In the sweltering heat of
summer with the temperature hovering around the
mid-40s Celsius in the steppes, Tashkent felt
claustrophobic and walked out of the tent of the
Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty
Organization. The CSTO spokesman acknowledged on
Thursday in Moscow that Uzbekistan had sent a note
intimating the "suspension of its activity in the
framework of the alliance".
The matter now goes for the
consideration of the CSTO heads of state. The
current members are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. Uzbekistan was
one of the founder members of the CSTO in 1992 and
one of the keenest promoters of the doctrine of
collective security in the post-Soviet space.
Uzbek
President Islam Karimov hosted the ceremony for
the
signing of the CSTO's
groundwork treaty on May 15, 1992. But by 1999,
Tashkent had suspended its CSTO membership.
Uzbekistan estimated that greener pastures lay
ahead in a nascent regional process known as GUUAM
- Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and
Moldova - which was sponsored by the United States
to promote Western interests in the geopolitics of
energy in the Caspian region.
Second walkout But after another seven
years, Karimov took Uzbekistan back into the CSTO
tent in 2006 when it transpired that the US had
lost interest in GUUAM. Now, after yet another six
years, Karimov has decided that Uzbekistan should
step out of the CSTO tent once again.
The
CSTO aims to rebuff external threats and defend
the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the
member states without interference in their
internal political processes with military aid if
necessary. Defense and political relations are the
priority areas of the alliance. In 2004 the United
Nations General Assembly passed a resolution
granting it observer status. The alliance hopes to
gain status as a peacekeeping entity in the UN
operations worldwide. Suffice to say, Uzbekistan
is a key player in the CSTO's activities.
The
expectation is that after the withdrawal of the
bulk of the Western forces from Afghanistan in
2014, the CSTO will play an enhanced role in
Central Asia. Given the criticality of the
regional security scenario, Karimov made a risky
decision to quit the organization.
But
Uzbekistan's exit doesn't come as a surprise. In
recent years, Tashkent stopped taking part in CSTO
activities. In its demarche with the CSTO
secretariat last week, Tashkent seems to have
cited the following as reasons for its decision:
Dissatisfaction with the
alliance's strategic plans with regard to
Afghanistan;
Differences over the
intensification of military cooperation among
member countries;
Disregard of its concerns
by the alliance.
The demarche is not without
merits. In reality, the CSTO has no real role in
Afghanistan and the member countries bypass the
alliance, including by sending military
contingents to participate in the war led by the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Russia decided recently to
provide the use of its airbase in the Volga city
of Ulyanovsk as a hub for the transit of US and
NATO forces to and from Afghanistan. Moscow pleads
that the hub will not turn out to be a
full-fledged US or NATO base, and according to
NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, it
is a "pragmatic arrangement which allows us [NATO]
to transport non-lethal weapons and troops to
benefit our operation in Afghanistan". A
complicated mind But
there is something very odd about the fact that
the CSTO members collaborate deeply with the NATO
despite the latter's stubborn rejection of
repeated Russian pleas over the past three years
for engagement between the two alliances. NATO
never lost a moment to debunk the CSTO while the
latter's member countries worked with the Western
alliance. Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown
Foundation said recently:
The CSTO is
mainly a symbol of Russia's aspiration to become
a great power and to be regarded as the leader
of a bloc ... The CSTO is actually a network of
bilateral relationships. It follows the model of
the erstwhile Warsaw Pact, which was similarly
the sum total of bilateral relationships between
Moscow and each individual member country ... No
one in the West has given recognition in any
form to the CSTO ... In fact, its own member
countries would like to have their own
relationships with NATO, with the US and other
Western players - not to have to go through the
CSTO in order to have such relationships. And
certainly NATO reciprocates that
wish.
The crunch time came probably
when despite (or because of) the above
contradiction, Moscow began intensifying the
CSTO's integration processes. Indeed, the CSTO is
funded primarily by Russia, and its estimation
that the alliance's member countries are not
sufficiently motivated is valid. The integration
potential of the CSTO has become important for
Russia.
Ironically, Uzbekistan would
have lived with a loosely knit CSTO that existed
on paper. But it refused to sign the agreement on
the Collective Forces of Operative Reaction within
the CSTO treaty, which was formalized in 2009.
From that point Tashkent began dissociating from
CSTO activities.
But the alliance surged by
creating a rapid reaction force and further
decided at its last summit in Moscow in December
that no member country could allow outside powers
to deploy military bases on its territory without
the consent of all CSTO members. Tashkent
apparently feels that this decision curbs its
sovereign prerogatives in the prevailing highly
volatile regional security environment. But there
is more to Tashkent's calculations.
