Central Asia

 

Central Asia Countries

According to the Newsflash As the sun sets on the last day of 2006, the twilight over Central Asia would contain the afterglow of a number of events that define the complexity of its 15-year-old history since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is a chequered sky cape with economy representing brighter patches and political evolution showing comparatively less luminous areas. The cultural journey that began when communist ideology overarching state maps drawn arbitrarily by Soviet cartographers lapsed has continued to be marked by ethnic and religious tensions. In more than one case, the new Central Asian states have fallen back on exaggerated nationalism to paper over internal diversity.

 It is a region that becomes more self-aware of its geo-political importance with every passing year. Through it run the crossroads that link Europe, Russia, Iran and China. In 2006, it took more measured steps to register on global consciousness as an energy powerhouse and by the same token it came under an even sharper international focus. The result is an intensifying strategic contest among several major powers, acting singly or collectively.

Central Asia Countries

What are the 4 general spaces of Central Asia?

 As energy prices soared and oil reveneues showed exponential rise, many of the Central Asian states achieved growth rates above the global average. In Azerbaijan, where 7.9 million people live on 87,000 square kilometers, GDP grew by a hefty 26 percent, a trend likely to be sustained in the next year. The figure for 2006 for Kazakhstan, a country of more than 15 million multiethnic people inhabiting 2,716,998 square kilometers, is above 8 per cent. Tajikistan, the energy potential of which is only now being recognized in important international agreements, has maintained 9 per cent growth from 2004 to the year under review, opening up prospects of prosperity for its seven million people that occupy strategically sensitive 143,001 square kilometers of Central Asia. Turkmenistan (area: 488,000 square kilometers; population 5 million), which maintains a strongly individualistic position on energy coordination projects of outside powers, posted GDP per capita of $6,000 in 2006.Higher prices of non-oil commodities also fuelled Central Asian economies.

 Russia has traditionally relied on the commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to ensure that economies of the regional states remain integrally linked to it. From a near absolutist expectation that all energy outflows from them take place through Russian territory, it has reluctantly reconciled itself to gradual diversification while continuing to seek Russian pre-eminence. China has used strong bilateralism as well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) to establish itself both an energy investor and client. Led by the United States, the West has vigorously competed with both Russia arid China. The United States’ Trade and Development Agency has sketched a wider network in what is called the Central Asian Infrastructure Integration Initiative which includes Pakistan. Iran also emerged notably as a stakeholder in 2006.

Energy development and the competition that it generates are showcased by some illustrative projects. The most audacious, challenge to Russian supremacy came from a project that was, frequently described as being less than cost-effective. The Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline linking the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashii oil fields to Europe through Georgia and Turkey was inaugurated in July. The European Union has an ambitious pipeline of its own that involves Iran and Austria and on which work would begin in 2008. Amongst the major players is Kazakhstan that has already added to the two major pipelines to Russia a pipeline to China, a major energy importer for decades to come.

 Of particular interest to Pakistani readers would he the memorandum of understanding signed in October 2006 by Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan for supply of electricity to Pakistan. Both these Central Asian states have immense potential for hydroelectric power and the project, strongly supported by the United States, could provide a significant strategic linkage between Central and South Asia. The only serious threat to it’s the fear of instability in Afghanistan.

 At the year-end, strategic competition in the classical sense stood sharpened. The desire to see the Taliban regime overthrown proximately led to Central Asian states playing willing hosts to American military. In the zeitgeist of 2001-2002, they won Russian acquiescence in it by Jetting them return to the region under the same rubric of security against the Islamist threat. But things changed dramatically when Uzbekistan, a crucial state in the geopolitical configuration of the region, went ahead with the termination of Karshi-Khanabad base facilities for the United States. As this piece is being written, the Kyrgystan parliament has just passed a resolution asking the government to re-consider the advisability of the American base established in 2001, In Uzbekistan, President Islam Karimov linked the discontinuation of the American military base to an important policy shift. The year 2006 witnessed deepening of Russia-Uzbekistan Treaty of Palled Relations signed in 2005. The two contries have a formal military pact now. There was further hardening of a basically authoritarian approach to politics in the region during the year 2006. In the best of circumstances, the US-inspired western pressure for democracy and human rights in Central Asia was suspect. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the erosion of American moral authority by Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay and the western support for dissident forces in - Georgia, Ukraine and Belarus have almost forced the Central Asian states to strengthen ties with Russia, where President Putin practices his own brand of authoritarian democracy. China and Iran amongst the neighbors evince a similar distrust of western-style democratization. It is also undeniable that vociferous condemnation of human rights violations in Uzbekistan came only when Karimov took the decision to evict the Americans from their military base in the Country.

