AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Citation preview

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA By William M. Brinton

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

1

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Books:

Amazon.com is pleased to have The Abridged History of Central Asia website in the family of Amazon.com Associates. All of the books quoted in this online history are available from the AMAZON.COM Web site. Click on the book title to find out more about the book. Chapter 1: Turkey Constantinople : City of the World's Desire 1453-1924 by Philip Mansel The Rommel Papers by Liddell Hart The Dawn of Peace in Europe by Michael Mandelbaum Chapter 2: Armenia and Azerbaijan The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn of the 21st Century by Robert D. Kaplan Chapter 3: Iran The Prize by Daniel Yurgin The Iranians, Sandra Mackey God Has Ninety-Nine Names by Judith Miller Chapter 4: Iraq Republic Of Fear by Samir AlKhalil Chapter 5: The Peoples Republic of China The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress by Andrew J. Nathan The Coming Conflict with China by Richard Bernstein and Ross Monro Hungry Ghosts by Jasper Becker Chapter 7: Russia Das Capital by Karl Marx The Strange Death of the Soviet Empire by David Pryce-Jones Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

2

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire by Michael Dobbs Afghanistan:Soviet Vietnam by Vladislav Tamarav Without Force or Lies: Voices from the Revolution of Central Europe in 1989-90, an anthology with essays by Vaclav Havel, Andrei Sakharov, Norman Manea, and Adam Michnik. Edited by William M. Brinton and Allan Rinzler. Lenin by Dmitri Volkogonov The World Cultures Report: Ecocide in the USSR The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn Moscow and Beyond 1986 to 1988 by Alexander Solzhenitsyn Lenin:The First Account Using All the Secret Soviet Archives by Dmitri Volkogonov Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. by Dmitri Volkogonov Russia: People and Empire. by Geoffrey Hosking Chapter 8: Threat Perception and China's Role in Asia China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Inc : The Dynamics of a New Empire by Willem van Kemenade Chapter 9: The Viability of Central Asia Requiem for Modern Politics by William Ophuls Ecology of and the Politics of Scarcity by William Ophuls Death by Default A Policy of Fatal Neglect in China's State Orphanages by the Human Rights Watch Chapter 10: The Black Sea The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn of the 21st Century by Robert D. Kaplan

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

3

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Interesting links to other Web sites:

AKA-Kurdistan http://www.akakurdistan.com/ Contested Borders in the Caucasus http://www.vub.ac.be/POLI/ch0101.htm British Information Centre http://www.britain-info.org/ United Nations http://www.un.org/ ABC News Archive http://archive.abcnews.com/ The World Cultures Report: Ecocide in the USSR http://www.cpss.org/books/ecocide.htm

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

4

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

INTRODUCTION

Global demand for oil, particularly in Asia, has been growing since 1985. In that year, oil prices collapsed, and the Persian Gulf region suffered a substantial decline in real income. In peacetime, oil is indispensable to fuel expanding economies around the world. In wartime, oil is indispensable to fuel the military forces of the various combatants. In 1918, for example, Germany surrendered because its military machine was about to run out of oil. In World War II, Germany saw its oil supplies cut off at Ploesti in Rumania. American bombers led the attack on refineries and storage tanks there. Adolph Hitler looked even further afield than Ploesti which provided only 58 percent of Germany's oil imports in 1940. Hitler saw Baku in Azerbaijan as the objective of his Panzer divisions. Baku and the other Caucasian oilfields were central to Hitler's concept of his war against Russia. This war was launched on June 22, 1941 and Germany's war ended far short of Baku and Grozny in what is now Chechnya. Nazi divisions were defeated just short of Stalingrad, about 200 miles from the Caspian Sea. A violent confrontation for access to oil in the Caspian Sea Basin could very possibly occur between Russia and China early in the 21St. Century. In this remote part of the world, oil has been discovered in vast quantities not yet measurable. Some familiar with the find estimate the oil reserves at over 95 billion barrels in the Caspian Sea fields. In nearby Turkmenistan, gas reserves are estimated at well over 18 trillion cubic metres. And only recently, has Kazakhstan captured the interest of the international business community. In addition to oil, Kazakhstan is thought to have the largest reserves of gold in the world, together with copper and silver. The People's Republic of China has more than a casual interest in Kazakh oil; it must more that double its daily consumption of crude oil by the year 2000. In October, 1996 Tashkent, the capital city of Uzbekistan, was recently the site of a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Human Rights Watch/Helsinki sent copies of its letter for publication on the Internet. The letter addressed to America's am ii bassador in Uzbekistan charged that OSCE's human rights staff was giving its tacit approval to strict government control of the media and fierce repression of free speech, not withstanding Article 67 of Uzbekistan's constitution. In part, it read: "the mass media shall be free...censorship is impermissible." Constituent countries once part of the Soviet Union, like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan was once one of the constituent republics of the

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

5

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Soviet Union but now is independent within the Confederation of Independent States (CIS). Chechnya has been recognized by Russia as a state, but Grozny, its capital has been the site for two years of bloody guerilla warfare with independent status as the objective. In early 1996, General Alexandr Lebed signed an agreement with the rebel's leader, and Russian forces withdrew with Boris Yeltsin's approval In May, 1997 Yeltsin went even further. He helped reinforce Aslan Maskhadov by signing a peace treaty with this newly elected president of Chechnya. Yeltsin promised "never to use force or threaten to use it in relations between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Ichkeria." This is the new name for Chechnya. According to a map prepared in Moscow by the Russian Oil Industry in cooperation with Rosneftegaz, Chechnya and the nearby Krasnodar area has some fifteen oil fields and one refinery with a capacity of 22 to 28 million tons of oil per year. The same map shows that only a small percentage of Chechnya's oil is exported. The bulk of this oil is sold to Russia. By controlling the Chechen economy devastated by years of bloody fighting and widespread destruction, Russia will probably continue this arrangement. However, leaders in Chechnya have sharp policy differences with Russia. One of them is capital punishment for certain offenses under Islamic law. Boris Yeltsin publicly denounced one such filmed execution. He still sees Chechnya as a province of Russia, not the independent country it has been since 1991. Except for Belaurus, the other countries on the Soviet periphery -- Georgia and Ukraine -- have preserved their independent status but probably not without promises of economic support from Moscow. The western geography of Russia includes Ukraine, and Belarus in an arc turning north from the Black Sea. The rulers of Russia have cut off Turkmenistan's oil and gas via pipelines to Ukraine and on to Europe. Turkmenistan cut off Ukraine's supplies until it agreed to pay in hard currency, not the inflated ruble. Any attempt to present the search for oil in a region of the world iii riven by the cultural wars and conquests during some two thousand years of history must omit some facts considered relevant by students of history. I refer, of course, to the Caspian Sea, a landlocked body of water surrounded by Russia, Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. This latter country shares a common boundary with the People's Republic of China, and its national neighbors include Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan. With the exception of Russia, Armenia, and China, the populations of all the other countries in this list are united by a common religion, Islam. While not now the lingua franca of these Moslem nations, Turkic or some variant will become the common language, probably by the next generation. According to Central Asian expert, Martha Brill Olcott, "Few people in the world have ever been forced to become independent nations. Yet that is precisely what happened to the five Central Asian republics Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan in 1991 when the Soviet

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

6

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Union dissolved," she said, " these people wanted civil liberties, but not necessarily freedom as citizens of new states. Each republic was named for a local nationality, but was based on the borders of a state that had, in fact, never existed. Therefore, all these groups have border claims on one another, and large populations in the other's territory on which to base such claims. " Stalin, for example, created Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan by dividing the Kyrgyz nation into two republics. In November, 1996 the Chevron Corporation announced the consummation of an agreement allowing it and its consortium partners to export up to at least 700,000 barrels of oil per day from the Tengiz oil field in the Caspian Sea. The oil will be delivered by pipeline to the newly constructed Russian port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea. Oil reserves in the entire Caspian Basin are estimated at ninety-five billion barrels. Natural gas in Turkmenistan is estimated at more than eighteen trillion cubic metres, enough to supply Russia with most of its industrial energy needs. Russia once had adequate supplies of both oil and gas. However, its pipelines and pumping stations have obsolesced and much of the Russian plant and equipment have deteriorated. Furthermore, some of its wells have been almost depleted over a period of ninety or one hundred years. Besides Chevron, other companies with an interest in the consortium are Lukhoil, the huge Russian oil company, Mobil Oil, AGIP S.pA., a unit of ENI of Italy, British Gas, and Oryx Energy, based in Dallas, Texas. iv The agreement signed in Moscow on December 6, 1996 was of major importance to Chevron. Currently, it was shipping only 120,000 barrels day. Its ability to ship more was limited by the current pipeline in Russia which has run within a few miles of Grozny, the capital city of Chechnya. For the last two years, there has been heavy fighting in that country. It got its independence from Russia, now known as the Confederation of Independent States (CIS). The government of Turkey has expressed disappointment with the route chosen by the consortium. Turkish officials had prepared a position paper with reasons for getting Caspian Sea oil on the international market by shipping it through pipelines via Turkey to Ceyhan for delivery to European markets. Except for Kurdish nationalists in the southeastern area of Turkey, a pipeline from, for example, Baku to Ceyhan, might well work under conditions of relative political stability.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

7

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Central Asia

Seven time zones to the east of the Caspian Basin, Chevron announced a new crude oil discovery in the South China Sea in the Pearl River Mouth Basin. The China National Offshore Oil Corporation will own 51 percent of the oil discovered in this prolific Huizhou area, with AGIP and Texaco being the other consortium partners. This latest discovery in October, 1996 brought total production to 120,000 barrels a day during a period that began in 1983 with the formation of what is now known as the CACT Operators Group. Each of the three corporate partners own a 16 1/3 percent interest in the South China Sea oil field, while CNOOC owns a 51 percent interest. On June 10, 1997 the official China Daily Business Week reported that China would have to import nearly one million barrels of oil a day by the year 2000, twice the normal level. With the domestic oil industry struggling to maintain production at about 3.1 million barrels a day, imports must increase sharply to keep up with China's rapidly expanding economy. China will continue as a net importer of oil well into the 21st Century, while its population continues to expand at an exponential rate. With this expansion, China needs far more oil than it will ever discover in either offshore or onshore oil drilling. Over the long term, Chinese economic growth will require the import of more oil. By 2010, China must quadruple its oil imports to at least 14.5 million barrels a year. Only two areas in the world produce oil on this magnitude, the Middle East and the Caspian Basin. Oil v from the Indonesian wells is barely enough to satisfy the requirements of Japan and the Malaysian Peninsula countries. On June 3, 1997 China announced a $4 billion deal under which Kazakhstan would deliver its oil to Sinkiang, a UighurHan Chinese province in the Northwest

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

8

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

of China via pipeline. China National Oil Company also announced an agreement with Iraq to develop two major oilfields with about 340,000 barrels of oil per day. Some officials note that Russian intransigence over pipeline routes to Europe via Turkey caused Kazakhstan to negotiate with the China National Oil Company, a statewide company. In 1994, China was considered to be the sixth largest oil producer, but the country consumes most of its own output. China refined 2.5 million barrels of oil per day in 1994, but is still 300,000 barrels short of its target for 2000. The present government in Beijing has other policies related to energy development. It is interested in American refinery technology and crude oil in the ground in countries like Kazakhstan and Russia. However, ever since the end of World War II, Russia has been a net importer of oil; its own oil facilities have become hopelessly inefficient, and its nuclear power reactors are dangerously unsafe. With the collapse of the old Soviet Union in 1991, some of its national areas have spun off into independent states. Georgia is one of them, and other states like Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan have become the key players in the search for oil and gas. Republics on the periphery of the former Soviet Union -- now the Confederation of Independent States (CIS) -- are often at war over issues of power. Belarus, for example, recently had a referendum which left the status of President Alexandr Lukashenko in some doubt. He had announced the referendum to seek near absolute power of a country of about 10.5 million people still living in the shadow of the radioactive fallout after Chernobyl in 1986... Belarus its capital is Minsk lies between Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine (World War II in Ukraine). In 1994, Belarus established its own currency, the ruble, but its value against the dollar is practically nil. The Ukraine has no serious internal disputes, but it does have a boundary dispute with Rumania going back to the MolotovRibbentrop Pact in 1939. Ukraine's population is estimated at 52 million, and its capital city is Kiev. Ukraine shares access to the sea with Georgia via the Black Sea. Chechnya shares a border with Georgia to the south and Dagestan to the east. The vi status of Chechnya was on hold in 1996 after an agreement was signed suspending hostilities between it and Russia for five years. However, Yeltsin finally signed a treaty with Chechnya in 1997. As already noted, China and Kazakhstan have a common border in western China where no substantial oil drilling is likely to take place without some assurance of results in commercial quantities of oil or gas. Chevron recently signed an agreement with China allowing it to explore for oil on land. China has a badly split personality. As of 1992, the Chinese economy was growing at an annual growth rate of 12.8 percent. Despite the one child per family policy, its population is growing at a rapid clip. By 2010, the

