[A-List] America Discovers Central Asia

["Mark Jones" <markjones011@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Foreign Affairs
March-April 2003
America Discovers Central Asia.
By Charles William Maynes
Charles William Maynes is President of the Eurasia Foundation and was
Editor of Foreign Policy from 1980 to 1997.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.

LONG TIME, NO SEE

Prior to September 11, 2001, the Central Asian states of the former
Soviet Union -- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and
Uzbekistan -- might as well have been on the other side of the moon as
far as U.S. policy was concerned. They were and are everything the
United States is not: landlocked, poor, peripheral, fearful,
defenseless, Muslim, and
undemocratic. Today, however, they are high on the U.S. foreign policy
agenda, and America once again finds itself engaged militarily in an
area about which its key officials know little. Almost none speak the
critical languages of Central Asia; all too few have relevant experience
there.

Curiously, as different and remote as the United States and the Central
Asian countries are from one another, their fates have intersected at
least twice before. During the U.S. Civil War, the North's tight trade
blockade on the South had an unexpected
consequence for Russian textile manufacturers: they suddenly found that
they could no longer buy American cotton for their rapidly expanding
plants. On learning of their plight, expansion-minded Russian officials
developed a new rationale for pushing the borders of their empire south:
conquering Central Asia, where cotton could grow, would assist the
industrialization
of modern Russia.

The fate of Central Asia next intersected with the United States a
century later, when, during the Cold War, American policymakers realized
that Moscow was locating its nuclear testing and missile- launch sites
in the region, as far away from prying American eyes as possible. This
prompted renewed U.S. interest in the region. The United States sought
military
facilities in Iran and Pakistan to monitor Soviet activities in Central
Asia. Many pressing for U.S. support of radical Islamic forces during
the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan hoped the religious fervor would
spread into Soviet Central Asia, as indeed it
did. After the fall of the Soviet Union, America's main objective in the
region seemed to be to help the Central Asian states gain sufficient
confidence and stability to prevent any resurgence of Russian influence.

But then came September 11, which abruptly brought the United States and
Central Asia together much more closely and permanently. One of the
world's richest countries, a state so powerful that its military and
economic reach seems limitless, suddenly began to voice greater concern
over developments in one of the world's most remote and powerless
regions. Of course Washington's heightened interest is understandable.
If Central Asian countries take the wrong path, it is feared, they may
willingly or unwittingly provide sanctuary to the kinds of terrorists
that struck the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

Indeed, given America's new fears and interests, U.S. involvement in
Central Asia is likely to last longer than official statements suggest.
Although the Bush administration promises a timely end to the military
presence there, many believe the United States will remain engaged
through an enhanced political and military presence for years to come;
after all, staying until the "job is done," as the administration has
promised, means rooting out the conditions that breed terrorism in the
first place. And that
formidable goal suggests a quasi-permanent U.S. interest in Central Asia.

In becoming the de facto protector and guarantor of the region, the
United States has an opportunity to play a constructive role that will
further its own interests as well as those of the Central Asian states
themselves. To succeed, however, Washington will need a crash course in
the realities of this complex and troubled region.

THE LAY OF THE LAND

Central Asia is spread over an area roughly a quarter the size of
Russia. The largest country, Kazakhstan, is four times as large as
Texas; Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are each about the size of
California; and the last two, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, are the size of
Wisconsin and South Dakota, respectively. Geographically large, the
region is also becoming more important demographically. In most of
Central Asia, the birthrate is more than 20 per thousand, whereas in
Russia it is a mere 9. Central Asia, at roughly 50 million, is thus
stabilized or growing in demographic weight as Russia's population of
about 150 million
continues to decline.

Economically, the postcommunist era of free markets and globalization
has not been kind to the region. According to World Bank studies,
Central Asia is now much worse off than it was under communism. All of
its five countries have suffered shocking declines in health and
education standards, and all -- except oil-rich Kazakhstan -- have
suffered a disastrous decline in gross domestic product. In Tajikistan,
the GDP today is only 38 percent of what it was in 1990. Kyrgyzstan,
another orphaned republic, now finds its GDP a third lower than in 1990.

Where economic reform has been attempted, moreover, it has caused a high
degree of disruption without much tangible payoff, whereas Turkmenistan
and Uzbekistan have staved off much of the economic disruption suffered
by their neighbors by steadfastly refusing to reform. Uzbekistan, for
example, has managed through intransigence to hold its GDP at 96 percent
of the 1990 level. The likely long-run cost of this decision to protect
the Soviet legacy could be ruinous, however. Little has changed in
Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan since 1990, and although the result may be
less economic disruption in the present, it will also almost certainly
mean less growth in the future. Machinery from the Soviet period is
steadily wearing out. And old markets lost with the disappearance of the
Soviet Union are not being replaced.

