This new "great game" in the heart of Asia is unfolding not so much among the old
     colonial powers as among their former minions, many of whom are themselves just
     emerging from colonial domination and seeking to define their roles in their
     regions and the world.1  

                                       --Boris Rumer

Introduction.

Is there a new "Great Game" being played out in Central Asia? Boris Rumer argues that the successor states to the Russian and British empires have renewed the struggle for hegemony in the center of the Asian continent. As the world shifts from a bipolar to a multipolar focus, the nations of Asia search for new trans-regional security arrangements. More specifically, the breakup of the Soviet Union and the creation of five Central Asian republics2 (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan), have complicated the security relations of the Asian states. (See Figure 1.) But, this new struggle is not a repeat of the 19th century "Great Game," by which the Central Asian states are but pawns of great powers as they jockey for power and position. Instead, the Central Asian states themselves are active players in this struggle for power, in a unique geo-strategic position to influence immediate neighbors Russia, China, and Iran, and even beyond into the Indian subcontinent. Once considered a backwater of little importance during the Soviet era, Central Asia could play a pivotal role in Asian politics in the next decade.

Enlargement and Engagement set domestic political stability, regional peace, and the maturation of market economies in the five Central Asian states as policy goals of the United States. The key to Asian, especially Central Asian, regional security is economic. A strong, vibrant market economy is a prerequisite for political stability and the growth of democracy. Political stability, however, is itself a key element to economic development; peace in the region, especially in Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Kashmir, must be gained before that economic takeoff can occur.

Serious political, economic, ethnic, religious, and social challenges confront the five new Central Asian states in this quest for regional security. How each state is able to confront and resolve these problems will determine its ability to emerge as a viable force in this struggle for influence, in this new "Great Game." Instability might seem to provide opportunities for states such as Iran or China to expand their influence, but the risks that such instability would ricochet back on them are too great. Thus, Iran, Pakistan, India, Russia and China each seek, in their own way, to promote stability within Central Asia while expanding their own regional influence.

Implications for American security from this struggle derive from the U.S. desire to prevent existing problems within Central Asia from escalating into crises that might engage Iran, Pakistan, India, Russia or China.3 Therefore, we must first identify those centrifugal forces threatening Central Asia, then review each of these states in turn, to analyze their behavior, identify their regional objectives and state policies in relation to Central Asia, and evaluate the impact of Central Asia upon their own security. Doing so offers a better perspective on our own strategic interests in post-Cold War Asia.

Threats to Central Asia.

The greatest threats to Central Asian security are internal. The painstaking process of nation-building, the legitimacy crisis, rapid social and economic transformation, decolonization, ethnic diversity, border disputes, and a catalogue of other issues are all sources of instability in the post-Soviet republics.4

The core issue is the ethnic composition of each state. Since no nation-states existed in the centuries before Russian conquest, substantial transmigration of ethnic groups characterized the region. As a result, major concentrations of ethnic minorities reside within countries other than their titular5 nation, to include: one million Uzbeks in the Khojent province of Tajikistan, half a million in the Osh area of the Fergana valley in Kygyzstan, and 280,000 in the Chimkent region of Kazakhstan; one to two million Tajiks in Samarkand and Bukhara, Uzbekistan; nearly a million Kazakhs in Uzbekistan; and roughly eight million (a number declining daily due to emigration) Russians, Ukrainians, and Germans in the northern part of Kazakhstan.6 The percentage of the titular nationality (and the ruling elite) in each republic may be less than half.7 Ethnic populations are also split by international boundaries; for example, there are more ethnic Tajiks in Afghanistan than in Tajikistan itself.8

These titular nationalities are caught outside their home republic because artificial boundaries, established during the Stalinist era, purposefully cut across nationalities, to "divide and conquer."9 Central authorities meant these boundaries as internal administrative lines of demarcation--no one dreamed the Soviet Socialist Republics would ever become actual states. This ethnic mix was further complicated when the area became a wartime dumping ground for exiled nationalities, such as Volga Germans, as well as the relocation of war industries during the early 1940s, the Virgin Land program of the 1950s, and Moscow's systematic immigration of ethnic Slavs (to dilute the titular nationality) after Stalin's death.

