[R-G] Russia joins the war in Afghanistan

Thu Jun 26 23:13:28 MDT 2008

Jun 25, 2008
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JF25Ag01.html
Russia joins the war in Afghanistan
By M K Bhadrakumar

Moscow is staging an extraordinary comeback on the Afghan chessboard  
after a gap of two decades following the Soviet Union's nine-year  
adventure that ended in the withdrawal of its last troops from  
Afghanistan 1989. In a curious reversal of history, this is possible  
only with the acquiescence of the United States. Moscow is taking  
advantage of the deterioration of the war in Afghanistan and the  
implications for regional security could be far-reaching.

A joint statement issued in Moscow over the weekend following the  
meeting of the United States-Russia Working Group on Counterterrorism  
(CTWG) revealed that the two sides had reached "agreement in principle  
over the supply of Russian weaponry to the Afghanistan National Army"  
in its fight against the Taliban insurgency. The 16th session of the  
CTWG held in Moscow on

June 19-20 was co-chaired by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei  
Kislyak and US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William  
Burns.

Talking to reporters alongside Burns, Kislayak said, "We [Russia] in  
the past have already provided military equipment to Afghanistan and  
we feel there is now a demand by the Afghan population for the ability  
of Afghanistan to take its security in its own hands." He added it was  
"possible" that Russia might increase the delivery of arms to  
Afghanistan, though "I wouldn't be eager to put a number on it".

Washington has consistently rebuffed Russian attempts to become a  
protagonist in the Afghan war - except in intelligence-sharing. As  
recently as March, public demonstrations erupted in Afghanistan  
against alleged "deployment of Russian troops" reported in a Polish  
newspaper, which had all the hallmarks of a sting operation by Western  
intelligence. The Kremlin's then-first deputy press secretary, Dmitry  
Peskov, had to clarify that rumors of Russia sending troops to  
Afghanistan were "absolutely untrue".
Russian analysts felt that the Polish report was deliberately intended  
to create "an image of an external threat to the sovereignty and  
territorial integrity of Afghanistan in order to give a more plausible  
explanation for NATO's [North Atlantic Treaty Organization's] military  
presence in the country".

Clearly, the weekend's announcement in Moscow underscores a change in  
the US stance. The deterioration of the war is undoubtedly a factor  
behind the shift. (Incidentally, in a similar shift, Washington  
recently approached China and India also for the dispatch of troops to  
Afghanistan.) Britain's Telegraph newspaper reported last week on a  
growing "despair" in Washington over the NATO allies' perceived  
failings in Afghanistan. The gung-ho attitude - "have-gun-will-travel"  
- is no more there.

A top Pentagon advisor told the Telegraph, "There's frustration,  
there's irritation. The mood veers between acceptance and despair that  
nothing is changing. We ask for more troops and they're not  
forthcoming in the numbers we need. The mistake was handing it over to  
NATO in the first place. For many countries, being in Afghanistan  
seems to be about keeping up appearances, rather than actually  
fighting a war that needs to be won. Was that necessary  
diplomatically? Probably. Is it desirable militarily? I don't think so  
nor do most others who are involved with Afghanistan."

A German NATO general said on Sunday that 6,000 additional troops are  
urgently needed in Afghanistan to complement the 60,000 foreign troops  
already in the country, most of them part of the NATO-led  
International Security and Assistance Force.

The Russians are all too aware of the pitfalls of another intervention  
in Afghanistan. Zamir Kabulov, Moscow's veteran diplomat who served in  
the Soviet Embassy in Kabul all through the 1980s when the Soviets  
occupied the country, is the present Russian ambassador to  
Afghanistan. Kabulov recently dissected the tragedy of the Soviet  
intervention in an interview with the US-government owned National  
Public Radio. He said: "We underestimated the allergy of the Afghan  
nation to foreign invaders because we didn't believe ourselves to be  
invaders at that time ... We neglected traditions and their culture  
and the religion of Afghans."

