News Report: Security Threats Against CSTO States Aimed Against Russia as Well – Deputy PM

Security threats against CSTO member states are also considered to be threats against Russia, Russian Deputy Prime Minister said on Thursday.

BISHKEK (Sputnik) — Security threats against Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and other member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) are also considered threats against Russia, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Thursday.

"We understand clearly that threats to Kyrgyzstan’s security, threats to Tajikistan’s security, to other CSTO member states are also threats aimed against Russia. They are at various reaches: far reaches, medium reaches, close reaches. That is why the issue of our cooperation, of our mutual commitments, collective actions and increase of military efficiency – both of Russian military units and bases and of national military forces of CSTO member states – is an issue of a collective response to threats that, as we can see, have no tendency to reduce," Rogozin said at the meeting of the Interstate Commission of military-economic cooperation in Bishkek.

News Story: BRICS Summit Expresses Concern Over Afghanistan

Brazil, the Russia, India, China, & South Africa - BRICS

Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, China, and South Africa - BRICS - on Sunday at a summit expressed deep concern over the current security situation in the Middle East, especially Syria and Afghanistan and North Africa, according to reports.

"We are deeply concerned about the situation in the Middle East and North Africa. We support all efforts for finding ways to the settlement of the crises in accordance with international law and in conformity with the principles of independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the countries of the region," the leaders of BRICS said at the end of the summit.

BRICS called upon all the concerned parties in Syria "to work for a comprehensive and peaceful resolution of the conflict taking into account the legitimate aspirations of the people of Syria, through inclusive national dialogue and a Syrian-led political process based on Geneva of 30 June 2012 and in pursuance of the UN Security Council Resolution 2254 and 2268 for their full implementation."

Read the full story at TOLOnews

News Story: Kazakh professor lauds SCO's outstanding work

ALMATY, June 27 (Xinhua) -- The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is a reputable, influential and appealing organization that has reduced transnational crimes and made people feel safe, a Kazakh professor has said.

Regional organizations such as the Eurasian Economic Union, the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations hope to enhance cooperation with the SCO, Seylbek Musataev, a professor from Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, said in an interview with Xinhua.

He said countries such as Belarus, Sri Lanka and South Korea also expect to hold dialogue with the SCO, which currently groups China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Since the SCO was established 15 years ago, the organization has advocated and put into practice the pioneering Shanghai Spirit, which features mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for diverse civilizations and pursuit of common development.

Devoted to establishing a democratic and just new international economic order, the SCO has actively combated extremism, separatism and terrorism, and has deepened cooperation in politics, economy, national defense, energy and transportation, Musataev said.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Story: Russia, China could drive anti-terrorist struggle: CSTO chief

Collective Security Treaty Organization
(CSTO) Logo

MOSCOW, April 28 (Xinhua) -- Russia, China and relevant regional bodies could become locomotives of an international coalition to combat terrorism, the chief of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) said here Thursday.

Nikolai Bordyuzha, secretary general of the organization, said "there is a need for consolidation among Russia and the CSTO member states, (as well as) China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which could become locomotives of the entire anti-terrorist struggle."

He made the remarks at the fifth Moscow International Security Conference, reported the RIA Novosti news agency.

Russian President Vladimir Putin urged Wednesday in his address to the conference that a broad international front under United Nations (UN) auspices be established, an idea he first proposed at the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly last year.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Story: IS gaining clout in Afghanistan, Russian Deputy FM says

ALMATY, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The Islamic State (IS) militant group has been strengthening its position in Afghanistan since the end of 2015 and now there are about 6,000 IS militants there, the Russian deputy foreign minister has said.

Supporters of the organization had been found in 25 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said in an interview with Kazakh newspaper "Kazakhstanskaya Pravda" published on Thursday.

Among these fighters were citizens from countries in Central Asia and the North Caucasus, such as Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and North Caucasian republics of Russia, said Karasin.

He disagreed with those who said that the threat from Afghanistan was allegedly often exaggerated.

Read the full story at Xinhua

Editorial: China in the Caucasus

Wiki Info - Image: Wiki Commons

By Emil Sanamyan

For Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, China is an important investor and possible regional stabilizer.