All five republics have suffered sharp economic dislocation since gaining independence. They were suddenly cut off from the centralized command economy that directed their resource allocation, long-range planning, investment funding, and management. Exploitation of rich natural energy and mineral resources has been stalled; no longer a part of the Soviet Union, the five republics are all landlocked, and goods must transit through a second nation via transportation networks that do not yet exist (other than through Russia). Economic reform and movement toward a market economy have been uneven, as states fear that further economic dislocation will produce massive internal unrest and political instability. The lack of modern financial systems, transportation networks, banking institutions, and enforceable legal systems all hamper foreign investment. Migration of ethnic Slavs to Russia has cost the republics a large cadre of skilled technicians and managers; migration of ethnic Germans has cost the republics the group most responsible for cultivated agriculture. Many local nationalities are a generation or two from being nomads or herdsmen. At the same time, overpopulation pressures from large Central Asian families (often having five to six times the birth rate of urbanized Slavic states) have produced an underclass of poor un- or under-employed, less-educated workers whose dissatisfaction in the 1980s often provoked the riots leading up to independence. Ethnic discrimination during the Soviet era produced few senior, local leaders in the military, industrial, legal, diplomatic, or managerial fields from the Central Asian republics.

Soviet degradation of the environment created massive economic distortions and mammoth health problems that have resulted in rival demands for finite state funds. The question is whether or not states will use their limited resources to rectify current problems or invest in the future. Huge tracts of land were used to test Soviet weapons of mass destruction--with little regard for the local nationalities living downwind, many of whom now suffer disproportionate cancer rates.10 Under the Soviet economic system, cotton monoculture produced 90 percent of the USSR's cotton requirements and 17 percent of the total world cotton production. Cotton usurped practically all grain crops and has taken over land used previously for fruits and vegetables. As a result, not only does the once agricultural heartland suffer from an insufficiency of vegetables, wheat, meat, and milk, but the region is beset with ecological disaster created by defoliants, airborne salts, industrial pollution, over-fertilization, water diversion schemes (the Aral Sea), and an exhausted water supply.11 Irrigation, the water distribution system, and control of waterways all threaten to become major issues in the next decade.12

Efforts to resolve economic ills through inter-republican or regional associations have not flourished. In 1993, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan formed a customs union, but a lack of resources and Russian opposition to any program of which it is not a part have hampered full implementation. Similarly, Russia (unsuccessfully) opposed Central Asian membership in the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), founded by Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan in 1992.13 Turkmenistan's reluctance to enter into any multilateral regional agreement also has stifled attempts to find common solutions to common problems.

Democracy has been sacrificed on the altar of stability in all five republics. None of the Central Asian Communist leaders wanted independence; indeed, most favored the 1991 coup attempt in Moscow.14 Early constitutional efforts lacked real checks and balances or public commitment to their survival. When legislatures attempted to play a genuine role in the decision making process, the executive branch progressively usurped their power, and in the case of Kyrgyzstan (September 1994) and Kazakhstan (March 1995) the presidents dissolved them outright. Authorities repressed organized opposition political parties, especially those Islamic in nature.

The continuing civil war in Tajikistan remains the most crucial threat to inter-regional security. Initially portrayed as the result of radical Islamic fundamentalism, the civil war is, in reality, less about religion or ideology and more about economic, linguistic, ethnic, clan, and regional rivalries for access to political and economic spoils.15 Russian force of arms has failed to end the conflict, even with token units contributed to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Peacekeeping force by Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. However, the war justifies the stationing of nearly 25,000 Russian forces in the area (9,000 peacekeepers and 16,000 border guards) and affords excessive Russian influence on the Tajik government.

