No invading army has ever 'won' in Afghanistan, and nothing unites the people more than infidel soldiers on their holy soil
By James Fergusson
The Independent
"It has become a pub bore's cliché to argue that we will never prevail in Afghanistan because no foreign power ever has: not even the Russians, whose nine-year occupation cost the lives of 14,000 of their soldiers and 35,500 wounded, and which ended in humiliating retreat in 1989. Those Cassandras irritate Western leaders, whose response is to insist that it is different this time.....
It sometimes feels like unfinished business for us as well. In 1929, the RAF's 39 Squadron was stationed at Risalpur in the border areas of Pakistan, from where it flew bombing missions over Waziristan against the elusive insurgent leader, the Fakir of Ipi. Today, 39 Squadron operates a dozen MQ-7 Reaper drones over the same area – albeit from computer screens on an airbase in Nevada – in a bid to kill or capture Osama bin Laden. Some analysts think that drones could turn the tide of this war, and even be part of the West's exit strategy by eventually allowing machines instead of men to police the border. But as the Russians and the British before them found to their cost, it is a mistake to put too much faith in weapons technology when fighting in a country like Afghanistan."
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