Afghan heroin could kill US-Russian reset

Graham Stack for Russia Profile (www.russiprofile.org)

In context of the “reset” in U.S.-Russian relations, the two countries’ cooperation over Afghanistan has been hailed as a model for working together in other areas, ranging from Europe to Iran and North Korea. But with the reset hardly underway, opinion differences are already emerging between Moscow and Washington over anti-narcotics policy in Afghanistan.

Russia’s security policy hawks tend to react negatively to the United States acting unilaterally, deploying interventionist military power and tweaking UN mandates to expand missions. But when in 2008 U.S. hardliners pushed for the American military and allies to widen the fight against the Afghan Taliban to include military engagement of the country’s billion-dollar narco-industry, including a shoot-to-kill policy against heroin producers and a blanket aerial crop-eradication campaign, Russia’s siloviki stood up and applauded.

U.S. hardliners regarded Afghanistan’s opium production as a crucial source of financing for the strengthening Taliban insurgency, and drew inspiration from the America’s experience of having fought and largely won a war with drug producers in Columbia. In 2007, the U.S. ambassador to Columbia William Wood, an ardent supporter of aerial crop eradication, was reassigned to Afghanistan to step up the war on drugs. “If there is no poppy, there is nothing to traffic,” Wood told reporters on arrival. In 2007, military operations supporting manual eradication got underway, and in January 2009, a leaked letter by NATO’s Supreme Commander General John Craddock to European counterparts declared an effective shoot-to-kill policy for the drug war, saying it was “no longer necessary to produce intelligence or other evidence that each particular drug trafficker or narcotics facility in Afghanistan meets the criteria of being a military objective.”

Iraq, Iran and North Korea are all examples where Russia has vehemently opposed the use of American military force against weapons of mass destruction. But without any sense of irony, Viktor Ivanov, the head of Russia’s Federal Anti-Narcotics Service (FSKN) speaking in February called Afghanistan’s heroin “a weapon of mass destruction of a special kind,” and expressly demanded that the United States and its allies in Afghanistan engage and destroy it.

Ivanov’s reasoning is clear: Russia is the country worst affected by Afghanistan’s heroin exports. According to FSKN statistics, Russia has up to 2.5 million drug addicts, mostly in the critical reproductive age group of 18 to 39, with the number surging by 80,000 a year. Ninety percent of drug addicts in the country use Afghan heroin. These alarming figures do not take into account the enormous number of HIV infections transmitted via dirty needle sharing. “Today it is self-evident for everyone that the state should take decisive emergency measures to prevent an approaching national catastrophe,” Reuters reported Ivanov as saying in May, adding that “it is time the world community got serious about the Afghan drug problem.”

Although Ivanov has no official foreign policy remit, he is not simply a law-enforcement officer lobbying for a larger budget. A former KGB officer, he is a longstanding associate of the current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and a key member of the influential “silovik” network of former KGB officers from St. Petersburg responsible for Russian security policy. He was a top Kremlin aide throughout Putin’s presidency before moving to the FSNK in 2008. And there is also a special personal background to Ivanov’s interest in Afghanistan: he served there with the Soviet forces in the 1980s during the Soviet Union’s disastrous occupation. His move to the FSNK duly shifted the organization’s attention from the domestic to the international dimension of Russia’s heroin problem.

It is testimony to Ivanov’s influence that the joint declaration given by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at June’s Moscow summit listed combating illegal drug trafficking alongside the fight against terrorism and armed extremism as shared goals in Afghanistan, with Obama acknowledging that “Russia has deep concerns about the [Afghan] drug trade and its infiltration into Russia.”

New man on the job

The Obama-Medvedev summit was the birth of the U.S.-Russian “reset,” and the new spirit of cooperation was marked by Russia’s agreement to allow the transit of U.S. weapon cargo to Afghanistan. But ironically, as part of Obama’s global adjustment of foreign policy, the U.S. policy in Afghanistan is also being reset – and the results are not looking like anything Russia would want them to be.

Obama’s shift away from George Bush’s hardline policies has seen both general Craddock and ambassador Wood lose their posts this year. Instead, a veteran Democrat diplomat Richard Holbrooke has taken over the U.S. policy in the area as the American special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Holbrooke is a longstanding opponent of any form of crop eradication, whether on ground or by air, and indeed largely denies that Afghanistan’s opium trade is the main source of funding for the Taliban insurgency.

