From: Barry Stoller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [R-G] Ex-Soviets warn of ground war bloodbath AFP. 19 October 2001. Russian vets warn of Afghan bloodbath if US troops invade. [Washington has just confirmed the deployment of ground troops...] MOSCOW -- Hard-bitten Russian veterans of the disastrous Soviet intervention in Afghanistan have warned of a bloodbath if the United States sends in ground forces in pursuit of Osama bin Laden, wanted for last month's US terror attacks. Alexei Zelenyov, now a deputy in the Russian parliament but seen by some as the Soviet Union's last action hero, predicted the worst for US troops in the event of a protracted land campaign. "The US special forces will be up against people who have been fighting for 20 years and who have grown up as warriors. The Afghans have an immeasurable love of freedom. Every province is a state in itself," he said. A former pilot, Zelenyov was one of the last Red Army troops to leave Afghanistan when Moscow, under the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, resigned itself to the failure of its 10-year campaign in the mountainous Central Asian republic. Decided in secret by a handful of Politburo figures under Communist party general secretary Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Union's Afghan war was launched in December 1979 in a bid to prop up a pro-Moscow regime in Kabul. Moscow paid a heavy price for what proved to be a strategic blunder. An estimated 14,000 Soviet troops died, thousands of others were permanently maimed, and the immense resources poured into the campaign and the ignominy of the defeat undoubtedly contributed to the Soviet collapse in 1991. Zelenyov -- who plunged into the affray again in 1992 to help extract Russian embassy staff, under machine-gunfire, from the embassy in Kabul -- predicted that US forces would suffer "heavy losses." "Only in Hollywood movies are special forces so effective. When we went into in Afghanistan, it took us a year to learn how to fight," he recalled. Around one million Afghans also died in the fighting, in which the anti-Soviet forces were liberally armed by the United States channelling its supply of weapons through Pakistan. Bin Laden, the scion of a wealthy Saudi family converted to Islamic militancy and now Washington's public enemy number one, was one of those who benefited from the American largesse. Ruslan Aushev, now president of the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia but formerly a general who fought in Afghanistan, also predicted "an exhausting, drawn-out guerrilla campaign" for US forces. He warned moreover that a high rate of civilian casualties on the Afghan side could lead to lead to the nightmare scenario of the opposition Northern Alliance, currently battling to oust the Taliban fundamentalist regime, abruptly switching sides to turn against the US troops. Franz Klintsevich, another former veteran pursuing a political career as a pro-Kremlin Unity party deputy, agreed. "The longer the Americans stay in Afghanistan, the stronger local resistance will be, to the point of the Northern Alliance joining forces with the Taliban to repel the 'invaders'." All three veterans were dubious of the Northern Alliance's chances of overthrowing the Taliban. Zelenyov believed a Korea-style division of the country was possible, with the Alliance holding the north while the Taliban held on to the south. He also believed the chances of plucking Bin Laden out of Afghanistan were slim. "That kind of thing only happens in Hollywood movies," he said. For Aushev too, the operation smacked of "looking for a needle in a haystack." General Boris Gromov, who led Russia's troops in Afghanistan and went on last year to become governor of the Moscow region, warned that "a large-scale ground operation would provide no laurels for US troops" and also noted the Afghan tendency to overcome internal dissent when faced with an external adversary. Gromov believed that "it would not be too complicated to defeat the Taliban chiefs by means of well-thought out special operations." But if by "Taliban" the West means all the Afghans who support them, "then the chances are reduced to nil." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews with continuing coverage of WWIII _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
