Because poverty is seldom shared out equally, and because Central Asia, like the rest of the former Soviet Union (hereafter FSU), had become accustomed over several decades to modest but gradually improving or at worst stable living standards, backed by comprehensive health, education and welfare services, the economic decline(1) which began with perestroika and accelerated after independence has accentuated inter-ethnic and inter-regional tensions.
Problems in inter-ethnic relations in Central Asia are sometimes attributed to the arbitrary nature of the inter-state boundaries dictated by Stalin, and they are certainly a factor. But such problems of inter-ethnic relations as the borders created are paralleled by economic problems arising from Soviet planning's ignoring of the borders. Thus Uzbekistan the FSU's largest fruit and vegetable producer, is not self-sufficient in food, because over 40% of its agricultural land is under cotton; it produced 90% of the FSU's cotton, but had to import cotton textiles, manufactured elsewhere in the Union; and it accounted for one-third of Soviet gold output, but was the second poorest Soviet republic. Tajikistan's northern province exported cotton and textiles to Russia, while its southern provinces imported textiles from Russia; and one of the world's largest aluminium smelters was built in Tajikistan, even though of the three main requirements for aluminium production - bauxite, cryolite and electricity - it possesses only the last. In all the Central Asian republics agriculture occupies a far higher proportion of the population than in Russia, but only Kazakstan is self-sufficient in food. Soviet-era irrigation projects undertaken mainly to increase cotton production reduced the Aral Sea to one-third its former area, while leakage, evaporation and uneconomical use of water (supplied free, creating no incentives to economical use) meant that up to two-thirds of the water is wasted. The scale of wastage can be inferred from the figures cited below for non-domestic water consumption in cubic metres per capita per annum. They are for 1994, but the situation has not changed significantly since. The first column contains five high-income industrialised countries, the second four countries with climates similar to Central Asia, the third Russia and the Central Asian countries.(2)
Table 1: Non-Domestic Water Consumption in cubic metres per capita per annum [please note: Tables from the Bulletin are available in hard-copy only - they cannot be accessed electronically]
Turkmenistan's extremely high consumption derives mainly from its small population (4.01 million) and dependence on the Kara Kum (now Turkmenbashi) Canal. This runs well over 800 km from the Amu Darya through the Kara Kum Desert, where summer temperatures cause high losses from evaporation, added to which there is substantial seepage through the banks and bed. But all the Central Asian republics show very high consumption compared to Australia and to the four countries in Column 2, which have similarly hot climates and economies in which agriculture, including cotton growing, occupies an important place.
Another problem created by arbitrarily fixed Soviet-era low prices and indifference to costs is exceedingly inefficient use of energy. In the table below the same countries are compared, this time in terms of the GDP per capita in US Dollars generated in 1994 for a given energy consumption.(3)
Table 2: 1994 GDP per capita in US$ generated for given energy consumption
The FSU countries show uniformly poor results compared not only to the high-income countries, but to low-income Egypt and lower-middle income Turkey.
Where, as in the FSU, exceedingly uneconomic use of such basic resources as water and energy has become entrenched over more than two generations, no quick transition to international standards can be expected, and any recovery at all necessitates large-scale capital investment. Soviet-made equipment, manufactured by enterprises safeguarded against foreign competition by import bans or tariff barriers, and usually possessing at least regional monopolies which inhibited domestic competition, has not often proved best of its kind(4) and tended also to be retained in service far longer than is normal in non-Communist industrialised countries(5), so massive updating is necessary. However, in Central Asia gross domestic investment in 1996 compared to 1988 was 97.2% in Tajikistan (only because it was already low in 1988), 65.9% in Uzbekistan, 55% in Kyrgyzstan, and only 15.5% in Kazakstan(6) (Turkmenistan claimed an unbelievable 210.8% in 1994, and data for later years are not published). In Russia it was only 26.2% of the 1988 level, so Russia cannot now be, as it was in the Soviet period, a significant provider of capital investment to Central Asia. Most funding therefore has to come from outside, as private sector investment or as grants or loans from governments and international institutions.
Interethnic Relations
The effects of prolonged impoverishment on inter-ethnic relations in such heterogeneous societies as those of Central Asia are likely to be unfavourable, because poverty seldom spreads evenly between ethnicities, and minorities are often made scapegoats for it. The most obvious targets in Central Asia are the Russian communities, mostly concentrated in urban centres and higher-paid occupations. Although inter-ethnic violence, except in Tajikistan, has so far mostly been between locals rather than anti-Russian(7), growing local nationalism, erosion of privileged status, worsening economic conditions compared to Russia's(8), and a pessimistic view of a future in which locals are in charge and fluency in their languages in obligatory, has prompted many Russians, especially the best qualified, to leave,(9) particularly from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. However, this cannot be attributed solely to Central Asian independence; it only intensifies a trend which began in the late 1970s, and accelerated in the years of perestroika. Between 1980 and 1990 850,000 more Russians left Central Asia than immigrated there; their numbers increased very slightly in Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan, but fell in the other three republics,(10) and their proportion of the population fell in all five because of the indigenes' much higher birthrates(11). In 1990 more than twice as many Russians left Central Asia as arrived there.(12) Awareness of the economic damage this exodus could do prompted Turkmenistan to grant dual citizenship to resident Russians in December 1993, and Tajikistan to follow in September 1995. But Presidents Nazarbaev of Kazakstan and Karimov of Uzbekistan oppose the very principle, for fear in Kazakstan that dual citizenship would be claimed by its very large Slav population, and in both countries that to grant it to Russians could engender pressure for similar status from the many Central Asians who live outside their titular states, e.g. Tajiks in Uzbekistan, or Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan; and President Akayev, while declaring himself in favour, did not persuade his parliament to approve it. In Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan parliamentary elections in 1995 and 1996 respectively have caused Russians additional apprehension, because the number of Russians returned is far lower than their proportion of the electorates would warrant.
