The New Railroad in Afghanistan

The new railroad from Hairatan to Mazar-i Sharif doesn't run very far but it augurs for a momentous technological change in Greater Central Asia because it can eventually link into the rail networks of north and south.  Assuming that some day Afghanistan will be at peace, we can believe that the rail line will run beyond Mazar into Pakistan as well as Iran, thus linking the rail networks of the Middle East, South Asia, and North Asia. This was a matter of great interest in the nineteenth century when railroads were critical devices of colonial imperialism.  So, finally, it's happening.  The effect of such linkages will effectively reduce distances across the vast span of Eurasia, both in cost and in time of travel.  So this small, modest innovation seems to portend the emergence of a new and different social, economic, and political world in Eurasia. I reproduce here the report of the Associated Press.  RLC [Click on the title below for a link to the source.]

Afghanistan opening first major train service
By KAY JOHNSON, Associated Press – Dec 21, 2011  KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Operators ran the first train down Afghanistan's first major railroad Wednesday, clearing the way for a long-awaited service from the northern border that should speed up the U.S. military's crucial supply flow and become a hub for future trade.
A cargoless train chugged into a newly built station in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Wednesday after a 47-mile (75-kilometer) trial run from the border with Uzbekistan, said Deputy Public Works Minister Noor Gul Mangal, who was on hand for the arrival.
The new rail line is the first stage of an ambitious plan to link landlocked Afghanistan to its neighbors' extensive railways for the first time, eventually opening up new trade routes for goods traveling between Europe and Asia.
Afghanistan has never had a functional rail network, though many projects have been begun and later abandoned, victims of maneuvers of the 19th century Great Game rivalry between Russia and Britain, and then political bickering in the early 20th century. Soviet occupiers abandoned a few rail projects in the 1980s, and later years of bitter civil war made such construction impossible.
So the line from the border town of Hairatan to Mazar-i-Sharif marks a milestone in a violence-wracked country eager for good news on the horizon. It also could be a key route for the U.S. troop withdrawal beginning next year and, eventually, a gateway for Afghan exports that would travel its neighbors, said Fred Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Washington
"It's actually a big deal. It's very significant both practically and symbolically," Starr said.
In the short term, service will help release a bottleneck at Hairatan dry port that is now holding up goods — including fuel and other supplies for American troops — while they are loaded off of trains and onto trucks for a hazardous journey over Afghanistan's northern mountain roads.
"This port of Hairatan is where the bulk of commercial cargo is coming from into the country, so it is very important," said Juan Miranda, head of Central and West Asia Department of the Asian Development Bank, which funded the $165 million project.
Allowing trains to come straight in will help Hairatan handle up to 10 times as much cargo, from 4,000 tons per month now to 25,000-40,000 tons per month once the service is fully operating, the ADB says. Once in Mazar-i-Sharif, the goods can be transferred to most of the rest of Afghanistan on surface roads.
Uzbekistan's state-owned SE Sogdiana Trans will run the commercial train service, ADB's Afghanistan representative Noriko Sato said.
A U.S. military spokesman says the new railway will be key to supplying American troops — and possibly also withdrawing non-lethal cargo during the American troop pullout set to begin next year.
"We do not have numbers yet, (but) we anticipate that the rail line will be able to speed the transit of cargo into Afghanistan and out of it," said Cmdr. Bill Speaks of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
The U.S. has recently shifted much of its supply line to the north from routes going through Pakistan, and the northern routes' importance was brought into sharp focus last month when Pakistan — angered by a disputed NATO strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers — closed its two border crossings for U.S. supplies.
Just three years ago, about 90 percent of nonmilitary supplies to Afghanistan went through Karachi, Pakistan. Today, close to 75 percent of cargo is shipped through the northern network.
Just as the Pakistani supply line has been attacked by insurgents, the newer northern routes through Mazar-i-Sharif and other cities are likely to also become targets. In 2009, Taliban forces in the northern province of Kunduz hijacked two fuel trucks, resulting in a fiery NATO airstrike that killed dozens.
While many fear instability or even civil war in Afghanistan after 2014 when most foreign forces leave, others are busy planning for a future in which the country could be a hub in a New Silk Road reconnecting spice and silk routes from centuries past.
The 10-country Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation project — supported by the ADB along with the U.N., World Bank and International Monetary Fund — envisions a network of some 2,250 miles (3,600 kilometers) of roads and 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) of railway linking China and India to the Middle East and Europe, although the project is far from complete.
For years, Afghanistan's poor roads and rails have been the project's missing link to much of that network.
With the northern Hairatan rail line ready to open for business, Afghan officials are already planning to expand its infant railroad with another proposed line to Turkmenistan to the northwest, Mangal said Wednesday.
He said a delegation would meet with Turkmenistan officials to discuss the expansion at the official inauguration for the Hairatan-Mazar-i-Sharif line, which he said would come soon though he wouldn't give a date.
"This is the first railway in Afghanistan and of course when we inaugurate it there will be a big ceremony, Mangal said.
Johnson reported from Bangkok.Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Turkistan's gas wealth: 25 trillion cu meters

[Click on the title to link to the video on this topic.]

Eurasianet: Central Asia: Can Expanded Trade Pacify an Unsettled Region?

Hillary Clinton’s new emphasis on the “New Silk Road” reflects how much is changing in Eurasia.  The need for Central Asia’s minerals and the infrastructural improvements in the region that make them more accessible have brought the Americans to the point of inventing – rather appropriating -- an old name for the world’s growing focus on Central Asia.  It’s not exactly a new idea; it’s been around for a long time.  But it reflects the necessity that if the world’s growing economies are to be fed they cannot ignore the abundance of resources in Central Asian grounds.  

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/64419

Published on EurasiaNet.org (http://www.eurasianet.org)

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Central Asia: Can Expanded Trade Pacify an Unsettled Region? by Joshua Kucera October 31, 2011

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton worked quietly and diligently during her recent trip through Central and South Asia to lay the groundwork for a regional stabilization plan, dubbed the “New Silk Road.” The vision sees expanded trade as the balm that can heal the region’s wounds.
The New Silk Road aims to stimulate regional trade between Afghanistan and its neighbors. At its most ambitious, it envisions Central Asia as a trade hub between Europe and Asia, as it was in the days of the old Silk Road. Clinton promoted it on her recent trip through the region [5], including stops in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In the coming weeks, she will continue to make a diplomatic push to enlist allies' support for the vision.
As Clinton sees it, commodity and energy exports have the ability to lift regional economies. Trade, in turn, could naturally suppress Islamic militant tendencies. “Turkmen gas fields [6]could help meet both Pakistan’s and India’s growing energy needs and provide significant transit revenues for both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Tajik cotton could be turned into Indian linens. Furniture and fruit from Afghanistan could find its way to the markets of Astana or Mumbai and beyond,” Clinton said about the Silk Road strategy during a September speech at the United Nations.
As yet, there are few details on how the United States can make its regional trade vision turn into reality. Washington has identified up to 40 infrastructure projects that could be part of the plan, according to a US government official, and will also work to reduce legal and procedural barriers to trade, like onerous and corrupt border-crossing procedures. Clinton will attempt to gain allied support at two upcoming conferences, one November 2 in Istanbul and another in December in Bonn, Germany.
The United States needs to quickly develop an implementation plan if the strategy is to succeed, said S. Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Washington, DC. Starr cautioned that the State Department's version of the plan, as he saw it so far, needed to focus more closely on the “software” or border regulations, rather than on infrastructure. He also saw a need to develop a plan for short-, medium- and long-term projects. He proposed starting with relatively easy-to-implement but high-profile projects like truck convoys along a few key corridors. “Skeptics abound,” he told EurasiaNet.org. “We must prove to them that the United States can deliver tangible results that positively affect peoples’ lives, and do so in the short term.”
Starr has promoted a Silk Road vision [7] for several years. The State Department has long been wary of the plan, with officials initially dismissing it as unworkable. But it began to gain favor last year at US Central Command, and its commander at the time, Gen. David Petraeus. Since Marc Grossman became President Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan[8], replacing the late Richard Holbrooke earlier this year, the State Department has come around to support the strategy.
Speaking in Islamabad on October 21, Clinton said: “We want to advance together the vision of a New Silk Road, which would increase regional economic integration and boost cross-border trade and investments between Pakistan and all of her neighbors.” The next day in Tajikistan, Clinton said she discussed the strategy with President Imomali Rahmon and “appreciated the president’s enthusiastic support for this vision.” In Tashkent she discussed the strategy “in some detail” to President Islam Karimov, according to a senior State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Doubts remain about the strategy's feasibility. The State Department, in its public statements on the plan, has highlighted a handful of existing or proposed projects on which the New Silk Road could be modeled, including a free-trade agreement signed last year between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline [9]. Skeptics note that the Pakistan-Afghanistan agreement, which was laboriously, personally brokered by Holbrooke, hasn’t yet been implemented. And implementation appears unlikely in the foreseeable future, due to strained bilateral relations. In a similar vein, versions of the TAPI pipeline have been on the drawing board since the 1990s, but insecurity in Afghanistan has scared away companies that might have the capital to complete the project.
With US and NATO troops scheduled to depart [10] by 2014, the security situation is likely to decline even further, a problem that the Silk Road plan's boosters acknowledge. “We have continued insecurity and instability in Afghanistan,” Sham Bathija, senior economic adviser to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, said at a recent conference in Washington on the strategy. “Yet we have no choice but to forge ahead.”
The Silk Road project may be making too many geopolitical assumptions, especially in the area of diplomatic relations among regional states, suggested George Gavrilis, an expert on Central Asia and borders at the Washington, D.C., think tank The Hollings Center. He noted that many of the countries in the region seem locked in persistent diplomatic spats with their neighbors; Pakistan with Afghanistan and India, Uzbekistan with Tajikistan [11] and Kyrgyzstan. Trade agreements are fragile and vulnerable to political difficulties, as evidenced by the fact that the border between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan has been closed for 18 months, following last summer's violence in southern Kyrgyzstan. The border only reopened this week. “I love the idea [of the New Silk Road] but I just don't see how it can be implemented,” Gavrilis said.
Another potential pitfall is the cost of infrastructure projects. “Unless the job is funded, it ain't going to happen,” said Juan Miranda, Director General of the Central and West Asia Department of the Asian Development Bank, which is a supporter of the project and has been carrying out a related infrastructure project, the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation, for several years. “So we have to think about that and it will be a challenge.”
Obama administration officials are mindful of a domestic political environment that is opposed to new government spending, has emphasized that it doesn't plan to allocate a lot of money on the Silk Road project. “With governments all around the world facing economic challenges, we have to focus on ways to make this work with limited government support,” said Robert Hormats, undersecretary of state for economic, energy and agricultural affairs, in a recent speech. “So, for the 'New Silk Road' vision to realize its potential, it is critical that the Afghan government and its neighbors take ownership of the effort.”

