| Submit your comments on this article |
| How tough are they? |
| 2001-11-01 |
| That's it. I heard it one too many times: the Afghans are too tough, we'll never beat them in a ground war. The latest was the fellow on O'Reilly tonight. "The last person to win a ground war in Afghanistan was Alexander the Great." Nonsense. The Soviets had them whupped, using an army that's not as good as ours is today. The only hold-outs were Masood in the Panjir Valley. Hekmatyar was collaborating, Dostum was on the government side, and the Talibs were hiding in Pakistan. Two factors threw the Sovs out: first, the USA provided Stinger missiles to Masood (Hekmatyar's forces actually attacked Masood's and took some away from them). That altered the balance enough for Masood to tie them down into a war of attrition. Reagan was busy spending the Soviets into the ground and the Soviet Union collapsed behind them. Certain of the Soviet units were very effective: the SpetsNaz -- the equivalent to our Special Forces -- and the airborne troops acquitted themselves very well. The ground forces had horrible problems with equipment, especially the T62 tank, which broke down at the drop of a hat; and their command structure was so top-heavy it was funny. One might even ask, if the Afghans are so tough, what were the Soviets doing there at all? Afghanistan had an army, and it wasn't up to the standards of the Russians. Period. Afghanistan isn't a country; it's an area. Just under half the population is Pashtuns (aka Pathans), the same as those living in Pakistan. Pakland fought a war with India about twenty years ago, when East Pakistan decided it wanted to become Bangladesh. The Hindus beat them up and sent them home. Masood, the hero of the Soviet War, wasn't a Pashtun; he was a Tadjik. General Dostum, who is probably the most competent commander the Northern Alliance has left, is, I believe, an Uzbek. The Uzbeks and Tadjiks are Turkic people, a different cultural strain from the Pashtuns, who are Indo-European speakers. The Hazaras have mongol features and are Shi'ites. Of the four groupings, the Uzbeks and Tadjiks are the toughest. How tough? Well, pretty tough. They control about 10% of Afghanistan, and the other Pashtun-controlled 90% hasn't been able to beat them up yet. Oh, and the al Qaeda Arab hotshots Bin Laden has imported? They've never been good soldiers. Iraq caved in the 100-hours war. The Arab states attack Israeli teen-agers and granny-ladies because if they attack with regular forces the Israelis beat the hell out of them and take more land with almost monotonous regularity. Can the US handle them? Compared to the Japanese, they ain't squat. Compared to yesteryear's Germans, they ain't squat. Compared to human waves of screaming Chinese and North Koreans, they ain't squat. How to take Afghanistan? We can do what we're doing: support the Northern Alliance from the air and let them take over. Don't worry about what the successor state's going to look like, because it's their country, not ours; or we can put two brigades of 82nd Airborne into Kabul, two into Kandahar, two of the 101st into Mazar and two into Herat. That turns it into guerilla war, preferably in winter. Why? Because there's a difference between a man with a gun and a soldier. The soldiers win, hands down, every time. And why in winter? Because no matter who you are, if you're living in the Hindu Kush in winter, you're going to build a fire. Every time you build a fire, you're a target because the US forces do infrared right. Meanwhile, "General McArthur" is rebuilding the area into a secular state, Pakistan is collapsing into anarchy, and the Saudi royal family is coming down with the vapors. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |