Analytical Articles

Since 1979 Afghanistan has been a thorn in the side of Soviet and Russian security. Today it is clear that Afghanistan's ruling faction, the Taliban, is a source of support for insurgents, terrorists, and narcotics trafficking across the CIS, not just Central Asia. The vexing problems that insurgency, terror, and drugs have spawned in Central and South Asia have triggered numerous international efforts to promote a settlement to the Afghan civil war between the Taliban and its rivals that has long defied international settlement.

Based on the latest evidence, it appears that Shamil Basayev’s agents might have convinced one or more radicalized Dagestani sailors on the Kursk to sink the submarine with a suicide blast on 12 August. The world does not know for certain what happened to the Kursk as it now lies 350 feet down in the Barents Sea. While the Russian government may well encase the submarine in concrete to prevent radiation leakage, a move that also would conveniently prevent foreign governments from conducting their own investigations, many signs point to Dagestani sabotage.

Last month’s call by the Speaker of the Russian State Duma, Gennady Seleznev, for the Russian Federation to introduce automatic citizenship to all former Soviet citizens who desire it would create political, security, legal tensions with former Soviet Republics, particularly the Transcaucasian countries. Should the policy be enacted, Moscow could jeopardize the security of the entire region. For example, the Foreign Minister of the self-proclaimed Abkhaz government, Sergey Shamba, recently received Russian citizenship and stated that should Seleznev’s proposal be adopted, the majority of the present 300,000 citizens of Abkhazia are likely to accept Russian citizenship as well. If relations between Moscow and the Transcaucasian republics are not resolved quickly, the situation could spin out of control.

On 27 July 2000, Yusup Soslambekov, who in 1998 served as Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov's representative to Moscow, died from an assassin's bullet while in Moscow.   Judging by the lackluster performance of the investigators into other high-profile assassinations, we never will learn the facts of the case and the perpetrators will never be apprehended. A few weeks before his death, Soslambekov authored a draft peace proposal and expressed his wish to hold talks with Moscow.  Throughout his career he exhibited flexibility and practicality. These factors suggest that Soslambekov’s peace mission had serious potential and his murder represented a substantial setback for the possibility of a negotiated solution between Dzhokhar and Moscow.

On September 8, a catastrophic explosion rocked Urumchi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, killing more than 60 and injuring several hundred others. The disastrous blast coincided with Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji visit to Xinjiang with former US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and with China’s President Jiang Zemin’s meeting with US President Bill Clinton at the UN Millennium Summit in New York. Hoping to contain the explosion’s damage and Xinjiang’s volatile ethnic tensions, the Chinese government issued contradictory casualty figures and ambiguous explanations allowing it to strike out once again at Uyghur "separatists" for an act of callous disregard of life by the Chinese military.

In late August of this year, Russia announced its intention to withdraw from the agreement on visa-free travel among the CIS countries. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov's explanation that the growth of international terrorism, organized crime, and drug trafficking made it impossible to continue the visa-free agreement.  The announcement was greeted by a chorus of Western analyses ringing the death knell of the CIS. Tracking the CIS's organizational health is a convenient way to monitor international relations in Central Eurasia. Unfortunately, the health of the CIS is an unreliable indicator even of Russia's relations with its neighbors. Not only is the CIS not dead, its vital signs seem to matter more to Western triumphalism than to Russian geopolitics.

Tajikistan's fragile ceasefire and process of political reconciliation is being increasingly threatened by both the insurgency launched by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) in three Central Asian Republics and the Taliban conquest of almost the entire Afghanistan-Tajikistan border. The government of Tajikistan is being weakened and the state is being undermined by a massive draught, growing economic problems, a growing dependency on Russia, continuing law and order problems and the escalation of drugs trafficking from Afghanistan. Unless there is greater Western material help and political support for Tajikistan, the country will become even more dependent on Moscow for aid and the fragile political equilibrium in the country could break down.

The spread of radical political Islam in Dagestan throughout the 1990s occurred as a reaction against local pseudo-religious practices, as well as against the inequities of socio-economic transition, and broader westernizing influences. The extent that the radical Muslims there are literally followers of Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhabi is unclear, though there is no denying their complete opposition to traditional North Caucasian Islam. Its spread cannot be attributed to the war with Russia. In fact the opposite is true. Since August 1999, the conflict with Russia has done much to undermine political Islam and Wahhabism in the Dagestan. The failure of Wahhabism in Dagestan is a watershed event with significant implications for the Caucasus and Central Asia. Had political Islam taken hold in Dagestan, Russia would probably not have held the Northeast Caucasus.

Earlier this year, Moscow announced that it was sending 50,000 troops to Central Asia by 2003 and openly talked of a aerial bombing campaign against Afghanistan. In late August 2000, Uzbekistan faced difficulty repulsing repeated Islamic militant attacks from the Islamic Movement for Uzbekistan and asked Russia for military assistance. Moscow was glad to oblige but soon learned that not only had Uzbekistan repudiated Russia’s request for troops and weapons, but received such military aid from China instead. Uzbekistan has categorically denied ever having asked for Russian assistance and Karimov is unwilling to surrender too much power to Russia. Karimov seeks to maintain a free hand and remain the dominant local military power in Central Asia.

The incursions from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan into the three Central Asian republics of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan by Islamic militants from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) are part of a wider strategic co-ordination with the Taliban and their offensive against the opposition Northern Alliance. Although the IMU has strategic aims to mobilize a Central Asian-Caucasus force of Islamic rebels and tactically to set up bases in the Ferghana Valley for a prolonged guerrilla war against President Islam Karimov, the IMU actions are also providing direct assistance to the Taliban offensive inside Afghanistan. The Taliban gained a major advantage on September 5 when they captured the town of Taloqan in northeastern Afghanistan.