With such profound hindsight, how could Moscow be once again wading  
into Afghanistan? There is no question of Russia ever sending troops  
to Afghanistan. But what prompts the Russian involvement is the belief  
that "You can double and triple the number of your contingent and you  
still will lose this war because it's not a matter of numbers, it's a  
matter of the quality of the Afghan national army and police", to  
quote Kabulov.

That is to say, there has always been this belief within the Russian  
security establishment that the tragedy of Afghanistan could have been  
averted if only president Mikhail Gorbachev hadn't pulled the plug off  
the life-supporting system of Soviet supplies for Mohammad  
Najibullah's regime. They believe that Najibullah, who became  
president in 1986, could have held on even after the Soviet troop  
withdrawal if only he had been provided with the necessary material  
wherewithal.

Questions remain over the Russian enterprise to enhance the quality of  
the Afghan army. Will Russia also assume the responsibility for  
training the Afghan army in addition to equipping it? Indeed, that  
would seem logical. The next best thing would be to involve the  
erstwhile cadres of Najibullah's armed forces who were trained in the  
Soviet military academies and intelligence schools. But that might be  
too much for Washington to stomach.

One thing is clear. Moscow acted with foresight in initiating the  
proposal at the beginning of the year that NATO could use Russian  
territory for the dispatch of its supplies to Afghanistan. The  
agreement formalized at NATO's Bucharest summit meeting on April 2-4  
served Moscow's purpose in different ways. Moscow signaled that  
despite Washington's hostile mode, it is prepared to help out in  
Afghanistan, which only shows that the Russian-NATO relationship can  
be based on mutuality of interests and concerns.

As expected, NATO's European members were receptive to such a signal.  
At the Russia-NATO council meeting on the sidelines of the Bucharest  
summit, for the first time perhaps, the format worked in the fashion  
in which it was intended to work when the Bill Clinton administration  
proposed it to a distraught Boris Yeltsin anxious about NATO's  
expansion plans in the mid-1990s - that the format would have the  
alliance members participate as national entities rather than as bloc  
members.

Russia has a problem with NATO expansion. As Prime Minister Vladimir  
Putin told Le Monde newspaper recently during his visit to Paris,  
"There's no Soviet Union anymore. There's no threat. But the  
organization remains. The question is: 'Against whom are you allied?  
What is it all for?' And expanding the bloc is only creating new  
borders in Europe. New Berlin walls. This time invisible, but

not less dangerous ... And we can see that military infrastructure is  
heading towards our borders. What for? No one is posing a threat."

Therefore, Moscow has put NATO on the defensive by stretching a  
helping hand to Afghanistan. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov  
pointed out at a speech in Moscow on May 28: "Russia does not claim  
any veto rights. But I think we have the right to expect reciprocity  
if our partners expect us to consider their interests. Indeed, without  
such reciprocity, it is hard to see how the Bucharest summit could  
have produced an agreement on ground transit to Afghanistan. It would,  
after all, have been easy for us to let NATO carry out its  
international mission in Afghanistan on its own. But we did not do  
this ... Russia will

continue to be involved to such an extent as meets our interests and  
principles of equal cooperation."

The directions in which Western "reciprocity" manifests will be  
absorbing to watch on the Eurasian political landscape. To be sure,  
there is an overall mellowing toward Russia in the European approach.  
The George W Bush administration has failed to initiate the deployment  
plan for anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland and the Czech  
Republic. The forthcoming Russia-European Union strategic negotiations  
on a new partnership agreement promise a new start. These are positive  
tidings.

But equally, NATO's expansion plan with regard to Ukraine, Georgia and  
Azerbaijan still remains on the agenda. Russia-NATO tensions have  
appeared over Georgia and Kosovo. Therefore, Russia won't take  
chances, either.

Parallel to the growing involvement in Afghanistan, Moscow is also  
stepping up its military presence in Central Asia. Arguably, the  
deteriorating situation in Afghanistan has prompted Moscow to beef up  
the security of the Central Asian region. But a distinctive feature is  
that Russia's move is also in response to the wishes of the Central  
Asian states. Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov recently proposed  
that the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and  
the Eurasian Economic Community must merge into a single body so as to  
create a "powerful union capable of becoming a counterbalance to NATO  
and the EU".

