Soviet–Afghan War Thread

Anyone who's interested in the Afghan War should read Artyom Borovik's "The Hidden War" - probably the best and most accessible account of it available in English:

https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-War-Russian-Journalists-Afghanistan/dp/080213775X/

>>33871778
Yes, and books too. I forgot this. Books, always books welcomed. I listen to audio books when I haul.

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"The guerrillas' fire was driving us into the ground. Suddenly, our helicopters appeared and started to strafe our own battalions.

...

It was some kind of hell."

Abramov wrote, 1988

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Abramov described how two Afghan prisoners suspected of being guerrillas were brought into his camp.

"We already had people killed and missing," he said. "Lost friends . . . and we unleashed all our accumulated pain on those two. We beat them all night, with short breaks. I, too, tried to beat them as painfully as I could. It seemed as if they were to blame for the deaths of our soldiers. And in the morning, it turned out they were peaceful inhabitants who had never participated in any battles."

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"According to the story by Gennady Bocharov, one of the country`s more seasoned war reporters, a group of Soviet soldiers with orders to interdict weapons being smuggled to Afghan guerrillas shouted at a car to stop as it approached a border checkpoint.

``The soldiers ordered the driver to stop,`` Bocharov wrote, ``but he just accelerated. It can`t be ruled out that it just seemed that way to the soldiers.``

The story said that the troops fired warning shots into the air, and when the car didn't stop, they fired at the automobile. The newspaper said that when the car eventually stopped and the soldiers searched it, they found no weapons.

But they discovered a dead woman, a wounded man and a wounded teenager who had been hit in the hail of bullets. Four other passengers, including an old woman and two children, escaped unharmed."

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>>33871778
That's a good one, Zinky Boys is my favorite tho

>True late 80s Soviet Afghan War rifle clone soon

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"The Badaber uprising (26–27 April 1985, Badaber, Pakistan) was an armed rebellion by Soviet and Afghan prisoners of war who were being held at the Badaber fortress near Peshawar, Pakistan. The prisoners fought the Pakistan army and the Afghan Mujahideen of the Jamiat-e Islami party in an unsuccessful attempt to escape. All the prisoners were killed in the ensuing siege and the fortress was destroyed."

There were 52 Soviet/Afghan casualties (all prisoners) and 100-200 Pakistani/Mujihadeen killed.

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Can't really stay and lurk, but I'll post a few pics on my drive.

Soviets learned nothing from their own invaders actions in WW2

>Germans invade USSR
>greeted as liberators
>massacre people even worse than the previous regime
>Few years later, they're facing massive popular resistance

>Soviets invade Afghanistan
>At the very least, the civilian population does not oppose them
>Soviets level village after village like idiots in hunting a few insurgents
>Soon, an entire popular uprising is directed against them

>>33873148
>Soviets level village after village like idiots in hunting a few insurgents
They were actually not that bad about blowing up villages until the war dragged on and they saw how the Afghans would torture Soviet prisoners, after that they went all out.

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>>33873148
The situation was a bit complicated. They came in initially to whack an Afghan president that was even more commie than them. The Soviets were afraid he may turn to China as an ally or cause bad things to happen. After that guy's gone, the Soviets set up the new government and try to stabilize things. That's when shit hits the fan and various ethnic/religious/political (there were technically some commie mujahideen groups) groups start rising up. Then starts almost a decade of insurgency with no end in sight.
>>33873175

>>33873148
Well, big part of ex-Soviet population was loyal to Germany to the end, like Ukrainians, Estonians and Latvians.

Most of the soviet resistance fighters was from dropped by parasutes of just sneak through the front line.

And most of population was passive toward the germans or actively supported them.

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>>33871757

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>>33873387

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Monument at Bagram to Soviet pilots lost during the war, taken in the early 90s.

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>>33873399
What's left of the monument today.

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>>33873220
>those hats
want

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>>33873397

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>>33873423

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>>33873436

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>>33873443

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>>33873450

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>>33873460

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>>33873474

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>>33873483

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>>33873491

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>>33873498

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>>33873505

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>>33873513

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>>33873526

>>33871757
I guess the 2 million estimate is from the beginning of the soviet invasion until now. Afghanis have been at war either with someone else or themselves the whole time

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>>33873534

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>>33873550

>>33873410
Did this ever get rebuilt? It's at Bagram. I remember some AF guys were trying to put it back together.

