To: Thomas M. who wrote (12876 ) 3/21/2002 5:17:44 AM From: GUSTAVE JAEGER Respond to of 23908 Russia must feel relieved that it successfully passed the Afghan torch to the Yanks...cdi.org Excerpt: With Russia's threats to bomb Afghanistan - the meeting of Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev with Ahmad Shah Massoud, promises of full-scale military help for the latter and plans to broaden its military presence in Tajikistan - the country is fast spiraling into a new, much larger, conflict than the Chechen war, without having the slightest idea what it hopes to do. The Fergana Valley is a powder keg lit not so much by the Taliban as by domestic problems - poverty, youth unemployment, corruption of the secular authorities, and ethnic and territorial conflicts over access to irrigated land. Unfortunately, the region will remain mired in these conflicts for decades to come. But this won't concern Russia directly unless Russia itself sets out on a path of war first with the Taliban and then with all the other forces in the region. This would make Chechnya look like child's play. The methods that are the only way we know of waging war, our racial and ideological alienation from the local population, whom we have no solutions to offer to real problems other than our megalomania, will quickly increase the number of armed people ready to fight us. This could be a force of tens of millions. No matter what legions we send, they'll dissolve in this human sea with no frontlines, no borders, no directions. The Russian bear already has a paw caught in the Chechen trap. It can either pull it out or cut it off. But in the wolves' lair that is the Fergana Valley, Russia will lose its skin entirely. But our generals, liberals and spin doctors will tell us that this is our Eurasian Shambala - the mystical Shithouse into which our most right sort of people is following Putin.(Andrei Piontkovsky is director of the Center of Strategic Research.) ________________________