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To the imaginations of many in the West, Central Asia struggles for prominence beyond distant memories of imperial Great Games, when Russian and English spies jousted for influence across the span of endless steppe and snow-capped and forbidding mountain ranges.
However, in more prosaic times, as Russia becomes ever more committed to its war in Ukraine, Central Asia – or, more precisely, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, which have all traditionally operated within Russia’s sphere of influence – have been flexing newfound diplomatic muscles previously at risk of atrophy.
However, for those looking to make their mark within the region, the rewards, just as the challenges, are significant.
In a world where Russian energy has become politically toxic, Central Asia boasts a wealth of oil and gas. Minerals, principally gold, can be found in relative abundance, while its location – bordering China, Pakistan, Russia, Iran and Afghanistan – promises an embarrassment of riches for even the most amateur of armchair strategists.
However, in terms of soft power, Central Asia has long remained within Russia’s domain. From the time of the Tzars, through the Soviet Union to the five states membership, or associate membership, in Turkmenistan’s case, of the USSR’s successor, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
It’s Russian that serves as the lingua franca that binds many of the old Soviet states together, while a walk through any Moscow suburb, where the bulk of Central Asian emigres find work, will convince any visitor of the profound economic ties that continue to bind Russia to much of its old empire.
However, none of this is to say that, increasingly bogged down in Ukraine, Russia’s influence hasn’t weakened. Neither is it to suggest that Moscow’s international competitors haven’t begun to sense blood in the Central Asian water.
In mid-May, China hosted Central Asian leaders and a state summit, reinforcing their longstanding role in Beijing’s massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as well as shoring up its potentially vulnerable border with the region.
Iran, never one to let the comparative weakness of an ally go unchecked, has sought to consolidate relations with Tajikistan and its majority Persian speaking population. Turkey, for its part, has profited from the region’s appetite for its drones, irrespective of significant tensions between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. India has also made its presence felt, though concentrating much of its diplomatic firepower on counter extremism from Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Into this mix, the West’s offering looks relatively paltry. Moreover, while Russia, China and others were happy to look away from the regions’ record on rights and corruption, the EU and the US feel at least obliged to at least note their concern.
“The West is currently pivoting away from Russian oil and gas, which gives Central Asia added importance,” Dr Anna Matveeva from King’s College, London, who recently wrote a paper on the EU’s options within the region, said. “In addition, there are the transit routes for energy and cargo from Asia, which will mean it can bypass Russia.
“However, when we talk about ‘Central Asia,’ we often overlook the state’s own problems. Concerns over security are broadly shared,” she said, “but are more often used for accusation and counter accusation between the states.”
Unity isn’t the only issue. Democracy, while constitutionally mandated, remains an aspiration more than a reality. In Turkmenistan last year, President Serdar Berdymukhammedov inherited the title from his father, while similar moves look to be underway in Tajikistan.
Across the board, corruption exists on a scale termed “rampant” by anti-graft watchdog Transparency International, with anti-corruption efforts typically focused on the politically inconvenient rather than those actually guilty of corruption.
For Western policy-makers, sensitive to the needs of voters and an unpredictable press, rights present an almost insurmountable problem. While Central Asia has come a long way since accusations of Uzbekistan’s almost industrialisation of torture, including credible accusations of boiling prisoners alive were made in the early 2000s, much work remains.
“Torture remains a vital tool for governments,” Human Rights Watch’s Central Asia researcher, Syinat Sultanalieva, said over the phone from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan,
However, more corrosive has been the flaunting of international norms by Russia in Ukraine. “It seems as if the rule-book has been broken since Ukraine,” Sultanalieva continued. “They’ve seen Russia commit all sorts of human rights abuses since the invasion began without, to them, paying any price,” she said, as trade booms between Russia and much of the Gulf, China and elsewhere.
In a region where the loose interpretation of international norms was already shaky, the implications for both internal dissent and the conduct of any future conflict looks grim.
One of the most likely sources of that conflict – beyond the violent border clashes between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – is the threat to the region from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. On this occasion, not from the Taliban itself, but from factions of the Islamic State that have established themselves within northern Afghanistan, which shares a border with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
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Since the chaotic Western retreat from Afghanistan two years ago, the Islamic State–Khorasan Province group, a branch of the IS in Central Asia, has been pushing back the Taliban across much of northern Afghanistan. According to a Kremlin official, some 4,000 Islamic State fighters are currently stationed near the Tajik border, with a US general warning that the group is positioned to attack Western targets within the year.
For all concerned, the Taliban’s failure to address some of the significant humanitarian challenges that affect the area, allied to their brutal treatment of the country’s minorities, has essentially established the Taliban as the principal recruiting sergeants for their own opposition.
While Europe might stand as a cultural and social totem for many in Central Asia and their leaders, the suspicion that aid comes with an inherent rebuke is hard to dislodge. Moreover, what the west, or any of the region’s host of international courtiers might say or want, the ties that bind Russia to Central Asia remain.
Hobbled by its war in Ukraine and denied access to western goods, Russia’s trade with Central Asia has actually increased, as the five Central Asian states seek to turn a profit from their weakened neighbour. And while Russia may be weaker as a security provider, it remains the only game in town.
Most significantly, however, is the sheer volume of migrant workers in Russia who have retained their ties and bank accounts to home. For European readers, the salary of a Tajik road worker in Kaluga, Russia, may not carry immediate geopolitical significance. However, combined with others, receipts from overseas represent serious revenue. Currently, money from work overseas makes up close to a third of the GDP of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. In Uzbekistan, the most populous country within the region, remittances from 2022 stretched to $14.5 billion, 18% of the country’s GDP.
Few doubt that Russian influence is in retreat across Central Asia. However, for now at least, The Game continues.
Great Games: The New Battle for Central Asia
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