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

9

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

population is expected to increase by 25 percent. Expansion on such a scale is simply not sustainable because of environmental degradation. Arable land has nearly lost its capacity to grow crops sufficient to feed the growing population. About 25 percent of the entire population in rural China has less arable land than the Bangladeshis. Over the next fifteen years, this already disastrous condition of agriculture will become dramatically worse. As of 1990, about 77 percent of China's agricultural land was being irrigated, but this irrigation water has become increasingly polluted by industrial wastes. Anyone who has seen what an American forest looks like after clear cutting will recognize a grotesque scene. As river beds silt up from soil washed out by normal rainfall, the river beds rise above the normal surface and increase the danger of floods. Water and air pollution are increasing rapidly, as the population grows and has to feed itself. As the population expands, its rural component moves closer to the coastal population centers. Internationally, China has been criticized for its repressive human rights violations. Western businessmen tend to ignore all this for the lure of low wages and high profits on exports. Faceless Chinese bureaucrats routinely describe criticism of China's dismal human rights record as interference in the internal affairs of the Peoples' Republic of China. However, Europe has worked with the European Convention on Human Rights since 1951, and the thought of complying with this convention didn't even slow down the race to the banks by American businesses anxious to make money in Europe.Turkey has the worst record of human rights violations of the convention. Furthermore, the Council of Europe just rejected Russia's application to become a member of the Council of Europe. The Council vii executive ruled that Russia could not satisfy the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Peoples' Republic of China cannot survive without access to far more oil than it has in 1996. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Reform with its Red Guard excesses were both utter disasters. The terrible famine in the years between 1959 and 1962 caused the deaths of some 30 million peasants in the rural areas of China. Then, when Lin Biao was Minister of Defense beginning in 1959, he moved to politicize the army. Military professionalism must yield to strict ideological controls. Deng Xiaoping himself was a victim of the Red Guard cadres in 1966. He was humiliated in public rallies and attacked in insulting posters. He retired in time to avoid the blame for the chaos of 1967 caused by the Red Guard units. By 1968, these units were at war with one another, and the government infrastructure all but collapsed. Mao Tsetung was close to presiding over social breakdown. Mao distrusted Lin, so he is thought to have had Lin removed. Actually, Lin was reported to have died in a plane crash in 1971. This was the year in which the PRC got Taiwan's seat at the

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

10

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

United Nations, and Mao saw it might be time to cultivate the United States. So he was receptive to a visit in 1972 by President Nixon. Mao died in 1976, leaving a battle for the Party succession behind him. Miraculously, Deng was recalled from retirement because of his vast knowledge of the Party apparatus. Deng was very old then -- he died in February, 1996 -- but probably still powerful enough to suppress most dissent. The current Secretary General of the Party is Jiang Zemin who serves with Deng's blessing. He also used the army to quell the Shanghai demonstration occurring at the same time as the violence in Tiannanmen Square. Even a short account of Chinese culture, which has been a success in terms of economic development, should be an incentive to avoid commercial diplomacy by, among other things, denying China its MFN status without conditions. At least three generations of Chinese have been the victims of human rights violations. In late 1996, the China Communists turned their attention to the United States and humiliated its government. General Chi Haotian, who carried out the order to crush the Tianenman Square student uprising in 1989 was sent to Washington as a guest of honor of the Clinton Administration. The Clinton Administration sees more trade viii with China, and corporate America has been Clinton's willing executioner of human rights. President Clinton has refused to see the Dalai Lama or once imprisoned political dissidents. The international business community has an obligation to know the culture and react to its excesses. Free enterprise does not lead to a free society. Even with the rapid expansion of China's economy, there is abundant evidence that the same factors that produce serious abuses of human rights are also detrimental to trade. Have American corporations forgotten the economic sanctions that finally helped end apartheid in South Africa? During 1995, for example, China exported $47.3 billion worth of goods to the United States, but imported only $11.5 billion. This deficit has been used principally to finance arms for use by the Peoples' Liberation Army (PLA) and other capital needs. Chinese enterprises are required to sell their foreign exchange earnings to Chinese banks. The Chinese Century: A Photographic History of the Last Hundred Years published by Random House in December, 1996 has this to say: "China's foreign policy was assertive since 1989. The collapse of the Soviet Union -- perhaps reassuring in an odd kind of way to those in the [Beijing] leadership who warned of the perils of unplanned democratization without a visible economic base -- presented a completely new arena for maneuver among the newly independent republics in central Asia. China, as the new central power in that region, might gain access to water, fuel, and new markets for its own far west. At the same time, powerful Muslim forces in many of these republics raised disquieting prospects of possible unrest in Xinjiang, where the Uighur Muslims demonstrated energetically for a

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

11

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

measure of increased religious autonomy and control in 1989. The Russians' deactivation of their main naval base at Vladivostok, when followed by the American abandonment of its own huge naval base at Subic Bay in the Philippines, made China -- in the absence of a significant Japanese fighting force -- the dominant naval power in the immense region extending from the South China Sea to Sakkalin. China took an aggressive stance against Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei , and Indonesia over the disputed oil and natural gas deposit in the Spratly Islands, although the area was 500 miles from China's shores. China's warships patrolled the area, and set up boundary markers in strategic locations. Its expanding nuclear submarine program, its successful launching of intercontinental ballistic missiles, its projected purchase of an aircraft carrier, and its mastery of in-flight fueling techniques for its fighter bombers, all highlighted the risks to the other claimants should confrontation escalate." This overstates China's actual sea power. It has no carrier, and one will not be enough; there must be two carriers. China's air power has little range even with in-flight fueling. Its surface fleet of frigates is vulnerable to anti ship missiles, and its "smart" weapons have not been designed or produced within China. In 1992, a rail link between Beijing and Alma Ata in Kazakhstan which more or less followed the Silk Route used by Marco Polo in the 13th century makes the use of Chines forces in Kazakhstan quite simple. These two countries share a common border, so conventional military forces may travel through Sinkiang to the border and perhaps beyond like the nomads of history. About six hundred years ago, the Mongols led by Genghis Khan almost penetrated Europe, and they traveled by horse. On July 1, 1997 the British left Hong Kong, and the PRC moved in. Hong Kong has been widely seen as Beijing's economic engine; it is the city where most Taiwanese money has been invested, expanding China. Now Beijing wants to reclaim this island republic as its own. There is a problem with this. Taiwan wants its independence, and China does not yet have the military might to mount an amphibious landing, and its air force consists of obsolete Soviet jets. Furthermore, Beijing has said it will reclaim Taiwan peacefully. This claim exists at the same level of truth as its human rights policy. A possibility exists, however. Circumstances might be created by Beijing that could cause Taiwanese to rebel against their present leadership.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

12

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Modern Turkey is a nation which has been a bridge between Asia and Europe from the beginning of time. Once, as the Ottoman Empire, it ruled a huge area of the region around its borders as far southwest as Egypt including what is now Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. As the end of the millennium approaches, Turkey finds itself embroiled in a religious war within its own boundaries. In mid-May, 1997 Turkey was ruled by a fragile coalition including the Welfare Party headed by Necmettin Erbakan who vacillates between a secular state and one true to Islam and the True Path Party headed by Tansu Ciller. She has been charged with financial corruption, but denies any wrongdoing. On November 24,1997 The New York Times reported that Erbakan had just completed three days of a hearing before Turkey's Constitutional Court. A case had been brought that might impose a ban on his party, the Welfare Party. The prosecutor had alleged that this party had undermined the country's secular government and turned it into an Islamist state. The ruling coalition had been reorganized. Necmettin Erbakan had resigned, having seen the handwriting on the wall. His successor was Mesut Yilmaz who inherited an ugly civil war between Turkey and the Kurds. No one believes it has a military solution, and one member of Parliament, Leyla Zana, waived her parliamemntary immunity so she could make her point from prison. In 1994, the State Security Court convicted her of supporting Kurdish terrorism in violation of the AntiTerror Law (Law 3713). In 1991, Human Rights Watch described this law as A "New Restrictive AntiTerror Law." Mrs Zana's letters to Prime Minister Yilmaz and President Clinton noted that "Being in prison is an inevitable, unavoidable and necessary price to be paid for peace, brotherhood, and a democratic Turkey." Mrs Zana is a widely known in Europe as a symbol for Kurdish nationalists who are working for an autonomous Kurdish or independent state in Southeastern Turkey. It is no accident that this location may be used to transport Caspian Sea oil to the West through this area via pipeline, but this Turkish coverup of its brutality against Kurds and those who help them should have a negative effect on support for these proposed pipelines. In mid-December, 1997, Turkey's 33 year bid to enter the European Union was rejected. The decision angered Turkish officials, who threatened to reduce, if not eliminate their contacts with Europe. EU leaders had offered Turkey a new role in the European Conference, but Turkey declined to accept a role that did not lead to almost immediate membership. The EU's

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

13

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

western leaders commented that Turkey had made no progress on human rights. Moreover, it continued its aggressive policy against Cyprus. More recently, Kurdish refugees had landed in Italy where they were welcomed. Germany, a leader in allowing Turkish workers to find employment in Germany, led the vote against inviting Turkey to become a member of the EU. Both countries are members of NATO, as is Greece, which imposed unaccepteble conditions on Turkey's bid to become a member of the EU. A political survey taken for the Turkish Daily News on April 25, 1997 suggested an overwhelming majority of the voters polled favored the termination of this coalition which favored Islam. They also see antisecular trends as more serious than the threat of Kurdish separatism. Traditionally, the Turkish army has acted as a brake on Islamic fundamentalists acting to upset the secular coalition. Since 1960, the Turkish army had intervened three times to install a secular government, i.e., non-Islamic. In an interview in Ankara, Turkey's Deputy Chief of Staff, General Cevik Bir pointed to the country's constitution as the army's rationale for displacing a civilian, but anti-secular government. Article 2 of the Constitution established that Turkey shall be a secular nation. Article 4 declares that this provision may never be changed.Finally, it was not until mid-January, 1998 that the Constitutional Court ruled that the Welfare Party should be banned as threatening to undermine a secular state. This case appears headed for the European Court of Human Rights. To defuse protests from NATO, Bir emphasized the military's duty was to defend the political system as defined in the constitution. NATO, however, insists its members rely on civilian democracy, not a military government. On June 18, 1997 Erbakan stepped down pending elections to be scheduled at least four months from the date of his resignation. Erbakan remained as a caretaker until his successor was selected by the President of Turkey, Suleyman Demirel. As the guardian of the constitution, the army has often noted there is no Muslim formula for running the nation's affairs and deplored the retreat from secular government adopted in 1925 under Kemal Ataturk.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

14

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Turkey

In 1923, modern Turkey was largely secular, but almost seventy years later, secular Turks, (and they include a vast majority of the military) are threatened by fundamentalists. In the southeastern area of Turkey, a region known as Batman -- an administrative region -- is unsettled by Kurds. They resent the loss of Kurdish identity; Kurdish newspapers have been closed and Turkish schools will not allow the Kurdish language to be taught, and this war costs Turkey an estimated $5 billion a year. Turkey has been a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since 1954, and it is also a member of the Council of Europe. The Council's members accept the European Convention on Human Rights as an article of faith. However, Turkey's record on human rights is the worst of any of the Council's twentyone members. Turkey, for example, invaded Cyprus in 1974 and brought about a de facto partition of Cyprus, conduct condemned by the European Commission on Human Rights, the division of the Court of Human Rights that hears evidence and makes findings of fact. Turkey has no oil of its own, but it would like to see one or more pipelines carry Caspian Sea Basin oil to one of its ports on the Mediterranean Sea, such as Ceyhan or Iskenderum. However, its responsible leaders see the potential for pipeline disruption if its route goes to Ceyhan via territory occupied by Kurds (PKK). The territory occupied by Kurds has no fixed boundaries. However, World War I ended with a series of treaties in which the former Ottoman Empire was dismembered. The Treaty of Sevres was one of these, and it came close to establishing an independent Kurdistan. No contemporary map shows Kurdistan; the Kurds were betrayed by Great Britain and France. The Kurds were not permitted to establish their own state; they were divided up among Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Today, Kurds claim some oilrich portions of Iraq as their own, but France and Great Britain sided with Ataturk who suppressed the Kurds at various times from 1925 to 1937. Iraq was an artificial creation of Great Britain after World War I, but the Kurds boycotted the referendum in which the British sought local approval

