Been There, Done that, Merry Xmas

30 years after USSR went into Afghanistan, remembrance of a former Soviet general::

..."Afghans will fight foreign troops as long as foreign troops are there," said Lev Serebrov, whose time there was book-ended by the Soviet invasion and retreat. He arrived in 1979 and stayed through 1981 as a lieutenant colonel and deputy division commander, and returned from 1987 to 1989 as a major general and deputy to the Soviet operations commander for the Afghan war"....

Another general:

...""It's very hard to fight in Afghanistan. Your leadership will have to find a way out."

The excerpts are from this report here. well worth 2 minutes of your time reading in its entirely.