Understanding the 'Uzbek way' on
security By Roger McDermott
Tashkent's decision to suspend its
membership in the Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO) has prompted widespread
speculation on its motives, and its portrayal as a
difficult and non-cooperative partner. However,
the pattern of Uzbekistan's participation in
multilateral security cooperation initiatives or
organizations is much more complex than the bulk
of reporting on the decision last month to suspend
CSTO membership might suggest.
Uzbekistan
has a record of involvement in cooperative
security
arrangements in Central Asia
on its own terms, and it does more clearly prefer
bilateral rather than multilateral mechanisms.
Highlighting some of these cooperative
arrangements is revealing in that it sheds light
on the specific organizations and circumstances in
which Uzbekistan has reservations or objections to
fuller participation.
Tashkent takes
part Although Uzbekistan takes part in
several organizations or projects aimed at
boosting multilateral security cooperation,
despite the lack of progress within Central Asia
to build genuinely cooperative security regional
security architecture, it is unclear if any of
these significantly enhance the stability of the
country or the wider region.
Uzbekistan,
like the other Central Asian states, is part of
the Border Management Program in Central Asia
(BOMCA). BOMCA is sponsored by the European Union
and the United Nations Development Program, and is
part of the European Union's anti-drug strategy in
Central Asia. Uzbekistan is not known to oppose
its work or initiatives and, moreover, also
participates in related anti-drug trafficking and
countering organized crime through the Central
Asian Regional Information and Coordination Center
(CARICC) in Almaty.
CARICC was founded in
2009 and is largely funded by the United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to facilitate
information exchange between the intelligence
agencies in Central Asia, interior ministries,
customs and border services and other agencies.
Canada, the US and a number of European countries
have observers in CARICC, and the body also
liaises with international security organizations
including the UNODC Regional Office for Central
Asia, Europol and Interpol and the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) Anti-terrorist Center in
Moscow.
Indeed, within the CIS, Uzbekistan
is a participant in a number of security bodies,
in addition to the CIS Anti-terrorist Center. It
is involved in the CIS Air Defense Coordination
Committee (Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine),
the CIS Military Cooperation Coordination
Headquarters and the CIS Council of Commanders of
Border Troops (SKPV). The SKPV includes
Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
The
SKPV coordinates efforts and develops relations
among CIS border troops, and promotes
military-technical cooperation and joint training
programs. Following the suspension of CSTO
membership on June 20, Tashkent sent a defense
ministry delegation to the 62nd meeting of the CIS
Council of Defense Ministers in Kaliningrad on
July 5, and reportedly proved cooperative and
willing to reaffirm the country's commitment to
joint air defense schemes.
Military and
security exercises As a result of recent
media coverage of the Uzbek suspension of CSTO
membership, certain errors have been put forward
as analysts tried to fathom the underlying motives
for Tashkent's "sudden" decision. Equally, in such
coverage, the country is often wrongly portrayed
as hostile to all forms of multilateral
cooperation. The recent history of Uzbekistan's
cooperation with international and regional
security organizations does not quite fit this
simplistic interpretation.
Uzbekistan
joined China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and
Tajikistan in Vostok Anti-terror 2006, under the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Regional
Anti-terrorist Structure (RATS) in Tashkent. An
unspecified number of troops, special forces and
law enforcement units took part in the exercise,
which was aimed at enhancing hostage rescue
capabilities and strengthening the protection of
critical infrastructure; the exercise rehearsed
the response to a terrorist attack on the
Institute of Nuclear Physics at the Uzbek Academy
of Sciences which contains a nuclear reactor.
Uzbekistan was involved in a similar SCO
exercise in Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan in May 2007,
using Special Forces and law enforcement units to
break a militant seizure of a village, practicing
hostage rescue and bomb disposal. In
August-September 2008, Volgograd Anti-terror was a
joint counter terrorist exercise involving units
from Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan; the exercise included anti-terrorist
units rehearsing hostage rescue and neutralizing
terrorist at a Lukoil refinery in Volgograd.
Although Uzbekistan eschewed most high
profile SCO military exercises, such as the Peace
Mission series, only sending a small number of
officers to Peace Mission 2007 and recently
avoiding any involvement in Peace Mission 2012 in
northern Tajikistan in June 2012, the country has
proved willing to send forces to smaller more
narrowly focused exercises.
