Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Into the valley of death ...
By M K Bhadrakumar

Overthrow the Uzbek government and pass on power to an Uzbek oligarch living in exile in the US - this seems to be the latest American game plan, tragic as it might sound.



Jun 16, 2005

In calibrated moves during the past week, Washington began wading into the controversy over last month's suppressed uprising in the town of Andizhan in Uzbekistan's Ferghana Valley. Leaving behind the deadpan statements while the ground situation was evolving, Washington is shifting to a proactive mode.

The new elements are: Washington has convinced itself that "hundreds of innocent civilians were killed" in the Andizhan uprising; "a credible, transparent assessment of the tragic events" is called for; it is not enough that Uzbekistan has ordered an inquiry and has of its own accord invited major powers to assist; any inquiry must include "an international partner"; the Uzbek government "owes its citizens and the international community a serious, credible and independent investigation"; the US rejects the Uzbek government's invitation to take part in its investigation "as we do not see that as a substitute for an international investigation".

In a further ratcheting of demands, the US State Department added, "The current state of play is that we are considering all of our diplomatic options, including at the UN ... meantime, we're talking to member states of various international organizations to try to generate support for an international investigation ... and we are actively working within the international community to try to generate support." So far, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the World Bank have rallied. A senior State Department official was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as saying, "It could be a UN resolution, it could be a statement by the Security Council, it could be an action that the secretary general [Kofi Annan] takes or something else."

Clearly, Washington has decided to forgo the option of working with the Uzbek government's investigation (which is what regional powers have chosen to do). Instead, it has invoked the doctrine of humanitarian intervention. Why such concern, which was lacking over Fallujah?

Three factors come into play. First, from the perspective of the "war on terror", there should have been strong reason for the US to wait for the outcome of the Uzbek investigation. All countries neighboring Uzbekistan, including Afghanistan, have perceived the hand of Islamist militants one way or another behind the Andizhan uprising. Initial American statements, too, acknowledged this. On June 2, the US issued a travel advisory on Uzbekistan. Family members and non-essential staff of the American Embassy in Tashkent were authorized to leave Uzbekistan for security reasons.

On June 4, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, "We have data showing that various extremist groups may have been involved, among them the Taliban and Chechen terrorists who, and we do know this, periodically meet with the Taliban on the territory of Afghanistan." Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov added last week: "We have irrefutable evidence of a foreign trace in these events ... It is necessary to find the masterminds of the turmoil and the whereabouts of weapons seized from the local military unit and to find the answer to many other questions." Russian Defense Ministry sources claimed separately that 50 foreign nationals from Asian countries, including the Commonwealth of Independent States, were among those killed or detained.

It stands to reason that as partners in the "war on terror", Washington and Moscow would have shared interests to probe any involvement of extremist elements in the Andizhan events. Ivanov stated at a Russia-NATO council meeting in Brussels last Friday that US and NATO forces were not doing enough in Afghanistan to check the "export of terrorism", but were concentrating instead on "imposing democracy without taking into account local habits and national traditions".

Washington seems uneasy that the Uzbek inquiry over Andizhan events may come up with findings that cast aspersions on the "war on terror" in Afghanistan, which the George W Bush administration has touted as a success.

Secondly, diplomatic prudence would demand that Washington held fire at a time when sensitive bilateral negotiations were going on with Tashkent over "refinements" to the American military's access to the Karshi-Khanabad airbase in Uzbekistan. In these negotiations over recent months, Uzbekistan has sought compensation for the use of the base by US troops. The US has paid Uzbekistan US$15 million since 2001 in "reimbursement of services" for use of the base, but is using it rent-free - on par with its free use of other Soviet-era bases, such as Bagram and Shindand in Afghanistan.

In October 2001, Tashkent needed some persuasive talk by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld before acceding to Washington's request for access to Khanabad. After the Andizhan events, the negotiations over the base are yet to resume. Meanwhile, Tashkent's policy toward the US has become noticeably guarded: Uzbekistan dropped out of important NATO conclaves (which drew pointed criticism from NATO officials); US Peace Corps volunteers in Uzbekistan - numbering 52 - have been forced to leave; Uzbek officials did not receive a visiting delegation of US senators, including Republican heavyweight John McCain.

Washington could be seeing the writing on the wall, that it might be time to pack up and leave Khanabad.

Thirdly, and most interestingly, Washington's hardening stance vis-a-vis Andizhan comes shortly after a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at Astana, Kazakhstan, on June 3.

