FROM KYRGYZSTAN TO PAKISTAN

Developments in recent months unfortunately present a threat to stability in Central Asia.  The region has never been considered calm and stable but, at present, too many negative factors have coincided.

First and foremost, there is the situation in Kyrgyzstan, where the relatively recent change of government was followed by ethnic clashes which, unofficially, claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people.  The country's future remains unclear and disintegration remains a possibility.  Second, because some border areas between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are disputed, incidents take place which a number of experts believe could easily result in international conflict.  Third, the tensions between Central Asian countries over access to water resources are on the rise.  Fourth, the proximity of extremely unstable Afghanistan and Pakistan also influences this region; drugs and arms are smuggled along with radical ideas, and criminal elements and terrorists infiltrate Central Asia.  In addition, the situation within Pakistan itself is increasingly alarming; unusually large-scale flooding has put the lives of millions of people at risk.  Fifth, alarming reports have been coming from Tajikistan of late about acts of terrorism there.

Tajikistan

In early September, the largest-scale terrorist action in recent years took place in the town of Khujand, in the courtyard of the Regional Directorate for Combat against Organized Crime (RUBOP) of the Sogd Oblast Department of Internal Affairs.  It all happened, one might say, according to the classical scenario:  a car was driven into the courtyard at high speed and exploded, killing two officers and wounding 25 policemen.  The Tajikistani Internal Affairs Ministry issued an official statement that the explosion in Khujand was carried out by people who might be members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which was founded in 1996 and is presumed to be headquartered in the Afghan city of Kandahar, although it operates across a vast territory, including Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.  According to some reports, the IMU, which recently acquired a new leader, Usman Adil, and has changed its tactics to focus almost entirely on the Central Asian republics, intending to forcibly transform them into Islamic states.  It is also known that the IMU, whose members include mercenaries from all over the globe, has connections with Al-Qaida.  In the mean time, the fact that the latest terrorist attack was organized in a part of Tajikistan which is not too loyal to the centre was probably no accident.

In addition, on 23 August, some 30 detainees who had been sentenced to various terms in prison for their participation in a coup attempt, escaped from the No 1 pre-trial detention centre of the State National Security Committee (SNSC) in Dushanbe.  There were several IMU members among them.

And on 6 September, there was an explosion at a night club on the outskirts of Dushanbe, in which several people were wounded.  A jacketless explosive device was set off under a table next to the dancing floor.  One theory is that the attack could have been organized by religious fanatics antagonistic towards this type of entertainment establishment, especially during the holy month of Ramadan.

Meanwhile, Deutsche Welle reports that discontent with government policy is growing in Tajikistan because, as one Russian expert on Central Asia believes, the authorities find it convenient to blame the IMU for all problems.

Pakistan

A terrorist action took place in the Pakistani city of Lahore earlier this month: explosions occurred during a religious procession of Shia Muslims, killing 37 people and wounding more than 200.  The explosive devices were set off by three suicide bombers.  This was the first large-scale action in Pakistan after the onset in late July of extensive flooding.  The local media report that radical Sunni groupings, which operate mainly in Punjab and wish to transform Pakistan into a purely Sunni state, might have been involved in the explosions.  The most notorious and best-organized of them is Lashkar-e Jhangvi, whose members were trained in Afghanistan and maintain close ties with the Taliban.

On 3 September there were further terrorist attacks in Pakistan, claiming dozens of lives.  In the city of Quetta, in the country's southeast, a suicide bomber set off an explosive device when a large demonstration of Shia Muslims was passing by on a so-called Day of Solidarity with the Oppressed People of Palestine (Youm-al-Quds).  In the centre of Peshawar, a car full of explosives was blown up, and a bomb was exploded in the city of Mardan in the Khyber Province in northwest Pakistan.  On 6 September, a police office was blown up in the town of Lakki Marwat in northwest Pakistan (near the Taleban-controlled areas of the country); this cost 14 people their lives, including 9 police officers.

