IS NANGAHAR JUST THE BEGINNING?

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has supported an expansion of cooperation with Russia to help stabilize the situation in Afghanistan. A proposal has been made to Moscow to become involved in NATO military operations in Afghanistan.

The head of the alliance said that an agreement with Moscow could include the following elements: the delivery of Russian helicopters and training of Afghan pilots with Russian help; training for the Afghan military by Russian instructors; the expansion of transit routes through Russia to supply NATO forces, and effective cooperation between Moscow and Brussels in combating drug trafficking and strengthening cross-border security.

Thus, the alliance has openly declared its support for an Afghan settlement with Russia. This indicates that NATO operations in Afghanistan are going from bad to worse. The Taleban movement is strengthening every year (if not monthly), as reflected in the growing number of losses by the alliance. The situation was obviously not helped by the termination of the US fighting mission in Iraq, which prompted an increased American presence in Afghanistan.

Moreover, the public in western countries involved in the Afghanistan war expresses growing indignation about the protracted war. In this apparently hopeless situation, NATO has decided to seek assistance from Moscow which, however, has its own bitter experience of involvement in Afghan affairs. Russia's assistance may, indeed, appear very opportune for the alliance, moreover, Moscow's authority in the region is partly based on such factors as geopolitical domination in the post-Soviet states of Central Asia and its considerable authority with influential forces in the north of Afghanistan.

In the meantime, Russia has yet not given any grounds for believing that it is ready to accept the alliance's offer. Sergey Lavrov, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, has declared firmly that Russian troops will not return to Afghanistan. Moscow realizes that participation in military operations in Afghanistan, in particular, on "anti-drug raids", will be seen as nothing less than actual combat operations against the Taliban, who earn over 400m dollars annually from opium.

A response to NATO's appeal may be indicated in a statement by Vitaliy Churkin, Russia's permanent representative at the United Nations; he criticized the strategy of the international forces on security in Afghanistan. According to Churkin, NATO's current activity in Afghanistan is ineffective as efforts to combat the obdurate armed opposition are conducted mainly in the southern provinces of the country.

At the same time, the insurgents can move to other parts of Afghanistan where NATO operations are not conducted so actively. This, in particular, explains the rising number of attacks by the armed opposition in the north of the country, close to Russia's "traditional zone of influence". "By squeezing insurgents from the zone of operations, NATO allows them to retain their combat capacity and to relocate to other parts of the country, including to the north" - Churkin said.

Thus Moscow lets it be known that it doesn't intend to become a tool in others' games. Nevertheless, she doesn't totally reject the proposal to cooperate in Afghanistan; the evidence being the operation at the end of October in the Afghan province of Nangahar, near the border with Pakistan: the first joint American-Russian combat operation in modern times against drug dealers. As a result, four drug laboratories and a ton of heroin were destroyed. Moscow's agreement to participate in this operation is quite logical: the Russian ambassador to NATO, Dmitriy Rogozin, has for a long time urged the alliance to strengthen its struggle against drug dealers in Afghanistan. After all Russia, like any other country, suffers from the flow of drugs smuggled from there.

However, this joint operation has another interesting aspect. Dealing a blow to the drug business in Nangahar with Russia, NATO has shown that for the sake of achieving strategic success of an Afghan campaign which is more and more presented to western strategists in close interaction with Moscow, it is ready to turn a blind eye to discontent in official Kabul. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called the latest operation an encroachment on the sovereignty of his country and international law. Karzai maintains that any participation by Russians in operations on Afghan territory is not in Afghanistan's interest; memories of invasion by the Soviet army are fresh to this day.

However, the West is confident that the reason for Karzai's discontent stems not just from his unwillingness to see Russian troops on Afghan land. The influential French paper France Soir has directly accused the Afghan leadership of protecting drug production and drug trafficking. The reference was made to a US State Department report published in March which said that some opium sites belong to relatives of higher officials in the incumbent regime. The report refers quite often to Karzai. However, while the motivations of the alliance and the Afghan regime are more or less clear, Russia's aims continue to cause much discussion in the situation developing around Afghanistan and in all aspects of its relations with NATO.

As for the problem of Afghanistan, it is clear that the Russian Federation is vitally interested in the prompt stabilization of the situation in the country as most of Afghanistan's drugs are smuggled into Russia. It is in this light that we must consider Russia's consent to supply free weapons to Afghan troops and to train local policemen and Air Force pilots.

Further, Moscow has agreed to sell 21 Mi-17 helicopters to the United States for the Afghan air force. Meanwhile, Russia is concerned not only with the current military-political, but also with future economic problems. So, Moscow achieves participation by Russian firms in upgrading the Afghan infrastructure, including the restoration of the hydroelectric power station for which the budget is 500m dollars, and also in projects to exploit gas deposits in the north of Afghanistan.

At the same time, the motives pushing Moscow to cooperate with the West in Afghanistan are not only connected with that country. Without doubt, Russia will demand serious geostrategic concessions from NATO in exchange for its consent to contribute to an Afghan settlement. And, first of all, the abandonment by the western alliance of eastward expansion plans.

In other words, NATO, according to Russia, should forget about the possibility of taking Ukraine and Georgia into its ranks. Brussels understands perfectly what this bargaining means and probably agrees to it for the sake of a prompt decision on the Afghan problem. So the Afghan game between NATO and Russia costs little as the game is mainly of a tactical nature and does not at all demand that Brussels overturns the 'open doors' policy in the long term.

One more concession which Russia expects from the USA and NATO is on anti-missile defence. Washington's decision not to station elements of its anti-missile system in the Czech Republic and Poland has given Moscow reason to be more flexible on other strategic projects of the West. In this context, the single anti-missile shield from Vancouver to Vladivostok is thought to be Rasmussen's initiative. The possibility of achieving a reasonable compromise with Brussels on the anti-missile problem is worth Moscow taking the first step towards meeting the western proposal on Afghanistan, anyway, to the extent to which it meets Russia's interests.