Editor's note:  Joshua Kucera is a Washington, DC,-based writer who specializes in security issues in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East. He is the editor of EurasiaNet's Bug Pit blog.

2010 © Eurasianet

A tribute to Ehsan Yarshater

A great tribute to Ehsan Yarshater has appeared in the New York Times today. It is refreshing to see that a popular news source would celebrate the life-absorbing project of a serious and dedicated scholar. Patricia Cohen, the author, has recognized not only the significance of Yarshater’s project – to produce a comprehensive Encyclopedia of Iran – but also the example that he provides of what a life of scholarly commitment consists of. I have never met Yarshater but I have been aware of his work, and have already been mining the Encyclopedia for nuggets available nowhere else. It is worth remembering that for Yarshater “Iran” can include a wide swath of territory, depending on the time, as Persians have had an influence on affairs in virtually all the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Ganges and from the Aral Sea to the Indian Ocean. This is truly a grand project.
In some university settings professors are obliged to think primarily about getting published early and often in order to gain tenure, a practice that tends to force the grand projects into a distant future. Yarshater has demonstrated that a major enterprise like his, spanning many years, can bring forth a distinctive scholarly resource that will be appreciated for decades. Thanks to the work of Ms. Cohen we are reminded that a few great visionaries in the scholarly world still exist. RLC

New York Times August 12, 2011
A Lifetime Quest to Finish a Monumental Encyclopedia of Iran
By PATRICIA COHEN
Ralph Ellison wrote for 40 years without finishing his novel “Juneteenth.” Antoni Gaudí labored 43 years on the Sagrada Família basilica in Barcelona, but construction continues today. And in the annals of grand quixotica, Ehsan Yarshater also deserves a prominent chapter.
At 53, he embarked on his magnum opus, a definitive encyclopedia of Iranian history and culture. At 75, he started looking for a successor. He didn’t find one so he kept going himself. Now he’s 91. He’s up to “K.”
“My mission is to finish the encyclopedia,” he said recently from his office at Columbia University’s Center for Iranian Studies. He knows he won’t be able to do it personally, especially since the task keeps expanding as progress is made. There are topics to be added and entries to be updated. So Mr. Yarshater has tried to make sure the work will continue by establishing a private foundation with a $12 million endowment and finally choosing three scholars to replace him as general editor.
The sheer ambition of Mr. Yarshater’s vision is daunting. With money from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he has worked to create the most comprehensive account of several millenniums of Iranian history, language and culture in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia.
“There is nothing like it” in scope or quality, said Ali Banuazizi, a professor at Boston College and a former president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.
Unlike a conventional encyclopedia, which briefly summarizes existing knowledge, Mr. Yarshater’s work, Encyclopedia Iranica, is producing original scholarship. “Most of the articles require research,” said Mr. Banuazizi, because they are topics no one has studied in much depth.
Mr. Yarshater has raised the bar further. “Our aim is that for each subject,” he said, “we should find the best person in the entire world.” With that in mind, he has been searching two and a half years for an expert to write about Sirjan and Rafsanjan, townships in the south of Iran.
Mr. Yarshater has not been back to Iran in 32 years, ever since the Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah of Iran and established an Islamic republic in 1979. “The encyclopedia’s impartiality does not please the current Persian government,” Mr. Yarshater said in a low, breathy voice. A troublesome tremor that started in his hand several years ago has moved to his knees and vocal cords, slowing him down and compelling him to use an assistant. But otherwise he feels healthy. “My immune system is excellent,” he boasted.
For years Mr. Yarshater’s routine was to work late into the night, coming home only when his wife walked down the hallway from their apartment to the Iranian center to fetch him. “I don’t know many wives who would tolerate that,” he said appreciatively. (She died in 1999; the couple had no children.)
“I’ve seen him work 12 hours without a break,” said Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak,director of the Center for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, who has known Mr. Yarshater for more than 40 years. He remembers a visit when Mr. Yarshater stayed up until 3 a.m. editing. Three hours later, he was in the shower, getting ready to return to work.
Mr. Yarshater expects others to have equal enthusiasm for the task. It took him 17 years to choose his replacements, rejecting one potential successor when he concluded that the man was “too concerned about the number of holidays he could take and the number of hours he would work.”
Now Mr. Yarshater works only until 9 p.m., staying long after his colleagues have turned off their lights. When he returns home, he indulges in his latest hobby: learning Russian.
The 1,480 contributors from around the world who, so far, have composed 6,500 entries are familiar with Mr. Yarshater’s relentlessness. “By hook or by crook, he gets you to do what he wants you to do,” Mr. Karimi-Hakkak said. (Eight hundred entries out of alphabetical order are posted in an online version.)
. . .
[For a link to the source article click on the title above.]

Reflections on a note in Science about a Central Asian astronomer

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is the most prestigious scholarly organization in this country. But the June 17 issue of the society’s journal Science has a brief note [p 1365] that veils a useful distinction that to some of us is important.

The note is about the esteemed Central Asian astronomer Ulugh Beg. The note refers to a tribute made to Ulugh Beg by the Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius in 1687. Hevelius asked for help in finding Beg’s map of the heavens and asked for it to be translated from the Persian.

The resultant map produced by Hevelius is being displayed in a show called Arabick Roots in London. The article refers to the “flow of knowledge from the Arab world to Europe in the 17th century.”
Technically the statement is OK but it masks a certain historical reality. That is, Ulugh Beg was not Arab; he was Turko-Persian, the grandson of Tamer lane, and the son of the famed ruler of Herat Shah Rukh who sponsored an elaborate Turko-Persian culture. Ulugh Beg wrote in Persian even though he may have known Arabic as well as Persian and Turkish. So the “Arabic world” in Ulugh Beg’s time was very Persian as well as Arabic. Much of the scholarly knowledge that came to Europe from the “Arab world” was very Persian as well as Arabic. In fact, some of the most scientific gains in those centuries were made by Central Asians – that is, Turko-Persians. So the flow of knowledge to Europe came from the Turko-Persian societies in Central Asia.

