Central Asia Ripe For Radical Islamic Movements

by Behrouz Saba

The Bush administration, by appeasing Kazakhstan for its oil and accommodation of U.S. troops, risks contributing to the creation of a new Iraq or Afghanistan on a giant scale.

This is just the beginning of a plausible Central Asian nightmare scenario. Numerous other former Soviet republics, including Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrkyzstan, are similarly ripe for Islamic radicalization in a region that stretches from Europe to China.

Should Islamic guerrilla warfare come to the area, American forces intent on fighting a "war on terror" could be drawn into battle in close proximity to Russia and China, in a resource-rich region where the world's three largest nuclear powers are already jockeying for control.

Rampant oil corruption in Kazakhstan has already resulted in legal action by American courts. James Giffen, a New York merchant banker, is scheduled to stand trial in January on federal charges of allegedly depositing $78 million in two Swiss bank accounts controlled by Kazakhstani rulers in a deal with ExxonMobil. The arrangement came to light as a result of an investigative piece by journalist Sergei Duvanov. Duvanov was subsequently charged by the government of President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev with raping a 14-year-old-girl, and is now serving a three-year prison sentence. Human rights organizations such as Reporters Without Frontiers called his trial a parody of justice that resembled a government frame-up.

The Bush administration is treating the Duvanov affair with extreme caution to avoid jeopardizing its oil and geopolitical interests in Kazakhstan even as it pays a heavy price as a result of identical past and present policies in the Middle East.

Nazarbayev, who has ruled Kazakhstan since its independence form the Soviet Union in 1991, is just one example of Central Asian autocrats who are duplicating the worst of the Soviet KGB tactics and corruption while adding novel twists of their own.

Azerbaijan is tiny compared to Kazakhstan, yet it is oil-rich and critical to an American plan to bypass the Middle East by piping Caspian Sea oil across its territory to reach Mediterranean ports. With a Moslem population of 93 percent, the country recently held presidential elections that involved the virtual coronation of Ilham Aliyev, who replaced his ailing father, Heyder Aliyev. Protests against the elections, which at least one international organization of observers denounced as rigged, were quelled quickly and brutally. This leaves the majority of disenfranchised Azerbaijanis, who will never see a penny from oil revenues, open to suggestions of radical Islam.

In other countries in the region there isn't even the thinnest pretense of democracy or possibility of protest. In Uzbekistan, with a majority Moslem population, Islom Karimov rules with an iron fist, garnering Saddam-like votes of nearly 100 percent in pro forma elections. In Kyrkyzstan, Askar Aayev presides over an increasingly impoverished country and is answerable to no one. Similar to many other regional leaders, he was a former Communist Party official and has ruled since his republic gained independence.

The Middle East is already beginning to have a corrupting and destabilizing impact on Central Asia, through a brisk drug trade. An exponential increase in opium production since the fall of the Taliban has made Afghanistan the world's largest source of heroin. Drug traffickers are finding safe routes in the vastness of Khazakstan, while there are reports that Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan's ruler, is an active participant in the Afghani drug trade.

By supporting such leaders or turning a blind eye to their misdeeds for the short-term use they can be to the United States, the Bush administration is encouraging another blowback.

The administration should demonstrate its commitment to democracy by becoming a vocal critic of autocracy and corruption in Central Asia. It should think twice before counting former Communist Party and KGB hands as its allies. Instead, it should support thousands of reformists throughout the region who, like Sergei Duvanov, are languishing in prisons unjustly or have been silenced through intimidation and fear.