# Afghanistan is still a basket case. Can anything be done? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 26, 2005, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/afghanistan-is-still-a-basket-case-can-anything-be-done/291970 "2005-02-26T03:52:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2005, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/afghanistan-is-still-a-basket-case-can-anything-be-done/291970/41 "2005-03-05T17:45:39Z")
[QUOTE=Princhester] You got a cite for all that? I was talking to an Afghan last week and he’d just got back from a trip home. He said his friends and family had reached the point where they were lamenting the demise of the Russian days, because at least the Russians built roads, improved educational standards etc. He said that the common view was that the US were interested in the place as a battleground. Period. [QUOTE] Oh please, Russian assistance? The only assistance Russia ever provided was making sure the Afghan economy dropped 25-30% and then subsequently destroying the country. We’re starting from a point where the countries been invaded, occupied fractured and then under another form of puritanical oppression, to base the Russian involement and the American one on a level playing field is ludicrious. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2005, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/afghanistan-is-still-a-basket-case-can-anything-be-done/291970/42 "2005-03-05T18:40:42Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > Oh please, Russian assistance? The only assistance Russia ever provided was making sure the Afghan economy dropped 25-30% and then subsequently destroying the country. Cite? ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2005, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/afghanistan-is-still-a-basket-case-can-anything-be-done/291970/43 "2005-03-05T19:13:41Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Cite? Afghanistan: The first five years of Soviet Occupation. Author J. Bruce Amstutz ‘Decline and Redirection of the Afghan Economy’ Page 233-262 > **[Afghanistan: The First Five Years of Soviet Occupation: Amstutz, J. Bruce:...](https://www.amazon.com/Afghanistan-First-Years-Soviet-Occupation/dp/089875528X)** > > Afghanistan: The First Five Years of Soviet Occupation \[Amstutz, J. Bruce\] on Amazon.com. \*FREE\* shipping on qualifying offers. Afghanistan: The First Five Years of Soviet Occupation ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2005, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/afghanistan-is-still-a-basket-case-can-anything-be-done/291970/44 "2005-03-05T19:19:43Z")
But a more benevolent form of Soviet intervention in Afghanistan **preceded** the Soviet invasion. From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History\_of\_Afghanistan#Soviet\_intervention\_in\_Afghanistan\_.281978-1992.29:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Afghanistan#Soviet_intervention_in_Afghanistan_.281978-1992.29:) > [@](#): > > The PDPA, as a pro-communist socialist party, implemented a socialist agenda which included decrees abolishing usury, banning forced marriages, state recognition of women’s rights to vote, replacing religious and traditional laws with secular and Marxist ones, banning tribal courts, and land reform. **It invited the Soviet Union to assist in modernising its economic infrastructure (predominantly its exploration and mining of rare minerals and natural gas). The USSR also sent contractors to build roads, hospitals, schools and mine for water wells; they also trained and equipped the Afghan army.** > > These reforms were met with a large backlash, partly led by members of the traditional establishment. Many of these establishments formed groups in an attempt to reverse the dependence of Afghanistan, some resorting to violent means and sabotage of the country’s industry and infrastructure. The puppet government of Afghanistan responded to attacks with heavy handed intervention from the army. The government arrested, exiled and executed many mujahedin “holy Muslim warriors”. > > In 1979 the Afghan army was overwhelmed with the number of incidents, and the Soviet Union sent troops to support the government they installed by crushing the uprising. On December 25, 1979 the Soviet army entered Kabul. This started the ten year war between the Soviets and the mujahedin resistance. The American CIA, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia assisted in the financing of the groups because of their anti-communist stance, and in the latter case because of their Islamist inclinations. > > A wealthy Saudi named Osama bin Laden was a prominent mujahideen organizer and financier; his Maktab al-Khadamat (MAK) (Office of Order) funnelled money, arms, and Muslim fighters from around the world into Afghanistan, with the assistance and support of the American, Pakistani, and Saudi governments. In 1988, bin Laden broke away from the MAK with some of its more militant members to form Al-Qaida, in order to expand the anti-Soviet resistance effort into a worldwide Islamic fundamentalist movement. > > The Soviet Union withdrew its troops in February 1989, but continued to aid the government, led by Mohammed Najibullah. Massive amounts of aid from the CIA and Saudi Arabia to the mujahadin also continued. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Najibullah government was overthrown April 18, 1992 when Abdul Rashid Dostum mutinied, and allied himself with Ahmed Shah Massoud, to take control of Kabul and declare the Islamic State of Afghanistan. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2005, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/afghanistan-is-still-a-basket-case-can-anything-be-done/291970/45 "2005-03-05T19:33:00Z")
