Russia’s Afghan foray a subtle stroke
By Brian M Downing
Russia's use of its military and security forces has historically not been
known for economy of force or strategic subtlety. Injudicious invaders and
troublesome satellites have been met with overwhelming force. However, in the
decades after Joseph Stalin and his successors belatedly departed the scene,
Russia has used its might more judiciously and subtly.
Russia's incursion into Georgia in 2008 succinctly conveyed displeasure with
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) expansion into Eastern Europe,
underscored the vulnerability of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline linking
Central Asia to the West, and made countries in the area wonder if they could
rely on NATO security arrangements.
Last week's joint Russian-US raid on opium caches in
Afghanistan demonstrates even more economy of force, and considerable craft as
well. It registers Russia’s deep concern with the disintegrating situation in
Afghanistan, strengthens global perceptions of geopolitical partnership with
the US, and is eliciting concern in Afghanistan, the Taliban leadership,
Pakistan, and China. All this with a single strike conducted by a small force.
US Drug Enforcement Agency officials and a task force including Russians and
Afghans destroyed four opium refining laboratories and over 1,000 kilograms of
high-quality heroin in Zerasari village of Achin district, in Nangarhar
province near the Pakistani border.
Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of heroin, with the opium crop last
year estimated at almost 4,000 tons. Most of the drugs that flow into Russia
come from Afghanistan.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has vigorously protested the raid, remonstrating
from his Kabul retreat that it was an affront to national sovereignty. Indeed
it was - and that is precisely how Russia and its partner intend it to be read
back in his heavily guarded splendor. To make the point even clearer and more
stinging, Afghan forces were used without the Afghan president's foreknowledge.
He has been upbraided for his government's incompetence in national affairs and
his family's complicity in drug commerce. Plagued and angered by drugs smuggled
in from Afghanistan, Iran - rival of the US but colleague of Russia - would
wish this latter point made clearer to a man it gives bagfuls of cash. Further,
any deal Karzai might be working on with the Taliban must take serious note of
Russian interests, and not be arrived at in close collaboration with Pakistan
and with undue consideration of the fortunes of the House of Karzai.
The Taliban have been served notice that Russia is concerned with the rise of
Islamist militancy and terrorism near its southern periphery, which has a large
Islamic population - and one with an unsettlingly high birthrate. The Taliban
must respect that warning and limit its influence to the Afghan south and east.
Any Taliban effort to expand into the northern province of Kunduz, despite a
sizable Pashtun population there, would endanger the former Soviet republics of
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Those states have in recent years had to deal with
militant groups tied to the Taliban and al-Qaeda - one of which, the Islamist
Movement of Uzbekistan, was driven out in the 1990s, found haven in
Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and today serves with al-Qaeda along the AfPak
line.
There is little prospect of Russian troops returning to the Pashtun south and
east, but implied in the raid, if only obliquely, is the possibility of Russian
assistance in reconstituting the Northern Alliance armies - the non-Pashtun
forces who fought the Taliban to a standstill in the 1990s and drove them out
of the country in 2001 with US help. Northern peoples are increasingly weary of
Pashtun pre-eminence in national affairs and are seeking international leverage
against Karzai, assistance in rearming, and perhaps even support for regional
independence.
There are doubtless drug assets in many parts of Afghanistan, especially in
Helmand province in the south, but the Russian-US raid took place far away from
Helmand and only about five kilometers from the border with Pakistan - an area
where Pakistani frontier troops and intelligence personnel operate freely. The
expression of opposition to Pakistani support for insurgents and its heavy hand
in negotiations is clear, especially in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The joint
raid underscores the growing logistical cooperation between the US and Russia,
which is an increasingly attractive alternative to the unreliable routes
through Pakistan. Moscow has allowed non-lethal cargo destined for Afghanistan
to be transported across Russian territory.
China's rather muscular foreign policy in recent months has raised concerns in
states along its long periphery, including Russia, whose resource-laden
Siberian region might seem attractive to a resource-hungry neighboring power.
China has also been working more closely with the Pakistani military; it has
recently introduced thousands of uniformed "flood relief workers" near Kashmir.
This of course has alarmed India, a longstanding Russian ally and a burgeoning
regional and global power toward which the US has been drawing nearer in recent
years.
The US and Russia are cooperating more closely in Central Asia and elsewhere on
security matters. This cooperation indicates that renewed tensions between the
two powers of a few years back - Cold War Two, it was being called - are being
eased.
Neither Russia nor the US can afford increased defense budgets and the world
can do without a rivalry exacerbating smaller conflicts around the globe.
Further, their cooperation in stabilizing Afghanistan or at least in limiting
the Taliban's expansion will be welcomed in many parts of the world, though not
in Pakistan or China.
Brian M Downing is the author of The Military Revolution and
Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in
America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached atbrianmdowning@gmail.com.
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