KATHRYN STONER

Russias 21st Century Interests in Afghanistan

Resetting the Bear Trap
ABSTRACT

The Russian government under Vladimir Putin has long-term geostrategic interests in
Afghanistan: stability, economic development, and curbing narcotics flowing into
Central Asia and thence to Russia. Moscow is in the difficult position of not wanting
American forces to stay in Afghanistan but also not wanting the drawdown of forces
to leave behind chaos.
K E Y W O R D S : Russia, Afghanistan, Central Asia, security, development

SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION

The contemporary Russian Federation, under President Vladimir Putin, has

security and economic interests in Afghanistan that will endure far beyond
the drawdown of American-led coalition forces. These concerns stem from
Russias long history of war and trade in Central Asia and Afghanistan in the
Imperial and then the Soviet periods, ending most recently with the Soviet
Unions own terrible war in Afghanistan from 197989. Since the invasion of
Afghanistan by the U.S. in the fall of 2001, Russia has engaged less directly
with military operations, but it has helped the U.S. establish the Northern
Transportation Route and then acted as a guarantor of access for NATO
forces to key military bases in Central Asia.
Russia has not acted out of benevolence. The Russian government has
a primary interest in stability in Afghanistan, a supporting interest in economic
development, and a strong interest in limiting narcotics trafcking out of
Afghanistan into Central Asia and then into Russia. Finally, as demonstrated

K ATHRYN S TONER is Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Affairs at
Stanford University, Faculty Director of the Susan Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy
Studies, and teaches in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.,
U.S.A. Email: <kstoner@stanford.edu>.
Asian Survey, Vol. 55, Number 2, pp. 398419. ISSN 0004-4687, electronic ISSN 1533-838X. 2015 by
the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission
to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Presss Rights and
Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/AS.2015.55.2.398.

398

STONER / AFGHANISTAN AND RUSSIA  399

by its 2014 seizure of Crimea from Ukraine and its support of pro-Russian
separatists in eastern Ukraine, Russia is concerned with furthering its geostrategic power in the international system. It intends in particular to ensure
that the U.S. does not make further incursions into areas that Russian leaders
consider to be their countrys traditional spheres of inuence, including Central Asia and Afghanistan.
Since 2001, and the initial invasion of Afghanistan by NATO forces led by
the U.S., Russia has had to pursue a careful balancing act with its Afghan
policy. On the one hand, the memory of its decade-long war, which killed
thousands of Russian soldiers and ultimately became a defeat for the Soviet
army, means that Russian leaders do not want to become overly burdened
with responsibility for Afghanistan following the 2014 pullout. On the other
hand, however, Russia does not want instability in Afghanistan to spread to
its Central Asian neighbors, nor does it want an increase in the heroin trade
out of Afghanistan into Russia itself.1
This paper begins in Section 2 with a brief overview of Russias tangled
history in Afghanistan from the 19th century through the Soviet invasion in
1979 and troop pullout under Gorbachev in 1989. Section 3 turns to Russias
key interests following the U.S. pullout in 2014, and the instruments it has
used to pursue them. Section 4 explains Russias interactions with the Central
Asian states that border Afghanistan, as well as its interactions with China
and the U.S. over Afghanistan since 2001. Section 5 concludes with an
examination of Russias options in Afghanistan following the NATO troop
pullout.

SECTION 2: RUSSIAS TROUBLED HISTORY IN AFGHANISTAN

Russias involvement in what is now Afghanistan began in the 19th century in

what became known as the Great Game with Britain over control of
Central Asia. (The term was later popularized by the Rudyard Kipling novel,
Kim, published in 1909).2 As Alex Cooley notes, In the original Great Game,
British ofcials perceived the expanding Russian empire, which seemed to be
1. Stephen Blank, Russia: Anti-Drug Trafcking Light Goes on in the Kremlin, but Its Low
Wattage, February 4, 2013, Eurasianet, <http://www.eurasianet.org/node/66502>, accessed June 23,
2014.
2. Alexander Cooley, Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 3.

400  ASIAN SURVEY 55:2

insatiably annexing large swaths of the Caucasus and Central Asia, as a threat
to Indias northern entry points, access to the Indian Ocean, and even the
prized British colony itself.3 Britain became embroiled in two wars in
Afghanistan, rst disastrously in 1838, and then more successfully in 1878,
when it responded to the Russian empires takeover of two Central Asian
khanates.
Stalin re-drew the empires internal boundaries in the 1920s and 1930s,
ultimately creating ve new republics of the Soviet Union that now comprise
ve new independent states, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. The establishment of these new republics within the
Soviet Union linked the geostrategic interests of the Soviet empire even more
rmly to Afghanistan than during the Russian imperial period prior to the
revolution of 1917. Stalins pencil lines were thick, and ran rather haphazardly
through nomadic tribal lands, resulting in a random regrouping of ethnicities
such as the Uzbek, Tajik, and Turkmen herders who were imperfectly inducted into the Soviet experiment (see map in Figure 1). The borders established between the three southern Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan,
Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan and Afghanistan ensured an enduring geostrategic interest for the Soviet state through its collapse in 1991. Tajiks, for
example, form the second largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, and practice
Sunni Islam. Uzbeks are the fourth largest ethnicity, and populate the countrys northern border areas near what is now Uzbekistan. Finally, Turkmens
are a smaller, but still signicant ethnicity in northern Afghanistan. The security of the borders between these republics and northern Afghanistan was
a constant concern for the Soviet state. Soviet leaders were wary of radical
Islam making its way into Central Asia and beyond into other Moslemdominated regions of the Soviet Union, including what was then the Russian
Republic and is now the Russian Federation.
As a result of the ongoing security concern related to ethnic and religious
politics in Central Asia, and because Marxism-Leninism promoted propagation of the Soviet model of government worldwide, the Soviet Union dabbled
in Afghan politics prior to its invasion. During the latter part of the reign of
the countrys last king, Zahir Shah (in the late 1960s and early 1970s), for
example, Afghanistan purchased arms from the Soviet Union, and the Soviets
built large infrastructure projects in Afghanistan including the Salang Tunnel
3. Ibid., p. 3.

