The US in Central Asia - Volume 10, Issue 3 - April 2004

 

The US-led coalition is hoping that its campaign against Taliban/al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan may be moving towards a decisive stage. In March and April 2004, additional troops and resources were deployed to the Afghan-Pakistan border regions, and increased pressure was exerted on the Pakistani military and tribal leaders to deliver up – or at least cease shielding – Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in the Pakistani borderlands. Substantive progress in Afghanistan, combined with a cluster of other policy considerations, present US planners with an opportunity to undertake a top-to-bottom reassessment of US strategic priorities and posture in Central Asia. By mid-2005, the contours of the region's medium-term security profile will be easier to discern.

 

The dramatic insertion of US military power into Central Asia in 2001 was not intended to stabilise the region per se, but to counter a direct and substantive threat to US national security. Should that threat perception diminish (for example, through the extirpation or capture of senior al-Qaeda/Taliban figures), Washington will need to carefully evaluate the extent to which it now wishes to engage with the region's broader internal security dynamics, even when these sometimes impinge only marginally, if at all, on America's own national interests. A further contextual consideration will be the status accorded to US bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan as part of the ongoing Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) programme, scheduled for completion in 2005, together with State Department assessments of (the lack of) progress towards democratisation and the observance of human rights in Uzbekistan.

 

 

Cooperation on military-security matters between the US and the Central Asian Republics developed incrementally during the 1990s, primarily through (or disguised within) NATO's 'Partnership for Peace' programme. Limited joint military exercises were conducted from 1997 onwards and, also in that year, the Pentagon allocated Central Asia as an area of responsibility to Central Command (CENTCOM) – a significant shift in contingency planning that was viewed with concern in Moscow. Nevertheless, the establishment of semi-permanent US bases at Khanabad in southern Uzbekistan, and then at Manas airport near Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan in late 2001, introduced an entirely new security dynamic to a region hitherto characterised by declining but still hegemonic Russian power.

 

The Khanabad base proved to be an important transport hub and springboard for search-and-rescue operations in the early stages of the conflict in Afghanistan, and still hosts around 1,200 predominantly US troops. The Uzbek government, for whom the relationship with the US has become the cornerstone of foreign policy, would ideally like the base to be made permanent. The bilateral security arrangements were given political substance by the 'Declaration on the Strategic Partnership and Cooperation Framework' signed on 12 March 2002 during President Islam Karimov's visit to Washington. Only one of the Declaration's five articles dealt with security issues. This provided for deepening military cooperation and gave Karimov a slightly nebulous assurance of US support in the event of an external threat to Uzbekistan's security. Karimov was clearly seeking to inveigle the US administration into providing a firm security guarantee as a quid pro pro for the base leasing arrangement, thus enabling Uzbekistan to slip out of Russia's geopolitical orbit and establish itself as a significant regional player.

 

President Askar Akayev's rationale for allowing the US base to open in Kyrgyzstan was constructed on different foundations. The impoverished and topographically fragmented Kyrgyz Republic will never be able to compete militarily with its larger and more populous neighbours. Akayev has therefore sought to enmesh the country in a web of bilateral and institutional security arrangements that would both deter potential aggressors and assist in combating the internal threat posed by the region's small but violent Islamist groups. The durability of the US commitment to the region is of lesser importance to Bishkek, because its core security policy is centred on a close alliance with Russia, supplemented by membership of the Commonwealth of Independent States Collective Security Treaty Organisation and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). From a Kyrgyz perspective, US bases essentially provided a layer of additional security, and a welcome injection of hard currency into the economy through the levying of take-off and landing fees and local provision of services to the foreign troops. The initial US-Kyrgyz basing agreement signed in December 2001 was for one year only. It has subsequently been renewed for a further three years with the option of still further extensions. The base accommodates around 1,000 troops and 30 planes, mainly F-16 fighters and C-130 Hercules transport planes. Although most of the troops and assets are American, there is a much larger multinational contingent of coalition forces at Manas than at Khanabad, including a significant contingent of South Korean medical personnel.

 

The Central Asian bases were pivotal logistical hubs for Operation Enduring Freedom. Significant coalition progress in Afghanistan will necessarily entail a re-evaluation of their utility. Although the Taliban (together with associated al Qaeda fighters and Gulbuddin Hikmatyar's Hizb-i Islami militia) has sufficient residual capacity to disrupt the peaceful reconstruction of Afghanistan, the movement is now largely boxed in to a localised setting along the Afghan–Pakistan border. Taliban fighters are now operating within an essentially Pashtun ethno-nationalist framework, rather than with the broader pan-Islamist aspirations that posed a threat to regional stability in the past.

