Carnegie Moscow Center
The Tulip Revolution did not mark the emergence of democracy in Kyrgyzstan. To the contrary, since 2005, limits on political rights and freedoms and the strengthening of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s family rule have only increased.
The five post-Soviet Central Asian republics—Kazakhstan, Krygyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan—share common political, cultural, and historical roots, but they are far from homogeneous, and continuing domestic and regional tensions could lead to violent conflict.
As the war in Afghanistan begins to enter a new phase, it is important to reexamine some of the premises of U.S. policy in the Central Asian region and to consider whether the conditions in the region have changed in the last decade.
Clearly it is in Russia's interest, while maintaining its strong positions in India, to search for a way to move beyond the traditional spheres of cooperation, in order not only to maintain the strategic nature of their bilateral relations in the long run, but, using these relations, to enhance the innovative character of its own economy.
While the U.S.-led NATO operations in Afghanistan have resulted in somewhat enhanced security capacity for Central Asian countries, their long-term security challenges seem to be increasing, given the current situation in Afghanistan and the growing instability of Pakistan.
Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Sarbaev stressed that many of the problems plaguing Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan, such as security and drug trafficking, are in fact regional problems, and that multilateral negotiations and mutual concessions can help find solutions to these problems.
Russia retains interests throughout the post-Soviet regions, but Moscow’s considerable influence is no longer dominant.
Each of seven major religions in Eurasia—Buddhism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Islam, Protestantism, Russian Orthodoxy, and paganism—has been forced to develop under the modern pressures of globalization.
The economic crisis has had a clear impact on the already impoverished countries of Central Asia, but few Americans and Europeans have noticed. China and Russia have stepped in to provide aid, and their investments threaten institutional reform in the region.
Islam alone will not aid Pakistan’s political development; instead, national stability will improve with better administrative, security, economic, and social services.