In February 2000, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was asked by a British journalist, David Frost, how he envisaged future relations with NATO and even the possibility that Russia could join the military alliance if Russia was treated as an equal partner. Putin replied:

Russia is part of European culture. I cannot imagine my country in isolation from Europe and from the so-called, as we often say, civilised world. So I find it difficult to image NATO as an enemy. It seems to me that … even posing the question this way can be damaging.

To Putin, Russia was a great power and it should be treated as such. And yet, he also stated, in an early segment of that same interview with Frost,

I have the impression that our partners all too often remain prisoners of their previous views and continue to regard Russia as a potential aggressor. This is an absolutely wrong picture of our country. It is untrue, and it prevents the development of normal relations in Europe and in the world as a whole.

Even so, on December 14, 2000, Putin announced that Russia no longer viewed the United States as an enemy or even as an opponent. “The United States is Russia’s partner”, he said.

On September 11, 2001, four coordinated Islamic terrorist attacks were carried out against the American people. That morning, 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airlines and crashed the first two planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. They aimed the next two flights toward targets in or near the nation's capital, Washington DC. The third team succeeded in striking the Pentagon and a fourth plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania during a passengers’ revolt.

When terrorists mounted these attacks, Putin was the first world leader to call the US President, George W. Bush, to offer condolences and help. Putin was shocked but not surprised, not least because the day before he had called Bush to say he believed that "something serious" was about to happen. He spoke about the links between al-Qaeda and Chechen Islamists – in fact, the Russian leader claimed that Osama bin Laden had twice been to Chechnya. This was followed by the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the anti-Taliban “Northern Alliance” in Afghanistan, on September 9, which Russian intelligence interpreted as a harbinger of worse things to come.

Vladimir Putin linked the 9/11 attacks in America to the same global terrorist threat that Russians face in Chechnya. Russia had supported the Northern Alliance with weapons and money for several years in an effort to curb the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. Supporting the Americans, Putin thought, could only help garner support for their own campaign against global terrorism.

Russia was now fully aligned with the US in the war on terror. Hence, Putin offered logistical aid, intelligence, search missions, and even Russia’s military rescue if American pilots were shot down in Afghanistan. He even offered the right to US military flights over Russian territory. Putin told Bush: “I am prepared to tell the heads of government of the Central Asian states that we have good relations with the United States, and that we have no objection to a US role in Central Asia as long as it is aimed at fighting the war on terrorism.”

Putin was alerted about those terrorist attacks in American soil within minutes of the first tower being hit. It was 5 pm, Moscow time. His first reaction was to call the American President, but he was on board of Airforce One and out of reach. So, the Russian leader first spoke to the US State Secretary, Condoleezza Rice, asking her to convey to President Bush Russia’s unconditional support to the United States. It was an opportunity, Putin thought, to prove to the hardliners in Bush’s entourage that Russia was – as Bush had put it at Ljubljana – a genuine “partner and friend” on whom America could rely in its hour of need.

In fact, Putin called the White House even before the dust from the explosions had settled. He was the first foreign leader to express total solidarity. Putin even told Rice that his country fully accepted the US decision to put forces on high alert, and that there would be no corresponding action by Russia. In a statement that same night, Putin declared on national television that he wanted the American people to know: “We are with you. We share and feel your anguish totally and completely. We've got your back.”

Putin’s support for the US war on terror

That message was not just for the Americans. It was also to communicate to the Russian people, the Russian armed forces, and the nation’s security services, that Russia and the United States should be allies. The next morning Putin was finally able to contact the American President. He took the chance to tell Bush, in prophetic tone: “Good will triumph over evil. I want you to know that in this fight we will be together”. Coming from Russia, which had for such a long time been America's primary adversary in the Cold War, this message astounded US officials. In a telegram to Bush, Putin reiterated the full solidarity of the Russian people to the Americans, describing those attacks as “an act of barbarism that must not go unpunished”.

In the days that followed, President Putin surprised everyone in the US Government by offering more cooperation than anyone had thought possible. For two years, Putin had been warning the West about Islamic terrorism only for his words to fall on deaf ears. The Russian leader, however, was careful enough to absolve President Bush for the American failure to take his warnings more seriously. It was primarily the Clinton administration that was most to blame. “I alerted them to the bin Laden problem. They just shrugged helplessly and said, 'What can we do?'’ Condoleezza Rice later admitted: “Putin raised the problem of Pakistan, ... their support for extremists and their links to the Taliban and al-Qaeda”.

