Afghans open a front in Moscow

And they invited me to visit the construction site

Two significant events that are directly related to Russian-Afghan relations , but are in no way connected with each other, occurred the other day in Moscow. On October 21, a representative office in Russia of the National Front of Afghanistan (NFA) was established. And yesterday, at the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI), the Afghan Investment Agency presented promising projects of economic cooperation with Russia.

The creation of the NFA representative office took place in an informal but very solemn atmosphere in the banquet hall of one of the Moscow clubs, where several dozen representatives of the Afghan diaspora in Russia from St. Petersburg, Rostov, Krasnodar, and several people from Moscow gathered. The creation of the Popular Front, a new political bloc in Afghanistan, which included 14 parties, was announced only six months ago, on April 4, 2007 in Kabul. Just at that moment, Afghan President Hamid Karzai was visiting India. The leader of the Popular Front was the ex-president of Afghanistan Burhanuddin Rabbani. The APF's supreme council included the grandson of former King Zahir Shah, Prince Mustafa Zahir, the country's Vice President Ahmad Zia Masoud, Speaker of Parliament Yunus Qanuni, Minister of Energy and Water Resources Ismail Khan, former Defense Minister Marshal Fahim, former Minister of Commerce Mustafa Kazimi, former field commander Abdurashid Dostum, several influential members of parliament and a number of former mujahideen.

The Popular Front positions itself as a systemic opposition to the ruling regime in Afghanistan led by Karzai. Expressive evidence of this was the speech in Moscow by the representative of the executive council of the Popular Front, Akim Tursun, who arrived from Kabul. Talking about the atrocities of the Taliban and the support that Pakistan provides them, the Kabul guest emphasized Hamid Karzai's desire to fight the enemies of Afghanistan. But he immediately noted that the president was clearly not coping with these tasks and the task of the Popular Front was to help him. The speech of Dr. Abdul Khalil Abasi, a pediatrician and leader of the Afghan diaspora in St. Petersburg, who headed the NFA representative office in Russia and the CIS countries, was structured in the same spirit. A born orator with a thunderous voice and excellent diction, as his comrades say, a convinced communist, Dr. Abasi convinced his compatriots that the APF “was created not against the state power and personally the President of Afghanistan, the respected Hamid Karzai, but to restore peace and stability in the country, and is in this direction the reliable support of the President of Afghanistan.”

But if you analyze the composition of the Popular Front, which included mainly former Mujahideen and field commanders of the former Northern Alliance, led by the national hero of Afghanistan, the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, it becomes obvious that the tasks of the front are much broader than the assistance to Karzai declared by the “front-line soldiers.” Observers in Afghanistan see the grandson of the late king, Prince Mustafa Zahir, who joined the leadership of the Popular Front, as a serious contender for the post of future president of Afghanistan. The next presidential elections there are due to take place in 2009. Moscow’s reaction to the establishment of a representative office of the Popular Front in Russia boils down to “complete ignorance and sincere surprise.” This is exactly how the Russian Foreign Ministry responded to Vremya Novostey’s request to comment on this event.

Moscow paid much more attention to the arrival of a representative delegation of Afghan business circles, whose members, together with the Afghan Ambassador to Moscow Zalmay Aziz, spoke to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry about how Russian investors were welcome in their country. It turned out that in Afghanistan, where the laws of a market economy are protected by the constitution, there is almost the most liberal investment legislation in Asia. There are short-term (four years), medium-term (six years) and long-term (eight years) tax exemptions for investors. Products produced at enterprises built under investment projects are also not subject to duties. Afghan law allows private investors to transfer profits outside the country. They have the shortest period for registering enterprises in the region - only seven days and the lowest import customs duties - 4.2% (in their neighbors they are much higher: in India - 22%, and in Pakistan - 17.3%). According to the World Bank, Afghanistan has now become the most convenient place in the region to start a business.

The guests were sincerely sad that the Russians were absent from the world’s largest “construction site,” which is now Afghanistan, where about $2 billion is being developed annually. To these calls, a representative of the Russian Ministry of Economic Development delicately responded that “joint Russian-Afghan projects began but did not always end successfully due to security problems in Afghanistan...” Nevertheless, both sides demonstrated enviable optimism when talking about the prospects for cooperation, especially after the problems of Afghanistan’s financial debt to Russia were resolved a couple of months ago.

Arkady DUBNOV