Central Asia the Caucasus

CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Journal of Social and Political Studies

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Volume 16 Issue 1 2015

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Bülent ARAS Doctor, Chair, Department of International Relations, Fatih University (Turkey) Mariam ARUNOVA Doctor of Political Science, leading research associate, Institute of Oriental Studies, RAS (Russian Federation) Garnik ASATRIAN Doctor of Philology, professor, head of the Department of Iranian Studies, Erevan State University (Armenia) Ariel COHEN Doctor, leading analyst, The Heritage Foundation, U.S.A. (U.S.A.) William FIERMAN Doctor of Political Science, Professor of Indiana University (U.S.A.) Paul GOBLE Senior Advisor, Voice of America (U.S.A.) Sergey GRETSKY Doctor, Chair of Central Asian Studies, Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State (U.S.A.) Xing GUANGCHENG Doctor of Political Science, professor, Deputy Director of the Institute for East European, Russian and Central Asian Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (China) Alexander IGNATENKO President, Institute of Religion and Politics, Doctor of Philosophy, specialist in Islamic studies, leading expert of the Institute of Social Systems, Moscow State University, member of the Council for Cooperation with Religious Associations under the Russian Federation President (Russian Federation) Ashurboi IMOMOV Ph.D. (Law), assistant professor, head of the Department of Constitutional Law, Tajik National University (Tajikistan) Lena JONSON Doctor, senior researcher, Swedish Institute of International Affairs (Sweden) Klara KHAFIZOVA Doctor of History, Director, Center for Strategic and International Studies, professor at the International Relations and Foreign Policy Department, Kainar University (Kazakhstan) Zaynidin KURMANOV Doctor of History, professor, head of the Chair of International Relations, the Kyrgyz-Russian University (Kyrgyzstan) Jacob M. LANDAU Professor of Political Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel) S. Neil MACFARLANE Professor, Director, Center for International Studies, The University of Oxford (Great Britain) Alexei MALASHENKO Doctor of History, professor, Scholar-in-Residence, Ethnicity and Nation-Building Program Co-Chair, The Carnegie Moscow Center (Russian Federation) Abbas MALEKI Doctor, Director General, International Institute for Caspian Studies (Iran) Akira Doctor, History of Central Asia and the Caucasus, Program Officer, The Sasakawa Peace MATSUNAGA Foundation (Japan) Roger N. McDERMOTT Affiliated Senior Analyst, Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen (Denmark) Vitaly NAUMKIN Doctor of History, professor, Director, Center for Strategic and International Studies of RF (Russian Federation) Yerengaip OMAROV Professor, Rector of Kainar University, President of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Republic of Kazakhstan (Kazakhstan) Vladimer PAPAVA Doctor of Economics, professor, Rector of the Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (Georgia) S. Frederick STARR Professor, Chairman, The Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, The Johns Hopkins University (U.S.A.)

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CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Journal of Social and Political Studies

Volume 16 Issue 1 2015

IN THIS ISSUE:

GEOPOLITICS AND REGIONAL SECURITY

Jannatkhan UKRAINIAN CRISIS-2014: Eyvazov. POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF THE POST-SOVIET REGION AND NATIONAL SECURITY OF AZERBAIJAN...... 7

Murat BELARUS Laumulin. IN THE EURASIAN SECURITY SYSTEM...... 23

RELIGION IN SOCIETY

Igor EXPLORING THE PATTERNS OF Himelfarb, RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE Neli IN POST-SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA AND Esipova. AZERBAIJAN...... 37

REGIONAL POLITICS

Vladimir THE MAIN PROBLEMS ON THE WAY Paramonov, TO COOPERATION IN CENTRAL ASIA: Alexei FOREIGN POLICY FORECAST Strokov. FOR THE REGIONAL COUNTRIES...... 58 4 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015

Sergei Zhiltsov, CENTRAL ASIAN POLITICS Aynur REGARDING WATER USE OF Bimenova. TRANSBOUNDARY RIVERS...... 78

Dosmir Uzbekov, CONTEMPORARY KYRGYZSTAN: Ilyas THE ONTOLOGICAL ROOTS OF Kurmanov. INSTABILITY...... 88

Dariko Mazhidenova, Timur ARE THE AFGHANS TO BLAME Urazaev. FOR THE AFGHAN PROBLEM?...... 95

NATION-BUILDING

Maxim KARTVELISM AS A DEVELOPMENT PARADIGM OF Kirchanov. GEORGIAN ETHNIC NATIONALISM ...... 102

Shokir THE FORMATION OF PARLIAMENTARIANISM Khakimov. IN TAJIKISTAN: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE...... 114

DEMOGRAPHY AND POPULATION MIGRATION

Saule JANUS-FACED DYSFUNCTIONAL LAW: Emrich-Bakenova. CASE OF KAZAKHSTAN’S SOCIOECONOMIC SUPPORT TO REFUGEE COMMUNITY ...... 125

Zharkyn Samanchina, Aynura THE PROSPECTS FOR EDUCATIONAL MIGRATION Elebaeva. FROM KYRGYZSTAN TO TURKEY...... 135

5 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

The Special Feature section in the next three issues will discuss:

 Central Eurasia: Politics Today  Central Eurasia: Religion in the Sociopolitical Context  Central Eurasia: Integration Processes

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All articles accepted are published in Russian and English, in the Russian-language and English-language versions of the journal, respectively. The editorial board takes responsibility for translation of the articles.

6 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015

GEOPOLITICS AND REGIONAL SECURITY

UKRAINIAN CRISIS-2014: POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF THE POST-SOVIET REGION AND NATIONAL SECURITY OF AZERBAIJAN

Jannatkhan EYVAZOV Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Central Asia and the Caucasus Journal of Social and Political Studies (Baku, Azerbaijan)

ABSTRACT

he author analyzes the impact of the situation is fraught with changes at the re- current Ukrainian crisis on the political gional level and in the security context of all T structure of the post-Soviet region and the post-Soviet states. At the regional level, national security of the Azerbaijan Republic. these changes have added to structural in- The events that have been unfolding in stability and, hence, transitivity. Azerbaijan, Ukraine since 2014 can be described as the as a regional state, is facing greater struc- acutest crisis in the relations between the tural risks accompanied by much fewer eco- Russian Federation and the West since the nomic and political opportunities to imple- end of the Cold War, while the emerging ment its national security strategy.

KEYWORDS: the Ukrainian crisis-2014, post-Soviet space, regional security system, Post-Soviet Security Macrocomplex, political structure, structural instability, Russia, the West, Azerbaijan, national security.

7 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Introduction

In the early 1990s, the united Soviet state disappeared to be replaced with an anarchically organized regional political system; the fifteen independent states started working on their foreign policy. The Russian Federation remained the only geopolitical actor that could project its influence on the regional scale and the key security factor for the newly independent states. This meant that the dynamics of the security relations among them and their contacts with the external powers depended along with endogenous factors on Russia’s geopolitical interests and activity. Russia consistently opposed all attempts by the newly independent states to withdraw from its “near abroad” and move closer to the extra-regional poles of power. In the 1990s, a time of acute internal economic and political problems, Moscow manipulated the ethnopolitical conflicts in the newly independent states—the Armenian-Azeri conflict and the conflicts in Georgia and Moldova.1 The Baltics, which left the zone of Russia’s “special interests” largely thanks to the West’s rigid position, was and so far remains the only precedent. At that time, the Kremlin was too weak to openly oppose this. In the 2000s, political power in Russia became centralized; high prices on energy resources increased its economic opportunities, which added to the Kremlin’s determination to insist on its exclusive status in the post-Soviet space to prevent, first and foremost, the enlargement of NATO and the EU. The war with Georgia in August 2008 and the current developments in Ukraine can be cited as the open use of Russian armed forces against post-Soviet states. The unprecedented Western pressure on the Kremlin that followed can be read as the worst, since the Cold War, crisis in their bilateral relations. This is a factor and an indicator of the changing regional and macro conditions of security of the newly independent states. Azerbaijan, a post-Soviet and geopolitically very attractive state, is directly affected by the emerging context. Below I will assess this, as well as the general regional effect of the Ukrainian crisis.

The Regional System of Post-Soviet Space: Political Structure and Security Dynamics

The regional system that appeared in the post-Soviet space in the early 1990s is best analyzed within the theory of regional security complexes (TRSC), which describes the region as a centered great power regional security complex. At the time of its emergence, it included the RF and four sub-

1 I have in mind Russia’s unofficial support extended to the separatist movements in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova: Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Transnistria (for example, see: B. Coppieters, “The Politicisation and Secu- ritisation of Ethnicity: The Case of the Southern Caucasus,” Civil Wars, Vol. 4, No. 4, 2001, pp. 74-75; A. Malashenko, “Post- sovetskie gosudarstva Yuga i interesy Moskvy,” Pro et Contra, Vol. 5, No. 3, 2000, pp. 42-43; S.E. Cornell, R.N. McDermott, W.D. O’Malley, V. Socor, F.S. Starr, Regional Security in the South Caucasus: The Role of NATO, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, Washington D.C., 2004, p. 16; S.E. Cornell, “Undeclared War: The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict Reconsidered,” Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. XX, No. 4, Summer 1997, p. 12; A.I. Utkin, Mirovoi poriadok XXI veka, Eksmo, Moscow, 2002, pp. 400-401; A. Mörike, “The Military as a Political Actor in Russia: The Cases of Mol- dova and Georgia,” The International Spectator, Vol. XXXIII, No. 3, July-September 1998, available at [http://www.ciaonet. org/olj/iai/iai_98moa01.html], 13 December, 2007).

8 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 complexes (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia; Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine; Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia; and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan). The region’s development was accompanied by structural changes, the main one being EU membership for the Baltic republics. These changes suggest that the concept of Post-Soviet Security Macrocomplex (PSM) is much better suited to the current political structure represented by one power (the RF) and three local security complexes (Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine; Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia; and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan). The specifics of the region’s political structure directly affect the security dynamics inside it; this dependence is best assessed by the parameter of (in)stability of the political structure of the regional security system (RSS).2 The latter rests, in my opinion, on the following three components: internal weakness/strength of the states in a regional system; (a)symmetry of strength and (a)symmetry of vulnerability among them; and (im)maturity of their mutual relations. The PSM demonstrates the obvious asymmetry of weakness/strength, threats and vulnerabilities, the fact that it consists mainly of weak states, and the absence of adequate cooperative practice in regulation of the security dilemmas present in their relations. The numerous and so-far unresolved conflicts are the best evidence of the above. According to my classification, the PSM is a negatively asymmetrical RSS3; its structural specifics still directly affect security of the regional states and the relations among them. Tables 1 and 2 offer some of the quantitative characteristics and the acutest security challenges to the states directly responsible for the structural specifics of the PSM. Table 2 shows that the PSM consists mainly of states that face very serious national security challenges and are highly vulnerable: all the states, Russia included, have to cope with severe internal problems, as well as with obvious or latent conflicts in mutual relations. Table 1 reveals an obvious asymmetry in their military and economic strength/weakness components. Russia is the only power in the political structure of the PSM, this makes it an asymmetrical RSS. Here we are dealing with a cardinal strength asymmetry because the RF and the other PSM states are separated by a wide gap (illustrated by the figures quoted in Table 1) in terms of the key parameters of national power. The problems of the far from simple post-Soviet transit did not deprive Russia of its status of a power, but the vulnerabilities of that period do not allow us to describe it as a strong state. Nonetheless, it is less vulnerable when compared to the other PSM members than they are in their relations with Russia. This means that the strength asymmetry is complemented by the

2 For more details, see: J. Eyvazov, “Structural Factors in the Development of the Regional Security Systems (A Post- Soviet Central Eurasia Case Study),” Central Asia and the Caucasus, Volume 13, Issue 1, 2012, pp. 79-102; Idem, “The Regional Security System in the Post-Soviet Space: Political Structure, Environment, and Transitivity,” The Caucasus & Globalization, Volume 8, Issue 1-2, 2014, pp. 7-33. 3 In accordance with the above-mentioned parameters of the (in)stability of the political structure, I singled out four types of regional security systems: (1) a positively symmetrical regional security system, in which all states are more or less equally strong with almost the same mutual vulnerability level; (2) a negatively symmetrical regional security system, in which all the states are more or less equally weak with a more or less equal level of mutual vulnerability; (3) a positively asymmetrical regional security system, in which some of the states are strong and others are weak, while the degree of vulnerability of the former to the latter is much lower than the degree to which the latter are vulnerable to the former. Furthermore, the stronger states predominate both quantitatively and qualitatively (they can maintain moderation and cooperation in the dynamics of regional security relations); (4) a negatively asymmetrical regional security system, in which some of the states are strong and others are weak, while the degree of vulnerability of the former to the latter is much lower than the degree to which the latter are vulnerable to the former. The weak states outnumber the strong ones, while the qualitative capabilities of the strong states are not sufficient to maintain moderation and cooperation in the regional security relations dynamics (see: J. Eyvazov, “Structural Factors in the Development of the Regional Security Systems (A Post-Soviet Central Eurasia Case Study),” pp. 83-84; Idem, “The Regional Security System in the Post-Soviet Space: Political Structure, Environment, and Transitivity,” p. 12).

9 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS

Table 1

Certain Economic and Military Descriptions of the PSM States (2013)

Per Numerical Growth Military GDP Capita Strength of No. State Rates of Budget ($bn) GDP Armed

(million) GDP (%) ($m)

Population Population ($m) Forces

1 Armenia 3.0 10.3 4.3 3,037 447.0 44,800

2 Azerbaijan 9.6 77.2 4.1 8,297 2,000.0 66,950

552.0 3 Belarus 9.6 72.9 2.1 7,807 48,000 (2012)

4 Georgia 4.5 17.0 6.0 3,763 389.0 20,650

5 Kazakhstan 17.7 214.0 5.5 12,708 2,320.0 39,000

6 Kyrgyzstan 5.5 7.2 7.4 1,282 102.0 10,900

7 Moldova 3.6 7.9 4.0 2,218 24.0 5,350

8 Russia 142.5 2,210.0 3.4 15,650 68,200.0 845,000

9 Tajikistan 7.9 8.6 7.0 1,052 189.0 8,800

538.9 10 Turkmenistan 5.1 40.2 7.7 7,051 22,000 (2012)

11 Ukraine 44.6 182.0 0.4 4,015 2,420.0 129,950

1,460.0 12 Uzbekistan 28.7 56.5 7.0 1,895 48,000 (2012)

S o u r c e: The Military Balance 2014, The International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, 2014.

Table 2

The Acutest Challenges and Vulnerabilities of National Security of the PSM States

No. State Challenges and Vulnerabilities

Territorial claims which cause open and latent conflicts in relations with neighbors—Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh), Turkey (Eastern Anatolia), 1 Armenia Georgia (Javakhetia)—and the resultant isolation from the main economically profitable regional energy and transportation projects; dependence on external actors (Russia, the diaspora).

Conflict with Armenia, occupation of southwestern regions and related sociopolitical and economic problems; potential threat of separatism in the areas where ethnic minorities live in compact communities; tension with 2 Azerbaijan some of the neighboring powers (Iran, Russia) caused by their regional and ethnic policy; strong economic dependence on the export of energy resources.

10 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015

Table 2 (continued)

No. State Challenges and Vulnerabilities

Inflexible (Soviet-style) regime, repressive methods of governance that caused international isolation (mainly by the U.S. and EU) and pro-Russian 3 Belarus orientation, resulting in considerable economic dependence on Russia (energy resources and export of consumer goods).

Conflict in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which Tbilisi no longer controls; forced migrants; separatist threats in other places where ethnic minorities live in compact communities; continued tension with Russia and its military, 4 Georgia political, and economic repercussions (the August 2008 war; Russia’s recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia; the legalization of Russia’s military presence in these regions).

Still unregulated legal status of the Caspian; dependence on external actors (Russia) when it comes to transporting energy resources to the world 5 Kazakhstan markets; latent conflicts with Uzbekistan—border issues and rivalry for regional leadership.

Weak system of state governance, political instability inside the country responsible for the violent regime changes in 2005 and 2010; this and relatively poor natural resources are responsible for the country’s poorly 6 Kyrgyzstan developed economy. Unsettled contradictions with Uzbekistan—borders in the Ferghana Valley, water resources, trans-border activity of radical Islamic groups; economic dependence on external actors (Russia, China, and Kazakhstan); and dependence in the security sphere (Russia).

Continued split of the country because of the Transnistrian conflict; 7 Moldova economic decline and dependence on external actors (Russia and the EU) caused by the conflict and lack of natural resources.

Continued instability in the Northern Caucasus—separatism and an increase in religious extremism accompanied by the two Russian-Chechen wars and continued armed activities in Daghestan, Ingushetia, and other republics of the North Caucasian Federal District, which makes the “southern Muslim belt” of Russia vulnerable; an acute demographic crisis that has already developed into concern over the decreasing number of ethnic Russians and illegal immigration of Muslims and Chinese; material growth in the 2000s, 8 Russia mainly thanks to the export of energy resources, which did not encourage technological progress; this ensured Russia’s long-term dependence on world raw material prices accompanied by numerous socioeconomic problems, the acuteness of which became especially obvious in 2008, when the world economic crisis began. The situation is further worsened by consistent confrontation with the NATO countries and international isolation and economic sanctions caused by the annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and support of armed separatism in Donbass.

The still unresolved repercussions of the civil war of 1992-1997; weak state governance, political instability, economic decline; continued economic (labor migration and investments) and security dependence on Russia; weak 9 Tajikistan control of the Afghan border and destructive impact of Afghan instability— radical Islamic groups and drug trafficking; continued tension with Uzbekistan caused by the unsettled border and water-use issues, transborder activities of radical Islamic organizations.

Turkmenistan Inflexible closed political regime; continued tension with Uzbekistan over the 10 use of water of the Amu Darya and with the Caspian states over offshore oil and gas fields.

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Table 2 (continued)

No. State Challenges and Vulnerabilities

Inflexible closed repressive political regime that has found itself in political isolation (maintained mainly by the U.S. and EU); economic problems; active 11 Uzbekistan radical Islamic organizations and tension with neighbors over water use, borders, radical Islamic groups, and refugees.

Internal instability, which resulted in the Orange Revolution in 2004; continued political split in the society. At the end of 2013, a new wave of political instability that caused a regime change; the loss of the Crimea, 12 Ukraine annexed by Russia in March 2014; the rise of armed separatism in the southeastern regions (Donetsk, Lugansk); partial loss of control over these regions; wide-scale clashes with separatists; continued tension in relations with Russia, and dependence on it for energy resources. vulnerability asymmetry, which is reflected in mutual perceptions and conduct within the entire regional system.

Azerbaijan: The Security Interests and Policy

Azerbaijan, as part of the PSM, was affected by its structural specifics to a much greater extent than the others. As one of the Soviet republics, it had to deal with the territorial claims of Armenia, its closest neighbor, which demanded that the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region should be transferred from the Azerbaijan S.S.R. to the Armenian S.S.R. When the Soviet Union disintegrated, armed clashes in the disputed territory developed into a full-scale war, in which Baku lost control over Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts (about 20 percent of its territory) occupied by Armenia. Despite the cease-fire regime established in 1994, the conflict remains unsettled; nothing much has been done to liberate the occupied Azeri districts and to specify the political status of the former autonomous region. This armed conflict, because of its emergence during the rising national movement, its exacerbation and transformation into a full-scale war at the early stage of Azeri independence, its tragic repercussions, and its still unregulated status, still determines the security agenda of Azerbaijan.  First, the dented territorial integrity causes doubts about the country’s sovereignty.  Second, over a million people had to abandon their homes and became refugees, thus the fundamental rights of at least one-tenth of the republic’s population were violated.  Third, the conflict remains unregulated, which means that the war might flare up again, along with the already painfully familiar humanitarian, economic, and political consequences. In fact, armed clashes in the zone of conflict do happen from time to time, they even develop into trench fights that claim their share of military and civilian lives. This explains why the military aspects of Azerbaijan’s security figure prominently in its agenda and why many other issues are pushed to the background. The huge military budget (the fourth largest among the PSM countries, the first three being Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan) and the active

12 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 growth in the republic’s military-technological potential devour the money that could otherwise be spent on other purposes, including non-military security measures. However, reality proved to be even more dramatic. The Nagorno-Karabakh problem further developed under the pressure of many, including internal, factors, particularly political-structural factors. But it is much easier and much more effective to assess the conflict from the point of view of the geopolitical and security relations that are taking shape in the post-Soviet region. Therefore, the PSM concept is needed to understand this problem. The PSM structural asymmetry is especially clearly seen in the vast power potential gap between Russia and the other newly independent states. Moreover, the Kremlin perceives this space as a zone of its exclusive interests and influence.4 The reality of the post-Soviet period demonstrates that the Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as other armed conflicts remain among the main instruments of control over this space: Georgia-2008 and Ukraine-2014 are two most graphic examples of how this works. Under Elçibey (1992-1993), Azerbaijan was trying to move, as fast as possible, away from its post-Soviet political identity. In the political sphere, this meant prompt withdrawal of Russia’s armed forces from the republic, refusal to join any post-Soviet integration projects, and the course toward drawing closer to Turkey and the West. It was at that time of Azerbaijan’s post-Soviet independence that the northern neighbor exerted the strongest pressure, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict being its main instrument. Svante Cornell put this as follows: “Elçibey refused to sell his soul for the country’s gain—or even to let the Russians think he would sell his soul while actually crafting long-term strategies to build independence… In all fairness, the Elçibey government’s hand was weak and its chances of success limited. Russia had decisively taken the Armenian side at the time of the Khojaly mas- sacre and the fall of Shusha, months before Elçibey was even president. Indeed, Moscow’s simple ambition was to get Elçibey out of power by whatever covert means possible, and there was little, short of a total surrender, that could have changed its mind.”5 Russia’s support of Armenia in the war in Nagorno-Karabakh was the main factor of Azerbai- jan’s military defeats, resulting in the political crisis of 1993 that cost Elçibey his presidency. Heydar Aliev, who came to power in June 1993, balanced out the previous bias toward Turkey and the West; the republic resumed its CIS membership (which the previous administration had left twelve months before); in May 1994, the sides of the Karabakh conflict signed a Russia-brokered cease-fire agreement. While normalizing relations with Russia, the Aliev administration also developed the country’s relations with the West—in September 1994, Azerbaijan and several international oil giants signed a “Contract of the Century” on developing the Azeri, Chirag, and Gunashli oil fields. In this way, the West became involved, on a long-term basis, in Caspian oil and gas projects. In October 1998, an agreement was reached on the project for laying the main route for Azeri oil export—the Baku- Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline.6 This was the cornerstone of the “oil diplomacy” that relied and is

4 The three presidents of the Russian Federation declared, one after another, the post-Soviet space a zone of Russia’s special interests. Boris Yeltsin’s decree of 14 September, 1995, On Adoption of the Strategic Course of the Russian Federation with the States-Members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the “five principles” of Russia’s foreign policy formulated by President Medvedev in pursuance of the Russian-Georgian crisis of 2008, and the Executive Order on Measures to Implement the Russian Federation Foreign Policy Vladimir Putin signed on 7 May, 2012, which outlined the foreign policy priorities of his administration, marked several stages in the development of the Near Abroad concept, the main thesis being that the region is of major importance for Russia. 5 S.E. Cornell, Azerbaijan since Independence, M.E. Sharpe, 2011, p. 71. 6 This decision was reflected in the declaration signed in Ankara on 29 October, 1998 by the presidents of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan in the presence of the U.S. Secretary of Energy.

13 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS still relying on Azerbaijan’s energy potential to strengthen its international positions and deal with the most urgent political issues. In 1997, Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova formed the GUAM, a regional structure actively encouraged by the United States for maintaining political pluralism in the post-Soviet space. The participants expected to strengthen their international position and finally settle the armed conflicts in their territories. Nothing much changed in Azerbaijan’s foreign policy course when Ilham Aliev became president in 2003; the republic, however, acquired two important levers of its advancement—two pipelines—the BTC and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline—were commissioned one after another in 2006 and 2007; they brought huge amounts of Azeri energy resources to the world market and huge amounts of currency to the republic’s coffers, thus stirring up unprecedented economic growth. As the key hub of energy transit, Azerbaijan offered alternative access to the Caspian’s energy resources; the republic’s clout in world politics increased accordingly.

Exacerbation of Contradictions between Russia and the West

The relations between Russia and the West (the U.S. and the European Union) are the most important factor of geopolitics and security in the PSM and an indicator of its dynamics. Azerbaijan could not isolate itself from these impacts; however, the transregional functions of energy transit and economic self-sufficiency ensured by the oil and gas projects described above allowed it to respond to the changing situation and even influence it to a certain extent. It should be said that the developing confrontational trends between the RF and the West might create new security challenges for Azer- baijan and significantly curb its political and economic potential. At the early stages of its post-Soviet existence, the Russian Federation was extremely weak—in the 1990s, it was confronted with the most acute security challenges. Its semi-ruined economy and the deep ideological crisis in society that used to be a superpower were exacerbated by the anarchy of its political system and the inability of the people at the helm to ensure law and order and restore stability. Amid the resultant chaos, however, Russia remained the only power pole in the post-Soviet space. The relations between Russia and the West during the first years of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency are best described as a “honeymoon.” Russia depended on the West for economic assistance, while the West wanted a favorable resolution of the “Soviet nuclear heritage” issue. In Russia, there were more or less widely shared expectations that the country would set up a political system common with the West, while the West expected that Russia would set up functional democracy and a Western-style market economy. In the early 1990s, the position of those who wanted Western foreign policy identity for Russia was fairly strong that was reflected in its real foreign policy course. The thaw of the early 1990s in the relations between Russia and the West soon ended to be replaced with another period of acute misunderstanding. The eastward expansion of NATO, bombardment of Serbia, and active involvement of Western companies in the energy and transportation sphere of the post-Soviet newly independent states were enough to alert the Kremlin, to say the least. Mos- cow was too weak to stem the unfavorable developments, but it was strong enough to demonstrate its dissatisfaction, the most eloquent gesture of which was the notorious “U-turn over the Atlantic.”7

7 On 24 March, 1999, Prime Minister of Russia Evgeny Primakov did a U-turn over the Atlantic in protest against the bombardment of Serbia.

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The myth that the Russian Federation could be integrated with the international system based on Western values was gradually withering away; post-Soviet Russia returned to the traditional idea of its great power nature with its own zone of influence in the post-Soviet space. While Russia was recovering from the default of 1998 and building a vertical of power under Putin’s administration, its political course across the post-Soviet space was becoming clearer and more resolute. The classical levers for ensuring regional interests were used and improved; in the 2000s, Russia learned how to use new, economic (including energy-related) levers when dealing with its Near Abroad and in the game against the West. In his article “Missia Rossii v XXI veke” (Russia’s Mission in the 21st Century), Anatoly Chubais, one of the most influential administrators of the 1990s, formulated a new concept of the Kremlin’s revised policies.8 He wrote about a “liberal empire” and “liberal imperialism” to justify Russia’s economic expansion across the CIS as “the only and unique natural leader” in this space where “the size of its economy and the living standards of its citizens were confirmed.” These mechanisms were complemented by the efforts to limit Western influence by setting up post-Soviet reintegration structures, such as the CSTO, the Union State of Russia and Belarus, EurAsEC, the Customs Union (CU), the Common Economic Space (CES) and, finally, the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), expected to tie together what was left after the latest eastward expansion of NATO and the EU in the Baltics. The first “Ukrainian gas crisis” of 2006 (when Russia suspended gas supplies to Ukraine and the EU) was seen in the West as the Kremlin’s effort to promote its political interests. To diminish its dependence on Russia, Europe started looking for alternative and more reliable sources of fuels which added to Azerbaijan’s political weight. In May 2009, the EU Summit in Prague approved the idea of a Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) to ensure the stable supply of Caspian and Middle Eastern gas to Europe.9 In January 2011, during the visit of José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, to Azerbaijan, the sides signed a joint declaration on the SGC. This meant that Azerbaijan agreed to take part in the project that would supply Europe with Caspian gas. In 2011, Turkey and Azerbaijan announced that they were planning to build a Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP); the corresponding agreement was signed on 26 June, 2012 by Prime Minister of Turkey Erdoğan and President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliev. At the first stage, gas from the Shah Deniz gas fields (2nd phase) was to be moved to Turkey and Europe; later the pipeline’s capacities were to be increased to move Turkmen gas as well.10 Early in June 2013, the international consortium developing the Shah Deniz-2 preferred the Trans-Adriatic Gas Pipeline (TAP) to Nabucco-West11 as the route for transporting gas from Azer- baijan to Europe. This was the first step toward implementation of the SGC. The disagreements on gas supplies between the Russian Federation and the West added political weight to Azerbaijan. On the other hand, the aggravation of RF-West contradictions, the rise in their political component, to be more exact, might have produced an opposite effect. The decision on TAP of June 2013, which rejected the larger Nabucco-West project, was prompted, among other things, by practical considerations: the Kremlin’s sharp response and strong pressure should be better avoided. The geography of Nabucco-West would have meant open competition with Russia. The tension

8 See: A. Chubais, “Missia Rossii v XXI veke,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 1 October, 2003. 9 The Southern Gas Corridor presupposed several possible routes—Nabucco, Trans-Adriatic Pipeline and the White Stream. 10 TANAP’s initial annual carrying capacity is 16 bcm; starting in 2018, it will move gas from the second phase of Shah Deniz; larger available volumes of gas suggest that its annual capacity will be increased to 22 bcm. 11 A shortened version of Nabucco presupposed a gas pipeline from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to the Austrian border.

15 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS between Russia and Azerbaijan, very much obvious during the international discussions of Nabucco (late 2012-July 2013),12 subsided as soon as the TAP project was chosen or, rather, when Nabucco- West was pushed aside.

Georgia-2008 and Ukraine-2014: New “Rules of the Game” in the Region

The war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008 and the Ukrainian crisis of 2014 demonstrated that the situation has changed and that the “game” will be played according to new rules. In the post-Soviet region, this meant that the Russian Federation would protect its political interests by all means: military-political levers and methods of “liberal imperialism” used on the sly, as well as openly used military force. At the macro-regional level, this meant that, for the sake of these interests, the Kremlin was ready to escalate the conflict with other powers interested in the region, the United States and the EU in particular. Georgia and Ukraine, two post-Soviet states, went further than the others toward their integration into the European and North Atlantic structures, which explains why Russia recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, legalized its military presence in these regions, annexed Crimea, and stirred up armed separatism in southeast Ukraine. The Russian Federation was the only power present in the PSM ready to use force to protect its interests in the region. This is a strong argument used by those who talk today about the political system in the post-Soviet space as unipolar. It should be said that response of Turkey, the EU, and especially the United States to Russia’s use of force in August 2008 against the post-Soviet state where their interests were concentrated was very different from their previous statements. The Unit- ed States went as far as sending its warships to the Georgian Black Sea coast; this, as well as the very determined diplomatic efforts of the EU and Turkey,13 contained Russia. Very much like in 2008, the Ukrainian crisis of 2014 confirmed that the PSM was and remained a unipolar RSS. The Russian Federation was the only power ready to use military force, this time in Ukraine. As we know, on 1 March, 2014 President Putin asked the Federation Council of the RF Federal Assembly for permission to use Russian armed forces outside Russia; this ensured the referendum of 16 March in Crimea on joining Russia. The other actors involved were more determined than they were in Georgia’s case: Brussels and Washington used much harsher language and much harsher methods, up to and including sanctions. Very much like in Georgia’s case, the West clearly demonstrated that it was resolved to stop at economic and political pressure and would not resort to the use of force.

12 The absence of a compromise at the talks on continued renting of the Gabala Radar Station, rejection of the Russian side to move Azeri oil along the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline, and the Kremlin’s tacit agreement, to say the least, to set up a so-called Union of Billionaires (of the richest Azeri businessmen living in Russia) in Moscow in view of the presidential election in Azerbaijan scheduled for October 2013 can be listed in this context. 13 The situation around Georgia stimulated interaction among the interested powers at the bilateral (RF-the U.S., RF-Turkey, and RF-the EU) level and within the U.N. (the extraordinary meetings of the U.N. Security Council convened to discuss the situation in Georgia were marked by sharp disagreement between the United States and Georgia, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other, over the proposed resolution).

16 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 The First Response of Azerbaijan

The events that have been unfolding in Ukraine since the end of 2013 acquired an international dimension when Crimea was annexed, stirring up apprehensions in Baku. During the post-Soviet period, both states had established a wide spectrum of ties and relations and occupied similar positions on many key issues of international policy and security; they cooperated within GUAM and also in the economic and military-technical spheres.14 Further developments, however, were fraught with much greater risks than disrupted cooperation. According to the Russian version, Crimea was reunified with Russia on the strength of a referendum among the peninsula’s population; it served, if not as a legal, at least as a political precedent of the way territorial issues could be settled. The same applies to the recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which occurred six years before. It stands to reason that the expert and political community of Azerbaijan actively discussed both issues. Russia’s determination to “punish” those post-Soviet states that refused to accept its interpretation of regional politics and the vague and, not infrequently, delayed responses of the West showed that either the “Ukrainian” or the “Georgian” scenario could be implemented by the Kremlin in Nago- rno-Karabakh. Moreover, confronted with the need to take sides, Baku lost its previous freedom of political maneuver. On the one hand, there was the principle of territorial integrity, which served as the axis, for obvious reasons, of Baku’s foreign policy throughout its post-Soviet independence, and the partner relations with Ukraine. On the other, there was Russia determined to go to all lengths, as well as its aggressive policy heated up by its awareness that its previous efforts to achieve international recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia had failed.15 On 18 March, Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan Elmar Mamedyarov explained the position of Azerbaijan in relation to the events in Crimea. He supported the territorial integrity of Ukraine and pointed out that the problem should be resolved in full accordance with the Constitution of Ukraine.16 On 27 March, Azerbaijan was one of 100 states that voted for the Resolution of the U.N. Gen- eral Assembly confirming the territorial integrity of Ukraine and denouncing the Crimean referendum as illegal. At that point, there were no serious complications between Baku and Moscow because the position of the Azerbaijan Republic and its politics were fully justified by the fact of Armenian occupation of part of Azeri territory. Moreover, very much as before, Baku carefully avoided any demonstration of its progress toward integration with the EU and NATO so as not to irritate the Kremlin; it preferred to remain equidistant from the Euroatlantic and Eurasian vectors. At that time, Moscow was distracted with what was going on in Ukraine and still looking for the best possible ways to legitimize unification with Crimea. This never happened while Moscow found itself under Western pressure; it was facing sanctions, possible international isolation, and a crippled economy at home.

14 Ukraine was one of the main suppliers of weapons and military equipment to Azerbaijan. 15 Russia failed to persuade even its closest post-Soviet allies to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. So far, they are recognized by Russia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, as well as by several tiny Pacific states in exchange for Russia’s financial aid. 16 See: “Azerbaijan Supports Early Restoration of Stability in Ukraine,” FM. News.Az., 18 March, 2014, available at [http://news.az/articles/politics/87228].

17 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Possible Developments: Risks and Limitations for Azerbaijan

So far, 2015 has done nothing to move the Ukrainian crisis closer to settlement. Intensified fighting in Donbass, the obvious involvement of Russian armed forces, and the deepening contradictions between the Kremlin and the West leave no doubts that the crisis will not be resolved any time soon. Meanwhile, continued confrontation is fraught with structural changes and the changes in many other spheres and, therefore, new security challenges for Azerbaijan. Structural risks. First of all I will try to assess the Ukrainian crisis from the point of view of the development of the RSS in the post-Soviet space so as to identify the changes in the fundamental conditions of the national security of the regional states. Armed conflicts are the key indicator of instability in any RSS and of its tendency toward a transit. Throughout its history, the PSM remained a scene of armed conflicts, which were not only limited to its sub-complexes (Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Fer- ghana, Tajikistan, and southeastern Ukraine), but also characterize certain processes going on in Russia, the only pole of the PSM (in the Northern Caucasus). There are several other features (the economy, technology, and political regimes) of the post-Soviet region that allow us to describe it as a negatively asymmetrical RSS. In the conditions of a negatively asymmetrical RSS, its tendency toward conflict is generated not so much by the strength asymmetry as by the internal weaknesses of the states involved, which are fully aware of their vulnerability. This explains their rivalry, the extreme forms of which are war and a security dilemma. In these conditions, the only pole (of the unipolar) system must establish control over it and build a strict hierarchy in order to protect itself and neutralize “external threats.” The empirics of the discussed region offer enough arguments in favor of this—the events of the 1920s, when Bolshevik Russia engulfed the states that appeared on the ruins of the Russian Empire, and the events of the 1990s-2000s, when the Russian Federation tried to preserve the CIS zone within its geopolitical orbit, the apogee being the events of August 2008 and the current Ukrainian crisis. The history of the PSM is the history of the attempts of its only pole to remain in control. In the 1990s, Russia was not strong enough to restore its previous domination; it could exploit the even greater weakness of the newly independent states to contain their desire to move closer to alternative centers of power. The CIS was set up to outline the zone of Russia’s interests in the new context of the relations between it and the other post-Soviet states. In the 2000s, centralization of power in Rus- sia and high oil prices strengthened its military and economic potential. This did nothing, however, to alter in any noticeable way its relations with the post-Soviet states, or to make them more mature. The more obvious strength asymmetry in the PSM with predominantly immature relations adds to the structural instability in the region and intensifies the awareness of vulnerability and external threats among the members. The Ukrainian developments launched acute geopolitical rivalry at the macro-regional level, which does nothing for the stability of the regional structure. The present tension between Russia and the West brings to mind the Cold War. No matter who is responsible for the present crisis, we can say that (1) the Kremlin, which unified Crimea with Russia and supported the separatists in the southeast of Ukraine, invited Western pressure (the strongest since the Cold War), which can only be restrained at huge costs;

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(2) Russian society, which for a long time had been taught to regard the West as a source of trouble for their country, closed ranks, on the whole, around its leaders; (3) the conflict is spreading to new spheres and resources (mutual economic sanctions, military exercises, revision of military strategies, greater spending on defense, stronger military presence in the zones of contact, and, probably, intensification in the ABM and nuclear spheres). The solutions are fairly obvious. Either restoring the status quo—Russia returns Crimea to Ukraine, discontinues its support of the separatists in Donbass, and recognizes the present borders of Ukraine—or the United States and the European Union accept the new political reality of Crimea being part of the RF and a federalized or even divided Ukraine. In either case, there will be clear win- ners and losers. In the short-term perspective, no scenario will allow the retreating side to save its reputation of a great power. In the event of a zero sum game, Russia, which has long time been talking about its special interests in the region (the construct that relied on public support), should be prepared to face serious political risks outside and especially inside the country. A retreat on one of the pivotal issues will deprive the Kremlin of public support with very negative repercussions for political stability in this far from simple state. These ideas and the image of the West as an enemy of Russia plotting against it have become part and parcel of public life in Russia. This means that the people in the Kremlin cannot return to the status quo. Any power has political interests abroad, as well as economic considerations and social obligations inside the country. The Russian economy is “in tatters” because of Russia’s confrontation with the West17—this also might deprive the Kremlin of public support. If we exclude a regime change in the Russian Federation any time soon, we should expect that amid the steadily declining economy, the administration will have no choice but to rely on mobilizational scenarios. It might launch “a splendid little war” as a “consolidating resource”—some territories can be “reunited” with Russia, while the independence of others recognized. The future terrain is obvious—the objective strength asymmetry and the strong conviction of the Russians that Russia has special interests in the Near Abroad make it a “consolidating resource.” Reintegration projects were the main tool expected to resolve the mounting internal and external problems and complications. From the very beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, they, together with the Chinese energy project, figured prominently in what the Kremlin was doing. On 29 May, 2014, the member states of the CU (Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan) signed the Treaty of the Eurasian Eco- nomic Union, with Armenia and Kyrgyzstan waiting in line to be admitted. The fact that much was done to persuade Armenia not to sign the Association Agreement with the EU and join the EEU shows that its importance went far beyond its declared economic consequence. The EEU political and ideological linings are obvious—politically, it is expected to institutionalize the zone of Russia’s influence (something which the CIS did not do), while socially, its consolidating function was its main ideological lever. The two mechanisms of mobilization—a “splendid little war” and reintegration projects—are obviously interconnected. Let us go back to the very beginning of the current Ukrainian crisis. In view of the progress that had been achieved during the presidency of Victor Yanukovich, the Kremlin expected the then President of Ukraine to reorient the country from Euroatlantic to Eurasian integration.18

17 In 2014, capital outflow from Russia reached $150 billion, while the exchange course of national currency dropped by half. 18 In April 2010, Russia and Ukraine signed the Kharkov Agreements, which extended the presence of the Black Sea Navy of the RF in Crimea; in July, the Supreme Rada passed the Law on the Non-Aligned Status of Ukraine.

19 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS

In November 2013, Kiev suspended the preparations for signing the Association Agreement with the EU scheduled for the Vilnius Summit of Eastern Partnership (28-29 November). This stirred up mass protests in Kiev, which cost Yanukovich his post as president; he was replaced with pro-Euroatlantic leaders, to which the Kremlin responded with the Crimea-Donbass scenario. The relations between Russia and the West (the U.S. and EU) have been reduced essentially to a “zero sum game,” which means that similar scenarios can be implemented in all the other post- Soviet states. There are fairly large communities of Russians and Russian-speakers in almost all of them; some of these communities live compactly along the borders of the Russian Federation; some of these states already have “frozen conflicts” and “out of control zones”. This scenario is more probable in the post-Soviet states that look to the West, yet under the macro conditions described above it might be used for domestic consolidation, which extends the list of potential targets. On the whole, the following are the key factors of potential trouble: (1) geographic location and geopolitical importance; (2) the level of involvement in post-Soviet integration projects, economic links and political relations with Russia and the West; (3) territorial disagreements or even conflicts with neighbors; (4) the shares of the Russian and Russian-speaking population, its compact settlement, and the attitude toward the leaders of the corresponding countries and their policy. The first, third and, partly, second set of problems are the most critical for Azerbaijan. Under present conditions, the geopolitical attractiveness of Azerbaijan is a negative rather than positive factor, which might transform it into a target of uncompromising rivalry among the great powers in many, including military-political, spheres. Despite its consistent political relations and economic ties with Russia, Azerbaijan prefers to limit its involvement in reintegration processes to the fairly amorphous CIS format. However, its geographic location and communication functions do not allow it to stay away from these processes: it is hard today, and will be harder tomorrow, to find convincing arguments in favor of a balanced political course. Fully aware that no efficient Eur- asian integration is possible without Azerbaijan because of its geographic location and communication potential, the Kremlin will increase its pressure on Baku. Ethnoterritorial levers may also be used. The fourth set of factors can be described as positive. The Russian community of Azerbaijan, one of the largest in the CIS countries, is scattered across the country; it has no problems with the people in power and can teach its children in Russian at schools and higher educational establishments. Examining development of the situation, we cannot exclude the possibility that the PSM may undergo serious structural changes. The states might fall apart or unite, while the system may change its polarity; the current and unfolding structural instability suggests that this cannot be excluded, albeit in the long-term perspective. Strategic limitations. The Ukrainian crisis has created certain situational problems that may make it much harder for Azerbaijan to carry out its national security strategy; it might create fairly acute problems if the worse comes to the worst. The political situation taking shape at the macro-regional level limits the foreign policy leeway of Azerbaijan, which prefers to remain at an equal distance from the West and from Russia; it does not want to clarify its choice in order to keep the very complex geopolitical situation at an acceptable level. In the worsening macro-conditions and obvious bias toward the zero sum game, Baku is finding it increasingly harder to preserve foreign policy flexibility. This has already affected the chances of settling the Karabakh problem, the central issue on the country’s security agenda. In the mid-2000s, when the republic started earning huge amounts on its

20 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 oil exports, it poured more money into many spheres, including defense. Within a relatively short time, Azerbaijan modernized its armed forces and increased their fighting efficiency. Table 1 shows that its military budget is one of the largest among the post-Soviet states. There were plans to use military force to liberate Nagorno-Karabakh and the regions around it still occupied by Armenia. The leaders of Azerbaijan did not exclude this if and when diplomatic measures had been exhausted. The present macro-conditions have made this alternative prohibitively risky. While earlier Baku could, in principle, expect that the RF would remain neutral if the active stage of the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan was revived, today the price of this neutrality might be too damaging to its independence and sovereignty. Russia cannot afford “losing an ally” (Arme- nia) because it is unable or unwilling to support it. This will dent its reputation of a power with a special regional status and will probably bury its reintegration projects. Under the unprecedentedly strong pressure of the West and the gradually worsening economic situation inside the country, this also will undermine everything the Kremlin has been doing to consolidate the country’s population. In principle, the negative effect of “losing an ally” might be balanced out by acquiring a much more important “ally;” this means that Azerbaijan should, at best, abandon its balanced foreign policy and join the Eurasian reintegration projects. Moreover, if the relations between Russia and the West go from bad to worse, the Kremlin might increase its pressure on Baku to achieve the aims described above outside the Karabakh file. In the conditions of a full-scale zero sum game at the macro-regional level and in view of the obvious strength asymmetry in the region, Azerbaijan and the other geopolitically attractive post-Soviet states will have to admit that their foreign policy possibilities are limited and that they are going to have to make a choice between the Euroatlantic and Eurasian political identity and corresponding integration vectors. As it develops, the Ukrainian crisis is also exerting economic pressure on Azerbaijan. Without going into the finer details of how the Ukrainian events affect oil prices, I will point to the obvious. Very much like during the Russian-Georgian war of 2008, in 2014 oil prices, the main source of Rus- sia’s income, are being used to “bring Russia to its senses.”19 Even if this cannot be called a consolidated effort, the West is interested in this lever for putting pressure on the Kremlin; all the other post-Soviet states that rely on energy resource exports as the main source of income are also suffer- ing—in Azerbaijan, oil and gas account for nearly 70% of its income. In view of this, stalemate at the macro-regional level will infringe on the republic’s economic potential. High oil prices allowed the republic to accumulate about $50 billion in its international reserves. If the unfavorable economic situation continues, the state’s high social expectations and obligations formed during the “fat 2000s” might exhaust these reserves fairly soon. The “oil logic” is not the only negative factor; the economic crisis in Russia echoes in Azerbai- jan. During the years of independence, the two countries became economically interdependent; much is being said in Azerbaijan today about the prospects for Azeri labor migrants in Russia.20 It goes without saying that the worsening economic situation in Russia is driving many of them back home; this will do nothing for their families, which will lose the money these migrants earned in Russia21; an inflow of hundreds of thousands of mainly jobless people within a relatively short period of time will produce negative economic and, possibly, social effects.

19 Since July 2014, the price of Brent oil has dropped by half: from $110 to $47 per barrel. 20 According to Russian official statistics supplied by the Federal Migration Service, there are slightly over 600 thousand of them in Russia. Unofficial figures, which include illegal migration, are much higher—about 2 million (see: E. Rustamova, “Azerbaidzhan ne silno postradaet v usloviiakh obestsenivaniia rublia v otlichie ot drugikh stran. No ushcherb vse-taki budet nanesen,” Ekho, 29 January, 2015, available at [http://echo.az/article.php?aid=77564]). 21 Official Russian statistics speak of slightly over $1 billion a year; unofficial, of $2-3 billion.

21 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Conclusion

The Ukrainian crisis reflects certain trends in the development of geopolitics and security in the post-Soviet space that remained latent before they cropped up in the spring of 2014. The crisis can be described as an apex of the clash of two opposing geopolitical trends—the West wants to strengthen post-Soviet geopolitical pluralism to gain consistent access to the post-Soviet region, while Russia wants to preserve it as the zone of its special interests and influence. In the post-Soviet period, this space has been developing as a specific regional security system with a highly unstable political structure. The unsettled and, therefore, very much alive armed conflicts can be described as the most obvious evidence of the structural instability in the post-Soviet region. No matter how complicated or, at times, dramatic the relations between the only pole of the regional system (the RF) and the other participants, they never reached the stage of an armed conflict. The Kremlin also maintained relatively stable relations with other powers interested in the region. The events of August 2008 in Georgia and, especially, the current crisis in Ukraine reveal that the situation has changed.  First, the Kremlin has clearly indicated that the region belongs to the zone of its exclusive interests and that it is prepared to defend them by force.  Second, geopolitical relations at the macro-regional level have become extremely acute. Since the end of the 1990s, relations between the Russian Federation and the West have been demonstrating a consistent trend toward conflicts, although things never went as far as presenting each other as an enemy. The sides always smoothed out disagreements or pushed aside the acutest of them to continue their cooperation in certain security spheres. Today, in the light of the Ukrainian crisis, their contradictions look very much like a zero sum game. The resultant situation presupposes changes in the regional structures and the national security conditions of the post-Soviet states. This increases the structural instability in the Post-Soviet Secu- rity Macrocomplex and, therefore, its transitivity. The states involved are facing greater structural risks and, therefore, military threats, which figure high on their national security agenda and are accompanied by contracting economic capabilities and chances for political maneuvering. Practically throughout the entire period of its independence, Azerbaijan balanced out its relations with the West and Russia. However, if the present situation continues, it will find it much harder to preserve this positive trend and equidistance from both power centers. If this trend continues to reach the zero sum game stage (which cannot be excluded), it will be accompanied by increased external pressure on the republic. This might transform geopolitically attractive Azerbaijan into a field of uncompromising rivalry between the powers fraught with very negative effects for the republic’s security. Armenia still occupies about 20% of the territory of Azerbaijan, as a result of the Nagorno- Karabakh conflict, which forms the core of Azerbaijan’s national security agenda. Today, in the present macro conditions, it has become much harder to resolve this problem from the point of view of the republic’s fundamental national security interests. Moreover, the situation might bring about the outside exploitation of this vulnerability. In a situation in which structural risks are coming to the fore and economic and behavioral limitations are growing more obvious, the best choice is not to become a trophy in the geopolitical game. For that it is necessary to move away from what is going on. Since no more or less efficient solution of the fundamental problems of military security can be expected, all sudden shifts or leaps in the political course should be avoided. The republic should exercise caution, consistency, and patience and clearly demonstrate that its foreign policy is geared toward its most important national

22 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 interests. Partners and opponents alike should be aware that Azerbaijan is guided by its earlier declared national interests and by international law. This alone will minimize the effects of the political choice of a small state living amid structural instability and severe rivalry among the powers that “call the tune.” This is true not only of Azerbaijan. Seen at the systemic level, the situation looks like the acute stage of the development of structural instability in the RSS, which has added to its transitivity. Any inconsistency in the behavior of its actors, their hasty or careless actions, will add to the overall in- definiteness and unpredictability and will further undermine the already far from structurally stable system, thus increasing the possibility of the use of force.

BELARUS IN THE EURASIAN SECURITY SYSTEM

Murat LAUMULIN D.Sc. (Political Science), Chief Research Fellow at the Kazakhstan Institute of Strategic Studies under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Almaty, Kazakhstan)

ABSTRACT

he Republic of Belarus occupies the of European confrontation of the previous western periphery of geopolitical Eur- period. Today, it is consistently and actively T asia, by which I mean the post-Soviet involved in military integration within the space, and is fairly far removed from Central CSTO. The armed forces of Russia and Be- Asia. This distance, however, does not larus are tied together by the so-called coali- mean that Belarus is safely protected from tion approach. Civilian and military experts the security threats emanating from the of the Republic of Belarus are studying the Central Asian region, and, on the whole, In- hypothetical possibility of its involvement, at ner Eurasia. The Belarusian expert commu- the technical level, in the Collective Rapid nity is not indifferent to these problems. Be- Reaction Force of the CSTO if and when larus has preserved its military and strategic NATO pullout of Afghanistan sends waves importance for Russia within the categories of instability across Central Asia.

KEYWORDS: Belarus, Russia, Central Asia, CSTO, the Union State, Eurasian security, Ukrainian crisis, Eurasian Economic Union, the military-industrial complex.

23 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Introduction

The Republic of Belarus occupies the western periphery of geopolitical Eurasia, by which I mean the post-Soviet space, and is fairly far removed from Central Asia. This distance, however, does not mean that the Belarusian expert community, as well as military and civilian specialists, are indifferent to the problems of security of Central Asia and Inner Eurasia as a whole. Belarus is involved in all the integration structures in post-Soviet space, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in particular, which makes it one of the sides in any hypothetical conflict in Central Asia and the Caucasus if all the other CSTO members are involved.1 A member, together with Russia, of the Union State, Minsk has even greater responsibilities in the collective security sphere.2 Today, Belarus is concerned about the gradual movement of NATO forces closer to its territory caused by the Ukrainian crisis and the mounting confrontation between Moscow and the West.3 The Ukrainian crisis has destabilized the European part of the CIS and spread its negative impact across Eurasia. The events in Ukraine confirm the principles of indivisibility of Eurasian and Euro-Atlantic security registered in the Declaration of the Astana OSCE Summit of 2010.

Military-Strategic Cooperation between Belarus and Russia

Very much according to the logic of previous confrontation, Belarus has preserved its military- strategic importance for Russia and is one of the most consistent and active members of military integration within the CSTO. Both countries support the so-called coalition approach that saves money spent on defense and optimizes the system of command and control. Russia’s military-strategic interests are served, among other things, by the Volga Radar Station (Russia rents it from Belarus, the present term ending in 2020), which allows Russia to follow troop movements in the North Atlantic, as well as in Northern and Central Europe, and the Antey hub site, which ensures communication with the Russian submarine missile carriers in the Atlantic Ocean. Russia pays Minsk between $14 and 20 million every year. On the whole, Russia’s annual aid to Belarus in the form of armament, training of officers, and maintenance of the S-300 air-defense missile systems has reached $360 million.4 Practically all the military equipment the republic receives from abroad is produced in Russia; in the last fifteen years over one thousand citizens of Belarus have graduated from Russia’s military educational establishments.

1 See: Yu. Godin, “Vneshniaia politika Respubliki Belarus (1991-2014),” Rossia i novye gosudarstva Evrazii (IME- MO), No. 3, 2014, pp. 23-35. 2 See: V. Bondarenko, “Rossia-Belarus: uroki stroitelstva Soiuznogo gosudarstva,” Vestnik analitiki (Moscow), No. 2, 2011, pp. 85-93; A. Mikhaylenko, “Soiuz Rossi i Belorussii: prioritety i perspektivy,” Mirovaia ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnoshenia (IMEMO, Moscow), No. 11, 2010, pp. 104-110. 3 See: S.V. Astakhova, “Belorussia: novye realii mezhdunarodnoy politiki,” Rossia i novye gosudarstva Evrazii, No. 4, 2014, pp. 84-92. 4 Quoted from: S. Astakhova, “Voenno-tekhnicheskoe sotrudnichestvo Rossi i Belorussii,” Rossia i novye gosudarstva Evrazii, No. 3, 2013, pp. 61-69 (see also: Yu.F. Godin, Belorussia—eto “Brestskaia krepost” sovremennoy Rossii, ITRK, Moscow, 2008, 184 pp.; E. Tsedilina, “Rossiysko-belorusskie otnoshenia i interesy bezopasnosti RF,” Rossia i novye gosudarstva Evrazii, No. 3, 2009, pp. 18-35).

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The economic and political context of the relations between the two countries leaves much to be desired, but cooperation in the military sphere is developing on the basis of over 30 treaties and agreements. As a neighbor of NATO’s military infrastructure, Belarus is doubly important to Russia. The two countries successfully cooperate in the sphere of radiation, chemical and biological defense, and topographic and geodesic support of the armed forces. Experts point out that in the past much was done to ensure external security of the Union State— it acquired united systems of radioelectronic warfare, communication, and logistics in the military sphere. As mentioned earlier, there is a Russian radar station in Belarus and a hub of long-range radio communication; joint staff and field exercises keep the battle-worthiness of troops at the required level. The Single Regional Air-Defense System is another important element of the Union State’s military potential. In 2013, Russia supplied Belarus with the first upgraded Buk missile systems to improve air defenses. In April 2013, during his official visit to Minsk, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu discussed military cooperation within the Union State with President Lukashenko and Defense Minister of Belarus Zhadobin, in particular, increasing the efficiency of joint defenses and the possibility of setting up a single group of armed forces within the CSTO. Russia intends to discontinue its import of elements for new types of strategic armaments, including nuclear weapons, and to rely in this field on Belarusian capacities. It is expected that the largest Belarusian enterprise, Integral Ltd., which manufactures microelectronics, will also be involved. Today, it occupies 15 to 20 percent of the Russian market of electronic components of dual and special use. The final stage of joint military exercises Zapad-2013 organized, for the first time, simultane- ously in Russia and Belarus took place in September 2013. Russia planned to deploy, by 2015, a regiment of fighter planes at the airbase in Lida (Belarus) used by Belarusian ground attack aircraft, which also serves as a training center with the necessary and adequate infrastructure. At the first stage, it was planned to deploy the latest multi-functional SU-27SM3 fighters there, as well as strengthen the aviation group with other types of military aircraft. The Russian side, however, demonstrated that it did not plan to set up a joint airbase. In November 2013, the situation around the base changed; it was planned to move it from Lida to Baranovichi. When in Baranovichi, Lukashenko made several statements addressed to Moscow, in particular about his intention to remove Su-27 planes from the republic’s air force. Earlier, the Be- larusian president had mentioned that Russia would deliver new military aircraft. The statement in Baranovichi was intended as a warning to the Kremlin that the republic would modernize its weapons (including aviation) on its own and that, in the future, it would pursue an independent military policy. The haggling over the military facility is still going on; the Lida base is too close to the external borders of the Union State; therefore, four Russian SU-27B aircraft were temporarily removed to Baranovichi. Earlier Belarus made similar concessions in exchange for Russia’s economic aid and used them as maneuvering room in its relations with Russia and the European Union. Some observers think that the steadily decreasing military potential of Belarusian aviation will make it more and more dependent on the Russian air force to protect its borders. Russian experts are convinced that a Russian air base in Belarus is a response to the relocation, on permanent tactical efficiency, to the military base in Šiauliai (Lithuania) of four NATO F-16 Fight- ing Falcon all-weather multirole aircraft capable of carrying American B61 variable yield bombs. The 15-minute flight time between Šiauliai and Moscow makes these bombs (defined as tactical weapons) strategic weapons for Russia.

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The experts of the Center for European Integration Problems in Minsk are convinced that a Russian airbase in Belarus indicates that the Kremlin is very concerned about NATO’s military threat. The Russian airbase in Belarus issue has a domestic political dimension as well; the local opposition speaks of approaching Russian occupation and accuses the president of violating the Consti- tution. He, in turn, dismisses as absolutely groundless what the opposition says about the possible loss of sovereignty due to continued military cooperation with Russia. Minsk argues that the Belarusian army forms the core of the joint group of armed forces and never fails to criticize the North Atlantic Alliance and its military activity in the region and the position of Poland on the American ABM system in Europe. Despite the traditionally high assessments of battle-worthiness of the Belarusian Armed Forces, Russian and some Belarusian experts point to the mounting problems caused by military-technological degradation, the negative effects of demography, etc. The financial, economic, and budget problems do not allow the state to maintain its army at the previous high level. Money shortages have negatively affected the special rapid reaction force expected to form the core of the republic’s armed forces after the reforms. Russia’s very justified concerns about the future of the Belarusian armed forces, the battle-worthiness of the armed forces of the Union State, and the efficient involvement of the Republic of Belarus in the CSTO are caused by the noticeable outflow of contractors from the elite and special units.5

Development of the Military-Industrial Complex in the Republic of Belarus

Belarus inherited about 120 enterprises of the military industrial complex (including maintenance plants) from the Soviet Union and practically no enterprises of final assembly. The Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic did not produce its own weapons; its production range was limited to auto- mobiles and various equipment—communication, navigation, and command and control systems, as well as optics of all sorts, etc. Today, military-industrial production is coordinated by the State Military-Industrial Committee of the Republic of Belarus. In 1992, it supplied up to 20 percent of the total volume of materials, spare parts, and components needed by the Russian military-industrial complex; in the 2000s its share dropped to 8 percent. The Belarusian leaders have preserved some of the former integration contacts with Russia and the Russian enterprises that produce mobile ballistic missile systems Topol, Yars, and Iskander (the Minsk Plant of Wheeled Tractors [MZKT], for example, supplies chassis for them). Belarusian target- ing fire systems and navigation complexes are used in Russian planes and tanks; the republic is further deepening its specialization to develop systems of communication, navigation, reconnaissance, surveillance and command and control without which no network-centric army is possible.6

5 See: A.Sh. Zhvitiashvili, “Rossia i Belorussia: nekotorye aspekty sravnenia,” Rossia i sovremenny mir, No. 2, 2011, pp. 110-121; S.V. Astakhova, “Otnoshenia Rossi i Belorussii v novykh politicheskikh realiiakh,” Rossia i novye gosudarstva Evrazii, No. 3, 2014, pp. 72-79. 6 Quoted from: “Portrety predpriiatiy belorusskogo VPK,” Analytical project BelarusSecurityBlog, 2013, Minsk, available at [www.bsblog.info].

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In 2012, Belarus launched production of over 35 types of high-tech products; over 20 R&D have been completed in the following five fields: battle systems of special operations and land forces; geo-information systems; drones; high-precision weapons countermeasures; and systems of fire damage. The range of latest achievements includes a radio-relay station Tsitrus (which can replace 10 radar complexes) and also automated guidance systems Bor, Polyana RB, Neman, Sprut, Prostor, Rif-R, and Protok that have no analogues in the world. Belarus has moved to the frontline of drone production. In April 2014, at the 4th International Exhibition and the BMC DIMDEX-2014 conference in Qatar, Beltekhexport exhibited its latest products, including Berkut-1 tactical short-range drone intended for optoelectronic night/day reconnaissance. The hand-starting unit Berkut-1 together with a payload is able to absolutely automatically fly a distance of 15 km at an altitude of 1,000 meters. Cruising speed machine is 50-80 km/h, the unit can be flown for 1.5 hours. In Qatar, the republic showed Shershen-D, another novelty, viz. an absolutely unique third generation anti-tank guided missile (ATGM). Belarus has created unique devices of radioelectronic warfare; its maintenance plants have manufactured new and modernized some types of old Soviet military machines (air-defense assets in particular) very popular in developing countries. The same enterprises cover the needs of the armed forces of the republic and other countries. There is an opinion that the Belarusian military- industrial complex turned out to be more viable and, on the whole, more successful than the Ukrainian. Military-political cooperation between Russia and Belarus is unfolding within the Treaty on the Union State and the CSTO and is based on five main documents. Both countries belong to the unified air defense system of the CIS countries. The republic has a considerable number of facilities of Rus- sian military-technical infrastructure in its territory, which helps to maintain strategic security in Europe (the early warning radar system in Baranovichi and Russian Navy’s long-haul communication center in Vileyka, which provides communication between Russia’s Navy headquarters and atomic submarines in the Atlantic (the above-mentioned Antey hub site). Since 1998, the budget of the Union State has been funding military education for the Belarusian military in the Russian Fed- eration. The Belarusian-Russian intergovernmental commission on military-technical cooperation is doing a lot, including holding regular talks between heads of organizations and industrial enterprises of the military-industrial complex, designed to arrive at the best forms of cooperation in various fields and to draw up and implement programs of the Union State in the field of security and defenses. The two countries have pooled forces to design and produce science-consuming technologies— microwave and optoelectronic products and equipment to be used to produce nano-materials. There are several very successful programs—Komposit, Traektoria, Kosmos-NT, and Nanotekhnologii-SG. Belarus has preserved over 50 enterprises of the defense sector involved today in production and scientific and technical cooperation with over 400 enterprises in Russia, which they supply with electronic components, spare parts, etc. The country is actively involved in bilateral projects through its participation in interstate financial and industrial groups and joint ventures; its defense industry concentrates on the latest information and telecommunication technologies. In 2006, the country launched the State Armament Program for 2006-2015, so far the most ambitious military-technical project in its history as a sovereign state. Automated systems of troops and weapons command and control are generally regarded as the highest achievement of the Belarusian military-industrial complex. According to military experts, a

27 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS single automated control system for the air force and air-defense upgrades the fighting potential of the Belarusian army and the regional group of troops (forces) of Russia and Belarus. It should be said that joint military industrial projects do not interfere with cooperation of Rus- sia and Belarus with third countries. While moving their military products to foreign markets, both countries carefully avoid competition among themselves so as not to infringe on their partner’s interests. In the sphere of dual technologies, Belarus is present in the CIS markets and cooperates with China—they produce multi-axis wheeled chassis and tractors for special, including military, equipment and armaments of various purposes. The first Chinese-Belarusian assembly plant was opened in 1998 in Xiogan (Hubei Province). After a while, the Chinese started copying the MZKT products and pushed out the Belarusian suppliers. China is also interested in the fairly high technical and exploitation properties and fighting qualities of the Belarusian air-defense system. According to Russian sources, in 2000-2002, China and Belarus signed several agreements in this sphere. The Chinese military are very impressed by Belarusian achievements in radar technologies, in particular the Vostok D/E mobile 2-dimensional metric band surveillance radar carried on MZKT chassis.7 Beijing is interested in what is being done in Belarus in the field of high-precision weapons, the modernized Module-A complex designed to improve the tactical-technological description of common aerial bombs being one of them. There are signs that China and Belarus are intensifying their cooperation in design and development of means of radioelectronic warfare intended for themselves and third countries. There is an opinion that Belarus and China will cooperate in R&D of mid-range surface-to-air missile systems similar to S-300. General overhaul and, recently, modernization of SU-27 aircraft and Mi-8 helicopters are the traditional sphere of military-technical cooperation between the two countries. Recently the military- industrial complex of the Republic of Belarus has moved into a new and potentially very attractive field for the People’s Army of China, namely modernization of the Smerch multiple rocket launcher and production of the means of radio electronic protection for aircraft. There is the Satellit complex of airborne equipment of individual radio electronic protection of the aircraft against high-precision radio-controlled weapons with active homing missiles of the surface-to-air or air-to-air classes. There is any number of those who think that the recent intensification of relations between Belarus and China at different levels is largely explained by pragmatism of the Chinese—they are interested in the results of the latest Belarusian original academic and applied studies. The state base of scientific and technical cooperation among China and Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and other CIS cities set up in Changchun, the capital of the Jilin Province, is geared at contacts in optical electronics, studies of materials, biotechnologies, etc. Earlier, Belarusian State University and Harbin Polytechnics signed an agreement on cooperation. The Center for Scientific and Technical Cooperation was set up for joint studies and development of new technologies (laser and nano technologies, etc.). China is especially interested in what Belarus has done in space research and dual and military high tech. Beijing knows that many types of military equipment and dual products developed and produced in Belarus are absolutely competitive on a world scale or even unique, with no analogues in the CIS countries. The Chinese military treat as such the automated system of troops and weapons command and control, aerial space optoelectronic devices and photogrammetric systems, armored vehicles fire control, automated radar, laser-optical and information air-defense command and control systems.

7 Quoted from: “Voenno-tekhnicheskoe sotrudnichestvo Belarusi i Kitaia,” Analytical project BelarusSecurityBlog, 2013.

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Until recently the Belarusian military-industrial complex closely cooperated with the Ukrainian defense industry, Shershen, Sarmat, and Skif being the results of their joint efforts. The Belarusian side produced homing systems, while the missiles were made in Ukraine; both had the right to sell them to third countries. The rule was applied not only to these missiles but also to surface-to-air missiles and the module that transformed unguided gravity bombs into guided bombs. The recent events in Ukraine changed everything. In April 2014, during his visit to the 558 Avia- tion Maintenance Plant in Baranovichi, President Lukashenko pointed to two equally attractive possibilities created by the crisis—highly skilled Ukrainian specialists who could be tempted to move to Belarus and Ukrainian technologies that could be borrowed from their owners. Late in September 2014, a delegation of the military-industrial complex of Belarus visited military enterprises in Kiev, Lvov, Dnepropetrovsk, and Chernigov on a fact-finding mission. The members were primarily interested in industrial enterprises and scientific research and development organizations connected with the design and manufacture of missiles and their components, homing systems, engines, automated command and control systems, etc. There is a more or less generally shared conviction in Ukraine that the Belarusians will try to lure the best specialists or will even try to buy missile technologies (it should be said that Russia is very reluctant to let Belarus develop these facilities in its territory). The seventh international military hardware expo MILEX 2014 in Minsk was a great success. The organizations within the State Committee for Military Industry of the Republic of Belarus signed 55 contracts totaling over $350 million (on the whole, contracts amounting to $700 million). Alebarda, a mid-range anti-aircraft missile system made in Belarus, attracted a lot of attention; even before the expo ended the new missile had gathered 15 orders. The market capacity is assessed as 200 or even more complexes, produced practically from beginning to end in Belarus. Recently, the leaders of Belarus, who are seeking wider contacts with the developing countries, have been inviting their potential partners (Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, South Af- rica, and some of the Arab states) to set up joint military-technical projects. Today, the Belarusian military-industrial complex demonstrates the following trends: (1) Modernization of military equipment to add mobility and manageability to the troops, ensure their protection, widen the scope of reconnaissance, and increase the possibility of delivering precision strikes at long distances. (2) Setting up a complete production cycle of promising types of weapons ranging from means of mobility to means of destruction. The country has already created prototypes of a fighting armored vehicle and a car of all-terrain capability and completed the design stage of an unmanned aerial complex with a range of 100 km or even more. Belarus and its foreign partners have created a new anti-tank missile complex. (3) There are plans to set up, jointly with leading world machine-tool companies, assembly facilities to produce equipment and the latest machine tools as a means of import replacement and, later, set up national production facilities in the republic.

Belarus and Security in Central Asia in the CSTO Context

Normally Minsk is not much interested in the problems of Central Asian security and the threats emanating from Afghanistan. President Lukashenko last clarified his position on the issue at the fall 2013 CSTO Summit. He was convinced that the CSTO states should help Tajikistan fortify its border with Afghanistan after the Western coalition pulled out its forces.

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Until recently, Belarus limited its support within the CSTO to supplies of uniforms for the Tajik border guards and was officially thanked, in February 2014, by Nikolay Bordyuzha, Secretary Gen- eral of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Civilian and military Belarusian experts are contemplating the technical possibility of being involved (as one of the units in the Collective Rapid Reaction Force) in responding to potential threats created by destabilization in Central Asia (a low-intensity conflict) after the coalition forces of NATO have been finally removed from Afghanistan. Some experts think that destabilization might spread to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.8 They also think that the country is unable to part with more than the one-third it has already pegged for participation in the Collective Rapid Reaction Force; two-thirds should remain in the republic for personnel rotation. It is commonly believed that the country cannot spend more than 1 percent of its consolidated budget (central and local budgets), that is, about $230 million, on training the national contingent and its funding. The numerical strength of the Belarusian military contingent within the Collective Rapid Reac- tion Force depends on the nature and scope of the potential threats and might include military, gendarme, and counterterrorist units, communication with local authorities, and support forces. Belarus could be represented by one mobile battalion of about 550 people complete with armored vehicles and guns; the organizational structure and personnel will be geared at the nature of the terrain and the degree of threats. The gendarme contingent will consist of two or three patrol companies from among the Ministry of the Interior Forces (up to 400 men) trained and equipped to suppress riots and conduct searches of transportation vehicles and people. The counterterrorist part will be represented by a unit of up to 30 members of the Alfa and Almaz groups and riot police involved on a rotational basis. The group responsible for communication with local authorities consists of Belarusian officers serving in the staffs of the union forces, the Ministry of the Interior, the Air Force, and the state security forces of the host state. The support group consists of a helicopter unit of up to 300 men and a medical sub-unit. It has been calculated that up to 1,600 military from the Ministry of the Interior, the State Se- curity Committee, and the Defense Ministry will be needed; the country cannot afford more; no more than one-third of the total amount of needed forces are deployed in the host country, while the rest is intended for rotation. Experts believe that the technical equipment of the units of the Ministry of the Interior, the counterterrorist units, and the medical service units is adequate, although they need well-protected transportation vehicles. Belarusian analysts are showing a lot of interest in the fighting experience of Estonian units in Afghanistan, which revealed, among other things, that Soviet armored machines were ill-suited as mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles. Because of limited finances and technical possibilities, the republic’s national contingent will be moved to the area of possible conflict and will be supplied by land; transport aviation will be re- served for emergencies. The republic’s involvement in a possible mission requires a lot of technical training since the available armored vehicles and cars cannot be used in contemporary armed conflicts. Experts have offered the following three ways out: modernization, purchase of new machines, and purchase of surplus machines from foreign states. So far, there is no idea about the exact sums involved, even though several million dollars might be required.

8 Quoted from: “Otsenka gotovnosti Belarusi k uchastiiu v koalitsionnykh operatsiiakh,” Analytical project BelarusSe- curityBlog, December 2013.

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In Minsk, the problem of Afghanistan is discussed as part of the drug threat; the expert community looks at drug production in this country as a unique phenomenon explained not so much by the volumes of the locally raised and processed drugs as by the unpredictable geopolitical effects of their spread and consumption. Russia consumes 75 to 80 tons of Afghan heroin every year and loses, according to certain sources, over 30 thousand lives. There is an opinion in the Belarusian expert community that “drug production in Afghanistan, unprecedented in its scope and concentration in one geographic point, can be described as a tool for undermining international security. This is a unique planetary-historical phenomenon that can be qualified, according to the U.N. Charter, as a threat to international peace and security.” This domestic Afghan phenomenon directly affects the region and many countries outside it; it is directly connected with the armed conflicts unfolding in the territory of Afghanistan (which have already assumed international scope) and the military-political destabilization of Central Asia and pours a lot of money into extremist criminal and terrorist activities. This phenomenon is largely caused by the unprecedentedly high level of corruption in Afghanistan and the countries along the trafficking route, which excludes any possibility of realizing the ideals of democracy in the region’s countries. This explains why Belarusian experts have been talking about the right of Russia and the other CSTO member states to self-defense against the drug aggression waged by Afghan non-governmental groups in their territory.9 Some of them think that the SCO should also pour its political and economic potential into the CSTO anti-drug efforts. The expert community has pointed out that the Ukrainian developments might radically change the geopolitical situation in Eurasia as a whole and in Eastern Europe in particular; the security system might change to confront the CSTO with new and even more complicated problems. The military-political expert community of Belarus, however, cannot discern any prospects for CSTO expansion and prefer defense cooperation with Russia within the Union State. At one of the meetings with the speaker of the Federation Council and the heads of the federation subjects of Russia, President Lukashenko said that in the near future the CSTO would develop into the military component of Eurasian entity. The Belarusian expert community is of a different opinion—Moscow demonstrates a lot of independence when it comes to decision-making and rarely takes the positions of its allies into account. This has been amply confirmed by previous crises. The Crimean crisis put the deficit of trust among Moscow, Minsk, and Astana into bolder relief. Indeed, Belarus and Russia belong to the Union State and, together with Kazakhstan, to a single regional armed group and the CSTO. The Kremlin resolved the Crimean crisis and passed the decision on unification (which means joining the peninsula to the Union State and the CSTO) unilaterally. The post-factum consultations within the Union State and the CSTO were purely formal. Belarusian experts have pointed out that the CSTO members prefer to stay away from the Russian-Ukrainian war and that Moscow has failed to rally the post-Soviet states for a military- technical blockade of Kiev.

Belarus and the Ukrainian Crisis

Throughout 2013-2014, Minsk gradually readjusted its attitude to Ukraine, which has been living through a far from easy period of political transformations. The Belarusian media and public

9 See: Yu. Tsarik, Afghanskoe narkoproizvodstvo kak ugroza mezhdunarodnomu miru i bezopasnosti, TsCVI, Minsk, 2014, 88 pp.

31 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS opinion limited their comments on the wave of opposition later tagged as Euromaidan to whether or not Ukraine would be involved in Eurasian integration. As the situation on Maidan moved toward violence, Minsk paid more and more attention to the Ukrainian developments; the removal of Viktor Yanukovich and the political U-turn performed by those who came to power in Kiev shocked the Belarusian president. In March 2014, Lukashenko began regularly commenting on the Ukrainian developments; put in a nutshell, he says the following: (1) the Belarusian authorities will not allow a second edition of Maidan in their country; (2) the Ukrainian riots were caused by “the huge scope of corruption and economic collapse” in Ukraine; (3) Minsk will adequately respond to all attempts of NATO members to step up military activities in close proximity to Belarus. This means that from the very beginning, the events in Ukraine were used to scare the local people. This was when Minsk formulated its foreign policy interests: — Prompt stabilization of Ukraine; — Resistance (if necessary) to Russia’s pressure, which might insist on worsening Minsk’s relations with the Ukrainian regime; — Capitalization on the Ukrainian developments and the worsened relations between the West and Russia. The Belarusian leaders primarily had to find a balanced political course: they did not know how far they could go with their support of Moscow because of its rapidly worsening relations with the West, lest to betray the country’s national interests, undermine its international position, and dent its security. On the whole, Lukashenko was not always consistent; he sided with Moscow when the U.N. GA voted on the annexation of Crimea; later, on 7 June, the President of Belarus attended the inau- guration of President Poroshenko and clearly indicated that he was on the side of Ukraine. There is another aspect of the same issue—Lukashenko tried to wring dry the Ukrainian conflict and extract the maximum political dividends by positing himself as a broker between Kiev and Mos- cow. In late July 2014, he began insistently offering Minsk as a venue for the tripartite talks of the so-called contact group that was trying to settle the situation in the east of Ukraine. Late in August 2014, Minsk welcomed a summit of the Customs Union, Ukraine, and the high representatives of the European Union; during this meeting, Lukashenko skillfully used his diplomatic talents to gain a personal audience with Catherine Ashton, an indirect sign that Brussels had softened its position in relation to the Lukashenko regime. The president used the Minsk summit to obtain diplomatic bonuses and upgrade the country’s international status. Minsk extracted all possible economic and political dividends from the Western anti-Russian sanctions and Russia’s reciprocal sanctions. While formally remaining on Russia’s side, Lukashenko clearly indicated that Minsk would not join the reciprocal sanctions and promised to close possible holes in foodstuff supplies with Belarusian products. Later Moscow repeatedly accused Minsk of cheating by re-exporting products of EU countries. In view of the crisis, Belarus adopted additional measures to tighten internal security, in particular, in connection with the world hockey championship. In August 2014, the president signed decrees on the mechanism for introducing a state of emergency; early in 2015, the law on martial law was amended.

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In many respects, the Ukrainian market remains the biggest consumer of Belarusian export, oil products and potassium fertilizers in particular (which brought $6 to 7 billion every year). On 19 August, 2014, Ukraine and Belarus abolished all the limiting measures previously introduced in trade and mutual licensing, which meant restoration of the free-trade regime. In 2014, the trade turn- over between the two countries decreased mainly because of the devalued grivna. Minsk strengthened its border guards, especially those stationed along the borders with Ukraine, and deployed a new air group of the Russian Federation at the Baranovichi airbase. On the whole, Lukashenko and Putin agreed that they should jointly and adequately respond to the current build-up of NATO troops. In August 2014, the KGB of Belarus officially refuted information that Belarusian citizens had joined the volunteers in the east of Ukraine. According to official information, by August 2014 there were about 26 thousand Ukrainian refugees in Belarus; 1.5 thousand applied for a refugee status and nearly 1.5 thousand received residence permits; over 3 thousand intend to apply for temporary residence. The country’s external and internal policy remains under the pressure of the Ukrainian crisis and the related international events. President Lukashenko believes that the Ukrainian regions should become more independent and that the Constitution should be amended accordingly. Early in Sep- tember, he signed a decree which simplified many procedures for Ukrainian citizens in Belarus, including application for state grants, education, and employment. The country’s international situation and its relations with Germany and the United States are likewise strongly affected by the Ukrainian crisis. Early in September 2014, an American delegation headed by one of the top officials of the U.S. State Department came to Minsk to confirm that Wash- ington was pleased with Minsk’s decision not to recognize unification of Crimea with Russia and that its efforts to encourage and organize talks on the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis were appreciated. The American diplomats paid particular attention to the Minsk’s recognition of the new people in power in Ukraine and expressed their readiness to change the format of relations with Minsk in light of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Late in September, during his visit to Moldova and in the interview he gave on 1 October, the Belarusian president expressed his opinion about the Ukrainian crisis. He said that the contact group that had worked in Minsk did a lot and halted the hostilities. He described the possible repercussions of the crisis as catastrophic and pointed out that what had happened on Maidan was wrong and unconstitutional. He said that his country had offered a peace plan for Ukraine, but “the West rejected it because somebody profited from this rejection.” On 21 December, 2014, when in Kiev on a working visit, President Lukashenko made an official statement to the effect that his country would spare no effort to help restore peace in Ukraine. The Ukrainian president reciprocated by praising Minsk’s clear position on his state’s sovereignty and independence and thanked Lukashenko for the opportunity to use Minsk for the meeting of the tripartite contact group, which arrived at a document intended as the first step toward peaceful settlement. Experts paid particular attention to what the Ukrainian leader said about the “Minsk format” as the only model of de-escalation of the situation in some of the districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions; they associated this with certain shifts in Kiev’s approaches and explained Lukashenko’s Ukrainian visit by the recently worsened relations between Moscow and Minsk in trade and the economy and, allegedly, the common strategy Moscow, Minsk, and Astana are pursuing in their relations with Kiev. It should be said that the talks between Minsk and Kiev produced an unexpected decision on setting up a joint TV channel in Minsk (which will probably be safely forgotten).

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Most of the expert community agrees that Minsk and Kiev have many common interests: Be- larus wants Ukraine as one of the largest markets for its products, while Ukraine wants maximum security along its northern border, steady supply of oil products, and neutralization of Russia’s attempts to limit Ukraine’s trade and to the standards of the Eurasian integration project. What is even more important is the fact that Minsk indirectly refused to support the “federaliza- tion scenario” Moscow was imposing on Ukraine. It also guaranteed that it would not allow third countries to use Belarusian territory for military aggression against Ukraine. On the whole, however, Minsk’s Ukrainian policy cannot be called consistent. Throughout 2014, Lukashenko changed his opinion about the Ukrainian events several times. His seemingly contradictory position prompted by his desire to preserve the sovereignty of his country and by his latent fear of Moscow’s imperial ambitions does not interfere with his pro-Russian position caused, among other things, by the growing dependence (economic dependence in particular) on the Russian Federation. In any case, Alexander Lukashenko is using every opportunity for political maneuvering to create the impression of his complete independence.

What Minsk Thinks about the Security Threats to Central Asia

The latest assessments of the new security threats to Central Asia and the region’s geopolitical future offered by the Belarusian expert community are very interesting. The report published by the Center for Strategic and Foreign Policy Studies (TsSVI)10 described the following two supra-national strategies of counteraction: the Chinese, represented by the SCO and the emerging Silk Road Economic Belt, and the Russian, represented by the CSTO and the emerging EAEU. There is a more or less common opinion that Central Asia has come close to fundamental changes largely connected with the developments unfolding in other regions, the Middle East in particular. The following can be described as the key factors responsible for the Central Asian strategic context: (1) The pullout of American troops from Afghanistan in 2014-1016; (2) The establishment of the EAEU and its possible enlargement; (3) The dramatic activation of China’s regional policies; (4) The emergence of India as a new regional power; (5) The continued strategic rapprochement of the U.S. and Iran; (6) The shift of the zone of U.S. primary interests to the Far East and Washington’s rising concern about the growing Chinese factor in Eurasia. (7) The changed structures and patterns of activity of international extremist and terrorist organizations and continued struggle between ISIS and al Qa‘eda; (8) The rising level of violence, the rising drug production, and the persistent political crisis in Afghanistan.

10 See: “The Central Asian Chessboard at the End of 2014,” in: Destabilization Scenarios in Central Asia and Strategic Counteraction, TsSVI (Minsk), 4 September, 2014 (in Russian).

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The United States, China, India, Iran, Pakistan, and, of course, Russia are the states with the potentially greatest impact on Central Asia. Washington wants to preserve the stability level, which will allow it to shift its geopolitical priorities, safely and completely, from Central Asia to the APR and the Middle East. The White House is concentrating on containing China by counterbalancing it to the states involved in Central Asia (Russia, Iran, and India in particular). The Americans expect that Russia will try to push China out of the post-Soviet space and that Iran will help to stabilize Afghanistan and prevent the greater role of Pakistan and the Taliban, while India, locked in competition with China, will add geopolitical and economic weight to the structure. Experts and analysts believe that China is attracted by Central Asia’s mineral resources and consumer markets, its interests in the region being inspired by Beijing’s desire to avoid instability in the XUAR. Meanwhile, China which has already formulated the Silk Road Economic Belt initiative, occupies a much more active or even expansionist position: the economic belt will require infrastructure which will require protection. The Chinese elite, or its greater part, is regarding the Economic Belt as a free trade area between China and the Central Asian countries. After losing interest in the Mes Aynak copper mines, China developed an interest in protecting the oil fields in the north of Afghanistan. Containment of India is one of China’s strategic concerns; Beijing wants to limit Delhi’s influence in the region and intercept its share of the resources. India, according to the expert community, is primarily concerned about receiving a steady supply of resources mainly through TAPI and IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India) gas transportation systems. Tehran needs stability in Afghanistan, a solution to the drug trafficking problem, and suppression of the still growing influence of extremist groups oriented toward Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Iran needs larger markets for its hydrocarbons (hence the IPI project) and a wider area of economic cooperation. The Port of Chabahar project, the only Iranian port with direct access to the ocean, is one of Tehran’s strategic priorities. The country is determined to pursue an active policy in Afghani- stan and post-Soviet Central Asia (Tajikistan being the main aim). A decrease in the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and Central Asia is another point on the Iranian agenda. On the whole, analysts agree that Pakistan has found itself in a quandary. In recent years, the traditional contacts between the Pakistani special services and the Taliban (and its branches) have been causing increasing trouble. Like many of its neighbors, Pakistan is interested in the resource-rich Central Asian states; it wants to keep India and Iran outside Central Asia and relies on China as its main ally. Russia’s strategy in the region is fairly vague; the Ukrainian crisis distracted its attention from Central Asia, the key to Eurasian security. Russia, which is establishing the EAEU together with its allies, expects that Kyrgyzstan and, somewhat later, Tajikistan will also join it. According to certain sources, it is interested in the TAPI gas pipeline, while some Russian companies are ready to join the construction project. The Belarusian expert community has concluded that the terrorist international is being torn apart by the dramatic rivalry between ISIS and al Qa‘eda. In the West, experts are very skeptical about the prospects for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which needs money and fresh forces; its ethnic composition, Uzbeks being in the minority, has moved far from its title. The Ismailites of Afghan and Tajik Badakhshan may temporarily come to the fore, as well as pan-Turkic and ethnically diverse groups in the north of Afghanistan and more moderate Islamist organizations of the Hizb ut-Tahrir type. The expert community in Belarus points to the Islamist threat as the main one in the present conditions; the new actors, ISIS being one of them, on the regional scene may aggravate it even more. Today, the Central Asian states are doing more than the other players to oppose the region’s destabilization. They are keeping the political field under control, applying pressure, within legal

35 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS limits, on the Islamist and other opposition structures, and offering the easily tempted, as well as vulnerable groups, social benefits. The Central Asian countries have geared their opposition strategies to nationalism, a combination of the following two key values: national history and sovereign statehood. This particularly applies to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. According to the expert community, these two countries, rather than the CSTO, will play the main role in strengthening the region’s security, at least because Russia remains bogged down in the Ukrainian crisis.

Conclusion

Today, the foreign policy course of the Republic of Belarus is largely determined by the following factors: — wide-scale, diverse, and, at the same time, “uneven” cooperation with the Russian Federa- tion; — involvement in Eurasian integration and the EAEU Treaty signed in May 2014; — cautious drawing closer to the West; — its higher international status of a broker between the sides in the Ukrainian conflict and consolidation of its military-political cooperation with Moscow; — continued cooperation with its traditional partners—China, Venezuela, some of the CIS countries, and Kazakhstan in particular. Beyond its borders, the country is looking for new and widening the already existing markets for its products; it is using Eurasian integration to strengthen its position when dealing with Russia and has returned to its old policy of balancing between Russia and the EU; and it has raised its peace- keeping and broker status and strengthened the security of the Union State against the background of the growing crisis between Russia and the West. It is more or less obvious that in the near future the Belarusian leaders and the president will have to address a set of fairly complicated political and economic tasks, the following being especially urgent: (1) preserving as wide a leeway as possible when dealing with Russia in the conditions of steadily growing economic dependence on Russia and enactment of the EAEU treaty; (2) keeping away from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine supported by the West; (3) using the accumulated potential to move closer to the EU and the West as a whole; (4) taking advantage of all the opportunities created by the EAEU; (5) remaining in power after the presidential election despite the mounting social and economic problems.

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RELIGION IN SOCIETY

EXPLORING THE PATTERNS OF RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE IN POST-SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA AND AZERBAIJAN

Igor HIMELFARB Ph.D. degree in Education, Master’s degree in Statistics, held a position of Advanced Design and Analytics Associate with The Gallup Organization. Currently, holds a position of Associate Psychometrician at Educational Testing Service (San Francisco, CA, the U.S.)

Neli ESIPOVA Several Master’s degrees including a Master’s degree in Market Research, Regional Director for the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe at The Gallup Organization (Princeton, NJ, the U.S.)

ABSTRACT

esearch indicates that in Central Asia Although the vast majority of Central Asians and Azerbaijan the patterns of devo- consider Islam to be an integral part of their R tion to the Islamic faith are not uniform. social identity, the years of rule by the Soviet

We are grateful to The Gallup Organization and Gallup World Poll for supporting this research project and providing the data for analysis.

37 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS regime have affected the Islamic faith.1 This three distinct classes emerge from the anal- study investigates the different patterns of yses: Devout Pious, Moderate Pious, and religious observance in Kazakhstan, Kyr- Soviet Muslims. Additionally, the predictive gyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Azer- variables are considered and demographic baijan. Latent class analysis (LCA) is used covariates are examined in multinomial lo- to examine the profiles of religious obser- gistic regressions. Gender, educational lev- vance based on data obtained from the Gal- el, and income are predictive of class mem- lup World Poll. Across the five countries, bership in most of these countries. This study is a ground-breaking attempt to quan- 1 See: J.T. Gunn, “Shaping an Islamic Identity: titatively examine classifications of devotion Religion, Islamism, and the State in Central Asia,” Sociology to Islam in post-Soviet republics with a ma- of Religion, No. 64 (3), 2003, pp. 389-410. jority Muslim population.

KEYWORDS: Islamic religiosity, Central Asia, Azerbaijan, Latent class analysis.

Introduction of Islam to Central Asia

Around the 7th century AD, Arab tribes brought the Islamic faith to Central Asia along with their skills, art, and culture.2 By the 8th century AD, Islam was the dominant religion among elite groups throughout Central Asia,3 and by the end of the 10th century, Islam was the only formal religion in the area.4 Islam then thrived in the region for centuries, becoming a fundamental part of intellectual thought and the regional cultural identity.

Islam in Imperial Russia

During the period of Imperial Russia, the Muslims of Central Asia were viewed as foreign subjects and never assimilated into Orthodox Russian society. “Through long contact many Russian officials came to respect Islam and see its uses in enforcing the status quo but never regarded Muslims as equal to themselves.”5 Tsarist Russia considered the Central Asia region important for its resources, but never absorbed its residents into Russian culture. This may be why Islam did not lose its status as a culture-defining element of Central Asia and remained a mark of indecipherable foreignness6 until 1917.

2 See: G. Gleason, The Central Asian States: Discovering Independence. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1997. 3 See: D. Christian, A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, Blackwell, Oxford, 1998. 4 See: G. Gleason, op. cit. 5 Sh. Keller, To Moscow, not Mecca: The Soviet Campaign against Islam in Central Asia, 1991-1941, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 2001. 6 See: Ibid., p. 28.

38 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 Islam during the Soviet Era

The early Bolshevik regime had little tolerance for religion. Churches, mosques and synagogues were closed en masse or converted to theaters, museums or factories, prominent religious leaders were killed or sent to Gulag labor camps, and everyday religious observance was made impossible for the masses. Religious literature was not available in the Soviet Union, and only “a pale, state- controlled, ‘official’ Islam was permitted to exist legally.”7 Islam was suppressed during more than seventy years of Soviet rule in Central Asia, with its infrastructure being almost shattered.8 However, Islam survived in the U.S.S.R. despite the state-enforced atheism, largely due to the sizeable population that identified itself as Muslim. Religion in Soviet Central Asia was a part of everyday life9 even during Soviet times. The size of the Muslim population residing within the boundaries of the Soviet Union was second only to that which traditionally followed Russian Orthodoxy.10 A sociological survey conducted in Central Asia in the 1970s revealed that religious identification and the level of religious practice were much higher among Soviet Muslims than Soviet Christians.11 The Soviet government viewed Islam as a potential “glue” uniting large areas with majority Muslim populations in Central Asia and Russia,12 and thus used every opportunity to diminish Islam’s influence on the masses. Islam in the U.S.S.R. had to adapt to the new reality of dealing with a So- viet governmental structure, which changed the face of the religion within Soviet borders. Discussing the sociology of Soviet Islam13 showed that it differed from other religions in the tactics used for dealing with the regime, which resulted from the nature of the faith. As Ro’i stated: “The essence of Islam is not to be found in the prayer-house and liturgy or even in its credo. It lies rather in law, the Shari‘a, Muslim calendar, festivals, fasts, and rites of passage.”14

Post-Soviet Islam in Central Asia

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, state-encouraged atheism was replaced with moderate levels of religion at all levels of society. Seeking new ideology to generate charisma, the governmental elites in Central Asia and Azerbaijan gradually re-introduced Islam into daily life.15 The dominance of the Russian language and the Slavic culture was relaxed in Central Asia and Azer-

7 J.T. Gunn, op. cit., p. 390. 8 See: Sh. Akiner, “The Politicization of Islam in Post-Soviet Central Asia,” Religion, State & Society, No. 31 (2), 2003, pp. 96-122; A. Greeley, “A Religious Revival in Russia,” Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion,No. 33 (3), 1994, pp. 253-272. 9 See: D.W. Montgomery, “Namaz, Wishing Trees, and Vodka: The Diversity of Everyday Religious Life in Central Asia,” in: Everyday Life in Central Asia: Past and Present, ed. by J. Sahadeo, R. Zanca, Indiana University Press, 2007, pp. 355-380. 10 See: Ya. Ro’i, Islam in the Soviet Union from WWII to Gorbachev, Columbia University Press, New York, 2000. 11 See: Ch. Hann, M. Pelkmans, “Realigning Religion and Power in Central Asia: Islam, Nation-state and (Post) socialism,” Europe-Asia Studies, No. 61 (9), 2009, pp. 1517-1541. 12 See: H. Carrère d’Encausse, “The Stirring of National Feeling,” in: Central Asia: 130 Years of Russian Dominance. A Historical Overview, 3rd ed., ed. by E. Allworth. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 1994; Ch. Hann, M. Pelkmans, op. cit. 13 See: Ya. Ro’i, op. cit. 14 Ibid., p. 428. 15 See: Ch. Hann, M. Pelkmans, op. cit.

39 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS baijan in the early 1990s and was replaced by the rediscovery of regional traditions, which included the emergence of Islam.16 However, as the older generations had been deprived of basic Islamic education, the majority did not return to the strict practice of faith—they embraced Islam as an integral part of their national and cultural tradition rather than as a way of life. The ceremonial patterns among the older generations of Muslims in Central Asia are therefore not directly comparable to those of Muslims in the rest of the world. Gleason wrote: “Virtually all indigenous Central Asians consider themselves Muslim, although a large number of Central Asians have only a vague idea about what it implies.”17 Gunn echoed Gleason, stating: “Central Asians typically correlate their ethnic identities with their religious identities. That is commonly assumed that Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Tajiks are Muslims, and that Russians are Orthodox.”18 Conversely, with thousands of mosques and religious schools opening following the end of Soviet rule, Islamic education became available to the younger generations of Central Asians. Moderate Islam is also promoted on a state level in post-So- viet Central Asia and Azerbaijan, generating greater levels of awareness and commitment to the Is- lamic faith among the younger segments of the population.19 In contrast to Russia where Islamic practice is not necessarily consistent with that in the rest of the world and “Islam … is full of surprises,”20 the Central Asian Muslims are in agreement with the rest of the Islamic world on the five pillars of Islam: Confession, Salat (daily prayers), Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca), charitable contributions, and the fast of Ramadan.21 We believe that there are several driving forces behind the revival of Islam in today’s Central Asia and Azerbaijan that contribute to the latent variability of Muslim populations living in the ex- Soviet republics, among them the Soviet legacy and the fear of radicalism.

Heterogeneity of Islam in Central Asia and Azerbaijan

The non-uniform structure of re-introduced Islam in Central Asia may shape the population of Central Asian and Azerbaijani Muslims. Akiner divides post-Soviet Islam in Central Asia into three subcategories: traditional Islam, government-sponsored Islam,22 and radical Islam. Traditional Islam in post-Soviet Central Asia and Azerbaijan is practiced on the individual level but knowledge of the faith is limited due to the limited religious education available during Soviet times. This type of Islam is perceived more as ethnic identification than as religious affiliation. The “traditional” in traditional Islam is more consistent with the Soviet than the Islamic tradition—people who practice traditional Islam in today’s Central Asia and Azerbaijan would have identified themselves as Muslims during the Soviet era but would also state that they are atheists, which for them would not be an oxymoron. Government-sponsored Islam is simply a political tool intended to fill the ideological vacuum that has existed since 1991. Finally, radical Islam is a trend of Islam that unites radical elements in Central

16 See: A. Khalid, Islam after Communism: Religion and Politics in Central Asia, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 2007. 17 G. Gleason, op. cit., p. 42. 18 J.T. Gunn, op. cit., p. 394. 19 See: Sh. Akiner, “Political Processes in Post-Soviet Central Asia,” in: Central Eurasia in Global Politics: Conflict, Security and Development, ed. by M. P. Amineh, H. Houweling. Brill, Boston, 2004. 20 S. Gradirovski, N. Esipova, “Russian Muslims: Religious Leaven in a Secular Society,” Harvard International Review, No. 30 (1), 2008, pp. 58-62. 21 See: G. Gleason, op. cit., p. 42. 22 See: Sh. Akiner, “The Politicization of Islam in Post-Soviet Central Asia.”

