With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Victor Sebestyen: How not to end a war in Afghanistan

[Victor Sebestyen is a journalist. His book, "Revolution 1989: the Fall of the Soviet Empire", is published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson.]

In May 1985, two months after Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he sent one of his cleverest generals to Kabul on an urgent, secret mission. The name of General Zaitsev is unlikely to be well known to today's Nato commanders, but perhaps it should be. Back then he was the Red Army's most senior military planner and logistics expert, and Gorbachev ordered him to provide an honest answer to the question: can the USSR win the war in Afghanistan? He returned to Moscow swiftly with a simple answer: no.

Zaitsev concluded that the only way the war could end on Soviet terms would be to seal Afghanistan's border with Pakistan and thereby prevent the movement of arms and "terrorists" from the mujahedin - the Army of God - into the country. At this point, the Soviets had already committed 100,000 troops; the leadership in the Kremlin was told that about a quarter of a million more would be required to trap the guerrillas inside the country.

Politically, that was impossible. After six years of a war that party bosses in Moscow had been told would be a "surgical operation", over in a few months, more than 7,500 soldiers had died. It was draining resources at a time when the USSR was in an acute financial crisis because of plummeting oil prices. Gorbachev and other Kremlin leaders were inundated by letters from families of troops on duty in Afghanistan, and from the general public, asking why "our boys" were dying in a faraway land about which the Russian people knew little.

In all the debates about the west's role in Afghanistan, politicians, soldiers, diplomats and academics rarely refer to the Soviet experience of a war that lasted nearly a decade. Barack Obama and Gordon Brown are known to be wide readers, but one wonders if their bookshelves hold any of the numerous memoirs by Soviet generals about the USSR's Afghan war.

They should, as today's conflict is eerily reminiscent, right down to battles and skirmishes taking place in the same areas, such as Helmand Province. The Soviets could never pacify the south of the country. Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand and a base for Nato troops now, repeatedly changed hands during the war. For long periods during the 1980s, there were intense battles in nearby districts: in Nad Ali, Nawzad and around Marja, a vital centre for Afghan poppy production then, as now.

Listen to a Nato commander talking about the difficulties of fighting the Taliban and you could almost think it was a Soviet soldier from 25 years ago speaking. "Much of the territory stays in the hands of the terrorists. We control the political centres, but we cannot maintain control over
territory we seize . . . Our soldiers have fought incredibly bravely in adverse conditions. But to occupy towns and villages temporarily has little value in such a vast land where the insurgents can just disappear into the hills."

It could easily be the voice of a Nato spokesperson on the Today programme. In fact, these are the words of Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, commander of the Soviet armed forces, at a meeting of the Soviet Communist Party Politburo on 13 November 1986.

The Soviets searched over many years for an "exit strategy" from Afghanistan, as well as for something that could be described as a "victory". Both were elusive. Critics of current western policy argue that our leaders face similar dilemmas but don't know what the answers are. Yet the Soviet experience is, at the very least, an object lesson in how not to end a war...
Read entire article at Newstatesman (UK)