Post by peterd on Sept 18, 2013 8:49:27 GMT -8
Sino-Russian Strategic Partnership Boosted by Syria Crisis
Considerable international media attention on the Syria crisis focused on the apparently deft handling of the diplomatic track by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Yet, Russian diplomacy, which succeeded in presenting Moscow as a critical player in the pursuit of a non-military option against Damascus, also contained an underestimated dimension: specifically the emergence of a de facto Sino-Russian alliance under cover of their strategic partnership and rooted in opposing unilateral action by the United States. Levels of coordination between Beijing and Moscow extended beyond repeatedly standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the United Nations Security Council in order to prevent a UN mandate for a military strike on the Bashar al-Assad regime. Evidence of this coordination also surfaced in the Bishkek Declaration issued at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit on September 13 (RIA Novosti, September 15).
Russia’s apparently principled position during the crisis in Syria, following the use of chemical weapons in the suburbs of Damascus on August 21, yielded little surprise. Doctrinal and political opposition to US unilateral military action and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) out-of-area operations have been persistent themes in Russian security thinking since the allied intervention in Kosovo in 1999. Moscow also adopted a very critical interpretation of the Arab Spring in terms of its expression of concern about stability in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as arguing that no foreign power possessed a right to intervene in the civil war in Syria. These themes were all present in the numerous official statements from the Russian political leadership in the aftermath of August 21, 2013 (Interfax, August 22–September 15). The second- and third-order consequences of Moscow’s successful forestalling of the strike option through its diplomacy will have a lasting impact on global affairs: these relate to the appearance of a virtual Sino-Russian alliance against the US on key issues.
On September 13, Putin used the opportunity afforded by the SCO summit in Bishkek to praise Syria’s decision to join the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. “We should welcome the decision of the Syrian leadership. I would like to express the hope that it will be a very serious step on the road to settlement of the Syrian crisis,” Putin told the summit. Unlike his experience of discord over the issue of options on Syria during the St. Petersburg G20 gathering earlier in the month, Putin could rely on the unity of the SCO and its core strengthening of Russia’s stance on the crisis by China (RIA Novosti, September 13).
On September 9, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov confirmed that Syria would feature on the SCO summit agenda. Morgulov added, “The positions of the SCO member states on the issue are very close; we all believe that a foreign military operation without the UN Security Council’s sanction is a violation of international law. I believe the Bishkek final declaration will include a consolidated position of the SCO states on the issue” (Interfax, September 9).
Consequently the heads of state of the SCO members (China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) gathered for the summit in Bishkek alongside the SCO’s observers (Afghanistan, Iran, Mongolia and India) and were joined by the secretary generals of the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the executive secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the UN deputy secretary general. On the sidelines of the summit, Putin met his counterparts from Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Iran. The SCO Council of Heads of State approved a plan of action for 2013–2017 to implement the provisions of the Treaty on Long-Term Good-Neighborly Friendship and Cooperation between the SCO states and also signed the Bishkek Declaration. However, the summit was overshadowed by the Syria crisis, and occurred while the talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were in progress in Geneva. Interestingly, Russian media, including the defense ministry’s Krasnaya Zvezda, emphasized that all members of the SCO, including China, support the early convening of a peace conference on Syria and the “initiative of the Russian Federation on the transfer of chemical weapons in Syria under international control” (Interfax, ITAR-TASS, September 13).
The Bishkek Declaration stated that the SCO stands for “the speedy overcoming of the crisis in Syria by the Syrians themselves, subject to the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic,” and “launching a broad political dialogue between the authorities and the opposition without preconditions on the basis of the Geneva communique of June 30, 2012.” It added support for “the initiative to support the transfer of Syrian chemical weapons under international supervision with its subsequent destruction and the accession of Syria to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction” (http://redstar.ru/index.php/component/k2/item/11483-po-prioritetnym-napravleniyam).
Although Russia and China maintain a “strategic partnership,” they have eschewed any move toward forming a political-military alliance with mutual security guarantees. However, it is revealing to note carefully the chronology of how the initiative to disarm Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons became known as “Russian,” as well as the Sino-Russian dialogue occurring prior to August 21 and as a precursor to the SCO summit. In fact, the idea was first advanced by Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski in late August, discussed by Putin and Obama in St. Petersburg on September 5 at the G20 summit, and not until September 8 did Moscow throw its full support behind the idea. On August 15, in Moscow, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, and Yang Jiechi, a member of China’s State Council, held the ninth round of consultations on strategic security. Several days before the chemical attack in Damascus, they exchanged views on North Korea and Syria and formulated plans to reach a joint position on the latter at the SCO summit (politikom.ru, September 5). Putin was able to exploit the gamble on mooting Syrian disarmament, knowing that Sino-Russian unity on Syria was guaranteed.
After the public backing of the disarmament plan by Putin, Patrushev said the US Congress had no authority to back strikes on Syria and again upheld the importance of the UN Security Council. “If a strike is delivered, then we can say that it is aggression against another state,” he added. Patrushev reiterated that Russia insisted on the need to resolve the situation in Syria by political diplomatic means and stated: “I believe that our position will be heeded in the end” (Interfax, September 9). It was ultimately the opportunism afforded by the Polish idea, and the Sino-Russian coordination in the background, that emboldened Putin to take the risk.
--Roger McDermott
____________________________________________________
China Strengthens its Hand in Kazakhstan After Xi Jinping’s Visit
On September 6–8, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid an official visit to Kazakhstan, amid his ten-day journey across Central Asia that had previously taken him to Turkmenistan where gas production at the world’s second-largest gas field was inaugurated. Xi Jinping’s visit to the Kazakhstani capital came several months after President Nursultan Nazarbayev had already greeted his Chinese counterpart in Beijing following the latter’s orchestrated accession to the presidency. While this latest meeting between Presidents Nazarbayev and Xi was hailed on both sides as further evidence of the two countries’ constantly developing bilateral partnership, it also served to announce a string of new achievements (Rg.ru, September 6; News.nur.kz, April 6).
On the political front, Kazakhstan and China signed a declaration on the development of comprehensive strategic cooperation, with Nazarbayev qualifying the Chinese dimension as a priority area for his country’s foreign policy. In his turn, during a lecture at the Nazarbayev University, Xi unveiled Beijing’s proposal to establish a new regional framework undergirding the so-called Great Silk Road diplomacy. Whereas the United States government previously put forward a similar idea, focusing on the reconstruction of war-torn Afghanistan and increased cooperation among neighboring countries in both Central and South Asia, China’s approach is pragmatically limited to the five post-Soviet “stans” (Zakon.kz, KazInform, September 7).
Encompassing such key steps as reinforcing the regional political dialogue, creating road infrastructure, facilitating cross-border trade, intensifying money flows and bridging cultural differences, the Great Silk Road speech represents China’s first attempt to structure its relations with Central Asia in a strategic way. Unlike Washington, Beijing prefers to avoid any linkages to either Afghanistan or Pakistan, focusing instead on a limited number of feasible goals unrelated to hard security issues but covering trade, energy and mutual understanding. At the same time, this strategic outlook differs from that of Russia, whose Central Asian connection is primarily based on bilateral exchanges characterized by recurrent ups and downs. Whereas, China is invariably viewed as a privileged partner by all the five regimes, including the reclusive Turkmenistan. Given Kazakhstan’s political and economic weight in the region, it is most likely to become the core of China’s refurbished diplomacy aimed at ensuring stable long-term relations in select priority fields.
