Obama’s Russian lessons: How the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan
Twenty years ago, the Soviet Union’s client regime in Afghanistan was starting to unravel.
For two years, Mohammed Najibullah, the latest leader the Soviets had helped install, had been trying to keep his country together without the Soviet 40th Army — relying on a combination of crack troops, Soviet weaponry, patronage, and the divisions and overconfidence of his enemies. His tenacity had even impressed President George H.W. Bush, who in mid-1990 told U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar that “I was dead wrong about Najibullah; I thought he would fall when the Soviet troops withdrew.” But with the Soviet Union itself crumbling and crucial financial support for Kabul drying up, Afghanistan’s prospects of emerging as a semblance of a stable state were beginning to look hopeless.… Seguir leyendo »