The Soviets who stayed behind in Afghanistan

Yesterday the BBC ran an interview with two Red Army soldiers who stayed behind after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan twenty years ago. The men were both teenage draftees from Ukraine who were thrown into the brutal guerilla war. Their reasons for staying in-country were vastly different - Alexander deserted his unit to escape an abusive army commander, Gennady was captured by Afghans and given a choice – either convert to Islam or be killed.

Today both men live quiet lives in Afghanistan - then grew beads, adopted (in Alexander’s case) Islam, took Afghani wives and started families; they give no indication of their former lives as Soviet troopers. And while their story is unusual, it is not unique, a small number of troops did stay in Afghanistan after the Soviets left - some defectors like Alexander, others captured converts like Gennady.

It's a fascinating story, definitely worth a read. And while we're on the topic of Afghanistan and the Soviets, after a recent commemoration of the 20th anniversary of their withdrawal - the Red Army's last foreign campaign, a group of Army veterans offered their advice to the United States. It boiled down to: the war is unwinnable and the United States is kidding itself if it thinks otherwise.

“It's like fighting sand,” said one Soviet vet, remarking on the Afghan insurgents' uncanny ability to blend into the rugged landscape after launching hit-and-run attacks. Another said “it's their holy land, it doesn't matter to them if you're Russian, American. We're all [foreign] soldiers to them.” And the vets noted that the more troops the Soviets poured into Afghanistan, the stiffer the Afghani resistance became (Pres. Obama has signaled that he will be sending up to 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan this year).

So far the United States, particularly officials at the Pentagon, have been dismissive of such talk from the Russians. But the Russians say that the US is making the same basic mistake they did - trying to force a group of diverse ethnic groups, with their own long history of hostility between them, into one national government.

The US has said our involvement is different, because we are bringing democracy. But one of the Soviet vets said that their side went in with the same good intentions - they, of course, though that communism was the system that would turn Afghanistan into a peaceful, prosperous, modern nation. The Soviet Union went into Afghanistan to prop up a weak Communist government facing wide-spread insurrection across the country, today the United States is (for now) backing the government of President Hamid Karzai, who is sometimes called the ‘Mayor of Kabul’ since his control doesn't really extend far beyond the capital, with the Taliban controlling perhaps as much as 70% of the rest of the country.

Maybe the two situations aren't that different after all.