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AFGHANISTAN WAR TO FLARE UP ANEW IN SPRING, RUSSIAN EXPERT PROPHESIES

MOSCOW, NOVEMBER 29, RIA NOVOSTI. -- In spring, the war in Afghanistan will flare up anew. This opinion was voiced in a RIA Novosti interview by Alexei Vasiliyev, a Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, director of its Africa and the Middle East Institute and editor-in-chief of the Asia and Africa Today magazine.

He said that with an advent of winter lull will come in Afghanistan, with major events to unfold in spring.

Vasiliyev noted that, if the Taliban stronghold Kandahar falls, "the Taliban will disperse among the locals and the war in Afghanistan will go on. In spring it will gain in intensity".

The Russian Afghanistan expert said that talk of elections and democracy in Afghanistan is "idle, having nothing to do with reality".

Vasiliyev believes that "there can only be agreement between various ethnic groups on co-existence in a united state".

In order to estimate possible aftermath of the United Nations' Bonn conference on Afghanistan, we should wait and see whether the opposition Northern Alliance -- an organisation of ethnic and religious minorities of Afghanistan which has won the war -- "will, in reality not on paper, share power with Pashtuns, constituting the basic ethnos populating the country". Vasiliyev reminds that the Taliban relied mostly on Pashtuns and was in agreement with the leaders of Pashtun tribes.

Alexei Vasiliyev views the Bonn conference as "an attempt at creating an ideal power structure in isolation from Afghan reality". It is not even clear what will be the final configuration of such a government.

Vasiliyev is sceptical about return prospects for the "albeit symbolical" king to Afghanistan. To Vasiliyev, it is inadmissible for Iran, which "stands behind the back of the Northern Alliance, especially for its Shiite portion, Hazaras". "For the former shah-ruled Iran, the return of a monarch to a neighbouring country is inadmissible for internal considerations", believes Vasiliyev.

As regards Russia, Afghanistan is in needs rehabilitation but while Russia nothing "except symbolical gestures", to get involved, notes Vasiliyev. Besides, the Afghan population's attitude to Russia is as negative as before". Northern Alliance leaders had participated in the war against Soviet troops, although present-day interests prompted them to cooperate with Russia, said Alexei Vasiliyev.