Over the past few years, military aid has taken up an increasingly large portion of total U.S. aid to Central Asia, from around 5 percent throughout the 1990s to more than 30 percent since 2007. But that aid hasn't been closely examined, a situation I attempt to rectify in a new report (pdf), "U.S. Military Aid to Central Asia: Who Benefits?" The report focuses on aid to Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Among the findings:
-- U.S. training and equipping aid focuses on special forces, including OMON and Alfas, and on occasions when those forces may have acted in ways contrary to stated U.S. interests, U.S. officials have tended to not take an active role in investigating those incidents and continue to support those units.
-- The pattern of aid shows a clear pattern in which the aid increases when Afghanistan is a high priority in Washington, right after the September 11, 2001 attacks and in 2007-8, when U.S. focus again began to turn from Iraq to Afghanistan. That (among other evidence) suggests the aid is intended less as assistance for Central Asian security forces, than as a form of payment for those countries' cooperation in the war in Afghanistan.
-- U.S. claims that the aid is intended to foster the promotion of human rights by Central Asian security forces has been undercut by the decision to resume military aid to Uzbekistan. “It makes the people mad that we do anything with them. They say, ‘Really? Here [in Kyrgyzstan] you talk about human rights, they’re [in Uzbekistan] not so good at it,’” said a U.S. military official currently working on security cooperation with Central Asia. “The desire
to work with people outweighs the desire to do the right thing sometimes.”
Tomorrow, President Imomali Rakhmon will begin his long-promised visit to the restive mountainous east, scene of fighting in July that killed dozens of government troops, rebels, and an unknown number of civilians. During the visit, Khorog residents hope the president will see their suffering and offer solutions. But what’s on the president’s agenda, and the way local officials are preparing for his high-level visit to Gorno-Badakhshan (GBAO), has some deeply worried.
Addressing the president in an unusually frank open letter sent September 15, the “ordinary people” of Khorog (actual authorship is unclear) say they “believe that not all information about the situation in Khorog reaches you” and complain that local officials are forcing them to celebrate the visit with Potemkin pomp, rather than address the recent tragedy.
Published by Asia-Plus and posted by Facebook users, the letter – entitled “A grieving populace is being forced to have fun” – accuses local officials of obligating them to put smiles on their faces and banning discussions of the violence; teachers and doctors, according to the authors, have been told they could lose their jobs if they don’t cooperate.
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon, and U. S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez at a ceremony at the opening of a U.S.-funded bridge connecting Afghanistan and Tajikistan in 2007
An underreported and underappreciated aspect of international security in Central Asia is the fight against drug trafficking. As everyone knows, Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium, and it reaches world markets through Central Asia and Russia. Central Asian countries' western partners have been increasingly focusing on drug trafficking in their security assistance to the region, but thus far to little effect.
In a paper presented on Friday at a conference at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University, Sebastien Peyrouse divided the Central Asian drug trade into three types: "green" refers to trade by Islamist networks to raise money for militant activities, "black" refers to small-time criminals who smuggle drugs on their person to supply local markets, and "red" describes the trade by large, organized crime networks, with the collaboration of government officials. Peyrouse notes that Central Asian governments, in their rhetoric to the international community, focuses on the green and black drug trade, while by far the greatest amount of trafficking is red. But the international (US, European, UN) efforts tend to follow the lead of the Central Asian governments, focusing on the small-scale trafficking while ignoring -- and even unintentionally abetting -- the red trade.
Tajikistan and Russia have reportedly agreed on the terms of the continued presence of Russia's 201st Division in Tajikistan. The term of the agreement is 30 years, and Russia will continue to not pay Tajikistan for the base's presence, CA-News has reported, citing "sources close to the negotiations" (so proceed with the appropriate amount of skepticism).
