Foreign Minister Zarifi at CACI SAIS in Washington, DC, May 17, 2012.
The NATO Summit in Chicago provided an opportunity to hear a number of Central Asian officials speak who stopped in Washington on their way to the summit.
I've blogged about the many challenges Tajikistan faces as US troops exit Afghanistan in 2014 and the issue of terrorism and related challenges to religious freedom.
Foreign Minister Hamrokhon Zarifi spoke at CACI SAIS May 17 on "Tajikistan and Central Asia in Light of 2014." Dr. S. Fred Starr opened the meeting. Zarifi worked for Tajik national security, i.e. the Soviet KGB from 1973-1993 and then in the 1990s served as ambassador to Austria, Switzerland, and Hungary and then came to the US from 2002-2006. So he is an important figure in terms of understanding the deep security issues of not only his own country but the region, and also understanding the thinking in Washington.
Like so many speakers today, he described the turning point for the world and his country in September 2001; Tajikistan of course was riven by civil war from 1992-1997, in which 50,000-100,000 were said to be killed; perhaps it says something about the world's indifference and the closed nature of the society that the estimates vary so wildly.
The first thing Zarifi mentioned was his 1,500 kilometer border with Afghanistan which is "very, very different" than our borders -- "it's not like Canada" he explained helpfully for people who know this but need to think about it more -- and even different than Mexico. It's mainly mountainous rock, and it has very little electronic facilities; 70% of the border does not have any kind of electronic surveillance, electric fence or physical barrier or communications but just some dirt paths.
"I hope we will be well-prepared for 2014," he said -- and his schedule in recent months reflects the worry of the world -- he has been to Beijing, Moscow, and now Washington, and consulted with the SCO and CSTO; also Istanbul and Bonn Zarifi described his border as "quite silent," i.e. generally without incident, although of course EurasiaNet and other sites do have a number of stories of border incidents, mainly with Uzbekistan. "Except for drug aggression," he added -- which, while not perhaps the precise English phrase he meant to say, conveyed something very important: the fierce determination of aggressive drug-smugglers against whom the world's various weak defense systems can't cope. There wouldn't be 30,000 illegal drug-related deaths in Russia otherwise.
So what's his thinking about how to address the post-2014 challenges? Well, he has a lot of ideas. Building highways and railroads -- there are a number of projects in progress and coming on line later in the decade. Vocational training, investment, trade; regional disaster and risk monitoring, regional fiber optic networks. CASA-1000 is quite important for these plans as it is building cooperation in the electricity market -- Tajikistan suffers from such shortages of electricity that it impacts its press freedom because people literally can't print news or share news online if they are in the dark. "There are serious shortages in winter-time," added the minister.
There's the Turkmen-Tajik rail system of 500 km that will go through the northern part of Afghanistan -- these plans for more crossroads on the Silk Road are in play because Tajikistan does not have much ready gas and oil to export like other Central Asian nations -- the deposits are very deep and not accessible, so railroads for other countries' products become important -- of course, if relations with Uzbekistan ever improve enough (and Uzbekistan seems to exercise most of what we could call "transport aggression" here by simply blocking Tajikistan's passage due to disputes about the hydropower station that could deprive Tashkent of water for its cotton crops.)
Although not mentioned very often or tied up to human rights concerns in the way Uzbekistan is, Tajikistan is part of the Northern Distribution Network, with important trucking routes.
Different powers have their own idea of what the Silk Road should be, of course, and Zarifi indicates that it is not just a repeat of the old Central Asian Silk Road but draws in China, Iran, and Iraq, and connects the former Soviet Union to the Arab World.
Notably, as to future projects, particularly gas pipelines, Zarifi makes it clear that neither disputes and rivalries among Central Asian powers, or America's concerns about relations with Iran will not be factored in, to deter regional development.
"Nobody will be a resister or destroyer of these projects. Everybody will protect them." They all understand it will help their families, he added, as the economic cooperation will help the region be stable.
As for pipeline projects with Iran, "Why should we avoid participation of Iran in gas pipelines? I'm not seeing any obstacles. If Iran would be ready to discuss, we will discuss."
Zarifi also spoke optimistically about converting crops from opium to sweet potato, which Afghanistan exported 20 years ago. Obviously, the cash values of these crops differ wildly...
Dr. Starr pointed out that a lot of the projects, such as those related to CASA-1000, were due to come online in the future -- 2016, 2018, and so on. Meanwhile, 80% of the GDP of Afghanistan derives from the NATO countries. "A lot of bad things could start to happen" when that's withdrawn, he cautioned.
"First, we don't know, some will stay," said Zarifi hopefully about the troops. The Coalition should "finish his job," he said.
"Do you have a Plan B?" asked Starr. Indeed.
What sort of Plan B could Tajikistan, a small and poor country with 25% of its own GDP made up of remittances from labour migrants in Russia, have regarding this tremendous challenge on its border?
That's of course why the US military is in Tajikistan spending $1.5 million and more to train and equip troops particularly to make a more secure border.
