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27 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing book, long overdue, January 22, 2009
This review is from: The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan (Hardcover)
For the last 4 or so years I've been looking for a book about the Soviet Afghan war and I was absolutely shocked to find here in America that there is virtually nothing. I've checked major retailers, surfed Amazon, even asked Russian history professors what they could recommend. Each time I'd get partial answers, essays or books relating to how journalists covered the Mujahideen, or military tactics involved, or a quick 20 pg reference covering the whole conflict. There was never a book covering a holistic account of the entire conflict. Even wikipedia failed as a descent start for references.
When I finally came across this book a few days ago, I had low expectations. Instead the book turned out to be everything I'd been looking for and more. The conflict is shown from multiple perspectives, first from Russian intelligence, to PDPA, to foot soldiers involved in the battles, then onto the several factions that united the country against the Soviets. It dives into the tactics and intense guerilla conflicts and shows the emotional damage that caused both sides to lose their humanity. Ultimately, these tactics plunged the soldiers involved on both sides into some of the most atrocious acts committed by mankind. In the film "Charlie Wilson's War", there is a scene where Russian fighter pilots are casually talking about relationships while gunning down civilians. This book will show a much more complicated picture which created the same stress our soldiers faced in Vietnam. In addition, we see the seeds sown for the current state of affairs. If you are a reader that is familiar with Afghanistan, you'll find that Mr. Felfer introduces a lot of these players and gives us their background, including the fate of one charismatic leader Ahmed Moassad.
Several history books can suffer from two flaws. One, the author becomes so intimately connected to his work that the information becomes second hand and he forgets how laymen approach the subject when writing. Or two, so much detail is involved that the reader can miss the overall map of what's important and happening. This book suffers from neither. It's totally accessible and Mr. Felfer knows what readers need to understand about this topic.
The only thing that bothered me is that it is marketed as saying how similar our situation is with the Russians. I think the comparison is hugely over exaggerated and there are several massive flaws with it. I won't go into them because this is a review but I should mention that the author never includes a chapter comparing our conflict with the Soviets. This is purely about the Soviets and to buy this for any other reason is faulty.
I'll just conclude this review with two other books that really helped me understand the region and helped me support Pres. Obama's decision to send more troops. They are Steve Coll's The Ghost Wars, (it'll give a brief intro to the Soviet Afghan war but really focuses on America's involvement in the region up to Sept 10, 2001) and Ahmed Rashid's Descent into Chaos. Mr. Rashid's book is the definitive book I've read on the conflict since Sep 11, 2001.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A timely survey of Soviet misadventures in Afghanistan, February 1, 2009
This review is from: The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan (Hardcover)
"The Soviets had come to help the locals. Why were they hiding?" Sergeant Alexander Kalandrashvili's annoyance at finding a village empty of applauding citizens when his battalion drives through in late December, 1979, is just one example of the misunderstandings that contributed to the Soviet Union's version of a quagmire: a decade or so spent bogged down, fighting an enemy that was hard to define and even harder to locate, using tactics, weapons and strategies hopelessly out of tune with the country itself. Amazingly, by the time I had read 50 pages, I found myself deeply sympathizing with the Russian officials baffled by the Afghan leaders and their double- and triple-dealing!
This history of the Soviet Union's invasion of and quest to subdue Afghanistan during the 1980s is unbelievably timely, arriving in bookstores just as the focus of the 'war on terror' shifts from Iraq to Afghanistan and debate about building up forces in that country rages. Anyone reading this will find it hard to escape the parallels between the Russians' plight of nearly three decades ago, and that of the Americans today or the irony that the roots of American engagement today lie in our efforts to support the guerilla opposition to the Soviets back then. Above all, there is the single overwhelming fact that no invading force has ever managed to permanently subdue Afghanistan.
This is a book about fascinating events, and events that are little known and little understood, except within certain circles in the former Soviet Union. But it is not a fascinating book. There are writers who can take chronicles of war and conflict and turn them into riveting narratives that are impossible to put down. Unfortunately, Feifer didn't manage to pull off that feat. The result is a very worthwhile and significant book which should be read by anyone interested in American foreign policy, but a book that all too often feels plodding in tone and that frequently becomes bogged down in an endless litany of names, places, dates, items of military hardware, details of political infighting, etc. (The chapter titles say it all: "The Soviets Dig In"; "The Mujahideen Fight Back", "The Soviets Seek Victory", etc.) In other words, it never transcends the genre of military history.
It's not fair to compare this with books like Carpet Wars: From Kabul to Baghdad: a Ten-year Journey Along Ancient Trade Routes, a compelling story of the region that is beautifully written, because the latter is not a military history. Nevertheless, having read books by Kremmer and others about the region, as well as military histories that do manage to convey all the critical information about campaigns and tactics within a broader narrative arc, I found myself struggling with this and all too often having to read paragraphs repeatedly (after my eyes glazed over with too much military hardware detail) or jump back and forth to be sure I could follow the detail of which army group was doing what.
I'm hopeful that someone will be able to take the bare bones of the story that is presented here -- how elite Soviet troops stumbled into a situation that they didn't understand and couldn't control -- and flesh it out with what must be a rich trove of first-hand stories from both sides of the prolonged war in a more comprehensive and livelier book. (It wouldn't matter to me if it were twice the length of this one, which covers the whole war in a mere 280 pages.) Feifer has presented some first-hand views to the American reader for the first time -- a valuable service. But the anecdotes he includes function as anecdotes alone, rather than giving the reader insight into broader issues and themes, such as the daily life of a conscript or a mujahadeen fighter.
An important book, and one that should command a large readership, but one that is hard to recommend to anyone who doesn't have a strong interest in foreign policy, military history or geopolitics.
A very interesting and well-written history of this region that gives some insight into just why it has been so much fought-over is Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia. I would highly recommend reading this along with Feifer's book, as the latter skims over this important historical dimension only briefly.
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18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Jumps Around Too Much, February 7, 2009
This review is from: The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan (Hardcover)
I had high hopes for this book when I started out. Aside from others' comparisons to the US invasion of Iraq, which I think are a bit strained, the topic has a more direct relevance to the US because it appears at least initially that the 44th President intends to increase our presence in Afghanistan. Thus, because I think history often repeats itself, I was interested in reading a book that tells the story of the USSR's problems in Afghanistan to see what we might expect if the number of foot soldiers in the country is increased. I think that information is in the book, and I also think that the author has meticulously investigated the story he tells. But I simply cannot read his story because it jumps around too much.
After the initial tale of the upheavals that led to the Soviet invasion in 1979, the story begins to jump forwards then backwards too much for me to follow. For example, on page 106, the story begins in March 1980 for the 201st Motor Rifle Division. It then jumps to events in May in the next paragraph, then "the following month" in the next. However, on the very next page, the discussion jumps back (forward?) to February.
The story regularly proceeds in short bursts that ought to be and probably are connected, but in such a manner that I find it hard to follow. I think this format is particularly difficult for someone, like me, who has only an overview of the war in the context of the Cold War and not the actual tactical and operational events occurring during the Soviet occupation. Therefore, I have struggled through to about midway through the book, but I can't make it any further.
I think it would have been better if the story had been written strictly chronologically and followed 4-5-6 people through the events of the Afghan war. As it is, I found it too frustrating to follow and to keep up with.
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