Taking Aim
at Russia’s ‘Underbelly’
While loudly complaining about “Russian aggression,”
the U.S. government escalates plans for encircling
Russia in a modern “Great Game,” writes Jonathan
Marshall.
By Jonathan Marshall
March 10, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Consortium
News"
- Two hundred years after the “Great
Game” for domination of Central Asia began
with the Russo-Persian Treaty of 1813, Washington is
maneuvering to increase its military presence on
Russia’s underbelly, this time through a
“counterterrorism partnership” with Tajikistan and
its neighbors.
Last month,
the Pentagon
announced plans for $50 million in new
military aid to Central Asia — with a focus on
Tajikistan — to “counter the Taliban, ISIL [an
acronym for Islamic State], and other
regionally-based terrorist groups, and to promote
stability in the region.” The aid will also help the
U.S. military get its feet in the door by enabling
“interoperability and collaboration” with local
partner armed forces.
The program
comes at a time when the United States and NATO are
trying to counter Moscow by providing billions of
dollars in
new aid to Russia’s neighbors, from the
Baltic States and Ukraine to Georgia, and stepping
up
naval exercises in the Black Sea. The
announcement follows a
visit last November by Secretary of State
John Kerry to Tajikistan and other former Soviet
republics in the region, where he pledged “U.S.
security cooperation.”
It also
represents the first major escalation of U.S.
military aid to Central Asia since the Pentagon
sponsored an intensive training program for special
forces in Kyrgystan and Tajikistan in 2012 and 2013.
That operation, ostensibly aimed at boosting
narcotics enforcement, was
criticized by researchers who noted that it
would simply eliminate competitors of the country’s
biggest drug trafficking rings, which are led by
high-level politicians and state officials.
The new
military aid program, if approved by Congress, aims
to offset reverses suffered by Washington in the
region in 2014. That year the government of
Kyrgyzstan closed a major U.S. air base, which had
been implicated in
notoriously corrupt dealings with the
country’s former president. Kyrgyzstan also joined
the Eurasian Economic Union, a common market that
includes Russia, and
terminated an aid agreement with Washington.
The United
States is not Tajikistan’s only suitor, however. The
chief of staff of Pakistan’s army, General Raheel
Sharif, met earlier this month with Tajikistan’s
president, Emomali Rahmon, to
discuss “cooperation between national armies
and law enforcement agencies of Tajikistan and
Pakistan in the fight against modern threats and
challenges, including terrorism, extremism and drug
trafficking.”
His visit
came just one day after a leading Chinese military
official told President Rahmon that Beijing was
ready to “enhance military cooperation and
multilateral counter-terrorism collaboration with
Tajikistan.”
Tajikistan
is already a member of the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which
promotes military cooperation and intelligence
sharing with China, Russia and other member states.
Tajikistan is also a key transit country for a
huge new gas pipeline slated to run from
Turkmenistan to China. China’s longer-run plans call
for
Tajikistan to become the first link in a
planned commercial route from China to Europe’s
markets, called the Silk Road Economic Belt.
For now,
Russia still enjoys the strongest presence in
Tajikistan. It stations several thousand troops in
the country to support border security.
Moscow recently earmarked $1.2 billion to
train and equip Tajikistan’s army and plans to hold
major joint exercises in coming days. Russia
hopes to
prevent Islamist insurgents from moving
out of Afghanistan and destabilizing other Muslim
countries on or near Russia’s southern border.
All of the
governments courting Tajikistan are turning a blind
eye to the
corruption and brutality of the country’s
regime — which even the Russian media note is
becoming “totalitarian.”
This May, voters in Tajikistan will almost certainly
approve a
referendum to anoint President Rahmon
“Leader of the Nation” and amend the Constitution to
exempt him from the two-term limit.
Human
Rights Watch and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee in
February
accused the Rahmon government of
“arresting, imprisoning, and torturing members of
the country’s peaceful political opposition” and
even kidnapping critics who live abroad.
One critic
of the Rahmon regime was
shot dead in Istanbul; another was seized in
Moscow, where he had lived for a decade, and flown
home to serve a 13-year prison sentence.
Said one senior researcher at
Human Rights Watch,
“Tajikistan is in the midst of the worst political
and religious crackdown since the end of the
country’s civil war,” which claimed the lives of
up to 100,000 people in mid-1990s.
“Hundreds of people [are] landing behind bars for no
other reason than their peaceful political work.
Tajikistan’s human rights crisis is expanding by the
day, but the response of Washington, Brussels, and
other international partners has fallen seriously
short.”
Human
rights groups called on the Obama administration to
“designate Tajikistan a ‘country of particular
concern’ under the International Religious Freedom
Act, for its systematic, ongoing, and egregious
violations of religious and political freedoms
without further delay.”
So far,
however, the Pentagon’s plans for a closer
“counterterrorism partnership” appear to be trumping
the cause of human rights in Washington. And the
European Union, also hoping to wean Tajikistan away
from Russia,
pledged 251 million Euros for development
funding.
For
millions of people suffering under corrupt,
repressive regimes in Tajikistan and the other
“Stans” of Central Asia, such interventions
perpetuate the “Great Game” that foreign powers have
played at their expense for two centuries. From the
U.S. perspective, perpetuating our mindless military
competition with Russia in such distant lands is
both counterproductive and inhumane. It’s time for
Washington to stop playing the Game.
Jonathan Marshall is author or co-author of five
books on international affairs, including The
Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War and the
International Drug Traffic (Stanford
University Press, 2012). Some of his previous
articles for Consortiumnews were “Risky
Blowback from Russian Sanctions”; “Neocons
Want Regime Change in Iran”; “Saudi
Cash Wins France’s Favor”; “The
Saudis’ Hurt Feelings”; “Saudi
Arabia’s Nuclear Bluster”; “The
US Hand in the Syrian Mess”; and
“Hidden
Origins of Syria’s Civil War.”] |