Word: conscription
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Pirie: To go back to a partial conscript system leads to unending pain. It won't solve any of the problems that we are talking about. I don't think that it will solve the problem of [disproportionate racial] representation or the problem of numbers. I don't think there is any way that you can conscript for quality. So you would go through a wrenching political upheaval to yield a manpower system that would have as many or more problems than the present one has. This is a way of saying that I prefer the present...
...U.S.S.R. has 31 divisions in Eastern Europe: four are stationed in Hungary, with which Yugoslavia shares a common border. At week's end, however, Washington officials were satisfied that the troop movements involved routine Warsaw Pact maneuvers and were related to events in Afghanistan rather than Yugoslavia. Conscript units were apparently being rotated from Eastern Europe to replace the reserve forces that had spearheaded the invasions...
Moscow's army of occupation was substantially larger than Afghanistan's own military forces. Kabul's conscript forces, once more than 100,000 strong, had been reduced to fewer than 65,000 by defections. Morale was further eroded by Soviet commanders, who ordered the disarming of Afghan battalions considered to be of suspect loyalty. Consequently, Soviet troops have had to take on an increasing share of the combat against the rebels, who still control about 80% of Afghanistan's barren countryside...