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

15

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

of their selection of Emir Faisal as the King of Iraq in 1921. After World War II, the Kurds tied their policy to the Shah of Iran who needed a fighting force to keep Iraq at bay. Jonathan C Randall, author of After Such Knowledge What Forgiveness: My Encounters with Kurdistan, charged Richard Nixon with "unwittingly contributing to the Shah's downfall and to epic instability in the Middle East by encouraging the monarch's naturally autocratic ways and his insatiable appetite for U.S. military hardware. This combination helped burn out Iran's economy and undermine confidence in the Shah, thereby paving the way for the Ayatollah Khomeine's Islamic revolution a halfdozen years later." When Islamic Iran was attacked by Iraq, the Iraqi Kurds allied themselves with Iran. Saddam Hussein did not forget this alliance. After his defeat in 1991, Iraqi aircraft pursued the Kurds who had to retreat in the face of superior firepower. As one observer noted, the Kurds were never more than a political or diplomatic card to play in the Middle East. The United States betrayed the Kurds by selling arms to Iraq during the war with Iran. Hussein used this generosity to launch the first use of gas after World War I in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning the use of chemical weapons. Some 110,000 Kurds were killed by Iraqi gas between 1987 and 1990. Were fighting to break out in the Middle East in the next few years, Iran might well resort to the use of nuclear weapons. Russia has sold the technology to Iran and sent experts to advise Iranian physicists. By early in the 21st century, Turkey may find itself on the brink of a struggle over oil and gas. On the east, Turkey borders Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran. To the south Turkey shares a border with both Syria and Iraq. On the northeast, Turkey shares a border with Georgia, one of the Confederation of Independent States (CIS) made independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Most of Turkey lies in Asia; its capital city is Ankara. Turkey controls the two exits from the Black Sea, the Straits of Bosporus and the Dardenelles. Ships leaving the Black Sea must transit the straits via the Sea of Marmara before moving into the Mediterranean Sea. Great Britain almost succeeded in closing the Straits of Bosporus in 1915 when it had naval forces off Gallipoli. As Phillip Mandel wrote in his book, Constantinople, "Panic swept Constantinople (now Istanbul) when a British submarine broke through the Dardenelles and started sinking ships in the Bosporus: by the end of the year Allied submarines had brought daytime traffic on the Sea of Marmara almost to a halt." Russia has different ideas. It has invoked the 1936 Treaty of Montreux which guarantees free passage through the Bosporus and the Dardenelles during peacetime. Recently, however, there were as many as 110 vessels weighing as much as 200,000 tons, often carrying oil, gas, chemicals, nuclear 9 wastes, and other hazardous materials pass through the straits each day through the tortuous route that literally splits Istanbul, a city of

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

16

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

eleven million people, in two. In 1994, Turkey, citing environmental concerns, adopted regulations regulating sea traffic through the Bosporus Straits. Two potential disasters had already occurred. In 1994, the oil tanker Nassia collided with an empty cargo ship at the entrance to the Bosporus. The Nassia was carrying 19 million barrels of crude oil from the Russian Black Sea port of Novorosisk. The Nassia caught fire and burned for a week causing damages of about $1 billion. In 1979, a collision occurred between a Greek freighter and a Rumanian tanker near the lower entrance to the Bosporus. The resulting explosion shattered windows on shore, and the cargo of oil burned for weeks.Turkey has solicited bids to build a radar system making the Bosporus more navigable. However, nations using these straits have been reluctant to say they would help pay for an expensive system. With the increase in oil traffic projected as a result of the Central Asian oil fields, it seems grossly unfair for Turkey to assume the risk for the health of both the environment of the straits and the inhabitants of Istanbul. With these concerns quite evident to Turkey, it approached the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, and successfully got I.M.O approval of the 1994 regulations. See " Regulating Traffic Flow in the Turkish Straits: A Test for Modern International Law at 10 Emory International Law Review 333. The flow of oil from the Russian terminal at Novorosisk has more than doubled since the end of the Cold War in 1991. It is evident that Russia resents the possible loss of its monopoly of transportation of oil by Russian pipelines. Many experts argue that a pipeline through Turkey bypassing the Kurdish separatists is by far the best route for oil from Central Asia. Turkey touches Europe at Greece and Bulgaria. During the Gulf War in 1990 and 1991, the United Nations approved sanctions with the effect of cutting Iraq off from the world markets for oil; it closed the oil pipelines that cross Turkey carrying oil from Iraq. In late 1996, the Security Council allowed Iraq to sell $2 billion worth of oil so the government might buy food and medicine for people suffering because Saddam Hussein had tried to seize Kuwait's oil in August, 1990. Turkey could close off water to Iraq flowing through the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers around Baghdad, 10 because water for these huge rivers originates in Turkey. The Ottoman Empire was probably one of the two or three great empires that survived into the early 20th century. After World War I, the Ottoman Empire disappeared. Some of its territory was taken to form the wholly invented boundaries of Iraq. Part of its land was set aside as the Mandate for Palestine to be ruled by Britain until 1948, and another part was set aside for the French and became Lebanon. Syria was carved out of this land in what was really a cartographer's nightmare.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

17

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

The part of Turkey located in Asia has been named Anatolia since ancient times going back 5,000 years. Late in the third millennium B.C. waves of invaders speaking IndoEuropean languages crossed the Caucasus Mountains into Anatolia. These were the Hittites who lived during the bronze age. They took their name from the Hatti indigenous tribes whom the invaders subjugated. The Hittites adapted their language, using the cuneiform alphabet. The invaders also imposed the political and social organization they brought with them, probably from the Balkan Peninsula, on their subjects in the Anatolian interior and northern Syria. The indigenous peasantry supported the Hittite warrior caste with rents, services, and taxes. In time, the Hittites won the reputation of being merchants and statesmen who schooled the ancient Middle East in both commerce and diplomacy. However, the Hittite state collapsed in 1200 B.C. when the Phrygians rebelled and burned the ancient city of Hattusas. In 1906, systematic excavation of the site yielded archives containing cuneiform tablets that had been baked by the same fire that consumed the city. The deciphering and interpretation of this material brought to light the history, literature, laws, and religion of a people initially known by language from the Bible with references to "Hittim" in the Old Testament. During the period between the twelfth and ninth centuries B.C. Anatolia was in constant turmoil. The Assyrians from Mesopotamia, now part of Iraq, were on the march. The kingdom established by the Assyrians was overthrown by the Cimmerians, a nomadic people who had been pursued over the Caucasus into Anatolia by the Scythians. They in turn were overcome by the Lydians, a Thracian warrior caste who enriched themselves from gold found in great quantity in the area ruled by Croesus. The successive Lydian kings controlled western Anatolia until the kingdom fell to the Persians in 546 B.C. Part of the Persian Empire is now modern Iran. Armenians and Kurds also shaped the linguistic diversity of Anatolia. Armenia had been established as a client of the Roman Empire to guard the frontier against the Persians. The Roman empire gained control of Anatolia in 138 B.C. Cicero, a great writer -- he wrote in Latin - said of this acquisition of Anatolia that its importance lay in "the richness of its soil, in the variety of its products, in the extent of its pastures, and in the numbers of its exports, it surpasses all other lands." Under a succession of Roman emperors, Rome expanded over the next three hundred years. In 285 A.D., Emperor Diocletian undertook the reorganization of the Roman Empire, dividing jurisdiction between its Latinspeaking and Greekspeaking halves. In 330 A.D. Emperor Constantine reigned from 306 to 337. He had established his capital at the Greek city of Byzantium strategically situated on the European side of the Straits of Bosporus at its entrance to the Sea of Marmara. There he could watch both Persia's empire and the Goths across the Danube River. For nearly seven centuries

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

18

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

the city, renamed Constantinople, remained the capital of the Roman Empirebetter known in its continuous development as the Byzantine Empire. John Julius Norwich has written an engrossing history of this period, A Short History of Byzantium which grew after 330 AD and ended in 1483. Norwich had written a three volume history of this period. They first told the story of the Empire from its foundation to the establishment of its western rival, the Holy Roman Empire, with the coronation of Charlemagne on Christmas Day 800. The second followed its fortunes through the dazzling dynasty of the Macedonians to the apogee of its power under the terrible Basil II Bulgaroctonus, the BulgarSlayer, but ended on a note of ill omen: the first of three great defeats of Byzantine history, suffered at the hands of the Seljuk Turks at Manzikert in 1071, only five years after William the Conqueror landed in Great Britain in 1066. The third and last volume showed just how fateful the defeat at Manzikert proved to be, robbing the Empire of most of Asia Minorthe principal source of its manpower weakening it and impoverishing it to the point that, rather more than one hundred years later it was powerless to resist the onslaught of the grotesquely misnamed Fourth Crusade. That obscenity, and the fiftysix years of Latin rule that followed it, proved to be the second blow from which Byzantium never recovered. The the Ottoman Empire emerged. The Metropolitan Museum of Art had an exhibit, The Glory of Byzantium, which finally closed on July 7, 1997. No ruler in all history can equal Constantine the Great. It was his decision to adopt Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, and he transferred the capital of that Empire from Rome to the site of old Byzantium where it was to be known for the next sixteen centuries as Constantinople. Christianity was introduced into Anatolia through the missionary activity of St. Paul, a Greekspeaking Jew from Tarsus. Christians already constituted a majority of the population in Anatolia; this religion had been granted official toleration under the Edict of Milan in 313. The Armenians of Anatolia had been converted to a form of Christianity at variance with the orthodox tradition of the Greek church. They were Greek Orthodox in religion, a fact that would have fateful consequences in 1915. However, the Byzantine Empire tolerated all religions including Muslim by the end of the Seventh century. It ruled not only Anatolia and Greece, but also Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Sicily, most of Italy, and the Balkans. It lost Syria to Muslim conquest in the seventh century. While the Byzantine Empire slowly diminished in size with frequent waves of Goths, Slavs, Persians, and Arabs, it generally remained on the offensive until the eleventh century. During this period of perhaps 700 years, migrations out of Asia continued with Turks leading in numbers and settling in Anatolia. Thus, did the beginnings of the Ottoman Empire emerge from the remains of the Seljuk Empire with an intervening spasm following the Mongol invaders led by Genghis Khan in the 13th century. Mongol horsemen assembled the

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

19

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

largest land empire the world had ever seen, including most of what is now the Peoples' Republic of China. This empire stretched from the Yellow Sea bordering on Korea to the Mediterranean Sea. Even today, there are traces of the Mongol presence in parts of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, together with Kiev in Ukraine. Mongol hordes sacked Baghdad in 1221 and occupied Samarkand in 1219. In their march into Asia Minor, the Mongols drove nomadic Turkoman tribes before them. They in turn spread terror through the Seljuk Empire. Its rulers were threatened with extinction and finally disappeared never to emerge again. Mongol power itself, like the power of other nomadic peoples over a settled society, proved ephemeral, lasting in Asia Minor -essentially all of Anatolia -- only a single generation. Other refugees third volume was the story of the Empire's last two centuries, from which driven before the invaders were Muslim who had fled from Turkestan and Persia. They rekindled Turkish enthusiasm for war against the infidels in Anatolia. They were reinforced by Turkoman tribes. Collectively, these two groups were known as Ghazis. These Ghazis were driven by religious fanaticism and poured unresisted into western Anatolia beginning about 1300. This century marked the rapid decline of the Christian Byzantine Empire and the rise of the Moslem Ottoman Empire. In 1453, Mehmed II marched into Constantinople as conqueror of all before him. This city's population was overwhelmingly Christian, a remnant of the Byzantine Empire. Islam is a religion with revolutionary implications. Rulers are considered legitimate only if they live by and enforce the sharia, or Islamic jurisprudence. Its holy laws are based on the teachings of the Koran. Conflict between dynastic power and Islam emerged throughout the history of Constantinople. The Ottomans were all Moslem, and this single fact was to affect the destiny of eastern Europe, the Republic of Venice, Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia, and Austria. In Constantinople, however, Mehmed II gave Christians protected status. He also supported the restoration of the Orthodox Christian faith with the appointment of an Orthodox Patriarch who played an important role in raising taxes for the Sultan Mehmed II. The Sultan was short of military manpower in Constantinople, so he ordered Turks from Anatolia to move to the capital city and supplement his fighting Janissaries for conquest outside of his immediate domain. In 1529, the Ottomans had decided to invade Europe with the excuse that a dispute with the Habsburg family in Hungary had not been settled to Suleiman's satisfaction. Turkish forces were stopped at the gates of Vienna after an army of professional soldiers had been assembled to defend Vienna. Suleiman, the Ottoman Turkish ruler tried again a few years later, but once again the Austrians defended themselves well. The invaders were