The economic side of Xi Jinping’s visit to Astana was the key success of Chinese diplomacy. Kazakhstan’s KazMunaiGaz oil and gas company and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed on September 7 a formal agreement concerning the purchase by Beijing of a 8.33-percent stake in the Kashagan oilfield. Moreover, China has agreed to cover half of Kazakhstan’s future investment expenditure related to the exploitation of this giant deposit on the Caspian Sea. While the Middle Kingdom remains excluded from oil and gas operations at Kazakhstan’s two other strategic deposits, Tengiz and Karachaganak, its victory over India in the Kashagan affair opens a new chapter in Chinese-Kazakhstani energy relations (News.nur.kz, September 7).
Nursultan Nazarbayev further confirmed that the Chinese government would provide assistance in the construction of the fourth oil refinery in the country, in addition to the ones located in Atyrau, Pavlodar and Shymkent, where costly modernization is underway. Earlier, Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Oil and Gas had already hinted at the possibility of downscaling Russia’s share in the refining of Kazakhstani crude oil, against the backdrop of an unending spat with Moscow regarding the tricky issue of energy trade within the trilateral Customs Union. Finally, Nazarbayev and Xi inaugurated the Beyneu-Bozoy-Shymkent pipeline, which will carry 6 billion cubic meters of natural gas from the Caspian Sea to Xinjiang across Kazakhstan’s southern provinces. Thus, Kazakhstan’s contribution to the overall gas supplies to China via the Central Asia–China gas pipeline, including segments built in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, will grow substantially in the next few years (Sim.kz, September 11; Interfax.ru, September 7).
On a broader scale, China’s economic cooperation with Kazakhstan has increasingly been on the rise. In 2012, the bilateral trade turnover increased by 12.5 percent, reaching $24 billion. On his April 2013 visit to Beijing, Nazarbayev famously said that the two countries were planning to bring this figure up to $40 billion by 2015. This intention was recently confirmed by the Kazakhstani and Chinese leaders, and Xi’s two-day stay in Kazakhstan has already yielded concrete results in this direction. Thus, Astana and Beijing signed 22 contracts worth over $30 billion, covering not only energy, agriculture, transport and education, but also space cooperation where Russia still enjoys absolute preeminence. Also, to Moscow’s dissatisfaction, Kazakhstan’s political elites are increasingly oriented toward neighboring China, which minimizes the risks of future instability in the Kazakhstani-Chinese relations in the post-Nazarbayev era (Today.kz, September 7; Newskaz.ru, April 6).
Whereas China enjoys the support of Kazakhstan’s current leadership and is likely to maintain the favorable status of a privileged foreign partner in the years to come, its positive image among the country’s population is far from consensual. Earlier, in mid-August 2013, the Kazakhstani industry ministry’s proposal to simplify visa rules for Chinese tourists traveling on organized tours led to heated debates about Beijing’s unchecked strategic ambitions. Although the foreign ministry promptly denied the possibility of liberalizing the existing visa regime with China, a group of local activists promised to stage protests against Chinese “expansionism.” More recently, the governor of the Eastern Kazakhstan region, Berdibek Saparbayev, suggested leasing unused cropland to Chinese farmers, quickly triggering numerous criticisms from various public associations. In December 2009, a similar proposal already drew to the streets of Almaty dozens of Kazakhstani nationalists protesting their government’s purported plan to grant over 1 million hectares of arable land to China on lease terms (News.mail.ru, August 13; Tengrinews.kz, August 12; Time.kz, September 7; Zakon.kz, December 12, 2009).
Therefore, while China’s rapid rise in Kazakhstan may be strongly favored by the latter’s elites, it is increasingly seen as a threat to the country’s sovereignty by its own population. This trend warns powerfully against any precipitous steps on China’s behalf, so that Beijing is likely to keep on treading cautiously.
--Georgiy Voloshin
___________________________________________________
Uzbekistan Faces Civil War, Possible Disintegration, Tashkent Scholar Says
Over the past six weeks, the independent FerganaNews.com portal has conducted an online discussion, sparked by an article of the leader of the “Birdamlik” opposition movement, Bahordir Chorniyev, on the possibility that Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov and his regime could be overthrown by a “velvet revolution” (fergananews.com/articles/7849; fergananews.com/articles/7852; fergananews.com/articles/7854; fergananews.com/articles/7856).
