Why Russia suddenly wants an ally in Pakistan

Asia Times



[Russia seeks Pakistan's support for its Afghan peace initiative but
US and Turkey may beat Moscow to the geopolitical punch]

By Salman Rafi Sheikh
April 13, 2021

When Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov landed this month in
Pakistan, marking Moscow’s first high-level ministerial visit to
Islamabad in nearly a decade, the diplomat’s presence was laden with
geopolitical intrigue.

While Lavrov’s overt mission was to court Pakistan’s support for
Russia’s new bid to promote a political settlement in war-torn
Afghanistan, his unspoken agenda focused on indications the US will
delay its avowed withdrawal from the war-torn nation.

Lavrov arrived in Islamabad with a bag of promises ranging from
possible defense, energy and infrastructure development cooperation.
While the offers were warmly received by Pakistan, the two sides are
still far from developing any type of strategic partnership.

Whether Pakistan will support a Russia-sponsored political settlement
in Afghanistan, one that no doubt will aim to leave little to no space
for the US is still unclear. The US agreed with the rebel Taliban
under the previous Trump administration to withdraw all of its
remaining troops from Afghanistan on May 1.

In exchange, the Taliban agreed to eliminate any al Qaeda remnants it
may be sheltering in the growing amount of territory it controls. Al
Qaeda has in the past also operated out of Pakistan’s border regions.

With the deadline for America’s withdrawal fast approaching, the US
has reached out to Turkey to play a key role in the peace process, a
move that likely indicates the Biden administration will, at least
temporarily, renege on Trump’s troop withdrawal vow.

The US is now actively seeking to leverage Turkey’s known influence on
both Pakistan and Afghanistan — including Ankara’s ties to the Taliban
— to clinch an agreement that allows the US to extend its military
presence until a political settlement between President Ashraf Ghani’s
government and the Taliban is agreed.

Both Russia and China are opposed to an open-ended US military
presence in Afghanistan, a country where both have grand
infrastructure development designs and security concerns.

Specifically, America’s military presence in Afghanistan is seen as a
stumbling block for the completion of China’s Belt and Road Initiative
(BRI) and Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) trade and integration
schemes.

Chinese diplomatic officials have recently claimed in press briefings
that the US is using its military and intelligence presence in
Afghanistan to stir trouble in China’s far-western Xinjiang region,
where as many as one million ethnic minority Uighurs have been
interned in so-called “vocational” camps.

Stability in Xinjiang is crucial for the BRI’s success. Of the BRI’s
main six corridors, three pass through Xinjiang, including the US$60
billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that once completed
will provide China an outlet on to the Indian Ocean via a BRI-financed
port at Gwadar.

With Turkey’s inclusion in the Afghanistan stakes, the possibility of
greater trouble for China in Xinjiang and other Central Asian states
has by some analysts’ estimation increased manifold.

Turkey has recently adopted a tough approach to China’s mistreatment
of Uighur Muslims, with reports in pro-government Turkish media
linking the future of Turkey’s ties with China to the fate of the
Muslim minority population.

With Turkey already supporting jihadi elements in Syria, facilitating
their relocation to Libya and even exporting some to the
Nagorno-Karabakh war, Russia and China will be wary of Ankara’s
involvement in Afghanistan.

They both no doubt fear Turkey’s possible deployment of these Islamist
militias to Afghanistan and elsewhere in the region with a view to
destabilize Russia’s historically volatile underbelly and disrupt
progress on China’s BRI.

Accordingly, Lavrov in his discussions with his Pakistani counterpart
emphasized his concern about the “rise in terrorist activities and
march of ISIL in the north and east of the country.”

Afghanistan is bordered by Central Asian states in its north and China
on its northeast. From Russia’s and China’s perspectives, rising
instability in these regions can easily spread and wreak wider
regional havoc.

By tapping Turkey, the US is broadening the scope of talks and adding
an actor that can help negotiate a so far elusive Ghani-Taliban
settlement. To be sure, Turkey does not specialize in facilitating
peace settlements.

What Turkey does specialize in is the art of using jihadi elements as
geopolitical tools. By involving Turkey in Afghanistan, the Biden
administration is bidding to extend US-Turkey cooperation in Syria to
the Hindu Kush, a partnership that could convince Pakistan to support
a numerically reduced but open-ended US military presence in
Afghanistan.

Pakistan and Turkey’s mutual support for such an objective could, in
Washington’s apparent calculation, convince the Taliban to agree to
such an arrangement as well.

If the US sees Pakistan as a vital source of support for its long-term
strategic objectives in Afghanistan, then that likely motivated
Lavrov’s somewhat sudden visit to Islamabad.

Both Russia and the US understand that Pakistan — because of its
strong links with the Afghan Taliban — has the power to facilitate or
complicate a longer-term US military stay in Afghanistan.

By visiting Pakistan and offering a “blank check” of cooperation,
Lavrov tried to court Pakistan into blocking any path that 1) leads to
an extended US military presence in Afghanistan, and 2) allows the
spread of jihadi elements to the north and northeast and further into
the Caucasus and China’s Xinjiang.

While Pakistan, having fought its own “war on terror” for almost 15
years, would not want to see yet another wave of jihadis coalescing
next door, it has only limited room to maneuver.

With its economy now largely controlled by the International Monetary
Fund, any move against US interests in Afghanistan could lead the IMF
to refuse to extend its bailout package.

It’s a scenario Pakistan can ill-afford at a time when its economy is
struggling to break out of last year’s negative growth and while Prime
Minister Imran Khan’s incumbent regime faces crucial political
challenges that could bring down his government.

Indeed, as Pakistani officials have confirmed in the past, one
significant reason why Pakistan was able to secure the IMF’s financial
support during the Trump era was a promise it made to extend full
possible cooperation to the US in Afghanistan to end the so-called
“endless war.”

With the Biden administration now “reviewing” the terms of the pact
Trump signed with the Taliban in February 2020, the US may look to
extend its “endless war” as a counter to China and Russia. In that
great game scenario, Pakistan’s support would be crucial.

At the same time, Russia sees in this strategic recalibration a
potential recipe for chaos that spreads jihadis across its southern
flank.

Whether Lavrov made that explicit point during his visit to Islamabad
is still unclear, though his unprecedented offer of bilateral
cooperation across a wide range of fields hinted strongly of a much
wider geopolitical agenda.