Posted on 10/06/2015 6:59:21 AM PDT by Trumpinator
Surprise! The Soviets Nearly Won Afghan War
December 26, 2004|Mark Kramer | Mark Kramer is director of the Harvard Cold War studies program and a senior fellow at the university's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian studies.
Twenty-five years ago, on Christmas Eve, Soviet troops marched into Afghanistan with the aim of restoring order in a few months. Nine years later they withdrew amid continued violence. In their wake, civil war erupted and the Taliban rose to power, providing a haven to Al Qaeda.
Critics of the U.S. military effort in Iraq often cite the Soviet experience in Afghanistan as evidence that using foreign troops to put down an insurgency is bound to fail. But that "lesson" is misleading because it depends on a depiction of the Soviet-Afghan war that is downright inaccurate.
When Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan, they initially failed to protect their logistical and communications lines. But Soviet commanders quickly corrected these mistakes and brought in better troops, including helicopter pilots trained for mountain warfare. From mid-1980 on, the Afghan guerrillas never seized any major Soviet facilities or prevented major troop deployments and movements.
When Soviet generals shifted, in mid-1983, to a counterinsurgency strategy of scorched-earth tactics and the use of heavily armed special operations forces, their progress against the guerrillas accelerated. Over the next few years, the Soviets increased their control of Afghanistan, inflicting many casualties -- guerrilla and civilian. Had it not been for the immense support -- weapons, training, materials -- provided to the Afghan guerrillas by the United States, Saudi Arabia, China and Pakistan, Soviet troops would have achieved outright victory.
Even with all the outside military assistance, Afghan guerrillas were often helpless when facing the Soviet military machine. Raids conducted by Soviet airborne and helicopter forces were especially effective.
(Excerpt) Read more at articles.latimes.com ...
I remember the number 70,000 dead Russian soldiers in Afghanistan. That’s worse than our Vietnam.
“Reagan’s genius was giving the Afghanis the means to fight their own war, to protect their own land and people.”
Exactly what we should be doing today. We do not need to send any of our fighting men to those places unless they are willing to fight as hard as we do/did.
,,,,,, pure bull$h!+ !!!
...horseshoes and hand grenades...
The only question worth asking is whether the Russian military has a Creighton Abrams-style general officer who has put the army /military back together. And if so, who is he?
Balkans intervention = Grenada.
Georgia = Panama
Ukraine = Desert Shield
Syria = Desert Storm (Are the ready for prime time? Prove it.)
Putin is carving out a nice little defensible enclave for his client Assad. Crimean naval base has been recovered, Syrian/Mediterranean naval base is next. Business is business.
Well...to be fair, they did come in second place.
That is the nature of insurgency warfare though. Either go scorched earth, which no modern power is willing to do so far, or periodically mow the grass.
Personally I think the people who are behind these movements are the ones who need to be targets. Don’t go for nameless bolshevik rabble, go for Lenin, or his wife. Bring it home to the agitators of trouble. An example is Reagan taking it to Kaddaffi personally back in the day.
It’s hard to let go of preconceptions...
Oh yeah. How did funding and training mujaheddin work out?
Besides, Reagan continued a Jimmy Carter program.
The biggest f*** up by any CIC in history.
These same mujaheddin have spread throughout the world. Yeah, heap praise on that . Blow back , baby.
Suggested reading materiel.
I love the quote from Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, concerned about the growing strength of the Islamist movement, told President George H. W. Bush, "You are creating a Frankenstein."
Right now the Taliban are being aided by American ally Pakistan. That is insane. The Taliban would collapse if Pakistan just arrested all the Taliban leaders living in luxury there but they won't. Pakistan hates that we overthrew the Taliban who they created to take control of Afghanistan.
Pakistan has been most responsible for the failure to destroy the Taliban followed by the Gulf Arab states.
The only people who can’t beat them are the lawyers.
Quote: “Nope - the Soviets won in Afghanistan. The famed Mujahaddin had slunk back to the refugee camps in Pakistan, demoralized, dejected, and defeated. I was there, I saw it. It was August, 1986, and the Mujhaddin had given up. The Soviets had won.”
But that wasn’t the game. Territory wasn’t the game. Bleeding the Soviet Union was the game. This is what I mean by history in a vacuum. Absent the U.S. facing the Soviet Union, in a world where it was the Soviets v. the Taliban and Mujahaddin, yes, the Soviets win!!! But that wasn’t the world they were in. The Soviets were in a world where they could ill afford a scintilla of blood or treasure, not one scintilla.
‘unless they are willing to fight as hard as we do/did’
Sorry.....our guys aren’t ALLOWED to fight the way we used to fight. Obama’s ROE have nearly neutered our brave Warriors. And they will be prosecuted if they stray from those ridiculous ROE.
Why are you arguing with Dr Wheeler's description? He was there. Am I the only one who knows who Dr. Wheeler is in this frame of reference?
14,453 Soviet troops were killed, an average of 1,600 a year. This was not a trivial number, but certainly sustainable for the Soviet army, which numbered more than 4 million.
Reagans' blunder. We should have butted out. Islamists were a bigger potential problem than The USSR.
We don't know if the Afghan war on the Soviets helped end the Cold War. It is more likely that communism was failing regardless and it was not long for this world. In other words, if the Afghan war never happened the USSR would have fallen just the same.
We are lucky in that unlike the Chinese, who ditched communism while maintaining a one party state, the Soviets held onto their ideology until the bitter end. Gorby tried to do what the Chinese pulled off but the rot of communism was too far ensconced within the Soviet system to be reformed.
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