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Vladimir Ivanenko,
Ph. D. (Hist.), leading research associate of the Center of Asia and the Middle East, Russian Institute of Strategic Studies
THE AFGHAN KNOT: CONCEPTUAL FEATURES OF U.S. STRATEGY IN AFGHANISTAN AND EURASIA
For many decades Afghanistan has been one of the most crucial vectors of the U.S. analytical course on the Eurasian continent. It has become the center of attraction of Washington's military-political efforts by virtue of its geographical proximity to the Soviet Union, and now Russia, and the Central Asian region. Apart from that, Afghanistan is an important link in the "arc of instability around the U.S.S.R. / Russia, including the so-called green (Islamic) belts of tension.
The well-known Russian expert on the Middle East and Central Asia D. Ryurikov, who has been working in this field many years and held the post of the Russian Ambassador in Uzbekistan, has proposed to introduce in parlance the category of "American scheme towards Afghanistan." Its realization began with the drawing of the U.S.S.R. in the armed conflict in that country (1979), continued with the operation "Enduring Freedom" (2001), and will continue after 2014, that is, after its completion. This approach may contribute to a more profound conceptual and chronological analysis of U.S. Afghan policy.
In the 1980s the United States rendered an intensive military and financial aid to the Afghan mujahiddins. It was combined with tangible assistance to them from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. This ultimately created real threats to the security of the U.S.S.R., inasmuch as military tension came quite close to its borders. In 1988 on the initiative of the CIA the "Islamic alliance of Northern peoples of Afghanistan" was
formed with its headquarters in Peshawar. One of its tasks was to undermine the situation in the Muslim enclaves of the U.S.S.R.
It should be noted that both the Afghan mujahiddins and the Taliban movement, which subsequently overthrew the former, had practically similar sponsors and inspirers - the CIA, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan's intelligence service and Ministry for the Interior, as well as the right-wing Islamic party "Jamaateislami." It is indicative that in February 1995 'The Wall Street Journal" wrote that the Taliban was, perhaps, the best group which had emerged in Afghanistan during the past few years.
In 1999 the NATO strategic concept was evolved. It was viewed by the expert community as an attempt to justify NATO intervention in Yugoslavia. But its premises also reflected certain aspects of the preparation for the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. The concept envisaged the right of the alliance to organize military operations outside the boundaries of its territory with due account of such risks as terrorism, sabotage, organized crime, etc. This contradicted Article 53 of the UN Charter, which said that no coercive actions could be undertaken by regional bodies without authorization by the Security Council. Thus, the concept of 1999 actually took NATO out of the bounds of the international legal sphere.
As is known, the pretext for the operation "Enduring Freedom," which began with the invasion of the American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was the acts of terror on September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington. There are several interpretations of these tragic events, including those which disproved the official version of the White House. It is important that the invasion of Afghanistan based on the principles of the Strategic Concept of 1999, had been planned long before September 11, 2001. It is known that already on September 14 American representatives began negotiations with the leadership
of Uzbekistan on creating a military base there to support the U.S. operations in Afghanistan, which showed a high degree of preliminary preparations to the occupation of that country.
The consecutive chain of American special and military operations - assistance to Afghan mujahiddins, the creation of Taliban in opposition to mujahiddins, invasion of Afghanistan in order "to curb" the Talibs - are part of Washington's strategy to create an unstable situation in Eurasia. This course was continued by the U.S. invasion of Iraq under the artificial pretext of the existence of weapons of mass destruction n that country, the creation of a turbulent atmosphere in the vast region of North Africa and the Middle East, or the so-called Arab spring. The consequences of these and other operations of Washington which were part of this course, gave quite predicted results many years later. Evidently, the United States would not have to deal blows at the Muslims militants in Iraq in 2014, if it had not created a permanently acting seat of terrorism there by its invasion in 2002.
The chain of armed and unarmed conflicts raging on our continent requires their analysis in the context of Eurasian policy of Washington.
In 2002, the U.S. Department of State evolved a project of the initiative of supporting partnership in the Middle East, whose aim was to implement democratic transformations in a number of countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Its implementation caused the abolition of undesirable regimes and an expansion of the region of instability by including in it a whole number of Arab states mentioned in that project.
