Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/042792/04279930.000

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                                                                                CENTRAL ASIA, Page 44

Five New Nations Ask Who Are WE?


The Muslim republics search for an identity somewhere between
radical Islam and Western secularism

By JOHN KOHAN/BISHKEK -- With reporting by J.F.O. McAllister/
Washington and Yuri Zarakhovich/Namangan


    On a rugged, snow-mantled mountainside above Bishkek, the
capital of Kyrgyzstan, Joloi Beishenov tends his flock on
horseback, as his ancestors did centuries ago. During the cold
season he shelters his 70 sheep in two traditional canvas yurts
and lives alone in a spartan wooden shack until the warm weather
brings his family up from the lowlands. This spring there is
another new season, the opening out of the former Soviet Union;
Beishenov has heard about new economic reforms, and hopes to
rent from a neighboring state farm the strip of stony pasture
he uses for grazing. But he is unmoved by larger questions of
politics and religion. He is the kind of Muslim, he says, "who
prays to himself." He just wants a piece of land he can call his
own.

    Beishenov may soon get his wish. Since the Soviet Union
collapsed five months ago, more dramatic changes have been
taking place in Central Asia than the sheepherder could ever
imagine. Freed from control by Moscow, a vast stretch of the
Eurasian continent populated by more than 50 million
predominantly Muslim, Turkic-speaking peoples has unfolded to
the outside world. The former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan,
Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan never
agitated for the breakup of the union and even served as a
passive but powerful prop for the communist regime. Once
centralized Soviet control began to split apart, however, they
had little choice but to join the exodus toward independence.

    The economically underdeveloped states of the south were
not ready to deal with such newfangled concepts as political
pluralism or free-market economics. The vast majority of the
population lives a rural life, cut off from urban political
developments. Robbed of their natural resources and even their
cultural identity by the Kremlin, the Central Asians were forced
to take charge of their destiny overnight. Their struggle to
define the future is even more basic than in the old Soviet
European republics.

    Nevertheless, the outside world is already vying to shape
it for them. Presidents and diplomats, businessmen and clergy
shuttle in and out of the republics like traders from the
caravans that once crisscrossed the great Silk Road to China.
After U.S. Secretary of State James Baker made a whirlwind
December visit, Washington became the first foreign nation to
establish formal diplomatic ties with Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
Neighboring Turkey and Iran have been the main competitors for
influence, inviting the Central Asians to take part in their
rival Black Sea and Caspian Sea cooperation zones. China has
cautiously proposed joint-venture projects, and even the South
Koreans have offered a taste of free enterprise with a fast-food
restaurant in the Kazakhstan capital of Alma-Ata. If an Islamic
regime emerges in Afghanistan, the Asian republics can expect
strong overtures to bring about fraternal ties.

    With so many suitors, the newly independent states have
been wary of making geopolitical commitments. Askar Akayev,
President of Kyrgyzstan, wants his country to be "politically
like Switzerland, but in the heart of Asia." Foreign Minister
Abdu Kuliyev believes Turkmenistan should be "neither Islamic
nor Soviet but a secular, democratic state." President Nursultan
Nazarbayev thinks Kazakhstan, which stretches from the Volga
region of Russia to the western borders of China, should be a
bridge between Europe and Asia. Says he: "We want to enter the
democratic world like any other state."

    Much of the diplomatic activity has been prompted by
growing fears in the West that if democratic values and
free-market economies fail to take root, the whole southern rim
of the old Soviet empire will slide inexorably into the embrace
of Islamic fundamentalism. Central Asia has been an arena for
clashing values, an ancient land swept successively by Persians,
Greeks, Arabs, Turks, Mongols, Tatars, Russians and finally
communist bureaucrats. During 70 years of heavy-handed rule,
Soviet administrations made every effort to standardize life and
co-opt Islamic culture. The abrupt end of Moscow's power has
left a yawning political and spiritual vacuum. Since most of the
region's Muslims have predominantly Turkic ethnic roots, the tug
is between two versions of the Islamic state: the secular,
Westernized Turkey and the radical, anti-Western Iran.

    When strict confessional differences are considered, the
pull of Iranian-style fundamentalism appears to be greatly
exaggerated. The overwhelming majority of Central Asian Muslims,
including the ethnically Persian peoples of Tajikistan, follow
the Sunni Islam observed in Saudi Arabia and most of the Muslim
world. A true religious revival in Central Asia would probably
produce an Islamic state more like Pakistan than Iran, which
holds to the more extreme fundamentalist Shi`ite dogma.

    Such theological distinctions are lost, however, on a
younger generation of radicals, who accuse the official Islamic
establishment of having collaborated with a godless Soviet
regime. "It doesn't matter that they are Shi`ite over there and
we are Sunni," argues a militant in the Uzbek city of Namangan.
"The Ayatullah made Iran strong and glorious, while in Sunni
Turkey they have weakened Islam."

