Those concerned about the danger of drugs and militants in Central Asia know that all roads lead to -- or through – Tajikistan, the impoverished failing state on Afghanistan’s northern border. In recent weeks, apprehensions about the country’s sieve-like borders have been stirred up in Moscow and Washington alike. Can the two find enough mutual ground to cooperate on border security in the region, or will mistrust keep them at odds?
In Russia, the latest alarm bell sounded two days ago, when Semyon Bagdasarov, a member of the State Duma’s International Affairs Committee, said the Tajiks are not keeping Afghan drugs out of Central Asia -- and, by extension, out of Russia -- and should either hand control of the Afghan border back to Moscow, or suffer the consequences.
“Either we go back there and there is control of the situation, or it is time for us to introduce a visa regime with Tajikistan,” the Avesta.tj news service reports Bagdasarov as saying. (By some estimates, as many as a million Tajiks work, legally and illegally, in Russia. Moscow raises the specter of a visa requirement from time to time, usually when it is pressuring Dushanbe for some concession.)
Bagdasarov’s insistence that Russia take more responsibility for the porous, 1,300-kilometer border is not surprising. He’s said as much before. But chatter in favor of a return of Russian troops (who guarded the border from tsarist times until 2005) is growing louder. The fashionable position in Moscow seems to be that Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the sick men of Central Asia, cannot provide adequate security.
At least Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan’s neighbor to the north, is ready to admit it. Only one mountain range separates Kyrgyzstan from Tajikistan’s Rasht Valley, the scene of violence attributed to Islamic militants last fall, and President Roza Otunbayeva says her country desperately needs help protecting itself. In summer of 1999, militants from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan negotiated that very range as their doorway into Batken Province, where they captured several villages.
In Washington this week, Otunbayeva resurrected a request for American military aid, this time specifically for border support in Batken, the southern province surrounded on three sides by Tajik territory. Located just a few hundred kilometers and a couple of mountain passes from Afghanistan, southern Kyrgyzstan had been the proposed site of an anti-terror training center to be built with American money, but that plan was tabled after the Bakiyev regime fell last year.
"I'm very concerned about the Kyrgyz-Tajik border," Otunbayeva said during a talk at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, AFP reported. "We work closely with Russia by the way in this regard. I do seek assistance here in Washington also. ... Border troops need a lot of financial support."
A recent US government report confirms Otunbayeva’s worries are well founded: “30 percent of the borders in Kyrgyzstan remain virtually uncontrolled,” said the annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) released this month.
The report likewise justifies Moscow’s jitters about the Afghan-Tajik frontier, saying that “several Tajik border posts … have been neglected or abandoned in the past year due to the logistical difficulties of staffing and supplying them.” Overall, it adds, “the 1,344 kilometer border with Afghanistan is sparsely guarded.”
It will be interesting to see how Moscow reacts to Otunbayeva’s request. She sought NATO’s support last week, explicitly stating her concern that militant Islamists will come over the mountain passes from Tajikistan. Usually, the Kremlin doesn’t take kindly to any visible American military presence in the region, but Tajikistan leaves a lot of territory for cooperation.
David Trilling is Eurasianet’s managing editor.
Sign up for Eurasianet's free weekly newsletter. Support Eurasianet: Help keep our journalism open to all, and influenced by none.