Why did Russia fail to conquer Afghanistan?
Russian vets’ dire warning U.S. could become trapped in Afghan war — like they were. By James Rosen — Bee Washington Bureau MOSCOW — Andrei Petrovich Luganov arrived in Afghanistan on Jan. 4, 1980, one week after the first Soviet soldiers were dispatched to prop up a faltering communist government. Luganov remembers being met by cheering children and women with flowers. By the time the infantry sergeant left Afghanistan 18 months later, he and his Russian compatriots were regarded as hostile invaders. By then, the Kremlin was entangled in a failed occupation that over the course of a decade pierced the aura of Soviet invincibility and hastened the demise of the Soviet Union. “Our main interest in the very beginning was to defend the southern borders of the Soviet Union,” Luganov said. “But later on we got mixed up in spats among the Afghan people themselves. “Everything that happened once we got farther and deeper immersed was bad. It became a war between clans. We just got mired in
The British fought the Afghans during their Indian Empire days and never were able to beat them. The Russians tried and failed as the Afghan fighters killed were always replaced by Muslims from Pakistan as they are today.We have so called British born Muslims going out there to fight their own countrymen.We the allies are giving them the biggest battering they have ever had and we have killed thousands and that’s no exaggeration, but it does not mean we that we will beat them.The mountain terrain in Afghanistan is very rugged and a hard theatre of war to fight in,and the Afghans know this very well.
Russia signed a peace treaty with the leftist Afghani government in 1978. The new Government was opposed by most of the people and led by religious leaders rose up against the government , In 1979 thousands of Russian troops were airlifted into Afghanistan. More than 100,000 Russian troops were in the country aided by the Afghani regular army. The Resistance forces , the Mujahidin had weapons and aid provided by the West and over 5 million nationals fled the country. The farmland was devastated.. The rest of the world was very anti Russia being in the country and by 1988 Russia had lost 25,000 soldiers. The Guerilla warfare and the do or die attitude of the Mujahidin was too much for the armies to take . Russia started to withdraw its troops in 1988 and had made a full withdrawel by 1989. The BBC actually had News crews travelling with the Mujahidin terrorists, who became the new Government in 1992.
russia couldnt beat afghanistan because of the mountains, it was hard for russia to get their heavy artilary in through the rough terrain, and the afghanies were experts in their own terrain. the mountain ranges meant russia had to enter witha slow trickle of forces which were easy for the afghanies to pick of.
Main reason is the terrain. Many times this region has been under siege. Every time the wood be conquerers have lost. The people are stubborn and there has been tribal warfare there for close to 1000 years on a farely continuous basis. This makes hardcore warriors from a society used to sacrifice. Russia couldn’t handle this and the unorthodox combat tactics.
