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Central Asia: Confronting Independence

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Central Asia: Confronting Independence THE JAMES A. BAKER III INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY OF RICE UNIVERSITY UNLOCKING THE ASSETS: ENERGY AND THE FUTURE OF CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS CENTRAL ASIA: CONFRONTING INDEPENDENCE MARTHA BRILL OLCOTT SENIOR RESEARCH ASSOCIATE CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE PREPARED IN CONJUNCTION WITH AN ENERGY STUDY BY THE CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY AND THE JAMES A. BAKER III INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RICE UNIVERSITY – APRIL 1998 CENTRAL ASIA: CONFRONTING INDEPENDENCE Introduction After the euphoria of gaining independence settles down, the elites of each new sovereign country inevitably stumble upon the challenges of building a viable state. The inexperienced governments soon venture into unfamiliar territory when they have to formulate foreign policy or when they try to forge beneficial economic ties with foreign investors. What often proves especially difficult is the process of redefining the new country's relationship with its old colonial ruler or federation partners. In addition to these often-encountered hurdles, the newly independent states of Central Asia-- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan-- have faced a host of particular challenges. Some of these emanate from the Soviet legacy, others--from the ethnic and social fabric of each individual polity. Yet another group stems from the peculiarities of intra- regional dynamics. Finally, the fledgling states have been struggling to step out of their traditional isolation and build relations with states outside of their neighborhood. This paper seeks to offer an overview of all the challenges that the Central Asian countries have confronted in the process of consolidating their sovereignty. The Soviet Legacy and the Ensuing Internal Challenges What best distinguishes the birth of the Central Asian states from that of any other sovereign country is the incredible weakness of pro-independence movements throughout the region. In fact, both the elites and the masses were reluctant to leave the imperial union to which their homelands belonged. The Central Asian republics had been the most Soviet of all in more ways that one. Their elites never challenged Moscow's authority and the populations loyally followed the leadership's directives. Mikhail Gorbachev's reform program of the mid-1980s was greeted with much less enthusiasm here than there elsewhere in the Soviet Union, especially since it was the traditional culture of the Central Asians that was frequently cited by the communist leader as the aspect of Soviet life which most needed reform. Popular-front-style organizations that agitated for greater sovereignty on cultural and some economic issues did develop in all of these states, save 2 CENTRAL ASIA: CONFRONTING INDEPENDENCE Turkmenistan, generally with at least some support from the local communist party elite. These groups, however, were all strikingly different from the mass- supported national independence movements that were emerging in the three Baltic states and in Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. While the authority of the Communist party was collapsing elsewhere, the organization continued to thrive in most of the Central Asian republics. Here, as elsewhere in the Soviet Union, there were violent outbursts in the late Soviet years, most notably in the Fergana Valley (in Uzbekistan) in 1989, and then just across the border in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, a year later. Neither conflict, however, gave rise to well-organized movements for independence or even political autonomy. Between 1990 and 1991 the legislative bodies of most constituent Soviet republics adopted sovereignty declarations. In March 1991, an all-union referendum on the future of the Union unequivocally showed that voters in the Baltics, Armenia, Moldova, Georgia supported their countries' independence. Throughout Central Asia, however, more than 9 out of 10 participants indicated a desire to preserve the Soviet Union. Partly the region's quiescence could be explained by what from the outside seemed to be a negative form of political inertia--Asian habits of deference to leaders and the continued force of patriarchal culture. There is, however, at least one positive justification for the Central Asian masses support for the Soviet Union, and that rests in the fact that they had derived a number of large and genuine benefits from the Soviet system. There was a general consensus among Soviet Central Asians that they lived better than the huge majority of other Muslims elsewhere in the world did. Indeed, they enjoyed superior medical care, education, and social benefits as compared to the citizens of Egypt, Iraq or Afghanistan. Similarly, despite the widespread racial bias and ethnic discrimination in the Soviet Union, the system was comparatively meritocratic, and ambitious Central Asians could "dream big". Even some talented women were able to move upward. Again in contrast with the rest of the Soviet Union, the Central Asian republics did not see the rise of popular, nationalist-minded