Five minutes of googling produced the following documented snippets, available to
anybody with curiosity to know the facts.
Again, it would take a moral cripple or ignorance to equate the USSR's conduct in Afghanistan and our in Iraq.
All I
highlighted below was Soviet policy.
Compare that to US policy, where we not only did not bomb indiscriminately, we removed the HE from many of our smart bombs and replaced it with concrete to reduce the collateral damage when our bombs hit the target.
Instead of destroying irrigation systems, we rebuilt them and re-flooded the marshes Saddam had drained.
When Iraqi civilians are killed, we hold investigations for violating our policy and laws, if the evidence points that way.
Instead of rubbling cities, we go after insurgents the hard way, fighting house-by-house with great care to avoid killing noncombatants. Fallujah being a prime example.
WRT refugees, the Soviet policy of forcing them out resulted in 33% of the population being displaced. Estimates are that 7% of Iraqis have been displaced, the greatest number internally to avoid not American violence, but sectarian violence by other Iraqis.
The USA also does not sling out small mines willy-nilly, in an attempt to displace the locals.
I could go on, but it is obvious to a rational observer that the USSR and USA conduct of the different operations was as different as can be.
The Soviet Union had a good deal of experience with guerrilla warfare. During the 1920s and 1930s, they conducted a successful counterinsurgency in Central Asia against the Basmachi. During World War II, the Soviet Union fielded and directed the largest partisan force ever deployed in wartime. Following World War II, the Soviets conducted another successful counterinsurgency in the Ukraine. Yet, when the Soviets entered Afghanistan, they were unprepared to conduct a counterinsurgency in this theater. Their divisions were designed for conventional war against NATO or China, so they had all their tanks, chemical defense and air defense units with them. The Soviet intention was to hold the operational key terrain and ward off the hostile neighboring states of Pakistan and Iran. The Armed Forces of the DRA were supposed to fight the counterinsurgency. However, as the countryside rose in revolt, it became obvious that the DRA could not handle the counterinsurgency alone and that the Soviets would have to participate--as the main partner.
The initial Mujahideen resistance to the Soviets was based on a popular uprising. Hundreds of small bands took to the field. The guerrillas were local and their leaders were local--village chiefs, tribal leaders, prominent family elders. The revolt was secular and the leadership was secular. The local mullahs and imams might accompany the guerrillas, but seldom in a leadership role. Since the guerrillas were local, the support base was built in. Food, water, shelter and medical aid were readily available and the neighbors provided intelligence on Soviet and DRA movements. The guerrillas weapons were what they had on hand--primarily WWI-era British Lee-Enfield.303 bolt-action rifles and older British Martini-Henry single-shot breech-loading rifles from the 1880s. Lucky units seized DRA district headquarters, looting their arms rooms and liberating AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifles and some machine guns.
Belatedly the Soviets addressed the insurgency. Despite their past experience, they had forgotten their history. They read Mao Tse Tungs aphorism the guerrilla is the fish that swims in the ocean of the people . The Soviets decided that the way to isolate the fish was to drain the ocean. The Soviet Air Force, which had readily ripped apart the Afghan lashgars, was useless against a guerrilla that it could not target. However, the air force could readily target irrigation systems, orchards, cropland, farms, villages and livestock. The air force went after the Mujahideen support structure.
At this time, Afghanistan was a country of approximately 17 million people. Most were rural. Soviet bombing drove 5.5 million people out of the country and into refugee camps in bordering Pakistan and Iran. Another 2.2 million became internal refugees crowding into the shantytowns and the suburbs of Afghanistans cities to escape the Soviet Air Force. The guerrilla now had to carry his weapon, ammunition, food and water with him. If he was hurt, his closest medical support might be in Pakistan or Iran. The rural social system was turned upside down and the guerrillas support base was being closed down.
The Soviets soon learned that they did not want to be within 300 meters of the Mujahideen. The 300-meter mark represents the maximum effective range of the Kalashnikov assault rifle, the RPG-7 anti-tank grenade launcher against a moving target and is well within the danger close area of supporting artillery and air power. The Mujahideen preferred the flat trajectory fight where the bulk of Soviet combat power was negated. Where possible, the Soviets bulldozed orchards, villages and other cover and concealment some 300 meters back from both sides of the road to create stand-off and aid in counter-ambush.
The war was a political as well as military operation. While Soviet troops supported and then took on themselves a counterinsurgency effort in the countryside, the Soviet secret police, known as the KGB, and other civilian institutions set about building an Afghan Communist state in Kābul and other cities. The system was enforced by the Afghan State Information Services (Afghanistans secret police), known as KhAD. Led by Muhammad Najibullah, who replaced Babrak Karmal as party leader in 1985 and as president in 1986, KhAD had a larger budget than even the military. It operated under the guidance of KGB advisers.
The Soviet leadership did not intend to fight in Afghanistan for a prolonged period. It planned on an operation similar to that in Czechoslovakia in 1968, leading to a quick stabilization. Initially it secured the main towns and supply routes while leaving counterinsurgency to Afghan troops. It also engaged in massive and indiscriminate aerial bombardments of areas along infiltration routes near the Pakistani and Iranian borders, as well as in a few other resistance strongholds, such as the Panjsher Valley. These bombardments resulted in many civilian casualties. They forced about a third of the populationan estimated 5 million Afghansto flee the country. The 3 million Afghans in Pakistan and the 2 million in Iran became the worlds largest refugee population in the 1980s.
When this strategy proved a failure, the Soviets sent in Special Forces, known as spetsnaz, starting in 1984. The spetsnaz undertook aggressive operations, mainly against the same areas that had been targeted in the bombing campaign. These operations began with the surrounding of an area by armored vehicles, usually at night. The Soviets then bombarded the area from the air or with artillery. Spetsnaz, often transported by helicopters, then invaded the villages, often fighting house to house and killing large numbers of civilians. The result was the emptying and destruction of villages. The destruction included the placement of antipersonnel mines in houses, agricultural land, and irrigation canals, in order to prevent the return of the population.
The use of antipersonnel mines was widespread. So-called butterfly mines distributed from helicopters had wings that enabled them to flutter to the ground. Camouflaged in the color of dust or vegetation, they were laid along infiltration routes that also served as herding paths and routes for refugees. These mines, which maim rather than kill, were largely responsible for the large numbers of handicapped persons in Afghanistan.
Irrigation systems, crucial to agriculture in Afghanistan's arid climate, were destroyed by aerial bombing and strafing by Soviet or Afghan communist forces. In the worst year of the war, 1985, well over half of all the farmers who remained in Afghanistan had their fields bombed, and over one quarter had their irrigation systems destroyed and their livestock shot by Soviet or Afghan Communist troops, according to a survey conducted by Swedish relief experts [60]
The population of Afghanistan's second largest city, Kandahar, was reduced from 200,000 before the war to no more than 25,000 inhabitants, following a months-long campaign of carpet bombing and bulldozing by the Soviets and Afghan communist soldiers in 1987.[61] Land mines had killed 25,000 Afghans during the war and another 10-15 million land mines, most planted by Soviet and Afghan government forces, were left scattered throughout the countryside to kill and maim.[62]
A great deal of damage was done to the civilian children population by land mines. A 2005 report estimated 3-4% of the Afghan population were disabled due to Soviet and Afghan communist land mines. In the city of Quetta, a survey of refugee women and children taken shortly after the Soviet withdrawal found over 80% of the children refugees unregistered and child mortality at 31%. Of children who survived, 67% were severely malnourished, with malnutrition increasing with age.[63]
