Ukraine is not Afghanistan (Part 2 of 2)
In Part 1 of this series, we began to address the invalid comparisons of the NATO training missions in Afghanistan and Ukraine, and discussed reasons why the training mission in Afghanistan was a resounding failure.
In this part of the series, we’ll discuss many of the differences between Afghanistan and Ukraine and why the mission in Ukraine has been meeting with significant success.
A quick comparison
Language and Identity: The first comparison should be quite obvious, but it may be one of the most important to understanding the reasons behind the failures in Afghanistan and the successes in Ukraine.
Afghanistan’s official borders are more based on where other countries’ borders end rather than delineating where “Afghanistan” begins. Within this space live families make up tribes, and tribes are are grouped by their ethnic and linguistic traditions. They speak more than forty different languages and represent more than forty distinct ethnicities and cultural traditions such as Pashtun, Tajiks, Hazarra, Turkmen, Uzbeks and Kazakhs. It is rare for an Afghan to associate with a national identity. In the cases where they do, they are likely from Kabul and speak Pashtu and/or Dari (Afghan Farsi).
