Formation of the CIS and official end of the USSR -Dissolution of the USSR

Formation of the CIS and official end of the USSR


Map of the CIS

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The final round of the Soviet Union collapse took place following the Ukrainian popular referendum on December 1, 1991, wherein 90% of voters opted for independence. The leaders of Slavic republics agreed to meet for a discussion of possible forms of relationship, alternative to Gorbachev’s struggle for a union.

On December 8, 1991, the leaders of the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian republics met in Belavezhskaya Pushcha and signed the Belavezha Accords declaring the Soviet Union dissolved and replacing it with the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Gorbachev described this as an unconstitutional coup, but it soon became clear that the development could not be halted.

On December 12, 1991, Russia’s secession from the Union was sealed, with the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR formally ratifying the Belavezha Accords and denouncing the 1922 Treaty on the creation of the Soviet Union.

On December 17, 1991, alongside 28 European countries, the European Community, and four non-European countries, twelve of the fifteen soviet republics signed the European Energy Charter in the Hague as sovereign states.^[15]

Five double-headed Russian coat-of-arms eagles (below) substituting the former state emblem of the Soviet Union and the “CCCP” letters (above) in the facade of the Grand Kremlin Palace after the dissolution of the USSR

Doubts remained over the authority of the Belavezha Accords to affect the dissolution of the Soviet Union, since they were signed by only five of the Soviet Republics. However, on December 21, 1991, representatives of all member republics except Georgia signed theAlma-Ata Protocol, in which they confirmed the dissolution of the Union. That same day, all former-Soviet republics agreed to join the CIS, with the exception of the three Baltic States and Georgia. The documents signed at Alma-Ata also addressed several issues raised by the Union’s extinction. Notably, Russia was authorized to assume the role of the USSR in the United Nations, which meant inheriting its permanent membership on the Security Council. The Soviet Ambassador to the UN delivered to the Secretary General a letter by Russia’s president, Boris Yeltsin, dated December 24, 1991, informing him that, in virtue of that agreement, Russia was the successor state to the USSR for the purposes of UN membership. After being circulated among the other UN member states with no objection raised, the statement was declared accepted on December 31.

On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as president of the USSR, declaring the office extinct and ceding all the powers still vested in it to the president of Russia: Yeltsin. On the night of that same day, the Soviet flag was lowered for the last time over the Kremlin. Finally, a day later on December 26, 1991, the Council of Republics (a chamber) of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR recognized the dissolution of the Soviet Union and dissolved itself (another chamber of the Supreme Soviet had been unable to work during some months before this, due to absence of a quorum). By December 31, 1991, all official Soviet institutions had ceased operations, as individual republics assumed the central government’s role.

The Taliban and Sharia

THE Taliban and Sharia

Allegations of connection to United States CIA

Although there isn’t any evidence that the CIA directly supported the Taliban or Al Qaeda, some basis for military support of the Taliban was provided when, in the early 1980s, the CIA and the ISI (Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency) provided arms to Afghans resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the ISI assisted the process of gathering radical Muslims from around the world to fight against the Soviets.^[9] Osama Bin Laden was one of the key players in organizing training camps for the foreign Muslim volunteers. The U.S. poured funds and arms into Afghanistan, and “by 1987, 65,000 tons of U.S.-made weapons and ammunition a year were entering the war.”^[10] FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who has been fired from the agency for disclosing sensitive information, has claimed United States was on intimate terms with Taliban and Al-Qaeda, using them to further certain goals in Central Asia.^[11]

The Taliban were based in the Helmand, Kandahar, and Uruzgan regions and were overwhelmingly ethnic Pashtuns and predominantly Durrani Pashtuns.^[12]

[edit]Emergence in Afghanistan

The first major military activity of the Taliban was in October-November 1994 when they marched from Maiwand in southern Afghanistan to capture Kandahar City and the surrounding provinces, losing only a few dozen men.^[13] Starting with the capture of a border crossing and a huge ammunition dump from warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a few weeks later they freed “a convoy trying to open a trade route from Pakistan to Central Asia” from another group of warlords attempting to extort money.^[14] In the next three months this hitherto “unknown force” took control of twelve of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, with Mujahideen warlords often surrendering to them without a fight and the “heavily armed population” giving up their weapons.^[15] By September 1996 they had captured Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.

[edit]Consolidation of power

Under the Taliban regime, Sharia law was interpreted to ban a wide variety of activities hitherto lawful in Afghanistan: employment, education and sports for women, movies, television, videos, music, dancing, hanging pictures in homes, clapping during sports events, kite flying, and beard trimming. One Taliban list of prohibitions included:

pork, pig, pig oil, anything made from human hair, satellite dishes, cinematography, and equipment that produces the joy of music, pool tables, chess, masks, alcohol, tapes, computers, VCRs, television, anything that propagates sex and is full of music, wine, lobster, nail polish, firecrackers, statues, sewing catalogs, pictures, Christmas cards.

Men were required to have a beard extending farther than a fist clamped at the base of the chin. On the other hand, they had to wear their head hair short. Men were also required to wear a head covering.^[17]

Possession was forbidden of depictions of living things, whether drawings, paintings or photographs, stuffed animals, and dolls.^[17]

These rules were issued by the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Suppression of Vice (PVSV) and enforced by its “religious police,” a concept thought to be borrowed from the Wahhabis. In newly conquered towns hundreds of religious police beat offenders (typically men without beards and women who were not wearing their burqas properly) with long sticks.

Theft was punished by the amputation of a hand, rape and murder by public execution. Married adulterers were stoned to death. In Kabul, punishments were carried out in front of crowds in the city’s former soccer stadium.