Most of those taking part were skeptical about that possibility, but none of them has as bleak a vision of Uzbekistan’s future as Maryam Ibragimova, a Tashkent-based political scientist, whose article concludes the current series (http://www.fergananews.com/articles/7860). In an 800-word letter to the editor, she argues that her “beautiful and unhappy land” likely faces “either a military dictatorship or a civil war.”
As “a professional political scientist,” Ibragimova writes, she says she has no choice but to add her voice and that in her view there is no possibility of any “velvet” revolution in Uzbekistan. Instead, she continues, what lies ahead is “a bloody dismantling” of the existing dictatorship “or a prolonged civil war accompanied by the disintegration of the country.”
The Tashkent scholar gave five reasons for her explanation. First, in what she describes as his regime’s “greatest political mistake,” President Karimov has destroyed what might have been a liberal opposition whose criticism would have acted to restrain him from his worse missteps. His unwillingness to tolerate any criticism has driven the most talented people of the country to flee and meant that there is no one left to stand up to him. “‘Velvet’ revolutions presuppose a demand for reform. But now in [Uzbek] society, there are very few people who are ready to support” such things.
Second, there are no institutions in Uzbekistan that provide serious political and economic education or even more traditional education. As a result, the graduates of the institutions that do exist are inadequate to the tasks the country faces, and ever more people are turning to Muslim schools for answers to their problems.
Third, Uzbekistani guest workers in Russia are keeping the Central Asian republic afloat, an arrangement the Kremlin likes because it benefits from “the incompetent and corrupt bureaucrats” who rule in Tashkent. Fourth, Uzbekistan’s police and judicial organs are completely corrupt to the extent they function at all. Many of their staff have told Ibraimova, she reports, that they make no decisions. Instead, the powers that be and the National Security Service (SNB) simply give orders.
And fifth, the officers of the SNB know exactly what is going on, but they mostly do not want to rock the boat because they profit from the corruption. In fact, the political scientist says, “the SNB is the only organization” in Uzbekistan which knows the state the country is in and could act. One hopes that some of its officers will do so, she says, implicitly drawing an eerie parallel with the role of Yuri Andropov and the Soviet KGB in the Soviet Union during the 1980s.
As a result of these five factors, Uzbeks “do not believe in their country’s future.” The active part has already left or wants to do so, and overwhelmingly those who remain are satisfied with Karimov’s policy of “bread and circuses” or at least are not prepared to unite to challenge his regime. A velvet revolution requires exactly that, and it also requires leaders “capable of uniting those who agree with them and struggling often at the sacrifice of themselves for their ideas,” Ibragimova says. “Where are these leaders” in Uzbekistan today? Anyone who begins to distinguish himself or herself will be repressed, compromised or driven abroad.
As a result, at least in the short term, Uzbekistanis can expect only “the worst” of scenarios. As long as the regime has enough resources to buy people off, it will survive. When it runs out—and eventually, it will—“criminality will increase, chaos will ensue, and a bloody collapse” of the entire system and even the country will follow, she warns.
Once that starts, Ibragimova argues, there are only two possible outcomes: Either “the SNB and the army will unite and establish a military dictatorship,” something many in Uzbekistan—and, it should be said, not just there—will support as “better than anarchy” even though it will not solve the country’s problems. Or worse, “the SNB and the army will be paralyzed by corruption,” and “chaos will grow into a civil war.” In what is likely to be a war of all against all, various groups will become involved, including “separatists, Islamists, the narco-mafia, Russia, China, the United States, etc., etc.”
Such prospects serve in many ways as the last bulwark of the Karimov regime: it can pose as a lesser evil to those outcomes. But the ruling system cannot change itself and does not yet face a “velvet” pressure to change. Ibragimova concludes by expressing hope that her prognosis will somehow turn out to be incorrect.