In the run-up to that meeting, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the foreign ministers would exchange views on "reinforcing stability and security in the Central Asian region". Russian officials were quoted as saying, "Those present at the meeting [in Astana] are not indifferent to what happened in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan recently." Addressing SCO counterparts on June 3, Lavrov stressed that "the situation that has been evolving demands of us still greater unity and solidarity and better coordination of efforts to reinforce stability and security in the SCO space". The SCO comprises Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

The joint statement issued after the Astana meet said, "The SCO countries reaffirmed their readiness to intensify cooperation in countering the conspiracies of terrorist, separatist and other extremist forces which aimed at creating instability in Central Asia." The foreign ministers decided to recommend to the forthcoming SCO summit meeting in Astana on July 5 that the organization should have a "joint mechanism" to respond to emergencies by developing real-time permanent interaction of the law enforcement and security-related agencies. They decided to further strengthen the SCO's institutional linkages with regional bodies such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), as well as to accord "observer" status to Pakistan, India and Iran - effectively safeguarding against the possibility of any security organization from outside the region (such as GUUAM or NATO) imposing itself arbitrarily on Central Asia. GUUAM comprises Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

Could Washington be circling the wagons around the SCO? That seems unnecessary. At a working meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in St Petersburg on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin made an innovative proposal similar to what is being mooted by the Group of Eight for the impoverished countries in Africa - the G8 could also help the CIS countries. Putin said that poverty and other acute social problems were at the root of political instability in the CIS countries, and the instability, in turn, was engendering a tendency for the West and Moscow to view the CIS space as a "battlefield". But a radically different solution would offer itself if the democratic and economic development of Central Asia could be turned into a matter of international cooperation.

But it is not for Putin and Blair to arrive at such an approach. It calls for visionary leadership in Washington. Also, it is far from clear whether the Central Asia experts who set the policy trends in Washington will allow such an approach. They are "cold warriors" who would feel orphaned if they were taken off the Central Asian battlefield.

Certainly, by the high standards of the Great Game set by imperial Britain in the 19th century, the American drive to "remake" Central Asia looks like sheer petulance. Imperial Britain would have first stabilized Afghanistan before venturing north across the Amu Darya into the Central Asian steppes. In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf pointed out that even in "do-able" terms, "a semblance of democracy that is sustainable, ensuring the integrity of Afghanistan" can be an achievable target only in the next 10 years or so. And that indeed is a very long time in politics. Meanwhile, the "war on terror" itself has been sub-contracted. The US has shifted the burden of responsibility to curb drug trafficking originating from Afghanistan toward Central Asia - the profits are a main source of funding for the militants - to the Afghan government, even though the Kabul government has no effective control of the country.

The only success that could be claimed is that the "war on terror" has dispersed various militant networks thriving in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. But the militant groups - from the Ferghana Valley, Xinjiang or Chechnya - have since established sanctuaries inside Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. All indications are that the Afghan-Tajik border region is becoming highly volatile. On Wednesday, a bomb attack in downtown Dushanbe flagged how tenuous Tajik peace is.

In such a perilous security climate, in the name of promoting freedom and civil society, the US is pressing ahead with a systematic campaign aimed at undermining Central Asian governments and replacing them with pliable set-ups amenable to "globalization". Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are the "key" countries for US regional policy - they hold large reserves of oil and gas - while Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are of secondary importance as "panhandles" only.

Curiously, US policy is once again showing a propensity (as in the 1990s vis-a-vis the Taliban) to manipulate political Islam as the instrument of change in the region. But, given the clan structure of Central Asian society, no single political force will be in a position to replace existing governments. Central Asian social structures and their political forms may appear archaic, and they probably are by Western standards, but if outsiders introduce change, what is highly likely to happen is political fragmentation and a prolonged period of anarchy as various contending forces struggle for supremacy.

The disquieting signs are already there. Kyrgyzstan is tottering on the brink of anarchy and may well descend into civil war. Under Russian counseling, a tenuous alliance between the northern and southern clan interests has been put in place for the moment, but there is no certainty about its durability. There are so many elements that feel excluded following the ouster of Kyrgyzstan's president, Askar Akayev. An overall cult of violence is appearing. Political violence has become a daily occurrence. Also, a nexus has formed between criminals, drug mafia and militant groups based in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, with elements inside Kyrgyzstan. These forces are on the ascent. The weakening of state authority in Kyrgyzstan has worked to the advantage of all quarters that want to take the law into their hands. The Tulip Revolution has created a first-class precedent for the street fighters. US President Bush's rhetoric pigeonholing the biography of the Tulip Revolution into hackneyed definitions of freedom already looks ludicrous.

The events in Andizhan have further destabilized the Ferghana Valley - a hotbed of Wahhabism and simmering nationality questions. This may appear to be a limited space on the vast Central Asian landscape, but the valley accounts for a quarter of the entire region's population and is shared uneasily between Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Overthrow the Uzbek government and pass on power to an Uzbek oligarch living in exile in the US - this seems to be the latest American game plan, tragic as it might sound.

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/GF16Ag01.html