It’s the Great Game, Chapter Two. The collapse of the Soviet Union has inspired a new contest for Central Asia. For most of the 19th century, this remote territory, stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Gobi Desert, was the chessboard across which Russia steadily pushed its empire southward-as a check on the British, who were probing northward from their Indian stronghold. The game shifted in the 1920s, when the Bolsheviks carved out a handful of artificial republics from what had once been Turkistan. Thereafter, the West sought to block the spread of communism further south, an effort that led to U.S. support for the Afghan rebels.
Today, the players and the stakes have been transformed; the new specter is a resurgent Islam with access to nuclear weapons. Because those fears so far seem overblown, Russia and the United States, no longer at cold-war odds, are staying mainly on the sidelines. Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia are the chief rivals for influence. They’re vying for traditional prizes-access to markets, as well as gold, cotton and natural gas. But they’re also racing to win the hearts and minds of more than 50 million Muslims newly released from 74 years of totalitarian rule. Democracy is virtually unknown in this region. Experience with the free market is minimal. “These new Central Asian countries are being pulled in two directions, two variations of Muslim states-the secular, Westward-looking Turkish model and, at the other extreme, the radical, West-hating Iranian model,” says a State Department official. How the game plays out will have profound consequences for the region-and perhaps for the world as a whole. A guide to the players and their strategies:
Muslim, but market-oriented and friendly to the United States, Turkey has a head start on its rivals, having begun to develop relations in 1989 with the Central Asian republics, all of which but Tajikistan speak variants of Turkish. Among Turkey’s current projects: the formation of a Black Sea Economic Cooperation Zone that includes the Muslim republic of Azerbaijan, where Turkish firms are building a new telephone system and investing in light industry; a $7 million tannery in Kyrgyzstan; a cooperative banking arrangement in Tajikistan; and air links between Istanbul and most Central Asian capitals. Some 3,000 students from Central Asia are now studying at Turkish universities and in private training programs. “They’ve started seeing Turkey as a model, an elder brother,” says a diplomat in Moscow. The Post-communist elites who still run most Central Asian nations prefer a secular Muslim regime to Islamic fundamentalists. But don’t look for a resurgent Greater Turkistan. One reason: the longstanding tensions among the republics, especially the widespread distrust of Uzbeks.
Iran may be exporting more than commerce and envoys. Moscow-based diplomats say that Teheran covertly supported a peaceful uprising against a communist power grab in Dushanbe in September, allegedly paying demonstrators 100 rubles a day to lead Muslim prayers and demand the resignation of Tajik communist leaders. Religious activism is on the
rise in the countryside, where unemployment is rampant and half the population is under 24. “Iran would like nothing better than to have five mini-Irans, completely under their sway,” says a Saudi official.
Can the revolution take hold? Not likely in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, which favor Western-oriented models of development. Uzbek and Turkmen elites prefer authoritarian capitalism as in Chile and South Korea under the previous regimes. Tajikistan is a likelier candidate.
There, the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP), banned in several other republics, operates openly and claims 20,000 members. “The trend is moving toward Islam,” says Mohammad Sharif Himat Zade, head of the IRP, who spent years dodging the KGB and training with Afghan rebels. Would an Iranian model work? Vafa Goulizade, an adviser to Azerbaijani President Ayez Mutalibov, warns: “Iran would take us back to the Middle Ages.” But that attitude can change: if Westernization falters, grass-roots fundamentalism could take hold.
Its game is one part opportunism, one part preventive medicine. “The Saudis want to counter Iranian influence-which they possibly overestimate–and also give Islamic services to people deprived of them for seven decades,” says a Western diplomat in Moscow. Overtures have included hosting thousands of Central Asian pilgrims to Mecca last year. To promote a conservative religious revival, Saudis have poured nearly $1 billion into the region and pledged 1 million Korans.
Meantime, former Soviet specialists within the State Department are trying to determine just what U.S. interests in the region should be. The threat isn’t so much nuclear: there are no longer any mobile, tactical weapons in the Central Asian republics, insists a top U.S. official, and Kazakhstan’s strategic missiles are under Boris Yeltsin’s control. The real question is whether America will seize the opportunity to help shape the progress of a region it only dimly understands, or leave it to allies like Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps Washington should take its cue from Moscow. Deeply preoccupied with its own mounting economic troubles, Russia is adopting a wait-and-see strategy toward a region that history shows can create empires-or quagmires.
PHOTO: A struggle for harts and minds: An imam displays Koran in Tashkeni, Tajik rug sellers
The breakup of the Soviet Union has spurred a regional contest to shape the political, economic and religious fate of the five resource-rich Central Asian republics. Rivals include:
Eager to secure allies to the north, Teheran has been courting the Muslim republics with diplomatic and trade overtures. It has also been accused of exporting Islamic fundamentalism to Tajikistan, with which Iran shares a common language.
A counterweight to Teheran, Ankara offers a secular Muslim model for modernization. With the advantage of strong historical and linguistic ties to the region, Turkey has sponsored economic-development projects in several republics.
Burned out by the Afghan war and absorbed by its own mammoth difficulties, Moscow isn’t about to get embroiled in Central Asia-unless fundamentalism begins to threaten its own interests. So far, at least, that hasn’t happened.