On his first visit to Beijing, then-Armenian defense minister Vazgen Sargsyan is said to have thrown the hosts into a state of mild confusion when he remarked that (paraphrased) “as we say in Armenia, together with the Chinese there is more than a billion of us.” Jokes and linguistic barriers aside, the comment reflected the main motivating factor behind Armenia’s outreach to China. When dealing with larger and often hostile neighbors, it is only natural for small countries to seek out support or, as a paper published by the Armenian government’s think tank put it, a “special partnership,” externally.

The Caucasus, hemmed in by Russia, Turkey, and Iran, is particularly rife with conflicts. Armenia and Azerbaijan are engaged in low-intensity attrition warfare with non-existent bilateral relations. Turkey has largely sided with Azerbaijan and kept its economic ties with Armenia to a minimum. This leaves Armenia reliant on Georgia, itself in conflict with Russia, and Iran, which until recently faced international sanctions. While Azerbaijan is in much less restricted geopolitical position, its relations with Iran, as well as Russia, have also been quite testy.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: CSTO Says Fighting Islamic State Is a Top Priority

By Catherine Putz

The group called for forming a broad coalition “without politicizing and preconditions.”

At a gathering in Moscow, the presidents of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) member countries laid out the group’s top priorities. In a surprise to none, combating the Islamic State and other extremist groups topped the list. The regional military alliance includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan.

The group of leaders last gathered in September in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, where they focused the discussion on the Islamic State and fragility in Afghanistan. The insecurity in Afghanistan is often linked by Central Asian governments to an impending threat from the Islamic State. Of the CSTO members, however, only Tajikistan borders Afghanistan.

A joint statement from the group Monday said, “We see as a priority task the decisive fight against the ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — former name of IS) terrorist group that has unleashed cruel bloodshed in many countries and presents a threat to the entire humanity.” The statement went on to note “the growth of security threats in Central Asia connected with activities of ISIL, the Taliban movement, Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations on the territory of Afghanistan which leads to escalation of tensions on CSTO’s southern borders, directly threatening with destabilization of the situation in the area of its (CSTO’s) responsibility.”

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: US Stops Export of Korean Fighter Jets to Uzbekistan

By Catherine Putz

Washington has reportedly nixed a fighter jet deal worth $400 million, over concerns about technology leakage.

This Sunday, the United States blocked the sale of 12 T-50 Golden Eagles from Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) to Uzbekistan the Korea Times reports.

The jets, jointly developed by KAI and Lockheed Martin in 2006, are designed as supersonic trainers and multirole fighters. Lockheed Martin promotes them as delivering “the fighter-like performance and capabilities needed to eliminate 5th Generation training gaps and inefficiencies.” Although the T-50 and its variants are Korea’s first indigenous supersonic aircraft, the jets use Lockheed Martin’s avionics system and engines, making their sale a matter of U.S. concern. Although Lockheed Martin’s advertising material proclaim that the T-50 was “envisioned to be exported to other countries” it seems Uzbekistan doesn’t quite measure up.

A source told the Korea Times that “KAI has been in negotiations with the Uzbek government to export the supersonic trainers, but the U.S. government is opposing the deal, citing possible technology leakage and diplomatic policy.”

A presumably Korean military source honed in on Uzbekistan’s relations with Russia as the main cause for concern in comments to the Korea Times, saying, “As Uzbekistan has close ties with Russia, the U.S. is worried that an export of T-50s to Uzbekistan may lead to its technologies being transferred to Russia.”

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: Central Asia and the ISIS Phantom

By Cholpon Orozobekova

The region’s leaders have been playing up the ISIS threat. How real is it?

On September 16, just after the CSTO summit held in Dushanbe, Tajik authorities arrested 13 active members of the Islamic Renaissance Party and removed the passports of other 50 members to prevent them from travelling abroad. The next day, the General Prosecutor`s Office released a statement explaining the arrests as an action to prevent new acts of terrorism and crimes of an extremist nature, accusing the party of being affiliated with the armed group led by General Abduhalim Nazarzoda and of involvement in a violent attack on a police station and weapons depot that began on September 4. “Nazarzoda was acting on orders from the party, including the exiled party leader, Muhiddin Kabiri,” says the General Prosecutor`s office.