STONER / AFGHANISTAN AND RUSSIA  401

figure 1. Map of Afghan Ethnicities

SOURCE : 2003 National Geographic Society, <http://www.afghannetwork.net/maps/Afghanistan-Map.

pdf>, adapted by Amber Wilhelm, CRS Graphics, in Kenneth Katzman, Afghanistan: Post-Taliban
Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, April 2013).

and Bagram Aireld.4 In the 1970s, Afghanistan became increasingly unstable

as the power struggle between the communist and Islamic movements blossomed. Mohammed Daoud, whose 1973 coup overthrew the monarchy,
thereafter ruled through a dictatorship and enhanced the states involvement
in the Afghan economy. Daoud was eventually overthrown and killed in
April 1978 by the Afghan Communist Party, called the Peoples Democratic
Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), in a coup known as the April Revolution.
But by September 1979, the attempts by other leaders to impose radical
socialism spurred another rebellion by Afghanistans Islamic parties.
In an effort to save Afghanistans socialist government, Leonid Brezhnev,
then General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, sent in
Soviet troops in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to prevent further gains by
Islamic militias (mujahedin). Soviet troop levels eventually reached 120,000
4. Katzman, Afghanistan, p. 2.

402  ASIAN SURVEY 55:2

(in comparison, U.S.-led forces at their peak in 2010 numbered about

150,000), and despite the full blown war that developed over a decade,
the Afghan conict proved to be a complete disaster for the Soviet Union.5
By the time Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, agreed
to the Geneva Accords on April 14, 1988, that required a complete withdrawal
from Afghanistan (completed on February 15, 1989), the Soviet army had
suffered over 13,000 casualties. The Soviet military left in its wake the weak
Najibullah government, and Afghanistan slid quickly back into chaos until
the Taliban takeover in 1996.
The Soviet casualty rate, second only to that in World War Two, and the
number of maimed Soviet conscripts returning from Afghanistan, affected all
levels of Soviet society: most families had at least one member in the conscripted military serving in Afghanistan. The Afghan war became known as
the Soviet Unions Vietnama prolonged conict that erased and maimed
a generation of Soviet men in a war against an elusive enemy that even the
mighty Soviet military failed to vanquish. Once-healthy young men returned
to their hometowns across the Soviet Union as severely disabled veterans,
often left to beg on the streets to survive. Indeed, the staggering losses in
Afghanistan led in part to the Gorbachev reform efforts in the mid- to late
1980s known as Perestroika. The military had failed miserably, and the
citizenry was losing faith in the Party and the communist state. The economy
could no longer afford such military campaigns.
The Soviet experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s also gave rise to an
Afghan Syndrome in Russian foreign policy today: Russias contemporary
leaders know all too well the difculty of the Afghan terrain and the hardiness
of Afghan ghters. The searing memories of the Afghan experience have
contributed to the Russian tendency to avoid deep, direct involvement there
since 2001. This is observable in the low level of aid, the insignicant number
of Russian troops or advisors in Afghanistan since the invasion, and a determined desire to stay on the periphery of the conict. Russia, too, has had its
share of economic ups and downs since 2001, and this has also undoubtedly
contributed to President Putins desire to let the U.S. and NATO take the
lead in dealing with Afghanistan.
5. See M. Gareev, Afghanskaia problematri goda bez sovetskikh voysk [The Afghan problem: Three years without Soviet troops], Mezhdunarodnaia Zhizn [International Affairs], no. 2
(1992), for an overview of the Soviet invasion and pullout.

STONER / AFGHANISTAN AND RUSSIA  403

Still, Russia has worked on the periphery in Afghanistan since the Soviet
collapse in December 1991. For example, on September 13, following the
unsuccessful coup attempt against Gorbachev by members of his own Politburo a few weeks earlier, and as the Soviet Union crumbled that autumn
under the relentless political pressure of Russias president, Boris Yeltsin,
Moscow and Washington agreed jointly to cut off further military aid to all
Afghan combatants. Neither side stuck to this agreement, and it is well
known that Russia, with Iran and India, provided a modest amount of funds
to the Northern Alliance (again addressing the security concern with Central
Asian borders) until the assassination of the key insurgent political and
military leader Ahmad Shah Massoud on September 9, 2001.6
Aid of any sort to any movement in Afghanistan was among the lowest
priorities of the Soviet Russian state at this point in its history, given that the
Soviet Union itself (and the Russian state that emerged from its ruins) was in
deep nancial and political crisis. The eventual collapse occurred on December 25, 1991. Russia took over as the international successor state of the Soviet
empire, although the empire itself, of course, disintegrated into 15 independent new countries. Among these were the ve new Central Asian states of
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. Russias
continuing interest in Afghanistan following the collapse of the Taliban in
2001 stems primarily from its enduring security and economic interests in
these countries, and also a renewed interest in reestablishing itself as a global
power in opposition to the U.S. and a rising China.7
Vladimir Putin is a realist. In his March 18, 2014, address to the Russian
Parliament over Russias annexation of Crimea, Putin defended the action,
asserting that Russia . . . like other countries . . . has its own national interests
that need to be taken into account and respected. Further justifying Russian
actions in Ukraine (after listing grievances like NATO expansion, and the
bombing of Belgrade in 1999), Putin complained in the same speech: And
then, they hit Afghanistan, Iraq and frankly violated the UN Security Council resolution on Libya . . . when they started bombing it too. Expressing
what most clearly currently drives Russian foreign policy, he asserted that we
6. Katzman, Afghanistan, p. 7.
7. For a clear statement of Vladimir Putins foreign policy concerns and goals, see his article
Rossiya na rubezhe tishyacheletnie [Russia on the edge of the millennium], in Nezavisimaya
Gazeta, December 31, 1999, at <http://www.ng.ru/politics/1999-12-30/4_millenium.html>, accessed
June 24, 2014.

