Since 9/11, America’s priority in
Central Asia has been to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. But as the United
States and NATO pull out, there is a new danger: that the West could become
entangled in regional rivalries, local strongman politics and competition with
Russia and China. Central Asian governments have sought for years to manipulate
foreign powers’ interest in the region for their own benefit. In the summer of
2005, the United States military was evicted from its facility at
Karshi-Khanabad in Uzbekistan after American officials criticized the Uzbek
government’s slaughter of hundreds of anti-government demonstrators in Andijon;
Russia and China, which have both been expanding their footprints in the
region, publicly backed the crackdown. In 2009 Kyrgyzstan’s kleptocratic
president, Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev, drummed up a bidding war between
Washington and Moscow over the fate of the Manas air base, the main staging
facility for American troops in Afghanistan. Following Mr. Bakiyev’s ouster in
an April 2010 revolt, Kyrgyz officials claimed that many of these payments had
been laundered through a complex network of offshore bank accounts controlled
by the former first family. As America begins withdrawing from Afghanistan, the
Central Asian states are likely to increase their demands for tacit payoffs for
cooperation. Currently, the United States pays the Kyrgyz government $60 million
a year to lease Manas and funnels hundreds of millions of dollars in fuel
contracts to local suppliers and intermediaries. The United States also pays
roughly $500 million annually in transit fees to ship equipment and material
via the Northern Distribution Network, a set of road, sea, railway and air
routes that traverse the Central Asian states, which was opened to provide an
alternative to Pakistani supply routes. In June, NATO reached agreements with
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan for taking equipment out of Afghanistan.
Uzbekistan, which effectively controls rail shipments out of northern
Afghanistan, has already announced that it will charge up to 150 percent of the
distribution network’s prevailing transit rates, and American officials expect
to be further squeezed as neighboring states bargain hard during the West’s
rush to the exits. Most controversially of all, NATO and the Central Asian
states are still negotiating over the potential transfer of military equipment,
used by coalition forces in Afghanistan, to Central Asian governments’ security
services, which have a bloody human rights record. In January, the Obama
administration lifted a ban on foreign military sales to Uzbekistan, on
national security grounds, to allow for sales of counterterrorism equipment.
American officials insist that such future transfers will include only
nonlethal items, but the Uzbek government has long sought items like armored
personnel carriers, helicopters and drones, which could be used to suppress
protests. Withdrawal from Afghanistan also elevates the risk that the United
States, together with other external powers, will be drawn into a number of
local disputes and escalating regional rivalries. Over the last decade, Central
Asian leaders have consistently invoked the specter of insurgents’ spilling
over from Afghanistan to justify their own counterterrorism efforts and the
need for security cooperation with Russia, China and the United States. Western
withdrawal will encourage local elites to stoke these fears, justifying
domestic crackdowns, rendition of political opponents and escalation of border
tensions with neighbors. The Tajik government recently cracked down on local
militias in the remote town of Khorog near the Afghan border. Though the
government claimed that it captured Afghan-trained fighters in its crackdown,
locals view the action as an attempt to take over lucrative smuggling routes
along the Afghan border and finally bring the autonomous region under full
state control. Russia seems keen to reinforce this narrative to justify
extending its military basing rights throughout the country, which, in all
likelihood, Tajik officials will then use as leverage to demand more Western
assistance. Washington’s “new silk route” strategy, an attempt to promote
sustainable development in Afghanistan by linking its infrastructure, energy
transmission grids and pipelines to Central Asia, may lead to further
corruption and enrichment of top officials. Promoting big-ticket projects and
labeling them in grand terms has already provoked suspicion in Beijing and
Moscow about the West’s long-term regional ambitions. Moreover, Russia
continues to push for the inclusion of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in the new
Moscow-led customs union, while China continues to build new infrastructure and
energy pipelines. Far from promoting increased regional trade and commerce, the
Central Asian states now seem to be using external economic initiatives to
extract new revenue. After 11 years of pressing the Afghan government to improve
its governance and create democratic institutions, Washington has failed to
effectively promote these same goals in neighboring countries. Now withdrawal
from Afghanistan risks dragging the West even further into a hotbed of domestic
power struggles and regional rivalries. The New York TimesAlexander Cooley,
a professor of political science at Barnard College, is the author of 'Great
Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia.'
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