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Nearly 40 years ago, the Friendship Bridge was grandly opened, connecting the Soviet Union with its new satellite, the emerging Socialist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
But Pyotr Gavrilenko believes that the 800-meter-long reinforced concrete structure separates two completely different worlds.
In May 1982, at the age of 19, wearing an unfit uniform and oversized boots, he crossed the bridge from the town of Termez, which is now located in southern Uzbekistan, when he was frightened and sweating profusely.
He recalled that in the sweltering heat, he crossed the Amudaria River in a military truck and entered a dystopia, where identity and loyalty were fickle and fatally unpredictable.
After sunset, a friendly man with a wrinkled face and a smile will turn into a ruthless “Dushman” or “enemy” in Dari, just as the Soviet soldier calls a U.S.-backed jihadist.
A boy who smiles and yells “hello” in Russian will set up a booby trap near the Soviet base.
“They are like werewolves. They are still,” Gavrilenko, a 58-year-old retired man who now lives in the western Russian city of Bryansk, told Al Jazeera.
The Soviet invasion of 1979-1989 and the subsequent civil war resulted in the deaths of more than 2 million Afghans, and more people became refugees, turning this westernized, mostly secular country into a safe haven for al-Qaeda and the longest armed conflict in the United States. battlefield.
Gavrilenko had a gunshot wound on his right thigh, leaving a pale scar that still makes him limp.
His occasional nightmares were full of sharp bullets and the shouts of his dying comrades.
He binge drinking for three or four days a year and visits the graves of other Afghan veterans who died in the post-1990s from old injuries, alcoholism, or joining criminal gangs.
He eagerly read and watched news about the Taliban rushing through Afghanistan and occupying major cities.
Gavrilenko said: “When I heard them swear forever peace and saw them shaking hands with our diplomats, I knew they would stab us the moment we turned.”
But the top Russian diplomat does not think so.
“They are sane people,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on July 23.
“They made it clear that they do not intend to cause trouble to Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbors. They will fight the Islamic State (ISIL) uncompromisingly and are ready to discuss the political structure of their country with other Afghans because they have been accused. Want to establish an Islamic emirate based on Islamic law,” he said.
He mentioned the latest delegation of Taliban officials, which visited his department in central Moscow in early July for closed-door talks.
Such talks have been held in Moscow since 2017, and Taliban officials have passed by Russian diplomats in countless peace talks in Qatar.
on Monday, When violence enveloped KabulRussia said it is contacting Taliban officials through its embassy in the Afghan capital, but said Moscow will take time to decide whether to recognize the new authority.
But Russia’s attitude towards the Taliban “has not changed,” Moscow-based analyst Alexei Muhin told Al Jazeera.
“There is no goal to legitimize the Taliban, but yes, one goal is to talk to them to reach certain agreements, agreements and restrictions in Afghanistan and neighboring countries. This approach is purely pragmatic,” he said.
This approach follows years of mutual contempt and distrust.
In 2000, when the movement controlled two-thirds of Afghanistan, it recognized Chechnya’s independence, allowed Chechen separatists to train on its territory, and declared a “jihad” against Russia.
The Kremlin still bans the Taliban from being a “terrorist organization”; a Russian court has sentenced six supporters to prison.
After the attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was seeking to establish closer ties with the West, allowed the coalition forces headed by the United States to use Russian airspace and acquiesced to the deployment of troops by the United States and NATO in the former Soviet Union. -Soviet Union Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
But then Moscow slammed Washington and NATO for turning a blind eye to poppy cultivation and the rapid increase in heroin production smuggled north through Central Asia, making Russia the world’s largest consumer of opioids.
Another expert said that Moscow’s consistent approach is the problem.
“Although it is logical for Russia to try to continue its dialogue with the Taliban, Russia has no idea what it wants to see in Afghanistan after NATO leaves, how it wants to interact with Afghanistan, and what it wants,” Pavel Luzin, Washington A Russian defense analyst at the Jamestown Foundation, a SAR think tank, told Al Jazeera.
Afghanistan today is very different from the country the Taliban almost controlled between 1996 and 2001.
He said its population has almost doubled-to 38 million-and it is becoming more urbanized.
The structure of the Pashtun tribe that gave birth to the Taliban is disintegrating, and the organization is seeking support from the Afghan minorities—Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Hazaras.
Luzin said that Russia does not intend to invade Afghanistan again, but it tends to exaggerate its threat to strengthen its presence in its own backyard.
“The only thing that Moscow definitely pursues is to become the dominant military force in Central Asia, as a defender of regional rulers, from the mythical threat of Afghanistan, and to sell its’services’.”
Rulers in these regions tend to oppose Islam politically and have a bloody history with the Taliban.
Central Asia in the former Soviet Union is a region with a population of 74 million. Beijing is increasing its economic influence, but Russia has a dominant position in terms of military presence and soft power.
In mid-July, Lavrov warned regional diplomats and the embattled Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
“Everyone understands, [West’s] The mission failed,” he said at a regional meeting in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, which is located about 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) north of the Friendship Bridge.
According to reports, shortly before his speech, the Uzbek authorities built dozens of huge tents beside the bridge to prepare for a possible refugee wave.
At about the same time, hundreds of Afghan refugees defeated pro-Ghani soldiers who had entered neighboring Tajikistan from Afghanistan, but were sent back to Kabul by chartered plane.
Lavrov said: “There is a real risk of instability spreading to neighboring countries.”
An exiled opposition leader said that the Taliban-led country may destabilize the most populous country in this region of Uzbekistan. Although Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoev lifted restrictions on religious life, Still criticized by human rights organizations for alleged violations of religious freedom.
“Encouraged by the government, young people with radical ideas are growing at an alarming rate. Coupled with increasing corruption, weak secular civil society, uneducated youth, and ubiquitous lawlessness, it has created a kind that only needs sparks. Burn the mixture,” Niagara Hiduitova, who leads the opposition party but is now in exile in the United States, told Al Jazeera.
But the overflow is not necessarily related to the Taliban.
Thousands of ISIL fighters have taken refuge in northern Afghanistan, including natives from Central Asia.
They may want to fight for their way home, but their immediate goal is to survive and possibly resist the Taliban.
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