Kyrgyzstan edging toward more turmoil
By M K Bhadrakumar
Kyrgyzstan's location between the sensitive Ferghana Valley and China's
Xinjiang region; the presence of Islamic militants and Uighur
separatists; its use as a transit route for drug traffickers from
Afghanistan; its being a cauldron of ethnicity and sub-nationalism; as
a country flanking Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan: all this makes Kyrgyzstan
a pivotal state in Central Asia.
In addition, it is a neighbor to Tajikistan, which is still recovering
from the wounds of a bloody civil war. It hosts the the sole remaining
US military base in Central Asia at Manas, and it is an
operational area for the Collective Security Treaty Organization
(CSTO) and a "founder-member" of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO).
A coalition of political forces opposed to the leadership of President
Kurmanbek Bakiev and Prime Minister Felix Kulov has been in the making
ever since last July's presidential election. An anti-Bakiev coalition,
called the People's Coalition of Democratic Forces, has coalesced
around pro-American political parties, "civil groups" and
"non-governmental organizations".
It has called for mass protest rallies all over Kyrgyzstan this
Saturday. The agitators have openly invoked the spirit of "color
revolutions" of Ukraine and Georgia and the country's own "Tulip
Revolution" in March of last year. Even so, Kyrgyzstan is beset with
problems. Not surprisingly, criminal elements gained ascendancy when
state institutions crumbled in the anarchy that followed.
Despite Russian and Chinese help, the Kyrgyz economy is nowhere near
recovery. Foreign debt accounts for 80% of the country's gross domestic
product (GDP), this despite Moscow writing off half of the debts
Kyrgyzstan owed to Russia. The extremely low level of demand in the
domestic market makes revival of business very hard to achieve in the
short term. The remittances from more than 300,000 Kyrgyz migrant
workers in Russia, exceeding US$200 million annually, correspond to the
size of the Kyrgyz government budget.
Kyrgyzstan's internal sources for capital are too meager to generate
meaningful investment, so it depends on neighbors. Russia drew up a
plan of economic recovery for Kyrgyzstan, which was discussed during
the visit of Bakiev to Moscow last September.
Russia agreed to invest more than $1 billion in Kyrgyzstan by
undertaking to build two major hydroelectric projects and invest in
industries, such as aluminum and cement, that could use the power
generated in these projects. China hopes to purchase Kyrgyzstan's
surplus electricity and has also proposed infrastructure projects that
would generate economic activity.
The Russian-Kyrgyz economic commission that met in Bishkek last
Thursday discussed Russian participation in several projects,
including: a) construction of a $100 million airport terminal; b) a
$300 million project for tourism development; c) revival of the famous
Kara-Baltinsky Mining Combine, a Soviet-era uranium-processing facility
with a capacity of 2,000 tons annually.
Russian-Kyrgyz trade turnover (which accounts for almost 30% of
Kyrgyzstan's trade) is showing a 40% annual growth rate currently and
may exceed $1 billion.
The United States, however, is not eager to endorse Bakiev's policies.
Speaking in Bishkek on April 11, Richard Boucher, US assistant
secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, said: "There
are a lot of very positive things here; there is a free press, a strong
civil society, a definite direction to Kyrgyzstan's democracy. But
there is a lot of work still to be done, not only on roads and power
lines, but also on laws and reforms. They can both benefit the economy
and also improve the health of your society."
Six days later, on April 17, in an extraordinary outburst for a
diplomat, US Ambassador Marie Jovanovich condemned the Bakiev
government: "Journalists are scared. Members of parliament are openly
stating that they are scared. Threats against the Central Election
Commission are worrisome. Even the police are frightened. Investors and
donors are raising objections about the direction in which Kyrgyzstan
is moving ... The judiciary must be free from corruption. We keep
saying that the state must take decisive measures against organized
crime."
What happened?
To be sure, there are any number of things going wrong in Kyrgyzstan.
But even by US accounts, Bakiev obtained a popular mandate. His term in
office began only in August. The problems that Jovanovich harped on are
hardly Bakiev's creation. They are the problems of any impoverished,
exhausted country that had a high level of social formation but found
itself suddenly at a crossroads, groping in the dark for a way forward.
(Kyrgyzstan isn't alone in these problems; Mikhail Saakashvili's
Georgia fares no better in comparison.)
Once it became evident that the Bakiev-Kulov team was not at
Washington's beck and call, the US turned on Bakiev and began to try to
destabilize his government.
