Why war in Afghanistan took so much of the Soviet effort?

Surely the anti-Taliban bias levels it out?

heh, no
attitude is similar to "same shit"

Story of a angery russian general complaining how terrorists appear as cockroaches is all you need to know

link?

I read a solitary book about this war and from what i remember the parallels to the US war are numerous so you might want to look into it. The soviets had the cities and the major roads locked down but everything beyond that was guerrilla domain. They did not have enough man to crack the mountain strongholds and maintain people there, neither they had enough people to lock down the border and prevent weapons from coming trough, they also had the problem of their raids and major airstrikes often being known to the rebels in advance because someone tipped them off, the afghan army was completely unreliable and a lot of them helped the guerrillas.

irrc one soviet general estimated that they would need 1,5 million soldiers to get the whole of Afghanistan under control.

Oh and as far as who was on the offensive or defensive a major concern of the soviets was keeping the towns safe and their offensives happened more under the requests and concerns of the afghan communists.

They also were never able to completely secure their supply convoys and they came under attack a lot. One time Robert Fisk rode with one and they handed him an AK and asked him to watch the road like it was nothing.

thanks a lot, man

what is the name?
maybe I can find it on genlib

Right, lets get to some ground level stuff. The SU's command structure was notoriously bad. Strict, lacked lenience, and relied heavily on your higherups being alive at all times.

The SU's plan was to originally send the SSRs comprising of high muslim populations to attempt to act as an olive branch of peace, shit backfired. Something like 25% of all soldiers from those SSRs quickly bailed and joined the muji because the SU had been pissing in their cups back home.

So what you get is you have "well trained" conscripts, which bailed with whatever equipment they could take, and some would stay behind in the camps, and take notes of everything from MG emplacements, defense structures, the works.

This is also why helicopters and planes got shotdown so much. Wasn't so much the Stinger Effect, but was more the fact that the mujis had the landing schedules and only had to enter the area for less then twenty minutes, blow up whatever is landing, and run off into the mountains while praising to allah.

This type of thing continued on for quiet some time with other areas as well. Mujis would know just about every officers face, and would send snipers to take care of them. As I mentioned earlier, the entirety of the SU military command structure during the early years of the war, relied heavily on those officers staying alive.

The situation was a clusterfuck for numerous reasons, but the easiest ones to lockdown are these:

how did it changed in the following years?

also, what are your sources?

Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89 It is on libgen.
Try not to get teary-eyed when you read about the Black Tulips.

And for afghanistan they had a conscript army they raised from scratch(making sure not to get the son of a higher party official or anyone important of course)
Their best was all in Europe and the board with China, i knew the chinese hated the soviets at that point but not enough to actually send weapons to the rebels.
The situation was so ridiculous that the soldiers joked that the old name of the Red Army should come back: The Worker and Peasant's Red Army.

Towards about the last four years, the Soviet Union actually started sending troops from Ukraine SSR, and a few of the Baltic countries, they hardly agreed to send their own, as mentioned by because those troops were to valuable to not be placed in Europe.

The folk which came from those countries were slightly better trained, and were not… Ya know… Going to bail and join their ethnic and nationalist brothers to give a big ol' fuck you.

So most of the folks getting transferred in were guys who actually had experience prepping for a NATO-Warpact shitfest. They were trained to work with each other, but not in such a strict way where command could be absolutely dissolved by a sniper.

what can you tell me about the similarities and differences between Mujahideen and Vietcong tactics?
what are your thoughts on a guerilla warfare in general?
how can a modern regular army counter querilla tactics?
what Soviets cound've done to win? Send in more troops? Better equip them?
sorry if too many questions

People have already mentioned the big details, like the terrain be unsuited to an army designed to stomp NATO on the plains and rolling green hills of Europe, or the fact they had too few men and a too porous border to actually control anything.

What also should be kept in mind is the US funneling Stingers to the Mujahideen so the greatest advantage of the Soviets – airborne infantry and attack helicopters – was severely curbed. IIRC they even lost some planes at the main airport in Kabul thanks to that, even CAS planes like Frogfoots. That's big ticket items being lost to cheap, man portable missiles. It was called Operation Cyclone.

The US did this by using Pakistan's intelligence service. After the war was over Pakistan continued meddling in Afghan politics through those ties created during the war. Eventually they helped bring the Taliban into being.

So the Mujahideen were effective to the extent they were aided by the outside, much like the Vietcong. Otherwise they served to keep Soviet troops confined to the limited territory they could control.