MOSCOW — Thirty years ago this week, the Red Army began its invasion of Afghanistan, a move that sank the Soviet Union in a decade of guerrilla war and hastened the collapse of the Cold War empire.
Today, as former Soviet soldiers watch American troops trying to pacify the same stretches of Afghan land they once fought for, aging Soviet generals and grunts alike are reminded of a war they'd rather forget.
While Russians are willing, and often eager, to predict utter defeat for U.S. efforts based on their own failure in Afghanistan, they're much less comfortable talking about the pain of reportedly having lost more than 14,000 lives in a war that ended in retreat.
Comparing wars is a process riddled with inconsistency — the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was far different from the American presence today — but on the eve of the anniversary of the Soviet war, the somber and at times anguished way that veterans in Russia spoke of their time in Afghanistan was a disturbing reminder of the hurdles that American forces now face.
The retired soldiers talk about Afghanistan in terms that echo the American experience in Vietnam: of winning battles but losing the campaign, watching the local population throw its support behind an insurgency and, finally, coming home to a country that no longer understood or supported their war.
As the Obama administration sends in 30,000 to 35,000 more troops by next summer — raising the total of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan to at least 140,000 — men such as Alexander Tsalko say they can't fathom why anyone would want to fight in that land of sharp mountain ridges and hot desert sands.
"Nothing was achieved while I was there. ... There wasn't anything good there; they fired at us, we fired at them," said Tsalko, who commanded a helicopter unit in Kandahar from 1982 to 1983.
Tsalko was later the deputy head of a Soviet state defense committee and then a member of a Russian government commission for veterans affairs. He's spent the last several years working for an organization that helps disabled veterans.
What are his thoughts in late December, the period when the Soviets thrust into Afghanistan with a troop buildup on Dec. 24 and Dec. 25 and then the overthrow of the government on Dec. 27?
"Bitterness and regret that we were drawn into this war," Tsalko replied.
In short, he said, "those who fought there do not want to talk about it when they're not drunk."
Unlike Russia's springtime celebration of its World War II victory over Nazi Germany, a national holiday that includes a triumphant, sparkling military parade in Red Square, the anniversary of the Soviet war in Afghanistan is hardly mentioned in the cold, dark days of December.
"It's especially difficult to remember those episodes that so many would like to leave behind," said Vladimir Kostyuchenko, a helicopter pilot for three tours in Afghanistan who's now active with an Afghan veterans group in Russia. "These generals at the top, they had no sense of reality. They gave us murderous orders. I still bear a cross because I fulfilled those orders."
Kostyuchenko, a slightly pudgy man with a friendly face whose helicopter was shot down in 1988, continued the thought: "Later we saw the results, and they were terrible."
Igor Rodionov, who from 1985 to 1986 commanded the Soviet 40th Army, its main military force, said it wasn't just the troops who were conflicted.
"On one hand, I was indignant when I understood what this decision to invade Afghanistan would result in. I could say that to my friends, but I could not say it out loud because I was a general," said Rodionov, who retired as a four-star general and later was a Russian defense minister and then a parliament deputy. "Our sacrifices were not needed."
Rodionov, who's now 73, looked down at a table in front of him and arranged a pen, plate of crackers and a napkin to demonstrate the flanks of a troop position. He gazed at them for a moment with a bemused expression, as if to recognize the absurdity of talking about the violence of war while pointing at a napkin.
Pushing the items forward, Rodionov said that commanders often sent their men to hunt for the enemy in villages on either side of mountain gorges near vital transport routes.
"We could fight for two weeks in this gorge, killing the Afghans," he said in a gravelly voice. "In return they kill our guys. We have used all our water, ammunition and food, and then we must go back to our rear position."
Rodionov pulled the pen, crackers and napkin back to their starting places: "Then the mujahedeen" — meaning holy warriors, the term used by Afghan fighters — "would return to the gorge, and the whole thing continues."
The Soviet experience, of course, isn't proof that the same fate will befall the United States, which is now more than eight years into its Afghan war.