Regionalism
The crucial point about Central Asian regionalism is that it is divisive precisely because politics were regionalised but the economy was not. Tajikistan's six constituent regions, for example, became incorporated into the All-Union division of labour, but economic integration between them remained low. 75% of its light industry was located in the northern Leninabad oblast and most of its output, primarily textiles, went to other Soviet republics, while its southern regions had to import textiles from Russia. Uzbekistan exported cotton, fruit and vegetables to Russia, and in return imported not only Russian textiles, but also most of its wheat, instead of from neighbouring Kazakstan. Soviet economic policy, however, was only one element in the mosaic of inter-regional interests and contradictions.
Soviet-era claims that the spread of literacy, general rise of culture caused by industrialisation, and the reconstruction of agriculture brought Central Asians closer to each other were not convincing. Moreover, tensions among the regions intensified as grotesquely uneven development patterns endured. They could be checked temporarily by coercion (such as campaigns against mestnichestvo ['Localism'] under Stalin and Khrushchev) or by channelling more resources from the centre (as under Brezhnev), but were always present.
Interaction amongst regional elites formed and forms the core of all symbolic processes (including political ideas, public ideologies and development strategies) and practical endeavours. During the Brezhnev era, the party-state structure demonstrated almost infinite capacity to control regional ambitions in the republics. Moscow's 'stability of cadres' policy allowed the web of informal 'understandings' and exchanges amongst regional elites to become institutionalised. As long as a region fulfilled its economic obligations to the Union and complied with the CPSU's general line, Moscow did not seem to object to the peculiarities of local personnel policy.
Within the rigid framework of the Soviet system regionalism could never lead to violent political action. Moreover, it had been institutionalised, and henceforth could be controlled and manipulated to some extent. A ruling regional elite did not need to invoke traditional institutions of power to maintain its privileged status - its legitimacy was guaranteed by Moscow. Generally, in the Soviet period traditional social structures and popular Islam on the one hand, and regionalism on the other operated on different planes - private and public. However, these phenomena were closely linked, and there always remained a possibility that informal networks would be activated as the primary mechanism for establishing the authority of a regional clique.
The Soviet drive to modernise Central Asia accelerated economic development, growth of education, secularisation of culture and political mobilisation of the masses, and much altered the fabric of society. The profundity and irreversibility of these changes, however, were questionable, as seventy years of Communist experiment were not comparable with many centuries of a continuous cultural tradition. Soviet rule's most important failure was its inability to reform the Weltanschauung, traditional allegiances and omnipresent spirit of collectivism that made individuals completely dependent on such institutions as the family, neighbourhood, solidarity network and coterie of fellow-regionalists. In a handful of cities, at industrial enterprises and scholarly institutions, in government agencies, social praxis ostensibly conformed to the patterns of mono-organisational Socialism found elsewhere in the USSR. But in rural areas that were of little interest to Moscow-based industrialisers, and where even the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) proved uninterested in or incapable of setting up networks of informers(13), an ethnocultural mentality based on traditional patrimonialism, popular Islam and regionalism survived unscathed, and any breakdown in the mechanisms of social control would inexorably transpose it into the realm of political action. The collapse of the Soviet Union was just such a breakdown.
Social Service Problems
Part of Central Asia's inheritance from the FSU was social services of scale and comprehensiveness comparable to those of much wealthier European 'welfare states'. For example, in the United Kingdom 1 person in 52 is employed in the National Health Service, whereas in Kazakstan in 1989 the figure was 1 in 41. These Soviet-era services raised educational, health and welfare standards well above those of their non-Soviet neighbours, but were largely financed by subsidies from the Soviet central budget, as was pension provision, made additionally onerous by the fixing of low retirement ages, 60 for men and 55 for women, with even earlier retirement permitted not only from hazardous or physically taxing occupations such as mining, but from others, such as teaching, not generally considered to be either. With the end of Moscow's subsidisation, ability to sustain these services at Soviet-era levels declined sharply. Wages, (though often paid months in arrears) consume nearly all available funds, leaving little or nothing for maintenance, let alone replacement, of hospital or school buildings, or equipment, or pharmaceutical supplies. Public health is also endangered by water supplies polluted by run-off of herbicides and pesticides, and by excessive use, inadequate storage and handling of them on farms. Infant mortality rates (deaths per 1,000 live births: Turkmenistan 60, Tajikistan 41, Kyrgyzstan 29, Uzbekistan 28, and Kazakstan 27) are lower than in most other low-income countries, but are tending to increase; they are high compared to Russia (19) and very high compared to high-income industrialised countries, which are all in the range of 4 to 8.(14)
Another problem inherited from the FSU is loading of industrial enterprises with social responsibilities (housing, creches, clinics, often schools and holiday homes) which in market economies are undertaken by local authorities, specialist private firms, or a mixture of both. Enterprises are in principle shedding these, but the pace is slow and the process often resisted by management (because enterprises known as good providers could more easily recruit and retain workers), by workers (who justifiably fear being charged full costs for previously subsidised or free services) and local authorities (which lack funds and experience for their new responsibilities). Accustomed to seventy years of Moscow's taking the major decisions and providing funds to implement them, Central Asia shows signs of a dependency culture, in which high-technology capital-intensive solutions are sought from outsiders, nowadays OPEC countries rather than Russia; for example, World Bank teams noted tendencies to envisage solving irrigation problems through expensive Western-provided drip-irrigation and sprinkler systems, rather than better maintenance and less wasteful use of existing irrigation networks.