Delighted that he could act in concert with the West, Putin impressed many people in his famous speech at the German Bundestag (Parliament), on September 25, 2001. There he emphasised Russia’s full cooperation with the West in the “War on Terror” and contrasted this with the betrayal the Russians had felt over the bombing of Serbia. “We cannot have a united Greater Europe without an atmosphere of trust”, he said. Presenting a grand vision to put an end to the Cold War, Putin declared: “Today we are forced to say that we are renouncing our stereotypes and ambitions, and from now on we will jointly guarantee the security of the population of Europe and the world as a whole”.

A week later, Putin met in Brussels with NATO’s Secretary General George Robertson. Robertson was caught off guard when the Russian leader opened that meeting by asking: “When are you going to invite Russia to join NATO?” Putin also proposed the creation of a working body to examine how the two sides could cooperate more closely. “There is much more that unites NATO and Russia than to divide us”, he said. Although the Russians would continue to oppose NATO enlargement and encroachment on Russian borders, “we might change our position if we didn’t feel sidelined”, Putin added.

For Putin, a close relationship of Russia with NATO would only make sense if there was an element of joint decision-making. On certain issues, and particularly the fight against terrorism and nuclear non-proliferation, the Russian leader contended that Russia and the 19 members of NATO should form a unified "Group of 20" that would have the power to conduct joint policies. “We are ready to go as far as the North Atlantic bloc is ready to go”, Putin said. “If the format of our relationship changes, NATO enlargement will cease to be an issue”.

Putin also aspired to see Russia joining the World Trade Organization, to facilitate the growth of its economy. But this was not something the US was willing to accept. In response, the American Government not only blocked Russia’s application but also increased tariffs on the country’s steel imports. Russia had lost the Cold War and the West was determined never to let the Russians forget this. “Russia has changed radically, the West almost nothing”, Putin lamented in 2003. Francis Richards, who at the time headed GCHQ – the British equivalent of the US National Security Agency – recalled:

We were very grateful for Putin's support after 9/11, but we didn't show much. I used to spend a lot of time tiring myself out to persuade people that we needed to give and take ... I think the Russians felt throughout this [on NATO issues] that they were being harmed. And they were.

On October 7, 2001, the United States and its allied forces invaded Afghanistan after the Taliban regime refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, the founder of Islamic terrorist organisation al-Qaeda, which apparently was responsible for the attacks on September 11. Russia happily provided intelligence and tens of millions of dollars’ worth of arms to the US allies of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.

The morass of Afghanistan

However, Putin felt the Americans were dangerously ignoring at their own peril the lessons of earlier wars in Afghanistan. “The USSR’s error”, he said, “had been to install a pro-Soviet government. Afghanistan is not a country that can be privatised”. The Americans should not do the same mistake. But as so often, Washington “knew better” and, in October 2001, the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, marked the first phase of what would become a 20-year-long war in the region. Twenty years later, the world watched the horrific images of unstoppable advance of the Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. The advance was accompanied by brutal repression and mass executions of anyone suspect of having collaborated with the US-backed government, and denigration of women and religious minorities. There were scenes at the airport of Kabul of desperate people clinging to planes and falling out of the sky. The whole country was overrun in eleven days by the Taliban.

US President Joe Biden has admitted that the events occurred more quickly than his Administration anticipated. Rather than accepting responsibility for the carnage in, and collapse of Afghanistan, he blamed the country’s military leaders for giving up and fleeing the country. In an address to the media, Biden disingenuously stated that nation-building was never one of the aims of the American presence in Afghanistan. In reality, the aim was to hunt Osama Bin Laden who had found sanctuary in Afghanistan, and to degrade the Taliban. Besides, his assertion that the American presence in Afghanistan was never about nation-building did not explain why it was necessary for the US military forces to stay there for 20 years. During that time, the Taliban, rather than being degraded, were able or allowed to keep their arms. It functioned as a kind of shadow government and controlled large swathes of Afghan territory.