Another formulation of the issues in Central Asia

I'm glad to see any signs of interest in the growing investment of the Chinese in Central Asia, as is indicated in this opinion piece by Pepe Escobar, even if it seems a bit jargonistic ("Great Game", "pipelinestan", angel of history). In geopolitical terms we can speculate whether the war in Afghanistan-Pakistan is mere the current expression of what augurs to be a century-long power struggle over access and control over the mineral resources of Inner Asia. On that issue China is winning, as Escobar suggests. From Al Jazeera. RLC

Opinion
High stakes in Eurasia's 'New Great Game'
China and Russia will benefit from US mistakes in Afghanistan, and the operation in Libya, gaining influence and energy.

Pepe Escobar Last Modified: 04 Jul 2011 14:39

China is investing on a land-based Central Asian energy strategy - a pipeline-driven New Silk Road from the Caspian Sea to China's Far West in Xinjiang [GALLO/GETTY]
Antonio Gramsci once mused that the old order has died but the new one has not yet been born.

While Washington's geopolitical/energy focus was on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran, and to a lesser extent on Central Asia, international politics was already in transition from a unipolar world towards a new, polycentric system.

And then the 2011 Arab Revolt irrupted all across the MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa) chessboard, turning all calculations upside down and reconfiguring the relationship between the US, the main Eurasian nations, and Northern Africa.

Time to recall an ultimate Cold Warrior, Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski, who in 1997, in the article "A Geostrategy for Eurasia", published by Foreign Affairs, conceptualised that: "Eurasia is the world's axial supercontinent. A power that dominated Eurasia would exercise decisive influence over two of the world's three most economically productive regions, Western Europe and East Asia. A glance at the map also suggests that a country dominant in Eurasia would almost automatically control the Middle East and Africa. With Eurasia now serving as the decisive geopolitical chessboard, it no longer suffices to fashion one policy for Europe and another for Asia. What happens with the distribution of power on the Eurasian landmass will be of decisive importance to America's global primacy and historical legacy."

US power waning

Fast forward to the first decade of the 2000s. The George W Bush administration devised a strategy for a Great Central Asia according to which the US would roll back Russia's traditional and China's growing influence.

Washington would have New Delhi as the partner of choice in Afghanistan and Central Asia - laying the foundations of a new Silk Road.

And Washington would establish itself not far from Xinjiang, in Western China, and close to Russia's underbelly. Essentially, that's how the US would win the New Great Game in Eurasia.

This strategy was inbuilt in the Pentagon's Long War - codename for the Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine - and its far more important, if half-hidden, twin: the global energy war.

In my 2007 book Globalistan, I branded this process as Liquid War; here we would find "liquidity" not only in terms of fast-flowing capital and information shaping liquid modernity (a hat tip to Zygmunt Bauman), but also as in oil/gas pipelines crisscrossing an enormous battlefield, what I have called Pipelineistan.

The problems with the Bush administration strategy may have already started way back in 2003, when Turkey - the bridge par excellence between Central Asia and the Mediterranean - decided not to support the war in Iraq.

Since then, Turkey has gotten closer to Russia and, following Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's concept, in fact all its neighbors, especially Iran - performing what could be called an "escape from the US" - and thus denting its role as a NATO base for penetration into Eurasia.

It's in this context that an Ankara-Tehran-Damascus alliance was solidified (and, incidentally, may now be unraveling). Meanwhile Eurasia as a whole changed at breakneck speed.

Russia was "back" on a continental and also global scale; China and India emerged geo-economically; the US got bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Soon the US was not the "indispensable nation" anymore.

China and Russia

Very few former Soviet states were annexed to the US sphere of influence - as it was expected after 9/11. Moreover, Washington's dream of a line of control stretching from the Mediterranean all the way towards Central Asia, aimed at cutting in two the Eurasian landmass, did not happen.

China and Russia developed a joint Eurasia policy - organised, among other channels, by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Eurasian Economic Community and now increased military cooperation.

In Pipelineistan terms, China didn't have to send a single soldier (to Iraq) or get bogged down in an infinite quagmire (in Afghanistan); instead it will get plenty of oil from Iraq and much of the natural gas it needs from Turkmenistan.

China is massively investing in a land-based Central Asian energy strategy - a pipeline-driven New Silk Road from the Caspian Sea to China's Far West in Xinjiang.

The US's geopolitical perspective is characteristic of a sea power - framing its relationship with other nations from the position of an "island"; the Mediterranean basin and Central Asia are viewed as placed in a so-called "arc of instability", as defined by Dr Brzezinski.

Over these past few years, in a constantly evolving context, much more than Great Central Asia, what became paramount for Washington was the geopolitical concept of a Great Middle East - expanding on Brzezinski's "arc of instability" and running from the Maghreb all the way to Central Asia.

So as much as Brzezinski conceptualised Central Asia as a volatile and unpredictable "Eurasian Balkans", we had the Bush administration forcefully dreaming of the "birth pangs" of the Great Middle East. The aim was unmistakable; to cause a lot of trouble to the increasing geopolitical union between China and Russia.

Botched operations

In these past few years, up to the - largely botched - Africom/NATO operation in Libya, the US strategy has been aimed at the militarisation of the entire arc between the Mediterranean and Central Asia.

Africom, the US Africa command implemented in 2008 with a headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, has now engaged in its first African war, in Libya. Africom aims at rapid intervention all across Africa but also has its sights on the "New" Middle East and Central Asia.

So now the US strategy can finally be examined in detail as a militarisation of the Mediterranean-Central Asian arch.

That would assure the US a wedge between Southern Europe and Northern Africa; assure military control over Northern Africa and Southwest Asia, with particular emphasis on Turkey, Syria and Iran; and "cut" Eurasia in two. In sum: divide and rule.

So this geopolitical road map was bound from the start to target Syria (already happening); Iran (a perpetual neo-con dream); and even Erdogan's Turkey - all useful for a US advance in Eurasia.

Meanwhile Eurasian powers Russia, China and India - all BRICS member countries - not to mention Iran and Turkey themselves, are slowly calibrating their response.

In the midst of this ever-shifting accommodation of tectonic plates, Afghanistan assumes an even more crucial role. It could - and should - recover its status of crossroads/hub bringing Central Asia and South Asia together. Yet that may ultimately happen not under American sponsorship - but under Chinese and Russian partnership.

The Moscow/Beijing counterpunch is to organise the SCO as a rival to NATO in terms of providing security for Central Asia - and for Afghanistan. Wily Hamid Karzai has seen which way the wind is blowing - and he's all for it.

Moscow and Beijing have decided to enter into "tight cooperation" (their terminology) not only in Central Asia but in the Middle East and North Africa as well; Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao admitted as much in a recent op-ed piece for the Financial Times newspaper.

The wake-up call was the Western intervention in Libya. The Chinese economic/political/diplomatic push will be organised under the aegis of the BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa).

The complex hidden agendas at play in Syria; the unraveling of the Ankara-Tehran-Damascus alliance; the West's double standards over Bahrain; Washington's determination to overstay its military presence in Iraq -these developments are all seen by Moscow and Beijing as part of a strategy to perpetuate Western dominance in the Middle East.

So expect even more feverish moves by the angel of history. Eurasian actors Turkey, Iran, Russia and China will be ever more active in the Mediterranean and Central Asia - the key geostrategic battleground in a 21st century New Great Game that might even be pitting Washington against Eurasia itself.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for the Asia Times. His latest book is Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera

Khalil Nouri's new article: An illustration of strategic change in Eurasian relations

A new article by Khalil Nouri in the HuffingtonPost illustrates how integrated are the issues in Afghanistan and the wider region of Central Asia. Locally the to-and-fro of negotiation is between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the interests of the respective parties actually include China, India, Russia, and of course the United States. Not much will happen without those and other parties engaging in the discussions. Afghanistan and its neighbors, once isolated and marginal to the current of world affairs, now commands a prominent place in world concerns. A civil war that is a surrogate international war; nuclear arsenals in the region; vitally needed reserves of gas, oil, and vital minerals; transport lines and pipelines that must remain open if the great populations centers of the world are to be supplied -- these issues force the interests of the Eurasian powers to converge in Central Asia.

But in a sense there is no "Central Asia" without the wider configuration of nations whose interests now clash in this region as well as a few key places elsewhere. The Indian Ocean, the Gulf, Iran, East Asia, eastern Africa -- these regions are likewise involved in the concerns of Central Asians.

