military boots on the ground in Afghanistan after its catastrophic war there in the 1980s, but if the Americans were going to do it for them why should Russia oppose? Sergei Ivanov recalls: ‘We were counting on getting help in return. We knew where the training camps were in Afghanistan. I mean, we knew the exact map coordinates. Those camps trained terrorists – including those from Chechnya and Dagestan, as well as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan ... We were counting on the Americans to liquidate those camps. Or they would capture the terrorists and send them to us.’
Secondly, Putin linked the 9/11 attacks to the same worldwide terrorist threat that he faced in Chechnya. Supporting the Americans could only help garner support for (or at least mute criticism of) his own campaign against terrorism. The Russian leader had already spoken to the Americans about the links between al-Qaeda and the Chechen Islamists – indeed he claimed that Osama bin Laden himself had twice been to Chechnya. Now the Russians had a chance to help the Americans wipe out some of the sources of trouble within Russia itself. ‘We all have to understand,’ Putin told his team, ‘that the situation in the world has changed.’
The hardliners were won over. ‘Even the doubters agreed,’ Putin said in an interview. ‘New circumstances meant we had to help the Americans.’
After four hours, Putin left the meeting to call the American president and inform him of their decision. ‘It was a substantive conversation,’ Putin recalls. ‘We agreed on concrete steps to be taken straight away, and in the long term.’ He offered Russian logistical help, intelligence, search-and-rescue missions if American pilots were downed in northern Afghanistan, and even the right to military flights over Russian territory for humanitarian purposes. Most importantly, he told Bush: ‘I am prepared to tell the heads of government of the Central Asian states that we have good relations with that we have no objections to a US role in Central Asia as long as it has the object of fighting the war on terror and is temporary and is not permanent .’ 16 The last words were crucial. Ten years later (despite a Russian attempt to have them evicted in 2009), American forces still operate out of the Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan. 17 They were asked to leave their base in Uzbekistan in 2005.
The American campaign was mainly going to involve air strikes, while the Afghans themselves (the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance) would be doing the fighting on the ground. Rice says that she and Sergei Ivanov were given responsibility for getting supplies to the Northern Alliance and preparing them to fight. Even as Putin was calling Bush from Sochi, Russia’s chief of staff, General Anatoly Kvashnin, was holding talks with a Northern Alliance leader in Tajikistan.
Russia, it seemed, was now totally aligned with the US in the war on terror. Sergei Ivanov claims that some days after the war began, Russian border guards on the Tajik frontier with Afghanistan were approached by representatives of the Taliban. ‘They said they had authority from Mullah Omar to propose that Russia and the Taliban join forces fighting the Americans.’ Putin referred to the same incident when the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, visited Moscow. ‘We gave them only one answer,’ said Putin in English, showing a crude Russian hand-gesture, a fist with the thumb pushed between the forefinger and middle finger. ‘We do it a little differently, but I get the point,’ laughed Rumsfeld. 18
The American assault began on 7 October. It was Putin’s birthday. Together with the guests at his party, he watched the news of the first air strikes on television. Defence minister Sergei Ivanov turned to him and raised a glass of vodka: ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich, it’s a birthday present for you.’
The George ’n’ Vladimir show
It seemed that Putin had now answered that journalist’s question in Ljubljana: was
Secondly, Putin linked the 9/11 attacks to the same worldwide terrorist threat that he faced in Chechnya. Supporting the Americans could only help garner support for (or at least mute criticism of) his own campaign against terrorism. The Russian leader had already spoken to the Americans about the links between al-Qaeda and the Chechen Islamists – indeed he claimed that Osama bin Laden himself had twice been to Chechnya. Now the Russians had a chance to help the Americans wipe out some of the sources of trouble within Russia itself. ‘We all have to understand,’ Putin told his team, ‘that the situation in the world has changed.’
The hardliners were won over. ‘Even the doubters agreed,’ Putin said in an interview. ‘New circumstances meant we had to help the Americans.’
After four hours, Putin left the meeting to call the American president and inform him of their decision. ‘It was a substantive conversation,’ Putin recalls. ‘We agreed on concrete steps to be taken straight away, and in the long term.’ He offered Russian logistical help, intelligence, search-and-rescue missions if American pilots were downed in northern Afghanistan, and even the right to military flights over Russian territory for humanitarian purposes. Most importantly, he told Bush: ‘I am prepared to tell the heads of government of the Central Asian states that we have good relations with that we have no objections to a US role in Central Asia as long as it has the object of fighting the war on terror and is temporary and is not permanent .’ 16 The last words were crucial. Ten years later (despite a Russian attempt to have them evicted in 2009), American forces still operate out of the Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan. 17 They were asked to leave their base in Uzbekistan in 2005.
The American campaign was mainly going to involve air strikes, while the Afghans themselves (the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance) would be doing the fighting on the ground. Rice says that she and Sergei Ivanov were given responsibility for getting supplies to the Northern Alliance and preparing them to fight. Even as Putin was calling Bush from Sochi, Russia’s chief of staff, General Anatoly Kvashnin, was holding talks with a Northern Alliance leader in Tajikistan.
Russia, it seemed, was now totally aligned with the US in the war on terror. Sergei Ivanov claims that some days after the war began, Russian border guards on the Tajik frontier with Afghanistan were approached by representatives of the Taliban. ‘They said they had authority from Mullah Omar to propose that Russia and the Taliban join forces fighting the Americans.’ Putin referred to the same incident when the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, visited Moscow. ‘We gave them only one answer,’ said Putin in English, showing a crude Russian hand-gesture, a fist with the thumb pushed between the forefinger and middle finger. ‘We do it a little differently, but I get the point,’ laughed Rumsfeld. 18
The American assault began on 7 October. It was Putin’s birthday. Together with the guests at his party, he watched the news of the first air strikes on television. Defence minister Sergei Ivanov turned to him and raised a glass of vodka: ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich, it’s a birthday present for you.’
The George ’n’ Vladimir show
It seemed that Putin had now answered that journalist’s question in Ljubljana: was
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