I remember a talk with a Soviet officer who served in the Baltics and Afghanistan in the 1980s. He told me:

“Could never figure out these Afghans. With the Balts, you see they hate you right away, but they never try to harm you. An Afghan will be all smiles, pour you tea, tell you the names of his kids—just to shoot you in the back when you’ll be leaving his village”.

Not taking sides

I had a few conversations with people who saw it all first-hand some 12 years ago and some 30 years ago. From which I made some observations to myself—without pretending to be an expert.

The Soviet-Afghan war destroyed the traditional Afghan agriculture, killed 1 million people (some claim up to 2 million) and made refugees of another 6 million. But the Afghans, like us Russians, do not obsess about their body count.

Task at hand

In the universe of tribal politics like Afghanistan the worst enemy is always the current one. The Soviets are long gone, after all. Out of sight, out of mind.

Nowadays, with NATO in Afghanistan, what frustrates the locals most, is that the foreign troops make themselves too hard to kill. “Russians were real warriors, not afraid to meet us in fight like men. The Americans, they hide in their helicopters, humvees and inside their bases. Cowards.”

Too elusive

During the 10 years of Soviet invasion, insurgents killed 15,000 Soviets, and 18,000 Afghan soldiers. During the 15 years since the NATO invasion, they killed 5,500 Westerners, and almost 40,000 of the Afghan security forces. They are more and more reduced to killing fellow Afghans—and that infuriates them the most.

United States :

For 20 years the US has tried something the USSR already did and failed. What did the United States got at the end? Absolutely nothing. Instead, they gotten themselves an absolute lackluster withdrawal that cost them more money and, at the moment of this writing, thousands of their own citizen still stranded in the country.

So what was the last 20 years was supposed to achieve? I know there are many alleged goal Pentagon has said to justify the US’ presence in Afghanistan. Yet those are exactly just that, a justification and nothing more. Joe Biden himself has said that the goal was to get rid of Osama bin Laden and not nation building.

And how long does the US backed Afghan Govt lasted? Literally ONE WEEK.

Angry Afghan throwing stones at fleeing Afghan Army

There are many people here on Quora and everywhere else that fully blames the ANA (Afghan National Army) for cowardice, but few actually said an important factor which is being swept by large media under the rug.