Russian envoy cautions US on Afghan troops surge

AP ^ | September 14, 2009

[Tailgunner Joe]

KABUL — Russia's ambassador to Afghanistan has some advice for top NATO commanders fighting the Taliban based on the Soviet Union's bitter experience battling Islamist insurgents here in the 1980s: Don't bring more troops.

"The more troops you bring the more troubles you will have here," Zamir Kabulov, a blunt-spoken veteran diplomat, told The Associated Press in an interview.

In 2002, he noted, there were roughly 5,000 U.S. soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and the Taliban controlled just a small corner of the country's southeast.

"Now we have Taliban fighting in the peaceful Kunduz and Baghlan (provinces) with your (NATO's) 100,000 troops," he said this week, sitting on a couch in the Russian Embassy in Kabul. "And if this trend is the rule, if you bring here 200,000 soldiers, all of Afghanistan will be under the Taliban."

Kabulov served as a Soviet diplomat in Afghanistan from 1983 to 1987, during the height of the Kremlin's 10-year Afghan war, when Soviet troop levels peaked at 140,000.

The Soviet war here, which is estimated to have cost the lives of 14,500 Soviet soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Afghans, ended in 1989 in a humiliating withdrawal.

Kabulov has little sympathy for the U.S. or NATO. He said the U.S. and its allies are competing with Russia for influence in the energy-rich region.

But the 55-year-old envoy speaks from experience, and NATO leaders have sought his advice.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the new top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, asked Kabulov a number of "precise" questions about the Soviet war at a diplomatic function last month, the Russian envoy said.

McChrystal is supervising the expansion of U.S. combat forces to 68,000 and is likely to soon request thousands of more troops. Forty-one other NATO countries have another 35,000 troops here.

[Thunder90]

Conclusion... The Russians want back in!

[SF_Redux]

Conclusion II, Russia is undermining

considering they finance and supply almost every enemy of the USA

[Zhang Fei]

In 2002, he noted, there were roughly 5,000 U.S. soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and the Taliban controlled just a small corner of the country's southeast. "Now we have Taliban fighting in the peaceful Kunduz and Baghlan (provinces) with your (NATO's) 100,000 troops," he said this week, sitting on a couch in the Russian Embassy in Kabul. "And if this trend is the rule, if you bring here 200,000 soldiers, all of Afghanistan will be under the Taliban."

The reason for 2002? The Taliban fought conventional pitched battles with us. We wiped out that batch. Now they have fresh recruits and are fighting guerrilla scale hit-and-run actions against our people hundreds of warriors at a time instead of putting up thousands of warriors to defend fixed positions, which we demolished with B-52 strikes. Precision bombing led the enemy to re-learn the lessons of Vietnam - hug your enemy by the belt (in part by using civilians as human shields) to minimize the effects of his firepower. I wonder if this Russian idiot is paid by the word for his opinions.