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 ...
So you’re in favor of the mujaheddin? You support them. Even though they’ve slaughtered Americans the world over?
Syria does not have Afghanistan’s mountains
“Much as we don’t have much use for Islam, Godless Marxism is more expansionist and at least as crushing to the human spirit.”
That is true, but also not terribly relevant today. The more aggressive and more soul crushing ideology today is this disgusting transnational, ill defined, feel good suffocation of all distinct nations and cultures. This is a Western perversion (as was Marxism) and it is one our nation is vigorously promoting along with the EU and the UN.
The principal threat to humanity today is this amorphous transnational bureaucracy. This recent Islamic spew is in furtherance of those transnational objectives, which every American president since 1989 has promoted over our national interests.
The same Europeons that are being flooded with mujaheddin now. They’ll be thankful that the US created , funded and nourished them. Not only back then, but now, as evidenced by Obunga’s actions and inactions.
Hey they came in second! That’s pretty good, right?
One thing being in Afghanistan did, was to stop the Russians from invading Poland in 1980, when Jaruzelski begged the Soviets to intervene to stop Solidarity, the Soviets told them they could not do it because of their war in Afghanistan.
That’s an interesting theory. I will read up on it. I have read or heard in lectures that the main effect of the Soviet failure in Afghanistan was that the feared Red Army was not so feared after that.
Thanks, it looks like that old memory of 70,000 was killed or injured. Wiki shows all the people who got sick and the equipment they lost too.
1,600 dead Soviet troops sounds like maybe half died from drunken accidents rather than fighting.
I know I read - but can't find source now - that most of the Soviet regular forces in Afghanistan were themselves from the 'Stans except for the special forces and officer corps and engineering battalions.
You and I both know that's a faulty comparison, and you ignored the cause-and-effect value of my statement. The primary reason the Soviets were thrown back in Afghanistan is the military assistance the mujahedin received from the U.S. and other western countries. Does that help now?
Possibly, but Afghanistan would've been a far less hospitable training environment without the Taliban in power.
They must have been getting ready to break out the horseshoes because the “almost” of the hand grenades just wasn’t cutting it.
I don’t think Reagan’s support of the Afghan resistance was evil or imprudent either, based on what was going on then. It was part of the overall siege operation against the Soviet Union, which was the most important issue of the day, Reagan’s main objective and the principal reason I had the pleasure of voting for him twice. I only have one serious complaint against Reagan, and that is that he did not have a worthy successor lined up.
I is 20/20 hindsight, but we should have let them win.
We helped the Mujahadeen, they won, the Soviets left. We let Trascanistan ferment for a couple of decades under them, and Voila! 9/11.
I can’t wait for the bill from Iraq and Syria to come due in 20-30 years.
“I know I read - but can’t find source now - that most of the Soviet regular forces in Afghanistan were themselves from the ‘Stans except for the special forces and officer corps and engineering battalions.”
Interesting. I did not know that. Did that have any bearing on subsequent events in Chechnya that you are aware of?
Then there is the whole issue of trusting anything any Russian says. They have their own Bagdad Bob network that really know their business.
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