The Afghanistan- Central Asia relationship: What role for the EU? Marlene Laruelle, Sebastien Peyrouse and Vera Axyonova working paper 13 February 2013 Abstract As the 2014 NATO drawdown from Afghanistan ap- proaches, the EU increasingly focuses on preventing po- tential spillover effects on Central Asia. The Union wishes to further its cooperation with the wider region. But to succeed, it will have to develop a clearer strategy to avoid condoning the repressive policies and opaque interests of the Central Asian governments. The EU should focus on a few well-chosen areas and prioritise the involvement of local actors, in particular civilian stakeholders, who are the only vectors of long-term sustainable solutions. This paper addresses the Central Asia-Afghanistan rela- tionship, analyses the impact of post-2014 changes to the security context and looks at the EU’s opportunities to foster regional dynamics. EUCAM-SD This working paper is published as part of the EUCAM-Security and Development project that is implemented by FRIDE and the Karelian Institute of the University of Eastern Finland. The EUCAM-SD is a key component of the EUCAM pro- gramme and focuses on the links between security challenges in the Central Asian region and the need for development in the broadest sense, including governance, poverty reduction, ethnic tension and social equality. The project aims to offer new insights and creative thinking on Europe’s role in promoting security and development in Central Asia. EUCAM-SD is supported by the Wider Europe Initiative of the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. © EUCAM 2013 ISBN (Online): 978-84-614-6870-6 The Afghanistan-Central Asia relationship: What role for the EU? EUCAM Working Paper No. 13 Marlene Laruelle, Sebastien Peyrouse and Vera Axyonova Table of Contents Introduction 5 1. The multifaceted linkages between Central Asia and Afghanistan 5 1.1. A shared history, dissociation and new interactions 5 1.2. Economic cooperation 6 1.3. The actors of the Central Asia-Afghanistan relationship 8 2. Assessing and preparing to react to the post-2014 situation 9 2.1. Security assessments of the post-2014 impact 9 2.2. Central Asia’s preparation strategies 9 2.3. Russian, Chinese and U.S. engagement post-2014 11 2.3.1. Russia 11 2.3.2. China 11 2.3.3. The United States 11 3. Niches for European engagement 12 3.1. The EU’s dissociated aid strategies 12 3.2. Security programmes: victims of distrust between Central Asians and Afghans 13 3.3. Developing joint programmes in the civilian sphere 14 3.4. Enhancing education exchanges 15 Conclusion 16 The Afghanistan-Central Asia relationship: What role for the EU? 5 Introduction Asia and Afghanistan, at least at the narrative level. The June 2012 review of the EU Strategy for Central Asia evidences a more structured security orientation and emphasises As the 2014 NATO drawdown from Afghanistan approaches, potential threats to Central Asia stemming from post-2014 the international community increasingly considers the Afghanistan. It notes Central Asian fears of a new wave of potential role for ‘regional solutions’. These do not imply insecurity from the south and it seems to support, or at least the naïve notion of neighbourly harmony, but new civilian it does not criticise, the way local governments formulate the patterns for improving peace and stability in the region as risk of ‘spillover’. Although security seems to be the keyword, a whole. Pakistan is quite rightly considered Afghanistan’s the review also states that the EU will help strengthen ‘actions most strategic neighbour and the main challenge to the around borders with Afghanistan, in close coordination with country’s long-term security. But other neighbours also play Central Asian states and international actors’. By doing so, an increasingly significant role for the country’s future. Their the EU hopes to foster regional dynamics, deepen bilateral level of economic engagement, their potential leverage on political dialogue and transform the Afghan neighbourhood domestic Afghan issues and their own perceptions of the into ‘an opportunity for developing economic cooperation in strategic balance among regional actors will be important to the wider region’.1 reaching a stable solution. This paper addresses the Central Asia-Afghanistan The position of the Central Asian states towards Afghanistan relationship after NATO’s 2014 withdrawal and Europe’s is less well-known in comparison to those of India, Iran, role in the region. The first part discusses the multifaceted China and Russia. Central Asian countries are most often links that exist between Central Asia and Afghanistan. It seen as the victims of the Afghan situation, rather than as gives a brief historical overview and assesses their growing actors at the same level as other neighbours. It is important economic relationship, as well as the diversity of the actors to understand not only the risks, but also the opportunities involved. The second part analyses the impact of post-2014 presented by Central Asia’s proximity to Afghanistan. changes on Central Asia’s security environment. It does so More