MOSCOW, October 27. /TASS/. Washington has always viewed Afghanistan as nothing more than a tool for achieving its geopolitical goals, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday in a video address to the participants in a ministerial meeting of Afghanistan’s neighboring countries that include Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
"The West’s stubborn desire to remold Afghanistan in its own image has had some dire consequences, including internal strife and bloodshed, social polarization, the collapse of the country’s society and economy, and a humanitarian catastrophe. It has also contributed to the wave of rampant violence by international terrorist groups along with unprecedented corruption and drug trafficking," Lavrov said. "But is there anyone in the US or other Western countries who cares about it? For them, Afghanistan which is thousands of kilometers away has always been nothing but a convenient tool for their self-serving geopolitical interests."
Today’s Afghanistan is a country which for all intents and purposes has to start from scratch and rebuild itself from ruin, both figuratively and literally, Lavrov pointed out. "This is the predictable result of two decades of the US and NATO imposing a nation-building model on the country," the minister added.