Could take 30,ooo troops to deal with Afghan mess..

Strength
Soviet forces: 115,000
Afghan forces: 90,000-100,000 (in 1984)

Soviet war in Afghanistan
The Soviet War in Afghanistan (also known as the Soviet-Afghan War or the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan) was a nine-year conflict involving Soviet Union forces supporting the Marxist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government against the Islamist mujahideen resistance. The latter group found support from a variety of sources including the United States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Muslim nations in the context of the Cold War. This conflict was concurrent to the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Iran–Iraq War.

Initially Soviet deployment of the 40th Army in Afghanistan began on August 7, 1978.[3][not in citation given] The final troop withdrawal began on May 15, 1988, and ended on February 15, 1989. Due to the Soviets' inability to register victory in the war, both The New York Times and Time have referred to the conflict in Afghanistan as the Soviet equivalent of the United States' Vietnam War.
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