404  ASIAN SURVEY 55:2

have every reason to assume that the infamous policy of containment, in the
18th, 19th and 20th centuries, continues today.8
This follows from Putins goal of reestablishing Russia as a great power,
clearly stated even in 1999 in his December article, Russia on the Edge of the
Millennium. Much of Russias activity in Afghanistan, therefore, has been
oriented toward limiting the scope and longevity of an American presence in
Central Asia.
SECTION 3: RUSSIAS CENTRAL INTERESTS AND INSTRUMENTS
IN AFGHANISTAN POST-2014

A central difference though, between Russias policy in 2015 and in the 1980s
under the Soviet Union, is that Russia today is not concerned with spreading
a particular political ideology, nor is it seriously interested in expanding its
sphere of political inuence there. Instead, Russian leaders are primarily
interested in enhancing Afghanistans political stability and economic development, limiting the drug trade by preventing the spread of Afghan heroin
into Central Asia and Russia (efforts in this regard were enhanced in 201213),
and protecting Russian inuence in Central Asia from incursions by the U.S.
and China. To further its interests, Russia has helped provide secure supply
routes for U.S. forces via Moscow into Afghanistan, provided modest aid for
infrastructural development in particular, increased its trade with Afghanistan, encouraged Afghan membership in regional trade associations, and
provided anti-narcotics training. Despite this, Russia really remains a secondary actor in Afghanistan in comparison to China or the United States. To the
extent it has real inuence, it is through its relations with Afghanistans
Central Asian neighbors.
Enhancing Political Stability to Ensure Central Asian Stability
and Russian Security

First and foremost, Russias leaders seek Afghan political stability so that the
country does not again become a haven for radical Islamic terrorist groups
like al-Qaeda. While al-Qaeda-trained terrorists crashed planes into the U.S.
at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Russia has also been attacked
8. Address by the president of the Russian Federation, March 18, 2014, the Kremlin, Moscow, at
<http://www.eng.kremlin.ru/transcripts/6889>, accessed June 24, 2014.

STONER / AFGHANISTAN AND RUSSIA  405

by ghters trained in Afghanistan by al-Qaeda. In its long internal war with the
Moslem-dominated republic of Chechnya, Russia has battled al-Qaeda-trained
foreign ghters from camps in Afghanistan seeking combat experience.
Distinct from U.S. interests, however, Russia is particularly concerned not
only that religious fundamentalism is contained but that Afghanistans ethnic
conicts do not spread northward into Central Asia, particularly to Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan but also to politically unstable Kyrgyzstan,
which borders China. As noted earlier, the Russian empire rst established
Russian inuence in Central Asia in the 19th century, and under a reviving
Russian economy, President Putin has sought to re-establish traditional inuence in this area. In part, this is a result of the security interest Russia has in
establishing a buffer zone between the Russian heartland and various Islamic
insurgencies in southern Central Asia and Afghanistan. But Russia is also
concerned with guiding and to some degree controlling the oil and gas riches
of Central Asian states, as well as pipelines running through Central Asia. The
goal is for the fossil fuels industries in these countries to support the Russian oil
and gas sector, rather than compete with it on world markets.9
Russia is not much concerned with the ideology of the current or future
Afghan government. Issues of democracy, equality for women, or ethnic
minorities are not a central concern of Russian policy. Indeed, even a theocracy would not particularly worry Russian foreign policy makers, as long as it
is not anti-Russian and does not encourage expansion of radical Islam. Contemporary Russian leaders cooperate where they need to with the Islamic
Republic of Iran, for example.
The instruments the Russian leadership has used to enhance Afghan security and political stability have been indirect. This is in part because Russia
has had its own internal political instabilities to deal with since the turn of the
millennium but also because of understandable Afghan sensitivity to Russian
boots on the ground. As a result, Russia has provided indirect support to
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) forces by facilitating the
Northern Supply Network (NSN) that allows U.S./NATO forces to resupply
troops and equipment through Russia into Central Asia to Afghanistan. This
route has proved a better alternative to the unreliable southern route through
Pakistan. Indeed, the NSN, also known as the Northern Distribution Network (NDN), runs on train tracks through Moscow itself! Kenneth Katzman
9. See Cooley, Great Games, Local Rules.

406  ASIAN SURVEY 55:2

reports that [a]bout half of all ground cargo for U.S. forces in Afghanistan
now ows through the Northern Distribution Network, and the United
States is emphasizing this network as relations with Pakistan remain strained,
although the costs to ship goods through the route are far greater than the
Pakistan route.10
General Paul Selva, the chief of U.S. Transportation Command, the entity
that operates the NDN, in his testimony to the U.S. Senate on March 14,
2014, noted that even as the U.S. draws down its forces, . . . about 20% of
the subsistence cargoes move through that network . . . 11 Anna Mulrine,
writing in the Christian Science Monitor, notes that in the context of the
Spring 2014 Ukraine crisis, U.S. military ofcials were concerned that Russia
would cut off the NDN, which was clearly still an important transit network
for U.S. forces. Mulrine asserts, Today [March 6, 2014], roughly 40% of the
supplies for U.S. troops in Afghanistan moves through the NDN, including
food, water and building materials.12 Russia has also allowed use of its
airspace to resupply foreign troops in Afghanistan, as well as Ulyanovsk Airbase, on the Volga River in Central Russia. It has also acted (somewhat
dishonestly) as a broker between Kyrgyzstan and the U.S. in the use of the
Manas Airbase in Kyrgystan for U.S. troops staging missions in Afghanistan
(this is discussed in Section 4 below).13
Until 2005, Russian border guards also patrolled the frontier between
Tajikistan and Afghanistan, and foreign ofcials have raised the possibility
of reinstituting this patrol function following the pullout in 2014.14 Indeed, in
preparation for the pullout Russia has developed stronger bilateral ties with
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in particular, and has become increasingly responsible for their border security.
Moreover, Russia has avoided its own direct military interventions into
Afghanistan. With the exception of aid in narcotics trafcking, it has not
supplied troops to the conict, and is unlikely to do so after 2014.

