#10
Miami Herald
November 8, 2001
Analysts are skeptical about U.S. strategy
BY DAVE MONTGOMERY
Herald World Staff

MOSCOW -- While U.S. officials offer an upbeat assessment of their monthlong offensive in Afghanistan, Russians who fought a losing 10-year war there are delivering a far more cautious review of U.S. strategy.

Military analysts and former soldiers are particularly skeptical of the aerial bombing campaign, noting that such large-scale bombardment had been a tactic of the former Soviet Union. But the Afghan guerrillas who opposed the Soviet Union's troops easily evaded the bombing through a network of tunnels lacing Afghanistan's corrugated landscape.

Russian analysts also caution that U.S. ground forces will face the same adversities that surprised Soviet troops two decades ago: severe mountain winters that idle men and machinery; hundreds of miles of uncharted minefields, a hit-and-run enemy that can strike instantly from caves and tunnels and then disappear without a trace.

U.S. military planners acknowledge they are drawing advice and intelligence from Russian soldiers and strategists who were involved in the Soviet Union's failed Afghanistan campaign -- though the scope of the information and the degree to which it is being used remain unclear. Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, a Pentagon spokesman, said former Soviet officials and army personnel have simply ``come forward'' to share their knowledge.

``The Russians have been very helpful to us,'' Stufflebeem said at a Pentagon briefing.

``We have not been shy about asking for information, but at what level and to what degree, I just honestly don't know.''

Although President Vladimir Putin of Russia and the country's top political leadership remain supportive of the U.S. war on terror, they have ruled out the use of troops in Afghanistan, largely because of memories from the former conflict.

At least 15,000 Soviet troops were killed in the war there. At least 73 percent of the 642,000 who fought there were wounded or incapacitated by serious illness.

The Soviet campaign in Afghanistan had some important differences from the current U.S. offensive. For one, the Soviet war was waged to install and then perpetuate a pro-Soviet government, and it ignited international condemnation. For another, the Soviet occupation was opposed with billions of dollars in assistance by the United States to Afghan resistance groups.

Elite Soviet special operations units invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979, seizing key government buildings and communication centers in the capital of Kabul and killing the Afghan president, Hafizullah Amin.

As one of the most powerful armies in the world, the Soviet forces were expected to crush what was perceived to be a rag-tag assortment of tribal factions.

But in a white-paper review of the war, retired Lt. Col. Lester W. Grau of the U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., said Russia's modern big-army tactics were out of place in Afghanistan.

The Soviets preceded every ground attack with a massive barrage of firepower from aircraft, helicopters, artillery and tanks, Grau wrote. Soviet ground troops advancing behind tanks then moved into the contested areas, ``firing indiscriminately at any moving object or just into the air until they were satisfied that their mission was achieved,'' he said.

The Soviets initially made little attempt to follow through with close combat or mopping up operations ``since they felt that the huge expenditure of heavy artillery and rocket shells combined with the bombing and strafing by their fighter bombers'' had battered the enemy, Grau wrote.

Further, the Soviets underestimated the Afghan guerrillas, known as the mujahedeen, which came from ``a traditional warrior society,'' Grau wrote.

``They saw no point in remaining under aerial and artillery barrages or in facing overwhelming odds and firepower,'' Grau wrote of the Afghan fighters.

``They were adept at temporarily withdrawing from Soviet strike areas and then returning in hours, days or weeks to strike the enemy where he was exposed.''

His criticism of the Soviet aerial bombardments rang particularly true to former Soviet officials.

The air strikes ``proved to be totally ineffective,'' said Dmitry Olshansky, who served as the Soviet Union's top civilian advisor to Afghanistan puppet governments. He said the Afghan guerrillas easily escaped to underground hiding places, then emerged to ambush Soviet soldiers.

American generals, he said, have ``prepared themselves for the previous war.''

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