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The shadows over Central
Asia
By M K Bhadrakumar
Two
years ago, on September 22, the first contingent of
American forces landed at the Khanabad military base in
Uzbekistan. In the period since then, lines have
appeared on the face of the "newly independent states"
of Central Asia, which might seem from a distance as
lines of disquiet and anxiety, but, on closer look, they
indicate signs of a new maturity, of quick learning and
adaptive skills that are requisites for surviving in a
difficult world.
Two years ago, a new uncertain
war was impending in Afghanistan, to which the landing
of American troops on Central Asian soil appeared
related. Central Asia and Afghanistan seemed as arm
locked as regards common security concerns; a regional
and international consensus seemed, at that point of
time, so vital to the winning of the Afghan war. The
anguish over September 11 silenced any doubts or
suspicions about the logic and hidden meanings of the
war about to be launched in Afghanistan. But, during the
two years since then, Central Asia has been disengaging
and assumed a habitation and name of its own. Compelling
realities emerged during this period.
The
Central Asian states realized that regardless of the
vicissitudes of the Afghan war, American forces had come
to stay in their region. They are no longer consigned to
the languid backwaters of geopolitics. The American
troop presence emanated out of their bilateral dealings
with Washington. Moscow merely acquiesced. For the first
time as "newly independent states", Central Asian
leaderships took a strategic decision.
They
realized as months passed that by their decision they
created more space and time to preserve their
centralized governments and regimes. No contending power
competing for influence in their midst today wants to
risk annoying them by making intrusive prescriptions.
Since countering terrorism was the core issue in
the geopolitics of the region, Central Asian states
became well placed to raise the specter of "terrorism"
on issues of their choice, even for squashing domestic
political opposition. Since terrorism in the regional
context had come to be identified with Islamic
militancy, they abandoned altogether their tentative
reconciliation with the 70 years of enforced atheism.
Tajikistan, too, seems to be turning away from its
experimentation with defining the co-relation between
the state and religion. A curious dialectic may thereby
unfold - political Islam as the locomotive of democratic
opposition - which only time can tell.
Great
powers have brought into the region an array of
organizations as instruments of policy - the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the
International Monetary Fund, the Collective Security
Treaty (within the auspices of the Commonwealth of
Independent States ), the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) and dozens of "human rights
watchdogs" and non-government agencies. Central Asian
leaderships would look back with satisfaction that they
have largely received this formidable battery of
collective wisdom to bend according to their needs and
wishes.
The US forces use Manas air base in
Kyrgyzstan, yet, hardly 30 kilometers away, Russia has
been permitted to use Kant airbase (the two bases may
have to coordinate the take-off and landing of their
"fourth generation" aircraft!); Uzbekistan, which the US
all but concluded to be its "proxy" in the region, has
just sought and obtained the privilege of hosting SCO's
"counter-terrorism" center; the US is the single biggest
investor in Kazakhstan's oil fields, yet Russia has just
entered into a far-reaching agreement with Kazakhstan on
"common economic space" with a common currency
(probably, rouble); Tajikistan was branded as Russia's
"proxy" in the region, yet it is in Dushanbe that Russia
encounters dogged resistance to its request to allow a
military base unless Moscow reciprocates on a variety of
extraneous issues.
Central Asian states draw
comfort that the presence of powerful foreign powers
shelter them from fears of outbreaks of strife, which
their inexperienced national security bodies were
previously hard-pressed to counter. The closure of the
bases of militant Islamic groups in Afghanistan has
indeed provided a rather peaceful period. But, more
enduringly, the accent on security concerns has prompted
strong border controls in the region. Central Asian
states, thereby, step out of the residual Soviet-era
legacy of "Turkestan" to become hard-nosed nation
states.
In these two years, the Central Asian
states preferred bilateralism in addressing their
intra-regional issues, be it border disputes, natural
resources of the region, ecological calamities,
transportation, tariff and trade. Russia can no longer
recapture the role of an arbiter, but nor can the US
pretend to be a new mediator in Russia's place. More
importantly, Central Asian states seem to grasp, despite
all their mutual suspicions and vexatious vanities, that
outside involvement in their intra-regional disputes
could lead to manipulation by the outsiders and would
place them ultimately at a disadvantage.
