Afghanistan, the last cold war relic

[Peikko 1,575]

In this year of monumental anniversaries, perhaps one episode of all the events either celebrated or denigrated with the benefit of hindsight needs to be reassessed: the Soviet Union's military intervention in Afghanistan in 1979.

It was Moscow's Vietnam, we have come to accept. A bloody quagmire with disastrous consequences that left a million Afghans dead and a generation of Soviet men pulverised by trauma, as had happened to their American counterparts in southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s. The conflict lasted 10 years and the Soviet army retreated only to see its very existence crumble a few years later with the collapse of Communism.

The Soviets had been chased out by the Islamic militants, the Mujahideen, among whose number was Osama bin Laden. Using the same hit and run tactics favoured by their Taliban inheritors against the US-led coalition in Afghanistan these days, the Muslim fighters harassed and outfought the cumbersome Soviet military machine, whose conscript mass was sapped of every ounce of morale.

But in drawing parallels between the two conflicts – and they appear to be accumulating with each passing day – we should bear in mind one crucial difference, one which makes the Americans' inability to conquer the Taliban after eight years more startling.

It is that the rocket launchers and other weaponry used by the Mujahideen to such great effect against the Soviets were invariably paid for by the CIA. In fact the agency had begun aiding the Islamic militants even before the Red Army rolled in, in an attempt to induce an invasion. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser to the then president, Jimmy Carter, admitted as much some years ago.

Bin Laden, we know, was one such beneficiary of this, and the consequences of his empowerment in the Afghan mountains came back to haunt the US.

But given our current political climate, you do have to wonder what Brzezinski and the CIA were playing at – not to mention the Reagan administration which came in after Carter. In 1979, after all, there had already been Iran's Islamic revolution, which made it very clear that it was an enemy and not a friend of the west. Before the Soviet invasion, Iranian students had taken US embassy workers hostage – a sign, if any were needed, that Islamic militancy and the US were not a match made in heaven. And yet Washington saw nothing untoward in pouring money into the pockets of men who wanted it destroyed.

You wonder if anyone within the CIA or close to the White House thought this strategy might be all wrong; that perhaps supporting the Soviets against the Mujahideen rather than actively opposing them might result in greater benefits?

Its seems bizarre these days, but one of the US-backed Mujahideen's gripes against the Communists was that they were introducing alien, "western" practices among their people, such as women having access to education and not being forced to wear burkas.

Was this the first time the Soviet Union was ever considered "western"? How come the Americans didn't latch on to this concept? It could have been grounds for a detente that could have been much more productive than in fact turned out.

The Soviet Union fell to bits, the US rejoiced and then was left to face another enemy, which is a moving target in the way the old cold war enemy wasn't. All the signs are that the Afghan war may last forever, just as with the Soviet Union in the 1980s. The Vietnam lesson was not learned by the Soviet Union, and it isn't by the US today, either.

But why not just consider a parallel universe for a while. What if someone in the White House had decided in 1979 to side with the Soviets against the Islamists, recognising that the two cold war warriors' real interests lay in defeating a medieval enemy, rather than continue a fruitless squabble? With or without Afghanistan, the Soviet bloc was doomed anyway.

There would be no burkas, and probably fewer hawks in the White House. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, if properly handled by the two big powers at the time, would have caused us all a lot less bother.

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[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

US Hegemony has been declining steadily since about 1970 (and disastrously in the 8 years that Bush was president) and that nothing Obama does in the next 4-8 years is likely to change that.

What's is becoming fast inevitable is that there will be a realignment of global power between the US (and East Asia), Europe, and Russia-China.

Edited October 5, 2009 by Gene Hunt