It was said at the time that Operation Cyclone was the most successful covert operation in CIA history. It involved sending over $2 billion in weapons to Muslim rebels in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan between 1982 and 1987.
Today, as the Taliban gradually rebuilds the nation according to Islamic law, they have asked Russia to help their government circumvent the imposition of Western sanctions on their economy.
Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu headed a Russian delegation that held talks with senior officials in Kabul this week, including deputy prime ministers and the defense and interior ministers of the new administration. Among his finer points was that Russia hoped to establish broader political ties and dialogue between the two nations.
“We have tried to ensure conditions for a growth in exports of Afghan goods and a growth in foreign investment,” Abdul Ghani Baradar, the nation’s finance minister, was supposed to have said at the meeting, bringing up the issue of sanctions. Shoigu said the US should return frozen funds that had been held by the previous regime, and help rebuild the country.
This fledgling collaboration presents as the richest ironies. The US had spent billions arming freedom fighters to fight the Russians out of Afghanistan, only to watch, and groom, as those freedom fighters became international terrorists in Bosnia and Chechnia, and eventually destroyed the World Trade Center on September 11th, prompting the persecution of an unrelated group of Muslims (the Taliban) and an invasion of Afghanistan in the name of remaking the country—this time into a Western democracy rather than a Soviet socialist republic.
That war dragged on for 2 decades, cost trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives, and ended with a disorganized retreat in the face of the very power Washington had invaded to topple. Three years later, that power is now collaborating with Moscow, the very entity the US had sought to roust from the country’s borders when Washington first became involved in Afghanistan’s affairs.
How times change
Just as in 1982, there are many reasons why Putin’s administration would want to make friends out of a regime in Kabul. Russian regimes going back to the Tzars of the 19th century have sought control of Afghanistan for geostrategic regions. Though landlocked, the country borders many nations which present security concerns for Russia.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said last month a decision had been taken to remove the Taliban from its list of terrorist organizations, but legal procedures would extend beyond that announcement for some months.
Shoigu pointed to cooperation in extracting minerals as a prime example of proposed economic cooperation. WaL reported in September that the Taliban was gradually regaining control of international diplomatic missions and embassies that had previously been staffed by the US-backed Ghani regime.
WaL also reported that the Taliban have been extremely liberal in international trade and market liberalization. It’s believed that $1 trillion in mining revenue and mineral rights have already been auctioned off to investors from Iran, Turkey, and China, the latter of which also pledged to include Afghanistan in its Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksei Overchuk, who accompanied Shoigu to Kabul, told Taliban officials that Russia wanted to participate in a project to create a trans-Afghan railway as another economic boon to the country.
Shoigu hastened to add that the US should be the one rebuilding the country.
“Again we have the theme of the United States, which robs everyone around them,” he was quoted as saying, according to Reuters. “We’re talking here about returning assets, funds which belong to Afghans and which, so it appears, they are not about to return, as in many other countries, like Libya and Syria. In my view, the United States should be the main entity to invest in the rebuilding of Afghanistan”.
Andrew Corbley is founder and editor of World at Large (WaL), an independent news outlet. He is a loyal listener of Antiwar radio and of the Scott Horton Show. Reprinted with permission from World at Large.
