Sophie's choice

Afghans say that in the old days, there were no walls around the houses when the Americans were here en masse. But then the Soviets invaded and walls went up. I asked several Afghans who was worse, the Soviets or the Taliban. One man said the Soviets were far worse. The Soviet approach to counterinsurgency bordered on genocide, but that strategy backfired. The Soviets left under a hail of bullets, and their loss of the war in Afghanistan helped bring down the entire Soviet Union. British soldiers told me that they held joint patrols with some of the Eastern European troops, who still use Soviet-style vehicles. When the people saw the Soviet vehicles coming, they threw rocks at them, though they did not throw rocks at British vehicles.

Other Afghans told me the Taliban, and years of civil war, was even worse than the Soviet invasion.

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