Earlier this week, the U.S. designated three men as members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), shadowy groups operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And U.S. agents arrested a fourth man in the U.S., charging him with supporting the IJU.
These moves have prompted skepticism about whether the IMU and IJU are in fact real threats, and questions about whether the U.S. is trumping up these charges -- or even selling out Uzbekistan's dissidents -- for the sake of Tashkent's cooperation on the Northern Distribution Network. These are worthwhile questions to be asking, even while there's still too little information to come to conclusive answers.
But if this is a sort of "payment" by Washington to Tashkent, it wouldn't be the first time. Political scientist Eric McGlinchey, in his new book Chaos, Violence, Dynasty: Politics and Islam in Central Asia, discusses how the IMU got on the State Department's official list of terrorist organizations -- ultimately making this week's arrest and sanctions possible:
President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan has said that the departure of U.S. and coalition troops from Afghanistan will bring "an increased threat of the expansion of terrorist and extremist activities, increased tension and confrontation" and "the creation of a permanent source of instability here." He made the comments in a televised address to the country's armed forces on the occasion of their 20th anniversary. Trend.az has reprinted a summary of Karimov's speech, but BBC Monitoring has the whole thing. This was the most intriuging part:
The Central Asian region, due to its geopolitical and geo-strategic importance and vast mineral resources in recent years become an object of close attention and the intersection of strategic interests of major states, is characterized by ongoing tension and confrontation in Afghanistan, where the war is under way already for more than 30 years.
The announced upcoming withdrawal of the US troops from Afghanistan and the International Security Assistance Force in 2014 could lead to an increased threat of the expansion of terrorist and extremist activities, increased tension and confrontation in this vast region as well as to the creation of a permanent source of instability here.
This will require reforms to the Uzbekistan's armed forces, Karimov continued:
[T]he drastically changed conditions and the nature of modern military operations, which differ with their suddenness, quickness and rapidity, using small mobile units, should always be borne in mind.
An analysis of military operations in modern military conflicts and local wars shows the use of radically new combat systems of special task forces; the wider use of non-contact forms and methods of warfare with the use of advanced information technologies and modern high-precision weapons.
The Taliban have announced that they intend to open an office in Qatar as part of a process that could lead to peace negotiations to end the war in Afghanistan. Turkey had been the Afghanistan government's original preferred location for an office, and the Turkish government was on board, too. Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai also proposed Saudi Arabia to host the office, but the Taliban refused.
The U.S. was pushing Karzai to accept Qatar as the only possible option, according to the New York Times, and somewhere along the way Turkey must have decided it wasn't amenable to hosting the Taliban:
[T]he United States and Germany together have made some progress in reaching out to the Taliban in recent months. The talks had centered on opening an office, preferably in Qatar, which is seen as relatively neutral and, most important, was willing to host it, according to American and Afghan officials....
Afghan officials ... insisted that the office be in Saudi Arabia or Turkey, although it was never clear that either of those countries was willing to host a Taliban peace mission. Afghan officials also never fully explained why they preferred those two countries over Qatar, all three of which fit their demand that the office be in a Muslim country.
It was not apparent on Tuesday what had changed Mr. Karzai’s mind. But an American official said that it was made clear to the Afghans that Qatar was the only option at the moment, and that waiting for another country to step forward would be only a waste of valuable time.
When firebrand Russian politician and ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin last week appeared to threaten to cut off NATO and U.S. military transit to Afghanistan, it was seen as another sign of the recently deteriorating relations between Washington and Moscow, and got a lot of attention. But now, apparently, Rogozin is saying he was misquoted.
NATO's foreign ministers are meeting now in Brussels, and a State Department official, speaking on background, says Rogozin has told them he never said he would cut off the Northern Distribution Network:
On the NDN, it’s actually – there was no confirmation. Even Rogozin, who was the one who was quoted, has said – he told us today, but he said all along his was misquoted and they are not linking the NDN to our disagreement on missile defense.
