SunTzu
24th April 2010, 07:32 PM
He who wishes to fight must first count the cost. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be dampened. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor dampened, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue... In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.
-Sun Tzu, the Art of War
Is the West Going the Soviet Way in Afghanistan?
By iNewp Citizen Journalist
Published: April 24, 2010
Afghanistan has been the graveyard of many an invaders through history. The British learnt it the hard way that taming Afghans was no mean task. The Afghan Wars waged by them gave them a bloody nose over and over again. Just as the allies failed in 2001 to study the fateful Soviet invasion, the Russians before them dismissed Queen Victoria’s foray into a country some have dubbed “the graveyard of empiresâ€.
What successive invaders have failed to register is that the mountains are the same and the people and tribes are willing to die for reasons unfathomable to the west. This serious mistake in judging Afghanistan and implementing their brand of “Afghan Way of Life†through communist or democratic ideals does not work here. This is the rugged land of the tribal where Jirgas are comprehended better than nationalism and where death is “Shahadatâ€(martyrdom). Soviet veterans of the Afghan War castigate the West for still being there and for what they sees as a doomed attempt to impose their democratic institutions and way of life on a country deeply steeped in feudalism.
Is America leading the West to make the same mistakes the Russians made?
In 1979, Moscow went in to prop up the Afghan communist government, which had come to power in a coup the previous year. It did not plan to stay long. Elite KGB special forces were flown into Bagram to help stage a coup. In a textbook raid, they took the presidential palace, killed Amin and installed the pro-Soviet Babrak Karmal as leader.
“We believed that when such a powerful army as ours goes in, things would calm down. The opposite happened. The civil war only intensified.†articulated some Russian veterans of the Afghan War who had hoped to get out of Afghanistan in six months leaving a battery of communist workforce behind.
The biggest mistake the Russians made was when they started taking sides without realising that the Afghans don’t like outsiders whatever their internal problems. The same is happening today when Taliban are being considered as terrorists. Their methods may use terror but they are finally Afghans and it is because of this that the West has not been able to douse the fire even after 8 years. They are finally fighting against Afghan people, same as the Russians did.
What is the guarantee that similar divisive tactics would succeed now? The West entered Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11 chasing Al Qaeda. The newer targets, however, are Taliban – Afghans themselves. They are now being taught the virtues of Democracy. So the longer this battle gets, greater would be the resistance to it and it would be difficult to identify the face of victory amongst plumes of smoke billowing out of the Afghan countryside.
Most Soviet Afghan war veterans now view the 1979 invasion as ill-judged. The conflict killed around 15,000 Soviet soldiers and some 1.3 million Afghans. A third of the country’s pre-war population went into exile. Many also believe it accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union, two years after Mikhail Gorbachev, the father of glasnost and perestroika, pulled out troops in February 1989.
Soviets deployed about 120,000 troops while the “surge†puts the Western figures at 130,000. No military camp of the Soviets was over run by the Mujahideens. While the Soviet boots covered every inch of Afghanistan, the Mujahideen returned the moment the boots headed in a different direction. Exactly the situation the allied troops are now facing.
The “Clear†phase may be a publicised troop intensive activity but “holding†the cleared areas is proving to be disastrous as the events of Marjah indicate, post Op Moshtarak. An aspect highlighted in an earlier post Operation Moshtarak. Keeping long-term control of seized areas is once again proving to be difficult.
Repeating the “clear†phase across Afghanistan would mean a long haul and Obama may not have the appetite to stay that long. It is here that genuine efforts to win battle of hearts and minds would have to be won alongside the “clear†phase to empower the Jirgas to develop and defend themselves.
The Soviets and the coalition made one fundamental mistake. Both went in with a clear and limited objective but allowed themselves to get bogged down in pursuit of unattainable goals. The Soviets ended up attempting to “sovietise†the Afghan society and the West is advocating democracy – both outside the per view of their respective agendas. That was and is the reason for them getting their hands inextricably dirty.
As stated earlier, the feudal structure of governance in Afghanistan should not be tampered with as an indigenous answer to the political problem. The West will have to respect that and digest the idea that the Taliban being Afghans have to be a part of the solution to Afghanistan’s problems.
If they impose Sharia laws, so be it. Even Saudi Arabia follows the Islamic laws and is a friend of the West. So the model exists. This, however, does mean a strong and capable Afghan Army and Police to assist in the “hold†phase of the COIN. But somewhere along the line, the West will have to leave the back door open for diplomacy through the Taliban. Even the educated Afghans detest foreign presence and spew vitriol against it. So, this would be a tough task.
The “build†phase, the most important component of the COIN has to be addressed simultaneously along the other two phases to placate the Afghans about the sincerity of the “invaders†in bringing prosperity to the troubled land. This alone would prevent growth of radical cadres and help stem the tide of violence in favour of peace and stability – the Afghan way. The Indian participation in this phase has been exemplary and needs to be copied across Afghanistan.
That the West is still “fighting†in Afghanistan after 8 years is proof enough that they have thus far gone the Soviet way and that in the final analysis the answers to Afghanistan may not come from the barrel of a gun.
There has to be an Afghan solution to the mess and the West must contribute towards making conditions and environment safe for this to happen. In the final analysis only Afghans will have to govern themselves in their own ways.
In the meanwhile, for the soldiers engaged in Afghanistan it wouldn’t hurt to remember Kipling:
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains
And the women come out, to cut up what remains
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
And go to your Gawd like a soldier.
