Uzbek Role in Tajik Civil War is Ominous Portent for Central Asia

By Michael Collins Dunn

The disastrous civil war in Tajikistan is just beginning to sink into Western consciousness. Reports of between 20,000 and 40,000 people dead and perhaps 300,000 refugees reveal a tragedy of massive proportions, yet because the war has been fought away from the television cameras, it has not drawn the attention devoted to equally horrendous events in the Balkans. Almost entirely ignored is the degree to which neighboring Uzbekistan has intervened in, and now may be able to dominate, Tajik affairs.

The Tajik civil war offers some alarming warnings of what could be coming in the rest of formerly Soviet Central Asia. Neither Russia nor Uzbekistan has behaved as if it considered Tajikistan a genuinely sovereign and independent country. Despite Russian protestations of neutrality, the Russian division stationed in Tajikistan reportedly helped the ax-Communist side in its victory over the democratic and Islamic alliance.

But what may be an even more ominous portent for Central Asia was the role of Uzbekistan. Despite the Uzbek government's insistence that it has provided only humanitarian aid to its smaller, poorer neighbor, there is strong evidence that Uzbek military forces intervened directly in Tajikistan and helped in the victory of the ax-Communist side. Some reports have indicated that up to one-half of the victorious forces were actually from Uzbekistan. In fact, the new defense minister of the Tajikistan government, Major General Alexander Shishlyannikov, was born in Tashkent, the Uzbekistan capital, and until recently was serving in ex-Soviet forces based in Uzbekistan.

The new Tajik armed forces are being set up under the direction of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Joint Armed Forces, even though individual components of the CIS Joint Armed Forces virtually have ceased to have a separate existence. It therefore seems fair to say that the new Tajik army is being crafted with considerable input from Russia and Uzbekistan.

The side which won the civil war, the so-called ax-Communists who are in fact still Communist in all but name, includes large numbers of ethnic Uzbeks living in Tajikistan. Thus Uzbekistan's involvement may partly be motivated by concerns for fellow Uzbeks. But the government of Uzbekistan also has been promoting itself as the defender of Central Asia against "Islamic fundamentalism.'' Uzbek President Islam Karimov repeatedly has warned that Tajikistan was becoming "another Iran" and that the Central Asian states must work to defeat this threat.

Russia and the other Central Asian states, in a declaration last year on Tajikistan, warned that the southern border of Tajikistan was also the southern border of the CIS, and its security was an interest of all CIS members. Translated, this means that while Russian and Uzbek involvement in Tajikistan is acceptable, Russia and Uzbekistan reserve the right to block Afghan involvement. The flow of arms from Afghanistan into Tajikistan to support the Islamists received much negative attention in Russia and Uzbekistan, while the flow of arms from Russia and Uzbekistan was not criticized.

If reports in the West and the Muslim world are to be believed, in the final rounds of fighting in November and December Uzbekistan sent helicopter gunships, tanks, and ground troops into Tajikistan in support of the ax-Communist side. That constitutes a violation of Tajik independence far more profound than some gun-running across the Afghan border.

A major problem seems to be that Russian, Uzbek, and even Western observers simply do not see cross-border interventions by one former Soviet republic in another's affairs as intervention by one state against another. (Carnegie Endowment scholar Paul Goble frequently points out that the very fact that Westerners continue to call them "republics" rather than simply "countries" reflects this failure to accept in practice the independence which has been recognized in theory.)

The U.S., already trying to juggle far too many international crises, is not about to alienate Russia by criticizing events in a remote corner of Central Asia. But the fact remains that in the Tajik civil war the pro-democracy side appears to have lost, at least in part because of the direct intervention of Russian and Uzbek troops.

Uzbekistan's role is the likeliest to raise problems in other parts of Central Asia. That the Uzbek government has little respect for its neighbors' sovereignty was already shown late last year when a leader of the Uzbek human rights movement, Abdumannov Pulatov, was arrested by Uzbek police in the Kyrgystan capital of Bishkek and taken back to Uzbekistan, where he was charged with insulting President Karimov. There was no extradition, nor were the Kyrgyz authorities involved. Though Pulatov has since been released in an amnesty by Karimov, his arrest shows the degree to which Uzbekistan is willing to intervene in its neighbors' affairs.

Central Asia's Largest Ethnic Group

This is dangerous simply because the Uzbeks are the largest ethnic group in Central Asia. There are Uzbek populations living not only in Tajikistan (and Afghanistan) but also in the other Central Asian countries. There have been recent outbreaks of ethnic violence involving Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan and elsewhere. By its intervention in Tajikistan and its kidnapping of Pulatov in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan has shown that it will not be too troubled by international boundaries in playing its self-appointed role as protector of Uzbeks everywhere. Whereas only about 4 percent of Uzbekistan's population is officially Tajik, some 22.9 percent of Tajikistan's population is Uzbek, as is 12 percent of Kyrgyzstan's.

As the heirs of the great Chagatai culture that once prevailed in Central Asia, Uzbeks are among the strongest proponents of a unified Central Asia. Other ethnic groups assume, however, that Uzbeks mean unity under Uzbek domination.

There have been reports of widespread executions in Tajikistan, apparently on ideological rather than ethnic or racial grounds. It is not clear, therefore, whether Islam Karimov's Uzbek nationalism has reached the intensity of Slobodan Milosevic's "greater Serbia" fascism. Uzbekistan's intervention in Tajikistan, however, and its lack of respect for its neighbors' borders, already give cause for concern.