Analytical Articles

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.

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.

India’s willingness to play a more active role in Central Asia has the potential to further confuse the already complicated geopolitics of the region.  Much has been made in foreign policy circles of India's attempts to improve ties with the booming economies of East Asia, and the world's remaining superpower, the United States. India's renewed interests in developments in Central Asia have been less well documented. Rather than adopting a go-it-alone policy towards Central Asia, India is strengthening relations with its old ally Russia to blunt Chinese expansion and form one of the major axes for future competition in the Central Asia region.

The recent "invasion" of Surkhandarya, Uzbekistan by "Islamists" represents but the latest stage in an escalating cycle of violence directed against the Karimov government. The actual military threat posed by such insurgencies is minimal, and such actions actually serve to reinforce the perception among Western and Russian leaders that Karimov represents a vital barricade against Islamic fundamentalism. Karimov’s authoritarianism has not brought increased stability, but on the contrary has radicalized the opposition and destabilized Uzbekistan and its neighbors.

BACKGROUND: Four years ago, Uzbekistan in desperation to attract foreign investors, welcomed with open arms foreign cigarette companies and their millions of dollars of investment capital.  One particular company, British American Tobacco fleeing troubled western waters, pitched in with $300 million to secure a 51% stake in Uzbekistan’s tobacco monopoly. By 1997, the stake was 97%.  In return for mortgaging the health of his country’s 24 million people, Islam Karimov the president of the newly independent republic, gained new factories and fermentation plants, superior leaf research and a “secure” future for 60,000 new farmers whose lives now depend on the tobacco industry.

In January of this year, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright named Ukraine as a major force for achieving stability in the Caucasus region. Ukraine is vitally important for creating a secure and integrated Europe. As former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, Zbignew Brzezinski, has stated, "If Ukraine becomes a strong central European state, it will "drag" some other CIS countries to Europe, particularly South Caucasian republics". Ukraine is shouldering greater regional responsibilities in the geopolitical, military, democratic and economic realms. Should it manage to become more successful than Russia in carrying out such activities as peacekeeping missions in the Caucasian conflicts, its importance in Europe will multiply.