Earlier, on 28 August, the headquarters of the local military intelligence office was fired on.  The gunmen penetrated a guarded compound, in the immediate vicinity of the US Consulate, to boot.  During the battle, the gunmen, probably members of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistani branch of the Taliban) movement, managed to defend themselves successfully against special-purpose units for six hours.  Incidentally, the US Administration officially declared the Pakistani Taliban a foreign terrorist organization in early September and accused its leader of organizing the killings of US citizens abroad, including attacks against the US base in eastern Afghanistan in December 2009.

It is particularly worrying that all these terrorist acts took place during the month of Ramadan, which is held sacred by all Muslims and during which any kind of violence is banned.  The terrorists are apparently trying to take advantage of the consequences of the huge floods in Pakistan, which left almost 20 million of the country's 170 million people without shelter.  One fifth of Pakistan's territory was flooded, more than 1,600 people died, some 5,000 villages were wiped off the face of the earth, more than 1 million acres of farmland were inundated, and there is a great likelihood of epidemics due to the absence of essential goods and access to clean drinking water.

No assessment has been made yet of the damage to the infrastructure, industry and agriculture.  Pakistan's High Commissioner in London, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, told the BBC that Pakistan would need 5 years and up to $15 billion to repair the damage.  Hasan urged the development of a new "Marshall Plan" to help rebuild the collapsing economy because "lack of international assistance might result in a rise of extremism and, as a consequence, in destabilization of the entire region."  After all, the sympathies of the local population towards the various radical organizations might be considerably strengthened by a drastic drop in the standards of living and Pakistani discontent with the authorities' response to the major disaster.  For example, Pakistani President Asif Zardari did not find it necessary to cancel his European tour even at the peak of the disaster and stayed on at a five-star hotel in London.  Commentators noted that in this situation, different extremist groups handed out food and medicines to the victims, and the Taliban even urged the country's government not to accept humanitarian aid from international organizations, promising their own assistance...

But for now, Western countries are not rushing to help Pakistan.  As The Indpendent wrote earlier, it seems that the world was not particularly touched by the tragedy there.

For now, a country which was not able to defend itself effectively against extremist threats before, now looks even weaker.  But Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and it is scary to imagine what might happen if those weapons fell into the terrorists' hands...

Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan's future remains very unclear.  The country might find itself again on the verge of large-scale clashes around the parliamentary elections which are scheduled for 10 October.  Even if the voting process itself takes place quietly, it is unlikely that any political party will be able to win more than 50% of the seats in Parliament.  So the politicians will have to start talking to one another, which is often quite a painful process even in developed European democracies, not to mention a country which has gone through a coup d'?tat and bloody ethnic clashes between the ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities.

However, the greatest concern is that the south of the country is effectively defying Bishkek and the people live in permanent fear for their future; the interethnic differences also remain.

People's discontent in Kyrgyzstan is further stoked by the fact that the reconstruction of destroyed residential buildings in the south of the country is very slow according to eyewitness reports and many may be without shelter in the winter.  Furthermore, food prices are continually on the rise:  UN World Food Programme experts have even warned of imminent famine in Kyrgyzstan, which will be further aggravated by the drought and fires in Russia and Kazakhstan.  Some 1.4 million people are already experiencing food shortages; Osh and Jalalabad are in the greatest difficulty.

Louise Arbour, former UN Human Rights Commissioner and incumbent head of the International Crisis Group, wrote in The Guardian that "If the international response to Kyrgyzstan's descent into political chaos is not swift and bold, the consequences will be disastrous."  Arbour goes on to write that any efforts to help pull back the divided country from the brink of disintegration may simply be too late and proposes that the UN Security Council needs to make contingency plans so that the international community will be in a position to respond in a timely and effective manner to any future violence and consequent refugee crisis.  The analyst also suggests deploying a sizeable international force.  But even the delayed token force of 52 unarmed police advisers sent by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has been a target of Kyrgyz nationalist ire.  Although the Otunbayeva government agreed to the deployment of the OSCE advisers, who were to consult local policemen, many local politicians raise objections.  They voice fears that their arrival might cost Kyrgyzstan its sovereignty.  Frankfurter Allgemeine reports that, according to Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group, raids against ethnic Uzbek-populated areas were carried out with the approval of the security bodies and sometimes even with their direct participation, which is why many officials and armed services officers do not want any external presence at the moment.

