Excellent article on Afghanistan

[Snipey]

Originally Posted by Wdll

As I have mentioned a couple of times, and people choose to ignore me lol, the problem was that since the population was hostile and impossible to switch over for more than a temp time, the soviets were not ruthless enough. It was a half *** attempt at intervention. If they sent far more troops and just massacred the population wherever there was trouble, the situation would be solved quickly.

It is the same reason that the current one will fail. It was the same reason (or at least one of the reasons) that the Vietnam war failed for the americans (and the french). If you are going to send occupation forces where the population don't want you, you better be ready to either KILL or leave in shame.

Not entirely true. You just have to take out the leadership, and teach a painful lesson to those that are attacking your army, but not to the villagers. You don't just wipe off villages from the map; once you get attacked, you counter-attack, and follow through on it viciously. If they choose to hide in the village, than you take out the village. That way the village gets burned AFTER the Taliban units hide there, not before. As per leadership, look at how much damage was done to the Taliban in Pakistan when the glorious US missile took out Meshud. I rarely animate non living objects, but the missile that got Meshud deserves the nickname "Glory".

You also have to coordinate better with the locals. Not everyone in Afghanistan is pro-Taliban. So you arm those that are anti-Taliban, and go after the Taliban.

But in one aspect you are correct. The Brezhnev and Gorbachev Administrations half-assed the Soviet War in Afghanistan.