Why did the Soviets lose the war in Afghanistan?

Answer 1

The Soviets did lose the war in Afgahanistan - they withdrew in the face of overwhelming resistance and opposition from the mujahadin freedom fighters (who were supplied with arms by the US).

AnswerI'm not certain they did, or that they ever intended to win it. In 1979 the Soviets put 100,000 men into Afghanistan. It quickly became obvious that that was not sufficient, ever, to quell the resistance against them yet they maintained precisely that force level rotating troops in and out after one year deployments. That did not make any sense. Military decisions in the Soviet Union were made by a five man council consisting if the seniormost party and military leaders. They were politically unasalable. If they had wanted to subdue Afghanistan they could have committed the necessary force to accomplish it and nobady would have offered any objection. I concluded by 1982 that they weren't so much trying to win a war as train their army. When they attacked Afghanistan in 1979 no one in their army had seen combat in 34 years, by contrast the United States, recently out of Viet Nam, had a vast number of combat veterans. That would be a telling advantage in any conflict between the U.S. and Soviet Union. I think the Soviets made a deliberate decision to maintain a low level conflict there until they about one million veterans and then pull out. Keeping a war going in Afghanistan also forced Iran and various radical Islamic forces to commit their resources there rather than trying to stir up rebellion in the Central Asian Soviet republics. I could be wrong. To my knowledge no documents have ever come to light supporting this theory but I began predicting in about 1982 that the Soviets would pull out in 1989 after they had shuttled 1,000,000 through Afghanistan and that is precisely what they did.

Michael Montagne