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>>33873589

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top notch thread, keep it going /k/unts.

>>33873420
the craftsmanship on them is pretty superb, the stitching all over the hat is the best part IMO.

>>33873535
no. it was based solely on that period of time of 9+ years

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>>33873607

>>33873618
wonder what it's at now then

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>>33873624

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>>33873639

>>33873608
do you own one? what's the strap across the front made of?

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>>33873656

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>>33873683

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>>33873694

Thread theme:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlERM1UiZqQ

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>>33873709

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>>33872981
>>33873001
>>33873037
>>33873079
Das fucked up

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>>33873725
>not who

>>33873665
Not him but it's just plastic, not too comfy to use as a strap imo. I used some paracord to make a proper strap instead

>>33873721
>implying
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBDc2pDQgVg

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>>33873737

>>33873748
>that adidas sticker
stay classy, slavs

I HAVENT SEEN A SINGLE AKS74U HOLSTER YET

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>>33873752
Last one for now

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>>33873771
:^)

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Alright, I think that's gonna be it for me. If I come across any more folders I'll post 'em.

Anyone have the story of the Pakistani F-16 being shot down by the Soviets?

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>>33873665
I own a couple of them. The strap is plastic and it's uncomfortable to wear for more than a few minutes which is why I have leather strips on mine.

>>33873755
anybody have any pics of the VDV wearing knockoff Gazelles?

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>>33873911
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/02/world/afghans-down-a-pakistani-f-16-saying-fighter-jet-crossed-border.html

Nvm found it.

Another good song from the conflict: https://youtu.be/MnAsDx6QkNk

>>33873721
>>33873748
>Implying

Jesus fucking christ guys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qMT20Z2NEU

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>>33874122
>tfw no private army made up of slavs and rhodesians
why live?

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>>33873985
>Sabaton
>9th Company

>>33873273
This is a big revisionist/pol-meme

By 1945 the anti-nazi local resistance had far larger membership than collaborators. Even in the Baltics. Germans killed 500,000 non-Baltic Jews in just 4 years, Germans killed about 100,000 in 1940, 10,000 1945-1953, and less than a thousand (political-related deaths) 1953-1990

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>>33873200
interesting, I wonder if any commie groups are still around the country in small numbers. im guessing after years under the taliban theyve been absorbed into the rest of the snackbars

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>>33874331
well shit I just did a quick google and there is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_(Maoist)_Party_of_Afghanistan
jesus the middle east is a cluster fuck

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>>33873748
So comfy

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>im too young to die

>>33873079
Damn those prisoners got a breddy gud kd

>>33873779
Did the Soviets celebrate Christmas?

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>>33873199
>>33873624
>almost 16 pound ak

I need this thread to stay alive so I can save all these aesthetic as fuck pictures to my PC later. Eurofriends, please bump.

>>33874888
The Soviets tried to replace Christmas with a made up communist new year holiday. Santa Claus war to be replaced with grandfather frost.

t. gommunism history expert

>>33873656
>the familiar feeling of "fuck it, we're cold, bored, and surrounded by useless materiel. let's burn this shit."

some things never change.

>>33871757
There was 15000 soviet dead, not 32000

>>33876301
Casualties count wounded and killed

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>>33871757
>Try to keep politics to a minimum
>Looking at you vatniks, don't try to defend your dead country

Nigger are you retarded or what

Weren't they issued at any point of the war body armor?

>>33877737
yes
>>33873172

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>>33873607
Removing terrorists with style.

>>33871757
>mfw these all too familar photos of grunts being bored, shirtless grunts winning hearts and minds, and operators operating
it's almost poetic

>>33878705
More like removing each other's panties

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>mfw

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Man the 80's era Soviet Army was /fa/ as fuck

>tfw you will never wear berezka and remove kebab with your trusty Dragunov

>>33878770
The buildup was really eerily similar.

