If 120,000 Russians can’t win Afghan war how can 5,000 kids?

If 120,000 Russians can’t win Afghan war how can 5,000 kids?
Published: 14 Jul 2009

LET’S pause here for a few moments to consider our fallen troops in Afghanistan.
Partly in sorrow. But also in reflection.

Because as the death toll mounts and the feeling of hopelessness grows, its time we put into perspective exactly what those poor boys are up against.

In 1979, the Soviet bear stomped across the same jagged rocks and desert plains, a staggering 120,000 soldiers squaring up against mujahideen rebels at any one time.

Over the following ten years, Moscow buried 14,500, treated 53,000 wounded and saw 415,000 fall sick through slogging in searing summers and frostbitten winters.

In the end, that great bear limped home with its tail between its legs.

This was the mightiest army the world has ever seen.

Humbled by religious warriors hiding in caves and bushes, silent as shadows.

Today, the next generation of guerillas are better trained, with more sophisticated weaponry and the same in-built advantage of knowing treacherous terrain like the back of their hands.

Yet we are asking a force of 5,000 to take them on with half the experience and a tenth of the back-up the Russians brought to the party.

They do it without question, too, those British troops. Each morning they leave their Helmand base and walk into the valley of the shadow of death, knowing full well that the bullet or the bomb with their name on it could be a step away.

They see mates fall, some still too young to order a pint in a pub.

They count the territory gained at the end of each patrol in yards, not miles.

Yet still the mouth music sings out from back home that the fight is being won and the enemy worn down. Talk about lions led by donkeys.

This was the war we were told could be won without a shot being fired, a ludicrous statement peddled by then Defence Secretary John Reid back in 2006.

The following year, we fired more than four million rounds. Today, we’ve lost more than 150 men — and boys — in combat.

As for Dr Reid, he’s now working for a company granted a Government contract to provide private security to British personnel in battle zones.

For eight years, we’ve bought the line that we’re there to stem the threat of terrorism.

We’ve nodded in agreement that we also need to slow the flow of heroin from Afghan poppy fields.

But as each corpse is flown home, what do we find?

That our leaders still warn that terror attacks on Britain and the US are imminent.

That more smack than ever is supplied from those fields.

And that the troops we ask to fight on regardless are so short of the back-up they need to save their skins that their life expectancy is now less than it was in Vietnam or the Falklands.

A stark, terrifying fact brought into the sharpest of focus by the loss of eight soldiers in 24 terrible hours last week.

A bloodbath that is surely great enough to shake this country out of its confusion and apathy over what we’re in Afghanistan for — and to turn pressure on Downing Street to justify its action. Or get the hell out of Dodge.


With each day, it seems more obvious that our Government has lost control of a situation it was never going at better than half-cocked in the first place.

Their lack of support — not moral, but physical — for our troops is nothing short of scandalous.

So it’s stick or twist time for Gordon Brown and his pals. Either they finally put their full weight behind getting the job done right — or they cut their losses and pull out.

Either they really, really believe their own line about wiping out the Taliban and invest every penny they have in men and equipment. Or they forget it.

Either they nail down a strategy that everyone can understand, that leaves no one in any doubt about what the aim is and what the timescale is for achieving it. Or they stop waffling and admit defeat.

Otherwise? Well, let’s recap on those Soviet figures; ten years, 120,000 troops at a time, 14,500 dead and 200,000 wounded or sick.

Or put it another way. We had boys killed last week who were in primary school when the first Brits went to the Afghan front.

Do we need the nursery classes of today to be the cannon fodder of tomorrow before we learn how unwinnable a war we’re fighting?

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The situation when russia was fighting was different then the prsent situation in afghanistan.America,Pakistan and you can say rest of the world is against mujahideen(rebel).
When russia was fighting in afghanistan, Pakistan,america some of the other country's were supporting rebels to fight against russia and they were very well armed and the support was provided by America and pakistan.

Defeating rebel/taliban in afghanistan is easy when compared to situation when russia was fighting against them. Today pakistan from NWFP and american forces from kabul is bombarding taliban on daily basis.