#6
The Times (UK)
OCTOBER 18 2001
Democracy holds key to stability in Central Asia
The US must look beyond Afghanistan's borders and consider its neighbours
By AKEZHAN KAZHEGELDIN
The author was Prime Minister of Kazakhstan from 1994-97
The revised codename of America’s war against terrorism, “Operation Enduring Freedom”, involves a challenge that goes beyond even the difficult and dangerous tasks that lie ahead for the US and its allies. Many of us with hard experience of what lack of freedom entails wonder whether America has really yet come to terms with this.
Kazakhstan, of which I was once Prime Minister and from which I am now exiled, is a country which, with its neighbours, has suddenly assumed new strategic importance for the West. Three of the Central Asian countries — Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan — share borders with Afghanistan. The Uzbeks and Tajiks have been fighting their own civil wars against Islamic militants backed by the Taleban and will, it seems, play an important role in allowing US forces access to Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden and those judged responsible for the terrorist outrage are holed up. Kazakhstan, itself, has no border with Afghanistan. But it is deeply involved as the major Central Asian state.
Despite their helpfulness and their immediate military importance to the US, none of the Central Asian states could, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as a free country or a functioning democracy. In this, Kazakhstan is no exception, as I know to my cost. But it is not necessary to point to my own experience. The US State Department report on human rights, released last February, said quite enough.
President Nazarbayev, the former Communist boss who controls the country, runs what is to all intents and purposes an authoritarian regime. In 1995 one referendum bestowed new powers on Nazarbayev allowing him to dominate the legislature and the judiciary. Another in the same year extended his term of office. In 1999 he was elected to a further seven-year term.
Such things matter to me as a Kazakh. They matter equally to other democrats in the other authoritarian states of Central Asia who suffer the same experiences. Yet — to put it bluntly — should they matter to anyone else? Of course, if America and her friends are sincere in their commitment to freedom beyond their own borders, the answer is “yes”. But it would hardly be realistic, particularly at a time when hard-headed strategic analysis is at a premium, to fail to grasp that global idealism alone is unlikely to be the dominant factor in the West’s calculations. Indeed, in the short term, dealing with authoritarian governments, which do not need to take notice of what minorities or even a majority of their population feel, may seem simpler.
And yet, in the longer run, sustaining or even doing business with authoritarian regimes is a path that leads not to stability but to upheaval. In Central Asia, as elsewhere, order must eventually depend on the growth of pluralism, the development of civil society, the removal of corruption and the creation of a rule of law administered by honest, independent judges. None of that progress will occur unless the international community keeps on urging the replacement of quasi-dictatorship by full democracy.
There is a very practical consideration here. Only functioning democracies will be able to withstand the attacks which extremists launch against them. It is not just Islamists who oppose the regimes in these countries. So do people from every class and background. What they dislike is not the secular nature of the state, but the fact that the whole state apparatus is put to the personal use of those who control it rather than the people at large. Such a system cannot, in the last resort, be relied upon even to do the international community’s bidding — because, for those in power, profit always comes before international agreements.
Although it is Uzbekistan and Tajikistan which have suddenly acquired the highest profile because of their value as launching pads against the Taleban, Central Asia as a whole — and within it the largest player, Kazakhstan — will be of enduring importance long after bin Laden has met his maker. For two important reasons it is greatly in the interests of America and of the West that they should lengthen their attention spans and help promote soundly based states in the region.
First, Central Asia is and will continue to be an area in which both the United States and Russia have important interests and in which those interests, as at present, are best pursued in harmony. Kazakhstan and its neighbours need both political links with Russia and economic links with America – and security links with both – if they are to prosper.
Secondly, the region — again, above all, Kazakhstan — has enormous potential wealth in the form of oil reserves. The Caspian is home to the third largest petroleum deposits outside Russia and the Middle East. Of the five states bordering the Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan has the biggest reserves. A new pipeline pumps oil from the rich Tengiz field to the Russian port of Novorossiysk. At the start of the year a further new field at Kashagan was discovered, even larger than Tengiz. These developments have not, of course, failed to attract the attention of outside powers, notably Russia and the US, which are jockeying for position. But the risk is that this vast potential to improve the lives of the people of the region and to underpin its stability could have quite the opposite effect unless political reforms are made. The money earned could even further criminalise state structures and that could lead to untold consequences for the country and the area.
It is not for nothing that in every continent the formula of open democracy, honest law and genuinely free enterprise yields positive results. In Central Asia, too, it deserves a chance.
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