Putin calls Kerry a liar on Syria...
Source: CBS News
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday called U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry a liar, claiming he had denied that al Qaeda was fighting with the Syrian opposition in that country's civil war. Speaking to his human rights council, Putin recalled watching a congressional debate where Kerry was asked about al Qaeda. Putin said he had denied that it was operating in Syria, even though he was aware of the al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra group.
Putin said: "This was very unpleasant and surprising for me. We talk to them (the Americans) and we assume they are decent people, but he is lying and he knows that he is lying. This is sad."
It was unclear exactly what Putin was referencing, but Kerry was asked Tuesday while testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee if the Syrian opposition had become more infiltrated by al Qaeda.
Kerry responded that that was "basically incorrect" and that the opposition has "increasingly become more defined by its moderation."...
Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57601401/putin-calls-kerry-a-liar-on-syria/
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Last edited Fri Sep 6, 2013, 12:34 AM - Edit history (2)
Russia had two ways to march on the Persian Gulf. First was via the Caucasus, take Tehran and Eastern Turkey, then march down the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers to the Persian Gulf. Rome paid Attila the Hun to do this move in the 400s (He attacked, was bought off by Persia and then demanded more money from Rome, then marched on Gaul when Rome did not pay him enough).
Sarmatiains were known for such attacks during the classical Greek Period
The Avars did similar attacks in the 500s. In the 700-900s the Turkic people the Khazars often attack via the Caucasus.
In reverse this is the route Timurlane moved from Persia against the Golden Horde between 1392 and 1396. The Golden Horde controlled most of what we now call European Russia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Avars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarmatians
Georgia and Armenia (along with the Caucasus Mountains themselves) acted as a block to most such invasions, but it is believe the Turks entered the Middle East and finally modern Turkey via both the Caucasus and Central Asia (and as I pointed out above, Timurlane attacked what is today Russia via the Caucasus Mountains).
The other invasion route was via Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan (The Fourth and Fifth former central Asia Republics, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan were not on this invasion route) . Unlike Afghanistan these are on a direct line to Tehran and Persian and once in Persian down any of the River that flows from Persia into Iraq. This is the route the Turks took when they cross Persian into the Middle East. It is the Route taken by Genghis Khan when he moved against Persia. It was the route Imperial Russia took over in the 1800s as Russia moved against both Turkey and Iran. It is the route Timberlane took to take Persia and threaten the early Ottoman Empire (And the then barely surviving Byzantine Empire).
In reverse, this route was taken by Rulers of Persia to invade Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan several times over the last 1000 years (and the Arabs when they held Persia use to invade those same countries from the Conquest of Persian around 650 ad till the Arabs lost control of Persia just before the Mongol Invasion of the 1200s).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Horde
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timur
Afghanistan is only needed to attack one Country, India (which includes present day Pakistan). Southern Eastern Persia is the Baluchistan Desert then the a branch of the Himalayas. The easiest way to move a large Army form Russia or Persia is to march to Afghanistan and somewhere around Kabul you turn south and march into the Indus River Valley (i,e, modern Pakistan). This is how Cyrus the Great and then Alexander the Great moved from Persia to the Indus Valley. This is how various other rulers of Persia has moved into the Indus Valley over the last 2500 years. Genghis Khan marched his army home to Mongolia via Afghanistan, through he said he did want to invade India, he was setting his army up for such an invasion (Timurlane would use Afghanistan to invade India from his base in Kazakhstan 1398-1399).
Rulers of Afghanistan were known to invade India as late as the early 1800s (and the British was afraid of such invasions as late as WWI). Thus the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan had nothing to do with Persian Gulf oil, the Soviet Union had other better ways to march to take those oil fields if the Soviet wanted them.
Sidenote
Why the Soviet Union Invaded Afghanistan
Afghanistan is NOT an invasion point to the Persian Gulf, they are two much easier ways to invade, and the Soviet Union had both of them from the Revolution onward (and Imperial Russia had then since the 1880s at least, some indications that as far as these locals were concerned the "White Czar" just replaced the Golden Horde, as their natural leader in the 1500s.