Vostok-Anti-terror 2012, in Jizzax region
in Uzbekistan on June 4-6, 2012, was an SCO
exercise aimed at improving coordination between
SCO members' Special Forces to respond to
international terrorism. Special forces from
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan practiced
locating and eliminating groups of militants
launching an incursion from a "neighboring
country", destroying a terrorist training base and
rescuing hostages from vehicles and a local
government building.
Reflecting on the
Uzbek critique of the larger SCO or CSTO military
exercises, arguing that often these were too
focused on combined arms operations that did not
meet the requirements of a counter terrorist
mission, or that the scenarios were unrealistic,
Tashkent chose to send forces to multilateral
military exercises when it was seen to clearly
benefit the country.
Tashkent and the
CSTO crisis In June 2012, Tashkent did not
"suddenly" object to the evolution of the CSTO
away from a collective security body into an
organization capable of acting across a much wider
set of missions; its reservations were known to
other members and long in the making.
Specifically Tashkent was opposed to the
creation of the 20,000 strong Collective Rapid
Reaction Forces, first proposed in December 2008
and officially formed in June 2009. Like in the
case of other CSTO initiatives, Tashkent argued
that major decisions require consensus among all
members in accordance with the founding charter.
During the formative stage for the new
force structure, Tashkent advanced the concept
that all CSTO members should contribute equal
numbers of troops and have joint say in their use.
This was ignored, and the force that emerged,
without Uzbek participation, had Russian and
Kazakh elite airborne and air mobile units as its
mainstay. But Tashkent had deeper concerns; not
only the size and precise structure of the CSTO
forces but on the conditions of their operational
use.
In the interim, in June 2010 the
ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan resulted in
Bishkek's request for assistance from Moscow. And
some suggested that the CSTO might act, although
its members were opposed to action for numerous
reasons. However, any such action at that time
would have contravened the CSTO charter, since it
did not envisage military operations in response
to a domestic crisis within a member state. During
this period, Tashkent also opposed Moscow's plans
to open a new air base in southern Kyrgyzstan.
In December 2010, the CSTO summit in
Moscow advanced amendments to the CSTO charter to
allow action in response to a range of crisis,
including a domestic upheaval in a member state,
and even included civil emergencies. Uzbekistan
refused to sign the documents. Further advances
during the CSTO summit in December 2011, such as
the decision to sign an agreement among members
requiring consensus in the case of a foreign
country seeking basing rights on the territory of
a member state or to issue a joint communique
offering a common stance among members on key
issues, were met by Uzbek non-compliance.
By June 20, 2012, Tashkent suspended its
membership after several years of other members
ignoring its concerns, and offered in addition
reference to increasing military cooperation in
the CSTO and efforts to place Afghanistan on its
agenda.
Uzbekistan has twice over become a
key part of the Northern Distribution Network
(NDN) for NATO non-lethal supplies to Afghanistan.
First, by agreeing bilaterally to allow such
transit through the country by NATO member states,
and then more recently agreeing bilaterally and
also with NATO to allow "reverse transit" or the
removal of non-lethal equipment from Afghanistan
as part of the NATO drawdown by 2014.
Yet,
despite the importance of Uzbekistan in the NDN
and ongoing discussion with its NATO partners on
equipment donations to Uzbekistan linked to the
NATO exit from Afghanistan, some commentators
suggested that Tashkent suspended CSTO membership
possibly to allow a free hand to open a US air
base in the country; this misses the point.
Tashkent is not a signatory to the agreement that
binds other CSTO members to consult each other
before agreeing to host foreign bases.
The
roots of Tashkent's decision on June 20,
therefore, are purely connected with the internal
evolution of the CSTO. The door is still open for
its future return, but if the divisions cannot be
healed and Tashkent withdraws entirely, the CSTO
could emerge as a weakened organization without a
strategically important Central Asian state. The
Uzbek decision was not taken from a position of
weakness.
Recognizing that the calculation
was based on avoidance of a more final complete
withdrawal from the CSTO, Moscow is likely to
pursue a cautious diplomatic line with its Central
Asian partner. In the hypothetical case of future
CSTO military operations in Central Asia, it is
difficult to imagine that Uzbekistan's concerns
would be ignored, whether within or outside the
CSTO.
Roger N McDermott is an
affiliated senior analyst at the Danish Institute
for International Studies, Copenhagen, and an
Advisory Scholar: Military Affairs at the Center
for Research on Canadian-Russian Relations (CRCR)
Georgian College Ontario, Canada.
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