Kazakhstan ponders joining Afghan fray
By Roger N McDermott
LONDON - Kazakhstan is seriously considering sending its peacekeepers to
Afghanistan, which would mark the first deployment of soldiers from Central
Asia since the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980s. Such a controversial step would
follow Kazakhstan's decision in October to withdraw its peacekeepers from Iraq,
based there since 2003 under Polish command and carrying out demining and water
purification tasks.
The clearest indication yet that Kazakhstan's government is contemplating
deploying peacekeepers to Afghanistan in support of the International Security
Assistance Force's (ISAF) mission came from Kazakhstan's State Secretary Kanat
Saudabayev. Saudabayev, addressing a plenary session of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization's (NATO) parliamentary assembly in Valencia
on November 20 indicated that Astana would like to increase its overall level
of support for peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan by sending military
personnel there.
This may involve elements drawn from Kazakhstan's peacekeeping battalion
(KAZBAT) to work in military hospitals and at ISAF headquarters in Kabul.
Saudabayev said expanding constructive and mutually beneficial cooperation with
NATO is a key priority in Kazakhstan's foreign policy. Another indication that
Astana is open to such possibilities came on December 2, 2008, with an
agreement to open the military part of Almaty airport for emergency access to
United States and NATO aircraft in support of operations in Afghanistan.
Pressure has mounted for some months from both Washington and London, according
to sources in the Kazakhstan Defense Ministry, to send its peacekeepers to
Afghanistan to bolster the ISAF mission, though Astana has been reluctant to
implement such a policy shift. Pressure against the deployment is strong
internally, not only from pacifists in Kazakhstan's parliament, but also active
opposition from Kazakhstani veterans of the Soviet-Afghan war.
Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev, sensitive to these considerations,
has therefore sought to find a low-key workaround, which may bring the
advantages of KAZBAT's high-profile mission in Iraq without actually allowing
KAZBAT's use operationally.
In other words, sending KAZBAT to Afghanistan to carry out medical duties or
officers for ISAF staff represents a much lower risk that the regime may face
criticism at home over sustaining casualties in Afghanistan.
This remains a sensitive issue for Kazakhstan's government, since in January
2005 it sustained its first and only fatality during its five-year mission in
Iraq when a captain from KAZBAT died while offloading ordnance from a vehicle.
Indeed, after recently introducing NATO standard uniforms in KAZBAT, questions
were raised in Astana as to whether they were more likely to be shot at,
mistaken for American or NATO troops. Nazarbayev has used the peacekeeping card
skillfully to promote a positive image for Kazakhstan's armed forces abroad,
show commitment to the "war on terror" and prop up Astana's so-called
"multi-vectored" foreign policy. To a regime where image is everything, this
has been all too important, as has the collection of the trappings of
international legitimacy.
One such case relates to KAZBAT, as Astana has sought the accolade of becoming
the first Central Asian country to have designated "NATO Interoperable"
peacekeeping forces. Having gained considerable assistance from the US, Britain
and NATO to strengthen, train, equip and even expand its peace support
battalion into a brigade-sized unit (KAZBRIG), ready to play an active role in
NATO-led peace support operations, Kazakhstan wants confirmation of its new
role in international peacekeeping certified as "NATO Interoperable".
Its annual military exercises each September with US and British forces in
Kazakhstan, "Steppe Eagle" took on a new significance this year as a NATO team
assessed KAZBAT. Kazakhstan's Defense Minister Daniyal Akhmetov, was reportedly
pleased with the outcome, and the authorities in Kazakhstan are confident that
the "NATO Interoperable" status will be granted.
According to a Jamestown Foundation report [1], "Observers give at least three
reasons for Kazakhstan’s increasing strategic importance in global policy". The
report continues:
First, with [US president-elect Barack] Obama's
pledge to raise the American contingent in Afghanistan to 20,000, the US forces
will not be able to rely entirely on Manas airfield in Kyrgyzstan. Second, by
expanding their military presence in Central Asia, the United States and NATO
forces are determined to squeeze Russia and China out of the oil-rich and
strategically important region. This strategy also corresponds to the US-backed
plan of creating a Greater Central Asia extending from Afghanistan, through the
Central Asian states, to the Middle East. Third, by gaining access to an
airfield in Kazakhstan, the United States will have an opportunity to watch and
gather intelligence on Chinese nuclear facilities.
Yet, for
the all the importance attached by the regime to such signs of legitimacy and
international recognition, pressure from Russia following its five-day war with
Georgia in August has been felt acutely by Nazarbayev and his close circle.
Indeed, as they await NATO's decision on KAZBAT and consider plans to deploy
peacekeepers to Afghanistan, Moscow is also moving ahead with plans to promote
its own version of peacekeeping within the framework of the Collective Security
Treaty Organization (CSTO), hoping to have the peacekeeping component active by
2010; the year Kazakhstan assumes the chair of the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe. Moscow is tracking and mirroring Kazakhstan's rise
as an international peacekeeper through its western vector of its foreign
policy, by targeting its own multilateral and bilateral initiatives on these
same forces: drawn from Kazakhstan's air mobile forces headquartered at
Kapchagai.
As Nazarbayev straddles the fence, a role he is used to playing so well, he is
currently gauging whether Moscow will object to Kazakhstan's limited military
input into ISAF's operations in Afghanistan. What he will avoid at all cost is
succumbing to any Western pressure to deploy "operationally" to Afghanistan,
allowing a company from his peace support unit to patrol and carry out peace
support duties that puts them in harm's way. He learned well from the
deployment of KAZBAT in Iraq, that for a small element of his peacekeeping
forces to be used for the performance of supporting duties, minimizing the
risks undertaken, he can gain a larger dividend.
Roger N McDermott is an honorary senior fellow, Department of Politics
and International Relations, University of Kent at Canterbury (UK) specializing
in defense and security issues in Russia, Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
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