Excellent article on Afghanistan

[redcoat2]

Originally Posted by Anthony_Scott

Michael Yon is currently in Afghanistan and is stomping about with British soldiers. He has posted this article along with excellent photos. Also, the Yon article has some excellent Google Earth screenies that might prove valuable for scenario design.

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/bad-medicine.htm

Thanks. Interesting article and photos.

[Wdll]

The last article/interview is wonderful.
Read it.

The interviewee seems to have the same opinion as I. The war there is not going to gain anything. The people of the area will not change and become friends.

[Wdll]

The USSR couldn't have won the cold war unless it went hot and won that one. It's simple a matter of numbers. You can't fight an opposite system and at the same time depend on it for your own survival.

[Marcello]

Originally Posted by Snipey

If the Red Army could deliver supplies to Leningrad, you can be damn sure they can deliver supplies to Kabul.

They actually did. BUT they could not supply enough to prevent both mass starvation taking place in Leningrad or any hypothetical massive escalation in Afghanistan. In both circumstances being able to do something did not mean you could
arbitrarily do more of it.

Originally Posted by Snipey

Then you improve to road network.

They did what they could. Remember, it was the soviets who had built the bulk of the roads in the north of Afghanistan in first place. But there is only so much they could accomplish once the shooting started.
You would have to bring in more vulnerable convoys with construction materials and construction sites themselves would be vulnerable. This would be just part of the problem of course.

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?s...&article=23577

See the issues described in the above article and remember that the soviets had it at lot worse on every count.

You also coordinate with allies

What allies?

improve overall strategy

They were fighting abroad to protect an unpopular government
which was fundamentally at odds with the way of life of most locals, in a country where terrain and tradition favored guerilla warfare and bordering with a state willing to provide santuary to the guerrillas. IOW a strategic nightmare.

And none of the above had any simple fix.

use bombs and air force in intense battles

They did.

but gain the ground

They did.Holding was the problem.

I do, but I think you're wrong. Keep in mind that in the USSR there was no unemployment, everyone had jobs, and most people had a roof over their head and food to eat, as well as quality healthcare.

Hindsight.
All the people knew, back then , was that they had to wait for years for a cheap *** car and that there were always shortage of the most basic goods.
And they were pretty fed up about it (and Internet would only make things worse, as the knowledge that in the West they had no such issues would become even more widespread). And it was not going to get much better anytime soon because the economy was not growing anymore at decent rates.
They were not expecting an economic collapse.

[Snipey]

In the Leningrad Case I was referring to the Road of Life. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_of_Life If the Red Army could have done that, over treacherous ice, under severe Nazi bombardment, than why are you telling me that they couldn't do the same for Kabul? Mass starvation took place in Leningrad, before the Road of Life was built, not afterwards. Preventing further mass starvation was the whole point of the Road of Life, and the plan succeeded.

Also, you're talking about the USSR not being able to overproduce Afghanistan? I'm sorry, but that's just plain silly. In addition, if your building projects are being harassed, then simply set up ambushes, coordinate, bombard, use the Rocket Corps, etc. Give the native Afghanis jobs in building the roads. Stop building, duke it out with the local forces, and continue. You can use tanks to escort convoys. You can have have scouts patrol the roads. And if you're the USSR, you can surely commit more than 118,000 men.

What allies? Offer a training program to third world militaries, where you get elite SpetzNatz training, but your unit has to serve a year in Afghanistan. How many do you think would sign up for that? Even if half of the unit survives, and it would have been much more than half, you would have elite units in countries like Angola. A win-win for both countries. Yet nothing like that was even offered.

It was a tough war, no one denies that. But the main losing factors must be considered, if one is to understand how the war was lost. And the main factors were the Brezhnev and Gorbachev Governments. If the leader you are supporting is unpopular, you simply switch support. Again, that order lay with Gorbachev, not with the Red Army.

If the Red Army can hold Kursk against the Wehrmacht onslaught, surely they can hold any ground against the Taliban.

Actually the USSR had a nice system of mass transit, so a car didn't qualify for a basic good. In addition, if one was willing to look, substitutes for basic goods were readily available. It's not like there was mass starvation. The low crime rate enabled people to grow their own crops in the gardens, which, until the 1990's, no one stole.

They were fed up about it? Oh puh lease. It's not like there was a massive revolutionary feeling in the USSR. The Internet could have made it worst, or could have made it better, cause honestly we don't know. People might have found out not only about owning a car, but also about things like traffic, car insurance, unemployment, health insurance, massive divorce rate, the public school system in the US, the lack of Sanatoriums for a low price, ethnic warfare, (which was unknown in the USSR) etc. Either way, that was a choice to be made by the people, and the Internet would have given the people that choice. Gorbachev rushed through, completely unprepared. The result was mass chaos.

And you can say that hindsight is 20/20, but can you name a single country that successfully transformed into a Capitalist economy without mass chaos? And if you cannot, doesn't chaos usually bring about ethnic warfare? Like Chechnya? Like Ossetia? Like Nagorno-Karabakh? If everyone gets a car, but there isn't a road expansion, doesn't that lead to traffic? If everyone has a car, won't there be more accidents and a need for car insurance? In a Capitalist system, like the US, which Gorbachev was modeling from, is healthcare granted to every citizen? All that stuff could have been easily predictable, had Gorbachev not been so headstrong and impulsive, saying "my way or the high way". Sound familiar?

[Wdll]

Originally Posted by Snipey

And if you're the USSR, you can surely commit more than 118,000 men.

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.

[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.

[Marcello]

Originally Posted by Snipey

In the Leningrad Case I was referring to the Road of Life. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_of_Life If the Red Army could have done that, over treacherous ice, under severe Nazi bombardment, than why are you telling me that they couldn't do the same for Kabul? Mass starvation took place in Leningrad, before the Road of Life was built, not afterwards. Preventing further mass starvation was the whole point of the Road of Life, and the plan succeeded.

I was perfectly aware of the "Road of Life".
What you don't seem aware of is a few details that the Wikipedia article gloss over but I (wrongly) assumed would be common knowledge, at least in general terms.
Leningrad needed an absolute minimum of a thousands of tons of supplies per day. A month after the opening of the road the tonnage delivered was still only 700-800 tons per day.
About 120.000 people starved to death only during January 1942, two months after the opening of the road. Another 130.000 or so died on February. Eventually enough people died or were evacuated and the improved supply system could cope.
"not afterwards" indeed

Source: The siege of Leningrad, 1941-1944 by David M. Glantz
Or if you really like Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_...ad_on_the_city

January–February: The deadliest months of the siege: every month 130,000 civilians are found dead in Leningrad and suburbs

More on the rest later.

[Snipey]

Once again, that was during the first two months of it being established. In the end, Leningrad had a population of 640,000, that were supplied. In addition, you have to keep in mind that the Red Army couldn't devote all of their resources to the Siege of Leningrad, like they could to the path to Kabul. In addition, if they could supply 640,000 in Leningrad, that would be above the requirements of supply needed to carry out the operations in Afghanistan. And that was done with limited resources, which were much less than the resources the USSR had when the Red Army invaded Kabul. In other words, the USSR could have pulled it off, but didn't because of Brezhnev and Gorbachev, which was my initial point. So let's not go off topic, and focus on the task at hand.

[Wdll]

I think we are saying the same thing (in your last post).