Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 51, no. 1, February–March 2009, pp. 99–118
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Rodric Braithwaite takes part in a seminar chaired by IISS Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia Oksana Antonenko on the ‘Soviet Experience in Afghanistan and its Implications for NATO Strategy’ (Streaming video; 42:50)
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In early September 2008 Rodric Braithwaite travelled to Afghanistan to ‘see some of the places (Herat, Pandsher, Salang), talk to some Afghans, and check on the stories my Russian contacts (who go back there all the time) tell me about the positive attitude the Afghans now have towards the Russians’. He kept notes as a record for his own use, and to send back to his family on a daily basis to reassure them that he hadn’t been kidnapped. He kindly shared them with Survival, and we present a version abridged to fit the available space. Braithwaite did not meet the kind of people that official visitors to Afghanistan usually meet. He drew a number of conclusions from his conversations:
First, the common belief among Afghans that they were better off under the Russians, and that the last Communist President Najibullah was a better leader than Karzai, may not reflect historical reality; but it bodes ill for the coalition’s overall aims. Secondly, the Russian effort in Afghanistan was frustrated above all by their inability to control the frontier with Pakistan: a task which may well turn out to be even harder for the coalition. Thirdly, although the Russians were not defeated militarily in Afghanistan, any more than the Americans were in Vietnam, both the Russians and the Americans failed entirely to achieve their political objectives. The British, by contrast, who ended their nineteenth-century Afghan wars with military victory, sensibly settled for their minimum objective: a monopoly of Afghan foreign policy, which lasted for 80 years. There are no such simple options available today. Finally, there is no certainty that the proposed surge in coalition forces will stabilise the country: the analogy with Iraq is just as false as the earlier analogy between the prospects for democracy in Iraq and what happened in Germany and Japan after 1945.
Afghan diary, 4–5 September
The KamAir plane was a refurbished Boeing 737, smartly painted in blue and white. The stewardesses were young and pretty, and wore no headscarves. Once we started to come down towards Kabul the mountains loomed barren and light brown, with occasional patches of green in the valleys. The airport was like the airports I knew in Indonesia and the Soviet Union with one or two modern additions, which did not include the luggage-reclaim belt. Its chief defect was that my luggage wasn’t on it. I had been told both by BA in London and KamAir in Dubai that there would be no problem, so I had stifled my original instinct to retrieve it in Dubai and check it in again for Kabul. Not to worry, everyone says. It happens all the time and the luggage will turn up tomorrow.
As they went through the airport, the stewardesses were already wearing their headscarves. However, the young American blonde at the exit was carrying a large pistol and certainly no scarf.
The drive in from Kabul airport is dreary – grey dusty ruins interspersed with containers and what look like barracks...
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Rodric Braithwaite, whose diplomatic career included postings in Jakarta, Warsaw, Rome, Brussels and Washington, was British Ambassador in Moscow from 1988 to 1992. He has written two books on Russian affairs and is preparing a third, Afghantsy, about the Russians in Afghanistan.
Related Articles
Doctrine and Reality in Afghanistan by Adam Roberts (February–March 2009)
What is Happening in Pakistan? by Hilary Synnott (February–March 2009)
The Way Forward in Afghanistan: Three Views by Barnet Rubin, Amin Saikal and Julian Lindley-French (February–March 2009)
Averting Failure in Afghanistan by Seth G. Jones (Spring 2006)
Securing Afghanistan’s Border by Amin Saikal (Spring 2006)
Walking Softly in Afghanistan: The Future of UN State-Building by Simon Chesterman (Autumn 2002)
Afghanistan after the Loya Jirga by Amin Saikal (Autumn 2002)
The Taliban Papers by Tim Judah (Spring 2002)
