[R-G] Afghanistan: Soviet failures echo for US

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1219/p01s01-wosc.htm

from the December 19, 2008 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1219/p01s01-wosc.html
Afghanistan: Soviet failures echo for US
Control of roads and rural areas vexes coalition effort.
By Mark Sappenfield | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN

Recent headlines from Afghanistan have read like a history lesson from  
the Soviet 1980s.

That war "devolved into a fight for control of … the road network,"  
concludes a 1995 US Army study. Militants are now stepping up attacks  
against American supply routes, destroying some 200 trucks in Pakistan  
this month.

Anti-Soviet militants controlled "the rural areas," says a former  
Soviet official. Today's militants have a "permanent presence" in 72  
percent of the country, according to a Dec. 8 study.

There are differences between then and now. Yet 20 years later, many  
problems are similar: The US and NATO control neither the countryside  
nor the militants' hideouts in Pakistan, and as civilian casualties  
increase, Afghan anger is mounting.

To succeed, America needs solutions that eluded the Soviets. "It  
doesn't really matter what you do in Kabul or the provincial  
capitals," says David Isby, author of "War in a Distant Country –  
Afghanistan: Invasion and Resistance."

The problem, Mr. Isby adds, is that the Soviets "weren't able to  
control the grass roots."

The same thing is happening now, according to Dec. 8 report by the  
International Council on Security and Development (ICOS). The pattern  
of attacks against coalition forces and the Afghan government suggests  
that militants have significant operations in provinces that make up  
nearly three-quarters of Afghanistan's area, it argues.

The US military has questioned the report, saying it overstates the  
opposition's influence. Yet Afghans say that coalition forces control  
little beyond Afghanistan's major cities.

"From the border of Kabul to the Iranian border, there is fighting  
everywhere," says Mohammed Yunus, an Afghan truck driver.

His tanker truck is one of scores sitting along the highway into  
Kabul, a miles-long roadside caterpillar of brightly painted metal  
waiting for 9 p.m., when trucks are allowed through the capital.

He has traversed Afghanistan for 10 years as a truck driver, but  
"during the past year, violence has gone to its peak," he says.

The ICOS study notes that three of the four major highways out of  
Kabul are "compromised by Taliban activity."

"It is no real surprise that the current strategy tries to control the  
cities and towns, but it is reminiscent of the Soviet era," writes  
Larry Goodson, a professor at the US Army War College in Carlisle,  
Pa., in an e-mail.

"By the mid-1980s, the USSR concentrated on controlling the urban  
areas … and the major road network, conceding the countryside," he adds.

Still, the major threat to American convoys has arisen not here but in  
Pakistan, where militant groups have found sanctuary.

It is a renewal of tactics used in the 1980s. The Soviet Army's  
"ultimate survival depended on its ability to resupply itself,"  
according to the 1995 study by Lester Grau of the Foreign Military  
Studies Office in Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

"Afghan guerrillas learned to ambush supply convoys and cut the  
roads," he adds.

Moreover, it underscores the importance of Pakistani militants in  
Afghan wars. After the recent attacks in Pakistan, the local truckers'  
association said Monday it would no longer carry US equipment to the  
Afghan border. On Thursday, more than 10,000 Pakistanis, supporters of  
the hard-line Jamaat-e-Islami party, protested allowing US forces to  
ship supplies through Pakistan.

The US supplies arrive at Karachi by sea. American officials are now  
looking into using the longer and more costly overland route through  
Central Asia.

"The Soviets were unable to close sanctuaries in Pakistan," says Isby,  
the author. "America really has to do it now."

In that regard, the US might have greater opportunity for success than  
the Soviets did.

America was working with Pakistan in the 1980s to undermine the  
Soviets, funding the mujahideen. Today, Pakistan remains America's  
ally, though its efforts to dismantle militant sanctuaries have been  
stuttering.

Also in America's favor is the fact that while the insurgency is  
spreading, its roots are in the Pashtun south. The anti-Soviet  
insurgency was national.

"Against the Soviets, the [most effective] insurgents were non- 
Pashtun," says Isby, citing Ahmed Shah Masood, an ethnic Tajik from  
north of Kabul who was assassinated just before 9/11 by alleged Al  
Qaeda agents.

Obama's 'surge' not enough?

 From the perspective of Zamir Kabulov, the former Soviet official,  
President-elect Barack Obama's proposed troops surge for Afghanistan  
is not enough.

The Russian diplomat has perhaps a unique view on Afghan history. He  
was in Kabul at the height of the Soviet-backed Communist regime in  
the mid-1980s. He returned to see the government fall to the  
mujahideen in 1992. Now, he is Russia's ambassador to Afghanistan.

The Soviets had nearly 400,000 Soviet and Afghan soldiers at their  
disposal – more than twice what the US and NATO have here – and yet  
they still failed, he notes.

The coalition's stretched resources have created an unwanted echo of  
the worst of Soviet times, Professor Goodson says.

"As the war … went on, the Soviets realized they had to get at the  
mujahideen in the countryside and so began a genocidal policy toward  
the rural villages and households," he says. Today, "every incident of  
inadvertent civilian casualties … awakens bad memories for the Afghans."

So do America's attempts to change Afghan society, says Mr. Kabulov.  
Just as the Americans have tried to improve women's rights and instill  
democracy, the Russians tried to instill Communism.

"After [the Soviet-backed government] stopped trying to impose  
socialism on the people, the [Afghan] Army started to believe that  
they were fighting for their own cause," he says.

"The biggest mistake we made was to try to spread our ideology among  
them," adds Viktor Pavlov, chairman of the Yekaterinburg chapter of  
the Russian Union of Afghan War Veterans.

The best course, Kabulov suggests, is to help Afghans help themselves.

US and NATO "underestimate the Afghans – they don't address the issue  
of … trying to build a strong national state," he says.

The Soviet failure illustrates the fruitlessness of military might  
alone, Goodson agrees: "A more effective approach centers on relief,  
economic development, rule of law, and good governance, with the  
security pillar of nation-building being just an enabler of the other  
pillars."

•Anand Gopal contributed from Kabul; Fred Weir from Moscow.