Proximity and Self-Interest

In Central Asia, the worries about Afghanistan are real

The debate still goes on in the U.S. over why the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan last December. Hawkish observers--including National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski--have argued that the move could turn out to be Moscow's first big step toward the oil and warm waters of the Persian Gulf. Historian George Kennan and other defenders of detente say no, the Kremlin was acting defensively to shore up its southern border. Not surprisingly, the latter interpretation is endorsed in the Soviet Union. Also not surprisingly, an insistence on the defensive, legitimate and temporary nature of the Afghan operation echoed throughout interviews conducted by TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott during a tour of Transcaucasia and Central Asia.

The invasion was the most sensitive subject bound to come up in interviews with an American journalist, and the officials had carefully rehearsed their opening thoughts. Baltabai Yusupov, an Uzbek newspaper editor in Tashkent, even introduced what he called "strictly my own personal opinion" by noting for the record: "Of course, I personally agree entirely with the position expressed by Comrade Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev in Pravda." Last month the Soviet President justified the invasion as a defense of Afghanistan against intervention by the forces of "imperialism."

In many of the interviews there was a revealing shift in emphasis as the discussions continued. At first those interviewed stressed the "fraternal" nature of the invasion--a generous Soviet response to a cry for help from a beleaguered neighbor. Gradually the stress shifted to Soviet self-interest--the desire to cauterize a festering, perhaps malignant sore on the soft underbelly of the U.S.S.R.

Sakin Begmatova, Foreign Minister of the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic,* began by stating, "We wanted to make sure that no one strangles the Afghans' people's revolution." As the conversation went on, she recalled an incident--before the April 1978 revolution that brought the Marxists to power in Kabul--when the Soviets helped the Afghans fight a plague of locusts near the border. "That could have spread to us," noted Begmatova, "the locusts threatened crops on both sides of the border."

Might one reason why the Soviet Union moved into Afghanistan be to prevent the spread of a political locust plague into the U.S.S.R.? Begmatova denied heatedly that she had intended any such analogy: It is the official Soviet position that the Central Asian republics are utterly loyal to Moscow and that their Muslim populations are immune to contamination from the south, where Islamic fundamentalism and militancy are rampant.

Over and over again, especially toward the end of any discussion of Afghanistan, the issue of proximity kept coming up. Warned Begmatova: "I say to you as a human being, as a woman, as a mother and as a grandmother, that country [Afghanistan] is right on our border." Gairat Sapargaliyev, a law professor in Alma-Ata, said: "Afghanistan is, after all, a country on our own border!" Sapar Baizhanov, the editor in chief of Socialist Kazakhstan, put it this way: "We're not talking about Canada, after all, we're talking about a country on our own borders."

That recurring concern with the security of the frontier seems genuine and deeply ingrained. Long before the massive airlift of soldiers into Afghanistan, Soviet authorities had emphasized the close historical ties between the peoples of Soviet Central Asia, particularly Uzbekistan, and of Afghanistan. "The Uzbeks and Afghans--we're one people," said Khelyam Khudaiberdiyev, an official of the state radio and television in Tashkent. He went on to express a feeling of almost familial responsibility toward his backward cousins to the south: "We have a saying that our dogs live better than the Afghans lived under the old regime there" (referring to the monarchy and Daoud government overthrown in '78).

Yet even if one gives the benefit of the doubt to the Soviets and accepts as their main motive for the Afghan invasion a determination to protect their border, the "events in Afghanistan" are still ominous. The legalistic fictions used to justify the invasion are distinctly reminiscent of those used to justify "the events in Czechoslovakia" twelve years ago. Then it was called "the temporary deployment of Soviet troops on the territory of Czechoslovakia," ostensibly at the request of the Czechoslovak peoples--even though the invasion crushed the most popular Prague regime in 20 years. Now it is called "the introduction of a limited contingent of Soviet troops temporarily into Afghanistan," ostensibly at the invitation of a government whose head was summarily executed. Moreover, what might be called the Afghan Doctrine of 1979-80 has threatening implications for other crisis-prone countries along the southern border of the U.S.S.R.--especially Iran. Consider the following hypothetical chain of events:

Iran's revolution enters a new, secular phase as Ayatullah Khomeini and the mullahs are pushed aside. There is a power struggle--possibly even civil war--between various factions. Leftists, perhaps self-avowed Marxists, come out on top, but the unrest continues. Separatist Kurds stir up more trouble than ever from bases in Iraq and in NATO ally Turkey. Muslim militants declare a holy war on the godless Marxists and take to the hills. An embattled government in Tehran appeals to Moscow for help, and the Soviet Union accuses NATO of interfering in Iran's internal affairs. Authorities in Soviet Azerbaijan and Turkmenia stress their ethnic ties with the Iranians. Finally, in come the Soviet transports, loaded with soldiers and equipment. Given the Carter Administration's declared determination to resist such a move with force, history might well repeat itself--to reverse Marx's famous aphorism--not as farce, but as tragedy.

The point of this chilling scenario is that every argument one now hears being advanced by the Soviets to justify the invasion of Afghanistan could also be applied to the Iranian crisis hypothesized above. The Soviets repeatedly--and, quite possibly, with some sincerity--deny having a grand design for a grab at the oil and warm waters of the gulf. But a socialist Iran, asking for help from Moscow tomorrow, is even easier to imagine today than was an Islamic Republic of Iran two years ago.

* The 15 republics of the U.S.S.R. all have foreign ministers, although policy is carried out by Moscow.

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