Beijing Actively Pushing US Out From Russia’s ‘Soft Underbelly’ in Central Asia
SputnikNews.com
16.09.2016
On Thursday, commenting on the upcoming anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan, former Kyrgyz President Askar Akaev suggested that Operation Enduring Freedom was only a pretext for US entry into Central Asia. Fifteen years later, the situation is changing, with Russia and China actively working to push the US out of the region.
Speaking to the RIA Novosti news agency, Akayev recalled that “in 2001, President Vladimir Putin, all the leaders of the Central Asian states, and most leaders around the world backed President George W. Bush’s call for the formation of an international coalition against terrorism.
Unfortunately, the former president noted, “eventually, people saw that the Americans have multiple objectives, and that they did not plan to destroy international terrorists everywhere; in some parts of the world, on the contrary, they cultivated terror and used it to reach their geopolitical goals.”
In 2001, before the beginning of the invasion of Afghanistan, the US military established military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Akayev, who was Kyrgyzstan’s president at the time, told RIA Novosti that he eventually came to the realization that the US entered Central Asia to gain a foothold in the strategically important region.
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