The ongoing civil war in Afghanistan remains the most immediate extra-regional threat to security. Afghanistan faces the real prospect of disintegration if the power struggle between northern ethnic groups and the Pashtun leadership degenerates into a conflict along ethnic lines. Such a split might eventually draw in Afghanistan's neighbors, notably Iran, Pakistan, and the Central Asian republics (relatively unstable themselves), which have close ethnic-religious ties across the border.16 An Islamic regime in Kabul could encourage the religious resurgence already growing across the border in Central Asia.17

Political alignments within Central Asia could be profoundly affected by events in Afghanistan. Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan have large numbers of ethnic kinsmen across the border. The disintegration of state power occurring in Afghanistan could result in a new regional realignment; northern Afghanistan nationalities might forge new links with their ethnic kinsmen across the Amu Darya, rather than being subordinate to a Pushtun-dominated government in Kabul.

The current growth of Islam is both a cause and a result of secular leaders' mistrust. Central Asian leaders have exaggerated the incursion of radical Islamic fundamentalism and pushed it forward as the new "threat" to justify their suppression of internal dissent. They overstate Central Asian adherence to the religious elements of Islam and the potential of Islamic states to export their revolution. Such repression can backfire, as religious martyrdom often generates new converts even as the old ones are driven underground. True, there has been an explosion of mosque-building and Koran distribution (funded externally, especially by the Saudis), but at this stage much of the interest has been in "folk Islam"--the rituals of daily life and death--and in rediscovering a lost cultural identity, rather than a purely religious conviction. Attempts to limit or control Islam and nip "fundamentalism" in the bud without simultaneous dramatic attempts to reverse the economic and social decline hasten the growth of more strictly observed Islam.18 Martha Olcott argues that secular leaders themselves are responsible for Islam's growth:

     What none of Central Asia's leaders seem to understand is that Islam is not the
     agent of instability and the competing power they take it to be, but that its
     spread is instead a response to their own inability to control their economies,
     their societies and their states.19  

Whether Islam itself is an element of instability is debatable, but central authorities' fears--provoking arrest, imprisonment, and exile--fuel the flames of intolerance and authoritarianism that surely do destabilize the region.

These centrifugal forces (and the threatened spillover if they should explode into ethnic, religious, and social conflict) alarm the region's Asian neighbors. Each seeks to promote stability within all the Central Asian states through a variety of bilateral and multilateral means. Geographic, political, financial, religious, and ethnic factors affect the ability of each to achieve its security goals and promote its hegemonic aspirations.

2. The parameters of "Central Asia" fluctuate in the popular press and practical use. Once the old, tsarist province of Turkestan was subdivided in the 1920s, the Soviets coined the phrase "Sredniaia Aziia" (Middle Asia) to refer to the territory covering the present four republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, omitting Kazakhstan (almost half of which included heavily ethnic-Russian areas that Muscovy absorbed into the empire in the 16th century). Western sources coined the phrase "Soviet Central Asia" to include all five republics. When the ECO expanded to "Central Asia," there were six new states--to include Azerbaijan. At a 1992 meeting of the five former Soviet Central Asian states, they adopted the term, "Tsentral'naia Aziia" (Central Asia), to include Kazakhstan. Some contemporary popular periodicals, under the subheading "Central Asia," stretch their coverage from the Bosphorous to Southeast Asia. For the purposes of this study, however, "Central Asia" refers only to Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. (Back to text)

3. The other player, Turkey, is beyond the scope of this study. See Stephen J. Blank, Stephen C. Pelletiere, and William T. Johnsen, Turkey's Strategic Position at the Crossroads of World Affairs, Carlisle Barracks: Strategic Studies Institute, December 1993. Chap 4, "Turkey's Strategic Engagement in the Former USSR and U.S. Interests," is of special interest. (Back to text)

4. Seyed Kazem Sajjadpour, "Iran, the Caucasus and Central Asia," in Ali Vanauzizi and Myron Weiner, eds., The New Geopolitics of Central Asia, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994, p. 197. (Back to text)

