This has never before happened
in Tajikistan - "People Power". The regime in
Dushanbe retreated in the face of a groundswell of
popular opinion. A precedent has been set, which
has implications not only for the country but the
region as a whole. The great game being played out
in Central Asia acquires a new vector.
Last Thursday, when small groups of people
began gathering in the central square in
Tajikistan's eastern city of Khorog, the
capital of the remote
Gorno-Badakshshan province in the Pamir Mountains,
it seemed an innocuous walk in the afternoon.
But by Friday, the crowds grew bigger and
bigger and were already several thousands strong.
As the day wore on, they pitched tents and began
preparing for what appeared to be the long haul in
a pattern ominously reminiscent of "color
revolutions".
In Dushanbe, alarm bells
began ringing as if a the sound of distant drums
carried by the wind blowing in from the Maghreb
and North Africa across the vast expanse of the
Greater Middle East were echoing in the silence of
the Pamirs.
No more a 'Little
Brother' The milling crowds in Khorog's
city square had a deceptively simple demand:
Dushanbe should honor the terms of an earlier
truce agreed with the armed groups in
Gorno-Badakhshan and withdraw the government
forces from the area and dismiss the region's top
official. The truce had brought to an end the
security operations began by the government last
month in Gorno-Badakhshan.
By Saturday,
the retreat of the Special Forces from Khorog was
underway, following the signing of an agreement
between the government and the leaders of the
protest movement the previous evening "with
participation of international organizations".
The Tajik government had portrayed the
security operations as directed against fugitive
Islamist warlords but the Pamiri saw them as the
latest episode of the unresolved legacy of the
Tajik Civil War that erupted in the aftermath of
the disintegration of the former Soviet Union and
ended in 1997 on the basis of a reconciliation
between the secularists and the Islamists brokered
by the United Nations.
The point is, the
cold peace that descended on the country in 1997
has gradually transformed as a systematic purge
got under way in recent years involving the former
Islamist fighters who were brought into the power
structures within the framework of the peace
accord. The Pamirs have been the stronghold of the
Tajik opposition, and the local population views
the latest security operation as a barely
disguised attempt by the central government to
hunt down the former commanders of the United
Tajik Opposition and bring the remote region,
which has been a largely de facto autonomous
region, under its control.
Of course,
Gorno-Badakhshan is also the route for the drug
trafficking from Afghanistan and a thin line
separates the local opposition commanders and
organized crime-syndicates. But then, there is
hardly anyone with authority or muscle power in
Tajikistan who isn't tempted to make a living out
of the trafficking of Afghan heroin.
What
complicates the matrix are three factors. One, the
region has considerable mineral wealth. Second,
the Pamiri ethnic group is Shi'ite, belonging to
the Ismaili sect, whereas Tajikistan is a
Sunni-majority country. Three, the region
comprises rugged mountain terrain that borders
Afghanistan but the Tajik security forces are
weak, ill-equipped and ill-trained and have not
been able to cope with the security challenge in
the past seven-year period since Dushanbe asked
the Russian troops to leave. (Russian troops
patrolled the Tajik-Afghan border until 2005.)
Each of these dimensions is fast assuming
negative overtones. With the endgame in
Afghanistan, a scramble for the mineral resources
in Central Asia is about to erupt. Tajikistan used
to be Russia's Little Brother in Central Asia, but
the equations have changed and there are major
irritants today in their dealings, as evident from
the protracted, inconclusive negotiations so far
for the extension of the lease of the Russian
military bases.
'More faith and
respect' Meanwhile, China has
significantly expanded its presence in Tajikistan
and the United States also hopes to establish a
long-term military presence in that country. The
Russian experts are inclined to interpret the US
moves in Tajikistan as directed exclusively
against their country but that is being
presumptuous.
Tajikistan is also a
prospective link in the US' containment strategy
toward China. In the short term, the Russian fears
can be justified, but then, the US also has a game
plan for Tajikistan that has got to do with the
project for the "remaking of Central Asia" in a
truly post-Soviet, pro-West direction that creates
headaches for Beijing.
The Western
discourses over the unrest in Gorno-Badakhshan
have made it a point to underscore the Pamiri's
Ismaili identity, and alongside there has been a
studied projection of the Aga Khan as the
spiritual leader to Ismaili Muslims. Radio Liberty
/ Radio Free Europe has cited speculation that the
"Gorno-Badakhshan Ismailis might seek independence
from Tajikistan, exploiting the country's
political instability during the 1992-1997 civil
war."
Last week, in an extraordinary
commentary profiling the Aga Khan, it
thumb-sketched the prince - a jet-setting playboy
who takes keen interest in beautiful women, breeds
racehorses and owns fast cars - as a genuine
philanthropist in whom the local population in
Gorno-Badakhshan would have "more faith and
respect" than for Tajikistan President Emomali
Rahmon.
