Foreign Policy Blogs

Independence for Whom?

A few various items today:

A. Yesterday, and the day before, we discussed the meaning of a new CSTO deployment in Central Asia, with myself coming out on the side that it was both a political and strategic move for Russia and for the Central Asian states involved.  Basically, Russia wants the CA states looking towards it for security and the CA states want assurances against the growing instability in Afghanistan, in other words, a security partnership.  But Russia and the CSTO are not the only game in town, especially when one is talking about Afghan security and halting the Taliban advance.  The NATO alliance holds many strategic and political cards, as was quickly pointed out yesterday, they or the US have bases in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, and as we can see in this meeting between NATO Depty Sec Gen Claudio Bisogniero and Kazak Defense Minister Danial Akhmetov and its following press conference, Kazakhstan relys on and is a ‘key partner’ in this Western alliance as well.  At the meeting the two sides exchanged pleasentries and discussed their upcoming Kazak-NATO in Brussels where they will work on the framework of Kazak's individual plan of partnership.  The NATO Gen Sec stated Kazak was a ‘key partner’ and that achieved ‘good results’ in their cooperation with the nation.  Kazak minister Akhmetov made this very positive overture to its alliance with the military alliance along with the EU and US:

“I with pleasure note a positive dynamics and rather intensive reinforcement of relations between Kazakhstan and NATO,” stated in his turn D. Akhmetov. “I want to stress that expanding of constructive interactions with the alliance, European state, with the USA is a priority direction of the external political course of Kazakhstan.”

It appears the CSTO has quite the challenger for regional primacy, but Moscow knew that already.

B. Speaking of Afghanistan, and who isn't nowadays, Eurasianet.org published an interesting interview with former US intelligence analyst and current global scholar at CSIS regarding the current situations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the effect General Petraeus might have on the Afghan conflict now that he is in charge of the whole region of Central Command.  Though the interview focuses on Iraq, Cordesman has some blunt assessments about the current Afghan stabilization campaign and what will need to be done to achieve the desired result of a stable, free Afghanistan.  He stated that for the entire course of the Afghan war, ‘we’ve underestimated the threat, we’ve reacted far too slowly, we’ve never had the forces or resources to take the initiative.’  He discusses the discrepancy in the requested 12-15 thousand troop requests by commanders in country and the promise by Bush, Gates, and Chairman Mullen for only 8,000.

Cordesman also lamented the lack of aid and business sector workers available to help rebuild the country, but argues that we either do not have the resources or that the military does not want inexperienced people coming into to this conflict zone.  With the fear that more aid workers will be targeted for violence by the Taliban as were three last month.  The military's job in Afghanistan is amazing complicated as they must be soldiers, diplomats, engineers, teachers, etc.  General Petraeus probably understands this more than anyone else in the military, but as Cordesman points out, we should not expect immediate miracles from him as he takes over Central Command.

C. To conclude today's post, I want to highlight an important piece lambasting the Uzbekistan government over its various violations of individual and group rights.  Tanzilya Salimdjanova and Mandeep Tiwana from Civicus: World Alliance for Citizen Participation attempt to shed light on several instances of Uzbek government repression of its citizens and do this in light of celebrations of the nation's Independence from the Soviet Union 17 years ago.  The two discuss the imprisonments of activists Mutabar tojiboeva and Yusuf Juma, the restrictive Rules of Holding Mass Events legislation which strongly denies Uzbeki's rights of assembly and protest (in planning a public event one must put aside a minimum of 10 seats in each section for security personnel, ‘how inviting!’), and the struggle for organized groups in civil society to gather and be recognized, including NGOs, faith-based groups, and professional organizations.  Too often we in the West think only of the Afghan people's freedoms or lack there of and miss what is happening across the border.  We can thank this work by Salimdjanova and Tiwana for this vital piece and all others who keep a light shining on oppression of human rights everywhere.

 

Author

Patrick Frost

Patrick Frost recently graduated from New York University's Masters Program in Political Science - International Relations. His MA thesis analyzed the capabilities and objectives of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Central Asia and beyond and explored how these affected U.S. interests and policy.

Areas of Focus:
Eurasia, American Foreign Policy, Ideology, SCO