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Central Asia's Crisis of Governance

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Central Asia's Crisis of Governance Central Asia’s Crisis of Governance January 2012 By Philip Shishkin Bernard Schwartz Fellow Map of Central Asia Russian Federation KAZAKHSTAN Lake Balkhash Aral Sea Georgia Caspian Sea Ysyk Köl UZBEKISTAN KYRGYZSTAN Armenia Azerbaijan TURKMENISTAN TAJIKISTAN China Afghanistan Iran India Pakistan Iraq Kuwait Nepal Bahrain Qatar U.A.E. Arabian Sea Oman Saudi Arabia Arabian Sea Yemen Bay of Bengal 2 Table of Contents The Region . 4 The Countries . 7 Kazakhstan: Electoral Authoritarianism . 7 Kyrgyzstan: The Land of Perpetual Revolution . 11 Tajikistan: A Failing State . 14 Turkmenistan: A Desert Kingdom Fueled by Gas . 17 Uzbekistan: A Police State with Strategic Significance . 21 The Role of Foreign Powers . 25 China . 25 Russia . 28 The United States and the European Union . 31 Conclusion . 35 About the Author . 36 Asia Society Advisory Group on Central Asia . 37 3 The Region Located in a strategically important neighborhood “the Stans” in Western parlance, the five nations amid China, Russia, Afghanistan, and Iran, of post-Soviet Central Asia share historical and sitting atop vast deposits of oil, gas, gold, and political similarities, though there are and uranium, post-Soviet Central Asia is crucial differences, too . Oil-rich Kazakhstan, home to some 50 million people living in five for instance, is a far cry from the poor and countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, fractious state of Tajikistan . And the ongoing Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan . For centuries, political ferment in Kyrgyzstan offers a stark the region has drawn the attention of the world’s contrast to the sterile political atmosphere of superpowers as they seek leverage over their foes, Uzbekistan . The following sections will examine access to natural resources, or a base from which the governance challenges faced by each Central to influence adjacent regions . For just as long, Asian state in detail . The foreign policies of the the societies of Central Asia have been beset by major powers will be explored as well . lackluster and often abusive rule, first by warring In the early 1990s, well-placed Communist and insular feudal chiefs, then by colonial Party officials ascended to presidencies across conquerors from Russia, and then by their Soviet Central Asia . Twenty years later, three out of successors . Since gaining independence from five remain in power, with no clear succession the Soviet Union 20 years ago, the five Central plans in sight . The other two departed the scene, Asian republics have struggled to find viable leaving behind muddled aftermaths . Guided by governance models and to place their economies, autocrats, the region has experienced significant long moored to Moscow, on stable footing . corruption, human rights abuses, conflict, and The region’s governments have largely failed civil unrest . As Central Asian states grapple with in that quest . Central Asia faces a bleak political these problems, Washington increasingly relies landscape: corruption is rampant, human rights on the region as a logistical staging ground for are routinely ignored, economic opportunity the war in Afghanistan and a possible economic is limited, the mass media are sanitized in the development partner for Afghanistan after the best Soviet tradition, civil society is neutered, 2014 military drawdown; meanwhile, China and and even artistic expression is restricted— Europe covet the region’s energy resources . particularly in Uzbekistan . On the economic The recent wave of popular uprisings in the front, a qualified exception could be made for Middle East and North Africa is a reminder Kazakhstan . Aided by the country’s generous oil that even seemingly unassailable regimes reserves, an authoritarian government there has can crumble quickly, with unpredictable presided over economic growth . But Kazakhstan consequences . Central Asia bears some also faces real challenges of governance, similarities to the political, economic, and economic diversification, and equitable demographic structures across the Arab world, distribution of wealth going forward . Elsewhere a fact that has not gone unnoticed in Central in the region, pronouncements of economic Asian capitals . Of course, Central Asia does not growth and low inflation—such as those need external reminders of its instability—before routinely voiced by Uzbek leaders and echoed by there was the Arab Spring, Kyrgyzstan had its international financial institutions—do not tell own season of political renewal . The country the full story of the economy’s true shape . went through two revolutions in the space of Bundled together somewhat patronizingly as five years, both predating regime overthrows 4 in Egypt and Tunisia . And in 2005, the Uzbek even more problematic in Central Asia than in government ordered a violent crackdown on North Africa,” Clem writes . He goes on to say protesters following a prison break in the town that “this comparison [between the Middle East of Andijan . Although limited in scope and not and Central Asia] portends turbulence ahead, aimed at overthrowing the ruling regime, the particularly for Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan ”. 