Today is the 15th anniversary of the departure of Soviet troops from Afghanistan after nine years of occupation and insurrection. Here is how the Guardian newspaper reported it.
As the last Soviet soldier marched out of Afghanistan yesterday, apparently wipping away tears, Pravda said in Moscow that in future decisions to send troops abroad should not be taken by a small conclave but by the Soviet Parliament. Nine years and seven weeks of Kremlin military involvement ended five minutes before noon, when the Soviet forces commander, Lieutenant-General Boris Grosmov, walked across 'Friendship Bridge' linking the Afghan border town of Hayratan with Termez, in the Soviet Union.
Hours afterwards, the Kremlin appealed for an immediate ceasefire and an end to arms shipments by all countries. The statement said that the withdrawal of Soviet troops under last April's Geneva accords could provide a basis for restoring peace in Afghanistan .
But the absence of Soviet troops could now touch off a bloodbath between the two heavily-armed Afghan sides, poised for a decisive struggle.
The Afghan government confirmed its fear of a bloody struggle yesterday by revealing that it had considered asking Moscow to halt the withdrawal of Soviet troops.
The government said it would have been entitled to ask them to stay. It accused the United States of not only failing to end its support of the Mojahedin operations out of Pakistan, but said that Washington had actually increased 'the quantity and sophistication of weapons being sent across the border'.
This amounted to 'a brutal trampling underfoot' of the agreements signed in Geneva.
Kabul was quiet yesterday, with no new rebel rocket attacks after the ones which killed five people on Tuesday. People showed no signs either of panic or jubilation as the decade-long Soviet intervention came to an end.
It was a day of quiet, but without the peace which many Afghans a few months ago had almost miraculously expected to see by now.
The government sought to appeal for international support by saying its position had 'enhanced the UN's authority, which Pakistan and the US were undermining'. It also poured scorn on the shura (gathering) which is still limping along in Islamabad, saying that 'the real forces inside Afghanistan were not represented'.
In Islamabad, Afghan rebels said an interim government for their country was presented for approval on Wednesday to the shura. Mr Abdurrab Rasul Sayyaf, spokesman for the shura, said the proposed government would be headed by the US-educated engineer, Mr Ahmad Shah, a fundamentalist Muslim. Mr Sayyaf said that a new list would be drawn up if the shura rejected the proposed cabinet.
I find myself musing, but without real direction, on the chains of events touched off fifteen years ago.
Without US support for the mujahideen there would have been no Taliban, and quite possibly no al-Quaida. Without US weapons shipments then, there would be no worries about the 600 or so Stinger anti-aircraft missiles still in fundementalist hands. Without the ignominy of military defeat at the hands of a third world insurrection in what has been called the "Russian Vietnam", it is doubtful if the Soviet Union would yet have embraced perestioka and glasnost, no matter what Reagans eulogisers may think about "Star Wars" programs. The world would have been a very different place.
It's also worth musing on possible lessons for the US's current occupation of Iraq. Yes, a government has been installed by democratic election- but the warlords (terrorists just in it for the money) and the Islamic fundementalists (who now have an electoral mandate) can still turn Iraq towards civil war. At this stage of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, things looked rather better for the occupiers and the government they installed than Iraq does today - yet look where it ended up. I am not saying that Iraq will go the same way, but rather that the Soviet experience in Afghanistan should be taken as a cautionary tale. If anything, conservatives who subscribe to the "clash of cultures" idea should be more worried than the rest of us - after all, according to the theory, communism is no more and no less alien to Islamic nations than democracy is.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Americans, I am afraid to say, are often pretty much blind to history that does not directly involve their own nation and therefore have a hard time learning from it.
Just some thoughts, that's all.
10 comments:
Nice post. I've had a few debates about the subject- usually people seem to agree that one evil was helped in order to end another...
I think Americans can learn from the past. I think we went into Iraq, in part, because we knew from experiences in Germany and Japan that democracy can be forced onto unwilling populaces. Let's hope it continues to work in Iraq.
What I find very odd is Europe's continual embrace of Chamberlain and rejection of Churchhill.
Hark, my friend, where do you get the idea that there is democracy in Iraq?
There isn't now, and there will not be in the future.
Five will get you ten that the Iraqis will soon be resided over by some loony imam who puts the women into burquas and removes all electric appliances.
Saddam at least kept these loonies under control.
The reason Britain applauds Chamberlain is that they realise he was truly a man of peace.Because he could not have thought the way Hitler did, he could not imagine Hitler doing what he did.
As for Churchill, he was a true psychopath.Ask any Tommy or Anzac who fought in any of the world wars.
The two names Gallipoli and Dieppe spring readily to mind.
Churchill had nothing against allowing the deaths of 60,000 of his young men just to test the strength of the Axis' forces.
Oh yes...he'd say...well the Huns are a bit strong there, maybe we should move in from here....
And he didn't single-handedly win the war for the Allies either.
Chamberlain was only the wrong man at the wrong time.
shadows
okay- but Chamberlain empowered Hitler. If Churchhill had had HIS way there would have been no WWII... this is like people respecting Carter because he was a man of peace- even though he empowered the Soviets and gave Iran to the Khomeinis- and hating Reagan because he was willing to go to war- despite his ending of the Cold War...
Shadows, my friend-
what were all those blue fingertips about, if not democracy?
if you read the carnival of the liberated- Iraqi blogs by Iraqis- u might have a different opinion about this subject.
