Indian Defence Review

• Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). The IMU, renamed as the ‘Islamic Party of Turkistan’, professes creation of an Islamic state in the whole of Central Asia and Xinjiang.  Its cadres have developed close links with drug cartels and arms smugglers who act as their main source of funds. It is being funded by Al Qaeda and has close links with ISI.⁸

• Hizb ut Tehrir(HUT). It is a secretive transnational Wahhabi fundamentalist organisation, with an avowed aim of uniting Central Asia into an Islamic Caliphate. It is involved in large scale subversive activities, religious indoctrination and renders support to hardline Islamic militant organisations.
• Uihgurs. Approximately 300,000 Uighurs live in Central Asia and have links with the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). The Uighurs represent a constant source of concern for China; they reject Chinese rule, and their separatist tendencies have often translated into militant resistance to Beijing. Uighur efforts have some financial and material support in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

Increasing attacks on Russians and their continuing exodus from Tajikistan became important factors in determining Russia’s active policy in this region. Senior Russian leaders in the government and military openly voiced their concern over the security of Russian minorities and vowed to discharge their responsibilities on this account.

The question of what does or does not pose a threat to security can be very subjective. Some extreme members of HUT advocate the use of force to advance their goals. The majority, however, is focused on using peaceful means to spread its message, a message that is by definition seditious as it seeks to undermine the secular nature of the state. The EU and the US do not always see eye to eye with their Central Asian, Chinese or Russian colleagues over what constitutes religious extremism, or what constitutes an appropriate response.

Impact of the NATO campaign in Afghanistan

After the first phase of the war in Afghanistan ended with the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, Washington’s limited agenda in the region was to press the Pakistani military to go after al Qaeda. Meanwhile, the US largely ignored the broader insurgency in the region, which remained marginal until 2005. This suited the Pakistani military’s strategy, which is to retain the Taliban as a potential source of pressure on Afghanistan. 84 percent of the materiel for US forces in Afghanistan goes through Pakistan, and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) remains nearly the sole source of intelligence about international terrorist acts prepared by Al Qaeda and its affiliates in Pakistan.9

More fundamentally, the concept of “pressuring” Pakistan is flawed. No state can be successfully pressured into acts it considers suicidal. The Pakistani security establishment believes that it faces both a US-Indian-Afghan alliance and a separate Iranian-Russian alliance, each aimed at undermining Pakistani influence in Afghanistan and even dismembering the Pakistani state.10

Pakistan’s military, which makes and implements the country’s national security policies, shares a commitment to a vision of Pakistan as the homeland for South Asian Muslims and, therefore, to the incorporation of Kashmir into Pakistan. It considers Afghanistan as within Pakistan’s security perimeter. Moreover, Pakistan does not have border agreements with either India, into which Islamabad contests the incorporation of Kashmir, or Afghanistan, which has never explicitly recognized the Durand Line, which separates the two countries, as an interstate border.11 That border is more than a line. The frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan was structured as part of the defence of British India. On the Pakistani side of the Durand Line, the British and their Pakistani successors turned the difficulty of governing the tribes to their advantage by establishing Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Within the FATA, the tribes, not the government, are responsible for security. The area has traditionally been kept under-developed and over-armed as a barrier against invaders.

India has reestablished its consulates in Afghan cities, including some near the Pakistani border. India has genuine consular interests there (Hindu and Sikh populations, commercial travel, aid programmes). India has also, in cooperation with Iran, completed a highway linking Afghanistan’s ring road (which connects its major cities) to Iranian ports on the Persian Gulf, potentially eliminating Afghanistan’s dependence on Pakistan for access to the sea and marginalizing Pakistan’s new Arabian Sea port of Gwadar, which was built with Chinese aid.