 None of the recent elections in the Central Asian states permitted a genuine multiparty contest. Powerful rulers like Islam Karimov (Uzbekistan), Nursultan Nazarbayev (Kazakhstan), late Saparmurat Niyazov (Turkmenistan) and Sharipovic Rakhmonov (Tajikistan) who emerged from the debris of the institution of power created by the Soviet Union in Moscow and in the regional capitals in 1991 routinely legitimized their Position through elections that gave them overwhelming majorities. Many of their opponents have faced considerable pressure from the State. On November 7, the people of Tajikistan gave Imomali Rakhmonov another seven year term of office as the president of the republic with 79 per cent of votes.

The sad and sudden death of Niyazov on Dec. 21, 2006 has demonstrated the fragility of the political structure of these states where larger-than-life leaders camouflaged the weakness of institutions. He was Turkmenbashi, Father of the Turkmen, whose premature departure from the scene would create two inter-related problems: succession, and even with orderly transition, the time required by the successor to consolidate power to ensure continued stability in Asghabad especially if the situation demands a measure of change and adaptation.

From the very dawn of independence, Central Asia rulers have looked at Islamic resurgence in the region after 70' years of religious suppression by the Soviet Union with skepticism. It began as an inevitable cultural renaissance. The Islamic sentiment would probably have found a place in democratic institutions without causing much turbulence. But the peculiar power structures in the region ordained alienation and hostility. Afghanistan raised a spectre of outside interference and radicalization of Islamic movements. Fighting this phantom led to much bloodshed in Tajikistan. The elimination of the Taliban regime should have ressured the Central Asian rulers but they have continued to invoke danger from Islamists especially the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Hizb-ul-Tahrir.

 

What is the primary religion in Central Asia?

Islam has been the predominant religion in Central Asia for almost 1,300 years. There is considerable evidence that in more recent years the Islamic sentiment was orientated more toward amelioration of social suffering in the disadvantaged segments of the society than capturing political power. Independent studies show that the associations for such assistance — a network of "JamiyatS" — focused on social justice and Muslim values of supportive action for the needy and in most cases, did not encourage political activism. But this did not prevent a bloody showdown in Andijan between the government and the sub-regional jamiyat, the Akromiya. The bitterness of this clash flowed through 2006 with 'President Karimov insisting that the organization had tried to overthrow the lawful government.

 How Central Asia is socially and ethnically assorted?

The states of Central Asia will have to find a holistic way of reconciling the post-Soviet cultural strains to ensure that the immense wealth being created by the present market trends in oil gas is accompanied by social cohesion and stability. Not to be forgotten is the fact that they will continue to be an arena, for quite some time to come, of a much larger strategic contest. National reconciliation rather than exclusion of problematic groups in the body politic will provide a more credible shield against the negative fall-out of that contest on countries that are already divided by differing external linkages. Having survived decades of Soviet ideological tyranny, Islam surfaced in Central Asia with a mild indigenous complexion states. After a long time the cities of Central Asia are humming with new cultural aspirations. The present effort to turn nationalism into a substitute religion will not satisfy these aspirations. The present effort to turn nationalism into a substitute religion will not satisfy this aspiration. In any case, the states of Central Asia are not ethnic monoliths and Islamic revival can be a unifying factor that connects them to a glorious heritage of a bygone era. In its moderate Central Asian version, it will certainly help the people cope better with motivated external doctrines and creeds.