Really, there's a role for Russia in Afghanistan

ARTICLE: Russia Seeks Afghan War Role as NATO Deaths Climb, By Craig Hobson, Bloomberg, Sept. 2, 2009

Part of the solution staring us in the face:

Russia is seeking a role in planning NATO's war in Afghanistan two decades after Soviet forces were ejected from the country.

As East-West ties improve under President Barack Obama, Russia wants to be involved in setting the political, military and intelligence strategy for the war against the Taliban, said Dmitry Rogozin, Russian ambassador to the alliance.

"We want to be inside," Rogozin said, in English, in an interview in Brussels today. He spoke for the rest of the hour- long session through a Russian translator.

Allied military planners are groping for a new strategy as casualties climb. The commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal, this week called the situation there "serious." In what Obama calls a "war of necessity," some 153 allied troops were killed in July and August, according to www.icasualties.org.

Wrangling between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his challengers over the Aug. 20 election has magnified concerns about the country's stability.

Russia now lets the North Atlantic Treaty Organization use its territory to ship supplies to Afghanistan, saying it faces a more direct threat from terrorism there than the U.S. and its allies. President Dmitry Medvedev has said Russia is prepared to cooperate with the U.S. to bring order to Afghanistan, though officials have made clear that Russia won't commit troops.

Eventually, we get over ourselves and get less picky about who helps.

Comments

[rkka]

When the Soviets decided to get out of Afghanistan in 1985, they focused on building an Afghan Army. By 1989, they'd done that well enough that it kept the situation under control for 3 years after they left, as long as the Russians kept it paid. It was only after Yeltsin stoppoed doing that at our demand that the Glorious Afghan Freedom Fighters (tm) were able to take over.

We could learn something from that. We've been at it eight years. Would our setup last even a month after NATO pulled out?