“If the drugs ended tomorrow, it would not have a major effect on the Taliban source of funding,” Holbrooke declared in June at a ceremony to mark General Stanley McChrystal’s assumption of command of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Holbrooke pointed out that the ground-based crop eradication program has been costly in terms of money and lives, and has failed to make any impact. These are points the Russians agree with – but instead of ending crop eradication, Ivanov is demanding a step-up to aerial eradication, and lamented general Craddock’s departure in an interview he gave to the Kommersant daily in June.

In response to Holbrooke, Ivanov claims it would be possible to end the Afghan opium production swiftly, and adduces two examples: firstly, he says, following the UN’s condemnation of Afghanistan’s heroin exports in 1999, in 2000 and 2001 the Taliban reduced the opium harvest practically to zero. Secondly, the U.S. crop eradication campaign in Columbia has been largely successful. According to Ivanov, 74 percent of the coca crop was destroyed in 2008, with no increase in armed resistance.

Ivanov says the UN should force the United States and its allies to take decisive action against opium production in Afghanistan, firstly by declaring Afghan’s narcotics trade an international threat, as it has done with terrorism and piracy. Following this, Russia should make the next annual renewal of the UN mandate for international troops in Afghanistan conditional on action against heroin production and trafficking. “The further presence of coalition forces in Afghanistan should be made conditional on an undertaking to destroy drug fields,” Ivanov told a conference in April. Russia’s UN Security Council veto means that theoretically, Russia has the leverage to do this.

Ivanov has gone as far as to propose tying U.S. transit of weaponry to Afghanistan via Russia to a more active pursuit of crop eradication on behalf of the Americans. “The granting of transport corridors to NATO forces in Afghanistan should be conditioned on a commitment to destroy sown areas, laboratories, stocks and other infrastructure of the Afghan drug business,” he told Russia’s Duma in late June.

With Russian demands for crop eradication becoming more strident while U.S. strategy moves decisively away from the approach, the signs do not bode well for U.S.-Russian cooperation in the one policy area where it has been strongest to date.

At the same time, however, U.S. strategy is shifting away from unconditional support for the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, an opponent of crop eradication who has been frequently accused of protecting major figures involved in opium and heroin production. Indeed, on August 28 reports appeared in the media that Holbrooke had had a major row with Karzai over allegations of ballot-stuffing in the August 20 presidential elections.

A more distanced approach toward the Karzai administration could make Holbrooke’s plan to go after the big fish of heroin production and trafficking, instead of the small fry opium farmers, seem more plausible to the Russians. This is something that Ivanov, who has called for a UN blacklist of Afghan drug barons to be compiled, could go along with. On the other hand, Russia’s drugs tsar is skeptical that the big fish can be found in Afghanistan. “All these people live a long way from Afghanistan, for instance in United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia,” he told Kommersant in June

Cut the budget deficit and raise energy prices, Biden tells Ukraine

Graham Stack in Kyiv

In a speech in Kiev yesterday July 23, on the last of his Ukraine visit, US vice president Joe Biden told Ukraine to do exactly what the IMF says, and on two specific points: “The Fund requires that your government, and your government agreed to critical reforms to cut the budget deficit, revive a striving [sic*] banking system, and phase out energy subsidies, which I know from experience is a very difficult thing to do. Carrying out this agreement requires very hard choices and tough action, but it will help put you on the road to growth and competitiveness.”

Biden told Ukraine that, “moving toward market pricing for energy is brave, but also absolutely necessary pre-condition.”

Biden argued that shifting to market prices would strengthen Ukraine’s energy security. However, it also the Russian position that Ukraine must shift to market prices for gas.

If the US is resetting its relationship with Russia, it appears the US is also rethinking its relationship with Ukraine.

Biden as expected committed to Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty, and praised Ukraine’s democracy as the ‘the freest country in the region.” He emphasized however NATO or EU membership would be entirely Ukraine’s choice, and that the US would not push Ukraine to join. “The USA supports Ukraine’s deepening ties to NATO and to the European Union. But again, we recognize they are your decisions, your choices, not ours whether you choose the EU or seek to, or NATO. We recognize that how far and how fast to proceed on your choices is, again, a uniquely Ukrainian choice — it is not ours.”

Yesterday, Biden warned that the sustainability of Ukraine’s democracy was threatened by economic collapse and pervasive corruption.

“Mature democracies survive because they develop institutions such as a free press, a truly independent court system, an effective legislature – all of which serve as a check on the corruption that fuels the cynicism and limits growth in any country, including yours,” Biden said. Referring to Ukraine’s economic problems, Mr Biden asked: “Can you name me a place where democracy has flourished where the economic system has failed?”

He also harangued ruling politicians for their failure to work together. “Communications among leaders has broken down to such an extent that political posturing appears to prevent progress.”

