Challenges of Central Asian Security

It is my belief that it is not only in our best interests, but also our responsibility to analyze the history and current trends of the world in an effort to make predictions about what is likely to happen in the future. Of course, this is to a certain extent an exercise in futility, but I am a great believer in plans and contingency plans and contingencies for contingencies which can be adopted to fit any given situation. Certainly it is ridiculous to believe that the shape of the world in ten years can be predicted, but it is far more ridiculous to flail blindly into the future rather than to attempt to make reasoned, rational, informed predictions.

To that end, I have become increasingly convinced of late that Central Asia has a strong potential to become a security challenge on par with the Middle East. I have just begun reading about the area and its history, so expect further clarification and development of this idea, but for the time being, I cite the following security concerns:

The region consists of states whose borders were drawn arbitrarily by foreign powers, dividing ethnic, linguistic, and religious populations among several states (it is estimated that over 40% of Uzbekistan’s population are ethnic Tajiks, for instance). So far ethnic nationalism has been kept mostly under control due to the repressive dictators who have ruled the post-Soviet states, but there are signs that it is a rising trend, especially in Turkmenistan, where the population cannot even decide what to call themselves, since to be a Turkmeni carries an ethnic connotation which the sizeable Russian and Uzbek populations find unacceptable. In the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region of China, a 9-million strong ethnically Turmeni Muslim population (who refer to the region as East Turkestan) has suffered brutal repression for generations. An overlap of Uzbeks and Meshketian Turks in the Fergana Valley has led to chronic conflicts, as each population seems to be ruled and repressed by the government which represents the other.

The region has substantial oil and natural gas resources which have yet to be fully developed or exploited. Turkmenistan possesses the world’s fourth-largest natural gas reserves, and Kazakhstan’s vast oil fields are well known. The region is crossed by oil pipelines, the two most recent of which run from Azerbaijan across Afghanistan to Pakistan and/or India, and from Kazakhstan to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China. As Middle Eastern oil reserves become increasingly scarce, Central Asian supplies will be exploited to meet constantly rising global demand, especially in India and China. Most of the region’s dictators are very friendly to foreign investment; consequently, Gazprom, the four major Chinese national oil companies, and the American energy sector have been competing to secure as much of the region’s supply as possible.

In part due to the energy resources and oil pipelines, Central Asia occupies a unique geostrategic position. It sits squarely between Russia and China, two of the world’s strongest military and economic powers; next to India and China, the two most populous countries on Earth (and the two countries most likely to experience exponential growth in energy demands as their economies fully industrialize and their citizens begin demanding automobiles). India and Pakistan have fought four wars in the past sixty years, and India and China fought a small war in 1963 over a border issue which remains unresolved. The United States maintains four major military bases in the region, much to the displeasure of Russia, and sometimes of the host countries, as in the case of Uzbekistan. A strong case could be made for the calming presence of American power in the region, though it does also foster security concerns among the major powers. Further, the United States cannot seem to decide whether it wants to align itself with India against China and thereby alienate Pakistan, or to side with Pakistan against Iran, and alienate India leaves a strong sense of uncertainty and competition among the regional powers.

Islamism has a strong foothold in Central Asia as well. The influx of Arabian jihadists during the decade of conflict with the Soviets in Afghanistan left the region riddled with heavily armed, well-trained militias, many of whom follow an extreme Wahhabist philosophy which advocates jihads not only against non-Muslim groups, but also against any governments deemed not Muslim enough. The secular governments of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan all grapple with low-grade Islamist insurgencies. The ethnic Tajiks who make up most of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance derived a great deal of their economic support in the 1990’s from Iran, in an effort to block the primarily Pashtun (and more importantly, Sunni) Taliban forces. The Pashtuns, however, received aid from Pakistan in exchange for support against India. In fact, groups trained by al Qaeda during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s which were requested and funded by Pakistan’s ISI are still waging an erratic guerrilla war against India in Kashmir. There are at least two insurgency groups quite unsuccessfully fighting the Chinese in Xinjiang. There are at least two large Islamist terrorist organizations in Central Asia: Hisb-ut-Tahrir and Jamaat of Central Asian Mujahedins, each of which has declared jihads and carried out attacks against numerous Central Asian governments.

Criminal activity is endemic, as the national borders are porous and the terrain is ideal for clandestine activity. Afghanistan is once again the world’s leading producer of opium, which was the primary source of income for the Northern Alliance all throughout the 1990’s, after the CIA drastically reduced its funding. Likewise, Kazakhstan is a major producer of cannabis and serves as a departure point for large amounts of drugs to Russia and Eastern Europe. The drug-running operations spill over from Afghanistan into virtually every neighboring country, and since most of the local warlords are needed by the United States, the drug-running and heavily armed, organized, criminal elements are extremely unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

Furthermore, the region is plagued by chronic economic deprivation. Cotton is the next largest export of the region after energy resources, but much of the soil is poor quality (as a result of being consistently over-farmed by the Soviet command economy) and droughts are increasingly frequent. As global warming becomes increasingly severe, drought will become endemic—the regions two major rivers no longer reach the Aral Sea, which has caused an alarming drop in its water level, and it has been predicted that if this trend continues, the Aral will cease to exist entirely in thirty to fifty years. Supplies of drinking water are already perilously low, and the salt vapor being released by the expanding sand flats around the Aral has rendered the rainfall increasingly toxic. The historic emphasis on cotton production has neglected the development of other agriculture to the point where many countries have to import the vast majority of their food. Yet the regions birthrates are alarmingly high—in Uzbekistan, the growth rate is nearly double what the agricultural production can support, and the national population is expected to double in the next 25 years. In a region where unemployment is as high as 60% in Tajikistan, and the majority of Afghanistan, southern Uzbekistan, and rural Kazakhstan live on $2 a day or less, a population boom would be disastrous.

Most of the region’s totalitarian leaders squander their resources on personal gratification and allow their impoverished citizens little to no political or economic freedom. This is a recipe for instability and rebellion, as the 2005 revolution and recent riots in Kyrgyzstan have shown. Once Soviet-era President-for-Life Saparmurat Niyazov in Turkmenistan dies (or is overthrown), it is reasonable to assume there will be instability and conflict. Still recovering from its 1992-1997 civil war, Tajikistan has begun to hold elections, although they are quite obviously corrupt, and tensions still exist between the two major political factions, which are backed by Russia and Iran. Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev was granted powers and priviledges for life in 2000, and spends a lot of time repressing his political enemies while winning elections (administered and overseen by the Chinese) which he wins by 90%.

In the face of virtually every social ill: hyperinflation, crime, corruption, ethnic conflict, superpower interference, Islamist jihadists, crippling poverty, nonexistent infrastructure, extreme unemployment, and political repression, what sort of policies should a Western democracy adopt towards Central Asia? Since every government, political faction, and armed militia are backed by foreign powers, to aid any one group is to aid another power—and conversely, to move against another power. Clearly some steps must be taken to secure the region’s natural resources and geostrategic importance, because other powers will certainly attempt to do so, so not having a policy is not a viable option. America’s strategy seems to be the same as usual—prop up dictators and strongmen, since they are easy to deal with and are predictable, use them to keep your rivals at bay, and enjoy their lack of restrictions on your energy corporations. This policy doesn’t actually solve any problems, though, and will only perpetuate and exacerbate many of them. Is there a viable alternative? What moves can we expect Russia, India, China, Pakistan, and Iran to make in the region?