Stefaans Brmmer in London
The fear of full-scale war in Afghanistan is threatening to unravel the fragile threads of democracy and stability in the Central Asian former Soviet republics to the north.
Central Asia is dotted with small republics boasting the “-stan” suffix Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakstan, Turkmenistan, Kirghizistan home to a bewildering array of ethnic groups as colourful as the rugged and often mountainous terrain of the area. The clash of cultures and religion has bequeathed these states a political and social precariousness that has often erupted into brutal civil war since the fall of the Soviet empire in the early 1990s.
Now, as governments and opposition groups struggle to come to terms with the demands and possible effects of the United States “war on terrorism”, new such eruptions loom.
Leaders of these states have since the September 11 attacks performed an extraordinary egg-dance to, on the one hand, have themselves counted into President George W Bush’s alliance, but, on the other, not to alienate constituents who in some cases have links with Afghanistan’s Taliban, or who equate any action against the Taliban as an attack on Islam itself.
In Kazakstan, Central Asia’s most populous country and an important staging post for the Soviet army during the latter’s 1979 to 1989 campaign in Afghanistan, the solution has been simple: reassure the West of its support and indeed it is reported already to have allowed US fighter jets to be stationed at its airbases but to prevaricate and downplay matters at home.
Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov, whose government faces an Islamic guerrilla campaign allegedly launched from Afghan soil, has used the opportunity to clamp down on media freedom and to increase his campaign of repression on the Islamic opposition. Only state-sanctioned forms of Islamic practice are allowed, and thousands are languishing in jail for contravening the rules.
But in neighbouring Tajikistan, whose southern border is contiguous to territory controlled by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, the main opposition to the Taliban, the effects and choices may be starker. Tajikistan is ruled by something of a government of national unity sworn foes until a few years ago in a bloody but little reported civil war in which tens of thousands were killed.
In the 1992 to 1997 civil war, Tajikistan President Imomali Rahmonov’s forces slugged it out with the Islamic-dominated United Tajik Opposition. Now the latter’s forces are incorporated into Rahmonov’s defence force. But, according to Tajik television, opposition leaders have threatened to renounce the 1997 peace should Rahmonov collaborate with the US in strikes on the Taliban.
While many in the Tajik opposition are sympathetic to the Taliban, Rahmonov’s government has been a crucial supporter of the Afghani Northern Alliance, which has been courting the US and promising to help find Osama bin Laden. The alliance uses Tajikistan as a key supply base.
Compounding the chances of renewed civil instability in Tajikistan is the threat of new waves of refugees streaming towards the border from within Afghanistan. Tajikistan is one of Central Asia’s poorest and least developed countries and would find it hard to cope with an influx of refugees. Already before the attacks on the US, 10 000 refugees were amassed on the Afghan side of the border.
The ambiguity of the situation facing Tajikistan has found expression in Rahmonov’s pro-US statements, while other officials have made their dissenting views all too clear.
Ibrahim Usmonov, chairperson of the Tajik parliamentary committee on international affairs, has been quoted as saying: “If the US launches an attack against Afghanistan, which will cause casualties among the civilian population, and damage to economic objects and cultural relics, it will become itself like the terrorists.
“In this case [of an indiscriminate US attack], confrontation between the Islamic world and Christian world will increase to very dangerous levels,” Usmonov said. “It is impossible to overcome evil through evil.”
In Central Asia, the balancing act has become harder and the choices starker in the new world.