Given this unpromising outlook, some see the new American presence as an
unexpected ray of hope. The U.S. military has now stationed 3,000 U.S.
personnel in Kyrgyzstan and 1,000 in Uzbekistan to operate out of local
air bases. The United States provided roughly $580 million in aid to the
region in fiscal year 2002, more than doubling its aid level from the
preceding
year's $250 million. In addition, Washington has dramatically stepped up
its diplomatic involvement by assigning top diplomatic personnel there
and sponsoring high- level visits by members of the Cabinet and
Congress. It is argued that with this new
U.S. commitment, local governments will gain a greater degree of
confidence and security and will have the courage to accept the
political risks that reform entails. This theory is about to be tested.

But what makes change -- or at least a restoration of hope for future
change -- so crucial is the severity of poverty in the region. More than
two-thirds of the Tajik people now live on less than $2 a day. In
Kyrgyzstan, nearly half suffer at that level. A full third of
Uzbekistan's population lives below the official poverty line. Some
might point out that Russia's figures are no better, with a third of its
own people in poverty. But at least President Vladimir Putin has been
able to restore hope in the future of his country, thanks to the
economic reforms he has undertaken. Central Asia, on the other hand, has
much less cause for optimism.

FROM BAD TO WORSE

Against this bleak backdrop, the governments of Central Asia face five
fundamental challenges: identity, development, water, borders, and
security. All are problems that the United States will also be forced to
confront as the now preeminent military power in the region.

Central Asia today is in the process of etching out a new identity, the
contours of which are still uncertain. Its peoples accepted Soviet
domination only after a bitter resistance that lasted decades. Indeed,
some of the same religious forces that so frighten
local authorities and the West today trace their roots to the earlier
resistance against Soviet power. Furthermore, the wider local
population, now freed from compulsory atheistic secularism, is returning
to its religious roots. Mosques are springing up. Although often funded
by outside benefactors, they fill with local worshippers. Meanwhile, the
countries' rulers, mainly holdovers from Soviet times, are terrified
about such developments, which they poorly understand. Their response
has been repression, which then drives resurgent political Islam
underground, making its true strength harder to gauge.

Western leaders, similarly frightened by the prospect of resurgent
radical Islam, originally hoped that the secular Turkish model would
replace the Soviet one in Central Asia. Indeed, Ankara was encouraged to
make a bid for preeminence in the region. The Western gambit failed
miserably, however. Turkey did not have the resources to play such an
outsized role, and countries in the region would not accept it. Indeed,
far from being a model, Turkey seemed, like the Central Asian states, in
need of massive financial support from others.

The core issue in Central Asia today is how the political order can
accommodate the rise of Islam. At this point, neither the authorities
nor outside powers have an answer or know what this new order will look
like. They have already had one chance and failed to explore its
possibilities: Tajikistan is the only Islamic country in the world that,
after a brutal civil war, established a coalition government with
Islamists in December 1997. Unfortunately, the world largely ignored
this experiment, the success of which could have had profound
implications for the way that the Western world reacts to resurgent
political Islam elsewhere. The United States relocated its ambassador to
a neighboring country for security reasons, and there was no sustained
effort by Western countries to work with the coalition government.
Still, nongovernmental groups working in Central Asia report that today
Tajikistan is one of the more open countries in the region. The Tajik
example could well inform political developments in the region and
elsewhere -- and should help define Western perceptions of Islam.

Further confounding Central Asia's political future is its currently
stalled economic development. For ten years the West has preached the
virtues of the free market to the Central Asians. Western experts have
told local leaders that if they undertake the necessary reforms, Western
investment will follow. Of course, if more far-reaching reforms had been
adopted, the outlook would be better, at least in the longer run. But
there is still little prospect of major Western investment in several of
the countries. The region is too remote, the market too fragmented, and
the future too uncertain. With the exceptions of oil-rich Kazakhstan and
gas-rich Turkmenistan, Western investors have shown little interest in
Central Asia. There are few resources in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and
Uzbekistan is one of only two countries in the world that is doubly
landlocked. (The other is Liechtenstein.)

Any hope that the blessings of the free market will replace any time
soon the subsidies that Moscow once poured into the area is probably ill
founded, at least for the smaller countries such as Kyrgyzstan or
Tajikistan. (Indeed, Kyrgyzstan, which worked so hard to be the first
country in the region to join the World Trade Organization, has seen
little return from this bold step.) Although Uzbekistan has the largest
population among the five states, outside investment is unlikely to
increase there either, even with reform, unless the country manages to
break out of its unusual geographic isolation.