What about the consequences of the reconquest of Afghanistan by the Taliban?

First, the Taliban regime announced that their mission will only be completed when the whole world is subjected to their brand of Islamic terror.

Second, there has been an abominable discrimination and oppression of women and girls. In an article published on August 16, 2021, Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor at The Australian newspaper, indicated the darkness that had descended on Afghanistan. He wrote:

We are about to witness one of the worst tragedies for women and girls in modern history. From now on, once more, young girls, pre-teens, will be married off to much older men, often enough with multiple wives. Young girls won’t be allowed to go to school, they won’t be allowed to learn to read and write, let alone sing, they won’t be allowed to practice most careers, they won’t be allowed to go to the bazaar without the permission, and generally the presence, of their controlling male relative.

Third, with the takeover of Kabul, reports confirm that the Taliban has been “conducting targeted killings of Christians and other minorities found with Bible software installed on their cell phones”.

Since the Taliban’s fall in 2001, the Christian community in Afghanistan was growing exponentially, in part because of the modicum of security provided by the American occupation. In 2019, many Afghan Christians voluntarily included their religious affiliation on national identity cards. Now the American withdrawal left these Christians with the imminent threat of public executions, floggings, and amputations. Curiously, the United States remains the largest donor of “aid” to Afghanistan, providing a total of about US$2.6 billion since the collapse of the previous Afghan government. A US federal report shows that billions of dollars in American taxpayer money have been sent to the Taliban-controlled central bank of Afghanistan, thus resulting in the flow of US funds to the extremist group.

The ‘coalition of the willing’ stumbles in Iraq

In October 2002, the US Congress passed a joint resolution granting the American president the power to use military force against the Iraqi Government. Along with Iraq's alleged development of weapons of mass destruction, another justification for the invasion was the alleged links between Saddam Hussein's government and al-Qaeda. Obviously, nothing in the United Nations Charter authorised regime change in Iraq. For this reason, Putin correctly warned that any unilateral action in Iraq would be "counterproductive", "controversial" and "a big mistake". If the Americans decided to act on their own, the result would be “the radicalization of the Islamic world and a new wave of terrorist acts”, Putin predicted. It was time, he said, “for less emotional statements and more common sense”. Putin rarely says anything without thinking through the possible consequences. Looking back over the first four years of his presidency, from 2000 to 2004, writes his biographer Philip Short,

‘Putin felt … that he had put himself out on a limb to help the United States after the terrorist attacks. Russia had done everything Bush had asked for and more: it had shared intelligence, given the Americans overflight rights and encouraged its allies to provide base facilities. But what had it got in return? … NATO enlargement was continuing apace and would soon reach Russia’s borders; and Russia’s concerns about America’s invasion of Iraq, which were shared by many of America’s own allies, had been summarily dismissed’.

On March 20, 2003, the United States and its allies, Australia, the United Kingdom, and, symbolically, Poland – the "Coalition of the Willing" – invaded Iraq. Putin was quite right and the result would be “catastrophic”. For example, Islamists took the chance to kill thousands of Iraqi Christians and burn down their churches. Half a million Iraqi Christians fled the country. According to the US Department of Defence, 4,431 US soldiers were killed and 31,994 more were wounded in combat during the Iraq War.

Instead of the promised democracy, the US-led invasion destroyed Iraqi, its people and culture. The removal of dictator Saddam Hussein created a power vacuum that escalated sectarian tensions and resulted in a civil war. In Iraq, Christian Assyrians are among the last to pray in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. However, after the overthrown of Saddam Hussein’s regime by the US-led coalition, at least two-thirds of the Assyrian population fled the country because of “intense violence from Islamist extremists and common criminals, both of whom operate with impunity and who specifically target Christians”.

From 2005 to 2008, when some 100,000 American troops were still occupying Iraq, the local Christian community experienced some horrific persecution. When 20,000 Christian families were being violently driven from Baghdad in 2006-07, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated that the American Government could not take effective action to protect them from being murdered and kidnapped because it did not want American policy to be seen as “sectarian”.

At least 7,966 conflict events were recorded across Iraqi from 2003 to 2021. The number of internally displaced people rose from zero registered in 2003 to 2.6 million in 2007. By the time the US announced an end to its combat operation more than 2.3 million Iraqis had fled the country, millions of Iraqis had become refugees and at least 210,090 civilians had been killed. The highest annual fatalities occurred in 2006 when about 30,000 civilians were killed.