I'll take that bet, btw. I'll send 100 bucks to my favorite dem senator, Daniel Inoue, if you're right. (i vote for him anyway, just to be honest) and u can send a hundred to a conservative cause if yer wrong.
let's say two years? if democracy reigns I win, if shari'a reigns u win?
cheers!
Harkonnendog
Hark, my man, where did you get the idea that Chamberlain empowered Hitler?
Hitler would have done what he did anyway.
Hitler despised Chamberlain because he would not fight, he hated men of peace.
You say Churchill did not want WW2?
Churchill lived for war.I have always believed that the Treaty of Versailles was designed to start another war by the way it was set up.
Hiler did not set up that huge military power for nothing.Like Japan at the Rape of Nanking, he wanted it all.
OK, I'll be waiting for 2 years to see how Iraq turns out.
With respect,
shadows
it is just a common meme in America:
Chamberalain is a dunce because he didn't stop Hitler when he was weak, and he should have...
i have no evidence to support it, actually. it is just sort of in the air...
cheers!
Hark
Hi Hark,
Here are a couple of background links on that "meme".
The BBC history unit.Chamberlain's policy of appeasement was seen as a failure by many at the time, and for many years to follow. Current thinking has shifted, however, believing Chamberlain to have shrewdly agreed to appeasement to give the British armed forces the time they desperately needed to prepare for full-blown war.or Sparticus ScoolsNet, which has an especially rich set of document quotes from the time.
All the press welcomed the Munich agreement as preferable to war with the solitary exception of Reynolds News, a Left-wing Socialist Sunday newspaper of small circulation (and, of course, the Communist Daily Worker). Duff Cooper, first lord of the admiralty, resigned and declared that Great Britain should have gone to war, not to save Czechoslovakia, but to prevent one country dominating the continent 'by brute force'. No one else took this line in the prolonged Commons debate (3-6 October). Many lamented British humiliation and weakness. All acquiesced. Some thirty Conservatives abstained when Labour divided the house against the motion approving the Munich agreement; none voted against the government. The overwhelming majority of ordinary people, according to contemporary estimates, approved of what Chamberlain had done. A.J.P. Taylor, greatest historian of Britain ever.
By the way, Chamberlain was a conservative, it was only the left who were very anti-Hitler. (Which also explodes the Hitler was a Socialist meme.)Even Churchill was pretty quiet about matters until he could see power for himself in it.
I am sending this letter to meet you on your return, as I had no opportunity of telling you before you left how much I admired your courage and wisdom in going to see Hitler in person. You must have been pleased by the universal approval with which your action was received. I am naturally very anxious to hear the result of your talk, and to be assured that there is a prospect of a peaceful solution on terms which admit of general acceptance. King George VI, letter to Chamberlain.
It is undoubtably true that if a hard line had been taken in '38, war would have resulted a year earlier, and Britain would have had less time to make up the military gap the German Army and Luftwaffe in particular had opened.
NUANCE, and an education in history, my friend. Pity there is none of either in your own current Commander in Chief.
Regards, C
"It is undoubtably true that if a hard line had been taken in '38, war would have resulted a year earlier, and Britain would have had less time to make up the military gap the German Army and Luftwaffe in particular had opened."
Sorry, it is NOT undoubtedly true. I could as easily say it is undoubtedly true that a hard line in '38 would have aborted WW2. And the newest theory about Chamberlain is that he ENCOURAGED Hitler to arm, hoping that his aggresion would spend itself against the Soviets. In which case Chamberlain should be compared to Chirac, kissing islamist buttock hoping that it would help counter American strength.
Undoubtedly? c'mon we're talking alternate history here- scifi- that word is out of place in this context.
it is IN place in sentences such as-
the Iraqi people are undoubtedly better off now than they were. see?
ok, ok - strike "undoubtably" and insert "in my opinion". Firstly, Hitler was not sane - he would have been no more deterred by Churchill. As regards Britains re-armament I actually know something about the subject, from a childhood obsession with militaria and WW2 in particular that I still feed by reading DefenceTech etc. The spitfire and hurricane were not fully operational in any numbers in 38, whereas the Me109 and Heinkel bomber were, as was the Stuka for c.a.s. work.
As to your own assertion - well, you havent set a timeline so if you mean "than before when the coalition was even worse at providing power, water or security" then yes. If you mean "than before the invasion" then it's contentious.
Regards, C
Hark, my little love, that's absolute bullshit about Chamberlain encouraging Hitler to arm.
Hitler was well and truly armed before Britain ever got their pants pulled up to see what was going on.
Hitler was trying to goad Britain into war but Britain did not have the military at that time, not having spent the last 8 years building ships, planes bombs etc as Germany did.
If the facts of Germany's build-up of power hadn't been leaked,no one would have even known about it.So Britain really was caught with its pants down.
The longer Britain held off the better they were.
There is no way that WW2 could have been averted in 1937 or 8.
With what?
How?
By whom?
Which country had the weapons?
Germany had become a mighty force again and was to be feared.
Britain only entered the war when Hitler's troops marched against Poland and they realised they would take the whole of Europe.
As it was, allowing Czechoslovakia to go down was disgusting.
But as I previously said, the Treaty of Versailles was responsible for a lot of the unrest, with Sudetanland Germans complaining about being now in Czech territory.
It is not so simple that someone can say... well this should have been done, or that.
The Sudetenland Germans were a
prime reason why Hitler treated the Czechs so badly and all that can be traced back to the peacemakers of WW1.
With respect,(even tho you're wrong_
shadows
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