Nato making same mistakes as Soviet army, says Zamir Kabulov
The Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, once told his British counterpart that Nato was making all the same mistakes that the Soviet army did in the country in the 1980s.
When Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador, asked if Mr Kabulov would explain what those mistakes were, the reply was a quick and simple “No!”. It was a joke, but, like most Russian ones, it was rooted in an uncomfortable truth.
“The Soviet Union tried to bring socialism to Afghanistan. Unfortunately, you are trying to do the same with democracy,” Mr Kabulov, who served in Kabul in the 1980s, told The Times.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan 29 years ago it, too, wanted to overthrow a hostile government and install a more compliant regime. Nine years and 15,000 lives later, the mighty Red Army retreated, worn down by a relentless Islamist insurgency, in a defeat that precipitated the Soviet collapse two years later.
Ruslan Aushev, now 54 and head of Russia's War Veterans' Committee, served twice with a combat regiment in Afghanistan and was made a Hero of the Soviet Union. “We have to ask what the Afghans want,” he told The Times. “What have the people of Afghanistan received from the coalition? They lived very poorly before and they still live poorly, but sometimes they also get bombed by mistake.”
Read entire article at Times (UK)
When Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador, asked if Mr Kabulov would explain what those mistakes were, the reply was a quick and simple “No!”. It was a joke, but, like most Russian ones, it was rooted in an uncomfortable truth.
“The Soviet Union tried to bring socialism to Afghanistan. Unfortunately, you are trying to do the same with democracy,” Mr Kabulov, who served in Kabul in the 1980s, told The Times.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan 29 years ago it, too, wanted to overthrow a hostile government and install a more compliant regime. Nine years and 15,000 lives later, the mighty Red Army retreated, worn down by a relentless Islamist insurgency, in a defeat that precipitated the Soviet collapse two years later.
Ruslan Aushev, now 54 and head of Russia's War Veterans' Committee, served twice with a combat regiment in Afghanistan and was made a Hero of the Soviet Union. “We have to ask what the Afghans want,” he told The Times. “What have the people of Afghanistan received from the coalition? They lived very poorly before and they still live poorly, but sometimes they also get bombed by mistake.”