Afghanistan Revisited

WHEN ONE of the young fighters who control the Kabul zoo points a Kalashnikov at one of the two remaining monkeys, it stands to attention and salutes, the Soviet way. Other animals are less playful. The white bear is smarting from three bullet wounds, and the vulture limps from a shrapnel wound he got when a mortar exploded near his cage. The deer and the antelopes were eaten long ago. Rumor has it that during one of the numerous battles for the zoo, one overzealous soldier mistook the elephant for a tank and tore it to shreds with a rocket-propelled grenade. The animals have the misfortune to occupy the very frontline where the main factions are battling for control of Kabul. Four years after the Soviet withdrawal and over a year since the collapse of the Communist regime, Kabul hardly looks like a city celebrating a triumph.

It should do. The victory which the Afghans, together with their American backers, won over the Soviet Union is seen in its proper proportions only if we imagine the Vietcong not only forcing an American withdrawal from Indochina, but precipitating the break-up of the United States as a superpower and a nation-state. The tens of billions of dollars which the Soviets lost fighting the war during the 1980s and the $300 million per month which the Afghan Communist regime received after Soviet combat troops were withdrawn in February 1989 were arguably a catalyst of the Soviet collapse. America, on the other hand, supported the mujahedin with a pittance. Western support for the Afghan war was probably the most successful and most cost-effective campaign we ever fought against Communism. It was the Afghans who did the fighting and the dying, but much of the credit must go to Ronald Reagan: it was his decision in 1986 to supply the rebels with Stinger portable anti-aircraft missiles that turned the tide.

RS

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Radek Sikorski

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WHEN ONE of the young fighters who control the Kabul zoo points a Kalashnikov at one of the two remaining monkeys, it stands to attention and salutes, the Soviet way. Other animals are less playful. The white bear is smarting from three bullet wounds, and the vulture limps from a shrapnel wound he got when a mortar exploded near his cage. The deer and the antelopes were eaten long ago. Rumor has it that during one of the numerous battles for the zoo, one overzealous soldier mistook the elephant for a tank and tore it to shreds with a rocket-propelled grenade. The animals have the misfortune to occupy the very frontline where the main factions are battling for control of Kabul. Four years after the Soviet withdrawal and over a year since the collapse of the Communist regime, Kabul hardly looks like a city celebrating a triumph.

It should do. The victory which the Afghans, together with their American backers, won over the Soviet Union is seen in its proper proportions only if we imagine the Vietcong not only forcing an American withdrawal from Indochina, but precipitating the break-up of the United States as a superpower and a nation-state. The tens of billions of dollars which the Soviets lost fighting the war during the 1980s and the $300 million per month which the Afghan Communist regime received after Soviet combat troops were withdrawn in February 1989 were arguably a catalyst of the Soviet collapse. America, on the other hand, supported the mujahedin with a pittance. Western support for the Afghan war was probably the most successful and most cost-effective campaign we ever fought against Communism. It was the Afghans who did the fighting and the dying, but much of the credit must go to Ronald Reagan: it was his decision in 1986 to supply the rebels with Stinger portable anti-aircraft missiles that turned the tide.