10. Katzman, Afghanistan, p. 31.

11. See Eurasianet.org/node/68140 site, accessed on June 24, 2014.
12. See <http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/2014/0304/Punish-Russia-Whysome-Pentagon-ofcials-would-prefer-restraint.-video>, accessed on June 24, 2014.
13. Cooley provides a good description of U.S./Russian competition of the Manas airbase in Great
Games, Local Rules, pp. 12027.
14. Amie Ferris Rotman, Fearing Afghan Instability, Russia Mulls Border Troops, Reuters,
May 17, 2013.

STONER / AFGHANISTAN AND RUSSIA  407

Establishing Afghan Economic Stability and Investment

The issue of Afghanistans economic development is really secondary to

Russias security interest, but it is related and not inconsequential. Russian
policy makers clearly understand that if Afghanistan is to stabilize, it must
wean itself off foreign aid, develop a favorable investment climate, and
become integrated into regional trade regimes. In 2007, for example, Russia
wrote off a US$11 billion Soviet-era Afghan debt. In 2010, Afghan President
Hamid Karzai visited Moscow, which led to the signing of the bilateral
Russian-Afghan Agreement on Trade and Cooperation. Unsurprisingly,
though, Russian exports dominate trade relations. Ekaterina Stepanova
reports that while trade had increased between the two countries 12 times
in comparison with 2004, it was still only US$984.9 million in 2011. Russia
accounts for 7.6% of Afghanistans trade (following Irans 8.2%) and sends
primarily oil and gas products and sawtimber to Afghanistan. The latter
accounts for 0.12% of Russian trade and exports raisins, potatoes, and a few
turbo jet engines.15 Russia has pledged some economic assistance to Afghanistan following the 2014 ISAF/NATO pullout, but its main aid contribution
is technical expertise on Soviet-built Afghan factories.
Russias direct aid to Afghanistan between 200212 was relatively low. Of
27 non-U.S. donors that gave over US$100 million, Russia ranks 22nd with
total aid of US$150 million. Given the importance of Russian security regarding Afghanistan, the net aid ow is abysmal. In comparison, China gave $255
million in the same period, and Japan gave US$13.1 million.16 More significant, reecting Russian Foreign Ministry comments in June 2010 regarding
the need to boost aid levels, Moscow is planning to invest $1 billion to
develop electrical power stations and other types of power infrastructure.
There are also planned projects to help develop Afghan railroad and transportation infrastructure, as well as construction and mining. These projects
are primarily still in the planning process, however. Katzman notes,
Included in those investments [is] implementation of an agreement, reached
during a Karzai visit to Moscow on January 22, 2011, for Russia to resume
long dormant Soviet occupation-era projects such as expanding the Salang
Tunnel connecting the Panjshir Valley to Kabul, hydroelectric facilities in
15. Ekaterina Stepanova, Russias Concerns Relating to Afghanistan, Barcelona, CIDOB
[Barcelona Center for International Affairs], Policy Research Report, June 2013, p. 5.
16. Katzman, Afghanistan, p. 73.

408  ASIAN SURVEY 55:2

Kabul and Baghlan Provinces, a customs terminal, and a university in

Kabul.17
Overall, Russian economic aid and investment have been relatively modest
considering the countrys geostrategic position relative to Afghanistan. This
could be because Russia was undergoing major economic change in the past
decade, but it is also likely a product of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan
and a pervasive skepticism regarding the efcacy of direct political or economic involvement.
Preventing Afghan Heroin from Reaching Russia

Russia also has a deep concern that heroin from poppies grown in Afghanistan does not nd its way into its own territory, although efforts to block the
trafc have been complicated and not terribly successful. In part this is
because state actors have not been unied on the matter. Poorly paid border
guards may have enabled the ow of heroin in exchange for bribes, for
example. According to the U.N. Ofce on Drugs and Crime (UNODC),
as of 2011, about one-third of Afghan-exported heroin ran through Central
Asia.18 This disproportionately affected Russia, which became the largest
market for Afghan opiates in the latter 2000s. The U.N., for example, reports
that 70 tons of heroin were trafcked to Russia, three times more than the
U.S. and Canada combined, making Russia the biggest market for Afghan
heroin.19 There is a growing Russian HIV/AIDS epidemic that is fueled by
heroin injection. In an effort to combat the inux, Russian ofcials have set
up quadrilateral summits that also include Pakistan, Afghanistan, and
Tajikistan; they focus on counter-narcotics and anti-smuggling. Russian
anti-narcotics police have occasionally participated in raids inside Afghanistan, but the Afghan government is very sensitive to any sort of Russian
presence and Russia has had to tread carefully.20
Although Afghan heroin trafcking is almost as important a concern to
Moscow as is internal Afghan stability, Russias instruments for combating
the problem are weak, and the political will of Russian leaders has vacillated.
The best that Russia can do in the wake of the pullout is to try to strengthen
17. Ibid., p. 55.
18. UNODC, Drug Report (New York: UNODC, 2011).
19. Ibid., pp. 7273; and see also UNODC 2010 report with identical title.
20. Stepanova, Russias Concerns Relating to Afghanistan, p. 6.

STONER / AFGHANISTAN AND RUSSIA  409

Central Asian border regimes and patch up its own uneven border security.
In 2013, about 6% of the Russian population was classied as drug addicted,
according to Russias Drug Control Service. Stephen Blank at the U.S. Army
War College notes that there has been a shift in the Russian position on drug
trafcking from publicly expressing concern while doing little. Blank claims
that in 201213, the Russian government was getting more serious about antitrafcking. He noted, The Kremlins [previous] recalcitrance had been
mainly rooted in concern that the US footprint in Central Asia would grow
too big.21
Although Russian leaders recognize the countrys growing drug problem,
they have resisted letting the U.S. take more of a lead in stomping it out with
additional drug agents on the ground in Afghanistan. Instead, in 2012, for
example, Russia proposed creating a multi-national drug agency under the
auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), of which the
U.S. is not a member.

