8. The Soviet Afghan War Behold the story of the Soviet Afghan War as the oldest cliché in the book, "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it," comes true once again. Why America thought it could modernize Afghanistan by finishing off the insurgents will be a topic to baffle historians a hundred years from now as the Russians attempted to do the same thing twenty years before and failed miserably. In the late 1970s, Afghanistan experienced two revolutions in the same year that resulted in a socialist government controlled by the Soviet Union taking power. The new government's first order of business was to bring the locals out of the dark ages. Afghanistan was a feudalistic society based on the wealth of a few powerful individuals where women had no rights at all. None of this was in accordance with communism; the individual was supposed to have nothing and be just as equal to whoever stood to their right and left, or so in theory. The new Soviet government began forcing a change. They outlawed the ability of the wealthy to lend money at high interest rates and began an extreme social reform. The outcome was violent protests by the people, which the communists reacted to the same way they did in every other country. They killed everyone. Overnight new groups of insurgents sprang up everywhere. The Soviets were immediately put to death and Russian citizens were executed in the streets. It was time for the Motherland to lay down some law. The resulting war lasted from 1979-1989 and went exactly the same way America's more recent war did with Al-Qaeda. Wherever the insurgents showed a military presence the Russians destroyed them so they made surprise attacks instead. Eventually Russia grew tired and went home having experienced the long term effects of fighting another "Vietnam" or "Bear Trap" as they called it. Both Russia and America's attempt to modernize Afghanistan failed. Perhaps they are better off being left alone... Or are they? I had a friend, a marine, who served four tours of duties in the war. He explained to me how one time in the town he was stationed the local populace discovered a young unmarried couple getting intimate. The result was that the girl was killed by the women as the boy was tied to a post where every man in the village took a turn raping him.
First Posted On:
28th Nov 2013
Behold the story of the Soviet Afghan War as the oldest cliché in the book, "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it," comes true once again. Why America thought it could modernize Afghanistan by finishing off the insurgents will be a topic to baffle historians a hundred years from now as the Russians attempted to do the same thing twenty years before and failed miserably. In the late 1970s, Afghanistan experienced two revolutions in the same year that resulted in a socialist government controlled by the Soviet Union taking power. The new government's first order of business was to bring the locals out of the dark ages. Afghanistan was a feudalistic society based on the wealth of a few powerful individuals where women had no rights at all. None of this was in accordance with communism; the individual was supposed to have nothing and be just as equal to whoever stood to their right and left, or so in theory. The new Soviet government began forcing a change. They outlawed the ability of the wealthy to lend money at high interest rates and began an extreme social reform. The outcome was violent protests by the people, which the communists reacted to the same way they did in every other country. They killed everyone. Overnight new groups of insurgents sprang up everywhere. The Soviets were immediately put to death and Russian citizens were executed in the streets. It was time for the Motherland to lay down some law. The resulting war lasted from 1979-1989 and went exactly the same way America's more recent war did with Al-Qaeda. Wherever the insurgents showed a military presence the Russians destroyed them so they made surprise attacks instead. Eventually Russia grew tired and went home having experienced the long term effects of fighting another "Vietnam" or "Bear Trap" as they called it. Both Russia and America's attempt to modernize Afghanistan failed. Perhaps they are better off being left alone... Or are they? I had a friend, a marine, who served four tours of duties in the war. He explained to me how one time in the town he was stationed the local populace discovered a young unmarried couple getting intimate. The result was that the girl was killed by the women as the boy was tied to a post where every man in the village took a turn raping him.