A Central Asian setback

Uzbekistan's demand that the United States vacate its air base on Uzbek soil upsets the latter's scheme to establish "forward operating sites" in the Central Asian region with the intention of dominating politically the constituents of the erstwhile Soviet Union.

VLADIMIR RADYUHIN in Moscow

THE eviction notice Uzbekistan served on the United States air base at Khanabad signalled the first reversal for Washington in its drive to establish itself as a dominant power in the former Soviet Union. On July 29, Uzbekistan's Foreign Ministry notified the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent that the U.S. aircraft, personnel and military equipment deployed at the Karshi-Khanabad air base should be shifted out within 180 days. The closure demand was perfectly in line with a U.S.-Uzbek accord on the lease of the base, which allows either side to terminate the agreement on a six-month notice.

After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, Uzbekistan emerged as a key ally of the U.S. in Central Asia. Its President Islam Karimov became in October 2001 the first Central Asian leader to allow the U.S. to set up an air base in his country, and this became a key staging point for the U.S. military operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Kyrgyzstan followed suit in December 2001, while Kazakhstan and Tajikistan offered logistical support to the U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also offered whole-hearted support for the U.S.-led "war on terror" in Afghanistan. This created a historic chance for a strategic alliance between Washington and Moscow in Central Asia, but Washington threw it out. Instead of joining hands with Russia to promote development in Central Asia, the U.S. aggressively pursued the goal of ousting Russia from the region.

Karimov was the driving spirit behind a U.S.-backed plan to set up a Central Asian grouping that would exclude Russia. Two months after offering base facilities to Washington, the Uzbek President hosted a summit of the four Central Asian states of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to announce the establishment of a Central Asian Cooperation Organisation (CACO) in which Russia was conspicuously absent.

The new alliance, which replaced the Central Asian Economic Community (CAEC), proclaimed the goal of developing not only economic, but political cooperation among the member-states. The U.S. responded by increasing economic and military assistance to the CACO members. In 2002 alone the U.S. pumped into these states over $900 million through various aid programmes.

At the peak of its romance with Uzbekistan, the U.S. encouraged Karimov to re-equip Uzbekistan's armed forces, the biggest in Central Asia, according to North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) standards. The Uzbek leader drew up plans to replace Russian Kalashnikov guns with U.S. M-16 rifles and purchase Western rocket artillery, tanks and armoured vehicles. Contrary to its original pledge to leave Central Asia once its Afghanistan campaign ended, Washington made it clear that it had come to stay. During a visit to Uzbekistan in early 2004, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was on record as saying that Uzbekistan was a prime location for hosting one of the U.S' "forward operating sites", sometimes referred to as "lily pads" (the concept of deploying flexible bases armed with high-technology weapons throughout the world, like lilies across a pond, to intervene in trouble spots with greater mobility).

However, Central Asia's honeymoon with the U.S. ended when the Bush administration embarked on its crusade to promote American-brand liberties in the former Soviet states. The "Velvet Revolutions" the U.S. helped mastermind in Georgia and Ukraine showed the Central Asian leaders that close ties with the U.S. did not guarantee political stability, as there was the risk of being toppled by Washington. Six months after the "Rose Revolution" led by Mikhail Saakashvili overthrew President Eduard Shevardnadze, who was previously backed by the U.S, in Georgia in November 2003, the CACO voted to admit Russia into its group, burying U.S. plans to edge Russia out of the region. The "Tulip Revolution" in Kyrgyzstan in March and the Islamist riots at Andizhan in Uzbekistan in May finally steered Central Asian leaders away from Washington and towards Moscow.

Once again Uzbekistan led the way in redrawing the geopolitical map of the region. During his visit to Moscow in June, Karimov accused the U.S. of stirring trouble in the region. He signed a defence pact with Russia under which Moscow resumed military assistance to the Central Asian country and obtained the right to use its military facilities for operations in the region.

In July, at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation at Astana in Kazakhstan, the four Central Asian states, acting at Uzbekistan's initiative, joined Russia and China in asking the U.S. to set a deadline for its military withdrawal from Central Asia.

U.S. officials shrugged off the eviction of the base as a reaction to Washington's tough stand on the Andizhan "massacre". This explanation obscures a deeper reason for the tectonic shifts in Central Asia. The U.S. policy in the region, as elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, has been driven by competition with Russia for influence over the new states. Washington's resort to the export of Western-standard democracy to Central Asia as a tool in this power game has forced Russia to back the autocratic regimes in order to prevent a dangerous destabilisation game and a resurgence of militant Islam, as the Andizhan riots demonstrated.

An alternative to the crippling stand-off between Russia and the U.S. did exist. Before he was ousted in the U.S.-hailed "Tulip Revolution", former Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev had proposed the merger of the Russian and U.S. air bases he had hosted on Kyrgyz territory. The Russian military privately welcomed the idea and some U.S. officials also applauded it.

"A joint base in Kyrgyzstan would be the easiest place to begin (U.S.-Russian cooperation to exert reformative influence on local regimes)," Ira Straus, U.S. coordinator of the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO, said in an interview. "If successful, this could be followed by joint use of the respective U.S. and Russian bases in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan; by joint basing in Georgia instead of the U.S.-backed demands for Russia to pull out and the Russian demands for guarantees against the United States ever coming in; and by joint basing in Ukraine instead of implicit pressures on Ukraine from both sides to exclude the other," Straus said.

Such proposals fell on deaf ears in Washington. Instead of going to Moscow to discuss the crisis over the American bases, Rumsfeld rushed to Kyrgyzstan at the end of July to pressure the new Kyrgyz leadership into accepting the continued presence of the U.S. military in that country.

Russian experts warned that the continued rivalry between the U.S. and Russia in Central Asia would create a situation in which China could emerge the only winner. They pointed out that Karimov's decision to send out the U.S. military was taken after his visit to China, where he was offered $1.5 billion in credits.

Kyrgyz leaders recently confirmed that they had been approached by Beijing with an offer to set up a Chinese military base in Kyrgyzstan. "The issue of the deployment of a Chinese military base in Kyrgyzstan was discussed at a high level, but Kyrgyzstan's position is clear: we do not plan to turn the country into a politico-military battleground," Kyrgyzstan's acting Vice-Premier Adakhan Madumarov said.

Unfortunately, the whole of Central Asia has become a battlefield for great-power rivalry.