>leaders of the country are suck-ups to their allied power
>leaders are idiots piss off the dominant religion in their country
>religious crisis leads to insurgents taking over most of the rural areas
>allied power arranges a coup and the death of said incompetent leader
>people who come after said leader suck even more
>"advisors" aren't enough to cut it any more and the civilian leadership of the allied country decides to spam in conscripts because they're worried about the disorder spreading to more important countries

They made a far better go of it than the west did, and if they had been left alone to it then the Soviet intervention would have been up there with Malaya in terms of successful COIN.

>>33879622
When you put it like that, it's almost like you're serious.

>tfw the Soviet Union never had it's own 'desert storm' in which it showed off its might to the world at the peak of its military power.

Feels bad. Desert Storm was like a confirmation that all that time and money that went into the US military was worth it because they absolutely obliterated Iraq.

I wish the USSR had a chance to fight a conventional war like that in the 80's, just so all the cool shit they had would have seen combat

>>33879622
>Malaya
It was pretty much Vietnam: Easy mode

If the brits fought the vietnam or soviet/afghan wars they would've lost as well

>>33879708
John A Nagl, who knows these sorts of things, disagrees. You should read his book.

>>33879651
Prior to the serious US involvement, the Soviets had a working COIN strategy and a far more useful domestic force than NATO would ever build in 2000s and 2010s. Even after they withdrew and ceased all support, the system they put in place hung on for far longer than the current one will last against much lighter odds.

The only reason they failed is because the west, Pakistan and the Gulf Arabs pumped money into their opponents and allowed them to train and recruit internationally.

Were the only tank the Soviets used in Afghanistan T-55s or T-62s?
I suppose it works since they're not really anticipating running into enemy armor.

>>33879769
From what I understand the Soviets avoided using their latestest and greatest stuff in Afghanistan.

Lots of outdated tanks and planes.

Nice thread /k/haps

>>33879788
The bulk of the forces deployed were from the central Asian republics.

A Soviet defector, a senior sergeant, confirmed this. We assumed they had first line forces out there. They did not. They had some, but the bulk of deployed soldiers were taken from the various - Stan republics. This changed the approach western assessors took over the course of the war.

Fascinating stuff, but it always is.

>>33879809
That's an interesting bit of info when you consider it. The USSR was huge and so there would be a disparity in the equipment and even training between the forces in the North/East by Europe and those down in the South.
Top grade units would probably be kept to guard airbases and command centers.

>>33873148

>Germans invade USSR
>greeted as liberators
>massacre people even worse than the previous regime

Simply not true.

>‘Remember the 11 million’? Why an inflated victims tally irks Holocaust historians

>An oft-cited statistic of 5 million non-Jewish Holocaust deaths has no basis in fact, experts say, and may be contributing to denial efforts

http://www.timesofisrael.com/remember-the-11-million-why-an-inflated-victims-tally-irks-holocaust-historians/

>Yehuda Bauer, an Israeli Holocaust scholar who chairs the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, said he warned his friend Wiesenthal, who died in 2005, about spreading the false notion that the Holocaust claimed 11 million victims – 6 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews.

>“I said to him, ‘Simon, you are telling a lie,’” Bauer recalled in an interview Tuesday. “He said, ‘Sometimes you need to do that to get the results for things you think are essential.’”

>Bauer and other historians who knew Wiesenthal said the Nazi hunter told them that he chose the 5 million number carefully: He wanted a number large enough to attract the attention of non-Jews who might not otherwise care about Jewish suffering, but not larger than the actual number of Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, 6 million.

http://www.jta.org/2017/01/31/news-opinion/united-states/remember-the-11-million-why-an-inflated-victims-tally-irks-holocaust-historians

>>33879732
Look I respect the British military and all but let's compare Malaya with 'Nam


>MNLA never numbered more than 8,000 insurgents while the NVA numbered over a quarter-million soldiers
>Soviets and Chinese provided state of the art weapons and training to North Vietnam
>most MNLA insurgents were ethnically Chinese which made them foreigners to the Malayans while there was no difference between North and South Vietnamese
>Malayans trusted and respected the Brits while the Vietnamese and Americans never shared a high level of trust in each other
>In vietnam the North used Laos and Cambodia as shelters while the MNLA didn't have such available other than Thailand

>>33879911
They were completely different wars, yes, but the handling and approach from the start made Vietnam into what it was.

