Quote:
Originally Posted by lchoro
You just need to go look at the history where the Daoud and Saur tried to impose land social reforms.
The Communists announced a revolution — they called it the “Great April Revolution,” like the October Revolution in Russia. They passed two decrees to turn the coup into a revolution. The first was land reform — the land would be taken from the landlords and given to the sharecroppers. In many areas the government had no means of enforcing land reform, but in Helmand, where the boys had shouted “Death to the Khans” from their soapbox, the local Communists began taking the land and redistributing it.
The second was the abolition of the bride-price payments given by a groom’s family for the bride’s hand. These were substantial sums, usually two to five years income for a household. More important, bride-price stood in everyone’s eyes as a sign of the subjection of women.
The relations between men and women were not the sexist caricature we are familiar with now from Islamophobic propaganda. In villages, perhaps four or five families out of two hundred kept their women in seclusion, allowing them out only in enveloping burqas. In most poor households women had to work in the fields with the men. But if the oppression of women was not as portrayed today, it was real enough, as it was in other countries. The Communists were determined to change all that. The decree on bride-price was largely formal in effect, though in some areas girls were encouraged to dance in public.
The measures on land and marriage ignited a rebellion led by local mullahs. The mullahs were not the same as the Islamists of the Brotherhood. Those were educated men, engineers, and theologians. The mullahs were mostly poor villagers, schooled just enough to read Farsi and recite the Koran in Arabic. They were treated with disdain by the elite. But they had a history of leading popular resistance.
...
The Communists did have real support in the cities. In the free elections held before Daoud seized power in 1973, they had won most of the seats in Kabul. They had support among school children, university students, civil servants, and others in the big cities. In an overwhelmingly rural country, this wasn’t enough.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/05/a...t-intervention |
That's all on the Afghans and their "left radicals," them being the third world country and NOT understanding how far they could push.
Although Russians were guilty of the radicalism back in the 1917 themselves, with time they realized what should and should not be done, when it comes to the rural population in particular.
They already had the wisdom of "do no harm," and their approach to the whole Afghan situation at that period was
as following;"
"Though the new regime promptly allied itself to the Soviet Union,
many Soviet diplomats believed that the Khalqi plans to transform Afghanistan would provoke a rebellion in a deeply conservative and Muslim nation.[111] Immediately after coming to power, the Khalqis began to persecute the Parchamis, not the least
because the Soviet Union favored the Parchami faction whose "go slow" plans were felt to be better suited for Afghanistan, thereby leading the Khaqis to eliminate their rivals so the Soviets would have no other choice but to back them.
[118]
...Following the
Herat uprising, the first major sign of anti-regime resistance, General Secretary
Taraki contacted
Alexei Kosygin,
chairman of the
USSR Council of Ministers, and asked for "practical and technical assistance with men and armament". Kosygin was unfavorable to the proposal on the basis of the negative political repercussions such an action would have for his country, and he rejected all further attempts by Taraki to solicit Soviet military aid in Afghanistan.
[127] Following Kosygin's rejection, Taraki requested aid from
Leonid Brezhnev, the
general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and
Soviet head of state, who warned Taraki that full Soviet intervention "would only play into the hands of our enemies – both yours and ours".
Brezhnev also advised Taraki to ease up on the drastic social reforms and to seek broader support for his regime.[128]
See, unlike the American left, Russians of the later Soviet period ( as Russians of pre-1917) were not adhering to the "politically-correct" notion that "all people are the same," and "skin color is just a hue."
They were looking at the world in its all complexity, giving a significant consideration to people's ethnic background, history, difference in mentality, and even the temperament.
They were well-aware that what work for some, would absolutely not work for others.
With other words, being the "old worlders" themselves, they were "finely tuned" to the differences.
And THAT"S WHY they should have been left alone when dealing with Afghanistan, because they looked deep into the whole structure of the society, they were well aware of the fragmentation of it, and who followed what beliefs.
They were building their alliances carefully, sifting through different leaders and their followers, looking for the ones they could back up, turning their movement ( and beliefs) into the backbone for the rest of the society. After all, the Russians were in the area ( Central Asia/Caucasus) for centuries, and knew how to turn the things around. They were successful in that, as much as they could, taking in consideration constant hindering from the West.
And these are the skills that Americans are totally lacking, being the "New World" nation.
American approach to "change in the societal structure" in that part of the world was purely mechanical - "we'll train the army, we'll train the police by the known to us formulas," and then these forces "will protect the freedom that we gave to the society."
But what kind of "freedom," and why would anyone in that society want the kind of "freedom" that Americans brought to them, was none of American concern or consideration.
Because after all, it was yet another third world country, the "unwanted colony," that needed to be "managed accordingly," and not more than that.
And that's what brought about today's crushing end.
And that's precisely what one of the military instructors in Afghanistan ( and Iraq) who used to train their armies is describing
in this article, while reflecting on today's fiasco.
"But from my tours in Iraq through to my time in Afghanistan, larger systemic problems were never truly addressed. We did not successfully build the Iraqi and Afghan forces as institutions. We failed to establish the necessary infrastructure that dealt effectively with military education, training, pay systems, career progression, personnel, accountability—all the things that make a professional security force...
We borrowed untrained personnel from mostly administrative assignments and largely had them focus on tactical tasks,
reporting progress in colorful bubble charts... "
( So utterly American, makes me chuckle somewhat.)
And the last but not least -
"We didn’t send the right people, prepare them well, or reward them afterward.
We rotated strangers on tours of up to a year and expected them to build relationships, then replaced them."
And THIS latter alone, makes a big difference with Shoygy ( being in charge of the Russian military,) bringing those Syrian kids to Moscow for a sightseeing.
They want the "relationships" with people in that part of the world, that they guard. And they BUILD these relations, because they are well-aware of who is who over there.
So that the atrocities of the radical Islam wouldn't be spreading further, which would have inevitably happened, if Americans would have been allowed to succeed, supporting the "freedom fighters" in Syria yet again.
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