In the past decade and a half we remained engaged in Afghanistan. What we did not do was a close and realistic observation of our engagement and investment in men and money into that country and the implementation of hundreds of projects carried out haphazardly without coordination or prioritization or making it sure that their results were tangible and goal oriented. Well, it appears that perhaps the Russians have done that evaluation and utilizing their observations are now trying to return to Afghanistan because she is indeed a very important country strategically located in the heart of Asia and is truly located on the crossroads of economic and strategic developments in the region.

Politics, very much like games of chess, watches for moments of weakness of the opponent. These could be moments of surprise, bewilderment, indecision, or misplay.

Even much before the plans for the annexation of Crimea, the Russians were doing what we should have but did not about Afghanistan. They were watching and evaluating. Russia before the Soviet era and more so during it, planned and implemented plans and programs in Afghanistan. Some of these during the Soviet era were in the form of physical development projects such as assisting Afghanistan to extend the Salang Highway that connects the country's southern and eastern provinces with the north. They embarked on very visual and essential projects like a prefabricated housing factory that built what the Soviets called microrayons. These buildings housed mostly the educated middle class families. The Soviet Union furthermore helped the country build a hydel plant near Kabul that boosted power production for a capital city that was fast expanding. It further helped with agricultural programs such as the Hadda Farm in Jalalabad of Nangrahar province in the east. It then attempted to get into the field of education and helped in building the Kabul Polytechnic Institute that educated hundreds of young students in a variety of developmental fields. All of these were in addition to the extensive so-called assistance to the Afghan military and civil training, education in the Soviet Union and equipping of the military in Afghanistan.. Of course Afghanistan bought major military equipment such as fighter planes, tanks, armored vehicles, weaponry, ammunition, attack and transport helicopters etc, from the Soviet Union at relatively cheaper prices. However, the Soviets charged the country an arm and a leg for spare parts.

The Soviet Union further got into prospecting of Afghanistan's mineral and other resources. It spent valuable time of the country searching for gas and oil with the result that it only helped in tapping the country's natural gas resources to be exported wholly to the Soviet Union. The exact amount of which, not even the Afghan government knew, because the meters were installed on Soviet soil. It purposefully stalled on oil prospecting for reasons of its own and forced the Afghan government not to contract Western companies for the job.

These projects for the most part were very visible for example building and operating of silos for storing flour and baking bread and some profitable for a poor country like Afghanistan. The common man on the street or on the farm thought that all of this was done in good faith and true friendship until the gradual occupation of their land proved them wrong. But that is an old story that has been told and retold many times. The invasion of the country by the Red Army and long years of war gave way to a deep hatred for anything Russian.

Then came the post war era, a period that the new Russian government of the post-Soviet era used for observation and watching of the affairs in Afghanistan, something that we should have done in earnest but failed to do. Let us make an attempt to look at the things that the Russians watched in Afghanistan:

They watched an era of rule by the reactionary Taliban. This made them happy. They thought it would deflate the pressurized hate of the people against the Soviet era. They saw that a system that in many ways was worse than the Soviet was dominating the lives of the people and encroaching on peoples' private liberties. But this period did not last long and with the help of the United States, the Taliban was defeated and a new so-called democratic system was introduced in the country.

The Russians still watched. They saw many-hundreds of projects that were taken up in Afghanistan by the US and its allies to rebuild a destroyed infrastructure, physical and social services including education and health, and attempt at economic development. Perhaps they realized how haphazardly these projects were implemented, how open ended these programs were, how the goals of many were confused, how their implementation was not supervised or coordinated, how their intended objectives were not met and how nobody cared. The Russians as well as some other observers saw that many of these projects that consumed millions and billions of aid dollars either ended up without tangible results or were left in abeyance or even abandoned without results. They observed also that contrary to some of the Soviet era projects very little physical evidence could be seen by the man on the street of these projects. They perhaps also analyzed the whole futility of the expenditure of billions of dollars spent under the name of assistance to a rising Afghanistan. And perhaps they also noted a few achievements in the area of political structure and expansion of education. The Russians may also have rejoiced in the fact that security did not return to Afghanistan notwithstanding hundreds of thousands of foreign forces engaged in a war called a war on terror-a war that is yet to be won. They rejoiced because they could now boast that this poor country was not only able to defeat the Red Army, but that even the military machinery of the West was not able to tame it either.

They think now is the time to score to go back to Afghanistan in the name of finishing and revitalizing the Soviet era physical development projects many of which is in dilapidated form. They see that now that they have blatantly annexed Crimea and the US has no tramp cards besides sanctions to play against their illegal action is a good time to score elsewhere as well. They think the US is weak and the time is ripe to return to geopolitically important regions of the world, not as a new Russia committed to democracy and rules of international law, but as a more powerful, more arrogant force at par with the US. They think it is time to meddle in the affairs of the Middle East and support the oppressive regime of Syria and the theocracy of Iran. They think it is time to benefit from the situations in Egypt and Ukraine. And it is time to go back to Afghanistan and using the results of their observations of this country in the past thirteen years, make the Russian presence in the affairs of this country strategically located at the crossroads of Asia a new reality. Perhaps they are happy they did what we in the US did not of evaluating the true situations in Afghanistan and our own sacrifices in input in the form of men and money into that country.

No wonder that a weak Afghan lame duck president such as Hamed Karzai supports the illegal and so-called referendum carried out at the behest of Russia's Putin under the direct supervision of the Russian army in Crimea.

The world must be aware of what happened and what is happening in Afghanistan and should watch carefully that our mistakes and those of the Afghan governments in the past decade and a half should not be repeated. The US should stand strong and truly committed to the people of Afghanistan who unfortunately remain prey to the games of their own national and also international politics. The US should not let Afghanistan naked and alone against the nefarious designs of countries in the region and the world. This will not be in the interest of the US. 3-22-2014