Eurasia Insight:
LOOKING FOR TROUBLE? RUSSIA STEER CENTRAL ASIAN ANTITERRORIST PREPARATIONS
Roger N McDermott: 7/22/02

Dale Watson, head of counterterrorism for the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation, hazarded a guess on July 17 that Osama Bin Laden had died in Afghanistan but told reporters that the US "will be attacked again." Similarly, politicians and generals in Central Asia are looking through American-led advances in Afghanistan for signs that extremist groups are preparing to mount fresh attacks. In particular, officials are speculating that the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a violent group with links to bin Laden’s al Qaida network, has swollen to as many as 2,000 members. And Central Asian states’ military ability to respond to such a force depends heavily on Russian decisions and capacity.

Four days after Watson’s remarks, Kyrgyz Security Council Secretary Misir Ashirkulov told reporters that Juma Namangani, the IMU’s leader, was probably alive despite official reports of his burial in late 2001. Ashirkulov’s colleague, Defense Minister Esen Topoyev has expressed that Tajik and Kyrgyz military forces can repel any terrorist incursion made from Afghanistan. A blueprint for such an effort has emerged. Kyrgyzstan would first involve its 5,000 Border Troops, who include Kyrgyz conscripts and Russian officers. If fighting intensified, the Commonwealth of Independent States’ Collective Rapid Deployment Forces would join the fighting. Since the IMU launched attacks on Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in 1999 and 2000, Kyrgyz officials have emphasized development of a ‘mountain army’ specially trained to cope with the carrying out missions in mountainous terrain. But this emphasis and its implied troop specialties are young and somewhat abstract. The states that seem most vulnerable to terrorist attacks cannot necessarily repel enemies on their own. Instead, they remain reliant upon military protection from Russia. Technically, Russian support comes in the form of a 201st Motor Rifle Division component deployed to the CRDF in Tajikistan. But Russian involvement – and former Soviet states’ vulnerability to sneak attacks- run much deeper.

Russian Major General Sergei Chernomordin led antiterrorist CRDF exercises in Kyrgyzstan in April, and ran similar rehearsals in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan between June 13 and 16. In both rounds of exercises, mock "bandit gangs" invaded a state and Kazakh peacekeepers attacked a staged village with bombs, mortar fire, and paratroopers engaged in hand-to-hand combat. At the end of the exercises, hostages went free and gunmen surrendered. Officials based the scenario on actual events that occurred in 2000, when IMU militants invaded Kyrgyzstan. Russia’s leadership of these exercises, and smaller states’ commitment to the CRDF, indicate how badly Russia wants to maintain military influence even as American troops settle in at Uzbekistan’s Khanabad air base. And Russia’s use of past attacks as a script – which assumes that IMU or other extremists have learned nothing from previous episodes- reveals how military planning, in the absence of strong intelligence, can make for weak security.

Russia aims to influence regional intelligence gathering, too. Increasingly, its FSB has worked in concert with Central Asian intelligence services. The FSB has managed the so-called antiterrorist operations in Chechnya, and now steers antiterrorist exercises in Central Asia with similar authority. In late June, Russian intelligence Director Nikolai Patrushev met with Kazakh counterpart Nartai Dutbayev to discuss foreign terrorists’ attempts to enter these states from abroad. Kazakh intelligence has in the past emphasized the importance of cooperation between law-enforcement and specialist antiterrorist bodies. Nonetheless, Major General Koziy Korpesh Karbuzov, Chief of the investigative branch of the Kazakh National Security Committee, told a conference in Shymkent, Kazakhstan in May that his government wants to learn from the Russian counterterrorism experience.

Finally, Russia steers official antiterrorist policy for the CIS through the two-year-old CIS Antiterrorist Center in Moscow. The Center principally plays a coordinating role; it does not lead combat missions. Now, though, geopolitical tension could undermine its effectiveness. Uzbekistan, whose president survived an IMU assassination attempt in 1999, has opted out of joint exercises in the spring of 2002. Anti-Terrorism Chairman Boris Mylnikov attributes this decision to interstate rivalry. Now that he has become an ally in the United States-led war on terrorism, Uzbek president Islam Karimov seems more interested in mobilizing rapid-response forces than in bolstering a standing antiterrorist army.

The Central Asian states are strengthening their borders and attempting to enhance the aviation component of their Border Services. By working more closely with Russian intelligence, these states may become less vulnerable to surprise attacks. However, those states’ weak militaries and anemic economies leave them constantly vulnerable to IMU and al Qaida remnants seeking to destabilize the region. Rather than marching forward to eliminate a threat, these weak armies think defensively and obsess over the 1999 and 2000 attacks. That mindset leaves Russia the region’s protector and policy leader, and could leave the smaller states beholden to Russia’s agenda should a crisis arise.

Editor’s Note: Roger N. McDermott is a Political Consultant at the Scottish Center for International Security of the University of Aberdeen.