The exiled leader of a recently banned Islamic Renaissance party in Tajikistan, Kabiri has rejected Tajik authorities’ accusations that he ordered to Nazarzoda to instigate and lead the deadly mutiny in September. He insisted that neither he nor his party had anything to do with the incidents.

International human rights organizations have condemned the detention of opposition party members and demanded their immediate release. Amnesty International warned that all are at risk of torture and unfair trial.

“These arrests represent a full-scale assault on dissent in Tajikistan,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Tajik authorities have the obligation to charge these men promptly with specific crimes or release them and to maintain the presumption of innocence. They cannot hold opposition activists on spurious claims of preventing future crimes.”

Ivar Dale, senior advisor and representative in Central Asia for the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, told The Diplomat that Tajik authorities are now destroying what little credibility they still had with the international community. “To outside observers, it’s obvious that Rakhmon wants to close down the opposition. If he would allow journalists to freely investigate and report on what is happening, perhaps the situation would be different. But right now this looks like a rough take-down of the political opposition, and we also see connections to recent attacks on civil society. Tajik authorities should think long and hard on how they want their state to be perceived abroad. They’re doing an extremely bad PR job right now.”

Dale added that the Islamic threat has been an excuse for the Uzbek regime to silence opposition and civil society for years. “Tajikistan has held a somewhat lighter hand over these groups, but what we are seeing now is a total ban, even on ordinary opposition,” he said.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: Russia Continues Inflating the ISIS Threat in Central Asia

Image: Flickr User - Karl-Ludwig Poggemann

By Casey Michel

ISIS is recruiting around the world, but Russian rhetoric boosts the threat of ISIS to the region beyond reality.

The past year has seen wild swings in economic prognoses, hydrocarbon futures, and security realities throughout Russia and Central Asia. There seems to have been one constant, though: Russian officials hyper-inflating the threat of ISIS (also known as Islamic State) to Central Asian states. The head of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) helped kick off the fear-mongering just over a year ago, describing an “attempt to create some sort of underground extremist state” in Central Asia. Ever since, Russian appraisals of ISIS’s regional threat – from higher-ups to think tanks tied to the Kremlin – have been nearly uniformly overblown.

To be sure, Russian officials are not the lone voices blustering ISIS’s potential threat beyond recognition – regional leaders, and certain Western voices, have contributed to the threat-inflation. And all appearances indicate that ISIS has continued its regional recruitment, especially among itinerant migrant populations working in Russia. But the underground states, the rolling waves of Islamist invaders – these claims would appear to stand far more as a figment of imagination than a reality on the ground.

Nonetheless, Russian officials, and those tied to official Kremlin organs, appear to be sticking to the rhetoric 12 months on. To wit, earlier this month Vasily Kashin, of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST), told The Daily Beast that Central Asia is currently at a “high risk of ISIS blowing up one more front.” Kashin – whose CAST works closely with the Russian defense ministry – didn’t cite any evidence or information backing up his claims of the “high risk,” but moved directly on to the peril of a region-wide war ISIS could somehow spur. “If a large-scale war begins in Central Asia, Russia would definitely have to get involved. In the best scenario, that would be together with China, and in the worst alone; so Putin means to say that he would much rather crush ISIS in Syria by pumping up Assad’s and Iraq’s armies with weapons, than to have a massive war in Central Asia.”

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s Growing Pains

By Richard Weitz

The euphoria of summer is bumping up against some tricky political realities.

We now see that all this summer’s talk about a resurgent Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was at least premature, if not enduringly overoptimistic. Earlier this month, the presidents of the leading Eurasian countries held important leadership meetings in Beijing on the occasion of the Chinese military parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. Tellingly, not even the Chinese hosts, traditionally the SCO’s main boosters, highlighted the institution’s supposedly new momentum following its mid-July leadership summit in the Russian city of Ufa.

The July 9-10 decision of the SCO Heads-of-State Council to, in principle, expand the institution’s roster of full members to include India and Pakistan was admittedly newsworthy. For more than a decade the SCO had been deadlocked over the enlargement issue. The same six countries that founded the SCO in 2001 – China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – are still its only full members, despite the growing number of formal observer countries, “dialogue partners,” and other SCO affiliates and aspirants seeking that status.

