Russia, Tajikistan in lopsided alliance
By Shavkat Kasymov
Despite the optimism with which Tajik government officials hailed their country's accession to the World Trade Organization in January, there is a need for a more realistic assessment of the potential economic prospects in regards to membership of the world trading community.
Tajikistan is a remittance-dependent country with strong political affinity to Russia, whose own route to accession to the World Trade Organization last year was often described as a ''bumpy ride'', a trend unlikely to change.
Given the numerous disagreements involving the imports of US meat and the effects on US-Russian relations of the Magnitsky
law (by which those Russian officials believed to be involved in the 2009 death in custody of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky are barred from entering the United States or using its banking system), Russia is poised to render its membership in the WTO ineffective. Equally, Tajikistan's membership in the WTO is not expected to alleviate the country's dependence on Russia.
It's hardly likely Tajikistan will be able to bypass Russia's interests and avoid conflicts of interest with Russia on major agreements with other countries. When presidents of Russia and Tajikistan Vladimir Putin and Emomali Rakhmon signed a series of memoranda in October 2012 reaffirming their longstanding bilateral military and economic cooperation, they clearly sent a warning signal to Western policy makers and ideologues searching for an opportunity to extend the US presence in Central Asia beyond Afghanistan.
The focus of the memoranda was military cooperation, migration policy, energy supply issues and others. However, the main purpose of Putin's visit to Tajikistan was the prolongation of the Russian 201st military base agreement.
According to a new agreement, Russian troops are not expected to leave the Central Asian country until at least 2042. In contrast to Kyrgyzstan, whose opportunistic foreign policy led it in December 2001 to granting the US air force the right to lease a portion of the Manas international airport for its operations in Afghanistan in the war on terror, Tajikistan has always been viewed as a primary outpost of Russian strategic interests in Central Asia.
The presence of Russian-made Indian war planes at the Farkhor air base exemplifies Russia's loyalty toward its South Asian partner. At the onset, not only did India have Russia's acquiescence in acquiring the right to lease the air base, but Russia was instrumental in initiating India's commitment in its own sphere of influence.
Presently, Russia views India's presence in Tajikistan as a cornerstone of the "multipolar triangle" to repel any possible US encroachments on the Eurasian space.
Seemingly, what could be more of a boost of morale for Russia than the presence of Indian air force at the border with Afghanistan. Yet, it would also be an overestimation to view India as Russia's close strategic partner, especially when it comes to a collision of neo-imperial interests at the nexus of central Asia, China, and India whose imminent rise to a superpower status is only a question of time.
Yet, Russia does not see India's air force base in Tajikistan as eroding a dominance there driven by economic and military assistance. Russia's participation in the Tajik economy is larger than that of all other countries combined. Millions of Tajik households depend on a steady supply of remittances and oil from Russia already measured in billions of dollars each year.
The regime of President Rakhmon relies on a supply of modern equipment to maintain the military, which is crucial for maintaining a political hegemony in the country and deterring any military action by neighboring Uzbekistan, whose relations with Tajikistan have been strained for the past decade.
It is fair to say that stability in Tajikistan, or Central Asia in general, is at present based on the Russia-derived policies of hegemony and political force rather than consensus, freedom, and the respect for human rights.
Paradoxically, given Tajikistan's high economic dependence on Russia, it is Russia that is in equal measure interested in the prolongation of such close bilateral ties despite the opinions voiced in both countries in favor of alleviating the reciprocal dependence. In both countries some propositions have been made to introduce a visa regime between Russia and Tajikistan. For Tajikistan, this means finding alternative routes to meet the demands of its labor-intensive economy.
For Russia, it means filling an empty space that is occupied by Tajik migrant workers and which has its own complexities given the fact that they occupy a specific stratum in Russia's economy, the construction sector. Attempts to find alternative hosting countries have hardly proved successful for Tajikistan in the years past. In all, Russia remains Tajikistan's major economic partner and sponsor, despite China's and Iran's growing involvement in the Tajik economy and investments in major development projects.
(China's involvement in Tajik economy can't be seen as an act of altruism. Moreover, China's expansionist ambitions recently came to light after a statement was made by the chairman of the National Social-Democratic Party of Tajikistan, Rahmatillo Zoirov, about an alleged additional transfer of Tajik territory by the government to China in order to terminate its financial debt.)
Likewise, Tajikistan offers Russia's cheap labor and an extension of its neo-imperial interests.
While Russian interest in Tajikistan serves as a deterrent to the extension of US influence from Afghanistan to the north, the US leadership also seems to be satisfied with the current Tajik regime given the lack of a viable alternative political force in the country and, perhaps, an interest in maintaining stability in the region. By contributing significantly to the consolidation of state power institutions, both Russia and the US also indicate their anxiety about the prospect of another cycle of warfare in Tajikistan. Neither party is interested in the rise of fundamentalism in Tajikistan.
To a great extent, US and Russian interests in Tajikistan overlap on issues related to the containment of an Islamic threat that makes the US leadership turn a blind eye on the transgressions of Tajikistan's authoritarian leadership in dealing with the opposition and creating serious impediments to the development of an open electoral system. It is fair to say that by doing this the US policymakers do more harm than good as it might have serious repercussions in the future.
Despite the arguments made about a realignment in Tajik foreign policy away from a dependence-driven alliance, Russia still remains the single closest partner and a patron who continues to exert the strongest influence on a political leadership in Tajikistan. Without a doubt, over the past 10 years Russia has regained its hegemonic status in Central Asia owing to political imperatives set forth by President Vladimir Putin in the early 2000s.
Today, Russian-Tajik relations are a dependence-driven alliance whereby one country's political and strategic imperatives are met by another country's economic needs - a dependence hard to escape. With the bulk of the population well below the poverty line and millions of Tajiks forced to migrate and work in despicable conditions in Russia simply to make the ends meet, Tajikistan's leadership is concurrently forced to pursue alternative solutions in order to mitigate this dire dependence and thus avoid further turmoil.
However, instead of promoting democratic institutions, open society, and the respect for human rights, the efforts of Tajik leaders are confined to a pursuit of an economic and energy independence. As many of the present-day cases in other parts of the world suggest, an abundance of resources, whether economic or natural, does not always guarantee the welfare of the population. Only by pursuing these political goals first will Tajikistan be able to achieve genuine political and economic independence.
Shavkat Kasymov is an independent researcher and analyst based in Moscow.
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