The Great Game on a razor's edge
By M K Bhadrakumar
The accidental killing of Alexander Ivanov, a Kyrgyz fuel-truck driver, by
Corporal Zachary Hatfield, a US serviceman, at the Manas Air Base on the
outskirts of the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek in December is threatening to snowball
into a first-rate crisis for the United States' regional policy in Central
Asia.
Manas is the lone US military base in all of Central Asia - close to the
Chinese border of Xinjiang. Curiously, this was also how the year 2006 began,
as Washington was grappling with the call
made by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) for a timeline for the
withdrawal of the US military presence in Central Asia.
In a nationally televised address, Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev called
for reviewing the Manas base agreement with the US. The Kyrgyz Parliament
passed a resolution that given the "negative perception of the American image
among our country's population", Bakiyev should examine the continuance of the
base. The Foreign Ministry made a demarche with the US that Hatfield shouldn't
leave until the Kyrgyz due process of law took its course.
This is rhetoric out of Latin America. Yet Bakiyev had only come to power on
the crest of the US-backed "Tulip Revolution" of March 2005. But US-funded
Kyrgyz "civil society" groups are nowadays arrayed against him on account of
his increasingly pronounced foreign-policy leanings toward Russia and China.
They turned rowdyish in November, and humiliated him, forcing on him a new
constitution curtailing his presidential powers. That is to say, Washington
must now seek Bakiyev's help while backstage it could be funding and
instigating political activists bent on overthrowing him. Bakiyev's overthrow
may help the US firm up its grip on Manas, but today his helping hand is useful
for preserving US interests. Nothing could be more surreal. Nothing would so
vividly epitomize the complexities of the geopolitics of Central Asia.
Great Game slows down
The Great Game in Central Asia itself may appear to have considerably slowed
down in 2006. But nothing could be more deceptive an impression. True, we've
witnessed nothing like the cataclysmic events of the previous year - "Tulip
Revolution" or the Andizhan uprising in Uzbekistan. Yet great-power rivalries
most certainly continued - passions that were largely driven underground, where
they simmered without taking a confrontational character.
Partly this was because the bickering over geopolitical influence became
somewhat manifestly lopsided, with Russia and China not only retaining their
gains of yesteryear but also consolidating them, and the US painstakingly
attempting to recoup its lost influence in the region.
The single biggest "success story" of US diplomacy in the Great Game during the
past year has been that Washington prevailed on Russia and China to give
consideration to its reasoning that granting full membership to the Islamic
Republic of Iran in the SCO might not be consistent with their own long-term
interests. This was no mean achievement, considering that both Russia and China
have such high stakes in their bilateral relations with Tehran. But Iranian
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad attended the summit as a special invitee. The SCO
evidently keeps open the "threat" of Iranian membership.
Equally, the fact that, unlike its previous year's summit, the SCO meeting in
June 2006 did not assume an overt anti-American overtone must remain a matter
of relief for Washington. In many ways, the SCO demeanor has come to be the
litmus test of the United States' geopolitical standing in Central Asia at any
given time. Contrary to earlier US estimations, the SCO is increasingly
acquiring a swagger that is suggestive of its potential to become the main
powerhouse of the Eurasian region - arguably, a leading Eurasian economic and
military bloc. The SCO comprises China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
During the five-year period since its birth in 2001, the SCO, which has as
members a number of underdeveloped countries including some desperately poor
ones with nothing ostensibly to bind them together except their common
geography, has not only held together but has grown in size and influence.
Initially drawing on the Chinese tri-fecta of "terrorism, separatism and
extremism", the SCO speaks today about the establishment of a free-trade area
and about common energy projects such as exploration of hyrdrocarbon reserves,
joint use of hydroelectric power and water resources. But from the US
perspective, the SCO agenda continues to be laden with a heavy cloud of
suspicion regarding the United States' geostrategic intentions in the Central
Asian region.
This impression gets further confirmed by the SCO's decision to hold
large-scale joint military exercises scheduled for the coming summer in central
Russia with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the military
alliance that is Moscow's answer to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's
enlargement into the post-Soviet space. The CSTO includes Russia, Belarus,
Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
That the military exercises will take place against the backdrop of the chill
that has descended on Russia-US relations in the past year or two, and in the
light of the likely deployment of the first interceptors of the US missile
defense systems in Central Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, is no doubt
significant.
It is irrelevant whether the SCO can be called a latter-day Warsaw Pact or a
"NATO of the East". What is important is that on a practical plane, when it
transpired that the US aircraft deployed at Manas Air Base might be undertaking
reconnaissance missions into sensitive military regions in central Russia and
China's Xinjiang, Moscow and Beijing put their foot down and acted in concert
within the framework of the SCO, insisting that the stated purpose of the US
military presence in Central Asia must be fulfilled in letter and spirit,
namely that it restricted itself exclusively to undertaking resupply missions
for the "war on terror" in Afghanistan.
The then-Kyrgyz president, Askar Akayev, was caught in the middle and
overthrown from power in the process as a furious Washington let loose the
"Tulip Revolution" on him for his perceived intransigence in turning down the
US request for the stationing of AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System)
aircraft in Manas. But the SCO quietly and firmly held its ground. Thereby it
made an important point - that it had gained traction as a security
organization. Not only that, the SCO proceeded to follow up at its summit in
June 2005 with the call for the vacation of the US military presence in the
region.
Indeed, going one step further, the SCO emphatically rallied behind the
leadership of Uzbekistan in its move to ask for the vacation of the US air base
at Karshi-Khanabad. On both counts - restrictions placed on the use of Manas
and the eviction from Karshi-Khanabad - Washington meekly had to give in. In
the process, Bishkek even renegotiated the bilateral agreement on Manas a few
months ago by getting Washington to increase the annual rent of the base from
US$2.7 million to between $150 million and $200 million.
The year 2006 has thus made it clear that the US is unlikely to become a single
dominant power in Central Asia. Simply put, Russia and China have together put
up the SCO dikes delimiting the US influence in the region, which will be
difficult for Washington to breach for the foreseeable future. During the year,
by and large Washington has vainly exhausted its energies in attempts to create
misunderstandings between Russia and China and in pitting one SCO member state
against another.
The heart of the matter is that apart from the bleeding wounds in Iraq and
Afghanistan, which remain a major distraction for US diplomacy worldwide, US
policy in Central Asia is seriously
