[082349872349872]

The war in Afghanistan[1] was on the spending side, on the income side was the double whammy of oil price and (because oil is denominated in it) dollar decline. I think Fahd probably deserves a bit more credit for kneecapping the USSR than he commonly gets.

Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttzAsH1yM6E&t=60 (along the lines of: officers, you brought sons back to their mothers)

[1] I remember back when the Taliban were freedom fighters instead of terrorists. In the interim, I doubt their theology has changed significantly (but any outside weaponry is probably currently labelled in a different script).

[romanoderoma]

War in Afghanistan was a proxy for the cold war where primarily US and UK (but also China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) backed the mujahideen (including Taliban) to keep USSR spending a vast amount of money in the region while also cutting their income.

They succeeded in their intent and the fall of the USSR was so sudden that hundreds of soviet tanks were abandoned on the field

http://www.artificialowl.net/2008/08/ussr-red-army-tanks-gra...

A few years after the end of the war US left the region, refused to help with the reconstruction and handled control to Pakistan that in exchange for routes and security made pacts with local warlords and the Taliban.

With the consequences we know.

I wish I could understand what the Russian Walter White is singing in that YouTube video!

[082349872349872]

The russian is closer to Walter White than you may think. As I heard the story, he was a practicing MD for years before his mixtapes became popular, then switched to performing full time.

If you're really motivated try looking up офицеры текст песни ("officers text of-the-song") and use machine translation from there. Afghan war songs is a major genre.

[romanoderoma]

Fascinating

I will look it up

Thanks