Ghosts of the Past
Hello, faithful blogsters. No, I'm not actually referring to myself (though I've not updated in far too long - damn you 2.0!). Thanks to Clayton Oliver's very thoughtful gesture of sending Spycraft books to troops in the Middle East, I'm thinking about the Coalition troops stuck over there in Iraq, and the whole damn situation. While reading up on the history of Russian Spetsnaz forces for some personal research, the ghost of the past came out and bit me in the ass, from an excerpt from "The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost," written by none other than the Russian General Staff and translated by Lester W. Grau and Michael A. Gress.
The topic was the nature of the Soviet handling of the civil war following the failed attempt to establish a Communist client state in the region, but if you are to replace the word "Soviet" with "Coalition," "Brezshnev" with "Bush," and references to Afghanistan with Iraq, you have a haunting picture of the future of the Coalition campaign:
"The obvious models for intervention were Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. These models served the Soviet General Staff as planning guides. General Pavlovskiy, the Chief of Soviet Ground Forces, who commanded the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, led a group of 50 Soviet officers on a lengthy planning reconnaissance throughout Afghanistan during August through October 1979. However, the general staff planners failed to note that Afghanistan was involved in a civil war and that a coup de main would only seize control of the central government, not the countryside."
"Although the units of the 40th Army were briefed at the last minute, the Soviet 1979 Christmas Eve invasion was masterfully planned and well executed. The Soviets seized the government, killed the president, and installed their own man in his place. Apparently, the Soviet plan was to stabilize the situation, strengthen the army, and then withdraw the bulk of Soviet forces within three years. The Soviet General Staff intended to leave all fighting to the armed forces of the DRA. However, Afghanistan was in full rebellion, the demoralized DRA army was unable to cope, and the probability of a defeat following a Soviet withdrawal haunted the Soviet Politburo."
"Invasion and overthrow of the government proved the easy part. Now the Soviet 40th Army found itself drawn into fighting hundreds of guerrilla groups throughout the country. The 40th Army's instincts were to fight the war that they had trained for, using large-scale, high-tempo operations. But the war was actually fought at the low end of the tactical spectrum where platoon leaders tried to find and fight small, indigenous forces that would stand and fight only when the terrain and circumstances were to their advantage."
Scary, ain't it? And with a little help from outside forces, Afghanistan is what broke the back (and bank) of the Soviet Union. And all for invading one little, dusty country for ill-planned reasons with no plan for withdrawal. We've managed to make every one of these same mistakes, both in Afghanistan and Iraq. All they have to do to win the wars there is not lose - they don't have to worry about political cost, or manpower, or building alliances. All they have to do is hang on and wait.
Well, that's it for my cheery update. I'll post something more joyous as Xmas approaches.
Hello, faithful blogsters. No, I'm not actually referring to myself (though I've not updated in far too long - damn you 2.0!). Thanks to Clayton Oliver's very thoughtful gesture of sending Spycraft books to troops in the Middle East, I'm thinking about the Coalition troops stuck over there in Iraq, and the whole damn situation. While reading up on the history of Russian Spetsnaz forces for some personal research, the ghost of the past came out and bit me in the ass, from an excerpt from "The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost," written by none other than the Russian General Staff and translated by Lester W. Grau and Michael A. Gress.
The topic was the nature of the Soviet handling of the civil war following the failed attempt to establish a Communist client state in the region, but if you are to replace the word "Soviet" with "Coalition," "Brezshnev" with "Bush," and references to Afghanistan with Iraq, you have a haunting picture of the future of the Coalition campaign:
"The obvious models for intervention were Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. These models served the Soviet General Staff as planning guides. General Pavlovskiy, the Chief of Soviet Ground Forces, who commanded the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, led a group of 50 Soviet officers on a lengthy planning reconnaissance throughout Afghanistan during August through October 1979. However, the general staff planners failed to note that Afghanistan was involved in a civil war and that a coup de main would only seize control of the central government, not the countryside."
"Although the units of the 40th Army were briefed at the last minute, the Soviet 1979 Christmas Eve invasion was masterfully planned and well executed. The Soviets seized the government, killed the president, and installed their own man in his place. Apparently, the Soviet plan was to stabilize the situation, strengthen the army, and then withdraw the bulk of Soviet forces within three years. The Soviet General Staff intended to leave all fighting to the armed forces of the DRA. However, Afghanistan was in full rebellion, the demoralized DRA army was unable to cope, and the probability of a defeat following a Soviet withdrawal haunted the Soviet Politburo."
"Invasion and overthrow of the government proved the easy part. Now the Soviet 40th Army found itself drawn into fighting hundreds of guerrilla groups throughout the country. The 40th Army's instincts were to fight the war that they had trained for, using large-scale, high-tempo operations. But the war was actually fought at the low end of the tactical spectrum where platoon leaders tried to find and fight small, indigenous forces that would stand and fight only when the terrain and circumstances were to their advantage."
Scary, ain't it? And with a little help from outside forces, Afghanistan is what broke the back (and bank) of the Soviet Union. And all for invading one little, dusty country for ill-planned reasons with no plan for withdrawal. We've managed to make every one of these same mistakes, both in Afghanistan and Iraq. All they have to do to win the wars there is not lose - they don't have to worry about political cost, or manpower, or building alliances. All they have to do is hang on and wait.
Well, that's it for my cheery update. I'll post something more joyous as Xmas approaches.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home