Afghanistan – chaos is inevitable

http://www.timesca.com/

The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, which will end in 2014, will lead to inevitable changes in the situation in the region and will force almost all major international players to reconsider their priorities and to adapt to the new reality, writes Alexander Shahnazarov in his analytical article in Knews. He says that despite the withdrawal of a large part of the military contingent of the joint anti-terrorist coalition, the backbone of which forms the U.S. military and accounts more than 130,000 people, at least 30,000 well-trained military professionals will remain on IRA territory, which will be placed in set eight bases. It means that the “withdrawal” of U.S. military contingent is some sort of conformity that doesn’t signify no foreign troop remaining in Afghanistan. Regardless the fact that Americans have transferred all rights to control the territory to Afghan government, the last two weeks shows inability of Afghanistsni force to assure security not in Afghanistan as a whole but even in its center. Three major terror attacks happened in Afghanistan for the past two weeks. The responsibility for these acts took Taliban. It is necessary to note that Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Uzbek and Khazarians live in Afghanistan. This complicates interethnic situation in IRA as nowadays, the president, government and parliament is fully represented by one ethnic group – Pashtuns. This all does not contribute to the stabilization of the internal situation in the country. Shakhnazarov brings as an example event took place in Talukan, Takhan province that is on the north of Afghanistan where clashes between Uzbeks and Tajiks happened recently. He refers to Afghan news agency Vice that informed on ethnic Uzbeks living in the area, holding meetings, complaining their poor representation in the government of Afghanistan and their province. Takhar is a home for many Tajiks too, so mass demonstrations of Uzbeks ended by the death of three and 52 wounded. According to the witnesses of the event, Afghan police preferred not to interfere and did not prevent the collision. According to Shakhnazarov, this situation illustrates quite well what will happen in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the major part of ISAF military contingent. He believes that the country will once again plunged into chaos of ethnic violence which Afghan security won’t be able to stop. Taliban taking the power is inevitable in these circumstances. It will happen with the support of western players. Shakhnazarov assumes that this is the particular scenario United States plan to follow having started negotiations with Taliban representatives in Qatar. Afghan President’s objections remain unheard. At the end, Shakhnazarov says, Karzai would need to agree sharing power with Taliban or simply would need to leave the office. Internal situation in Afghanistan will influence neighboring countries – Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. They can expect a deterioration of situation in the border areas with Afghanistan. Shakhnazarov writes that for the part years, large number of national units, opposing the existing regime found asylum in Afghanistan. They are the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), and intransigent Tajik Opposition and Turkmen Islamists. Important to note that members of these groups have gone through serious military and terrorist trainings in Pakistan and Afghanistan camps. Of course, leaders of these organizations will certainly take advantage of the confusion that would arise in the IRA, to penetrate into the territory of neighboring countries, Shakhnazarov says. Today, the Central Asia countries are experiencing very difficult time. They do not have enough capacity to grade the security threat and the only guarantor of their stability has been and remains for long period of time membership in CSTO. As Nikolai Borduja, Secretary General of CSTO stated that leaders of CSTO member-states want to minimize the inevitable consequences of the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, and inevitable deterioration of the situation in the region. Shakhnazarov says that when it comes to minimizing losses, it is understood that they are inevitable. And the leadership of the region will have to choose between "bad" or "very bad." He believes that CSTO is practically the only force able to solve serious challenges to regional security.