Human Rights
In general the position is patchy(15), with no progress in 1996 in Turkmenistan, slight progress in Uzbekistan, and some regression in the other three republics. President Niyazov of Turkmenistan continued to employ all the apparatus of Stalinism except mass imprisonments and executions. In October 1996 he opened an Institute of Democracy and Human Rights in Ashgabat;(16) but this attempt to improve his international image was somewhat marred by his describing its function as 'protecting the Presidency from the influence of other branches of power', and warning citizens not to take their complaints too far. He has courted public acceptance by providing benefits, notably free gas, electricity and water, monthly allowances of butter, sugar, flour and meat at 1/50th of market prices, and very cheap petrol.(17) However, several signs emerged during 1996 that economic problems were increasing and having social consequences. In March 1996 the price of bread was increased by 150%; in June he denounced official corruption; in July the petrol subsidy was reduced and the quantity rationed to 100 litres a month, and free electricity supply to households capped, with consumption above a monthly limit charged at industrial rates. In January 1997 the subsidised flour ration was cut for urban residents from 8 to 6 kilos a month, and confined to those earning less than 200,000 Manat (about $US 37) a month.(18) On 14 January 1997 he disclosed that in 1996 crime had risen by 16% nationally, prostitution, including of girls as young as 12, had become widespread, and that police were profiting from it and from drug trafficking.(19) On 4 February he announced that from 1 March government employees' and military salaries would be doubled. The Manat's exchange rate has declined catastrophically compared to all other Central Asian currencies. It was introduced during 1993, at 2 to 1 US Dollar; by 30 April 1997 it had fallen to 5,300, or by 2,650 times, compared to falls by the other Central Asian currencies of 1.43 times (Tajik Rouble, since mid-1995), 2.29 times (Kyrgyz Som, since 1993), 2.32 times (Uzbek Sum, since July 1994) and 12.1 times (Kazak Tenge, since 1993) and of 4.62 times by the Russian Rouble since 31 December 1993.(20) Niyazov appears to have no current challengers, but a regime which combines oppressiveness with progressive impoverishment must be considered potentially unstable.
At the end of 1996 the annual Freedom House survey classed Turkmenistan and Tajikistan among the world's seventeen most oppressive regimes, noted some improvement in Uzbekistan (previously classed among the most oppressive), classified all three and Kazakstan as 'not free' and Kyrgyzstan as 'partly free'. Kyrgyzstan, the only Central Asian country whose President did not previously head its Communist Party was hitherto much the West's favourite for its freedom of press and political activity, and as the Central Asian country most receptive to World Bank recommendations. But the US State Department's annual human rights survey of 1996, issued on 30 January 1997, while agreeing with Freedom House in classing Turkmenistan and Tajikistan as 'worst', and Uzbekistan as little better, diplomatically noted that growth of Presidential power in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakstan had 'caused them to lag in the development of democracy and human rights'. Human Rights Watch, less diplomatically, noted a 'dramatic deterioration' in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan during 1996.(21)
Kazakstan's new Constitution was put to referendum on 30 August 1995, and despite being boycotted by all Opposition parties, a 90% turnout and 89% approval were officially claimed. These figures were challenged by a human rights organisation, which monitored 622 polling stations and found the average turnout only 34%. The US Embassy publicly criticised the new constitution, which gives the President much expanded power, as 'undemocratic'.(22)
From mid-1996 reports of popular unrest and growing socio-economic problems in Kazakstan became more frequent. A law increasing pensionable age by three years, to 63 for men and 58 for women, and removing some of the earlier retirement provisions mentioned above, was passed by Parliament in June only after initial rejection, and over protests from the trade union movement. In June also the government had to intervene in the agricultural sector, cancelling half its debt and all its arrears in payments for electricity supplied up to 1 May. In August the national airline and a major bank were declared bankrupt. In October Russia cut off electricity supplies to parts of North Kazakstan, claiming $420 million in unpaid bills, and a 60% shortfall in Kazak coal deliveries to Troitsk power station. Kazakstan riposted by terminating coal supply to all fourteen power stations in Omsk oblast. During October-December there were demonstrations of up to 4,000 people in Almaty, Shymkent and other centres against low living standards, irregular electricity and fuel supplies, and lack of democratic rights. In November also the government put pressure on independent TV and radio stations, shutting some down for claimed invalidity of their licences or for using frequencies which allegedly interfered with those used by air traffic controllers. A tendering process was introduced in January 1997, but several stations were again banned in February. In January metal workers and local transport employees in South Kazakstan struck over wage arrears, as did 1,500 teachers in Semipalatinsk oblast.(23) Wage and pensions arrears were estimated as approaching $1 billion, and there were fears that the increase in money supply if suddenly paid would cause drastic devaluation of the Tenge.(24) Later a union leader appealed for international aid, claiming widespread famine, and that over one-third of households had no heating, electricity or gas.(25) An independent research institute challenged the official 3.6% unemployment rate, estimating it as at least four times that, and noting that a survey of 1,513 respondents in eight oblasts had found that 28.8% had had no regular employment for several months.(26)
In Uzbekistan, on the other hand, there were some apparent advances in human rights. In March 1996 an OSCE mission visited Tashkent to discuss human rights violations and drug control policy with the Human Rights Commissioner and the Justice Minister. On 25 June Karimov met President Clinton in Washington, and human rights were among the issues discussed. Laundering of Uzbekistan's image was clearly an objective of Karimov's visit to the USA; it was hardly coincidence that on the day after the Washington meeting, an office of George Soros' Open Society Institute opened in Tashkent. In July Karimov defined the 'next tasks' as reforms in the areas of human rights and individual freedoms, and went on to specify opposition parties, a Western-style press and observation of citizens' rights as essential to Uzbekistan's continued development, and as 'assuring democracy'. In August Abdulmanop Pulatov, a leading dissident, in exile in the USA since 1993, returned to Tashkent on personal assurance from Karimov of his safety and freedom of political activity, and at the end of the month Karimov told parliament his government was committed to increased cooperation with human rights organisations. Pulatov tested Karimov's promises immediately, by holding on 7 September a Congress of the Human Rights Society, of which he is Chairman. Delegates said that the human rights situation was 'beginning to improve'. A further pointer was the opening four days later of an OSCE-sponsored human rights conference of non-governmental organisations, government officials and media representatives. However, Pulatov's Congress was kept until the last moment in doubt whether it would be permitted, and the media participants in the OSCE conference were government-selected.