I repeat myself on the pace of world change, but the process seems so awesome, as the emergence of new situations generates a plethora of unforeseeable possibilities. Crucial to this process is the ever-faster pace of technological development. The technologies of communication and transport are enabling social interchanges to trip relays of influence and interest all around the world, at an ever faster pace. New localities take on significances they have never had before, or at least not for a long time. This is the relevance of these developments for Central Asia. What was formerly marginal is now becoming more fully engaged with other places and peoples -- and in certain respects becoming inescapably crucial to whatever happens next. [For a link to the source of the Nouri article click on the title above.]

A Paradigm Shift on the Chessboard of the Afghan "Great Game"
Khalil Nouri.
HUFFPOST: Posted: 05/17/11 12:29 PM ET
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/khalil-nouri/afghanistan-pakistan_b_862292.html?view=print

Ever since Pakistan began lobbying against Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai's efforts to build a long-term strategic partnership with the U.S., urging him to look to Pakistan instead -- and its Chinese ally -- for help in striking a peace deal with the Taliban and rebuilding the Afghan economy, it was perceived to be Pakistan calling the shots for a new move on the chessboard of the Great Game.
However, despite how attractive that move may seem to them, it cannot come to fruition when few to even none of the players will consent to an all Afghan initiative; but in actuality, they are keeping the Afghan majority at bay from asserting their desire for such a plan. That said, this Pakistani rush to stack the deck in their favor in Afghanistan will fail due to the fact that there can only be one legitimate way to obtain stability in Afghanistan; through an all Afghan national ratification of a reconciliation process put forth for a genuine endgame to this decades-old grinding war in Afghanistan.
Subsequent to Pakistan's clandestine call in Kabul, the Kremlin announced a three-day official visit by Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari to Russia at the invitation of President Dmitry Medvedev. This was scheduled ahead of Zardari's trip to Washington, which has already been postponed; and now seems quite unlikely to take place anytime in the near future. Meanwhile, Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasoul was immediately sent to Beijing for a quick rendezvous with his Chinese counterpart. And, thereafter, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi was due to arrive in Moscow last Thursday on an official visit.
It seems, by all appearances, that this quartet is attempting to make strides towards an effort to introduce a model initiative initially engineered by Pakistan's craving for a prime leadership status in Afghanistan's forthcoming endgame.
However, in the wake of the May 2 killing of Osama Bin Laden and the Great Game players' interlaced stopovers in Moscow and Beijing, along comes another keen contestant in the game, but a solitary one; the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must nowconsider steps to advance his partnership cajolement with Hamid Karzai in Kabul.
These interwoven trips are all a push for strategic positioning by the aforementioned Great Game playing quartet in a post U.S. troop drawdown environment starting in July 2011 and ending in 2014. It also boils down to acrimoniously preventing a long term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. Pakistan, as the frontrunner to this antagonism, seeks to legitimize this notion where all parties have yet to give their endorsements. On the other hand, the underrepresented by majority, inept and weak government of Hamid Karzai who seems to have grown closer to Pakistan over the last year, cannot weather an outcome where all the key players have the decisive upper hand in this Great Game. Therefore, Karzai, whether he likes it or not, will have to abide by any outcome dictated to him by the major players. ....

[For more, click on the title above.]

The fear of popular suffrage extends even to Kazakhstan

Even Nazarbayev is enough concerned about the rising desire for popular suffrage that he is pretending to open up his country. Of course it isn't what it seems. See the whole of Abubakar's report by clicking on the title above.

Kazakhstan to hold snap election
Nursultan Nazarbayev calls for early presidential election after rejecting plan to hold a controversial referendum.
Last Modified: 04 Feb 2011 07:35 GMT

US State Department welcomed the president's decision, calling it "the right decision" [GALLO/GETTY]

Kazakhstan's president has called for a snap presidential election on April 3.

Friday's presidential decree will end Nursultan Nazarbayev's current term in office about 20 months before it was due to end.

Earlier, Nazarbayev rejected a plan to hold a referendum which was designed to allow him to rule unopposed for another decade.

Nazarbayev, 70, has ruled Kazakhstan for two decades and is almost certain to win the snap election he called.

Analysts say the opposition, which was caught off guard by the announcement, would simply not have enough time to prepare for the polls. more ...

Esposito and Lalwani on the plight of Christian minorities

A recent article in the Huffington Post by John Esposito and Sheila Lalwani on the threat to the wellbeing of Christian minorities in the Middle East and Central/South Asia is so significant that I reproduce it here. [Click on the title above for a direct link to the original article.] RLC

Christians Under Siege: The Challenge of Religious Pluralism in the Muslim World
by John L. Esposito and Sheila B. Lalwani

Conflicts and killings from Africa to Southeast Asia have brought into sharp relief the significant threat to religious minorities in some Muslim societies. While constitutionally entitled in many countries to equality of citizenship and religious freedom, religious minorities in the Muslim world increasingly fear the erosion of their rights -- and with good reason. Interreligious and inter-communal tensions have flared up not only in Egypt and Malaysia but also in Sudan, Nigeria, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Pakistan. Conflicts have varied from acts of discrimination, to forms of violence escalating to murder, to the destruction of villages and mosques.

Majorities of Muslims and Christians embrace religious diversity. However, a significant minority of hard-line conservative, fundamentalist, and militant Muslims -- like their counterparts in Christianity and Judaism -- are not pluralistic, but rather strongly exclusivist in their attitudes toward other faiths and even fellow believers with whom they disagree. As recent events in Egypt and Pakistan illustrated, these myopic religious worldviews can turn ugly.

The Coptic Christian community in Egypt is an ancient faith group whose presence in Egypt predates the coming of Islam. Relations between Copts and Muslims in society had generally been good. However, in recent decades, extremists have targeted Copts and the government. While the government has addressed their status as a security issue, it has failed to respond to the desire of Egypt's Christian Copts for full equality of citizenship: equal treatment with regard to building their churches; appointment into top positions, and non-discriminatory policies.

In the past year, extremists have again targeted Coptic Christians. In the town of Nag Hamadi in southern Egypt, seven people were killed when gunmen sprayed automatic fire into a crowd of churchgoers after a Coptic New Year's eve midnight mass on Jan. 7, 2010. Officials believed the attack was in retaliation for the November rape of a Muslim girl by a Christian man. But in December 2010, Egyptians were shocked when Muslim militants slaughtered 25 and injured another 100 Coptic Christian worshipers in Alexandria on New Year's Eve.

The magnitude of the atrocity triggered an unprecedented public outcry. Egyptian government officials, Muslim religious leaders, the media, and civil society moved quickly to condemn the attacks. Islamic leaders and groups from the Muslim Brotherhood to Dr. Ahmed Al-Tayeb, Sheik of al-Azhar (Egypt's highest religious authority) and the Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, along with the Coptic Pope Shenouda III, all came out with strong condemnatory statements and calls for Egyptian unity. Across the country Egyptians rallied to the defense of the Coptic community, its freedoms and its security. Thousands of Muslims turned out at Coptic Christmas eve mass services on Jan 6, 2011 around the country for candle light vigils and to serve as human shields and protect Coptic churches as they celebrated their Christmas. In Pakistan the assassination of a major politician who opposed its blasphemy law and its aftermath signaled any even more critical and worrisome threat.

A Christian woman, Asia Bibi, a 45-year-old mother of four was sentenced to death on charges of insulting Islam, in a case stemming from a village dispute. This case is not an isolated incident; allegations of blasphemy against the Prophet or desecration of the Quran have often been used against Christians in local disputes.

Asia Bibi, believed to be the first woman sentenced to death under Pakistan's blasphemy law, strongly denied the charges and requested a presidential pardon. In November 2010 the Lahore High Court in Pakistan barred President Asif Ali Zardari from issuing a pardon. The issue resurrected calls in Pakistan and internationally for the recall of the blasphemy law. The violent reactions of militant religious leaders and mosque preachers triggered the assassination of Salmaan Taseer -- the governor of Punjab and an outspoken critic of the blasphemy law -- by one of his bodyguards who shot him 27 times on 4 January 2011. The assassin, Mumtaz Qadri, admitted that he was influenced by the fiery sermons of militant preachers who had denounced Taseer. According to Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, an internationally recognized expert on Sout Asian politics:

Taseer's death has unleashed the mad dogs of hell, inspiring the minority of fanatics to go to any lengths to destroy the democratic, secular and moderate Islamic Republic of Pakistan. We Pakistanis are at the edge of a precipice and as a consequence the stability of the entire region is at risk. Not a single registered mullah in the city of Lahore with its 13 million people was willing to read Taseer's funeral prayers, because they were too scared to do so. Five hundred lawyers have signed up to defend Taseer's killer Mumtaz Qadri, but Taseer's wife cannot find a single criminal lawyer to prosecute him. It is hard to see which judge is even likely to pursue the case to its obvious conclusion.