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

20

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

forced to withdraw. Even before this unsuccessful invasion of infidel Europe, the Ottomans had created what would become an empire. By 1512, the empire began its expansion by various wars against Italy and Spain; even France was not immune from Suleiman's soldiers. Perhaps the only positive feature of all this violence was that people were just beginning to establish a few of the boundaries that would endure until the 20th century. Suleiman waged war on two fronts at times. He moved against Persia three times as his other forces were engaged elsewhere. Persia was the enemy on the basis of religion. The Turks were orthodox Sunnis, while the Persians were heterodox Shi'ites. In 1533, Suleiman marched against Baghdad -- Iraq was not then a nation with defined boundaries -- entering its gates in 1534 and liberating this city from the Persian Shi'ites. On the western front, another naval encounter ended in a disastrous defeat for the vessels of the Ottomans at Lepanto in 1571. Here, the Turkish Crescent and the Christian Cross met in the last great naval battle in the history of Europe. A year later, a new Turkish fleet sailed into the waters surrounding Crete. This threat caused the Venetians to cede Cyprus to the Ottomans. In today's world, the Turks felt they had a right to occupy half of Cyprus after the slaughter of many Greeks on the island.Three years after Lepanto, the Ottomans struck again. By the end of the 18th century, they claimed Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli as territory of the Ottoman Empire. The Turks had made seven different attempts to breach the gate to Europe, either at Vienna or at Budapest. All of them failed. The Ottoman Empire, however, had a new determined enemy, Peter the Great of Russia. He was determined to gain access to the Mediterranean Sea via the Black Sea. During most of the 18th century, the Ottomans struggled to reacquire what they had lost to the Austrians. During this period, diplomacy flourished. France, for its own reasons worked out various arrangements with the Ottomans, while Russia failed in its war against Sweden's King Charles VII, the socalled Baltic War. The Treaty of Belgrade in 1737 settled some disputes that had led to war in the past. This treaty, having humiliated the Austrian Habsburgs, frustrated the Russians and gave relief to the Ottoman Empire. No Russian vessel, whether warship or merchantman, could enter the Black Sea. The survival of the Ottomans now depended on agreements with the powers of Christian Europe. Catherine the Great ruled Russia, and she was determined to extend her empire to the shores of the Bosporus by dismembering the Ottoman Empire. She also sided with Prussia's Frederick the Great to partition Poland. Russian warships finally entered the Mediterranean Sea after first resupplying their ships in England. It was Catherine the Great's ambition to liberate Greece from the Turks.This effort failed, but the Turkish fleet was almost totally destroyed. Its admiral failed to consider access to the Black Sea from the south. The delay allowed the Turks to erect fortifications on both sides of the Dardenelles. In the meantime, however, the fortunes of war favored the Russians in the

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

21

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

main theater of operations. In 1771, Russia overran the Crimea, and three years later, the Turks agreed to peace which, among other things, allowed Russia access to the Black Sea. The last of the Ottoman sultans was Abdul Hamid II who assumed the mantle in 1876. One year later, Russia declared war on Turkey. Its sultan had to fight without Great Britain whose Queen Victoria had denounced the Turkish barbarians. This war was settled by the Treaty of Berlin which did little more that recognize German and Bulgarian spheres of influence and adjust a few boundary lines. Abdul Hamid had tried an experiment in democracy by offering a new constitution. It was approved by fraud, and Abdul Hamid finally dissolved parliament in 1878. It was not to convene again for thirty years To assure his own personal safety, Adbul Hamid ran a police state and used the newlyinvented telegraph system to issue orders. Moreover, Abdul Hamid saw himself as the ruler of his part of Islam. To reinforce his position, he had to persecute the Christian Armenians who once had protected status. Turkish army units carried out the bloody slaughter of Armenians that followed the Turkish fury fanned by Armenian revolutionaries. This slaughter of Armenians by the Ottomans was the beginning of genocide in the 20th century. In 1915, the Turkish government regarded its Armenian population as a dangerous Christian element in a Moslem society. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were driven from their homes, massacred, or marched until they died. This genocide lasted until the dust from World War I had settled, and Armenia became an independent nation carved out of eastern Turkey. Its independent status did not last long. By the Treaty of BrestLitovsk in 1918, Russia was forced to cede all of Turkish Armenia and part of Russian Armenia to Turkey. However, early in 1918, Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan formed the Transcaucasian Republic. Diversity of objectives brought about the dissolution of this republic. Then, in 1920, a coalition of Armenian guerillas and the Communists proclaimed Armenia a Soviet Republic. In 1922, an overwhelmingly Armenian area, NagornoKarabakh was awarded to Russia by the Treaty of Sevres which imposed order and suppressed Armenian nationalism. This surfaced again in 1990, and led to Armenia's independence in 1991 free of Soviet rule. However, ethnic violence began in 1988. Azerbaijan claimed some of the territory occupied by Armenia, and from time to time, violence still erupts. In retaliation, Azerbaijan imposed a blockade on Armenia, and huge segments of the Armenian population emigrated to other countries, including the United States. The first three decades of the 19th century saw a spectacular expansion of Russia's frontiers in the Black SeaCaspian Sea Caucasus. In two wars with Persia, the first in 180413, and the second, in 18268, Russia expanded the Tsar's domain by acquiring Baku, Georgia, Dagestan, Ereven, and

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

22

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

northern Azerbaijan and part of Armenia. The 19th century saw the extension of sovereignty over what were to become colonies of the great European powers: England, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, and the Netherlands. This period has been described as the "New Imperialism," and it lasted until the outbreak of World War I. In this same period, the Ottoman Empire saw a decline in its territorial base and corruption in Constantinople. In 1903, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany announced a plan to build a Berlin to Baghdad railroad, but only after he had signed a treaty with Turkey. Even though the Suez Canal was opened in 1867 providing a route for Britain to send arms and personnel to India quickly, Lord Palmerston, Britain's Foreign Secretary, saw the BerlinBaghdad railroad as a major threat to the heart of Britain's empire in the Middle East and a threat to India. In fact, the railroad ended in Anatolia on the Black Sea and was never extended to Baghdad. In 1883, German officers began training the Turkish army and modernizing it with arms and equipment made in Germany. When Kaiser Wilhelm II succeeded to the German throne in 1888, he saw that Asiatic Turkey could become a major sphere of German influence. Two years later, Wilhelm II dismissed German Chancellor Count Otto von Bismarck who opposed extending German influence to a Muslim nation ruled as an autocracy. Greece was unhappy with Abdul Hamid and chose to invite the Ottomans to declare war against Greece. In a thirtyday war, Greece was humiliated by the Ottoman forces, but fifteen years later they struck back at Turkey whose military power was illusory. A declining Ottoman Empire had sought alliances with Great Britain whose answer was that Britain could not save Turkey, unless the Turks could save themselves from the internal and external forces producing major cracks in the Ottoman establishment. A war in Europe seemed inevitable, and when Archduke Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian Habsburg throne was assassinated by a Serb fanatic. Turkey turned to Germany and soon wound up as an ally of Germany during World War I. For the years immediately preceding the outbreak of World War I, investors outside the Ottoman Empire and indeed, a few of them in the United States, oil derivatives -- kerosene, gas, and illumination -- offered enough profit to attract John D. Rockefeller. In fact, by 1868, he had put the Standard Oil Company together and invested massive amounts in acquiring production wells, refineries, and pipelines. Until Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, there was very little incentive to build electric utility plants to generate electricity. Henry Ford, however, gave the oil business something to think about, the gasoline engine to fuel the combustion engines of automobiles. Oil and gas in great quantities had been found in California and then, in 1901, Texas, where the best known gusher of all time, Spindletop, came in and started a land rush to Texas. Initially, Spindletop produced 75,000 barrels a day. Sir Marcus Samuel in

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

23

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

London heard the news of Spindletop and saw it as a way of diversifying world production, instead of relying entirely on production from one area. He and Henry Deterding, a Dutch oil entrepreneur, finally put Royal Dutch Shell together, and it became Standard Oil's largest, worldwide competitor in 1906. Even this early in history, Joseph Stalin was a troublemaker. He organized oil workers' strikes, one of them in the Baku oilfield on the Caspian Sea. Stalin had been in Tsarist jails eight times and saw the strike as the Great Rehearsal for the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. In 1908, Tsarist officials were fearful of revolution and provided arms to the Moslem Tatars. This Russian largesse allowed the Tatars to slaughter Christian Armenians in what is now Azerbaijan, an echo of the genocide over which the Sultan Abdul Hamid had presided in 1878. Persia -- Iran since 1935 -- found oil in 1908. It had agreed to a concession with the Burmah Oil Co. backed by British interests. After finding oil, all the concessionaires united to incorporate the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. The British now saw Germany as the new threat. The Kaiser supported the modernization of the German Navy with emphasis on oilfueled naval ships. Initially reluctant, Winston Churchill enthusiastically endorsed oil for the expanding British Navy, moved by German belligerence. In 1914, Parliament approved a measure that would guarantee the British Navy access to oil in peace or in war, and Anglo-Persian Oil Co. would be 51 percent controlled by the British government. On June 28, 1914, eleven days after Parliament approved Winston Churchill's bill, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo. Austria declared war against Serbia, Russia mobilized while Germany declared war against Tsarist Russia, and Great Britain declared war against Germany for violating Belgium's neutrality. The world was at war. After waiting long enough to see what might happen in Europe, Turkey finally declared war on Russia, and of necessity joined Germany. Indeed, by 1915, Turkey was deeply involved with Germany; its army was being trained by German officers and its bankers were so involved with Turkey that joining the Allies would have been unthinkable. Russia, however, had not really prepared for war and applied to Great Britain in 1915 for military intervention. Winston Churchill saw British help as essentially naval in its composition. However, when some opposition to this order of force was heard by the Asquith Cabinet, Britain sent some 249,000 British troops to Gallipoli. This change exposed Britain to the great losses of manpower to Turkish arms led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who later became the father of modern Turkey. By the end of 1915, this land invasion had failed in two costly offensives against Turkish forces, and the British forces had to withdraw. In 1916, however, Great Britain succeeded on another front and destroyed the Rumanian oil fields including Ploesti. It took the Germans a year to restore the Rumanian wells to just 35 percent of their 1914 production, which was not enough to fuel the German army

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

24

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

in Europe. Then, advancing through Persia, British forces reached the Baku oil fields. These forces denied the Germans the oil from the Caspian Basin, despite efforts of the Turks to reach Baku first. An exhausted Germany surrendered in November, 1918 and the war was over. The Middle East was effectively rearranged in Paris, where the Allies negotiated the Treaty of Versailles and separate treaties with the defeated Germans and Turkey. British interests had been responsible for setting up companies controlled from London even before World War I began. One of these companies was the Turkish National Bank. It had been set up to advance British economic and political interests in competition with Germany. London was alarmed when the Turkish Petroleum Company appeared on the scene in 1912. The Deutche Bank and Royal Dutch Shell each owned 25 percent of the stock, and the Turkish National Bank held the remaining 50 percent of the stock. One individual, Calouste Gulbenkian, owned 30 percent of the Turkish National Bank. This very wealthy Armenian therefore owned 15 percent of the Turkish Petroleum Company. When World War I ended, all the Allies knew that oil and its location would dominate their meetings. The United States, Great Britain, France and the Netherlands all knew that Middle East oil was up for grabs. Walter Teagle of Standard Oil of New Jersey, Henry Deterding of Royal Dutch, Ernest Mercier of France, and Charles Greenaway of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company were the principal players. Calouste Gulbenkian was the odd man out who could block any progress by the others. And it was not until 1928 that an agreement was signed covering oil rights in what is now Iraq. A year earlier, a gusher had been brought in near Mosul, so the players knew oil was there; however, they had difficulty agreeing on shares. In the final or Red Line Agreement dated July 1, 1928 -- Gulbenkian had drawn a red line around all the major oilproducing states, except for Persia and Kuwait -- each major player got 23.75 percent of the oil, and Gulbenkian got his 5 percent. Britain and France played hardball Real politik in the postwar Middle East. Winston Churchill, head of the Colonial Office, got Cabinet approval of his candidate for King of Iraq. Faisal was crowned in August, 1921. His brother, Abdullah was named King of what is now Jordan. Syria was a French mandate under the League of Nations, and Palestine was ruled by Britain as its Mandate for Palestine. Iraq had actually been carved out of the old Ottoman Empire and was a mixed bag of Muslims and nationalism. The Kurds wanted an independent nation, Kurdistan, but Russia opposed this, as did a defeated Turkey. The Bolshevik revolution of 1917 had so alarmed Britain that it had to protect its northern flank against a threat from the Russian Bear and the protection of the British Empire including India.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