This was not a tactical mistake, the Americans in Vietnam were as tactically aware as the British were in Malaya (for the most part) and had excellent small unit successes. But the broader American approach led to Vietnam being what it was, they didn't stumble across it as a mess. It was turned into one.

Counterinsurgency is all about learning from mistakes and experience, and when you avoid that you'll just make it worse.

>>33879911
You're forgetting the most important thing.

>British directly ran the government, Americans had to work through a corrupt, incompetent local government

I'm that one fag who wrote a thirteen page term paper comparing Malaya and Nam.

>>33873387
that looks exactly like the korengal in the restrepo doc.

jesus man, war never changes, or the locations

>>33873037
>But they discovered a dead woman, a wounded man and a wounded teenager who had been hit in the hail of bullets. Four other passengers

I count seven occupants.

was it a fucking clown car holy shit

>>33877609
OP here
Sucks doesn't it?
I just didn't want this to be turned into another politically-driven circle jerk. It is what it is. create your own thread or fuck right off to /pol/

>>33884088
I noticed that too. I'm not sure why the article worded it like that. hence I use quotations.

>>33884088
Welcome to third world countries anon

>>33873037
Same shit was common in Iraq. Checkpoints really needed fucking signage.

>>33884916
Apparently the insurgents would hold people's families hostage and shit to get them to rush coalition checkpoints, get shot, and create a bunch of photogenic civilian casualties for the evening news.

The only thing I know about this war is that the ruskies actually learned from the experiences, unlike the US.

Now they outright crush opposition (Chechnya) or back popular dictators instead of "nation-building".

>>33884951
>Chechnya
>success

Nigga, the last time anything like it happened to the US was the Apache Wars in the 1880s.

>>33884967
Nah, it's still happening right now with the mexican cartels infiltration to the US and the La Raza movement...and California in general.

And Chechnya is a success.

>>33884988
>lose a war to one of your countries own provinces
>end up having to pay half of the provinces warlords to kill the other half
>to this day, representatives of the federal government that arrive without the permission of Kadyrov are liable to be killed
>success

That word, I do not think you know what it means

>>33885011
The first war was a fuck up because the Russian government wanted to reduce the influence of the military. Back in the 1990's there was a talk of military coup against Yeltsin incompetence.

They sent in fresh conscript units and ordered them to storm an urban center with armour.

In the second war, they methodically advanced wiping out Chechen fortresses and centers of resistance before using superior firepower to eliminate any consistent resistance. Strong COIN operations reduced the Chechen hillfighters to small bands that evaporated.

Kadyrov is just a figurehead, most Chechens don't respect him.

>>33884109

you just wanted to casually post inflated KIA figures and a whole bunch of cherry-picked bullshit?

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>>33871757
As Major Mikhail Romanov the commander of the subunit "Zenit" recalled the situation during Storm-333
"Bulletproof vest didn’t save anyone. A bulletproof vest is symbolic, not a serious device. The pistol,
antipersonnel version as well, and an automatic weapon penetrates it easily. The West German helmets were not
bad…”
"They special forces were saved only by being in bulletproof vests, although they were practically all wounded." (At least 100 men died but the reports only claim 6 to 9 men)
"The special forces were in hostile territory, in a foreign uniform, without documents, and without any recognition signs; there was nothing except white armbands on their sleeves." (Zenit used Afghan uniforms to infiltrate the Taj Beg palace/Objective Dub)
hell they were in pretty shit situation and not everything wetn as planned: "According to plan we, operating on five armored personnel carriers, were to remove the
front of the palace gate using armor, quickly neutralize the two tanks (which were reportedly dug
into the earth up to their turrets) and two or three BMPs standing inside the gates with grenade
launchers, then divide right and left along narrow paths along a four-story barracks where the guards
were housed, and blockade them. An interpreter was to climb onto the armor and announce into a
megaphone (the megaphones were delivered later) that the anti-popular regime of bloody Amin has
fallen, suggest the guards surrender, and come out of the barracks without their weapons with hands raised. "

