Posted on 10/29/2010 1:50:42 PM PDT by kronos77
MOSCOW — Russian counternarcotics agents took part in an operation to eradicate several drug laboratories in Afghanistan this week, joining Afghan and American anti-drug forces in what officials here said Friday marked an advance in relations between Moscow and Washington.
The operation, in which four opium refining laboratories and over 2,000 pounds of high quality heroin were destroyed, was the first to include Russian agents and indicated a tentative willingness among Russian officials to become more deeply involved in Afghanistan two decades after American-backed Afghan fighters defeated the Soviet military there.
“This is a major success for cooperative actions,” Viktor P. Ivanov, Russia’s top drug enforcement official, told journalists in Moscow. “This shows that there are real actions being taken amid the reset in relations between Russia and the United States.”
Although Russia has a large stake in the outcome of the war in Afghanistan, Russia has not participated in the NATO-led military coalition there and has seemed ambivalent about the American effort in its backyard.
Officials in Russia and the United States have called Afghanistan an important arena for cooperation, but have often clashed over the conduct of the war. Russian officials have granted permission for non-lethal cargo destined for Afghanistan to be transported across Russian territory, but have also pushed authorities in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan to close an American military base there that acts a crucial supply hub for the war. So far, the base remains open.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
let the Russians handle all the ‘detainees’
Full jurisdiction to bring back into Mother Russia
(and never be seen or heard from again )
You forgot this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html
This is why they want in. Always follow the money.
As America withdraws there will be a power vacuum. This does not bode well.
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