25

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Before, during and after World War I, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Belgium the New Imperialism controlled what the governments of these countries saw as objectives. Economics was the most important single factor in this New Imperialism (1870 to 1925). The Industrial Revolution created large surpluses of European capital and a heavy demand for raw materials. Colonies in Africa and Asia had the raw materials, except for oil which was abundant in certain areas of the Middle East. Great Britain was spread thin from Suez to Singapore, Malaysia, and India. Its navy had to have oil so its warships might stop at any one of these sites plus Cyprus to refuel. Britain's governments had learned an important lesson in World War I. Without oil, Germany could not continue the war, and no British Cabinet would ever let the British Navy run out of oil. The major players were only marginally sympathetic with British access to oil for its Navy. They needed worldwide markets for their oil, and production wells that were located in a stable political environment. Postwar Arab nationalism and religious fundamentalism made the latter objective difficult, if not impossible. However, the most important objective for the major oil companies was to insulate and protect themselves against government intervention. A single ruler of an oil producing state can cause problems, as Persia's Shah was to demonstrate. Sir Arthur Cadman of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company -- the British government owned about 50 percent of the stock -- Walter Teagle, president of Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Henry Deterding, president of Royal Dutch Shell were the movers and shakers of oil production and distribution around the world. However, in 1928, they had a major problem; there was an oversupply of oil world wide, and prices were volatile. The Great Depression was to occur a year later, and with new oil from East Texas, it was selling at far less than cost of production, even oil sold in Europe from such countries as Russia, Rumania, and Persia. Its Shah, Reza Pahlevi, unilaterally cancelled Anglo-Persian's concession; oil royalties had declined to the vanishing point, and the Shah was infuriated. Nationalism was only one reason behind this move, as was money. Finally, a settlement was negotiated, but it set a precedent that other oil producing states would find useful in the future. The rulers of host countries would henceforth share in the worldwide profits of the majors, and Persia supplied a higher percentage of workers to these companies. And a huge annual payment to the ruler was guaranteed regardless of any other events. During this period that ended in 1933 with the Persian settlement, Turkey had emerged as a modern nation ruled by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as a democracy. Women were emancipated and given the right to vote and hold office. The harem and plural wives were both abolished. Ataturk abolished the Arabic script that had been used for centuries in the written language of Turkey.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

26

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

The Latin alphabet replaced it. Ataturk negotiated with the British over Turkey's share of oil from Mosul in what was Iraq. Turkey got 10 percent of the profits from the sale of oil produced in Mosul. Equally important was Ataturk's decision to end the sultanate that ruled Turkey for so long. In the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, Turkey had renounced its claim to Cyprus, a claim it raised again in 1974. Ataturk also established the seat of government at Ankara, essentially to end any lingering attachment to Istanbul, the home of the sultanate for generations. During his rule, the Kurds raised the banner of revolt in the name of Islam. It was put down in 1926, but has surfaced almost every year since then. Ataturk died in 1938 and his memory has lasted until today as the Father of Modern Turkey. During the period Turkey was modernizing its government and culture. Germany was moving toward war. In 1933, Adolph Hitler was fully aware of German dependence on foreign oil, so he was moved to support I. G. Farben A.G; it had patents on a process that produced high grade gasoline from coal. Farben's scientists had discovered that aviationgrade gasoline could be made from lignite, the cheapest of all coals. In 1926, a Berlin professor devised a way of making this gasoline synthetically, and even more important, inexpensively. Jersey Standard's Walter Teagle toured the German facilities producing synthetic fuel and was shocked. He saw this production as a threat undermining Jersey Standard's dominant position of oil in the worldwide market. Hitler had other objectives. In 1936, he inaugurated his FourYear Plan. The synthetic fuels industry occupied a central place in this plan. By September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland, some fourteen synthetic fuels plants were in operation with six more under construction. A year later, they were producing about 72,000 barrels per day, accounting for 46 percent of total oil supply. About 95 percent of German aviation gasoline came from the hydrogenation process in these plants. Rumania, a German ally in World War II, furnished the rest of the oil Germany needed. It was produced in Ploesti, an oilfield that had been a target in World War I. Indeed, the safety of Rumanian oil was not far from the thoughts of Nazi officials, By early 1942, Albert Speer was Minister of Armaments appointed by Hitler. Speer was responsible for repairing Allied bomb damage to the synthetic fuels plants in Germany. Until June 22, 1941 Germany also imported Russian oil, since Hitler had signed a nonaggression treaty with Stalin in August, 1939. Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June, 1941. A few months later, Hitler told his generals who had made rapid progress toward Moscow, that "The most important objective to be achieved before the onset of winter is not to capture Moscow, but to seize the Crimea and the industrial and coal region on the Donets and cut off the Russian oil supply from the Caucasus area." Baku and the oil of the Caspian Sea Basin was the ultimate objective. However, German forces were finally defeated before Stalingrad, thousands of miles from Berlin, but only 200 miles from the northern tip of the Caspian Sea. Germany's Sixth Army surrendered in

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

27

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

February, 1943 with only enough fuel in their tanks to drive some 30 miles. In North Africa , the story was no different. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's legendary Afrika Corps finally outran its source of fuel for both tanks and aircraft. From the island of Malta, the RAF aircraft could sink vessels carrying more fuel from Italy to German forces in North Africa. Then, when American forces landed in Morocco and Algeria, blocking Rommel's retreat route, Rommel's position became untenable. In a book edited by Liddell Hart, Rommel's Papers, the general himself complained bitterly about not getting the fuel he needed to win. Between mid-May and June 6, 1944 the American Strategic Air Force bombed Ploesti, Rumania and German synthetic oil plants within Germany. The theory was that by denying the Luftwaffe gasoline for its aircraft, German fighters would be less able to interrupt the D-Day invasion of Normandy scheduled for June, 1944. The Air Force continued its heavy bombing of synthetic gas plants after D-Day. Luftwaffe fighters remained on the ground for lack of gasoline. Germany's synthetic gas plants were producing 6 percent of average production in early 1944, from 92,000 barrels per day to just 3,000 barrels. This German fuel shortage may have shortened World War II by as much as six months. As a result Allied ground forces advanced rapidly toward their goal of Berlin. See Chapters 1 and 6 of An Abridged History of the United States for more detail . The war with Japan had the same problems. Initially, Japan had sufficient oil for its Navy and ground forces. However, beginning in May, 1943 the United States waged a war of attrition against Japanese tankers. American submarines proved very effective. By 1944, tanker sinkings were outrunning new tanker construction. Oil imports in Japan reached their peak in the first quarter of 1943. A year later, its imports were less than half the 1943 figure. Fuel shortages began to affect strategic decisions of the Japanese Navy. Carriers had to remain based in Japan to make rapid use of new carrier aircraft and pilots. On the other hand, its heavy battleships and cruisers were stationed at or near Singapore to take maximum advantage of oil from Sumatra and Brunei. The result was a divided fleet at the very time Japan needed a combined fleet strong enough to deal with the massive American task forces of the Third and Seventh fleets. Their warships could refuel at sea, while the Japanese warships could rarely get enough fuel for any extended operation. The Battle of Leyte Gulf was a complete disaster for Japan. It lost three battleships, all its remaining carriers, ten cruisers and twelve destroyers. While there is some documentation of the importance of oil in warfare, it is reasonable to state that Russia, the Peoples' Republic of China, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, and the United States all accepted

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

28

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

this as an article of faith. Certainly, the foreign policies of all these countries reflected a deep concern for the protection of their access to oil. The main contribution to the Allied cause by Middle Eastern countries was the use of their territories, resources, and facilities. In most of those countries, this was made possible by the military garrisons established during the post-World War I period, in Iraq, Iran, and the oilrich states of the Persian Gulf. Indeed, one of the most important changes in this century was the discovery, exploitation and use of petroleum. Indeed, on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Russia had supported the search for oil in Azerbaijan. At this time, oil from the fields in Baku on the Caspian Sea was providing some 95 percent of all Russia's oil. Notwithstanding the battles near its borders, Turkey remained neutral during World War II, that is, until the last few weeks when Turkey declared war on Germany in order to qualify for a seat at the victors' table. As one observer noted, Turkey wanted to be on the guest list, not the menu. When the dust settled after World War II, the Cold War began. In 1949, the United States took the lead in organizing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and Turkey was admitted in 1954. The language of the NATO treaty had the familiar text; an attack on the territory of one member was essentially an attack on all members. NATO was essentially a defensive alliance designed to meet a Soviet military threat in central Europe. In 1951, the Council of Europe had established the framework for solving problems of postwar human rights. Both the Republic of Turkey and the Kingdom of Greece acceded to the treaty in 1952. The Council of Europe invited Turkey to join it. The Court of Human Rights and the Commission of Human Rights were both created and accession to the European Convention on Human Rights was an article of faith for all members of the Council of Europe. Turkey has not accepted all its obligations under the human rights convention. In 1974, Turkish military forces landed in Cyprus with the intention of preventing Greece's move toward Enosis or Union with mainland Greece. Furthermore, Turkey has consistently denied Kurds in Turkey the opportunity of preserving their language and culture. To the government in Ankara, the Kurds are a quarrelsome minority, and the government has not hesitated to use force against them. See http://www.odysseyphoto.com/major/turk.html In mid-January, 1997, the United States warned Turkey against attacking Greek Cypriot forces on Cyprus. Turkey had accused the Greek Cypriot government of trying to change the balance of forces on the island by buying some Soviet antiaircraft missiles. Washington reacted strongly, arguing that installation of the Soviet missiles would introduce a destabilizing new military element and complicated peace moves. Both Turkey and Greece are members of NATO. The Turks have more to worry

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

29

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

about than Cyprus. Each major city in Turkey is about one-sixth Kurd. Turgut Ozal, who died in office in 1993, was the second greatest revolutionary of the twentieth century. He was president of Turkey until his death. Ataturk led the way, but he had one fatal flaw. Both Ataturk and Ozal tried westernizing Turkey, but the Kurds were forgotten. Today, some twenty million of them live dispersed in Iraq and Iran. The war against the Kurds threatens Turkey's social peace, and Ozal died just as he was moving toward a compromise with the Kurds. Turkey has dreams of dominating the area in which it is centered. The Southeastern Anatolia Project, when completed, will allow Turkey to stop the water flowing into Syria and Iraq for up to eight months without overflowing Turkish dams. This project (GAP for its name in Turkish) will be the world's fourth largest rockfilled dam known as the Ataturk Dam. While it may seem out of place, the manager of this dam sees it as a way of controlling the political conduct of the Arab world. It needs water, and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers rise in Turkey and flow through Baghdad. The Turks saw water as a weapon to be withheld if circumstances required it. The Ataturk Dam, when completed, will supply power and irrigation for the agricultural area of Turkey. Early in 1997, the Clinton Administration, going through high level personnel changes had to deal with expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). President Clinton wanted to expand NATO to include Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. At least one reporter on National Public Radio, January 14, 1997. Lee Cullum, a columnist of the Dallas Morning News offered a few cautionary views. "It is awkward, of course, to have to admit that the alliance is being expanded against a [potential] threat from Moscow," she said, "[Russia] is NATO's ally in the partnership for peace..." She also mentioned Michael Mandelbaum, a professor at Johns Hopkins University. His most recent book, The Dawn of Peace in Europe, was published in late 1996, and NATO was covered in depth. In fact, however, the NATO Participation Act enacted by Congress would have to be amended to include these countries, and then the treaty would have to be ratified by the Senate, twothirds concurring. The earliest it could be amended and the treaty ratified would be the year 1999. George Kennan, who provided the intellectual underpinning of the doctrine of "containment" of the Soviet Union in 1947, has written a column in The New York Times for February 7, 1997. In it he notes that "expanding NATO would be the most fateful error in American foreign policy in the entire postcold war era." "Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, antiWestern, and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

30

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to EastWest relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking. And last, but not least, it might make it much more difficult if not impossible to secure the Russian Duma's ratification of the Start II agreement and to achieve further reductions of nuclear weaponry. ... And it [NATO expansion] is doubly unfortunate considering the total lack of any necessity for this move. Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the cold war, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who should be allied with whom, and, by implication, in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?"

