Once-Obscure Central Asia Now In Global Spotlight

by Mushahid Hussain

Thanks to the U.S. campaign against terrorism, the former Soviet republics, all predominantly Muslim, have become the focus of global attention.

The United States has stationed 1,000 combat troops from its 10th mountain division at Khanabad airbase, 200 km from the Afghan border, in Uzbekistan.

On Oct. 5, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in Tashkent that "the United States has long-term interests in Uzbekistan," marking that country's entry into the ranks of "frontline" American allies in the war against terrorism.

This makes Uzbekistan the only country in the Muslim world that has allowed American combat troops on its soil. Other Central Asian republics and Pakistan have given logistics support and air-space usage rights to the United States.

On Oct. 12, Uzbekistan announced a bilateral defense agreement with the United States, which includes a clause "to consult on an urgent basis to address the situation in the event of a direct threat to the security and territorial integrity of Uzbekistan" -- a not-so-subtle reference to Russia.

It is no accident that in mid-October, the Russian Parliament's committee for Central Asian affairs chairman, Boris Pastukhov, said he hoped "Uzbekistan will not overstep the line which it would pay with its independence and sovereignty."

And perhaps to placate a worried Russia, President George W. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said the same day that the United States does not "harbor any plans aimed at squeezing Russia out" (in Central Asia).

U.S. military advisers are also helping the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance from their vantage points in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, with the latter's border city of Termez close to the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

The geopolitics of Central Asia has undergone a radical transformation since the terror attacks in the United States on Sep. 11. Three such changes are apparent:

• Never before has the United States been injected militarily into Central Asia with a troop presence to promote its political goal of combating terrorism and dismantling the Taliban regime in neighboring Afghanistan.

  This military presence is with the full concurrence of Russia and China, which was unthinkable until recently.

  Russia has its 201st division posted on Tajikistan's borders with Afghanistan, the only country in Central Asia to allow Russian troops on its soil.

• For the first time in history, the United States, Russia, China and Central Asian republics have an agenda of cooperation to combat a "common enemy," namely "terrorism, extremism and fundamentalism" spawned by radical Islamist groups in Afghanistan, as well as those operating in Central Asia.

  The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) is banned in their country and its leader, Juma Namangani, is said to be living in Afghanistan. The U.S. State Department has declared IMU to be a "terrorist organization" and Bush told Congress last month that IMU is part of the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, hinting at Uzbekistan's crucial role in the war against terror.

  Russia's war in Chechnya and China's attempts to curb unrest in Xinjiang, the Muslim-majority Turkish-speaking province that borders Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, is now also under the global umbrella of anti-terrorism.

• The Central Asian republics that were the last to be incorporated into the Soviet Union and that had militarily resisted the Soviet conquest until the 1930s also were the first to break away from the Soviet Union.

  In August 1991, Uzbekistan became the first Soviet republic to announce its independence, even before the break-up of the Soviet Union in December 1991.

  These countries, whose leaders are the same ones who led their countries to independence, now see an opportunity for the first time in a decade to exercise a strategic option, indeed, alternative in their foreign policies.

  Their twin goals: weaning away from Russia, viewing the American presence as countering Russian influence, while allowing them greater freedom to manoeuvre regionally and internationally.

In May 2001, worried about the rise of IMU and activism from radical Islamists, Uzbekistan started gravitating toward the Shanghai Five group created as a political and economic bloc in 1996 by Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

In the same month, they agreed to establish an anti-terrorism center at Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan. At a Shanghai summit in June, they established the Shanghai Cooperation Organization with the inclusion of Uzbekistan.

Fighting terrorism topped their priorities, but this included countering U.S. influence as well because the United States had announced its missile defense program on May 1 to counter "threats of missile attacks from rogue states."

China and Russia felt they were the real targets under the cover of "rogue states," although the United States officially defined these as North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Libya.

In July, Russia and China also signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with resumption of military cooperation after a lapse of 40 years.

However, parallel to this emerging Russian-Chinese bonhomie was the growing but discreet American military cooperation with Central Asian states like Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

In May, Gen. Tommy Franks, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Central Command that covers Morocco to Pakistan and Central Asia, toured Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, including their border region with Afghanistan while underlining the need to "cooperate against terrorism."

The Uzbek president's spokesman admitted as much when he told the Washington Post this month about military cooperation with the United States for the last "two or three years," that included sharing of intelligence and U.S. Special Forces training for the Uzbek military.

The war in Afghanistan and the American military presence in Central Asia is viewed by their leaders as risk insurance for the future, both from domestic dissidents whom they can easily suppress now under the garb of "combating terrorism," and from external pressures from an overbearing Russia.

Russia has traditionally viewed Central Asia as its "near abroad" given ties of geography, history, language and ethnicity since a sizeable number of Russians still live in these Central Asian republics.

The Central Asian alliance with America therefore helps to fortify the status quo in the region, with the regimes and rulers feeling more comfortable than before.

And should the war against the Taliban be successful in removing that regime, the Central Asian desire for access to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean via Afghanistan through Pakistan would provide them their easiest and closest outlet to the seas. This would lessen their dependence on Russia.

Interestingly, it was in October 1992 that Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov and then Afghanistan President Burhanudin Rabbani signed their first agreement in Uzbekistan, providing for a land route for trade linking Tashkent to the Pakistani port of Karachi through Afghanistan.

The civil war in Afghanistan prevented the realization of this dream, which could become a reality if the current war is able to achieve its political and military objectives. Then, a whole new world of opportunities would open up for Central Asia.