Indeed, if you look at the original story from Interfax (in Russian) Rogozin doesn't exactly spell the threat out, and it seems that Interfax could have put the words in his mouth.
But Rogozin apparently didn't talk to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen who, in a press conference at the meeting, said Russian talk of the NDN was "an empty threat":
I think, honestly speaking, that it’s an empty threat because it is clearly in Russia’s self-interest to contribute to a success in Afghanistan. Russia knows from bitter experience that instability in Afghanistan have negative repercussions in Russia as well.
Kazakhstan's foreign minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov met his U.S. counterpart Hillary Clinton at Tuesday's OSCE meeting in Vilnius, and the two discussed the U.S.-Kazakhstan strategic relationship, in particular Astana's contribution to the U.S.'s efforts to boost regional transportation links.From an Interfax report via BBC Monitoring (which I can't find online):
The Kazakh Foreign Ministry's press service said that, during the meeting, Clinton expressed "profound" gratitude to Kazakhstan for its efforts to assist the international coalition in Afghanistan, noting a key role of the country in promoting regional integration and as a link in interaction between North-South, East-West.
As was emphasized by the secretary of state, the USA welcomes such specific efforts of Kazakhstan as ... a proposal to establish a transport and logistics centre in the Aktau Sea port," the Foreign Ministry press release says.
At a conference today in Washington on the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Eric McGlinchey, a political science professor and Central Asia expert at George Mason University had an interesting theory about that statement. He noted that Kyrgyzstan, with its new pro-Russia president Almazbek Atambayev, has threatened to shut down the air base the U.S. operates at the Manas airport, and that Kazakhstan is showing more signs of cooperating with the U.S. "We're already beginning to see the writing on the wall: Kyrgyzstan says 'goodbye' to the United States, and Kazakhstan says 'Hello, come on in,'" McGlinchey said.
That's the provocative theory that is beginning to circulate, fueled by the Uzbekistan government's refusal to disclose basic information about an alleged attack, and some pointed questions being asked in Tajikistan about who has benefited and who has suffered from a rail bridge explosion near the Uzbekistan-Afghanistan border. When the bridge was blown up on November 17, the Uzbekistan authorities called it a "terrorist act" and most observers, not least this blog, speculated that it might be Islamists trying to scuttle U.S.-Uzbek cooperation over the war effort in Afghanistan. Initial reports about the area affected suggested that it could have been on a line renovated by the U.S. for use in its Northern Distribution Network, by which the U.S. and NATO ship military cargo overland through Central Asia to Afghanistan.
But since then, Uzbekistan has said nothing more about the incident. And it's emerged that while the U.S. military traffic to Afghanistan wasn't affected by the blast, shipping to neighboring Tajikistan -- with which Uzbekistan has chronically bad relations -- has been. A Tajikistan rail official complained that: "with the Uzbek railroad’s capacities, they should have been able to repair the bridge within a day. The Tajik railroad had offered to provide any assistance free of charge to speed up the restoration of traffic on the ... line, but had no response from Uzbek authorities, and no indication when repairs would be completed."
Russia has threatened to cut off NATO supply routes to Afghanistan if the alliance doesn't compromise on its missile defense plans, Moscow's NATO envoy, Dmitry Rogozin, has said. From the Wall Street Journal:
If NATO doesn't give a serious response, "we have to address matters in relations in other areas," Russian news services reported Dmitri Rogozin, ambassador to NATO, as saying. He added that Russia's cooperation on Afghanistan may be an area for review, the news services reported.
This is just the latest in several headaches that the U.S. has had to deal with over the last couple of weeks regarding its supply lines to Afghanistan. First, there was an explosion in Uzbekistan on a line used by the U.S. and NATO, then Pakistan cut off its supply lines in response to a NATO attack that killed 28 Pakistani soldiers. And the flamboyantly nationalist Rogozin rarely misses a chance to kick the U.S. when it's down. (He also gloated, via twitter, that a somewhat threatening statement by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on missile defense last week forced U.S. officers at NATO to go into work on Thanksgiving.)