Shockingly, the assassin has been greeted as a celebrity and hero. The extent of extremist influence, its power to turn out large street demonstrations and to intimidate liberal reformers could be seen in mass street rallies like that in Karachi where more than 40,000 people took to the streets in his support. At the same time, a notable number of more mainstream as well as militant religious leaders were quick to come out against repeal of the blasphemy law and the government has been quick to retreat, declaring it would never amend the law. The deafening silence of marginalized liberals and reformers, who fear to speak out, and political parties has been testimony of the extent to which extremists have been able to threaten and intimidate, target, issue death threats and kill. This is nothing new. Two of Pakistan's prominent reformist Islamic scholars and popular television preachers, Dr. Tahir al-Qadri and Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, have been forced in recent years to flee the country and live in exile in Canada and Malaysia.

Muhammad Tahir al-Qadri authored a 600 page fatwa, an exhaustive study of what the Quran and Islamic sources have to say about the use of violence, terrorism, suicide bombing. Qadri categorically and unequivocally rejects all acts of illegitimate violence, terrorism and every act of suicide bombing against all human beings, whether Muslim or non-Muslim. He also distances himself from all, whether fellow prominent religious leaders or Muslim youth, who have the potential to be radicalized, who would seek to justify and excuse suicide bombing and terrorism for any reason.

Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, who fled to Malaysia last year after police foiled a plot to bomb his Lahore home has publicly opposed the blasphemy laws since the assassination of Salmaan Taseer. Like al-Qadri's condemnation of terrorism and suicide bombings, Ghamidi attacks the blasphemy law on religious grounds, maintaining it has no foundation in either the Qur'an or the Hadith -- the sayings of the prophet Muhammad.

Religious tolerance and equality of citizenship remain fragile both in secular Muslim countries and in self-styled Islamic states. Mainstream Muslim religious and political leaders and the media need to not only condemn religious extremism and terrorism, as many have done nationally and internationally, but also speak out against those mainstream religious leaders and others who continue to advocate religious exclusivist theologies or doctrines and their implementation in law and society.

Critical is the implementation of reforms in religious thought, in law, and in society to ensure equality of citizenship. Both Muslim and Christian religious leaders will need to work more closely on religious and curricula reforms for madrasas, seminaries, schools, and universities and utilize mass media, the internet, and other avenues of popular culture. Failure to do so will not only feeds the growth of religious extremism but also contributes to the mentality of sectors of mainstream society, the estimated 500 to 800 lawyers, who offered to represent the self-confessed killer, and the physicians, teachers, police and others who have also publicly supported him.

The plight of Christians and other minorities in some Muslim countries in the face of a significant and dangerous minority of religious extremists and the failures of political and religious leaders threatens both the safety and security of religious minorities and the very fabric of Muslim societies.

Prof. John L. Esposito, author of The Future of Islam, is University Professor of Religion & International Affairs at Georgetown University and founding director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Sheila B. Lalwani is a Research Fellow at the Center.

A New Web Site on Central Asian Affairs

I am not alone, I think, in feeling overwhelmed at the flood of information on the web. At the same time I feel a need to track what is going on in the world.
How does anyone keep up to date who espouses the notion that modern anthropology should address real issues in our own time?
It seems fair to accept the notion -- formulated by cultural evolutionists like Leslie White a long time ago -- that the world is changing at an ever rising rate: Every new invention provides a basis for other inventions, sometimes a plethora of new ones, some of them inducing new social relations and new possibilities for imagination and creativity. So the pace of change may be geometric.
Whatever the principle, the reality seems to be demonstrating it: The pace of change is outstripping my own ability even to pretend knowledge of what is going on. As I tell my students, whenever I finally think I understand what is going on in the world I'm out of date.
So the problem is acute, keeping aware of what is going on.
Recently I have teamed up with Jaleh Fazelian of the Washington Univerity library to set up web sites to back up my courses. For the Central Asia course she has provided a kind of "home" site for many ways to track developments in Central Asia. There is so much there -- links to recent articles, blogs, basice sources -- that it is at least one place to start in trying to follow affairs as they develop in Central Asia, one of those places whose importance to the world generally is rising [again, I think, geometrically].
Click on the title above to see her site. [http://libguides.wustl.edu/content.php?pid=91285&sid=680158]

The US is helping improve Central Asia's Infrastructure

The infrastructural developments in Central Asia seem to be a major concern of the United States, owing to its evident importance as a vital line of supply for the in Afghanistan/Pakistan. Joshua Kucera's recent report reminds us of how critical Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are to the Americans. [Click on the title for a direct link.]

[Published First on EurasiaNet.org (http://www.eurasianet.org)

Central Asia: Washington to Expand Traffic on Northern Supply Route
November 18, 2010 - 2:05pm by Joshua Kucera

The United States intends to expand security cooperation with Central Asian states, US diplomats say. One means to do so, they add, is increasing the capacity of the Northern Distribution Network, which ships military cargo bound for US and NATO forces overland through Central Asia to Afghanistan.

The United States now can ship over 1,000 containers per week to Afghanistan via the NDN, said David Sedney, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia. “And we expect to increase this figure even further in the coming months,” he added. About 98 percent of that traffic passes through Uzbekistan [8], he said November 17 at a hearing of a House of Representatives hearing, titled The Emerging Importance of the U.S.-Central Asia Partnership.

“We must increase our engagement with Central Asia at all levels— working in the short term to expand logistical flows and, in the long term, expanding and deepening our relations from a DoD perspective, particularly in the security sector. Such engagement will help give our partners in Central Asia the support they need as we all work to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda,” Sedney said at the hearing.

Gen. James Mattis, the commander of US Central Command, was traveling through Central Asia, including visits to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. According to the US Embassy in Tashkent, Mattis signed the “2011 Program of Security Cooperation between USCENTCOM and the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Uzbekistan,” which it said was similar to the previous year's agreement.

“Through this increased engagement, we have seen an improved relationship with Uzbekistan, but many challenges remain,” said Robert Blake, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, who also testified at the hearing. “We continue to encourage the Uzbek authorities to address significant human rights concerns such as ending forced child labor [9], opening up the media environment, and demonstrating greater tolerance for religious activities. We are also encouraging building an investment-friendly business environment to enhance economic opportunities for American businesses and for the benefit of the Uzbek economy.”

The NDN could help expand Central Asia's economy, Sedney said in his written statement for the hearing. “By expanding trade linkages, the NDN has the potential to one day reconnect Central Asia to India, Pakistan, and other formerly closed markets, in a direct land route from the heart of Asia to the heart of Europe,” he said.

Both Sedney and Blake addressed the recent instability in Tajikistan, but neither appeared to endorse the Tajikistan government's explanation that transnational Islamist terror groups were behind the violence [10]. “In 2010, Tajikistan experienced a number of security challenges that the government told us originated with extremist elements,” Sedney said. Blake identified those fighting the government only as “former civil war combatants.”

Blake praised the performance of Kazakhstan as the chair-in-office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe [11]. “We think that Kazakhstan has done a very credible job,” he said. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will attend the OSCE summit in December in Astana, and the U.S. wants the OSCE to adopt an action plan at the summit to focus on improving border security, countering trafficking and promoting legal commerce in Central Asia, Blake said.

[Editor's note: Joshua Kucera is a Washington, DC,-based freelance writer who specializes in security issues in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East.
Joshua Kucera Afghanistan Tajikistan US Uzbekistan NDN War in Afghanistan
2010 © Eurasianet]

No sign in Kyrgyzstan that things are calming down.

