Afghanistan continues to be an area of instability in Asia, with multiple internal and external political conflicts, both ongoing and potential, no socioeconomic stability to speak of, and new waves of irrational migration being created as we speak. The obsession with starting wars has returned to a nation where generations have been educated in a warlike attitude and where there are no work conditions. Furthermore, in order to create controlled disorder in the Asian stage, various centers of power frequently start such a crisis from the outside. The intelligence services of Great Britain and the United States are one of the traditional conspiracy partnership in the so-called Big Game.
As is well known, the military operation of the United States and the international coalition in Afghanistan after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, and the almost 20-year stay of the Americans there did not lead to systemic positive transformations in this country. The radical Islamist Taliban (a terrorist group banned in Russia) took control of Kabul in August 2021, almost simultaneously with the American withdrawal from the country. The CIA had been in operational contact with the Taliban since the late 1970s and had used their fighters to attack Soviet troops.
Oddly enough, when the United States withdrew its soldiers from Afghanistan, it left behind more than $80 billion worth of small guns and military hardware. Jim Banks, a US congressman and former supply corps officer in the US Navy Reserve, and Dmitry Shugaev, Head of the Russian Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, assessed the entire value of US military hardware and weapons left behind at $85 billion. Such a huge “military gift” to the Taliban (a terrorist group banned in Russia) was undoubtedly intended to achieve broad objectives.
The following military equipment is in the list: 22,000 armored vehicles, 358,000 automatic rifles, 176 artillery pieces, 8,000 trucks, transport planes, more than a hundred helicopters. Although it is obvious that the Americans might disable some components of the abandoned arsenal and destroy control system monitors, this weaponry can generally be used as a basis for starting wars, conflicts, and terrorist attacks.
For the Anglo-Saxons, such priority areas of subversion using the Taliban (a terrorist group banned in Russia) can be:
- Post-Soviet Central Asia in attempts to undermine Russian interests by causing instability in the region;
- Iranian theater to draw Iran into a protracted conflict in the East for the purpose of:
- weakening of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s (IRI) military-political and economic potential in the Middle East;
- containing Iran’s nuclear program;
- increasing Israel’s influence in the region
- reducing and localizing military-technical exchanges between Iran and Russia, notably in relation to Russian purchases of Iranian drones;
- preventing Iranian involvement in Transcaucasia, particularly any potential conflict with Azerbaijan.
On the Afghan-Iranian border, there have been sporadic border skirmishes and provocations utilizing mortars and artillery with varied degrees of fire in recent years. Such hostilities frequently have an economic justification. Specifically, Afghanistan’s water problem – its access to the Helmand River’s flows Tehran claims Kabul is breaking a 1973 agreement that set the water allocation for each side.
In the meantime, there is border warfare close to Sistan and Baluchestan Province in Iran. Given their ethnic secessionist aspirations against the unity of the Iranian state, the Baluchis cannot be claimed to have started this terrorism on the Afghan border. Sunni-Shiite conflicts and the fact that the majority of Iranian Baluchis have relatives living in Afghanistan and Pakistan do not, however, rule out the possibility of further issues for Iran in the region.
Even with US weaponry still in place, it is obvious that the Taliban (a terrorist group banned in Russia) is unlikely to prevail militarily against Iran, which has sent a sizable military force to the Afghan border. A number of times in the past, Persians dealt crushing defeat to Afghan tribes and held the land that is now Afghanistan. Given the Iranian state’s current level of military and economic progress and the ideological cohesion of Shiite society, the Taliban (a terrorist group banned in Russia) and its external partners have slim chances of success.
However, the Afghans may undoubtedly divert Iran’s focus from other problems and constrain their capabilities with foreign military and technological aid. Such assistance for the Taliban (a terrorist group banned in Russia) could come from foreign governments and intelligence agencies. These nations include all the usual suspects, namely the US, UK, Israel, Pakistan, and Turkey.
The US and Britain aim to establish control over Asia, weaken Iran, strengthen Israel in confrontation with Iran, and push Russia out of the southern regions of Transcaucasia and Central Asia.
Israel is trying by the hands of its senior Anglo-Saxon partners to drag Iran into a conflict with Afghanistan in order to block Iran’s nuclear program and reduce the level of combat capability of the Iranian Armed Forces and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
In order to destabilize Iran and Afghanistan through new conflicts, Pakistan continues to assist US and British goals. Islamabad is also being sucked into yet another Turkish initiative to develop transit communications in Asia, avoiding Russia and Iran.
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan recently made clear President Erdoğan’s new directives to turn Turkey into one of the world’s major centers at the fourteenth edition of the Ambassadors Conference. Turkey is particularly interested in opening the Zangezur corridor in Armenia to connect with the rest of the Turkic world and Pakistan. Iran’s obstinate stance on the opening of the Zangezur corridor prevents Ankara from forming a new common market as part of the Great Turan strategy.