    Muslim political aspirations have found a focus in the
Islamic Renaissance Party, which held its founding congress in
1990 in the Russian city of Astrakhan, once the historic
capital of a Muslim Tatar fiefdom. "Our party's goals are
similar to those of the Iranian revolution," explains
Moscow-based spokesman Vali-Akhmet Sadur. "We stand for
tradition." Before the union broke apart, the party could
operate openly only in Russia, but it now has chapters in
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan that have emerged from the
underground.

    The movement has especially strong grass-roots support in
Uzbekistan's Fergana Valley, a hotbed of Muslim resistance to
communist rule. Angered by the new regime's failure to deal with
corruption and a growing crime rate, local militants in the city
of Namangan have organized local Islamic guard patrols, who
punish offenders with religious indoctrination and the public
pillory. Communist propaganda posters still decorate the
streets, but the cry of "God is great!" echoing from the mosques
has a more stirring effect on the local population. During
afternoon prayers, the Islamic guards keep order among the
steady stream of the faithful crowding through the ornate
portals of a city mosque.

    Officials in the capital of Tashkent turned a blind eye to
the growing power of the Islamic revivalists in Namangan, until
they openly challenged the authority of President Islam
Karimov. Last month police sealed off the city and whisked at
least 80 activists away to prisons outside the region, deeply
offending city residents. An enraged party member in Moscow
warned, "A revolution is imminent. We have learned something
from the Algerian experience."

    The conflict in some of the republics may be resolved only
when stable, popularly supported governments take shape. So
far, the political scorecard is mixed. Kyrgyzstan's Akayev and
Kazakhstan's Nazarbayev have won praise in the West for their
eagerness to open up to the outside world. They have tried to
forge a policy of "public consensus" in their ethnically diverse
states, presiding over what can best be described as "nonparty"
systems made up of shifting groups of democrats, nationalists,
environmentalists and Old Guard communists. Akayev says his
major aim is to create "a strong and powerful middle class that
will guarantee future stability." It is a commendable goal, but
until such social forces develop, the future of reforms in both
states may depend wholly on the political fate of their
Presidents.

    The region's two potential flash points are Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan, where postcommunist leaders seem unable to find
common ground with either democratic or Islamic movements.
President Rakhman Nabiyev of Tajikistan has been under a virtual
state of siege since last month, when supporters of the
opposition began to gather in the tens of thousands outside the
parliament buildto urge dismissal of the republic's legislature
of holdover party officials. Uzbekistan's President Islam
Karimov received a warning signal of his own in January, when
students protesting the liberalization of prices clashed with
police, resulting in two deaths. Muslim extremists view Karimov
as the major obstacle to setting up an Islamic republic, while
democrats see him as a sly defender of the old regime who, they
claim, "gives with one hand while squeezing with the other."
Uzbek moderates are worried that if Karimov should fall from
power now, the fundamentalists rather than the democrats would
pick up the pieces.

    However heated the current debate may be over Eastern and
Western values, the region's most serious problems are economic.
Uzbek writer Sabit Madaliyev contends that the political choice
Central Asians ultimately make will be determined by the
conditions of daily life, not by religious fanaticism. "They
will think first about how to feed their children, and that
means introducing a market economy," he says. "But democracy and
a free-market system cannot be introduced in a day here. Our
people could not endure such speed." Jabar Abduvakhid, deputy
director of Tashkent's Institute of Oriental Studies, puts the
dilemma more bluntly: "The growth of the Islamic movement will
be in direct proportion to the decline in the region's economic
and social conditions."

    The collapse of the Soviet Union has only deepened the
economic crisis by disrupting traditional trade ties with Russia
and the European republics. Central Asian republics used to
receive almost all of their manufactured goods and cheap fuel
in exchange for raw materials. Now they are without reliable
suppliers and must fend for themselves. That has not proved
easy. The fuel shortage in Kyrgyzstan grew so severe in February
that only one flight a day could leave Bishkek's airport for
Moscow; energy supplies at power stations dwindled to a 10-day
reserve.

    Nonetheless, Kyrgyzstan's Akayev contends that the pain of
separation from Moscow will pay off if his republic can manage
to rebuild its economy on a more stable foundation, open "to all
four corners of the world." Kazakhstan's Nazar bayev makes a
forceful case for greater Western economic involvement in the
region. His republic, he argues, could become the Kuwait of the
21st century if Western know-how were harnessed to tap its rich
energy sources. Even technical assistance in setting up and
running food-processing plants would be invaluable in getting
the new republics to stand on their own. Nazarbayev sums up the
region's hopes and the expectations of the West in a single
question, What are they waiting for?

    Washington's answer is, Democracy and free markets. The
U.S. has opened embassies in all the Central Asian republics.
But the $24 billion Western aid package President Bush
announced three weeks ago is aimed at Russia almost exclusively,
which Baker justifies on the grounds that Moscow's economic
reforms are the most advanced.

    In the end, the West cannot afford to ignore the Central
Asian call for cooperation, given its turbulent dealings with
other Muslim states like Iran and Iraq. Says Uzbek political
analyst Abduvakhid: "If the West waits until tomorrow or the day
after to get involved, it may be too late." Perhaps it is time
for the Marco Polos of this age to set out on a new voyage of
discovery to this long-neglected corner of the fabled East.