than 2,000 km of joint borders unite Afghanistan with from three vantage points: the likelihood of ‘spillovers’ from Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In Afghanistan, the Afghanistan; the Central Asian governments’ perceptions Tajiks, Turkmens and Uzbeks have served as mediators with of the challenges ahead and their preparedness to address their northern neighbours, especially since the intensification them; and the roles of Russia, China and the United States in of Soviet influence in the 1950s. Today, despite a revival the region. The third part examines the EU’s role in building of insurgency in recent years, the northern provinces are cooperation mechanisms between Central Asian states and remote from the unstable dynamics of the Afghan-Pakistani Afghanistan, and examines Europe’s opportunities in light of border and are still the most secure areas for the delivery of the changing regional context. international aid. The U.S. and the European Union (EU) are looking for new partners to share short-term agendas (such as transit-in- 1. The multifaceted linkages reverse of ISAF material from Afghanistan through Central Asia) and long-term plans (including integrating Afghanistan between Central Asia and Afghanistan into the wider economic region and developing new regional 1.1. A shared history, dissociation and new interactions security platforms). Central Asian republics are among the main candidates. Afghanistan and Central Asia share a long common history. The north of present-day Afghanistan is linked to arlene Laruelle is a EUCAM researcher, FRIDE Transoxiana or Turkestan, the region to the north of the Massociate and Director of the Central Asia Program at George Washington University. Amu Darya River, which more or less corresponds to the territories of contemporary Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, ebastien Peyrouse is a EUCAM researcher, FRIDE Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The Amu Darya has not historically Sassociate and Research Professor at George Washington separated two different spaces. The broader region began University. to disintegrate in the eighteenth century and was divided altogether in the nineteenth century with the advance of the era Axyonova is a EUCAM associate researcher, PhD Tsarist and British colonial empires. The Emirate of Bukhara Vfellow at the University of Bremen and researcher was the last direct historical link between Central Asia and at the Centre for Intercultural and European Studies Afghanistan; the last emir, Alim Khan, fleeing the advancing (CINTEUS), Fulda University. Bolsheviks, took refuge in Afghanistan in 1920. The deep political, social, economic and cultural The U.S. construes its Central Asia policy through an Afghan transformations introduced by the Soviets in Central Asia lens and in connection with a broader agenda that also between 1917 and 1991 put an end to the region’s similitude includes South Asia. Europe, on the other hand, has long with Afghanistan. But relations between the two zones dissociated Central Asia from Afghanistan, and maintains continued. In the 1920s and 1930s, tens of thousands of different degrees of involvement with separate agendas Central Asians, mainly Turkmens and Uzbeks, fled the civil for each region. However, preparations for the post-2014 context are pushing the EU to reconsider its approach and 1 Progress Report on the implementation of the EU Strategy for Central look for ways better to coordinate its engagement in Central Asia, 25 June 2012, p. 2 and 16, available at: http://www.eeas.europa. eu/central_asia/docs/20120628_progress_report_en.pdf 6 EUCAM Working Paper No. 13 war and Stalinist collectivisation and settled in Afghanistan. In Only Saparmurat Niyazov’s Turkmenistan, in the name of 1953, when Mohammad Daoud Khan became Afghanistan’s ‘perpetual neutrality’, continued state-to-state commercial prime minister, the country started developing closer ties relations with the Taliban, trading gas, electricity and food. with the Soviet Union. For over two decades, Moscow Meanwhile, the trafficking of opiates grew in scale across was Kabul’s main commercial partner and political ally, the entire region. Official trade resumed after the arrival of providing Afghanistan with substantial military and political the international coalition in Kabul and the establishment of aid, fostering economic development in infrastructure and Hamid Karzai’s regime at the end of 2001. From 2007-2008 industry and promoting social transformation through its on, it underwent a significant boom. support for literacy programmes, women’s emancipation and agrarian reform. After the 1973 coup, President Daoud Afghanistan’s position in imports, exports and the total trade of Khan tried to loosen the Soviet grip on the government in Central Asian states in 2010 in millions of Euros3 an attempt to diminish the power of Afghan communists. This gave rise to another coup in 1978, carried out by local Imports Rank Exports Rank Total trade Rank communists who formed a pro-Soviet regime and asked Kazakhstan 0.5 (0.0%) <50 145 (0.4%) 16 145.5 (0.2%) 18 Moscow for help.