I heard a discussion at this conference that encapsulated the problem of this region for me in a way that nothing I have heard in a decade has: A stable Afghanistan is of interest to Iran and a stable Afghanistan is of interest to the United States.
Now, at first glance you might thing, "Can't we all get along, and a stable Afghanistan is in all our interests."
But it doesn't, because the way this is interpeted in military and political doctrine is that a stable Afghanistan encourages Iran to become more interested in it and in fact Iran would prefer Afghanistan to be stable its way -- thereby making both an increased threat to the US. A stable Afghanistan that is stable in the way the US would like it to be then becomes a threat to Iran.
I recall back in the early 1980s, analysts would comment that the real war in Afghanistan was between communism and the West, as liberals often described it -- a Soviet communist incursion that the West fought by proxy because it was interesetd in deterring the USSR -- but rather was a war between communism and Islam. Now, we've ensured that it is more about Islam and the West.
Tajikistan has a "strategic partnership" with Russia -- the labour migrants and the students in universities and of course Russia's largest military base in Central Asia is in Tajikistan. "We would like to continue this relationship," said Zarifi carefully, but of course it's not without its problems.
A stable Tajikistan is of interest to Iran as well, as they are from the same great Persian civilization. Many have concerns about a return to Islamic unrest and civil war as in the 1990s. Asked a bout a harsh new religious law, Zarifi responded:
"We all respect and love our religion, but would never have it as a diktat in our country," he said. He pointed out, however, that unlike some other Central Asian countries, Tajikistan legalized the Islamic Party. "The law is not against Muslims," he explained, "but about the responsibility of parents for raising their children."
Asked to explain why children were not allowed to attend mosques or obtain education in Islam, Zarifi said that several organizations abroad in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran were fomenting radical Islam. "We're not blaming the countries, but some groups in them," he elaborated.
According to intelligence information -- and he'd be in a position to know, or for that matter, spin this information -- there were plans to train young children in suicide-bombing, a la Palestine.
"We have concrete facts that children as young as 8 and 11 were going to be used," Zarifi said.
Later I asked some Tajik journalists whether they found this information compelling. They didn't, because they had a basic journalistic question: what are the names of these children? Who are their families? What are the organizations? What countries were involved?
When they find Tajik students are brought home from study in Egypt from Al Azhar, the top university, because supposedly they are being trained in suicide bombing, the Tajik journalists just aren't buying the story. It's not a sophisticated notion, they feel.
If there were children brought abroad and prepared for suicide missions, as claimed, shouldn't we get more facts about them? Where are they now?
Zarifi also points out to those worried that Islam is suppressed that in the Soviet era, there were 15-17 mosques; today, there are 5,000-7,000 -- although we do hear of some being shut down.
"Nowadays, some are led by extremists who came back from the war in 1994, and nobody knows what they are teaching," the foreign minister complained. "We need to prepare our own imams."
There's a vicious circle here, however, if the belief of foreign training in Islam is accompanied with so much suspicion; 800 persons were brought back home from studies abroad due to concerns about spread of the Arab Spring.
Registan may not believe we can ever talk about the Arab Spring and Central Asia in the same breath; officials in charge in Tajikistan not only talk about it, but act on it.
"There are some in Saudi Arabia, some in Iraq, and they try to teach our children a different way." Again, we need details ultimately to be persuaded, and it doesn't seem to reflect the lion's share of Islamic activity in Tajikistan. Zarifi indicated a vision of a "modern Islam, a peaceful Islam" with people studying Islam in Tajikistan -- when sufficient numbers of domestic (i.e. state-controlled) imams are prepared, "maybe we will change our laws," he indicated.
Children have to stay in the state's school, and study -- they cannot be studying in religious schools. It is not that they are instructed not to go to the mosque at all; the idea is not to train them there, although for any religion, worship and instruction are hard to separate.
Ultimately, Zarifi's attitude toward religion was sort of summed up with this off-handed remark:
"If we pray five times a day, who will work?!"
Asked a number of times about his advice or his "lessons learned" from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Tajik civil war regarding NATO, Zarifi replied:
"Don't hurry. Be patient."
Can the Arab Spring reach Tajikistan? Recently, Zarifi heard a report from his chief of telecommunications in the government who quipped that they had "7 million people on the Internet." Of course they don't, in a country of 7.5 million -- it's a small fraction of penetration.
But they all have mobile phones, and increasingly, the phones are getting the capacity to connect to the Internet.
Starr batted away in irritation several Russian-speakers who wanted to speak to Zarifi in the language he likely spoke better than English, insisting that English remain as the language of the meeting. Russia looms over Tajikistan, of course.
But an "extraordinary painful transition" is coming to Tajikistan with the wrenching changes in Afghanistan, "and the terms are created in Washington and not in Dushanbe, and it presents extreme dangers."
The US does have a chance in concert with other NATO members and even Russia to mitigate this if it keeps a focus and a meaningful budget on the region.
