Combat Mission: Afghanistan Demo Brings Us Back to Another Brutal Time
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I'm not trying to criticise or to suggest it should be changed... but I find it interesting to refer to the conflict as the 'Russian-Afghan wars' since it implies the Russians were trying to beat the Afghans... their goal was to prop up an Afghan communist faction that had previously come to power in a coup. And it wasn't really Russians vs. Afghans, since the Soviet force was composed of many other nationalities (Armenians, Georgians, Ukrainians etc) and the force opposing them was an insurgency which initially formed to fight not the Russians but the Afghan government, and was not limited to 'Afghans' but also other muslims of the region.
Saying they were 'Russian Afghan wars' isn't wrong, but I find it interesting because I wonder whether in in 20-30 years the world will view the current conflict there as 'the American-Afghan wars' rather than the present terminology used in the US and UK which is 'war in Afghanistan' (which does not imply a war along national lines).