The agenda of the parliamentary session that opened on 26 November 1996 contained a number of democratisation proposals, including establishing a government institute to ensure that legislation conformed to international standards of human rights and democracy, and laws for establishing political parties, protecting journalists, and allowing greater access to state information. But it met in the shadow of the abduction and beating up of the son of a leading dissident on 9 November.
Karimov in February 1997 said the main task for 1997 was to build a property-owning middle class to be the 'bedrock' of the state, and called for it be a year of 'human interests'. What he meant remained to be seen, but his statements accompanied increased courting of foreign investment (which doubled in 1996 compared to 1995), an increase in the hitherto slow pace of privatisation, and a need to court the IMF, which temporarily suspended a $US 185 million loan because of Uzbekistan's failure to cut inflation as much as planned. Two successive bad grain harvests and a $700 million shortfall in tax revenues also impaired Uzbekistan's image as economically the most competent Central Asian government, but a good cotton harvest secured 100,000 tonnes of Russian wheat in exchange for 18,200 tonnes of cotton.
Islam
While in Soviet Central Asia political institutions and processes were apparently completely freed from influence by religion, Islam remained a source of identity, transmitter of cultural tradition and, more generally, way of life. In the Brezhnev years a kind of accommodation emerged, under which state-sponsored secular institutions and norms of behaviour dominated the public realm, while Islam was tacitly recognised as an integral element of private life. A survey conducted in 1985 showed that, e.g., 55.6 percent of Tajik Communists considered themselves true Muslims.
At least two factors contributed to this. First, so-called 'official Islam', revolving around functioning mosques, registered mullahs and officially recognised religious communities, was closely regulated. All 'working' mosques and clerics were registered with the Spiritual Directorate of the Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakstan, and with the Council for Religious Affairs. Official mullahs received salaries, and their appointment required official approval. Second, 'parallel', or 'popular' Islam had too apolitical a character and too diffuse a structure to rally believers under an anti-Soviet political banner.
Popular Islam centres on ceremonies and rituals, most of which date back to pre-Muslim times. Proper commemoration of birth, coming of age, marriage and death is vitally important to individuals or social groups in maintaining their social status. But even day-to-day life is largely regulated by beliefs perceived as Muslim, but in reality having more to do with ancient fertility and agricultural rites. The existence of a thriving institution of shamans, especially in Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, testifies to this. Furthermore, folk Islam was obedient to authority and rejected political struggle. Bearing this in mind, it should be easier to avoid the temptation to explain retention of traditional customs as necessarily manifesting religious zeal against the secular state.
Islam is an important factor in forming national identities in the newly independent Central Asian states, but its precise role and influence are difficult to determine. Seventy-three years of Communist rule accustomed the society to a belief system that sought to control all aspects of life, and might therefore be seen as creating receptivity to Islamic fundamentalism. That this aspect of events in Afghanistan certainly engendered a common concern between Russia and the Central Asian states was shown by their reaction to the Taliban's capture of Kabul in August 1996. Russia's Defence Minister immediately flew to Tashkent to meet his Central Asian counterparts, and met Karimov before the talks began. At a subsequent meeting of Central Asian Presidents, Karimov advocated intervention to support Northern Afghanistan's Uzbek warlord, General Dostum, but found no support. The Taliban's attempt to take Mazar-I-Sharif in May 1997, though unsuccessful, suggests that the Afghan civil war is far from over, and has entered a new phase, much closer than hitherto to the Central Asian borders.
Soviet rule, while not eradicating Islam, eliminated its Jadidist modernisers and drove it partly underground, thereby tending to freeze it at its pre-1917 stage and exclude it from the modernisation process, for which the Soviet regime created and promoted a large body of secularised if not actively atheist locals, especially prominent in the urban administrative elite and intelligentsia. For secularised ex-Communists it is a very long step from enhancing political acceptability by acquiring some Islamic credentials, to embracing a fundamentalism which most of the Muslim world rejects. Nor is there any reason to believe fundamentalism particularly attracts Central Asian Muslims. Three surveys by Richard Dobson of USIA between August 1992 and March 1993 indicated that in Kazakstan 27%, Kyrgyzstan 14% and Uzbekistan 43% of respondents were not believers, and 30%, 24% and 32% respectively did not think Islam should play a larger role. A fourth survey, of frequency of mosque attendance, showed that only 20% of believers attended once or more a month, while 46% attended once a year or less.(27) With those who attend not at all, or once or less a year, outnumbering by over three to one those who attend once or more a month, Islam fundamentalism seems to have few prospects in Central Asia.
However, to emphasise the threat it poses serves both domestic and foreign policy interests of the ruling regimes of Central Asia, and also of Russia. Domestically it provides reasons why not only secularised but also normal Muslim indigenes and the non-Muslim minorities should support their existing leaders. Internationally it helps to engage interest from Western countries, including elements which have already nominated Islam as the 'next enemy'. These might well be reluctant to assist 'previous enemy' authoritarian regimes of hastily-recycled Communists with dubious human rights records, but may do so if those regimes successfully present themselves as front-line fighters against an even more disagreeable alternative. It is also common ground between Russian and Central Asian leaders that potential investors rate stability above democracy; all Central Asian leaders, especially Presidents Karimov and Nazarbaev, frequently praise the stability they claim to have delivered.(28)
Russia, too, has strong incentives to emphasise the Islamic fundamentalist threat, as Muslims, though mostly secularised, total almost 20% of its population. The Chechen rising was not initially motivated by religion, and was led by a secularised Chechen, former Soviet Major-General Dzhokhar Dudayev, but it soon acquired an Islamic content; with that and the Bosnian experience behind them, Russia's leaders are wary of potential repetitions elsewhere, and incline to elicit domestic and foreign support by branding all Islamic radicalism as fundamentalist.
