When hardliners in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union mounted a putsch in August 1991 against Mikhail Gorbachev, accusing him of destroying the Union, Uzbekistan’s top Communist leader at the time, Islam Abduganiyevich Karimov, happened to be on a visit to Delhi (he was soon spirited off to Agra to keep him out of the eye of the storm). The putsch, of course, was the last misguided step on the part of the Soviet leadership to save the motherland — the Union fell apart four months later and all those in positions of power, including Karimov, inherited the top jobs in their respective, newly independent nations.
This was a historic moment, the empire giving way after experimenting with an extraordinary set of political ideas for 75 years or so. There was a new step in the air, but there was also a certain diffidence, and perhaps even some fear. Especially after Russia, instigated by the Americans, on the very first day of its independence on January 1, 1992, unhitched the rouble from the dollar, causing it to lose its value several hundred-fold — and soaking up the savings of millions of people in one stroke. At the time, the new dawn was certainly tinged with red, but the colour reminded one of blood rather than happiness.
The five Central Asian states were the most affected. Western media outlets allowed their reportage from these parts to be somewhat romanticised, in keeping with the dual identities of the region, Islamic and Communist (Dilip Hiro’s 1995 book, called Between Marx and Muhammed, embodied a similar motif), and it was fashionable in Moscow’s parties to discuss which country, Iran or Turkey, would end up being the lead player in Central Asia.
Twenty years later, the reality is far more prosaic, as Hiro tells us again. Turkey sought to re-connect with the region’s pre-Communist inheritance of Hanafi Sunni Islam by sending both religious teachers (although Saudi Arabia triumphed by pumping in money to build new mosques) as well as entrepreneurs who would help them establish a secular society, as per its Kemalist Constitution. Iran, whose pre-Islamic history had Zoroaster as well as Firdausi in common with Tajikistan, now played the geostrategic card. Realising that all the Central Asian nations along with Azerbaijan and Armenia were land-locked, Teheran offered them access to its warm water ports as well as assistance in transporting energy resources that would bypass Russia.
The new great game was the new buzzword, but this time it was the battle over energy resources which dominated the chessboard. Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan began to use their large discoveries of oil and gas as new pawns to wield influence. Ashgabad’s Saparmurad Niyazov was more than willing to allow the US conglomerate Unocal to build a gas pipeline from its Daulatabad fields, via Taliban-run Afghanistan and ending in Pakistan. Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev, who at the time of the Gorbachev putsch had still tried to keep the Soviet Union together, now agreed to let Chevron partner in the development of the Tengiz oilfields. The greenbacks began to flow like water, but instead of using it to democratise their nations, the leaders preferred to consolidate themselves in power, stamp out every challenge, including from family, and secret money into ballooning Swiss bank accounts.
Dilip Hiro brings alive the concordat between high corruption, “managed democracy” and the challenge of fundamentalist Islam. He points out how the US focus on democracy and human rights — with one eye on marginalising Russia through its energy corporates — in Central Asia in the aftermath of the break-up of the Soviet Union gives way to single-minded self-interest, especially once the September 11, 2001 incidents changed the world. When Karimov uses brute force to suppress the revolt in Ferghana, the US looks the other way. Askar Akayev of Kyrghystan allows a US airbase to come up in double-quick time, then rigs the polls in 2005 to ensure the election of his children.
When the Americans try and push their colour-coded democratic revolutions, for example the so-called Tulip revolution in Kyrghystan, the Central Asian leaders turn to Moscow for help. As they balance the great powers, they consolidate their own authoritarian regimes.
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Hiro’s insider account of Central Asian politics is told with considerable passion, but it is his description of the tangled umbilical cord between these new nations and Russia that is extraordinary. Stalin’s reinterpretation of Lenin’s take of the “nationalities” question, which he believed even gave the Central Asians the right to secede, is to tighten control and centralise power in Moscow. But Hiro also shows how during the Second World War, the region so comes to identify with the motherland that they help defeat the German army in major battles such as Stalingrad.
Hiro writes for a western audience, primarily, but Indians shouldn’t complain. Most of us love to talk about India’s connections with Central Asia — Babur, the first Mughal king, came from the Ferghana valley and more recently, India built its first airbase in Tajikistan to help the anti-Taliban forces — but the truth is, we are far less interested in our neighbourhood than in the recession-hit West. Hiro’s book is a great way to plug that gap in our knowledge.
INSIDE CENTRAL ASIA
Dilip Hiro
Overlook Duckworth
480 pages; $35