during my undergrad i did extensive research on both Pakistan and Afghanistan and the influence of the Soviet invasion on current terrorism

everything comes back to this war

>large surplus of weaponry from US and USSR
>large sums of money given to the mujahideen
>extremely loose border control means trafficking of weapons/personnel is easy and difficult to stop
>corruption in government and tribalism, would rather help terrorists because theyre countrymen or muslim rather than helping a foreign power destroy terrorist organizations (more relevant now than then)
>influx of mujahadeen means that large numbers of individuals gained combat experience in a hellish terrain that they were already familiar with, coupled with experience in trafficking weapons/personnel, and to boot sets the basis for importing fighters from other muslim countries, something fairly common today, the movement of individuals to fight a foreign power or other tribe goes back thousands of years, but never in the same scale as in the soviet invasion/current wars

every single bit of research i did, everything pointed back to the soviet invasion, without the invasion and US involvement in the region its entirely possible that the taliban and al qaeda (and by extension groups that splintered or were formed in the same time/after) would never have existed in the same capacity or at all. The soviet invasion gave them the means to grow exponentially and continue operation despite fairly constant losses in terms of combatants and equipment. "oh no achmed is dead and he had the PKM, oh well go grab another PKM and hand it to sharab"

if you havent already go read some academic articles, theyre long and some may consider them dry but its a super interesting topic

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>>33887128
According to Sergey Golov: “We had hardly begun to move when our vehicle stopped. The drivermechanic was frightened, jumped out of the BMP and fled”
„Gena Zudin was rather heavy when he jumped out of the BMP; his legs fell under the track and were crushed”
Karpukhin recalled: “I was the commander of one of the subgroups. When the BMP stopped I scared the driver-mechanic a bit. I told him not to spare the ammunition just shoot as fast as you can. And he tried; it was impossible to breath in the vehicle from the smoke”
According to Kolomiyets: “We had barely gotten out of the BMP when a shaped-charge grenade hit it. I then encountered a machinegunner who was sitting inside; his jaw was down and there was a terrible wound in his stomach. I don’t know whether he remained alive. A fragment had pierced my bulletproof vest”
Vladimir Fedoseyev: „They knocked out our BMP.The vehicle began to spin and the BMP commander shouted that an armor fragment had hit him in the thigh. When the driver tried to get out of the vehicle he was killed immediately.”
„An interpreter was also with us. He had been killed in the first second when he tried to climb out of the vehicle through the upper hatch.”

Just finishing up my undergraduate dissertation on the failure of the Soviet union to suppress the Mujahideen during the conflict, if anyone is interested in reading it I can upload it when it's done in a week :)

>>33887199
Jesus fucking Christ this guy is hardcore
" I had from a shell exploding in the weapon!My left arm had grown numb. I took a glance – my hand
was all bloody. I felt with the fingers of my right hand."
"And right here I
was hit in my left arm, my bad one, as if by a giant hot needle!"
" My arm was
almost completely separated. I simply didn’t feel it! My sleeve was swollen with blood. Here’s the devil for you, a
second wound, and both in the same arm! I probed it with my fingers. They moved just a bit! But I almost didn’t feel
my arm!"
"Having stood up the stock of the automatic weapon in front of me and holding it by the grip with my right
hand - the left had finally fallen off - I moved along the corridor. "
"I pulled a grenade out of my pocket, tore off the pin with my teeth, and launched it deep into the room with the
counterrecoil. Here an automatic weapon round hit me. They were shooting from the left apparently, from an partly-open
door."
"I felt sick. On my wounded side, it was as if someone had played around with a hot poker, such was the pain.
I tried to raise myself. It worked. "
"Instinctively, having raised my weapon in the direction of the presumed enemy, I let loose a
long random burst in the semidarkness and listened to some wild howl."
"At this moment, a fireball exploded literally five steps to the right of me. Evidently this was a RGD-5 grenade
which had been hurled down the ladder opening. I distinctly remember that for a hundredth or a thousandth of a
second, as the grenade fragments flew toward me I convulsively and strongly folded into a ball, squeezing for ages.
The fragments lashed my face, arms, and legs badly…The shock wave knocked me from my legs…”

>>33887216
I would be interested.

