18 June 2004 00:00
Dangerous game: China and Russia revive their interest in central Asia
Landlocked and sparsely populated, central Asia tends to be forgotten by
outsiders except in times of crisis, when the region becomes a playing field
for the next round of the "Great Game" between the superpowers. The
US paid attention to central Asia after the terrorist attacks of September 11
2001 because Washington needed the support of Afghanistan's neighbours
for its war on the Taliban.
Now China and Russia are making a diplomatic comeback. They have revived the
moribund Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, a security group including
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The leaders attended a
summit yesterday in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital. Hamid Karzai, the Afghan
president, was also invited. The meeting was not purely an attempt to
challenge American influence in the region. Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao, the
Russian and Chinese leaders, have legitimate concerns about the spread of
Islamist terrorism and their governments take a close interest in central
Asia's reserves of oil and gas. China, short of energy to fuel its
industrial revolution, has signed an agreement with Kazakhstan for a 1,200km
oil pipeline to western China. Lukoil, the Russian oil company, signed a
Dollars 1bn (Pounds 545m) deal on Wednesday to develop Uzbek gas reserves.
Central Asians resent being patronised, whether by their powerful Russian and
Chinese neighbours or by more distant powers in the US and Europe. In April,
Uzbekistan angrily cancelled its presentation at the annual meeting of the
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development because the EBRD had rightly
suspended most of its lending in response to human rights violations.
Leaders such as Islam Karimov, Uzbek president, must be delighted that Mr
Putin and Mr Hu are more concerned about oil and Islam than corruption or
human rights. Even George W. Bush, US president, in spite of some ineffective
bleating from the State Department, overlooks central Asia's glaring
faults in his single-minded pursuit of the war on terrorism. The question of
whether this coddling of dictators is a sensible way of promoting political
stability and economic progress is quickly answered: it has failed to bring
prosperity or reform to the Middle East and Africa and there is no reason it
should work any better in central Asia. Although Kazakhstan has made limited
progress, Uzbekistan, the region's most populous state, remains
oppressive and unstable. In March, 47 people were killed in attacks blamed by
the Uzbek regime on Islamic militants linked to al-Qaeda.
Yesterday's summit set up an anti-terrorism centre and provided a forum
for China to offer Dollars 900m in credits to central Asia, thus confirming
the meeting as the latest manifestation of the Great Game. Yet Captain Arthur
Conolly, the Briton who coined the phrase in Afghanistan in the 19th century,
insisted it should be a "noble game" as well. So far there is
little sign of that.
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