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Asian societies that want the development of their states to follow the trajectory of an Islamic theocracy. Radical Islam represents an imminent threat to the moderate governments in Central Asia and Azerbaijan that chose the Turkish secular political model over the Iran-like theocracy.23 According to Gunn, while the Soviet Union prohibited the practice of Islam it was not successful in destroying the population’s perception of having a Muslim identity.24 For Soviet Muslims, Is- lam became a part of their ethnic and social identities rather than a religious preference.25 Soviet-born Muslims whose social identity was formed during the years of Soviet suppression of Islam may thus constitute a category with less strict patterns of religious observance. The newly emerged moderate Muslim states of Central Asia, which together amount to the size of Western Europe and possess rich natural resources of oil and gas, are geopolitically important to the Islamist movements of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. Despite governmental opposition in Cen- tral Asia to radical Islam, fundamentalism operates at the community level with radical imams being sent to Central Asian mosques. Radical Islam has been gaining power in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and in the areas of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan adjacent to Uzbekistan.26 The governments of the Central Asian states promote “state-approved” Islam through the appointment of imams and muftis.27 The Central Asian states and Azerbaijan are becoming a battleground between state-sponsored and radical Islam that will doubtless affect the patterns of religious practice in the population. Investigators highlight the ethnic heterogeneity of the population in Central Asia. In compliance with the Soviet doctrine of equal distribution of the labor force over the land, many ethnic Russians settled in Central Asia. Kazakhstan, for example, has the largest Russian population among the Cen- tral Asian countries, with the majority living in its northern areas, although the other Central Asian countries and Azerbaijan also contain sizable Russian minorities.28 Russians have clearly shaped Central Asia. Hann and Pelkmans emphasize the geographical and cultural proximity of Russia to the Central Asian countries as having a prominent influence on the formation of national, cultural and religious identities in these states.29 The pragmatism of the Soviet mentality helped national leaders to adapt to the new reality of independence. Former Communist leaders quickly gave up atheism and transformed themselves and their nations to “cultivate specific national forms of Islam to underpin nation-building.”30 Possible governmental influence and control over the Islamic revival may be partly responsible for the presence of population categories based on religious observance among Muslims in Central Asia and Azerbaijan. The semi-authoritarian governments of Central Asian countries and Azerbaijan modeled their states after that of the Soviet Union, resulting in strong states that control every aspect of their citizens’ lives, including religion. Although the former members of the Soviet legislature who became state leaders publicly embraced moderate Islam, “they resorted soon after independence to similar methods the Soviet Union had applied to control and contain the Islamic Revival in Central Asia.”31

23 See: P. Akçali, “Nation-state Building in Central Asia: A Lost Case?” in: Central Eurasia in Global Politics: Conflict, Security and Development; V. Belokrenitskiy, “Islamic Radicalism in Central Asia: The Influence of Pakistan and Afghani- stan,” in: Central Asia and the End of Transition, ed. by B. Rumer, Sharpe, New York, 2005. 24 See: J.T. Gunn, op. cit. 25 See: Ya. Ro’i, op. cit.; Sh. Keller, op. cit. 26 See: Sh. Akiner, “The Contestation of Islam in Post-Soviet Central Asia. A Nascent Security Threat,” in: The Middle East’s Relations with Asia and Russia, ed. by H. Carter, A. Ehteshami, Routledge, London, 2004, pp. 75-102. 27 See: J.T. Gunn, op. cit. 28 See: O. Ferrando, “Soviet Population Transfers and Interethnic Relations in Tajikistan: Assessing the Concept of Ethnicity,” Central Asian Survey, No. 30 (1), 2011, pp. 39-52. 29 See: Ch. Hann, M. Pelkmans, op. cit. 30 Ibid., p. 1527. 31 T. Epkenhans, “Regulating Religion in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Some Remarks on Religious Association Law and ‘Official’ Islamic Institutions in Tajikistan,”Security and Human Rights, No. 20 (1), 2009, pp. 94-99.

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Governmental efforts to unite a country around moderate Islam while inoculating the population against radicalism translate into different patterns of Islamic faith observance in Central Asian countries and Azerbaijan. The rich variation and ideological diversity of Islam in Russia and other former states of the Soviet Union was noted by Gradirovski and Esipova32 in reporting the results of a Gallup poll of Rus- sian Muslims that asked them if and how they observed Islamic traditions. The respondents were asked to provide information on whether they observed four of the five pillars of Islam. Astonish- ingly, 49% of the Russian Muslim population had never performed Salat (Namaz), the ritual prayers of supplication to Allah, while 16% performed the prayers five times a day. Approximately a third of Muslims in Russia (35%) kept Ramadan fully. Only 5% of Russian Muslims stated that they had already performed the Hajj; while 37% stated that they wanted to travel to Mecca, the response of 18% was “do not want at all.” Based on the Gallup poll findings of 2008, only 11% of Russian Muslims fully comply with three pillars of Islam—Salat, Ramadan, and Shahaddah—while the vast majority of the Muslim population in Russia is relatively moderate and secular compared with Muslims in the rest of the world. Taking into consideration several centuries of common history and more than 70 years of a common past within the Soviet Union, similar population patterns are expected among Muslims in Central Asia and Azerbaijan.

The Current Study

The current study had three preliminary objectives.  First, we believed that the Muslim populations in Central Asia and Azerbaijan were not homogeneous. We based our beliefs on the findings in Russia discussed above33 and on the demographic and political processes that have occurred in Central Asian countries and Azerbaijan.34 The reality of everyday religious life in Central Asia is diverse. Whereas the majority of people consider themselves Muslim, assuming a corresponding homogeneity in interpretation and practice of Islam would be wrong.35 We also assumed that the Muslim populations in Central Asia and Azerbaijan could be categorized according to their attitudes, beliefs, and practices regarding the Islamic faith rather than through direct observation. We hypothesized that a history of living under Soviet rule and post-Soviet processes in Central Asian countries and Azerbaijan would result in the formation of a distinct class of people who identify themselves as Muslims but do not fully practice the Islamic faith.  Second, we sought the factors that explain the within-country latent variability of the populations. Specifically, we hypothesized that gender, age, educational level and income would have predictive quality in explaining the classification of the responses to the survey questions. These hypothesized relationships were multivariately tested in a structural equation modeling framework by regressing the latent class membership of these demographic predictors.

32 See: S. Gradirovski, N. Esipova, op. cit. 33 See: Ibidem. 34 See: S. Akiner, “Radical Islam in the Former Soviet Union,” Journal of Islamic Studies, No. 21 (1), 2010; J.T. Gunn, op. cit.; Ch. Hann, M. Pelkmans, op. cit. 35 See: D.W. Montgomery, op. cit., p. 356.

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 Finally, in addition to studying the within-country heterogeneity of the populations, we explored whether the number of latent classes and the patterns of responses to the survey questions differed across countries. For this purpose, the latent class models and the models incorporating demographic predictors were compared across countries.

Method Data

In 2008, as part of Gallup World Poll36 data collection efforts, Gallup included items enquiring about the respondents’ level of religiosity and observance of Muslim religious customs alongside the standard set of core survey questions. Those participants who identified themselves as Muslims were asked to specify their practice of the main Islamic religious customs: frequency of daily prayer (Salat), observance of Ramadan, compliance with Islamic dietary laws (Halal), pork and alcohol consumption, desire to perform the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj), compliance with (for females) and support for (for males) the Islamic head cover for women (hijab), acceptance of interfaith marriage, support for the establishment of places of worship in public areas, and support for Islamic laws (Shari‘a) in the country of each respondent.

Weighting

All of the data were weighted to ensure a nationally representative sample for each country. To correct for disproportionate samples, base sampling weights were applied to account for oversamples and household size. Weighting by household size was used to adjust for possible bias in the likelihood of selection. Post-stratification weights were applied.37

Measures

In its 2008 survey, the Gallup World Poll included a range of questions for assessing the extent of religious practice among Muslims living in post-Soviet republics where the majority of the population is identified as Muslim. These questions were not asked in Turkmenistan that year. The definitions for the key variables included in the study are presented in Table 1. Halal. To assess the respondents’ attitudes toward Islamic dietary requirements, the following question was asked: “Which of these statements best describes your attitude to food?” The responses “It is important for me to eat strictly Halal” and “I only eat Halal, I try to eat Halal whenever I can” received a coding of 1. The remaining responses did not indicate that Halal observance was important, and received a coding of 0. Salat. To evaluate attitudes toward daily prayer, the following question was asked: “How often do you perform Salat (how often do you pray)?” The responses “Five times a day” and “Between one

36 See: R.D. Tortora, R. Srinivasan, N. Esipova, “The Gallup World Poll,” in: Survey Methods in Multinational, Multi- regional, and Multicultural Context, ed. by J.A. Harkness et al., Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ, 2010. 37 See: D. Holt, T.M.F. Smith, “Post Stratification,”Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, No. 142 (1), 1979, pp. 33-46.

43 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS

Table 1

Definitions of the Key Variables after Recoding

Variable Definition

Halal Attitudes toward Islamic dietary requirements (0 = don’t practice, 1 = practice)

Salat Attitudes toward daily prayer (0 = don’t practice, 1 = practice)

Public Salat Attitudes toward public prayer (0 = don’t support, 1 = support)

Alcohol Alcohol consumption (0 = don’t consume alcohol, 1 = consume alcohol)

Pork Pork consumption (0 = don’t consume pork, 1 = consume pork)

Hijab Attitudes toward hijab (0 = don’t practice/support, 1 = practice/support)

Ramadan Attitudes toward Ramadan observance (0 = don’t observe, 1 = observe)

Marriage Attitudes toward interfaith marriage (0 = acceptable, 1 = not acceptable)

Hajj Willingness to perform the Hajj (0 = no/do not want, 1 = yes/want very much)

Shari‘a Support of Shari‘a laws in respondent’s country (0 = don’t support, 1 = support)

Gender Gender of the respondent (0 = female, 1 = male)

Age Age of the respondent (ranging from 15 to 92)

Education Respondent’s educational level (1 = elementary, 2 = secondary, 3 = tertiary)

Income Respondent’s household income (5 categories ranging from 1 = poorest 20% to 5 = richest 20%)

N o t e. All measures are self-reported. and four times a day” indicated that daily prayer was important and were coded as 1. The remaining responses, “One or several times a week,” “Less than once a week” and “Never” were coded as 0. Public Salat. Support for public establishments having a designated place for public prayers was assessed by the following question: “Do you think that public establishments (e.g. institutes, universities, railroad stations, airports) should have special places to perform Salat?” The responses were dichotomous—“Yes” received a coding of 1, and “No” received a coding of 0. Alcohol. The consumption of alcohol was assessed by the following question: “On average, how often do you drink alcoholic beverages (including beer)?” The possible answers were “Every day,” “Several times a week,” “Several times a month,” “Once a month,” “Less than once a month” and “Do not drink alcoholic beverages.” All responses that indicated some degree of alcohol consumption received a coding of 1, while “Do not drink alcoholic beverages” received a coding of 0. Pork. The following question was used to ask about pork consumption in a sensitive manner: “What kind of meat/sausages do you eat?” The possible responses were “Beef,” “Pork,” “Lamb/mut- ton” and “Horsemeat.” “Pork” was the only response that received a coding of 1, with the others receiving a coding of 0. Hijab. To assess compliance with/support for Islamic attire for women, two survey items were used.  The first was addressed only to female respondents: “Do you cover your head in public places because of religious beliefs (wear hijab)?” Responses of “Yes, always” and “Yes,

44 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015

sometimes” received a coding of 1, while “No, but respect women observing this tradition,” “No, I believe it is a vestige” and “No, other reason” received a coding of 0.  The second item was addressed to male respondents: “In your opinion, should your sister, wife or daughter cover her head in public places because of religious beliefs (wear hijab)?” The responses “Yes, always” and “Yes, sometimes” received a coding of 1 and were combined with the responses from women that were coded 1. Responses of “No” received a coding of 0 and were likewise combined with the responses from women that were coded 0. Ramadan. Ramadan is the ninth month on the Islamic calendar, during which fasting during daylight hours is required.38 The attitudes toward the observation of this holy month were assessed by the following question: “Do you observe the fast during Ramadan?” The following responses received a coding of 1: “Yes, fully” and “Yes, as much as possible.” The remaining responses indicated that the respondent did not observe Ramadan, and received a coding of 0. Marriage. Opposition to interfaith marriage was measured using the question “What do you personally believe about someone of your religion marrying someone who is not of the same religion?” The responses “Not acceptable,” “Acceptable, but there are risks for people who do it” and “Depends on gender” were coded as 1. The response “Completely acceptable to marry someone of a different religion” received a coding of 0. Hajj. The following two questions investigated the willingness of the respondent to perform the Hajj, with responses being combined after coding: “Have you performed the Hajj?” and “To what extent do you want to perform the Hajj?” Responses of “Yes” and “Want to very much” received a coding of 1. Responses of “No” and “Do not want to” were coded as 0. Shari‘a. Attitudes toward implementation of Shari‘a law were measured using the following question: “Shari‘a is an Arabic word which means Islam’s religious principles. In general, which of the statements offered comes closest to your own view?” The following responses were coded as 1: “Shari‘a must be the only source of legislation” and “Shari‘a must be a source of legislation, but not the only source.” The response “Shari‘a should not be a source of legislation” was coded as 0. To avoid an order effect, the alcohol and pork consumption questions were placed at the beginning of the survey while the religiosity questions were placed at the end of the survey. The gender, age, educational level, and income of participants were self-reported. Gender. Gender was dichotomously coded, with 0 = female and 1 = male. There were more female than male participants across all five countries. Table 2 gives a summary of descriptive statistics for the demographic covariates used in the analyses. Age. The Gallup World Poll defined the target population for its surveys as the “resident population aged 15 or older.”39 In the samples from the five countries included in this study, the respondents’ ages ranged from 15 to 92. Educational level. All initial within-country responses were classified into three categories: elementary—elementary education or lower (usually up to 8 years of basic education); secondary— some secondary education (9-15 years of education); and tertiary—at least 4 years of education beyond high school and/or a completed college degree. The vast majority of respondents in all countries had a secondary level of education, followed by tertiary and elementary levels (see Table 2). Income. To obtain a measure of income that was comparable across countries, respondents were asked to provide an estimate of their before-tax monthly household income in the local currency,

38 See: Encyclopedia Britannica, 2014, “Ramadan,” available at [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/490415/ Ramadan], 12 March, 2014. 39 Worldwide Research Methodology and Codebook, DC, Gallup, Washington, 2008-2014.

45 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS — — — — — — — — — — 37.6 37.6 (SD) Mean Mean (13.8) Table 2 = 937. Azerbaijan Azerbaijan 9.4 6.7 4.0 % — N 47.9 52.1 75.5 15.0 18.2 20.3 50.8 — — — — — — — — — — 38.8 38.8 (SD) Mean Mean (17.2) Tajikistan = 994, and Azerbaijan 9.3 0.6 % — 37.3 62.7 18.4 70.9 10.7 12.6 34.3 43.2 N — — — — — — — — — — 38.9 38.9 (SD) Mean Mean (16.2) = 986, Tajikistan N Country Uzbekistan Uzbekistan 1.1 % — 40.0 60.0 15.0 72.7 12.2 23.2 26.9 27.2 21.6 — — — — — — — — — — 40.8 40.8 (SD) Mean Mean (17.3) (17.3) = 980, Uzbekistan N Kyrgyzstan 2.0 % — 36.7 63.3 13.8 68.1 18.1 29.4 25.7 29.8 13.1 — — — — — — — — — — 43.2 43.2 (SD) = 917, Kyrgyzstan Mean Mean (16.9) N Descriptive Statistics of the Key Predictors Kazakhstan Kazakhstan 9.7 7.5 % — 43.1 56.9 10.0 62.9 27.1 20.0 42.9 19.9 Variable Male Male Female Elementary Secondary Tertiary Poorest 20% Lower Middle 20% Middle 20% Upper Middle 20% Richest 20% The analyzed sample sizes are: Kazakhstan Percentages are given for the binary and ordinal variables. Means and SDs are given for the continuous variables. Percentages are given for the binary and ordinal variables. Means SDs

Gender Age Education Income

N o t e.

46 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 including all possible sources of income. If the respondents could not provide this, they were presented with a set of income ranges in their country’s local currency and were asked to choose the range corresponding to their income.40 Estimates of household income were then expressed in international dollars (ID), created using the World Bank’s individual purchasing power parity data.41 The ID measure is comparable across all respondents, communities, local regions, countries, and global regions. An interval scale of measurement42 was used, such that a respondent reporting a household income of 1,000 ID had twice the income of one reporting 500 ID.43 Following initial assessment of the respondents’ household income, the measure was divided into within-country quintiles: the poorest 20%, 21-40%, 41-60% and 61-80%, and the richest 20%. The quintiles provided a measure of respondents’ income that was comparable to that of other respondents within that country. Refused responses and responses of “Don’t know” were treated as missing in all measures.

Analytic Plan

Latent class analysis (LCA)44 was used to classify the Muslim populations living in post-Soviet republics in Central Asia and Azerbaijan and examine their patterns of religious observance. This model-based, multivariate exploratory method helps to identify latent classes in a population on the basis of binary (“yes”/“no”) responses of the sample. The underlying concept is that the population is an aggregate of several subpopulations but group membership is unobserved.45 Class membership is specified as a latent variablec with c = k, where k is the number of subpopulations (classes) forming the overall mixture population. The categorical latent variable c is indicated by the binary survey responses. Latent class analysis clusters individuals into classes and calculates the probabilities of endorsement of a survey item (a “yes” or “no” response) conditional on the class membership. Latent class analysis is a subset of structural equation modeling (SEM).46 Similarly to other latent-variable techniques such as factor analysis and SEM, LCA models use a combination of theory and fit indices available within the SEM framework to arrive at the final model. A combination of likelihood-ratio-based fit indices such as the Bayesian information criterion (BIC),47 adjusted BIC,48 and bootstrap likelihood ratio test (BLRT)49 are commonly used to assess the fit of LCA models. The BIC and adjusted BIC are fit indices based on the log-likelihood of a fitted model applying different

40 See: Ibidem. 41 See: What is an “International Dollar?” World Bank, 2014, available at [https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/ knowledgebase/articles/114944-what-is-an-international-dollar], 13 March, 2014. 42 See: S.S. Stevens, “On the Theory of Scales of Measurement,” Science, No. 103 (2684), 1946, pp. 667-680. 43 See: Worldwide Research Methodology and Codebook, p. 7. 44 See: L.A. Goodman, “Exploratory Latent Structure Analysis Using Both Identifiable and Unidentifiable Models,” Biometrika, No. 61 (2), 1974, pp. 215-231; P.F. Lazarsfeld, N.W. Henry, Latent Structure Analysis, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1968; A.L. McCutcheon, Latent Class Analysis, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 1987. 45 See: B. Muthén, “Second-generation Structural Equation Modeling with a Combination of Categorical and Continuous Latent Variables: New Opportunities for Latent Class/Latent Growth Modeling,” in: New Methods for the Analysis of Change, ed. by L.M. Collins, A. Sayer, APA, Washington, DC, 2001, pp. 291-322. 46 See: B. Muthén, “Latent Variable Mixture Modeling,” in: New Developments and Techniques in Structural Equation Modeling, ed. by G.A. Marcoulides, R.E. Schumacker, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, 2001, pp. 1-33. 47 See: G. Schwartz, “Estimating the Dimension of a Model,” The Annals of Statistics, No. 6 (2), 1978, 461-464. 48 See: S.L. Sclove, “Application of Model-selection Criteria to Some Problems in Multivariate Analysis,” Psychometrika, No. 52, 1987, pp. 333-343. 49 See: K. Nylund, T. Asparouhov, B. Muthén, “Deciding on the Number of Classes in Latent Class Analysis: A Monte Carlo Simulation Study,” Structural Equation Modeling, No. 14, 2007, pp. 535-569.

47 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS penalties for the number of parameters estimated by the model.50 The BLRT assesses the significance of the differences between models when several LCA models are considered.51 The models were specified, estimated and tested in plus,M version 7.1.52 The full information maximum likelihood (FIML)53 estimation method was used for all models, resulting in samples of N = 917 in Kazakhstan, N = 980 in Kyrgyzstan, N = 986 in Uzbekistan, N = 994 in Tajikistan, and N = 937 in Azerbaijan being available for the analyses. All of the parameters were estimated by the maximum likelihood method using the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm.54 In LCA, the EM algorithm maximizes the expected log-likelihood for the full data conditional on the binary class indicators given to the parameters. The “E” step of the algorithm calculates the expectation of the latent variable c, given the class indicators, as the posterior probability for each class. The “M” step estimates the probability of endorsing the item (a “yes” response to an indicator) while controlling class membership, and the probability of class membership by regression and summation over individual posterior probabilities.55 To reduce the chance of estimations being performed at a local maximum, multiple starting values were implemented. We took several steps to fit the LCA models. First, two-class, three-class, four-class, and five-class models were considered within each of the five countries. A model with a greater number of classes was chosen if adding another class was conceptually meaningful and the model displayed an acceptable statistical fit. This process is usually referred to as “class enumeration.”56 Once the final number of classes was determined, demographic covariates were added to the model. Including covariates in latent class models permits the assessment of the covariates as predictors of class membership and has been common practice in recent years.57 When covariates are considered in the analysis, the latent class variable is regressed on the predictors, resulting in a multinomial logistic regression. The estimated probability of being classified in classk of the latent variable c is then conditional on the covariates.58

Results Overview

The primary results of the model estimation are summarized in this section. Table 3 presents the fit information for the LCA models, while the coefficients are presented in Table 4. The LCA results are also presented as graphs of probability profiles (see Figs. 1-5); items signifying the degree of Islamic religious observance by respondents are on the x-axes, and the probabilities of endorsing a specific item are on they -axes.

50 See: B. Muthén, L.K. Muthén, Mplus: Statistical Analysis with Latent Variables (Version 7.1), Muthén & Muthén, Los Angeles, CA, 2013. 51 See: K. Nylund, T. Asparouhov, B. Muthén, op. cit. 52 See: B. Muthén, L.K. Muthén, op. cit. 53 See: K.G. Joreskog, I. Moustaki, Factor Analysis of Ordinal Variables with Full Information Maximum Likelihood, University of Economics and Business, Athens, 2006, available at [http://www.ssicentral.com/lisrel/techdocs/orfiml.pdf], 13 March, 2014. 54 See: A.P. Dempster, N.M. Laird, D.B. Rubin, “Maximum Likelihood from Incomplete Data via the EM Algorithm,” Journal of the Royal Statistical, Series B, No. 39 (1), 1977, pp. 1-38. 55 See: B. Muthén, op. cit., p. 7. 56 K. Nylund, T. Asparouhov, B. Muthén, op. cit., p. 536. 57 See: K. Bandeen-Roche, D.L. Miglioretti, S.L. Zeger, P.J. Rathouz, “Latent Variable Regression for Multiple Discrete Outcomes,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, No. 92, 1997, pp. 1375-1386; A.K. Forman, “Linear Logistic Latent Class Analysis for Polytomous Data,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, No. 87, 1992, pp. 476-486; B. Muthén, op. cit. 58 See: B. Muthén, op. cit., p. 10.

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Latent Class Analysis

Analogous patterns of religious observance were revealed for all five countries. In all countries, the three-class models had a favorable statistical fit to the data (see Table 3) and made the most sense theoretically. In the five post-Soviet republics, the analysis divided the populations into Muslims who partially practiced the Islamic faith (Moderate Pious class), fully practiced the Islamic faith (Devout Pious class), and a unique class in which individuals practiced or supported some religious customs while violating some Islamic postulates such as consuming pork and alcohol (Soviet Muslims class). Table 3

Fit Indices for Latent Class Models with Two to Five Classes

Number of Classes Country The second-largestStatistics class in Kazakhstan2 was Moderate3 Pious, encompassing4 35% of the5 respondents.Kazakhstan This class showed low probabilities of praying, fasting during Ramadan, or observing a Halal diet. Higher probabilitiesLog-likelihood than those–3,541.67 for Soviet Muslims–3,500.4 of performing–3,479.99 the Hajj, wearing–3,459.49 hijabs, not supporting interfaith marriage, and living according to Shari‘a law were associated with respondents BIC 7,228.4 7,221.85 7,257.01 7,291.99 classified as Moderate Pious. The remaining class, Devout Pious, formed 9% of the sample. Respon- dents in this class ABICshowed the highest probabilities7,161.7 of 7,120.22endorsing most of7,120.44 the religious items7,120.49 (the probability of endorsingBLRT public Salat was the0.00 highest of all 0.00the classes) and 0.00the lowest probabilities0.00 of consumingKyrgyzstan pork and alcohol. Log-likelihood –4,682.2 –4,628.38 –4,606.73 –4,592.31 BIC 9,509.39 9477.8 9,510.49 9,558.33 ABIC 9,442.76 9,376.17 9,376.92 9,386.82 BLRT 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 Uzbekistan Log-likelihood –4,941.8 –4,902.33 –4,880.48 –4,859.64 BIC 10,028.67 10,025.72 10,057.99 10,092.65 ABIC 9,961.97 9,924.08 9,924.15 9,925.15 BLRT 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 Tajikistan Log-likelihood –4,102.1 –4,070.2 –4,046.88 –4,028.2 BIC 8,349.27 8,361.45 8,390.8 8,429.42 ABIC 8,282.57 8,259.81 8,260.22 8,267.91 BLRT 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 Azerbaijan Log-likelihood –4,539.1 –4,449.04 –4,428.21 –4,409.99 BIC 9,223.27 9,119.12 9,153.45 9,193.02 ABIC 9,156.57 9,017.49 9,016.88 9,021.51 BLRT 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

N o t e. BIC = Bayesian information criterion; ABIC = adjusted BIC; BLRT = bootstrap likelihood ratio test.

49 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS

Figure 1

Profile Plot for Religious Observance in Kazakhstan

1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1

0 Hajj Pork Halal Salat Salat Hijab Public Public Shari‘a Alcohol Marriage Ramadan

Devout Pious Moderate Pious Soviet Muslims

N o t e. Devout Pious 9%, Moderate Pious 35%, Soviet Muslims 56%.

Figure 2

Profile Plot for Religious Observance in Kyrgyzstan

1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1

0 Hajj Pork Halal Salat Salat Hijab Public Public Shari‘a Alcohol Marriage Ramadan

Devout Pious Moderate Pious Soviet Muslims

N o t e. Devout Pious 28%, Moderate Pious 50%, Soviet Muslims 22%.

50 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015

Kazakhstan. In Kazakhstan (see Fig. 1), 56% of the sample was classified as Soviet Muslims. Compared with the two smaller classes, Soviet Muslims showed a low probability of endorsing all the religious items and higher probabilities of pork and alcohol consumption. For these two items, the probabilities were the highest among the three classes. The second-largest class in Kazakhstan was Moderate Pious, encompassing 35% of the respondents. This class showed low probabilities of praying, fasting during Ramadan, or observing a Halal diet. Higher probabilities than those for Soviet Muslims of performing the Hajj, wearing hijabs, not supporting interfaith marriage, and living according to Shari‘a law were associated with respondents classified as Moderate Pious. The remaining class, Devout Pious, formed 9% of the sample. Respon- dents in this class showed the highest probabilities of endorsing most of the religious items (the probability of endorsing public Salat was the highest of all the classes) and the lowest probabilities of consuming pork and alcohol. Kyrgyzstan. In Kyrgyzstan (see Fig. 2), Moderate Pious emerged as the most prevalent class (50% of the respondents). For Moderate Pious, the probabilities of performing Salat, observing Ramadan, eating Halal food, performing the Hajj, wearing a hijab, not supporting interfaith marriage, and supporting the implementation of Shari‘a law were higher than for Soviet Muslims but lower than for Devout Pious. The probabilities of endorsing pork and alcohol consumption were lower than for Soviet Muslims but higher than for Devout Pious. The Devout Pious class, with the highest probabilities of endorsing all of the religiosity items and the lowest probabilities of endorsing pork and alcohol consumption, constituted the second-largest class (28%). The Soviet Muslims (22%) had the lowest probabilities of endorsing the religiosity items, and the highest probabilities of endorsing pork and alcohol consumption. Uzbekistan. The Moderate Pious class (46%) was dominant in Uzbekistan, followed by the Devout Pious (32%) and Soviet Muslims (22%) classes. The highest probabilities of endorsing most of the religiosity items and the lowest probabilities of endorsing pork and alcohol consumption were associated with the Devout Pious (see Fig. 3). The Moderate Pious class had the second-highest

Figure 3 Profile Plot for Religious Observance in Uzbekistan

1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1

0 Hajj Pork Halal Salat Salat Hijab Public Public Shari‘a Alcohol Marriage Ramadan

Devout Pious Moderate Pious Soviet Muslims

N o t e. Devout Pious 32%, Moderate Pious 46%, Soviet Muslims 22%.

51 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS

Figure 4

Profile Plot for Religious Observance in Tajikistan

1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1

0 Hajj Pork Halal Salat Salat Hijab Public Public Shari‘a Alcohol Marriage Ramadan

Devout Pious Partying Pious Moderate Pious

N o t e. Devout Pious 73%, Moderate Pious 23%, Partying Pious 4%.

Figure 5

Profile Plot for Religious Observance in Azerbaijan

1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1

0 Hajj Pork Halal Salat Salat Hijab Public Public Shari‘a Alcohol Marriage Ramadan

Devout Pious Moderate Pious Soviet Muslims

N o t e. Devout Pious 26%, Moderate Pious 49%, Soviet Muslims 25%.

52 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 probabilities for endorsing religiosity items. The Soviet Muslims had the lowest probability of endorsing items measuring the practice of the Islamic faith, except for daily prayer (Salat)—this probability was the second highest. Soviet Muslims were more likely to endorse pork and alcohol consumption. Tajikistan. Tajikistan was the only country where Devout Pious emerged as the most prevalent class (73% of the sample). The second largest class in Tajikistan was Moderate Pious (23%), with only 4% of the sample remaining (see Fig. 4). No Soviet Muslims class was apparent in Tajikistan. Tajiks in the remaining 4% of the sample had high probabilities of endorsing items measuring the observance of the Islamic faith, but they also consumed alcohol. The probability in this class of endorsing the consumption of alcohol was the highest of all the three classes. We called this class Party- ing Pious (see Fig. 4). Azerbaijan. Comparable to Uzbekistan, Moderate Pious emerged as the prevalent class in this country (49% of the sample). The remaining respondents were split between Devout Pious (26%) and Soviet Muslims (25%). The pattern of responses for Soviet Muslims in Azerbaijan (see Fig. 5) mim- icked the pattern observed in Kazakhstan—the probabilities of endorsing the items measuring religious observance were the lowest of the three classes while the probabilities of endorsing pork and alcohol consumption were the highest. The probabilities of endorsing items measuring religious observance were mostly similar for the Devout Pious and Moderate Pious. In both classes, relatively high likelihoods of alcohol consumption emerged. Performing Salat, observing Ramadan, and eating Halal food differed, with the Devout Pious having high probabilities of endorsing these items and the Moderate Pious having low probabilities (see Fig. 5).

Demographic Differences between Classes

After the class enumeration process and the finalizing of a latent class model within each country, we constructed explanatory models in which the latent class variable was predicted by gender, age, educational level, and income. Because the final model was a three-class model for all countries, the regression of the latent class variable on the predictors was a multinomial logistic regression.59 For more meaningful results, we reported the odds ratio (OR) instead of merely interpreting the regression coefficients. Devout Pious was chosen as the comparison class for these analyses. Table 4 presents the results of these regressions. In Kazakhstan, the respondents classified as Moderate Pious were more likely to be male (OR = 15.63, p < .01), younger (OR = .96, p < .01) and have a lower income (OR = .54, p < .01) than the Devout Pious. Only educational level (OR = 1.51, p < .05) was predictive of Soviet Muslims class membership. Higher levels of education were associated with lower degrees of religious observance but higher degrees of pork and alcohol consumption (OR = 1.51, p < .05). In Kyrgyzstan, participants classified as Moderate Pious differed slightly from the Devout Pi- ous in terms of age (OR = .95, p < .01), educational level (OR = 2.08, p < .01), and income (OR = .62, p < .01). The Soviet Muslims were likely to be better educated (OR = 2.36, p < .01) but to have a lower income (OR = .69, p < .01) than the Devout Pious. Age was found to be predictive of Moderate Pious class membership in Uzbekistan. The respondents classified as Moderate Pious tended to be younger than the Devout Pious OR( = .93, p < .01).

59 See: A. Agresti, Categorical Data Analysis, 3rd ed., Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ, 2013.

53 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS 1 0.9 .5** 0.68 0.98 1.21 OR .63** 1.84* Table 4 0.3 0.27 0.01 0.23 0.13 0.01 0.25 0.16 SE Azerbaijan 0.01 0.61 0.19 –0.11 –0.39 –0.69 –0.02 –0.47 Logit .35* .72* 0.98 1.38 1.31 1.27 OR .98** 1.96** 0.48 0.02 0.32 0.18 0.29 0.01 0.23 0.13 SE Tajikistan 0.32 0.27 0.24 0.67 –1.06 –0.02 –0.03 –0.33 Logit .5** 0.65 0.72 0.87 0.98 1.55 0.85 OR 12.21**

0.01 0.24 0.11 0.47 0.01 0.24 0.11 0.34 SE Uzbekistan 2.5

0.44 –0.07 –0.33 –0.15 –0.02 –0.17 –0.43 Logit 1.13 1.01 1.05 OR .95** .62** .69** 2.08** 2.36** = odds ratio. OR 0.01 0.18 0.09 0.29 0.01 0.28 0.12 0.25 SE Kyrgyzstan 0.73 0.13 0.01 0.86 0.05 –0.05 –0.48 –0.36 Logit = standard error; .53* 1.97 1.01 0.77 OR SE 1.51* 0.96** 2.12** 15.64* 0.2 0.01 0.61 0.31 0.51 0.01 0.18 1.24 SE Log Odds and Ratios for the Three-Class Models with Predictors by Country Kazakhstan 0.75 0.68 0.41 2.75 –0.04 –0.63 –0.01 –0.26 Logit < .01. p < 05; ** p Reference class is Devout Pious. In Tajikistan, the classes are: Devout Pious, Moderate Pious and Partying Pious. * Predictor

Age Age Education Income Gender Age Education Income Gender Class Soviet Muslims/Partying Pious N o t e. Moderate Pious

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Gender was predictive of Soviet Muslims class membership—members of the Soviet Muslims class were twelve times more likely than the Devout Pious to be male (OR = 12.21, p < .01). In Tajikistan, women were more likely to be classified as Moderate Pious than men OR( = .35, p < .05) compared with Devout Pious. Age (OR = .97, p < .01), educational level (OR = 1.96, p < .01) and income (OR = .72, p < .05) were predictive of Partying Pious class membership. The respondents classified as Partying Pious were slightly younger OR( = .98, p < .01), better educated (OR = 1.96, p < .01), and had a lower income (OR = .72, p < .05) than the Devout Pious. In Azerbaijan, income was the only factor predictive of classification as Moderate Pious rather than Devout Pious (OR =. 50, p < .01), with higher-income individuals classified as Devout Pious. Gender and income affected classification as Soviet Muslims or Devout Pious: male respondents (OR = 1.84, p < .05) and those with a lower income (OR = .63, p < .01) were more likely to be So- viet Muslims.

Discussion

Overview. The results of this study represent a quantitative justification of the assumption that Islam has a non-uniform structure in post-Soviet republics with a majority Muslim population.60 We have shown how Central Asian and Azerbaijani Muslims are dissimilar in their patterns of religious observance. In each country studied we found a class of people who were devoted to Islam—they ate Halal food, prayed on a daily basis, supported the establishment of places for public Salat, either wore or supported the wearing of hijabs, and fasted during Ramadan. They did not support interfaith marriage, were willing to perform the Hajj, and wanted to live according to Shari‘a law. This class also did not consume pork or alcohol. The participants grouped in this class were the most religiously devout within their countries. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to assume that this Devout Pious class serves as a foundation for radical Islam. Current research has concluded that Muslims see no contradiction between democratic values and religious principles: Muslim men and women who support a role for Shari‘a as a source of legislation do not want religious leaders to be directly in charge of drafting laws.61 Furthermore, in all five countries there was a class of less devout people who kept some religious traditions but were not as strict in their observance as those classified as Devout Pious. Indi- viduals in this Moderate Pious class recognized the importance of their Islamic heritage but lacked the religious education to keep their faith strictly. Hann and Pelkmans refer to this phenomenon as “folklorized, cultural Islam” and “national Islam.” 62 Akiner calls it “traditional Islam.” 63 Finally, a third class embraced a category of respondents who considered themselves Muslims but disregarded the key requirements of the Islamic faith. This class of Soviet Muslims was represented in every post-Soviet state where Islam has struggled against Soviet religious doctrine. The “ethnic” Muslims64 viewed Islam as a cultural legacy directly related to ethnicity rather than as a religious way of life. Researchers have implicated the geographical and cultural proximity of Russia and a history of enforced secularism in this adaptation to a non-Islamic way of life,65 and in the tolerant attitudes toward consuming pork and alcohol.66

60 See: S. Akiner, “Radical Islam in the Former Soviet Union”; Ch. Hann, M. Pelkmans, op. cit.; O. Ferrando, op. cit. 61 See: J.L. Esposito, D. Mogahed, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, Gallup Press, New York, 2007. 62 Ch. Hann, M. Pelkmans, op. cit., pp. 1524, 1527. 63 S. Akiner, “Radical Islam in the Former Soviet Union,” p. 101. 64 See: J.T. Gunn, op. cit., p. 394. 65 See: Ya. Ro’i, op. cit. 66 See: S. Gradirovski, N. Esipova, op. cit.

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Tajikistan was found to be the most religious country, with the majority of the population (73%) being devout Muslims. In Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan, the very religious constituted about a third of the general public (32%, 28%, and 26%, respectively). Kazakhstan appeared to be the least religious country, with only 9% of the population being devoted to the Islamic faith. These findings should not be surprising—Kazakhstan is officially bilingual, with Russian spoken by virtually all Kazakhstanis and used routinely in business and government affairs. Kazakhstan is also home to the largest Russian minority in Central Asia. According to the 2009 census, 23.7% of Kazakhstanis declared themselves to be Russian while only 63.7% considered themselves to be ethnic Kazakhs.67 Only 5.5% and 0.5%, respectively, of ethnic Russians live in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan today.68 Predictor Associations with Class Membership. The integrative model demonstrated that demo- graphics could be predictors of latent class membership. In countries where income was predictive of class membership, residents classified as Moderate Pious and Soviet Muslims reported a lower level of income than the Devout Pious. However, those in the Moderate Pious and Soviet Muslims classes were more educated than the Devout Pious. The association between the higher levels of education and secularism in Central Asia and Azerbaijan could be explained by the Soviet legacy.69 Gender significantly predicted class membership in four of the countries. Men were found to have a higher likelihood of classification as Soviet Muslims in Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, and as Moderate Pious in Kazakhstan. Women were more likely to be classified as Moderate Pious in Tajikistan. Limitations. The results presented in this study should be interpreted in the light of potential limitations. Our goal was to provide evidence of heterogeneity in Islamic practices in Central Asia and Azerbaijan. However, an inclusive image of the Muslim populations in Central Asia is impossible without studying Turkmenistan. Unfortunately, Gallup was not able to include the religion questions in its survey of Turkmenistan in 2008. Using standardized methodology for all Central Asian countries and Azerbaijan, this study analyzed the information collected on ten religion-related items, which in our opinion is sufficient to construct a picture of religious observance. Two of these items—pork and alcohol consumption— have not previously been used to assess the level of religious observance in countries with a majority Muslim population. However, a broader survey with more religion-related questions may be beneficial for future studies. Further, we recognize that Islamic tradition requires a prayer to be performed five times a day, and some Islamic experts may question our approach to coding the response “Between one and four times a day” as 1. Based on numerous consultations with experts who have studied post-Soviet Mus- lims, we arrived at the conclusion that this was the best way to code this response. Moreover, we recognize that measures in our study are confounded by the measures available in the Gallup dataset, which lack such important variables as Zakat and Shahaddah. The Muslim populations in Central Asia are not commonly studied, and we felt strongly that our findings are informative even with these limitations. Additionally, a methodological limitation results from the use of self-reported measures, a mo- dality of administration that is potentially susceptible to the treat of social desirability.70 Religiosity

67 See: Census of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Short Summary (in Russian), Republic of Kazakhstan Statistical Agency, 2009, available at [http://web.archive.org/web/20100628101359/http://www.stat.kz/p_perepis/Pages/n_ 04_02_10.aspx], 13 March, 2014. 68 See: The World Factbook. Central Asia: Uzbekistan, Central Intelligence Agency, 2014, available at [https://www. cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/uz.html], 13 March, 2014. 69 See: M. Ferro, The Use and Abuse of History: How the Past is Taught to Children, Routledge, London/New York, 2003. 70 See: W.D. Crano, M.B. Brewer, A. Lac, Principles and Methods of Social Research, 3rd ed., Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, 2014.

56 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 is more common in post-Soviet Central Asia and Azerbaijan; thus, some respondents may exaggerate their actual religious involvement. However, the anonymity afforded respondents by Gallup’s survey methodology reduces such bias to a minimum. In summary, this study pioneered a new avenue of research by using the latest available quantitative methodology to investigate and support the idea of non-uniform Islamic practices in post- Soviet republics with a majority Muslim population. We found evidence that Central Asians and Azerbaijanis differ in their devotion to the Islamic faith. Future research may concentrate on identifying the key non-demographic predictors of religious observance and include these in the model as predictors of latent class membership. We hope that this study will improve the understanding of the phenomena occurring in post-Soviet Central Asia and Azerbaijan.

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REGIONAL POLITICS

THE MAIN PROBLEMS ON THE WAY TO COOPERATION IN CENTRAL ASIA: FOREIGN POLICY FORECAST FOR THE REGIONAL COUNTRIES

Vladimir PARAMONOV Ph.D. (Political Science), Founder and Supervisor of the [www.ceasia.ru] Internet Project and Central Eurasia Analytical Group (Tashkent, Uzbekistan)

Alexei STROKOV Member of the Expert Council of the Central Eurasia Analytical Group (Tashkent, Uzbekistan)

ABSTRACT

he authors present a prognosis of the pol- ated with the essential absence of development icy of five Central Asian countries in or- of real, deep, and extensive forms of multilateral T der to identify the main problems associ- cooperation in the region.

This article was prepared on the basis of a report compiled and read by the authors at an international seminar called “Regional Cooperation as a Factor of Peace and Stability in Central Asia” held in Almaty (Kazakhstan) on 20-21 November, 2014.

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The main accent is placed on identifying/ each other, as well as on demonstrating the nega- explaining the key reasons/factors of the unwill- tive consequences of the absence of the neces- ingness of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, sary level of trust, cooperation, and integration in Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan to cooperate with the region.

KEYWORDS: foreign policy, Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.

Introduction

The following reasons are usually given to explain the problems interfering with the development of cooperation in Central Asia (CA), as well as the underdevelopment/absence of the political, economic, and social prerequisites required for ensuring it: — weakness/absence of political will on the part of the elites/leaders of the Central Asian states; — the non-democratic nature and/or non-liberal nature of the existing political and economic regimes; — the impact of a whole set of political and psychological factors (difficulties in the relations among the leaders of the CA countries, such as personal disdain, rivalry, striving for single-handed power, lack of desire/lack of willingness of the elites to share even some of their powers, and prevalence of personal and/or group interests over national, public, state, and regional interests. On the whole, the above-mentioned reasons look rather superficial, which might prevent an adequate understanding of the processes going on in the country, on the one hand, and a correct evaluation of the degree of influence of the subjective and objective factors on the situation, on the other. In this respect, a more systemic and, consequently, interdisciplinary approach is necessary that allows the main emphasis to be placed not only on an analysis, but also on a prognosis of the key factors that are causing the problems. The difficulties seem primarily to stem from the unwillingness of the CA countries to engage in regional cooperation (real, deep, and extensive forms of multilateral cooperation and integration) associated with the development conditions, the foreign and domestic policy being pursued, the models and vectors of the power structures, as well as interests, requirements, possibilities, and resources. The prognosis offered, which is based on an extrapolation of the trends and processes going on in CA and around it, is calculated primarily for the short term (up to five years). It does not keep in mind the possibility of artificial stimulation of regional cooperation and does not really take into account such force-majeure factors as natural disasters, wars, large-scale conflicts, major terrorist acts, global and regional crises, economic, political, and social upheavals (both in CA and in the most influential countries for the region—Russia and China), or any deep-rooted and principal changes in the foreign policy of Moscow and Beijing, or in the world order as a whole.

Uzbekistan’s Approaches to Regional Cooperation

Tashkent’s approaches to regional cooperation are largely based on the following: (1) placing traditional emphasis on the bilateral format of relations, which by definition does not allow for the development of multilateral ties either in the region itself, or beyond it; 59 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS

(2) giving increased attention to strengthening the country’s own security using internal and external resources, which denies the expediency of embracing closer and deeper forms of cooperation with the CA countries, with some of which (and to be more precise with half of which) Uzbekistan still has serious contradictions; (3) implementing a strategy of active maneuvering and balancing among the main extra-regional powers (Russia, China, and the West) and striving to retain equidistance from them. The external actors see the models, schemes, mechanisms, and algorithms of regional cooperation differently; they are essentially not interested either in cooperation or, even more so, in integration in the CA format. In so doing, Uzbekistan is unable to choose one of the “integration” projects proposed (imposed) from the outside. On the other hand, Uzbekistan is well aware that striving to establish active regional cooperation will be perceived by the main foreign actors as a direct threat or challenge to their interests, and Tashkent clearly does not wish to be in confrontation with them. As a result, Uzbekistan is retaining formal membership to a certain extent in several organizations (such as the CIS and SCO), without adopting any of their strict obligations. At the same time, Tashkent is shying away from participation in military-political blocs (for example, the CSTO) and political-economic coalitions (in particular the Customs Union/Eurasian Union), which requires deeper forms of cooperation, right down to creating supranational structures. Uzbekistan is placing the stakes on developing only certain elements of bilateral cooperation with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, while at the same time continuing to stay away from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. So Uzbekistan sees regional cooperation not as a way to enhance its own development, but as a threat to its national security from neighboring countries. Uzbekistan’s unwillingness to cooperate, not to mention integrate, with Kazakhstan is largely associated with the fact that Tashkent is aware of Kazakhstan’s fragmentation into spheres of influence of external powers and competing elites that have encompassed both different regions of the country and various sectors of the economy and resulted in the central government’s relative weakness and instability, thus excluding the possibility of close rapprochement with it. Moreover, there are principal differences between the domestic political and domestic economic systems, as well as between the foreign political and foreign economic courses/approaches of the two states. There is no way they can be instantly overcome. In the conditions of Kazakhstan’s significant economic and financial superiority over Uzbeki- stan (Kazakhstan’s GDP is more than four times higher than Uzbekistan’s), Tashkent is worried to a certain extent about being the second fiddle in a possible tandem with Astana. This will require selective cooperation; Uzbekistan will want to choose only those vectors that are advantageous to it.  The political sphere. Uzbekistan is willing to strengthen cooperation with Kazakhstan on border issues (in order to prevent possible incidents and aggravation of relations as a whole) and has a certain interest in cooperating to oppose Islamic radicalism/extremism. But Tash- kent is essentially unwilling to adjust its model of political development or to integrate it into Kazakhstan’s, not to mention coordinate its foreign policy with Astana, which is explained by the significant differences in the goals, principles, vectors, and approaches of the two countries.  The economic sphere. Uzbekistan is extremely interested in cooperating in the development of transportation corridors, due to the vitally important possibility of gaining access to the world markets and Kazakhstan’s high transit potential (the matter primarily concerns the Russian and Chinese vectors). Uzbekistan, which needs to import a whole range of goods (for example, oil and wheat flour), is also willing to expand its commercial ties with Kazakhstan, keeping in mind

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the importance of Kazakhstan’s market for selling Uzbek goods (for example, vegetables, fruit, cars, and textiles). Moreover, Uzbekistan is showing a high interest in cooperating with Kazakhstan in labor migration (there are at least 500,000 Uzbek guest workers in Kazakhstan, while their annual remittances amount to around $200-400 million). However, Tashkent cannot objectively allow itself to conduct an active policy in production cooperation and investment cooperation with Astana. This is explained primarily by the fact that Uzbekistan does not have the relevant financial possibilities for foreign expansion, its focus on primarily internal development, and the significant differences between the economic models/courses of the two countries.  The social sphere. Apart from labor migration issues, Uzbekistan is not willing to cooperate with Kazakhstan in this sphere, since this requires redirecting large political, economic and other resources from the resolution of domestic problems, which Tashkent believes to be more important and pressing. Nevertheless, until the situation in Kazakhstan itself stabilizes, Uzbekistan does not think it expedient to erect any additional barriers/obstacles to communication among the people, including the representatives of the relatively large national diasporas of both countries (more than 1.5 million Kazakhs live in Uzbekistan, and around 0.5 million Uzbeks live in Kazakhstan). Uzbekistan is not only interested in maintaining good neighborly relations with Turkmenistan, but also in developing deeper forms of cooperation with it, even as far as integration. However, Ash- ghabad is only willing to engage in selective forms of interaction for the time being, including coordinating efforts to ensure the functioning of a regional gas transportation system, road and rail infrastructure, as well as rational use of the water resources of the Amu Darya. In turn, Uzbekistan is very well aware that any attempts to step up, expand, and intensify cooperation with Turkmenistan will be very unproductive.  The political sphere. Uzbekistan is willing to maintain cooperation, mainly in border delimitation issues, as well as ensuring the transit of Turkmen gas in the Chinese and Russian directions. Moreover, it is going to have to cooperate during the exploitation of the hydrotechnical facilities on both sides of the border. If a real threat arises for CA from Islamic radicalism/extremism, Tashkent can naturally be expected to engage in joint efforts to overcome this problem, which cannot be said so confidently about Ashghabad, which may not show mutual interest. There can be no doubt that Uzbekistan is also willing to cooperate with Turkmenistan on many other issues, including of a regional nature. Nevertheless, aware in advance that the Turkmen side may not respond adequately, Tashkent is unlikely to put forward any initiatives.  The economic sphere. Uzbekistan is experiencing a shortage of petroleum products and is striving to increase their purchase in Turkmenistan. It may also become more interested in the future in importing certain amounts of Turkmen natural gas, the production volumes of which are increasing (while gas production in Uzbekistan is stagnating and demand for gas is rising). How successful Tashkent’s policy aimed at cooperation will be of course depends primarily on Ashghabad.  The social sphere. Uzbekistan is essentially willing to develop relations with Turkmenistan in this sphere; it is showing particular interest in intensifying economic cooperation, which is entirely possible keeping in mind that these countries have similar political models. However, Tashkent will most likely not exert any active efforts to develop cooperation until Ashghabad itself expresses a corresponding desire (which so far is highly unlikely).

