Nato troops in Afghanistan 'in a similar situation to failed Soviet invasion'

[unhappycamper]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/9933150/Nato-troops-in-Afghanistan-in-a-similar-situation-to-failed-Soviet-invasion.html



fghan government troops, left, ride past Soviet vehicles on the road in Kabul province in 1988

Nato troops in Afghanistan 'in a similar situation to failed Soviet invasion'
By Ben Farmer, Kabul
4:38PM GMT 15 Mar 2013

Both the Nato campaign and the 1979 invasion were initially attempts to impose "ideology foreign to the Afghan people", whose aims were quickly dropped when they ran into difficulty.

Nato, like the Soviets, has been unable to "establish control over the country's borders and the insurgents' safe havens", or "protect the rural population", according to the paper written by retired officers for an internal MOD think tank.

"The (Soviet) 40th Army was unable to decisively defeat the Mujahideen while facing no existential threat itself, a situation that precisely echoes (the Nato coalition's) predicament".

As combat troops leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the country will again be left "with a severely damaged and very weak economic base", reliant for years on vast sums of international aid.



unhapppycamper comment: George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."