5. For example, the titular nationality of Uzbekistan is Uzbek, of Kazakhstan is Kazakh, etc. Because ethnic Kazakhs comprise less than half of the population of Kazakhstan, care is taken to use the adjectival form "Kazakhstani" rather than "Kazakh," when referring to that state. Ethnic Uzbeks form over 70 percent of Uzbekistan, so there "Uzbek state" is admissible. (Back to text)

6. Anthony Hyman, "Power and Politics in Central Asia's New Republics," Conflict Studies 273, London: Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and Terrorism, August 1994, p. 10. (Back to text)

7. Percentages range from around 40 percent Kazakhs to 70 percent Uzbeks. This creates serious social tension, for example, when the national legislature announces a shift from Russian to the titular language when, for half of the population (and even many of the Russified titular minority), it is not their native tongue. (Back to text)

8. Anthony Hyman, "Moving Out of Moscow's Orbit: The Outlook for Central Asia," International Affairs, Vol. 69, No. 2, 1993, pp. 302-303. (Back to text)

9. According to Martha Brill Olcott, the dispute between the Uzbeks and Tajiks is potentially the most contentious. Central Asia's two main Persian-speaking cities, Samarkand and Bukhara, were included in Uzbekistan, leaving the Tajiks with the backwater town of Dushanbe for their republic capital. For their part, the Uzbeks have periodically staked a claim to all of the Fergana valley, which includes Kyrgyzstan's Osh oblast, and part of the Khojent oblast in Tajikistan. The Uzbeks also argue that part of southern Kazakhstan and eastern Turkmenistan rightly belongs to them as well. The republics of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan disagree not only about where their border should be, but even where it is, and briefly came to blows over this question in the summer of 1989. "Central Asia's Post-empire Politics," Orbis, Vol. 36, No. 2, Spring 1992, p. 256. (Back to text)

10. Nuclear test ranges are but the tip of the iceberg. Local authorities often had little, if any, knowledge of specific testing of chemical and biological agents in Soviet research facilities throughout the region. The identification of facilities, the types of tests once conducted, and disposal of test materials is of great interest to republican health authorities--and U.S. Department of Defense officials. (Back to text)

11. Igor Lipovsky, "The Central Asian Cotton Epic," Central Asian Survey, Vol. 4, No. 4, 1995, p. 534. (Back to text)

12. Olcott, "Central Asia's Post-empire Politics," p. 253. See also Gregory Gleason, "The Struggle for Control over Water in Central Asia: Republican Sovereignty and Collective Action," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Report on the USSR, June 21, 1991, pp. 11-19. (Back to text)

13. Afghanistan is the ninth member. (Back to text)

14. Only Akayev of Kyrgyzstan immediately condemned the August 1991 coup in Moscow. Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan waited 36 hours (until the outcome was evident) before protesting. The leaders of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan openly supported the coup from the start and used it as an excuse to crack down on their own dissidents. See Ahmed Rashid, The Resurgence of Central Asia Islam or Nationalism?, London: Zed Books, 1994, pp. 39-40. (Back to text)

15. "The War in Tajikistan Three Years On," Special Report, Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, November 1995, pp. 1-16. (Back to text)

16. The bonds of religious faith and ethnic kinsmanship must not be over-exaggerated, however. When one state intervenes in the domestic affairs of another, it all too often is merely a justification for pursuit of national interests, e.g. to create weak or dependent neighbors. Such states risk having the tables turned on them by their victims--who support dissident minorities within their borders tit-for-tat. In such cases, religious or ethnic "solidarity" would give way to Realpolitik. (Back to text)

17. J. Mohan Malik, "India Copes with the Kremlin's Fall," Orbis, Vol. 37, No. 1, Winter 1993, p. 80. (Back to text)

18. Martha Brill Olcott, "Central Asia's Islamic Awakening," Current History, Vol. 93, No. 582, April 1994, p. 150. (Back to text)

19. Ibid., p. 154. (Back to text)

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