On the eve of the 2011 events in Tunisia which triggered off the "Arab spring" the U.S. Strategy of national security was made public in 2010. It presupposed assistance in democratization to Third World countries right up to the use of "preventive measures against
authoritarian regimes." Among the examples of its realization was the NATO invasion of Libya and help to Islamic extremists, including al-Qaeda militants in Syria. The growth of Islamic extremism in the Wahhabi form provoked by the "Arab spring" has been reflected not only in Libya, Syria and Iraq, but also in the situation in the Russian North Caucasus.
Characteristically, during the mass unrest in Kiev (Ukraine) the supporters of the opposition in Maidan Square along with the national flag of Ukraine hoisted the flag of Syrian extremists - the fighters of the "Syrian army of liberation" supported by the United States.
As to Washington's course toward Russia, it has remained unchanged during a prolonged historical period. Coincidence is quite evident between the Afghan events of the 1980s and the developments in Ukraine in 2014. The assistance rendered by Washington and its allies to extremist groupings has led to the emergence and conservation of the state of a civil war in Afghanistan for many decades. A permanently dangerous seat of instability has emerged near the borders of the U.S.S.R. Moscow has found itself opposed virtually to the entire international community, suffered great human and economic losses, and was confronted with serious, if fatal, internal political problems.
The American operation in Ukraine has hurled the country in the abyss of civil war. The anti-Russian component of this operation boils down to the destabilization of the situation in Russia's close neighbor and the creation of foreign-policy problems and unprecedented economic difficulties for it. Apart from this, under the pretext of the "Russian threat" the NATO plans to deploy five new military bases in East Europe.
In both Afghanistan and Ukraine the United States set parts of their populations against one another on the ethno-linguistic
principle. In Afghanistan, after the emergence of the Taliban movement, a confrontation has begun between Pashtun-speaking southerners and Tajik- and Uzbek-speaking northerners. In Ukraine conflicts have flared up between the Ukrainian-speaking West and Russian-speaking East. The American locomotive is moving forward relying on the extremist and inhuman forces. The Taliban regime in Afghanistan was distinguished by medieval barbarity and man-hating. These features are common to it now, too.
According to the expert of the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies V. Kholodkov, the struggle against Russia at the oil front is waged with the help of the same methods as during the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. The United States and Saudi Arabia took joint actions to lower prices of oil at the time, which dealt a serious blow at the economy of the U.S.S.R. Similarly, during a visit of President Obama to Saudi Arabia in March 2014 joint actions were agreed to bring down the prices of oil and gas, which had an adverse effect on the Russian economy.
The promotion of American interests to the region of the Middle East by organizing armed conflicts has a purely economic background. Any local conflicts raise the demand for the dollar, inasmuch as investors use it as the "currency-asylum." A fresh example confirming this thesis is the conflict in Ukraine. Besides, the shares of U.S. military-industry companies soar to the sky.
The U.S.A., Islamic Extremists and Drugs
In the 1990s Washington' positions toward al-Qaeda and the Taliban movement operating in Afghanistan were of a dual nature. The United States granted asylum to Osama bin Laden who had been accused of committing terrorist acts against the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, where 224 people had lost their life. This would
have been difficult to explain had not the Bush family and bin Laden's clan had the common oil business in Texas. Besides, George Bush, Sr. was the head of the CIA at the time, which had worked with the Taliban movement quite actively.
In October 1999 the United States initiated preparation of the resolution No 1267 of the UN Security Council, which introduced sanctions against the Taliban movement. But this took place already when the democrat Bill Clinton came to the White House. When the republican George Bush, Jr. and the democrat Barack Obama became U.S. presidents even more questions emerged concerning relations between the United States, the Taliban movement and al-Qaeda than at the time of the George Bush Sr. presidency.
For two decades that had passed since the Taliban movement had come to the fore and developed its activity quite seriously, relations between the American special agencies and the movement had been rather complicated. The Taliban and the U.S. special forces had been in a permanent armed confrontation and interdependence.
The military operations and anti-terrorist actions in Afghanistan carried on by the occupation contingent headed by the United States, whose numerical strength reached up to 150,000 men and almost 300,000 Afghan men and officers, policemen, and other servicemen have failed to reach a decisive success in the fight against the Taliban units.
With a view to drawing the Taliban to the political process and creating an illusion of a positive development of the situation in Afghanistan, Washington and Kabul have agreed to set up a mission of the Taliban movement in Doha. But it has ended in a diplomatic embarrassment, and the mission was closed temporarily.
