[Marcello]

The main differance between the Red Army of 1979 and it's Western counterpart was the quality of it's training and the focus of the doctrine. The Red Army was never designed for COIN, it was a heavy army designed to bash through NATO defenses.

If you are implying that the western armies have been doctrinally focused on COIN, sorry that does not fly.
Since WW2 the doctrinal focus was on stopping the Red Horde From The East: that was the primary task, sometimes pursued at expense of everything else (see for example the emphasis put on nuclear forces at the severe expense of conventional ones in the early Cold War).
COIN was an after thought most of the time; yes there were the green berets etc but it was a small niche and did not really influence deeply the Army as a whole.
Vietnam, the only major COIN (and mind you, COIN was just a fraction of what was going on there anyway) experience before Iraq, left the US Army with a sour taste when it came to COIN and the general reaction afterwards was "let's forget about and focus on the Fulda Gap".
The upper side of that was the US Army splendid performance in 1991. The downside was the mistakes post 2003, when the US military had essentially to relearn COIN from scratch.
Now COIN is a primary mission but it is just because of contemporary circumstances.

We are not using terror tactics to try and beat the people into submission

You could easily define a lot of what was going on in Afghanistan in the 80's as "terror tactics" and "beat the people into submission". But then a lot of what was going in Vietnam would fall under that category. From the liberal use of massive amounts of firepower in populated areas to the relocation of population.

Finally, the Russians were incredibly vicious during the war. Their only recourse to failed operations seemed to be dropping mines and sowing terror amongst the Afghan populace which only caused more anger and resentment. The tales of wholesale destruction of villages and violations of Afghan women have passed into legend.

Legend is a apt term. As you will probably recall the US was engaged in a proxy war against the USSR which included, shocking suprise, heavy use of propaganda. And Afghanistan is not a great place for fact finding missions after the fact.
No doubt there was an extremely indiscriminate usage of firepower by the soviets, at least by current standards, and lots of atrocities to boot. But contemporary tales were filtered throught the anti USSR propaganda and that cannot be overlooked in a critical analysis.
Mining operations for example were extensively carried out by the mujahedeen too (mines were one of the most sought after weapons back in Pakistan).