Mullah Omar gets a Russian visitor
Posted by seumasach on March 23, 2011
M.K.Bhadrakumar
24th March, 2011
He can be disarmingly charming. Like any ethnic Uzbek. Plus he has cultivated a great sense of humor, especially the sardonic variety that is a Russian trademark, which sees you through adversities. He was trained in the tricks of his trade at the best professional schools in Moscow.
A consummate Orientalist – that is what he has been, coming in the long distinctive tradition of Russian diplomacy that places an overriding accent on area specialists. They keep serving for decades altogether in the same region and over time they become all but “natives”, speaking the local language, breathing the local customs and ethos, reveling in the local cuisine and having a whale of a time – and all the while filing back to the court in St Petersburg the chronicles of their subtle findings or making moves on the Central Asian chessboard.
That is probably the best way to describe Zamir Nabiyevich Kabulov. As a gifted Soviet and post-Soviet Russian diplomat he has only served in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan through the past 34 years, including as the Russian ambassador in Kabul, which was his most recent posting until last year. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev didn’t have to look far to decide Kabulov was his best choice for the new post of presidential special representative for Afghanistan. Medvedev signed the executive order on Tuesday.
The Kremlin’s executive orders are always a treat to read and study. Kabulov’s in particular. They say much about the thought processes within the closed Kremlin walls. Kabulov’s executive order prioritizes his mission in its pecking order:
His focus is unmistakably on the Russian-Afghan relationship in all its aspects from the perspective of Russian national interests and priorities at a defining moment in Afghanistan’s history and in the geopolitics of the region.
The fact that Medvedev has established a new post of presidential special representative for Afghanistan underscores Moscow’s assessment that a “hands-on” approach is called for over and above the normal diplomatic tools and instruments already available. Someone who can put it all together – the big picture and the brush strokes and keep working on the canvas without being hamstrung by the hurlyburly of day-to-day preoccupations over bread and butter.
The executive order makes the customary reference to the new appointee’s worthy credentials as “an experienced diplomat and Orientalist”. And then, out of the blue, it adds that Kabulov “repeatedly held talks on the release of Russian pilots with the leadership of the Taliban in Kandahar, including [Taliban leader] Mohammed Omar”. There was no real need to have said that. It almost seems jarring to single out one mission in a distinguished diplomat’s checkered career. But it said all that needed to be said.
By the language of the sport of cricket, one would shout from the crease in the heat of the moment: “Howzaat!” Is there an umpire nearby who could annotate the trajectory of Russian thinking? Not much ingenuity is needed to comprehend that Moscow is opening a line to the Taliban leadership and sending into the Hindu Kush someone who can meaningfully converse with the Quetta shura(council). Pakistanis know Kabulov, Iranians know him and Mullah Omar knows him. Afghan President Hamid Karzai knows him, too.
It is an audacious move on Moscow’s part. But then, as the executive order says: “He [Kabulov] has been awarded the Order for Personal Courage, the Order of Honor, and the Order of People’s Friendship for his achievements in Afghanistan. He also holds Afghan state awards.”
Kabulov’s mind is an open book – as far as a diplomat’s mind can be. While serving in Kabul, he was an easily accessible ambassador and even American military commanders used to drop by to pick his brains. Kabulov’s main complaint, though, was that the Americans were good listeners, but not good learners.
He kept harping on that the United States was repeating the same mistakes that the Soviet Union made in Afghanistan during its occupation in the 1980s, and to complicate matters, American policies have been innovating on Soviet mistakes by inventing original mistakes of their own for which as he once told John Burns of the New York Times, “We [Russia] do not own the copyright.”
He counted as common “Soviet-American mistakes” the following:
Kabulov has never hidden his thinking that the only way to salvage the situation is to swiftly “Afghanize” it. Russian policies are increasingly veering round to a resuscitation of the bilateral relationship with the government in Kabul and adding sinews of economic content to it by reviving Soviet-era projects in Afghanistan. While doing this, Russian diplomacy is harmonizing with the US-Russia reset, tapping into it and developing synergy.
Moscow is also establishing lines of communication to the Taliban leadership. Kabulov was a participant in the delicate negotiations with the Taliban leadership in Kandahar in 1995 for the release of Soviet prisoners of war in the hands of the mujahideen. In the process, he became one of a handful of people outside Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence who came face-to-face with Mullah Omar.
Ironically, American diplomats assisted in the negotiations between Moscow and Kandahar at that time. Maybe, Kabulov can return the favor. At any rate, he knows for sure that Islamabad was and will always be an ardent facilitator of any contacts he may need with Mullah Omar. He is a popular figure among the folks in Islamabad.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
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