Clashes interrupt Kyrgyz trial over April killings
17 Nov 2010 10:49:04 GMT
Source: Reuters

Angry relatives call for accused to be shot
* Defendants evacuated as trial descends into chaos
* Tensions remain in Kyrgyzstan after wave of violence
By Olga Dzyubenko
BISHKEK, Nov 17 (Reuters) - Relatives of protesters killed in an April revolt clashed with police in a Kyrgyz court on Wednesday, calling for the execution of those accused of killing scores in the uprising that toppled President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
Dozens of relatives of the dead broke through police lines at the trial held in a Bishkek sports palace, trying to reach the 22 accused, who include Bakiyev's former defence minister, before the defendants were evacuated.
"They must be shot!" the attackers cried, some grabbing microphone stands and wielding them to fight police a few hours after the start of the first trial stemming from the killings.
"Death for death! We will burn down your homes!" some shouted as the trial began. "You are damned ... We will pluck your eyes," yelled others.
The April uprising in the capital Bishkek triggered a wave of violence in the ethnically divided Central Asian nation, which hosts both U.S. and Russian military air bases.
Officials say 87 people were killed and more than 1,000 wounded on April 7 when Bakiyev ordered his special forces to shoot into angry crowds storming government headquarters.
The south of the Muslim state bordering China saw seizures of administrative buildings in May and the worst ethnic riots in its modern history in June when at least 400 people were killed.
The accused are charged with aiding or committing premeditated murders and face from 10 years in jail to life imprisonment.

[For more, click on the title to reach the source.]

News of conflict in southern Kyrghizstan

Strategy page is a site produced by "Strategy World" a site that seems devoted to the exaltation of war. The Strategy Page has information that is sometime very interesting. Here I reproduce a new article on the situation in Kyrghizstan.

StrategyPage.com

Dirty Money To Die For
June 11, 2010: Ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan has caused over 200 casualties in the last few days. In the south, where most of the Uzbek minority (14 percent of the population) lives, Kyrgyz supporters of ousted president Bakiyev are fighting local Uzbeks. Most of the violence is in the southern city of Jalalabad. While the violence appears to be ethnic, a lot of it is centered around Kyrgyz families that supported former president Bakiyev, had received jobs from him, and had been corrupt (either as government officials or businessmen). Bakiyev was himself was the head of a reform government, that replaced a corrupt one, and many Kyrgyz are wondering if the new reformers will be any cleaner. The Kyrgyz in the south, who supported Bakiyev, will lose a lot if the new government takes complete control of the south.

Russia is trying to get the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) to help with the unrest in Kyrgyzstan, and crippling the Afghanistan drug trade. The SCO consists of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, with Mongolia, Pakistan, India and Iran as associate members, or "observers". The SCO, unofficially, exists to keep the peace between China and Russia over economic activities in Central Asia. At the moment, China is winning the race to develop large oil and gas fields in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. China needs the energy, and is willing to pay whatever it takes. Since the Central Asian nations are run by corrupt leaders, often dictators, the Chinese have an easy, if expensive, way to gaining control of natural resources. At the moment, Russia more concerned with halting, or much reducing, the flow of opium, hashish and heroin from Afghanistan to Russia. These drugs have created millions of addicts and major social problems. Russia has supplied the United States with extensive information on the drug gangs in Afghanistan, and throughout Central Asia, and how the smuggling networks operate. Russia is also trying to get more cooperation from Central Asian governments as well. But in many of these countries, senior officials are on the drug gang payrolls.

A naval arms race is brewing on the Caspian Sea (the largest lake in the world, and a major body of water for Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia, and Turkmenistan). Iran recently built a 1,400 ton corvette at a Caspian shipyard. Russia, which controls access to the ocean via the Volga-Don canal, can bring in large warships (up to 140 meters long), and is doing so. Kazakhstan is seeking Russian help in expanding its fleet with three new corvettes and three new patrol boats.

June 6, 2010: Uzbekistan is preventing hundreds of railroad cars (loaded with NATO supplies for troops in Afghanistan) from crossing into Tajikistan, on the pretense that needed repairs must be made on several kilometers of rails. The real reason is a diplomatic dispute Uzbekistan has with Tajikistan. NATO must reroute these trains via other rail lines that enter Afghanistan.

June 3, 2010: Uzbekistan has removed its troops from a small portion of southern Kyrgyzstan. Uzbek troops had been there for nearly a week, to protect ethnic Uzbeks from Kyrgyz gangs loyal to deposed Kyrgyzstan president Bakiyev.

June 2, 2010: The new Kyrgyzstan government has blocked fuel shipments to U.S. aircraft using Manus air base. This has been done because the government believes that the family of recently deposed ruler Kurmanbek Bakiyev were receiving over a million dollars a week in kickbacks on the fuel contracts. As a result of the halt in fuel supplies, the U.S. is shifting its aerial tankers from Manas to other air bases in the region.

StrategyPage.com © 2010

Bhadrakumar's recent postings: valuable signs of shifting affairs in Central Asia and Afghanistan

M K Bhadrakumar of Asia Times Online has recently published two valuable reports worth careful attention.  The one that appeared on January 8 reveals how the struggle for pipeline access to the gas and oil fields of Central Asia [the "energy war"] is shaping up.  The one dated March 13, 2010, is about the tug of war over how to settle the conflict in Afghanistan.


Both of these you should read through.  The world we live in is not the same as it was and will not be the same tomorrow.  As we best can, we would like to track with it.  

Despite a likely pro-Indian bias, this guy's work helps us gain a sense of how affairs are moving.  

RLC


On pipelines in Central Asia:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/LA08Ag01.html

On the efforts to develop a secure agreement for peace in Afghanistan
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LC13Df01.html

Abbas Daiyar of Daily Outlook Afghanistan reports that the Uzbeks are behind the attaks in Kunduz

I had missed the report by Abbas Daiyar, reproduced on The Atlantic Community website, that the recent insurgency in Kunduz has been produced by Uzbeks connected to Al Qaeda. The Uzbek involvement in the Afghanistan/ Pakistan war displays the ambiguities of the insurgent movement in the region. The Uzbek insurgents are in a sense created by the repressive practices of Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan. Any form of dissent in that country is branded as “wahhabi Islamism” and dealt with severely. Karimov cannot bear dissent – displayed brutally by the gunning down of hundreds of people in Andijon in 2005. So only the most extreme can survive. What that means is that whoever opposes Karimov has little place to go but to extremists. And who are the dissidents they can link up with? Al Qaeda of course.

This is not to say that they are "moderate"; only that their agendas include removing Karimov, not a major interest of Al Qaeda, whose sights are actually on the Arab world, mainly Egypt and Saudi Arabia; nor of the Taliban who are animated as much by their Pushtun perspective as their conservative view of the world. Also, note that these are not the Uzbeks associated with Dostum, who have long seen themselves as part of Afghanistan. The two kinds of Uzbeks have little interest in each other. So far, we hear of no serious attempts to link up with each other.

We have already noted how complex the situation is for the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The situation for dissidents in Uzbekistan is analogous in some ways. Daiyar says that the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan has been drawn into the Afghanistan war by the American deal to transport materiel into Afghanistan through the northern route. The result of these developments for the government of Afghanistan and coalition of western nations supporting it, however, is that the opposition continues to be a fragmented body of dissidents who unite when they can but have little common interest in each other's agendas. So there is no single head to be lopped off in this war, but a diverse collectivity of people who for the time being agree to fight the Americans.

Daiyar's report is very helpful and may be revealing one reason for the recently announced enlarged concerns of the American military in Afghanistan. [Click on the title for a link to the Atlantic Community site.]

Idealism vs reality in Central Asian transport arrangements

Deirdre Tynan reports on Eurasia Insight that the Central Asian route of supply for the American war project in Afghanistan isn't working as planned. Welcome to the real world of Central Asia. What's most interesting in the article is the statement that the best route of supply is through Iran. Yes, that much has been true all along. Iran is the best route of access into Afghanistan (along with Pakistan) but because the Iranian government (lets not say the Iranians) is so obnoxious. RLC [Click on the title for a link to the source.]

Eurasia Insight:
CENTRAL ASIA: NORTHERN SUPPLY NETWORK FOR AFGHANISTAN HITS SNAGS
Deirdre Tynan: 7/23/09

The Northern Distribution Network, an American-assembled logistical pipeline designed to ease and expand the flow of supplies to coalition forces in Afghanistan, is off to a lackluster start.

The land routes for the delivery of non-military goods from Europe to Afghanistan via Central Asia provided just over 250 containers between June 5 and July 14. That total is far short of the number originally envisioned by military planners. During a Senate hearing in March, Gen. Duncan McNabb, the head of TRANSCOM, the military's transport wing, predicted that the NDN would transport "hundreds of containers" per day.

...