The key to Islam's future influence in Central Asia is probably Uzbekistan, the most populous Central Asian republic, heir to a long Islamic tradition, incorporating the ancient Islamic centres of Bukhara and Samarkand, and more influenced by the Persian-Islamic culture than any of the others except Tajikistan. Karimov's fostering of national identity specifically links Islam to Uzbek history. In May 1995 he decreed establishment of an International Islamic Studies Centre, charged 'to study the teachings and philosophy of Islam and the religious, historic and cultural heritage of the Uzbek people'.(29) He in effect claimed Timur (Tamerlane) as an Uzbek (though he lived three centuries before the term came into use), by proclaiming 1996, the 660th anniversary of his birth, 'The Year of Timur'; in October 1995 he opened a 'Timur and Timurid' Museum in Tashkent, and unveiled statues of Timur there, in his birthplace (Sharhisabz) and in Samarkand.(30) In March 1996 it was announced that Uzbeks making the Hajj would receive government organisational assistance, and that the national airline would arrange flights.(31) However, no direct subsidisation appears to be involved, and secularism remains state policy. The new Law on Political Parties, promulgated in January 1997, specifically bans parties based on religion, ethnicity, or advocating war or subversion.
Russia and Central Asia
Russia's continuing interests in Central Asia are based on several factors. The weightiest of them in Realpolitik is defence of the hegemonic position held since the late 18th century. But in popular perception, and therefore in domestic politics, probably more important is that despite the post-70s exodus there are still large Russian populations there. Russia's post-Soviet military doctrine specifically includes protection of the lives and interests of Russians living elsewhere in the CIS among its obligations. What this might involve is not specified, but it at least leaves open the possibility of unilateral Russian intervention in inter-ethnic conflict.
The seriousness of this possibility varies between Central Asian states, with Kazakstan as a special case, where the Russian-majority northern provinces might in extreme circumstances choose secession over exodus, and expect Russia to support them. In all of them the Russian population constitutes a majority of the urban skilled workers and non-manual professionals, and Russian is the language not only of administration and 'modern' activities, but also a lingua franca of communication between local ethnicities. Apart from the Bukhara-Samarkand area of Uzbekistan, where bilingualism in Tajik and Uzbek is widespread, Central Asian bilingualism usually means knowing one's native language and Russian. In the Russian Empire and Soviet Union few Russians acquired a local language. Resident Russians therefore perceive the post-Soviet elevation of local vernaculars to 'state languages' as a threat, even though deadlines for learning them are either unspecified, or allow ample learning time (in Kazakstan, for example, the legislation for administrators gives Kazaks until 2005 and non-Kazaks until 2010 to become proficient in Kazak).
A foreign policy imperative backed by economics is to counter influence-seeking by other countries. Turkey has religious affinity with all major local nationalities, ethnic and linguistic affinities with all except Tajiks, and a secular model of statehood. As against that it has limited financial resources, a serious ethnic problem with the Kurds, and its post-Ottoman rulers have sought its future more in association with Europe than with the Middle East and Central Asia. Iran has ethnic and linguistic affinity with Tajiks, and a long-standing Islamic cultural and religious status which modern Turkey lacks. But Iran's Shiism divides it from all of Central Asia except remote Gorno-Badakhshan, its Islamic statehood model is emphatically unattractive to Central Asia's ruling elites, and despite its oil wealth, its parlous economic state limits its ability to gain influence by financial means. Saudi Arabia has wealth and status as the cradle of Islam, but a statehood as unacceptable as Iran's. The Central Asian states are diversifying their relations with the outside world, including that of Islam, but neither Islam in the abstract or specific Muslim states currently pose any serious challenge to Russia's political or economic influence.
In the medium term the major political and economic threats Central Asia's socio-economic crisis poses to Russia's predominance come from the OECD countries, and in the longer term from China. US, Canadian, European, Japanese and Korean firms are already active in Central Asia, in consortiums, joint and individual ventures, or as sole contractors. For example: in the Caspian Pipeline Consortium formed to link Kazakstan's onshore Tengiz oilfield to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, and therefore dependent on Russian goodwill, Russia has a 44% share, compared to 33.5% shared between US and Western European firms (Chevron, Mobil, British Gas, AGIP), 19% by the Kazakstan and 7% by the Oman governments. But that where Kazakstan has territorial control, it seeks to minimise Russian involvement, can be inferred from the composition of the consortium developing the Tengiz oilfield itself. Chevron and Mobil have 70% of the shares between them, the Kazak company Munaigas 25%, and Russia's Lukoil only 5%.
The same consideration applies to two Soviet-built oil refineries in Kazakstan, at Pavlodar and Aktyubinsk. The larger, at Pavlodar, was supplied with oil from West Siberia, but has been idle because supply stopped owing to Kazakstan's inability or unwillingness to pay.(32) The contracts for modernising both have gone to US firms, CCL and Exxon respectively. A pipeline is being laid from Tengiz to both refineries, to end Pavlodar's dependence on West Siberia. At the end of 1995 Exxon initiated an oil exploration joint venture in an area on Kazakstan's coast south of Tengiz.
Similar opposition to Russian influence-seeking has been apparent in the prolonged negotiations over the Caspian. Disagreement centred on whether it is a sea or, having no outlets, is a lake. If a sea, the Law of the Sea Convention would apply, giving each country an Exclusive Economic Zone extending halfway to the opposite coast, whereas if a lake, division is a matter for mutual agreement. Defining it as a sea would confine Russia to its north-west corner, the least promising for oil and gas; the best areas would be shared between Kazakstan and Azerbaijan which, not surprisingly, argued for definition as a sea. Negotiations dragged on until 12 November 1996, when agreement was reached by all except Azerbaijan for each country to have exclusive rights to 45 miles (75 km) from its coast, resources outside those limits to be developed jointly.