During the NATO stay in Afghanistan narcotic drug production has increased dozens of times there. In all, 90 percent of heroin
production in the world are concentrated in that country, of them some 25 percent of the stuff is shipped to Russia along the "northern route" passing through Central Asian countries. According to UN estimates, up to 10,000 people die of Afghan heroin in our country annually. More than 10,000 die of this in NATO countries every year, which is five times more than the number of men and officers of the alliance killed in Afghanistan during the period between 2001 and 2009.
The volumes of narcotic drug production directly depend on the sown area, which has considerably increased during the NATO troops stay in Afghanistan. In 2013, this area was about 154,000 hectares. In Colombia Americans use defoliants in fighting the "cocaine threat." However, in Afghanistan the NATO troops do not even try to suppress drug production, preferring not to quarrel with the local drug barons and cartels. They put the main emphasis on fighting drug trafficking, but not its production. The essence of the problem lies in the fact that Afghan drugs do not threat the United States. They are shipped there from Mexico and Colombia. Strange as it may seem, Europeans adhere to the same course as Americans, despite the fact that they suffer from Afghan narcotic drugs.
Of course, it can be assumed that if the Talibs come to power in Afghanistan, they may announce a stop to narcotic drug production in order to win sympathy of the world community. But this situation will not last long. Afghanistan's economy has an absolutely drug-dependent character. To stop drug production would be tantamount for the Talibs to lose all means of existence. In any case, the flow of narcotic drugs from Afghanistan, before or after the reduction or withdrawal of the NATO contingents, will remain one of the main threats to Russia's security.
Military and Political Results
of the Operation "Enduring Freedom"
Under the impact of unconvincing achievements of Washington in the struggle against the Afghan extremists certain members of the international expert community express the view that the United States has suffered defeat in Afghanistan.
Speaking at the Senate Committee on defense in March 2011 the commander of the NATO forces in Afghanistan during that period, General D. Petreus, said that it was extremely important for the United States to stay in the region, where it had vital interests, and the instrument for its presence should be "joint Afghan-American bases." On September 30, 2014, a bilateral agreement was signed on cooperation in the field of defense and security, which listed nine military bases on the territory of Afghanistan.
Another aspect of U.S. - Afghan relations has been one of Afghanistan's President. It has always had an American dominant. The latest presidential elections in that country were accompanied with the deterioration of the domestic situation. During the first half of 2014 the Talibs made 691 attacks at populated centers and army and police headquarters. The police lost 1,523 men killed. The number of casualties among the peaceful population increased by 24 percent, as compared with the similar period of 2013. The Taliban militants stepped up their activity on the territories controlled by the national Afghan special forces and special police units.
In May 2014 President Obama presented a plan of the withdrawal of the foreign forces from Afghanistan. After the termination of combat operations in December 2014, about 10,000 American servicemen will have to stay in the country for another year. During 2015 their number will be reduced by half. The remaining military contingent will carry on consultation and training duties.
In 2016 their number will be halved. Then the American servicemen will become an ordinary army group of aid working under the supervision of the U.S. Ambassador and dealing with arms supplies. The American NATO allies have reaffirmed the stay of up to five thousand military instructors in Afghanistan after 2014.
The Afghan people have reacted to the developments in their country differently. Those who support the central power are concerned over the consequences of the latest decisions and believe that the withdrawal of the U.S. troops will hurl their country into a crisis. The leaders of the Taliban movement are sure that jihad is necessary until the last American soldier leaves Afghan soil.
During the 14 years of the operations in Afghanistan 2,340 American servicemen lost their life there. President Obama has declared that the termination of the Afghan war will make it possible to redirect resources to tackling more tasks of global dimension. Evidently, the curtailment of the American contingents in Afghanistan has been influenced by the decision to augment the U.S. forces in East Europe. Another direction of U.S. strategic efforts is the Asia-Pacific region. By 2020 about 60 percent of the naval and air forces of the
United States will be deployed there.
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Since 1979 the United States has carried on intelligence, information and military operations in the Middle East, where a permanent seat of tension has emerged, destabilizing the situation in North Africa and Eurasia. The growing chaos in international affairs is directly connected with the intentional process of retarding the formation of another world center of force.
