EurasiaNet Eurasia Insight - Kyrgyzstan: Lack of Results Again Raises Questions About the Future of the CIS

EURASIA INSIGHT

KYRGYZSTAN: LACK OF RESULTS AGAIN RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THE CIS
Joanna Lillis 10/14/08

The troika of recent summits in Bishkek turned out to be long on fanfare and short on results. The key meeting, the CIS summit on October 10, failed to clinch a deal on the keynote document, while gatherings of Eurasian Economic Community members and the heads of the five Central Asian states fizzled out without major agreements.

The country that exerted the most force over the meetings -- Georgia -- was one whose leader was not in attendance. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili announced his country’s withdrawal from the CIS in August amid Tbilisi’s brief war with Russia over South Ossetia. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Saakashvili’s name featured on the list of summit participants, and Georgia’s flag flew alongside those of the CIS member states at the summit, but he was conspicuous in his absence. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Ukraine’s Viktor Yushchenko also failed to attend, officially due to election campaigns under way in their countries. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Although they sent representatives, their absence underscored tensions within the CIS.

The decision to officially suspend Georgia’s membership was taken October 9 by the Council of CIS Foreign Ministers, with officials downplaying the suspension as a technical decision. CIS Executive Secretary Sergey Lebedev pointed out that it takes 12 months for any departure from the CIS to take full effect and that Georgia continues to meet its obligations under existing agreements. "It is Georgia’s sovereign right to leave the CIS," he told a news conference in Bishkek on October 9. "The door is not closed. If Georgia declares a desire to re-enter, it will probably be satisfied." He also noted that it was the "sovereign right" of member states to decide whether to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, none of which have done so. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

His conciliatory tone was a marked contrast with the hard line adopted by Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov. "Georgia leaving CIS will not have negative consequences for the organization," he stated. "Georgia’s membership of the CIS in the past few years was aimed at the erosion of the commonwealth."

Officials in Bishkek were mainly tight-lipped over Georgia. As they sought to deflect journalists’ questions on Georgia’s membership, the CIS decision to "end the activity of the Collective Peacekeeping Forces in the zone of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict" passed almost unremarked. However, as Russia’s Kommersant newspaper pointed out, "Russian troops in Abkhazia thus lost their status as peacekeepers, and the legal foundation for their presence on the republic’s territory is only a bilateral agreement between Sukhumi and Moscow." This formalizes Russia’s military presence in the disputed territory.

CIS leaders were keen to sideline the Georgian issue and focus on areas where they said they had made progress, such as economic cooperation, but the actual summit results seemed to contrast with their enthusiasm. They were unable to agree on the key document under consideration -- a Strategy for Economic Development to 2020. The economic blueprint was sent back for review in November. Officials did agree to set up a working group to tackle the global financial crisis and to make energy a "key sphere of interaction" for 2009.

During their gathering later in the day, Central Asian leaders appeared to make some progress on energy cooperation issues. Kyrgyzstan’s president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, said he expected to reach agreement with Uzbekistan within the next two weeks on gas supplies for the first quarter of 2009. Kyrgyzstan is already facing power shortages ahead of the onset of winter, and reaching a deal is an urgent priority for Bishkek.

Kyrgyzstan’s woes seem to be encouraging the five Central Asian states to overcome past differences and personal rivalries, and engage in a greater level of cooperation on water-related issues. With low water levels in Kyrgyzstan’s reservoirs that officials blame on drought, the country may not be able to generate enough power and still preserve sufficient water to irrigate downstream states next spring. "The heads of state again demonstrated their desire and ability to jointly resolve problems that arise and their inclination for work in close contact with the aim of improving the well-being of the citizens of their countries," Bakiyev commented, somewhat hopefully since Central Asian leaders have failed for 17 years now to agree on sharing water and energy resources equitably. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

The relatively sparse results from the CIS summit -- including agreements on combating the narcotics trade and illegal migration -- again raised questions about the future of the organization, which some observers see as toothless and hampered by personal ambitions and geopolitical competition.

The reliance of officials on stock phrases did little to allay such concerns. For example, Vladimir Voronin, the president of Moldova, which assumed the CIS chairmanship from Kyrgyzstan, described the Bishkek gathering as a good chance to "synchronize watches." Lebedev, however, offered an unequivocal endorsement for the future of the CIS. "All suppositions that the CIS does not have long to live are absolutely groundless," he told reporters.

Analysts were more cautious. "As an organization that results in important decisions, the CIS has never existed," Shairbek Juraev of the International and Comparative Politics Department at the American University of Central Asia told EurasiaNet. "At a formal level, though, the leaders may continue meeting once a year, thus creating an impression of the existence of such a commonwealth. The commitment of its members is very much contingent to their loyalty to Russia, and the future of the CIS is contingent to an understanding of this organization by Russia as necessary for whatever reason."

A hint that change may be afoot was dropped by Voronin, who spoke of moving to a "format of interested states," suggesting that a two-track CIS in which countries pick and choose areas of cooperation may be taking shape. Indeed, Juraev said, the key to the CIS’s future may well be "shrinking to resemble that of other, relatively more productive regional organizations" such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization or Eurasian Economic Community. "This may be a turning point for the future of the organization," he added.

Editor's Note: Joanna Lillis is a freelance writer who specializes in Central Asia.

The Central Eurasia Project aims, through its website, meetings, papers, and grants, to foster a more informed debate about the social, political and economic developments of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is a program of the Open Society Institute-New York. The Open Society Institute-New York is a private operating and grantmaking foundation that promotes the development of open societies around the world by supporting educational, social, and legal reform, and by encouraging alternative approaches to complex and controversial issues.

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