SECTION 4: RUSSIAS INTERACTIONS WITH OTHER

INTERESTED STATES

Russias interactions with other states over Afghanistan should be viewed

within the prism of its purposeful progression toward a new foreign policy
that seeks to claim (or reclaim) global power status. There is some argument
among analysts as to how important Afghanistan is to this strategy. On the
one hand, Marek Menkiszak claims that Afghanistan is one of the key issues
in Russian foreign policy, while Stepanova argues that Russia is at best a third
tier player in Afghanistan, with narrowly dened interests.22 Clearly, given
Russias concerns regarding stability in Central Asia, and the growing challenge of the narcotics trade, Russian policy makers are anxious about Afghan
stabilization following 2014. In addition, Russia under its increasingly condent president (now in his third term), Vladimir Putin, has become more
interested in ensuring that the U.S. in particular does not gain a lasting
foothold in Afghanistan, or worse, in southern Central Asian countries over
which Russia claims traditional inuence, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
21. See Blank, Russia.
22. Marek Menkiszak, Russias Afghan Problem: The Russian Federation and the Afghanistan
Problem since 2001 (Warsaw: PRACE, OSW Studies), September 2011; and Stepanova, Russias
Concerns Relating to Afghanistan.

410  ASIAN SURVEY 55:2

When the initial U.S. invasion of Afghanistan began in 2001, Russias

economy was just recovering from a decade of post-communist recession
and 70 years of communist mismanagement before that. Oil prices were
rising, and Russian gross domestic product (GDP) per capita had jumped
into the positive, and would continue to grow through 2008 at roughly 8%
year on year. Vladimir Putin became Russias second post-communist president following the surprise resignation of Boris Yeltsin on December 31,
1999. Putin was the rst foreign leader to express condolences and support
to President Bush following the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York and
Washington. He also cancelled Russian military exercises shortly after 9/11 so
as not to provoke or alarm the Americans as they prepared to invade Afghanistan later that fall.23 Russia supported the U.N. security resolution creating
ISAF, although Russia itself did not join the force.
Russian/U.S. relations were at their best since the mid-1990s in this period.
Indeed, Angela Stent reports that Putin called George Bush on September 9,
2001, to report Massouds murder and warned that it could indicate the start of
a broader terrorist campaign out of Afghanistan.24 Putin had also become
convinced, correctly as it turned out, that ghters out of Afghanistan had been
supporting Chechen separatists in the North Caucasus region of Russia. In
1996, for example, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former Egyptian doctor who
became Osama Bin Ladens right hand man in al-Qaeda, had been caught
and jailed by the Russian military in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan in
the south of Russia. Al-Zawahiri had been with a group of ghters from
Afghanistan who were en route to Chechnya to train and give advice to separatist ghters. Stent notes that the Russians relayed the news of al-Zawahiris
arrest to the U.S., but the latter was not particularly concerned, because the
incursion had been into Russia, and the U.S. was engaged in Kosovo at the
time. Al-Zawahiri was eventually released, and evidently went back to Afghanistan to assist in planning the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on
September 11, 2001.25
In the decade since 9/11, Russian-American relations deteriorated, revived,
and then deteriorated again. Russias interest and involvement in Afghanistan
should be understood within the broader U.S./Russian bilateral relationship.
23. Angela Stent, The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), p. 64.
24. Ibid., p. 62.
25. Ibid., p. 47.

STONER / AFGHANISTAN AND RUSSIA  411

Three patterns are distinguishable: (1) initial cooperation in the war on

terror immediately following September 11; (2) rising suspicion during
200510 regarding U.S. intentions in Central Asia, with Russia obstructing
rather than cooperating in the Afghan conict; and (3) from roughly 2011
onward, growing Russian fears of a security vacuum post-2014 and renewed
but grudging, relatively modest cooperation.
When he rose to power in Russia, Putin found himself instantly embroiled
in a renewed conict with the separatist province, Chechnya, in the volatile
South Caucasus region. Putin inherited the Chechen conict from Yeltsin,
who had invaded initially in 1996 following terrorist attacks by Chechen
separatists in the heart of Russia. The Russian military became bogged down
and suffered heavy losses as Chechen militants, with the help of foreign
ghters (some trained in Afghanistan by al-Qaeda), adopted guerrilla-style
tactics for which poorly trained and terribly equipped Russian conscripts
were ill prepared.26 Yeltsin made a patchwork peace with increasingly radicalized Islamic Chechen leaders, but this fragile agreement broke down as
Chechen militants began attacking targets outside of the restive republic
itself.
One such attack in August 1999 prompted Putin (then prime minister) to
send Russian forces back to Chechnya, but this time with greater resolve, and
out of the sight of the Russian public, since the media was banned from
covering the conict. The Taliban government in Afghanistan was the only
one in the world to recognize Chechen independence from Russia. In October 2002, about 40 Chechen rebel ghters took over the Dubrovka Theater
in central Moscow and held about 800 people hostage. The rebels demanded
recognition of Chechen independence and the end of the second Chechen
war. The terrorists displayed banners around the theater with radical Islamic
slogans written in Arabic (not actually spoken in Chechnya), signaling the
inuence of foreign ghters within the Chechen independence movement. In
the end, after nearly three days of failed negotiations, the Russian authorities
pumped in fentanyl gas, killing 130 of the hostages and allegedly all of the
terrorists. Despite the fact that these deaths might have been prevented had
the Russian authorities revealed exactly what the gas was and provided an
antidote to it, President Bush agreed to blame the civilian deaths on the
26. John B. Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conict (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1998).

