By Anton Evstratov
Not long ago, the American newspaper The New York Times (what even the president of the United States called nothing more than “fake news”) published a series of materials on the alleged financial support to the Taliban movement (a terrorist organization banned in Russia Federation) from Russia.
Citing anonymous sources allegedly from US intelligence agencies, the NYT published a package of articles claiming that Russia not only “cooperates” with the Taliban in Afghanistan, but also funds them with the task of “killing American military”.
After a while, according to the tradition of the modern system of dissemination of disinformation, the publication of the New York Times was picked up by other Western media, not only American, as well as by officials. Some “evidence” has appeared that Russia has “sent money transfers to the Taliban in Afghanistan from addresses belonging to Russian intelligence structures.”
This information does not stand up to scrutiny. Experts note that it is not only a fake news, but also a fake which undermines the trust in the American media. What kind of “money transfers from Russian intelligence addresses” can we talk about? And what kind of “addresses” American journalists known, and why Russia “suddenly needs to send funds to Afghanistan”? … If this were true, the awareness of the US media could arouse undoubted respect, but apparently it is not the case.
The expert community notes that there can be only one explanation for this informational fill. The American facilities themselves could use counterfeit addresses, which in the conditions of the development of modern information technology is by no means an impossible task, to try to discredit Russia’s steps to resolve the Afghan conflict.
If, of course, it makes sense to talk about the presence of some “facts” in the NYT itself , the American edition, and the media from the United States and other countries that shared his “discovery”, have not yet provided any confirmation of their thesis.
A separate, important detail: it is necessary to take into account the moment when these articles with accusations against Russia appeared in the American press: this happened exactly when US President Donald Trump confirmed his readiness to withdraw a significant portion of the US contingent from Afghanistan.
It is no secret that some representatives of the American financial elites have long sought to use the presence of American troops in Afghanistan to solve their own economic problems. There is also the issue of the control of drug trafficking. The volume of opiates (opium poppy-based drugs) produced in Afghanistan since the start of the US operation in this country has grown more than 25 times. There are those who cannot afford to lose such money that literally flows into America’s “money bags” from drug sales.
Therefore, there is the need of at least some clues to convince Congress and the US presidential administration that the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan “may be premature.” As one of the schemes, a fictional story can be interpreted as “the Russians finance the Taliban”.
This is a kind of new “horror story” for American elites, which boils down to cultivating Washington’s main fear: “Russia can strengthen its positions in Central Asia and the United States can lose control mechanisms over this strategically important region “. In a series of articles we have written about the precariousness of the positions in Central Asia of the United States, compared to those of China and Russia.
The task of the American financial and political elites is also connected with the attempt to completely withdraw Russia from the Afghan settlement process. After all, it is clearly that it is not in the interest of the United States to have a leading actor in front of it, who may be able to extinguish the fire of the long-term war in Afghanistan and block its further spread in the region.
Today the war in Afghanistan is not in the interest of any of the states of the macro-region: India, Pakistan, Tajikistan. And even more, it is not in the interests of Russia. But it is quite consistent with the geopolitical interests of the United States. In this regard, the American elites are looking for an opportunity to strengthen their position in the region, using, as we see, all possible means, including a fake trick about alleged transfer of money from Russia to Taliban terrorists.
Author: Anton Evstratov (Russian historian, publicist and journalist living in Armenia, lecturer at the Department of World History and Foreign Regional Studies at the Russian-Armenian University in Yerevan).
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights).