How the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan

Throughout the occupation, Soviet leaders launched a series of initiatives aimed at helping their Afghan allies stand on their own feet — to gain domestic and international legitimacy and to develop the wherewithal to fight off insurgent campaigns. This would in turn allow the Soviets to withdraw honorably. Each effort was announced with great fanfare, implemented and eventually found wanting.

Years of economic and development aid — employing thousands of Soviet specialists and costing billions of rubles — were found to have been largely wasted because of poor planning and corruption, and programs were pared back. The advisers the Soviet Union had placed at every level of the Afghan government, military and ruling party were doing the Afghans’ work for them, rather than developing competent and independent bureaucratic cadres, and Gorbachev withdrew them. Ambassadors were changed, generals shuffled, military strategies adjusted. Special forces were used with increasing frequency, and there was an effort to push the Afghan military into taking a more prominent role in operations — an effort made more difficult because Soviet officers often didn’t trust the Afghans.

Vickers

What a remarkable career. At least now I know who the smart former Green Beret from Charlie Wilson's War is...

U.S. deploying heavily armored battle tanks for first time in Afghan war

Break out those tanker boots...

Veterans of Soviet war see the same mistakes being made

"Everything has already been tried."
-General Igor Rodionov, former commander of the USSR's 40th Army

More scalps...

Another decent piece by Ralph Peters. I don't usually agree with him, but often times he makes some good (but often over the top) points. Here is an excerpt:

Yet, in Afghanistan, we've put the bulk of our efforts into turning a vast flophouse into the Four Seasons -- instead of focusing ruthlessly on our terrorist enemies. It's politically correct madness.

What we really need is just a compact, lethal force of special operators, intelligence resources and air assets, along with sufficient conventional forces for protection and punitive raids. More troops just mean more blood and frustration...

Our hunter-killer task forces should be deployed on a limited number of strategically positioned bases supported by air. Don't worry about the Afghan government -- Afghans don't.

The other alternative -- sending still more troops to die for Washington's fantasy of a Disney-World Afghanistan -- is disgraceful. Stop building sewage systems. Take scalps...

In Afghanistan, we're asking Hutus to fight for Tutsis and Hatfields to guard McCoys...

The Soviets and their Afghan cronies lost because their enemies were willing to sacrifice more -- to give their lives for their heritage, however backward and cruel.

Afghans are willing to fight. They're just not willing to fight for us.

An Old Afghanistan Hand Offers Lessons of the Past

Nearly 20 years after Soviet troops withdrew in humiliation, in February 1989, Mr. Kabulov has become a gloomy oracle, warning that the fate that overtook the Russians here may be relived by the Americans and their coalition partners.

"They've already repeated all of our mistakes," he said, speaking of what the United States has done ― and failed to do ― since the Taliban were toppled from power in November 2001 and American troops began moving into old Soviet bases like the one at Bagram, north of Kabul.

"Now, they're making mistakes of their own, ones for which we do not own the copyright."

The list of American failures comes quickly. Like the Soviets, Mr. Kabulov said, the Americans "underestimated the resistance," thinking that because they swept into Kabul easily, the occupation would be untroubled. "Because we deployed very easily into the major cities, we didn't give much thought to what was happening in the countryside," where the stirrings of opposition that grew into a full-fledged insurgency began, he said.

He places that blunder in the context of a wider failure to understand the "irritative allergy" among Afghans to foreign occupation, one that every invading power since the British in the 1840s has come to rue, and which, Mr. Kabulov said, grows into a fire if the invaders, especially non-Muslims, don't pull out soon. "One of our mistakes was staying, instead of leaving," he said. "After we changed the regime, we should have handed over and said goodbye. But we didn't. And the Americans haven't, either."

Confronted by an elusive insurgency and unable to maintain a presence in the hinterland because of a lack of troops, the Soviets, like the Americans, resorted to an overreliance on heavy weapons, especially airpower, he said. The resulting casualties among the civilian population only worsened the situation.

Below is a great clip from Charlie Wilson's War that seems appropriate given the subject matter: