -- preferably a respected veteran of the resistance against the Soviet occupation. This would give the majority Pashtun population a stake in the political process and initiate the first steps toward national reconciliation. In addition, a strong Pashtun president would be able to develop an indigenous security solution, pursue a dialogue with those Pashtuns bearing arms against government and coalition forces, and be less confrontational with Pakistan.

With a military solution effectively out of reach, the immediate task for the Obama administration will be to redefine its mission. No matter who is elected president, Kabul will have to adjust the relationship it has with other power centers in the provinces. The appointment of provincial governors by the central government has created a cronyism that encourages runaway corruption in the country. Local elections for governors would lessen the opportunities for corruption and improve regional security -- both of which would go a long way toward aiding ongoing reconstruction efforts.

To realize its goals in Afghanistan, the United States will also have to address instability in Pakistan. The war is in essence a Pashtun insurgency that draws fighters from a pool of 15 million ethnic Pashtuns in Afghanistan and 25 million more in Pakistan. It is the same population that worked closely with Pakistan and the United States as it fought the Soviet Army two decades ago. This time, however, the Pakistani government has sided with the foreign forces in Afghanistan, and as a result, the Pashtun insurgency has now spread to Islamabad's doorstep.

Among many Pakistanis, repeated U.S. lectures about the battle with extremists being as much Pakistan's war as it is the United States' are wearing thin. These warnings might elicit more understanding if they included U.S. acknowledgement of the cause-and-effect relationship between Pakistan's problems within its borders and past U.S. military strategies in Afghanistan. A little honesty on the part of the United States would go a long way.

Regardless of the calls from some members of Congress for a get-tough approach to Islamabad, there is simply no alternative to a strong U.S. alliance with Pakistan. The overwhelming majority of supplies vital to the U.S.-led effort in Afghanistan flow through Pakistan. The United States is now negotiating with Russia and the Central Asian republics for new supply routes, but they are geographically complex and would come with great logistical costs, not to mention the surely Faustian deal that Russia would likely pursue in exchange for helping U.S. forces in the area of its lost empire.

As the United States deepens its relationship with Pakistan, it will also have to engage India as a regional player in Afghanistan. This should include a frank conversation among India, Iran, Pakistan, and the United States on India's growing involvement in Afghanistan. Pakistan has always sought -- but never fully achieved -- a "safe" western flank in Afghanistan as a hedge against India, its traditional adversary. Pakistanis at all levels view India's activities in Afghanistan -- such as road-building projects, development programs, and military cooperation -- as a security threat. Unless the United States takes those concerns seriously, any U.S. effort to convince Pakistan to move more forcefully against Islamic militants in its hinterlands will be undermined.

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[seth gecko]

.......Every foreign power to enter Afghanistan in the last 2,500 years has faced these challenges in one form or another. All failed to overcome them. The likelihood of the United States breaking this pattern is slight. It is becoming clear, however, that the Obama administration at least understands the odds it faces.


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[seth gecko]

Now to provide some balance (I am non-political)

Summary -- The Taliban and al Qaeda may not pose enough of a threat to the United States to make a long war in Afghanistan worth the costs.

JOHN MUELLER is Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University. Among his books are Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them and the forthcoming Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al Qaeda.

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George W. Bush led the United States into war in Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein might give his country’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. Now, Bush’s successor is perpetuating the war in Afghanistan with comparably dubious arguments about the danger posed by the Taliban and al Qaeda.

President Barack Obama insists that the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is about "making sure that al Qaeda cannot attack the U.S. homeland and U.S. interests and our allies" or "project violence against" American citizens. The reasoning is that if the Taliban win in Afghanistan, al Qaeda will once again be able to set up shop there to carry out its dirty work. As the president puts it, Afghanistan would "again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can." This argument is constantly repeated but rarely examined; given the costs and risks associated with the Obama administration’s plans for the region, it is time such statements be given the scrutiny they deserve.

Multiple sources, including Lawrence Wright's book The Looming Tower, make clear that the Taliban was a reluctant host to al Qaeda in the 1990s and felt betrayed when the terrorist group repeatedly violated agreements to refrain from issuing inflammatory statements and fomenting violence abroad. Then the al Qaeda-sponsored 9/11 attacks -- which the Taliban had nothing to do with -- led to the toppling of the Taliban’s regime. Given the Taliban’s limited interest in issues outside the "AfPak" region, if they came to power again now, they would be highly unlikely to host provocative terrorist groups whose actions could lead to another outside intervention. And even if al Qaeda were able to relocate to Afghanistan after a Taliban victory there, it would still have to operate under the same siege situation it presently enjoys in what Obama calls its "safe haven" in Pakistan.

The very notion that al Qaeda needs a secure geographic base to carry out its terrorist operations, moreover, is questionable. After all, the operational base for 9/11 was in Hamburg, Germany. Conspiracies involving small numbers of people require communication, money, and planning -- but not a major protected base camp.

Given the Taliban’s limited interest in issues outside the “AfPak” region, if it came to power again now, it would be highly unlikely to host provocative terrorist groups whose actions could lead to another outside intervention. At present, al Qaeda consists of a few hundred people running around in Pakistan, seeking to avoid detection and helping the Taliban when possible. It also has a disjointed network of fellow travelers around the globe who communicate over the Internet. Over the last decade, the group has almost completely discredited itself in the Muslim world due to the fallout from the 9/11 attacks and subsequent counterproductive terrorism, much of it directed against Muslims. No convincing evidence has been offered publicly to show that al Qaeda Central has put together a single full operation anywhere in the world since 9/11. And, outside of war zones, the violence perpetrated by al Qaeda affiliates, wannabes, and lookalikes combined has resulted in the deaths of some 200 to 300 people per year, and may be declining. That is 200 to 300 too many, of course, but it scarcely suggests that "the safety of people around the world is at stake," as Obama dramatically puts it.

In addition, al Qaeda has yet to establish a significant presence in the United States. In 2002, U.S. intelligence reports asserted that the number of trained al Qaeda operatives in the United States was between 2,000 and 5,000, and FBI Director Robert Mueller assured a Senate committee that al Qaeda had "developed a support infrastructure" in the country and achieved both "the ability and the intent to inflict significant casualties in the U.S. with little warning." However, after years of well funded sleuthing, the FBI and other investigative agencies have been unable to uncover a single true al Qaeda sleeper cell or operative within the country. Mueller's rallying cry has now been reduced to a comparatively bland formulation: "We believe al Qaeda is still seeking to infiltrate operatives into the U.S. from overseas."

Even that may not be true. Since 9/11, some two million foreigners have been admitted to the United States legally and many others, of course, have entered illegally. Even if border security has been so effective that 90 percent of al Qaeda’s operatives have been turned away or deterred from entering the United States, some should have made it in -- and some of those, it seems reasonable to suggest, would have been picked up by law enforcement by now. The lack of attacks inside the United States combined with the inability of the FBI to find any potential attackers suggests that the terrorists are either not trying very hard or are far less clever and capable than usually depicted.

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