Eurasia Insight:
CENTRAL ASIA TO PLAY PROMINENT ROLE IN US-RUSSIAN COOPERATION
Ariel Cohen: 9/14/01

The September 11 terrorist attack on New York and Washington, apparently perpetrated by Islamic radicals, initiated a shift in the world’s geopolitical tectonic plates. This change of paradigm clears the way for a global struggle against terrorism. In this fight against terror, as with World War II’s anti-fascist crusade, the United States and Russia have coinciding interests that could end up forging a close alliance.

Russia reacted with great emotion to the carnage in America. President Vladimir Putin is leading an effort to put Russia squarely in the anti-terrorist camp. Putin has communicated with President George Bush on several occasions, and has reportedly ordered all intelligence information on ties between terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden – the chief suspect in the September 11 events – and the Taliban to be passed on the US security officials.

According to Boston University researcher Lyuba Schwartzman, who monitors Russian TV, the flag on the Russian White House has been lowered to half-mast. At noon on September 13, a moment of silence was observed at Putin's cabinet meeting and around the country. By that hour, the lawn of the US embassy had been covered with flowers, placed there by sympathetic Russians. Muscovites, like the Israelis, have come to hospitals to donate blood. This is an unprecedented expression of solidarity.

Putin and Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov have declared that Russia is prepared to act jointly with NATO against international terrorism. However, Ivanov clarified that Russia will not participate in retaliatory attacks, especially as long as it is not clear against whom they will be directed.

As the United States is focusing attention on the Taliban, which controls roughly 90 percent of Afghanistan’s territory, Russia’s immediate priority seems to be settling the Chechnya question. To take care of the home front, Putin met with Justice Minister Yuri Chaika and Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov to discuss beefing up anti-terrorism measures. Hundreds of civilians have been murdered in car bomb blasts throughout Russia since 1999. The Russian government blames Chechen militants for those attacks, while the Chechens have denied responsibility.

The leaders of Russia have not missed this opportunity to state their case about the need to crush Chechnya. Russian General Prosecutor Vladimir Ustinov met on September 13 with a delegation of the European Assembly and discussed "improvements" in Chechnya. Ustinov claimed that Moscow has proof that Chechen fighters undergo training in terrorist camps that are run and financed by bin Laden. In addition, Moscow is using the terror attack to advance other policy priorities. For instance, the Ministry of Defense has suggested that US efforts to create a missile defense shield would be futile, given that the terrorism threat is relatively low-tech.

Russia is also emphasizing the Taliban-Chechen connection to score propaganda points. The Taliban regime is one of very few which has formally recognized independence of Chechnya. And as the Chechens have a diaspora throughout the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe which is tough, business-oriented, but has often been accused of involvement in criminal activity, they are a perfect conduit for a large scale drug distribution network. Thus, the Afghan-Chechen connection may have as much to do with spreading the opium poppy in Europe as with spreading religion.

In combating Islamic radicalism, the United States is plunging into a region in which Russia has historically had a prominent presence. One immediate US priority concerns Pakistan, which has close ties to the Taliban. It looks increasingly likely that the United States will pressure the military government of Pakistan – which had had strong relations to the US since the 1979-98 Afghan war – to punish the Taliban, and to help apprehend bin Laden.

At the same time, Central Asia figures to play a prominent roll in US-Russian cooperation. If the US government does not succeed in pressuring Islamabad, or if it wants to open a second front from northern Afghanistan against the fundamentalist regime, Washington will need to deal with the Kremlin, as well as with the governments of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, to ensure their cooperation.

Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have all supported the so-called Northern Alliance, which has battled the Taliban for control of Afghanistan. The alliance, which is dominated by ethnic Tajiks, has most of its stronghold in northern areas of the country, near the Tajik-Afghani border. It is the prime opposition against the predominantly Pushtun Taliban.

One option for the US would be to provide immediate assistance to the Northern Alliance. However, the alliance’s leader, Ahmed Shah Masoud, the best military commander of the Afghan war, was either killed or severely wounded on September 10, a day before the New York attack.

Northern Afghanistan is the logical location to develop a staging area for anti-Taliban forces. Russia already has its 201st Division in the area, which is 11,000 strong, and is guarding the Tajik border.

Only ten days prior to the attack on Masoud, the Taliban appointed bin Laden the military commander of their army. Of special note, bin Laden then nominated Juma Namangani, a leading Uzbek militant Islamic fighting to topple the Uzbek regime of President Islam Karimov, as his deputy. [For additional information see the Eurasia Insight archives]. Thus, over the last couple of weeks, the Islamist expansion into Central Asia has become more likely than ever.

These appointments, as well as the blow against Masoud, may be connected to the September 11 events. If it is established that the Taliban knew of or cooperated with bin Laden in the attack against American targets, they may have been trying to anticipate a typical US response, which would be to arm and train the existing opposition in Afghanistan. However, if the Northern enclave is overrun by Kabul in the near future, there will be no opposition left for the United States to back. It would also complicate efforts by the United States to establish bases in the region.

Cooperating in the fight against terrorism may help the United States to "clear the air" in its relations with Russia, as well as with China, and open a new page for relations between the great powers during the 21st century. At the same time, the strategic alliance against terrorism must be careful to coordinate strategic and tactical priorities in order to reduce the chances for misunderstanding that could fuel new forms of international tension. The lessons of history show that the spirit of cooperation that prevailed between the United States and Soviet Union during World War II gave way to the ideological confrontation of the Cold War.

Editor’s Note: Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is a Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Heritage Foundation. He is the author of Russian Imperialism: Development and Crisis, Greenwood/Praeger, 1998.