The problem has been and still is the reality of postCommunist Europe. Just about everything in Central Europe and run from Moscow for the last forty years has turned into ein Drecknest. This translates from German to "a filthy mess." Bulgaria is a splendid example. One might think a government faced with an unpayable international debt would reject the idea of printing more money with inflation running at 20 percent per day and look for a more sensible solution. In Bulgaria, the Socialist government has lost billions of dollars in trade by adhering to the sanctions imposed on Serbia, even though its most important transit route and trading partner disappeared. Bulgaria's desperate plea for compensation has so far fallen on deaf ears. Rumania, Macedonia, and Albania are in the same boat The International Monetary Fund has not shown any disposition to postpone payments on Bulgaria's huge debt of $12 billion. And the European Union will not lift a hand, until Bulgaria rationalizes its economy, i.e. balances its budget. Petar Stoyanov, elected as president of Bulgaria in November, 1996, leads the Union of Democratic Forces -- the nonCommunist alternative to the Socialists -- had gone to Brussels to get it to admit Bulgaria as a new member of the European Union. Thousands of demonstrators have blocked the downtown of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria since January 2, 1997. They were protesting against the ruling Socialist Party and mass poverty in this Balkan state. About 80 percent of Bulgaria's population of nine million live below the poverty level. In Ankara, another protest was organized by secular activists. The target of the protesters in mid-April, 1997 was Necmettin Erbakan, Turkey's Prime Minister who governs a coalition that includes Tansu Ciller, Foreign Minister. She is under investigation for alleged financial improprieties during the time she was Prime Minister. However, the protesters were anti-Israel, and they wanted to end the new relationship between Turkey and Israel. Over the last two years, Turkey and Israel have forged a remarkable program of military cooperation. In April, 1997 David Levy was in Ankara to discuss it with highly placed Turkish officials, including

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

31

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

General Ismail Hakki Karadayi, Turkey's chief of the military staff. As The New York Times story said: The relationship between Turkey and Israel is continuing to develop improving the security of both countries, even as relations between Israel and the Palestinians deteriorate, and as the entire region faces the rise of fundamentalist Islamic movements. In particular, the relationship can only make Israeli leaders more confident they can take tough positions in dealing with their Arab neighbors. An alliance with Turkey could go a long way toward neutralizing Syria in any major crisis. It could also make Syria think twice about stirring up trouble to Israel's north, however preoccupied Israel may be with quelling unrest among the Palestinians.

Turkey ruled a great deal of the territory now known as Syria and Palestine. Both were once part of the Ottoman Empire which ended after World War I. Today near the end of the 20th century, the miniarea surrounding Syria -- Israel, Turkey, and Greece -- has been compared to the Bermuda Triangle, a place where objects mysteriously disappear. In 1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus and in effect divided this traditionally Greek island nearly in half. In 1948, Israel was attacked by Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq. For its own security, Israel has to reduce the level of trading land in the West Bank for an ephemeral peace with the Palestinians. For its part, Turkey is faced with Islamic fundamentalism by those who seem determined to roll back the progress made by Ataturk in 1925; he created a secular state that has remained secular with the army warning religious militants not to press it too far. In addition to this state of tension, major American and European oil giants are locked in a dispute over the route that pipelines from Kazakhstan must follow to avoid Iran and probably Russia. Ironically, the People's Republic of China was the winner, signing a development contract for oil and gas in Kazakhstan's Uten field. China has said it will construct two multibillion dollar pipelines. This deal signaled a new Chinese determination to pursue its economic interests abroad. In the waning days of 1997, Iran and Turkmenistan signed a deal selling 12 billion cubic feet of natural gas to Iran, using a 130mile pipeline from Korpedzhe, Turkmenistan to Iran's Kurd Kui. Oil companies in the United States are handicapped by the IranLibyan Sanctions Act of 1996. Republicans designed this nonsense, and Clinton signed it. Unless it's repealed or modified to meet domestic oil companies objections, no U.S. company can route a pipeline through Iran This area of the world is engaged in a high stakes power game. The center of the action has been Azerbaijan. Since October, 1996, the estimate of oil reserves in this Caspian Sea Basin has escalated wildly to the point where oil in the ground is said to be more than any other region outside the Persian Gulf. The Tengiz field, only a small fraction of the total, is in Kazakhstan, and natural gas has been estimated at over 18

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

32

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

trillion cubic meters is in Turkmenistan. The principal foreign oil consortium in Azerbaijan is the Azerbaijan International Operating Company, known as AIOC. The only real obstacle to participation of American companies in this new field was the 1992 Freedom Support Act. A provision inserted by Armenian supporters in Congress prohibits direct U. S. economic aid under certain circumstances. However, the Azrebaijani Chamber of Commerce with heavy weight American politicians is moving toward persuading Congress to remove the existing limitation. Armenians have never forgotten the genocide of the period from 1915 to 1924. See http://www-scf.usc.edu/~khachato/genocide/ An Armenian produced this semi-documentary at a site on the Web. Beginning in the year 1915, Turkish soldiers indiscriminately slaughtered Armenians. By 1924, 1.5 million Armenians had been killed by these Turks. Armenians were Christians so they received help from the Soviet Union. Its Soviet military aid helped Armenia, but it tended to muddy the waters for negotiations of the "Minsk Group", which included the United States. In neighboring Azerbaijan, Armenians won a war with Azzeris and occupied about 20 percent of Azerbaijan. Understandably, Armenians feel passionaltely that they will never give up the land known as NagornoKarabakh. However, in an election in 1998, Levon Ter-Petrosian, President of Armenia was ousted by the Armenian military for compromising on the process leading to peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The central issue of the political campaign was the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh, the small mountainous ethnic Armenian enclave it had won from Azerbaijan in a war lasting six years. Unfortunately, the breakdown in the peace process has made the economy in Armenia decline even further. In 1998, some 45 percent of the workers in Armenia were unemployed. This misfortune exists in double-measure. Armenia was being considered for an oil pipeline carrying Caspian Sea oil to a Turkish port. Now the oil companies will have to deal with Georgia, and Armenia will lose the income from oil transit fees. In its own backyard, Turkey has an ugly war with the Kurds. It has lasted some ten years and costs an estimated $5 billion annually. Turkey seems determined to destroy it a crime to be found with even photographs of the Kurds at war. See http://www.akakurdistan.com/. This site offers new insight into this ugly war and should be studied by all historians. The pictures were taken by various photographers and used in Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History, with the Internet version condensed from one by Susan Meiselas in 1997. While ugly political struggles plague Turkey, its next door neighbor offers the intractable Nagorno-Karabakh problem. The Armenians have occupied about 20 percent of Azerbaijan and were responsible for creating a refugee class of some 1 million people. A small group in Azerbaijan publishes a

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

33

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

magazine, Azerbaijan International. Its most recent issue -- August, 1997 -- has dedicated many pages to the revival of Azerbaijan's once flourishing film business. It goes back about 100 years according to one article. The more recent films produced before 1991 feature Communist story lines, and the plots are quite predictable. Azerbaijan has a growing musical culture, and the CD playing features Aziza, a talented performer keyboarding Seventh Truth in the Mugam mode. Essentially Mugam is improvisional piano, and Aziza has performed before audiences in London, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Istanbul, and Tel Aviv. See http://www.azer.com/audio.aziza.four.html In early 1997, St Martin's Press released a new book, The Kurds and the Future of Turkey by Micheal M. Gunter. Densely written, this book should be on the desk of anyone studying Turkish policy and how it has been challenged by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). In the Introduction, Mr. Gunter wrote that "In analyzing the failure of Turkey to solve its Kurdish problem, I have been impressed by what I call the authoritarian tradition of the Republic of Turkey. This Tradition not only has influenced the general attitudes of most government officials against a successful political solution, but has negatively affected human rights. Turkey has been prevented from taking the final steps towards becoming a genuine democracy, and there is a real possibility that the state will be split up, due to its failure to satisfy the legitimate demands of its citizens of Kurdish ethnic heritage, who constitute approximately 20 to 25 percent of the overall population." By 1990, some 13.7 million Kurds were living in Turkey, a figure that constituted 24.1 percent of the total population of Turkey. If present demographic trends continue, as they are likely to, in about two generations' time, the Kurds will replace the Turks as the largest ethnic group in Turkey, reestablishing an Indo-European language (Kurdidh) as the principal language of the land. While other considerations were and will continue to be a factor in determining Turkish policy, language was by far the most important. Suleiman Demirel, once Prime Minister of Turkey beginning in May, 1993, observed; "if we let the Kurds have their language, we will have to agree that Kurdistan is a state." The Persian Gulf War in 1990-91 left Turkey in debt. At the request of the United States, Turkey closed the Iraqi pipeline from Kirkuk in Iraq, to Yumurtalik on Turkey's Mediterranean coast. It did not reopen until late 1996 , and by then had cost Turkey about $30 billion. In March 1998, Iran made a significant gesture in once again opening a dialogue with the United States. It stopped oil sales made by Iraq in violation of Security Council Resolution 687. During the period from 1991 to the present time, some members of Hussein's family had somehow

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

34

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

gotten around the oil sanctions of Security Council Resolution 687. Iran announced a crackdown on shipments of some 100,000 barrels a day that earned Iraq millions of dollars in violation of the sanctions. Iran has been able to restrict the flow of petroleum because most tankers carrying Iraqi oil ave used forged Iranian papers and passed through Iranian's waters until the oil could be delivered to buyers in the United Arab Emirates. Proceeds of these illegal sales generated about $600,000 daily for Saddam Hussein's regime, after bribes and discounts paid by Uday Hussein, Saddam's son, or by some other lower level official. This oil trade was so effective that only about 5 percent of the illicit oil sales were intercepted by the American-led coalition sent to the Persian Gulf in 1990. All of this money from the very beginning should have been paid to Turkey, it suffered a huge loss for the closing of the above-mentioned pipeline. In its foreign policy, there are plenty of Kurds who would welcome the export of Kurdish aspirations to Germany, France, Britain and the Benelux countries. In Germany alone, some 450,000 Kurds in the 1.8 million citizens of Turkey. Amongst this group, some 4,800 were activists given to violence. In June, 1993, for example, Kurds attacked Turkish consulates, banks, airline offices and travel agencies in some twenty different cities in Germany, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Britain and Denmark. This violence continued until the European Union voted to deny Turkey any membership in the EU. The PKK has been subjected to criticism for its tactics designed to frustrate the objectives of American oil companies. Amongst other things, the PKK is thought to have cooperated with the Armenians as a way to block a possible oil pipeline between Azerbaijan and Turkey. In late 1995, the PKK pulled significant numbers of its fighters out of southeastern Turkey due to the relentless Turkish pressure and positioned them in northern Iraq. It was clear that the PKK had emerged as a third force in northern Iraq. In the summer of 1996, the situation again deteriorated in Iraqi Kurdistan, as Iran began to support the PUK in its civil war against the KDP headed respectively by Barzani and Talabani. The government has also organized a national symphony and local composers have written music for performances in a new symphony auditorium.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

35

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

The greatest oil rush in decades occurred after Western oil companies had spent billions in exploratory and development costs in the Caspian Sea Basin. At least one major obstacle has frustrated businessmen and Central Asia politicians alike. The oil and gas pipelines must still be built along politically stable routes. The Caspian Sea Basin and Western oil companies expect to make piles of money, add several million barrels of oil a day to the current daily output of seventy million barrels, and help the struggling economies in the region. They include Georgia, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Kazakhstan,and Turkmenistan, all of them having recently -since 1991 -- established their independence from Russia. The stakes are huge. At current oil prices per barrel, the participants expect to sell some $4 trillion worth of oil and a very great deal from the sale of natural gas found in Turkmenistan. The borders of Armenia and Azerbaijan were a political hodge podge and senseless established by ethnic and/or linguistic disputes during the period from 1921 to 1991. During Stalin's life -- he died in 1953 -- Stalin killed off the Moslem intelligentsia and deliberately transplanted entire populations, drawing illogical borders in and importing huge minority populations in a region where the lack of natural frontiers had permitted volatile and arbitrary Soviet-drawn boundaries. The Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh was itself surrounded by vengeful Turkish clans. They are a symbol of the violence and genocide of the Turks in 1915; an estimated 600,000 Christian Armenians were killed by the Moslem Turks during World War I. The northern border of Armenia touches on the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. To the south, Armenia shares a border with Iran, and Azerbaijan to the east. A bigger problem was that less than half of the Azeri Turks lived in Azerbaijan; the rest lived in Iran to the south. In his recent book, The Ends of the Earth, Robert D. Kaplan put it this way: In 1828, Russia made a deal with Persia that split Azerbaijan between them. This illogical frontier obviously had no historical or geographic meaning. In fact, the first flash point of the Cold War was here: In early 1946, Stalin tried to grab all of Azerbaijan up to Tabriz [in Iran] when President Truman forced him to withdraw to the international border. Azerbaijan's borders were merely a colonial fiction that had little to do with demographic and ethnic realities.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

36

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

In this little corner of Transcaucasia, there are a few small countries spun off from the Soviet Union. Georgia is one of them, and a quarrelsome bees nest including Ossetia, Ingustia, Chechnya, Karachay-Cherkassia, Kabardino-Balkania, and Dagestan are the others. These petty principalities wouldn't matter, except to their inhabitants, and on the map of this area, they straggle along like snails on the back of Georgia.This country gained independence from Russia in 1991, even though Russian border guards still patrol Georgia's frontiers. Eduard Shevardnadze, formerly a Soviet minister of foreign affairs, is the president of Georgia; Tbilisi is its capital city. Ever since 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgia sought to direct its economy away from Russia and toward the West, and Turkey is now Georgia's main trading partner. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is the only foreign organization with an office in Tbilisi. The IMF is the source of credits and foreign assistance. Georgia is already emerging as a transit route for Uzbek cotton, the first time Uzbekistan has been able get its cotton to foreign markets without crossing Russian territory.

