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Tuesday, Jun 21, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Central Asia — a region destabilised

M.K. Bhadrakumar

Just what is the U.S. mission in Afghanistan? The "war on terror" is providing a timeless, seamless context for geopolitics.

DURING HIS recent visit to Australia, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf detailed the fallout of the Afghan situation on regional security. Among the statesmen in the region there is no one better placed than Gen. Musharraf to speak on the phenomenon of trans-border terrorism, militancy and the "war on terror." That alone ascribes the utmost importance to the Pakistani leader's words.

Gen. Musharraf assessed that in "do-able" terms, from a soldier's perspective, "we should be able to bring a semblance of democracy that is sustainable, ensuring the integrity of Afghanistan" in 10 years. What had been achieved in the three-and-a-half-years since the American troops landed in Afghanistan was that "we've broken [Al-Qaeda's] cohesion" and its ability to function as a corporate entity, as a "homogeneous body able to execute operations in a command and control environment." But it would take 10 years for an "ultimate dismantling, ultimate elimination" of Al-Qaeda from the face of the region.

This is the first time that an attempt has been made to give the "war on terror" in Afghanistan a timeline. It helps. But the implications of what Gen. Musharraf said do not become any less startling. Ten years is a long time in politics.

It certainly helps to draw a balance sheet on the "war on terror" in Afghanistan. What has been achieved? The success so far on the security front is that the "war on terror" has dispersed various international militant networks thriving in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. In October 2001, as the American troops moved in, the Taliban militia and its allied cadres retreated into the tribal agencies in Pakistan. Senior Pakistani military officials have stated in recent weeks that no foreign militants are any longer present in the tribal agencies.

The Western media have frequently suggested in recent months that the inaccessible Nooristan province in Afghanistan, sandwiched between Pakistan's Northern Areas and the remote Wakhan corridor (bordering China), has become the base camp for the Taliban and its Arab fraternity broadly known as Al-Qaeda. But, inexplicably, U.S. forces are yet to venture into the area. American military commanders and the authorities in Kabul have lately begun to admit that the claims that the Taliban is a spent force were made hastily. Indeed, it is becoming difficult to tell who is a Talib. The U.S.-sponsored strategy of wooing "moderate" Taliban into the political mainstream too is floundering. The flawed strategy is becoming exposed for what it was — providing the political justification or fig-leaf for the forced disarming and scattering of the main forces of the Northern Alliance, which had previously spearheaded anti-Taliban resistance.

Unfortunately, the U.S. has incrementally shifted to the Afghan Government the burden of curbing drug trafficking, which is a main source of funding for the militants. This though the Government in Kabul has no effective control of the country. Thus Afghanistan's opium production has touched an all-time high level today, and the militants have easy access to vast funding.

Meanwhile, the bulk of the militants belonging to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan or IMU (numbering 3000 to 5000 fighters), Uighur militant groups, and Chechen militants have established themselves in Tajikistan (where 93 per cent of the terrain consists of the Pamir mountain ranges) and parts of the Ferghana Valley. The Afghan-Tajik border region has become highly volatile. Last Tuesday, a bomb attack in downtown Dushanbe flagged how tenuous the eight-year-old Tajik peace settlement has become. Evidently, the U.S.-led "war on terror" in Afghanistan has spilled over to the Central Asian region. The Central Asian region is getting destabilised.

An "Afghan connection" is showing up in the two cataclysmic events of March and May in Central Asia — the so-called "Tulip revolution" in Kyrgyzstan and the uprising in the Uzbek city of Andizhan in the Ferghana Valley. Despite the U.S. propensity to view these events through the prism of the Bush administration's democracy project, it is becoming difficult to ignore the disquieting questions that have arisen.