It is no accident that Shiite Iran’s attitude of threatening Azerbaijan with war in the event of further aggression by the Turkish-Azerbaijani alliance against Armenia was cited by Erdoğan as the primary cause of the Zangezur corridor’s protracted history.
In this context, Erdoğan stated that it is important to highlight the Iranian issue. If Tehran refuses to make concessions on the Zangezur issue, there is no guarantee that Ankara won’t ratchet up diplomatic and intelligence measures to pressure Tehran to comply. And given that Tehran has deployed a 200,000-strong military force along the borders of the Arax River, how can the “Iranian threat” to Azerbaijan be contained? One option is to compel Iran to engage in a new conflict on the opposing side by resettling the Syrian refugees there. And Afghanistan could be that destination.
As is well known, the deputy prime minister of the Taliban’s (a terrorist group banned in Russia) temporary government in Afghanistan, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, recently met with the Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. Even when the Taliban (a terrorist group banned in Russia) gained authority, Ankara offered to help them take control of Kabul Airport. However, the Taliban (a terrorist group banned in Russia) declined the Turkish offer at the time. Turkey is in a stronger position right now to provide Afghanistan with military and financial aid, including airfield control, the sale of Bayraktor drones, discussions of Afghan refugees, etc. In addition, Turkey might propose terms for inciting confrontation with Iran in exchange for financial gains from using the Zangezur corridor for transit.
As can be seen, the geographic separation between Afghanistan and Armenia has little bearing on the geopolitics of the region when indirect warfare is used. Vasily Koltashov, a Russian analyst, claimed in an interview with “RusArmInfo” that Azerbaijan deliberately broke the terms of the Nagorno-Karabakh trilateral truce agreement by blocking the Lachin corridor in the area under the control of Russian peacekeepers. Baku’s goal is to force Yerevan to open the Zangezur corridor. According to the expert, in case of Azerbaijani aggression, Russia will not be able to provide military support to Armenia because of the military operation in Ukraine and is extremely uninterested in a “second front” in Transcaucasia, which is intentionally provoked by the West. Koltashov asserts that Iran, too, won’t be able to join Armenia in the conflict with Azerbaijan because the US deliberately armed the Taliban (a terrorist group banned in Russia) in order to rile up Tehran and concentrate its activities in Transcaucasia.
Of course, one can only partially agree with such an opinion of Vasily Koltashov. First of all, Azerbaijan is not such a formidable military adversary for Russia, which has a military assistance treaty with Armenia, a CSTO member. Second, Armenia will be able to strike a commensurate blow in case of Azerbaijani aggression. Third, it is better for Azerbaijan not to antagonize its southern neighbor because Iran is unlikely to change its stance on the Zangezur issue as a result of provocations made by the Taliban (a terrorist group banned in Russia). Fourth, the United States has little interest in the Zangezur corridor since it is aware of Turkey’s, a problematic NATO ally, aspirations for Turan. Superpowers, on the other hand, do not want new competitors. Another problem is that the US does not foreclose NATO’s entry, on Turkey’s shoulders, into the Central Asia in order to control its potential for raw materials and create a strategic dividing line between Russia and Iran as well as Russia and China. Fifth, due to disagreements over the Taiwan and Russia issues, the US, Britain, and the EU have recently started to scale back their technology cooperation with China. Therefore, the Zangezur corridor, which facilitates the transit exit of Chinese (and possibly Russian) goods to the European market through Turkey, hardly corresponds to the interests of the United States.
At the same time, Vasily Koltashov recommends opening the Zangezur corridor to connect Azerbaijan with the Nakhchivan exclave under Russian border guard control as a solution to the Transcaucasian road dilemma. In other words, through control offered by the border guards on the Zangezur corridor to Nakhchivan and the peacekeepers on the Lachin corridor to Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia will bolster its presence in the area. However, to do so, Russia should, at a minimum, restore its control over the Lachin corridor in accordance with Clause 6 of the November 9, 2020 trilateral online statement.
Russia does not rule out recognizing the Taliban (a terrorist group banned in Russia) government if an inclusive government is formed in Afghanistan, i.e. with the participation of all political forces in the country and the holding of parliamentary elections. Russia, like the United States, has experience of military presence in Afghanistan and considers unacceptable the destabilization of the situation in Central Asia and Transcaucasia, i.e. in the zone of military and political responsibility of the CSTO. This author believes that Tehran will support Moscow’s approaches and localize the threat of a new conflict with Afghanistan.
Aleksandr SVARANTS, PhD in political science, professor, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
