Russia Prepares 1-Million Man Army for Afghanistan - 500 Beiträge pro Seite

[Lancelot]

29 October: The shape of the
governments-to-be of
Afghanistan and Iraq - “when
the war is over� – seems to be
uppermost in the minds of the
US-led alliance engaged in the
war against world terrorism. This
may be a useful academic
exercise, but while it is in
process, the war itself shows strong signs of running
out of steam.
DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence experts ascribe
this loss of momentum to two primary dilemmas:
1. In order to tackle its objectives of overturning the
Taliban regime and rooting out Osama bin Laden’s
terrorist apparatus, the United States needs to field a
ground army of some 400,000 trained combat troops
in Afghanistan alone. At a pinch, US and British
strength combined amounts to less than a third of
this figure – the 100,000 American troops stationed in
bases around Afghanistan’s borders, the Persian Gulf
and the Middle east, and another 20-35,000 British
combat troops.
2. The United States and Britain have never invested
in the kind of intelligence tools required for winning
this war, focusing instead in recent years on satellite
and electronic intelligence, which is of limited use in
Afghanistan and the counter-terror campaign.
America’s deficiency of ground forces for combating
terrorism is the direct outcome oft the collapse of the
international anti-terror coalition doctrine. The
diplomacy employed by US secretary of state Colin
Powell to muster this coalition stripped the United
States of the fighting strength needed for the
campaign itself. The four nations with the right kind
of fighting strength are India, Taiwan, Israel and
Turkey. The first three had to be counted out, while
Turkey was only retained as a pro-American reserve
for securing the Turkish-Iraqi frontier and standing
by in case anti-US turbulence got out of hand in
Central Asia and Pakistan.
Therefore, Washington has painted itself into a
corner with only two options: Declaring a military call
up at home – partial, then full conscription, with all
the political hazards entailed, or turning to the only
other power which commands a substantial military
force, whose enlistment will not jeopardize US long
term goals - Russia.
DEBKAfile’s sources in Moscow report that in the
last ten days, the lights in the planning and
operations departments of the Russian armed forces
have burned brightly round the clock, as staff officers
draft the blueprints for the Russian army’s return to
Afghanistan in a manner very different from its dismal
experience in the 1980s.
This time, Russian troops will be going in on a huge
scale to fight shoulder to shoulder with their
erstwhile foes, the Americans. The Afghanistan
intervention force will be made up of roughly quarter
of a million combat troops and an equal number of
rest air force, intelligence, logistical and services
personnel.
The conditions posed by Russian army chiefs for
meeting President Vladimir Putin’s demand for this
force were:
A. The entire force would not be fully engaged before
winter was over, ie April 2002.
B. The United States would carry all the costs – not
only for the creation and training of the Afghanistan
expedition army, but also for setting up a comparable
force for operation in the former Soviet republics of
Central Asia and Chechnya.
According to DEBKAfile’s Moscow informants,
Putin bowed to the generals’ demands whereupon
they went to work on the new venture without delay.
This means that the Russian military staff is in the
process of building a combat ground force one
million strong.

[Olaf]

was soll das denn?

[HelenDuval]

sorry,zu unwahrscheinlich.


H.