Why did the Soviets lose in Afghanistan?

>15,000 Soviets died, compared to like a million Afghanis
>when they left the country communist party was still in power
>they were never defeated in field
Thus, just like how America won in Vietnam, USSR won in Afghanistan.

Communists suck at fighting

>>2199941
The entire country was against them + foreign supplies.

>>2199967
They lost way more than they gained

>>2199995
and the US?

>>2199995

That's his point.

The terrain

>>2199941
Outspent themselves to the point they collapsed economically.

you cant justify occupying a country with a million troops, guarding every cave and sheep when you go in to help them

your losses will be greater aswell
the populace will not tolerate death upon death for no other reason than ideological dickwaving

and you need troops, since you are an aggressor, its a vicious cycle

>>2200100
Why didn't the soviets just take over via brainwashing younger generations?

>>2199941
afghanistan cant be conquered

>>2199941
They lacked the GUTS and Determination of the Afghans. Also superior Stinger missiles folded over 9000 times capable of cutting through a Mi-24 Hind like wet toilet paper.

Did anti-war hippies protest against the Soviets killing brown people in Central Asia or did they not just give a fuck? Born in 1993 so I wasn't aware of what went on.

>>2200131
For the people living there Islamic fundamentalism > commie bullshit
>Marx or Allah? Silly heathens!

>>2199941
Afghanistan was very difficult, even more difficult than Vietnam, basically the guerilla's consisted of groups of 7~ men patrolling a particular area and only that area for some warlord protecting his opium crops, mind you, these were locals so they knew their area inside out.
trained troops poored out from pakistan and from the islamic world came fresh recruits to fight for the cause.

They had connections through their tribes and were gaining enough wealth from cash crops to sustain themselves without the help of villages(which the soviets were actively uprooting to deny the guerillas resources, big mistake) and if they ever ran short on resources their extensive tribal connections would provide them, more important than that was of course Pakistani and American support

Adding to that Afghanistan has almost NO major cities outside of Kandahar and Kabul and those were firmly under soviet control, it also had almost NO infrastructure outside of those cities, the country was basically untamed lands dominated by tribes, which were usually left alone by the government for time immemorial, they were understandibly pissed when the soviets showed up to meddle in their affairs.
the soviets had to stamp infrastructure out of the ground to even be able to operate.

The perfect solution to this was obviously choppers, like what the americans used in Vietnam, these were perfectly suited for operating in territory with no infrastructure, but then stingers came around and they turned everything upside down. the soviets eventually acquired those through a costly operation but too little too late.

The government of Afghanistan was almost useless as well so it really was the soviets versus afghanistan because local help was minimal. It was basically impossible to occupy the country in its entirety. No matter how you look at it the situation was FUBAR all the way, they should have pulled out earlier or they should just have stuck to Kandahar and Kabul.

>>2200196
This

The British had a fuckton of problems with their 3 wars in Afghanistan. And the fact that the Soviets gave no shits about human rights and did all sorts of atrocities didn't endear them to the public either.

>>2200159
>Did anti-war hippies protest against the Soviets killing brown people in Central Asia or did they not just give a fuck?
The Soviet citizens knew fuckall what was going on in Afghanistan because radios and TVs were considered capitalist propaganda machines and therefore illegal.

>>2200242
I mean anti-war hippies in the US and non-Commie nations. Who gives a fuck what those sheep in the Iron Curtain felt. It's not like they could do anything without Big Brother shooting their asses.

>>2200131
They tried, it backfired hard. Part of why the civil war started to begin with.

>>2200242
That's fucking wrong though, they knew plenty of what was going on but of course the government tried to cover much up, but they can't stop returning soldiers and not returning soldiers, WIA's, costs, the length of the war, western media slipping in(people fucking watched RAMBO dubbed over by some dude who pinched his nose), critique from communist party members looking to discredit political enemies, occasional admissions etc. etc.
Do some research before you shitpost if you don't want to get called out.
source: actual people from the soviet union that lived throught the war.

mostly people became more cynical and made cynical jokes(like they have been doing since Stalin, but what can you do.

>>2200242
Are you actually retarded?

t. Russian

>>2200266
>they knew plenty of what was going on
They didn't. When a soldier was KIA or WIA the government notified the relatives that he was deported to the furthest Gulag to cover it up. The citizens didn't know about the war in Afghanistan until Yeltsin openly admitted it to the public in 1993.

>>2200281
that's pretty different from how I remember it, vets would sit in commieblock basements getting shitfaced, and are you seriously saying the soviet people didn't know that the communist party was lying through its teeth and that they weren't aware of the cover up?
Info was spread from mouth to mouth but it was out there. Smuggling media was pretty widespread in the USSR too

>>2199967

War is more than just a numbers game of how many people killed.

>>2200291

He's being sarcastic and denigrating the people who claim that the U.S. won the vietnam war.

>>2200098
You must an Armenian.

>>2200299
almost no one claims that.

File: fuckyeass.jpg (575KB, 1280x1795px) Image search: [Google]

575KB, 1280x1795px

>>2200340
Are you sure?

>>2200266
>people fucking watched RAMBO dubbed over by some dude who pinched his nose
I gotta see this.

also to people thinking that anti-communist sentiment was a driving force for afghans to fight the soviets watch this https://youtu.be/SimIS_cQ6ko
It's a guy questioning Afghanis what 9/11 means to them, turns out, most of them DON'T KNOW what it is even when shown pictures of it. In fact a survey concluded that 92%(ninety-two per-cent, not exagerating) of Afghanis don't know about 9/11. That survey was taken in 2010.

That's just to give you a picture of how utterly oblivious these people are, once you leave kabul you are basically in the middle ages. Most Afghanis probably didn't even know what communism was during the war.
Such obliviousness is fertile ground for indoctrination by muhajideen.

>>2199941
Pakistani diversion of CIA funds and Saudi funding of mujahideen, combined with the fact that communism never stood a chance in afghanistan due to the culture, combined with the factionalism between the Khalqis and the Parchamis within the Afghan Party, combined with the fact that the central government only had de jure control over most of the country

>>2201405
also this, seeing as most Afghans lived (and still live) in villages and maintain loyalty to their tribe (durrani, ghilzai etc) and ethnicity (Pashtun, Tajik etc) than to the idea of an Afghan state. Zahir Shah was probably the last ruler to have fairly universal support

>>2200340
Ummm

>>2200059
They've gained Al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorism.

>>2200247
>>2200159
Yes. Carter was a big one. He shut down grain supplies from the U.S. and Argentina just filled the gap because Carter tried to embargo Argentina over human rights bullshit even though they were our ally. One of the biggest U.S. Cold War diplomatic blunders desu. Carter's presidency, in general, was just a long string of diplomatic blunders, actually.

>>2199941
Their task - to occupy a mountainous and almost entirely rural country, fighting against native tribes and foreign fighters assisted by billions of U.S. military aid - was impossible.

>>2201405

This. Afghanistan is a country dominated by small tribal settlements organized into walled compounds. This makes for a very inward-looking society.

>>2202897

Nevermind that every walled compound is potentially a mujihadeen fortress. Fighting in Afghanistan is fairly grueling.

>>2200133

Nothing worth conquering there in that shithole

>>2200131
it needs 2 generations to change the tradition
look at the USSR
its alot of time