Posted on 09/21/2001 10:12:55 PM PDT by oxi-nato
The Kremlin is pouring troops, tanks, and military equipment on to the border with Afghanistan in anticipation of an American onslaught on the Taliban regime. In addition to 10,000 border guards under Russian command guarding the ex-Soviet state of Tajikistan's border with Afghanistan, Moscow has sent tanks and several thousand crack troops to the border zone over the past week, according to Tajik, Afghan opposition, and western European sources in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe.
For days the airport in Dushanbe has been closed for several hours each day as the Russians fly in more men and equipment. A tank battalion was seen moving to the border last weekend. On Wednesday Russia's top army officer, General Anatoly Kvashnin, arrived in Dushanbe to be briefed by commanders of the 15,000-strong 201st motorised infantry division, most of which has been moved from Dushanbe to the border in recent days. The forces have been put on high alert.
The Russians are also believed to have updated some of their aged surveillance equipment on the Afghan border. A western diplomat who has toured parts of the 700-mile border that Tajikistan shares with Afghanistan said the Russian equipment was in a sorry state. The Kremlin security council chief, Vladimir Rushailo, went to the border yesterday to in spect the Russian forces, accompanied by the Tajik president, Emomali Rahmonov.
The Izvestiya newspaper in Moscow said the intelligence gathered from a fibre optic spy station could be shared with the Americans. "The purchase of information from this station will inevitably become one topic of negotiations between Russia and the United States," the newspaper said. Unlike the other Afghanistan "frontline states" of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, Tajikistan is widely seen as a Russian satellite.
The Russian defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, ordered the troops on the Afghan border and in Dushanbe to be beefed up and put on alert in the wake of the attacks on New York and Washington. Most of the Afghan territory on the other side of the Russia-secured border is under the control not of the Taliban, but of the opposition Northern Al liance forces backed by Russia Iran and India.
The 201st division also has air support units, fuelling speculation that the Russian build-up could be deployed to join the expected US attacks on the Taliban. But Gen Kvashnin, Mr Ivanov and other senior Russian officials have repeatedly stressed that they have no intention of participating in any war, nor of allowing Tajikistan to grant the Americans use of military facilities to attack Afghanistan.
It seemed more plausible that the Russians were tightening control of the border to try to prevent any spillover of conflict into Tajikistan, impoverished after years of civil war involving Islamist militants in the mid-90s. "I don't think these reports are true. I see no preparations in Dushanbe," said Colonel Saleh Registani, a senior officer of the Northern Alliance.
I wonder what the Chinese are doing on their area of the border?
The Taliban doesn't have any real friends among the powers that be, it seems.
JT
Warplanes Begin Deploying to Gulf, Central Asia
American warplanes began flying overseas from U.S. bases yesterday as the Pentagon ordered dozens of fighters, bombers and other aircraft to the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean and -- in an unprecedented move -- the two former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, Defense Department officials said.
Should it REALLY matter to us if Russia ends up with that god-forsaken country?
Other than wiping out their terror network, is there ANYTHING there we need or want?
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