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Uzbekistan is not cooperating with Tajikistan in any way. This is largely due to Uzbekistan’s categorical non-acceptance of the Tajik leadership’s domestic and foreign policy, including its veiled claims to Samarkand and Bukhara, as well as the stubborn striving at all costs to implement the Rogun Hydropower Plant project. Keeping in mind the possibility of Tajikistan’s destabilization and the growing threats coming from this country (drug trafficking, extremism, and terrorism), Tashkent would like to cut back cooperation with it, further toughen up the border regime, and reduce transportation, communication, and other ties.  The political sphere. Uzbekistan thinks it expedient to maintain contacts with Tajikistan primarily in the border sphere, since objectively this is simply inevitable.  The economic sphere. Tashkent is unwilling in principle to develop economic cooperation with Tajikistan (even by using it as a transit country or agent) that might promote the implementation of Dushanbe’s current domestic and foreign policy course. For this reason, Uz- bekistan is only interested in purchasing cheap electricity from Tajikistan generated during the summer; some of it is re-exported to neighboring Afghanistan.  The social sphere. Uzbekistan thinks the toughening up of border, administrative, and information policy toward Tajikistan to be entirely legitimate, whereby it is pursuing the goal of preventing negative trends and processes from being transferred to its territory. Uzbekistan does not want close cooperation with Kyrgyzstan either. On the one hand, keeping in mind Kyrgyzstan’s permanent instability, Tashkent is extremely interested in creating a so-called sanitary corridor with its participation. On the other hand, Uzbekistan intends to continue upholding its interests in water use and border demarcation issues. However, Tashkent and Bishkek are pursuing essentially different approaches to meet them, not to mention the other deep contradictions that exist between them.  The political sphere. Uzbekistan thinks it very desirable to further strengthen the border regime and retain a high level of military presence in the areas adjacent to Kyrgyzstan. Moreover, Tashkent, through diplomatic and other channels, is continuing its attempts to resolve the border problem as quickly as possible and is still trying to convince the Kyrgyz leadership to officially reject the idea of paying for water deliveries in the summer. Despite Uzbekistan’s negative attitude toward construction of Kambarata-1 Hydro- power Plant, Tashkent understands that observing the country’s interests is prevented by a complicated combination of different factors that are mainly associated with the situation in Kyrgyzstan itself, the goals/tasks of the Russian Federation and big Russian business in the region, the nature of Uzbek-Russian and Russian-Kyrgyz relations, as well as the policy of China and the West.  The economic sphere. Uzbekistan does not think it necessary to develop cooperation with Kyrgyzstan in this sphere. According to Tashkent, Kyrgyzstan’s membership in the WTO and the unrestricted liberalism (which is essentially anarchy) of its economy are incompat- ible with the Uzbek model of state and economic protectionism. Uzbekistan is willing to support its industry and protect the market in the future too, while also creating additional barriers in trade with Kyrgyzstan, preventing shuttle business, and clamping down in every way the re-export of Chinese products.  The social sphere. Keeping in mind the explosive situation in the south of Kyrgyzstan,1 Uzbekistan thinks it necessary to take additional security measures. It appears that Tashkent

1 The extremely difficult socioeconomic circumstances and crime-prone situation, increased influence of political Islam, conflict relations between the Uzbek and Kyrgyz diasporas, and Bishkek’s limited opportunities to control these processes.

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is willing to toughen up administrative and information control over the main channels of interaction among citizens of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan even more (including with representatives of the country’s Uzbek diaspora).

Kazakhstan’s Approaches to Regional Cooperation

Kazakhstan’s approaches to regional cooperation are largely motivated by the following: (1) the dramatic reduction in recent years of Astana’s external financing opportunities, which has led to an actual loss of the informal leadership position Kazakhstan reached earlier in CA and eliminates/destroys its ambitious plans to control the regional processes (in its interests and on its conditions). This is making the advancement of cooperation and integration in the region a secondary task; (2) the orientation toward economic and political interaction primarily with the main extra- regional powers (Russia, China, and the West, which are also playing a key role in the development of the strategic branches of Kazakhstan’s economy), which does not meet the goals of Astana’s strategy in the region; (3) the policy of maneuvering and balancing among the main extra-regional powers and, on the whole, the extremely contradictory economic course, envisaging simultaneous participation in regionalization and globalization processes. This all dramatically limits Astana’s opportunity to carry out a comprehensive and long-term regional policy, particularly since the approaches of the other CA countries to regionalization and globalizations are significantly different, and in some cases are diametrically opposed to Kazakhstan’s interests. As a result, Astana, which is participating quite actively in economic and military cooperation in the post-Soviet space, is also trying to distance itself from the political aspects, in particular from creating supranational structures under Moscow’s aegis. This essentially cooperation (and not at all integration) policy of Kazakhstan is aimed at strengthening and expanding (to certain degrees) interaction primarily with Russia within the framework of the Customs Union (Eurasian Union) and CSTO. On the other hand, Kazakhstan is still striving to join the WTO and establish cooperation ties with countries that are actively participating in globalization (China, the Western countries, and so on). Against this background, relations with the CA countries are of clearly secondary importance for Astana, while the Central Asian vector itself (apart from its Uzbek and Kyrgyz segments) is not objectively among its foreign priorities. Kazakhstan’s unwillingness to engage in deeper forms of cooperation with Uzbekistan is largely determined by the latter’s lack of interest in this. Kazakhstan is becoming increasingly aware of Uzbekistan’s important role in the region, including in interaction with the extra-regional powers. At the same time, alarmist moods are growing in Astana about possible destabilization and/or Islamiza- tion of Uzbekistan associated with the possible transfer of these processes to Kazakhstan. All of this is prompting the Kazakhstan leadership to move closer to Tashkent and even reach a certain level of cooperation with it, which Uzbekistan is still not ready for. It appears that Kazakh- stan is perceiving any indecisiveness as a gesture of mistrust or manifestation of regional ambitions, and so is forced to artificially limit cooperation with Uzbekistan, reducing it primarily to maintaining good-neighborly relations and interaction in trade, transport, the transit of Uzbek/Turkmen gas, as well as in border and regional security issues. 63 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS

 The political sphere. Astana is interested in coordinating policy with Tashkent regarding the main extra-regional powers. But Uzbekistan itself is still not ready for this, since it does not agree in principle with the course being conducted by Kazakhstan toward too close and, in Tashkent’s opinion, extremely dangerous rapprochement with Russia, China, and the West. In addition, Kazakhstan still has a certain interest in more active cooperation in opposing Islamic radicalism/extremism, drug trafficking, transborder crime, and other threats to security. Despite this, Uzbekistan is trying to fight against these problems independently. In this way, from the viewpoint of the development of cooperation, essentially the only task that Astana can solve is completing legal registration of the common border, which Tashkent is also interested in.  The economic sphere. In conditions of stagnation of political relations with Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan is primarily regarding this country as an important sales market for its products, as well as a valuable exporter of fruit and vegetables. Astana is ready to cooperate with Tashkent regarding the transit of Turkmen and Uzbek gas too (to China and Russia), but is not rushing to develop investment and production cooperation with it. This is largely explained by the raw material orientation of Kazakhstan’s economy, its reduced capabilities for attracting foreign financing, and the extremely difficult business climate in Uzbekistan that is forming in conditions of state protectionism, pressure from the civil service, and the inconvertibility of the national currency (the Uzbek soum).  The social sphere. There are no corresponding political or economic prerequisites for cooperation with Uzbekistan in this sphere, so Kazakhstan does not see the need to develop it. This lack of interest is also explained by the fact that Kazakhstan is inclined to view Uzbekistan as a source of its own social problems. Nevertheless, while the situation in Uzbekistan is assessed as stable, Kazakhstan will most likely not create additional obstacles to establishing humanitarian, cultural, and other contacts, a process that has essentially been given free rein. A change in Astana’s current position is only possible if the Eurasian Union draws up a coordinated social policy, which, for the time being, seems highly unlikely, at least in the short term. Kazakhstan is still interested in Kyrgyzstan’s friendly absorption, that is, integration with it on its own terms. But in addition to a rapid decrease in Kazakhstan’s financial and other possibilities, this is prevented by the continued instability in Kyrgyzstan, as well as the increase in the dependent moods of the elite and society regarding bilateral cooperation. Kazakhstan is neither willing, nor capable of resolving Kyrgyzstan’s rapidly multiplying problems on its own. Although it is not refus- ing to support Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan is forced to limit its economic presence in this republic and coordinate it with Moscow’s and, to a certain extent, Beijing’s interests.  The political sphere. Kazakhstan is only willing to compensate for the decrease in its economic interest toward Kyrgyzstan with a certain increase in diplomatic activity and, possibly, play along with Bishkek (and at the same time to Moscow) regarding the construction of Kambaratin-1 Hydropower Plant, which is still not being implemented in practice (and is unlikely to be in the next few years). Kazakhstan has no interest in establishing deeper forms of cooperation with Kyrgyzstan, nor is this interest likely to arise; one of the reasons for this is Bishkek’s clear lack of desire to follow in the footsteps of Astana’s policy.  The economic sphere. Due to the negative influence of the world crisis, aggravation of the domestic situation in the country, and extremely unfavorable business climate in Kyrgyz- stan (corruption and the lack of any guarantees for investments), Astana and Kazakhstan’s 64 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015

oligarch groups are inclined toward reducing their investment activity and withdrawing their assets. It is possible that this will be accompanied by economic disputes and certain complications in bilateral relations. We should also expect Kazakhstan to strive for reorienting flows of goods from Chi- na through its own territory to other post-Soviet countries. This could significantly decrease the volumes of their re-export through Kyrgyzstan and lead to the appearance of additional political contradictions between Astana and Bishkek. Nevertheless, Kazakhstan does not intend to leave Kyrgyzstan to deal with its problems alone, for this republic it is still (and will likely remain) the largest regional trade and financial partner, as well as important energy donor. We can also expect a certain increase in Kazakhstan’s economic activity (including investment); this likelihood depends, for example, on Kyrgyzstan’s accession to the Cus- toms Union (toward which Bishkek is constantly being pushed) and normalization of the situation in the country, but keeping in mind the current reality this seems highly unlikely at present.  The social sphere. Kazakhstan is only willing to create relatively favorable conditions for labor migrants from Kyrgyzstan (around 250,000 people) and step up the information impact on its auditorium. For the moment, Astana does not see the need to erect artificial barriers hindering the uncontrollable and essentially spontaneous development of humanitarian, cultural, and other contacts with Bishkek. Nevertheless, due to the continued instability in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan will most likely have to periodically resort to measures to toughen up the border and customs regime and administrative control. It seems this kind of strategic behavior might generate distrust in the Kyrgyz leadership and arouse criticism from its society. In its relations with Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan is primarily interested in coordinating diplomatic efforts with it aimed at peaceful resolution of the Caspian problems, and hopes for non-conflict interaction (the significance of which is likely to increase in the next few years) with this country in the future too. In addition, Astana is willing to maintain the level of contacts in current issues concerning transport communication, trade, and borders necessary for preserving good-neighborly relations. For the moment, Kazakhstan does not feel an urgent need for deeper or more active forms of cooperation, one of the reasons for which is the incompatibility between its development model and Turkmenistan’s.  The political sphere. Astana’s approaches to establishing political cooperation with Ash- ghabad largely depend on the prospects of big oil and big gas on the Caspian shelf. If the Caspian hydrocarbon deposits acquire world significance, it stands to reason that Kazakh- stan’s interest in cooperation with Turkmenistan will greatly increase. Until this happens though, relations between Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan will remain limited to interaction in border issues, while bilateral cooperation will be limited to political declarations.  The economic sphere. Kazakhstan is only inclined to maintain the necessary and inevitable interaction to ensure the functioning of the main Turkmenistan-China and Central Asia- Center (Turkmenistan-Russia) gas pipelines, and beginning in 2015, the North-South main railroad (which connects Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Iran). For the moment, Astana is not willing to develop deeper forms of cooperation in this sphere. The main reasons for this are probably the following: no need for energy deliveries from Turkmenistan (due to Kazakhstan’s supply of its own energy resources, including gas), the closed nature of its market/financial system, the inconvertibility of the manat, and Ashghabad’s across-the-board control over the economy and external trade. Astana may

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show greater interest in cooperation only if the Caspian energy resources become a central theme in bilateral political relations.  The social sphere. Keeping in mind that Turkmen society is essentially completely closed, Ashghabad’s unwillingness to develop cooperation (one of the signs of which is its striving to retain the country’s information isolation) and the small size of the Kazakh diaspora in Turkmenistan (from 40,000 to 60,000 people), Kazakhstan does not think it necessary to establish any deep relations in this sphere. Kazakhstan’s cooperation with Tajikistan is largely prevented by the latter’s economic and geographic isolation, which retains the conflict-prone nature of Uzbek-Tajik relations, and a certain improvement in Uzbek-Kazakh relations; there is not much point in these countries developing close forms of cooperation. Therefore Kazakhstan does not place any particular significance on relations with Tajikistan and views it only as a sales market for its products; cooperation in other areas is formal and symbolic. In so doing, Astana’s approaches have been and will most likely remain pragmatic; they are generated by a broad view of the regional situation, but in no way by the narrowness of bilateral relations with Tajikistan, and particularly not by its interests and needs.  The political sphere. Kazakhstan does not think it necessary to establish a confidential dialog with Tajikistan and is limiting itself only to maintaining the current diplomatic contacts with it. A certain need for cooperation might arise primarily if the situation in Tajikistan itself and/or on its border with Afghanistan worsens (this likelihood exists), as well as in the event of normalization of Uzbek-Tajik relations (which is unlikely so far).  The economic sphere. Keeping in mind that Tajikistan is still a target of primarily Chinese interests and the ongoing conflict in its relations with Uzbekistan, Astana is forced to limit its interaction with Dushanbe to mainly the commercial sphere (deliveries of food and petroleum products) and even then in small amounts.  The social sphere. The weak development of relations with Tajikistan in this sphere is due, among other things, to the small size of the Kazakh diaspora living there (40-50,000 people), as well as to the actual geographic and information isolation of the two countries. Nevertheless, in the future, Astana will likely try to regulate the number of Tajik labor migrants (the number of which according to certain estimates reaches 400,000 people), particularly if the domestic situation in Tajikistan worsens and/or there is an economic crisis in Kazakhstan.

Tajikistan’s Approaches to Regional Cooperation

Tajikistan’s approaches to regional cooperation are largely motivated by the following: (1) the country’s deep geographical and economic isolation from the other CA states due to Uzbekistan and the growing conflict potential in relations between Dushanbe and Tashkent, which makes it practically impossible for Tajikistan to participate actively in cooperation processes in the region; (2) Tajikistan’s orientation toward economic and political cooperation primarily with friendly China, Russia, and Iran, which makes it possible for the country to receive financial and

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military assistance on a regular basis. This is moving Tajikistan’s cooperation issues with the regional countries to the back burner; (3) the greater internal instability, which is forcing the Tajik leadership to concentrate mainly on domestic problems and tasks, including those related to preserving and strengthening its power; this is removing the elaboration of approaches to regional cooperation issues from the list of the government’s priorities. Nevertheless, Tajikistan’s foreign policy is still focused on Uzbekistan, the nature of relations with which will largely determine the prospects for Dushanbe’s participation/non-participation in regional cooperation processes, as well as, which is highly possible, the country’s future. The current Tajik leadership has made itself a hostage of the policy it is pursuing from the viewpoint of both its international and domestic image; the matter concerns giving the construction of the Rogun Hydro- power Plant the status of a national idea and periodic circulation of the question of the territorial allegiance of Samarkand and Bukhara. Tajikistan’s lack of understanding of the key problems in the development of the state and society are essentially driving it into an impasse and prompting a confrontation with Uzbekistan. As a result, Tajikistan’s opportunities to cooperate with other CA countries, which are limited anyway, are being reduced to a minimum. Despite the fact that Tajikistan is exerting certain efforts to develop cooperation with Turk- menistan (as a possible alternative gas and electricity supplier to Uzbekistan in the winter), neighboring Kyrgyzstan (as an alternative transport corridor to Uzbekistan), and Kazakhstan (as an important supplier of food and petroleum products), they are not yielding significant practical results. This state of affairs is largely associated with the objective fact that Tajikistan can only engage in economically efficient transport communication with the other CA countries through Uzbekistan, relations with which have much to be desired, to put it mildly. Finding itself in isolation, Tajikistan will encounter growing threats and security challenges, which it will most likely be unable to deal with alone, while launching the external resource will lead to a loss of its independence (completely or partially). In this respect, the scenarios envisaging Ta- jikistan joining the Customs Union or its economic absorption by China are relatively favorable; they are capable of leading to stabilization in the country and a change in the policy it is conducting. An alternative to these two scenarios (the first of which is extremely unlikely and the second quite possible) could only be Tajikistan’s destabilization. Uzbekistan. Tajikistan’s unwillingness to normalize relations with Uzbekistan de facto explains the categorical lack of desire of the Tajik leadership to adjust or even reexamine its domestic and foreign policy. In these conditions, Dushanbe’s confrontation with Tashkent will most likely only increase. Any significant change in Tajikistan’s policy could theoretically be caused by destabilization of the situation and/or change in power in the republic or by external factors (in particular, impact from China and/or Russia, and/or the development of events in Afghanistan), or if Uzbekistan itself shows good will. In addition, the role of well-known, as well as unpredictable internal and external circumstances, including force-majeure, must be kept in mind.  The political sphere. The Tajik leadership is essentially not ready to change its position regarding regulating relations with Uzbekistan and is continuing to put the blame for its errors and failures on it. Dushanbe, in keeping with the development algorithm the country has launched, has no intention of yielding its position in the latent dispute about the territorial allegiance of Samarkand and Bukhara, or of making concessions to Tashkent regarding construction of the Rogun Hydropower Plant.  The economic sphere. A drastic drop in energy and transport dependence on Uzbekistan is an important component of the policy being implemented by Tajikistan. To be independent

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Tajikistan should accelerate the development of its own gas fields (with the support of Rus- sia and China in particular), advance the project for building a gas pipeline from Turk- menistan with the participation of Beijing, develop road and rail communication with China, Kyrgyzstan, and Afghanistan, as well as build a power transmission line for exporting electricity in the southern direction (the CASA project). In so doing, much depends on a whole series of factors, far from the last of which is Uzbekistan’s position and the nature of Tajikistan’s relations with this country itself.  The social sphere. Dushanbe is not only not willing, but not interested in cooperation with Tashkent in this sphere, which, unwittingly or not, is promoting an increase in anti-Uzbek moods in Tajik society. In so doing, Tajikistan is striving to increase its information isolation from Uzbekistan, preferring to give its citizens the official version of what is going on in the country and beyond it. As a result, Tajikistan is essentially forming the image of external enemy that is to blame for all the problems; in this way, the country’s government is trying to direct the population’s discontent outwardly. Turkmenistan. Dushanbe is making an exerted effort to reach a mutually advantageous level of cooperation and integration with Ashghabad, which is related to hopes of organizing (with China’s assistance) regular deliveries of natural gas from Turkmenistan and establishing a stable system of Iranian-Turkmen-Tajik transport communication through northern Afghanistan. But this interest is in general one-sided.  The political sphere. Tajikistan, which is aiming to strengthen cooperation with Turkmen- istan, is supporting any initiatives from Ashghabad in every way it can. Nevertheless, even if the plans to build the fourth line of the Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline (transit through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan) come to fruition, Tashkent will still have enough control levers over it at its disposal. Moreover, it is unlikely that Dushanbe will be able to pay for deliveries of Turkmen gas independently, so it is counting on help from Beijing. This could strengthen China’s position in Tajikistan even more, which is fraught with partial or complete loss of the country’s sovereignty.  The economic sphere. Tajikistan is extremely interested in building the Iran-Turkmenistan- Afghanistan-Tajikistan transportation corridor, but from the viewpoint of the real economy, this project is unlikely to have prospects. On the one hand, Dushanbe has nothing to offer Tehran, Ashghabad, or Kabul in return. While on the other, the very idea of organizing reliable transport communication in the territory of unstable Afghanistan seems pointless.  The social sphere. By developing official cultural and humanitarian contacts, Dushanbe is trying to create the semblance of friendship between the Tajik and Turkmen peoples, which does not change the essence of their real relations, which are formal. Since there is no common border with Turkmenistan and its society is closed, any large-scale cooperation between the two countries is objectively impossible. Kazakhstan. Tajikistan views Kazakhstan as an important economic trade partner and is counting on a certain amount of political and diplomatic assistance from Astana in its standoff with Tash- kent. Disregarding Kazakhstan’s waning financial and other possibilities, Tajikistan is continuing to place the stakes on Kazakhstan’s ambitions to remain a regional leader. Nevertheless, the attempts to play the anti-Tashkent card are unlikely to lead to the results Dushanbe desires, since Kazakhstan is not interested at all in complicating relations with Uzbekistan. Therefore, Tajikistan, as before, will be forced to limit itself to maintaining mainly diplomatic contacts and trade relations with Kazakhstan. It appears that the dynamics of Tajik-Kazakh relations will largely be determined by how Ka- zakh-Uzbek and Uzbek-Tajik cooperation develops. 68 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015

 The political sphere. Dushanbe is interested in achieving at least symbolic and formal approval from Astana of the Rogun Hydropower Plant project. As for Kazakhstan, it prefers to unofficially support Uzbekistan’s position for the moment and is limiting itself to declarations on “understanding Tajikistan’s energy interests.” Moreover, it is impossible to fully exclude the possibility of Tajikistan initiating consultations with Kazakhstan on accession to the Customs Union and regional security problems in the future. However, even if As- tana shows mutual interest, this is unlikely to lead to a dramatic change in the present format of Tajik-Kazakh relations.  The economic sphere. Tajikistan is theoretically willing to expand and intensify commercial cooperation with Kazakhstan, since its need for deliveries of food and petroleum products from this country is constantly growing. In turn, Tajikistan can only offer Kazakhstan electricity generated in the summer, as well as raw mineral resources, which are not of particular interest to it. Deliveries from Kazakhstan prevail in the trade structure between the two countries, while the volume of goods from Tajikistan is extremely small and limited to dried fruit and vegetables. In the future, Tajikistan will most likely attempt to achieve a more beneficial trade regime; in so doing, Dushanbe will probably refer to Uzbek regional ambitions and the internal difficulties Tajikistan experiences “due to Uzbekistan.” It should be noted that Kazakhstan certainly has no intention of being a donor state for Tajikistan. Astana, at best, will limit itself only to preserving a few trade preferences and offering relatively favorable administrative conditions for Tajik labor migrants to live in the country (there are currently around 400,000 of them and their annual remittances amount to between $300 and 500 million).  The social sphere. Tajikistan will most likely continue to only view Kazakhstan as an important recipient of the workforce it needs. Keeping in mind such objective circumstances as the de facto isolation of the two nations and the extremely small size of the national diasporas in both countries, there is no point in expecting other topics to appear on the agenda of Tajik-Kazakh relations. What is more, labor migration as such does not provide a firm basis for developing bilateral cooperation. For example, a scenario may develop in which Astana will be forced to restrict external trade migration and/or will prefer to receive workers from Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, which are more important to it. Kyrgyzstan. Dushanbe is interested in cooperation with Bishkek regarding demarcation of the border and the advancement of transportation and energy projects important to both countries; there is probably no prospect of finding other spheres of interaction.  The political sphere. Tajikistan hopes to accelerate the border demarcation process (primarily to put an end to the regular border conflicts that complicate bilateral relations), but does not have the necessary financial, technical, or administrative resources for this. At the same time, the Tajik leadership is showing an interest in political consultations and coordination of diplomatic efforts to advance a whole series of projects—Rogun and Kambarata-1, the power transmission line for exporting electricity to Southern Asia (CASA), and the fourth branch of the Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline. However, these projects are unlikely to be implemented in the near future (apart from perhaps the fourth branch of the Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline), and so cannot objectively act as driving forces behind Tajik-Kyrgyz rapprochement.  The economic sphere. Tajikistan is still not able to reach a higher level of cooperation with Kyrgyzstan, since efficient transportation communication between the two countries is

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implemented only through Uzbekistan. As for the Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan route through the mountains, it is strategically important only for the drug business and the representatives of the shadow economy of both countries. Forming more stable prerequisites for economic cooperation between Dushanbe and Bishkek is only possible if Beijing implements the project to build the fourth branch of the Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline, which is to pass through Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.  The social sphere. Tajikistan’s lack of objective need for cooperation with Kyrgyzstan in this sphere is due to the fact that the state border between these countries passes through high mountainous and underpopulated areas and there is traditionally weak interaction among the people who populate them. In this respect, Dushanbe is limiting itself only to the task of rapid regulation of territorial and border contradictions. However, keeping in mind the difficulty of the situation in both countries and the absence of corresponding financial and other resources, its successful resolution depends very little on the desire or even willingness of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan themselves.

Kyrgyzstan’s Approaches to Regional Cooperation

Kyrgyzstan’s approaches to regional cooperation are largely motivated by the following: (1) the catastrophic socioeconomic situation in the country, political instability, and threat of loss of internal integrity, which are forcing Bishkek to concentrate on cooperation with the main extra-regional powers (Russia, China, and the West), since only they (and not the CA countries) are capable of rendering Kyrgyzstan significant financial assistance, supporting its ruling regime, and guaranteeing security; (2) the increasing domestic political and inter-clan contradictions that prevent the Kyrgyz elite from even coming close to developing a more or less unified vision of the country’s further development and making the formation of any integrated policy impossible, including with respect to regional cooperation; (3) the active balancing/maneuvering of different Kyrgyz political groups not only among the main extra-regional powers, but also among the less influential foreign players (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and international institutions and organizations), which removes the Central Asian vector of Kyrgyzstan’s policy from the country’s priorities (apart from the Kazakh- stan segment). As a result, Bishkek will probably have no other option but to steer its previous course toward closer cooperation with Russia and Kazakhstan. Moreover, Kyrgyzstan will continue to maintain good relations with China, which will make it possible for it to maneuver between Moscow and Bei- jing, acquire additional financial resources and security guarantees, and retain its role as commercial agent between the PRC and other countries of the region. It should also be added that Bishkek sees cooperation with Beijing as a reserve strategy, in the event that the current pro-Russian course fails, for example. In turn, the various opposition forces to the current authorities will most likely appeal both to the U.S. and EU, as well as to international and human rights organizations. As for the struggle-weary Kyrgyz population, it will very likely for the most part follow the authority that offers it the most attractive and understandable idea for building the country’s “radiant 70 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 future.” In the next few years, this will most assuredly be the team of the country’s current president. What is more, in the absence of any force-majeure circumstances, Bishkek may even join the CU (with the support of Moscow and Astana). China is also expected to fortify its position in the country, which is primarily related to implementation of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railroad project. This is something all the Kyrgyz leaders have been promising to support since the end of the 1990s. Keeping in mind that this project contradicts the interests of Russia and Kazakhstan, which Kyrgyzstan is striving to come closer to, there is very little chance it will be implemented. It seems that Kyrgyzstan will most likely concentrate on neighboring Kazakhstan (to the greatest extent), Uzbekistan (to a slightly lesser extent), and Tajikistan (to a very small extent). Kazakhstan. Kyrgyzstan traditionally shows a high interest in cooperation with Kazakhstan, maintaining friendly relations with which is essentially one of the conditions of its survival. At the same time, the current Kyrgyz leadership is not ready either for cooperation or for integration with Kazakhstan, which is explained by a whole series of external and internal factors. One of them, for example, is the acute sense of national pride among the Kyrgyz elite, which gives rise to a desire to preserve the country’s sovereignty at all costs.  The political sphere. Kyrgyzstan is extremely interested in coordinating its efforts with Kazakhstan both in the bilateral and multilateral formats (the CSTO, CIS, and SCO). Tak- ing Astana’s assistance and support as its due, Kyrgyzstan is nevertheless blatantly demonstrating its political independence, not wishing to create even the slightest impression of being a country that is following in the footsteps of Kazakhstan’s policy, never mind being absorbed by it.  The economic sphere. Kazakhstan is still an important energy donor for Kyrgyzstan, the main market for re-exported Chinese goods, one of the main (along with Russia) recipients of labor migrants, as well as a significant factor of stability of the banking system and a source of tourists. We should also expect a further increase in Bishkek’s interest in regulating the question of customs obstacles Kazakhstan (as a member of the CU) has raised to hinder the movement of goods from Kyrgyzstan. However, talks on this question are unlikely to be productive. It stands to reason that Kyrgyzstan will be pushed toward joining the CU and forming a common economic space with Kazakhstan. But the course toward membership in the CU and integration with Kazakhstan will contradict China’s policy and the regulations of the WTO, of which Kyrgyzstan is a member. It is theoretically possible that some temporary compromise will be reached, whereby Bishkek (if Kyrgyzstan joins the CU) will receive certain quotas for the re-export of Chinese goods. Nevertheless, in practice, this will not ease the problem of the growing contradiction between the foreign economic vectors Kyr- gyzstan is trying to follow. Sooner or later, Bishkek will have to choose one of them, otherwise it could lead to the emergence of additional difficulties in relations both with the CU member countries and with China.  The social sphere. Kyrgyzstan thinks it is extremely necessary to maintain the closest cooperation with Kazakhstan in this sphere. In addition to purely political, economic, and cultural reasons, this is related to the objective and vitally important need to increase labor migration to Kazakhstan in order to reduce social tension in Kyrgyzstan itself caused by across-the-board unemployment, poverty of most of the population, and the trend toward toughening up of the conditions for migrants in Russia. Based on these considerations, Bishkek is trying to hide its growing irritation with Astana’s policy, camouflaging it with diplomatic rhetoric about the fraternity between the

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two nations. However, Kyrgyzstan is not even trying to systemize the interaction between the populations of the two countries. This would mean Bishkek admitting its complete in- competence in the face of the threat of another social explosion, on the one hand, and demonstrating its acute need for cooperation and integration with Kazakhstan, on the other. Uzbekistan. Kyrgyzstan is not ready for close forms of cooperation with Uzbekistan and is incapable of developing any integrated policy in this vector. This is explained by Bishkek’s lack of vision/understanding of ways to resolve the problems that have accumulated in its relations with Tashkent, as well as its lack of desire to make any compromises. The Kyrgyz authorities are limiting themselves to reacting to the general dynamics of bilateral cooperation and Tashkent’s initiatives/proposals, and are continuing to uphold their position in resolving disputes and incidents that regularly arise on the border. In so doing, it should be noted that Kyrgyzstan is making every attempt to avoid even the slightest possibility of a conflict arising with its stronger neighbor. Nevertheless, the Kyrgyz leadership is unable to control its relations with Uz- bekistan, which it has allowed to run amok.  The political sphere. Bishkek has absolutely no desire to meet Tashkent halfway regarding the construction of Kambarata-1, or to reject the previous demands regarding Uzbekistan’s payment for so-called water deliveries. In so doing, official Bishkek is pushing Uzbekistan to alienate itself from Kyrgyzstan. At present, Bishkek, which is showing some interest only in talks on the disputed territories, is very well aware that possible border incidents will increase the likelihood of new clashes in Kyrgyzstan on ethnic grounds. Nevertheless, Bishkek is unlikely to go for any compromises with the Uzbek side, since the government’s opponents will certainly interpret them as giving in to Uzbekistan and use them in the political struggle, which threatens another hike in the internal crisis.  The economic sphere. Keeping in mind Uzbekistan’s opposition to the development of any forms of economic ties with Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek does not see the point in establishing cooperation with Tashkent in this sphere.  The social sphere. Kyrgyzstan is not only not interested in cooperation, but is also striving for dissociation with Uzbekistan. At the same time, Bishkek is increasing administrative pressure on the Uzbek community living in the south of the republic (it consists of more than 700,000 people) and subjecting its members to political and economic dis- crimination. Such actions are largely caused by Kyrgyzstan’s fear of losing its southern regions, where Uzbeks comprise more than half of the population, on the one hand, and possible interference of its more influential/stronger neighbor, on the other, which moreover also has a historical claim to these areas (at one time they were part of the Kokand khanate). Tajikistan. Kyrgyzstan is theoretically interested in cooperating only on border problems and advancing the project to build a power transmission line through Tajik territory to Afghanistan and the South Asian countries (the CASA project). However, Kyrgyzstan is de facto not ready even for that, which is largely explained by the absence of an economic foundation for developing bilateral relations, the serious armed incident that took place on the border in January 2014 (which greatly complicated interstate relations), and Bishkek’s generally extremely weak control over the processes going on in the country, including in the border areas with Tajikistan. Due to this, Kyrgyz policy in the Tajik vector remains extremely ineffective. Everything largely depends on the willingness of Dushanbe itself to make concessions and advance initiatives to develop bilateral relations.

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 The political sphere. Despite a certain amount of interest in cooperation, Bishkek is not ready for real forms of close cooperation with Dushanbe. This is largely explained by the extreme weakness of the Kyrgyz government and the acute shortage of administrative, financial, and other resources at its disposal. So Kyrgyzstan can only be expected to create some semblance of coordinating political-diplomatic efforts with Tajikistan and finding common points in some border issues and advancing joint transportation and energy projects.  The economic sphere. The Tajik vector will not be of interest to Kyrgyzstan until some of the major transport and infrastructure projects are implemented that join both countries, which will require external support, including financial. In the near future, all hope for any progress in this issue lies on Beijing; the matter primarily concerns construction of the fourth branch of the Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline. However, the implementation of particular projects will mean not only creating a foundation for developing economic relations between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, but also the inevitability of these countries becoming increasingly drawn into the orbit of Chinese influence. It appears that any steps/initiatives by Bishkek to move closer to Beijing will be perceived in Kyrgyz society as an infringement on its sovereignty.  The social sphere. Due to the significant narrowing (compared to Soviet times) of the channels of communication among citizens of the two countries, deterioration of economic ties (which can largely be executed only through Uzbekistan), and the unresolved border problem, Bishkek sees no point in close cooperation with Dushanbe in this sphere. Kyrgyzstan supports the development of contacts with Tajikistan mainly through the Ministry of For- eign Affairs and relevant departments, under the aegis of international organization and institutions, and within the framework of their projects. Turkmenistan. Kyrgyzstan’s interest in Turkmenistan is sporadic, aroused by the occasional discussion of regional problems (such as the Aral disaster or the situation in Afghanistan), certain cooperation issues (within the framework of the CIS and SCO), and the international theme (both within the framework of the U.N. and other organizations and institutions). It can be presumed that Bishkek will only reexamine its policy regarding Ashghabad if Beijing successfully advances transportation projects.

Turkmenistan’s Approaches to Regional Cooperation

Turkmenistan’s approaches to regional cooperation are largely motivated by the following: (1) Ashghabad’s striving to place the stakes exclusively on the bilateral format of relations, which denies the very need and possibility of Turkmenistan’s active participation in multilateral cooperation in CA; (2) Ashghabad’s isolationist and neutral foreign policy, which implies not only the rejection of any close forms of multilateral cooperation (not to mention integration), but also protection from foreign influence, including from neighboring countries; (3) Turkmenistan’s clear orientation toward developing cooperation mainly with large gas con- sumers (China, Russia, and Iran). In this context, the political-diplomatic consultations with the EU and Turkey should also be mentioned regarding possible gas deliveries to Europe bypassing Russia.

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On the one hand, this is making interregional relations secondary, apart from Turkmenistan’s inevitable interaction with transit countries—Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, while on the other, it is obvious that Ashghabad has no interest in sharing revenues from the sale of its gas to support the abstract ideas of regional cooperation and/or supply insolvent Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan with it. So Turkmenistan is only interested in preserving the level of cooperation that has already been reached with neighboring Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan (which are also transit countries of Turkmen gas) in the Central Asian vector. Some revival in Ashghabad’s relations with Dushanbe and Bishkek can only be expected if the project to build the fourth branch of the Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline is implemented, which is to pass through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. It appears that Turkmenistan will only be interested in closer cooperation with the countries of the region, primarily Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, if there is a direct threat to the country’s security, which is unlikely at the moment. Whereby Ashghabad will certainly refrain from interfering in the relations among the other CA states, and particularly from supporting any party to real or potential conflicts. Uzbekistan. Turkmenistan also intends to continue pursuing a policy of good-neighborly relations toward Uzbekistan. Nevertheless, Ashghabad is not willing to cooperate or integrate with Tash- kent and is showing an interest only in selective forms of cooperation, whereby in the most urgent current issues relating primarily to the transit of gas, border security, the functioning of transport routes, and the system of hydrotechnical facilities located along the Amu Darya. The development of other cooperation vectors is not in the offing so far.  The political sphere. Turkmenistan may cooperate with Uzbekistan in the following areas: developing gas pipelines, increasing transit gas deliveries to external markets, organizing transborder rail shipments, and coordinating efforts to ensure the rational use of water resources. Only if a real or direct threat to its own security arises, from radical Islam, for example (which is unlikely so far), will Ashghabad perhaps agree to greater cooperation with Tashkent (although it is possible that it will rely more on assistance from China and/or Russia).  The economic sphere. Turkmenistan is interested in developing primarily commercial ties with Uzbekistan, as well as making use of its transit potential. In turn, Turkmenistan is offering Uzbekistan the possibility of using its transport infrastructure to reach Iran and the Indian Ocean ports. It appears that, for the time being, Ashghabad has no intention of embracing any other forms of economic cooperation. Turkmenistan will most likely continue its policy to strengthen the border and customs regime in order to prevent the smuggling of its goods (primarily petroleum products) and reduce the scope of shuttle trade uncontrolled by the state.  The social sphere. Turkmenistan, which is striving to keep its society closed, will most likely maintain contacts in this sphere only within the framework of official undertakings. We will note that although Turkmenistan is not against interaction of the population in the border zones, there is still a general tendency toward isolation of the people of the two countries. Kazakhstan. In its relations with Astana, Ashghabad is pursuing the same selective cooperation policy as it is in its interaction with Tashkent. However, there is one important exception here—Turk- menistan shares Kazakhstan’s need for joint cooperation in the Caspian. At the moment, Ashghabad has neither claims against Astana, nor intentions to develop close cooperation with it, but one or the other might be possible in the future (probably the more distant future than any time soon).

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 The political sphere. Keeping in mind Ashghabad’s growing (whereby unilateral at the moment) infrastructural dependence on Astana,2 Turkmenistan is only willing to cooperate with Kazakhstan in issues regarding the development of transport and gas-transport routes. Turkmenistan also maintains good-neighborly relations with Kazakhstan on border issues, which is significantly alleviated by the land border through desert and underpopulated areas and the absence of mutual territorial claims. The Caspian vector occupies an important place in Turkmen-Kazakh relations. On the one hand, Ashghabad may show a greater interest in cooperation with Astana in developing and transporting the Caspian’s energy resources to the world market. For the moment though, the big oil and big gas of the Caspian shelf are more propaganda rhetoric than reality. On the other hand, Ashghabad might have several, albeit insignificant, claims against Astana (even in cooperation conditions regarding the sea), which could intensify if there are any serious changes in Iran’s policy. Despite the fact that Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan have already reached an agreement on the delimitation of their sectors in the Caspian, these agreements might be reexamined. Under certain circumstances, Iran (which insists on changing the principles for dividing up the Caspian) will be able to introduce if not corrections, at least elements of tension, nervous- ness, and distrust among the Caspian countries, including Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.  The economic sphere. In conditions of incompatibility of models of development and the absence of Turkmenistan’s significant need for cooperation with Kazakhstan, which is limited to the transport sphere, Ashghabad is only interested in maintaining commercial ties with Astana. Turkmenistan’s increased interest in activating cooperation might be enabled by successful development of cooperation in the Caspian and/or effective functioning of road and rail routes passing through both countries.  The social sphere. Turkmenistan is not willing to cooperate with Kazakhstan and is interested in keeping a certain distance from it. It appears that it is worried about how a much more liberal and information-open Kazakhstan might influence its sociopolitical system. Positive changes can only be expected if dramatic domestic political changes occur in Turkmenistan itself and/or bilateral economic relations reach a qualitatively new level; the first and the second are very unlikely at the moment. Tajikistan. Ashghabad is only willing to engage in selected forms of cooperation with Du- shanbe, and so it is mainly limiting the development of contacts to the leadership level and via foreign ministry channels; it is simply not interested in more intense cooperation. Building the fourth branch of the Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline through Tajikistan and Bei- jing’s active mediation in arranging for regular gas transit through Uzbekistan could have a certain impact on Ashghabad’s position (which is unlikely to undergo any major changes). In this case, some cooperation might be established between the two countries, particularly if China pays for the deliveries of Turkmen gas.  The political sphere. In responding to Dushanbe’s striving for rapprochement, Ashghabad is only willing to maintain a suitable level of diplomatic politeness.  The economic sphere. Turkmenistan is mainly rendering humanitarian assistance to Ta- jikistan. Cooperation between Ashghabad and Dushanbe might acquire real features after Turkmen gas begins to be delivered to/through Tajikistan, which will be carried out with

2 The transportation of Turkmen gas in the Russian and Chinese directions and perhaps the functioning of the North- South main railroad in the future.

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China’s assistance. An invisible, but nevertheless palpable, presence of a third party in the relations of these two countries is capable of leading not only to Tajikistan’s loss of its economic independence, but also to Beijing using the normalization of relations between Ashghabad and Dushanbe in its own interests.  The social sphere. Turkmenistan is not willing and does not intend to pay any significant attention to developing cooperation with Tajikistan, limiting itself only to carrying out official diplomatic and cultural measures. Kyrgyzstan. Turkmenistan is not experiencing a need to develop any form of cooperation with geographically distant Kyrgyzstan, which is in a state of political chaos, economic decline, and social turbulence. Until Bishkek itself shows an interest in developing relations, cooperation between these countries will be limited to non-binding political and diplomatic contacts at the level of their leader- ships (for example, within the CIS and U.N.), representatives of foreign ministries, and water specialists (within the International Foundation for Saving the Aral). Even if the project for building the fourth branch of the Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline is implemented, Ashghabad’s position is unlikely to change.

Conclusion

The unwillingness of the CA countries to engage in regional cooperation is primarily explained by their lack of understanding of the economic, political, and social dividends/advantages to be gained from mutual cooperation and mutual integration; there are essentially no mechanisms that might promote its formation. In the political sphere, where there is no unifying idea or project, the CA countries simply have no other choice but to develop strictly national projects and corresponding mechanisms (for example, to advance the idea of national independence, national uniqueness, national selectness), which, in turn, will lead only to greater national egoism. It seems that the largely compulsory orientation of the CA countries toward exclusively narrow national interests presupposes their growing unwillingness to give them up for the sake of regional cooperation. This is all leading to the region’s states being increasingly against the idea of creating any kind of supranational structures. In the economic sphere, the CA countries have been compelled to orient themselves mainly toward extra-regional economic ties, which are more important for them than interregional. It seems that it is precisely the objective, whereby extremely strong dependence of the CA countries (commercial, financial, and technological) on external forces, that is greatly limiting their opportunities to develop regional cooperation. In the social sphere, where there is no political and economic foundation for regional cooperation, no integration project can be formulated that is capable of consolidating the CA countries in any way. It seems that it is precisely for this reason that only those ideas and projects are being developed in the CA countries that are related to narrow national economic priorities. They envisage the cultivation among the population of historical self-consciousness and national pride, but in some cases promote the formation of an image of an external enemy that is “to blame for all the problems.” As a result, the main problem (whereby resolvable) is obvious, which consists primarily in the absence of stable mechanisms of systemic analytical provision and support of regional cooperation. However, throughout the entire post-Soviet period, not one CA state has made any serious attempt to organize and carry out even individual studies on regional cooperation or, in particular, on creating mechanisms to boost cooperation and integration. This is mainly why there has not been, is not, and most likely will not be any understanding among the ruling elites and expert circles of the region’s countries of what algorithms specifically 76 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 need to be followed in order to launch regional cooperation. This problem is also aggravated by the fact that the CA states do not have any independent strategic planning experience. In Soviet times, this was the exclusive prerogative of Moscow, while the national elites simply saw to it that the direc- tives and instructions handed out by the Center were executed. An external driving force that can mobilize the CA countries to engage in regional cooperation is needed to prevent further disintegration and fragmentation of the region and stop any negative and/ or unfavorable scenarios from being played out there. For it to work, the recommendations offered below should be implemented.  Recommendation No. 1 (basic condition): creating a permanent mechanism of analytical provision and support of efforts to develop regional cooperation in CA. It is proposed to create a special regional brain center (hereafter Center) on cooperation issues in CA. The main tasks of this Center should be analytical provision and support of regional cooperation in CA, drawing up programs, schemes, and algorithms for its development and stimulation, searching for driving force projects and breakthrough solutions for the problems existing in the region, and forming temporary analytical groups on specific topics and vectors.  Recommendation No. 2: creating mechanisms for supporting the policy of the CA countries in relation to each other. It is proposed to create several mechanisms that could promote the resolution of key problems on the way to development of each of the CA countries and decrease the likelihood of conflicts in the region as a whole.  Recommendation No. 3: creating mechanisms to boost bilateral cooperation. It is proposed to create several mechanisms that, at the initial stage at least, could promote a reduction in tension in bilateral relations, in so doing forming a basis for possible cooperation. It is proposed that these mechanisms be primarily applied to Uzbek-Tajik, Uzbek-Kyrgyz, and Kyrgyz-Tajik relations, which are characterized by high conflict potential.  Recommendation No. 4: creating mechanisms for boosting multilateral cooperation. It is obvious that at the current stage boosting regional cooperation in CA in the five-way format will be extremely difficult or even impossible. So a principally important step might be to encourage cooperation in at least the trilateral format, which in itself would mean a significant breakthrough/withdrawal from a strict bilateral framework. It can be claimed with a high degree of certainty that performing these recommendations will make it possible to slow down, stop, and, possibly, reverse the disintegration and fragmentation of the region and allow the countries belonging to it to reach a level of real cooperation that even goes as far as integration. The trilateral format would be most expedient for resolving hydropower problems. In this respect, we will remind you that Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan use the resources of the Syr Darya basin, while Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan use those of the Amu Darya basin. It should be absolutely clear that recommendations Nos. 2, 3, and 4 are only a certain set of ideas; real and systemic work can only be developed on the basis of recommendation No. 1, which proposes creating a permanent mechanism of analytical provision and support of efforts to develop regional cooperation in CA. Until this is done, all the talk about regional cooperation will most likely remain wishful thinking, which is increasingly in stark contradiction to grim reality.