 

There is still much for the coalition to do in southern and eastern Afghanistan. Large tracts of Zabul, Paktika and Kandahar regions are effectively without government writ. The ruling Islamist Muttahida Majlis-i Amal (MMA) coalition in the North West Frontier and Baluchistan provinces of Pakistan continues to permit the Deobandi madrassas, from which the Taliban first emerged, to operate with impunity and replenish Taliban ranks. The Taliban's relationship with Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency persists in clandestine form, principally as a vehicle to contain Pashtun nationalism (which could threaten Pakistan's own territorial integrity) and as an insurance policy that would guarantee some influence in a scenario in which the coalition forces and ISAF depart the theatre without consolidating the rule of law.

 

However, the Taliban does not now have the capacity to meaningfully engage coalition forces in the field in any orthodox sense. It signally failed to disrupt the constitutional Loya Jirga at the turn of the year. With declining combat capabilities, the Taliban may resort increasingly to asymmetric terror tactics such as indiscriminate suicide bombings, but this would signal the end of the movement as a populist force. After Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit to Pakistan in March 2004, the Pakistani military began to exert serious pressure in western tribal areas such as Waziristan on elders to deliver up locally based al Qaeda fighters, to whom tribal leaders have much less ethnic allegiance. Moreover, the decision to deploy an additional 2,000 US marines in late March 2004, along with the construction of a new airstrip in the Paktika province, will assist in border interdiction, extend tactical reach and increase force repositioning flexibility. This indicates the coalition's serious intent to neutralise the Taliban once and for all over the coming months, thereby giving the vast majority of Afghanis who wish to return to normality a chance to do so.

 

Successful containment of the Taliban within the Afghan–Pakistan border regions therefore raises the issue of the rationale for maintaining the Khanabad and Manas bases in the medium term. Ideally, Karimov would prefer Uzbekistan to become the region's principal security manager in partnership with the US. However, it is extremely unlikely that the US would wish to become embroiled in the type of interstate disputes – for example, over border demarcation and resource sharing – which are emerging as the primary security challenges in the Fergana Valley, post-Soviet Central Asia's most significant potential conflict zone. The uncertainty surrounding US intentions is reinforced by the forthcoming 2004 US presidential election campaign, in which foreign policy seems destined to play a significant part, and the latest BRAC round which concludes in 2005.

 

Neither a Bush nor a Kerry administration is likely to roll up the Central Asian bases completely – especially in view of their proximity to China and the northern tier of the Middle East. The BRAC programme will relocate more than 50,000 personnel from Cold War bases – principally from Germany, but with some implications for bases in South Korea and Japan – to much smaller semi-permanent Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) or Forward Operating Locations (FOLs), also called Cooperative Security Locations, designed to enable the rapid projection of US military power. FOBs will be permanently occupied by a modest staff, whereas FOLs would be manned only in emergencies or for training exercises. The indications are that Khanabad and Manas will be designated as FOLs. The Kyrgyz government will be able to live with that choice. The US presence in Kyrgyzstan has effectively drawn Russia into seeking, and getting, its own airbase just a few miles away from Manas. This the first Russian base opened anywhere since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

 

For Uzbekistan, the conversion of Khanabad to an FOL rather than an FOB would be an acute disappointment. Tashkent has staked much prestige on its relationship with the US. A part-time military base may appear to the Uzbekgovernment, with some justification, to be a part-time security commitment. An additional complication to the bilateral relationship is the decision by Congress to insert conditions into the Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs Appropriations Act for 2004 that make the continuation of military-technical aid and training to Uzbekistan beyond July 2004 conditional upon the State Department's certification of satisfactory progress on democratisation and human rights issues. Given that State Department officials in January 2004 refused to certify that the Uzbek government was 'committed to human rights' on less stringent criteria in relation to a separate assistance programme for the disposal of Soviet-era nuclear weapons facilities, there is a realistic prospect that the US may seek to diversify its security relationships in the region, perhaps towards Kazakhstan, over the next year. This prospect has caused Karimov to urgently reappraise the state of Uzbek-Russian relations. Karimov was given an effusive reception in Moscow in mid-April 2004. There are detailed plans to draft a partnership agreement, and Putin and Karimov have unilaterally agreed to relocate the SCO's anti-terrorism centre from Bishkek to Tashkent, much to Kyrgyzstan's bemusement.

 

The evolving situation in Afghanistan, together with broader US foreign and defence policy considerations, has required Russia, Pakistan, China and the Central Asian Republics to envision a regional security environment in which its most powerful military actor may, paradoxically, be physically absent for much of the time. This leaves a space for Russia – and, through the SCO, China – to assume responsibility for intra-regional security issues, especially concerning localised terrorist and separatist activity. After the benign neglect of the Yeltsin years, Russia is now more actively engaged in Central Asia than at any point since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Following a dozen and more years of independent statehood, the authoritarian leaders of post-Soviet Central Asia may conclude that not only will Russia always be there but, what is more, Moscow does not tend to ask embarrassing questions about internal affairs.