Mark Galeotti, Moscow Times: Moscow Watches Kabul’s Fall With Some Satisfaction, Much Concern
The Kremlin will wait now to see whether the Taliban will fare any better than any of the other powers who have thought they could reshape the country.
A month ago — and, as we have seen, a month is a whole cycle between triumphalism and despair — I wrote that Moscow was viewing events in Afghanistan with a ‘mix of satisfaction, exasperation and trepidation.’ The sudden collapse of the Kabul regime has heightened all three emotions.
It is not that it is at all unhappy with the sight of the self-described ‘indispensable nation,’ ‘the last superpower’ and, as the Russians see it, the would-be global hegemon reduced to ignominious flight, helicopters lifting diplomats to Kabul airport in an inevitable echo of the fall of Saigon.
For some, it was simply a geopolitical debacle. The government newspaper Rossiiskaya gazeta framed it as ‘a shameful result for the American ideologues of the fight against terrorism and nation-building.’
Read more ....
WNU Editor: The people I know in Russia are deeply troubled what they are seeing in Afghanistan right now, and they have no love for the Taliban. The also know too well that with the Taliban in control of Afghanistan, it will become a magnet for jihadists worldwide, and a breeding ground for Islamic fundamentalists throughout central Asia.
