| |
 PART
4
Touching base
Part 1: The last frontier: China's far
west
Part 2: The king of the steppes
Part 3: In pursuit of the snow leopard
BISHKEK and KANT - On October 23, Russian
President Vladimir Putin and his Minister of Defense
Sergei Ivanov spent seven crucial hours in Kyrgyzstan
meeting Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev and opening a
Russian military base in Kant, described by the minister
as "a deterrent to international terrorism".
Is
the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) about to turn
the contiguous alpine republic into a caliphate? Not
really. Putin said that "on the whole, the current
military and political situation in Central Asia is
stable. However, one should remember the possibility of
terror attacks from the outside."
The Kant base,
only a 20-minute drive from the capital Bishkek, was
built in World War II for rear support to the Soviet Air
Force. During the Soviet era, foreign pilots studying at
Frunze College trained at Kant: one of them was the late
Syrian leader Hafez Assad. Kyrgyzstan has granted Russia
all the infrastructure of the base. Russia has spent
US$3.3 million in reconstruction, and will spend $10
million more to modernize it, apart from an annual $5
million in maintenance. The Russians will station five
Su-27 fighter jets, seven Su-25 bombers, two Il-76, one
An-26 military cargo and one L-39 training plane at the
base. Kyrgyzstan will have five planes and two
helicopters.
Putin himself made another fine
distinction on his visit to Kant: the American military
base at Manas airport in the country is engaged in the
stabilization of Afghanistan; the Kant airbase will take
care of security of Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS) countries in their southern borders. Colonel
General Boris Mylnikov, the head of the CIS
Anti-Terrorism Center in Bishkek, holds the same view:
the threat to Central Asia comes from Islamic
fundamentalists operating in the south.
Kyrgyz -
nomads who came to Islam only in the 15th century, and
for whom an al-Qaeda worldview is totally alien - are
comfortable with that view. At the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, bright young officials are more worried about
"peaceful Sinification" - the very real possibility of
an invasion by get-rich-quick immigrant Han Chinese.
Nonetheless, trade with China remains essential. Almost
all goods imported by Kyrgyzstan come from China, via
the Torugart pass. When China temporarily closed its
borders because of SARS, thousands of Kyrgyz lost their
jobs.
China has shown what Kyrgyz define as
"self-control and wisdom" as far as both the American
and Russian bases are concerned. In a recent visit to
Bishkek, Jiany Hong, a female Chinese general, stressed
that the American and Russian bases will not affect
further military cooperation with Kyrgyzstan - which
will be concentrated in the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization. Kyrgyz military leaders cheerfully
speculate that sooner or later China may also try to
open its own air base in the country.
From
Russia, Kyrgyz expect above all lots of investment in
hydro-electricity, the mining industry and agricultural
processing - although the latest agreements were
basically related to transport and power engineering.
Kyrgyz place great hopes in the Eurasian Economic
Community - which at the moment consists of Russia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Belarus, with
Armenia, Ukraine and Moldova as observers. Average
annual investment in Kyrgyzstan has been a mere $100
million since 1995, but that represents 7 percent of the
gross domestic product.
Washington was obviously
not pleased with the news from Kant. Kyrgyz point to
some very visible consequences. The International
Monetary Fund (IMF) office in Bishkek has become tougher
towards Kyrgyzstan. And the State Department has opened
its own independent printing house - which means
opposition newspapers will be back in full force.
Kyrgyz are very pragmatic and have no historical
hang-ups: it's easy for a foreign visitor to catch
himself in a Beatles' "Back in the USSR" mood. The
country's greatest writer, Chingiz Aitmatov, insists
that Russian is the key language link for Central Asia's
common development: this has nothing to do with
preserving national culture, he says. It was only on
August 16 that Vladimir Lenin's statue in Biskek's
Ala-Too square was finally toppled - replaced by an
independence statue. Bishkek has its eyes glued on
Moscow: like every other CIS leader, Akayev has not said
a single word on the arrest in Russia of Yukos chairman
Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Kyrgyz and Kazakhs are
essentially the same people. Both these descendants of
Genghis Khan's Golden Horde migrated south from Siberia.
The Kyrgyz - originally called Kara-Kyrgyz - chose to
live in the mountains. The Kazakhs chose to live in the
steppes. Before the October Revolution of 1917, they
were both Kyrgyz - as far as the Russians were
concerned. Once again, it was Josef Stalin who imposed
on them a geographical and ethnic divide.
Modern
problems may essentially be attributed to a combination
of Stalin's demented mapmaking and the IMF's dreadful
structural adjustment policies. Few Kyrgyz ever joined
the Communist Party - even after being tamed by the iron
hand of Stalinism: this means that when the Soviet
republic became independent in 1991, there were very few
Kyrgyz bureaucrats and technology experts. Stalin's
bouts with geography led to the country being split in
the middle. Russians are settled in the north and in the
largest cities; Uzbeks dominate Osh and the south. The
Uzbeks, linked to the ultra-sensitive Fergana Valley
(more later in this series), form a powerful economic
and business lobby in Osh, but are completely excluded
from political power in Bishkek.
Akayev, whom
Kyrgyz mockingly refer to as "Papa", was a researcher in
St Petersburg and an associate of legendary Russian
physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov. He bears the
distinction of being the one and only non-communist
elected as president of a Central Asian republic in free
and fair elections, in 1991. But independence revealed
itself to be an economic disaster: Kyrgyzstan, famously
described as being able to feed the entire Soviet Union,
suddenly lost its market for dairy products. Akayev went
Western: in 1993 Kyrgyzstan became the first Central
Asian republic to privatize state-owned business and
land (90 percent of state firms have already been
privatized) and to adopt IMF policies. And in 1998 it
became the first Central Asian republic to join the
World Trade Organization.
The problem is
Kyrgyzstan's vulnerability: it depends on neighbors
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for oil, gas and coal, and
Uzbekistan's dictator Islam Karimov can be a very moody
leader. Inevitably, Kyrgyzstan's external debt started
to grow: thanks to the IMF it is now the largest debt
per capita of any Central Asian republic. The result has
been massive loss of jobs and increased poverty,
affecting 60 percent of the population, according to
World Bank figures.
With the economic situation
deteriorating and political opposition growing, Akayev's
only possible exit strategy was to turn from democrat to
autocrat. Faced with the threat of a mass exodus by the
Russians, Akayev set up a Slavic University in Bishkek
(there is also an American University), and in 1999
named Russian as a second national language. Karimov
forced Akayev to repress Islamic fundamentalism: Akayev
arrested dozens of people and forced all mosques and
religious schools to be state-registered. China for its
part forced Akayev to repress Uighurs. And so the Kyrgyz
dream of religious and political tolerance came to an
abrupt end - largely by pressure from its undemocratic
neighbors.
But ironically it was thanks to the
activities of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan,
closely aligned with the Taliban, and which considers
Karimov its bete noire, that Akayev managed to achieve
one of his cherished goals: a greater economic
cooperation between Russia and Central Asia (Karimov was
always against it). As a side effect of the "war on
terror", Kyrgyzstan has become a de facto key pawn for
Russia, the US and China in the New Great Game. Thus the
American base at Manas, the Russian base at Kant, and
the Chinese base somewhere in the future.
German
political scientists consider the diverse Central Asian
authoritarian models as an objective and inevitable
phenomenon - especially now that policies of the
European Union, for example - as well as America's - are
all geared towards fighting radical Islam. The Kyrgyz
army was basically re-equipped with EU money. Regimes
like Akayev's are thriving with the West's security
obsession. This means that no one in Washington or
Brussels - and forget about Moscow or Beijing - is bound
to mention the words "democracy" and "Central Asia" in
the same phrase for a long, long time.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
