Ties between NATO and Russia were restored this week as a joint council of NATO members and a Russian envoy met in Brussels, the first such meeting since negotiations with the military alliance were suspended in August following Russia's war with Georgia. The renewed dialogue signaled a major improvement in Russia's relations with the United States, which have been at their lowest since the breakup of the Soviet Union. They also suggested that the two sides shared a pivotal bargaining point strong enough to positively impact their relations as a whole: an alternative transit route into Afghanistan.
Both Russian and NATO officials have confirmed that an offer of alternative transit to Afghanistan was in effect. Alternative transit routes to Afghanistan have gained particular urgency because routes through Pakistan, such as the Khyber Pass, have grown increasingly volatile with militant attacks. What was keeping the actual transit from becoming active, officials said, was a lag in finalizing agreements with other transit countries in the former Soviet Union.
Last spring, Russia offered NATO nations transit through its territory to deliver civilian cargo to troops in Afghanistan. Just ahead of the summit in Bucharest in March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov exchanged "letters" outlining Russia‘s agreement to provide transit routes "on a commercial basis," with NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Russia's ambassador to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin, told The Moscow News. In his words, Russia also helped facilitate negotiations for similar agreements with other transit countries such as Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. But relations with Russia soured over its war with Georgia, and the issue stalled. But Rogozin says that Russia never threatened to take back its offer and supported the transit despite the tensions.
"The transit depended on us to a large extent when we offered our partners in the Collective Security Treaty Organization a document on which they could base their agreements of transit," Rogozin told The Moscow News. "Also, we regularly met with ambassadors of this organization, and when the polemic heated up, I told my colleagues that the Russia's transit agreement would not be frozen or suspended, or in any way reconsidered. I also informed NATO headquarters of this. The question now is, when will the agreements [with other countries] start working? This is no longer our issue. The finalization of documents [with other countries] involved a legal process, but I cannot rule out that political issues are involved as well."
A NATO source confirmed this, saying the alliance was happy with its agreement with Russia, and suggested it was a matter of time before other agreements were finalized.
The offer raised the importance of healthy relations with Russia to the fore of international security, underlining just how crucial Moscow has become for Washington. Even amid angry rhetoric over Russia's allegedly "disproportionate" reaction to Georgia's invasion of breakaway South Ossetia, strategic security issues have been on the table all along.
"A northern route is becoming very important [for the troops under U.S. command in Afghanistan]. The route through Pakistan has become dangerous, and up to 50 percent of the cargo ends up not being delivered," Rogozin said. "If they plan to increase troops from 62,000 to 100,000, they will need more logistics support, and 80 percent of that is non-military."
Experts agree that Afghanistan is gaining strategic importance for the United States. According to Boris Kagarlitsky, an expert at the Institute of Globalization and Social Movement, control of Afghanistan has become more important than control of Iraq, and will grant coalition forces a certain amount of leverage with Iran.
"First of all, this is a bargaining point," Boris Kagarlitsky told The Moscow News. "For the Obama administration, the priority is in Afghanistan, not Iraq. Russia has a whole series of leverage points in talks with the Obama administration. The first is the Afghanistan transit. But Russia has not yet decided how to use that leverage, because it has not yet decided what exactly it wants from the new U.S. administration. In general, it knows that it wants better relations."
Relations with Russia may not have been top priority for Washington, but the issue of Afghanistan should make bargaining with Moscow priority, pushing the United States to seek a more reconciliatory position.
"Anything that NATO does, especially in the former Soviet space, is viewed upon with extreme prejudice," James Nixey, Russia and Eurasia Programme Manager at the Chatham House Institute, told The Moscow News. "That does not quite apply to Afghanistan, because this is in Russia's interests for the West to succeed there. But that does not go as far as to wish them well there. There's a certain paradox, because one the one hand they don't want to bolster them. But it's very difficult for them to give their blessing to something's going on in their backyard."
By Anna Arutunyan