77 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS CENTRAL ASIAN POLITICS REGARDING WATER USE OF TRANSBOUNDARY RIVERS

Sergei ZHILTSOV D.Sc. (Political Science), Head of the Chair of Political Science and Political Philosophy, Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Moscow, the Russian Federation)

Aynur BIMENOVA Ph.D. Candidate at the Academy of State Administration under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Astana, Kazakhstan)

ABSTRACT

his article analyzes the situation regarding water use. A comparison is made of garding the water resources of the the international legal base that regulates T transboundary rivers that developed conflicts involving the water resources of in Central Asia after the collapse of the So- transboundary rivers and the legal docu- viet Union when the previous mechanism of ments of the Central Asian states. The pa- mutual account of the interests of all the per analyzes the reasons for the failure to Central Asian republics broke down. Partic- create a multisided mechanism for resolving ular attention is given to studying the factors the disputes that arise among the Central that have an impact on the formation and Asian countries with respect to water use of implementation of Central Asian politics re- the transboundary rivers.

KEYWORDS: water resources, water apportioning, transboundary rivers, Central Asia, hydropower.

Introduction

Central Asia, to which Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan belong, has been experiencing a water shortage for many centuries. Life in the region has always been based on farming and cattle-breeding, while water has always been the main restricting factor. After they gained their independence, the former Central Asian republics focused their efforts on raising the economy and forming new state institutions. This left one of the most important problems, distribution of the water resources of the transboundary rivers among the countries of the region, unre-

78 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 solved. What is more, the formation of surface water runoff by the largest transboundary rivers is a complex phenomenon that engenders economic, hydropower, environmental, and political problems. A large amount of the water used in the region comes from the two largest rivers—the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya, which originate in the Pamir and Tien Shan mountains. The Syr Darya runs from Kyrgyzstan through Tajikistan to Uzbekistan (passing through the densely populated Fer- ghana Valley) and Kazakhstan, while the Amu Darya runs from Tajikistan to Uzbekistan and Turk- menistan. The water resources of the Syr Darya, the long-term average annual runoff of which is equal to 37 cubic km, are distributed as follows: Kyrgyzstan accounts for 74%, Uzbekistan for 14%, Kazakhstan for 9%, and Tajikistan for 3% of the total runoff. More than 80% of the runoff of the Amu Darya, the long-term average annual runoff of which is equal to 78 cubic km, is formed in Tajikistan, 6% in Uzbekistan, 2.4% in Kyrgyzstan, 3.5% in Turkmenistan (with Iran), and 7.9% in Afghanistan. The water runoff regime is the main reason for the aggravated relations between the upstream (Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan) and downstream countries (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) of the transboundary rivers. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are the most industrially developed countries and possess large supplies of oil, gas, and other resources. These countries have the largest populations among the states of the region. Located downstream, they depend greatly on the upstream countries, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which are better supplied with water resources and essentially control the main runoffs of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, the main water arteries of Central Asia. Water has turned into a source of potential sociopolitical, ethnonational, and interstate conflicts. This is due to the differences in the policies of the countries situated on the upper and lower reaches of the transboundary rivers. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, which control 80% of all surface water reserves in the region according to different estimates and possess significant water resources, use water to generate electricity not only in the summer, but also in the winter. The reservoirs built during Soviet times on the upper reaches of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya make it possible to regulate the amount of water that goes to the countries situated on the lower reaches. This powerful lever of influence gives Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan control over their neighboring countries Kazakhstan, Uzbeki- stan, and Turkmenistan. When the newly independent states formed in Central Asia, the question of who owns the water arose, since it, along with other resources, turned out to be on different sides of the state borders. Water shortage and the striving of each of the states to make maximum use of it and exclusively in their own interests are aggravating the situation in the region. Keeping in mind the high birth rate and unemployment in Central Asia, the water problem has turned into a serious destabilizing factor in the region.1 Climate change is having a significant impact on the policy of the Central Asian countries. Cen- tral Asia is experiencing more and more low-water years, and in the foreseeable future, they could become the norm. In the last 50 years, the glaciers that feed the Amu Darya and Syr Darya have shrunk in size by almost 40%, which has significantly reduced their runoff volume. According to the forecasts, the population of the Central Asian republics will increase by 2025 and demand even more water.

Period of Non-Conflict Use of Transboundary Water Resources

In the Soviet Union, there was essentially no question of the Central Asian republics forming and implementing their own policy. Water distribution and use was decided centrally by the

1 See: S.S. Zhiltsov, Postsovetskoe prostranstvo: tendentsii razvitia, Edel-M, Moscow, 2001, 199 pp.

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U.S.S.R. Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Management based on a unified regional economic and agricultural plan. The Soviet system of inter-republic water relations was based on the water-apportioning limits and the balance of contract obligations between the republics and the Union Center. Runoff regulation of the transboundary rivers was aimed at balanced economic development of all five Central Asian republics, combining electricity manufacture and development of the agrarian sector of the economy.2 The reservoirs operated for the maximum benefit of all concerned.3 The reservoirs built on the upper reaches of the rivers helped to solve this task. They made it possible to regulate the runoff going to the republics situated downstream and prevent inter-republic conflicts. Priority in Central Asian development went to irrigation, primarily to irrigated farming in Ka- zakhstan and Uzbekistan. For example, regulation of the runoff of the Syr Darya by means of the reservoirs of the Naryn-Syr Darya cascade was carried out in keeping with the irrigation regime. The annual release of water from the Toktogul reservoir during the summer amounted to 75%. In turn, Kyrgyzstan obtained raw resources from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. A similar approach was used with respect to the Amu Darya, the runoff of which was regulated by the Nurek reservoir.

Central Asia’s Water Problems after the Collapse of the Soviet Union

The collapse of the Soviet Union meant the collapse of the unified system. The water-apportioning problem proved the most difficult for the newly independent Central Asian countries in this respect.4 The Soviet system, which essentially collapsed overnight, gave rise to a mass of mutually unregulated claims. They primarily applied to determining the volumes of water intake in the conditions of the market economy, the weaker investment flows into the water consumption sector, changes in the operating mode of the large reservoirs (transfer from irrigation to energy), and other issues. For example, the striving to increase hydropower production by the upstream countries opposed the interests of the downstream states, whose irrigation policy required a different approach to water use. Similar discrepancies and differences in interests in hydropower resource use also aggravated the situation in the region between separate countries and had a negative effect on interstate relations. Central Asia is known for its extreme inequality in water distribution. The region is situated in a zone that experiences periodical droughts, the consequences of which primarily affect the cultivation of agricultural crops that require irrigation. After declaring their independence and building market states, the Central Asian countries began conducting their own policy regarding the control and distribution of water resources. Their own plans for hydropower resource use came to the foreground. Each of the Central Asian states began pursuing its national interests when carrying out water management policy, caring little about how they correlated with the interests of their neighbors and impacted the situation in the region as a whole.

2 See: T. Sarsembekov, A. Mironenkov, “Dva v odnom: mozhno li razdelit vodu i gidroenergiiu,” Mirovaia energetika, No. 8, 2007, pp. 50-51. 3 See: S.N. Griniaev, A.N. Fomin, Aktualnye voprosy primeneniia mekhanizma birzhevoi torgovli dlia resheniia vodno- energeticheskikh problem stran Tsentralnoi Azii. Analiticheskiy doklad, Center of Strategic Estimates and Forecasts, Moscow, 2009, p. 3. 4 See: S.S. Zhiltov, I.S. Zonn, “Borba za vodu,” Indeks bezopasnosti, No. 3, 2008, pp. 49-62.

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Factors relating to their economic development and social processes have a huge influence on the policy of the Central Asian countries. The demographic situation is a key problem for Central Asia. The increase in population in a situation where water is at a premium is pushing the countries toward discord and intensifying rivalry among them. Water resources in the Central Asian countries are one of the main factors determining the state of most branches of the economy, primarily agriculture. Water shortage and the decrease in quality of the river runoff are making it more difficult to resolve socioeconomic and environmental problems. This is why stable access to water resources has become a priority issue for the region’s countries. In this region of the world, all water reserves have essentially been exhausted. The runoff of the Amu Darya is regulated by 96%, while that of the Syr Darya by more than 85%. Most of the water resources are used for irrigation needs.

The Central Asian Countries Draw Up Their Water Policy

After gaining their independence, the Central Asian countries tried to rely on the experience accumulated during Soviet times in their relations. An important political step was the initiative of the heads of the national water departments of the Central Asian countries to adopt the Tashkent Declaration in October 1991, which became the starting point of the negotiation process among the Central Asian states in the use of the water resources of the transboundary rivers. The statement envisaged joint water use on general principles, keeping in mind the interests of all the parties.5 In further- ance of the Tashkent Declaration, on 18 February, 1992, an intergovernmental agreement called On Cooperation in the Joint Management and Protection of Water Resources of Interstate Sources and an agreement on the establishment of an Interstate Coordination Water Commission (ICWC) were signed in Alma-Ata (Kazakhstan). The countries of the region confirmed their intention to preserve the existing water management regime of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya basins and adhere to the current approaches to the distribution of transboundary water resources. The matter concerned memorandum No. 413 of the Scientific and Technical Council of the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Land Reclama- tion and Water Management for the Syr Darya signed in February 1984 and memorandum No. 566 of the Scientific and Technical Council of the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Management for the Amu Darya signed in September 1987. These documents envisaged the annual distribution of water among the countries of the Aral Sea basin, although they did not take into account seasonal distribution.6 Soon it became clear that the contracts and agreements signed in Soviet times did not correspond to the policy carried out by the upstream countries of the transboundary rivers. The most acute interstate disputes emerged with respect to the water use regimes in the basin of the Syr Darya River and the reservoirs of the Naryn-Syr Darya cascade, primarily the Toktogul section.7 In Soviet times, these reservoirs regulated the runoff of the Syr Darya in the regime used for irrigation in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

5 M.L. Pikulina, “Problema transgranichnykh vodnykh resursov v Tsentralnoi Asii,” Kazakhstan Spektr, No. 1, 2013, pp. 31-42. 6 See: B.A. Iskandarkhonova, “Pravovoe regulirovanie ispolzovaniia transgranichnykh rek v Tsentralnoi Azii,” Moskovskiy zhurnal mezhdunarodnogo prava, No. 3, 2007, pp. 140-153. 7 See: E.M. Kuzmina, Geopolitika Tsentralnoi Azii, Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 2007, p. 68.

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Signs of conflict first appeared in 1993 when Uzbekistan left Kyrgyzstan without gas for a non- payment debt. In response, Bishkek released water from the Toktogul reservoir.8 Kyrgyzstan explained the change in operation of the Toktogul reservoir by the need to produce electricity in the winter and save it in the summer. The following objective factors prompted Kyrgyzstan to change its water use policy: the break in economic ties within the region and the increase in cost of hydrocarbon resources. As a result, Kyrgyzstan, like Tajikistan, encountered an energy crisis, which increased their interest in unilaterally changing operation of the reservoirs and using the water resources exclusively in their own interests. After 1993, the operating mode of the Toktogul cascade was changed. Water began to accumulate in the summer and was released in the winter. This change was dictated by Kyrgyzstan’s interest in generating electricity in the winter. Despite the difference in interests, in 1993, the Central Asian countries again tried to eliminate the disputes over water apportioning and joint water use. An Agree- ment on Cooperation in Joint Management, Use, and Protection of the Water Resources of Interstate Sources was adopted. However, this document did not come into force either. In 1995, the Central Asian countries made another attempt to resolve the disputes in water use by adopting the Nukus Declaration. It envisaged the importance of earlier signed agreements that regulate water relations. The countries of the region confirmed their adherence to the principle of water use in the interests of all the states. Then several more documents were adopted, but they were not able to resolve the conflicts among the Central Asian countries either. In 1998, an agreement was entered among Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan On Use of the Hydropower Resources of the Basin of the Syr Darya River. Tajikistan joined the document in 1999. This was a framework document, although it set forth compensation principles. However, it did not describe the economic mechanism of relations between hydropower and irrigation.9 In the end, the downstream countries began experiencing a water shortage in the summer, during the high consumption period, and had to deal with the waterlogging and flooding of water facilities in the winter. The documents adopted did not help to resolve the problem of water distribution of the transboundary rivers since they were not underpinned with practical compensation mechanisms. The downstream countries were not willing to compensate the upstream countries for the losses from the change in operating mode of the reservoirs. Moreover, each of the states of the region was counting on resolving the water problems that emerged independently and achieve a positive result by putting pressure on their neighbors. The matter essentially concerned the contradictions in the national development plans of all the Central Asian states.10 This resulted in a periodical aggravation of interstate relations between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan regarding water use of the transboundary rivers.

Transboundary Watercourses of Central Asia and International Law

The reasons for the conflicts among the countries of the region regarding the water resources of the transboundary rivers should also be sought in the provisions set forth in national legislation. The

8 See: V. Guseinov, A. Goncharenko, “Vodnye resursy TsAR,” in: Tsentralnaia Aziia. Geopolitika i ekonomika regiona, Krasnaia zvezda, Moscow, 2010, pp. 68-88. 9 See: G. Petrov, “Conflict of Interests Between Hydropower Engineering and Irrigation in Central Asia: Causes and Solutions,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 3, 2010, pp. 52-65. 10 See: K.P. Borishpolets, “Voda kak perpetuum Mobile tsentralnoaziatskoi politiki,” Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta, Ser. 12, Political Sciences, No. 5, 2010, p. 29.

82 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 fundamental documents of the Central Asian countries clearly position water as a resource belonging to the state. For example, the Water Code of Kazakhstan (Art 8), adopted in July 2003, talks about the state’s exclusive ownership to water resources. A similar provision is contained in the Kyrgyzstan Law on Water (Art 5) adopted in January 1994. In the Water Code of Tajikistan (Art 4), adopted in December 1993, water resources are viewed as the exclusive property of the state. Uzbekistan’s Law on Water and Water Use (Art 3), adopted in May 1993, says that water resources belong to the state. A similar position is reflected in Turkmenistan’s Water Code adopted in June 1993. These documents were subsequently supplemented and clarified, but the gist remained unchanged—water resources are the exclusive property of the state, which regulates their use at its own discretion. This approach is manifested particularly clearly in the upstream countries, which have begun upholding their right to the possession of water resources. In 2001, a Law on Interstate Use of Water Facilities, Water Resources, and Water Installations of the Kyrgyz Republic was adopted in Kyrgyz- stan. This document emphasizes the country’s right to water resources and water facilities within the state borders, and also notes that water has a cost value. Tajikistan has taken a similar position. The region’s countries have been adhering to their own ideas about water use of the transboundary rivers. What is more, many of the internal laws of the Central Asian countries, as well as bilateral and multilateral agreements, give no definition of “transboundary rivers.” The terms “water resource,” “hydropower resource,” and so on are mainly used. This approach contradicts the provisions of international law that examine transboundary water resource issues and gives rise to significant difficulties in the use of international legislation.11 The U.N. adopted several documents regulating the use and protection of international watercourses. It is worth singling out the Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Water- courses and International Lakes (March 1992) and the Convention on the Law of the Non-Naviga- tional Uses of International Watercourses adopted in May 1997. According to these documents, transboundary water resources should be developed jointly, keeping in mind the mutual interests of those states these rivers flow through. And although the conventions do not provide clear answers about ways to resolve the disputes, they nevertheless could become the basis for subsequent formation of a legislative framework applicable to the transboundary rivers of Central Asia. The Central Asian states, apart from Kazakhstan, did not ratify the international documents and continue to strive at reaching bilateral agreements in implementing their policy regarding the water resources of the transboundary rivers. The insufficiently clear understanding and very weak application by the Central Asian states of the principles and regulations of international law in the use and protection of transboundary resources have been restricting factors in resolving the problems in the region.12

Policy of the Central Asian Countries: Between Irrigation and Hydropower

Division of the countries into those interested in the energy operating mode of the reservoirs and those in favor of the irrigation regime is having an effect on their approaches to forming and carrying out their policy regarding the water resources of transboundary rivers.

11 See: B.A. Iskandarkhonova, op. cit. 12 See: Zh.M. Amanzholov, “Mnogostoronnie mezhdunarodnye dogovory v obespechenii vodnoi bezopasnosti v Tsentralnoi Azii,” Moskovskiy zhurnal mezhdunarodnogo prava, No. 4, 2007, pp. 226-244.

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Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan hold similar positions regarding the use of the region’s transboundary water resources. These states are most actively in favor of developing water resources and building hydropower facilities, seeing this as an opportunity to strengthen their energy security and an additional source of income. Kyrgyzstan adheres to the position that the agreements signed among the countries on transboundary water resources are infringing on the country’s interests. Official Bishkek finds fault with the agreements signed after 1992 since they enforce adherence to the Soviet system of transboundary water use, which was based on taking into account the interests of all the sides and oriented toward operation of the reservoirs in the irrigation mode. Adoption by Kyrgyzstan of the Law on Interstate Use of Water Facilities, Water Resources, and Water Installations in June 2011 is not accidental. Kyrgyzstan proposes reexamining the mechanisms of reciprocal payments with neighboring countries for use of their hydropower installations in the irrigation mode. To this end, proposals are being put forward to introduce payment for water as a separate resource with economic value, or the payment of compensation for the maintenance of water infrastructure.13 The Kyrgyzstan authorities have calculated that if Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan begin paying for water, at least at a minimum level, this will bring the country around $350 million annually. Neighboring states that belong to the same hydropower system as Kyrgyzstan do not want to cover all its costs for maintaining hydrotechnical facilities. Expenses on keeping hydropower plants in operation and the damage incurred from unused flooded territories amounts to around $120 million annually, which is equal to almost one fifth of Kyrgyzstan’s budget. Tajikistan holds similar views and is persistently advancing the idea of building new large hydropower facilities on the transboundary rivers. For example, Tajikistan still insists on building the Rogun Hydropower Plant, which Uzbekistan is categorically against. If it is built, Tajikistan counts not only on resolving the problem of supplying the entire country with electricity, but also exporting it to Afghanistan and Pakistan. So far implementation of Tajikistan’s plans is prevented by the absence of an investor and insufficient funds of its own. These factors, as well as the environmental and technology-related risks, are not dampening Tajikistan’s resolve to finish building this facility. The downstream countries have been forced to react to the policy of their neighbors who control the runoff of the transboundary rivers. Turkmenistan is implementing large-scale projects to create artificial reservoirs in the Karakum Desert, which should join up with the Amu Darya canal. The national program titled Strategy of Economic, Political, and Cultural Development of Turkmenistan until 2020 envisages that the total volume of all the country’s reservoirs should reach 11 bcm. Imple- mentation of such a large-scale project might aggravate the problem of supplying the neighboring Central Asian states located in the basin of the Amu Darya River with water and worsen the environmental situation in the territory adjacent to the Aral Sea. Kazakhstan has adopted several decisions that should improve the water situation. They include a decision to restore the Small Aral, a change in the structure of agricultural crops cultivated in the country, and the introduction of water-saving technology intended to reduce water use. Moreover, Kazakhstan has built the Koksarai counter-regulator, which is balancing out the seasonal changes in water resources. However, the more water taken, the more water shortage problems the region’s countries encounter. As a result, disputes are shifting to the political sphere and causing interstate controversy.14

13 See: B. Auelbaev, T. Erzhanov, “Politika stran Tsentralnoi Azii i vodno-energeticheskie problemy regiona,” Analytic (Kazakhstan), No. 3, 2009, pp. 13-18. 14 See: E. Borisova, “Tadzhikistan-Uzbekistan: borba za vodnye resursy,” Istoriia i sovremennost, March 2011, pp. 93- 106.

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Uzbekistan accounts for almost half of the water consumed in the region. In this respect, any change in the use of transboundary rivers or the construction of new hydropower facilities affects Uzbekistan’s interests. Uzbekistan’s agrarian sector is a significant factor in defining the country’s position regarding the distribution of transboundary water resources. In this matter, Uzbekistan must cooperate with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Water resources, primarily the amount that reaches Uz- bekistan, are having a direct influence on the amount of cotton grown. Water shortage forced Uzbeki- stan to adopt a decision in 2008 about reducing the cotton-growing area. There is also a problem with soil degradation due to wear and tear on the irrigation grid. The absence of water-saving technology and insufficient funds for improving the land reclamation system are leading to a shortage of irrigation water. The upstream countries, in contrast to the downstream countries, have development prospects. According to different estimates, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are using no more than 10% of their hydropower potential, while agriculture, which is being actively developed by the downstream countries, with decreasing water volumes and increasing populations, is encountering serious difficulties. What is more, in recent years the water resources of the transboundary rivers have been completely depleted. As early as the end of the 1980s, scientists indicated complete depletion of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers. This was the reason for the disaster that met the Aral Sea.15 On the whole, water resources are shrinking in Central Asia, which is related to glacier shrinking and climate change. This is making it difficult for the downstream countries to increase farm land and develop industry.

Conflict Potential

During the more than twenty years that have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the countries of the region have not managed to overcome the contradictions in water apportioning and come up with a mechanism of mutual account of their diametrically opposite interests, preferring to orient them exclusively toward national interests that prevail over interstate relations. What is more, the interstate contradictions are being intensified by historically accumulated discrepancies.16 The countries have still not been able to reach an agreement about direct payment for water resources, and payment is carried out by means of barter—gas for water (Uzbekistan—Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) or water for electricity (Tajikistan—Kazakhstan), and so on. All the known areas of rational water use in Central Asia have their technical and economically justified limits. In Central Asia, disputes have been going on for more than one year now about how to use and share the region’s water resources. Approximately 40% of all the drinking water reserves are found in Kyrgyzstan. The republic, with its five-million population and 6% of arable farming land, requires a tenth of the entire annual runoff of the transboundary rivers to meet its needs. The rest goes to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and partially to Turkmenistan. In the last decade, the problems among the Central Asian countries in the hydropower industry have intensified. The upstream countries are experiencing a chronic energy shortage in the winter, while the downstream countries suffer an acute shortage of water necessary for farming needs. Ac- cording to different estimates, current water resources can only meet the Central Asia region’s needs

15 See: I.S. Zonn, M.G. Gliants, Aralskaia entsiklopediia, M.O., Moscow, 2008. 16 See: B.R. Syrlybaeva, “Upravlenie vodnymi resursami kak faktor obespecheniia bezopasnosti Tsentralnoaziatskogo regiona,” Aktualnye problemy bezopasnosti i sotrudnichestva v Kaspiisko-Tsentralnoaziatskom regione, Papers of the 11th Annual Almaty Conference (Almaty), 20 June, 2013, KISI, Almaty, 2013, pp. 119-148.

85 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS until 2020-2025. During the indicated period, the sum total of water consumption by the priority branches could reach a level beyond which water requirements can be met only by reducing water supply for farming needs, which will make it necessary to reduce the area of irrigated land in the region. And this is all occurring against the background of accelerated demographic growth. The water situation in Central Asia has become one of the main sources of potential interstate conflicts. Access to water resources, primarily of the transboundary rivers, has intensified competition among the region’s countries. For example, in recent years, the water of the Syr Darya hardly reaches the middle of Uzbekistan’s territory, the western regions of which are already essentially completely desiccated. According to the forecasts, in 15-20 years, the region’s water resources will decrease by at least one third. According to the U.N., by 2040, the volume of Kyrgyzstan’s annual runoff will amount to 19 cubic km, while in 2006, this index was equal to 55 cubic km. Meanwhile, in just the next ten-fifteen years, the need for water in the region could increase by 40%, which cannot help but have an impact on the region’s conflict potential. Water shortage largely restricts the economic development of the Central Asian states.17 Resolving the problems of joint hydropower use in Central Asia is not only of decisive economic, but also of enormous environmental, political, and international significance. It is essentially one of the main factors for forming a zone of stability, economic development, and environmental security in the region. The large number of signed documents has not brought the Central Asian countries closer to rational and mutually beneficial water use. However, most of them note the need to adhere to principles of common interests and not permit action that could be of detriment to another side. Despite the agreements the countries of the regions periodically reach, there is still no mechanism of joint water management. The contradictory approaches to resolving the water problems create the main barriers to the adoption of efficient measures aimed at integrated management of the hydropower complex. The absence of clear laws regulating the water use of the transboundary rivers is also making it difficult to look for mutually beneficial solutions. The Central Asian countries are experiencing significant difficulties in juxtaposing fuel and energy resources and water resources, which each of the countries of the region is still offering for barter.18 The absence of an effective mechanism of water distribution, water use management, and conflict resolution, as well as the low level of information exchange on water quality issues and its use constitute the obstacles hindering regional cooperation in water use. Moreover, the littoral countries are trying to share the gain from access to water, and not the water itself, which is leading to difficulties in the joint use of the transboundary rivers.

Conclusion

The intergovernmental agreements called on to regulate water use of Central Asia’s transboundary rivers have not removed this problem from the agenda. In this respect, the Central Asian states are still placing the priority on drawing up a mechanism that takes into account the interests of all the Central Asian countries in the use of hydropower potential. The Central Asian countries should stop directly juxtaposing price parameters for the water and energy resources supplied, since this is making it difficult to draw up a coordinated mechanism

17 See: M.L. Pikulina, op. cit. 18 See: B. Auelbaev, T. Erzhanov, op. cit.

86 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 for their use. What is more, the region’s countries should keep in mind the indirect losses relating to resolving the consequences involved in violating access to hydropower resources. The matter could concern establishing a supranational body consisting of representatives of the region’s countries endowed with the right to draw up a coordinated policy in the use of hydropower potential and keeping in mind the aggregate gains and losses for each of the countries. This work presumes developing a joint balance for managing the region’s hydropower resources. It should be based on calcu- lating the needs of each of the region’s countries for water and energy resources and ways to reach a compromise for their use. Without taking mutual account of each other’s interests, the countries of the region will not be able to reach a compromise. A return to the Soviet system of limited water supply and compensation will make it possible to improve interstate relations and meet the interests of all sides. If the upstream countries build hydropower facilities, this will lead to further infringement on the interests of the downstream countries, which with the current reservoir use regime does not bode well for improving the situation regarding access to water resources. For more than twenty years, diametrically opposite processes have been going on in the upstream and downstream countries of the transboundary rivers. While the downstream countries are drawing up programs for reducing water shortage (the latest example is the President of Kazakhstan’s approval of a water management program in April 2014), the upstream countries are elaborating large-scale plans to build new major hydropower plants, by means of which it is hoped to resolve the economic problems. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, which intend to use large amounts of water, are stick- ing to this course, particularly since there are specific conditions for this. Kyrgyzstan uses around 25% of the 49 cubic km of water resources that form in its territory, which allows it to make plans for increasing this index.19 The talks between the upstream and downstream countries should go beyond the amount of water discharged and electricity generation indices. The matter should concern drawing up joint action plans that include bank strengthening work, the resolution of environmental problems, the formation of a common electricity market, and taking account of the needs of the downstream countries for water resources in the summer. Only then can the Central Asian countries overcome their acute differences and establish good-neighborly relations. Otherwise, the countries of the region will continue to use energy blackmail against each other. So only by forming a mechanism of joint hydropower management can the region’s countries create conditions for sustainable development and reduce the conflict potential. Correspondingly, the key task for the five Central Asian states is to draw up joint actions plans for the use and protection of the water resources of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya.20

19 See: B. Yanush-Paletta, “Pravovye mekhanizmy sotrudnichestva v oblasti upravleniia transgranichnymi vodotokami v Tsentralnoi Azii,” in: Central Asian Scientific Practical Conference on Water Cooperation of the Central Asian Countries—20 Years: Experience of the Past and Tasks for the Future, Almaty, 20-21 September, 2012, Kazakh-German University, Kazakhstan, 2012, pp. 14-15. 20 See: N.K. Kipshakbaev, “Vodnomu sotrudichestvu stran Tsentralnoi Azii—20 let: opyt proshlogo i problemy budushego,” Vodnoe khoziaistvo Kazakhstana, No. 2 (52), 2013, pp. 15-20.

87 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS CONTEMPORARY KYRGYZSTAN: THE ONTOLOGICAL ROOTS OF INSTABILITY

Dosmir UZBEKOV Professor, Chair of International Relations, Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University (Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic)

Ilyas KURMANOV Ph.D. (Political Science), Deputy Director, Institute of Parliamentarianism and Democracy (Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic)

ABSTRACT

he authors undertake the challenging viet political and spiritual legacy and which task of going to the roots of the politi- has been exhausted by two coups, demon- T cal instability that enveloped Kyrgyz- strates a very low level of cohesion and stan during the period of democratic transit weakened political will. and discover that the bureaucratic state can- The authors describe the ways and not adapt democratic values to the local means that will help the state and society conditions and, most importantly, does not remove the obstacles and remedy the short- want to do this. The political elite of Kyrgyz- comings to finally acquire political stability stan, which remains under the spell of So- and move forward.

KEYWORDS: administration, nomenklatura bureaucracy, archaization, traditionalism, conformist bureaucracy, democratization, color revolutions, democratic reforms, Kyrgyzstan.

Introduction

Practically all international programs implemented in Kyrgyzstan by the UNDP, OSCE, USAID, EC, etc. after the March 2005 and April 2010 revolutions are geared toward political stability and peace-building. They include the following: Development of Parliamentarianism through Political Stability, Judicial Reform through Political Stability, the Rule of Law through Peace-Build- ing, etc. These and other programs are visual confirmation that the world is concerned about the political situation in post-revolutionary Kyrgyzstan, where society no longer believes in the competence and honesty of the authorities and, more important, that they can be trusted; there is no faith in the potential of progress, while respect for the law and state institutions has dropped to the lowest point. 88 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015

Why indeed is a state that has, according to official statements, been building democracy for over two decades now, living in chaos; why has its leading position in democratic transformations in the region not brought economic wellbeing; and why is the country in the grips of permanent instability? What is going on in the republic anyway—democratization, liberalization, parliamentarization, or something else? The European countries achieved their political, economic, social, and cultural prosperity because the liberal-conservative and social-democratic parties brought to power through general elections alter- nated at the helm, the former filling the state coffers due to accelerated economic development and the latter spending the money on social needs. Well-versed in politics, the Western electorate knows what the country needs and which party should be invited to rule. In Eurasia, the situation is different. The liberal and democratic parties are not developed enough, therefore the electorate is fairly vague about its preferences—there is no clear party space anyway. The politically naïve voters support those who promise more, or those who are currently in power. The party field is crowded by pro-government centrist parties dominated by former party and state bureaucrats still devoted to the Soviet political principles (reliance on the leaders, intolerance of independent thinking and criticism and, hence, repressions, etc.). After two so-called revolutions, the former C.P.S.U. members remain in power. Roza Otunbaeva, Interim President of Kyrgyzstan in 2010-2011, was a Soviet functionary at the city level, while President Almazbek Atambaev worked at the district level. This explains why the democratic reforms are neither deep-cutting nor dynamic; in most cases, they are warped. The local leaders and reformers are more concerned about their own well-being than about the country’s future, progress, and prosperity. More and more often, the political organizations working in Kyrgyz- stan point to “weakening political will” in their reports. Lack of freedom is the best soil for liberal parties, formed to fight suppression, to push the country toward democratization, the stage at which social-democratic parties join the game. In Eur- asia, and in the greater part of the post-Soviet space, for that matter, liberals and social-democrats are not wanted. The bearers of corresponding ideologies are NGOs, rather than political parties. How- ever, the NGOs remain outside the election process and, therefore, the representative power bodies. For example, in the early 20th century, the Russian political field was dominated by liberal and social- democratic parties (the Constitutional Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Octobrists, and Menshe- viks); in the late 20th century, there were no parties that represented these political trends: they were either not needed or distorted. The social-democratic parties do not preach social-democracy, which explains why in Eurasia democratization is a slow and torturous process. In Central Asia, color revolutions have proven ineffective; well-organized former party bureaucracy and oligarchs inevitably come to power, while the new revolutionary structures drift toward authoritarian rule. This has happened in Kyrgyzstan several times because no radical democratic changes are possible unless the old elite is replaced with a new generation of politicians. There should be thousands, rather than dozens or even hundreds, of them. This explains why Kyrgyzstan has been merely marking time and why it trails behind its authoritarian neighbors in terms of international ratings of human rights, the rule of law, freedoms, the economy, quality of life, etc. The people in power blame democratization for the problems of the post-Soviet period, such as lower standards of living, crime, corruption, and other negative phenomena, and suppress the democratic gains of the next revolution allegedly to preserve social peace, political stability, and social security.

Personal Rotations Rather Than Revolutions

The people brought to power by the October revolution in Russia, the Communist revolution in China, and the Islamic revolution in Iran turned the old order upside down. The color revolutions in

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Kyrgyzstan and other republics introduced no radical changes—they were not revolutions in the true sense of the word, but rather replacement of the people at the top. Under Askar Akaev, the republic was freer and corrupt; under Kurmanbek Bakiev, the country became more authoritarian and still corrupt; under Almazbek Atambaev, it became freer and remained corrupt. This means that two color revolutions did not change the life of the people for the better. The so-called revolutionaries never tried to improve the life of the ordinary people anyway; they never abandoned even the small- est of their privileges, like country houses, special services, etc. A sociological poll conducted in Kyrgyzstan to identify the rating of the presidents of the Kyrgyz Republic revealed that the population assessed their results much lower than the average of the maximum possible assessment. Askar Akaev, who fled the country during the 2005 revolution, received the highest points; Almazbek Atambaev and Roza Otunbaeva, brought to power by the 2010 revolution, came second and third, while Kurmanbek Bakiev, brought to power by the 2005 revolution and driven out of the country by the 2010 revolution, came fourth. The places are separated by a minimum number of points, which means that all the presidents were not that great, with Akaev being the best among the worst.1 In December 2014, the leaders of 43 NGOs advised President Atambaev to avoid the mistakes of the deposed presidents, who had tried to tighten their grip on the NGOs. Zbigniew Brzezinski, an American academic and politician who predicted the disintegration of the Soviet Union forty years ago, has written that the future leadership of the United States greatly depends on the quality of the future American elites. He was right. Weak governance and, correspondingly, a weak state have already caused numerous misfortunes, not to say tragedies. According to the present authors,2 in Kyrgyzstan, and in the post-Soviet space, for that matter, conformist nomenklatura bureaucracy (nomenklatura capital) has been in power for over twenty-four years now together with the local oligarchs. “…Strong and peaceful leadership did not emerge quickly in Kyr- gyzstan,” writes Lincoln Mitchell, an expert in color revolutions.3 The crisis seems to be resistant to ancient rituals, such as slaughtering sacrificial animals in front of the Zhogorku Kenesh (parliament) building, the inevitable changes of the color and format of the national symbols (state emblem, flag and anthem), and high-sounding names of revolutionary events. Some of the overenthusiastic freshly elected deputies of the fifth Zhogorku Kenesh wanted to call the events of April 2010 the Great April Revolution, similar to the Great French Revolution; common sense prevailed. The euphoria following the bloodshed that claimed about ninety civilian lives increased after the bloody color revolutions in the Arab countries. Interim President Otunbaeva started talking about the worldwide importance of the April revolution in Kyrgyzstan for the cause of liber- ating the world from tyranny and dictatorship. When the country learned the names of the architects of these “revolutionary events” and of the puppeteers from among the Gulf monarchies, this episode of revolutionary history was buried and forgotten. Little has changed in the country since that time—there is no responsibility or morality in the corridors of power; unemployment is high; poverty is widespread; and corruption, nepotism, intrigues, crime, bureaucracy, etc. are as prominent as ever. People have already learned how to live with problems that have not been addressed for decades. After vowing allegiance to the new regime or merely paying off their serious economic crimes or misdemeanors in office, thousands of function- aries who had lost the trust of the people retained their posts.

1 See: M. Suiunbaev, “Sravnivaem prezidentov Kyrgyzstana: opros komiteta 30,” Obshchestvenny rating, 20 November, 2014. 2 See: D.S. Uzbekov, Evolutsia politicheskoy sistemy Kyrgyzstana: skvoz prizmu mirovogo opyta, Bishkek, 2014, pp. 7-29; Z. Kurmanov, “Déjä vu: strane nuzhny peremeny,” Obshchestvenny rating, 24 April, 2014, and others. 3 L. Mitchell, The Color Revolutions, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012, p. 62.

90 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 Democratization or Archaization?

The country has slid down from 80th place in the world in terms of the GDP level it occupied at the early stage of independence to 144th place (Kazakhstan climbed up to 60th place during the same period). As part of the Soviet Union, the Kyrgyz lived in the “first world” (which consisted of the Soviet Union and the United States); today they are living in the Third World together with the poorest developing countries. Nothing good has happened in the field of freedom, democracy, rule of law, struggle against crime, etc. Kyrgyzstan, which has dropped lower in the international ratings than its authoritarian neighbors, has come close to the bottom. Today, the country is no longer an agrarian-industrial country—it is an agrarian-raw material state. It is still trying to leave behind the norms and values of traditional and Soviet society to become a contemporary state and move from paternalism to democracy, which is seen as an instrument and form of political self-organization of society. The disintegrating traditionalism forces the people to defend their interests and insist on democratic freedoms in spheres where there were none. The rather contradictory combination of traditionalism and liberalism creates social tension and instability; traditional values should be reassessed, while a new national agenda formulated. The ruling elites, either ignorant of or deliberately ignoring national experience, come up with one alternative after another, all of them baffling from the Western point of view. Under the pressure of democracy, traditionalism becomes situational and pragmatic; superimposed on traditional values, liberal ideas lose much of their meaning. Even fairly simplified, liberal ideas about freedom and democracy do not fit the habitual behavior patterns of the Kyrgyz elite and society. The revived meanings push the system back to the old forms or even further back, into patriarchal feudal relations (kurultai, tribalism, and division of society along the friend-foe line, etc.). Traditions, which are beyond criticism, lead to archaization of society and thinking. This can be described as repeated traditionalization: the archaic norms and ideas prove to be viable enough and are supported by society in the form of tribalism, regionalism, nepotism, etc. The country is divided into the South and the North, as well as the countryside vs. the urban environment. There are several epicenters; the country is guided by informal social rules of behavior in the patriarchal feudal society—Kyrgyzchylyka, tuuganchylyka, zherdeshchilika— based on the principles of common origin, kinship, and common region. This means that the republic resists globalization with archaization and traditionalization and other large-scale processes unfolding with varied velocities and spreading in different directions. This confirms what Samuel Huntington had to say about the clash of civilizations. There is accelerated Islamization (of predominantly radical Islam), Chinese-ization and Westerniza- tion, processes that remain outside the control of the weak Kyrgyz state. The president frequently talks about a “strong and free Kyrgyzstan” without explaining what he means by “free and strong.” The ruling class and society are at a loss; some think that democracy should be curtailed since the West thinks a “strong state” is undemocratic, while Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, which are building up “strong states” headed by autocratic leaders, very much approve of the idea.

Specifics of the Kyrgyz Model of State Governance

Throughout their long histories foreign countries have learned a lot about the theory of state governance and how to use it in their specific conditions. The Soviet system of state administration,

91 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS which is still used in its original form in Kyrgyzstan, developed independently; foreign experience was either ignored or criticized. This experience has not yet been tapped to the full. The Kyrgyz office of the WB is working on reform of state governance, the future of which will be as sad as that of its predecessors. It will be discussed and pushed aside. In the past, the Kyrgyz had a model of state governance called “nomadic democracy,” which was perfectly suited to amorphous tribal alliances with vague interests and principles. These alliances relied on collective guidance; they had no state apparatus or professional bureaucracy. As distinct from the West, the leaders in this patriarchal-feudal society were not elected—they relied on personal authority and were accepted as leaders on the strength of personal services. According to Abdykerim Sydykov, the founding father of the Kyrgyz Soviet statehood, the principle of elected leaders, which the Russian administration introduced when Central Asia was joined to the Russian Empire, desacralized power, disunited society, and taught people that everything could be bought. The struggle among the clans became even fiercer than before because from that time on power was within the reach of anyone.4 Chokan Valikhanov, a famous traveler, enlightener, and scholar, was of the same, not very flattering, opinion about elections. On the other hand, as part of the Russian Empire, Kyrgyzstan acquired a system of governance more or less close to the European standards. Soviet Russia, however, preferred an administrative command system based on orders and coercion; at the early stage of post-Soviet development, this system faltered; today, it has exhausted its development resources, but it still exists. The old problems are becoming worse, while new problems are piling up. These are the ontological roots of the transformation of the Kyrgyz Republic into an ineffective and weak state with wobbling social, political, economic, cultural, and spiritual systems.

The Problems of Governance

When the Soviet statehood was falling apart and a new independent statehood was being formed accompanied by the emergence of new ideological landmarks, it became abundantly clear that the country lacked a patriotically-minded intelligentsia and civilian bureaucracy. Deprived of a moral and intellectual context, the country plunged into the whirlpool of the rapidly developing market, in which the cult of personal enrichment triumphed over the national ideals and values. The national intelligentsia as the vehicle of moral and spiritual values retreated under the pressure of businessmen and the nomenklatura and ceded to them its role of a moral and social leader and a political force able to govern the state and society. The new people in power were mostly those who had enough money to pay for the election campaign and assured results. Ordinary well-educated and capable people, women, the youth, the disabled, and the national minorities found themselves in the margins of the political main road. The so-called revolutions caused de-sacralization of power to the extent that today there are no liberals or democrats in the corridors of power who can be trusted and respected and who are able to finally remove the birthmarks of the past and start realizing the very attractive models of future. Respect for power and confidence in power have dropped to an absolute minimum. Intelligent youth with good prospects prefer to keep away from the power structures because low salaries make corruption inevitable. This means that we should restore respect for governance; the state should abandon violence and coercion as an instrument of governance; it should learn to seek compromises—the Kyrgyz state has had enough of revolutions and post-revolutionary disorder.

4 See: A. Sydykov, “Kratkiy ocherk istorii kara-kyrgyzskogo naroda,” Pishpekskiy listok, 17 December, 1920.

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There are no charismatic leaders at the top who can win hearts with their knowledge and are skilled at governing knowledge, creating new knowledge, and managing changes. Prof. Joomart Otorbaev, who worked for a long time in the Netherlands and the U.K. before being appointed prime minister of Kyrgyzstan, demonstrates a fresh approach to his personnel policy. He prefers people with good Western education who can speak foreign languages. It remains to be seen whether his policy will survive amid the accusations of idleness and excessive intelligence. There is no shortage of creative passionaries and “messiah,” a crowd dominated by belligerent provincials who may do more harm than good. There are enough people who, having climbed higher than their competence level, have no idea about the far from simple task of state governance, the pitfalls on this road, or the means and methods they need to avoid them. These people can make revolutions, divide state property, and stir up intrigues, but they cannot plan, institute changes, think globally, look forward to detect possible problems and resolve them well in advance, appreciate projects of the country’s future, or make well-balanced and absolutely correct decisions. During the revolutions, smart and resolute administrators were defeated and thrown out of the state administration system; those who sided with the next winner and abandoned him in time of troubles retained their posts. Political instability rooted in the republic’s Constitution is another stumbling block. During its twenty-three years of independence Kyrgyzstan has seen twenty-five cabinets, eighteen speakers of parliament, four presidents (two of whom fled the country, while one became an interim president through a referendum). In the past, the democratic opposition was very critical of President Akaev’s intention to extend his term in office through a referendum. In 2010, the opposition initiated a referendum and liquidated all the legal power bodies with an easy heart. The number of ministers in each ministry has topped twenty; three out of six convocations of the Zhogorku Kenesh were disbanded; there were ten referendums, two of them related to confidence/ non-confidence in President Akaev; and eight sought opinions on amendments and addenda to the Constitution. The country adopted two Constitutions and also an amended Constitution. Today, there are talks about new amendments. The form of government has been changed three times, and the election system six times. Today, there are attempts to change it for the seventh time in order to adopt the preferential system. The corresponding draft law passed the first reading.5 Since the events of April 2010, the country has seen two presidents and five prime ministers. Some experts think that the current parliament might survive (there are rumors that the president intends to disband it) if the country navigates the far from easy winters with raised tariffs on electric power and higher prices on practically all products of vital importance. Prime Minister Otorbaev promises at least three such winters. It is generally believed that the higher tariffs on electric power (1.5 soms instead of previous 0.7 som per 1 kW/h) served as the detonator in April 2010. Today, the country buys electric power in Kazakhstan (about 5 soms per 1 kW/h) because of the water shortage in the Naryn River, the main source of hydroelectricity, and sells it to the people for 2.05 soms (within the limit of 700 kW/h people pay 0.7 per kW/h). To prevent possible trouble, the government slashed the price to 1.85 soms per 1 kW/h as of 1 February, 2015 and promised to avoid rolling power cuts; today they continue under the guise of maintenance jobs. One wonders whether the population, which has grown accustomed to the parasitical attitudes to the state, is able to forget its private interests for the sake of the country’s still vague future. Self- sacrifice for the sake of higher values—the Motherland and the state—is possible in countries that have already acquired nations. Can we expect the same from a country that has only just embarked on the road of nation-building?

5 See: Z. Kurmanov, “Kyrgyzstan: ot khrupkoy politicheskoy stabilnosti k razvitiiu,” Bolshaia igra, No. 6, 2014, pp. 5-9.

93 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS The Results of Bureaucratic Reforms

During the twenty-five years of independence, Kyrgyzstan’s Central Asian neighbors have already left the stage of formation behind to enter the stage of development. Kyrgyzstan is stuck at the first stage, which is confirmed by the continued discussions of the Constitution, state symbols, forms of government, state structure, etc. Discussions should have been cut short in May 1993 when the first Constitution was adopted, but they go on and on at the top level. In comes as no surprise that in a country with no tradition of continuity of power, each new government must start from the very beginning, hence the never-ending déjà vu. The people at the helm change, but the people at the grass- roots level do not believe that these leaders can end the crisis and curb corruption. This and the semi- closed political system, which does not know and does not want to know what people expect from it, are responsible for the post-revolutionary chaos of rallies and demonstrations. As a result, many of those who have climbed to the very top do not know that reforms start with reorganization of the system of governance and that aims should be identified, tasks formulated, stages outlined, officials responsible for the results appointed, sources of funding found, and the results closely monitored. They do not know that the new times and new conditions demand new approaches to state governance and that an old mechanism of governance cannot create a new society. At an international conference in Bishkek, a representative of a German foundation which, together with others, organized the conference talked about this with a great deal of bewilderment. Kyrgyzstan badly needs reformers who can formulate goals and insist on them, are ready to firmly protect its national interests, and can think as experts, that is, logically, systemically and sci- entifically. It needs charismatic leaders and managers with adequate human potential and abilities. The elites should be changed, not because they grow old, but because the state needs people with business abilities ready to serve the state. Democratic reforms should be carried out in three stages: liberalization, democratization, and consolidation. The logic is simple—first, the people should be liberated; second, they should learn how to be responsible and disciplined; and third, the people and the state should unite for the sake of impressive goals. Kyrgyzstan is stuck between the first and the second stage; the third stage cannot begin without an inspiring national agenda. Instead of this meaningful (methodological) activity, the country is steeped in endless bureaucratic exercises that the government is trying to pass off as democratic reforms.

Conclusion

In 2014, Kyrgyzstan joined the Customs Union and the Eurasian Economic Union, which caused a lot of discussion and premonitions. Before the two events and even after them, the supporters and opponents of integration were and still are locked in discussions fanned by inflation, loss of state sovereignty, lower standards of living, etc. In the absence of an adequate information policy, which should explain the pluses and minuses of integration, and Bishkek’s ongoing “join-not join” games, the people are treating the final intention to join and actual joining with a lot of suspicion as badly prepared and lacking weighty arguments.6 The people are scared by the falling exchange rate

6 See: E. Karabaev, “EAES: ottorzhenie i pritiagatelnost,” Vecherniy Bishkek, No. 143, 5 December, 2014.

94 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 of the ruble and som (the Kyrgyz national monetary unit) against the American dollar and the possible spread of Western sanctions to Kyrgyzstan. Civil society is displeased with its country’s integration with the authoritarian regimes of the CIS; the people are convinced that this is responsible for the corruption, double standards, anti- democratic legal initiatives—the law on foreign agents, false denunciation, and raising the election level from 5 to 10 percent. This will become a serious test for the Kyrgyz democratic model and for the people, who for many centuries lived freely and not tolerated injustice. In the Mongol Empire, the Kyrgyz rebelled three times against the Mongolian invaders who, under Khan Khubilay, finally ex- terminated the ruling Kyrgyz aristocracy; this drove the Kyrgyz from Altay to Tien Shan and revived the institutions of people’s democracy; in the Russian Empire the Kyrgyz rebelled in 1916 against the Russian colonial policy; in the Soviet Union, there was an attempt to set up a national statehood in 1921/22 and the Statement of Thirty in 1925 against the nationalities policies of the C.C. R.C.P. (B.); and the anti-military revolt in Frunze in 1964. This explains why today Kyrgyzstan is an epicenter of two coups; in Central Asia it is known as an island of democracy. In these conditions, the ruling elite of Kyrgyzstan should grasp the meaning of current and rapidly developing globalization, elaborate, adopt, and implement a “catching-up development” strategy, and place the stakes on innovation and human development since the traditional road and solutions will not allow the country to extricate itself from its present marginal and even grievous state.

