Advice on Afghanistan from the Russians

A BBC report quotes Russian servicemen as cautioning the USA against its current strategy in Afghanistan.

As Russia marks the 20th anniversary of its withdrawal from Afghanistan, officials in Moscow are warning that US and Nato-led forces are making exactly the same mistakes as the Soviet Union made when it invaded the country in 1979.

The BBC's Richard Galpin has been speaking to experts and veterans, who remember the withdrawal after 10 years of occupation as a traumatic and humiliating experience.

Lt Gen Ruslan Aushev, a Hero of the Soviet Union, sports a moustache that hangs over his mouth like a heavy velvet curtain.

But from the dark morass emerge words of precision and directness that befit a much-decorated commander of the Soviet military venture in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

"We were there for 10 years and we lost more than 14,000 soldiers, but what was the result? Nothing," he tells me as we sit in his office on one of central Moscow's most fashionable streets.

"[After the Soviet withdrawal] there was a second civil war and then the Taleban appeared. We wanted to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan, but in fact everything got worse," he adds.

Such frank admissions of failure are common amongst the Russian veterans who are attending a series of commemorative events this weekend, exactly 20 years after the last Soviet troops left Afghanistan.

Experts say the Soviet government under Leonid Brezhnev had assumed their invasion in December 1979 would bring rapid results, stabilising the fledgling communist government in Kabul and thus ensuring the loyalty of an important neighbouring country at the height of the Cold War.

But instead of being able to leave within six months, the Soviet forces became bogged down in a protracted conflict with a tough and well-armed guerrilla force which received massive assistance from the West and the Muslim world.

Some of the Mujahideen, as the loosely-aligned groups of rebels became known, were radical Islamists for whom the fight against the godless communists was a jihad.

And crucially, the rebels enjoyed the support of the population.

Bitter experience

Now just 20 years later, the Russians are looking with astonishment at the way the US and Nato-led forces are waging their war in Afghanistan.

The view from Moscow is that the Western forces have learned nothing from the bitter experience of the Soviet Union.

Instead, they are falling into exactly the same trap.

One prime example is the current plan by the US to send tens of thousands of extra troops.

"Doubling their forces won't lead to a solution on the ground," says Col Oleg Kulakov, who served twice in Afghanistan and is now a lecturer and historian in Moscow.

"The conflict cannot be solved by military means, it's an illusion," he adds.

"No-one can reach any political goal in Afghanistan relying on military force. Frankly speaking, they are doomed to repeat our mistakes."

Parallels

There are many striking parallels.

Once again, invading foreign forces in Afghanistan are trying to stabilise a foreigner-friendly government.

Once again, they are facing a rebellion by Islamist militants who just happen to have a different generic name this time, "the Taleban".

Once again, the rebellion is growing in strength and has increasing support from the population as the occupation drags on inflicting a mounting number of civilian casualties.

There's more at the link.

I have enormous respect for General Petraeus, who used the 'surge' to stabilize Iraq, and hopes (I think) to do the same in Afghanistan using similar methods: but any student of the history of the North-West Frontier area keeps coming back to the same hard truth.

It has never, EVER, been stabilized, civilized, or brought under control.

Never. Not once. Not by the British in the days of the Raj; not by the Indian or Pakistani governments after independence; not by a succession of feeble Afghan governments; not by the Soviet Union; and not now by the present forces in that country.

It's going to take a miracle to change that particular lesson of history. I'll hope and pray for one: but in the absence of Divine intervention, I fear that current efforts are, in the end, as doomed to failure as all their predecessors.

If you want to know more about the past problems of the region, and how they're being played out again today, a particularly good book is 'Khyber: British India's North West Frontier' by Charles Miller. It's the best single-volume history of the region that I've found. Sadly, it's long out of print, but used copies are readily available. (Be careful to check the seller's location - some are outside the US, with correspondingly higher shipping fees.) I highly recommend the price of a copy as a great investment for anyone who wants to understand the region.

Things haven't changed much there in 200 years . . . probably more like 2,000, if the truth be told. The US and its allies are just the latest in a long, long line of would-be conquerors. All those who went before were mauled, savaged and eventually run out by the locals. I'm not betting that things will be any different for us, in the long run.

Peter