View Single Post
Old 10-02-2006, 00:38 AM   #8 (permalink)
troung
A Self Important
Senior Contributor
 
troung's Avatar
 
Join Date: 08-03-03
Posts: 4,390
Country:
Quote:
Bringing back the King is as stupid as anything else. While no one has yet to win that civil war, the King certainly lost his fight. No one was going to welcome him back.
I agree, the King has been out of power before the Communists or Islamists rated as a threat, he is a non starter.

Quote:
Even with the Soviet invasion, there were those, including Pashtuns, who opennly supported the Soviets.
For what it is worth both Afghan communist parties had a mostly Pashtun membership roster.

Quote:
People also forget that it was the Pashtuns who pushed the Taliban out of Kabul.
Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazaras did the heavy lifting. Sayyaf and his 2000 Wahibbies took part yes but the minorties like in 1992 took the city.

Quote:
A comparison with the 1980s is in order. The 100,000-strong Soviet army operated alongside a full-fledged Afghan army of equal strength with an officer corps trained in the elite Soviet military academies, and backed by aviation, armored vehicles and artillery, with all the advantages of a functioning, politically motivated government in Kabul. And yet it proved no match for the Afghan resistance.
That is a huge over statement from the article. Soviet supplies to the DRA often went into storage right away because they lacked training crews to use artillery and tanks. Furthermore the DRA, other then the commando units and some ethnic militias, was not terribly functional until the Soviets left. The DRA on paper could have had one million didn't make a difference as young men deserted in droves.
__________________
To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

Last edited by troung : 10-02-2006 at 00:44 AM.
troung is offline   Reply With Quote