Posted on 07/12/2006 11:46:02 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
MOSCOW -- The West's decision to fund Islamist guerrillas against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan has backfired two decades later, Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday, setting an uncompromising tone as he prepared to welcome leaders for Group of Eight talks.
This weekend's summit in St. Petersburg has focused attention on Russia, with some Western politicians asking why Mr. Putin deserves the honour of hosting the world's major democratic leaders when he is neither democratic nor presiding over a leading economy.
Mr. Putin fired back in an interview with CTV News yesterday. It was his first one-on-one interview with a Canadian broadcaster, and part of an intense publicity effort by the Kremlin before the summit.
The Russian President dismissed Western concerns about democracy and human rights as pretexts for meddling in Russia's internal politics.
Then he added his own wide-ranging critique of Western foreign policy in places such as Iraq and Iran.
He saved his most scathing comments for Afghanistan, suggesting that the country's resurgent Islamist militias might not be such a big problem if the West hadn't spent billions of dollars training, funding and arming Islamists during almost a decade of proxy war after the Soviet invasion in 1979.
The President listed the forms of assistance his country has donated to the recent efforts to pacify and reconstruct Afghanistan: money, weapons, airspace and railway-supply routes. The situation would be much worse, he said, if Russia were pursuing the old Cold War agenda.
"We are going to continue the work together," Mr. Putin said. "But what is very important here: If it was today like it was in the 1980s, . . . you would have . . . much more complicated problems. Because when the Soviet Union was present there, the whole Western community was creating bin Ladens there in large numbers, and spared no money and efforts for that."
Iraq hasn't fared any better than Afghanistan after intervention by the West, Mr. Putin said.
"Our partners sometimes do make mistakes, to put it mildly," he said. "They were looking for WMD in Iraq, but where is this weapons of mass destruction? Is the situation any better there? I think it's questionable, this, in terms of the economy, social aspects."
He continued: "In the fight against terrorism, we should look for the solution and what to do next. We can't leave [Iraq], and we don't know what to do later on."
The United States and its allies must learn from the Iraq experience, Mr. Putin said, and apply these lessons to current talks about Iran and North Korea. Russia often cautions against rushing into action against those countries, which it considers valuable trading partners.
Referring to Iran, Mr. Putin said: "If we start applying sanctions, we are going to undermine the good process that is now emerging."
As he spoke, leading opposition figures in Russia gathered at a Moscow hotel for a conference titled The Other Russia, intended to highlight what observers have described as Russia's trend toward authoritarianism under Mr. Putin's presidency. Kremlin officials publicly warned foreign diplomats that attending the conference would be viewed as an "unfriendly gesture" on the eve of the summit. Many foreigners attended anyway, including Christopher Westdal, Canada's ambassador to Russia, who described it as a healthy exercise in democracy.
"Some of our political opponents inside the country domestically want to use it [the G8] as a reason to promote their viewpoints on the domestic situation and our foreign policy," Mr. Putin said, pointing out that the increased scrutiny comes little more than a year before Russia's next parliamentary elections.
"If the officials from other countries support such undertakings, then this means that they somehow try to influence internal distribution of powers in Russia. They have the right to it, but God help them," Mr. Putin said.
The New York Times reported yesterday that Russian security officers arrived at the conference and seized four members of an opposition movement, handcuffed them and rushed them away. Then they turned on a German magazine correspondent who tried to photograph the arrests. One of the officers snatched his camera and left with it.
The President described the foreigners' attitudes toward Russia as a hangover from the 1990s, when the West was given unprecedented influence over Russian affairs in the chaotic aftermath of the Soviet collapse.
"All of a sudden, in five, six years, the situation drastically changed," Mr. Putin said. "But the willingness to govern and command Russia in domestic issues and foreign policies was kept by some of our partners. And they started looking for those strings and leverages of influence. But very few are left with regards to their opportunity to manipulate Russia."
Mr. Putin also complained that Canada has engaged Russia more on political than economic issues, the opposite of the usual criticism by human-rights activists, who say Canada treads softly with Russia in exchange for business co-operation.