Although the SCO has tried to enhance the status of non-members, there is no evidence that these other states have benefited much from their lesser status. Only full members can exploit the SCO’s consensus-based decision-making to veto SCO activities, which they do by calling for further studies. The limited value of anything less than full membership has been evident in the case of Turkey, which welcomed its accession to formal dialogue partner in 2012 but has not even bothered to send high-level officials to the SCO annual leadership summits or other meetings.

At the time of the July summit, Sun Zhuangzhi, the secretary general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, joined many local experts in rejoicing in the formal end of the protracted expansion gridlock. In his words, “with the expansion of its membership, the increasingly consolidated regional organization will be able to assume more responsibility for global stability and prosperity.” Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted that a dozen countries without a current SCO affiliation want one.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: CSTO Gathers in Tajikistan, Talks ISIS

By Catherine Putz

Could Russian troops return to the Tajik-Afghan border? Only if asked.

Tuesday, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Russia’s answer to NATO, gathered in Dushanbe for a summit. Attended by the presidents of the six member states — Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Armenia, and the host, Tajikistan — the summit was preceded by a day of bilateral meetings. ISIS, also known as Islamic State, dominated the conversation and an unnamed source indicated that if Tajikistan asked, Russian troops would return to the Afghan border.

Of the three Central Asian states that share borders with Afghanistan, only Tajikistan is a member of the CSTO. Uzbekistan withdrew from the group in 2012. The idea of Russians once again at the Afghan border isn’t radical. Up until 2005, Russian border guards helped Tajikistan patrol the Tajik-Afghan border. In 2011, an RFE/RL article featured General Sharaf Fayzulloev, then-deputy commander of Tajikistan’s border guard forces discussing how Russia and the U.S. helped modernize the Tajik border service:

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Editorial: Eurasian Silk Road Union - Towards a Russia-China Consensus?

By Alexander Gabuev

The recent summit has gone a long way to confirming the Russia-China rapprochement.

More than a year after the annexation of Crimea triggered a major rupture in the relationship between the West and Russia, Moscow’s attempts to build new partnerships in Asia are no longer surprising. Since the announcement of a $400 billion gas deal with China in May 2014, the Kremlin has tried to portray an emerging partnership with the world’s number two global economic powerhouse as an antidote to Western sanctions.

Grand summits between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, with dozens of agreements and triumphant declarations, have been met with skepticism in Western capitals. Russia-China rapprochement is frequently brushed off as spin doctoring, which both an isolated Russian regime and an assertive Chinese party-state try to sell for domestic consumption. It is widely believed that the two countries remain deeply suspicious of each other, and internal rifts will prevent them from forming a meaningful partnership.

One of the realms where Moscow and Beijing are strategic competitors is Central Asia. China’s economic and political clout in this resource-rich region is growing, sometimes at Russia’s expense. Many see China’s “Silk Road Economic Belt” initiative, first unveiled by Xi on a 2013 trip to Kazakhstan, as an attempt to drive Russia out of the region, where Moscow is trying to promote its own integration project, the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). It’s widely believed that it’s just a matter of time before clashes occur between the two integration projects.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

News Story: Russia Flexes Central Asia Military Might

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan — Russia has deployed hundreds of troops for drills in Central Asia with its ex-Soviet allies in a show of force as anxiety grows over a surge in fighting in neighboring Afghanistan.

Around 2,500 personnel from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) are taking part in joint exercises due to run to Wednesday in Tajikistan. The move is seen as re-enforcing Moscow's role as the main guarantor of the fragile region's security after US troops leave Afghanistan.

The Russian deployment of about 500 troops for the drills started last week, bolstered by soldiers from Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Belarus.

Tajikistan is in a strategic spot, bordering Afghanistan's Kunduz province where over 200 people have died and 10,000 been displaced by a militant offensive.

Russia's foreign ministry says it is "particularly concerned" by the violence, which Afghan local authorities claim has seen the Taliban link up with jihadists from the Islamic State group battling in Syria and Iraq.

The uptick in Afghan fighting has rattled Moscow's ex-Soviet allies in Central Asia, and some have looked towards Russia for reassurance.