3 events in Andijan showcased the government’s None of this is to suggest that political zero-tolerance approach to protests of any kind . change in Central Asia will follow the In that, the Uzbek government’s reaction was Middle Eastern or Kyrgyz scenarios of street similar to those of Syrian and Libyan authorities protests and revolutions . For all the structural as they tried to deal with their own insurrections similarities between parts of Central Asia and in 2011 . Most recently, security forces in the Middle East, there are critical differences, Kazakhstan shot and killed at least 16 people too . The population of Central Asia tends to in December protests in a Western oil town— be depoliticized, and some of its most active the most serious explosion of violence in the members are either content with the relative country’s history 1. economic stability (as in Kazakhstan) or Watching the Arab unrest, a prominent are working in Russia (as in Tajikistan and Kyrgyz politician said, partly in jest, that the Uzbekistan), and they are not clamoring for Middle East got its revolutionary virus from political change . The tumultuous experience Central Asia . In Kyrgyzstan, protesters shouted of Kyrgyzstan has given authoritarian regimes Ketsin!—Kyrgyz for “Get lost!”—as they chased in the neighboring countries a resonant, if self- out two consecutive dictators . The politician serving, argument: revolutions lead to chaos coined a new term: “The Kyrgyz Ketsinism is and bloodshed, and authoritarian stability is becoming a global phenomenon ”. 2 preferable to half-baked democratic experiments . Ralph S . Clem, a political geographer at In the years to come, political change in Florida International University, has attempted Central Asia will likely be driven by inter-elite to quantify the similarities between Central tussles, particularly during succession struggles Asia and the Middle East by studying data on following the death, retirement, or incapacitation governance, economic development, corruption, of longtime rulers . and wealth gaps from sources such as the United There are no simple solutions in the region . Nations, the World Bank, and Freedom House . A rush toward democracy and elections, by itself, Perhaps not surprisingly, his analysis does not will not solve Central Asia’s many crises and, in bode well for Central Asia . “The empirical fact, may exacerbate them in the short term . But data available suggest a very close fit between the status quo is equally fraught with risks . socioeconomic conditions in Egypt and Tunisia The precise events that triggered street on the one hand and the five Central Asian protests in Kyrgyzstan and the Middle East vary countries on the other, especially with regard from country to country, but what they all have to the youthfulness of the population . In in common is popular anger at the anything-goes other respects and in some countries, the pre- crony capitalism practiced by the ruling elites conditions associated with political unrest are coupled with a lack of economic opportunity 1 “Kazakhstan Asks UN to Help Investigate Deadly Clashes,” BBC News, December 22, 2011, accessed January 8, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ world-asia-16305005. 2 “ ,” (“In Bishkek, the coming of the global Kyrgyz ketsinism an- nounced”), Lentu.ru, February 22, 2011, accessed January 8, 2012, http://lenta.ru/news/2011/02/22/ketsinism/. 3 Ralph S. Clem, “From the Arab Street to the Silk Road: Implications for the Central Asian States,” Eurasian Geography and Economics, vol. 52, no. 2 (2011): 234, accessed January 8, 2012, http://bellwether.metapress.com/content/t85t4223321wmr76/fulltext.pdf. 5 for many others . As in Egypt and Tunisia, most effort to foster cooperation on regional defense, Central Asian regimes, at one time or another, through something called the Central Asian have fused the privilege to govern with the Battalion, faltered amid the mistrust typical of chance to get rich . At a time when many Central the region’s leaders . “They cooperated, but very Asian men have to scavenge for livelihoods reluctantly,” recalls retired General Anthony on construction sites in Russia and send Zinni, who at the time headed the U .S . Central remittances to their families back home, such Command and worked closely with the rapacious behavior by rulers and their relatives battalion 5. and friends is particularly noticeable . “There is
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