MOSCOW, Apr 27—Despite its importance, Russia’s perspective has been missing from many previous analyses of coalition policy in Afghanistan. Dmitri Trenin and Alexey Malashenko fill that gap with a new report that takes a fresh look at the coalition’s involvement in Afghanistan. They conclude that Moscow is an essential part of the Afghan equation that is often overlooked.

Russia remains cautious about becoming too involved in the conflict, but Moscow fears the prospect of instability in Central Asia and drug trafficking from Afghanistan. Russia wants to:

  • Prevent an outright Taliban victory fearing that if the Taliban regain control they could export radicalism and support rebel activity in Russia’s near abroad. Even though there is a rivalry with the United States for influence in Central Asia, Russia essentially supports the U.S.-led coalition.
  • Stem the flow of drugs out of Afghanistan to Russia’s consumers. Its leaders worry about the exponential growth in narcotics production in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban.
  • Restore a neutral, pacified Afghanistan to serve as a buffer state between Central Asia and the Greater Middle East.

“Russia views Afghanistan today largely through the prism of security threats to itself and its Central Asian neighborhood, where Moscow aspires to soft dominance,” write Trenin and Malashenko.

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NOTES

  • Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, has been with the Center since its inception. He retired from the Russian Army in 1993. From 1993–1997, Trenin held posts as a senior research fellow at the NATO Defense College in Rome and a senior research fellow at the Institute of Europe in Moscow.
  • Alexey Malashenko is a scholar-in-residence and co-chair of the Religion, Society, and Security Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center. He is the author and editor of numerous books on Islam, Chechnya, and other issues, including The Islamic Alternative and the Islamist Project (Carnegie Moscow Center, 2006), Russia and Islam (Carnegie Moscow Center, 2007), Ramzan Kadyrov. The Chechen Version of Russian Authoritarianism (Carnegie Moscow Center, 2009).
  • The Carnegie Moscow Center was established in 1993 and accommodates foreign and Russian researchers collaborating with Carnegie’s global network of scholars on a broad range of contemporary policy issues relevant to Russia—military, political, and economic.
  • The Carnegie Russia and Eurasia Program has, since the end of the Cold War, led the field on Eurasian security, including strategic nuclear weapons and nonproliferation, development, economic and social issues, governance, and the rule of law.