The European Union's ‘Strategy for a New Partnership with Central Asia‘ has now passed its 1st year of existence and therefore must immediately be judged! Here are its original stated goals and origins and here is a one year assessment by ISN's Robert M Cutler. Now the 'strategy’ is a decade long process that hopefully will go on even longer and its ambitions must be considered rather large considering Europe's presence in the region has been scant for years, but it is not without use to see how its doing so far.
Cutler calls the project's a 'slow start,’ but one that has shown potential and should have mutual benefits. The results have been ‘modest’ in his eyes as steps have been made, but it is too early to see any real change/progress involving relations between the two regions and concrete development on the ground. Cutler is correct in noting that the EU has made major attempts to diplomatically and strategically engage Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, but is also correct in noting that nothing concrete has come from their talks so far. Though he fails to mention that in April of this year, an EU delegation to Turkmenistan seemed to come close to a gas deal, circumventing Russia with the Trans-Caspian pipeline, though nothing has become official as of yet. Cutler gives the EU credit for pushing a degree of democratization in Kazakhstan, using their leverage concerning Nazarbayev's 2010 OSCE presidency. However, this influence is difficult to truly measure. Concerning Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the former has been given poverty reduction to support 100,000 people in the southern part of the country and in the latter, the EU has pledged to help alleviate Tajik's border patrol and drug trafficking problems, especially on its Afghan border. In the end, Cutler is right in warning against the 'strategy’ becoming too disjointed, piecemeal, with individual policies spread throughout, and also acknowledges the EU's difficult task of trying to garner influence in a region already beset by great powers Russia, China, and the US.
Two quick Euro items to point out; Though much of Europe {though not all} has been resistant to a greater presence in Afghanistan and the greater Central Asian region, France and its executive have made some positive, strong moves of late and its Foreign Minister Kouchner has ‘called on the international community to enhance security efforts in Central Asia and increase engagement in Afghanistan.’ Secondly, a new German embassy was opened in Tajikistan in late July with German ambassador stating 'this proves that Germany will further remain a reliable partner for Tajikistan, and do everything possible to further expand bilateral cooperation within the framework of the strategy of the European Union.’
If all goes to plan, I will do a post later today about NBC's coverage of the Xinjiang Province and the latest spasm of violence that has plagued the region.