Meanwhile, the region's closed borders and inaccessibility also throttle
development. More liberal economic policies will not compensate
adequately for the limited commercial opportunities that exist under
current conditions. Young people in the region face increasingly bleak
futures. As a result, they tend to emigrate, either physically or
spiritually, and crime and drugs are becoming the preferred sources of
livelihood.

WATER SHOWS THE WAY

There is no magic way out of Central Asia's morass, but two
possibilities offer some hope. One is for some outside power or
international institution to attempt to restore the subsidies that
Moscow once channeled to the region. This prospect seems highly
unlikely, however. The other, more practical, approach would be to find
ways to induce states in the region to open
their borders to mutually beneficial development and commerce.

Such regional cooperation is essential, for example, to dealing with the
region's very serious water shortage. As poor as Soviet water practices
may have been -- and they are widely condemned for the damage that they
did to water levels in the Aral Sea -- the collapse of the Soviet Union
made water management in the region even worse. Suddenly, a single
system became five.

Soviet planners looked on Central Asia as a single unit and, in a
rational manner, accorded low priority to agriculture in Tajikistan and
Kyrgyzstan, where land is poor but water is plentiful. Instead, they
encouraged agricultural development further downstream, where the
reverse is true -- the land is good but the water scarce.

Today, the two upstream states, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, find
themselves the guardians of water reservoirs crucial to their downstream
neighbors. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are therefore asked to maintain a
system that benefits others more than themselves, and no one should be
surprised that they are reluctant to do so. On their end, the downstream
states that have always received water at no cost fail to understand why
they should now consider schemes to pay for it.

As the water system that the region inherited falls into disrepair,
leakage and evaporation have increased; in response, states now use more
water to compensate for unexpected losses. A drought in recent years has
compounded the problem. Today, the region consumes 150 percent more
water than it should, according to a recent report by the International
Crisis Group.

As burgeoning populations push states to bring more and more land under
cultivation, their water needs will only grow.  Between 1995 and 2000,
the states in the region brought seven percent more land under
cultivation using irrigation. And soon there will be another claimant
for the region's limited water. Afghanistan has never drawn much water
from the common river system that divides that country from the rest of
Central Asia. But with peace, the Afghans will surely press for a larger
share.

Making understanding and compromise more difficult is the steady
deterioration of the Soviet monitoring systems. Countries have begun to
question the exact amount of water that their neighbors are using. And
with good reason: Turkmenistan, for example, has sharply increased the
amount of water that it drains from the Amu Dar'ya, with the result that
some provinces of Uzbekistan have not received water in several years.
Indeed, the situation between Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan resembles in
some respects the relationship between Iraq and Kuwait: a powerful
neighbor to the north contending that its weaker neighbor to the south
is unfairly depriving it of an essential natural resource. Under the
encouragement of the United Nations Development Program, the U.S. Agency
for International Development, and other aid agencies, the countries of
the region have opened talks about the water issue. But progress has
been slow due to regional mistrust and the uncertain security situation.

Further contributing to an atmosphere of insecurity are a number of
border disputes. Territorial arguments among nations have a tendency to
lead to war, and in Central Asia, border problems acquire a complexity
seldom seen anywhere else. Central Asia was once a borderless region
where the map lines drawn by cartographers were largely meaningless;
today those lines divide brother from brother. Pieces of one country
remain lodged in another.

Under Soviet nationality policy, a minority language group in one
republic could associate itself with the majority population of another.
Pockets of Tajiks and Uzbeks inside Kyrgyzstan, for example, were thus
considered part of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Their geographic
separation from the "motherland" made no difference in Soviet times
because borders then were only symbolic.

No longer. With independence, impoverished Kyrgyzstan found itself home
to seven ethnic enclaves linked to neighboring states: five to
Uzbekistan and two to Tajikistan. The largest of these, the Uzbek-
populated Sokh, measures 320 square kilometers and is home to more than
40,000 people. Other enclaves, however, are as small as half a town or a
handful of acres. Nonetheless, according to the rules of modern
sovereignty, they are formally part of other states, boasting those
states' flags, currencies, and legal systems. Indeed, some of these
communities follow the time zone of their home country rather than that
of the country in which they are located.

