Nine years, 50 days: US presence in Afghanistan as long as Soviet slog

The Soviet Union couldn't win in Afghanistan, and now the United States is about 
to have something in common with that futile campaign: nine years, 50 days.
On Friday, the U.S.-led coalition will have been fighting in this South Asian 
country for as long as the Soviets did in their humbling attempt to build up a 
socialist state. The two invasions had different goals — and dramatically 
different body counts — but whether they have significantly different outcomes 
remains to be seen.
What started out as a quick war on Oct. 7, 2001, by the U.S. and its allies to 
wipe out al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and the Taliban has instead turned into 
a long and slogging campaign. Now about 100,000 NATO troops are fighting a 
burgeoning insurgency while trying to support and cultivate a nascent democracy.
A Pentagon-led assessment released earlier this week described the progress made 
since the United States injected 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan earlier 
this year as fragile.
FULL AP STORY FOLLOWS BELOW
US presence in Afghanistan as long as Soviet slog
Length of US military presence in Afghanistan about to surpass Soviets' 9-year, 
50-day slog
PATRICK QUINN
AP News
Nov 25, 2010 16:37 EST
The Soviet Union couldn't win in Afghanistan, and now the United States is about 
to have something in common with that futile campaign: nine years, 50 days.
On Friday, the U.S.-led coalition will have been fighting in this South Asian 
country for as long as the Soviets did in their humbling attempt to build up a 
socialist state. The two invasions had different goals — and dramatically 
different body counts — but whether they have significantly different outcomes 
remains to be seen.
What started out as a quick war on Oct. 7, 2001, by the U.S. and its allies to 
wipe out al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and the Taliban has instead turned into 
a long and slogging campaign. Now about 100,000 NATO troops are fighting a 
burgeoning insurgency while trying to support and cultivate a nascent democracy.
A Pentagon-led assessment released earlier this week described the progress made 
since the United States injected 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan earlier 
this year as fragile.
The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, has said 
NATO's core objective is to ensure that Afghanistan "is never again a sanctuary 
to al-Qaida or other transnational extremists that it was prior to 9/11."
He said the only way to achieve that goal is "to help Afghanistan develop the 
ability to secure and govern itself. Now not to the levels of Switzerland in 10 
years or less, but to a level that is good enough for Afghanistan."
To reach that, there is an ongoing effort to get the Taliban to the negotiating 
table. President Hamid Karzai has set up a committee to try to make peace, and 
the military hopes its campaign will help force the insurgents to seek a deal.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Dec. 27, 1979, its stated goal was 
to transform Afghanistan into a modern socialist state. The Soviets sought to 
prop up a communist regime that was facing a popular uprising, but left largely 
defeated on Feb. 15, 1989.
In 1992, the pro-Moscow government of Mohammad Najibullah collapsed and 
U.S.-backed rebels took power. The Taliban eventually seized Kabul after a 
violent civil war that killed thousands more. It ruled with a strict 
interpretation of Islamic law until it was ousted by the U.S.-led invasion.
Nader Nadery, an Afghan analyst who has studied the Soviet and U.S. invasions, 
said "the time may be the same" for the two conflicts, "but conditions are not 
similar."
More than a million civilians died as Soviet forces propping up the government 
of Babrak Karmalwaged a massive war against anti-communist mujahedeen forces.
"There was indiscriminate mass bombardment of villages for the eviction of 
mujahedeen," Nadery said. "Civilian casualties are not at all comparable."
Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank and 
Afghanistan expert, said NATO forces have killed fewer than 10,000 civilians and 
a comparable number of insurgents.
The allied military presence has also been far smaller and more targeted. Even 
now, nearly all operations are restricted to the south and east of the country 
where the insurgency is most active. O'Hanlon points out that at the height of 
the resistance, there were 250,000 mujahedeen representing all Afghan ethnic 
groups fighting the Soviets, while "the current insurgency is perhaps one-eighth 
as large and is only Pashtun."
"We do have big problems. But there is no comparison between this war and what 
the Soviets wrought," he said.
"The Soviet war set Afghanistan back dramatically from what had been a weak but 
functioning state. NATO has, by contrast, helped Afghanistan to a 10 percent 
annual economic growth rate, 7 million kids are now in school, and most people 
have access to basic health care within a two-hour walk," O'Hanlon said.
He also points out that although Karzai was hand-picked by the United States 
after the invasion "he has since been elected twice by his own people."
The United States and its allies, however, have made strategic mistakes, 
including taking their eyes off Afghanistan and shifting their attention to the 
war in Iraq. In those crucial years, the Taliban and their allies surged back 
and took control of many parts of the Afghan countryside and some regions in the 
south — especially parts of Kandahar and Helmand.
Wadir Safi, a professor at Kabul University who served as civil aviation 
minister under the Najibullah government, said risks surround the U.S. effort 
because "the Americans never reached the goal for which they came."
"If they don't change their policy, if they don't reach their goals, if they 
don't reach agreement with the armed opposition and with the government, then it 
is not a far time that the Afghan people will be fed up with the presence of 
these foreign forces," Safi said.
The United States has pledged that its commitment to Afghanistan will run past 
the 2014 date when NATO forces are supposed to transition to a noncombat role.
A Russian analyst said the Soviet Union tried to do something similar when it 
left Afghanistan. It backed Najibullah with money and weapons, and left behind a 
trained and heavily armed Afghan military. But it all crumbled and the 
mujahedeen took over Kabul in 1992. Najibullah stayed in the 
city's U.N. compound until Kabul fell to the Taliban in 1996, and he was hung 
from the main square.
"The Soviet Union tried to leave its protege alone to run the country, but that 
ended in the Taliban victory," said Alexander Konovalov, the head of the 
Moscow-based Institute of Strategic Assessment, an independent think-tank.
"The U.S. now wants to create a self-sufficient structure behind backed by some 
support forces," he said. "It remains to be seen how successful it could be in 
Afghanistan."
Source: AP News