412  ASIAN SURVEY 55:2

rebels. Both the U.S. and Russia agreed that military force was required to
defeat terrorism. As Stent notes, [I]ndeed, the U.S. concept was used to
justify Russias own campaign in Chechnya.27 Igor Ivanov, Russias foreign
minister from 19982004, explained the nature of the immediate post 9/11
relationship with the U.S.: We wanted an anti-terrorist international coalition like the anti-Nazi coalition. This would be the basis for a new world
order.28
By 2004, Chechnya had been largely tamed, but the republic remains
a dangerous place to live, and the danger of Islamic radicalism persists there
as well as in neighboring Dagestan, where Chechen rebels have ed since the
end of the hottest part of the last Chechen conict. Indeed, the February 27,
2015, murder of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, just steps from the
Kremlin, was blamed on Chechen gunmen, although their relation to the
insurgency as opposed to Chechnyas all-powerful, Moscow-appointed president, is unclear. Moreover, Russia has been concerned that U.S. forces do
not pull out of Afghanistan too hastily, spurring a power vacuum and the
resurgence of Islamic militancy that could spread north. Russia at various
times even pushed for a U.N. Security Council resolution to ensure that some
troops stay in Afghanistan beyond the 2014 deadline.29 At the same time, the
Putin administration has been very wary of U.S. intentions globally, and its
new foreign policy is focused on stopping the U.S. essentially everywhere it
can.30
This shift in Russias policy from cooperating on the defeat of the Taliban
and sharing intelligence in the war on terror became evident in 200405.
Russia became increasingly concerned about Americans global power intentions. In part, Russias growing discomfort was fueled by the color revolutions in the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Georgia, and, in 2005,
Kyrgyzstan. In the view of the U.S. and other NATO countries, all 15 former
republics of the Soviet Union, including Russia itself, became independent
countries upon the 1991 Soviet collapse. Russia, however, still viewed these
countries as being within its traditional sphere of inuence. Therefore,
when popular uprisings emerged in Georgia in 2003 and then Ukraine in
27. Stent, The Limits of Partnership, p. 71.
28. Igor Ivanov, as cited in Stent, ibid., p. 69.
29. Katzman, Afghanistan, p. 39.
30. Authors conversation with Russian foreign policy expert who wished to remain anonymous,
Valdai International Discussion Club, Lake Valdai, Russia, September 18, 2013.

STONER / AFGHANISTAN AND RUSSIA  413

2004 against corrupt governments in stolen elections, the U.S. and European
countries came out on the side of the protesters in what became known as the
Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and, later,
the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan. Russian leaders cringed at the sight of
thousands of people on the streets of Tbilisi and Kiev demanding greater
freedom and more-accountable government. Some actors within the Russian
government even accused the U.S. of inciting popular revolt in both Georgia
and Ukraine to install governments more amenable to the U.S.
The Russians also feared that such uprisings could also occur within Russia
itself. As Stent notes, Precisely because the political system in the post-Soviet
states resembled that of Russia, the Kremlin felt threatened by these revolutions.31 Following the Orange Revolution, Putin created organizations like
Nashi (Ours), a youth group funded by the Kremlin that used some of the
same aggressive, though non-violent, tactics that university students had used
in leading the Orange Revolution. This was meant as a bulwark against the
rise of a color revolution-style movement in Russia. Nashi, however, used
these tactics to harass and discredit the British ambassador to Russia (by
effectively ash-mobbing him with aggressive anti-British protesters, for
example), and members of opposition parties in Parliament, while tirelessly
defending Putin.
In the years that followed, Russia became less democratic, with Putin
cracking down further on Russian civil society by instituting tough registration requirements for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with the
Ministry of Justice that require them to document all of their activities.
Putins government also introduced costly and lengthy nancial reporting
requirements, and effectively prohibited the funding of Russian NGOs by
foreign sources. He used a law that would publicly declare those NGOs that
did receive funding from abroad to be foreign agents (inostraniie agentie),
a term with traitorous connotations.
Russias 2014 seizure of Crimea from Ukraine, and Moscows subsequent
support for Ukrainian separatists in eastern Ukraine, was done in the name of
defending ethnic Russians in the near abroad, and also reasserting Russian
power in its historical sphere of inuence.
The U.S. under President Bush from 200103 or so presented American
interests as being in lockstep with Russiasto defeat the Taliban and Islamic
31. Stent, The Limits of Partnership, p. 101.

414  ASIAN SURVEY 55:2

terrorism more generally. But by about 2005, Russian policy makers had
become increasingly nervous about Bushs Freedom Agenda as a policy
promoting democracy aimed at Russias periphery and perhaps at Russia
itself. It was at about the same time that the Bush administration began to
pursue anti-ballistic-missile bases in Eastern Europe that further fueled Russias concerns about U.S. foreign policy incursions into another sphere of
Russian traditional interest. Despite American assurances that these systems were not designed to protect against Russian missiles, the Russian
foreign policy and defense establishments simply could not be convinced
otherwise. Indeed, by 2011, Moscow threatened to withdraw its cooperation
on the NDN in response to the American missile defense program. That
March, the latter was scrapped.32
The Russian war with Georgia in 2008 also cast a shadow on Russian
cooperation with the U.S. in Afghanistan. Washington condemned the Russian invasion, and U.S. Senator and presidential candidate John McCain
infamously declared in August: We are all Georgians! American presidential candidate Barack Obama was initially hesitant to condemn the invasion
but eventually also backed the Georgian side, much to Russias surprise and
disgust. The U.S. and NATO, however, could do little to prevent Russia
from defending Russian citizens in the Georgian regions of North Ossetia
and Abkhazia other than strongly condemn the incursion. Even this, however, fueled Russias suspicion that the U.S. was determined to foil Russias
inuence within the former Soviet Union. Many Russian policy makers
became ever more suspicious of U.S. intentions in Central Asia; many Russian ofcials began to believe that the U.S. was not going to leave Central Asia
and could use Afghanistan as a further excuse to erode Russian inuence.33
This concern evolved into direct Russian involvement in the U.S. loss in
2005 of the Karshi-Khanabad (or K2) Airbase in Uzbekistan and the near loss
of the Manas Airbase in Kyrgyzstan. Both were important in staging troops
and supplies going into Afghanistan, especially as Pakistan became a less
reliable U.S. partner. The K2 base closure came on the heels of the U.S.
condemnation of Uzbek President Islam Karimovs May 2005 crackdown on
demonstrators in the city of Andijon, where between 300 and 1,500 were
32. Ibid., p. 229. Note though that State Department ofcials are adamant that the end of the
anti-missile program was not done to appease Russia.
33. Ibid., p. 98.

