Outdoing the Soviets in Afghanistan
By ERIC WALBERG | Counterpunch, May 21, 2008
Twenty years ago this week the Soviet Union began its withdrawal from Afghanistan, eight and a half years after it was invited by the desperate People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), which had degenerated into intra-party squabbling and was beset by Islamic rebels massively financed by the United States. The straw that broke the Soviets’ back was when the US began providing Stinger missiles to Osama bin Laden and his friends.
Now, after eight years of US/NATO occupation, the parallels — and differences — between the two occupation are many and stark, as confirmed by the current Russian ambassador to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov.
“There is no mistake made by the Soviet Union that was not repeated by the international community here in Afghanistan,” Kabulov said. “Underestimation of the Afghan nation, the belief that we have superiority over Afghans, that they are inferior and cannot be trusted to run affairs in this country. A lack of knowledge of the social and ethnic structure of this country; a lack of sufficient understanding of traditions and religion.”
Not only that, but the country’s new patrons are making lots of new mistakes as well.
“NATO soldiers and officers alienate themselves from Afghans — they are not in touch in an everyday manner. They communicate with them from the barrels of guns in their bullet-proof Humvees.” As a career diplomat who was posted to Afghanistan in 1977, he sees some divine justice in the US’s current predicament. “But I am even more satisfied by not having Russian soldiers among ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] because I don’t want them to suffer the same results.”
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