Frankfurt (18/12 – 14)
That there are remarkable advantages in being ignored is not generally recognized. Central Asian countries, historically under the thumb of Moscow, all through the 70+ years of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, were more or less cut off from the outside world. There was little trade or other exchange.
The USSR was in fact a grab-bag of ethnicities, religions and languages, controlled with an iron fist by Stalin and afterwards with unbroken dominance through subsequent regimes.
Under Soviet management, Central Asia had stayed poor and ignored; it had not developed any hydrocarbon resources to lure western and European petro-buccaneers of the transatlantic Empire. With the sudden collapse of the USSR, renewed interest in the jigsaw puzzle of the various “-stans” arose in the west, partly in order to sniff out mineral resources of potential value – Kazakhstan has oil – but also in an effort to “contain” the newly-established “Russian Federation”, still a prickly opponent armed with ICBMs, and with tempting land and mineral resources. Western hegemony has steadily crept into Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, all Muslim, Turkic-speaking nations relieved to finally slip away from Russian domination.
“Hope Springs Eternal”, and there are western political figures and think-tankers who propose to bust up the Russian Federation into smaller, more malleable nations, docile ones easier to raid for tasty resources (such as was documented after 1991, when the Russian oligarchs conspired with western companies to steal everything that wasn’t nailed down). That the Russians themselves might not acquiesce in seeing their nation broken up and exploited is outrageous to the west, which considers the world its oyster (evidence: cheap extraction of resources from Africa & Latin America, with little profit for those who live there, with unbroken western hegemony).
The charming fantasy of breaking Russian military potential would allow Washington to fulfill its dreamy dream of “total spectrum dominance” (actual Pentagon term – not made up), having all but gutted the European economy through its quixotic Ukrainian adventure: destruction of the Nordstream 2 pipeline cut off the cheap Russian gas driving West European industry and consumer markets. Meanwhile, a sizable American military continues to occupy Germany, the UK and Japan.
The USA exacts tribute from its vassals through a negative trade balance and the relentless sale of Treasury Bonds, financial instruments whose intrinsic value becomes ever more questionable, and overpriced armaments.
With the Russians embroiled in the Ukrainian “Special Military Operation”, ostensibly to protect Russian-speaking areas under attack since 2014 by neo-Nazis, NATO saw an opportunity to beguile Central Asia, following the peaceful lead of the People’s Republic of China, whose “Belt & Road Initiative” has already made inroads, first in primitive Tajikistan and considerably more developed Kazakhstan.
China has also built the world’s longest oil pipeline, stretching from its oil fields in Kazakhstan over the Tien Shan mountain range separating it from Central Asia.
Now, the Americans, working through NATO and its usual-suspect NGOs, are attempting to tempt the Central Asian republics away from Russia, hoping that the traditional resentment of Soviet abuse and exploitation will draw them toward alliances with the west.
An example of Russian mistreatment: its nuclear weapons tests and space launches are being carried out in Kazakhstan.
One Andrei Serenko, Director of the Analytical Centre of the Russian Society of Political Scientists and head of the Centre for the Study of Afghan Politics, has warned that a resurgent terror movement, originating in brutal Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, poses threats to countries of Central Asia, primarily to Tajikistan. The Jamaat Ansarullah movement (also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Tajikistan, or TTT, or the “Tajik Taliban”), has begun to train suicide bombers, consisting mainly of candidates from desperately-poor Tajikistan.
Jamaat Ansarullah is said to be based in the Afghan province of Badakhshan, bordering Tajikistan. In the past six months, according to Serenko, it has significantly expanded its ranks.
“If earlier the number of militants in this group was in the dozens, now it is in the hundreds,” wrote Serenko.
“Jamaat Ansarullah was able to solve problems with its financing, as well as with weapons—its militants gained access to modern American and NATO armaments left in Afghanistan in August 2021.” That was when the US and its allies, tails between their legs, ignominiously fled from Afghanistan, after a twenty-year slaughter and a failed twenty-one trillion dollar military adventure.
The Jamaat Ansarullah suicide bombers also originate from other post-Soviet countries; their training takes place in a special madrassa located in Nusay District (Darwaz-i-Bala) of Badakhshan Province.
Alexander Bortnikov, Director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), has stated that “a “belt of instability” is being created on the “southern borders of the CIS”; Bortnikov reported that militants were being recruited from international terrorist organizations operating in Iraq, Syria and a number of other Asian and African countries, and were being transferred to northern Afghanistan.
A former Afghan spy chief claims that the Taliban regime now ruling Afghanistan is ambitiously exploring options to obtain tactical nuclear weapons.
Now we are talking. Suicide bombers are like mosquitoes in western society: they can cause damage but a SWAT team can just swat them away. Nuclear weaponry (including a simple-to-build “dirty bomb”) are another matter altogether. Even a small tactical nuke can take out a major part of a city – and drive the rest of the population to panic, thus ruining social cohesion and daily routines.
“The terrorists’ priority goal is to seize power in the countries of Central Asia, primarily in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and include them in the so-called ‘global caliphate’,” Bortnikov added, alleging that “this is being done with the active participation of American and British intelligence services.”
This would be no surprise, considering how the western military adventurers behaved in Iraq, Libya and Syria: sponsor, fund, then destroy. Rinse & repeat.