STONER / AFGHANISTAN AND RUSSIA  415

killed by government troops. Karimov refused to submit to an international

commission of inquiry proposed by the U.S. and EU. Russia stood by
Karimovs claim that he was defending Uzbekistan from extremism. By July,
Karimov announced that the U.S. should leave the K2 base. Later that year,
Russia and Uzbekistan signed a Treaty of Friendship.
In 2009, the then president of Kyrgyzstan, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, used the
K2 incident to play the U.S. against Russia in an attempt to get the best deal
for himself and his country. Manas Airbase had become the main transit
point for NATO troops and supplies after the K2 closure. In February,
shortly after Obamas inauguration, Bakiyev announced that the base would
be closed. Later the same day, Moscow offered a $2 billion loan to Kyrgyzstan. It looked as though Bakiyev had effectively been paid by Russia to close
the U.S. base. American ofcials managed to renegotiate the base contract,
and by June, Bakiyev had extracted an agreement for three times the original
rent, reversing the closure. Bakiyev was ousted in 2010 as president of Kyrgyzstan in a popular uprising and ed the country, and there is speculation of
Russian involvement. There were also accusations that his family directly
beneted from contracts at Manas.34
Despite these clashes over the U.S. presence in Central Asia, with Moscow
playing the role of spoiler, Russia by 2011 had returned to cooperation with
the U.S. and NATO with respect to Afghanistan. The hallmark of this cooperation was the opening that year of the NDN. The Russians interest in
stability in Afghanistan trumped its fears of the U.S. establishing a permanent
presence in Central Asia. Indeed, Russian policy makers have openly expressed
fear of what will happen after the U.S. pullout, including Nikolai Bordyuzha,
former chief of the Russian border service: We arent on the verge of solving
the problems in Afghanistan, but on the worsening of them, and seeing quite
a qualitatively different situation in the Central Asian region, especially after
2014. The prognosis is clear: Afghanistan will remain a base for organizing
terrorist and extremist activities, we feel.35 Bordyuzha was echoing comments
by Dmitry Rogozin, Russias ambassador to NATO, who noted in 2011: We
dont want NATO to go and leave us to face the jackals of war after stirring up
the anthill. Immediately after the NATO withdrawal, they will expand towards
34. See ibid., pp. 23637 on the Menas case; and Cooley, Great Games, Local Rules.
35. Joshua Kucera, Why Russia Fears the U.S. Afghan Plan, The Diplomat, October 18, 2011, at
<http://thediplomat.com/2011/10/why-russia-fears-us-afghan-plan/?allpagesyes>, accessed December 15, 2013.

416  ASIAN SURVEY 55:2

Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and it will become our problem then.36 In particular, Rogozin feared the resurgence of Islamic terrorism in both states, a threat
that is possibly overplayed for the sake of maintaining authoritarian regimes
there that are nonetheless friendly to a Russian presence on their borders.
As a result, Russia has walked a ne line with the U.S. on Afghanistan in
the past ve or so years. On the one hand, Russia supports the withdrawal,
since it signals that the U.S. does not want to maintain a large troop presence
in Central Asia and Afghanistan indenitely. But, on the other hand, Russias
leadership gradually has become more engaged in Afghanistan, with the goal
of ensuring its leverage there while limiting the potential U.S. threat to
Russian interests. By far the biggest threat to Russia coming out of Afghanistan in the last 10 or so years has been opium. Indeed, before the U.S.-led
war, Russia did not have a signicant heroin problem. The Taliban, for all of
its other problems, was good at keeping a lid on opium production. The
Americans, however, have been less willing to eradicate poppy production
when poor farmers have few other sources of income. It is possible, therefore,
that a new Taliban government would do a better job in dealing with this
Russian problem if it curtailed opium production.
Russia has tried to use what few avenues of inuence it has on Afghanistan.
Some of these have included supporting President Karzai as relations between
him and the U.S. deteriorated, especially after the 2009 Afghanistan presidential elections.37 Russia established a new diplomatic mission in Kabul in
December 2001 and has maintained it over the past decade. The center of
Russian foreign policy toward Afghanistan has become Zamir Kabulov, Russias special representative on Afghanistan, appointed in March 2011. Kabulovs job is to coordinate all aspects of Russias policy in Afghanistan with
Russias Foreign Ministry.38
Russia and China in Afghanistan

As Andrew Scobells paper in this special issue also notes, China is the other
major player that concerns Russia in and around Afghanistan. As with the
36. Ibid.
37. Menkiszak, Russias Afghan Problem, p. 23.
38. See Zamir Kabulov, Leaving Afghanistan the United States Wants to Strengthen Its Presence
in the Asia Pacic, Security Index: A Russian Journal on International Security 19:1 (2013), pp. 511,
DOI: 10.1080/19934270.2013.7571.