Read the full story at DefenseNews

Editorial: ISIS and Turkmenistan’s Border Worries

Afghanistan-Tajikistan bridge over the Amu Darya
(Image: Wiki Commons)

By Casey Michel

Justified or not, Ashgabat is increasingly concerned about its border with Afghanistan, and the threat posed by ISIS.

The Turkmen-Afghan border is, understandably, one of the least-covered geopolitical divides extant. It’s also one of the most peculiar. For years, the Amu Darya River – one of the points of separation between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, and now between Kabul and Ashgabat – has been steadily pushing southward, eroding Afghan land and creating unmarked islands along the way. As the years have passed, the split between borders on the map and borders on the ground has only grown.

The border region has been relatively quiescent over the past few years but in 2014 things shifted. Incidents between Turkmen border guards and local Afghan actors, Taliban and non-Taliban alike, flared. Afghans claimed Turkmen nationals were stealing their land. Turkmen guards claimed they were simply protecting their de facto border. Multiple deaths, numerous incidents, and smothered protests have lined the disputed border over the past twelve months, and there’s little sign of restitution on the horizon.

And now there may be other factors to consider along the border. It is clear the Turkmenistani government doesn’t feel nearly as confident against putative Islamist threats as it would like. (An internationally acknowledged regime of neutrality will not stop Islamic militants, after all.) To be sure, the threat that ISIS poses to Central Asia, and to Turkmenistan especially, is significantly overblown by both Moscow and Washington. Even Afghanistan has amped the threat, with President Ashraf Ghani this week saying ISIS presented a “terrible threat” to Central Asia. 

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: Is Moscow Losing Its Security Edge in Central Asia?

By Casey Michel

Recent reports suggest a shift in the region’s security calculations.

For the last few years, one of the largest questions facing Central Asia pertained to the Chinese security component in the region. Beijing’s economic hegemony, especially as it pertained to hydrocarbons, stood plain to see. Between infrastructural development and gas transit, China’s supplanted Russia as the region’s leading economic and energy pole. To choose but one statistic, Russia’s natural gas imports from Central Asia have dropped some 75 percent since their 2008 high – all while China continues bringing further transit routes online, morphing into the region’s primary export client.

Moscow, however, retained a security advantage in the region: CSTO bases, defense systems overlap, potential expansion moving forward. As the U.S. fumbled out of the region, and despite Washington’s sudden uptick in security interest, Moscow remained the primary security patron within Central Asia.

That, however, may be shifting – and we may finally be gaining a glimpse of the form China’s security extension into Central Asia is likely to take. Details remain sketchy and lightly sourced, but seem to point to a potential shift in the region’s security calculations. 

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: Russia and the SCO Military Exercises

By Joshua Kucera

Russia may be putting aside its reluctance to accept the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s growing clout in Central Asia.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is holding its biggest joint military exercises ever, as Russia seeks to strengthen ties with China in the wake of its collapsing relations with Europe and the United States. The scale of the exercises suggests that the organization, which had lately seemed to be focusing more on economic and law enforcement cooperation in Central Asia, may be again emphasizing its military component.

This year’s iteration of the annual Peace Mission exercises are scheduled for August 24 to 29 in China’s Inner Mongolia province. About 7,000 troops are slated to take part: mostly from China, but also from SCO members Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. (Uzbekistan, while an SCO member, traditionally declines to participate in the group’s military drills.)

The size of the Peace Mission drills has declined in recent years, but Chinese officials say this is the largest SCO drill ever: “It’s the first time that so many troops and so much weaponry have been deployed in joint drills under the SCO aegis,” Wang Ning, chief director of the drills and deputy chief of the general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, told the China Daily newspaper.

It’s not clear what has prompted the revival of large-scale SCO military exercises, but it comes at an opportune time for Russia. As Moscow faces sanctions and censure from the U.S. and European countries as a result of its assertive policy in Ukraine, the Kremlin is eager to show that it doesn’t need the West. 

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Editorial: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Central Asian Security

By Amit R. Saksena

Structural and policy problems prevent the SCO from being an effective Central Asian security organization.

With the administration of President Barack Obama intent on withdrawing all but 10,000 troops from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the region is bracing for a security vacuum that is primarily affected by a lack of cooperation and interstate awareness in the vicinity. Although the recently concluded presidential elections in Afghanistan do offer a glimmer of hope for the restoration of a legitimate, autarkic government, the possibility of a relapse  far outweighs the practicality of such hope.

