Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 22 – Two comments
last week, one by a Russian specialist on Afghanistan suggesting that that
could disintegrate with possible spillover effects for Central Asia and a
second by a presidential advisor in Tajikistan who spoke about the possibility
of the appearance of two new states being carved out of the region, have been
criticized in Moscow as “fantastic.”
But the fact that such suggestions
were made at all and the nature of the arguments against that possibility
highlight just how fragile some of these states are, how problematic the borders
among them inherited from Soviet times are, and the certainty that some people
in the region are thinking the unthinkable about the countries in which they
live.
On the Afghanistan.ru portal, Andrey
Serenko, a specialist at the Moscow Center for the Study of Contemporary
Afghanistan, said that the growing “’privatization of sovereignty’” by regional
ethnic, military and economic groups in Afghanistan threaten that country’s
territorial integrity especially after the American withdrawal (afghanistan.ru/doc/62482.html).
After the collapse of Najibullah’s
communist regime in 1992, Serenko said, several provinces of Afghanistan in
fact were “’privatized’ by major field commanders” along ethnic lines. The
recent conflict between Uzbeks and Tajiks in Takhar Province suggests this
could happen again, all the more so because these divisions now have an
economic base.
Non-Pashtun business interests are
now so strong that they could provide the kind of support for secessionist
groups that the latter did not have two decades ago. As a result, Serenko suggested, Kabul may
soon have to decide which is the greatest threat: “the reanimation of the Taliban
or the disintegration of Afghanistan and the loss not only of its internal but also
of its external sovereignty.”
Sayfullo Safarov, the deputy
director of the Presidential Center for Strategic Research in Dushanbe, then
suggested that Afghan developments could have an impact on political borders in
Central Asia proper, leading to the formation of a new state, Greater
Badakhshan, on what is now the Tajik-Afghan border, or a second new one in the
Fergana Valley.
The Tajik expert said that groups on
the Afghan side of the border hope “to unify [their] territory with the
Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast and form a new state, Greater
Badakhshan. Behind this effort, he said
were “the main figures of secret ‘geopolitical games’” (ca-news.org/news:1073743 (subscription),
repeated at islamsng.com/sng/news/7055).
Russia
and China oppose such an outcome, Safarov said,but Tajikistan must be “vigilant”
or it risks “losing its part of Badakhshan.”
In
a follow-on comment to Golos Rossii, the Tajik specialist said that he also
sees the preconditions for the appearance of a new Fergana Republic which would
include within its borders parts of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and
Kazakhstan on the basis of Islam or cultural commonalities (rus.ruvr.ru/2013_07_20/Grozit-li-Centralnoj-Azii-smena-politicheskoj-karti-5542/).
Not surprisingly, Safarov’s
statements have provoked a media firestorm in Tajikistan. But officials there
have tried to calm the situation.
Foreign Minister Khamrokhon Zarifi said that “the Badakhshan problem does
not exist. It never existed. These are the fantasies of specific groups who
want to create instability in the countries of Central Asia.”
Dmitry Aleksandrov, the head of the
Central Asian sector at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI), was
almost as dismissive of the idea that new states could emerge in Central Asia
anytime soon (rus.ruvr.ru/2013_07_19/Sozdanie-novih-gosudarstv-v-Centralnoj-Azii-fantasticheskij-scenarij-6687/).
He suggested that such predictions
were “somewhat alarmist” because at present there are “no immediate broad
threats of destabilization in Central Asia.” Moreover, the Moscow analyst said,
the situations in Badakhshan and the Fergana Valley are quite different in
terms both of religious and ethnic identities.
Some in the elites of both places
may hope to form new states, but “the population in the main does not support
these ideas very strongly,” either because they are divided along ethnic lines
or because the meaning of Islam varies among them. In the Fergana, he said,
this idea isn’t going anywhere, but the situation in Badakhshan is more
complicated.
On the one hand, the Tajiks on the
two sides of the Afghan border are very different because of the impact of the
Soviet system. But on the other, there is the possibility that militants from
the Afghan side will pass into Tajikistan. “To speak about the prospects for
the appearance of a new state,” he said, “is premature.”
Indeed, Aleksandrov suggested, that
could happen “only in the case of the complete disintegration of the Central
Asian region,” something that if it happened could lead to “the establishment
of several units like states.” But for the immediate future, “this is still a
fantastic scenario.”
What is certainly going to be a
problem in the coming months is the return of Central Asian militants who have
fought in Afghanistan. “Having acquired
military experience [there], they will seek to use it on the territory of
Tajikistan and other countries,” but, the Moscow expert said he doesn’t think
this will cause “the full-scale disintegration of Central Asia.”
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