Armenia & Azerbaijan

There are other problems. Rail and road links between Georgia and Russia have been cut, a casualty of instability in the breakaway Georgian province of Abkazia to the northwest of Tbilisi and the war in neighboring Chechnya which wants to break away from Russia. Abkhaz secessionists have a large area on the Black Sea. Without any foreign aid from the West, Shevardnadze was forced to agree that Russia might retain five military bases on its territory in exchange for help in regaining control over Abkhazia "Russia has a key to Abkhazia," Shevardnadze noted, and if it uses this key correctly, then it will get the bases. If Georgian territorial integrity is not restored, the agreement on Russian military bases will not be ratified by the Georgian parliament." Georgia now sees itself as a trading crossroad for Uzbek cotton and Caspian Sea oil. In early 1997, construction is scheduled to begin on a pipeline to carry oil from the

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

37

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Caspian Sea to the Black Sea port of Supsa. For its part, Russia would like to formalize its presence in Georgia, thereby gaining more leeway under the East-West accord limiting conventional forces in Europe. The Abkhaz secessionists have not been the only source of instability. Armenia is still looking at the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave as essentially theirs. Geographically, this idea doesn't work; Armenia is an enclave within Azerbaijan. For their part, the Azeris were confronted with the problem of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave populated mainly by Armenians. Armenia is a Christian enclave surrounded by Islam. Moscow cannot be seen as favoring Armenia at the expense of Muslim ethnic constituencies. In Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, the political movements in both did not begin as anti-Soviet, but initially included demands for the Kremlin to ensure the validity of their respective claims: in the case of Armenia, the Nagorno-Karabakh to be connected to it, and in the case of Azerbaijan to prevent this. It was the inability of the Kremlin to satisfy both that set the political movements in both republics on a path to independence. In July, 1997, Armenia and Azerbaijan reached a secret deal on the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, allowing a multinational force to monitor the performance of this agreement. In 1989, Soviet authorities felt that scheduled elections in Baku, the Azerbaijanian capitol city would lead to the election of pro-Armenian candidates. And Gorbachev had sent a signal that violence paid by his failure to use force to protect civilians in the Azeri riots to expel Armenians. There were pogroms in which the Armenians were the victims, but that is what Soviet leaders wanted, a pretext for military intervention. Curiously, the same tactic was being used in Beijing in Tiananmen Square. There, students were the victims. In Baku, the Armenians were victims and had been ever since 1915. It seems clear that the pogroms had been organized for months before the local elections in Baku, and Moscow was aware of this. The pogroms needed only an event to flare up. A decision of the Armenian Supreme Soviet to incorporate Nagorno-Karabakh was the fuse. After brutally killing many Armenians in Baku, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet imposed a state of emergency in Baku and near the border with Iran. During this period, the Soviet Army systematically shot civilians and engaged in wanton acts of violence. The tanks and armored cars of the Soviet Army had to move barricades often defended by unarmed Azeri students. This sorry episode was not reported in the Western press. However, the official version put out by Mikhail Gorbachev's people blamed Azeri nationalism for the violence. President George Bush saw the intervention in Baku as justified by Gorbachev's "need to keep order." One needs to see these regional conflicts as the inevitable aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union beginning in 1989. Seven years later, the son of Azerbaijan's president, Gaidar Aliev, complained about Black January in 1993. Soviet troops attacked and killed many civilians in Baku. And in an interview published

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

38

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

in the magazine Azerbaijan International, Ilhan Aliev noted that some million Azeris were refugees after the fighting over Armenia's dispute with Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh. Geopolitical changes on the periphery of the Soviet Union have been the main underlying causes of ethnic conflicts in the Caucasus. Just as in 191821, when the Caucasian conflicts followed the demise of Tsarist Russia, these have come on the heels of the weakening and then the breakup of the Soviet Union. Geopolitics is a function of the vital interests of states and societies. Thus, the Warsaw Pact served the purpose of preserving the social system as a counter to the NATO forces. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, these interests changed abruptly. Moscow had to adjust to the disappearance of Communist rule from the center. There were no more common ideological interests. It is no accident that ethnic groupings and autonomous republics of the periphery were the first to showcase the conflicts. Chechnya, for example, got more worldwide attention from the brutal intervention of Russian troops than ethnic or religious conflicts where different groups fought among themselves. The fighting between Georgia and the secessionist Abkhazia is an example of this type of conflict with Moscow always asserting its own version so as to retain its sphere of interest. In terms of Communist doctrine, the move toward independence of regional governments, even on the periphery is inconsistent with "Socialist unity," (friendship of peoples). At least one other regional difference produced armed hostilities in a geographically insignificant political district of the Soviet Union. Fighting between the Ingush and North Ossetian populations broke out in 1990. Ingush were a "punished people" from the days of Stalin. Large parts of the population were deported to Siberia, and the Ossetes were settled in their place adjoining Chechnya. Moscow, as it usually did, tried to satisfy both sides by calling for rehabilitation of Ingush deportees but made no provision for a welcome by the North Ossetes. Boris Yeltsin, then Chairman of Russia's Parliament, signed this law in 1991. It was criticized by political scientists, as being in contravention of Russia's constitution which stated that borders of the republics inside the Russian Federation could not be changed without the consent of the relevant subjects of the Federation. The same principle was incorporated in the Federative Treaty signed by the republics and regions of Russia in 1992. Later the Russian Parliament imposed a moratorium on border changes within the Federation until 1995. However, during his 1991 presidential election campaign, Yeltsin promised the Ingush to settle their problem by the end of that year, but Yeltsin never redeemed his promise to the Ingush. The virtual secession of Chechnya from Russia prompted members of the parliament to set up a separate Ingush Republic, and this dispute escalated to an acute stage. Moscow ordered action in the area, hoping that General Dzhokhar Dudaev of Chechnya might send troops to help the Ingush, thus giving Russian troops the opportunity of destroying the self-proclaimed

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

39

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Chechen Republic. Dudaev proclaimed neutrality. Then, acting on Yeltsin's orders, the Russians agreed to pull out of both Chechnya and the area claimed by the Ingush. By 1997, the dispute had not yet been resolved. Dudaev was killed in April, 1996. General Alexandr Lebed was sent to Grozny by Yeltsin and directed to negotiate a Russian troop withdrawal in early 1996. Lebed was visiting the United States in early 1997 to make his case for succeeding Yeltsin who was in poor health after heart surgery followed by pneumonia. Moldova is not really located in the Caucasus, but it recently gained its independence from the former Soviet Union (FSU) and identified with Rumania. At the end of World War II in 1945, some 3 million Rumanians were geographically incorporated in the FSU. With the collapse of the Ceauauscu regime in December, 1989, these Rumanians opted for independence. In December, 1996, Petru Lucinschi , who promised to halt and reverse Moldova's economic decline, captured the presidential election by defeating the incumbent, Mircea Snegur, in a runoff election. Even within Moldova, secession crops up in the potential breakaway Trans-Dnieste region, along Moldova's eastern border with Ukraine. This area has been tense since a bloody 1992 conflict between ethnic Slav separatists and Snegur's troops. Snegur got about 46 percent of the vote in December, mostly from the Rumanian portion of the total population. Contested Borders in the Caucasus, edited by Bruno Coppieters is available on the World Wide Web at www.vub.ac.be/POLI/ch0101.htm. Coppieters was of the opinion that "glasnost, with the conflicting decisions of republican bodies, backed by popular mobilizations, with the party un able to gratify the relevant ethnic groups, not only flouted the communist international doctrine (friendship of peoples), but made the party unable to govern. As the party was the cement binding together all of Soviet society and its institutions, the erosion of party rule -- led to the collapse of not just the party, but also the USSR itself. Subsequent experience, especially in the Caucasus, has shown, however, that in a state of disunion the peoples of the exist have had even less chance of reconciling their national demands." Thus, republics on the western periphery of the Russian Federation are hotbeds of conflict. Belaurus is another. In November, 1996 Moscow attempted to forge a compromise between the nation's autocratic president, Alexander Lukashenko and his principal opponents. Lukashenko, a Stalinist and open admirer of Adolph Hitler, initiated a referendum process that if approved, would have given near absolute power, a step toward totalitarian power in the heart of Europe. A compromise was signed by the President, by their Speaker of the Parliament, and by the visiting Russian Prime Minister, Viktor S. Chernomyrdin. No sooner had Moscow proclaim a diplomatic breakthrough than the Belaurus Parliament

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

40

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

refused to ratify it on the ground that it left Lukashenko with too much power. Belaurus is simply another republic with conflicting interests. On the one hand, Moscow welcomed the ardently pro-Moscow policies of Lukashenko, but Moscow did not welcome the prospect of instability on Russia's doorstep. Lukashenko was not without power. He threatened that if Parliament did not ratify the compromise, he would consider the referendum expanding his powers as binding. The large majority of his votes came from rural areas, and many of the voters had been contaminated by radioactive fallout from Chernobyl in1986. President Yeltsin has treated Lukashenko gently to avoid endangering the federation endorsed by Yeltsin to please Russia's nationalists and Communists who argue strenuously that Yeltsin gave in to easily to NATO's expansion eastward. The failure of the Russian Federation to dismantle its nuclear arsenal, at least in part, has led to some unpredictable problems. Nuclear power plants have a useful life of about forty years, and disposing of the highly radioactive waste has been neglected in parts of Russia. Slightly over ten years ago -- 1986 -- one of the four nuclear reactors at Chernobyl in Ukraine went into meltdown. The radioactive cloud that it generated contaminated some 40,000 square kilometers in Belaurus. Russia's three operating plutonium production reactors are over thirty years old and share design characteristics with the Chernobyl-style reactors, including the lack of a containment structure. When these power plants were first built, many of them were built in clusters, with three or four at each site. Chernobyl and Novovorenesh are two examples. Prior to 1987, 13 plutonium production reactors operated at three sites, Krasnoyarsk. Tomsk, and Chelyabinsk. Ten of these reactors have been shut down. In Russia, Gosatomnadzor (GAN) is the agency responsible for safety at nuclear fuel cycle facilities, including plutonium production reactors. The Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy (MINATOM) is responsible for most nuclearrelated activities in the entire country, including the nuclear weapons production complex and electricity generated by their power plants. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the discipline of operators at these facilities has significantly deteriorated according to one MINATOM official. He also said that the Soviet era emphasis on meeting production goals rather than maintaining safety had hampered efforts to improve safety. GAN inspectors do not have the legislative or other power to enforce compliance with official decrees of the inspectors, nor has GAN been adequately funded to carry out its mission. Furthermore, environmental concerns from Russia's waste disposal policies have received increasing international attention in recent years. In 1993, for example, the government in Moscow released a report describing over three decades of Soviet era dumping of radioactive waste in the ocean. During this period, Soviet personnel dumped two reactor

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

41

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

compartments without spent nuclear fuel into the Sea of Japan, and sixteen reactors into the Kara Sea, six of which had spent or damaged fuel. Without centralized control of nuclear facilities, some of the breakaway countries have no idea how many nuclear facilities are even located in their country. Nor is there anyone willing to disclose this sort of information. The possibility of nuclear theft is too much of a possibility. In fact, in countries like Chechnya, the devastation from two years of bombing and shelling has been almost total. In his article published in Foreign Affairs for May/June, 1997, Michael Mandelbaum describes the Russo-Ukrainian border as a "flash point" and one of the [two]most dangerous spots on the planet. The other is the Straits of Taiwan. His description was given in terms of the Russia-China position at the end of the 20th century. Even though Moscow has recognized the independent status of Ukraine, it still asserts a claim to this territory with almost 1000 miles of a common boundary with Russia. Within the last seventy years, Ukraine has had to endure territorial division mostly controlled in Moscow. In the period between 1922 and 1939, drastic efforts were made by the USSR to suppress Ukrainian nationalism. Ukraine suffered terribly from the forced collectivization of agriculture and the expropriation of foodstuffs from the countryside; the result was the famine of 1932 to 1933, when more than seven million people died. Just over twenty-seven years later, the People's Republic of China produced a carbon copy of this famine when over thirty million people died from starvation. Chinese peasants uncritically followed Russian scientific socialism and suffered accordingly under Communist rule. Following the Soviet seizure of eastern Poland in September 1939, Polish Galicia, comprising nearly 24,000 square miles, was incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR. When the Germans invaded Ukraine in 1941 during World War II, Ukrainian nationalists hoped that an autonomous or independent Ukrainian republic would be established and governed by Germans. The Nazis, however, came as conquerors. Ukraine was retaken by the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1944. In the same year, parts of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina were added to it, and the region of Ruthenia of Czechoslovakia was added in 1945. The Ukrainian SSR became a charter member of the United Nations in 1945. The Crimean region in Russia was added to Ukraine in 1954, a year after Joseph Stalin died. Communism collapsed in 1991, and the USSR ceased to exist. Ukraine became an independent republic in the same year. After independence in 1991, political tensions developed in Ukraine over several domestic and international issues. Crimea, which was part of the USSR until 1954, became a source of contention between Moscow and Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine. Some of the ethnic Russians proposed secession from Ukraine. It succeeded only in changing the status of the