- Article Contributed By: N Kapoor
http://inewp.com/?p=2746
-Sun Tzu, the Art of War
Is the West Going the Soviet Way in Afghanistan?
By iNewp Citizen Journalist
Published: April 24, 2010
Afghanistan has been the graveyard of many an invaders through history. The British learnt it the hard way that taming Afghans was no mean task. The Afghan Wars waged by them gave them a bloody nose over and over again. Just as the allies failed in 2001 to study the fateful Soviet invasion, the Russians before them dismissed Queen Victoria’s foray into a country some have dubbed “the graveyard of empiresâ€.
What successive invaders have failed to register is that the mountains are the same and the people and tribes are willing to die for reasons unfathomable to the west. This serious mistake in judging Afghanistan and implementing their brand of “Afghan Way of Life†through communist or democratic ideals does not work here. This is the rugged land of the tribal where Jirgas are comprehended better than nationalism and where death is “Shahadatâ€(martyrdom). Soviet veterans of the Afghan War castigate the West for still being there and for what they sees as a doomed attempt to impose their democratic institutions and way of life on a country deeply steeped in feudalism.
Is America leading the West to make the same mistakes the Russians made?
In 1979, Moscow went in to prop up the Afghan communist government, which had come to power in a coup the previous year. It did not plan to stay long. Elite KGB special forces were flown into Bagram to help stage a coup. In a textbook raid, they took the presidential palace, killed Amin and installed the pro-Soviet Babrak Karmal as leader.
“We believed that when such a powerful army as ours goes in, things would calm down. The opposite happened. The civil war only intensified.†articulated some Russian veterans of the Afghan War who had hoped to get out of Afghanistan in six months leaving a battery of communist workforce behind.
The biggest mistake the Russians made was when they started taking sides without realising that the Afghans don’t like outsiders whatever their internal problems. The same is happening today when Taliban are being considered as terrorists. Their methods may use terror but they are finally Afghans and it is because of this that the West has not been able to douse the fire even after 8 years. They are finally fighting against Afghan people, same as the Russians did.
What is the guarantee that similar divisive tactics would succeed now? The West entered Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11 chasing Al Qaeda. The newer targets, however, are Taliban – Afghans themselves. They are now being taught the virtues of Democracy. So the longer this battle gets, greater would be the resistance to it and it would be difficult to identify the face of victory amongst plumes of smoke billowing out of the Afghan countryside.
Most Soviet Afghan war veterans now view the 1979 invasion as ill-judged. The conflict killed around 15,000 Soviet soldiers and some 1.3 million Afghans. A third of the country’s pre-war population went into exile. Many also believe it accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union, two years after Mikhail Gorbachev, the father of glasnost and perestroika, pulled out troops in February 1989.
Soviets deployed about 120,000 troops while the “surge†puts the Western figures at 130,000. No military camp of the Soviets was over run by the Mujahideens. While the Soviet boots covered every inch of Afghanistan, the Mujahideen returned the moment the boots headed in a different direction. Exactly the situation the allied troops are now facing.
The “Clear†phase may be a publicised troop intensive activity but “holding†the cleared areas is proving to be disastrous as the events of Marjah indicate, post Op Moshtarak. An aspect highlighted in an earlier post Operation Moshtarak. Keeping long-term control of seized areas is once again proving to be difficult.
Repeating the “clear†phase across Afghanistan would mean a long haul and Obama may not have the appetite to stay that long. It is here that genuine efforts to win battle of hearts and minds would have to be won alongside the “clear†phase to empower the Jirgas to develop and defend themselves.
The Soviets and the coalition made one fundamental mistake. Both went in with a clear and limited objective but allowed themselves to get bogged down in pursuit of unattainable goals. The Soviets ended up attempting to “sovietise†the Afghan society and the West is advocating democracy – both outside the per view of their respective agendas. That was and is the reason for them getting their hands inextricably dirty.
As stated earlier, the feudal structure of governance in Afghanistan should not be tampered with as an indigenous answer to the political problem. The West will have to respect that and digest the idea that the Taliban being Afghans have to be a part of the solution to Afghanistan’s problems.
If they impose Sharia laws, so be it. Even Saudi Arabia follows the Islamic laws and is a friend of the West. So the model exists. This, however, does mean a strong and capable Afghan Army and Police to assist in the “hold†phase of the COIN. But somewhere along the line, the West will have to leave the back door open for diplomacy through the Taliban. Even the educated Afghans detest foreign presence and spew vitriol against it. So, this would be a tough task.
The “build†phase, the most important component of the COIN has to be addressed simultaneously along the other two phases to placate the Afghans about the sincerity of the “invaders†in bringing prosperity to the troubled land. This alone would prevent growth of radical cadres and help stem the tide of violence in favour of peace and stability – the Afghan way. The Indian participation in this phase has been exemplary and needs to be copied across Afghanistan.
That the West is still “fighting†in Afghanistan after 8 years is proof enough that they have thus far gone the Soviet way and that in the final analysis the answers to Afghanistan may not come from the barrel of a gun.
There has to be an Afghan solution to the mess and the West must contribute towards making conditions and environment safe for this to happen. In the final analysis only Afghans will have to govern themselves in their own ways.
In the meanwhile, for the soldiers engaged in Afghanistan it wouldn’t hurt to remember Kipling:
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains
And the women come out, to cut up what remains
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
And go to your Gawd like a soldier.
- Article Contributed By: N Kapoor
http://inewp.com/?p=2746