MOSCOW. Oct 8 (Interfax) - The record of Afghanistan shows that the international community needs to find new forms and methods of combating illegal armed units, Sergei Makarov, the chief of the Military Academy of the Russian General Staff, said at an international conference on Afghanistan on Thursday.
"The limited contingent of Soviet troops in Afghanistan and the U.S. and NATO coalition forces conducted dozens of ground and air operations but still could not inflict a decisive defeat on the Mujahedeen and the Taliban," he said.
One of the main reasons for this is that irregular armed units' actions were "partisan in nature, so both Soviet and coalition forces had to look for new forms and methods to combat them," Makarov said.
Hence, "non-traditional" (asymmetric) military actions are an integral part of modern military conflicts, in which the Iraqi and Syrian government forces have been unable to change the situation in their favor because of the armed opposition's actions, he said.