Russian officials often suggest that Central Asia’s poorest statelets -- Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan -- should join their new Customs Union. But is Moscow really interested in letting this troublesome pair into its elite new club?
An analysis by a member of the Russian State Duma’s CIS affairs committee and printed by state-owned RIA Novosti bluntly says what trade experts in Bishkek have been telling me all year: Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are way too unstable, and their borders too unguarded, to join.
The potential new members, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, are unlikely to add anything but economic problems and political instability to the situation. Low incomes, skyrocketing unemployment and corruption make these countries very vulnerable to extremism.
Neither produces much of export value and their purchasing power is negligible compared with the union’s Kazakhstan, Belarus and Russia, which, according to this analysis, collectively produce 80 percent of the CIS’s GDP.
Joining the Customs Union means beefing up border security. Moscow eyes the leaky borders and drug trafficking routes through these two countries with alarm. Click here to see the lengths Kazakhstan went to earlier this year to protect itself from Kyrgyz smugglers. Of course, all this is hurting Kyrgyz traders, making any motion to join a sure populist win in Bishkek. Though enlisting would be complicated for the WTO-member, it’s an option that pro-Russian leaders there repeatedly (here’s the latest) say they embrace.
Perhaps Moscow is angling for a quid pro quo: give us your porous, drug-infested borders and we’ll turn the aid tap back on, as Vladimir Putin did this week for the new, pro-Russian Kyrgyz government.
David Trilling is Eurasianet’s managing editor.
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