Tajikistan wary of Iranians bearing
gifts By Fozil Mashrab
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - Iranian President
Mahmud Ahmadinejad attended Navruz (spring "New
Year") celebrations in Tajikistan over the past
weekend, after which he attended the Fifth
Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on
Afghanistan in Dushanbe, the capital Tajikistan,
on March 26-27.
While in Tajikistan,
Ahmadinejad tried to comfort his embattled Tajik
counterpart, Emomali Rahmon, on whom next-door
Uzbekistan and Russia have been tightening the
screws recently. Ahmadinejad promised to help
Tajikistan, Iran's Persian-speaking cousin, to
overcome its geographic isolation by building an
international highway and a railway line linking
Dushanbe with Tehran.
Moreover,
Ahmadinejad also promised to construct gas and
water pipelines between the two countries through
war-inflicted
Afghanistan to supply
Iranian natural gas and crude oil to Tajikistan
and to allow it to import water.
If
realized, these transport and energy projects
could be "game-changers" for Tajikistan, a small
and land-locked mountainous nation of about 7.8
million people squeezed between Uzbekistan, China,
Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan. Its current dependence
on Uzbekistan and Russia for fossil fuel supplies,
ie natural gas and petroleum, and transportation
networks is crippling its economy.
However, regional observers doubt that
these grand projects will be realized any time
soon due to various obstacles. For a start,
cash-strapped Tajikistan would expect Iran to foot
the bill, which could be a problem as the Iranian
government has had to introduce a number of
unpopular austerity measures, such as slashing
subsidies, including petroleum subsidies. Tehran
faces a range of international sanctions -
including economic ones - over its nuclear
program, which some say is designed to build
weapons - a charge Iran denies.
International financing will become
increasingly difficult - if not impossible - to
source as economic and financial sanctions imposed
by the United States and other Western countries
begin to bite on Iran's oil exports, its main
source of revenue.
Besides that, Iran and
Tajikistan do not share a common border, meaning
the envisioned highway/railway lines and pipelines
will have to cross through Afghanistan, which does
not have the necessary security and technical
capacity to host transnational natural gas
pipelines.
A similar transnational natural
gas pipeline that is meant to cross Afghanistan
from gas-rich Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India -
TAPI - remains on the drawing board after more
than a decade since its conceptualization. This
despite strong US support for the project in
addition to the Asian Development Bank's
willingness to finance its implementation.
A proposed Iran-Pakistan natural gas
pipeline, opposed by the US which wants to isolate
and undermine the Iranian regime, also remains a
pipedream.
Brothers across borders
Since Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005, he has
been a strong proponent of unity among
Persian-speaking Iran, Tajikistan and parts of
Afghanistan. Under his watch, Iran has become one
of the largest foreign investors in key sectors of
the Tajik economy, such as construction of
hydroelectric power stations, road infrastructure,
banking and other sectors.
Ahmadinejad has
famously described the two nations as "one spirit
with two bodies". Similar bonhomie exists only
between Turkey and Azerbaijan, Turkic-speaking
countries that call themselves "one nation, two
countries".
However, linguistic fraternity
and a common cultural and historical heritage
aside, Iran and Tajikistan have little in common
in their political systems and ideologies.
Both are predominantly Muslim, but
Tajikistan is Sunni while Iran is the champion of
Shi'ite Islam, which, though not a complete
barrier, is an important factor that prevents
people from fully embracing one another.
Hence, both among Iranian and Tajik
political elites there lurk strong divisions under
the surface of happy smiles and kisses on how to
build relations.
Some high-ranking Tajik
officials are believed to be cautioning Rahmon to
draw limits to Tajikistan's tilt towards Iran in
view of the latter's troubled relations with
Western countries.
Alcohol-drinking and
secular Tajik officials have also been quietly
apprehensive of the clerical foundations of the
Iranian regime at a time when the Tajik government
is grappling with the challenges posed by the rise
of various Islamic organizations. These include
the Hizb u-Tahrir, the Jamaati Tablig and other
banned jihadi groups.
Similarly,
influential representatives of Iran have called on
the secular Tajikistan government to "correct the
Qibla"; they accuse it of imposing Islamophobic
rules on the population, such as banning
hijabs for women, prohibiting under-age
boys and women from attending mosques, and
recalling Tajik students who are undergoing
religious studies in other Muslim countries,
including in Iran.
Iran is also giving
moral support to the Islamic Renaissance Party of
Tajikistan, which is the only legal Islamic party
in the country. It has two seats in the lower
chamber of parliament. Its leader, Muhiddin
Kabiri, and other prominent religious leaders are
frequent guests in Iran to attend
government-sponsored conferences.
In the
past, the Tajik government has also on several
occasions politely rejected Iran's enthusiastic
offer to establish a visa-free regime between the
countries, while a proposal to establish a joint
Persian-language television channel that would
include Afghanistan has been frozen by
bureaucratic hurdles created by the Tajik
government, according to Ali Asqar She'rdoust, the
Iranian ambassador in Tajikistan.
In
short, Tajik authorities have always tried to
distance themselves from the ideological
dimensions of Iranian foreign policy. Tajik
leaders usually use very guarded and cautious
language when voicing their sympathy and support
for Iran's nuclear program.
Perhaps,
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been
consistently more vocal in his support for Iran's
resistance of the so-called "Western imperialism
and arrogant powers" and its nuclear program than
Rakhmon or his globe-trotting English-speaking
Foreign Minister Hamrokhon Zarifi.
The
task for Tajikistan is to pick and choose from
various cooperation offers from Iran and agreeing
to join hands only when it sees economic benefit
for itself while at the same time keeping its
relations bereft of any ideological or religious
dimensions.
In such circumstances, the
seemingly warm rapprochement now underway might
gradually dissipate once Ahmadinejad leaves the
political scene when his second and last term ends
next year. It is expected that somebody more
religiously conservative and more aligned with the
clerical establishment will take over.
Such a new president would likely shelve
the various plans to build highways, railway lines
and pipelines for Tajikistan.
Similarly,
should a more pragmatic president take office - as
happened during the time of Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani and Muhammad Khatami - Iran would pay
less attention to Tajikistan, which was considered
an economic and political liability for Iran in
its efforts to forge friendly relations and
greater economic ties with other countries in the
region.
Fozil Mashrab is a
pseudonym used by an independent analyst based in
Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
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