The people that had been subject to the Mongol Empire north of Persia had found they benefited greatly from being subject to a strong centralized country. This was found to be the case after Genghis Khan had united Siberia, Mongolia, Central Asia and Russia into one huge country. From the time of Genghis Khan onward, most of the people in these countries wanted to be part of a larger nation, and be independent but part of that larger nation. It is inherently inconsistent, but it is what the people of what was the Russia Empire wanted. They wanted to have a say in their local government, but also be part of the larger nation so they could trade easily with people not only in the larger nation but "overseas" i.e. outside that larger nation. The Nations of the old Mongol Empire north of Persia know that they are land locked and as such they need access through other countries for they have no access to the sea. To have access through another country, means that country must be yours or subject to your country, or your country subject to those other countries. Either way, you benefit due to greater ease of trade. Thus these nations want to be one nation. At the same time they want to be independent of each other. Thus all of these nations have a tendency to want to work with each other and become part of each other's countries. That is one of the problems of having no access to the sea, thus such nations want to belong to a larger empire, but also be independent. Any wars between these nations tend to be short, for it is more deciding what the relationship will be then defeating and conquering each other,
As far as Afghanistan was concerned, it was NOT part of that Former Mongolian Empire that became the Russian Empire, then the Soviet State and now Russia Federal Republic AND its former Central Asian Soviet Republics (all of whom train their troops in Russian). It was a backwater, but also the best way to invade India. Thus from 1800 onward Britain and Russia came into conflict in Afghanistan. Britain wanted to make sure no one could use Afghanistan to Invade India, Russia saw British Troops in Afghanistan as causing problems for its control over Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. The Locals Afghan leadership used this tension between Russia and Britain to strengthen their own internal position. Persia also became involved in Afghanistan during the 1800s, but lost its interest when the Soviet Union took over half of Persia in 1942 (Britain and the US took over the southern half). This Soviet-Britain-US occupation was to permit western war supplies to reach Russia during WWII.
Now, Stalin had decided during the 1930s that the only way to control Afghanistan was to appoint a local King and have him run Kabul and leave the locals alone. Give the King of Afghanistan money that he could dispense to his supporters in Afghanistan (including Supporters who only supported him as long as the king gave them money). Leave the king rule Afghanistan and provide him a fast plane if he ever needed to leave. Stalin actually picked the last king of Afghanistan in the 1950s, someone who did not threaten anyone else in Afghanistan but would also follow whatever Moscow told him to say and support (and knew how to spread the money Moscow gave him to stay in power). For all practical purposes he was nothing more then the Mayor of Kabul, but unlike today's American Mayor of Kabul (President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai) the King did not need foreign troops to stay in power.
The problems for Kabul started in the 1970s. After Stalin's death, the Soviet Union went into a slow decay. Stalin had managed to keep things running by kicking out the bureaucrats every so often (Stalin Purges caused a lot of employee turnover in high places in the bureaucracy). Once Stalin was dead, the people who survive him to rule the Soviet Union were the most bureaucratic of Bureaucrats. Khrushchev appears NOT to be of that mode, but once he made the changes needed to end the terror of Stalin, the additional changes needed unset the Bureaucrats and the kicked Khrushchev out of power after ten years on the job. Brezhnev succeeded Khrushchev, but Brezhnev was NOT going to rock any boats and thus the rot became worse.
By the 1970s things were turning bad. Life expectancy had started to drop (After increasing under Stalin and Khrushchev), the farming situation was bad, to many people giving false reports and false numbers to justify themselves. In fact these reports were so bad, that the Soviet Union in the 1970s had to rely on US spy satellite data on the size of Soviet crops, for the data collected by the Soviet Union itself was useless due to its inaccuracy (but no one was punished for the bad data, thus the bad data continued to be collected).