It is difficult to gauge the
authenticity of such profound assessments, but the
region has surely become the playpen of Western
intelligence. The Aga Khan, by the way, is a
multi-millionaire British citizen with extensive
business activities.
A point of incessant
interest for the West will be Moscow's ability to
swing a deal with Rahmon to extend the Russian
military presence in Tajikistan. Equally, the West
would ideally like to see Russia quitting the
Soviet-era Okno ("Window") complex in Nurek, which
is capable of detecting, identifying and finding
orbits of space objects of 1 meter size (such as
military satellites) located 2,000-40,000 km high.
The Pentagon knows Moscow will be
hard-pressed to replace Nurek, a location of such
atmospheric properties and parameters of
transparency and stability and number of clear
night hours (over 1,500 hours), except, perhaps,
somewhere in the Caucasus. It took over a decade
to construct the Okno after the place was chosen
in 1970.
Suffice to say, the political
volatility in Gorno-Badakhshan and the dangerous
security situation in the region - an Ismaili
"belt" runs down through Afghanistan to Pakistan's
Northern Areas - could be used by unfriendly
powers to act as pressure point on Rahmon to reset
his alliance with Moscow.
This probably
explains the alacrity with which Moscow played
down the popular surge in Khorog over the weekend.
However, in a longer term, questions marks are
indeed appearing about Tajikistan's stability and
viability as a nation state.
There has
been an all-round failure of governance and
against the overall backdrop of Tajikistan's
steady decline as a "failed state", separatist
sentiment could well rear its head in
Gorno-Badakhshan, which is an isolated,
impoverished region of rugged mountains several
hundred kilometers from Dushanbe with a sparse
population of a quarter of a million people only,
but comprises 44% of the country's land mass and
connected to the rest of the country by a solitary
highway.
A tangle difficult to
untie If political separatism gains ground
in Gorno-Badakhshan, there is big trouble ahead
for all of Central Asia, since Tajikistan also has
an ethnic Uzbek minority population of over a
million, which would also seek union with
Uzbekistan. Dushanbe has all along suspected
Tashkent as covertly fueling the Uzbek separatist
sentiments.
Looking ahead, therefore, if
Tajikistan fragments, the repercussions will be
keenly felt in the southern regions of Kyrgyzstan
(which are alienated from the north of the
country) and in Ferghana Valley (which is carved
out between Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and
Tajikistan). The tremors won't end there, because
Josef Stalin had ensured that there are Uzbek
minorities present in all the Central Asian
countries outside Uzbekistan.
Thus, the
intentions of Uzbekistan, which is the strongest
military power in Central Asia, already cause
uneasiness in the Tajik and Kyrgyz mind.
Uzbekistan's recent decision to suspend its
membership of the Collective Security Treaty
Organization and its lukewarm attitude to
participation in the military exercises of the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization are conveying
strong signals.
What perturbs Dushanbe and
Bishkek even more is the strategic import of the
proximity that is rapidly developing between
Uzbekistan and the US. A US-Uzbek axis would upset
the region's balance of power. The relations
between Uzbekistan on one side and Kyrgyzstan and
Tajikistan on the other have touched a dangerously
low point in the recent period.
Conversely, the dilemma that is facing the
US is how to pursue the promise of long-term
strategic ties with Tashkent, while stringing
Bishkek and Dushanbe along. This is by no means an
easy diplomatic tangle for Washington to handle,
since Tashkent is also not to be trusted as an
enduring ally, given its maverick behavior.
The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
will be undertaking a delicate diplomatic mission
when she visits Tashkent and Dushanbe in October
with the intent of finessing the Uzbek-Tajik
discords and bringing them somehow below an
acceptable threshold for the Pentagon to work on
creating its "lily pads" in both the Central Asian
countries.
Washington would hope that
before it finishes the work in progress to
establish its long-term military presence in the
region and before Clinton travels to the region,
Moscow doesn't wrap up a deal with Dushanbe.
Equally, Moscow will be racing against time in the
coming weeks and months to create the
underpinnings that would tie down Tajikistan to a
long-term partnership with Russia.
The
fact of the matter is that Moscow has subjected
Russia's relationship with Tajikistan to a long
period of neglect after raising high hopes in
Dushanbe during President Vladimir Putin's
landmark visit a decade ago. Again, the stakes are
high for Putin's project of creating a Eurasian
Union in the post-Soviet space (which of course
Washington is determined to frustrate).
Moscow has achieved remarkable success
lately on the path of bringing Kyrgyzstan back
into its orbit. The process will continue in the
coming months unless the latest turbulence in
Kyrgyz politics doesn't complicate matters. With
the job well in hand, Russian diplomacy toward
Tajikistan can be expected to attempt a similar
approach toward Tajikistan - a strategic
partnership with underpinnings of economic
assistance and investment in an overall matrix of
strong political support embedded within a
long-term military presence.
Meanwhile,
Moscow will do well to ensure that the
Gorno-Badakhshan situation is calmed and does not
upset the apple cart.
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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