Central Asian leaders regularly pay lip service to Russia's continued importance, but their countries' trade patterns show determination to reduce dependence on it. However, the extent to which they can do so is currently limited. Soviet planning has left their economies narrowly based, with only a small range of exportables. Their largest nearby alternative markets are the Indian subcontinent and China. But they are separated from the subcontinent by poor roads, absence of railways, an unstable Afghanistan, and difficult terrain. Communication with China is easier, because of better roads and a rail connection through Xinjiang. But China's main centres are at the far end of the country; and the subcontinent countries and China are all low-wage economies, so that the Central Asians' low wages confer no comparative advantage, and with China's modernisation vastly more advanced than Central Asia's, much of China's industry is greatly superior to theirs.
In the longer term China's development potentially threatens Russia's influence. For some time to come China is likely to invest its growing wealth within its own borders. But the experience of Japan and the 'Asian tigers' tends to suggest that a long period of rapid growth eventually leads to expansion abroad. In Central Asia this is already apparent in, for example, the South Korean Daewoo corporation's two vehicle assembly plants opened in Uzbekistan during 1996,(33) or recent contracts for Mitsui and NEC to modernise Kazakstan's telephone system,(34) and for Itochi, JGC & Nissho Iwai to build a polypropylene plant in Turkmenistan.(35) The next decade may see the start of Chinese involvement in ventures of comparable scale. By 1994, within three years of Kazakstan's becoming independent, China has already become its second largest trading partner, exchanges of visits between Central Asian and Chinese leaders are frequent, and the Central Asian leaders have regularly placated China by denouncing separatism 'of any kind'(36) (readily understood to refer to Uighur separatism in Xinjiang). Reports of Jiang Zemin's discussions with Nazarbaev in February 1997 included possible involvement in exploiting Kazakstan's hydrocarbon resources, though no decisions were mentioned.
Uighur separatism long predates Central Asian independence, but has undoubtedly been stimulated by it. Among the reasons for unrest is that average incomes in Xinjiang are only about half the all-China average. The disparities between China's flourishing coastal and lagging interior provinces have long been a cause of internal dissatisfaction; one way to ameliorate them would be establishment in provinces bordering the former USSR of consumer goods industries to supply the Central Asian and Far Eastern markets. However, the Russian Far East's population is only about one-tenth and purchasing power about one-fifth of Central Asia's; it is overwhelmingly Russian, intensely suspicious of China and Chinese, suspected of ambitions to resettle and ultimately re-acquire territory taken by Russia in the nineteenth century.
The Central Asian situation is entirely different. The territory taken from China in the 1860s is far less than that seized in the Far East, is not adjacent to China's heartland, and now part not of conquering Russia but of conquered Kazakstan. As China's economic expansion continues, a search for new markets is likely to take it the same way as its predecessors in industrialisation. Initially this would probably involve exchanging Chinese machinery, consumer goods and food products for Turkmen gas and Kazak oil, gas and coal, but if past experience is relevant, the next step would be to establish subsidiaries in Central Asia itself.
But even without Chinese involvement, Russia's economic dominance of Central Asia has already been eroded enough for its continued political dominance to be in question. Russia is in no position to lift the Central Asian states out of their socio-economic crisis, and their leaders clearly have mixed feelings about its continued hegemonial aspirations. The priority Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in particular are attaching to development of their gold deposits, for example, is largely because gold is valuable enough to be flown out, whereas their other exports depend for transit on Russian goodwill.
That Russian goodwill is not always forthcoming has been illustrated on several occasions. In the early post-independence years unrealistically low Soviet-era domestic fuel prices remained in force. Russia paid $10 per thousand cubic metres for Turkmen natural gas, which, when piped to Western Europe, sold for $72. When Turkmenistan raised its price to $28 Russia and Ukraine stopped paying, and in 1993 Russia ceased to buy Turkmen gas for export, replacing it with West Siberian. The only customers left to Turkmenistan were CIS countries, paying only 60% of world prices(37) and often unable to pay at all.(38) Turkmen gas production slumped from 90 billion cubic metres a year in 1990 to 35.2 billion in 1996.(39) Niyazov's hopes for Turkmenistan's future depend on resumption of deliveries to Europe via the Russian pipeline and a line now under construction through Iran to Turkey, and on new pipelines to supply northern Iran and Pakistan. The Pakistan project is estimated to cost $2 billion, and a preliminary agreement was signed in August 1996. US Unocal and Saudi Delta companies hold an 85% share between them, Russian Gazprom 10%, and a Russo-Turkmen joint venture, Turkmenrosgaz, 5%. However, its feasibility depends on restoration of stability in Afghanistan.
Niyazov's most grandiose project of all is a gas pipeline through Afghanistan and China to the Koreas and Japan.(40) Given its length, and alternative supplies available from gas fields closer to North-East Asia in Siberia and Sakhalin, this is probably best classified for now as a pipe dream.
Another important reason for Russia to maintain a Central Asian presence is drugs traffic. Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan are estimated as growing about 40% of world opium supplies, and though most of it leaves via Pakistan, the porosity of Tajikistan's frontiers engendered by civil war, and the ease with which Customs controllers and Border Guards(41) (wretchedly paid when paid at all) can be bribed, is making a route via Tajikistan and Russia to Western Europe increasingly attractive to smugglers. Apart from the dangers a Russian mafia-controlled narcotics trade could pose to Russia itself, not to be seen combating the trade would harm Russia's relations with the West.(42)
Weapons smuggling is another reason for Russia to maintain tight control over external borders in Central Asia, particularly those with Afghanistan. Apart from weapons taken into Tajikistan by United Tajik Opposition forces for use within that country, the abundance of arms in Afghanistan makes it an obvious source of cheap weaponry for other militant movements or for gangsters. However, weapons are easier to detect than drugs, and weight for weight much less lucrative to smuggle; so far, at least, they are not a problem of comparable severity.
