Meanwhile, Far Away From The Mideast

While events in the Mideast, most recently Libya, have been sucking all the media and diplomatic oxygen, a faraway state in Central Asia faces both internal and external threats.  Tajikistan hasn't made the news, but it is currently facing set of challenges which threaten to turn it into either a failing state or a hollow one.

Tajikistan is the poorest of the former Soviet Central Asian Republics.  Its poverty has not helped in the process of repairing the deep social and political wounds inflicted on the country by the five years of warfare between Tajiks and Uzbeks.  Even though that particular war ended nearly fourteen years ago, the scars run Grand Canyon deep across economy, society, and polity alike.  Insofar as there has been any recovery from that disastrous little war, it has been the inadvertent consequence of the attention and money flowing into Tajikistan following the invasion of Afghanistan.

Not unexpectedly that money and the "recovery" have served just as much to exacerbate underlying problems as it has to rehabilitate the place.

The sole reason the US or anyone other than either Russia or China is interested in the remote Wisconsin sized region is Afghanistan.  Tajikistan has a twelve hundred mile border with Afghanistan.  This border edges the formerly peaceful northeastern portion of Afghanistan.  The operative word here is "formerly."

Tajikistan borders China for a bit more than four hundred kilometers.  While much less than the borders with any of its other neighbors, the Chinese one has been the focus of international tensions.  Recently the tensions slacked apparently with the signing of a treaty which ceded some Tajik territory to China.  The government of Tajikistan crowed about its victory in that the Chinese gained only a small percentage of the territory it claimed.  But, to Tajiks living near the Chinese border, the victory was hollow at best.  In a side agreement the government agreed to lease ten square miles of land to China at, to put it delicately, well below market rates.  Also, the government permitted China to provide several hundred (thousand? reports differ) farmers to use the land.

President Rahmon has been attacked over the China deal which is seen even in Dushanbe by the microscopic local elite as a sell-out to Beijing.  There is a fair amount of belief that China will seek to "lease" more agricultural and pastoral land in the near future while defenders of the president see him as a canny player of the China card as a make weight to Russia.

There is a good deal of accuracy in the notion that President Rahmon is attempting a balancing act so as to curb the possible de facto takeover of Tajikistan by the Kremlin.  At the moment Tajikistan is heavily dependent upon Russia for external defense as well as the heavy lifting regarding the insurgency mounted by advocates of violent political Islam.

Rashmon is shaking in his boots over the ever increasing presence of the advocates of political Islam, particularly those of the violent sort.  He has been facing a shooting war for the past five years in which the security forces of Tajikistan have not covered themselves with glory--or even much success.  Not to overstate the matter, there is a direct link between the uptick of insurgents in the border region and the insertion of larger numbers of lethal and well motivated Afghan Taliban into the northern part of Afghanistan.  Given that the Tajik-Afghan border is so porous as to make the Great Fence of the Southwest look more impenetrable than ever was the Berlin Wall, this development should not have surprised anyone--even the Germans who sought service in north Afghanistan as a way of doing something for NATO without actually having to be involved in a shooting war.

The only effective force on the Tajikistan side of the border is a unit of the Russian army.  It is there both to stop insurgent border crossers and drug smugglers.  The border area is a primary, perhaps the primary, land route for opium and its derivatives on route to Russia and Eastern Europe.  The most recent estimates from the Tajikistan government is that some 130 million "doses" of heroin cross the border every year.  There was, of course, no source for this figure.

While the amount of drug traffic may be in doubt, there is no doubt who controls the route to and through Tajikistan.  The men who run the affair are all advocates of violent political Islam.  Most are native Tajiks.  The drugs are, along with unemployed workers, the major export of Tajikistan.  The Kremlin is of the view, with accuracy, that many of the migrant workers from Tajikistan are themselves members of groups espousing violent political Islam which increases the domestic threat from that quadrant.

The Rahmon regime has taken measures against the growth of political Islam.  Some of these have been unique and wide reaching.  Notable are the severe restrictions placed upon Tajiks studying in foreign madrassas.  Equally severe limits have been placed upon the number of mosques, madrassas, and religious students allowed in Tajikistan.  Most recently Rahmon's ministers have proposed prohibiting any person younger than eighteen from attending religious services of any sort.  This would affect Muslims primarily as ninety percent of the people are Muslims (eighty-five percent Sunni, five percent Shiite.)

The government has taken the firm position that the unrest, the drug trafficking, and the internal instability are all the result of Islam.  While the suppression of the religion may be impossible, it is clear the government has determined to lower the impact of political Islam to an irreducible minimum.  As a one time Soviet nomenclatura member, he recalls the old ways and days with fondness.

The Kremlin is quite willing to back Rahmon as it is better to rule the Tajiks from a distance than up close and personal.  At the same time any significant growth of the Tajik presence in the North Caucasus based Muslim insurgency will result in more direct, more significant Kremlin involvement in Tajikistan.

The most basic need of the country is money.  The problem is the place has little to offer in return for investment.  Only the Chinese can see a real potential in Tajikistan.  That potential comes not from the microscopic hydrocarbon resources under the soil but the soil itself.  The areas closest to the Chinese border are those with the best soil, longest growing season and, the big consideration, the best water.  China is facing crop and water shortages at home such as to occasion investment in farmland in Africa.  Extending Chinese agriculture and pastoral activities over a few hundred (or thousand) square kilometers of Tajikistan is both cheaper and more convenient.

Should the proposed hydroelectric dams be completed either with World Bank or Chinese investment, they will produce not only quite a bit of electricity (most of which will have to be transported hundreds of kilometers to market), but also irrigation water.  This implies that even more land can be brought under (Chinese?) cultivation.  If the Chinese insist on providing their own labor force, the difficulties with Tajikistan could be monumental given that nearly eighty percent of the Tajik population is agrarian or pastoral.

Should the Chinese displacement of native Tajik workers continue, and the Islamist insurgency not be fully suppressed, the combination would spell failed state for the Dushanbe government.  The only alternative would be to become an independent government and state in name only.  This would make Tajikistan the first "hollow state" within the Central Asian Republics.  It would probably not be the last.

While most US attention has been directed to other of the several "stans" in Central Asia, it has a dog in the Tajikistan fight.  The long, open border with Tajikistan means Taliban and others have free access to Afghanistan not only from Pakistan.  As has been seen in recent months, this provides the insurgents with opportunities for horizontal escalation which render American battlefield victories less impressive in their overall effect.  Also the convenience of Tajikistan as well as the tightly organized Muslim Tajik cartels which handle the cargo provide an alternative cash cow route.  This, in turn, means that even a total halt to flows through Iran or Pakistan will not end the utility of narcotics to the Taliban and others.

All of the various assessments of the state of American strategy (if what we are doing really deserves that term) in Afghanistan have given very, very short shrift to the Tajikistan connection both material and religious. This has been another of the numerous blind spots which have plagued American Deep Thinkers tasked with finding success in that dismal contest.

Just a little reminder that important things are underway far from the attention of the fly-by-night media and their diplomatic cousins.  It is an interesting world even when the television cameras aren't there to record.