> [@](#): > > The PDPA, as a pro-communist socialist party, implemented a socialist agenda which included decrees abolishing usury, banning forced marriages, state recognition of women’s rights to vote, replacing religious and traditional laws with secular and Marxist ones, banning tribal courts, and land reform. It invited the Soviet Union to assist in modernising its economic infrastructure (predominantly its exploration and mining of rare minerals and natural gas). The USSR also sent contractors to build roads, hospitals, schools and mine for water wells; they also trained and equipped the Afghan army Yes, but the majority of the PDPA had been derivative from the army, and the officer korps, which were trained in the Soviet Union! Since Russia had wanted Afghanistan as a client state ever since the great game, what a perfect way to get what it wanted with no immediate or short term backlash! Babrak Kamal requisitioned land with no effective plan when after he chucked out the land owners, which caused further chaos and disputiveness in the Afghan countryside, its nice to want to be fair and equal, but when you have a government at odds with itself and its people also, Afghanistan would never function in the way it could of done under PDPA leadership. > [@](#): > > It invited the Soviet Union to assist in modernising its economic infrastructure (predominantly its exploration and mining of rare minerals and natural gas). The USSR also sent contractors to build roads, hospitals, schools and mine for water wells; they also trained and equipped the Afghan army. They were the only people they could turn to, as America regarded Afghanistan as a backwater. Its closest ally, India was seperated by Pakistan. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2005, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/afghanistan-is-still-a-basket-case-can-anything-be-done/291970/46 "2005-03-05T19:36:19Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > Yes, but the majority of the PDPA had been derivative from the army, and the officer korps, which were trained in the Soviet Union! Since Russia had wanted Afghanistan as a client state ever since the great game, what a perfect way to get what it wanted with no immediate or short term backlash! None of which detracts from **Princhester’s** point, which is that some Afghans, with some justice, remember the Soviet intervention in their country as comparing favorably with the current Amerian intervention. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2005, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/afghanistan-is-still-a-basket-case-can-anything-be-done/291970/47 "2005-03-06T01:42:29Z")
3/5/05: I’m watching an episode of _Law & Order_ – investigation of a drug-related shootout leads back to an Afghan warlord who has been smuggling heroin into New York – and has been working hand-in-glove with U.S. Special Forces (who have been using him to catch Taliban, but deny any specific knowledge of his poppy fields and drug trafficking). It’s only television, of course, and the writers, like most of us, can know only what they read in the papers or other media – but it still makes you think. Whatever happened to the “War on Drugs”? Has the Admin decided to put it on hold wherever the “War on Terror” takes first priority? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2005, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/afghanistan-is-still-a-basket-case-can-anything-be-done/291970/48 "2005-03-06T14:15:20Z")
Same thing happened to the War on Poverty. No surprise. The Drug Czar’s office is one door down from the Education Czar’s in the West Wing basement - if they haven’t been shipped out to the Beltway somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2005, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/afghanistan-is-still-a-basket-case-can-anything-be-done/291970/49 "2005-03-06T18:41:53Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > None of which detracts from **Princhester’s** point, which is that some Afghans, with some justice, remember the Soviet intervention in their country as comparing favorably with the current Amerian intervention. What like one in every thousand of the Population? The PDPA never had popular support, and the Soviets were hated ever since they started interfering in Afghan affairs. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2005, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/afghanistan-is-still-a-basket-case-can-anything-be-done/291970/50 "2005-03-06T23:25:15Z")
You miss the point entirely. No one is suggesting that the Afghans wanted to give the Russians big warm cuddles. The point is that I am aware of at least one view that the Americans are not viewed much differently, and possibly viewed as worse in at least one respect. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2005, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/afghanistan-is-still-a-basket-case-can-anything-be-done/291970/51 "2005-03-07T00:45:30Z")
> [@](#): > > The point is that I am aware of at least one view that the Americans are not viewed much differently, and possibly viewed as worse in at least one respect. Care to enlighten us why they would be viewed worse in one respect? ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2005, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/afghanistan-is-still-a-basket-case-can-anything-be-done/291970/52 "2005-03-07T05:58:58Z")
Go back and read my first post [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/afghanistan-is-still-a-basket-case-can-anything-be-done/291970.md?page=2)