The invasion of Afghanistan, support of the "Arab spring," assistance to the fundamentalists in Libya and Syria, events in Ukraine
are all components of the drive to thwart Russia's advancement to world leadership. If Washington succeeds in achieving this task, it will concentrate its main efforts on China.
One of the threats to Russia's security is the creation of permanent American military bases in Afghanistan and Central Asian countries, and later, in the Caucasus, if possible, under the pretext of fighting terrorism. There are signs of linking the NATO bases in Afghanistan in one system. Close to the base in Afghan Mazar-i-Sharif is a German military base in the Turkmen city of Termez. Apart from that, the United States creates a network of strong posts in Central Asian countries, which can also serve as transit and logistics centers, as well as training centers for fighting terrorism. To tackle this task the NATO has opened a Central Asian office of communications in Tashkent. There are rumors that the United States may redeploy a military base in Uzbekistan which was closed soon after the events in Andizhan in 2005.
Rivaling with Russia, Americans cooperate with Tajikistan in the military sphere and in training personnel for special services. Nevertheless, in October 2013 the lower chamber of Tajik parliament ratified a new agreement with Russia on the Russian 201st military base on the territory of the republic, which prolonged its deployment until 2042.
In Afghanistan and the region of Central Asia there are about ten various terrorist organizations connected with Afghanistan's Taliban movement. In most cases units of the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan, Islamic movement of Tajikistan, and others operate as structural subdivisions of the Taliban movement. These radical groupings are armed, trained, replenished and acquire combat experience in Afghanistan. Russian Islamists from the Volga Area and the North Caucasus are also trained at these militants' camps.
Any development of the situation in Afghanistan after 2014 preserves that country as a system-forming element of destabilization in the Middle East. Connected with the situation in the region, Afghanistan will become one of the two main poles of instability in Eurasia as a whole. The Afghan Talibs have already offered the Islamic state militants operating in Syria and Iraq "all possible assistance and support."
In this connection the role of regional international organizations, such as SCO and CSTO, first and foremost, is considerably increasing. The military component of CSTO makes it an important element of opposing regional threats coming from Afghanistan.
Against the background of risks coming from Afghanistan and the new massive offensive of the United States in Eurasia, the expansion and strengthening of SCO (especially its forcible element) looks hopeful. This was shown by spectacular joint military exercises "Peaceful mission 2014" held on the territory of China last year. The official pretext for the exercises was the expected reduction of the NATO military contingents in Afghanistan. It is planned to accept India and Pakistan in SCO as full-fledged members. As a result, it turns out that pursuing its aggressive strategic course in Eurasia aimed at preventing the formation of another world center of force, the United States itself helps its formation.
A no less important aspect is to define the role of Russia in the Afghan affairs in connection with the inevitable regionalization of a solution of the Afghan problem. The question of the resumption of the Russian presence in Afghanistan becomes quite timely. For example, Americans, Indians and Chinese have opened universities in Afghanistan thanks to which they not only train national personnel, but also increase the number of their supporters in that country. At the same time, Russia, which has a rich experience and tradition of cooperation
with Afghanistan in the sphere of higher and secondary special education, has completely abandoned this sphere of public life in that country. The same is true of the mass media sphere of Afghanistan, which is now completely controlled by the United States and its allies, as well as India, Iran and Pakistan.
The regionalization of the Afghan problem opens fresh opportunities for Russia to bolster up its political positions in Afghanistan, the Middle East and in Central Asia. Moscow's prestige and experience accumulated during negotiations aimed at solving the Syrian problem, the ability of Russian diplomats to persuade the conflicting parties to sit at a negotiation table can be a good basis and largely contribute to solution of the intra-Afghan conflict. Moscow, Beijing and New-Delhi could be the "regulators" of the situation in Afghanistan and around it, despite certain contradictions within the triad. Participation of Iran and Pakistan in this process could also be quite valuable.
"Moskva," Moscow, 2015, No 3, March, pp. 138-149.
Kamaludin GAJIYEV,
D. Sc. (Hist.), Professor, chief research associate at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences FUNDAMENTALISM AT THE CROSSROADS OF WESTERN AND ISLAMIC VALUES
One of the notable development tendencies of the modern world is the growing influence of radical movements, organizations and parties whose programmatic documents and activities are based on a wide range of ideological, socio-cultural, confessional and other values, ideas and principles, which can be united under the common