Failing to protect Middle East Christians

On January 20, 2005, at the start of his second term, President Bush declared that henceforth “the policy of the United States is to seek and support the growth of democratic movements in every nation and culture”. Putin thought this wasn’t necessarily a good idea. Democracy, he said, “is not a commodity that can simply be exported from one country to another … It is a product of society’s internal development”. The Soviet Union, Putin recalled, had tried to export its own ideology. If others now began trying to export their version of a better society, “the world will embark on a very dangerous and slippery path”.

According to Putin, the call of President Bush for the Americans to take the lead in the fight against tyranny sounded a lot like outright hypocrisy. After all, the United States has a long history of supporting undemocratic regimes, as long as these regimes support its economic and military interests. Indeed, the United States continues to support the theocratic regimes of the Middle East, notably Saudi Arabia, whose spread of Wahhabi fundamentalism is one of the main sources of global terrorism.

Saudi Arabia defines itself as an Islamic State. Saudis are required by law to be Muslim. Christians living in this country cannot worship in public and they are not entitled to hold meetings even in the privacy of their own homes. Christians caught practising their faith in public are most likely to be beheaded.

In Saudi mosques, speakers continue to pray for the death of Christians and Jews, including at Mecca’s Grand Mosque where they serve at the pleasure of King Abdullah. An official eight-grade textbook used in public schools teaches children that “the Apes are the people of the Sabbath, the Jews; and the Swine are the infidels of the communion of Jesus, the Christians”.

Despite this severe religious persecution, Saudi Arabia is America’s largest foreign military customer and its second-largest trade partner. Particularly under the first administration of President Donald Trump, a very strong military and economic relationship was cemented between these two countries. Trump even threatened to veto any measure passed by Congress if it attempted to end American support for the Saudi war in Yemen. Relations between the two nations were so strong that the Saudi newspaper, Al-Youm, ran headlines like this: “US-Saudi Relations are Fortified Politically and Strategically”.

Religious freedom, of course, is the bedrock on which the United States was founded. Why is it then that Washington has been so indifferent, sometimes even complicit, on all these egregious human rights violations in the Middle East? The answer lies, at least in part, with the strong economic ties between these Western elites and the Saudi theocratic rulers. As Paul Marshall points out,

Because Saudi Arabia supplies one-quarter of the world’s oil the United States and other governments have been reluctant to press it harder to end its demonization and incitement to violence against Christians both within the kingdom and throughout the Islamic world. This reluctance exists despite the financial and other support for terrorism that emanates from the kingdom – terrorism that is based on doctrines of religious hatred and jihad.

Regarding the global threat of terrorism, Putin believes that Chechnya is merely one fragment of a broader Islamist struggle to conquer the world. He believes that the jihad in Chechnya is part of a global threat which puts the entire world in danger. “Not only are we disappointed with the Western position, but we consider that it is in the national interest of Western countries to support Russia in its struggle with international terrorism”, he says.

Of course, if the United States and its allies were sincere in their fight against terrorism, they would have supported Russia in Chechnya on the front where the Russians were fighting alone. Instead, the West’s special services still maintain close contacts with leaders of the Chechen jihad, both inside Chechnya and in Dubai. The US and the UK have even granted political asylum to Islamic terrorists from Chechnya.

There is now compelling evidence that the US government, under the presidency of Barack Obama, aided and abetted terrorist groups in their quest to expand the scope of Islamic fundamentalism. The “Arab Spring” was a series of anti-government protests and army uprisings that in the early 2010s spread across the Middle East and North Africa. During this period, the US government and its agents did more than any religious extremist group “to permanently enshrine Sharia as the constitutional law of the land throughout the Muslim world.” In Egypt, for example, the so-called “Arab Spring” empowered Muslim extremists to initiate a bloody persecution that has led hundreds of thousands of Christian Copts to flee the nation. Egyptian political scholar Samuel Tadros write: “The Copts can only wonder today whether, after 2,000 years, the time has come for them to pack their belongings and leave, as Egypt looks less hospitable to them than ever”.