Russian advice on Afghanistan: Build roads, don't drop bombs

[Coventina]

Source: Kansas City Star

The old diplomat sighed as he recalled his years in Afghanistan, and then leaned forward and said in a booming voice that no escalation of troops would bring lasting peace.

As the Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan from 1979 to 1986, Fikryat Tabeyev saw the numbers rise to more than 100,000 troops without any possibility of victory against a growing insurgency.

Even with President Barack Obama's plan initially to send 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to that mountainous nation this year, the combined NATO-American force will be smaller than the Soviet contingent was. Moscow's failure to pacify Afghanistan, which broke the back of the Soviet Union, doesn't mean that the same fate awaits Obama's efforts, but ignoring a decade of experience there would be a mistake, former envoys and generals warn.

The Soviets rumbled into Afghanistan in 1979 to rescue a weak communist regime, a very different reason from the U.S.-led invasion of 2001, which sought to deny the Sept. 11 terrorists a haven. The seven years of war since the U.S. intervention, though, look familiar to the Russians.



Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/451/story/1076911.html

[AlphaCentauri]

1. Moscow's failure to pacify Afghanistan was in part to our intelligence service

feeding the Tali-ban

[sofa king]

2. They would know.

Apparently it was not uncommon to see a small line of Soviet supply trucks guarded by a regimental combat team, complete with tanks, APCs, and helicopters. Because of the rudimentary road network, the Mujahedeen had the luxury of picking which valley to set up as an ambush. Once the supply train was in the right spot, the Mujahedeen would blast vehicles in the front and back of the column, then rake the column for a couple of minutes, then run like hell. The Soviet response was characteristically massive and powerful, but most of it was wasted on the rocks.

The real key to controlling Afghanistan is to accept that it cannot be controlled without the direct support and leadership of the local population. That was one of the very few smart things the Bush Administration ever did, cultivating the support of the opium producers there to do most of the heavy lifting on the ground against the Taliban.

You can probably guess what the other half of that deal is.

[LynnTheDem]

3. How 'bout "build roads in AMERICA" and then worry about other

nations IF and WHEN other nations ask us for advice and/or help?

Gee, that'd be different.

[avaistheone1]

4. Russia is right on this.

America's hubris in Afghanistan will be to our detriment.

Afghanistan is not called the graveyard of empires for nothing.

[gratuitous]

5. When the one-armed man warns you against that piece of machinery

You'd best listen, is what I'm thinking.