--Paul Goble
Considerable international media attention on the Syria crisis focused on the apparently deft handling of the diplomatic track by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Yet, Russian diplomacy, which succeeded in presenting Moscow as a critical player in the pursuit of a non-military option against Damascus, also contained an underestimated dimension: specifically the emergence of a de facto Sino-Russian alliance under cover of their strategic partnership and rooted in opposing unilateral action by the United States. Levels of coordination between Beijing and Moscow extended beyond repeatedly standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the United Nations Security Council in order to prevent a UN mandate for a military strike on the Bashar al-Assad regime. Evidence of this coordination also surfaced in the Bishkek Declaration issued at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit on September 13 (RIA Novosti, September 15).
Russia’s apparently principled position during the crisis in Syria, following the use of chemical weapons in the suburbs of Damascus on August 21, yielded little surprise. Doctrinal and political opposition to US unilateral military action and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) out-of-area operations have been persistent themes in Russian security thinking since the allied intervention in Kosovo in 1999. Moscow also adopted a very critical interpretation of the Arab Spring in terms of its expression of concern about stability in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as arguing that no foreign power possessed a right to intervene in the civil war in Syria. These themes were all present in the numerous official statements from the Russian political leadership in the aftermath of August 21, 2013 (Interfax, August 22–September 15). The second- and third-order consequences of Moscow’s successful forestalling of the strike option through its diplomacy will have a lasting impact on global affairs: these relate to the appearance of a virtual Sino-Russian alliance against the US on key issues.
On September 13, Putin used the opportunity afforded by the SCO summit in Bishkek to praise Syria’s decision to join the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. “We should welcome the decision of the Syrian leadership. I would like to express the hope that it will be a very serious step on the road to settlement of the Syrian crisis,” Putin told the summit. Unlike his experience of discord over the issue of options on Syria during the St. Petersburg G20 gathering earlier in the month, Putin could rely on the unity of the SCO and its core strengthening of Russia’s stance on the crisis by China (RIA Novosti, September 13).
On September 9, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov confirmed that Syria would feature on the SCO summit agenda. Morgulov added, “The positions of the SCO member states on the issue are very close; we all believe that a foreign military operation without the UN Security Council’s sanction is a violation of international law. I believe the Bishkek final declaration will include a consolidated position of the SCO states on the issue” (Interfax, September 9).
Consequently the heads of state of the SCO members (China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) gathered for the summit in Bishkek alongside the SCO’s observers (Afghanistan, Iran, Mongolia and India) and were joined by the secretary generals of the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the executive secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the UN deputy secretary general. On the sidelines of the summit, Putin met his counterparts from Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Iran. The SCO Council of Heads of State approved a plan of action for 2013–2017 to implement the provisions of the Treaty on Long-Term Good-Neighborly Friendship and Cooperation between the SCO states and also signed the Bishkek Declaration. However, the summit was overshadowed by the Syria crisis, and occurred while the talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were in progress in Geneva. Interestingly, Russian media, including the defense ministry’s Krasnaya Zvezda, emphasized that all members of the SCO, including China, support the early convening of a peace conference on Syria and the “initiative of the Russian Federation on the transfer of chemical weapons in Syria under international control” (Interfax, ITAR-TASS, September 13).
The Bishkek Declaration stated that the SCO stands for “the speedy overcoming of the crisis in Syria by the Syrians themselves, subject to the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic,” and “launching a broad political dialogue between the authorities and the opposition without preconditions on the basis of the Geneva communique of June 30, 2012.” It added support for “the initiative to support the transfer of Syrian chemical weapons under international supervision with its subsequent destruction and the accession of Syria to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction” (http://redstar.ru/index.php/component/k2/item/11483-po-prioritetnym-napravleniyam).