Washington's antagonism took many forms - creating a rift between
Bakiev and Kulov; instigating members of parliament (elected during the
regime of former president Askar Akayev) to challenge Bakiev's
authority; spreading insinuations that Bakiev was conniving with the
mafia; inciting clan rivalries; and funding "pro-American
non-governmental organizations that combine a democratic agenda with
moral support for the US military presence in Kyrgyzstan" - to quote a
US commentator recently.
All this took place while Washington got away with a token payment of
$2 million annually to use the Manas air base on the specious excuse
that the base was integral to the "war on terror" in Afghanistan, and
that the war was for the collective good of all Central Asians.
Bakiev insists that an enhanced rent of $200 million for the Manas base
would be fair, and he has now gone on record saying that unless
Washington agrees to enhanced rent by June 1, he will evict US forces
from Kyrgyz soil.
Washington is furious. Two hundred million dollars is a lot of money.
Besides, June 1 is just a fortnight ahead of the SCO summit meeting in
Beijing. (At its summit meeting in Almaty last June, the SCO called for
a timeline for removing the US military presence in Central Asia.)
The SCO is, generally speaking, bad news for Washington - now more than
ever. The organization may induct new members (specifically, Iran) and
may accord observer status to Belarus - a decision that brings the SCO
to the very frontiers of the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO).
Meanwhile, for the first time, SCO member countries' defense ministers
were to meet in Beijing this Wednesday. Russia's permanent envoy to the
SCO, Grigory Logvinov, said in the Chinese capital on April 18: "The
SCO has no intentions of transforming into a military bloc. However, as
threats of terrorism, extremism and separatism have increased,
substantial involvement of armed forces is necessary for combating them
effectively."
Logvinov meaningfully added, "We are really contributing to the
formation of a peaceful, open, developing and harmonious Eurasian
continent."
He spoke on the eve of the Russia-Belarus joint collegium at Minsk last
Friday held at the level of defense ministers to finalize plans for
large-scale military exercises in June by the CSTO "in the Eastern
European direction" (to quote Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov).
Units of Russia's crack land forces guarding the Moscow Military
District, Tu-160 strategic bombers, Su-27 fighters and AWACS (Airborne
Warning and Control System) aircraft will apparently take part in the
exercises.
Washington has evidently concluded that the time has come to draw a
battle line in the post-Soviet space - and confront Russian President
Vladimir Putin's policies since 2000 in garnering all available
centripetal factors serving the integration of countries in the
Commonwealth of Independent States. During the 2000-04 period, mutual
trade among the CIS countries increased more than twofold and crossed
the $100 billion level.
Russia's cooperation with its CIS partners involves: a) formation of
joint-stock companies out of existing industrial facilities and
infrastructure; b) direct investment of enterprises; c) purchase of
property in the CIS countries; d) transfer of production to the CIS
countries; e) purchase of share capital of indebted enterprises in the
CIS countries; and f) vertically integrated transnational companies and
bank subsidiaries.
The Eurasian Economic Community (comprising Russia, Belarus,
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) has harmonized about
90% of its import-export duties and is forming a customs union. It aims
at forming energy, agriculture and currency markets. A free-trade zone
is virtually in existence already.
Russia's parallel efforts in streamlining the CSTO have also gathered
momentum since the unprecedented meeting of the CSTO Council of Foreign
Ministers and Defense Ministers in Moscow last November. Bakiev's
"strategic defiance" of the US thus comes as the proverbial last straw
that broke the camel's back. Washington proposes to force the issues of
post-Soviet space.
If Bakiev's authority crumbles in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan will fall into
the downward-spiraling vortex of political uncertainties, and all sorts
of tantalizing possibilities may arise, including installation of a
pro-American successor regime.
In such an eventuality, the forthcoming SCO summit would have to
holster its guns. The CSTO too would look foolish. Moscow would look
indecisive. On the other hand, if Bakiev were to prove decisive, the
Kremlin would be seen as backing yet another "authoritarian" ruler.
The United States has just notified Russia that the agenda in the July
Group of Eight summit in St Petersburg ought to include "issues
pertaining to conflicts very close to Russia's borders", as US Under
Secretary of State Nicholas Burns put it in Moscow on April 19.
But Washington must factor in yet another possible outcome of upheaval
in Kyrgyzstan. In a statement at a Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence meeting on February 2, the director of national
intelligence, John Negroponte, said: "In the worst, if not implausible,
case, central authority in one or more of these states could evaporate
as rival clans or regions vie for power - opening the door to an
expansion of terrorist and criminal activity on the model of failed
states like Somalia and, when it was under Taliban rule, Afghanistan
...."
With the White House in such visible disarray, it is unclear whether
Negroponte is in the loop as regards the United States' Kyrgyzstan
policy.
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