Written by Geoffrey Bastin
As another chapter in the Afghan story is completed by 11th September this year perhaps a quick look back at that history tells us that there are seldom easy answers to all the problems in that part of the world.
Russian influence, help and aspirations for the future of Afghanistan go back well before their invasion of 1979. The Brezhnev philosophy was based on a theory that territory taken over by Moscow would never return to capitalist influence and so it transpired that millions of roubles and lives would be lost in its pursuit. It was Russia or more precisely the USSR’s only invasion outside of the Eastern European theatre and as others before it had discovered, including the British that Afghanistan was a potential road to ruin.
To compound a busy 1979 we also saw the Iranian hostage debacle that along with the US potential to influence the Afghan theatre and possibly gain a foothold next door to Iran that persuaded the USSR to move and capture Kabul and install their own regime.
Russian troop movements began in October of 1979 but the Americans with their spy satellites delayed telling the world until December to ensure the Russian military were well and truly embedded. Thereafter followed a ten-year war that was helped and encouraged by both the US and the UK who made sure plentiful supplies of materials reached the Mujahadin. Over those ten years, the Russians carried out detailed surveys to ascertain what mineral wealth and resources could be found and the US continued and expanded on that research following their invasion in October 2001 just three weeks after 9/11.
Afghanistan is a crossroads hence the desire to pacify its population and in more recent years build a pipeline that could carry natural gas to Pakistan and India but alas some other investment opportunities hoped for by the US have never materialised due to hostile forces. The amount of money paid to the Taliban for the safe passage of the pipeline has been estimated at many millions hence their ability to wage war and influence the political situation.
The key to Central Asian politics is economic development in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, all of which are amongst the poorest parts of the former Soviet Union all situated to the north of Afghanistan.
Most are authoritarian dictatorships of the most dismal kind. For the last twenty years the US has been wooing the governments of these countries, and opening the doors for profitable investment by US companies.
But of course, it is not Afghanistan alone that has been subjected to US and outside interests in the last five decades.
At the same time as the EU and US were agitating and trying to entice Ukraine away from the Russian sphere of influence, a new lease had been agreed for the extension of Russia’s only warm-water naval port at Sevastopol in the Crimea. As a result, the Russians had spent billions of roubles updating their facilities so is it any wonder they behaved as they did when that facility came under threat. Illegal or not the annexation of Crimea I’m sure would have seen the US respond the same way if one of its major naval ports had been so threatened.
You may even recall the EU’s “foreign minister” Baroness Ashton having a prominent role in all that Ukrainian misery along with millions of Euros being used to temp Ukrainian companies and organisations to join in EU boundary expansion, just as David Cameron had envisaged as he spoke of the EU eventually reaching The Ural Mountains.
From a German perspective, it was the ability to import vast quantities of brown coal, Lignite, from Ukraine to fuel its power stations after scraping their nuclear facilities. That was another large incentive. Lignite is the dirtiest of all the coals but that doesn’t seem to matter when industry has to be kept running and the use of lignite quantities from German mines were restricted by the EU whereas imports were not.
The Russian fear of the West is far greater than our fear of it and yet it seems that the never-ending bear-baiting must continue despite the recent changes in the Russian’s way of life and trade. Perhaps if we adopted a different attitude towards our Russian cousins, things might actually take a turn for the better, after all, the Russian GDP isn’t even as large as that of the French and yet we persist in being convinced they are just another devil reincarnated.
Oh, how the games of we two-legged anthropoids continue until perhaps we reach that utopia espoused by the WEF and The Great Reset that will leave the management of the world to just a few Genghis Khans who will control everything and anything and we will all be so grateful.
Hang on, it’s already begun, and if you haven’t yet noticed it will be coming to a town and village near you very soon. It seems human nature will never change.
Photo by The Advocacy Project 
Many thanks for this GB.
“The amount of money paid to the Taliban for the safe passage of the pipeline has been estimated at many millions …”
There are riches below the Sahel region in Africa too, and I understand goldmines are guarded in many places by Islamic terrorists . Either they must doubtless be paid by whoever gets the upper hand there , or enticed to the West too get them out of the way.
This was an interesting article for me. I don’t like the continuing demonization of Russia. The Fascists/Globalists are far more threatening to us. I never understood why President Trump looked so ruffled when he came out of a one to one with Putin. It seemed as though he had been told some hard truth. Any ideas? I can’t find footage of this but I remember seeing it filmed.
Russians…..Let’s see they’re the ones that sends out agents poisoning people they don’t like. Bent on recovering the lost empire of Peter the Great? They still need watching.
There’s some countries out there with cultures so bad that only a dictator can keep them in order. (Think on Iraq/Syria).
Best left well alone. And keep wannabe “asylum seekers” from them out of the UK, they have a tendency to bring their c**p cultures with them.
I agree Harry.
Harry Again. The Russian people can rest assured that Putin and his successor will not allow Russia to become the multi-cultural ghettoised, cesspit that the British establishment have foisted upon the British people.
Putin held his hand out to the USA twenty years ago on the basis that he would respect the West’s sphere of influence if they would respect Russia’s. The USA declined his goodwill and cranked up the missile defence systems on Russia’s border. Only total submission to global economic and political globalisation was acceptable to the USA. At the same time the USA cynically turned a blind eye to China’s fast growing military and global economic influence as its corporations/bankers/Wall Street were making a killing out of offshoring American industry to China whilst externalising the social costs of this onto the State. And all the time the wealth gap in the USA was growing wider and wider, the national debt piling higher and the number of billionaires multiplying.
Geoffrey – Russia has always been an enemy because it refused to adopt the West’s Central Banking System, hence today’s efforts by Obama, Clinton and Biden to demonise Russia and start a war with it, they’ve done the same thing more successfully all over the Middle East.
The Powers That Be would love a war but are making do with a false pandemic and poisonous vaccines until they can get one started.
As for me, I love anything Russian, collect Russian guns and other equipment and think that Putin is the most intelligent politician in the world today.