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				Remember Afghanistan? Moscow does

by J.R. Nyquist, Worldnet Daily, June 5, 2000

Vladimir Zhirinovksy, the head of Russia's Liberal Democratic Party, made a curious comment in December 1993. He said, "If in Afghanistan we had used the tsar's flags instead of the red flag, we would have won."

Perhaps the time has come when this theory will be tested.

As Russian forces continue to mop up the last of the Chechen "bandits," Kremlin officials have been threatening military action against Afghanistan. In recent weeks the Russians have accused the Afghans of giving aid and comfort to the Chechens. This aid and comfort, they say, gives Russia the right to launch military strikes against Afghanistan.

But there is more to this than meets the eye.

In March the former Tajik defense minister of Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Massoud, met with Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnically Uzbek general who once supported the Afghan Communist regime. The meeting took place in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan. Officials of the Russian, Tajik and Uzbek governments were also present.

What were they up to?

There is every reason to suspect they were planning a summer campaign in Afghanistan. And there is nothing unusual in this. Year after year, there have been summer campaigns in that part of the world. This has been the situation ever since the Soviet 40th Army pulled its last forces out in February 1989.

The Afghan war, which Russia supposedly lost, never ended. Even more interesting, Moscow's involvement has been continuous (though cleverly disguised).

Most Americans have the general impression that Afghanistan was a disaster for the Soviet Union, similar to America's "Vietnam" experience. But the comparison is not valid. While the U.S. suffered approximately 60,000 fatalities after several years of fighting in Vietnam, the Soviets suffered only 13,310 fatalities after nine years of fighting in Afghanistan. (By some reports Soviet and Soviet-allied forces killed over a million people in Afghanistan during the 1980s.)

There is one other difference between Vietnam and Afghanistan that has to be remembered, as well. After the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam the Communists defeated the pro-Western regime in Saigon. In Afghanistan there was not a victory by one side over the other. The war kept going long after Moscow pulled out. In fact, Kremlin military support for the Communist regime in Kabul continued.

Ironically, the Communist dictator of Afghanistan, Mohammed Najibullah, was still in power when the Soviet Union collapsed. He had survived by organizing something of an ideological retreat. In 1990 he openly dumped his ruling party's Marxist ideology and declared himself an Afghan nationalist. Needless to say, he was still Moscow's puppet. But it never hurts to change the label on the package. In fact, Najibullah renamed the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. He began to call it the Homeland Party.

The disguise did not fool the Afghan people, though similar trickery in other Communist countries at the time was readily believed -- especially in the West. Every attempt to trick the Afghan rebels into a peace agreement came to nothing. The rebels continued their bloody frontal assault against the Communist forces. Finally, in April 1992, Najibullah's military strength was spent. His usefulness to Moscow was at an end. His Uzbek ally, General Dostum, suddenly turned against him. It should be suspected that this betrayal was ordered by the Kremlin. After all, the Russians wanted their viable clients to survive. It was time to clean out the dead wood. They wanted the war to continue, even if that meant abandoning overt Communists like Najibullah -- even if that meant adopting clients with Moslem colors.

The Russians have a long established technique of political dominance that is not often discussed in the West. The technique involves controlling your political opposition. This control is achieved not only by infiltrating the enemy camp but by creating enemy forces out of your own forces. You set up double agents. You even give them armies to command. And you covertly supply these armies. You even engage in minor skirmishes with them.

Dostum was a classic example of this. And it may be suspected that General Massoud rose to prominence in this same way. In fact, Massoud has admitted that his military supplies always came from Russia -- from the Russian mafia. But those of us who know that Soviet military intelligence and the KGB controls the Russian mafia, must therefore suspect that Massoud was never a genuine Mujahidin leader, but a controlled opposition leader set up by Moscow for the day when the Communist regime would be forced to go underground.

Isn't this idea intriguing?

And consider the ethnic angle in all of this, as well. Moscow's main clients in that part of the world are the Tajiks and the Uzbeks. Was it only coincidental that Massoud's forces were Tajik and Dostum's forces were Uzbek?

It is absurd that General Abdul Rashid Dostum would declare himself a Moslem and enter into alliance with Afghanistan's holy crusaders. He had fought for the communist regime. Then he joined the other side.

Was Dostum a legitimate part of the victorious anti-communist coalition? This is doubtful, especially when we consider what happened later on. Nonetheless, he was billed as such. And on April 19, 1992, Massoud and Dostum established an "autonomous" administration for the north of Afghanistan at Mazar-i-Sharif. After the Peshawar agreement was signed on April 20, and a two-month interim presidency under Sibghatullah Mujahdidi had passed, General Massoud's political organizer -- Burhanuddin Rabbani -- became Afghanistan's president.

Isn't it interesting that after all the fighting and dying, and all the declarations of Soviet defeat, that an ethnic Tajik (remembering that Tajikistan was a Soviet country) would emerge as Afghanistan's president? And isn't it interesting that this ethnic Tajik, united with an ethnic Uzbek and former ally of Najibullah, would then turn their forces against the advancing Mujahidin?

And Tajikistan has always had a role in this business.

Long after the collapse of the Soviet Union, bombers based in the so-called "independent" republic of Tajikistan, continued to pound Mujahidin troops in Afghanistan -- clear into the summer of 1997. In fact, Tajikistan has always been the main logistical center for supporting Moscow's clients in Afghanistan, whether these clients were Marxist or Moslem. As it happens, there is a large air base in Tajikistan, controlled by 20,000 Russian troops, where Moscow's word is law. And from this air base supplies have been sent for many years to Massoud's Tajik forces and to Dostum's Uzbek forces.

The West never paid much attention to who was who in Afghanistan. And now the Kremlin is preparing us for a renewed offensive in Afghanistan. The Russian leadership knows that a revived Uzbek army under Dostum, combined with Massoud's Tajik forces, could take Afghanistan back if Russian air support is added to the mix.

According to Vladimir Georgiev, a writer for Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Russia and its Central Asian clients are currently preparing to destroy "terrorist bases" on Afghan territory. In fact, several air strikes are being contemplated. These strikes will be launched from Russia-controlled air bases in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

In order to exploit these air strikes, Moscow will need troops on the ground. Defeated by the Taliban forces in the late summer of 1998, General Dostum's revived Uzbek army may have already crossed from Tajikistan into Afghanistan. Last month it was reported that an Islamic Uzbek force entered Afghanistan directly from Tajikistan, under the watchful eye of Russian troops.

Just as Russia unleashed total destruction against the Chechen people over the past eight months, a similar destruction is being prepared for Afghanistan. "Religious extremists are fighting in Chechnya," said a leading Kremlin security official. "They have fought in Central Asia and are now preparing to go through Tajikistan into Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan."

This is the pretext. This is the excuse.

We now must realize that Moscow never gave up in Afghanistan. Will Russia push south?