STONER / AFGHANISTAN AND RUSSIA  417

U.S., Russias interactions with China are closely linked with its security and
trade relations in Central Asia. In the Chinese case, though, Russia sees itself
also competing for trade, yet positioned as a potential ally on at least some
issues in opposition to the U.S. Russias Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu
explained in a recent meeting that the PRC [Peoples Republic of China] is
our strategic partner. We have ongoing exchanges of personnel and training.
We market weapons to them because we are not afraid of them.39
Still, Russia has struggled with Chinas positions in meetings of the
Beijing-led SCO, formed in 2001 to facilitate collective security in Central
Asia with China and Russia. The SCO rejects Western hegemony and
values, while claiming to promote a new type of international relations.40
Notably, in 2008 China pointedly refused to condone Russias recognition of
North Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent following the Russian-Georgian
conict. This led the Central Asian members of the SCO to take a stand
against Moscow in similarly denying recognition to these republics of Georgia. Without China acting as buffer, however, it is unlikely that the Central
Asian states would have dared to oppose Moscow in this regard. The SCO is
not a vehicle for promoting Chinese interests in Afghanistan. Russia is,
however, in competition with China over mineral contracts there, and most
important, in inuence over Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
Russias interactions with the U.S. regarding Afghanistan are most heavily
inuenced by its interests in and inuence over Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan,
Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan. These countries, in turn, were pivotal actors in
U.S. efforts to expand the NDN supply route. Because of the airbase at
Manas, Kyrgyzstan was crucial to the U.S. ability to y troops and supplies
in and out of Afghanistan, although its post-2014 role is unclear. By agreement, the U.S. military vacated the base in June 2014. Katzman also notes
that [t]hese [Central Asian] states are also becoming crucial to the New Silk
Road (NSR) strategy that seeks to help Afghanistan become a trade crossroads between South and Central Asiaa strategy that could net Kabul
substantial income.41

39. Sergei Shoigu meeting, attended by the author; discussion was between Shoigu and members
of the Valdai International Discussion Club, Lake Valdai, Russian Federation, September 19, 2013
[hereafter, Shoigu meeting].
40. Cooley, Great Games, Local Rules, p. 5.
41. Katzman, Afghanistan, p. 73.

418  ASIAN SURVEY 55:2

SECTION 5: CONCLUSION: RUSSIAN STRATEGY BEYOND

THE PULLOUT

As the pullout deadline approached in 2014, Russia became increasingly

critical of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. While expressing gratitude
for the job they have done, Russian leaders were very concerned that a hasty
pullout would leave a variety of threats within Afghanistan, and that these
would threaten regional stability more generally. Among these, cited by
Shoigu, were the weapons left behind, undertrained and disloyal police, and
the revival of the Taliban. In his view, prior to the spring 2014 presidential
elections in Afghanistan, when more than 50 percent of polling stations are
controlled by the Taliban, how free and fair will elections be?42 Russia
openly and happily supported the Northern Alliance prior to 2001. Shoigu
insisted in 2014 that it would be ne to have another Massoud, but unfortunately, there is no such opportunity.43
As a result, in the interest of stability in Afghanistan, Russia has expressed
willingness to see moderate rank and le Taliban included in any future
government. Russian leaders point to the fact that heroin trafcking was less
under the Taliban than in the past ve years under the U.S./NATO coalition.
Russia has also openly discussed the possibility of putting additional troops in
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan as well as re-equipping those countries armies to
provide a defensive zone in Central Asia against Afghan radical or narcotics
incursions into the Russian heartland.
Russian policy in Afghanistan is at a crossroads, with worsening relations
with the West looming against the background of the Russian-Ukrainian
conict. The ideal Russian scenario in Afghanistan would have been for
President Karzai to stay in power and a government of national reconciliation
to be formed with moderate Taliban. This scenario, however, has failed, and
Russia will have to deal with Afghanistan without Karzai. As a result, Russia is
faced with choosing between two alternative paths: First, reverting to its
policy of the 1990s and supporting a reconguration of the Northern Alliance
to reinstitute a northern buffer zone protecting Central Asian allies from
incursions; or second, seeking cooperation with the new Afghanistan president,
Ashraf Ghani, and perhaps a moderate Taliban, in running Afghanistan. The
latter strategy could have the advantage of reducing narcotics trafcking, but it
42. Shoigu meeting.
43. Ibid.

STONER / AFGHANISTAN AND RUSSIA  419

risks allowing Afghanistan to again become a haven for radical Islamic terrorists. Russia has already suffered the results of the latter, and is unlikely to risk
a revival of the Chechen conict or spark new pockets of radicalism in other
parts of the south Caucasus.
A third option would be to continue some degree of cooperation with
Western forces in creating a protective zone around Central Asia, but this
might bring about a counterbalancing strategy on the part of China, which
would not t with Russias strategy. Russias renewed conict with the West
in the wake of its support of Ukrainian separatists in Eastern Ukraine in 2014
[to the time of writing] and its annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, however, seriously undermine any further prospects of cooperation with the West
on creating a buffer zone.
There are few reliable indications of which path Russia is likely to choose.
One can discern elements of each scenario in Russian statements and actions
in Afghanistan. Russian leaders want to reassert their countrys prominence
in foreign policy, especially in the wake of the September 2013 agreement
with the U.S. on Syrias chemical weapons and the 2014 upheaval in Ukraine.
In many ways, Russia is resurgent internationally. It has emerged from the
ashes of the Soviet Union not as the superpower it was, but as a formidable
regional power that cannot be discounted. Under Vladimir Putin, Russia
demands the respect of the international community. Although the country
can no longer rely on pure brute force and military strength in pursuing its
interests, it has the diplomatic and strategic ability to act as facilitator or
spoiler in many parts of the world.
Its policy choices in Afghanistan since 2001 have been determined by
Russias gradual return to prominence in international affairs, and the enduring interests it has in the lands around its southern borders. It wants inuence, but not ownership, in Central Asia, and ultimately in Afghanistan. For
this reason, Russia has preferred to operate on the periphery of the most
recent strife there, using the leverage it has in Central Asia in particular to
protect its own security interests. Russia has much to lose and little to gain by
doing much more. For this reason, Russian policy makers are in the awkward
position of not having wanted the Americans to come to Central Asiabut
now, not wanting them to leave. The Soviet experience in Afghanistan in the
1980s left a rm imprint on the memories of Russian policymakers, who have
no interest in being trapped again in a war they can neither afford nor win.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further unauthorized reproduction is

prohibited without permission or in accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976
Copyright of Asian Survey is the property of University of California Press and its content
may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright
holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.