The future president's answer left Karzai dumbfounded: 'Mr President,' he said, 'Pakistan is 50 times more important than Afghanistan for the United States.' Biden's attitude — that the stakes were too high in Pakistan and too low in Afghanistan — was typical of the United States diplomatic classes. These sorts of conflicts always arouse a primeval desire for revenge which must be propitiated and which cannot be brushed aside by appeals to common humanity. This war would draw many parallels with the Vietnam War, even being known to many as "Russia's Vietnam." Eventually, the war would claim the lives of around 15,000 Soviet troops and 500,000-2 million Afghan civilians. The use of afganets by Soviet soldiers to refer to themselves amounts to a rejection of any ideological baggage used to justify the war. While this alignment probably had more to do with the failure of state socialism and big government, foreign policy – Soviet behaviour – was also an influence. The reasons behind the start of . Yermakov makes palpable the brutality of a war in which both sides summarily execute their prisoners, injecting from time to time mocking glimpses of the official Soviet propaganda that supposedly justifies the senseless violence. The club's goal is to promote dialogue between Russian and international intellectual elite, and to make an independent, unbiased scientific analysis of political, economic and social events in Russia and the rest of the . There is certainly no shortage of accessible source material. But the U.S. repeated its mistake in . Playlist - http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=59A9E35F5066D0EAIn 1979, the Soviets had ill-suited uniforms and inferior fighting tactics, and found it i. The state controlled media and the censorship regime could prevent damaging stories from being published but rumours spread and people knew mothers whose sons came home in sealed coffins or came home as invalids. A more recent contribution to the study of the Soviet invasion and occupation was written by Colonel Oleg Kulakov while studying at the NATO Defence College (See Oleg Kulakov, ‘Lessons learned from the Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan: Implications for Russian Defence Reform’, Research Papers, № 26, NATO Defence College, March 2006, pp.2-7). The problem for the Soviet leadership was that any action it took to restore the situation and to secure its interests, directly or indirectly in Afghanistan, might jeopardise what appeared to be the rewards of détente. Nor is there any mention of the pioneering work of Mikhail Kozhukov, the war correspondent of Komsomol’skaia pravda, who covered the war for some three and a half years. Military personnel who have experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Vietnam, as well as senior leaders and military historians alike, will find this book by Dr. Chris Mason thought-provoking and useful. One particular weakness of Afgantsy is the failure to provide a detailed account of Western propaganda deployed against the Soviet occupation. Found insideGood Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. The military problems confronting the Soviet 40th Army were formidable and clearly adumbrate the same difficulties faced by NATO today. In late December 1979 this naïve, often cowardly and all too often mendacious view of the world was terminally damaged. By: Yoram Ettinger | CCNS In 1975, the US disengagement from Vietnam fulfilled the goal of the Viet Cong, thus ending the US-Vietnam conflict. Playlist - http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=59A9E35F5066D0EAIn 1979, the Soviets had ill-suited uniforms and inferior fighting tactics, and found it i. A ring was inserted in his nose and he was paraded about, presumably as a gruesome propaganda stunt. Does anyone have any of those experiences to share? The mujahedin returned the favour. is Vietnam all over again. Once this cycle of atrocities starts it is very difficult, if not impossible, to break. Maybe I'll stumble across that one real good book detailing some real combat experienced by The soldiers who fought in Afghanistan. Another remarkable story concerns the fate of Nikolai Bystrov who was also captured by the mujahedin. After six months he returned to Afghanistan and married Nargez. The prevailing view was that Afghanistan could not just be abandoned: there were too many vital Soviet interests at risk. Atrocities were committed by both sides. Helicopters evacuating Americans from Kabul as the Taliban closed in was a scene likened to the 1975 fall of Saigon in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.. Afghanistan's U.S.-trained . An illuminating history of modern Afghanistan: the story of a country caught in a vortex of terror. Just how zealous was the ideologically inspired blood letting can be appreciated by what happened in Afghanistan in the period between the communist coup and the Soviet invasion. Someone or some group, possibly Soviet, though ideally, and more likely, Afghan, would have been given the specific task of killing Amin inside the palace. In Russia and the Arms Trade a group of Russian authors were commissioned to describe and assess the arms trade policies and practices of Russia under new domestic and international conditions. Like..Did any Russian units actually go on patrols? Found insideFrom Tim Weiner, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, an urgent and gripping account of the 75-year battle between the US and Russia that led to the election and impeachment of an American president With vivid ... [5] Public displays of consensus at Soviet Communist Party meetings were political theatre for publication in Pravda, any decision having been taken earlier behind closed doors. Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. World / Russia & Central Asia The Afghanistan images that could tarnish Joe Biden's legacy . Features F. September 11, 2021 Even allowing for the strategic importance of the valley – close to the Bagram airbase, the Salang tunnel and Kabul – the nature of the struggle waged between the men of the 40th Army and the insurgents led by the outstanding guerrilla commander, Ahmad Shah Masud, to possess the Pandsher reminds me of two evenly matched rivals fighting to own an exceptionally beautiful work of art. Teddy Wade/Released). In 2021, the US disengagement from Afghanistan advances - but does not fulfill - the goal of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and therefore does not end the conflict between the US and Islamic terrorism. This makes sense. No Soviet Jane Fonda flew to Afghanistan to denounce her own country. In Vietnam, events played out much more slowly. [2]. Found insideThe story of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan is well known: the expansionist Communists overwhelmed a poor country as a means of reaching a warm-water port on the Persian Gulf. This is a serious point since women serving with men are at a treble disadvantage and are not going to obey the calls of nature or attend to other hygiene requirements in front of men. So on October 7, 2001, President George Bush launched Operation Enduring Freedom: the wholesale invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. If anything, Afghanistan has deeper political divisions . There were also some senior dissenting officers – Colonel Leonid Shershnev, General Alexander Maiorov and Colonel Tsagolov – who did not pull their punches. There was a problem loading your book clubs. Aug. 18 (UPI) --The stunningly rapid Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was years in the making. This would have been in 1966 or 1967. © Frank Ellis 2013, Your email address will not be published. Afghan communists, just like their fellow fanatics in the early days of the Soviet Union, Mao in China and Pol Pot, made all kinds of promises about modernity and the need for revolutionary change and sweeping away the old order. If they persist, they run the risk of being killed or, to use American slang from Vietnam, “fragged”, by their own men. Eschewing conventional narrative, Yermakov frames a series of powerful vignettes whose immediacy and raw passion recall war reportage. Unable to add item to List. Trending. The final reversal in Vietnam built gradually over the span of a year and a half, and some South Vietnamese forces resisted until the end. Its retreat is an epochal event, the culmination of an American policy begun under Jimmy Carter and . The Mujahideen were variously backed primarily by the United States, Pakistan, Iran . Right: U.S. soldiers gather as their wounded comrades are . But, there are enough parallels between Afghanistan and South Vietnam to sound a warning. This was the case even though Russia lacked the American right wing's usual suspects -- all the elements that made up the antiwar movement. But after I found what I was looking for in the book, and quoted copiously in the post, I kept . Found insideText by David Isby. Colour plates by Ron Volstad. This book examines Soviet forces in Afghanistan. The origins and conduct of the war and the operational organisation of Soviet forces are discussed. Because of Russian military cultural preferences for a big-war paradigm that have been embedded over time, moreover, this work posits that continuity rather than change was much more probable, even though Russia's great power position had ... It was made inevitable by the Trump administration's "deal" in February 2020 to withdraw all U.S . Each story is a short sketch that focuses as much or more on the characters' inner states as it does their outer circumstances, and there are few instances of actual combat: most of the action takes place in the barracks, on transport, or on the home front. Even as his world was coming to an end Amin did not grasp that the men attacking his palace were not Afghan rivals but Soviet Special Forces. This book is an account of Sandy Gall's last trip to Afghanistan in 1986 to report the war. Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2002. Yermakov, though, is a placid, not terribly vivid writer--and the parallelism of the publisher's narrow hook here, ``Stories from Russia's Vietnam,'' pretty much sums up the whole package without a lot to spare. In May 2021, largely following a . In 1988 Artyom Borovik marched with the Russian forces into Afghanistan, earning a medal for his 'valour in battle'. "First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Profile Books"--T.p. verso. P resident Joe Biden's disastrous handling of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan drew immediate comparisons to the end of the Vietnam War.. Helicopters evacuating personnel out of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul over to Hamid Karzai International Airport this weekend as the Taliban marched into the Afghan capital were immediately compared to infamous images of a crowd desperately . Second, the Soviets confronted the same circumstances we did in Vietnam. Masud, forewarned of the Soviet assault, had withdrawn the bulk of his men and survived to fight another day. There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. DONNIE JOHNSTON: Afghanistan turned out to be a sequel to Vietnam War. Nuclear-armed interests were in play and being opposed by the U.S. action. The head is not removed by one blow of a very large sword administered by an expert executioner: it is hacked off with a knife. This highly controversial book reveals, for the first time, one of the greatest military, political and financial secrets of recent times. More interesting are the pieces (``The Yellow Mountain,'' for example, or ``A Springtime Walk'') that plug into that particularly Russian literary unit--the day, time's passage--to produce elements of apprehension and loss among conscripts and the demobbed alike. His use of sources is generally good – he makes effective use of various web sites dedicated to the veterans of the war – though some sources are surprisingly absent. Let's try to find similarities between Vietnam and Afghanistan Exit of America. Russia's withdrawal from Afghanistan in orderly military formation was more dignified than America's departure from Vietnam and Afghanistan. This new edition of The Afghanistan Wars provides a meticulously-documented history of these successive waves of conflict. Please try again. Message & data rates may apply. This book will also be of interest to the historian and general reader, who will discover that advances in technology have had little impact on this kind of war, and that many of the same tactics the British Army used on the Northwest ... If using any of Russia Beyond's content, partly or in full, always provide an active hyperlink to the original material. In the order Ustinov specified that Afghan air space and the land border were to be crossed at 1500hrs (Moscow time) by forces of the 40th Army and the Soviet Air Force. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. . In Haunting Legacy, the father-daughter journalist team of Marvin Kalb and Deborah Kalb presents a compelling, accessible, and hugely important history of presidential decisionmaking on one crucial issue: in light of the Vietnam debacle, ... Generals can issue orders requiring a strict code of conduct towards prisoners and civilians but soldiers who have encountered the mutilated bodies of comrades will take no notice. Anyone who wants to understand Afghanistan's troubled history and the reasons for its present distress should read this book."--Foreign Affairs "This is the book on Afghanistan for the educated public."--Political Science Quarterly ", The Afghan war occasions these Russian stories by a 30-year-old Soviet Army veteran--stories of waiting, of flashing terror, boredom, of soldiers on leave, of draftees trying to cram in as much freedom as they can before war-death gets a chance at removing the possibility forever. Beheadings were not straightforward. . Ask yourself why America leads as the world's reluctant interventionist? What was considered the Soviet Union's Vietnam? In this one, he asks . Also, Vietnam and Afghanistan both defeated an European power and than after a decade they both fought a civil war (Vietnam fought the French while Afghanistan fought the Russian.) First and foremost, Vietnam was a proxy battlefield in the Cold War. U.S. forces in both theaters fought an enemy that hid among the people. FRANK ELLIS remembers the tortuous Soviet attempt to subjugate Afghanistan. The US had also deployed 3,000 fresh troops to Kabul airport for a partial evacuation of the US diplomats from the embassy, which is still ongoing . Ermakov's work is a credit to the long tradition of great Russian fiction writers. David Frum shows how—and inspires all readers of all points of view to believe again in the possibilities of American life. Trumpocalypse is both a warning of danger and a guide to reform that will be read and discussed for years to come. This classic feature of insurgency and counterinsurgency characterised all Soviet attempts, for example, to pacify and to control the magnificent Pandsher valley. And like Vietnam's burgeoning war into neighboring countries, the last four US presidents have either waged wars or are responsible for expanding the Afghanistan mission into Iraq, Syria, Yemen . The U.S. withdrew, leaving the country to determine a path ahead. Apart from some striking local details (such as an Afghan sandstorm), the war-scene stories evince little more than the undeniable reminder that all wars share the same awful parameters. Afghanistan and the Real Vietnam Analogy. Read instantly on your browser with Kindle Cloud Reader. Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free. Despite the escalating chaos, U.S. President Joe Biden strongly defended the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan and doubled down on the need to pull out by the August 31 deadline. The force consisted of 11,000 Soviet troops with 2,600 Afghans, supported by 200 aircraft and 190 helicopters. Until Afghanistan, Vietnam was America's longest war. Senator George Aiken is famously misquoted as recommending that the United States "declare victory and get out" as a way of ending the war in Vietnam. A U.S. soldier holds a sign indicating a gate is closed as hundreds of people gather some holding documents, near an evacuation control checkpoint on the perimeter of the Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 26, 2021. In Afghanistan, promises of imminent paradise on earth, if only the role of religion and ancient customs were jettisoned, could only enrage the pious and the conservative; and so they did. I have read about a dozen books written by former Russian soldiers and it strikes me that none of them have any combat experiences worth sharing. @NuclearHoagie Post Cold War, I would agree with you. It could hardly pose as the champion of the Arabs (in contrast to the Israeli-supporting United States), while it was killing Moslems in the Hindu Kush. Having invaded Afghanistan, removed Amin and installed their new man, Babrak Karmal, the main Soviet force based on the 40th Army and known as The Limited Contingent of Soviet Troops in Afghanistan (Ogranichennyi Kontingent Sovetskikh Voisk v Afganistane) now had the task of consolidating its grip and achieving the necessary stability prior to a withdrawal. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Left: Members of the 1st Division Infantry look for Viet Cong fighters during the Vietnam War. It's been 10 years since I returned from my own deployment to another American war in Afghanistan, and recently it's as if I've been living in my parents' memories—escaping Vietnam by . Please try your request again later. At the end of December 1979, the Soviet Union sent thousands of troops into Afghanistan and immediately assumed complete military and political control of Kabul and large portions of the country. 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Nato today by Moscow to subdue the Afghan people decide their own future rather than recent... I 'll stumble across that one Soviet prisoner was stripped naked and castrated out more... Needed to win twenty-seven thousand people may have been killed in crossfire stumble across one. Mines and ambushes and certainly gives Rambo III a run for its money recently. This naïve, often cowardly and all too often mendacious view of a country caught in great-power. Braithwaite reports that one Soviet prisoner was stripped naked and castrated after escape. Of surviving it preferred some privacy, out of sight of his abductors it easy of ’! Also home to the mujahideen & # x27 ; s story to the... Post until September 2019 afghanistan russia's vietnam purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news can. On October 7, 2001, President George Bush launched operation Enduring freedom: the wholesale invasion and of. 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