Kyrgyzstan is tottering on the brink of anarchy and may well descend into civil war. Under Russian counselling, a tenuous alliance between the northern and southern clan interests has been put in place for the moment but there is no certainty whether it will hold. Political violence has become a daily occurrence. An overall cult of violence is appearing. Also, a nexus has formed between criminals, drug mafia, and militant groups based in Afghanistan and Tajikistan with elements inside Kyrgyzstan. These forces are on the ascent. The weakening of state authority in Kyrgyzstan has worked to their advantage. The "Tulip revolution" has opened the door for the Hizb-ut Tahrir (which some suspect is the IMU's "political wing") to come to centre stage in southern Kyrgyzstan regions that form part of Ferghana Valley. The American rhetoric pigeonholing the "Tulip revolution" into hackneyed definitions of freedom looks not only ludicrous but an incitement to the forces of political Islam.

The developments in Andizhan have more ominous dimensions. The Ferghana Valley — a hotbed of Wahhabism and simmering nationality questions — may appear to be a limited space on the vast Central Asian landscape but accounts for a quarter of the entire region's population and is shared uneasily between Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The ghosts that Joseph Stalin had forcefully laid to rest are stirring.

On June 4, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said: "we have data showing that various extremist groups may have been involved, among them the Taliban and Chechen terrorists who, and we do know this, periodically meet with the Taliban on the territory of Afghanistan." Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov added on June 9: "We have irrefutable evidence of a foreign trace in these events ... It is necessary to find the masterminds of the turmoil and the whereabouts of weapons seized from the local military unit and to find the answer to many other questions." Russian Defence Ministry sources claimed separately that there were 50 foreign nationals from Asian countries, including the CIS, among those who were killed or detained.

It stands to reason that as partners in the "war on terror," Washington and Moscow would have shared interest to probe any involvement of extremist elements in Andizhan events. A monitoring group from China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan and Russia amongst others has commenced its investigation. But the U.S. has refused to join the investigation on the plea that any enquiry must include "an international partner"; U.S. will not take part in the current investigation "as we do not see that as a substitute for an international investigation; we are considering all of our diplomatic options, including at the U.N ... meantime, we're talking to member states of various international organisations to try to generate support for an international investigation ... and we are actively working within the international community to try to generate support."

Washington uneasy

Washington seems to be uneasy that the enquiry over Andizhan events may come up with findings that cast aspersions over the "war on terror" in Afghanistan. Understandably so. Details are now emerging (what many had suspected all along) that American operatives have been in active contact with the IMU (which is suspected to be behind the Andizhan uprising). Not only that, reports that Tohir Yoldashev, the IMU leader, was killed by the U.S. troops in Afghanistan during the operations in 2001, appear to have been very much exaggerated. Actually, U.S. intelligence operatives held several clandestine meetings with Yoldashev and the IMU top brass in the recent months!

The strategy itself is not new. Some of the most obscure chapters of the Afghan jihad in the 1980s which lie hidden in the dusty archives of world capitals relate to Mujahideen operations (guided by American operatives in Peshawar) aimed at hitting inside Tajikistan — based on the U.S. assessment during the Cold War period that Muslim Central Asia, especially the Ferghana Valley, was the USSR's "soft underbelly." The strategy was abandoned following refusal by Ahmad Shah Massoud to cooperate. The Soviet army withdrew from the Panjshir Valley in 1984 on the basis of a tacit understanding with Massoud that as a quid pro quo he would not let the U.S. have access to the sensitive border regions of Tajikistan. (This explains U.S. hostility towards Massoud.) In the present context, the strategy has even greater validity as Muslim Central Asia also borders China's Xinjiang province.

Yoldashev's nexus with the American intelligence no doubt prompted Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov to go on record at the Russia-NATO Council meeting in Brussels last Friday that the U.S. and NATO forces were not doing enough in Afghanistan to check the "export of terrorism" but were concentrating instead on "imposing democracy without taking into account local habits and national traditions."

All this raises some profound questions. Washington may well seize Gen. Musharraf's statement for justifying the onward 10-year march of the "war on terror" in Afghanistan. But the central question remains: just what is the U.S. mission in Afghanistan? The "war on terror" is providing a timeless, seamless context for geopolitics.

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