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 ...
This is rewriting history.
The Soviets got their ass kicked in Afghanistan.
Our State department was sending the Mujahedeen junk (WWI rifles, etc.) at first. Occasionally, they’d get lucky from a mountain. Eventually Reagan, or someone close enough to him, found out what was going on. Once the Afghanis got their mitts on Stingers, the Soviets were losing about one chopper a day. Very asymmetrical warfare.
Reagan’s genius was giving the Afghanis the means to fight their own war, to protect their own land and people.
“almost won” = lost
Then the soviets never had to fight a war under Obama’s ridiculous Rules of Engagement.
If you take what the writer says at face value, the Russians “lost” Afghanistan pretty much in the same way we “lost” Vietnam. Won most every battle. Decimated the enemy. Lost the political/propaganda war.
yes almost won = lost. But the lesson here is that in the absence of outside support, scorched earth tactics are effective. Think back to the end of our own civil war. Scorched earth tactics were adopted because it was recognized that the civilian population were an important component to the war effort. Sherman may have been hated, but he also made it impossible for many civilians to support the Confederate Army.
We nearly won Vietnam too.
And we almost won Vietnam if we hadn’t decided to lose it. Soooo, the authors point is what, exactly? Is it that if the Soviets had more time they would have been able to kill every man, woman and child in Afghanistan leaving nothing but earth? Or is it that somehow the Soviets were going to be able to ramp up operations in Afghanistan while trying to keep up with the Reagan military buildup of the U.S.?
Once again we see the revisionist exercise of “history in a vacuum.”
Almost . . .
Horseshoes . . .
Hand grenades . . .
I almost married Michelle Malkin, too.
LA Times is engaging in revisionist history. It’s well documented and accepted that shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles provided by the CIA to the Mujahideen enabled the precision for shooting down Soviet transport helicopters in mountainous terrain. Because the Mujahideen could exist indefinitely and plan attacks on villages and towns where Soviet forces camped, and then run back to mountainous regions for cover, there was no way the Soviets could ever win the peace.
That is how I take it. And as someone else pointed out above, “almost won” = LOST.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.sufi/SikrHjmi4oU
How the Soviets Won in Afghanistan And how the U.S. will win
By Dr. Jack Wheeler
Article at:
http://www.politicalusa.com/columnists/guest_columns/wheeler_006.htm
Won? Huh? The Soviets lost in Afghanistan, didn't they? They were humiliated and defeated in the Afghan quagmire that the US would helplessly sink into if it invaded now, right?
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 then, the Stinger missiles that Ronald Reagan had promised them finally arrived. On September 26, 1986, the first three Stingers were fired by the Muj and three Soviet aircraft were shot down out of the sky. The refugee camps erupted, the Muj poured back into Afghanistan aflame with renewed passion. Over the next 28 months, Stingers would shoot down hundreds of Soviet Hind helicopter gunships and MiG fighter jets. The skies cleared, the Muj fought with fury, and on February 15, 1989, the Soviets retreated back to the Soviet Union.
Ronald Reagan's Stinger missiles defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan, not the vaunted Mujahaddin. Before the Stingers, the Soviets had won. After the Stingers, they lost. So the question for the US military, as it contemplates sending ground forces into the "Afghan quagmire," is: what tactics did the Soviets use to demoralize and defeat the Afghan guerrillas as of August 1986?
The short answer is one word: Speznaz. Speznaz were the small commando teams of Red Army Special Forces. As long as the Soviets fought the Muj with infantry tactics - tanks and lots of ground troops - the Muj picked them off and cut them up. The early years of the war in Afghanistan were heroic - guys with single shot, bolt action, World War I (or before - I saw many Lee Enfields with dates stamped on the barrel like "1909") going straight up against the Red Army of the Soviet Union. By 1985, Egyptian and Chinese copies of Soviet weapons (like the AK-47 and RPG-7) were pouring into the Mujahaddin's hands via a US covert operation, and the Muj were confident of victory. But in the spring of 1986, I noticed a change. The Soviets had gotten smart. They switched their focus from infantry fighting to parachuting Speznaz commando teams into areas where bribed informers located Muj encampments. They would then hunt the target camp down, attacking and killing in the darkness of night. For months, the Speznaz teams did this relentlessly, so by the summer the Muj were flooding out of Afghanistan and giving up.
This provides an obvious lesson instructive for any US military assault on OBL (Osama Bin Laden) forces and their Taliban supporters. Massive Gulf War-type assaults are not the way to go. Swarm the country with teams of Navy SEALs, Green Berets, and other Special Forces. The Afghan people as a whole have been tyrannized by the Taliban worse than the Soviets, so legions of informers should be willing to provide accurate intelligence. It must be assumed that part of the deal Pakistan made with the US is the cooperation of the ISI, Inter-Services Intelligence, the Pak CIA. The Taliban were placed and kept in power through the support of the ISI, as a business arrangement between them to operate a billion dollar heroin smuggling operation. No folks know more about the Taliban than the ISI, who will now have to fork the info over. So the intel the Special Forces need will be available.
The country of Afghanistan is described as being one- quarter of an inch above the ground. No country in the world has been more smashed and beat up. The Afghan people have suffered unimaginably over the last quarter century. We do not need to add to their misery with some massive and massively destructive military attack. The Soviets' use of their Speznaz provide the blueprint for how to destroy OBL, his operation, the Taliban regime, and liberate Afghanistan from the hell it has been through.
Dr. Wheeler has been called the "real Indiana Jones" by the Wall St. Journal, the "creator of the Reagan Doctrine" by the Washington Post, and an "ideological gangster" by the Soviet press. He has traveled to 180 countries and all seven continents, and leads 3 to 4 expeditions a year.
An unintended consequence was the formation of a global radical jihadist movement that spawned the Taliban, AQ, and now ISIS.
And this was cost.
During the nine years of fighting, more than 2.5 million Afghans (mostly civilians) were killed or maimed; millions more were displaced or forced into exile. By contrast, 14,453 Soviet troops were killed, an average of 1,600 a year.
Not until we outfitted the Mujahedin with Stingers and other weaponry. The Soviets' gunships were decimating the Afghans.
Won? Huh? The Soviets lost in Afghanistan, didn't they? They were humiliated and defeated in the Afghan quagmire that the US would helplessly sink into if it invaded now, right?
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.
So in the modern sense, these ISIS and Taliban can be beaten - as long as they don't have anti-aircraft capabilities. The USA is not into the game of scorched earth and dirty warfare (SEALS tying up Afgahns rather than shooting them dead, etc).
INteresting post. Of the almost-wons of history, the most intriguing for me is that the colonials not only almost won but (if it hadn’t been for desertions on one side and a very experienced British commander on the other) should have won the Battle of Bunker Hill.
One of my two favorite books of military history:
http://www.amazon.com/Now-We-Are-Enemies-Bunker/dp/0984225668
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