figures, who in other new states of modern history have 3 CENTRAL ASIA: CONFRONTING INDEPENDENCE become revered 'Founding Fathers'. Three of the five men, who were sworn in as the first presidents of these new nations (Saparmurad Niyazov of Turkmenistan, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, and Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan) were originally appointed by Moscow. A fourth, Askar Akaev of Kyrgyzstan, though elected by the local parliament, was tacitly approved by the Soviet leadership. All of the leaders were beneficiaries of the Soviet system--Nazarbaev was the son of a cowherd, whom the system sent first to technical university and then to administrative training; Akaev was trained as a physicist, and lived in the intellectually hothouse of Leningrad for 17 years; Niyazov was a war-orphan who was partly raised by state institutions before being sent on to higher education; and Karimov, who also spent part of his childhood in an orphanage, was trained as an aviation engineer and economist. Due to the lack of both popular or elite support for independence, the Central Asian states were the last to declare independence. Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan declared independence as late as the fall of 1991. Kazakhstan trailed behind all Soviet republics, and announced the assumption of sovereignty on December 16, 1991, a week after the Soviet Union had already been officially disbanded. The Central Asians insistence on preserving the union was a well-founded result of several realizations. Firstly, the level of national self-awareness throughout the region was quite low. Not only did none of the Central Asian states have a history of previous statehood, but also their boundaries and even the peoples for whom they were named were, to a great extent, political creations of the Soviet period. Secondly, the checkered demographic and religious make up of the new entities forebode the difficulties associated with the integration of all communities into a single nation. Finally, the region constituted a common geopolitical, cultural, and religious space and the leaders recognized the great challenges that interdependence and dependence on the former metropolis would pose to the new sovereign states. In Central Asia, unlike in some other parts of the decaying Soviet Union, even had the local authorities permitted it, the historical precedents upon which agitators might build an argument for nationhood were simply more tenuous. From 1918 until late 1919 or early 1920 parts of present-day Kazakhstan were fitfully administered by a group which called itself the Alash Orda, or Horde of Alash (the name of the legendary founder of the Kazakh people). The steppe, which 4 CENTRAL ASIA: CONFRONTING INDEPENDENCE these people attempted to administer, was in the throes of civil war, and was also claimed by Russians, of both the Red and White forces. Moreover, the Alash Orda never asserted a desire for full statehood, but rather for some form of federate sovereignty within a larger state framework. Since the Kyrgyz and Kazakhs were then considered to be one people, that movement might be said to have embraced at least the northern Kyrgyz. Properly speaking, the Uzbeks too had no previous state existence, but the territory that is now Uzbekistan-a fertile crescent between two rivers--has one of the world's longest and richest histories, from which sprang a number of states and empires. At the time of the Russian revolution, there were two nominally independent states-in fact protectorates of the Russian Empire-on that territory, the Emirates of Bukhara and Khiva. A third state, the Kokand Khanate, had been destroyed in the 1870s, in the process of Russia's conquest of the region. The territory of present-day Tajikistan lay mostly in the Emirate of Bukhara and Kokand. Prior to the Russian conquest, further sub-divisions, based upon clan, kinship, village or city of residence and language, were most important, and continue to play a critical role up through the present. The names by which the various states are now called all existed before the Soviet period, but they did not originally denote nationalities. The terms "Uzbek" and "Kazakh" seem originally to have been military designations (something like "regular troops" and "irregulars", respectively); what became the Kazakhs arose when a disaffected prince left his Uzbek home to move north. Later Kazakhs and Kyrgyz were considered to be one people (all called Kirgiz); while the distinction between Tajik and Uzbek was largely imposed on the basis of primary language, during the political maneuvering of the 1920s. Seven decades of Soviet propaganda have succeeded in strengthening these denominators as ethnic identities. However, the evidence suggests that most of the eponymous peoples of Central Asia do not define their identities exclusively through these over-arching ethnic markers. Rather ties to clan, kin, and, in some cases, region of residence or birth are often at least as critical and sometimes even more important. Most Turkmens, for example, define their primary allegiance not to a national ethnic identity, but rather to one of the five major clans, whose tribal "seals" adorn the left margin of the country's new flag.
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