It’s impossible to impose your will on people in Afghanistan – congressman

The Soviet and American experience in Afghanistan shows that any attempts to impose alien values on the local population will fail, believes US Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher.

“It’s a village tribal culture and we need to go down to work with them on that level rather than force them,” he told RT.

“As it takes to defeat any foreign army that is there is to force them to do things that they don’t want to do – whether it’s the Russians, the British, Alexander the Great or the United States of America – these are courageous people.”

The Soviet Union had no success in the 1980s organizing the Kabul-based government, he said. Now the United States are trying to organize the central army – and that is not working either.

The locals need the government that is close to them – “real democracy that works from the bottom up and not from the top down” – Rohrabacher concluded.