Although Russia and China maintain a “strategic partnership,” they have eschewed any move toward forming a political-military alliance with mutual security guarantees. However, it is revealing to note carefully the chronology of how the initiative to disarm Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons became known as “Russian,” as well as the Sino-Russian dialogue occurring prior to August 21 and as a precursor to the SCO summit. In fact, the idea was first advanced by Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski in late August, discussed by Putin and Obama in St. Petersburg on September 5 at the G20 summit, and not until September 8 did Moscow throw its full support behind the idea. On August 15, in Moscow, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, and Yang Jiechi, a member of China’s State Council, held the ninth round of consultations on strategic security. Several days before the chemical attack in Damascus, they exchanged views on North Korea and Syria and formulated plans to reach a joint position on the latter at the SCO summit (politikom.ru, September 5). Putin was able to exploit the gamble on mooting Syrian disarmament, knowing that Sino-Russian unity on Syria was guaranteed.
After the public backing of the disarmament plan by Putin, Patrushev said the US Congress had no authority to back strikes on Syria and again upheld the importance of the UN Security Council. “If a strike is delivered, then we can say that it is aggression against another state,” he added. Patrushev reiterated that Russia insisted on the need to resolve the situation in Syria by political diplomatic means and stated: “I believe that our position will be heeded in the end” (Interfax, September 9). It was ultimately the opportunism afforded by the Polish idea, and the Sino-Russian coordination in the background, that emboldened Putin to take the risk.
--Roger McDermott
____________________________________________________
China Strengthens its Hand in Kazakhstan After Xi Jinping’s Visit
On September 6–8, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid an official visit to Kazakhstan, amid his ten-day journey across Central Asia that had previously taken him to Turkmenistan where gas production at the world’s second-largest gas field was inaugurated. Xi Jinping’s visit to the Kazakhstani capital came several months after President Nursultan Nazarbayev had already greeted his Chinese counterpart in Beijing following the latter’s orchestrated accession to the presidency. While this latest meeting between Presidents Nazarbayev and Xi was hailed on both sides as further evidence of the two countries’ constantly developing bilateral partnership, it also served to announce a string of new achievements (Rg.ru, September 6; News.nur.kz, April 6).
On the political front, Kazakhstan and China signed a declaration on the development of comprehensive strategic cooperation, with Nazarbayev qualifying the Chinese dimension as a priority area for his country’s foreign policy. In his turn, during a lecture at the Nazarbayev University, Xi unveiled Beijing’s proposal to establish a new regional framework undergirding the so-called Great Silk Road diplomacy. Whereas the United States government previously put forward a similar idea, focusing on the reconstruction of war-torn Afghanistan and increased cooperation among neighboring countries in both Central and South Asia, China’s approach is pragmatically limited to the five post-Soviet “stans” (Zakon.kz, KazInform, September 7).
Encompassing such key steps as reinforcing the regional political dialogue, creating road infrastructure, facilitating cross-border trade, intensifying money flows and bridging cultural differences, the Great Silk Road speech represents China’s first attempt to structure its relations with Central Asia in a strategic way. Unlike Washington, Beijing prefers to avoid any linkages to either Afghanistan or Pakistan, focusing instead on a limited number of feasible goals unrelated to hard security issues but covering trade, energy and mutual understanding. At the same time, this strategic outlook differs from that of Russia, whose Central Asian connection is primarily based on bilateral exchanges characterized by recurrent ups and downs. Whereas, China is invariably viewed as a privileged partner by all the five regimes, including the reclusive Turkmenistan. Given Kazakhstan’s political and economic weight in the region, it is most likely to become the core of China’s refurbished diplomacy aimed at ensuring stable long-term relations in select priority fields.
