EDITORIAL (July 10 2009): Twenty years after a humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, Moscow is once again looking in that direction; this times as an ally of its erstwhile tormentor, the United States. Under an agreement signed at the Kremlin during President Obama's visit, the United States has been allowed to fly 4500 military flights across the Russian territory annually at no extra charge.
So far Moscow had only conceded some non-military flights in line with UN Security Council resolutions. The main route for military and non-military supplies to coalition forces in Afghanistan, however, runs through Pakistan. Some 200 trucks loaded with these supplies daily enter Afghanistan from the routes terminating at Khyber Pass and Chaman. But of late both the routes have become less secure because of the militants' repeated attacks.
Obviously, it is no small victory for President Obama who dispatched some 21,000 additional American soldiers to Afghanistan and would like to see that their supplies are guaranteed. Rightly then, an elated White House says the agreement would enable the US "to further diversify the crucial transportation routes used to move troops and critical equipment to re-supply international forces in Afghanistan".
From the Pakistani perspective the US-Russia agreement lends a new dimension to the war in Afghanistan in that Washington 'discovers' an alternate supply route. As it would reduce Americans' dependence on Pakistani government's co-operation in ensuring uninterrupted supply of war material and food for the coalition forces, as a corollary they would not feel beholden to their Pakistani counterparts' for 'advice and consent' in the conduct of war. Naturally, over time, the two may tend to move away from each other instead of coming together.
That is not a happy development given that already Pakistan and the United States remain poles apart on the issue of drone attacks. Also, no less crucial to Pakistan is the message emitting from the US-Russia agreement - that by agreeing to give transit route facility to the Americans, Russia is back into the 'great game'.
Historically, Moscow has never stopped considering Afghanistan as its backyard and the road to the warm waters of Indian Ocean. Should the US-led coalition forces fail in taming the ongoing insurgency in Pushtun dominated southern Afghanistan while Kabul and northern Afghanistan remain loyal, the Afghan state may split up along the lines? Therefore, an eventuality is always on the cards that the Russians again receive 'invitation' to come to Afghanistan - this time from the Northern Alliance.
Has Moscow served the cause of peace by agreeing to overflights by American military aircraft, only time will tell, but it is now clear that Russia has decided to actively support the US-led war on Afghan Taliban. That is to say one more country - in this case it is a former superpower having profound influence in Afghanistan's neighbours in the north - has joined the war. That obviously widens the regional conflict, as against the crying need to bring it under control. This is against expectations. Being a traditional friend of the Afghan people, Moscow is expected to use its influence with the West to bring the parties to the conflict to the negotiating table.
All the more for the reason that as an invader of Afghanistan the Russian Federation, then called the Soviet Union, should know first hand the pain of a war fought only to be lost? President Obama is seeking an end to the Afghan imbroglio by overwhelming the Taliban by massive superior force - the kind of strategy a former American president employed to overwhelm the Japanese by nuking them. That may bring victory to the coalition but no peace to Afghanistan and the region.
