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Text File | 1994-05-02 | 42KB | 771 lines

<text> <title> Dateline, Tashkent: Post-Soviet Central Asia </title> <article> <hdr> Foreign Policy, Summer 1992 Dateline Tashkent: Post-Soviet Central Asia </hdr> <body> By James Rupert, an assistant foreign editor at the Washington Post. He wrote this article while on leave as an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. At the end of the twentieth century, with a once-wide world shrunken into a global village, it seems astonishing that America should be called upon to establish relations with a virtually undiscovered region of the world. But following last year's breakup of the Soviet Union and the release of its Central Asian republics into the world political arena, the United States has encountered perhaps its biggest and least-known new diplomatic partner since Commodore Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay. The steppes and deserts of Central Asia had been locked behind the walls of the Russian czarist and Soviet empires since around the time of the U.S. Civil War--long before America had become a power with global interests. Now America's interests in Central Asia's stable development are vital. The region holds vast energy resources as well as ex-Soviet nuclear weapons and facilities. Its stability will be important to the other former Soviet republics and its direction may greatly affect the Asian and Islamic worlds it is now rejoining. Yet few Americans have considered a U.S. relationship with Central Asia. Many presume that the reportedly strong Islamic fundamentalist movement there and influence from neighboring Iran make it hostile territory for U.S. diplomacy. But there is no broad fundamentalist movement, and any hostility is largely imagined. Indeed, eight months of travel and interviews in the region, and discussions with U.S. specialists and diplomats, suggest that it is Washington rather than central Asia that is unreceptive to a productive relationship. As a shorthand, it is useful to think of Central Asia as a region now beginning the processes of decolonization and nation building that have driven the turbulent politics of the Arab world since its independence in the decades following World War II. After more than a century of Russian rule, Central Asian muslims face the same tasks as did the newly independent Arabs: They must define cultural and political identities scrambled by colonial power; choose from among Islamic and Western models of governance that they poorly understand; and manage internal conflicts once arbitrated by an outside ruler. They must especially meet the basic needs and rising expectations of impoverished, expanding populations. They face these challenges with authoritarian political systems rife with patronage and corruption and a shattered, dependent economy that is destroying the environment of the Aral Sea basin. While there is no strong Islamic political or "fundamentalist" movement now, the soil for such a movement is as fertile in Central Asia as it was earlier in Algeria, Jordan, Tunisia, and other countries where such movements now complicate movement toward liberal democracy. It is difficult to say how long the Central Asians have to make significant progress on the tasks they face before political desperation and radicalism set in. In Central Asia, officials and citizens alike are eager for close relations with the United states; America could offer critical influence, resources, and technology. But Washington's attention to foreign affairs is substantially limited by an election-year rise in isolationism and stretched over a broadened range of difficult issues. Central Asia has no political constituency in the United States. The only voices that could draw attention to the region will be those of strategic thinkers and area specialists who understand its importance to U.S. interests. But, as numerous scholars and policy analysts have pointed out, the Bush administration tends to concentrate key foreign policy decisions at the top, muffling the voices of area specialists and limiting its own ability to work on important issues that are not in the headlines. Even a rudimentary U.S. policy in Central Asia was delayed by Washington's unpreparedness for the Soviet collapse. As early as the mid-1980s, scholars on soviet nationalities and central Asia had hinted at the possible breakup of the Soviet Union, but officials did not plan for it. When the collapse came, Washington acted reflexively, attempting to shore up Mikhail Gorbachev's position long after he had lost any realistic hope of keeping power, rather than recognizing and accommodating the aspirations of the republics. In particular, Washington moved warily toward the six culturally Islamic republics--five in Central Asia plus Azerbaijan across the Caspian Sea. It might have congratulated them on their independence and offered to open a broad relationship that would help them achieve their own aims while addressing a strategic, longterm U.S. agenda in the region. Instead, out of the six Muslim republics, the United States immediately recognized only two: Kazakhstan, the sole central Asian republic with nuclear weapons; and Kyrgyzstan, the republic ostensibly most committed to reform. In a narrow opening seen by man in Central Asia as condescending and vaguely biased against Muslims, Washington delayed establishing relations with the four remaining Muslim states, demanding their adherence to basic rules of international conduct, human rights, and democracy. While the intent may have been laudable, it ignored two points: The United states maintains relations with countries that routinely violate such rules; and America would ultimately have no choice but to establish full relations in the region, if only to avoid leaving Iranian diplomacy uncontested. In February 1992, Secretary of State James Baker reversed the policy and settled for promises by the Azerbaijan, Tajik, Turkmen, and Uzbek leaders to observe the U.S. principles. Although his explanation to Congress--that the United States needed to open relations with these states because Iran was doing so--was forthright, it bolstered the message that the United States does not consider the Central Asian states important in their own right. The State Department did manage to defuse the situation somewhat by scrambling to open embassies--two in hastily prepared hotel suites--in the republics. Except for the Tajiks, who are ethnically Persian, the ex-Soviet Islamic belt is formed of Turkic peoples: Azeris, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmens, Uzbeks, and others. The broadly uniform Turkic culture and language that gave Central Asia its earlier name--Turkistan--was blended over a millennium from among the original nomadic Turks who migrated to Central Asia from the east, and the Arab, Persian, and Mongol conquerors who followed. Pre-soviet central Asia was a land of feudal or nomadic emirates whose people had little or no concept of political participation. The Soviet Union worked harder to remold the traditional Islamic societies it ruled than any of the European colonizers except perhaps the French in Algeria. Many of the changes that Moscow wrought deeply affect Central Asia's politics today. Most significantly, Soviet policy firmly established the "nationalities" into which Central Asia is now divided. In pre-Soviet Turkistan, people had defined themselves primarily as Turkic or Tajik Muslims, identities that could have permitted the evolution of a unified polity across the region. The Soviets sought to prevent that by establishing five Central Asian republics, forcing on each a distinct "national" language and culture. It appears that strategy was a success. In hundreds of interviews in recent months, both city and village dwellers have expressed loyalty to their supranational identities as Muslims or Turks and to local identities of clan or region, but most often they have made clear that their strongest sense of affiliation is