A grand bargain Secret negotiations have been
going on for the past two or three months between
Washington and Tashkent on the feasibility of
Uzbekistan providing the main gateway in the north
for the US (and NATO) forces operating in
Afghanistan. Indeed, Uzbekistan has great
potential as a transit hub for the US forces, and
its Soviet-era military bases in Navoi and Termez
are just the sort of facility that Washington
would like to access to support its permanent
military bases in Afghanistan, where tens of
thousands of combat troops will be deployed.
(Germany has a base already in Termez.)
The
non-availability of the Pakistani transit routes
and the growing uncertainties and tensions in the
US-Pakistan relationship lend urgency to the
US-Uzbek negotiations. Karimov anticipates the
scope for striking a grand bargain with the US and
NATO. According to reports, the Pentagon may even
consider handing over free of cost to the Central
Asian states its war equipment (which are in any
case cumbersome logistically and burdensome
financially to evacuate) from Afghanistan.
Getting rid of the CSTO
membership becomes the need of the hour for
Tashkent. In sum, Tashkent is decoupling its
wagons from the CSTO convoy.
The
great irony of the situation is that the US and
NATO are poised to get "hubs" in both Russian and
Uzbek territories (and, perhaps, in Tajikistan and
Kyrgyzstan as well) and in the process also
undercut the CSTO as a military alliance.
Uzbekistan's exit from the
CSTO is a setback to the alliance at a crucial
juncture. Other Central Asian countries -
Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan - may also feel
encouraged to strike bargains with the US and NATO
independent of Moscow.
One more shot across the
bow Meanwhile, there
is yet another imponderable: How does China view
these trends in a region where it is a stakeholder
too?
Even as the rupture in
Uzbekistan's ties with the CSTO surfaced, Xinhua
news agency featured an exclusive interview with
Rasmussen on Saturday. He said, inter alia, that
NATO appreciated the "concrete steps" taken in the
direction of strengthening the dialogue between
the alliance and China and cited as examples
"military-to-military cooperation and increased
high-level contacts".
Rasmussen pointed out that it
was "quite natural" for NATO to "seek a more
structured dialogue" with China. "I hope to see
that further develop in the coming years," he
added. Rasmussen welcomed a "strong engagement" by
China in Afghanistan not only in the economic
sphere but also politically by "facilitating a
process where Afghanistan's neighbors, including
Pakistan, engage positively in finding a solution
to the conflict in Afghanistan".
Equally,
Rasmussen sidestepped the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization's plans in Afghanistan and merely
said, "NATO has cooperation, partnerships and
dialogues with members of the SCO and we will
continue to develop bilateral relationships,
dialogues with members of the SCO."
He
seemed to have had Uzbekistan on his mind. But
Russian experts expect that Karimov will get
disillusioned with the US eventually and return to
the CSTO fold. To quote from a Russian commentary:
Tashkent wants
to become the key link in the [United States']
future troop withdrawal and play a role as the
main springboard ... However, considering the
current situation in Central Asian countries,
which is very difficult, it won't do [for
Uzbekistan] without security guarantees from its
neighbors. Neither the US nor NATO wants to give
such guarantees to Uzbekistan - and neither of
them can do that. Tashkent has time to think
over everything. Taking into account the
[vacillating] choices that Uzbek authorities
make from time to time, Uzbekistan may soon find
itself again on the list of CSTO
members.
The Russian optimism is not
entirely misplaced. Curiously, on Friday, as the
eventful week was drawing to a close, Tashkent put
one more shot across the bow. In an interview with
Russia's Interfax news agency, the spokesman for
the Uzbek Defense Ministry said:
Uzbekistan
continues its partnership in the format of the
CIS Defense Ministers Council. The national
Defense Ministry [in Tashkent] on Thursday
confirmed that it will attend the Council's 62nd
meeting to be held in Kaliningrad on July 5
under the chairmanship of Russian Defense
Minister Anatoly Serdyukov.
He added
that Deputy Defense Minister Major-General Rustam
Niyazov, who holds charge of international
cooperation, would lead the Uzbek delegation.
It
may be a low-key delegation, but it is just enough
to keep Moscow and Washington wondering. This was
how business used to be transacted under the
famous moneychangers' dome near the Caravanserai
in Bukhara on the Silk Road in ancient times.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a
career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His
assignments included the Soviet Union, South
Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
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