Are Russia, China, and Iran close to reviving the Northern Alliance?
Author: Andrey Serenko, head of the Center for the Study of Afghan Politics (Russia).
In any case, rumors about this are increasingly spreading in various Afghan political groups within the country and in exile. According to them, Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran are consulting on a joint project to ensure the security of Northern Afghanistan.
We are talking about protecting the southern borders of the former Soviet republics and guaranteeing reliable blocking of any attempts by terrorist groups located in Talibani Afghanistan (“Taliban” is a terrorist movement banned in the Russian Federation) to penetrate Central Asia, as well as China.
According to current versions, Russia, China, and Iran are allegedly increasingly inclined to create and support some analog of the former “Northern Alliance”, whose armed units would undertake to ensure security in the northern provinces of Afghanistan and fight ISIS (banned terrorist organization in the Russian Federation) and other terrorist groups in the border areas of the country.
So far, these rumors have not been officially confirmed by any of the mentioned parties. However, it is unlikely that they will be confirmed at all, even if the project of the new “Northern Alliance” is already being implemented.
Be that as it may, these rumors, as sources in Kabul say, are alarming and unnerving for the Taliban. Moreover, the rumors coincided with the obvious intensification of Russian contacts with representatives of Afghan political groups that were previously part of the first Northern Alliance.
