U.S. should think twice before striking Afghanistan - Russian experts say
FRED WEIR
Canadian Press
MOSCOW (CP) - U.S. talk of military strikes against terrorist bases in Afghanistan sends
chills up Valery Guskov's spine. A former major in the Soviet army, Guskov spent two
years fighting "shadows and evil spirits" during the Kremlin's war to put down what it
viewed as the terrorists of the day in Afghanistan in the 1980's.
Guskov's advice to his American colleagues today? "Don't go there, you cannot win," he
said. "Everything you think you know about war turns out to be different in Afghanistan."
Afghanistan - an Alberta-sized central Asian state of scorching deserts, rugged
snow-peaked mountains and little else - has brought more than one great empire to
grief over the centuries.
Britain invaded the country twice in the 19th century, hoping to impose order on its
unruly tribes and secure India from bandit raids through the fabled Khyber Pass. Both
times its armies were smashed.
Of a 16,000-strong British force that retreated from the Afghan capital of Kabul in 1842,
only one man eventually made it back to India alive.
In 1979 the USSR intervened in Afghanistan to prop up a pro-Soviet government facing
tribal revolt. What was meant to be a swift operation turned into a brutal nine-year war that left 14,000 Soviet soldiers dead.
In the process, one of the world's poorest countries was
completely devastated and its already warlike people learned ruthless guerrilla tactics and acquired the weapons of modern
conflict.
Up to 10,000 Islamic "volunteers" from around the world, including a Saudi millionaire named Osama bin Laden, came to
Afghanistan to fight the Russians and stayed to help the Muslim fundamentalist Taliban movement win the subsequent civil war.
"That was one of the ugliest wars ever fought, on both sides," said Grigory Bondarevsky, one of Russia's top Afghanistan experts
who acted as adviser to Soviet forces in the 1980's.
"The CIA backed our enemies, and provided sophisticated weapons to them. It is just one of many ironies that bin Laden and his
men, who are the biggest terrorist threat in the world today, got started as American-backed 'freedom fighters' in Afghanistan," he
said.
Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, who withdrew his troops in 1989, has cited the costs and strains of the Afghan war as
one of the key causes of the USSR's subsequent collapse.
Veterans of that war say the Soviet forces never had a chance.
"It is not a structured society, so you can never take control of it," said Andrei, a former Soviet intelligence officer who asked his
family name not be used. "Yet the bands of fighters are superbly organized. They seem to just come out of the ground and strike
where you least expect them."
Guskov said any peaceful Afghan peasant or shepherd could turn into a ferocious mujahedeen, or "warrior of god," by night.
"The only tactic that ever worked for us was to make sure no potential enemy was left alive," he said. "But there were always
more of them."
Soviet machinery broke down in the extreme desert heat, where tires melted and tank engines exploded, vets say.
The bitter mountain cold made guns jam, paralysed vehicles and sidelined more men with frostbite than the Afghan mujahedeen
ever managed to kill.
A powerful sand-blasting wind that Soviet troops called "the afghanets" overwhelmed military operations and left a fine residue of
red dust that scrambled radio equipment, ruined food supplies and destroyed vehicle transmissions.
"There are no roads in Afghan, only goat tracks," Andrei said.
"There are no reliable maps."
"The mujahedeen moved their arms and fighters through over 4,000 mountain passes, and those are only the ones we eventually
got to know about. It's impossible to control that terrain," he said.
Veterans scoff at the idea that air or cruise-missile strikes might be sufficient to eliminate the training camps and bases that the
U.S. believes were the source of last week's terrorist attacks against New York and Washington.
"The terrorists will be dispersed and hidden deep in the mountains,"
said Andrei. "Even the Americans, with all their technology, will never find them.
"And remember, this is not Yugoslavia. You can't put on pressure by destroying Afghanistan's infrastructure, because they haven't
got any," he said.
"If the Americans want results they'll have to go in on the ground, in force. Then they'll face all the nightmares that we did."
The worst scenario of all could be the regional fallout from even a successful U.S. attack on Afghan terror bases, Russian experts
said.
"The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan destabilized that country, plunged it into civil war and spawned the terrorist threat the
world faces today," said Bondarevsky.
"Any big or sustained U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan could collapse the very delicate stability of the entire region, and spread
Islamic revolution to Pakistan, northern India and the post-Soviet states of central Asia," he said.
"I hope the Americans will think, and think again before they do anything rash down there." |
