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16/06/2010 | Moscow Ponders Kyrgyz Intervention

Richard Weitz

The ability of the Kyrgyz armed forces and security services to restore order is uncertain.

 

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has become commonplace to write of a new "Great Game" in Central Asia, pitting Russia, China, and NATO countries led by the U.S in a race for influence and access to the region's energy and other resources. But despite all the worries about the potential for international conflict, the distinctive feature of the current crisis in Kyrgyzstan is the reluctance of all the major powers to intervene there. 

The riots in southern Kyrgyzstan, which first broke out Thursday, have now left hundreds of dead and thousands of injured, according to the latest reports. But the specific precipitating event for the fighting remains unclear. Kyrgyz and international analysts offer diverse possibilities, including a resurgence of longstanding tensions between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz, opportunistic looting motivated by economic and class jealousies, a plot by supporters of recently deposed President Kurmanbek Bakiev to return him to power by demonstrating the incapacity of the current interim government led by President Roza Otunbayeva to maintain order, and great power conspiracies by Russia, the United States, or other foreign powers to advance their regional interests at Kyrgyzstan's expense. 

According to one report
, during the last few days the Obama administration turned down a request by the interim Kyrgyz government to provide military assistance. Moscow then declined an even more direct Kyrgyz appeal to send Russian soldiers to restore order in the country that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev earlier had described as falling within Moscow's sphere of influence

Nobody has thought to ask for Chinese intervention, despite Beijing's co-leadership in theShanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which just held its annual leadership summit. Beijing is eager to preserve its economic interests in Central Asia as well as political stability in this border region near China's volatile province of Xinjiang. But Chinese policymakers have made it clear that, at least for now, they prefer Russia to assume the burden of enforcing regional stability. As for the government of Uzbekistan, it has tried to play down fears that it might deploy troops to protect Kyrgyzstan's ethnic Uzbeks from the violence that has led approximately 100,000 of them to seek refuge on Uzbekistan's territory. 

The current hope in the world's capitals is that the violence will either spontaneously burn out, or that the Kyrgyz authorities will manage to restore order using their own newly mobilized military. Russian policymakers would clearly prefer such an outcome. On Monday, the Moscow-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) decided to defer any decision to send its own combat forces into Kyrgyzstan. Instead, its members committed to fortifying Kyrgyzstan's own military with accelerated deliveries of fuel and equipment. 

The ability of the Kyrgyz armed forces and security services to restore order is uncertain. Thus far, they have proven unable to control the mass riots that occurred during the past few days. Nor were they effective in early April, when widespread popular demonstrations led to the collapse of the previous Bakiev regime. Another problem is that some military units appear to have sided with the majority Kyrgyz against the country's Uzbek minority, calling into question their impartiality. 

If the Kyrgyz government is unable to restore order, the Russian government will face an unpleasant choice of using its own troops to restore order or risk allowing political instability to spread to neighboring regions. The possibilities of horizontal escalation are high given the misalignment between national frontiers and ethnic ties in Central Asia. This is especially true in the Ferghana Valley region, which has been the scene of much of the recent fighting as well as of an earlier wave of ethnic tension in 1990 that required Soviet military intervention to end. 

The valley also hosts various Islamic groups (.pdf) that might try to exploit the chaos to challenge the region's secular regimes. A decade ago, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which was affiliated with al-Qaida and the Taliban, exploited these conditions to conduct terrorist and guerilla attacks throughout much of the Ferghana region. CSTO officials claimthat Islamist radicals, narcotics traffickers, and other transnational mischief-makers are eager to similarly exploit the current regional instability.

Any Russian military intervention would likely threaten various Russian interests, which is why Moscow has sought so hard to avoid committing to one. One obvious problem is that the use of Russian combat forces in Kyrgyzstan would reawaken concerns among the former Soviet republics about Russian security aspirations within Eurasia. Even Moscow's regional allies were alarmed by the August 2008 war that dismembered Georgia, and have refused to follow Moscow's lead and recognize the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries. Although other governments might see the wisdom of Russian military intervention to halt the current bloodshed in Kyrgyzstan, they might also worry about the precedent it could set for domestic opposition groups who, having provoked mass disturbances, could then appeal to Moscow to restore order. They would also not welcome giving Moscow a license to send troops to stop ethnic conflicts that could conceivably occur in many of the former Soviet republics. 