In June and July, according to publicly available data, only seven containers a day on average were arriving in Afghanistan via the NDN. A commercial source, speaking on condition of anonymity, characterized the performance as "ridiculous." Railway experts have also questioned whether the Uzbek rail route, which crosses the Afghan border at Termez-Hairaton, is capable of handling the amount of traffic envisioned by the US military and its allies.

David Brice, an international rail consultant who made recommendations on upgrading the capacity of Hairatan two years ago, said the depot remains under-equipped to deal with a large volume of traffic. "There will certainly be a capacity problem in the Termez-Hairatan section, which two years ago was handling its full capacity of three or four trains daily without the US traffic," Brice said.

... . "The ideal route for this traffic would be deep sea via Bandar Abbas and the new Iranian rail line being built from Sangan to Herat. It’s a massive problem, though, due to the current political tension between the United States and Iran."

... Given the complexities of overland operations, an air-transit deal for arms and military equipment, struck by Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow in early July, appears to be an important breakthrough. However, America's partners in the region say similar arrangements with the United States have not been negotiated.

Daniyar Mukataev, a spokesman for the Kazakh Ministry of Transport and Communications said, "There are no agreements or talks between Kazakhstan and the United States on the transit of military cargoes through the territory of Kazakhstan. ...

Some regional observers suggest the United States may have underestimated the complexities, both political and logistical, of establishing the NDN. "We have to realize that this network implies crossing of the borders of several states and every transit country is looking out for its own material interests," said Andrei Grozin, the director of the Central Asia Department at the CIS Institute in Moscow.

....Central Asian leaders publicly express concern about the security threats originating from Afghanistan, but, although they don't say so openly, the NDN is also seen as a lucrative opportunity, Grozin said. "The United States understands that for solving its geopolitical and other problems, it has to pay," he added.

But many experts are asking: is Washington overpaying? Several indicators would seem to suggest that the Pentagon's tendency to throw money at the problem is not producing desired results. Not only is the rail network not delivering as expected, financially speaking it's shaping up as something of a boondoggle.

Russian and Uzbek companies are reorganizing their structures to take maximum advantage of the Pentagon's commercial approach to the NDN. In a move designed to get the network up and running quickly, defense officials eased tender rules to allow for lucrative contracts to be granted with no competitive oversight. That has seemed to stimulate a feeding frenzy among regional transport entities.

...

Editor's Note: Deirdre Tynan is a freelance journalist who specializes in Central Asian affairs.

Uighur Uprising: continued signs of instability along the frontier

The street fighting in Urumqi and Kashgar indicate how much remains unresolved in the relations of power in Central Asia, that is, along the frontier of the former Soviet Union. And also the evident power of the new technology to enable collectivities to organize and coordinate in defiance of central power. The demonstrations in Iran have exposed the raw power that undergirds the system in place there. It is natural to wonder if the Uighur learned how to put it together by reading about the opposition movement in Iran. Could copy-cat movements develop elsewhere? We hear of tensions brewing elsewhere along the old Soviet border, that is, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Georgia. However it was done in Xinjiang, it is not over. Here is the NYTime report. RLC

July 8, 2009
New Protests in Western China After Deadly Clashes
By EDWARD WONG

URUMQI, China — Rival protesters took to the streets again on Tuesday, defying Chinese government efforts to lock down this regional capital of 2.3 million people and other cities across its western desert region after bloody clashes between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese.

The fighting, which erupted Sunday evening, left at least 156 people dead and more than 1,000 injured, according to the state news agency.

Police fired tear gas on Tuesday at Han Chinese protesters armed with clubs, lead pipes, shovels and hoes, news reports said. Earlier, in an attempt to contain China’s worst ethnic violence in decades, the authorities imposed curfews, cut off cellphone and Internet services and sent armed police officers into neighborhoods.

The official Xinhua news agency said an overnight curfew would again be imposed here on Tuesday night.

Despite the authorities efforts to bring the situation under control, hundreds of Uighur protesters defied the police, crashing a state-run tour of the riot scene for foreign and Chinese journalists.

A wailing crowd of women, joined later by scores of Uighur men, marched down a wide avenue Tuesday with raised fists and tearfully demanded that the police release Uighur men who they said had been seized from their homes after Sunday’s violence. Some women waved the identification cards of men who had been detained.

As journalists watched, the demonstrators smashed the windshield of a police car and several police officers drew their pistols before the entire crowd was encircled by officers and paramilitary troops in riot gear.

“A lot of ordinary people were taken away by the police,” a protester named Qimanguli, a 13-year-old girl clad in a white T-shirt and a black headscarf, said, crying. She said her 19-year-old brother had been detained on Monday, long after the riots had ended.

The initial confrontation later ebbed to a tense standoff between about 100 protesters, mostly women, some carrying infants, and riot police in black body armor and helmets, tear-gas launchers at the ready, in a Uighur neighborhood pocked with burned-out homes and an automobile sales lot torched during the Sunday riots.

But soon afterward, news reports said, hundreds of Han Chinese threw rocks and smashed shops owned by Uighurs, ignoring police who appealed to them over loudspeakers to disperse. At one point, some 300 Han Chinese marchers seemed to be heading toward a mosque, only to face clouds of tear gas, news reports said. And at one point, rival groups of protesters clashed until riot police moved in to set up a barrier between them, cheered on by Han Chinese protesters, Reuters reported.

The bloodshed here, along with the Tibetan uprising last year, shows the extent of racial hostility that still pervades much of western China, fueled partly by economic disparity and by government attempts to restrict religious and political activity by minority groups.

The rioting, which began as a peaceful protest calling for a full government inquiry into an earlier brawl between Uighurs and Han Chinese at a factory in southern China, took place in the heart of Xinjiang, an oil-rich desert region where Uighurs are the largest ethnic group but are ruled by the Han, the dominant ethnic group in the country.

Protests spread Monday to the heavily guarded town of Kashgar, on China’s western border, as 200 to 300 people chanting “God is great” and “Release the people” confronted riot police officers about 5:30 p.m. in front of the city’s yellow-walled Id Kah Mosque, the largest mosque in China. They quickly dispersed when officers began arresting people, one resident said.

Internet social platforms and chat programs appeared to have unified Uighurs in anger over the way Chinese officials had handled the earlier brawl, which took place in late June thousands of miles away in Shaoguan, Guangdong Province. There, Han workers rampaged through a Uighur dormitory, killing at least two Uighurs and injuring many others, according to the state news agency, Xinhua. Police officers later arrested a resentful former factory worker who had ignited the fight by spreading a rumor that six Uighur men had raped two Han women at the site, Xinhua reported.

But photographs that appeared online after the battle showed people standing around a pile of corpses, leading many Uighurs to believe that the government was playing down the number of dead Uighurs. One Uighur student said the photographs began showing up on many Web sites about one week ago. Government censors repeatedly tried to delete them, but to no avail, he said.

“Uighurs posted it again and again in order to let more people know the truth, because how painful is it that the government does bald-faced injustice to Uighur people?” said the student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the government.

A call for protests spread on Web sites and QQ, the most popular instant-messaging program in China, despite government efforts to block online discussion of the feud.

By Tuesday morning, more than 36 hours after the start of the protest, the police had detained more than 1,400 suspects, according to Xinhua. More than 200 shops and 14 homes had been destroyed in Urumqi, and 261 motor vehicles, mostly buses, had been burned, Xinhua reported, citing Liu Yaohua, the regional police chief.

Police officers operated checkpoints on roads throughout Xinjiang on Monday. People at major hotels said they had no Internet access. Most people in the city could not use cellphones.

At the local airport, five scrawny, young men wearing black, bulletproof vests and helmets stood outside the terminal, holding batons. The roadways leading into the city center were empty early on Tuesday, except for parked squad cars and clusters of armored personnel carriers and olive military trucks brimming with paramilitary troops. An all-night curfew had been imposed.

Residents described the central bazaar in the Uighur enclave, where much of the rioting took place, as littered with the charred hulks of buses and cars. An American teacher in Urumqi, Adam Grode, and another foreigner said they had heard gunfire long after nightfall Sunday.

Xinhua did not give a breakdown of the 156 deaths, and it was unclear how many of them were protesters and how many were other civilians or police officers. There were no independent estimates of the number of the death toll. At least 1,000 people were described as having protested.

Photographs online and video on state television showed injured people lying in the streets, not far from overturned vehicles that had been set ablaze. Government officials gave journalists in Urumqi a disc with a video showing bodies strewn in the streets.