That the Soviet Union needed radical change was clear by the 1980s, but then the leadership of the Soviet Union was dying off (most had been appointed to various places as young men by Stalin during the Show Trials of the 1930s and again after his minor purges after WWII, Stalin was planning another purge when he died in 1953). Thus the Soviet leadership died one after another till most, if not all of them were dead. Then and only then did someone who had not known Stalin appointed as the head of the Soviet Union. That was Gorbachev.
Anyway, while Brezhnev was still alive, the Soviet Union became a strange place, people were attacked if they did not follow Soviet Communist ideology good enough. It was NOT important that what you were doing was working, it was important that whatever you were doing followed whatever was the party's consensus. This could be Marxism, could be Leninism, it could be something else (It could be Stalinism, but one of the dogma rules of the time period was Stalin had been bad, Stalinism worse, so it could not be CALLED Stalinism, even if it was and was party consensus).
Thus what was "Communism" (as defined by the Party's Consensus) had to be followed, even if it turned out to be bad AND had been rejected by Lenin or Stalin. This is what drove Soviet Policy on Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s. Afghanistan was a Kingdom, ruled by a King. Afghanistan was also a long time ally of the Soviet Union, integrated into the Economy of the Soviet Union and a place which received a lot of Soviet aid. How can the Soviet Union leave Afghanistan be a Kingdom. The Soviet should help Afghanistan join the rest of the Communist world. Thus it became party consensus that the king had to go and that Afghanistan become a a people's republic.
Thus the Communist Party of the Soviet Union made it a policy to replace the King of Afghanistan with a President. Worse, the local rulers would also have to be replaced or embrace communism as that term was understood in the Soviet Union. Stalin had not wanted to do this. There is indication that Lenin saw Afghanistan as to backward for it to embrace communism till while after the rest of the world had done so, but no one remember what these two leader had done. The dogma was Kings were bad, People's President were good and Afghanistan need a People's Republic.
Thus the King was kick out and replaced. The King had developed friendships with the various local leaders, but those connections were lost when he was overthrown. Various local started to go into revolt, not so much as to demand the return of the king, but to see what they could grab from their neighbors in the interregnum between rule by the King and rule by the President.
Pakistan saw this as a great chance to improve its control over its mountain people (an area of Pakistan, Pakistan does not control even today) by giving them supplies and weapons to support their various cousins who lived on the Afghan side of those same mountains (Notice the reason weapons were given was NOT to overthrow the Afghan Government, but to keep these Pushtans busy so they would not attack into Pakistan). China seems to become aware of these rebels and poured supplies into Pakistan to support the Rebels. Then Pakistan convinced the US that these were freedom fighters that needed US Support, not locals trying to expand what they controlled. The US started to dump supplies into Afghanistan.
The First President tried to appease these groups for he saw them as they were, locals trying to use the change of government to increase what they controlled, Thus wear them down and sooner or later a deal will be made, similar to the various deals between these same locals and the former King of Afghanistan.
This policy violated the consensus of the ruling elite of the Soviet Union. Communism was on the march, and everyone but the rich would support communism. These local leaders where just the Bourgeois that had to be fought and defeated so the peasants and workers could prevail. Such a defeat would be quick if enough force was provided, for the peasants and workers would also join the fight against these local Bourgeois. Thus the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan and replaced the Government. This just provided the west reasons to support the opposition, who were untouched by the invasion.
The new government then used the Soviet Army to fight the opposition. The US, China and Pakistan all worked together to support those same opposition forces. When the workers and peasants did not join the Soviet Army against their own local leaders, the Soviet Army then adopted an anti-guerrilla warfare policy and the war was on.
Notice the reason for the replacement of the King, and then the Replacement of the First President was do to neither embracing the prevailing consensus of the ruling elite of the Soviet Union. That Consensus could not be changed even as it became clear that it was wrong.
