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Financial Times, Friday, May 16, 1980

Moscow ‘lacks Afghan strategy’

Fighting a War of Shadows

Almost five months after the Soviet invasion, the war in Afghanistan has become a war of shadows. Western observers believe the Soviet army has not yet developed a strategy for defeating the Afghan rebels, who melt away as Soviet units approach.

There is little information about the fighting, but there have been signs in Moscow that Afghan resistance has been greater than expected, while Soviet military performance has been poorer.

The first indication of problems was the speed with which the Russians replaced the original invasion force, drawn from quarter-strength Central Asian reserve units. The Soviet troops in Afghanistan are now overwhelmingly European, with some reported to have been transferred to Afghanistan from bases in East Germany.

There has been no confirmation of reports of desertions by Central Asian soldiers, but it is thought the Soviets would not have replaced thousands of Asian troops as quickly as they did if they had been satisfied with their discipline or performance.

The Communist Party newspaper Pravda, in a highly unusual acknowledgment of the problems facing Soviet troops and their Afghan Allies, said last Saturday that “the struggle against the bandits in the mountains is no easy matter.”

Pravda said that “just 10 or so men, occupying good vantage points and wellarmed with automatic weapons, machine guns and grenade throwers provided by the United States and China, can hold up the advance of a much superior force.” The narrow ravines prevent the use of tanks, while the echoes of shots make it difficult to determine the source of attacks.

There was no acknowledgement that Soviet troops were taking part in the fighting, and the problems were said to affect only Afghan army units. Soviet forces, however, are now believed to have taken over almost the whole burden of the war against the rebels. According to one report from Indian travellers young Afghans are being rounded up every night in Kabul and forced into the Afghan armed forces’ depleted ranks.

The Soviet armed forces newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda, has carried almost no information about fighting in Afghanistan, but there have been an increasing number of reports about training exercises on Soviet territory in such specialities as mountain warfare, airborne operations and since the February rioting in Kabul, fighting in cities.

Western military observers believe the Soviet forces in Afghanistan are mechanised and road-bound, and the growing emphasis on training in unconventional warfare stresses the fact that Soviet military training has traditionally presumed front-to-front confrontations of the kind which might be expected in a conflict in Central Europe. The Russians have little experience of anti-guerrilla warfare.

There are now 80,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan, and about 25,000 in the Soviet Union near the Afghan border. But the long-awaited spring offensive against the guerrillas has not come, and may be postponed indefinitely.

The Soviet forces have secured major cities and the roads between them, but military observers believe they have not adjusted psychologically to the kind of war they are fighting. The vast amounts of ultra-modern equipment they have moved into Afghanistan, including the latest rifles, mortars, anti-aircraft missiles and long-range artillery, can be thoroughly tested in Afghanistan but the equipment is of little use in pursuing the guerrillas on their own terrain.

Soviet and Afghan units typically respond to calls for help from beleaguered local authorities only to arrive and find that the Afghan rebels have disappeared. They may search houses and make a few arrests, but they do not take drastic action to assert government authority. The rebels return as soon as the Soviet units withdraw.

When Soviet and Afghan units come into direct conflict with the Afghan rebels, the rebels are usually the initiator and the Soviet troops normally take up defensive positions behind their heavy equipment. This minimises casualties, but does little to suppress the insurgency. The Soviet troops apparently seldom pursue the rebels on foot into the mountains.

The deployment pattern suggests the Russians believe their own propaganda about defending the Afghans against “foreign aggression.” There have been punishing Soviet strikes against some rebel strongholds, including, most recently, a battle involving hundreds of Soviet tanks in the Ghazni area, south of Kabul. But the Soviet force, military specialists believe, would have to be increased to no less than a quarter of a million men if they were to subjugate the entire country.

The Soviet authorities appear hesitant to commit a much larger number of troops, and the reasons may be both military and political. Massive attacks and a huge Soviet presence could eliminate any possibility of President Babrak Karmal’s government broadening its base. If indigenous support for the Karmal’s Government cannot be created, a large Soviet occupation force will have to remain in the country for many years.

The Soviet authorities may, therefore, be very uneasy. The war is unpopular in the Soviet Union.

The Soviet newspapers say almost nothing about casualties or fighting—aware that they cannot count on broad public support. Reports from Afghanistan have concerned Mr Karmal’s Government, co-operation between Soviet and Afghan specialists, and the successes of the Afghan army against “gangsters” “criminals” "mercenaries” and “bandits,” with Soviet troops said to be playing only a support role.

The control over information affects the families of soldiers posted to Afghanistan. Throughout a Soviet soldier’s service, his relatives know only the number of his division but not where the soldier and division are posted. There have been cases of Soviet soldiers passing word to their families that they were not in Afghanistan. When a soldier is killed in battle, his family is told that he was “killed in the fulfilment of his duties”—the same formula used for accidental death—but not where he died or how.

This lack of information has softened the impact of Afghanistan. Many of the seriously wounded are treated in East Germany, and maimed or disfigured soldiers are reported to be resting in sanatoria on the Black Sea. They will probably not return to their home towns until after the Olympics at the earliest.

Sometimes, however, reality still manages to intrude on the all-but-pervasive impression in Moscow of a distant war against an ill-defined foe. Thirty officers were reported in mid-April to have been buried in the military cemetery in Kiev, a high toll for one locality. By the end of the month, there were 25 more fresh graves.

The Soviet takeover in Afghanistan was rapid and painless, but the Soviet authorities may be unable to consolidate their control so easily. The war has had little impact on Soviet society so far, but the choices which the Soviet armed forces must face suggest that, even with only the barest access to information in Moscow, the Afghan War may soon come to people’s attention of its own accord.