ARE THE AFGHANS TO BLAME FOR THE AFGHAN PROBLEM?

Dariko MAZHIDENOVA D.Sc. (Hist.), Professor at the Foreign Policy Chair of the Institute of Diplomacy, Academy of State Administration under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Astana, Kazakhstan)

Timur URAZAEV Ambassador-at-Large of the Kazakhstan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Astana, Kazakhstan)

ABSTRACT

fghanistan has been and will probably buffer or ideological (and sometimes military) remain not so much an equal partner front where battles are waged, cease-fires are A for the nations around it, as a kind of entered, and political “exchanges” are carried 95 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS out. This country, which is called the heart of ous dialog venues and mechanisms. At that, Asia in diplomatic terms, is merely a venue for Afghanistan represents a melting pot of Cen- major political bargaining, but not a real par- tral Asian, East Iranian, Persian, and Turkic ticipant in it. Today’s attitude toward the prob- traditions that go back to Muslim Shi’ism, Hin- lems of various regional and global nations duism, Buddhism, and Taoism. It is this intri- makes resolution of the Afghan question dif- cate conglomerate that has determined the ficult and requires a multi-stage approach; in difficult lives of the people who call them- order to tackle this task, the countries of the selves Afghans and are trying to find their own international community are setting up vari- niche in the Eurasian continent.

KEYWORDS: the Afghan problem, the Bonn venue, terrorism, drug business, geopolitics, the Istanbul process.

Introduction

As of today, withdrawal of the coalition armed forces from Afghanistan is one of the most urgent problems for world politics and diplomacy. Before taking a closer look at it, we must primarily elucidate some terms.  First, for the Afghans themselves, as represented by their current official government and political establishment, the term “Afghan problem” in wide political circulation is no longer entirely acceptable and was never really politically correct. The situation that has developed in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (IRA) was essentially imposed from the outside. Moreover, the above term turns Afghanistan into a “rogue state” that is a global breeding ground of terrorism and the drug business. Afghan politicians and diplomats today understand very well that, if these terms take root, their country will be deprived of the hope of restoring its former image.  Second, Afghanistan’s current misfortunes are largely related to the role it is forced to play in today’s political and geopolitical games. The relatively peaceful existence of the peoples populating Afghanistan has been greatly undermined by the events of the last 30 years. This was when foreign soldiers came to this land and remained even during the Taliban regime. On the one hand, Afghanistan, located at the crossroads of Central and South Asia (which, in turn, were outposts between broadly conceived “Europe” and “Asia”), has proven to be an extremely advantageous transport hub for the continent. While on the other, this has caused a clash of commercial and political interests between those who represented Europe and Asia, or ran the show on their behalf, meaning the British, Russian, Ottoman, and German empires, as well as local monarchies and ruling elites. What is more, Afghanistan represents a melting pot of Central Asian, East Iranian, Persian, and Turkic traditions that go back to Muslim Shi’ism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. It is this intri- cate conglomerate that has determined the difficult lives of the people who call themselves Afghans and are trying to find their own niche in the Eurasian continent.

On the Role and Place of Afghanistan

Afghanistan has been and will probably remain not so much an equal partner for the nations around it, as a kind of buffer or ideological (and sometimes military) front where battles are waged, 96 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 cease-fires are entered, and political “exchanges” are carried out. This country, which is called the heart of Asia in diplomatic terms, is merely a venue for major political bargaining, but not a real participant in it. Recalling the relations between the British and Russian empires and the Mortimer Durand Agreement that determined Afghanistan’s borders is ample confirmation of this. The world powers’ perception of Afghanistan’s role has not changed in modern times either. In 1979, the Soviet Union sent its troops into Afghanistan, while NATO did the same thing 20 years later, although their motives and goals were very different. The Soviet intervention continued an entirely legitimate tradition for that time of international assistance to an ideological ally. NATO’s actions in 2001, on the other hand, were an operation to eliminate terrorism (in response to the 9/11 terrorist act), for which it received a U.N. mandate. It envisaged increasing the number of participants in this operation right down to forming an international coalition and formally excluding the need to receive an official request from the legitimate government of the country. Most of the Afghan population perceived both of the above-mentioned military campaigns as foreign invasion and occupation. This made a deep psychological impact on the Afghan people’s perception of “foreign assistance,” thus distorting any true assessment of its success and justice. So the current situation in Afghanistan is of critical importance for the future of this country, which again finds itself on the threshold of change. It will have to make an independent choice, but without interference from the outside. It is very possible that the state and social structures, which have not fully formed in Afghani- stan in recent years, will be shaken again, and this could go on endlessly.

Remedies from the Outside

In the globalization era, the problems arising in a particular state are usually always related to external factors; the same can be said of the so-called Afghan knot, which cannot be untied by the Afghans alone. This is because the risks and challenges coming from Afghanistan threaten international security, while its geopolitical position very propitiously blends into the mosaic of world policy. Today, serious experts are arguing about what is primary and what is secondary—the U.S.’s real intention to rectify things in Afghanistan, or its attempt to wheedle its way into a region it was previously denied access to. Nor should we forget that Afghanistan is situated in close proximity to Russia, China, and Iran, which do not recognize the exclusivity of the U.S. A country proclaiming single- handed world leadership simply cannot tolerate such a state of affairs. It can be said in all certainty that withdrawal of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) from Afghanistan is only part of the imminent significant events in the region, whereby it is not worth giving any serious consideration to the so-called zero version (which presupposes full withdrawal of the foreign military contingent). The U.S. and Afghanistan are about to sign a treaty on security; one small detail remains—the Loya Jirga must decide how many American servicemen will remain in the country after 1 January, 2015 and provide them with immunity. It is symptomatic that the actors participating in resolving the Afghan problem are attempting to share the responsibility, or at times shifting it entirely onto each other. For instance, the Western coalition, which has begun restructuring Afghan life, is using every possible mechanism to shift some of the decision-making burden regarding the future of the IRA onto the rest of the world, primarily onto Russia, China, and Central Asia. 97 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS

Russia and China, in turn, do not have any particular desire to adhere to the Western settlement formula, which does not meet their ideas of regional security principles. However, they do not have any remedies of their own yet, or sufficient potential, for that matter, to achieve guaranteed success. The unsuccessful attempts of the Soviet Union and U.S. are a good case in point. Pakistan, which is denying its clandestine role in aiding and abetting the Taliban, has begun reminding everyone all the more frequently of the sacrifices already made to Afghan settlement. In so doing, it is blaming Kabul for destabilization of the situation in Waziristan, the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Due to its contradictions with the West, Iran is still basically excluded from the legal mechanisms of international regulation launched by the former. The Central Asian states are balancing among all the above-listed approaches, waiting for the general outlines of Afghanistan’s future to appear. As for Afghanistan itself, it is still incapable of offering any clear plan, since it depends too much on the West, Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, and the moderate Central Asian countries. Perhaps the only relatively unbiased partner of Afghanistan is India, although even it is not always free from stereotypes of geopolitical thinking regarding Pakistan. Today’s attitude toward the problems of various regional and global nations makes resolution of the Afghan question difficult and requires a multi-stage approach; in order to tackle this task, the countries of the international community are setting up various dialog venues and mechanisms. The international community began setting forth its approach to the situation in Afghanistan at the Bonn conferences in 2001 and 2011. The participants mainly discussed the operation for overturn- ing the Taliban regime and the decision adopted at the Lisbon NATO summit about withdrawal of the coalition troops from Afghanistan. It should be noted that the countries involved merely expounded their general intentions in Bonn, reducing them to a common denominator, thus making it possible from an international law perspective to determine the “correctness” or “incorrectness” of the events going on in Afghanistan, how dangerous the risks and threats existing there are for stable global development, and so on. The Bonn decisions on rendering Afghanistan economic aid and meeting the social needs of the people decimated by the long years of war with their own and foreign forces were confirmed at the Tokyo conference in 2012. Its participants noted that the lack of elementary living conditions for society and the population would bring Afghanistan to its ultimate downfall and turn this strategically important (both in the military and economic respect) country located in the very heart of the Asian subcontinent into a territory of chaos and horror. The main task of the Tokyo venue was to cover the necessary expenses for ensuring normal functioning of the Afghan state in its current form and retaining the results achieved over the past 12 years. The Kabul process launched in 2006 was called upon to determine the conditions and parameters of reconciliation, as well as render assistance from the international community. The three most important areas of activity in resolving the Afghan question are the national dialog, the political process in Afghanistan, and economic aid. The Istanbul process was another noteworthy event in the activity of international diplomacy relating to settlement of the Afghan problem and reflecting the stalemate in this country’s relations with the rest of the world. On the one hand, the striving to prevent global spread of the Afghan problem and keep it local- ized is extremely logical. However, this will leave the region to deal with the imminent events on its own, the forecast for which is extremely pessimistic even if the countries involved in the Afghan conflict share responsibility. 98 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 Afghanistan and Geopolitics

According to the rules of big politics, success largely depends on the balanced nature of the decisions made. Moreover, their efficient execution depends on the reality of the set goals and the existence of a hidden agenda. Nevertheless, the principle of “do no harm” should be adhered to before “helping others.” This austere, but realistic assessment of the prospects for the Afghan question is not only generated by the diversity of the participants in its regulation, but also by the objective trends in global international policy. Greater interdependence and correlation of all the links of the global economy and international relations system deprive the advanced countries of the opportunity to avoid the current risks and threats, so they try to rely as much as possible on not so advanced partners. In so doing, they are at least able to keep abreast of the processes going on in the world today; this is the main factor of international cooperation. It takes the form of the international regulation in the U.N. Charter that says the following: “To maintain international peace and security, and to that end, to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace” (Art 1). In this context, it should be noted that the number of negotiation venues should not exceed the reasonable limit, otherwise small countries may have neither the opportunity, nor the desire to fully participate in their work, which could ultimately lead to a decrease in the effectiveness and demand of international mechanisms in general. The ISAF (read NATO), the activity of which is aimed at ensuring military-political and internal security, as well as the economic conference on Afghanistan (Paris, Tokyo, London) engaged in determining the amounts of economic aid possess the real mechanisms of impact on the current situation in Afghanistan. Paradoxically, the U.N., which is carrying out its mission in Afghanistan, does not enjoy particular influence, the efficiency of which directly depends on cooperation exclusively with the country’s legitimate forces. In the post-2014 period, the CSTO and SCO could render real and practical assistance. Keeping in mind that there are no other mechanisms in the region for ensuring regional security, apart from the opportunities provided by the CSTO, its activity might be demanded for preventing or reducing the risks of real and potential threats. This organization is unique in that it possesses effective tools in the struggle against the Afghan threats (drug trafficking, illegal migration, and so on) in the form of regular special operations, Kanal and Nelegal. Despite Moscow’s noticeable attempts to employ it as a tool of Afghan settlement, the SCO can only be used in the long term (keeping in mind that Beijing is taking its time and that Afghanistan has acquired an observer status in the SCO; the country’s full-fledged participation in the organization will be possible only after a stable power regime is established in it).

View from Astana

The Istanbul process deserves separate mention. Due to the diverse areas of its activity and lobby pressure, it can only be a venue of political dialog and exchange of opinions at present. Despite the fact that the main aim of this initiative (which is to strengthen confidence in such spheres as regional infrastructure, education development, economic and investment opportunities, and dealing with terrorism, drug trafficking, and natural disasters) has taken clear shape, it has not become a real

99 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS tool for unifying the Participating states. In so doing, the latter use not simply different, but often opposite approaches and cooperation principles, not to mention their lack of common vision of the future of the entire region and the prospects for forming a collective security system. In this respect, the third ministerial conference of the Istanbul process Participating states held on 25-26 April, 2013 in Almaty deserves attention. Its results differ very perceptibly from the previous one. According to the conference results, the Participating states adopted the Almaty Declaration, which proposes honest cooperation instead of competition. It declared for the first time the need to form interests that are common for the region, coordinated and shared by all, and reflect Kazakhstan’s initiative to establish a “platform of regional interests” (Item 7), which will help to create a unified vision of principles and approaches capable of ensuring regional security and cooperation. The representatives of official Astana emphasized that when resolving the Afghan problem, the world community should set aside stereotypes of geopolitical behavior and proceed exclusively from a desire to maintain stability in the country and, consequently, throughout the entire region. Until the Great Game is replaced with the philosophy of Great Gain, Afghanistan’s destiny will not dramatically change.

Conclusion

As we know, an illness can only be effectively treated once it is clearly diagnosed. If, however, we close our eyes to the obvious symptoms, there will be no rapid recovery. In this context, I would like to offer several primary recommendations for resolving the Afghan problem. 1. Allow Afghanistan to choose its own social and political development model, without trying to plant European democratic standards in this country. The Afghans are not Europeans, and probably never will be; the transformation period (2015-2025) will most likely be just as difficult for them as the previous years, but they must go it alone. 2. While the Afghans are coming to terms among themselves, the international community should help them, but without imposing their own model of statehood. In so doing, assistance should be contingent on overcoming the serious threats that are still coming from Afghanistan. 3. While continuing to cooperate with Pakistan, no one should be under the illusion that the Taliban’s willingness for peace in Afghanistan depends on it. The Taliban, long an independent force, is a headache for Islamabad. Pakistan itself should stop regarding Afghani- stan exclusively from the strategic perspective. 4. The global powers, particularly the U.S., should not put pressure on the regional states bordering on Afghanistan in order to achieve their own geopolitical goals. They should make their policy around Afghanistan more open, presuming, among other things, reaching an agreement with the insurgents. 5. In no way should the antiterrorist coalition allow the peaceful Afghan population to fall victim to the military operations, since this could erase all the positive achievements and the population’s trust in the international efforts as a whole. And finally, in their cooperation with Afghanistan, the forces of the international community (states, international organizations, and various institutions) must stop preaching doctrinal approaches and imposing their prejudiced policy. Mixing a peace and progress policy with strategic plans

100 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 could significantly prolong the settlement process in the country. Nor should we forget that in addition to the Afghan problem, there are many more problems in the world (for example in the Middle East and Syria). It would seem that everyone understands the rules of the game, but for some reason they are unable to follow them. In this regard, the following very legitimate question arises: Is an unprejudiced and honest approach to Afghan settlement possible? And it seems it should be addressed not to the Afghans, but to those who want to govern them.

101 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS

NATION-BUILDING

KARTVELISM AS A DEVELOPMENT PARADIGM OF GEORGIAN ETHNIC NATIONALISM

Maxim KIRCHANOV D.Sc. (Hist.), Associate Professor, Chair of Regional Studies and Economics of Foreign Countries, Department of International Relations FGBOU VPO Voronezh State University (Voronezh, the Russian Federation)

ABSTRACT

he Georgian national myth is based on ethnic groups, being one of them. The Kartve- active promotion and actualization of lian ideas serve as the background against T Kartvelian narratives. The Kartvlian di- which ancient Georgians are glorified and mension of Georgian national identity has differ- mythologized; the Kartvelian narratives form ent forms, cultural Kartvelism, or, rather, studies the core of Georgian ethnic nationalism and of the languages and history of the Kartvelian Georgian historical and political imagination.

KEYWORDS: Georgia, nationalism, ethnicity, Kartvelism, historical imagination.

Introduction

Throughout the entire period of post-Soviet transformations, Georgian nationalism has developed dichotomously as a countermeasure between civil and ethnic nationalism, which occupies a special place in the Georgian intellectual and political discourse. 102 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015

The Georgian alphabet, which differs from the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets used by Georgia’s neighbors, is responsible for the Georgians’ ethnic uniqueness. I have selected the Kartvelian myth and the related problems as the subject of my article because in the contemporary Georgian nationalist discourse the myth is reproduced as a set of narratives tinged in Kartvelian hues. I have deliberately left the theoretical problems related to the linguistics and the early history of the Kartvelian peoples outside the scope of this article to concentrate on an analysis of the specifics of their mythologizing, while taking into account the diverse tactics and strategies through which contemporary Georgian ethnicity is retrospectively applied to hoary antiquity in the form of myths about the great ancestors and the Kartvelian world that allegedly existed in Europe before the Indo- Europeans invaded it.

Kartvelian Narratives in Georgian Nationalism

The Georgian national myth is based on the active use of several narratives, among which the Kartvelian narratives occupy a special place. The Kartvelian stratum in the Georgian national identity had several dimensions connected with the studies of the Kartvelian languages1 and history of the Kartvelian peoples. Georgian nationalists never fail to point out that the Georgians are the only Kartvelian people who have survived until our days, live in an independent sovereign state, and are one of the very old ethnicities of obvious European identity. It should be said that some of the Geor- gian nationalist-minded intellectuals are actively promoting the idea of the considerable contribution the Kartvelian ethnicities (scattered across Europe in the past) have made to the development and consolidation of the European civilization. Throughout the 1960s-1970s, Georgian intellectuals frequently and peremptorily repeated that “people have been living in Georgian territory from time immemorial … while the Caucasus was one of the regions where apes developed into humans.”2 On the other hand, the geographic factor was equally important. Shota Meskhia, for example, pointed out that Georgia “was situated in the south of the European (italics mine.—M.K.) part of the Soviet Union,”3 which means that he described Georgians as Soviet Europeans. Others tried to prove that “the Georgian people are one of the oldest in the world.”4 According to many authors, the tribes that lived in Georgian territory in the Stone and Bronze Ages were at a much higher development level than their neighbors, while their culture was highly original. Archeologists are actively contributing to the idea that in antiquity the “Georgian ethnic substratum” was autochthonous and widely spread.5 In his works, Ya. Kikvidze, a Georgian academic, writes about Georgia as one of the centers of civilization and European culture. After analyzing the development specifics of traditional society and the results of the Neolithic Revolution, Kikvidze

1 See: A.A. Tsagareli, Sravnitelny obzor morfologii iberiyskoy gruppy kavkazskikh yazykov, Tbilisi, 1957. 2 N.A. Berdzenishvili, V.D. Dondua, M.K. Dumbadze et al., Istoria Gruzii. Uchebnik dlia VIII-X klassov, Tsodna, Tbilisi, 1960, p. 3. 3 Sh. Meskhia, Istoria Gruzii, Tbilisi, 1968, p. 3. 4 N.Yu. Lomouri, “Istoria gruzinskogo naroda s drevneyshikh vremen do kontsa rabovladelcheskoy formatsii,” in: Stranitsy istorii Gruzii, ed. by G. Paychadze, Tbilisi, 1965, p. 5. 5 K.N. Pitskhelauri, Vostochnaia Gruzia v kontse bronzovogo veka, Tbilisi, 1979.

103 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS concluded that Georgian territory had been one of the centers where civilization and political institutions were developing.6 Georgian intellectuals have been cultivating a narrative on the uninterrupted and continuous nature of historical processes in Georgian territory,7 a fundamentally important statement related to the thesis that the Georgians were one of the oldest and autochthonous peoples in the region. Georgian historiography as a form of nationalist discourse was dominated by the opinion that the Georgian population of the parts that belonged to the Georgian S.S.R. was autochthonous. Mes- khia and his colleagues believed that “the ancestors of contemporary Georgians lived mainly in the territory of contemporary Georgia,”8 while kindred peoples were scattered across Europe.9 Later the Kartvelian ideas were pushed aside by Indo-European subjects that added an Indo- European dimension to the history of Europe in the earlier historiographical tradition.10 This explains why the pre-Indo-European (probably Kartvelian) substratum and the non-Indo-European (possibly Kartvelian) groups remained “in the shadows.” Ethnocentrism in all sorts of interpretations of the past, a highly specific feature of the development of “intellectual space”11 of the Georgian S.S.R., is probably responsible for the fact that the Georgians as an ethnic group were associated with extreme antiquity. It was pointed out that “about three thousand years ago, the ancestors of the Georgian people had a very specific appearance, language, and culture, which distinguished them from other peoples.”12 Historians insisted that the Geor- gians were “one of the ancient peoples of the world.”13 Russian historian Victor Shnirelman has offered the following comment: “In the age of nationalism, nations come forward as the central entities of history. The primordial approach imposes on them certain highly sustainable cultural features due to which they are associated, deliberately or spontaneously, with ethnic groups, the roots of which go back into hoary antiquity.”14 He has further written that not infrequently Georgian intellectuals build concepts within which “contemporary ethnicity is artificially pushed back into a very distant past.”15 Despite the obvious ethnocentrism in interpretations of the past based on certain patterns of historical studies, some authors admitted that in antiquity Georgia and the neighboring territories were also populated by other, albeit small, ethnic groups.16 The Georgian nationalist texts were dominated by a primordial trend especially visible in the interpretations of the problems of ethnogenesis and the earliest history of Georgians that rely on ar- cheological data17 accepted as arguments in favor of the Georgians’ antiquity and their priority rights to the territory of Georgia. Shota Dzidziguri, in particular, believes (without references to sources or previous studies) that “at the turn of the first millennium B.C., the Mushki emerged on the historical arena. They are be-

6 See: I. Kikvidze, Agriculture and Agrarian Economics in Ancient Georgia, Tbilisi, 1976 (in Georgian). 7 See: T. Chubinishvili, K drevney istorii Yuzhnogo Kavkaza. Drevniaia kultura Yuzhnoy Gruzii (V-III tys. do n.e.) i problema stanovlenia “Kuro-Arakskoy” kultury na Yuzhnom Kavkaze, Tbilisi, 1971. 8 Sh. Meskhia, op. cit., p. 3. 9 See: M. Gimbutas, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: 6500—3500 B.C., Berkeley, 1982. 10 See: L.A. Gindin, Naselenie Gomerovskoy Troi. Istoriko-filologicheskie issledovania po etnologii drevney Anatolii, Moscow, 1993. 11 Z.E. Kogut, “History as a Battlefield. Russian-Ukrainian Relations and Historiical Self-Awareness in Contemporary Ukraine,” in: Z.E. Kogut, The Roots of Identity, Studies of New and Contemporary History of Ukraine, Kiev, 2004, p. 222 (in Ukrainian). 12 N.A. Berdzenishvili, V.D. Dondua, M.K. Dumbadze et al., op. cit., p. 16. 13 Sh. Meskhia, op. cit. 14 V.A. Shnirelman, Voyny pamiati. Mify, identichnost i politika v Zakavkazie, Moscow, 2003, p. 18. 15 Ibidem. 16 See: N.A. Berdzenishvili, V.D. Dondua, M.K. Dumbadze et al., op. cit. 17 See: O. Lordkipanidze, Arkheologia v Gruzinskoy SSR, Tbilisi, 1982.

104 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 lieved to be ethnic Georgians (italics mine.—M.K.).”18 He described the Mushki/Meskhi or Moskhi as a “Georgian ethnic unit”19 and believed that contemporary Georgians descended from Georgian tribes that gradually gathered together to create the Georgian statehood.20 The Georgian political culture remained under the strong impact of the ethnocentric model of the perception of history promoted, among others, by Georgy Melikishvili, whose theoretical con- structs were highly ethnocentric and primordial. When dealing with the origins of the Georgian people he asserted: “We can even say that the Georgian people included the main (Georgian) ethnic element, which had been living in the territory of Georgia from time immemorial, as well as diverse kindred Hurrian, Urartu, and Hittite tribes, which lived to the south of historical Georgia. This makes the Georgian people the heir to the Hittite and Hurrian-Urartu cultures.”21 Melikishvili believed that in antiquity the Georgians “were recognizable by their individuality” and that “the Georgian ethnic group” used “a single Georgian language, which kept the Georgians together.” The nationally-oriented intellectuals, on the other hand, never considered the ancient Georgians to be the historical heirs of Hittites, but insisted that the Hittite state was ethnically heterogeneous and that some of its peoples used the Kartvelian languages.22 The above was intended to push Georgian history as far back into antiquity as possible and stress its association with the political traditions of the ancient states of Asia Minor. The national version of Georgian history presented the people of Urartu as essentially Geor- gians. “In the first millennium B.C., the people of Urartu, one of the ethnic groups close to the Georgians, moved to the fore. In the ninth-sixth centuries, their mighty state occupied the territory directly bordering, in the south, on historical Georgia and, at times, even spread to some of its districts.” Those Georgian intellectuals who concentrated on the historical and political role of the Urar- tian statehood in the development of the Middle East wrote: “Late in the ninth and the first half of the eighth centuries B.C., during the reign of Urartian kings Ishnuini, Menua, Argishti I, and Sarduri II, the rulers of Biainili (Urartu.—Ed.) succeeded in strengthening their state, which reached the apex of its might to become one of the strongest in Hither Asia; it even pushed Assyria into the background. The Urartian kings spread their power far and wide across vast territories.”23 This state-political narrative, highly popular in the Georgian S.S.R., had two dimensions: the Georgians built up a developed statehood and maintained ties with Ancient Oriental societies. Shota Meskhia, for example, wrote that the Georgians had “cultural and economic contacts with the Hittites, Mitannians, and Urartians…, while the ancient Georgian states maintained ties with the Greeks, Iranian Achaemenids, Seleucids, and the Kingdom of Pontus.”24 Georgian intellectuals showed a great interest in the problems of linguistic and ethnic continuity; Georgy Melikishvili, for example, had the following to say on this score: “The Georgian language and the related Caucasian languages have preserved, mainly in their grammar, some of the typical features of the languages of the peoples of the Ancient Orient… There is no doubt that when the

18 Sh. Dzidziguri, Baski i gruziny, Tbilisi, 1979, p. 21. 19 Ibidem (see also: V.A. Shnirelman, op. cit., p. 327). 20 Sh. Dzidziguri, op. cit., p. 7. 21 G. Melikishvili, Nekotorye voprosy drevneyshey istorii gruzinskogo naroda, Doklad na XXXI sessii Otdeleniya obshchestvennykh nauk Akademii nauk Gruzinskoy SSR v iyune 1951 goda, available at [http://www.amsi.ge/istoria/div/ meliqiSvili.html]. 22 See: G. Melikishvili, Drevnevostochnye materialy po istorii narodov Zakavkazia, Vol. I, Nairi-Urartu, Tbilisi, 1954, p. 5. 23 G. Melikishvili, Nekotorye voprosy drevneyshey istorii gruzinskogo naroda. 24 Sh. Meskhia, op. cit., pp. 4, 5.

105 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS

Sumerian, Hittite, and Hurrian civilizations flourished in the Ancient Orient, the Caucasian languages (including Georgian) were much closer to the languages used by the builders of these civilizations.” The ethnic trend in the national version of Georgian history was accompanied by the political trend shown by the efforts to prove that the Georgians had inherited the historical experience of the great civilizations of the past. Melikishvili pointed out the following in this connection: “Ethnically (that is, linguistically, culturally, and anthropologically), the Georgian tribes are very close to a considerable part of the earliest population of Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Iran. Judging by the mon- uments of fine arts of the third-first millennia B.C. and the scalp shape of the Sumerians, Hittites, Elamites, Hurrians, Urartians, and other peoples who figured prominently in the political and cultural life of Hither Asia, their physical type was very close to that registered from time immemorial among the population of Georgia.”25 In an effort to prove that the ancient Georgians and Hittites had maintained close ties, the nationally-oriented intellectuals wrote26: “In the third millennium B.C., the tribes linguistically close to the contemporary Caucasian peoples dominated in Asia Minor … the Hittite culture of a later period, the second millennium B.C., goes back to the proto-Hittite civilization.”27 Those who wrote this were trying to present the ancient Georgian tribes as precursors of the Hittite state. Excessive attention to the linguistic and ethnic sides of the historical processes led to the domination of the ethnocentric interpretation of history. The role of the Georgian/Kartvelian component in the region’s past was idealized to finally arrive at the conviction that the Georgians were one of the world’s oldest peoples. Georgy Melikishvili, for example, wrote that “the Georgian language and the ethnic group that used it detached itself from all other kindred groups at a very early stage and, in the course of its millennia-long isolated existence, moved away from them. In the age of the great Ori- ental civilizations and powerful Hittite and Hurrian-Urartian states, the Georgian language and the ethnicity using it had, without doubt, already acquired its own individuality, which distinguished them even from the kindred ancient Oriental tribes. These individual traits appeared and developed because the ancestors of the contemporary Georgians and the North Caucasian tribes had been living in the Caucasus from time immemorial and, for this reason, detached themselves from the southern branch of the kindred tribes.”28 The nationally-oriented Georgian intellectuals tried to find the “home” of the Georgian ancestors who spoke the Kartvelian languages in other regions of Europe as well, something with which Soviet historians disagreed. Yu. Otkupshchikov, for example, believed that the substrate languages were not Indo-European29; L. Gindin mentioned the “pre-Indo-European stratum” or the “earliest pre-Indo-European substratum,”30 without offering clear ethnic correspondences. Other authors31 who supported the idea of Indo-Europeanization of Europe preferred to ignore the problems of linguistic and ethnic affiliation of the non-Indo-European substratum. Georgian historiography offered fundamentally different interpretations. Nationalistic imagination ascribed political and Kulturträger functions to the ancient Georgians in their relations with the

25 G. Melikishvili, Nekotorye voprosy drevneyshey istorii gruzinskogo naroda. 26 See: M.G. Abdushelishvili, V.I. Tsiuma, “Antropologicheskie vzaimootnoshenia naseleniia Kavkaza i Peredney Azii v epokhu neolita i bronzy,” in: Chelovek i okruzhaiushchaia sreda. Materialy po arkheologii Gruzii i Kavkaza, Tbilisi, 1984, pp. 33-38. 27 Ibidem. 28 G. Melikishvili, Nekotorye voprosy drevneyshey istorii gruzinskogo naroda. 29 See: Yu.V. Otkupshchikov, Dogrecheskiy substrat. U istokov evropeyskoy tsivilizatsii, Leningrad, 1988. 30 L.A. Gindin, Yazyk drevneyshego naselenia Yuga Balkanskogo poluostrova. Fragment indoevropeyskoy onomastiki, Moscow, 1967. 31 See: V.P. Neroznak, Paleobalkanskie yazyki, Moscow, 1978.

106 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 neighboring Indo-European peoples. Other (non-Georgian) historians displayed caution when hy- pothesizing about the linguistic and ethnic affiliation of the pre-Indo-European population of Europe. The idea of the “individuality” of the ancient Georgians was extremely popular. Georgy Me- likishvili, one of the classics of Georgian historical science, for example, described the Kaska-Kartve- lians as the most dangerous opponents of the Hittites and believed that at that stage Kartvelians had a unique culture and their own language. In Soviet times, Georgian nationalism relied on the linguistic factor. The Georgian language was treated as evidence of the political uniqueness and ethnic exclusiveness of the Georgians. It demonstrated the ethnic continuity of the ancient states that had functioned in Georgian territory (Urartu being one of them). It should be said that in the late 1970s, only the Georgians preserved the official status of their language. The Georgian nationally-oriented intellectuals widely relied on the narrative of the Urartu- Kartvelian political and linguistic continuity. Georgy Melikishvili cited long chains of words (sari- night; ubani-country; cxoveli-alive; kurdzeni-grapes, kogli-everything, kuti-heel, coli-wife, celi-year, etc.) with what he believed to be Urartian roots. He also pointed out that the language of the Urartians was of an “agglutinative nature;” it was not Indo-European or Semitic, but had much in common with Old Georgian.32 Very much like the Soviet Russian nationalists who were nurturing the idea of an Old Russian people, Georgian nationalist intellectuals insisted that a single Ancient Georgian community had existed in the distant past. They told the story of how it “detached itself from its southern relatives and, later, disintegrated. The single Georgian language-base fell apart to form several languages— Kartian (Georgian), Megrelo-Chan (Laz), and Svan; there were probably other, now extinct, languages. There is every reason to believe that in antiquity this disintegration was a fact.” Georgian historians regarded the new communities as purely Kartvelian, which resulted in idealization and consistent nationalization of history. When writing about the earliest history of the Georgian people, Melikishvili pointed out: “Throughout many centuries and, probably, millennia, the Georgian language (at first as the basic language and later as several branches) was very individual, which distinguished it from the very close and kindred linguistic world from which it had emerged. Together with this highly individual language with its own character there was an ethnic group that used it during its long existence and that we can identify as the direct and immediate ancestors of the Georgian people of today.”33 These narratives based on the idea of the Georgians as the primary and extra-historical nation led to ethnicization of historical knowledge blended with nationalism. It should be pointed out in this connection that the authoritarian regime of the period under review made the humanities the only nationalism-friendly sphere. Very much like his Georgian intellectual colleagues,34 Academician Shota Dzidziguri interpreted the ethnogenesis of the Georgians along primordial lines. Discarding the details, he believed that the population of Georgia (that is, Georgian tribes) was first called Urartians (because “many phenomena in the field of verb conjugation confirm that the Urartian and the Kartvelian languages were extremely close … while the system of noun declension … reveals its extreme closeness to the Kartvelian languages”)35 and later Iberians, but later still called Kartlians. The Kartlian dialect be-

32 See: G. Melikishvili, Drevnevostochnye materialy po istorii narodov Zakavkazya, pp. 5, 77, 104. 33 G. Melikishvili, Nekotorye voprosy drevneyshey istorii gruzinskogo naroda. 34 See: V.A. Shnirelman, op. cit., pp. 293-318 (see also: I. Javakhishvili, Vvedenie v istoriiu gruzinskogo naroda, Book 1, Intellektualo-etnologicheskie problemy Gruzii, Kavkaza i Blizhnego Vostoka, Tbilisi, 1950; N. Berdzenishvili, I. Javakhish- vili, S. Janashia, Istoria Gruzii, Vol. 1, S drevneyshikh vremen do nachala XIX veka, Tbilisi, 1950). 35 Sh. Dzidziguri, op. cit., p. 122.

107 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS came the literary language of the Georgians36; this means that the Iberians had a developed written language and literature. The Georgian nationalists actively supported the supposition that the Iberians of the Pyrenees37 and the trans-Caucasian Kartvelians were related through the Kartvelian element. Dzidziguri pointed out that “the root iber (iver) is present in many versions of the earliest names of Kartvelian tribes.”38 On the other hand, the same author believed that the Kartvelian tribes were tied together by a “national idea” that “kept them together in the national and cultural respects … as well as physi- cally for a long stretch of their history.”39 This “undermined the foundations of particularism that went back into the past” and created conditions for the “emergence of the common Georgian national organism.”40 Shota Dzidziguri discarded the historical names of the territories that belonged to Eastern and Western Georgia (Egrisi, Meskheti, and Kartli) as evidence of secondary importance.

Georgian Nationalist Imagination about the Kartvelization of Europe

The nationally-oriented intellectuals insisted that in antiquity the Georgians/Georgian tribes occupied much vaster territories than the Georgian S.S.R.41; they had a positive influence on their neighbors42 and had contacts with diverse ethnic and linguistic groups.43 They also played the role of a regional cultural and political center,44 which means that they were one of the greatest peoples of antiquity. Dzidziguri believed that similar information can be found in the works of authors of antiquity. Shota Dzidziguri always wanted to push the history of Georgians back into antiquity and put them on an equal foundation with the peoples of antiquity, hence his supposition that the “Kartvelian (Georgian) tribes” of Halibs and Halidzons fought in the Trojan War. The Georgian historian ascribed a special civilizational role to the Halibs, the ancestors of the Georgians, and believed that they had gone much further than their neighbors in metal working and that “the fame of the ancient Georgian tribes of the Musks [Meskhi] reached even the Jews.” He registered “the fact that two of the four greatest peoples (Persians, Midians, Saspers, and Colchians) who lived in Hither Asia, the Colchians and Saspers, were of Kartvelian origin” and as-

36 See: Ibid., p. 15. 37 The academic and popular versions of the history of the Iberians are represented in the works of Ludmila Korotkikh and Antonio Arribas (see: L.M. Korotkikh, Drevniaia Iberia v antichnoy traditsii i arkheologii, Voronezh, 2002; A. Arri- bas, The Iberians, Thames & Hudson, London, 1964). The authors practically ignored the Kartvelian component in Iberian topics. 38 Sh. Dzidziguri, op. cit., p. 45. 39 Ibid., p. 23. 40 Ibid., p. 28. 41 See: Ibid., p. 10. 42 See: N.A. Bendukidze, “Hettskiy mif o Telepinu i ego svanskie paralleli,” in: Kavkazsko-blizhnevostochny sbornik, Issue 4, Voprosy Drveney istorii, ed. by G. Giorgadze et al., Tbilisi, 1973, pp. 95-100. 43 See: Z.G. Kiknadze, “Shumero-kartvelskie iazykovye paralleli,” in: Kavkazsko-blizhnevostochny sbornik, Issue 4, pp. 61-72. 44 See: M.D. Khidasheli, “O kharaktere vzaimootnosheniy Iugo-Zapadnoy Gruzii s urartskim mirom,” in: Kavkazsko- blizhnevostochny sbornik, Issue 4, pp. 101-110.

108 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 cribed a civilization role to the Georgians, which, in his opinion, widened the area of the use and domination of the Kartlian (Georgian) languages in the Caucasus. He also believed that the mountain dwellers of the Caucasus were living under the strong influence of the Georgians—some of them “became completely Georgian,” while the Georgian language “penetrated everyday life of the mountain dwellers.”45 He explained the strong influence of Georgian not only by its linguistic specifics, but also by the mentality of people who used it. The Georgian intellectuals believed that linguistic and ethnic kinship were especially important, which explains their persistent efforts to find “relatives” in the territory of Old Europe46; they found them in Basques. Their language was recognized as kindred to Georgian and related to the other Kartvelian languages.47 In other words, the Basque language was perceived as an inheritance of the Kartvelian world in the predominantly Indo-European context of contemporary Europe. In the intellectual discourse of the Georgian S.S.R. of the 1970s,48 the Basques were discussed as a kindred nation and the oldest people of Europe49 who used to live in a much more extensive territory from which they were pushed away by more successful neighbors.50 The Basque academic community displayed much more conservatism—it limited itself to the statement that “the Basque language is the only language in Europe that emerged before our era, the only language that withstood the pressure of the Indo-European languages and the only language in Western Europe that survived the invasion of Latin and the Romanic languages.”51

Old Europe and the Georgian Nationalist Myth

Georgian nationalist imagination treated the Basques as the first Europeans52 who lived in Eu- rope before the Indo-Europeans moved into the continent and were part of a vast cultural community,53 the members of which used the Kartvelian languages or those close to them.54 Shota Dzidziguri, who pioneered Basque studies in Georgia, invariably stressed that in antiquity, the Basque language55 was used “across a much wider territory than today.”56 His analysis of the

45 Sh. Dzidziguri, op. cit., pp. 7-9, 23-24, 44. 46 See: M. Gimbutas, The Civilization of the Goddess. The World of Old Europe, Harper, San Francisco, 1991. 47 See: “The Reflexive in the Basque Language and Kartvelian Languages,” available at http://gernika.ru/euskara/6-[ euskara/250-erreflexioa-euskaraz-eta-hizkuntza-kartveliarretan] (in Basque and Russian). 48 See: T. Makharoblidze, “The Results and Perspectives of Contemporary Kartvelian Basque Studies,” available at [http://gernika.ru/euskara/6-euskara/26-gaur-egungo-baskologia-kartveliarraren-emaitzak-eta-perspektibak-r] (in Basque and Russian). 49 See: M. Gimbutas, “Old Europe c. 7000-3500 B.C.: The Earliest European Civilization before the Infiltration of the Indo-European Peoples”, The Journal of Indo-European Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1-2, 1973, pp. 1-20. 50 Dm. Lytov, “The Origin of the Basques and the Basque Language: The Overview of the Contemporary State of the Problem,” available at [http://www.gernika.ru/euskal-herria/7-euskal-herria/164-euskaldunen-eta-euskararen-jatorria-egungo- begirada-problemaren-egoeraz-] (in Basque and Russian). 51 A. Arejita, “The Secret of the Origin of the Language of the Basques,” available at [http://gernika.ru/euskara/6- euskara/28-euskal-hizkuntzaren-jatorriaren-enigma-] (in Basque and Russian). 52 See: Languages in Prehistoric Europe, ed. by A. Bammesberger, Th. Vennemann, Heidelberg, 2003. 53 See: Th. Vennemann, Europa Vasconica-Europa Semitica, Berlin, 2003. 54 See: Languages in Prehistoric Europe; R.D. Woodard, Ancient Languages of Europe, Cambridge, 2008. 55 See: A. Arkhipov, G. Nuzhdin, “From the History of the Basque Language,” available at [http://gernika.ru/euskara/6- euskara/3-euskara] (in Basque and Russian). 56 Sh. Dzidziguri, op. cit., p. 84.

109 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS history and culture of the Basques,57 as well as the Basque and Kartvelian languages, abounded in numerous historical and linguistic parallels58 intended to prove their kinship.59 In particular, he de- tected a lot of common features between the Georgian and Basque songs and wrote that “the Georgian and Basque languages were very close in terms of the preserved archaic elements in them.”60 The intellectuals and people in power inspired by the classical works of Academician Nikolai Marr showed a great and even growing interest in the Basques throughout the entire history of the Georgian S.S.R.61 Yury Zytsar, a prominent Soviet expert in Basque studies, wrote in one of his autobiographical works that the Georgian myths about the Basques gave birth to the idea of the kinship between the two peoples. This was presented to the people in newspapers as “having met, a Basque and a Georgian will find many common words starting with the simplest, such as numerals.” In his memoirs, Zytsar wrote that in the 1970s he was “pressurized by the largest newspapers, which wanted him to write about the kinship between the Basques and the Georgians” against the background of the efforts of the Soviet political leadership to establish close relations with the Basques.62 Georgian intellectuals believed that the Basques were a very ancient people; Shota Dzidziguri supported this conviction with the following quote from L. Perico Garcia: “The only language that has survived since prehistoric times; a miracle presented to Spain by Neolithic or, probably, Paleo- lithic. What is this language? In Europe, nothing can move a man of the twentieth century five or even ten thousand years back … in Spain, it is enough to listen to Basque peasants talking among themselves … yes, this is Neolithic shepherds talking!”63 Later, future President of Georgia Zviad Gamsakhurdia picked up the idea. “Like the Georgian, the Basque language is called proto-Iberian, although they are divided by several epochs. For a long time, they developed separately, which made it hard to establish their genetic kinship. It is established through toponymy, sayings, and forms, as well as with the help of cultural-historical comparisons. There are practically no languages genetically close to the Basque and Georgian languages; we cannot exclude the possibility that in hoary antiquity the two worlds were one and the same. As we all know, it was one clan, one race, but later they moved apart to become so different that scholars find it hard to establish their genetic kinship.”64 Georgian nationally-oriented intellectuals cultivated the narrative about Old Europe as a Kartve- lian world and a sphere where the ancient Kartvelian cultures and languages dominated. Gamsakhurdia replaced the Soviet concept related to the ethnogenesis of Georgians with a new and considerably nationalized version. In a lecture he delivered on 2 May, 1990 at the Idriart Festival in Tbilisi, he said: “The earliest autochthonous population of Southern Europe—the Pyrenees, Italy, and the Mediterranean islands—was Iberian. These people were called proto-Iberians and all of the European population descended from them.” He paid particular attention to the supposition that the Old European civilization was Kartve- lian. “The period from antiquity to the third millennium, until the second millennium, to be more

57 See: Sh. Dzidziguri, The Basque-Caucasian Problem, Tbilisi, 1981 (see also: S. Gabunia, The Basque-Georgian Ethno- graphic Parallels, Tbilisi, 1995; N. Sturua, S. Gabunia, An Anthology of Basque Poetry, Tbilisi 1991; I. Tabagua, V. Gvakharia, Poems and Songs of Basques, Tbilisi, 1982, all in Georgian). 58 See: The Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus, Vol. 1, The Kartvelian Languages, ed. by A.C. Harris, Delmar, 1991. 59 See: J.D. Bengston, “On the Genetic Classification of Basque,”Mother Tongue, No. 22, 1994, pp. 31-36. 60 Sh. Dzidziguri, Baski i gruziny, p. 111. 61 See: N.Ya. Marr, Basksko-kavkazskie leksicheskie paralleli, Tbilisi, 1987. 62 See: Yu. Zytsar, “Past and Present of the Basque Studies in Georgia and Russia,” available at [http://gernika.ru/ euskara/6-euskara/41-lehengo-eta-gaur-egungo-euskaltzaletasuna-georgian-eta-errusian-lehenengo-zatia-] (in Basque and Russian). 63 Quoted from: Sh. Dzidziguri, Baski i gruziny, p. 101. 64 Z. Gamzakhurdia, “Dukhovnaia missiya Gruzii,” available at [http://forumkavkaz.com/index.php?topic=47.0].

110 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 exact, is considered to be the highest point of proto-Iberian or Paleo-Mediterranean mankind.” This served the starting point for intellectual deliberations that the Georgians were the most ancient Euro- pean nation connected with the emergence of the cultural and, on the whole, civilizational type. While holding forth about a single European population, Gamsakhurdia pointed out that “this race or breed used one main language with numerous dialects; when developed into languages in their own right, they remained kindred languages and developed as such.” He also outlined the great role the ancient Kartvelians played in the development of Europe and pointed to the “kinship between the Georgian and Etruscan languages and between the Kartvelian and Lacedaemonian tribes and entire Asia Minor and the world of the Aegean Sea, Troy, in particular.” In the cultural and linguistic respects, it was part of the Colchis, that is, proto-Kartvelian, world. Moreover, the national version of Georgian history based on the idea of Kartvelian kinship presents Achilles of the Greek myth as a “Pelasgian, that is, a representative of the Kartvelian tribes.” Zviad Gamsakhurdia insisted that the Kartvelian culture (represented by the Pelasgians) greatly affected the ancient Greeks and that ancient Kartvelian myths were widely reflected in the culture of the ancient Greeks. Speaking about the kinship between the Georgians and Old Europeans and the fact of the wide use of the Kartvelian languages (in the regions bordering on contemporary Georgia, among other places), he pointed out: “The larger part of population of Asia Minor belonged to this breed, while the Meskhi (Moskhi), Cappadocians, Colchis, Tao, and others were merely members of the tribe … they were branches of the same type academic science calls Kartvelian or proto-Iberian.”65

The Kartvelian Idea: Contradictions of Contemporary Virtualization

Today, the Kartvelian idea of Georgian nationalism is being changed and readjusted. Georgian nationalists, very much like nationalists all over the world, are actively using all virtual means at their disposal (traditional websites and social networking sites) to draw new people under their banners. The ideas of Kartvelism are promoted by the media and also in virtual space. The concepts of Kartvelism in Georgian nationalist imagination perform a double function. On the one hand, they insist on the unique nature of the Georgian nation living in the Turkic and Into-European environment. On the other, Kartvelism can be described as an attempt to attract attention to the problems and current position of genetically close groups. The Georgian nationalists are not alone—the ideas of Kartvelism are promoted by all sorts of marginal pseudo-historians66 who “have populated” the whole of Europe, from the British Isles to the Caucasus, with Kartvelians, discovered a Kartvelian substratum in Italy and Spain, and insist that the people of the Tripolye Culture were Kartvelians. Those who tend toward the romantic academic version of Kartvelism67 prefer comparative linguistics and toponymy to political rhetoric,68 as well as efforts to discover the Kartvelian substratum

65 Ibidem. 66 See: A. Ivantsov, “Mezh dvukh Iberiy,” available at [http://www.academia.edu/6026293/Меж_двух_Иберий_-_статьи]. 67 See: D. Biskaia, “What is Kartvelism?” available at [https://chkineburi.wordpress.com/2014/11/11/kartvelist-nedir/] (in Turkish); Idem, “The Laz Alphabet,” available at [https://chkineburi.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/lazuri-albon-laz-alfabesi/] (in the Laz language). 68 See: D. Biskaia, “The Laz Toponym of the City of Vijas,” available at [https://chkineburi.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/] (in Georgian).

