Apart from the U.S. troops that will stay until late 2016, the foreign contingents will all end their combat mission in Afghanistan by this December. Many will leave trainers to support the nascent Afghan security forces, and their taxpayers will shoulder most the annual $4 billion bill of maintaining the Afghan forces, which currently number more than 300,000 personnel.



But while leaders like Britain's Tony Blair had once assured that their countries would stay for "a generation" to rebuild Afghanistan, the withdrawal does not surprise most Afghans. History has all too often shown that nobody stays for long.



For many, the usefulness of any foreign army is measured only in terms of how much material assistance they can get from it.



A U.S. Special Forces operative who served in the western province of Herat was amazed to hear locals saying they preferred the Russians because they gave out more rice and basic products.



"I said, 'but didn't they kill you though', and they said yes, but only if you opposed them. They told me they expected the Americans to leave before long and then someone else would come, like the Russians again, or maybe the British," he said, struggling to comprehend this casual lumping together in the same pile of all foreigners, Russians included.



"It's almost as if this country needs to be invaded by someone, that it can't sustain itself otherwise."



With the Western bonanza of aid and contracts now over and Moscow eager to step up, many Afghans, including former president Karzai, fondly recall the material and financial support that came with the Soviets.



"The Soviet money went to the right place," Karzai said in a March interview with The Washington Post, a month before 2014 presidential elections to install his successor. "They were efficient in spending their money and doing it through the Afghan government."

