9 years and 50 days – that is how long the Soviet Union tried, and failed, to successfully occupy Afghanistan and install a pro-Soviet regime. From their late 1979 invasion to their withdrawal in early 1989, Soviet troops struggled against an Islamist insurgency that eventually toppled the pro-Soviet Najibullah government and sent the Soviet Union itself spiraling into the depths of bankruptcy.
9 years and 50 days is also how long the US-led NATO occupation of Afghanistan has been going on now. In much the same way, from the late 2001 invasion to the current day, NATO troops have struggled against an Islamist insurgency.
Of course by February 15, 1989, when the last Soviet troops left the nation, the writing had been on the walls for many months, and the Gorbachev government had been withdrawing troops. By contrast NATO just cemented several more years of war in the country at its most recent summit, and officials are openly talking about keeping troops there for decades.
The Pentagon insists that even the 2014 “transition” date is at best an aspirational one, and other NATO officials have said there is no exit strategy of any kind in place. This suggests that NATO has designs on making their own failed occupation dramatically longer than the Soviet one, though despite the lack of exit strategy a number of officials concede that this war is unlikely to have any better of an end result.
At least the Soviets didn't have the benefit of profiting from others experiences. Our situation is even worse. We are pursuing an already tried and failed tactic.
"and failed, to successfully occupy Afghanistan and install a pro-Soviet regime."
jason ditz
"Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76*
Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today? "
unlike the americans the soviet union did not invade to install a puppet regime but to support the existing regime
Quite interesting! Can one find this on the internet now (apart from your posting here)?
got the quote off of counter punch
Paul – if I remember correctly, with rare exception, the news media of that era would label Afghans fighting the Soviets as "rebels", so there is support for your position. I never understood how fighting a foreign invader made one "rebels".
Compare that to today as Uncle Sam tackles "insurgents". Think that old adage is true; all corruption begins with language.
The AfPak war is all about graft and corruption for which the USG has tolerance without end. The Capitalist system can easily expand the funding for graft and corruption, that's what Wall St. is for. The USSR was limited in its ability for corruption, no stock markets,, so it went bankrupt faster because the corruption exceeded the amount of available capital. Evidence, the building boom in Dubai coincided with the USG invasions of Iraq and AfPak. The graft and corruption had to go somewhere and conveniently Dubai has secret banking laws. The USSR couldn't afford the amount of graft and corruption needed to "stay the course".
As a force-multiplier, the Soviets had recruited the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara minorities and still could not defeat the storied warriors, the Pashtun majority. Lionized in the West as the fabled "lion-of-the-Panjshir", Ahmad Shah Massoud provided security along Highway no.2, the critical lifeline for the Soviet war machine.
The so-called "Treaty Bands" who collaborated en masse, do not seem to have a contemporary, equivilant force aiding the ISAF.
It seems we never to learn from history.
Afghanistan is "the graveyard of soldiers and of empires" – always has been and always will be.
As Mao was to have said after he defeated the Chinese Nationalists: "It is easy to defeat an arrogant enemy".
NO country more arrogant than the U.S..
NO 'invader' has ever 'won' a war' in Afghanistan.
As the saying goes: "A smart country learns from its mistakes; a wise country learns from the mistakes of others".
Of course – a stupid and arrogant country neither learns from its own mistakes nor formn the mistakes of others.