Kabul Is Not Saigon

Helicopter gunships blaze away at elusive guerrillas. The army of a superpower tries to shore up an allied regime against an insurgency, but the puppet government and its military forces only grow weaker. The rebellion spreads. What was intended as a swift surgical operation begins to resemble a futile, possibly humiliating war without end.

Ever since six Soviet divisions barreled into Afghanistan--and especially since the eruption of indigenous protests against the invasion--Western analysts have been tantalized by possible parallels to the U.S. involvement in Viet Nam. Says Viet Nam War Chronicler David Halberstam: "The So viets to learning the big Viet Nam lesson, that it's easier to go into those countries than it is to get out. They will find out, just as the U.S. did, how amazingly easy it is for a little country to swallow a military machine." Says a Pentagon officer with undisguised delight: "I think it's great. It tickles me to death."

There are some striking similarities. Like the U.S., the Soviets moved in first with advisers, then felt compelled to undertake an active military role when the country was on the verge of collapse, as Viet Nam was in 1965. Just as the U.S. did with South Viet Nam's forces, the Soviets inherited a demoralized, poorly trained, desertion-prone Afghan army that has no stomach or heart for fighting the Muslim insurgent Helicopter gunships blaze away at elusive guerrillas. The army of a superpower tries to shore up an allied regime against an insurgency, but the puppet government and its military forces only grow weaker. The rebellion spreads. What was intended as a swift surgical operation begins to resemble a futile, possibly humiliating war without end.

Ever since six Soviet divisions barreled into Afghanistan--and especially since the eruption of indigenous protests against the invasion--Western analysts have been tantalized by possible parallels to the U.S. involvement in Viet Nam. Says Viet Nam War Chronicler David Halberstam: "The Soviets are learning the big Viet Nam lesson, that it's easier to go into those countries than it is to get out. They will find out, just as the U.S. did, how amazingly easy it is for a little country to swallow a military machine." Says a Pentagon officer with undisguised delight: "I think it's great. It tickles me to death."

There are some striking similarities. Like the U.S., the Soviets moved in first with advisers, then felt compelled to undertake an active military role when the country was on the verge of collapse, as Viet Nam was in 1965. Just as the U.S. did with South Viet Nam's forces, the Soviets inherited a demoralized, poorly trained, desertion-prone Afghan army that has no stomach or heart for fighting the Muslim insurgents. Meanwhile, the rebels show no sign of melting away before the overwhelming firepower of Soviet tanks, artillery and supersonic fighter-bombers. The Moscow-installed government of President Babrak Karmal already appears to be as discredited as Nguyen Van Thieu ever was in Saigon. Even the explanations for the invasion that Soviet officials are giving out in Moscow have a lamely defensive, Viet Nam-era ring: "We had no choice. We had to live up to our commitments."

Some of the problems the Soviets face in Afghanistan are even more troublesome than those the U.S. tried to cope with in Viet Nam. Despite their discontents, the South Viet namese populace did not actively rise up against the Saigon government; by contrast, it appears that the vast majority of the fierce and volatile Afghans seem to reject the Kabul regime. Edmund Stillman, a strategic analyst who is the di rector of a Paris-based think tank, the Hudson Institute, points out that Afghanistan is in roughly the same category of population as South Viet Nam (approximately 16 mil lion, vs. 12 million) but is four times larger in surface area. "If South Viet Nam could not be held by 1 million local forces plus 540,000 U.S. troops," Stillman says, "it is hardly cred ible that a vastly larger Afghanistan can be pacified by a dubiously loyal army of 40,000 and a mere 100,000 Soviets." He also believes that Moscow's forces--like America's in Viet Nam--face a problem of technological overkill: "What are they going to do, napalm nomad tents?"

For all the similarities, however, there are significant, perhaps crucial, differences. First, the logistical equation is almost exactly reversed; the Soviets are operating across an adjoining land border, not across 7,000 miles of ocean. In the Afghanistan war, it is the in surgents who are to a degree stranded, cut off from soures of support. Second, unlike the Viet Cong, the Afghan rebels are lightly armed and disunited, with neither a Ho Chi Minh to galvanize them ideologically nor anything like the North army to back them up militarily. Finally, there is a quantum difference on the home front: no network TV news brings the bloody facts of the war home to the average Soviet citizen, there are no antiwar movements on Soviet campuses, no antidraft demonstrations, no domestic public opinion to limit the options of the leadership.

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