At_traction
Member
- Joined
- 5 Aug 2010
- Messages
- 291
Hmm. Someone might take the "greatest armies" bit as humour, though, when regarding the Soviet army.
In all, large, definitely, and well-equipped in terms of number and robustness of vehicles and arms, but that might have been it. Too often the morale and combat effectiveness of the conscripts fighting in Afghanistan was, similarly to their counterparts in Vietnam, suspect. Although the soviets did eventually overcome much of the inherent rigidity of standard tactics and command structure to innovate and often gain tactical initiative, the proficiency of most of the troops available and the politically imposed troop level cap were still a considerable issue. The air assault brigades were the elite around which most of the successful tactics were built and, as in counter-insurgency wars since Algeria (and definitely Vietnam), the use of helicopter was to be the linchpin around which the success hinged. As a British commander during the Malayan insurgency (a notably successful co-in campaign) stated:
"The fewer helicopters you had the more troops you required. Give a hundred men helicopters and they will do the work of a thousand. A battalion with six Wessex helicopters was worth more to me than a brigade without them."
The western aid, especially in the precarious first years of the conflict, helped to keep the mujahideen in the picture as somewhat viable military force(s) and not merely a set of local traditional bandits (although these have done well since the days of Alexander the Great against all invaders). And although the impact of Stinger SAM deliveries has been overblown, for some time their initial successes did nothing to help the vital helicopter contingent of the Soviet war machine to cope with the various tasks at hand. At one point the helicopter operations in particularly Stinger-infested areas were even handed, clay pigeon style, to the Afghan air force helo units. As the mujahideen saying went: "we don't fear the Russians, but we fear their helicopters".
But, in the end, nothing short of immersion of the country in ground-level controlling troops and the rather literal crushing of a popular and traditional spirit of resistance might have sufficed to keep a Soviet-backed government in power. (In the process a large number of combat divisions would have been removed from the main front in East Germany ("the more crack, first echelon ones, thank you") - most of the Soviet air assault units were already in Afghanistan.) And for how long would that commitment have lasted? It would have been like with the other nations ("Soviet republics") of the southern USSR, subjugation of which took well over a decade and they reverted as soon as the Russian-dominated grip loosened.
So, to answer just in short this time
, there's indeed a snowball's chance to gain a permanent sense of security to this country, at least in a western sense. "Which is a pity."