There is no more a political solution in Afghanistan alone than there is a military solution in Afghanistan alone. Unless the decision-makers in Pakistan decide to make stabilizing the Afghan government a higher priority than countering the percieved Indian threat, the insurgency conducted from bases in Pakistan will continue. Pakistan’s strategic goals in Afghanistan place Pakistan at odds not just with Afghanistan and India; and with US objectives in the region, but with the entire international community. There is no multilateral framework for confronting this challenge. NATO, whose troops in Afghanistan are daily losing their lives to Pakistan-based insurgents, has no Pakistan policy. The UN Security Council has hardly discussed Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan, even though three of the permanent members (France, the United Kingdom, and the US) have troops in Afghanistan, the other two have their own agendas. China, Pakistan’s largest investor, is poised to become the largest investor in Afghanistan as well, with a $3.5 billion stake in the Aynak copper mine, south of Kabul.

The illegal drugs trade

Central Asia is a key region for the trafficking of illegal drugs from Afghanistan. Tajikistan was the “bottleneck for drugs trafficking to the north” particularly before 11 September 2001.12 European, US and UN programmes have increased interdiction rates and, with better controls, drugs are now passing from Afghanistan across other Central Asian countries and Iran.

A substantial amount of drug money was actually used to jump-start certain sectors of the economy in Tajikistan, and it undoubtedly helped support the revival of the home construction industry and the service sector. The illegal drugs trade also seems to have helped ordinary Kyrgyz in southern Kyrgyzstan keep afloat, providing income to small traders who would otherwise have no livelihood. However, drug-based organized crime has overshadowed many forms of legal business, as drug barons have sought to become legitimate businessmen by buying up large amounts of commercial property. This has contributed to the general instability of political life.13

By contrast, in both Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan the drug trade seems to be more managed by government, which reaps financial rent from the trade. Consequently, the governments maintain a hold over organized crime.

Conclusion

With the constriction of strategic space in Central Asia, the US is now enlarging its strategic space in South Asia.  One view is that the US could achieve its goal of transforming Afghanistan through establishment of a Greater Central Asia Partnership for Cooperation and Development.14

There appears to be a move in the US establishment to reorient the Central Asian region through trade towards the Indian Ocean.15. Among the many projects to help improve transportation in the region, a US-funded bridge has opened over the Pyanj River, between Tajikistan (Badakshan) and Afghanistan (Kunduz). Likewise, China seeks transformation of Gwadar into a major energy hub and plans to expand the Karakoram overland bridge to China.  Conscious of its centrality as a frontline state, Pakistan would continue to leverage this factor to gain maximum favours and balance its relations with the two countries.  Both the countries need Pakistan as a transit corridor.  How the two countries jockey for the influence in Pakistan would add a new dimension to the ‘Great Game’ in the extended strategic space.

India’s relations with Central Asia are influenced to a major degree by the actions of Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan and the US. India has lost valuable time in creating viable leverages and lacks bandwidth to use the hard power approach in pursuing its national interests in the region. India, however continues to enjoy goodwill of the people and its soft power vis-à-vis other players has considerable appeal. Therefore, a soft power approach and a subtle alignment with Russia, which is a vector in the region, will pay good dividends. Iran and Afghanistan provide a gateway to Central Asia and a buffer against Wahhabi radicalism. Strategic relations with these two countries are India’s imperative need.

The ‘New Great Game’ of the 21st Century in the region revolves around control over energy resources, economic competition, fight against international terrorism, regime change, fight against Islamic fundamentalism and military diplomacy amongst the US, Russia and China. The ‘Great Game’ is likely to have a significant impact on the balance of power in entire Eurasia and great power rivalry may extend to South Asia where the US and China will jockey for influence. From India’s strategic security perspective, Central Asia’s geo-strategic importance as a bridge cum buffer and as an alternate source of energy would remain. India needs to show ingenuity in gaining land access to CAR and explore new avenues for transportation of energy from the region. India’s overarching policy should be to seek convergence of geostrategic interests with the legitimate aspirations of the people of Central Asia and prevent the rise of religious fundamentalism.