Committing the US to respect for national sovereignty is a retreat from the neocon supremacist position, and, although delivered with an anti-Russian twist in the Georgian context, in facts coincides with longheld Russian and Chinese demands for the US to abide by international law.

Underlining the shift, Biden said the US was committed to a “multi-polar world” – an expression straight out of the Putin / Primakov phrasebook.

Ukraine’s poisoned president launches doomed bid for second term

Graham Stack in Kiev

Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko, the world’s most unpopular president according to opinion polls, climbed Ukraine’s highest mountain Sunday July 19 to prove his fitness for a second term in office. At the summit of Mount Hoverla (2016m) in the Carpathians, with a view westwards to the Europe he aspires to, Yushchenko announced officially that he would run for a second term in office in elections in January 2010.

“I would like to officially announce here that I will be running for the Ukrainian presidency in January,” he said.

A small band of supporters who had followed him to the peak in beautiful summer weather struggled with tears after his announcement. Opinion polls give Yushchenko an approval rating of only 2% – less than the margin of error – meaning he is facing utter humiliation in the elections. Pollsters point out that his rating constitutes a world record for unpopularity. His motorcade regularly encounters a hostile cacophony of blaring horns as it winds through Kiev streets.

Yushchenko’s record-breaking unpopularity is astonishing considering his initial approval rating of over 60% on taking office in January 2005. Yushchenko was swept to power by mass protests against electoral fraud in late 2004, known as the Orange Revolution. In the run-up to the rigged elections, opponents poisoned Yushchenko with dioxin. The images of his severe facial scarring that resulted have become an icon of people’s struggle for democracy.

The scarring, the medical term for which is chloracne, and facial immobility are still very obvious. The subtext of yesterday’s ascent of Hoverla was not only symbolic, but also simply to prove that the president is physically fit enough for high office in times of crisis.

Poisoned chalice

Leading international toxicologists familiar with the case argue however that the poison has massively impaired the president’s performance. They dispute Yuschenko’s claim that his body has got rid of 95% of what was one of the highest dioxin doses in humans ever recorded.

“My belief is that he will suffer many ill effects of dioxin for many years, including possible brain damage,” says dioxin expert University of Texas professor Arnold Schechter. “His chloracne not only affects the face, but the whole body – as every single follicle may be involved in severe cases as the one of president Yushchenko is,” agrees Vienna’s Alexandra Geusau.

Yuschenko has traditionally said little about the effects of the still unsolved poisoning, except to claim he is in good health. Last month, however, he admitted he had undergone 26 secret operations in the first two years of his presidency. “Nobody knew about the operations, because they were carried out at the weekend, on Friday evenings, and on Monday I was already back at work,” Yushchenko told journalists, adding that each operation lasted over three hours.

Toxicologists say Yushchenko’s out-of-touch performance in office is a direct result of the poisoning.

During the Orange Revolution, the poisoning added fuel to the popular fury at stolen elections. But according to Valery Khmelko, president of Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, “following the poisoning, Yushchenko became more interested in his presidential palaces, amateur history and bee-keeping than in running the country.” Crisis-hit Ukrainians see their president as out of touch with reality and incapable of exercising power.

British toxicologist Alastair Hay of Leeds University lists lethargy, enervation, numbness, liver damage and weakened immune system as medium-term consequences of dioxin poisoning

“Yuschenko’s behaviour is what you might expect from someone exposed to dioxin in the quantities he was,” says Hay. “The chloracne indicates he is genetically susceptible to dioxins, so he may have many systems of his body damaged. It must have taken an effort of will to continue in his high-octane job.”

Now, in a bitter irony of history, the clear favorite to win the upcoming elections is the man whom the Orange Revolution prevented seizing power in 2004, pro-Russian former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

A further bitter blow is the decision on the part of Barack Obama’s new US administration to send only the vice president to Ukraine, while Obama himself visited Moscow last week without any stop-over in Kiev. Yushchenko has staked everything on a pro-US foreign policy aiming at NATO membership, and Obama’s rapprochement policy with Moscow is making this look like a dead end.

Earlier this week, Yushchenko’s foreign policy spokesman said pointedly that the main topic of discussion with Biden would be to negotiate a visit to Kiev by Obama himself.

Say no to NATO, US experts tell Ukrainians

Graham Stack in Kyiv for Russia Profile

Following the Russian-U.S. reset, a new American policy institute has opened in Kiev to dissuade Ukraine from its bid to Join NATO. Its fellows argue that Ukrainian NATO membership would be bad for both the United States and Ukraine. But while their message is in tune with Ukrainian public opinion, they face an up-hill struggle convincing the foreign policy establishment in both countries.