Finally that group of men who came to power under Stalin during the Purges of the 1930s died out. With them died, only to a degree, that consensus and dogma. Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union and had the bad luck of having to make some hard decisions that violated the dogma of the ruling elite AND the dogma of the Western elite. Soviet oil production had peaked in 1985 and was dropping like a rock. That oil had paid for imported wheat and other goods. Massive government spending cuts were needed, and that meant an massive drop in spending on the Military. Up till Gorbachev Miltiary spending in the Soviet Union is believed to be over 40% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the Soviet Union. Under Stalin it is believed it was 10-20% (20% during WWII, 10% the rest of the time). 10% is the maximum a country can spend on the Military without doing serious harm to its economy (Thus in the 1900 period Communist leaders advocated Universal Military Service for any army of any state that turned Communists, but minimal spending on ships, cannons and weapons except the bare minimum needed).
While the Soviet Army of the 1980s was universal military service, it had became an army dependent on tanks, helicopters and other expensive weapons not leg infantry militia type service. Thus, while the Soviet Army of the 1980 was SMALLER then the Soviet Army of WWII, it cost almost four times as much (and that based on constant prices). By the late 1980s the Soviet Union could no longer afford this massive Military and massive cut backs started under Gorbachev. Part of this cut back was the pull out from Afghanistan and Eastern Europe (both done by Gorbachev NOT Yeltsin).
This cut back upset the ruling elite, who then tried to do a coup. The problem was the coup plotters failed to have anyone who actually had command of actual troops. When Troops were needed, the soldiers refused to go, instead saying they would support Yeltsin (Gorbachev was on the Black Sea taking a short vacation and thus isolated from Moscow). With that refusal the Coup collapsed, but so did the Soviet Union.
This was the last call of the consensus that had ruled the Soviet Union from Khrushchev's removal in 1964 till the 1991 Coup attempt. The ruling elite found out they had no popular support and without popular support they could not fight. The Soviet Union was dead.
Now, the Communist Government of Afghanistan would survive two more years. It would not fall to 1993. It had enough support among the people of Kabul and the Afghan Army to survive by playing the various opposition groups against one another to survive. Finally the opposition united and took over Kabul, but then started to fight among themselves over the remains. This lasted till Pakistan decided it had to do something and started to arm and support the Taliban. The Taliban then slowly took over the country by undermining most of the local leaders by providing aid to the workers and peasants of Afghanistan. These Workers and Peasants then backed the Taliban for the Taliban started to do what the local warlords had always done (but had failed to do since they took Kabul), making sure the peasants and workers were protected and treated fairly. This policy (and the fact that the Taliban where Pashtun, the largest tribe in Afghanistan) helped the Taliban take over most of the Country. The Taliban were only stopped when they reached the most northern area of Afghanistan where no Pashtun lived
I went into the above for the reason the Soviet Union went into Afghanistan was not for strategic or political reasons but for dogmatic reasons. Russia had no plans to attack Pakistan, Pakistan had nothing the Soviet Union wanted (through the ability to send troops into Afghanistan during any war between Pakistan and India would have helped India, for it would have forced Pakistan to address the possibility of the Soviet Strike in support if India). The problem with that strategic reason, is the King of Afghanistan would have permitted such a move for he knew who was pulling his strings and that was Moscow. Thus replacing the King gave the Soviet Union no added advantages (and appears to be the reason Stalin never tried to replace the King, what was it is for the Soviet Union? and Stalin's answer was clear none).
The Soviet Union did not need Afghanistan, it could be a back water (and thus once the old timers were gone from the Soviet ruling elite, the Soviet Union pulled out). Like the US invading Iraq, the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan was for reason of dogma not strategic reasons.
The Map above about Timurlane's campaign is confusing, Here is a map of his attack on the Golden Horde:
His West Persian Campaign, 1383-1387:
His Golden Horde attack, invasion of Modern Russia: 1392-1396
Asia Minor Campaign 1399-1404:
