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Into the valley of death ...
By M K Bhadrakumar
In
calibrated moves during the past week, Washington
began wading into the controversy over last
month's suppressed uprising in the town of
Andizhan in Uzbekistan's Ferghana Valley. Leaving
behind the deadpan statements while the ground
situation was evolving, Washington is shifting to
a proactive mode.
The new elements are:
Washington has convinced itself that "hundreds of
innocent civilians were killed" in the Andizhan
uprising; "a credible, transparent assessment of
the tragic events" is called for; it is not enough
that Uzbekistan has ordered an inquiry and has of
its own accord invited major powers to assist; any
inquiry must include "an international partner";
the Uzbek government "owes its citizens and the
international community a serious, credible and
independent investigation"; the US rejects the
Uzbek government's invitation to take part in its
investigation "as we do not see that as a
substitute for an international investigation".
In a further ratcheting of demands, the US
State Department added, "The current state of play
is that we are considering all of our diplomatic
options, including at the UN ... meantime, we're
talking to member states of various international
organizations to try to generate support for an
international investigation ... and we are
actively working within the international
community to try to generate support." So far, the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the
World Bank have rallied. A senior State Department
official was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as
saying, "It could be a UN resolution, it could be
a statement by the Security Council, it could be
an action that the secretary general [Kofi Annan]
takes or something else."
Clearly,
Washington has decided to forgo the option of
working with the Uzbek government's investigation
(which is what regional powers have chosen to do).
Instead, it has invoked the doctrine of
humanitarian intervention. Why such concern, which
was lacking over Fallujah?
Three factors
come into play. First, from the perspective of the
"war on terror", there should have been strong
reason for the US to wait for the outcome of the
Uzbek investigation. All countries neighboring
Uzbekistan, including Afghanistan, have perceived
the hand of Islamist militants one way or another
behind the Andizhan uprising. Initial American
statements, too, acknowledged this. On June 2, the
US issued a travel advisory on Uzbekistan. Family
members and non-essential staff of the American
Embassy in Tashkent were authorized to leave
Uzbekistan for security reasons.
On June
4, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said,
"We have data showing that various extremist
groups may have been involved, among them the
Taliban and Chechen terrorists who, and we do know
this, periodically meet with the Taliban on the
territory of Afghanistan." Defense Minister Sergei
Ivanov added last week: "We have irrefutable
evidence of a foreign trace in these events ... It
is necessary to find the masterminds of the
turmoil and the whereabouts of weapons seized from
the local military unit and to find the answer to
many other questions." Russian Defense Ministry
sources claimed separately that 50 foreign
nationals from Asian countries, including the
Commonwealth of Independent States, were among
those killed or detained.
It stands to
reason that as partners in the "war on terror",
Washington and Moscow would have shared interests
to probe any involvement of extremist elements in
the Andizhan events. Ivanov stated at a
Russia-NATO council meeting in Brussels last
Friday that US and NATO forces were not doing
enough in Afghanistan to check the "export of
terrorism", but were concentrating instead on
"imposing democracy without taking into account
local habits and national traditions".
Washington seems uneasy that the Uzbek
inquiry over Andizhan events may come up with
findings that cast aspersions on the "war on
terror" in Afghanistan, which the George W Bush
administration has touted as a success.
Secondly, diplomatic prudence would demand
that Washington held fire at a time when sensitive
bilateral negotiations were going on with Tashkent
over "refinements" to the American military's
access to the Karshi-Khanabad airbase in
Uzbekistan. In these negotiations over recent
months, Uzbekistan has sought compensation for the
use of the base by US troops. The US has paid
Uzbekistan US$15 million since 2001 in
"reimbursement of services" for use of the base,
but is using it rent-free - on par with its free
use of other Soviet-era bases, such as Bagram and
Shindand in Afghanistan.
In October 2001,
Tashkent needed some persuasive talk by US
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld before
acceding to Washington's request for access to
Khanabad. After the Andizhan events, the
negotiations over the base are yet to resume.
Meanwhile, Tashkent's policy toward the US has
become noticeably guarded: Uzbekistan dropped out
of important NATO conclaves (which drew pointed
criticism from NATO officials); US Peace Corps
volunteers in Uzbekistan - numbering 52 - have
been forced to leave; Uzbek officials did not
receive a visiting delegation of US senators,
including Republican heavyweight John McCain.
Washington could be seeing the writing on
the wall, that it might be time to pack up and
leave Khanabad.
Thirdly, and most
interestingly, Washington's hardening stance
vis-a-vis Andizhan comes shortly after a meeting
of the foreign ministers of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO) at Astana,
Kazakhstan, on June 3.
In the run-up to
that meeting, the Russian Foreign Ministry said
that the foreign ministers would exchange views on
"reinforcing stability and security in the Central
Asian region". Russian officials were quoted as
saying, "Those present at the meeting [in Astana]
are not indifferent to what happened in Uzbekistan
and Kyrgyzstan recently." Addressing SCO
counterparts on June 3, Lavrov stressed that "the
situation that has been evolving demands of us
still greater unity and solidarity and better
coordination of efforts to reinforce stability and
security in the SCO space". The SCO comprises
Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan
and Uzbekistan.
The joint statement issued
after the Astana meet said, "The SCO countries
reaffirmed their readiness to intensify
cooperation in countering the conspiracies of
terrorist, separatist and other extremist forces
which aimed at creating instability in Central
Asia." The foreign ministers decided to recommend
to the forthcoming SCO summit meeting in Astana on
July 5 that the organization should have a "joint
mechanism" to respond to emergencies by developing
real-time permanent interaction of the law
enforcement and security-related agencies. They
decided to further strengthen the SCO's
institutional linkages with regional bodies such
as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and
the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), as
well as to accord "observer" status to Pakistan,
India and Iran - effectively safeguarding against
the possibility of any security organization from
outside the region (such as GUUAM or NATO)
imposing itself arbitrarily on Central Asia. GUUAM
comprises Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine
and Uzbekistan.
Could Washington be
circling the wagons around the SCO? That seems
unnecessary. At a working meeting with British
Prime Minister Tony Blair in St Petersburg on
Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin made an
innovative proposal similar to what is being
mooted by the Group of Eight for the impoverished
countries in Africa - the G8 could also help the
CIS countries. Putin said that poverty and other
acute social problems were at the root of
political instability in the CIS countries, and
the instability, in turn, was engendering a
tendency for the West and Moscow to view the CIS
space as a "battlefield". But a radically
different solution would offer itself if the
democratic and economic development of Central
Asia could be turned into a matter of
international cooperation.
But it is not
for Putin and Blair to arrive at such an approach.
It calls for visionary leadership in Washington.
Also, it is far from clear whether the Central
Asia experts who set the policy trends in
Washington will allow such an approach. They are
"cold warriors" who would feel orphaned if they
were taken off the Central Asian battlefield.
Certainly, by the high standards of the
Great Game set by imperial Britain in the 19th
century, the American drive to "remake" Central
Asia looks like sheer petulance. Imperial Britain
would have first stabilized Afghanistan before
venturing north across the Amu Darya into the
Central Asian steppes. In an interview with
Reuters on Tuesday, Pakistani President General
Pervez Musharraf pointed out that even in
"do-able" terms, "a semblance of democracy that is
sustainable, ensuring the integrity of
Afghanistan" can be an achievable target only in
the next 10 years or so. And that indeed is a very
long time in politics. Meanwhile, the "war on
terror" itself has been sub-contracted. The US has
shifted the burden of responsibility to curb drug
trafficking originating from Afghanistan toward
Central Asia - the profits are a main source of
funding for the militants - to the Afghan
government, even though the Kabul government has
no effective control of the country.
The
only success that could be claimed is that the
"war on terror" has dispersed various militant
networks thriving in Afghanistan under the Taliban
regime. But the militant groups - from the
Ferghana Valley, Xinjiang or Chechnya - have since
established sanctuaries inside Tajikistan and
Kyrgyzstan. All indications are that the
Afghan-Tajik border region is becoming highly
volatile. On Wednesday, a bomb attack in downtown
Dushanbe flagged how tenuous Tajik peace is.
In such a perilous security climate, in
the name of promoting freedom and civil society,
the US is pressing ahead with a systematic
campaign aimed at undermining Central Asian
governments and replacing them with pliable
set-ups amenable to "globalization". Kazakhstan
and Uzbekistan are the "key" countries for US
regional policy - they hold large reserves of oil
and gas - while Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are of
secondary importance as "panhandles" only.
Curiously, US policy is once again showing
a propensity (as in the 1990s vis-a-vis the
Taliban) to manipulate political Islam as the
instrument of change in the region. But, given the
clan structure of Central Asian society, no single
political force will be in a position to replace
existing governments. Central Asian social
structures and their political forms may appear
archaic, and they probably are by Western
standards, but if outsiders introduce change, what
is highly likely to happen is political
fragmentation and a prolonged period of anarchy as
various contending forces struggle for supremacy.
The disquieting signs are already there.
Kyrgyzstan is tottering on the brink of anarchy
and may well descend into civil war. Under Russian
counseling, a tenuous alliance between the
northern and southern clan interests has been put
in place for the moment, but there is no certainty
about its durability. There are so many elements
that feel excluded following the ouster of
Kyrgyzstan's president, Askar Akayev. An overall
cult of violence is appearing. Political violence
has become a daily occurrence. Also, a nexus has
formed between criminals, drug mafia and militant
groups based in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, with
elements inside Kyrgyzstan. These forces are on
the ascent. The weakening of state authority in
Kyrgyzstan has worked to the advantage of all
quarters that want to take the law into their
hands. The Tulip Revolution has created a
first-class precedent for the street fighters. US
President Bush's rhetoric pigeonholing the
biography of the Tulip Revolution into hackneyed
definitions of freedom already looks ludicrous.
The events in Andizhan have further
destabilized the Ferghana Valley - a hotbed of
Wahhabism and simmering nationality questions.
This may appear to be a limited space on the vast
Central Asian landscape, but the valley accounts
for a quarter of the entire region's population
and is shared uneasily between Uzbekistan,
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Overthrow the Uzbek
government and pass on power to an Uzbek oligarch
living in exile in the US - this seems to be the
latest American game plan, tragic as it might
sound.
M K Bhadrakumar served as
a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service
for over 29 years, with postings including India's
ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey
(1998-2001).
(Copyright 2005 Asia
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