But
bilateral dealings have not led to the resolution of
disputes either. In fact, intra-regional tensions touch
new levels. Turkmenistan alleged an Uzbek hand in an
abortive coup attempt in Ashgabat last November;
violence erupts frequently involving border guards;
ill-defined border regions are planted with landmines -
the list is lengthening.
Central Asian states
continue to battle with their weak economies. Great
powers have not shown willingness or interest in the
past two years in making a difference to the grinding
poverty in the region, despite the region's critical
need of international assistance. Only China has
ventured into the building up of the manufacturing
sector of their economies in the critically important
small and medium sectors that have huge potential to
create employment. The US justifies inaction by blaming
political corruption, command economy structures and
conditions hampering investor confidence. Yet it eagerly
invests in the region's natural resources. It fights
pitched battles (as in Turkmenistan) for gaining control
over oil and gas. It meanly negotiates trade concessions
for marketing gold or cotton.
In these two
years, the geopolitics of the region has, ironically,
gained clarity. Three great powers - the US, Russia and
China - asserted their strategic presence while an
assortment of minor powers - Iran, Turkey, Pakistan,
India, European Union member countries - have been
consigned to the backstage as "pretenders" who do not
have an intrinsic role to play in the region, except in
collaboration with the great powers. The US estimated
that Russia's influence in the region was waning. But
Russia negotiated access to the gas supplies of
Turkmenistan and its evacuation, so much so that the
trans-Afghan pipeline might now lack viability;
moreover, Russia has assumed the responsibility for the
energy needs of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and will
handle the marketing of Uzbekistan's gas supplies.
China's brooding aloofness of the 1990s has given way to
a purposive initiative towards the region and a
constructive engagement, which it advanced very
considerably even within the short frame of the past
two-year period, despite all the adverse propaganda of a
"yellow peril". The Central Asian states, ultimately,
seem to discern what is in their best interests and to
pick and choose from the great powers.
Under the
auspices of great powers, three security alliances have
cast their net on the region - NATO, the Collective
Security Treaty and SCO. Central Asian states (except
Turkmenistan) allowed themselves with these multilateral
trappings to look for any tangential advantages of the
"militarization" of the region for their national
armies, but without committing to larger obligations.
The interplay of the three security alliances will be
keenly watched. None of them has been tested on the
ground.
None of the alliances has aspired to
gain exclusivity in Central Asia. This left the Central
Asian states from having to make hard choices. Even when
push came to the shove on Iraq and international support
was lacking, the US refrained from pressuring Central
Asian capitals, mindful that after two years of military
presence in the region it still has to compete for
influence.
The paradox lies in that no great
power can really substantially affect the security
equation in the region. As outside powers, they have
their own interests, which complicate their involvement.
They must constantly dovetail their Central Asian
engagement with the overall climate of their far more
important mutual relations, which are evolving in
diverse theaters - Chechnya, North Korea and Iran. More
fundamentally, they also have only limited capacity to
commit. Central Asia's needs - as nation states in the
making, the subsistence economies, the deep-seated roots
of the region's volatility, regional imbalances,
civilizational fault lines, claims by Islam to be an
appropriate participant in the political arena, a
Pandora's box full of intra-regional discords - are so
daunting as to make it impossible for any outside power
to claim the prerogatives of a sole benefactor or to
assume the phenomenal obligations of a provider.
Conversely, from the perspective of the great
powers, since exclusive dominance is unwise to aspire to
and hard to achieve in the Central Asian region,
significant economic and security assistance by any of
them individually for meeting the needs of the region
became doubtful in these two years. The "Cold Warriors"
dilating on the great game in Central Asia would do well
to remember President Harry Truman's words, "There is
nothing new in the world except the history you do not
know."
M K Bhadrakumar is a former
diplomat who served as India's ambassador to Uzbekistan
and Turkey.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times
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