WI: Soviets win in Afghanistan - what are the effects?

[Old Airman]

1st, it would be very useful to define a meaning of "win". If you define a winning as an ability to create a local regime able to control most of the country most of daytime as long as it's forces are trained and equipped by foreign sponsor state - Soviets did it. DRA outlived USSR and collapsed when Yeltsin stopped to support it. Comparison with Vietnam is incorrect - States did support Southern Vietnam till the very last day, so "theirs lost". Actually, if you think about it, Northern domain of the DRA did survive to the present day as Northern Alliance working hand-in-hand with States and Dostum being a Veep as we speak.

If you define a "win" as a complete pacification a-la post-war Baltic states, there're two ways to achieve it, and the success is hinging on severing of the cross-border support of muj:
1. Outright annexation and very long counter-insurgency in the new "Soviet republic", together with very serious message to Iran and Pakistan that it is not OK to support insurgency on the Soviet territory. It would not be pretty, but it would be quiet in the end.
2. Very different development of the Soviet-Indo-Pakistani relationships. Soviets did try to cultivate a relationship with Pakistan for a very long time under the usual umbrella of "anti-colonialism". But by 1970 multiple events led to India becoming the main Soviet ally in the region and Pakistan falling to the US camp. Would Pakistan be less rabidly Anti-Soviet by 1979, the muj war would not happen.

However, I don't see any significant consequences for the USSR in this scenario. Soviets did win numerous wars against anti-Soviet guerillas in Baltia, Western Ukraine, Central Asia (see "basmachis") etc. It didn't help, since USSR collapsed due to problems in the hinterland, not a pressure from bearded tribals.

 

[historynutty]

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Afghans are demonstrably as beatable as any other people in the world.

Such has not been the experience of Brits, Russians, Americans. Measures which make most Peoples cravenly obedient to the conqueror just cause Afghans to thirst for payback.

That's an interesting idea - you're the second respondent to posit an Afghan victory leading to a Soviet survival... Why might such a victory result in continued Soviet rule?

A War ending in victory would uplift the State in the eyes of both the People and the Nomenclatura as opposed to the numbing despair of defeat.

 

[fasquardon]

1st, it would be very useful to define a meaning of "win". If you define a winning as an ability to create a local regime able to control most of the country most of daytime as long as it's forces are trained and equipped by foreign sponsor state - Soviets did it. DRA outlived USSR and collapsed when Yeltsin stopped to support it. Comparison with Vietnam is incorrect - States did support Southern Vietnam till the very last day, so "theirs lost". Actually, if you think about it, Northern domain of the DRA did survive to the present day as Northern Alliance working hand-in-hand with States and Dostum being a Veep as we speak.

I would define "win" as "pro-Soviet government controls all the major cities of Afghanistan and can keep the lid on the rest of the country without Soviet subsidies".

However, I don't see any significant consequences for the USSR in this scenario. Soviets did win numerous wars against anti-Soviet guerillas in Baltia, Western Ukraine, Central Asia (see "basmachis") etc. It didn't help, since USSR collapsed due to problems in the hinterland, not a pressure from bearded tribals.

I'm inclined to agree.

Such has not been the experience of Brits, Russians, Americans. Measures which make most Peoples cravenly obedient to the conqueror just cause Afghans to thirst for payback.

The Brits won handily in Afghanistan and reduced the country to the status of protectorate until the strain of WW1 weakened their grip enough for the country to throw them off.

As famous as the British setbacks in Afghanistan were, their successes were far more significant at the time. It took the Germans bleeding the British white to change that.

As for the Soviets, arguably they were winning when they ran out of time and collapsed.

As for the Americans, well, the USA hasn't finished fighting in Afghanistan. Not by a long shot. It is, therefore, perhaps premature to say if they have "won" or "lost" yet.

A War ending in victory would uplift the State in the eyes of both the People and the Nomenclatura as opposed to the numbing despair of defeat.

So how do you see this resulting in the SU surviving?

Was the quagmire in Afghanistan actually such a big blow to the Soviet edifice in its own heartland that it is more important than Gorbachev and Chernobyl and if so why?

fasquardon

 

[Old Airman]

I would define "win" as "pro-Soviet government controls all the major cities of Afghanistan and can keep the lid on the rest of the country without Soviet subsidies".

Well, the biggest problem here is "without Soviet subsidies". Afghanistan is a poor country without a significant source of an export revenue which can be controlled from Kabul (a.k.a. an oilfield or an uranium mine). And the DPA regime was inherently hostile to the traditional clan and tribal hierarchy by virtue of being "progressive" and "modernist" (forget the "communist" part - their ideas were foreign for tribal elders once they start talking about road-building, universal secular education and all the other stuff not compatible with the traditional Afghan model of early-medieval fractured union of tribes). So, how do you rule a country where every local ruler hates everything you believe in and you can't bankroll an army to pummel him into submission? The old King regime financed most of their attempts to lift the country out of Middle Ages by selling the only resource it had (loyalty to foreign states), essentially by being "Finland of Central Asia". Afghans were studying in Soviet universities and military schools long before the DPA coup, both USSR and West bankrolled development projects in the country, this sort of things. So, unless you allow Soviet subsidies, it is not doable. And, BTW, Americans face the same dilemma now, so there's nothing uniquely Soviet about it.

Was the quagmire in Afghanistan actually such a big blow to the Soviet edifice in its own heartland that it is more important than Gorbachev and Chernobyl and if so why?

Well, Afghanistan was not considered a success, but it didn't shake the cornerstone of the Soviet Union either. So "winning" the war would be a modest moral uplift, but one without long-term positive consequences for the Communist system.

 

[strangecircus]

There was a stable national government after the Soviets left. Their army even fought and won battles without Soviet support at all, and could have held its own with weapons and supplies indefinitely in stark contrast to the current Iraq situation which needs constant American air support and Iranian advisers and still can't hold their own half the time.

But the Soviet Union collapsed and the Islamic forces seized control after the supply lines were cut and major defections happened.

The idea that the Soviets needed a half million men and ten years just because the Americans failed in Iraq is modern revisionism and wrong. Winning for the Soviets in Afghanistan is much easier than for the Americans in Iraq. For a more modern example you can see Chechnya and Putin. The Russians have the brutal means and effectiveness to defeat an insurgency which fields armies and regular units in a way First World nations will never -- because they are willing to obliterate whole villages and keep their armies out of the cities. They can even use deplorable tactics like seeding everywhere possible with mines, if you can call that "winning".

So, the "effect" of the Soviets winning would be the precondition that the Soviet Union was still strong and able to send weapons and supplies. If the USA had left well enough alone, after the collapse of the Soviet Union (sore losers?) Afghanistan could possibly have survived. The rise of an Islamic government was by no means preordained.

 

[aktarian]

Such has not been the experience of Brits, Russians, Americans. Measures which make most Peoples cravenly obedient to the conqueror just cause Afghans to thirst for payback.

Afghans are non unbeatable, they are ungovernable by foreigners. They can be defeated in sense that they cease to be miltiary problem, if you are willing to pay the price. But in the end you end up with puppet state that is drain on your resources so you ask yourself whether it's all worth it. and then you decide it's not and you leave, allowing people to say you've lost.