THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

For the Kabul Quagmire than VietNam. Maybe the military and the policy makers should be studying the Soviet effort of 1980-87.

Eight years into the war in Afghanistan: the most senior defence official running the conflict receives a letter from one of his officers. It is a depressing list of political and tactical failures.

"We should honestly admit," he writes, "that our efforts over the last eight years have not led to the expected results. Huge material resources and considerable casualties did not produce a positive end result – stabilisation of military-political situation in the country. The protracted character of the military struggle and the absence of any serious success, which could lead to a breakthrough in the entire strategic situation, led to the formation in the minds of the majority of the population of the mistrust in the abilities of the regime."

"The experience of the past years," he continues bleakly, "clearly shows that the Afghan problem cannot be solved by military means only. We should decisively reject our illusions and undertake principally new steps, taking into account the lessons of the past, and the real situation in the country..."

The date is 17 August… 1987. The writer is Colonel K. Tsagalov and he is addressing the newly appointed Soviet defence minister, Dmitry Yazov.

The Guardian takes a look at some of the similarities and not only are we following in their footsteps, but all too often we are wearing the same size boot.

Just as western officials now home in on the failings of the Hamid Karzai regime three decades later, the Soviet leadership lamented the lack of legitimacy and authority of their man in Kabul – Nur Mohammad Taraki – recommending, as US and British officials would do later, that the primary task of the Afghan leaders was to "create a new state apparatus, reorganise and strengthen the army and gather practical experience in building a state and party".

It was this desire – insistence on a modern, centralised state similar to the one the international community would seek – that the Soviet Union realised was one of the biggest factors to its catastrophe in Afghanistan.

As a result, in both conflicts foreign forces have found themselves propping up a minority grouping with unsustainable claims to nationwide legitimacy. Russia backed the narrowly represented supporters of the PDPA, the fractious and divided Afghan communist party; now Nato has promoted a small elite surrounding Karzai's weak government.

We knew better, we weren't going to make the same mistakes as the Soviets. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Or as one Soviet general was quoted as saying, "we should have read Kipling!"