The economic side of Xi Jinping’s visit to Astana was the key success of Chinese diplomacy. Kazakhstan’s KazMunaiGaz oil and gas company and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed on September 7 a formal agreement concerning the purchase by Beijing of a 8.33-percent stake in the Kashagan oilfield. Moreover, China has agreed to cover half of Kazakhstan’s future investment expenditure related to the exploitation of this giant deposit on the Caspian Sea. While the Middle Kingdom remains excluded from oil and gas operations at Kazakhstan’s two other strategic deposits, Tengiz and Karachaganak, its victory over India in the Kashagan affair opens a new chapter in Chinese-Kazakhstani energy relations (News.nur.kz, September 7).
Nursultan Nazarbayev further confirmed that the Chinese government would provide assistance in the construction of the fourth oil refinery in the country, in addition to the ones located in Atyrau, Pavlodar and Shymkent, where costly modernization is underway. Earlier, Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Oil and Gas had already hinted at the possibility of downscaling Russia’s share in the refining of Kazakhstani crude oil, against the backdrop of an unending spat with Moscow regarding the tricky issue of energy trade within the trilateral Customs Union. Finally, Nazarbayev and Xi inaugurated the Beyneu-Bozoy-Shymkent pipeline, which will carry 6 billion cubic meters of natural gas from the Caspian Sea to Xinjiang across Kazakhstan’s southern provinces. Thus, Kazakhstan’s contribution to the overall gas supplies to China via the Central Asia–China gas pipeline, including segments built in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, will grow substantially in the next few years (Sim.kz, September 11; Interfax.ru, September 7).
On a broader scale, China’s economic cooperation with Kazakhstan has increasingly been on the rise. In 2012, the bilateral trade turnover increased by 12.5 percent, reaching $24 billion. On his April 2013 visit to Beijing, Nazarbayev famously said that the two countries were planning to bring this figure up to $40 billion by 2015. This intention was recently confirmed by the Kazakhstani and Chinese leaders, and Xi’s two-day stay in Kazakhstan has already yielded concrete results in this direction. Thus, Astana and Beijing signed 22 contracts worth over $30 billion, covering not only energy, agriculture, transport and education, but also space cooperation where Russia still enjoys absolute preeminence. Also, to Moscow’s dissatisfaction, Kazakhstan’s political elites are increasingly oriented toward neighboring China, which minimizes the risks of future instability in the Kazakhstani-Chinese relations in the post-Nazarbayev era (Today.kz, September 7; Newskaz.ru, April 6).
Whereas China enjoys the support of Kazakhstan’s current leadership and is likely to maintain the favorable status of a privileged foreign partner in the years to come, its positive image among the country’s population is far from consensual. Earlier, in mid-August 2013, the Kazakhstani industry ministry’s proposal to simplify visa rules for Chinese tourists traveling on organized tours led to heated debates about Beijing’s unchecked strategic ambitions. Although the foreign ministry promptly denied the possibility of liberalizing the existing visa regime with China, a group of local activists promised to stage protests against Chinese “expansionism.” More recently, the governor of the Eastern Kazakhstan region, Berdibek Saparbayev, suggested leasing unused cropland to Chinese farmers, quickly triggering numerous criticisms from various public associations. In December 2009, a similar proposal already drew to the streets of Almaty dozens of Kazakhstani nationalists protesting their government’s purported plan to grant over 1 million hectares of arable land to China on lease terms (News.mail.ru, August 13; Tengrinews.kz, August 12; Time.kz, September 7; Zakon.kz, December 12, 2009).
Therefore, while China’s rapid rise in Kazakhstan may be strongly favored by the latter’s elites, it is increasingly seen as a threat to the country’s sovereignty by its own population. This trend warns powerfully against any precipitous steps on China’s behalf, so that Beijing is likely to keep on treading cautiously.
--Georgiy Voloshin
___________________________________________________
Uzbekistan Faces Civil War, Possible Disintegration, Tashkent Scholar Says
Over the past six weeks, the independent FerganaNews.com portal has conducted an online discussion, sparked by an article of the leader of the “Birdamlik” opposition movement, Bahordir Chorniyev, on the possibility that Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov and his regime could be overthrown by a “velvet revolution” (fergananews.com/articles/7849; fergananews.com/articles/7852; fergananews.com/articles/7854; fergananews.com/articles/7856).