But the two countries will likely gain a major economic link when Petro-Canada finishes negotiating with Russia's natural-gas giant Gazprom, Mr. Putin said. The deal will send liquefied Russian gas for processing in Quebec and consumption across North America.
"Our energy companies are in the process of negotiations, and probably they will join their efforts to co-ordinate their activities and make a significant new contribution to the solution of energy problems of the world," he said .
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Thank GOD Ronald Reagan had the courage to bring the EVIL EMPIRE to its knees and send them retreating from Afghanistan in humiliation and defeat.
Those who served the KGB loyally and still refuse to denounce them to this day may lament the downfall of the Soviet Empire, but the rest of the world rejoices!
Yeah, we should have let the Russian bastards take Afghanistan?
Pootie is a Comrade to the core.
Putin is repeating the myth that the US funded the people who later became the Taliban. That is wrong. We never funded the more radical resistance groups in Afghanistan, including especially the so-called "Arab Afghans" among whom many of today's Al Qaeda including Bin Laden came from. And we never funded the more radical Afghans who later became the Taliban. The groups we funded were the more moderate factions such as that headed by Ahmed Shah Massoud, the so called "Lion of the Panjshir" who was a fierce commander who defeated the Soviet Army nearly a dozen times in major battles in Afghanistan in the 80s and later became a fierce opponent to the Taliban and their Al Qaeda masters. Al Qaeda assassinated Massoud 2 days before 9-11 knowing he would likely be used to spear-head any US response within Afghanistan to 9-11.
So once again, Putin is blowing off his stupid mouth without having all the facts. By the way, so long as he's talking hypocritically about supporting Islamic radicals, maybe he should explain his support of Saddam who trained more jihadi terrorists than any other regime in the Middle East and why Russia continues to work with, enable and fund Iran and their nuclear program while blunting all Western efforts to stop them. What a total, double-talking hypocrite.
Rootin' Tootin' Putin is still a communist.
He's right, you know. We should have done nothing to contest the USSR's control over Afghanistan./sar
What an a**hole.
There is no doubt Putin is trying to re-establish the Soviet Union. But this interview is insulting. Lemme get this straight, we should have just stood by while the Soviet Union marched into country after country? No WMD?!?! Hey comrade commie, your for shyt country helped Saddam move them prior to the war and enabled him. Even now you seek to arm Iran and North Korea all in the interest of bringing back the good ole days of the Soviet Union just to make yourself feel better about its utter and total defeat and collapse.
Putin is a piss ant that stands around picking his posterior while he blames the U.S. and it's allies for shooting the lid off his terrorist connections.
What a load of crap! Wind mills and alternative energy sources are looking really good now.
Putin and the rest of whats left of the russian military was utterly humiliated when the US went into Afganistan and did in a couple weeks what Russia couldn't do in years.
OK, we're supposed to take ol' Pooty-Poot seriously when he's going out of his way to kiss little boys on the tum-tum when the notion strikes him?
I didn't have to peer into Pooty-Poot's eyes to get the measure of his soul, all I had to do was remind myself that "once KGB, ALWAYS KGB".
The Russians brutalized Afghanistan and forced communism on it, while we rebuilt it. Because of this, the insurgency against us was limited to some Taliban types. Against Russia was over 50% of the Afghan people.
Ping
Is that right?
I hope Bush knows that.
Two points:
Russia and Soviet Union are different entities.
Soviet Union did conquer Afghanistan and it took years before Soviet control deteriorated over there.
The 'bastards' in Afganistan were not the Russians, they were the headchopping Islamists.
"Two points:
Russia and Soviet Union are different entities.
Soviet Union did conquer Afghanistan and it took years before Soviet control deteriorated over there."
-----
And the third point is that Russia has been trying to control the energy markets for years - and they invaded Afghanistan only to go on to Iraq and Iran and Saudia Arabia
"What a total, double-talking hypocrite."
Agreed. And those are his good points! :)
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