While the Soviet invasion in 1979 was widely seen across the world as an act of wanton aggression, a broad coalition of countries supported the U.S. decision in the aftermath of 9/11 to topple the Taliban government in Kabul and hunt down al Qaida.
The Soviets were badly hobbled by Western and Arab financial and arms support for the Afghan fighters, especially U.S. Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, which American pilots haven't had to face.
The current collection of insurgents and terrorists — though they include some of the same men the U.S. backed against the Soviets — aren't thought to receive anywhere close to that level of foreign help.
Still, the men who took part in the Soviet fight for Afghanistan say that no matter how smart the Obama administration's plans are for turning the tide, they stand little chance in a country that's known as the graveyard of empires.
"Afghans will fight foreign troops as long as foreign troops are there," said Lev Serebrov, whose time there was bookended by the Soviet invasion and retreat. He arrived in 1979 and stayed through 1981 as a lieutenant colonel and deputy division commander, and returned from 1987 to 1989 as a major general and deputy to the Soviet operations commander for the Afghan war.
"No one should go there armed," said Serebrov, who's now a deputy in Russia's lower house of parliament.
Kostyuchenko, the helicopter pilot, hosts a neighborhood remembrance of the war on Dec. 27, the date that Soviet forces murdered Afghan President Hafizullah Amin in order to replace him with a more loyal pawn. Killing Amin was the point of no turning back, Kostyuchenko explained.
On Sunday night, a group of old women, some of them wearing black scarves, will shuffle into a drab apartment on Mikhailov Street and light candles for their dead sons. The candles, from a nearby church, are thin so that they'll fit into the spent bullet cartridges that Kostyuchenko lines up in a row at a small exhibit about the war that he tends.
Tsalko, the veterans' issues advocate, didn't say whether he'd be attending any memorial services.
After speaking of the bad dreams and drinking that come after a war ends, Tsalko thanked a reporter for his time and headed toward the door. Putting on his scarf, long winter coat and thick brown fur hat, he had one last thought: "It's very hard to fight in Afghanistan. Your leadership will have to find a way out."
U.S. retreat from Afghan valley marks recognition of blunder
By Greg Jaffe Thursday, April 15, 2010
KORENGAL VALLEY, AFGHANISTAN -- It was as if the five years of almost ceaseless firefights and ambushes had been a misunderstanding -- a tragic, bloody misunderstanding.
More than 40 U.S. troops have been killed, and scores more wounded, in helicopter crashes, machine-gun attacks and grenade blasts in the Korengal Valley, a jagged sliver just six miles long and a half-mile wide. The Afghan death toll has been far higher, making the Korengal some of the bloodiest ground in all of Afghanistan, according to American and Afghan officials.
In the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday, the U.S. presence here came to an abrupt end.
A day earlier, Capt. Mark Moretti, the 28-year-old commander of American forces in the valley, walked two dozen Korengali elders around his base and told them that the United States was withdrawing. He showed the elders the battle-scarred barracks, a bullet-ridden crane, wheezing generators and a rubber bladder brimming with 6,000 gallons of fuel.
Moretti, the son of a West Point physics professor, and Shamshir Khan, a valley elder whose son had been jailed for killing two U.S. troops, sat together on a small wall near the base's helicopter pad. In keeping with local custom among friends, they held hands.
Moretti gently reminded Khan of the deal they had reached a few days earlier: If U.S. troops were allowed to leave peacefully, the Americans wouldn't destroy the base, the crane and the fuel. Khan assured him that the valley's fighters would honor the deal.
"I hope that when I am gone, you will do what is best for your valley and the villagers," an almost wistful Moretti said.
"I want you to travel safely to your home, to your family," the 86-year-old elder replied. He gazed at the officer through thick glasses that magnified rheumy brown eyes and beamed.
Over the previous week, hundreds of U.S. Army Rangers and Afghan commandos had pushed into the valley to control the high ground the enemy would need for a big attack on departing troops. Dozens of cargo helicopters hauled off equipment. By Wednesday morning, the last Americans were gone.