111 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS in contemporary regions with predominant non-Kartvelian populations. They actualize the visual racial features and dimensions of the Kartvelian idea (in the form of historical photography, which reflects the traditional discourse of Kartvelian groups),69 a certain idealization of the Basques,70 which promotes an interest in corresponding subjects and stimulates (partially) academic Iberian-Caucasian linguistics, as well as the cultivation of the idea of cultural proximity and Kartvelian ethnic linguistic kinship between the historical and contemporary Georgians, Laz people, and Basques. In this context, Kartvelism looks like a descendant of the romantic version of Georgian nationalism, which insisted on a special mission and the historic role of the old Kartvelian world presented today by the tiny “islands” in Transcaucasia, a region of historical Greater Europe. Today, the Kartvelian idea, which is actively promoted on the Internet, is attacked by the critics and opponents of Georgian nationalism. Everything the Georgian nationalists, intellectuals, and blog- gers have to say about Kartvelism invites mixed responses from the Turkic Internet-community. In Turkey, Georgian nationalism is perceived in two hypostases.  First, there is a Turkic academic community familiar with the systemic texts related to Georgian history71 that claim the status of historiographic classics.  The second type of perception of Georgian nationalism is typical of the nationally-oriented authors72 (not infrequently anonymous and depersonalized by the specifics of virtual space) who tend to interpret its ethnic trends as anti-Turkish propaganda. This means that some of the Turkish authors73 tend to interpret Kartvelism as Georgian fascism and a policy of “systematic assimilation”74 and ethnic nationalism. It is accused of liquidating regional national and linguistic specifics, enforcing mandatory linguistic assimilation,75 and all but initiating territorial claims. In this context, Tbilisi is guilty not so much of usurping the Kartvelian idea per se as of creating a unified national identity which, throughout the twentieth century, diluted the regional (Kartvelian in origin) forms of identity and conscience. The critics of contemporary Kartvelism describe it as a form of “harsh chauvinist policy.”76 Other authors insist that the groups ethnically close to the Georgians that live in Turkey (the Lazes being one of them) are absolutely loyal citizens who are “deeply concerned about the conduct of Georgian nationalists and, therefore, will never embrace Georgian identity.”77 The opponents of the version of Kartvelism geared at Tbilisi and those who agree that the Laz, Georgian, and Megrelian languages belong to the same nationality speak with a great deal of doubt about the idea of forming a political nation. They pushed to the fore not the integrating, but the frag-

69 See: “The Lazes and Chans—People of Great Ancient Colchis,” available at [https://chkineburi.wordpress. com/2012/05/01/] (in Georgian). 70 See: D. Biskaia, “The Language of the Basques,” available at [https://chkineburi.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/baskuri- nena/] (in the Laz language). 71 See: N. Berdzenishvili, S. Janashia, History of Georgia, Istanbul, 1997 (in Turkish). 72 See: “The Kartvelians,” available at [http://dictionary.sensagent.com/kartvel/tr-tr/] (in Turkish). 73 See: “The Virus of Kartvelism and the Lazes,” available at [http://katvelizim.blogspot.ru/2013/12/kartvelizm-hastalg- ve-lazlar.html] (in Turkish). 74 E. Kutalia, “National-Socialism in Georgia and Its Agony,” available at [http://www.kafkasakademi.com/haberler/ erol-kutalia-gurcistan-da-nasyonal-sosyalizmin-son-cirpinislari-mevcut--759.html] (in Turkish). 75 See: “To the Turkish and Georgian People and the General Public,” available at [https://www.change.org/p/ türkiye-ve-gürcistan-halklarına-deklarasyon-declaration] (in Turkish); “To the Turkish and Georgian People and the General Public,” available at [https://www.change.org/p/türkiye-ve-gürcistan-halklarına-deklarasyon-declaration-3] (in the Laz language). 76 “Questions and Answers,” available at [http://www.gamarcoba.com/Yazilar.asp?goster=dos&id=133] (in Turkish). 77 I. Aleksishi, “My Trip to Düzce University, Kartvelism Does Not Stop despite Its Complete Emptiness,” available at [http://lazoba.blogspot.ru/2015/01/duzce-universitesi-ziyaretim.html] (in Turkish).

112 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 menting component measured by the ethnoregional and local factors of Kartvelism. This fans Geor- gia’s regional ambitions. The Abkhazian nationalists in Turkey, likewise, criticize the Kartvelian paradigm.78 They look at the Kartvelian idea as a dangerous and aggressive ideology used to assimilate the Svans and Me- grelians; this casts doubts on the idea of Georgian national unity, which, among other things, rests on Kartvelism.

Summing Up and Looking Forward

Several aspects are critically important for summing up the above. There are major approaches to the Kartvelian idea. An academic approach studies the Georgian language, as well as other kindred languages (Megrelian, Laz, and Svan) and hypothetically the language of the Basques. There is also a political approach—under Soviet power, Kartvelism was actively exploited by the Georgian nationally-oriented intellectuals. Scholarly speculations inspired by the quest for “great ancestors” and the efforts to stick a stamp of Kartvelian identity on ancient ethnic groups of vague origins were of fundamental importance for the development and functioning of the Georgian historical myth. As a form of national ideology, it was based on the idea that the Georgian nation was exceptionally ancient. Most Georgian intellectuals preferred the primordial approach and looked for ancestors of the ancient Kartvelian tribes in those parts of Asia Minor and Europe that bordered on Georgia, the intensity of the quest and, most importantly, the results depending on the degree of scholarly honesty. The search for, or rather invention of, ideal images of great ancestors who lived throughout this vast space was not fortuitous. Integrating the pre-Indo-European population into a Kartvelian historical and linguistic context was an important tool. In this way, the Georgians could present themselves as one of the oldest nations and the forefathers of European civilization with a significant contribution to its genesis on their record. This also meant that the Georgians were part of the European heritage presented as part of the Kartvelian cultural, historical, and linguistic traditions. A considerable part of the theories discussed above is a product of Georgian nationalist imagination. On the other hand, there are academic concepts that are trying “to reconstruct” pre-Indo-Eu- ropean Europe. A synthesis of nationalism and academism may, on the one hand, consolidate the Georgian identity and, on the other, stir up a quasi-academic discourse, the results of which will fit both the purpose of academic studies and nationalist mobilization.

78 See: E. Kutalia, “Assimilation, Racism, and Fascism as the Main Forms of Kartvelism,” available at [http://xopurilazi. blogspot.ru/2013/06/erol-kutalia-kartvelizmin-ana-temasi.html] (in Turkish).

113 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS THE FORMATION OF PARLIAMENTARIANISM IN TAJIKISTAN: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

Shokir KHAKIMOV D.Sc. (Law), Deputy Chairman of the Tajik Juridical Consortium Public Organization (Dushanbe, Tajikistan)

ABSTRACT

his article examines the comparative mentarianism and describes its primary legal, theoretical, and historical as- characteristics. He also gives the reasons T pects of parliamentarianism. The au- for the formation of parliamentarianism in thor analyzes the formation of Tajik parlia- Tajikistan and the obstacles hindering it.

KEYWORDS: Tajikistan, parliament, parliamentarianism, Supreme Soviet, elections, law-governed state, separation of powers, legitimacy of state power, parties.

Introduction

In December 2014, Tajikistan saw the start of the campaign for elections to the Majlisi namoi- andagon (lower house of parliament), as well as to elect local Majlisi of people’s deputies (the elections themselves were held on 1 March, 2015). According to Tajik legislation, the election system is mixed; candidates for deputies are nominated from both single-seat electoral districts and party lists. All eight political parties of Tajikistan held campaign congresses, at which candidates for deputies were nominated. The campaign for nominating deputies from single-seat electoral districts officially began on 30 December. At present, most of the parliament deputies represent the pro-presidential People’s Democratic Party of Tajikistan (PDPT). The Islamic Revival Party (IRPT), Communist Party (CPT), Economic Reform Party (ERPT), and Agrarian Party (APT) have two mandates each. The Democratic, Socialist, and Social-Democrat- ic parties are not represented in the country’s parliament. The existence of a multiparty parliament in Tajikistan, which includes two deputies from the opposition Islamic party, can be considered a great achievement on the path to democratization, since such a phenomenon is simply inconceivable in the other Central Asian countries. An analysis of Tajikistan’s constitutional legislation shows that from a formal viewpoint, the representative state power bodies of Tajikistan are endowed with enormous powers. However, prac-

114 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 tice shows that the role of the representative bodies in the power system is fairly weak, while the real political struggle is being waged far from the parliamentary field. What is parliamentarianism in Tajikistan? Can it become a cornerstone of further democratization? What historical prerequisites exist for this, and what obstacles could hinder the formation of a truly democratic parliament? An attempt to find answers to these questions prompted the present author to write this article. Unfortunately, such important concepts as constitutionalism, parliamentarianism, political pluralism, limitation on state power, control functions of the representation bodies in the state power system and people’s power are not a ready topic of public and political discussion in Tajikistan, so this article is breaking new ground. One of the obstacles hindering a widespread discussion of the above-mentioned concepts is the lack of desire of the powers that be to draw the broad public’s attention to them. Internal censorship and an unfavorable political environment are restraining factors in studying the issues relating to this situation.

A Retrospective View of the Formation of Parliamentarianism in Tajikistan

Before it joined the Russian Empire, Central Asia (we mean its part that until quite recently belonged first to the Russian Empire and then to the Soviet Union) was a conglomerate of extremely backward feudal-theocratic states1 populated by settled and nomadic peoples that had no specific borders. Feudal-patriarchal relations2 predominated in these states, but elements of the slave-owning strata and tribal mindset also remained. Therefore, the territories that were part of contemporary Tajikistan could not be fertile ground for cultivating principles of parliamentarianism, separation of powers, human rights, and so on. Russia’s conquest had a certain, but very insignificant influence on the political-legal development of the regions that belong to contemporary Tajikistan (including parts of the Turkestan Gover- norate-General and the Emirate of Bukhara). Some Russian scientists think that the main state laws adopted in 1906 by the State Duma aimed at regulating key issues of state-building in the territory of the Turkestan Governorate-General could be seen as a precursor of parliamentarianism in Central Asia. However, they did not lead to any shift in the public, political, or legal consciousness of the residents of Central Asia. Under the influence of the liberation ideas of the first Russian revolution at the beginning of the 20th century, the Jadid movement began in Bukhara. Its participants did not set themselves the task of fighting the existing system, rather they limited their activity to the cultural and enlightenment sphere, placing hopes on the “fair and radiant mind of the emir and his God-fearing vazirs.”3 Accord-

1 For more details, see: A.A. Kaufman, K voprosu o russkoi kolonizatsii Turkestanskogo kraiya, Report, St. Petersburg, 1903. 2 For more details, see: “Sudba etnicheskoi gosudarstvennosti v Srednei Azii v kontekste nationalnoi i geopolitiki Rossiiskoi imperii,” in: D.M. Zoirov, Tadzhikistan: ot gosudarstva Samanidov do suverennoi gosudarstvennosti, Devashtich, Dushanbe, 2003, pp. 14-44. 3 A. Kholikzoda, The Tajiks of Transoxiana. From the Russian Conquest to Independence, Second revised edition, Dushanbe, 1997, pp. 50-62 (in Tajik).

115 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS ing to the Jadids, they were supposed to reform the country by introducing the European way of rule in Bukhara. Later, taking their cue from the Young Turks, they began to call themselves the Young Bukharans. The Jadids demanded that some reforms regarding the organization of the Majlisi (parliament) be carried out, as well as strict control established over the activity of officials and the collection of tribute and homage from the population.4 Along with the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907, the establishment of the Jadid movement was undoubtedly assisted by the adoption of the constitutions in Turkey (in 1876) and Iran (in 1906); in both countries, the monarch’s power was limited by the parliament. Despite the severe struggle and contradictory implementation of the provisions of these constitutions, the very fact they were adopted had a huge impact on the mood of the intelligentsia in the Central Asian countries.5 The demands of the representatives of the national bourgeoisie to reform the administrative system of the Emirate of Bukhara aroused a wide response in the progressive community of Russia and Turkestan. For example, this question was raised by Dmitry Logofet in his book Strana bespra- viia (The Lawless Land); it was examined at special meetings in 1909-1914 held in the Turkestan Governorate-General, the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire, the Russian Ministry of For- eign Affairs, and the plenary session of the 4th State Duma. Opinions were expressed at the meetings about the prematurity of introducing a Russian form of rule in Bukhara due to the extreme hostility of the Muslim clergy toward any innovations and the fanaticism of the broad strata of population who supported the immunity of the sociopolitical and family-everyday structures of life enforced by the Shari‘a.6 Nevertheless, on 7 April, 1917, under the pressure of the democratic community, Emir of Bukhara Alim-khan was compelled to consent to carrying out reforms that boiled down to a transfer from the medieval system of “fief-office” to electing officials and granting an allowance to representatives of the local administration. A municipality (majlisi) comprised of representatives of the feudal nobility, merchants, and clergy was to be created in the capital for managing the city economy, national education, and health care. Immunity of the fundamental principles of Islam and the Shari‘a as the only source of law regulating human relations was recognized; the reform also contained provisions regarding the administration of justice, the collection of zakat, kharaj, and other taxes and duties, as well as the establishment of the state treasury. Measures were to be carried out aimed at developing commerce with the metropolis and eliminating all obstacles hindering economic cooperation between Bukhara and Russia. The development of science and establishment of printing houses for informing the population about domestic affairs were encouraged in precise compliance with the prescriptions of the Shari‘a.7 It goes without saying that the February revolution in Russia and creation of Soviets in Turke- stan had a significant impact on the situation in the Emirate of Bukhara; in May-June 1917, workers and dekhkans held demonstrations in several of its districts. In June 1917, the Bukhara congress of Councils of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies was held, which decreed introducing control over the activity of the Russian representative office in Bukhara. In addition, the congress discussed the situation in Central Asia and made a decision to create a Committee of Bukharan Affairs, the assignment of which included “protecting the interests of the workers” of the emirate.

4 See: Krasniy arkhiv, Vol. 1, Moscow, Leningrad, 1927, p. 80. 5 For more details, see: R. Zoyirov, Sh. Khakimov, Evoliutsiia konstitutsii kak osnovnogo zakona: istoriko-teoreticheskoe i stravnitelno-pravovoe issledovanie, Dushanbe, 2004, pp. 140-145. 6 See: D.I. Logofet, Strana bezpraviia, St. Petersburg, 1909. 7 See: Krasniy archive, Vol. 1, p. 82.

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Keeping in mind the public unrest, the leadership of the emirate made certain concessions. For example, in the summer of 1917, taxes were slightly reduced. However, the workers increasingly insisted on the need for a radical change in the existing system.8 By the time the February bourgeois-democratic revolution sustained a victory in Russia, the foundations of czarist power in Turkestan had already been significantly undermined by the national liberation movement. For this reason, both in Turkestan and in the northern districts of present-day Tajikistan, the revolution triumphed relatively quickly. So it can be said that in the context of this topic, Russia’s conquest of Central Asia, including the territory of contemporary Tajikistan, cannot be seen unequivocally. On the one hand, Russia brought elements of the European culture (including European parliamentarianism) to the region and put an end to the feudal internecine war, while on the other, Russia was at the initial stage of constitutional development itself and could not have any serious influence on the political and legal development of the region. The October revolution of 1917, which interrupted Russia’s bourgeois development, pushed the country, including Central Asia, into an extralegal environment; as a result, the constitutions could not act as the foundation of statehood and the legal system. In these conditions, both the emergence of national statehood and the adoption of the first Soviet constitutions were rather paradoxical in Tajikistan (as in other Central Asian republics)—the country, which had never experienced capital- ism, skipped the transition period and began building socialism. In these conditions, parliamentarianism in the country could only appear from the outside, since the internal conditions for its formation at that time had still not matured. So it comes as no surprise that Tajik parliamentarianism was essentially a copy of Union parliamentarianism and reflected the essence of the totalitarian political regime characterized by the supremacy of the only party ruling over the state and society. The constitutions of the Tajik A.S.S.R. and then the Tajik S.S.R. (which reproduced the R.S.F.S.R. Constitution of 1918) declared the Soviets to be the political foundation of the new power; they did not say a word about the parliamentary form of rule. The essence of the Soviets comprised of denying the principle of separation of powers, uniting the legislative and executive functions of the deputies, and combining the elected persons’ deputy obligations with their professional activity. What is more, there was no special remuneration for deputy work, while there was an imperative mandate as a guarantee of the continuous ties between the deputies and their electorates. Legislative, executive, and monitoring powers were concentrated in the hands of the representative bodies that acted as “working corporations.” The initiative and energy of the people’s representatives made it possible for them to carry out the real requests of the workers in a targeted and rational way without interrupting production or ignoring the interests of the people in the provinces. Between 1917 and 1990, the conception of supremacy of the Soviets was the constitutional foundation of the representative and state system of the Soviet Union as a whole. In the Constitution of 1936, the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies (Art 2) were declared the political foundation of the So- viet Union, and it also noted that all power belongs to urban and rural workers in the form of the Soviets (Art 3). The Constitutions of the Soviet Union of 1977 and the Tajik S.S.R. of 1978 (Art 2) contained a provision saying that all power in the Soviet Union and Tajik S.S.R. belongs to the people; it is exer- cised through the Soviets of People’s Deputies that comprise the political foundation of the Soviet Union and Tajik S.S.R. All other state bodies report to and are under the control of the Soviets. Ac- cording to Art 108, the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., as the supreme body of state power, was

8 See: K.A. Bogomolova, “Bukhara v period Fevralskoi burzhuazno-demokraticheskoi revoliutsii 1917 goda,” in: Materialy k istorii tadzhikskogo naroda v sovetskii period, 1954, p. 38.

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“authorized to resolve all questions related by the current Constitution to the administration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” The same thing was enforced by the Constitution of the Tajik S.S.R. in relation to the Supreme Soviet of the Tajik S.S.R.

The Birth of Parliamentarianism in Tajikistan: the Supreme Soviet of Tajikistan during Perestroika

An analysis of the events related to the collapse of the Soviet Union leads to the methodologi- cally important conclusion that the study of Tajik parliamentarianism of this period should begin from the time the former Soviet constitutional standards were rejected; the starting point should be recognized as the beginning of perestroika (the spring of 1985). In this respect, we will note that the downfall of socialism was caused by its “correction.” As for the development of Tajik parliamentarianism, the main contradiction of this process was the intense conflict between the Soviet model and the people’s desire for democracy. Numerous amendments were made to the 1978 Constitution of the Tajik S.S.R. (as they were to the constitutions of the other Union republics) to overcome this contradiction. These amendments increasingly changed its essence and created prerequisites for the emergence of a qualitatively new social model. In particular, Art 6 of the Constitution on the leading role of the C.P.S.U. was cancelled; it was recognized that all organizations and movements “act within the framework of the Constitution of the Tajik S.S.R. and laws of the Tajik S.S.R.” (Art 7), and the right of citizens to gather and participate in mass movements (Art 49) was declared. The structure of state power and governance was subjected to significant changes, presidential power was instituted, and the Supreme Soviet and government of the republic were reorganized. The new content of the Constitution reflected Tajikistan’s movement within the framework of the Soviet political system toward gradual democratization. There was a change in the power mechanisms, and a transition began from the administrative-command system inherent in the one-party regime to executing power based on the free will of the people, although this process took place in conditions of exclusively tough opposition between the democratic powers and supporters of the Communist Party. Support of the population at the stage of forming opposition movements increased, but due to the absence of political experience, they essentially did not contend for deputy mandates. In 1990, elections to the Supreme Soviet were held, which took place in the atmosphere of Gorbachev’s perestroika. The country got to know the names of the people on whom the policy of independent Ta- jikistan depended. They were Emomali Rakhmon, Makhmadsaid Ubaidulloev, Abdulmajid Dostiev, Tokhiri Abdujabbor, Safarali Kenjaev, Akbarsho Iskandarov, Khoji Akbar Turajonzoda, Asliddin Sokhibnazarov, and others. Despite this, the Supreme Soviet did not become the parliament at that time. One of the deputies recalled: “The 1990 elections were held in almost the same key as in the Soviet period. Gorbachev’s perestroika led to revival and a national upswing. Moscow gave the people democratic freedoms, elections were held. That parliament was communist, but the difference was that several members of the intelligentsia and religious representatives belonged to it. We hoped

118 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 that this system would gradually develop and a national parliament would form. But, unfortunately, we were unsuccessful. The opposite happened.”9 At the elections, the population essentially approved of the candidates selected in advance from among the party and Soviet nomenklatura, which showed the high degree of control the latter has over the election process. In those districts where the leaders of party and Soviet bodies balloted, non-alternative elections were “engineered.” They were graced by candidates known to have no winning chance but called upon to create the illusion of “free elections.” So it comes as no surprise that the parliamentary elections did not help to dismantle the one-party political system in Tajikistan10; the Supreme Soviet proved to be formed of deputies who were under the control of the Communist Party. On the whole, the supreme representative bodies of Tajikistan during perestroika and the acqui- sition of independence (1988-1995) can be described as follows: (1) Domination of the party-political leadership. According to Art 6 of the Constitution of the Tajik S.S.R., the C.P.S.U. was the nucleus of society’s political system and of state and public organizations. It determined the prospects for social development and the domestic and foreign policy course. What is more, the C.P.S.U. was engaged in appointing personnel, including to the Soviets, and actively interfered in the daily affairs and powers of the state bodies. (2) Domination of the executive bureaucracy. Unprofessional deputies, who gathered twice a year at the sessions of the Supreme Soviets, played the role of statists who confirmed particular draft laws prepared in advance. The practice prevailed of approving the absolute majority of legislative decisions put into effect by decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the S.S.R. or Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Tajik S.S.R.; they were permanent bodies with an overwhelming majority of representatives of the executive and party bureaucracy. (3) Domination of the former party-Soviet nomenklatura, which had significantly strengthened its economic position during the years of perestroika. It formed the backbone of the Tajik economic elite in the new conditions. The most important constitutional transformations carried out by the Supreme Soviet of the Tajik S.S.R., which created a working model of the new system, include the following: (1) Adoption of the Declaration on State Sovereignty of the Tajik S.S.R. (2) Abolishment of the leading and directing role of the C.P.S.U. and enforcement of the principles of political pluralism and the multiparty system. (3) Elimination of the provisions on socialist forms of property as the foundation of the economic social system, enforcement of the existence of different forms of property and ensuring their equal legal protection, and abolishment of the principle of mandatory state planning of economic development. (4) Exclusion from the Constitution of the Tajik S.S.R. of old socialist concepts and terms (“state of the whole people,” “in the interests of the workers,” etc.). (5) Enforcement of the principle of separation of powers, introduction of elements of parliamentarianism in the form of a permanent Supreme Soviet of the Tajik S.S.R., institution

9 F. Milod, “Parlament: Ot neposlushnogo sobraniia do spokoinogo i bezmolvnogo apparata,” Radio Ozodi, available at [http://rus.ozodi.mobi/a/26746138.html], 20 January, 2014. 10 See: A. Saifiddinov,Stanovlenie i razvitie izbiratelnogo prava v Tadzhikistane, Synopsis of a thesis for a PhD in Law, Moscow, 2002.

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of the post of President of Tajikistan as the supreme official and head of the executive power branch, formation of a Committee of Constitutional Surveillance as a supreme constitutional control body, and enforcement of the principles of independence of the judicial system.

Parliament of Commanders

The history of independent Tajikistan shows that the existence of a parliamentary body in a state-organized society does not mean the emergence of parliamentarianism (of a particular political- legal institution on which all state administration is built). In some sense, the movement toward parliamentarianism was noticed during the elections of 26 February, 1995, which were held after the bloodiest period of the civil war and Emomali Rakhmon’s ascent to power. Deputies came to office who manifested a specific range of Tajikistan’s political forces and social strata. At the same time, the competitive nature of the elections (354 candidates contended for 181 seats) hid the fact that weapons, the administrative resource, and bribing of voters were frequently used during the struggle for mandates. The Communist Party of Tajikistan acquired the largest number of seats (60 mandates), independent candidates received 113 seats, the Party of National Unity gained two, and the political and economic reformers managed to acquire one seat for the first and last time.11 As for the currently ruling National Democratic Party, at the time, it was unable to acquire even five parliamentary seats. This parliament was named the parliament of commanders, since most of its deputies were commanders of the National Front or their henchmen. It performed certain functions, primarily legislative; it is precisely the legislative function that makes it possible to create the main, primary stratum of legal support for the individual, society, and the state. The legal acts adopted by the parliament in most countries of the world become the main source of the law. Despite the erosion of legal conscience and law and order that occurred against the background of the ongoing civil war, the same also happened in Tajikistan. Another two very important functions of parliament should also be mentioned.  First, among all the state institutions of liberal democracy, it essentially acts as the only body of people’s representation and,  second, it is the most important institution in the separation of powers triad, since it can have an impact on each of them (at least theoretically). It is also worth remembering that the main function of parliamentarianism lies in limiting executive power and creating its retraining mechanisms. The matter concerns, for example, mandatory approval by the parliament of specific decisions and decrees (new taxes, army draft, etc.) and uncon- ditional execution of the laws it adopts. The parliament of commanders, albeit to a limited extent, gave alternative assessments of the situation in the country; along with the Commission of National Consent,12 it resolved difficult prob-

11 See: F. Milod, op. cit. 12 The Commission of National Consent (CNC), formed in accordance with the Peace Agreements from among members of the government and opposition, became the main mechanism for executing the “General Agreement” documents during the transition period of 1997-2000. The CNC ceased its activity after the parliamentary elections of 2000 were held and the convocation of the new parliament of Tajikistan, the Majlisi Oli of RT, which became two-house.

120 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 lems relating to the inter-Tajik talks and the post-conflict period. Tajikistan’s parliaments of subsequent convocations were no longer able to do this.

Parliamentarianism in Tajikistan: Its Problems and Prospects

The understanding of parliamentarianism is directly related to the idea of the people as a source of state power and the parliament as a body of people’s representation. The Tajik parliament cannot really be called a full-fledged body of people’s representation. Due to use of the administrative resource and various political techniques at elections, the will of the people is ignored. Moreover, the voters have no control over the activity of the deputies, who have very little in common with the people and know next to nothing about their real needs. In compliance with Art 49.2 of the Constitution of the Republic of Tajikistan, the Majlisi Oli (parliament) is endowed with the authority to “interpret the Constitution and laws.” This regulation arouses objection for several reasons. First, it contradicts the principle of separation of powers—interpretation of the Constitution and laws by a body of constitutional control is one of the ways the legislative power branch is kept in check by the judicial power branch (since provisions of the law recognized as unconstitutional are no longer applied). On the other hand, this regulation contradicts Part 1 of Art 98 of the Constitution, according to which amendments and addenda to it are made by holding a national referendum. Nevertheless, the official interpretation of the regulations of the Constitution by the supreme legislative power branch will act in practice as a masked form of making amendments and addenda to it; in other words, it could be perceived as hidden law-making (the official interpretation of the law by the supreme legislative power, which adopted these acts itself, will essentially have the force of law). At one time, Professor G. Shershenevich spoke out against this practice, which was applied as far back as the Russian Empire.13 The parliament has a limited influence on the government. The president as the head of state and the executive power branch, as well as the guarantor of the Constitution, has a special status (Art 64 of the Constitution of the Republic of Tajikistan); he has the task of defining the main vectors of the state’s domestic and foreign policy. The president takes direct part in forming the government by directly supervising the republic bodies of executive power; he essentially becomes another of its entities. The Constitution gives the president levers of influence on the government, while also en- dowing him with coordinating the actions of all the state power bodies. According to the Constitution of the Republic of Tajikistan, the government is responsible to the President and is also under the control of the Majlisi Oli “regarding execution of the laws” (Art 73). But the last provision is implemented very inconsistently. For example, although the Majlisi Oli approves the country’s budget presented by the government, it does not have the authority to monitor its execution. The government is responsible to the president, as is customary in a presidential republic. However, in some cases, it, or any one of its members, can inform the president of its retirement, which is not typical of a presidential republic. Moreover, it is not clear how independently the Tajik government, as the supreme executive body of state administration, bears responsibility for the state of affairs in the republic, what is the

13 See: G.F. Shershenevich, Obshchaia teoriia prava, Issue 4, Moscow, 1912, p. 726.

121 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS framework of its most important functional powers, and in what cases it can be shown a breach of confidence. According to Arts 71 and 72 of the Constitution, the Majlisi Oli can in certain cases raise the question of removing the president from his post (if he is shown to be disabled, committed state trea- son, etc.). However, the president does not have the authority to disband the Majlisi Oli. Another unusual form of rule in Tajikistan is the post of prime minister, the powers of whom are not envisaged in the constitution; this essentially makes him a nominal figure. In these conditions, the executive power branch has certain significant advantages over the legislative power branch, which does not have an efficient mechanism of control over the government’s activity at its disposal. The people of Tajikistan are cut off from the government and are implicitly subordinated to its representatives. In these conditions, Tajik democracy and parliamentarianism are extremely ineffi- cient. The Majlisi Oli elected in compliance with the Constitution of Tajikistan has limited legislative powers, since it is deprived of control functions; this directly raising the question of the efficiency of separation of powers. The parliament adopts laws and approves the budget of the country and members of parliament. In so doing, it does not have the authority to control their execution, while the government does not hold responsibility to it. All of this disappoints the voters and causes them to criticize parliamentarianism and democracy as a whole. Of course, in a democratic society, the parliament cannot and should not be inviolable; it stands to reason that there are significant shortcomings in its activity that can and should be criticized (as we know, all progress is engendered by free and severe criticism). The parliament is unable to efficiently perform its functions since it is bound by numerous limitations relating to attempts to cut back its competence, narrow its access to information, ignore deputy inquiry, and so on. This gives rise to the logical conclusion that a working parliament (albeit the most unprofessional) is very inconvenient for a bureaucratically organized government.

Factors Hindering the Real Establishment of Parliamentarianism in Tajikistan

When analyzing the evolution of the supreme representative bodies of Tajikistan, it can be said that the following factors and circumstances hinder the real establishment of parliamentarianism in the country: — the conflict of interests between the parliament as an institution of democracy and the bureaucratically organized government; — the unwillingness of Tajik society to accept parliamentarianism and pragmatically assess its potential, as well as its lack of desire to defend parliamentary democracy; — the low level of Tajikistan’s political and legal culture.

Conclusion

Despite the Tajikistan’s ineffective parliament, its dependence on the executive power bodies, and the inaction of most deputies, who are incapable of representing the will of the people, the coun-

122 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 try’s population continues to support the ideas of parliamentarianism. The real attitude of citizens to the parliament is manifested most obviously during the holding of elections, when, overcoming the opposition of the executive power branch, voters try to vote for the candidates who arouse their trust. We will note that, despite their critical attitude toward the parliament, the voters of Tajikistan have never supported the idea of eliminating it. The collective nature of the parliament, which distinguishes it from the other state power bodies, is close to the political culture of the Tajik people. Indeed, the parliament is a body in which the interests of most social groups of the country’s population are represented and conditions are created for implementing the most popular political ideas. It is where the state’s regulatory base is formed and the real mechanisms of limitation and control of the executive power branch function. In this context, it should be noted that the parliament can only become legitimate when it is endowed not only with legislative functions, but also with powers to elect the government, control its activity and that of the other executive power bodies, disband them, as well as remove the president (or monarch).14 Consequently, supremacy of the parliament is the main criterion of parliamentarianism, distin- guishing it from any other type of state system or political regime.15 Only in this case will it be possible to put an end to the endless rivalry between the legislative and executive power branches. Several contemporary authors juxtapose the presidential and parliamentary republic, that is, talk about not a political regime, but a form of rule. In my opinion, this kind of understanding does not fit the traditional classification of political regimes. So it appears very logical to look at parliamentarianism as an invariable characteristic of a democratic political regime in its contemporary liberal understanding. Talking about the special features of parliamentarianism as a system for organizing political power, the following main characteristics can be singled out: — predisposition of the government to adopting and executing decisions by a parliamentary majority; — high ability to govern in pluralistic conditions; — less inclination of the executive power branch to balance on the verge of constitutionality (thanks to the simplicity of the procedure for removing the supreme executive power branch that acts in a similar way); — less adherence to the threat of a military coup; — more developed tendency to procure the support of a political society with an emphasis on rational procedures for forming the administration (with a stable party majority).16 However, the Tajik political system is not ready to transfer to a parliamentary basis. First, parliamentarianism presupposes a certain level of human development, upbringing in ideas of democratic rule, experience in political discussions and work with voters, as well as the high moral qualities of the latter. Unfortunately, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, human development in Tajikistan has deteriorated, while the former concept of professionalism has become devalu- ated. The country does not have its own experience of democracy, while foreign models have not particularly taken root in Tajik soil.

14 See: R.M. Romanov, “Poniatie i sushchnost parlamentarizma,” Sotsialno-politicheskiy zhurnal, No. 4, 1998, p. 213; idem, “Rossiyskiy parlamentarizm: genesis i organizatsionnoe oformlenie,” Politicheskie issledovaniia, No. 5, 1998, pp. 123-133. 15 See: Sovremeniy parlament: teoriia, mirovoy opyt, rossiyskaia praktika, ed. by Doctor of Law O.N. Kulakov, Moscow, 2005, pp. 30, 31. 16 See: Ibidem.

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What is more, civil society is underdeveloped in Tajikistan. In a developed democracy, the parliament acts as a gatherer and expresser of the interests of the groups and structures forming civil society, which it redirects into state will. If there is no civil society, however, the parliament expresses the will of the people at the top. I would like to hope that Tajik parliamentarianism has good prospects on which the country’s further sociopolitical and socioeconomic development can depend. It is very possible that a body of professional parliamentarians will form, plurality will become a reality, and political forces in the parliament will be rotated as envisaged in the constitution. In so doing, the president’s powers will not be increased, but constitutionally limited, and Tajikistan’s form of state governance will begin to correspond to a contemporary developed democracy. Otherwise, the parliament will remain a formal body.

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DEMOGRAPHY AND POPULATION MIGRATION

JANUS-FACED DYSFUNCTIONAL LAW: CASE OF KAZAKHSTAN’S SOCIOECONOMIC SUPPORT TO REFUGEE COMMUNITY

Saule EMRICH-BAKENOVA Ph.D. in Public Policy from Carleton University (Canada), Assistant Professor, Department of Public Administration, KIMEP University (Almaty, Kazakhstan)

ABSTRACT

his paper examines recent develop- Refugee Law appears to grant rights and ments in refugee policy in the Repub- protections consistent with international ac- T lic of Kazakhstan. Specifically it con- cords, it does so only superficially as these siders the context of adoption of policy out- are undermined by a complex set of national put—the Refugee Law—and Kazakhstan’s laws and policies that have precedence over compliance with international commitments the Refugee Law. Only after the Refugee on providing socioeconomic support to refu- Law was adopted, Kazakhstan under inten- gee community. The analysis reveals that sive pressure of international organizations ratification and subsequent steps to put in- started slowly bringing its refugee policy into ternational policy into practice in this particu- actual compliance with international stan- lar case are symbolic gestures to gain legiti- dards. The process, even though important, mation in international society without actu- has proved to be very slow, cumbersome ally aligning the domestic legal system with and only piecemeal and in reality has international commitments. Although the amounted to walking in place.

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KEYWORDS: Kazakhstan, human rights, socioeconomic rights, symbolic policy, dysfunctional law, refugees, asylum seekers.

Introduction Kazakhstan is a participant in more than 60 multilateral universal international treaties in the sphere of human rights, including the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its Protocol to which it joined in 1998. In signing the 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocol, the country committed to observing international standards on refugee policy and specifically to according to lawful refugees treatment as favorable as possible with respect to socioeconomic rights. Implemen- tation of the Convention’s provisions required adoption of national legislation which came in 2009 when the Refugee Law was adopted. This was considered as a progressive step since the law guarantees refugees and asylum seekers the right to work and entrepreneurial activities, to proper documentation, health, naturalization and to “other rights and freedoms.” Notably the position of the government is also one that is relatively open to finding new ways of solving refugees’ issues in accordance with international treaties signed by Kazakhstan.1 However, despite these guarantees, there are significant weaknesses, internal inconsistencies and gaps that undermine the effectiveness of the Refugees Law and prevent refugees from exercising their rights relevant to economic and social self-reliance. The paper supports the position that human rights treaties provide considerable potential for ratify- ing nations to deviate from international policy objectives and treat ratification as a symbolic gesture to gain legitimation in international society. Although the law appears to grant rights and protections consistent with international accord, it does so only superficially. In its actual effect the law has only political relevance whereas in substance its objectives are effectively overridden by the laws and policies that precede it. Further, evidence demonstrates that since adopting dysfunctional legislation, Kazakh- stani decision makers are very reluctant to deal with refugee socioeconomic issues in a substantive way. Indeed any attempt to apply dead letter provisions of the law is entangled with changing a multitude of other well-established policies. As a result there are more piecemeal alterations than genuine openness and willingness to policy transformation which ultimately leave the problem at issue unresolved. What- ever one thinks about costs and benefits associated with offering the basic socioeconomic rights to refugees, the combined effect of adoption of dysfunctional law and subsequent haphazard changes to it is an embarrassment mixed with politician’s fear and prejudice against people in need. Failure to extend the most basic rights to refugees appear inconsistent with the Convention and contradictory to official claims Kazakhstani state representatives make in international forums. The fact that the official number of registered refugees in Kazakhstan is quite low and they have status of foreigners temporarily residing in Kazakhstan provides even more possibilities for neglect and abuse of this community.

Symbolic Policy Refugees in Kazakhstan

In 20 years since gaining independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan has become an attractive regional destination for refugees due to its relative political stability and fast

1 See: S. Seitzhanov, “Status cheloveka bez rodiny,” 16 May, 20112, available at [http://m.zakon.kz/4491072-status- cheloveka-bez-rodiny-sabyrzhan.html]; OSCE Review Conference, 30 September-8 October, 2010, Warsaw. Statement by the Human Rights Commission in Kazakhstan, Mr. Tastemir Abishev.

126 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 economic growth. On average each year there are 500 to 600 persons who are in possession of official refugee status and between 70 and 150 asylum seekers whose claims are officially registered though without guaranteed provision of refugee status. The consistent average numbers of refugees is largely maintained because they have to reapply annually for renewal of their refugee status and some of them continue to do so for as long as 20 years.2 Meanwhile the rejection rate of asylum claims was highest just after the adoption of the Refugee Law in 2009, constituting 38.9 percent in 2010 and as high as 73 percent in 2011.3 On average, 60 percent of recognized refugees are between the ages of 18 and 59 and are considered of economically productive age while 35 percent are children under age 16 (on average 3 to 5 children in a family).4 For years, even preceding the Refugee Law adoption, state authorities have been publicly stating that refugees in Kazakhstan have the same rights as citizens or have rights that are on a par with international standards regulated by refugee convention.5 However, as analysis of the law and the context of its adoption show, these claims are seriously contestable.

National Policies, Laws and Institutions

Between 1997 and the early 2000s, in the brief period after accession (to the Convention and its Protocol) Kazakhstan outlined its humanitarian role with respect to refugees in several government documents (Decree on Principal Directions of Migration Policy of Kazakhstan; Migration Policy Framework; Migration Policy 2001-2010, and Program on Lowering Poverty 2003-2005). These documents promised to accord refugees, at a minimum, the same standards of treatment enjoyed by other foreign nationals in the same circumstances and, in many cases, the same treatment as nationals with respect to facilitation of their socioeconomic, linguistic and cultural integration and voluntary repatriation to their countries of origin.6 The documents, however, were in principle declaratory, “aspirational,” since domestic legislation did not contain refugee-specific provisions nor were provisions of the Convention and its Protocol applied directly in public administration and in courts.7 None of the domestic laws addressed socioeconomic rights and responsibilities of refugees on the basis of their legal status. Instead refugees were regulated by the common legislation applicable to other groups of foreigners and therefore limited in application.8 The most important law that principally addresses rights and responsibilities of foreign nationals in Kazakhstan, in effect since 1995, is the Law on Legal Status of Foreigners. This law differentiates two categories of foreign nationals: temporarily and permanently residing in Kazakhstan. Permanently residing foreign nationals are those who have received permission of the Government of Kazakhstan authorizing their right for permanent residence and can enjoy, with some exceptions, almost the same rights as Kazakh nationals. Foreigners

2 See: S. Emrich-Bakenova, Study on Self-Reliance Opportunities for Urban Refugees in Kazakhstan, Published by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR, Almaty, Kazakhstan, 2011. 3 See: UNHCR Population Statistics, Asylum Application and Refugee Status Determination, available at [http:// popstats.unhcr.org/Default.aspx], June 2014. 4 See: S. Emrich-Bakenova, op. cit. 5 See, for example: OSCE Review Conference 30 September-8 October, 2010, Warsaw; S. Bapakova, “Migratsiia— krugliy stol,” 15 April, 2010, available at [http:// www.nomad.su/?a=3-201004160035]; D. Mavloniy, “Departament migratsii: zhalueshsia na pytki—pokazhi spravku ot vrachei,” 19 August, 2010, available at [http://www.zakon.kz/top_news/181960- departament-migracii-zhalueshsja-na.html]. 6 See: Z. Turisbekov, “O problemakh migratsii i demograficheskoi situatsii v Kazakhstane,” Kazakhstanskaia pravda, 26 January, 1999, available at [http://kp.kazpravda.kz/c/1008012604]. 7 See: A. Shakirov, Doklad Upolnomochennogo po pravam cheloveka v Respublike Kazakhstan “O sobliudenii prav bezhentsev i oralmanov v Respublike Kazakhstan,” Astana, 2008. 8 See: Ibidem.

127 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS who stay in Kazakhstan based on other legal conditions are considered temporary residents. Accord- ingly, refugees, as temporary foreign residents, had the right only to medical emergency assistance and access to primary and general education but no right to employment or social assistance. In 2007 Kazakhstan adopted the Migration Policy Framework of 2007-2015. The document mentions refugees in passing and is indicative of a shift in the country’s humanitarian values toward preoccupation with national security, controlling and fighting terrorism and illegal migration. Socio- economic support for refugees and asylum seekers is not part of any state program or strategy nor there is a state agency specifically responsible for these issues. State institutions relate to refugees chiefly as recipients of or applicants for legal status but never as recipients of socioeconomic rights. Without legal means of employment, refugees and asylum seekers have been greatly dependent on financial and social assistance of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and its partner organization Red Crescent (social assistance), and various other rather haphazard sources including illegal employment.9 However, as UNHCR official policy states, financial assistance is not a right of a refugee. It covers the most basic needs and is provided only if there are financial resources available. Because UNHCR’s financial resources depend on donors’ contributions, assistance and services available to refugees may be delayed or cut. State authorities have been and continue to be ill-informed about refugees and their rights, perceiving them as a threat and in the rhetoric of some officials, as “traitors to their homeland.”10 Law enforcement bodies put officially registered asylum seekers under pressure through excessive surveillance and possible deportation since frequently they are not in possession of valid identity documents nor papers that confirm their legal status in Kazakhstan. Often they lack proper documentation for various reasons including their misunderstanding of processes of registration and appeal. Not least, this problem stems from deficiencies in Kazakhstan’s policies and procedures for issuing and recognizing asylum seekers documents, lack of co-ordination between governmental bodies concerned with refugees and migration, shortage of trained personnel and inadequate technical and financial resources in the asylum field.11 Institutional instability is yet another weak point in Kazakhstan’s refugee policy. Responsibility for refugee matters is piecemeal and is often transferred from one state agency to another. For example, in 2003 just six years after being established the Agency for Migration and Demography (AMD) (and its territorial bodies) which had a marginal role in refugee issues and preoccupation with repatriation of ethnic Kazakhs, was reorganized into the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of Population. This agency was given responsibility for regulating refugees’ legal status determination process through its Committee on Migration and territorial migration departments. Almost immediately after the Refugee Law was adopted, in 2010 the Committee on Migration was dissolved and by Presidential decree some of its functions, including those related to refugee issues, were transferred to the Migra- tion Police Committee under the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This reorganization and shift of refugee matter from social protection to the law enforcement agency was justified by the fact that Kazakhstan became the center of large scale migration processes with escalating rate of illegal immigration. Although the Ministry of Internal Affairs continues to exercise the lead position in all migration related issues, after another round of public administration restructuring in early 2013 the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of Population received back some of its functional responsibilities over migration issues, sharing them with the newly established Ministry of Regional Development. These changes primarily relate to streamlining regulatory policies with respect to illegal labor migration and issuance of work permits to seasonal labor migrants from CIS countries. The effects of these changes on refugees are yet to be seen.

9 See: S. Emrich-Bakenova, op. cit. 10 Author’s interview with state officials, Almaty, November 2011. 11 See: A. Shakirov, op. cit.; S. Emrich-Bakenova, op. cit.

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Thus, it appears that refugee policy is a mish-mash of declaratory documents, constantly changing institutions and confused policy which treat refugees as a marginalized category of temporary foreigners. This contributes to a precarious protection situation for most refugees and asylum seekers in Kazakhstan.

Legislative Inertia

International and domestic stakeholders have for years exerted pressure on Kazakhstan to consolidate and systematize work in developing national refugee legislation that would establish legal protection and socioeconomic rights for refugees.12 In 1998, the first draft of the Refugee Law was submitted to Parliament but withdrawn in 2001 with the official explanation that the country was not ready to absorb the economic burden of hosting refugees and that there were significant budgetary concerns that would result from the implementation of such a law.13 In the following years the Government claimed that work on the draft law was proceeding and that the final document would fully meet international standards concerning the rights of refugees.14 Finally in the summer of 2008 Kazakhstan reported the establishment of a governmental working group to develop the draft Law on Refugees. However, it was only in early 2009, after Kazakhstan announced its upcoming chairmanship in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and became intensively engaged in preparation for this important international position, that work on the refugee law lurched forward. In the spring of 2009 the President of Kazakhstan approved the National Human Rights Action Plan 2009-2012 which was presented as “the first in its kind” and “an eloquent testimony” to Kazakh- stan’s commitment to further democratization, improvement of legislation and implementation of the national system of protection of human rights. The document emphasized the need for Kazakhstan to fulfill its international responsibilities in the area of rights of refugees and advised expediting passage of the Refugee Law by Parliament. The Human Rights Plan was appraised by the United Nations as a milestone initiative for the implementation of the Path to Europe program of the Government of Kazakhstan, and more specifically for the Government’s commitment to bring the national legislation in compliance with international standards on the threshold of its chairmanship in OSCE.15 Within this political context, the draft law swiftly was passed in Parliament’s lower chamber (Majilis) and Senate, and was signed by the President of Kazakhstan on 4 December, 2009.

Dysfunctional Law

The objective of the Refugee Law is to provide a general legal framework for policy on refugees and asylum seekers including stipulation of their socioeconomic rights and responsibilities. Accord- ing to the law, refugees and asylum seekers have the right to proper documentation, freedom of em-

12 See: B. Baikadamov, “Budet zakon, budet i status,” 18 January 2007, available at [http://www.kazpravda. kz/c/1169116928]; M. Sarsenbaev, “Bezhentsy v Kazakhstane: vosmozhnoe reshenie ikh problem,” in: The Commissioner for Human Rights of the Republic of Kazakhstan Information Bulletin, No. 1 (10), 2007, pp. 28-31. 13 See: Z. Turisbekov, op. cit.; M. Sarsenbaev, op. cit. 14 See: “Lobby for Refugees,” Izvestia.kz, 30 March 2005, available at [http://www.izvestia.kz/node/1548]. 15 See: National Human Rights Action Plan of the Republic of Kazakhstan 2009-2012, Government of Kazakhstan, Astana, 2009.