“Ukraine’s NATO membership is not in Ukraine’s interests. Nor is it in U.S. interests. All that it will create is a nuclear trip wire at the heart of Europe,” argued Anthony Salvia, director of the American Institute in Ukraine (AIU), a non-commercial organization founded this year in Kiev, funded by U.S. citizens. “In Ukraine, U.S. opinion is often represented as being monolithically in favor of Ukraine’s future membership of NATO,” he added. “We’re here in Kiev to show this is definitely not the case.”

AIU is unique in being an American organization campaigning overseas against NATO expansion. “Other American organizations in Ukraine, many of which are funded by the U.S. government, actively promote Ukraine’s entry into NATO at the earliest possible date, despite the fact the majority of Ukraine’s population is opposed to NATO accession,” said Salvia, who served in Ronald Reagan’s White House.

The AIU is aligned, but not affiliated, with the Nixon Center, headed by legendary former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and which publishes the influential journal “National Interest”. In March 2009, the Nixon Center released a review of Russian-U.S. relations arguing that Ukrainian or Georgian NATO membership “could decrease rather than increase Europe’s overall security.” The review called for U.S. policy makers to “work closely with U.S. allies to develop options other than NATO membership to demonstrate a commitment to [Ukrainian and Georgian] sovereignty.”

“The U.S. should refrain from making promises to Ukraine it cannot honor, but which might embolden Ukraine to provoke a conflict. The Ukrainians should realize that the US will never fight Russia over Ukraine,” argued Doug Bando, senior analyst at the conservative Cato institute, and a recent AIU guest speaker in Kiev. The August 2008 Georgian war looms in the minds of all those warning against extending NATO deep into the unstable former Soviet Union. “Ukraine must learn to rely on its own resources for securing its sovereignty, and not to trust to U.S. promises,” said Bando.

“Ukrainian NATO membership, by ruining relations with Russia, would make Ukraine less secure than it is, not more. And it would also harm U.S. security, by ruining the chances for cooperation with Russia over vital issues such as Afghanistan, North Korea and Iran, all issues that the new administration has said it will prioritize,” agreed Salvia.

“There are other mechanisms available for strengthening Ukrainian security,” he added. “One is a new European security treaty, similar to that being proposed by Dmitry Medvedev. The other is for European Union membership. The Kremlin is basically open toward Ukraine’s future EU membership, especially if it is an alternative to Ukraine’s NATO membership”.

Reset in Action

The AIU is in fact part of a wider battle waged over the new U.S. administration’s Russia policy. U.S. President Barack Obama has famously called for “pressing the reset button” in Russian-U.S. relations, but he is advised on Russia by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Michael McFaul, both historic advocates of a tough line with Russia. “We hope Obama listens to a wider range of opinion,” said Salvia.

Underlining the potential of cooperation with Russia, on the other hand, last week’s Moscow summit between Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev saw the Russians sensationally agree to the United States transiting weaponry through Russia to Afghanistan.

And equally sensationally, although little noticed in the West, Obama, speaking to Moscow students, said that NATO membership would require a majority of any country’s population to be in favor – which is not the case in Ukraine. He also said that America would not press any country to join the alliance.

Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership, and Russia’s adamant opposition to this, put the United States in a bind. Washington is unwilling to openly privilege Russian interests over Ukrainian. Changing the situation on the ground in Ukraine could help U.S. policy makers out of this dilemma, hopes the AIU.

It should also not be too hard, given that Ukraine public opinion is solidly anti-NATO. Polls have consistently shown support for joining NATO to hover at around only 20 percent of respondents, with over 50 percent against.

But at the other end of the scale, Ukraine’s powerful foreign policy bureaucracy has an entrenched ideological commitment to joining the military alliance, according to Yelena Biberman, a U.S. embassy policy specialist engaged in research on Ukraine’s foreign ministry.

“Foreign ministry officials are ideologically anti-Russian and nationalist to the extent that they may not always be able to objectively assess Ukraine’s real national interests,” said Biberman, who has interviewed many top foreign ministry officials. “They believe that Russia is inherently imperialistic and bent on regaining control over Ukraine as a step to rebuilding its empire, and NATO membership is the only way to stop this. Even for a new Ukrainian president, it will be very hard to change their perspective.”

This means that for AIU, it is work with opinion makers in the media that matters most. “We don’t engage in lobbying, but work exclusively in the public field holding conferences, talks and round table discussions,” said Salvia. “What we are trying to tell Ukrainians is simply that you can be pro-America and pro-European without having to want to join NATO.”

