Everything Afghanistan • 15 February marks the day Soviet troops pulled out of Afghanistan.

15 February marks the day Soviet troops pulled out of Afghanistan.

The withdrawal of Soviet combatant forces from the Afghanistan began on May 15, 1988 and successfully executed on February 15, 1989 under the leadership of Colonel-General Boris Gromov who also was the last Soviet general officer to walk from the Asfghanistan back into Soviet territory through the Afghan-Uzbek Bridge.

The whole time, during the withdrawal over the border, troop convoys were coming under attack by Afghan fighters. In all 523 Soviet soldiers were killed during the withdrawal.

The total withdrawal of all Soviet troops from Afghanistan was completed on 15 February 1989, in compliance with the terms of the Geneva Accords signed 10 months earlier.

The war, which cost over 13,000 Soviet lives and may have killed as many as one million Afghans, led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the takeover of Afghanistan by the Islamist Taliban.

“We did not expect the war to turn out like it did. We had the wrong strategy maybe. We shouldn’t have taken our troops there,” said Ruslan Aushev, a highly decorated veteran and lieutenant general in the conflict.

“At a certain moment we made a military mistake that led to a political mistake,” said Aushev, who went on to become president of the Russian republic of Ingushetia.

“I am convinced of one thing. That it is irresponsible to forget about lessons like Afghanistan,” Gromov, a Hero of the USSR and now governor of the Moscow region.

Former generals say the Soviet experience serves as a lesson that US and NATO forces fighting a renewed Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan must allow Afghans to build their own state rather than creating one for them.

“What is the goal of the coalition?” Aushev asked.

“We wanted to create a Soviet Afghanistan. But if we want stabilization, we need to provide the Afghans the opportunity to build their own state,” he said.

A study released Friday shows that 47 percent of Russians believed the invasion of Afghanistan was a “political adventure into which the political leadership irresponsibly led the country.”

Of those polled, 58 percent believe there was never a reason to put Soviet troops into Afghanistan.