New York Times - 10.10.2001

 

New York Times

Ex-Soviet Asian Republics Are Now Courted by the U.S.

By Stephen Kinzer

he five countries that emerged in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago — Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan — are unknown to most Americans but are now being urgently courted as the United States seeks to destroy terror bases in nearby Afghanistan.

Until a month ago, even many officials in Washington tried to avoid dealing with these countries, whose complex challenges range from surging Islamic militancy to lucrative drug trafficking.

With the exception of the Pentagon, which early on recognized that the Central Asian states might someday prove a valuable security asset, American and many other diplomats viewed them as dangerous places, and best avoided.

Defense Department officials dispatched senior officers to the Central Asian countries soon after they became independent. The focus on military cooperation rather than promotion of democracy proved a success, with none of the five Central Asian leaders — almost all of them holdovers from the Soviet era — displaying much interest in Jeffersonian ideals.

The region's presidents range from the relatively benign autocrat Askar Akayev in Kyrgyzstan to the dictator Saparmurad A. Niyazov in Turkmenistan, center of one of the world's most bizarre personality cults. Mr. Niyazov views himself as a demigod and has ordered that his image adorn every coin and bank note and that it be displayed in every public place.

These leaders are not new types in Central Asia. For centuries the region was the domain of colorful emirs and khans. Some fostered artists and scientists whose extraordinary achievements during the Middle Ages pushed the Islamic world far beyond then-primitive Europe. Others are remembered for developing excruciating forms of torture.

Central Asia remains rich in cultural heritage and natural resources, including huge reservoirs of oil and gas. But it is also dominated by rulers whose ruthlessness in crushing dissent has, according to some specialists, fed the very extremism they seek to suppress.

"If you're too tough on people, something's going to happen," said an Asian diplomat who spent several years as an ambassador in Uzbekistan, where human rights groups say thousands of Muslims, accused of being Islamic insurgents, have been unjustly arrested, tortured and even killed.

"The instinct out there is to repress," the diplomat said, "which might have worked when the lid was on tight, as it was during the Soviet period. But now some people who feel victimized by repression are turning to Afghanistan for help."

In the last two years religious radicals, evidently with Afghan support, have mounted armed attacks in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. They have proclaimed their desire to turn those countries into Islamic states modeled after Afghanistan.

In the bazaars of the Fergana Valley, the teeming heart of Central Asia, vendors sell cassettes of sermons in which radical clerics call the faithful to rebel against their leaders and replace them with others who share the Taliban's ideas.

"There's a real nervousness about the rise of Islamic radicalism," said Martha Brill Olcott, a scholar who has written extensively about the region. "It's not a threat in the short term, but in the long term it is.

"Leaders there want to reduce or eliminate that threat, and they'd welcome American help in doing that. But they don't want to get involved in the American operation in ways that will destabilize their regimes and their countries."

All of the five Central Asian countries were essentially forced into declaring independence as the Soviet Union collapsed, even though they were spectacularly unprepared for the challenges of nationhood.

During the 1990's, leaders of all five nations played the United States and Russia off each other. Now Washington and Moscow, seemingly united in the anti-Taliban cause, are well positioned to join together in seeking Central Asia's help.

Three of the five Central Asian countries share borders with Afghanistan. United States troops have been sent to Uzbekistan partly because it has the only year-round access to the border over a decent road.

Turkmenistan is less likely to help, because President Niyazov is deeply wary of foreign influence. The third country bordering Afghanistan is the region's wildest and most lawless, Tajikistan.

The Tajikistan-Afghanistan border is long and porous, but impassable for much of the year. Tajikistan is also deeply unstable, racked by civil war and with a government that controls only part of the country. The rest is run by clans and warlords, some of whom support themselves with a thriving drug and weapons trade.

Central Asian warriors spent much of the 19th century defeating Russian and British invasions. After their lands were forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union, guerrillas fought the Red Army for years before being crushed. To this day, family and clan weigh stronger in many areas than the nation.

That web of loyalties means that populations do not automatically follow their presidents and may oppose the closer ties to America.

American diplomats have been reluctant to deal with the warlords, especially those whose power rests on controlling lucrative heroin- smuggling routes. But many of them fear that a radical Taliban-style government would destroy their standing.

Thus they could find common cause in Afghanistan, much of which is also under the sway of hereditary chiefs who instinctively support whichever side seems likely to win the next war.

Like their counterparts in other parts of the world, Central Asian leaders wonder about the staying power of the United States. Many believe that the Americans helped create the current situation by effectively abandoning Afghanistan after Afghan rebels financed by Washington succeeded in chasing Soviet troops out in the late 1980's, and by doing much the same to Pakistan, leaving it awash in weapons and militant Islamic guerrillas.

These leaders fear that Washington will turn its attention elsewhere again after achieving or failing to achieve its first set of goals.