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Source: Reuters -
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The United States risks losing the war in Afghanistan if it
continues to repeat the mistakes that once helped the Taliban's
forerunners defeat the Soviet Union, Russia's outgoing ambassador
in Kabul said.
Zamir Kabulov, a veteran diplomat who worked in the Soviet embassy
in Kabul throughout the Russian occupation of Afghanistan in the
1980s, said the gloomy picture of present-day Afghanistan reminded
him of his own diplomatic past.
"There are many similarities between the Soviet embassy of the
1980s and the American embassy of 2009," he told a group of
reporters ahead of his departure next week.
"There are a lot of similarities as well as differences. The
outcome in both cases is quite poor.
"It makes me feel very sad that after having spent so much time in
Afghanistan ... I am leaving a country that is still at war without
any firm prospects of improvement," added Kabulov.
The remarks by the Russian ambassador, whose surname coincidentally
means from Kabul in Russian, come at a time when NATO-led troops
are engaged in the fiercest fighting in Afghanistan since 2001,
when the Taliban were forced from power.
As the war enters its ninth year, violence is increasing sharply as
casualties mount and many in the West begin to question their
nations' involvement in the US-led campaign.
Twenty years since Moscow's humiliating withdrawal following its
own 10-year war, Kabulov's words resonate in Kabul's diplomatic
circles.
"Neglect of the population. Failure in establishing firm
co-operation with local communities. Leaving them at the behest of
the enemy," Kabulov said, listing examples of Soviet mistakes he
believed were now being repeated.
Situation much worse
Speaking at the lavishly refurbished embassy compound, ransacked in
the post-Soviet mayhem of the 1990s, he said the country was
slipping back into chaos because efforts to rebuild the economy and
win people's hearts and minds came too late.
"If you compare the situation with five or six years ago, it is of
course much worse," he said.
"Our partners have lost a lot of opportunities to really control
the country, to help assist the Afghan government, ... provide law
and order."
With the Taliban extending their grip across the country, US
President Barak Obama is now wrestling with a call for more troops
from his Afghanistan commander.
There are now more than 100,000 Western troops here - nearly as
many as Moscow had at the height of its occupation.
Some in Washington have proposed trimming US forces and focusing
more on training the Afghan army so US troops would be gradually
withdrawn.
Worried about the spread of Islamist militancy into ex-Soviet
Central Asian republics north of Afghanistan, Russia originally
backed the 2001 invasion.
But, at odds with NATO over an array of other issues, it turned
increasingly critical of the campaign.
Kabulov said however that scaling down US forces at this stage
would be another mistake and praised General Stanley McChrystal,
the US and NATO chief in Afghanistan, for his call for more troops
and focus on gaining ordinary people's support.
"It's the right way to go," he said.