These small ethnic outposts have exacerbated the larger problem of
developing a common loyalty within the new state entities that emerged
out of the shattered Soviet Union. Take Uzbekistan, for example. A large
number of Tajiks live in some of the country's major cities. The central
government in Tashkent is eager to create a sense of loyalty toward the
new Uzbekistan among all the people of the country. But if Uzbekistan
also holds on to Uzbeks living next door in Kyrgyzstan, what message
does that send to the Tajiks and others who live in Uzbekistan proper?
Do they also have a right to maintain a special relationship with their
ethnic homeland?

As if unclear borders were not trouble enough, the new states must also
sort out the problem of economic zones located in one republic but owned
by another. Uzbekistan, for example, has energy leases in neighboring
countries that were signed during the Soviet period. The countries that
now hold the properties under lease feel that Tashkent should pay them a
higher rent for these leases. Tashkent, not surprisingly, feels
otherwise.

To the credit of the new authorities in Central Asia, they have not
allowed strains over border disputes to reach the point of open
conflict. True, Uzbekistan, which has the only significant military
force in the region, has occasionally brought military pressure to bear
against its neighbors, but no sustained engagement has taken place.
Nonetheless, the tinder is on the ground. At the beginning of January of
this year, violence erupted in one of the Tajik enclaves in Kyrgyzstan
when Tajiks destroyed a Kyrgyz border crossing and the Kyrgyz retaliated
against a Tajik post. The United States, as the region's guarantor, must
be wary of letting such sparks fly. If a border dispute were to increase
tensions in the future -- as such disputes have done in the past -- the
United States must restrain Uzbekistan, the strongest power in the
region, and not look the other way.

Security in the region is complicated by still another factor: the
unrest flowing out of Afghanistan. Policymakers in Washington might have
feared Moscow's return, but leaders in Central Asia were more concerned
with the arrival of the Taliban. Assuming the Western commitment to
solving the Afghan problem remains firm and begins to bear fruit -- as
yet an uncertain assumption -- the security of Central Asia could
dramatically improve. Such progress would remove some of the arguments
advanced against greater pluralism, more open borders, and easier trade
regimes. At that point, however, the region will face a new security
challenge, this time involving several major powers.

If, as seems likely, U.S. forces remain in the region for the
foreseeable future, it is almost inevitable that tensions among the
larger powers over this presence will begin to grow. A rift is already
evident in the deep resentment that Moscow's decision to bless the
American presence in Central Asia has generated within the Russian
military. But the more serious concern is going to come from China. From
Beijing's perspective, the entrenchment of an American military presence
in Central Asia could appear a form of encirclement. The United States
already has bases in Japan and South Korea and maintains an implicit
security relationship with Taiwan. A growing U.S. military presence in
Central Asia could look to Beijing like a new threat from the east. If
tensions over Taiwan were to grow, Chinese suspicions over the real
American objectives in Central Asia would mount.

It is therefore important that Washington work with Moscow and Beijing
to exclude this region from great-power politics. The three major powers
should strike a clear understanding about what kind of military presence
the United States will maintain in the region. Washington should make
the U.S. presence there more transparent as well as look for ways to
work with the Russian and Chinese militaries to address some of the
other local security threats.

TAMING THE TIGER

Central Asia, an area long on the farthest margins of U.S. interest, is
now at the center of Washington's concerns. The United States has
established a military presence in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and has
sharply increased aid and diplomatic involvement. Yet it could still end
up riding a tiger. The governments of the region are all authoritarian
and increasingly estranged from their own populations. Washington thus
runs the risk that it will be perceived as favoring these governments
and an unsatisfactory status quo. As currents below the surface carry
these societies closer and closer to their earlier Islamic identities,
the United States may find itself in the position of appearing to oppose
the wishes of the majority of the populations.

There is no easy way out of this quagmire. The principal Islamist
movements in the region advocate policies that seem either otherworldly,
unacceptable, or troubling: otherworldly, when the Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) call for the unification of
the entire Islamic world community under a restored Caliphate;
unacceptable, when the IMU seeks the violent overthrow of the current
government in Tashkent; and troubling, because the ht, although it
advocates the peaceful seizure of power, holds extremely conservative
views about the role of women in society, is virulently anti-Israel,
and has no real program to solve social or other governmental problems.

The United States thus faces enormous challenges and must boldly rethink
the way to engage this region. More precisely, the United States should
consider two strategies: promoting a larger vision of regionalism and
exploring possible ways to reconcile democracy and Islam. Here, a look
back at history provides some insight. Americans like to think that it
was their generosity under the Marshall Plan alone that enabled the
Europeans to stand on their feet after World War II. Yet 80 percent of
the capital invested in the decisive postwar years was European, not
American. Washington's real contribution was in insisting that it would
not provide aid unless Europeans agreed to work together.

