Back on the farm in Amenia in the early 1990s we had a sometimes summer-visiting Russian family from New York. The family was headed by Vasily Safronchuk. Our good neighbor and friend Gilbert Jobe became Vasily’s friend as well, as Vasily grew up on a farm in the Ukraine and missed the farmer’s life of his youth.
At the time, Vasily was the Secretary General of the U.N. Security Council and an Under-Secretary General of the whole United Nations as well. More historically, Vasily was the man who finally convinced Gromyko and the powers that be in Moscow to get the hell out of Afghanistan. It took him 10 years in their Foreign Ministry to make his case: Any war on the ground there was unwinnable. Vasily was a student of history. His nagging got him a reward, which meant he was shunted from Moscow to a last desk position in New York. President George H.W. Bush, Secretary of State George Shultz and half the world’s leaders considered him to be a logical, deeply intelligent man committed to peace in our time. That does not mean he favored our democracy over the USSR. Democracy and freedom had nothing to do with his position on Afghanistan. His position was simple: too many lives and too many national resources would be spent needlessly pursuing an outcome which could never, would never, be interpreted as victory.
Added to the situation back then was an “insurgence� armed by America, funded by the CIA and others, to force the collapse or weakening of the USSR. Vasily also saw this well-supplied insurgence as unstoppable — unstoppable, that is, unless the war was escalated to encompass the arms and money supplier: the United States of America. That could lead to nuclear war. In the end, Gromyko saw this end game scenario as a real, growing possibility and their decision to leave the battlefront on a fixed timetable finally became the USSR’s policy. Russian generals, to this day, say they should have stayed, fought on, and destroyed the enemy by any means. Some of our generals and certainly politicians like Sen. John McCain issue hindsight advice in a similar vein about Vietnam as a means to infer we should now stay and fight on in Afghanistan. “For the honor!� is the battle cry.
Vasily’s argument about Afghanistan was sound then for the USSR and it is sound now for the United States. It took them 10 years to get out. As we approach the beginning of our tenth year, there is no end in sight. Yes, there is a “beginning troop removal date� set for next year but that is not withdrawal.
I asked Vasily what, if anything, he felt the USSR should have done to prevent the collapse of the government as they left. “Close the skies,� was his answer. He meant give up the soil but shut the country down from the sky. He wrote an article, “Afghanistan in the Taraki Period� which makes interesting, if somewhat self-effacing, reading.
The irony is that the very people we armed and funded to beat up on the USSR soldiers are now our enemy and they are, once again, being funded by a dangerous foe we may be pushed into confrontation with: Iran. The present Karzai government employs 10 ministers who the Russians had in their government and the Taliban, our previous allies, are now the enemy. The whole situation would be more like an unbelievable farce if it were not so deadly to our troops.
Let’s stop kidding ourselves about this. The strike against the al-Qaida bases and a weakening of the Taliban from the skies (our initial attacks on Afghanistan) were warranted and surgically appropriate. If we wanted to shut down the skies in that country to help deter such training camps, the expenditure and risk to our troops would be warranted. But a ground war has never been won against the tribes in that land, never, ever, not even once in all of recorded history. And the Russians were not worried about the hearts and minds of the locals; they fought hard and with deadly intent. And they lost. As we are losing the war. We may win every battle we’re in, we may conquer or control large areas of land for a short while, but in the end the United States cannot sustain the cost in lives or taxes to try and outlast a mountain people hunkered down in their land of antiquity. Especially in light of the fact that all the while our real enemies are funding them to waste our resources. Vasily told the USSR this more than 20 years ago. Isn’t it stupid not to learn from others’ mistakes?
The writer, formerly of Amenia Union, lives in New Mexico.
