"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.