 From the Central Asian perspective, Russia's capacity to play a  
bigger role in regional security looks more credible today than at any  
time in the post-Soviet era. As influential Moscow commentator  
Vyacheslav Nikonov, president of the Politika Foundation, wrote in  
Izvestia newspaper recently, "The strengthening of ties with Russia  
today appears much more logical and natural than it did in the 1990s  
when, on the contrary, the Western economies were growing, while ours  
was steadily declining. The growing energy crisis also works in favor  
of integration."

Russia as a status quo power also holds attraction for local  
governments in Central Asia. Most important, there is profound  
disquiet in Central Asian capitals regarding the Afghan crisis - the  
US strategy in Afghanistan and NATO's grit to win the war.

Until last year, Russia and the Central Asian states counted on the  
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) playing a role in stabilizing  
the Afghan situation. But then they began sensing that China was  
following a complex policy within the SCO by exploiting it to develop  
its bilateral links with Central Asian countries and for penetrating  
deep into the energy sector, but all the while applying the brakes on  
Russian attempts to augment the grouping's profile as a security  
organization. (The SCO comprises China, Russia, Kazakhstan,  
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.)

China has virtually put its foot down on a Russian proposal regarding  
close CSTO-SCO ties. China disfavors SCO-CSTO military exercises. In  
sum, Beijing seems anxious not to create misgivings in Washington.  
(The CSTO consists of of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,  
Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.)

This is not to say that China is indifferent to the stability of  
Afghanistan. Far from it. China's preference is to keep its options  
open rather than be tied down by the SCO or overtly identifying with  
Russian interests. After all, China has huge stakes in Afghanistan.  
Beijing perceives advantages in directly cooperating with the US (and  
NATO) rather than from within the SCO. Conceivably, Beijing might not  
be altogether averse to the idea of sending peacekeeping troops to  
Afghanistan at a later stage, provided a suitable United Nations  
mission could be structured.

That is to say, an important phase of the SCO's evolution as a  
security organization lies ahead when Russia assumes its chairmanship  
in 2008-2009, following the SCO summit meeting scheduled to be held at  
Dushanbe (Tajikistan) in August. From all appearances, there has been  
some serious rethink in Moscow as well during recent months regarding  
the SCO's potential to play an influential role in Afghanistan, given  
China's manifestly lukewarm attitude. The Russian thinking also seems  
to have veered around to abandoning hopes of working within the  
framework of CSTO or SCO but instead to concentrate on a bilateral  
Russian-Afghan track.

Afghanistan also does not want to cooperate with either the CSTO or  
the SCO. During his visit to Moscow on May 25-26, Afghan Foreign  
Minister Dadfar Spanta made it clear that Afghanistan would not be  
seeking observer status with the SCO. He let it be known in no  
uncertain terms that Russia is a low priority for Kabul in its foreign  
policy - as compared to, say, China. All in all, therefore, Moscow  
would realize that a long journey lies ahead in cultivating influence  
in Kabul, which it must undertake all by itself.
Moscow appreciates that the present regime in Kabul of President Hamid  
Karzai is unabashedly pro-American and is a participant in the US's  
regional strategy that passes as "Great Central Asia Partnership for  
Afghanistan and Neighboring Countries", which actually aims at  
undercutting Russian influence in Central Asia.

Thus, the weekend's announcement in Moscow far from heralds a joint US- 
Russian effort to stabilize the Afghan situation. In fact, there is  
hardly any scope for a common US-Russian regional agenda. As Nikonov  
put it, "We [Russia] and the Western countries have diametrically  
opposite definitions of success in our policy toward the CIS  
[Commonwealth of Independent States] countries. For Russia, success  
lies in strengthening of integration ties, rapprochement with its  
neighbors and a strengthening of cooperation. For the West, on the  
contrary, success means a distancing of these countries from Russia, a  
reorientation to external centers of power aimed at preventing 'a  
rebirth of the Russian empire'. When political goals are so  
diametrically opposed, it is impossible to speak of a common agenda."

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign  
Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador  
to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).