While the government of Uzbekistan might welcome an end to the refugee crisis, Tashkent has for the past few years led the opposition to Moscow's efforts to establish a military presence in Kyrgyzstan, either directly or under the CSTO framework. Thus far, Uzbek officials have expressed their hope that Kyrgyz forces will end the fighting without the need for foreign military intervention. 

Another concern for Moscow is that, while the Russian military would encounter little difficulty in deploying forces into Kyrgyzstan, which already hosts a major Russian military base, the Kyrgyz situation makes it hard to envisage a rapid Russian military withdrawal. Its resemblance to the Afghanistan quagmire, both today's and the one prevailing at the time of the Soviet military occupation of the 1980s, is disquieting. The host government is weak, divided, and dependent on foreign assistance; crime and corruption are rampant; the local security forces are ineffective; and the country suffers from severe economic problems. 

The political chaos alone could take months to resolve before Kyrgyzstan sees a popularly elected government capable of ensuring internal order. The experience of the 1990s, when Russian troops served as peacekeepers and peace enforcers in several "frozen conflicts" in the other former Soviet republics, suggests that such lengthy military operations are unpopular among many Russians, who will have the opportunity to elect a new president in 2012. In addition, Russian troops, like other foreign forces, soon wear out their welcome. 

Even so, both the current and previous Kyrgyz leaders are calling on Russia to send troops to restore order -- and a failure by Moscow to act could lead its allied governments to wonder whether the Medvedev regime would rescue them in similar circumstances. If Russian policymakers decide to intervene, they would presumably seek to do so within a multinational framework. The CSTO would provide some legitimacy, since Kyrgyzstan is itself a member, and has a more developed integrated military structure than the SCO. In the last few days, Russian officials have taken care to avoid acting unilaterally, stressing their commitment to consulting with their CSTO allies. Moscow is eager to enhance the CSTO's authority and portray it as a collective security alliance comparable to NATO. 

Thus far, NATO has declined to deal directly with the CSTO for fear of acknowledging Moscow's security primacy in Eurasia. For this reason, NATO governments would want Russia to act within a mandate provided by another multinational institution, presumably one that, unlike the SCO, includes Western governments as members. The United Nations or the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) seem the most plausible candidates. Indeed, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley has gone on record as stating that, "The United States supports efforts coordinated by the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to facilitate peace and order and the provision of humanitarian assistance to the victims of violence and disorder in the Kyrgyz Republic." 

The U.N. Security Council has the greatest legitimacy as well as a lengthy history of sponsoring international peacekeeping operations. Russia has also long sought to enhance the U.N.'s exclusive jurisdiction in authorizing the multilateral use of force, and opposed in particular the Western military interventions in Kosovo (1999) and Iraq (2003), which occurred without Security Council approval. 

But the OSCE did a good job in taking the lead in ending the fighting this April in Kyrgyzstan, averting a potential civil war by arranging for Bakiev to go into exile. The organization has made ending ethnic conflict an important institutional mission. And, fortuitously, the OSCE this year is chaired by Kazakhstan, whose government exerts considerable influence in Kyrgyzstan and is generally seen as a neutral benevolent party among the competing Kyrgyz political factions.

Although the situation remains fluid, it looks like the international community will give Kyrgyz authorities a few more days to restore order through their own endeavors. After that, Russia will probably secure a U.N. mandate to lead a CSTO peacekeeping force in Kyrgyzstan, while the U.S. and its allies will try to bolster OSCE efforts to transition Kyrgyzstan to a popularly elected government with guaranteed rights for the country's ethnic minorities.

**Richard Weitz is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a World Politics Review senior editor. His weekly WPR column, Global Insights, appears every Tuesday.

World Politics Review (Estados Unidos)

 


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