Russian expert says the USA seeks to increase conflict potential in Central Asia

Security in Central Asia can only be achieved through integration into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Collective Security Agreement Organization, Russian scholar Alexander Kniazev said at an International conference in Kabul on April 20. The conference, Securing Afghanistan Again in Pursuit of Commander Massoud’s Vision, was organized by the Ahmad Shah Massoud Fund.

According to Kniazev, if we discuss the policy of US new administration in Afghanistan as realistic politics we see a primarily important contradiction between its declared aims and the practice. “Increasing its military presence and expanding the geographical area of it, including involving Pakistani territory, can only signify that the US administration’s aspiration is to significantly increase conflict potential in the Central Asian region,” Kniazev says.

Kniazev says that the optimal regional security system can be only created in the event of the mutual integration of such countries whose strategic interests are not mutually antagonistic and whose presence in the region “does not contradict the traditional values of the people living there.” The Shanghai Organization and the Military-Political organization of former Post-Soviet Countries, the Collective Security Agreement Organization, which is part of the Russian EGIDIT, are seen as the best ways of achieving this.

Kniazev considers that regional countries which have not yet been “fully realized” must admit this, and other “geoeconomic and geopolitical realities,” and cardinally change their foreign policy concepts. The speaker is of course expressing the claims of Moscow, which considers Central Asia as its “sphere of influence” and now is obviously trying to scare the West and, first of all, the USA.