Russia and Iran are “propping up the terrorist networks that are killing innocent people” in Afghanistan, the U.S. ambassador to NATO said Friday.
“Russia is not helping at all. … Iran is not helping at all,” Ambassador Kay Bailey Hutchison told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a U.S.-backed outlet. “We hear this when we’re in Afghanistan, and we hear from the military leaders. They talk about the enablers — those who have the money and the capacity to be helpful but instead are really propping up the terrorist networks that are killing innocent people.”
U.S. officials have aired suspicions that Russia has been arming the Taliban over the past year, which Russia has denied.
Hutchison’s more-explicit rebuke comes as both sides contemplate their strategy for Afghanistan, 17 years after the United States first invaded in pursuit of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda. Russia recently called for members of a security bloc that it leads with China to take an expanded role in the country, while representatives from the NATO alliance vowed Friday to continue backing the central government in Kabul.
“There should be no doubt about NATO’s position: NATO will continue to provide the support that the Afghan Government has requested so we can help Afghanistan fully provide for its own security,” the top diplomats from every NATO member state said in a joint statement Friday.
Western officials chiefly focused on Pakistan when discussing the danger of Afghanistan’s neighbors undermining Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s efforts to negotiate a lasting peace. President Trump’s national security team developed a new strategy the region that prioritizes pressuring Pakistan to deprive terrorists of the safe havens that they use to launch cross-border attacks in Afghanistan.
But the NATO statement on Afghanistan also contained a challenge to Russia and Iran.
“We echo President Ghani’s call on regional actors to cooperate more closely on fighting terrorism and to support the Afghan government’s peace and reconciliation efforts,” it said. “In this regard, we also encourage Iran and Russia to contribute to regional stability by fully supporting an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process.”
Army Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has pointedly declined to dispute reports that Russia is arming the Taliban. Nicholson also protested in April “the overt legitimacy lent to the Taliban by the Russians.” More recently, Afghan forces have reported that Iranian commanders are participating in Taliban attacks.
Russian officials have hinted that they may take a larger role in Afghanistan, in the name of fighting terrorism. “We must redouble our efforts to preclude the proliferation of conflicts from Afghanistan and to promote a political settlement of the Afghan crisis,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.
Hutchison, a former Texas senator Trump appointed as the U.S. representative at NATO last year, said there’s a simple way for Russia to help.
“We call on Russia, Iran, and Pakistan to do more, and we call on places like India and China who could do more and have not gotten as involved as we think they could by — number one — saying to Pakistan: ‘You have a chance to come in with the international community and be [involved in] a positive effort,’” she said. “‘We need to rally all of the capabilities that we have to stop terrorism in Afghanistan, which is then exported to many other countries around there. We want to stop it for the Afghan people and for all of the countries that would be invaded by terrorists.’”