According to the report, the 30-year term was a compromise between the 10 years Tajikistan wanted and the 49 years that Russia wanted. And though Russia will still not pay cash for the base (its second largest outside its borders, behind the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Ukraine), Tajikistan will get additional in-kind aid, like additional spots in Russian military academies and "modern technology and weapons." So if the report is true, Tajikistan failed to force Russia to pay rent for the base, as Kyrgyzstan managed earlier this year.
The deal will reportedly be officially signed during Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's trip to Tajikistan in October.
One problem for anyone seeking to foster regional integration in Central Asia (“New Silk Road” or otherwise) is the frequent border disputes between the countries involved. Uzbekistan, which abuts all the other Central Asia states, has been particularly uncooperative, often closing its border posts without notice, hampering trade and hurting economies around the region.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB), a multilateral lender, has announced it will grant $100 million to help people and goods cross one of those tricky borders. Much of the money will be used to repave a 113-kilometer stretch of road in Tajikistan connecting a major highway with an isolated valley leading to the border with Uzbekistan.
“Improvements to this road will increase regional connectivity, reduce transport costs, and strengthen competitiveness,” said Zheng Wu, a transport specialist at ADB’s Central and West Asia Department, in a September 13 press release. Part of the money will also be spent on upgrading infrastructure at the Sarazm border post on the Uzbekistan-Tajikistan frontier.
But that post has been closed for almost two years. Uzbekistan sealed it in late 2010, cutting Panjakent – a Tajik town in the valley, home to some 33,000 people – off from the Uzbek city of Samarkand, only 60 kilometers away.
The new road project, expected to begin later this year, will certainly help connect the isolated Zarafshan Valley with the rest of Tajikistan, and thereby with a new source for the goods and supplies local residents used to buy in Uzbekistan. At present, in winter Zarafshan’s access to the “mainland” is often restricted to irregular flights to Dushanbe.
President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan has upped his rhetoric against neighboring Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, warning that their efforts to build hydroelectric power stations on rivers upstream could spark war.
Speaking during an official visit to Astana on September 7, Karimov launched a broadside against Bishkek and Dushanbe, which, he said, “forget that the Amu-Darya and Syr-Darya are trans-border rivers.”
“Why do you think such questions [sharing limited international water resources] are discussed by the United Nations?” he asked in remarks quoted by Kazakhstan’s Bnews website.
It was a rhetorical question: “Because today many experts declare that water resources could tomorrow become a problem around which relations deteriorate, and not only in our region. Everything can be so aggravated that this can spark not simply serious confrontation but even wars.”
Karimov has long been a vociferous opponent of plans by Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to complete long-stalled hydropower dam projects -- Rogun on the Vakhsh River (the headwaters of the Amu-Darya) in Tajikistan and Kambarata on the Naryn River (which becomes the Syr-Darya) in Kyrgyzstan.
Tashkent says the dams could disrupt water supplies to downstream states, adversely impacting its economy and damaging the environment. Bishkek and Dushanbe counter that they need to harness hydropower to kick-start their ailing economies.
A Tajikistan border guard, during a 2007 training program with the U.S. Army.
In all of the news coverage of the fighting that rocked eastern Tajikistan this summer, one angle that was rarely (if ever) discussed was the U.S. involvement in training and equipping the government security forces that conducted the the operations there. While everyone has been paying a lot of attention to the U.S.'s growing ties with Uzbekistan as a result of the war in Afghanistan, the aid that Washington gives Tajikistan has flown under the radar. But the aid to Tajikistan has been pretty substantial, including a good amount of lethal military aid, and the conduct of the Tajikistan security forces this summer should be raising questions in Washington about whether this sort of aid is appropriate.
