Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin:
Regarding the next border clashes on the border of Iran and Afghanistan. A few important things to understand.
1. Border incidents on the border there have been occurring periodically since the time of the occupation of Afghanistan by the American occupiers. That did not prevent the Iranians from supplying weapons to the Taliban to kill Americans.
In particular, it was from the territory under the control of the Taliban that an Iranian missile was launched that hit the CIA air command post in 2020. In the current iteration, the conflict is formally linked to unresolved disputes over the water supply of border areas.
2. Control (including tacit control) over border checkpoints is important - the annual turnover of such checkpoints can be more than 1 billion dollars a year - therefore, in conflicts around checkpoints, in addition to state, there are also commercial and criminal interests on both sides.
3. Taliban factions in Helmand province seek to increase their autonomy from the government in Kabul. As has been pointed out more than once, the Taliban is very heterogeneous inside - it is not a monolithic structure, it has many large and small fractions - from moderate to stoned.
4. Helmand is one of the leading provinces in the cultivation of raw materials for the production of heroin. In the first half of the 10s, Helmand produced just under half of the world's opium poppy.
5. There are many interested players who would like to destroy the course of international legitimization of the government in Kabul and the reduction of heroin production in Afghanistan. Prolonging the conflict on the border with Iran will make it difficult for the Taliban to achieve their strategic goals in relations with China and Russia.
6. Therefore, the most likely scenario is that after a period of aggravation, the central government in Kabul will put on the brakes. Kabul has not yet declared any war, a representative of one of the factions is just routinely threatening jihad, if it starts at all - he himself does not have the opportunity to declare jihad.
Objectively, neither the Taliban nor Iran will be able to derive any serious benefit from this conflict. Such a conflict is beneficial to the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia and heroin producers in Helmand province.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
