Blast From the Past, Afghanistan Edition (Or: I Told You So)

[Editor's note: In my ongoing efforts to compile a "Food & Water Reader," I've been digging for old pieces of merit. Today I found this piece that was written on my first blog, "The Daily Curio," in December, 2001. It was also published later in the Food & Water Journal. Interestingly enough, this essay and others like it at the time led to several members of the Food & Water board to resign. "Stick to food issues, Michael." These writings also created a major riff with Vermont's fledgling Progressive Party, who wished to remain silent on the Afghanistan War issue because "it wasn't a Vermont issue." Yikes, try telling that to the family members who are burying their young today. Enjoy. Or, better yet, act up and speak out.]

The U.S. military’s strategy in its war in Afghanistan seems as transparent as it is tragic. Bowing to the pressures to secure “quick victories”-even if it means proclaiming faux victories-the U.S. armed forces are walking into a quagmire of disease, death, and frustration in Afghanistan. And, sadly, the script they’re following is all-too-similar to the Soviet experience in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.

While the U.S. political and media elite jump for joy over the relative “ease” with which they’ve forced the Taliban out of Afghanistan’s major cities, military strategists and historians of the Soviet-Afghan War know that taking over the cities has always been the easiest phase of fighting in Afghanistan.

When the Soviet Union launched its assault on Afghanistan on Christmas eve of 1979, a date that was intended to prevent a quick Western response, the Soviet military followed a game plan that looks strikingly similar to today’s U.S. effort. In a document titled “The Soviet War in Afghanistan: History and Harbinger of Future War?,” published by the Foreign Military Studies Office of the U.S. Army, the authors provide these details to the Soviet’s goals in its occupation of Afghanistan:

“[S]tabilizing the country by garrisoning the main routes, major cities, airbases and logistics sites; relieving the Afghan government forces of garrison duties and pushing them into the countryside to battle the resistance; providing logistic, air, artillery and intelligence support to Afghan forces; providing minimum interface between the Soviet occupation forces and the local populace; accepting minimal Soviet casualties; and, strengthening the Afghan forces, so once the resistance was defeated, the Soviet Army could be withdrawn.”

Sound familiar? It should.

Like the giddy atmosphere of military victory emanating from Washington today, the Soviet military brass of the early 1980s thought they, too, were on the road to a swift victory after quickly overtaking the major Afghani cities, airbases, communications centers, and main routes. But, as far as the Afghanistan fighters were concerned, the war was just beginning.

The kind of conventional military air power that both the Soviets and the United States have brought against Afghanistan to initiate occupational force is ready-made for driving less-sophisticated armies out of cities and key logistical sites. But, as the Soviets found out in 1980, the less-sophisticated, guerrilla-style armies of Afghanistan thrive in the rough, mountainous conditions of Afghanistan.

“The Soviet ground invasion force crossed into the county, fought with a few pockets of Afghan military resistance and occupied the main cities while the Soviet government installed their Afghan puppet regime,” the U.S. Army document recounts. “The Soviets expected the resistance to end here, but it had only begun.”

Interestingly, in this 1996 document published well before the United States intended to fight its own war with Afghanistan, the U.S. Army credits the Afghani people for their fierce determination in foiling the military advances of a “superpower.”

“The Afghani’s values, faith and love of freedom enabled them to hold out against a superpower, even though they suffered tremendous casualties in doing so,” the Army reports.

While the Afghani people-both inside and outside the military-appeared to be throwing in the towel to the Soviets, the truth was that they were merely protecting themselves and preparing for a guerrilla-style war that would literally drain the Soviet military of its resources and resolve. When the Soviet military personnel drifted into the mountains for combat missions, they were strategically outmaneuvered by Afghani soldiers who were both more accustomed to the terrain and more hardened to the difficult environment. And when the Soviet soldiers \ tried to police the cities, they were taunted, clandestinely shot at, and even openly attacked by the Afghani people they thought had succumbed to their political conditions.

Perhaps the biggest challenge to the Soviet military, once they had “secured the cities,” was living in the squalid conditions their attacks had only worsened for the impoverished nation. As a result, diseases ran rampant in the Soviet occupational forces, only adding to the harsh physical and psychological strain they were forced to fight under.

According to Lieutenant Colonel Lester Grau and Major William Jorgensen, coauthors of Beaten by the Bugs: The Soviet-Afghan War Experience, published by Military Review (Nov./Dec. 1997), the “Soviet experience in Afghanistan is an example of a modern force which was seriously hampered by disease and poor field sanitation.”

Grau and Jorgensen report that the Soviet propaganda machine liked to report back to the Soviet people how they were building hospitals and orphanages for the Afghani people. But what they didn’t report was that the Soviet soldiers “filled more hospitals and orphanages then they constructed.”

According to Grau and Jorgensen, of the 620,000 Soviets who served in Afghanistan, 469,685 (76 percent) required hospitalization. “Of these,” reports Grau and Jorgensen, “53,753 (11.44 percent) were wounded or injured. Fully 415,932 (88.56 percent) were hospitalized for serious diseases. In other words, 67 percent of those who served in Afghanistan required hospitalization for a serious illness.”

The major diseases that afflicted the Soviets were infectious hepatitis, typhoid fever, plague, malaria, cholera, diphtheria, and pneumonia. The reasons for the high rate of disease among the troops were obvious: a lack of reliable sources for clean drinking water (particularly after the initial bombing of infrastructures); poor sanitation both in the field and at base camps; infestations of disease-carrying organisms, such as lice and rats; stress; and a poor and inconsistent diet.

Although U.S. military and health officials blame the Soviet military for its lack of adequate planning and its uncleanliness, which purportedly caused the high incidence of disease, the truth is that many of these diseases weren’t preventable. There is no vaccine for hepatitis A, for example, which was the top disease encountered by the soldiers.

So if the guerrilla fighting style of the Afghani soldiers didn’t bring the Soviets to their knees, the wide range of bugs and diseases did. And both took a devastating toll on the troops’ morale.

The U.S. military was all too happy in late 1979 to learn its superpower counterpart was embarking on a war with Afghanistan. In fact, former Secretary of State Zbigniew Brzezinski has been widely quoted in recent years remembering the Carter administration’s outright glee over the Soviet invasion. It would be, they correctly hoped and predicted, the “Soviet’s Vietnam.”

But now the United States appears to be sliding down the same path it once gleefully shoved the Soviets down: a dangerous and dirty war with Afghanistan. And, so far, it’s looking very familiar, indeed. The U.S. military has captured the cities and important bases while keeping its own casualties low. The U.S. bombs have rattled the Afghani people into what appears acquiescence. And the U.S. military and political elites are beginning to slap themselves on the back for “a job well done.”

Sadly, as the Soviets know so well, it’s only just begun.