129 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS ployment and engagement in entrepreneurship, access to medical services, right to naturalization and very broadly stated “other rights and freedoms” as outlined in the Constitution and laws of Kazakh- stan, and in ratified international treaties. Concurrently with adoption of the Refugee Law Kazakhstan made changes only to three existing statutes: the Law on Migration of the Population (1997); the Code of Administrative Violations (2001) and the Law on State Social Assistance (2001). These changes were cosmetic and stylistic in nature and did not clarify provisions related to refugees and asylum seekers, neither to legal status determination nor to socioeconomic rights. Several other laws with direct impact on implementation of the Refugee Law were left unchanged. The Refugee Law is not a directly applicable statute since it sets out only a broad framework that lists socioeconomic rights. In order to understand how these rights are supposed to be guaranteed it is necessary to piece together provisions of various other statutes which are not specified in the law. This not only underscores the limited influence of the law; it also creates a substantial degree of con- fusion with respect to granted rights and obscures understanding of the most basic elements of the law by those whose interests, rights and responsibilities it is supposed to regulate. A majority of these legal statutes and rules, in their turn, are in conflict with the Refugee Law and sometimes with one another. Adopted earlier than the Refugee Law, nevertheless they have precedence and thus leave it utterly superfluous. For example, the Law on State Social Assistance (2001) contains reference to refugees as beneficiaries of state assistance despite the fact that not only is this right not explicitly stated in the Refugee Law but it also contradicts the Law on Legal Status of Foreigners (1995) which states that this right is granted only to citizens and permanent residents of Kazakhstan. As foreigners temporarily residing in Kazakhstan, refugees and asylum seekers are not entitled to state provision of vocational and language training; refugees do not have the right to social housing, make contributions to pension funds (including private ones) or to the State Social Insurance Fund that covers various types of social security contingencies including disability, loss of support of wage earner, loss of work, supplement for pregnancy and child delivery, and childcare benefits; nor do they have access to bank services to open accounts, carry out transactions, or take loans; or the right to own a dwelling. While the Law on Refugees guarantees to refugees and asylum seekers rights to medical services, this guarantee is undone by two legal documents—the Law on Legal Status of Foreigners (1995) and the Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Health of the Nation and Healthcare System (2009). According to these documents, free public medical services are guaranteed only to Kazakhstani citizens and permanent residents. The rights of refugees and asylum seekers to healthcare is limited by further rules enforced by the Minister of Health (2009) to treatment of only 21 contagious health conditions, including polio, tu- berculosis, and virus hepatitis A and E. Other services are available only on a paid basis. The right to employment and entrepreneurship guaranteed by the Law on Refugees is undermined by provisions of other laws including the Law on Legal Status of Foreigners (1995), the Labor Code (2007) and the Law on Private Entrepreneurship (2006) that do not grant temporarily residing foreigners these rights.  Refugees have the right to work, but as temporary foreign labor whose official refugee certificate is valid only for one year, though subject to renewal upon undergoing the official application process, they are not able to build solid employment record in Kazakhstan. Until changes in the Labor Code were introduced in 2012 refugees were not even being able to sign a labor contract because the refugee certificate was not included in the list of documents specified by the Labor Code as required for labor agreement. Thus, they were also forced to engage in illegal labor activities.  Situation with respect to officially registered asylum seekers is complicated by the fact that government issued asylum seekers certificates are not considered identity document. With- 130 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015

out valid identity document asylum seekers do not have the right to work. Moreover, paradoxically, they are also not exempted from the requirement to have a work permit as temporary foreign labor. To sustain themselves asylum seekers are forced to engage in illegal labor.  Engagement in entrepreneurship in accordance with the Law on Legal Status of Foreigners (1995) and the Law on Private Entrepreneurship (2006) requires establishment of a legal entity. Asylum seekers cannot enjoy this right since they do not have identity documents recognized by Kazakhstan. Refugees can register a legal entity. However, the process is complicated by various interconnected issues among which one year validity of the refugees’ certificate is a great impediment. Officially recognized refugees could potentially acquire permanent residency status, and subsequently Kazakhstani citizenship, which could alleviate their socioeconomic conditions in Kazakh- stan. However, the Law on Legal Status of Foreigners and other relevant rules put refugees on equal footing with all other foreigners without special consideration or exemption based on humanitarian ground. In accordance with these general rules, persons wishing to acquire permanent residency in Kazakhstan have to meet a minimum requirement which includes among others obtainment of written consent of the state of origin or equivalent document confirming the applicant’s right to permanently leave his/her country of origin; police clearance certificate showing absence of criminal charges in the country of origin; and proof of financial sustainability equivalent to about $12,000 per person and either residency registration (propiska) or the solvency amount sufficient to buy a 15 square meters per person dwelling in the area where an applicant intends to reside. For a majority of refugees these requirements are impossible to meet and are contrary to the Convention provision that urges host states to facilitate as far as possible the assimilation and naturalization of refugees. The Refugee Law was adopted as a new piece of primary legislation rather than as a set of changes to the existing statutes discussed above. However, neither de jure nor de facto has the law had its stated effect on refugees’ situation since they continue to be treated as foreigners temporarily residing in Kazakhstan in accordance with the Law on Legal Status of Foreigners (1995). This pre- vents them from enjoying the rights guaranteed by the Convention and the Refugee Law itself. Even though the law stipulates sanctions for violations of its provisions any sanction for non-compliance related to the socioeconomic rights of refugees is puzzling in light of conflicts that its provisions have with other laws.

Symbolic Dysfunctional Law

The UNHCR stated that it welcomes the national law because the very fact of its adoption sig- nifies a considerable step toward promotion of protection of the rights of refugees. The next step, according to the international refugee agency, should include elaboration of rules that would guarantee implementation of these rights.16 Local and international human rights organizations, however, claimed that UNHCR, in express- ing its formal approval of the law, was more concerned with being able to list its adoption, regardless of quality, as an achievement in its self-appraisals.17 The country’s policy decision makers, under pressure to comply with treaty obligations and requirements, and not least, in order to present Ka-

16 See: “UVKB OON privetstvuet priniatie Kazakhstanom Zakona ‘O bezhentsakh,’” Gazeta.kz, 10 December, 2009, available at [http://news.gazeta.kz/art.asp?aid=140975]. 17 See: D. Dzhivaga, “Vpechatlenie ot novogo zakona: ‘zakon ni o chem,’” Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, 6 Febriary, 2010, available at [http://www.bureau.kz/data.php?n_id=1184&l=en].

131 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS zakhstan as being the first country among all post-Soviet states to adopt this type of law18 sidestepped the difficult realities of meeting international standards while still presenting a policy output that would allow stakeholders to claim victory and move on to something else. Furthermore, critics argued that the government and parliamentarians appeared to disregard detailed and constructive recommendations of various experts19 produced in the course of previous years. The final product in its substance is a poorly written “law about nothing.”20 The Refugee Law’s deficiency could be due to ordinary unprofessionalism and sloppiness of those who engaged in its preparation. Indeed, the official annual self-evaluation report by the Senate of Kazakhstan for 2009 stated that in order to streamline national laws in accordance with international standards for the upcoming chairmanship of Kazakhstan in the OSCE in 2010, a number of laws in 2009 were adopted in haste. As a result, the texts of these documents, including the Refugee Law, contain serious deficiencies and inconsistencies with existing laws and regulations.21 In a way unintentional negligence does not look that bad in comparison to the hypothesis of purposeful actions of drafters of the law. However, even if plausible, there is always an alternative interpretation to consider especially given the chain of particular high profile political events that took place in 2011 and 2012 as outlined below. The law appeared to have only a symbolic nature. While such laws could be found in most political systems they are especially pronounced with respect to international human rights treaties where compliance, “if it takes place at all, may well happen sporadically and in fits and starts.”22 There is also strong research evidence that some governments face substantial pressure to ratify international treaties in order not to be considered deviant actors and to gain legitimation in international society. Ruling elites proceed with ratification as symbolic gesture knowing that they do not have to necessarily align their domestic practices with the provisions of the treaties. This is possible due to low cost of ratification, control deficit in the absence of clear overarching enforcement authority and absence of effective sanctions for failure to meet these treaties standards.23 Ratification as symbolic gesture may then lead to production of nominal formal policies that do not have the stated effects on the actual practice and/or go against declared objectives.24 In other words, symbolic legislation may be very effective in achieving political-strategic goals such as removing “hot” pressing issues from the public agenda, whilst being very ineffective in terms of reaching a substantive solution for the respective issues at stake.25 In the case of Kazakhstan, the government’s lack of will to make the law legally effective is underscored by various factors. Clearly one factor is failure of budget sufficient resources to support

18 See: “Denis Dzhivaga: ‘Kazakhstan porozhdaet lits bez grazhdanstva,’” 13 February, 2012, available at [http://www. megapolis.kz/art/Denis_DZhIVAGA_Kazahstan_porozhdaet_lits_bez_grazhdanstva]. 19 See: B. Baikadamov, “O razrabotke gosudarstvennoi politike po prisoedineniiu, implementatsii mezhdunarodnykh pravozashchitnykh dogovorov i podgotovke otchetov po nim,” The Commissioner for Human Rights of the Republic of Kazakhstan Information Bulletin, No. 1 (10), 2007, pp. 45-48; С. Dubon, “Multiparty Consultation on Adoption of National Law on Protection of Refugees,” The Commissioner for Human Rights of the Republic of Kazakhstan Information Bulletin, No. 1 (10), 2007, pp. 26-28. 20 D. Dzhivaga, op. cit. 21 See: M. Nurleutov, “Itogi raboty apparata senata parlamenta Respubliki Kazakhstan za 2009 god,” available at [http:// www.parlam.kz/ru/senate/documents/4/5], 2010. 22 E. Hafner-Burton, K. Tsutsui, “Justice Lost! The Failure of International Human Rights Law to Matter Where Needed Most,” Journal of Peace Research, No. 44 (4), 2007, p. 409. 23 See, for example: J. von Stein, “International Law: Understanding Compliance and Enforcement,” The International Studies Encyclopedia, 2010; E. Hafner-Burton, K. Tsutsui, “Human Rights in a Globalizing World: The Paradox of Empty Promises,” American Journal of Sociology, No. 110 (5), 2005, pp. 1373-1411. 24 See: E. Hafner-Burton, K. Tsutsui, “Human Rights in a Globalizing World: The Paradox of Empty Promises.” 25 See: J. Newig, “Symbolic Environmental Legislation and Societal Self-Deception,” Environmental Politics, No. 16 (2), 2007, pp. 279, 291.

132 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 refugees. Within the framework of a three year budget (2009-2011) the government assigned extremely modest 3,718,400 million tenge (about $25,000) for implementation of the law to cover issuance of refugee and asylum seekers certificates and travel documents. Furthermore, statements by certain officials betray the political nature of the law and opposition to having the document to achieve substantive effectiveness. As one of the representatives of the state authorities put it: “If [the Law on Refugees] were adopted in the form and substance demanded by experts, that would turn Kazakhstan into a garbage can. Anyone who illegally arrives to Kazakhstan would be considered a refugee. These people should be under the jurisdiction of the Criminal Code of Kazakhstan because they violate not only the laws of the country that they left, but also our [Ka- zakhstani] laws.”26 Timing of the law’s adoption coincided with politically strategic events to promote Kazakh- stan’s international status including the previously mentioned OSCE chairmanship and adoption of the Human Rights Plan 2009-2012. Related developments in refugee policy, as discussed below, also emerged in concert with particular political events that opened a window of opportunity for refugee issues to get onto the formal agenda. After the Refugee Law was adopted, UNHCR tried to bring its concerns about discrepancies between the Refugee Law provisions related to socioeconomic rights and other laws on various official occasions and through regular meetings with the Inter-Ministerial Working Group that includes the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Migration Police Committee under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, General Prosecutor’s Office, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Labor and Social Protection, and the Committee on National Security. However, the main agenda item of these meetings as a rule was preoccupied with issues related to refugee status determination. Thus attempts to interest state bodies in the “soft” socioeconomic problems have proved to be difficult. It became possible to push through these issues only when in Fall 2011 the Human Rights Commission under the President of Kazakh- stan requested UNHCR’s support in preparing its special report, “On the Situation Concerning the Rights of Oralmans, Stateless Persons and Refugees in the Republic of Kazakhstan.” Coincidently, in the midst of preparation of the Human Rights Commission report, in Fall 2011 Kazakhstan applied for full membership in the Venice Commission (the European Commission for Democracy through Law). In the spring of 2012, just after the report was officially endorsed by the President of Kazakhstan, the membership was granted. In the summer of 2012, the UNHCR actively participated in nationwide promotion campaign of the Human Rights Commission’s report which also helped it to secure a round table in the Senate of the Parliament. In the Parliament UNHCR representatives emphasized that treatment of refugees as temporarily residing foreigners deprives them of their socioeconomic rights in accordance with the Convention and the Refugee Law itself. The UNHCR, relying on the report’s formal recommendations, requested Kazakhstani politicians to find ways to guarantee refugees access to employment, social assistance, public privileges and compensations, education, integration and naturalization in Kazakhstan; establishment of temporary accommodation centers for asylum seekers; and training of migration police authorities in refugee policy including study of best practices of other countries. As it turned out most of the recommendations were deemed contradictory to national laws specifically with respect to treating refugees on a par with foreign nationals who have permanent residency status in Kazakhstan.27 It was the first time the Government (represented by the Ministry of

26 A. Beisenbaeva, “V RK neopredelennost v otnoshenii bezhentsev sokhraniaetsia,” 10 June, 2009, available at [http:// news.nur.kz/126672.html]. 27 See: Bezhentsy v Kazakhstane poluchat vozmozhnost vesti trudovuiu deiatelnost—vitse-ministr vnutrennikh del RK K. Tynybekov,” 6 June, 2012, Parliament of Kazakhstan, available at [http://www.parlam.kz/ru/mazhilis/news-details/ id432/2/1].

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Internal Affairs) publicly and unambiguously stated this position. However, it promised to work out issues related to legal employment of refugees. Already in October 2012 the Majilis of the Parliament approved a draft law on identity documents and a draft law on changes and additions to certain legal documents related to identity documents. Considering the right of refugees to freedom of employment and given that the refugee certificate was not a valid document allowing the bearer to sign a labor agreement, the Labor Code of Kazakhstan was amended in early 2013 to include the refugee certificate among the list of approved documents for labor agreement. This also allowed refugees to obtain individual identification numbers, access to bank operations, tax payments, obtaining of authorization documents. At the end of 2012 and 2013 the Government of Kazakhstan also made its first financial contribution to UNHCR since 2000 of $169,236 and $184,999.28 It is quite possible the above-discussed developments were intended to bolster Kazakhstan’s bid for a seat on the United Nation Human Rights Council from Asian-Pacific States for the period 2013- 2015. Indeed in late Fall 2012 the spokesperson for Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs com- mented: “We [Kazakhstan] are pleased to have been elected to the U.N. Human Rights Council. But we do not consider it solely as a badge of honor. We see it as an opportunity to contribute to global efforts for making progress in this crucial field.”29 Thus far these have been the most significant events since the adoption of the Refugee Law. With the latest changes the issue of refugees’ employment right appeared to be cleared only formally because there is no evidence available whether this change have had any positive impact on refugees’ lives. Other issues such as employment of asylum seekers, medical, social and housing assistance for both groups as well as issues related to naturalization of refugees remain unresolved.

Conclusion & Implications

The case study demonstrates the high political-strategic as opposed to issue-related effectiveness of refugee policy in this country. The development of a refugee policy that initially was supposed to respond to humanitarian concerns progressively turned into a vexatious problem. Policy makers re- sisted complying with international standards for a substantial period of time. However, despite its substantive and legislative ineffectiveness, the Refugee Law performed a very useful function for Ka- zakhstan. The law appeared as formal agenda item at a time when Kazakhstan was pursuing its political objectives conditioned not so much by concern with ensuring socioeconomic rights of refugees and alleviation of their concrete problems as by concern with bolstering the country’s international status. Students of symbolic policies, including those who study the effects of international treaties, point out that a strong increase in the amount of symbolic policymaking is always serious from a democratic perspective because there is a high probability that everybody, including the initiators, is cheated in the end.30 Laws that tackle problems in a merely symbolic way, despite the legislative possibility of more effective measures, remain both legally and substantively ineffective and costly to the public purse.31 In this context it is rather puzzling when some consider hopeful signs of progress in Kazakhstan’s nominal embrace of human rights as a step toward eventually addressing the practi-

28 See: “UNHCR Regional Operations Profile—Central Asia,” UNHCR, 2013; UNHCR Kazakhstan, Fact Sheet, UNHCR, 2014. 29 “Kazakhstan Elected to the United Nations’ Human Rights Council,” Government of Kazakhstan, 2012, available at [http://www.kazakhembus.com/article/vladimir-socor-kazakhstan-elected-to-the-united-nations-human-rights-council]. 30 See: G. Gustaffson, “Symbolic and Pseudo Policies as Responses to Diffusion of Power,” Policy Sciences, No. 15, 1983, p. 278. 31 See: J. Newig, op. cit.

134 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 cal legal obstacles to refugees and asylum seekers achieving their presumably guaranteed rights. Apparently in this optimistic view, each step, however, small, merits applause. The case study emphasizes that whatever elements of refugee policy do exist, they are not primary but principally derivatives of other much more important for Kazakhstan general policies. In other words, to make significant changes in refugee policy would require changes several orders of magnitude more complex than those that have been made in the Refugee Law. Would UNHCR have sufficient capacity to lobby for those changes? The question seems rhetorical given the existing problem within an international treaty regime that continuously faces problems with control deficit and enforcement capacities. The latest concession that was given (the right to employment for refugees) is a bargain item since there was no formal explanation of why this right, which has been in the Refugee Law from its inception, took so long to actually be met. The demand for change of refugees’ status from temporarily to permanently residing foreigners was declined precisely because of resistance to changing general policy—the Law on Legal Status of Foreigners (1995). The tightening security environment in Central Asia, rising fear of terrorist attacks, visa free regime between countries of the former Soviet Union and significant difficulties in controlling cross border population movements affect the positions of all concerned countries, including Kazakhstan, on provision of asylum. Thus instead of producing costly, dysfunctional and contradictory laws as a way of avoiding coming to grips with an intractable problem it could be suggested to consider refugee issues in earnest and in light of political concerns that Kazakhstan faces. However, as the case analysis implies, benefits of international reputation at times make creating symbolic dysfunctional policy worthwhile.

THE PROSPECTS FOR EDUCATIONAL MIGRATION FROM KYRGYZSTAN TO TURKEY

Zharkyn SAMANCHINA Ph.D. (Political Science), Bishkek Humanitarian University (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan)

Aynura ELEBAEVA D.Sc. (Philos.), Professor, International University of Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan)

ABSTRACT

s globalization of the world economy its forms is student or educational migra- increases, the scope of intellectual tion—a phenomenon that largely dates to A migration continues to spread. One of the end of the 20th century and has not been 135 Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS sufficiently studied so far. As for Kyrgyzstan, mines a country’s national potential. It this is essentially the first time intellectual should also be kept in mind that the host and student migration has been studied. countries use migrants to achieve specific Any migration, including intellectual, under- ideological and political goals.

KEYWORDS: transnationalism, translocality, international migration, intellectual migration, educational migration, student migration, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey.

Introduction

Migration is one of the most important problems in the social, economic, and political spheres of public life. In the second half of the 20th century, migration began reaching global proportions. It has encompassed almost every country, social strata, and sphere of public activity; the past century can rightly be called the “era of migration.” International migration is mainly activated by people striving to adapt to the global changes going on in the world. There can be no doubt that today migration has become one of the main factors of social transformation and development throughout the world, and migration processes determine to a large extent the current state of certain countries and the entire world community.1 Nowadays, there is great interest in studying intellectual migration, which is represented at two levels. The first includes qualified specialists, scientists, and experts, while the second comprises students and interns who could fill the ranks of intellectual migrants after they graduate. On the one hand, intellectual migration represents new socially economic opportunities for the migrants themselves, as well as the source and host countries. However, on the other hand, it could lead to negative consequences for the source countries, which are threatened with loss of control over their intellectual resources. The exclusively dynamic increase in student migration is of particularly note; turning it from a brain drain into a brain inflow depends on its effective management. In contrast to labor migration, the prospects for intellectual migration are generated by the fact that educated, highly qualified personnel participate in it, who can contend for good jobs with a high salary. The participants in intellectual migration are acquiring a completely new set of knowledge, abilities, skills, moods, and worldviews that they are bringing back home with them, or transferring to their relatives and fellow countrymen from abroad through virtual communication. This makes it possible to talk about a higher qualitative level of migration that presumes not only supporting the vital activity of those involved, but also encouraging their significant contribution to the development of their country. The increase in scope of student migration is directly linked to the activation of current globalization processes. Training young specialists abroad entails migration of young people based on a cosmopolitan view of the world and understanding of one’s place in it. It is in this respect that close attention must be paid to growing educational migration, which is making it possible to acquire an education abroad, in turn, raising socioeconomic mobility and the quality of human capital.

1 See: T.N. Balashova, Konstitutsionno-pravovye problemy formirovaniia migratsionnoi politiki, Juridical Press Center, St. Petersburg, 2011, pp. 7-8.

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Thanks to educational migration, an international “free-flowing” fund of mobile, self-confident, highly qualified and highly adaptable specialists is forming, who have a command of English and computer technology, as well as professions that enjoy a high demand in the world labor market.2 At the same time, it should be admitted that study abroad is very elite; only gifted students with a high level of knowledge and personal mobility can take advantage of it. Countries sending their students to foreign universities could find themselves in dire straits if these students do not return home.3

Factors of Educational Migration from Kyrgyzstan to Turkey

During recent decades, globalization processes have also intensified in Kyrgyzstan, which is related with the more extensive penetration of capital, technology, goods, and services into the country, on the one hand, and an increase in the dimensions of labor migration, on the other. According to various official and expert statistical data, between 12% and 26% of the country’s economically active population are involved in external labor migration in Kyrgyzstan.4 It is well known that external labor migration is very widespread in the Kyrgyz Republic (KR) and is a means of survival for many families. Since the republic acquired its independence, student migration has also been actively developing (although not at the same rate as labor migration). Kyr- gyz students, who study in many countries of the world today, are active participants in international intellectual migration. In so doing, they are making a certain contribution to strengthening interstate relations between the source countries and host countries participating in educational migration. Kyrgyz students have the opportunity to study abroad on grants from foreign governments. Educational exchange is based on the geopolitical interests of economically developed countries that are striving to cultivate talented specialists for themselves. Upon return to their homeland, they can become active advocates of the policy of the country they studied in. So educational migration promotes international integration and the development of interstate relations. Most students from Kyrgyzstan who study abroad under interstate agreements go Turkey. This is largely predetermined by the positive and good-neighborly relations on which interstate ties between Kyrgyzstan and Turkey are based. It should be noted that since the former Soviet republics gained their independence, Turkey has been showing an increased interest in many of them. As for interstate relations between Kyrgyzstan and Turkey, they stand on a firm historical and cultural foundation and mutual economic advantage. This makes it possible for both countries to develop multilateral cooperation, including in education, which is one of the main channels of Tur- key’s policy in the Central Asian Region.

2 See: S. Mooney, I. Angell, “Information Technology and Brain Drain: A Different Perspective,” Proceedings of the International Seminar on “Brain Drain Issues in Europe”, Venice, Italy, 25-27 April, 1993, Technical Report No. 15, ed. by S. Biggin, V. Kouzminov, UNESCO-ROSTE, 1993, p. 118. 3 See: L.I. Ledeneva, E.V. Tiuriukanova, Rossiiskie studenty za rubezhom: perspektivy vozvrashcheniia v Rossiiu, Strakhovoe reviu, Moscow, 2002, p. 7. 4 See: G.V. Kumskov, “Kyrgyzstan: razvitie potentsiala denezhnykh perevodov trudovykh migrantov,” in: Mezhdunarodnaia migratsiia naseleniia na postsovetskom prostranstve: dvadtsat let udach, oshibok i nadezhd, Scientific series Mezhdunarodnaia migratsiia naseleniia: Rossiia i sovremennyy mir, MGU, Iss. No. 25, 2011, p. 149.

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The fact that students find very favorable living and study conditions in Turkey has had a significant influence on the increase in educational migration from Kyrgyzstan to this country. Another important factor is that Turkish educational institutions have long been competitive at an international level; in terms of the quality of education they offer, they have noticeably overtaken many similar educational institutions in Russia and the CIS countries. There is a real educational boom going on in Turkey. This is confirmed by the fact that the Middle East Technical University of Ankara has overtaken Lomonosov Moscow State University (in 2013) in the global rating of Times Higher Education for 2012-2013, which determines the top 400 universities in the world every year. A total of five Turkish educational institutions were on this list (the Middle East Technical University of Ankara, Koç University, Bilkent University, Istanbul Tech- nical University, and Boğaziçi University) and only two Russian—Lomonosov Moscow State Uni- versity and the Moscow Physical Engineering Institute.5 This data make it possible to talk about competition between the Turkish and Russian educational institutions to which a large number of Kyrgyz students go to study. Kyrgyz students who study abroad return home armed with new knowledge and skills. Never- theless, along with its positive effect, educational migration could also have negative consequences for the country’s socioeconomic development. The matter concerns the non-return (or delayed return) of the most capable and talented graduates of foreign universities. It seems that this problem requires particularly keen attention and careful study.

Trends and Characteristics of Student Migration to Turkey

The questions relating to educational migration were analyzed in accordance with the results of an applied political scientific study carried out among Kyrgyz students studying at Turkish universities.

Study Methodology

The study was carried out in November-December 2011 in Ankara and in April-May 2012 in Istanbul within the Swiss North-South NCCR scientific study program, which lasted a total of 10 weeks. When carrying out individual in-depth interviews (in Russian, Kyrgyz, and Turkish), a semi- structured questionnaire was used that covered the following aspects:  reasons students go to Turkey to study;  factors that help students study and live abroad;  comparison of the educational systems of Kyrgyzstan and Turkey;  students’ ties with their homeland (family and friends);

5 See: R. Sharshebaev, “Regress prodolzhaetsia: Kyrgyzstan spasut tolko novye litsa,” Akipress, 8 April, 2013, available at [http://www.akipress.org/zdorovie/news:14490].

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 future plans and prospects;  influence of educational student exchange programs on international relations between Kyr- gyzstan and Turkey. In-depth interviews were carried out among 83 students and graduates—40 in Ankara and 43 in Istanbul. A total of 29 female students and 54 male students participated in the survey (including 35 students studying for a B.A., 24 students studying for an M.A., and 24 students studying for a PhD). The so-called snowball method of sociological study was used to look for and identify potential respondents, whereby each person questioned provides the coordinates of the next respondent. Per- sonal contacts, Facebook, and the help of activists of the Kyrgyz Society of Friendship and Culture from Istanbul and Ankara were also used. Students were willing to participate in the study, be interviewed, and help to find new respondents. The migration biography method was also used in the study, which made it possible to draw up psychological portraits of educational migrants. Four groups can provisionally be singled out based on the information about students studying in Turkey obtained during the interviews: (1) Students planning to finish their study and return home. (2) Students using the education obtained in Turkey as a springboard to continue studying in other foreign countries (for example, in Europe or the U.S.). (3) Students using study in higher educational institutions to extend their visas and find work in Turkey. (4) University graduates receiving diplomas and staying on to work in Turkey on the basis of a work visa or Turkish citizenship.

Special Features of Educational Migration from Kyrgyzstan to Turkey

Bishkek leads in terms of number of students studying in Turkish higher educational institutions, followed by the Dzhalal-Abad and Osh regions of Kyrgyzstan (see Table 1).

Table 1

Distribution of Respondents According to Place of Origin

Region Bishkek Naryn Osh Dzhalal-Abad Batken Talas Chuy Issyk Kul

Number 20 6 18 19 3 3 11 3

This can be explained by the fact that the highest number of Turkish secondary educational institutions (lyceums) are found in the capital and south of Kyrgyzstan. In addition to the above reasons, during the survey it was revealed that most students going to study in Turkey live in remote rural districts and are from families with average or lower than average incomes. Many students noted that combining study and work was aroused by their wish to support parents and other family members living in Kyrgyzstan.

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During the interviews, the students gave their desire to acquire a high-paying job in Russia as one of the main reasons for obtaining an education in Turkey. According to them, the graduates of world-renowned Turkish universities (including those recognized in Europe and the U.S.) have a real opportunity to become white-collar specialists and will never work as janitors or have to do any other kind of menial job. They also noted that the standard and quality of life for students in Turkey was much higher than in Kyrgyzstan and Russia. The influence of professors of the Turkish lyceums and higher educational institutions functioning in Kyrgyzstan plays a main role among the motivating factors (including personal considerations, advice from friends and relatives, media information, and others) promoting preference for studying in Turkey. The following table can serve as confirmation of this.

Table 2

Factors Motivating Going to Study in Turkey

Number of Students

Targeted/independently 23

Friends/relatives 8

Professors at the Turkish lyceum, Manas and Ata-Türk universities, at the Chair of 50 Theology of Osh State University, and the Arashan School of Theology

Announcement in the newspaper/Internet 2

Total 83

In contrast to work migrants going from Kyrgyzstan to Russia and Kazakhstan to look for work, young Kyrgyz people go to Turkey to obtain an education. However, they frequently combine study and work, which is essentially illegal. You need a special permit to legally work in Turkey, since according to the legislation of this country, foreign students do not have the right to work in Turkey. So a student visa states directly that it does not give permission to work even part-time (as is acceptable in many countries of Europe and in the U.S.). Nevertheless, in Turkey, students from Kyrgyzstan who know several languages (Turkish, Rus- sian, and English) and do not ask for high wages are willingly hired for work. So Kyrgyz students essentially work illegally in Turkey (unless we are talking about those who have received a work visa or become Turkish citizens). The gradual intertwining of migrants’ study and work is a complex problem that requires analysis. So one of the tasks of this research was to identify the main factors causing the transformation of educational migrants into work migrants and their failure to return or delayed return home related to this. One of these factors is that many Kyrgyz students studying in Turkish higher educational institutions find work through the internships they had to participate in during the last year of study at university. Quite often specialists about to receive their diplomas who can speak 3-4 foreign languages are offered jobs by the companies where they did their internship. When hiring a foreign citizen, the company must provide him or her with a work visa, which takes a long time and is expen- sive to obtain and entails filling out a multitude of documents and paying for all the members of his or her family (students’ spouse and children), creating numerous problems for both sides. Another factor is the work of Kyrgyz students in Turkish companies that do business with Russia and other former socialist republics, including Eastern European countries. According to

140 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 students, at least one Kyrgyz graduate from a Turkish university works in each of these companies. Moreover, among those interviewed was a person who stated that if all students from Kyrgyzstan working in Istanbul decided to quit their jobs, the entire sector of Turkish trade with CIS countries would collapse. A third factor is that several students combine their study with business that entails delivering Turkish commodities to Kyrgyzstan, where they are sold by their relatives or friends. Some of the most successful former students who currently live and work in Turkey have their own freight service business. They know the Turkish market well and act as agents in economic trade relations between Kyrgyzstan and Turkey. Social networks (Facebook and others) were named as another significant factor; more than half of the students from Kyrgyzstan interviewed noted that these networks allow them to maintain good contacts with their fellow countrymen and openly share information with them on available vacan- cies, work conditions, and so on. There are also public associations of students that provide assistance in finding jobs. For example, in addition to its main duties (meeting students at the airport, helping with local registration, and resolving enrollment issues), the Kyrgyz student council in Istanbul also acts as a source of information and provides assistance in finding jobs. Upper class students, particularly members of the Kyrgyz Friendship and Culture Society, provide lower class students with significant cultural and socioeconomic support both on an individual level and by means of organizing such sociocultural events as thematic conferences, picnics, sports competitions, and celebrating Nowruz, Kurman Ait, New Year, and so on. All of the above-mentioned factors as a whole are promoting the creation of interstate social communalities and activating transnationalization and transmigration.6 Associations of study and work migrants are creating an information field and generating financial, commercial, and migration exchange between the countries, accompanied by pendulum and shuttle interpenetration of elements of their social practices. This increases the effect of external influences on the migrant source country and host country and, in turn, promotes migration globalization. The Kyrgyz students studying in Turkey are a graphic case in point. Most of the students from Kyrgyzstan are concentrated in Ankara and Istanbul. These two cities differ significantly in terms of living and study conditions. Ankara, the capital of Turkey, has the largest number of administrative institutions; students, who have much fewer opportunities to find a job here, call it “the city of bureaucrats.” Istanbul, on the other hand, is a major tourist and trade center, which provides broad maneuver for business activity. It is much easier for foreign students to find work in this city. So students studying in Ankara experience significant financial difficulties. Many of them -con tinue their study to obtain a higher degree, others devote themselves to various types of research (this helps them to improve the quality of their education), while still others develop a new lifestyle. This is probably why 15 PhD candidates were surveyed during the sociological study in An- kara, and only 5 in Istanbul. Study aimed at receiving a high degree not only increases the grant, but also, as mentioned above, makes it possible for the student to combine study and work. It was revealed during one of the interviews that a certain student was enrolled in a post-graduate course in Ankara, but lived and earned money in Istanbul. Istanbul is a lively and dynamic metropolitan city teeming with job opportunities, so students who live there are able to successfully combine study and work. Cases are also known where students have abandoned their study and given their full attention to earning money.

6 See: L. Basch, S.S. Glick, B.Ch. Szanton, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments and Deterritorialized Nations-States, Gordon & Breach, New York, 1994, p. 34.

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There are many noncommercial and charity organizations in Istanbul, including various funds that, according to students, provide them with additional financing; the most successful students are able to earn up to $600-700 a month, not including their grant. Istanbul is also well-known for the important international conferences and symposiums held in it that require the services of interpreters and guides. Some large Turkish companies that specialize in organizing such events have data bases of Kyrgyz students who know several languages. Many students from Kyrgyzstan try to study well, thus creating a platform for rising to the next educational level (from B.A. to M.A. and then to PhD); their main motivation for doing this is to extend their stay in Turkey. At the same time, as follows from several interviews, there is also a category of students who deliberately fail the exams in certain subjects. This permits them to extend their student visa and remain in Turkey on a legal basis, while at the same time continuing to work illegally. It stands to reason that this practice has a negative effect on the quality of education of students and postpones their graduation. One of the main reasons why students stay on in Turkey to work is marriage and starting a family. This requires additional finances necessary for renting housing. According to one PhD student studying in Ankara and working as an export manager at an enterprise manufacturing car spare parts, he did not feel a particular need for money until he got married. In this respect, he said literally the following: “I returned (to Turkey) in 2004 and I was already married at that time. I easily found a job. I work as a white-collar employee, I am the manager of an export branch. Here I rent a four-room apartment for $300. In Bishkek, I would not be able to find such an apartment for that amount of money, plus utilities… I earn approximately $4,000 a month [in their interviews, Kyrgyz students noted that the minimum wage in Turkey amounts to around $400 a month], but that money goes to pay for private schools for my two daughters, apartment, utilities, food; however, no one in Kyrgyzstan would pay me so much… [As of today, the average monthly wage in Kyrgyzstan amounts to 10,249 Kyrgyz soms (around $215).7] I want to go home, but in order to live well there, it is better to save money here before returning…”8 After analyzing the results of the research, several main factors can be singled out that promote the striving of a large number of young Kyrgyz people to stay in Turkey after they graduate. Many do not see any prospects at home and worry that when they return to Kyrgyzstan they will not be able to find a good job, since this requires connections, which they do not have. Available jobs are low-paying, while daily expenses, rent, education for their children, and so on require a lot of money. In this context, the language problem should also be mentioned. As already noted, many students from Kyrgyzstan who enroll in Turkish universities are from rural areas, where they were taught in Kyrgyz. However, knowledge of Russian is required in Kyrgyzstan for finding a job (although the state language is Kyrgyz). However, after living in Turkey for several years, Kyrgyz students lose their command of Russian. Despite the fact that upon their return to Kyrgyzstan some graduates of Turkish universities do manage to find a good job or start their own private business, for many of them finding a job in their homeland is fraught with many problems, particularly since personal connections frequently play a more important role than professional skills or knowledge. It is especially difficult for young people who have obtained an education abroad to find a job in public structures, nor are they in particular demand in private enterprises.

7 See: “Average Nominal Wage,” 4 May, 2013 available at [http://stat.kg/index.php?option=com_content&task=view &id=123&Itemid=125]. 8 Interview by Zh. Samanchina in Istanbul, April 2012.

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Some students said in their interview that they would like to earn starting capital in order to open a business when they returned to Kyrgyzstan, whereby many of them already have potential Turkish partners. The graduates of Turkish universities often complain about bureaucratic obstacles preventing them from opening their own business in Kyrgyzstan.9 The lack of desire to open one’s own business in Kyrgyzstan is related to worries about possible pressure from the tax service, the high level of corruption, and having to take responsibility for the errors of partners. Many young specialists returning to Kyrgyzstan think that business legislation is more liberal in Turkey. A small number of graduates of Turkish universities who return home work at the Kyrgyz- Turkish Manas University, Ata-Türk Alatoo University, and in Kyrgyz-Turkish lyceums, where they teach students. It should also be noted that not everyone who returns to Kyrgyzstan succeeds in finding their niche in the local labor market, and they have to find a job in some kind of business structure (and not in their specialization). When responding to what factors promoted their successful integration into a foreign society, as well as provided them with normal living conditions and effective study, many students from Kyrgyzstan noted in particular the friendly attitude of Turkish citizens toward them (just as toward other natives from Central Asia). Moreover, they noted that during their stay in Turkey, they acquired new patriotic feelings, formed new social skills, and increased their ability to communicate with other students from Kyr- gyzstan. In the words of Kyrgyz students studying in Turkish universities, they try not to forget their national culture and traditions, and to this end make every attempt to maintain relations with their compatriots, spending their free time together and organizing various events. When in Turkey, they cannot help but worry about the decrease in the value of education in Kyrgyz society caused by economic difficulties. When responding to the question of what education system is more effective, the Kyrgyz or Turkish, the students’ opinions differed. Here it should be kept in mind that most of them went to study in Turkey right after graduating from high school and so cannot judge the quality of education at home. At the same time, students note how well equipped Turkish universities are, which makes it possible to carry out serious scientific research. The students interviewed believe that their study and work in Turkey is promoting an improvement in relations between the two countries. Kyrgyz graduates of Turkish universities are successful in finding jobs in large Turkish companies that do business in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. Many large Turkish companies have branches in the CIS, but they are mainly in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other Russian cities. For example, such well-known companies as Koç, Sabancı, and Vestel have offices in Moscow and are happy to hire Kyrgyz who have graduated from Turkish universities. A good case in point is the Turkish Credit Europe Bank, in the information technology branch of which work seven Kyrgyz employees.

Future Plans and Prospects

In 2012, Turkey began implementing a new international program that envisages a significant increase in the number and size of grants, as well as the payment of students’ airplane tickets.

9 See: S. Thieme, A. Elebaeva, Z. Bruce, J. Samanchina, “Studying Abroad: Encouraging Students to Return to Kyrgyzstan,” Evidence for Policy Series, in: Regional edition Central Asia, No. 5, 2013, ed. by M. Arynova, NCCR North- South, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

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One student studying in Ankara in Computer Technology expressed her concern about the brain drain from Kyrgyzstan as follows: “It upsets me that the strongest students enroll in Turkish universities and then stay here to work; this is the saddest thing. When I think about this, I wonder why they opened this program. But even if they don’t say so, it is clear that they want to train personnel for themselves. However, it would be best if students returned to Kyrgyzstan after taking advantage of this opportunity. Students who don’t think about this stay in Turkey to work. This upsets me because it means a brain drain.”10 The above-mentioned phenomenon is explained by the fact that many graduates cannot find jobs at home and either go to Russia, or return to Turkey to look for work, which, according to students, takes advantage of this situation to raise its intellectual potential. The survey revealed that educational migration from Kyrgyzstan to Turkey is stimulated both by the high quality of Turkish education and the intensification of socioeconomic and cultural ties between the two countries. Moreover, it gathered a large amount of data that shows the reasons why students choose not to return to Kyrgyzstan after finishing their study in Turkey. The results of the poll on this topic, which covered 83 students, are presented in the table below (see Table 3).

Table 3

Future Plans after Graduation (Return Home)

Plans Number

I will definitely return home 22

I will continue studying in Turkey (Masters degree, PhD) 16

I will continue studying in another country (Europe, U.S., Russia) 16

I will stay and work in Turkey for a while (2-5 years) 13

I will stay/am staying in Turkey to live 11

I don’t know 5

Total 83

As follows from Table 3, most participants in the interview are not planning to return home (at least in the near future). Many students consider study in Turkey not only as a way to obtain an education, but also as a long-term project to raise the prosperity of their families. Kyrgyz students think that they need to reinforce their theoretical knowledge with practical experience before returning home, which is required for acquiring command of some fields of specialization (for example, Archi- tecture). In Kyrgyzstan, there are very few opportunities to acquire that kind of professional experience; so for that reason they continue to gather practical experience in Turkey, Russia, Kazakhstan, and other countries. It is worth noting that Kyrgyz students regard Turkish universities as a springboard for further study or for finding a job in Europe and the U.S. Some of them participate in the EU Erasmus-Mundus program, which allows them to engage in research studies at European universities. Among Kyrgyz students who graduate from Turkish universities are also those who work for Google and Microsoft.11

10 Interview by Zh. Samanchina in Ankara, November 2011. 11 See: “A Kyrgyz Boy is Working for the Bill Gates Corporation,” Public Rating, 24 August, 2012, available in Russian at [http://kyrgyztoday.kg/ru/intervyu/item/3564-v-korporatsii-billa-geytsa-rabotaet-kyirgyizskiy-paren.html].

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During the interviews, it was revealed that several Kyrgyz students studying in Turkey participate in the Work and Travel program. Under this program, they can go to the U.S. to work and travel during the summer holidays. However, the impression was created that it is easier for Kyrgyz students to get a U.S. visa in Turkey. At present, there is a Kyrgyz diaspora in Chicago that consists of former graduates of Turkish universities. The students polled expressed the opinion that Turkey is using the above-mentioned educational program to “attract brains” (as the U.S. did at one time). Not only young people from the former Soviet Union study here, but also students from Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia. People from these countries (not including Kyrgyzstan and several other Turkic-speaking countries) do not have the linguistic and cultural communality with the Turkish people. Based on this, students believe that Turkey, which is aiming to build a better future, is making use of the intellectual potential of other countries. It should be noted that the wide choice of jobs and adequate evaluation of their qualifications by local employers plays a significant role in the decision made by students who graduate from university to stay in Turkey (according to the poll results, more than half of them plan to do this). Today, four graduates have already become Turkish citizens and begun working in their field of specialization after graduation, while one student quit university, but managed to find a job. Several instances were noted when Kyrgyz graduates became citizens and built successful ca- reers, including a successful surgeon who works in one of the clinics in Ankara, a professor at Fatikh University, and a journalist for Turkish radio and television. In this context, I would like to present the statement of a former student who studied in Turkey and became a citizen of this country. “After getting my PhD, I returned to Kyrgyzstan and went to the Ministry of Education, believ- ing I should work there according to my specialization in Preschool Education. I studied everything in this subject in Kyrgyzstan and Turkey. I chose a broad subject in order to be more beneficial and not simply become a school teacher. But they only laughed at me in the Ministry. They said that if I have connections I could get a job, but if not, I couldn’t. “So through a few personal connections I went to one university in Bishkek, because this sphere of research is only available there. I was immediately offered a job, but only as a part-time worker, and not as a permanent member of the staff. The wage I was offered was so small that it would not even have been enough to pay for an apartment. “My husband was in an even more difficult situation. He studied psychology, but in Bishkek, this subject is only taught at the Slavic University, while my husband does not know Russian well… “So we thought about it … and decided to go back to Turkey. We did not want to apply for citizenship, but my work visa had expired. My husband had one, but he would have had to pay for me and our two children as well, that required a lot of money, so we had no choice. We felt as though we had betrayed our country…”12 In 2011, at a meeting of the Committee for International Affairs and Interparliamentary Coop- eration, Kyrgyz Foreign Minister R. Kazakbaev said the following: “Most Kyrgyz students who go to study abroad usually do not return home. This particularly applies to students who study in Russia and Turkey.” He also noted that “at this stage, the department cannot influence the decision of students who do not return. In order to force them to return home and work for the country’s development, we must create the corresponding conditions, but at present we cannot do that.”13

12 Interview by Zh. Samanchina in Ankara, November 2011. 13 See: G. Bolotbek kyzy, “Kyrgyzskie studenty, obuchaiushchiesia za rubezhom, ne khotiat vozvrashchatsia na rodinu—MID,” Kir TAG, 21 February, 2011, available at [http://www.kyrtag.kg/?q=ru/news/4096].

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One of the problems of interstate relations in education between Kyrgyzstan and Turkey is nostrification (recognition) of foreign diplomas in Kyrgyzstan. Despite the fact that the interstate exchange program that has existed for 20 years now was created on the basis of a bilateral agreement, the diplomas of even those Turkish universities that are recognized at the international level (for example, the Middle East Technical University and Boğaziçi University) have not been recognized in Kyrgyzstan for decades. This is due to the fact that Kyrgyzstan has long been transferring to the Bologna educational system (what is more, the Soviet educational system is still used in the country). Many students expressed their discontent in their interviews about the lack of initiative from the Kyrgyz government. The matter mainly concerned the activity of the Ministry of Education and Sci- ence, as well as the recognition of Turkish diplomas. So many Kyrgyz students encounter the dilemma of remaining in Turkey or returning home. It stands to reason that marriage and childbirth make the decision to return home even more difficult. An excerpt from the interview of a former graduate from one of the Turkish universities who has been living in Turkey for more than 20 years now and works in the tourist business can serve as an example: “What am I going to do in Kyrgyzstan? Who needs me there? My peers have become important people—they are either department heads or hold other good offices. Once I went to Kyr- gyzstan and looked for work there, but my B.A. degree was not recognized as higher education. In Turkey, there are many companies and it is easy to find a job here… As for my return, I do not think about it. I think about my business, which I need to develop. I think about my children and about how they need a good education. I think about how my daughter needs a good piano teacher. And that is all I think about…”14 However, along with the rather obvious desire to remain in Turkey after graduation, students have a definite need to maintain ties with their homeland. Many of them hope that in the future they will be able to return and only need to wait for the suitable time. Young people who become Turkish citizens and find work in this country maintain close ties with their families and make investments in housing construction and buying real estate in Kyrgyzstan. Another factor promoting the decision of graduates to remain in Turkey is the common kinship, religious, culture, and linguistic ties that join Kyrgyzstan and this country. Many students believe that Turkey provides Kyrgyz students with an opportunity to receive a higher education on a gratuitous basis (no other state does this on such a grand scale), thus striving to strengthen Kyrgyzstan’s potential. Moreover, they genuinely believe that study in Turkey cultivates in them honesty, decency, law abidance, and high moral qualities, from which Kyrgyzstan only benefits. During the poll, most students said that they learned how to “have their feet on the ground” and acquired beneficial life and professional experience in Turkey, as well as expanded their range of vision and broadmindedness. One student even said: “Everything I know, I learned in Turkey.” Moreover, young Kyrgyz specialists striving to borrow the professional experience of their Turkish colleagues as much as possible are far from sure that they can use the knowledge and skills acquired when they return home. The survey results show that most students studying in Turkey are not planning (at least in the near future) to return to Kyrgyzstan. The main reason for this is their desire to create their own sufficiently strong financial basis or continue studying in Turkey (or other countries), which postpones their return home indefinitely. So to the question of whether this education program is beneficial for Kyrgyz students, one student studying interior design in Ankara made the following response: “On the one hand, I think yes, but on the other, no. On the one hand, they make it possible for our students to study in another country, see another country, another nation, and study another cul-

14 Interview by Zh. Samanchina in Istanbul, April 2012.

146 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS Volume 16 Issue 1 2015 ture. But, on the other, our most intelligent and capable, including me, go abroad and do not return for a long time. I do not intend returning either, because, as you know, life in our country is very different, not like it is here. There are more opportunities in Turkey, so I am not thinking of returning yet…”15 On the whole, students note that study in Turkey has had a strong impact on forming the world- view of young people and is Turkifying them. They also believe that Turkey, by rendering Kyrgyzstan help in education, has the prospective aim of forming a new loyal political elite that will accept its political, socioeconomic, cultural, and spiritual values.

Conclusion

It should be noted that most of the information on student migration from Kyrgyzstan to Turkey comes from oral, in other words, primary sources. It is based on the personal impressions of study migrants, each of whom has his or her own opinion about the reasons for studying abroad, the quality of the skills and knowledge obtained, their role in achieving success in life, as well as the influence they can have on the development of socioeconomic, political, and cultural relations between Kyr- gyzstan and Turkey in the long term. This survey of educational migration from Kyrgyzstan to Turkey has made it possible to reveal the positive and negative aspects of this phenomenon. The positive aspects of educational migration include obtaining professional and scientific qualification, expanding one’s range of experience, learning foreign languages, and exchanging social, historical, and cultural information. The negative aspects include primarily young Kyrgyz people changing their place of residence, which leads to a brain drain and is detrimental to the country’s socioeconomic development. Unfortunately, as the results of the applied study carried out in Turkey show, most students from Kyrgyzstan intend to extend their stay abroad or remain there permanently. Kyrgyz students studying in Turkish universities have the opportunity to become highly qualified specialists, particularly in social-humanitarian, economic, and information technology spheres. After graduation, they have a loyal or, at least, tolerant attitude toward Turkey that they have formed on an interpersonal communicative level. This has a very direct impact on the development and rein- forcement of interstate relations and cooperation between Kyrgyzstan and Turkey. It can be claimed in all likelihood that the graduates of Turkish universities will be able to fill the ranks of Kyrgyzstan’s political elite. Today many of them already occupy key government posts, which fully corresponds to Turkey’s interests. Students who obtain a higher education in Turkey definitely play an important role in the development of interstate relations and form a link between the two countries, regardless of whether they are living abroad or have returned home. However, in order for student migration to be of the most benefit to the country, issues must first be resolved relating to nostrification of diplomas received by young Kyrgyz people abroad. It is very unfortunate that the Kyrgyz government does not take responsibility for providing jobs for their citizens who have obtained an education in Turkey and other countries, so many of them do not want to return home. Moreover, as mentioned above, in Kyrgyzstan they have to deal with the problem of not having their foreign diplomas recognized.

15 Interview by Zh. Samanchina in Ankara, November 2011.

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The results of the interviews confirmed the main trends in the formation and development of work and study migration in Kyrgyzstan. In this article, we followed the shift in the aims of many Kyrgyz students who go to Turkey to study and then begin actively earning money, for which there are numerous opportunities there. We were also able to reveal that a certain number of students remain in Turkey after graduating from university or migrate to other countries of the Far and Near Abroad in order to study further or find a job. So the departure of young people to study in Turkey often turns into emigration from Kyrgyz- stan, as a result of which the country is losing its most educated and enlightened citizens, who prefer to build their lives abroad. Kyrgyzstan as a state with a limited amount of natural resources must pay particular attention to its intellectual potential, since it is an important element of its socioeconomic development. It stands to reason that study abroad makes it possible for young Kyrgyz people to acquire professional, linguistic, communicative, and managerial skills that significantly raise their competitiveness. In order for Kyrgyzstan not to lose its best minds, it is very important to create favorable conditions at home for the return of the country’s citizens studying abroad.

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