It's difficult to find out exactly what military aid the U.S. gives to Tajikistan. An increasing amount of the aid is given not through State Department programs (like Foreign Military Financing) but through Defense Department counterterrorism and counterdrug programs. And the latter tend not to have as rigorous requirements as to what information has to be reported to the public or to Congress. So, although much of the information isn't classified, it's not easy to find. As part of a report on U.S. security assistance to Central Asia that will be released soon, I tried to dig up all I could to figure out what sort of aid the U.S. was giving. And one of the surprising findings was how extensive the aid to Tajikistan has been.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meets with Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon in New Delhi
Tajikistan's president Emomali Rahmon has wrapped up an official visit to India, where leaders of the two countries agreed on a "strategic partnership." India has given plenty of signs it intends to be more active in Central Asia, including announcing a "Connect Central Asia" policy this summer, and the joint statement signed by both presidents calls for lots of new cooperation in trade, energy and security.
And what of the hottest issue between the two countries, India's perpetual hope for an air base in Central Asia? Not much, reports the Times of India:
"President Rahmon and I agreed that in view of the broad progress made in our bilateral relations, particularly in defence and security cooperation, we should elevate our relations to a strategic partnership,'' said [Indian Prime Minister Manmohan] Singh as he described Tajikistan as a key partner of India in the central Asian region.
Official sources said that the strategic partnership emanated mainly from Tajikistan's fear of the Taliban and the possibility of their comeback in Kabul after the drawdown of international forces in 2014. While there was barely any mention of the Ayni airfield, which India helped rebuilt, the two sides agreed that New Delhi would build a Friendship Hospital in southern Tajikistan for both military and civilian use.
The Indian Express has a bit more on the Friendship Hospital:
[T]he two sides said they agreed to set up an “India-Tajik Friendship Hospital” in Tajikistan.
A rider demonstrates his skill at tiin ilmei (catching the corn).
You can’t travel too long through the Kyrgyz heartlands without coming across some horse games. Recently the eastern Tajikistan town of Murgab, a region dominated by ethnic Kyrgyz, hosted a festival to celebrate the games.
The two-day event featured four traditional horseback standards: tiin ilmei (catching the corn), in which riders attempt to snag balls of cloth off the ground while riding at top speeds; kyz kuumai (catching the bride), where men on horseback chase female riders hoping for a kiss (if the male fails, the woman gets to chase and whip him); an all-out long-distance horse race; and er odarysh (flip the saddle), a wrestling match in which two riders each attempt to pull his opponent off his horse.
Although organizers had hoped to have the traditional goat polo game of ulak tartysh, only seven horses were available and thus it was cancelled. Still, the crowd of more than one hundred onlookers -- Kyrgyz fans, foreign travelers, and expat aid workers -- at the internationally sponsored festival last month, remained enthusiastic throughout the event.
Well, mostly. One local Kyrgyz man carefully eyed the horses like a connoisseur, noting that the riders were good but the horses needed more experience. As he spoke, the crowd was cheering on a few competitors galloping to the finish of a long race around a nearby hill. One of the horses came to an exhausted standstill about 50 meters before the finish and refused to continue.
The man continued, “You see? Ha! He can’t even finish. Good for him to stop!”
While light rain and sand blew through an awards ceremony concluding the weekend, the crowd applauded as young victors received prizes such as mobile phones, DVD players, and televisions.
After some of the largest anti-government demonstrations since Tajikistan’s civil war, Dushanbe, officials say, has begun withdrawing troops from the eastern mountain town of Khorog, scene of fighting last month that left dozens dead.
Thousands of protestors amassed in Khorog on August 22 and 23 after the murder of an informal leader and former warlord, Imomnazar Imomnazarov. Authorities had accused Imomnazarov, an opposition commander during the 1992-1997 civil war, of involvement in July fighting that left approximately 50 dead, including 30 militants, 17 government soldiers, and at least one civilian.
Under a deal signed late on August 23, the government agreed to begin pulling troops out of the town and promised to complete withdrawal in 20 days, Reuters reported. The soldiers are expected to move to their permanent garrisons. The deal stipulates that participants in the illegal rally will not be prosecuted, but the local government chairman, Kodiri Kosim, will remain in his post despite demands for him to step down.
