Paul Goble
Staunton,
September 26 – A Russian general’s statement this week that ISIS is now activating
its “’sleeper cells’” in Central Asia is only the latest in an increasingly
large chorus of Moscow comments about the region and the need to do something
to counter this Islamist threat before it grows too large.
In a post
for the Turkish Turan Today portal, Baku
blogger Amir Eyvaz says that Col. Gen. Andrey Novikov’s remarks reflect what he
sees as Moscow’s search for “an occasion to introduce troops” into Central Asia
just as it has done already in Syria and Ukraine (turantoday.com/2018/09/syrian-scenario-of-moscow-for-central-asia.html).
Moscow wants to ensure
that the Central Asian countries do not move even further from its orbit as a
result of China-European trade bypassing Russia, expanded cooperation among the
five countries of the region, and increasing links with NATO countries
including Turkey and the United States, Eyvaz says. But as of now, it has few
resources other than military ones to do so.
Positing
a threat from the Islamic State in the region, he continues, works perfectly as
a cover for such plans. “Under the form
of a struggle against ‘the khalifate,’ Russia would be able to calmly bomb its
geopolitical competitors [as it has been doing in Syria] and destroy
integration processes within Central Asia and any expansion of ties with the outside
world.”
By playing
up the threat from ISIS to the region, some Central Asian leaders like Kyrgyzstan
Deputy Prime Minister Zhenish Razakov are wittingly or unwittingly setting the
stage for Russian intervention, something Moscow could more easily do there
than it has in Ukraine because Central Asia lacks even the level of support
Ukraine has.
“If
Ukraine has in this hybrid war some informational support from Western
institutions and powers,” Eyvaz says, “Turkestan [the name for the four Turkic
republics of Central Asia] for a variety of reasons cannot count on that kind
of support at all.”
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