A rchive Date
[ 18-03-2006 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.ottawasun.com/News/Columnists/Harris_Michael/2006/03/17/1491978.html
Afghanistan rhetoric an echo of Soviet-era denial
By MICHAEL HARRIS
Fri, March 17, 2006
On August 13, 1987, Col. K. Tsagolov of the Red Army wrote a career-ending letter to his boss, Dmitry Yazov, then the U.S.S.R.'s minister of national defence.
His subject was the invasion of Afghanistan, a mission that began with the goal of securing the new Marxist government and ended in full-scale war.
Sensing that his candour would probably get him expelled from the army, (it did) he declared the motives for his reckless move. "Truth and honour for me are more valuable than personal comfort."
Col. Tsagolov told his boss that the only thing the Soviet Union had to show after eight bloody years in Afghanistan was the utter failure of the mission and ghastly casualties for the Afghan/Soviet forces, the mujahideen, and Afghan civilians.
By the time the last Russian soldier left Afghanistan on Valentine's Day 1989, the Soviets had lost 15,000 men, a million Afghans lay dead, and a rootless and desperate army of 5 million refugees was left behind. The government that the Soviets were trying to protect by force of arms crumbled. The monstrous casualties on all sides had apparently been taken to give the world Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
Col. Tsagolov laid down the reasons for the defeat of a super-power by guys in the mountains using U.S. and Chinese weapons. He reported to the minister of defence that the Afghan people backed neither their own government nor the Soviet invaders. In other words, the very people it was designed to help never got with the program.
Why would they?
The most successful tactic of the Afghan/Soviet forces was to mount major offences to destroy rebel strongholds in the 85% of the country's hamlets controlled by the Mujahideen and other resistance fighters. In the course of those operations, the Soviets destroyed towns and farms and inevitably killed civilians. The local population grew to hate them.
Even success with these so-called "big operations" was ephemeral. The moment the Afghan-Soviet forces returned to their bases, the rebels came down from the hills to re-occupy the territory so recently liberated. Without a garrisoning force to consolidate these victories, the death and destruction changed absolutely nothing on the ground. "The experience of the past years clearly shows that the Afghan problem cannot be solved by military means ... We should honestly admit that our efforts over the last eight years have not led to the expected results."
Were the Soviets in denial?
Col. Tsagolov thought so. He blamed false reports about the war for extending the misery. Back in the U.S.S.R., Soviet citizens were being told that their troops were building schools and roads, when they were actually involved in a bitter and escalating invasion/civil war with Russians cast as the villains. "It is especially important," the colonel wrote, "to be objective, and to take into account the existing situation, rather than presenting the desired as the actual."
Although the colonel was sacked for his audacious letter, the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev and the policies of "glasnost" and "perestroika" allowed opponents of the war to more freely voice their misgivings in public.
Another soldier who did so was none other than Marshal Ogarkov, chief of the Soviet General Staff. He told the government that he had not been given enough troops to do the job. It is worth remembering that Ogarkov had deployed the entire 40th Army of his country's forces, including a paratroop division, five divisions of military transport aviation, and two rifle divisions.
The defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan left a legacy far more poisonous than chaos in that sad country. It demoralized the Red Army, which was seen as a brutal invasion force, not an internationalist band of benevolent liberators. It stirred religious, nationalist and ethnic feelings in the central Soviet Republics, and it cast the Soviet Union as the enemy of Islam, a perception that eventually led to Chechnya. In the end, something was rotten not just in Kabul but Moscow too.
For the most part, the house-trained media in both Canada and the United States have covered the wars in Afghanistan (and Iraq) as necessary tragedies vouchsafed by noble intentions - the official line. Not much thought has been put into the consequences of mission creep, the move from peace-keeping to combat, who is really in command and what the plan actually is.
Somehow a plea for an indefinite commitment to war by Colin Powell, the man who misled the world over Iraq, isn't as reassuring as it should be.
Instead of recycling bad lines from George Bush, Canada's prime minister should study the fate of Alexei Kosygin, the Soviet leader who first sent troops to Afghanistan back in 1979, and the wise words of Colonel Tsagolov.
After all, fawning jingoism is no substitute for truth and honour.
Author, broadcaster and investigative journalist Michael Harris can be heard weekdays 1-3 p.m. on 580 CFRA. His e-mail address is mharris@cfra.com
Letters to the editor should be sent to feedback@ott.sunpub.com.
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