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Development of the Situation in Afghanistan and Security Threats to Central Asia

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Development of the Situation in Afghanistan and Security Threats to Central Asia Stenogram of the Trialogue Club International meeting April 14, 2016 DEVELOPMENT OF THE SITUATION IN AFGHANISTAN AND SECURITY THREATS TO CENTRAL ASIA. RUSSIAN SECURITY POLICY IN THE REGION Ivan A. Safranchuk, Editor-in-Chief of "The Great Game: politics, business, security in Central Asia" journal Stenogram of the Trialogue Club International meeting April 14, 2016 Ivan Safranchuk: Well, good morning, everybody. I would also like to thank all of the people of PIR Center, all of the people that are present here today, absent today. And I was connected with PIR Center - I believe this is my second arrival in PIR Center Advisory Board. So, I’m happy to be here. Well, I am really happy to welcome the members of the Trialogue Club International. And this is a closed platform, but it’s quite well known by experts, and I hope that, well, you are all present, so it is well known, but I hope that it is equally useful. I am going to talk about Afghanistan, about the possible influences of Afghanistan on Central Asia and also about Russian policy in the region, regarding the situation in Afghanistan. We’re not going to catch up on the whole situation in Afghanistan. We are more concerned about the northern provinces, and that’s why we are going to dwell on those. And, well, northeastern Afghanistan and west Afghanistan have been provinces, are neighbors, of the three countries in Central Asia. And what we have seen over the course of the past two years is the increasing number of terrorists in those seven provinces. In the Badakhshan Province, the situation is more complicated, so it’s a neighbor of what’s essentially part of Tajikistan. This province also has a border with Pakistan through the Wakhan corridor and there is quite an easy passage to the tribal zone from there, and the different military routes and paths –also from Central Asia, from Uzbekistan, from Pakistan, from different countries. They can move from all of these lines. Well, Badakhshan is a real, international multi-power zone, so there are a lot of confections represented there. This is a traditional Taliban, different groups and non- traditional Taliban, the Haqqani network and the Islamic party of Hekmatyar and various jamaats - groups that are branches of al-Qaeda. And it’s also like New York City – it’s a real melting pot in action. And then the province of Takhar, which is also a neighbor of Tajikistan, the situation there is a little bit better, but there are also terrorists from different groups. And the Kunduz province. It’s a northern province but traditionally the laws of Pashtun groups are there, and that’s why it’s also taken a strong social basis with the Taliban. And Hekmatyar in Kunduz has a strong position, certainly, at present. And then on the border of Uzbekistan is the Balkh province. I’m going to discuss it somewhat later. And three provinces next to Turkmenistan: Badghis, Faryab and Jowzjan. And those three Stenogram of the Trialogue Club International meeting April 14, 2016 provinces bordering Turkmenistan used to be quite stable, but two years ago the situation changed. And in the course of the last two years, in these three provinces, we have seen increased numbers of military movements. We have lots of information from those three provinces. It’s quite controversial, it’s quite different, but we can summarize it. So, in these seven north provinces that border with three Central Asian countries, the situation is as follows: in each of those provinces, at least one or two districts are under the control of lords. They control one or two districts in every province. And in those districts, they are really in power. In those districts, they have military bases. They are really well protected, from a military point of view. And the government forces failed to destroy those military bases. So, in all of those seven provinces, we can say that there are some fortresses—we could call those fortresses—which belong to the warlords. Well, I did mention the Balkh province, which is the neighbor of Uzbekistan, there also are districts there, which are controlled by those war confections. But, in general, that province has been called the oasis of stability. And the government there is really strong and is ethnically Tajik, and like a Mujahid. His name is Atta Muhammad Nur and he has some issues involved with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, with local Uzbeks, and also some discrepancies regarding neighboring General Dostum, but in general he is in control of the situation. In general, there are stable districts that are under control of the warlords. I would like to mention not just those seven provinces that have borders with Central Asian countries, but also the three provinces that are situated somewhat in the rear: Sar-e Pol, Samangan and Baghlan. And these three provinces, about two or three years ago, the situation was quite stable there, and they were controlled by government troops, but then the situation changed and now they are districts under control of the warlords. They have multiple military bases of the warlords. Also, they have integrated their training centers with young people. So, this is the center for training the personnel. And Sar-e Pol will be the rear of Faryab and Jowzjan, so for the three provinces that have borders with Turkmenistan, Sar-e Pol is the rear zone. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. For the three provinces bordering Tajikistan, Baghlan is the good rear zone where they can go. There are great roads there. Also, they can have some rest there and find new personnel, and so on. And the situation is quite interesting in those districts that are under control of the warlords because the government continues to run the funding for all of the government institutions and all the social programs of those districts. Well, in this school that is funded by the government, there is some kind of balance of official government curriculum and Taliban curriculum. So, official government school programm and Taliban subjects are both in the same school. And we can sum it up in the following way: the infrastructure of those provinces bordering Central Asian countries and also their rear provinces, like Sar-e Pol and Baghlan—their infrastructure is quite strong, the military structure, and it’s impossible to destroy it right away, so it’s going to be present, then. And what makes their situation more difficult, why the warlords are somewhat weaker, because there are multiple sections—on top of the ten main sections, there are also other groups and some of them semi-criminal groups, ideological groups… also, they change their allegiances. They Stenogram of the Trialogue Club International meeting April 14, 2016 come to one party and to another party, but still the infrastructure exists there, and it’s really strong. But before we get to the situation on the border before that, I’d first like to get to the situation in the capital, in Kabul. All that is still there, all in the course of the last two years, all of the government officials, the official power, had to deal with it. And a political crisis was going on in Kabul for two years. And the presidential elections of 2014 were quite problematic, and the result was the emergence of a crisis. Well, I’d like to remind you that in the second round of President Ashraf Ghani, there were more votes for candidate Ghani and he was ahead of his main rival Dr. Abdullah. Dr. Abdullah disagreed with him and they had a complete audit of the votes of the second round of the elections. And then this basically grew, which was signed on the 21st of September of 2014, and they divided all the power 50/50. And of course, many disagree about what does this mean, “50/50,” which was officially put in effect. Instead of two months, it took them six months to have a government, but by mid-2015, actually, they developed a division of powers, and Dr. Abdullah and Ghani did it. And a lot of people were optimistic because of that, because now they thought the government would start functioning and start some reforms. Economic reforms and also starting putting some order in the security realm. And it didn’t happen, since it was 2015 to 2016, it didn’t happen. And a lot of people believed that the reasons were purely technical, and to some extent it’s a fair assessment. It’s connected to the style of work of President Ghani. And President Ghani has technocratic views and he personally wrote some of the documents and personally wrote some of the contracts and he doesn’t trust anyone, but some of what he wrote is more than several million dollars. And he works with the documents a lot. Every day, he spends all waking hours working with the documents, but he takes his time and he doesn’t control the very important function in Afghanistan, meetings with different important and influential people because you have to meet people in Afghanistan all the time and somehow maintain the balance. And in Kazakhstan he met with people and he met with people in Kabul, as well. People like coming to him because he meets with wise people and he gives each of them a gift of five to ten thousand dollars, bringing suitcases of cash to the meetings, and people love meeting him. People like coming to him and he likes meeting them, and he is aware of the situation in the country because of constant meetings with wise, old people, with government officials, with businessmen.
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