However, for now the international community is not particularly worried about the situation in Kyrgyzstan.  And there are reasons for this:  the United States is now thinking about how to handle the Taliban in Afghanistan, how to maintain the apparent stability in Iraq after the withdrawal of combatant US units, and is also addressing the Iran nuclear problem.  In addition, the White House initiated direct Arab-Israeli talks a few days ago.  Russia has its own problems:  the snowballing crisis in its relations with Minsk and yet another surge in terrorist-related instability in the North Caucasus.

However, different extremist groupings, criminal elements and drugs barons are on the rise in Kyrgyzstan.  And Osh is already recognised as the regional centre of drug trafficking.

Afghanistan

The situation in this country can be viewed from different angles, but the most worrying fact is that it is the world's largest exporter of narcotics.  Afghanistan produces more than 90% of the world's heroin, which then makes its way to Russia and Western Europe, where it kills more people every year than all the terrorists have together throughout the whole of the modern era.  Sales of narcotic-producing plants and the narcotic substances themselves are thought to be the main source of income for the Taliban and Al Qaida gunmen.  At the same time, the struggle against the opium plantations in Afghanistan is further aggravated by the fact that growing the narcotic-producing plants is the only means of survival for many Afghan farmers.

Border incidents

The continual incidents on the border of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, which dispute the ownership of border lands and have enclaves on each other's territory, make clear the high risk of an international conflict.  All this is complicated by bureaucratic procedures at customs posts which irritate local residents, who are mainly farmers.  For example, incidents dubbed "illegal crossing of the border" have often been caused by wandering livestock - cows and sheep - which know little about the subtleties of international relations.  In just the last few days incidents have occurred at the border posts of the two countries, involving the border guards and officials of both sides.

All this would not have been so bad had the situation not been aggravated by the attempts of gunmen from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan to pass for local residents; they take advantage of the Kyrgyz and Uzbek authorities' inability to resolve their border disputes and could even provoke an international conflict.

The question of questions

Will the Central Asian state be able to handle the risks facing it or, most probably, will this require a determined coordination of all the parties concerned?  And are those "parties concerned" capable of coordination?  After all, the geopolitical interests of many countries, which, incidentally, face no lesser risks, collide in this region.

For example, the worsening of the situation in Central Asia most directly threatens Russia, which may see a refugee crisis, increased drug trafficking, smuggling and arms traffic.  And taking into account the difficult situation in the North Caucasus and the fact that the level of drug addiction in Russia may already be a threat to national security and the country's future, and it is clear Moscow does not need this at all.

As for the USA, full-scale destabilization in Central Asia might cost it the supply routes for their troops in Afghanistan.

Incidentally, many people believe that behind most developments in Central Asia stands geopolitical competition between Russia and the USA for influence in the region.

The Wall Street Journal, for example, writes that the quadrilateral summit on 18 August in Sochi proved that the Kremlin wants to regain its standing in Central Asia.  Yet another factor has a role here:  the USA, together with Russia, is trying to curb the spread of China's influence in the region - China is interested not only in Central Asia's energy resources, but also in access across its territory to the hydrocarbons in Iran and the Persian Gulf.

A number of Russian analysts also say that instability in Central Asia is in US interests because this will force Russia to intervene:  resolving the long-standing and very different conflicts in the region might be a fatal mistake for the country, as Afghanistan was for the USSR.  Will Russia step into the same trap?  Is this perhaps why Moscow is not particularly eager to help Bishkek with its escalating crisis?  Might delays turn out to be fatal in their own right?

On the other hand, these types of discussions sound all too similar to Cold War-era scenarios, and one does not feel inclined to believe them when set against the widely advertised "reset" in US-Russian relations.

It is more likely that the main causes of destabilization in Central Asia are the serious social and economic problems in the region:  mass poverty, very high unemployment levels and environmental problems...