MOSCOW (AP) - For all its sophisticated weaponry, the U.S.-led military operation in Afghanistan is misguided, fraught with peril and unlikely to wipe out Osama bin Laden and his Taliban supporters, a Soviet war hero said Thursday.
Retired Lt. Gen. Ruslan Aushev joined a growing chorus of former Soviet commanders who are criticizing the American anti-terrorist effort while backing its aims.
Especially worrisome is the prospect the operation could involve ground troops, the generals say, speaking from experience. The Soviet Union says it lost 15,000 troops during its 10-year war in Afghanistan, a fraction of the unofficial estimates.
``We used aviation, artillery, the newest armaments, and nothing helped,'' said Aushev, who fought in Afghanistan with the Soviet motorized infantry in 1980-82 and again in 1985-87, earning the Hero of the Soviet Union title, the Soviets' highest military honor.
``Every alien or foreigner stepping in there becomes an enemy in a while. This happened to us and it will happen to the Americans,'' he warned.
He also lashed out at Washington for ``not calculating the consequences'' of the action in Afghanistan, which he said has already led to unrest in Pakistan, new offenses by Muslim rebels in Chechnya and the threat of Taliban attacks on the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.
``You should fight terrorism in a way that would not create new terrorism,'' Aushev said. ``There are other methods: financial, political, secret, super-secret.... Today we are using a cannon to scatter sparrows.''
Aushev, today the president of the tiny Russian republic of Ingushetia bordering on rebel Chechnya, argued that American forces are not prepared for Afghanistan's harsh winter or its high mountains.
``Where would they have a base? Who will support the ground forces from the air? Why are they destroying the airstrips?'' Aushev asked at a news conference.
``The relief of the territory is very complex. There are thousands of gorges and it's very difficult to find Osama bin Laden, whatever commandoes might be used,'' he said.
Air bombardments are senseless, he added, as all of Afghanistan is covered by fortified shelters both left by the Soviets and built since their humiliating withdrawal in 1989. And the Taliban forces have no developed infrastructure, the ruin of which could bring them to surrender.
``Any gorge is a base. Afghanistan resembles one large base,'' Aushev said.
Only an all-out war involving huge forces that would ``burn out the whole of Afghanistan'' could be successful, he said.
Other veterans question whether even a ground war has a chance.
Maj. Gen. Alexander Popov, now a senior officer in Russia's peacekeeping forces, was with the Soviet army when it invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Despite extensive training, he found himself unprepared.
``I'd worked in the mountains, but those high mountains and cliffs were really impressive. We had to get over our psychological unpreparedness,'' he said recently. ``The mountains are difficult to reach. The level of physical preparation has to be very high.''
Another veteran, Yevgeny Zelenov, has called even the best-prepared ground operation ``hopeless.''
U.S. troops would be facing a people who have learned to ``sleep and live with their weapons,'' said Zelenov, a member of the Russian parliament.