For U.S. commanders, the Korengal Valley offers a hard lesson in the limits of American power and goodwill in Afghanistan. The valley's extreme isolation, its axle-breaking terrain and its inhabitants' suspicion of outsiders made it a perfect spot to wage an insurgency against a Western army.
U.S. troops arrived here in 2005 to flush out al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. They stayed on the theory that their presence drew insurgents away from areas where the U.S. role is more tolerated and there is a greater desire for development. The troops were, in essence, bullet magnets.
In 2010, a new set of commanders concluded that the United States had blundered into a blood feud with fierce and clannish villagers who wanted, above all, to be left alone. By this logic, subduing the Korengal wasn't worth the cost in American blood.
The retreat carries risks. Insurgents could use the Korengal as a haven to plan attacks in other parts of Afghanistan. The withdrawal could offer proof to other Afghans that U.S. troops can be forced out.
The American hope is that pulling out of the Korengal rectifies a mistake and that Moretti's troops can be put to better use stabilizing larger, less violent areas.
"You can't force the local populace to accept you in their valley," Moretti said. "You can't make them want to work with us."
'A waste of time'
On April 7, Moretti and about three dozen other soldiers set out on foot for the town of Aliabad, about one mile from the Korengal Outpost, the main U.S. base in the valley. Rumors of the American departure had begun spreading through the area, and intelligence reports suggested that insurgent commanders were planning a large-scale attack. Moretti was eager to find out what the valley's elders knew.
The troops walked down a dirt trail, scanning the ridgelines. About a half-mile from the U.S. outpost, a bomb exploded at their feet, spraying shrapnel, rock shards and dirt. Blood trickled from a 22-year-old soldier's blown eardrum, cutting a narrow path down his dirt-caked face.
"I can't hear a [expletive] thing," the soldier said.
Another soldier suffered what appeared to be a broken leg.
"If you have eyes on the triggerman, you are cleared to fire," Moretti screamed.
His troops blasted away at a lone figure running along the ridgeline on the other side of the valley. An attack helicopter fired a missile into an abandoned house where one of the soldiers thought he saw the triggerman.
The wounded were carried back to the base and evacuated by helicopter. Moretti and the rest of the patrol resumed their trek to Aliabad in search of Khan and his younger brother-in-law Zalwar Khan.
Later, Moretti and the elderly Afghans sat together on a small porch overlooking terraces of brilliant emerald winter wheat. Zalwar Khan's role as the primary interlocutor between the Americans and the insurgents gave him a small measure of status. He had used his relationship with the American commanders to seek humanitarian aid for hungry villagers and cash payments for goats killed by U.S. mortar shells.
But Moretti had been avoiding the Afghan as a way to pressure him into greater cooperation.
"You are the only American commander I have known who refuses to see me," Khan said in Pashto, his face just inches from Moretti's. "You are the only one who doesn't sit at the weekly shura. Why?"
"The shura is a waste of time," Moretti replied. "All we talk about is dead goats. In 10 months, the meetings haven't accomplished a single thing."
He and Khan argued in circles for the next 15 minutes about the violence in the valley before Moretti cut the conversation short.
"I know there are big plans for an attack on one of my bases," he said. "I want to hear about it." In exchange for information, Moretti promised to start meeting again with Khan.
Khan weighed the offer and then said, "I don't know anything."
An unbuilt road
Most of the Korengal's 4,000 to 5,000 residents live in stone houses that cling to the valley's steep walls. To survive, they grow wheat and log towering cedars in defiance of a government ban on timber exports. They speak their own language.
For most of the past five years, U.S. troops have exercised loose control over the first three miles of the valley. Beyond that mark, the insurgents have had free rein.
When he arrived in the Korengal in June, Moretti sent his troops into villages where there had been no regular American presence for a year. His plan was to drive the enemy back and persuade the elders to support a U.S.-funded effort to pave the sole road into the valley, a project that had stalled in 2007.
The road would connect the Korengal to the rest of eastern Afghanistan and, in theory, make it more governable. In September, as construction was set to begin, insurgents killed six guards hired by the contractor and took their weapons. The contractor quit.