Would the real Ukraine please stand up?

Graham Stack in Kyiv for Russia Profile (www.russiaprofile.org)

Opinion polls show Ukraine to be a Russian-leaning country very different from the one described by Western media and Ukrainian foreign policy elites.

“If we were to fantasise, and pretend that {Russian Prime Minister} Vladimir Putin would run for the post of Ukrainian president, then according to opinion poll results he would win right off,” says analyst Alexei Lyashenko of Kyiv’s polling institute Research & Branding (R&B). “His only serious competitor would be {Russian President} Dmitry Medvedev.”

The R&B poll published May 25 show that for all the rhetoric about westwards-bound Ukraine breaking free of Russia’s malign influence and Putin’s imperialism, the reality on the ground is very different.

“In fact, Vladimir Putin’s rating in Ukraine is nothing new, but quite steady,” adds Lapshen. “It was over 50% even during the Orange Revolution.”

Opinion poll results published in May indicate that 58% of Ukrainians have a positive relationship to Vladimir Putin, and 56% to current Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. 21% have a neutral relationship to the Russian PM and ex-president, and 16% negative, with the respective figures 25% and 14% for Medvedev.

R&B’s survey also finds that 35% of Ukrainians would like to see Ukraine united with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, compared to 22% who wished to join the EU, and 10% who wanted a restored Soviet Union.

These results were confirmed by a poll published June 17 by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS). According to KIIS president Valery Khmelko, 23% of Ukrainians desire full unification with Russia – compared to only 12% of Russians wishing the same.

Doubtlessly due to the 2008-2009 political and economic crisis wracking Ukraine, the number of Ukrainians desiring ‘reunification’ has risen over the last year from 20% to 23%, and the number of Russians in favour has fallen from 19% to 12%.

“These findings also indicate that the ‘prevailing willingness of Russians to append Ukraine to their country forming one state’ is an erroneous idea as the overwhelming majority of Russians do not want such a union,” notes KIIS president Khmelko.

While only a quarter of Ukrainian respondents want full unification with Russia, 68% want an EU-style border-free regime with Russia, with Russia and Ukraine being ‘independent but friendly states’ without a visa regime or custom controls.

Only 7.8% of respondents were in favour of Ukraine’s relations with Russia becoming the same as relations with other countries, i.e. with border controls, customs and visas.

This in fact contrasts even with sentiment in Russia, where respondents are far more cautious about union with Ukraine. Perhaps due to the Ukrainian leadership’s antagonistic policies towards Russia, amplified by the Russian state-controlled media, only 50% of Russian respondents want to see a border-free regime between the countries. 29.1% want relations with Ukraine to be the same as for other countries.

“Ukrainians’ attitude to Russia is much better than Russians’ attitude to Ukraine; over 90% of people in Ukraine have a positive attitude to Russia – and it has become even better over the past year,” points out Khmelko.

According to Lyashenko, the Ukrainian affection for Putin and Medvedev is most concentrated in East Ukraine, where 75% are positive. However, even in the West Ukraine districts where Russian is hardly spoken, around 25% of respondents described their relationship to the Russian leaders as positive.

Surprisingly, in contrast to geography, age group does not influence the attitude towards Russia and its leaders, according to the polls.

“Ukrainians preference for Russian state-controlled television, and the desire for strong leadership in crisis times, also play a role,” says Lyashenko.

“But the main cause that Medvedev and Putin score so high,” he adds, “ is the endless conflicts and score-settling in Ukrainian politics that make them look good.”

None of the current Ukrainian leaders can compete with Putin and Medvedev in terms of popularity. Pro-Russian head of opposition Party of Regions Viktor Yanukovych currently enjoys a 25% rating, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko 14%, and new face Arsenyi Yatsenyuk 13%.

Only 2% of Ukrainians would vote for President Yushchenko, the most anti-Russian top Ukrainian official, in upcoming elections January 2010.

Neither do Ukrainians have much sympathy for Georgian President Mikheil Sakhashvili, whom Yushchenko vocally supported during the country’s conflict with Russia over South Ossetia August 2008. According to Lyashenko, 45% have a negative opinion of Saakashvili, and only 11% a positive opinion.

According to an opinion poll published in Polish daily Rzeczpospolita in March 2009, 56% of Polish respondents fear Vladimir Putin, and 58% believe that Russia is conducting a foreign policy that endangers Poland’s national security. This despite the fact that Poland has no border with Russia, excluding Kaliningrad, and is a member of both NATO and the EU.