DUSHANBE, May 23, 2013, Asia-Plus – According to Reuters, Moscow’s envoy to Kabul noted on May 16 that Russia, predicting instability once NATO-led troops withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of next year, is considering deploying border guards on the Tajik-Afghan border.
Moscow, still sore from its disastrous, decade-long war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, is increasingly concerned by what it describes as the combined threat of narcotics and terrorism reaching Russia through former Soviet Central Asian countries.
“We prefer to tackle this problem on the Afghan border to stop these threats,” Andrey Avetisyan said late on Thursday in the Russian Embassy in Kabul.
Its sprawling grounds host a Soviet-built teal Volga car recovered in Afghanistan by embassy staff and a memorial to the 15,000 Soviet lives lost in the war against mujahedeen fighters.
“We used to have a serious presence on the Afghan-Tajik border and, at that time, the situation there was much better, so it would be in the interest of both Russia and Tajikistan and even Afghanistan if Russia is present there,” he said.
Avetisyan reportedly said such a presence would involve Russian border troops, but declined to give a number.
Russian border guards used to patrol the Tajik frontier with Afghanistan but left in 2005, ending a Soviet-era legacy and handing all power over to local authorities. Ex-Soviet Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan also border Afghanistan to its north.
Avetisyan said any agreement on border troop deployment would “of course” have to be agreed upon with Tajikistan.
Intensifying violence across Afghanistan, less than two years before foreign combat troops withdraw, has sent tremors of worry across Russia, which is battling an Islamist insurgency in its North Caucasus as well as widespread use of heroin and a huge increase in the incidence of HIV and AIDS.
Russia is involved in a series of ambitious construction projects in Afghanistan, including rebuilding its Soviet-era cultural centre, aimed at fostering stability in the country which produces 90 percent of the world”s opium.
Avetisyan, who also worked for the Soviet government in Kabul during Moscow”s war, said “fighting in northern Afghanistan — traditional bastions of anti-Taliban power groups — offers proof of a “general destabilization of the situation.”