While there is a multilateral organization in the region that could potentially manage this looming regional instability, it is not yet up to the task.

Instituted by the members of the Shanghai-Five plus Uzbekistan in the months preceding September 11, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is more of a private club, with ambiguous organizational mandates and individual state-driven interests, rather than a competent collective body. The “Shanghai Spirit,” a guiding doctrine of the SCO, dictates sovereignty and the importance of non-interference in the state affairs of other members. For the Central Asian republics, this principle has provided a measure of immunity from Chinese or Russian forays into their territories. However, this principle has failed the SCO on a few prominent occasions in the past, which questions the capability of the forum to function efficiently as a regional power bloc. 

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: Moscow’s Afghan Endgame

By Richard Weitz

Worried about the NATO withdrawal, Russia has adopted several new policies for Central Asia.

Few will have been watching the troubled Afghan presidential elections with greater attention than Russia. Although Moscow has not shown a strong preference for either candidate, and has managed to develop a good working relationship with outgoing Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Russian policymakers have been seeing nightmares in Kabul for years. Now the Iraq breakdown, coming after the years of civil strife in Syria, has deepened Russian anxieties about social and economic chaos along its vulnerable southern front at a time when relations with NATO remain strained over Ukraine.

Despite its public complaints, Russians have viewed the Obama administration’s initial surge into Afghanistan and its subsequent military drawdown with unease. Although Russian President Vladimir Putin acquiesced to the U.S. and then NATO interventions in Afghanistan, he did so reluctantly, with a fearful eye on potential threats to Russia’s regional influence. An initial Russian fear was that the United States planned to established permanent bases in Afghanistan and neighboring countries to dilute Moscow’s primacy in a region of vital Russian interest. Moscow likely encouraged Uzbekistan to order the Pentagon to stop using its territory in 2005. Putin later claimed that the United States had provoked Tashkent by acting as “a bull in a China shop.” For years, Russian representatives encouraged the Kyrgyz government to end the Pentagon’s lease at its other major base in Central Asia, at Manas International Airport near the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek.

More recently, Russian leaders have expressed growing anxiety that NATO was withdrawing prematurely from the region, dumping a massive regional security vacuum into Moscow’s unwelcoming arms. Russia still exercises military primacy in Central Asia but is threatened already by religious militants in the North Caucasus and other Russian regions with large Muslim populations. Russian officials expressed dissatisfaction with NATO’s decision to remove most if not all its forces from Afghanistan while the Taliban insurgency remains severe, believing the withdrawal would contribute to terrorism, narcotics trafficking, and instability throughout Central Asia. Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov has said that ISAF “has been too hasty about making the final decision to pull out.”

In response to the sharp drawdown in the Western military presence in Afghanistan and neighboring countries in recent years, and the expectation that most if not all NATO forces will leave Afghanistan by the end of this year, Moscow has adopted several policies as its Afghan endgame. 

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: What Crimea Teaches Central Asia

By Stephen Blank

The lessons from Russia’s actions in Ukraine in recent months are disturbing for Central Asia.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has called Russia’s invasion, occupation and annexation of the Crimean peninsula. along with its incitement of a civil war in Eastern Ukraine. a game-changer. One region where this description could possess particular resonance is Central Asia. All Central Asian governments have considerable reasons for alarm in the wake of Russia’s actions and the supine Western response. In this context, Vladimir Putin’s speech to the Duma of March 18, 2014 represented a landmine under the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all five Central Asian states with the threat of Russian military action should they somehow threaten the dignity and honor of Russians who are citizens in their states.

Subsequent Russian legislation on citizenship essentially then made all these ethnic Russians eligible for citizenship in Moscow to justify such intervention, and thus evoked one of the most obnoxious aspects of colonialism: the idea of extra-territoriality. This is, in other words, the idea that  citizens in one country could enjoy the protection of a stronger country as its citizens and  thus escape the legal authority of the state where they resided, while possibly becoming justifications for  military intervention there. Putin’s subsequent demand for self-determination for Russians, made in Crimea on May 9, exacerbated this threat to the sovereignty and integrity of these states. 

Read the full story at The Diplomat