Socialist Worker issue 481 l  March 6, 2007

Former Russian soldier speaks about Afghan wars

Socialist Worker's Valerie Lannon speaks with NIKOLAI LANINE about the similarities between the Russian and Canadian interventions in Afghanistan.

What was your involvement with the Russian military in Afghanistan?
My story is not unusual for the Soviet Union of that time; it is typical for my generation. Military service in the USSR was compulsory, so I was drafted at the age of eighteen. After training, I was deployed to Afghanistan between 1987 and 1989.

My unit was involved in a wide range of missions – too long to go through here – but mainly providing “security” in surrounding areas and protecting supply routes, especially during the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan. We were also involved in what is now misleadingly called “humanitarian aid”, “reconstruction” and “nation building”.

This included guarding supply convoys to Afghan villages; delivering food, gasoline, clothing and other supplies to the local population; accompanying and protecting doctors during their visits to local villages; guarding construction machines during construction work in local areas; helping to build electric lines to local villages close to the Soviet border; collecting school supplies at our base and distributing them to local villages (school supplies arrived to the base from the USSR and we had to sort them out and take them to local kids and schools).

I don’t list here the things that, in the Canadian media, are sometimes called “reconstruction” such as patrols, training of the Afghan army and pro-government militias, or guarding supply convoys for the Soviet army’s use only. At that time, we didn’t regard these things as “reconstruction” or “nation-building”.

So it was a mixed picture for my unit, pretty much like for NATO now. Ultimately, for most Afghans, we were part of a foreign occupation.

What lessons did you learn from your experience that you would like to share with Canadians?
There are many, but the most important one for me is that people do bad things believing in their own goodness. It is very hard – sometimes impossible – for people and governments to see themselves as aggressors.

There is always the conviction that whatever our side is doing, it is good, or, at least, we do it for the right reason.
There is a huge gap between what the state is doing and what regular soldiers believe.

Soldiers go to Afghanistan thinking they will be peacemakers, and they find themselves fighting for one of the sides in the civil war. There were many Soviet soldiers who believed that they were in Afghanistan for a good cause, just like Canadian soldiers seem to believe now.

The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan lasted for almost ten years, in large measure because of lack of internal pressure on government from the population. The same is true in Canada. I see many Canadians around me wanting to do good for Afghans.

And while Canadians have more opportunities to influence government policies than Soviet citizens did in the totalitarian Soviet Union, the degree of indifference and apathy towards the issue is similar to that of the USSR.

Canadians’ desire to do the right thing doesn’t translate into governmental policies on Afghanistan. Desire itself is not enough; one needs to act on it.

My personal lesson from the past is that citizens of an occupying country are ultimately responsible for what their state is doing. If it was true for the Soviet Union, it is even more so for Canada.

Are there any parallels between what the Russian state did to encourage Russians to support its war and what the Harper government is doing today?
I see many parallels, unfortunately. In Russia, som of the claimed goals and justifications for war included providing state security, fighting terrorism, building a peaceful Afghanistan, helping Afghans educate women and children, protecting women’s rights; “we are fighting for the right cause” and “for the better future of the Afghan people”.

We often heard declarations that “we were invited by the Afghan government”, claims that we were in Afghanistan to bring peace while participating in an internal civil war with unreliable, shifting allies bought with money of the occupying power.

The governent justifyied aggressive combat tactics by arguing “security before reconstruction” and by promoting “reconstruction work” as proof of our good intentions.

Government and army officials expressed enthusiastic “support and belief in the mission” and dedication to “getting the job done”, while soldiers were not allowed to talk to media under a gag order.

The government’s use of media as a propaganda tool. The principles of media-government relationships in Canada and USSR are fundamentally different. However, the outcomes of media coverage on the occupation are very similar, although there are some, from my point of view, insignificant differences.

Both Canada and the USSR did not keep official count of Afghans killed by us, restricted reporting on our wounded and banned media coverage of funerals of soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

Also, both demonised the enemy: incidentally, Canadians are fighting the same Afghans that the Soviets did. In the 1980s, the West called them “freedom fighters”; now they are “terrorists”. They are, in some cases, literally the same people like Mullah Omar, Mullah Dadullah (Taliban commander now), Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Jalaluddin Haqqani and many others.

The speeches of government officials at the funerals of soldiers killed in Afghanistan are virtually identical. The only minor difference is that in the USSR nobody made references to God. (“He gave his life for his country … for a better future of the Afghan people”.)

In both countries, the government excluded the population from making the decision to send troops to Afghanistan. Also, government officials condemned any criticism of the “mission” in Afghanistan as unpatriotic, and unsupportive of our troops.

What do you think the Canadian state should do?
I think the more important question is what Canadians should do. I personally can’t influence the state directly, but maybe I can encourage some people out there to educate themselves on this issue and to get involved in solving it. Positive changes happen very slowly, but they happen.

As for what Canada should do (presuming the state is interested in the well-being of regular Canadians and Afghans), Canada should be asking Afghans what they want us to be doing there.

Canada should advocate for a genuine long-term UN peacekeeping mission, probably for 15-20 years at least. All such proposals should include the real disarmament of warlords, legalization of opium production for medicinal purposes, and addressing the larger grievances that Muslims have with the West and that fuel terrorism – I am not saying anything new here – but it doesn’t seem that the Canadian government is really interested in it.

Meanwhile, Canada should be providing real help directly to Afghans and to progressive grass-roots organisations like RAWA, Afghan Women’s Mission and others. Right now, RAWA is basically excluded from the Canadian media, I guess because of its criticism of NATO’s role.

Canada doesn’t have its own independent policy in Afghanistan, and this is needed. Canada needs to realize that what we are doing in Afghanistan is not making us safer.

We have become an indistinguishable part of US policies that have increased the threat of terrorism against the West after 9/11, particularly after the invasion of Iraq.

Canada should stop exchanging soldiers’ lives for short-term political gains and should stop participating in US aggressive combat in Afghanistan. Even if people don’t agree that such a policy is wrong in principle, it puts Canadians in danger. The US never “got it right” in Afghanistan because it has not been interested in the well-being of regular Afghans – at least I can’t find evidence of this.

This is what led to the “blow-backs” of the 1990s and 9/11. Canada is now associated with policies that put Canadians in more danger than pursuing an independent course like some European countries have chosen to do.

Again, it should be up to Afghans to decide what Canada should be doing in Afghanistan. It is their country. And as an occupying force, we have a responsibility to Afghans first, not to ourselves.