The officials also released a statement that laid the blame directly on Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman and human rights advocate who had been imprisoned in China and now lives in Washington. It said the World Uighur Congress, a group led by “the splittist” Ms. Kadeer, “directly ignited, plotted and directed the violence using the Shaoguan incident in Guangdong.” The statement said bloggers first began calling for the protest on Saturday night and also used QQ and online bulletin boards to organize a rally at People’s Square and South Gate in the Uighur quarter of Urumqi.

The World Uighur Congress rejected the accusations and said that it condemned “in the strongest possible terms the brutal crackdown of a peaceful protest of young Uighurs.” The group said in a statement on Monday that Uighurs had been subject to reprisals not only from Chinese security forces but also from Han Chinese civilians who attacked homes, workplaces or dormitories after the riots on Monday.

The violence on Sunday dwarfed in scale assaults on security forces last year in Xinjiang. It was deadlier, too, than any of the bombings, riots and protests that swept through the region in the 1990s and that led to a government clampdown.

Uighurs make up about half of the 20 million people in Xinjiang but are a minority in Urumqi, where Han Chinese dominate. The Chinese government has encouraged Han migration to many parts of Xinjiang, and Uighurs say that the Han tend to get the better jobs in Urumqi. The government also maintains tight control on the practice of Islam, which many Uighurs cite as a source of frustration.

But an ethnic Han woman who lives in an apartment near the central bazaar said in a telephone interview that the government should show no sympathy toward the malcontents.

“What they should do is crack down with a lot of force at first, so the situation doesn’t get worse, so it doesn’t drag out like in Tibet,” she said after insisting on anonymity. “Their mind is very simple. If you crack down on one, you’ll scare all of them. The government should come down harder.”

Michael Wines, Jonathan Ansfield and Xiyun Yang contributed reporting from Beijing, and David Barboza from Shanghai. Huang Yuanxi contributed research from Beijing, and Chen Yang from Shanghai.

The melting ice sheets of the world: What will it mean in Central Asia?

Joseph Romm tells us that Bolivia’s 18,000 year-old Chacaltaya glacier is gone. Chacaltaya glacier was famous because it has been studied for many years. One reason for the scholarly interest in Chacaltaya has been its location on the equator where the shifts in the axes of the earth have had a different effect from the ice sheets at the poles. It provided information on the history of the earth that some other glaciers did not. Now it's gone. [Click on the title for a link to his article.]

This is not to lament the loss of a famous glacier so much as to use the occasion to reflect on what it could mean if the glaciers of the Himalayas would similarly disappear. Joseph Romm reminds us that the waters that run off in spring provide the surface flows that enable the irrigation of crops; millions of people live on water that originates as glacial runoff. The runoff of the winter snows on the mountains, which replenish the glacial ice, also supply the aquifers that supply wells and sometimes rise to the surface further downstream.

So when he tells us that there is already massive loss of glacier ice in the Himalayas comparable to the loss of glaciation in South America Romm is sounding a warning about the eventual risks for populations who depend on the water flows from the great ice-covered mountains of Inner Asia -- altogether a substantial portion of the world's populations. Romm quotes a report by Swiss geologists who say that as many as half a billion people are at risk.

An eventual problem that could further complicate affairs in an already complicated social world.

Tajikistan's troubles are mounting [Wired]

Below I highlight some issues of interest. RLC



“Central Asia's cold war over heat” Pulitzer Center Wired

By Ilan Greenberg

March 26, 2009

Wired

Ilan Greenberg, a journalist based in New York, lived in Central Asia from 2002 to 2007. The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting contributed funding for the reporting of this article from Khojand, Tajikistan.

"This is why we have no electricity, no water," says Alovutdin Sololiev, waving at the broken-down traffic lights as he speeds into a major intersection, asserting a right of way not recognised by other drivers. His gesture extends from the dead signals to the belching little gas generators with rubber hoses, which colonise the pavements like a maze of octopuses stranded on cement. "Nobody wants to stop and figure out rules."

Since gaining independence from the Soviet Union almost 20 years ago, most of Tajikistan – including big cities like Khojand – has little access to electricity or running water for the majority of the year. Tajikistan generates electricity from hydroelectric dams, which don't work when the country's alpine lakes freeze during winter months. Without electricity, the country can't run the Soviet-era pump technology that delivers clean water to cities, villages, and farms.

Central Asia's political problems compound Tajikistan's resource problems. A deal it struck this winter to buy electricity from neighbouring Turkmenistan, for example, was terminated by Uzbekistan, which controls a critical piece of the grid between the two countries. The governments of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are currently having back-room talks, according to diplomats in the region, but the two countries have long been engaged in a resource-driven cold war. Each side has multiple grievances against the other, but key among them are Tajikistan's demands that Uzbekistan supply its energy and Uzbekistan's demand that Tajikistan release more water downstream.

The volatile resource conflict flares beyond Tajikistan across Central Asia, the massive centre of the Eurasian continent which stretches into Russia. However, unlike Europe's recent energy crises, which were rooted in Russia's foreign policy goals, Central Asia's energy issues are mostly homegrown. The region is rich in oil and gas – and in Tajikistan, rich in water – but hampered by state rivalries, quixotically drawn borders, authoritarian modes of government and daunting pipeline problems informed by geographical isolation and crippling geopolitical calculations.

While the problems begin at home, Russia's role in the politics of energy in Central Asia is starting to grow. “Russia in various ways has started to insert itself into these intra-regional power conflicts,” says Katherine Hardin, senior director for Russia and Caspian research at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy consultancy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Russia is Central Asia's major customer for natural gas and weakening demand from Europe is likely to affect gas deliveries to Russia, said Hardin.

Russia sells Europe all the gas Europe will buy, gaining foreign currency and profit in the process, but it doesn't have enough gas to meet both European and domestic demand. Russia therefore buys Central Asian gas on the cheap, using its control of the supply route to Europe as a bargaining chip to demand low prices, and then marks up the gas and re-exports it to Europe. Slackening European demand for gas means Russia can meet most of Europe's needs with its own gas supplies, and that has pushed down demand for Central Asian gas. That, in turn, could jeopardise a large portion of some Central Asian governments' revenues. "It's interesting to me that we're seeing Gazprom sticking itself into the region, and to ask how that will play out," said Hardin.

Russian economic difficulties are poised to exacerbate the region's resource conflict. The global financial crisis imperils the payments from Russia on which Central Asia relies, potentially destabilising regimes, expanding powerful criminal networks, and disrupting Nato strategies in Afghanistan, which shares a long northern border with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. In a recently released report widely cited by Western diplomats here, the International Crisis Group concluded that there is a risk of social unrest in Tajikistan, and that the country is no longer a “bulwark against the spread of extremism and violence from Afghanistan.”

Back in Khojand, Sololiev drives his car through the city's dangerously laissez-faire intersections to pick up home repair supplies. His visit to Tajikistan is a brief one: he has returned from a job as a construction worker in Russia to spend March with his family, but plans to return to Russia next month, when he hopes Russia's massive building spree will resume. This pattern of work is not uncommon. More than a million Tajik migrants work in Russia's seasonal construction industry, as well as in Russian factories and in its agriculture sector. According to the International Monetary Fund, half of Tajikistan's GDP is derived from the income of workers in Russia.

Tajikistan has almost no jobs to offer returning migrant workers. Sololiev knows of only two factories in Khojand, Tajikistan's second largest city: a spirits factory, and an Italian-Tajik jeans manufacturing co-venture. The government has promised to hire 5,000 workers to build one of two new planned dams, but wages are expected to be low. The energy problem, meanwhile, has encouraged an across-the-board lack of business investment. Money from pay cheques have been poured into home repairs and used cars imported from Russia and Europe, but without electricity in winter, few returning migrants have started new businesses.

“How can I work in Tajikistan without electricity? I have to go back to Russia. Whether there is work in Russia for me is something I can't think about. Let the Russians think about it,” said Sololiev, still driving his car, newly purchased.

See the story as it ran at Wired.co.uk

For related reporting and dispatches from the field in Tajikistan visit the Tajikistan: Winter of Discontent project page.

Tajikistan: Winter of Discontent is part of our Food Insecurity project that includes Nigeria: Oil Rich but Hungry and Stalking a Wheat Killer.

Stoehlein: "Real Security in Central Asia is Not a Great Game"

Andrew Stoehlein has a nice discussion of the current issues in Central Asia. It's worth reading to remind ourselves of how much cliches masque realities that need to be carefully examined.