>>33887339
how did this guy survive...

>>33887386
Drop me an email at [email protected]

I'll mail you a copy once I've submitted it, obviously won't know if it's any good until the results come in in July, but have been told that I'm on track for a first class degree if that means anything :(

>>33873423
I wonder if the soviets ever had a truck that wetted the dust to keep it down. That would make columns go faster and make them less visible from a distance.

Of course, in the desert, one wouldn't wish to waste water like that...

>>33887390

Vodka, comrade anon.

>>33887196
>i wonder where those weapons ended up
"Karmal promised that 500 guerillas loyal to him
would support us. They brought in weapons and grenades for them – and waited. Only one of the 500 came."

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What would Afghanistan of been like if the soviets had won?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs3k1gcMDzE

Obligatory.

>>33888393
desert commie snackbars

Di the soviets still use conscripts at this point in history? Was military service required in the Soviet union or did they just pull from the male population if they were running low on volunteers?

>>33888504
Military service was mandatory even in the 90's after the collapse of the USSR. Every man in the age of 19 was conscripted for 1 year..

>>33888393
ukraine, but with moslems

not exactly an inspiring thought

>>33888504

Soviets and Russia, have been using conscripts and still do(although they are much more lax about it).

Its part of their doctrine based around the idea that you cannot do a war without casualties so you should focus on instead of losing less making the enemy lose more.

>>33880300
Yes and no. During Diem's period corruption at a provincial and village level was slowly being weeded out, even after Diem's assassination this was still being done. Done via coercion and using a considerable amount of US assets, but it was enough to quell Vietcong activity particularly post-Tet. Also it's difficult to stamp out corruption during wartime. People forget Vietcong insurgency activity was comparatively small after Tet, partially due to the Vietcong fucking up, but insurgents nowhere near as important post-1968.

Malaya had the luxury of having a particularly untouched by war local government apparatus and elite who were not ethnically affiliated with the communist insurgents - a Malay-majority government against a largely Chinese MCP, with most of Malaya being ethnically Malay. It was thus much easier to draw divisions between local villagers and commies. Malaya had a lot of provincial level and downwards corruption - all of southeast asia did - but with many of the countries in the region who successfully fought off the commies (like Burma, Thailand, or Indonesia) they were able to use an ethnic divide to their benefit despite chronic corruption.

t.studied counterinsurgency warfare in southeast asia for PhD dissertation

>>33892235
Yeah, but the corruption in South Vietnam extended to their conventional warfare capability.

Hence why they got chased out of Laos instead of closing the Ho Chi Minh trail at the source.

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>drive towards barricade
>clearly they look like they have guns
>they start shooting in the air
>better start speeding up towards that barricade

every
time

>>33892727
when see the same shit happening today, you realize it is not people making the same mistakes, but rather it has no solution.

>>33887483
Ayyy still regret not moving back to Swansea for my graduate degree.

What program you taking?

>>33887483
I sent you an email.

Did Russians even...wear any kind of uniform? In every photo I've seen of Russian troops in the war, every soldier is wearing something unique.

>>33888393
like Tajikistan or Kazakhstan

>>33893779
They (all of the USSR member states) had different uniforms from each other and even had separate sub variations, which is hilarious when they all use the same equipment.

>>33893537

Finishing up with BA War and Society right now, MA War and Society in September :)

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bump

>>33886954
Cherry-picked?
I provided an overview of the conflict, and proceeded with posting stories to get the thread going.
Cry more.

>>33874331
>>33874404
A big part of the clusterfuck is the mujahadeen was pretty much split half nationalist, half religious fundamentalist, so they were at war (afghan "gov" vs taliban) for the next few decades, and are still fighting it out today. The national forces help protect an ethnic minority group which is descendant from mongols which the taliban essentially genocided, and make up a large portion of their forces.

>>33873460
>dem cheeki breeki sneakers

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>russia will never have a warm water port

sigh

>>33893368
Aside from this thing called TURNING THE FUCK AROUND.

Just. Turn. Around. Go. The fuck. Away.