Moretti's predecessors had spent countless hours trying to persuade Zalwar Khan to rally the locals to support the road project. Three years of prodding had produced virtually no progress. Moretti sensed that the real power in the valley lay with the men leading the insurgency.
He asked Khan to deliver a letter to a timber baron and insurgent leader known as Matin, who like many Afghans uses only one name. Long before Moretti's arrival in the valley, U.S. troops had killed several of Matin's family members in airstrikes, according to the Korengalis. In banning the timber trade, the Afghan government had deprived him of his sole means of income.
"Haji Matin hates the Americans too much," Khan told Moretti, using an honorific that signified Matin's completion of the pilgrimage to Mecca. "He won't respond."
Instead he advised Moretti to write to Nasurallah, a colleague of Matin's. "It is our belief that you are the rightful leader of the Korengalis," the captain wrote. "You hold the power not only among the villagers but also among the fighters. If you want the valley to prosper all you have to do is talk with us and bring your fighters down from the mountains."
The letter offered Nasurallah two choices: development or death. "It is not our wish to kill your fellow Korengalis," Moretti continued. "But we are good at it and will continue to do it as long as you fight us."
Two days later, Moretti received a response. "If you surrender to the law of God then our war against you will end," Nasurallah wrote. "If you keep fighting for man's law then we will fight you until Doomsday."
A change of ambition
Shortly after Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal took over as the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan last summer, he flew into the Korengal to meet with Moretti. At the time, McChrystal was reluctant to pump any more troops into the stalemated fight. But he also was hesitant to leave because an American defeat in the Korengal would raise questions about U.S. will and embolden other insurgents, American officials said.
"Do you think you can turn the valley?" he asked Moretti, the son of one of his West Point classmates.
"I really believe we can make a difference," Moretti recalled telling him.
In the months since, Moretti and his commanders became increasingly convinced that the Korengalis' main ambition was to drive the Americans from the valley. They received training, money and weapons from backers in Pakistan and the Middle East. But the Korengalis' fight was local.
"I don't believe there are any hard-core Taliban in the valley," said Lt. Col. Brian Pearl, who oversees U.S. military operations in the Korengal and a half-dozen other valleys in eastern Afghanistan.
Last week McChrystal flew back into the valley. Moretti walked him through the plan to pull out his 154 troops. "Sir, I think we are looking forward to getting out of here," Moretti said. "I think leaving is the right thing to do."
Some of his soldiers were more blunt with the general. "This place is rough," said Pfc. Matthew Lunceford, who had a gash across his cheek from the bombing on the way to see the Khans. "It is freaking nuts."
Moretti's troops had learned from earlier units' experience about how to survive in the valley. They knew which ambush sites to avoid. They also patrolled areas that hadn't had a U.S. presence in years to keep the enemy off balance.
In 10 months, the unit lost only two soldiers: One sergeant committed suicide; the company's only combat fatality occurred in January when a platoon was ambushed while walking down an outdoor stairway near Aliabad.
Spec. Robert Donevski, a 19-year-old from Sun City, Ariz., jumped a fence and opened fire on the enemy so that his fellow soldiers could scramble to safety. As he was climbing back over the fence to join his squad, a bullet struck him in the head. He died at an Army field hospital.
Moretti mourned the losses. He also recognized that losing just two soldiers in 10 months in the Korengal was a victory.
"In this place, with all its violent history, that is our proudest achievement," he said.
There is photos - only 5 .. To me they show how our soldiers are really challenging themselves to forge building ties .. with people who have NEVER been around any other but themselves .. .It's an amazing, no doubt hopless mission they are trying so hard to accomplish . AND when you read and view this IT MAKES you SO ANGRY at how we treat these men/women ! especially the casual mention of the suicide .. I read yesterday .. that a soldier was tortured by Americans officers . . NO not waterboarding etc.. well, hell .. . go read it here for yourself .. it makes you cry !! it makes you wamt to DO something ! to change things AND to stop this type of behaviour ! Here's the link to the horrifying story When the Army Uses "Enhanced Interrogation" on an American Soldier [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshua-kors/when-the-army-uses-enhanc_b_536727.html?ref=email_share ]
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