On the Tajik-Afghan Border The Russians Are Coming—Back

By Michael Collins Dunn

As July ended, northern Afghanistan was under persistent Russian artillery fire. This may seem curious, since Afghanistan has no common border with Russia—in fact, there are now several countries in between. Nevertheless, since Russia and Uzbekistan intervened in the Tajik civil war, Russia has been very much involved in that remote portion of its former empire.

Throughout the former Soviet Union, remaining Russian troops are a problem. They continue to cast a shadow over the newly liberated Baltic states, the new republics of the Caucasus and the Muslim states of Central Asia. Russian forces have reportedly fought on the Abkhazian side in the war between that separatist part of Georgia and the Georgian government. The Russian parliament recently declared that Sevastopol, in the Crimea, which is part of Ukraine, is a Russian port. Russia has not by any means given up its interests in its former empire.

In the case of Central Asia, however, Russia has warned of "Islamists" and the danger of Islamic fundamentalism as a justification for intervention to protect the local Russian populations. And so "Islamic fundamentalism" becomes the bete noire used as an excuse for military action. At the very moment Israel was shelling southern Lebanon, claiming to be acting against Hezbollah, Russia was shelling northern Afghanistan, and claiming it was a defensive action against an Iranian and Islamic threat. The Russian actions had the advantage of being more remote from television cameras, however.

This argument—that radical Islamists are a threat to ethnic Russians—is increasingly heard, and not just to justify Russian intervention in Tajikistan. It has raised concerns in the Islamic world, but it has been virtually ignored in the West.

Why the Russians returned from defeat in Afghanistan to become militarily engaged there again may prove to be an important lesson for the future of Central Asian independence.

The civil war that broke out in Tajikistan last year was really between different regions of the country. One side identified with the old Communist leadership and the other included a democratic movement, the Islamic Revival Party and other groups. The Communist side argued that if the democrats and Islamists won, Tajikistan would become "another Iran," and that the Russians living there would be in jeopardy. Russians now constitute only about 10 percent of the population, perhaps 500,000 people at most.

Since about 23 percent of the population of Tajikistan are ethnic Uzbeks, neighboring Uzbekistan also took up the call. Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov is, despite his first name, an old Communist. He has used the argument that Islam constitutes a threat to Central Asia to crush opposition inside Uzbekistan, and not merely the Islamic opposition.

This view of a major threat of Islamist revolution in Central Asia was translated into action when Russian and Uzbek forces simply intervened in the Tajik civil war to assure victory for the ax-Communist forces there. Such blatant intervention in, say, Lithuania or Latvia would have created a major world crisis. In Tajikistan it was largely ignored. Many from the noncommunist side in the Tajik war fled either into the high Pamirs or across the border into northern Afghanistan.

Since the fall of Kabul last year, the northern part of Afghanistan has been generally under the control of ethnic Tajiks under the command of Ahmed Shah Masoud. Ironically, both Masoud and his arch-rival, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, are supporting the Tajik rebels. There has been a flow of people, and no doubt of arms, across the border into Tajikistan.

Since Tajikistan does not yet have its own army (although one is forming), Russia said its intervention was to maintain stability within the Commonwealth of Independent States and prevent formation of a hostile state which would threaten Russian interests. Some Russian commentators portray this as analogous to the United States' Monroe Doctrine for Latin America: Russia is pledging to help its former subject states fight off any "external" threat. By charging Iranian and Afghan involvement on the other side in the Tajik civil war, Russia justifies its own intervention. Russian commentators also cite Western willingness to intervene in the Gulf when oil supplies are in jeopardy.

The problem is that Russian involvement seems to be developing without much reference to the nominal Tajik government in Dushanbe. During the civil war, the one Russian unit still stationed in Tajikistan, the 201st Motorized Rifle Division, was well below its normal peacetime strength. Today the 201st has been brought up to wartime levels of some 12,000 men. Russian border guards also have been stationed along the Tajik-Afghan border to defend "the southern border of the Commonwealth of Independent States," although the CIS has ceased to exist in almost every other way.

The presence of Russians in the midst of an ongoing civil war, and of Russian border guards on the volatile, porous Afghanistan-Tajik border has led to casualties. On July 13 a force of Tajik rebels and/or Afghan mujahidin attacked Russian Border Guard Detail 12 on the border. In the fighting, at least 25 Russian border guards and three members of the 201st Division of the Army were killed.

A "Second Afghan War"?

This led democracy activists in Moscow to warn of a "second Afghan war" in the making; Yelena Bonner and other activists called for an immediate withdrawal from Tajikistan.

But the nationalist voices have been stronger in Moscow, and many call for intervention not only to protect Russian interests in Tajikistan, but in all the former republics of the Soviet Union. (It should be noted that there has been no evidence of the civilian Russian population in Tajikistan being in any jeopardy. All of the Russians killed were combatants guarding the border.)

Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, generally not a hard-liner (he is a Boris Yeltsin appointee), pledged to punish the Afghans for their action. Efforts were stepped up to reinforce the 201st Division, and Russian troops and border guards began interdicting movements out of Afghanistan. It was then that they began shelling areas of northern Afghanistan from which the infiltrators allegedly have been coming. Afghan officials now complain that the border area is becoming uninhabitable.

Grachev sees himself as fighting the "Islamists" and defending the Russians of Tajikistan. Russia claims a right to protect its national interests in its former empire, and it defines those national interests as including the security of the local Russian population. In some countries, such as oil-rich Kazakhstan, that Russian population is equal to the Kazakh population. In most of Central Asia, however, it is a much smaller percentage, like the 10 percent in Tajikistan.

Russians argue that the boundaries of their former empire are Russia's "security borders," and that they cannot tolerate outside intervention within those boundaries. Russians speak of the CIS as a "common strategic space," although with the CIS in disarray, that seems increasingly like a claim to re-imperialization.

Russian intervention in small and remote Tajikistan is no great threat to the West, of course. But Russian intervention in Kazakhstan or, even more credibly, Ukraine could be. If Tajikistan is a rehearsal for such interventions, it could be a real warning bell for the world.

In any event, long after Russia pulled out of Afghanistan and the Soviet Union has ceased to exist, Russian troops are far from Russia's borders, firing into Afghanistan. That the world is not complaining may have a lot to do with the fact that Russia claims to be fighting "Islamic fundamentalism" and that in many capitals anything goes in the name of that new crusade.

Michael Collins Dunn is senior analyst of The International Estimate, Inc., and editor of its biweekly newsletter, The Estimate.