An expert quoted by the Journal suggests that this new Russian threat isn't too serious:
Ivan Safranchuk, deputy director of the Moscow-based Institute of Contemporary International Studies, said Russia is unlikely to cut off the flow of NATO supplies to Afghanistan as an immediate response to missile-defense decisions. But Russia does want its objections to the missile shield to be taken more seriously, he said.
As a result of a NATO attack that killed as many as 28 Pakistani soldiers today, the Pakistani government has closed off NATO supply routes to Afghanistan. From Reuters:
Hours after the raid, NATO supply trucks and fuel tankers bound for Afghanistan were stopped at Jamrud town in the Khyber tribal region near the city of Peshawar, officials said.
The border crossing at Chaman in southwestern Baluchistan province was also closed, Frontier Corps officials said.
A meeting of the cabinet's defence committee convened by Gilani "decided to close with immediate effect NATO/ISAF logistics supply lines," according to a statement issued by Gilani's office.
It's not clear how long Pakistan will cut off NATO supplies, but they did it for ten days after another NATO attack killed three Pakistani soldiers last year.
According to the latest data from Reuters, NATO supplies into Afghanistan are roughly divided into thirds: a third goes overland via Pakistan, a third by air and a third overland via the Northern Distribution Network through Central Asia, primarily Uzbekistan. The U.S. had already been trying to increase their share of cargo shipped via the northern route, worried about the reliability of Pakistan. And now with the Pakistan route cut off indefinitely, that will put immediately more pressure on the northern route and Uzbekistan.
An explosion on a railroad on the Uzbekistan-Afghanistan border was a "terrorist act," according to local media, via RIA Novosti (in Russian). The explosion apparently happened on the line between Termez, at the southern tip of Uzbekistan, and Kurgan-Tyube in Tajikistan, between the Galaba and Amuzang stations. I can't find either of those stations on any map, but the stretch of that route that's inside Uzbekistan is pretty short, and hugs the Amu Darya river, the border between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. The explosion took place the night of November 17, there were no injuries and local authorities are investigating.
There is very little information about this so far, but there hasn't been a terror attack in Uzbekistan for several years. And the fact that it's so near to Termez, the hub of the U.S.'s Northern Distribution Network that carries military cargo through Central Asia to Afghanistan, has to have people worrying in Tashkent and the Pentagon. This line isn't the main line of NDN train traffic, which goes a more northerly route from Termez to Karshi, which would be an argument that it may not be NDN-related. Nonetheless, the location of the (alleged) attack is suggestive. Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov's number one fear is the rise of Islamist extremism in his country, and so if this does turn out to be NDN-related -- meaning that cooperation with the U.S. has brought terrorism back to Uzbekistan -- expect discussions between the U.S. and Uzbekistan over the NDN to get a lot more difficult.
Still, it's too early to jump to many conclusions. We'll see what more information emerges.
Heads of government of the SCO states pose in St. Petersburg
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization held a prime minister-level meeting on Monday in St. Petersburg, and from the outcome it appears the group is continuing its trajectory away from being a security group -- as it appeared to be in the mid-oughts -- toward being a more economically oriented body.
Most intriguingly, the proposals that came out of the meeting seem to dovetail remarkably with those of the U.S. and its New Silk Road -- i.e., building infrastructure in Central Asia to help the region become a hub of commerce between Europe and Asia, along the way building prosperity and stability. Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that Moscow would contribute $500 million to the CASA-1000 electricity project, by which hydropower from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan would be transmitted to India and Pakistan. And he endorsed the idea of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline. Both of those projects, you'll recall, are also centerpieces of the U.S.'s new New Silk Road initiative. Putin's speech at the SCO meeting echoed some of Washington's rhetoric of the New Silk Road:
I believe that we need to form a strong infrastructural outline of the Shanghai Organisation. Primarily, we need this in order to further expand our respective national economies, and to create new points of growth and additional opportunities for the people of our nations. Secondly, this will help realise the huge transit potential of the region and secure its role as a link between Europe and the Asian-Pacific Region.