The United States and other donors should follow a similar approach in
Central Asia. Just as Western Europeans had, in the end, largely to fund
themselves, so will Central Asians. But Western aid could again be
critical at the margin and, if coordinated, could push the states to
work with one another in a regional context. Up to this point, Western
aid has been parceled out among the various claimants, which denies the
donors regional leverage. And among the five states themselves, most of
the efforts at regional cooperation have been more talk than reality.

For a wider regional effort to succeed, the outside world will need to
stop viewing Central Asia through a colonialist lens. Because of the
struggle between tsarist Russia and imperial Britain, Central Asia was
cut off for nearly 150 years from its cultural neighbors to the south.
Today Central Asia should rightly be seen as a region that reaches
beyond the five states of the former Soviet Union to include neighboring
Afghanistan, Iran, and perhaps even Pakistan. There will be objections
to such a proposal. U.S. policymakers are reluctant to engage Iran
without further reform there. As long as that hesitation remains, a
wider regional approach could start with the five Central Asian states
and Afghanistan, with Iran joining only when ready. Turkey obviously has
a role to play in such an effort, since several of the states in the
region have strong linguistic ties to it, but Ankara these days is more
interested in joining the European Union than in being seen as part of
Central Asia. Pakistan, which offers another outlet to the sea, might
have the same kind of association as Turkey -- an interested friend and
economic partner.

If the United States begins to view the problems of the area from a
wider regional perspective and, starting with the five Central Asian
states and Afghanistan, encourages states to work together, they may all
be able to make more progress in resolving the
many pressing border and water issues they face. Furthermore, in the
broader regional context, the market is larger, the trade roots more
historically based, and the pool of outside money to gain leverage more
considerable.

With Genghis Khan and Tamerlane at the core of local mythology, Central
Asia appears to offer little fertile ground for democracy. The
trademarks of the region are intrigue and military mastery, not
compromise and concessions, and decades of Soviet rule further
entrenched such authoritarian traditions. Yet it would be wrong to
condemn the region to a nondemocratic dungeon, not least because the
majority of its people want to join the modern world. Moreover, the
region already boasts individuals who speak out for greater tolerance,
more freedom, and the rule of law, and they should be encouraged.

Unfortunately, the ground is not prepared for any local reformers to
reach positions of power in the foreseeable future. Work must be done to
reconcile Islam and democracy, and Western countries must make this goal
a priority if they hope to co-exist with the political forces likely to
dominate the region. Here again the West could take a page from its
past. In the postwar period, Western governments attempted to reconcile
democracy and communism by enabling communists to enter the system at
the local level while barring them, at least for a probationary period,
from participation in national government. The entry of communist
candidates into office at the local level introduced them to the
complexities of governing a modern political system. It also confirmed
in the minds of the voters that the communists had no magic answers to
the problems of governance.

In Central Asia, the problem is complex: because the IMU advocates
violence to achieve its ends, it is difficult to feel comfortable
endorsing its participation in the political system. In contrast, the
ht, despite some objectionable features of its platform, does propose to
reach power peacefully. The West should urge the region's leaders to
open local government to electoral challenge and to allow all parties
seeking peaceful change to take part. Perhaps it will turn out that more
radical Islamists enjoy little support. Even if they do garner electoral
support, however, Islamic forces may gradually develop a stake in the
system, so that when they do finally enter national government, it will
constitute an act of inclusion, not revolution.

In all these efforts, Washington must show patience. During the Cold
War, the United States developed long-run policies that took years to
bear fruit. Washington subsidized the study of the Russian and Chinese
languages, for example; it encouraged exchanges, supported the
development of scholarly centers for the study of communist societies,
and was prepared militarily but kept its powder dry. It was cautious in
the use of force and developed programs to reach out to local elites.

The time has come to adopt a similar approach toward Islam, particularly
in Central Asia. Needed are special programs to support American
students in the study of local languages. Western countries should reach
out not only to secular forces with which they are comfortable but also
to leaders who are likely to rise to positions of influence in the
religious parties. Meanwhile, U.S. assistance programs need to avoid the
deadening hand of the region's unreformed governments and reach directly
into local communities.

Such an approach might enable the United States to manage its engagement
in Central Asia more happily than it has managed its presence in many
other parts of the Muslim world. It may well permit the United States to
accomplish through cooperation and diplomacy what it will find difficult
to achieve by force. Finally, it might provide lessons for reconciling
the West and Islam more generally, one of the critical issues of the
age. Now is the time and Central Asia is the place for the United States
to develop a set of policies appropriate to the new challenges of the
post-September 11 world.