Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

In our 11 July issue, we noted that far from pushing Arab Spring-style uprisings in Central Asia (as Russia had feared), the US has been going soft on the human-rights abuses of the Islom Karimov regime in Uzbekistan in search of closer ties to help ensure a smooth pullout from Afghanistan, but also to help maintain influence in the region after the pullout.  As we reported, Washington’s hope is that President Karimov will allow the establishment of a US military base on Uzbek soil, particularly after Uzbekistan withdrew from the Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in June 2012.

Now, following recent media reports that US-Uzbekistan negotiations are under way, Russia has been expressing its disquiet.  In our 11 July report, we quoted Central Asia expert Aleksandr Knyazev as warning of “a fundamentally new format of American military presence in the region, when within the next year all the countries of the region without exception might be covered by a whole network of American military facilities, including at specific points of Russian vulnerability – around the Caspian and in northern Kazakh regions”.  The disquiet expressed this week takes a different angle.

According to Russian military expert Lt-General Leonid Sazhin, the problem is that far from helping to keep the Taleban out of Central Asia, new US bases will have exactly the opposite effect.  He told the military news agency Interfax-AVN: “Setting up this American facility, whatever it is called, will have negative political and economic consequences for Russia and for Central Asia.  Although the Americans claim they are fighting against the Taleban in Afghanistan, it will be them after they set up their facility in Uzbekistan, who will bring the Taleban there.”

According to Sazhin: “Taleban ideologists will inevitably use the American presence in Uzbekistan to fan the anti-American sentiments of the local population and win over some of it.  As a result, anti-American sentiments will develop into anti-government protests.”

On 28 August, the chief of the Russian general staff, General Nikolay Makarov, announced that the CSTO’s military component is to be strengthened.  He said that at a meeting of the CSTO chiefs of staff, they discussed a whole set of issues related to the strengthening of our colletive forces, both combat and peacekeeping forces...”  He added: “In today’s very difficult and tense situation in the world [we] require a significant increase of the combat components.”  Plans for a major military exercise in Kazakhstan in October were discussed.

According to CSTO Secretary-General Nikolay Bordyuzha, the December summit of the CSTO Council “will be entirely devoted to military issues of our organization”.  Founded in 2002, the current CSTO membership comprises Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan.  Members are not permitted to join rival military alliances, and the opening of new third-party military bases in a CSTO members state is subject to consent by all members.