The Russian military is particularly sensitive to situations along its borders. Although nuclear weapons can destroy a country without need to invade, Soviet military thinking from the mid-1960s assumed that in a future global war the superpowers, to avoid mutual suicide, would not use nuclear weapons against each other's territory, and the war, largely non-nuclear, would be fought around the periphery of the Soviet bloc, against NATO between Norway and the Transcaucasus, and against US-Japanese-South Korean forces (in the worst case Chinese forces as well) in the Far East. Central Asia appeared the least vulnerable area, especially after the collapse of CENTO, the Communist coup in Afghanistan, and the revolution in Iran. But foreign aid to anti-Communist forces in Afghanistan resuscitated nineteenth-century fears of hostile penetration of Central Asia, prompting an ill-considered military intervention.(43) Russia's present military leaders, mostly aged under 55, therefore commissioned since the mid-1960s or later, were taught throughout their careers that their most important mission was defence of the Soviet periphery. Bases, airfields, early warning radars, storage depots, supply and communications systems were located under that concept in Eastern Europe and frontier areas of the Union, which everywhere except in the Far North and Far East are now independent states. The cost of relocation in Russia is quite beyond current resources, so agreements were concluded, with as many CIS states as were willing, for Russia to retain facilities, station troops, and guard the external frontiers with Border Guards wholly or partly Russian, and wholly under Russian command. The Central Asian states have generally accepted Russian proposals, seen as involving little derogation of sovereignty (merely perpetuating, mostly on reduced scale, a century-old presence, and conferring some financial benefit by charges for use of the facilities), and saving them the expense and problems of building up their own armed forces quickly. Few Central Asians became officers in the Soviet Army, and hardly any reached senior ranks, so the Central Asian armies' officers are still mostly Russians,(44) and Central Asians now being trained will not be adequately qualified for senior posts until 2010 or later. This makes medium-term dependence on Russia inevitable, so it is convenient to have Russia shoulder much of the defence burden, and far cheaper for Russia to do so than to build new installations along its own borders. The arrangement, like the playing of the 'Islamic threat' card, therefore suits both sides at present. But it does not follow that Russia's military presence will prove a permanent fixture. Progress of détente between Russia and NATO is not without vicissitudes, but there is a general trend towards reduced confrontation and increased cooperation, and to redefinition of NATO as a general collective security organisation rather than one specifically directed against Russia.
Conclusion
The Central Asian states are having difficulties in overcoming the problems they inherited from the Soviet era, namely narrowly-based mainly rural economies, with industrial plants mostly too large and too specialised to meet their own needs, obsolete equipment in both industry and agriculture, health education and welfare services and pensions sustained only by the large subsidies they received from the Soviet central government, and dependence on Russian goodwill which is not always forthcoming for transits of imports and exports. They are well-endowed with natural resources, but these were mostly under-exploited in Soviet times and to exploit them requires capital investment which neither they nor Russia can provide. There is as yet no convincing evidence in any of them that the economic decline, far worse than in the Great Depression of the 1930s, has bottomed out, and social problems created by this are showing a tendency to increase, as are authoritarian tendencies in all of them except, perhaps, Uzbekistan. Russia retains considerable influence, and the Central Asians' efforts to reduce their dependence on it are constrained by the paucity of routes for export and import trade that do not go through Russian territory. In the short to medium term Russia's influence is challenged by development possibilities offered by Europe, USA, Canada, Japan and South Korea which Russia cannot match. In the longer term, China has a potential for joint ventures or direct investment which Russia is also unlikely to be able to match. Russia's strongest hand is its military and border guard presence, but this may prove in the medium-term future less acceptable to the Central Asian countries than it is now.
Geoffrey Jukes
Centre for Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies
Australian National University
Endnotes:
(1) This point is made by Stephen G. Wheatcroft, 'Revisiting the Crisis Zones of Euro-Asia', Part Two, Russian and Euro-Asian Bulletin, April 1997, Centre for Russian and Euro-Asian Studies, University of Melbourne, pp. 1-5.
(2) The data are extracted from Table 10 of From Plan to Market: World Development Report 1996, published for the World Bank by Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 206-7 (hereafter cited as 'From Plan to Market...')
(3) ibid., Table 8, pp. 202-3. The unit of energy consumption is one kilogram of oil equivalent.
(4) For example Soviet machine-picked cotton on the international market was found to contain too much trash to secure top prices; gold-extraction machinery in Uzbekistan left enough gold behind to justify a major contract to an Australian company to reprocess an enormous tailings dump, and Kyrgyzstan to entrust exploitation of its gold deposits to a Canadian firm.
(5) Abel Aganbegyan, one of Gorbachev's economic advisers, stated publicly that by the beginning of perestroika 71% of machinery in Soviet industry was obsolete.
(6) CIS Goskomstat data base.
(7) Since the signing of a cease-fire and power-sharing agreement between the government and the United Tajik Opposition in December 1996 there have been a number of killings of Russians in Tajikistan. These are denounced by both sides, and appear to be perpetrated by local 'warlords' who have benefited from the disorder of the Civil War.
(8) Per capita GNP at Purchasing Power Parity is calculated at $US 789 in Tajikistan, 1788 in Kyrgyzstan, 2318 in Uzbekistan and 2572 in Kazakstan, versus $4293 in Russia. Wheatcroft, op. cit., p. 8.
(9) E.g. at the peak in mid-1994 non-locals, overwhelmingly Russians, were claimed to be leaving Tajikistan at the rate of 2,000 a month. RFE/RL Daily Digest 20 June 1994. The Russian Ambassador to Tajikistan claimed that 365,000 of a Slav population of over 500,000 had left by mid-1994. Stolitsa 37/1994, p. 18. Of a Russian population of 1.1 million about 300,000 left Kyrgyzstan in the first two years of independence. Richard B. Dobson, 'Kyrgyzstan in a Time of Change', Central Asian Monitor (hereafter CAM), 2/1994, pp. 17-22. Of about 400,000 ethnic Germans in Kyrgyzstan, 75% have left. P. Kubicek, 'Building Social Tolerance: the Case of Kyrgyzstan', CAM 5/1996, pp. 16-19.