Most of those taking part were skeptical about that possibility, but none of them has as bleak a vision of Uzbekistan’s future as Maryam Ibragimova, a Tashkent-based political scientist, whose article concludes the current series (http://www.fergananews.com/articles/7860). In an 800-word letter to the editor, she argues that her “beautiful and unhappy land” likely faces “either a military dictatorship or a civil war.”
As “a professional political scientist,” Ibragimova writes, she says she has no choice but to add her voice and that in her view there is no possibility of any “velvet” revolution in Uzbekistan. Instead, she continues, what lies ahead is “a bloody dismantling” of the existing dictatorship “or a prolonged civil war accompanied by the disintegration of the country.”
The Tashkent scholar gave five reasons for her explanation. First, in what she describes as his regime’s “greatest political mistake,” President Karimov has destroyed what might have been a liberal opposition whose criticism would have acted to restrain him from his worse missteps. His unwillingness to tolerate any criticism has driven the most talented people of the country to flee and meant that there is no one left to stand up to him. “‘Velvet’ revolutions presuppose a demand for reform. But now in [Uzbek] society, there are very few people who are ready to support” such things.
Second, there are no institutions in Uzbekistan that provide serious political and economic education or even more traditional education. As a result, the graduates of the institutions that do exist are inadequate to the tasks the country faces, and ever more people are turning to Muslim schools for answers to their problems.
Third, Uzbekistani guest workers in Russia are keeping the Central Asian republic afloat, an arrangement the Kremlin likes because it benefits from “the incompetent and corrupt bureaucrats” who rule in Tashkent. Fourth, Uzbekistan’s police and judicial organs are completely corrupt to the extent they function at all. Many of their staff have told Ibraimova, she reports, that they make no decisions. Instead, the powers that be and the National Security Service (SNB) simply give orders.
And fifth, the officers of the SNB know exactly what is going on, but they mostly do not want to rock the boat because they profit from the corruption. In fact, the political scientist says, “the SNB is the only organization” in Uzbekistan which knows the state the country is in and could act. One hopes that some of its officers will do so, she says, implicitly drawing an eerie parallel with the role of Yuri Andropov and the Soviet KGB in the Soviet Union during the 1980s.
As a result of these five factors, Uzbeks “do not believe in their country’s future.” The active part has already left or wants to do so, and overwhelmingly those who remain are satisfied with Karimov’s policy of “bread and circuses” or at least are not prepared to unite to challenge his regime. A velvet revolution requires exactly that, and it also requires leaders “capable of uniting those who agree with them and struggling often at the sacrifice of themselves for their ideas,” Ibragimova says. “Where are these leaders” in Uzbekistan today? Anyone who begins to distinguish himself or herself will be repressed, compromised or driven abroad.
As a result, at least in the short term, Uzbekistanis can expect only “the worst” of scenarios. As long as the regime has enough resources to buy people off, it will survive. When it runs out—and eventually, it will—“criminality will increase, chaos will ensue, and a bloody collapse” of the entire system and even the country will follow, she warns.
Once that starts, Ibragimova argues, there are only two possible outcomes: Either “the SNB and the army will unite and establish a military dictatorship,” something many in Uzbekistan—and, it should be said, not just there—will support as “better than anarchy” even though it will not solve the country’s problems. Or worse, “the SNB and the army will be paralyzed by corruption,” and “chaos will grow into a civil war.” In what is likely to be a war of all against all, various groups will become involved, including “separatists, Islamists, the narco-mafia, Russia, China, the United States, etc., etc.”
Such prospects serve in many ways as the last bulwark of the Karimov regime: it can pose as a lesser evil to those outcomes. But the ruling system cannot change itself and does not yet face a “velvet” pressure to change. Ibragimova concludes by expressing hope that her prognosis will somehow turn out to be incorrect.
--Paul Goble