Russia jumps into Waziristan?
Saturday, November 24, 2007
A report from Afghanistan says that Afghan troops caught a man wearing a burqa and 1000 pounds of explosives meant to be used against the American and NATO forces in the country. Andre Vladimirovich Bataloff, a 27-year-old man from Siberia “with a flowing red beard, pasty skin and piercing blue eyes” insisted he was a religious student who travelled to Pakistan last year to learn more about his “new faith”. In fact he had first penetrated into (or sent into) Iran from where he crossed into Pakistan and moved to the Al Qaeda stronghold, North Waziristan, There he spent a year living and studying in a small mosque in Mir Ali. In Pakistan everyone knows that the Islamic Jihad Union, a terrorist group led by militants from Uzbekistan, operates a training camp in Mir Ali.
There have been reports from Swat that foreigners with their faces covered and not speaking Pushto were among the terrorists that started the beheadings in the valley. In the last encounter around Mir Ali in North Waziristan, there were 50 foreigners among the 200 militants killed by Pakistani troops. Most of them were identified as Uzbeks, Tajiks and Arabs. Russia has lately adopted an aggressive anti-US stance, and if it is fishing in the troubled waters of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s Tribal Areas, the battle lines will have to redrawn. It will be Kremlin’s payback for what Washington did when the Soviet army was in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Unfortunately, this will have a negative effect on the politics of Pakistan, bringing the crisis of Pakistan’s security to the fore at a time when the country is moving towards elections.