(10) Natsional'nyi sostav naseleniya SSSR, Moscow, Finansy i statistika, p. 26.
(11) Between the 1979 and 1989 censuses the Russian population in Central Asia increased by 2.2%, while that of the indigenous ethnicities increased by 20.6%. Rybakovskii, L. L., Sotsiologicheskiie issledovaniia 9/1995, p. 91.
(12) 179,000 arrived, 366,000 left. ibid.
(13) Malashenko, A., 'The 1980s: a New Political Start for Islam, in Russian Politics and Law Vol 31/4, 1993, p. 25
(14) 'From Plan to Market ...', Table 6, pp. 198-199.
(15) An article by Abdumannob Polat listed numerous human rights violations by Turkmen and Uzbek security forces including beating, forcible seizure and extradition of dissidents who are citizens of or resident in or attending conferences in other CIS countries. CAM 2/1995, pp. 31-36.
(16) ITAR/TASS 23 October 1996.
(17) CAM 1/1996, p. 11.
(18) Interfax 7 January 1997.
(19) CAM 2/1997, p. 16.
(20) The figures are taken from the Russian and Euro-Asian Bulletin, CRE-AS, May 1997, p. 12.
(21) CAM 1/1997, pp. 1-2.
(22) CAM 2/1997, pp. 8-9. Despite Akayev's reputation as a liberal, he had earlier attempted to institute controls over the press, which he accused of 'irresponsible behaviour stirring up social and political conflicts', and focussed particularly on the Russian-language Svobodnye gory parliamentary newspaper. Interfax 15 July 1994.
(23) CAM 2/1997, p. 6.
(24) CAM 2/1997, p. 7.
(25) AFP 9 February 1997.
(26) CAM 4/1996, p. 7.
(27) Each sample was of about 1,200 respondents, numbers of indigenes and Russians in each sample approximately corresponding to their proportion in the country's population. Richard B. Dobson 'Islam in Central Asia: Results of Four Surveys', CAM 2/1994, pp. 17-22.
(28) That in stressing stability they are not only addressing foreign investors is shown by a survey conducted by the US Institute of Peace in Central Asia in 1989. Roughly 90% of respondents defined strengthening of the social order and discipline as the most important problem, whereas only 47% of respondents in Uzbekistan and less than 40% in Kazakstan thought freedom of speech and a free press important. N. Lubin in Colton T. J. and Tucker R. C. (eds) 'Patterns in Post-Soviet Leadership', Westview Press 1995, p. 221.
(29) Interfax 20 May 1995.
(30) K. Petersen in CAM 5/1996, pp. 14-15. In a gesture which may have owed as much to economics as to politics, the Tashkent statue was placed on a pediment previously occupied by one of Karl Marx.
(31) CAM 2/1996, p. 11.
(32) At one time Russia was charging Kazakstan three times as much per tonne for West Siberian crude as it was paying for oil it imported from fields in South-West Kazakstan. Even after correction of this anomaly it charged Kazakstan $43.12 a tonne for oil supplied from Orenburg, while paying only $29.37 a tonne for Kazak oil. Information from M. Alexandrov.
(33) One in Tashkent, the other in Asaka, Andijon oblast, opened 25 March and 19 July 1996. CAM 4/1996, p. 13.
(34) ITAR/TASS 13 January 1997.
(35) Signed on 18 February 1997. RFE/RL 19 February 1997.
(36) E.g. during a 3-day visit to Beijing, Kyodo 13 September 1995, and following widespread Uighur rioting with 'several thousand' arrests admitted by Chinese authorities, Xinhua 19 February 1997.
(37) Delovoy mir 20 September 1994, p. 5.
(38) Niyazov's announced doubling of salaries of government employees and military from 1 March 1997 was to be paid for by fining Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan for arrears of payment for gas delivered in 1994-96. CAM 2/1997, p. 19.
(39) CAM 2/1997, p. 17.
(40) Delovoy mir 20 September 1994, p. 5.
41 Lieutenant-General Tarasenko, commanding Russian Border Guard forces stationed in Tajikistan, complained in June 1995 that since 1 January there had been over 1,000 desertions, and that only 2,100 of a required 3,500 conscripts reported for duty. A (Tajik) Lieutenant-Colonel Sharipov serving in the Russian 201 Motor Rifle Division (the core of the CIS peacekeeping force in Tajikistan) was arrested with eight others in June 1995 for alleged involvement in the murders of 12 soldiers and use of military aircraft to convey drugs to Russia. CAM 4/1995, p. 10.
(42) On 27 February 1995 the UN International Narcotics Control Board identified Central Asia as a major source of cannabis, opium and ephedrine. 390 kilos of raw opium were seized on the Afghan-Tajik border in August 1995 alone. Drug-related arrests in Kyrgyzstan rose from 909 in 1990 to 2544 in 1994. CAM 2/1995, pp. 3-4, and 5/1995, pp. 11-12. A Russian Border Guards officer told a press conference on 21 November 1995 that so far that year 2 tonnes of drugs had been seized on the Turkmen-Afghan border, 1800 persons, mostly Afghans, detained, and there had been 50 armed clashes, mostly with drug smugglers. Interfax 21 November 1995.
(43) For the military objections, and the reasons they were overruled, see Krasnaya zvezda 17 November 1989.
(44) The only detailed figures relate to 1994, in which year the percentages of officers in the Central Asian armies who were ethnic Russians were: Kyrgyzstan 70%, Tajikistan 80%, Turkmenistan 85%, Uzbekistan 90-91%, Kazakstan 90-94%. Lt-Colonel V. Mukhin 'The Slav Factor in the Muslim CIS States', Moscow, Armiya, 10/1994, pp. 20-26.
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