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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Snowshoe who wrote (2193)	10/2/2001 5:34:42 AM
From: FaultLine	Respond to of 281500

Russians in Tajikistan Dodge Bullets, Await Strike nytimes.com By REUTERS October 1, 2001 Filed at 5:03 p.m. ET KUPLETIN BORDER POINT, Tajikistan (Reuters) - As the world awaits a U.S. strike on Afghanistan, Russian border guards in next-door Tajikistan dodge sniper fire and uneasily monitor rising tensions across the frontier. Russian Captain Andrei Solovyov says his men have a duty to keep out drugs and disorder associated with the Afghanistan's fundamentalist Islamist Taliban rulers. But that is far from easy on sun-scorched plateau a few hundred meters from tank volleys and machine-gun fire between the Taliban and the opposition. ``My soldiers now spend much more time hiding in trenches during intensive shoot-outs on the other side,'' Solovyov, deputy commander of the base at 24, told visiting reporters. ``But Russia's presence is vital in this region. All that happens there, including a wave of drugs and violence, may soon move to Russia's borders.'' Solovyov was interrupted by the crack of a sniper's bullet fired from the other side of the Pyandzh river separating ex-Soviet Tajikistan and Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union's failed nine-year war in the 1980s precipitated its collapse. The bullet erupted in a cloud of dust near a bunker on a slope a few meters from the improvised news briefing. ``To leave Tajikistan would amount to moving the Afghan border straight to Russia's southern flank,'' said Solovyov, a native of Russia's far east, thousands of km (miles) away. ``Right now, the situation is more or less bearable,'' he said as another shot sailed within inches of a colonel and a foreign cameraman. The United States has identified Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, sheltered in Afghanistan, as its prime suspect in the attacks on New York and Washington on September. But it is by no means clear when the U.S. riposte will occur and what its targets will be. RUSSIA'S ROLE Today, Russia plays a pivotal role in Tajikistan, maintaining some 11,000 border guards and 6,000 regular army soldiers in a country riven by 1992-97 civil war between a secular pro-Moscow government and an Islamist opposition. The military action 250 miles south of the Tajik capital Dushanbe is fully visible -- and audible -- on the other side of the river, with intermittent barrages of heavy mortar and tank shells. Taliban fighters and their adversaries from the Northern Alliance are often seen praying, cooking or gaping across the river at the Russian base and its visitors. Russian officers amuse themselves by listening to an eerie concoction of Afghan music, colorful language and rare military commands from both sides flowing out of their walkie-talkies. Some 12 miles away from Solovyov's outpost, armored vehicles and artillery of Russia's 201st mechanized infantry division stand ready to come to the rescue if the frontline in northern Afghanistan suddenly splashes across the Pyandzh. Servicemen, all ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks except for Russian officers, are united in resolving to contain what they see as dangerous Islamist puritanism. They are also aware of the risks they run. ``They're just kamikazes who love their motherland and are devoted to their military duty,'' one Russian officer said. ''They may just lack time before reinforcement arrives.'' Twenty-five defenders of a nearby outpost were massacred by Afghan Islamist radicals in 1993. Help arrived too late. There is some consolation. Russian border guards appear to enjoy the respect of the local population with all too fresh memories of atrocities of their own civil war. ``If Russia leaves Tajikistan, Afghanistan will definitely come to Tajikistan,'' said soldier Anvar Ailayev, 20, bashful of his ungrammatical Russian. ``Therefore, we must defend Russia.'' Copyright 2001 Reuters Ltd.