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

42

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Crimean oblast (county) to that of an autonomous republic. Crimea also issued a declaration of independence, which was rescinded in May, 1992. In the same month, however, the Russian Supreme Soviet declared the 1954 transfer of the Crimea null and void. The Russian Supreme Soviet also laid claim to the Crimean port city of Sebastopol, the home port of the 350ship Black Sea Fleet, despite an agreement to divide the fleet, which was signed by President Kravchuk and Russian President Boris Yeltsin in August, 1992. Other major issues dividing the two countries include the possession and transfer of nuclear weapons for treatment in accordance with various international treaties, delivery of Russian fuel to Ukraine, the division of Soviet assets and military and political integration within the Confederation of Independent States (CIS). In 1989, Ukraine had a population of 51 million people and is the second most populous country of the former Soviet Union. Its entire population recalls with fear the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in 1986. It is surprising that so little has been said about this even in 1996, its 10th anniversary. The United States has a major interest in Ukraine. In the tripartite accord with Russia and Ukraine in January, 1994, under the terms of which Ukraine agreed to give up the nuclear weapons it had inherited from the Soviet Union, the United States offered a very general security guarantee to Kiev. The American obligation to each has, implicitly, a nuclear dimension. Both Taiwan and Ukraine could have had their own nuclear weapons but both forswore their use in part at the urging of the United States. Now the United States may have to support Ukraine in the event it becomes the target of an armed attack. This pact was not the end of nuclear issues. In 1991, three now independent states became nuclear powers after independence, Ukraine, Belaurus, and Kazakhstan. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, followed by that of its legal system, Russia and the United States tried to resolve most nuclear issues on an emergency basis, relying primarily on their own conceptions of security. Their shared conception may be summarized as follows: the Soviet Union's position as a nuclear state may be occupied by only one country, and that country is Russia. Hence, nuclear weapons must be withdrawn from the territories of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belaurus. The most convenient way to de-nuclearize these three republics has to be via START I, which provides for a 50 percent reduction of the former Soviet Union's strategic potential. The Lisbon Protocol of START I states that this 50 percent reduction shall consist of the weapons located on the territory of the three republics. Ukraine and Belaurus are adjoining states, each with sharply divergent views of nuclear security. Belaurus acceded to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty on July 22, 1993, while Ukraine became the indirect beneficiary of a treaty between Russia and the United States. Kazakhstan's position is still ambivalent. In late 1993, it and the United States held

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

43

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

intensive negotiations. They resulted in the signing of a framework agreement on U.S.participation in, and financing of, the dismantling of Soviet SS19 ballistic missiles. Kazakhstan evidently has been more moderate that either Belaurus or Ukraine. The reason seems fairly clear. For years, it has opposed the Soviet nuclear test site at Semipalatinsk. No other country in the world has had to endure as many nuclear tests as Kazakhstan: 459 nuclear explosions were carried out on Kazakh soil, 113 of them in the atmosphere. The People's Republic of China directly east of its border with Kazakhstan, has conducted a large but unknown number of nuclear tests at Lop Nor in Xinjiang (Eastern Turkestan). Even before its independence from Moscow, Kazakhstan's leadership had repeatedly raised the issues of the test ban and China's status as a signatory to it. Grozny, Chechnya's capital city, is a patchwork of burnout buildings and rubble. There is still no running water, and people line up for hours to fill buckets from standpipes in the cluttered streets. With the urban destruction from two years of shelling by Russian troops, the Chechen people still managed to hold an election on January 27, 1997. There were sixteen candidates, and all of them supported independence from Russia. Aslan Maskhadov won handily, leading his closest opponent, Shamil Basayev, with enough votes to eliminate a runoff election in February. Basayev, a military hero, led the deadly hostage raid on a Russian hospital in Budyonnovsk in June, 1995. Maskhadov negotiated and signed the agreement with Russia in August, 1996. The only important issue during the campaign was the fact that crime had run out of control in Chechnya. Neither of the two leading candidates had much to say about just how crime might be brought under control. Were the bandits and thugs put to work rebuilding Chechnya's infrastructure they would not have time to run around waving guns and stealing. Another feature of the country's economy is oil. However, the pipelines used to carry it were converted into a tangled mass of steel by a war lasting two years. Had Russia not signed a peace agreement with Chechnya in August, 1996, it would not have been able to join the Council of Europe. This is an international association of forty states which are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights.. The Council of Europe's main arm is the European Court of Human Rights with offices in Strasbourg, France. The Council of Europe is not connected with the European Union, but all EU members are signatories to the Convention. In 1993, the Council had good reason to hold in camera meetings in Chechnya; Russia's brutal intervention in the internal affairs of that beleaguered country troubled Mde Leni Fischer, president of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly. In December, 1996 she affirmed the Council's right to hold such hearings. "Human rights violations are never an internal affair." she said. Russia had applied for membership in the Council of Europe. Its application was held up pending an investigation of human

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

44

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

rights violations in Chechnya. Mde Fischer added that "the Assembly's favorable opinion on Russia's request for membership was largely based on Russia's specific commitment to find a peaceful solution to the Chechen crisis." The so-called Dagestan Agreement was signed by Aslan Maskhadov, General Alexandr Lebed, and Vladimir Lukin, advisor to Lebed and Chairman of the Russian Parliamentary delegation. For very much the same reason, the application of Belaurus for membership in the Council of Europe was put on hold. The constitution drafted for the referendum in Belaurus fell far short of the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights. As of January, 1997 the Belaurus membership application had not been approved by the Council of Europe. In fact, there is even a possibility that Belaurus may decide to rejoin Russia. Chechnya had held free elections monitored by representatives of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). They were fair, according to a consensus opinion of the monitors in late January, 1997. The Council of Europe may have to reconsider its admission of Russia, if that country now decides to ignore its agreement of August, 1996. In that agreement Russia agreed it would not raise the issue of sovereignty over Chechnya for five years from the date of the Dagestan Agreement. In fact, Russia has been using Chechnya's secession as a pretext for retaining control of the pipeline routes from the Caspian Sea Basin to Europe. While some of the oil field's equipment may have been destroyed by Russia's shelling of targets during its brutal shelling of Chechnya, major oil companies have been in the wings ready to finance construction of new pipelines bypassing Iran -- Clinton Administration objections -- and Russia. This route could allow dockside loading of oil using a Turkish site on the Mediterranean Sea with tanker loading facilities, e.g. Ceyhan or Iskanderum. A pipeline to either one would eliminate passage of tankers through the Black Sea and the always possible oil spill on Turkey's front door. The majors are patient, because they have to be. The water level in the Caspian Sea has increased by about two meters in the last twenty years. As a result, most of the oil wells in the Caspian Sea Basin are flooded by water runoff. There are other consequences. Questions of mineral rights are arising, and treaties that have been painstakingly negotiated are being invalidated by changes in sea level. Just next door is the Aral Sea lying partly in Uzbekistan and partly in Kazakhstan. Eons ago, it was the fourth largest body of water in the world. Today, in 1997, there is virtually nothing left of it. The Aral Sea is a closed system and gets its water from two rivers, the Syr Darya and the Amu Daraya. However, there is no outflow of water; a great deal of it, is lost by evaporation Water from the rivers just mentioned has been diverted to irrigate land for cotton, a major export crop. After the Soviet Union

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

45

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

replaced the Russian Tsar, traditional agricultural practices were destroyed by Soviet collectivization, and Soviet planners sought products that could be exported for hard currency. They placed cotton high on the list, and the Soviet Union became a net exporter of cotton in 1937. Change accelerated in the 1950s, as Central Asia farmers irrigated agriculture, expanding and mechanized the entire process. The Kara Kum Canal opened in 1956, diverting large amounts of water from the Amu Darya into the desert of Turkmenistan, and millions of acres came under irrigation after 1960. After that year, the level of the Aral Sea began to drop, while diversion of water continued to increase. Gradually the seabed became exposed and dried out. Winds picked up an estimated 43 million tons of sediments laced with salts and pesticides, with devastating health consequences for surrounding regions. In the early 1980s, the Soviet Union planned and began construction of a canal to carry water from Siberia to the Aral Sea. It was abandoned by Mikhail Gorbachev, and some authorities said it was planned to fail. Even after its cancellation, water meant for the Aral Sea continued to be diverted for agriculture. Critics of the canal said the diversion continued because cotton was the only cash crop in the region. Soviet obsession with central planning and the bottom line caused the impending death of the Aral Sea. The only way money may be useful in dealing with the consequences of environmental disaster is from the sale of oil and gas to Europe. In 1994, there was a meeting of the countries of the region, and not enough of them had contributed the share they had promised a few years earlier. The San Diego State University has organized the Central Asia Research and Redemption Exchange to study what might be done to restore the Aral Sea area, but hardly anyone is counting on concrete results from countries just learning to vote in free elections. In the meantime, some 75,000 people had lost their livelihood; some were fisherman, and some were farmers. The remaining water is too saline to drink, and there has been no commercial or other fishing since 1982. Russia's environmental record in the Caucasus amounts to criminal indifference. There is no reason to believe it will be any better when oil and gas are the two commodities are transported by pipeline via Chechnya or via the Black Sea. Turkey has adopted regulations covering tanker passage through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. The passage through the Bosporus Channel is too narrow for big oil tankers; there are four sharp right-angle turns and a 250,000 ton oil tanker simply could not negotiate passage without closing this channel for at least three days. As a matter of interest, revenues from the Suez Canal have declined for the last ten years, and the big tankers choose to take the route around the Cape of Good Hope rather that the expense, risk, and delay of using the Suez Canal. It's not deep enough for the 250,000 ton tankers.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

46

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

On March 24, 1989 the Exxon Valdez rammed the rocky Bligh Reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound spilling 240,000 barrels of petroleum in those pristine waters. The final cleanup costs were in excess of $2 billion. Other spills were not as large as this one, but French and Spanish residents have done more than their share of cleanup in well-publicized disasters of oil tankers. Environmentalists don't have to look too far for evidence of degradation. In 1922, for example, oil was discovered in Venezuela. By 1929, it was producing 135 million barrels a year, thereby enriching President Juan Vicente Gomez beyond belief. Then Standard of Jersey developed a new approach to drilling wells under water. In no time at all, Lake Maracaibo was a textbook example of what not to do to prevent environmental degradation. All the lake's fish were dead or dying. A spectator could stand at the entrance to Lake Maracaibo and see the evidence of water pollution from the long lines of oil well towers to the south of this entrance. Environmental pollution is not the only practice for which the major oil companies could be and have been criticized. All the majors had marketing problems, so they used price cuts to enter a market. In 1959, Standard of Jersey made a unilateral price cut without consulting Middle East countries whose oil was being sold. Naturally, the price cut reduced national revenue, and the rulers were furious. Out of this rage, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Companies (OPEC) was formed with only one objective, to defend the price of oil. OPEC on balance, was a colossal failure, and it has more or less disappeared in terms of fixing the price at which its member companies could sell their oil. Oil was discovered in Algeria and Libya, and prices of oil fell sharply. The supply of oil was far greater than the demand, and the rulers of Iran and Iraq were more interested in revenue than seeing OPEC flex its muscles. Furthermore, OPEC was never designed to deal with major oil fields about to go online. In October, 1995 representatives of the world's major oil companies gathered in London to see the latest find from the Caspian Sea. Azerbaijan had oil since the turn of the century, but its output was never developed to use deep drilling over water. In fact, the oilfields near Baku were set afire in 1908 to prevent Russia's Tsar from seizing them. Today, oil experts are openly stating that the oil in the Caspian Sea Basin greatly exceeds the reserves publicly disclosed. The reserves are conservatively estimated at 125.5 billion barrels. And the one pipeline already in place runs through Chechnya and north to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. Chevron Corporation reported oil discoveries in Kazakhstan with eventual output of 700,000 barrels per day. British Petroleum and Amoco found wells in both the Chirag and Azeri fields, and it estimates at least 4.5 billion barrels in these two fields, and other fields remain untapped but with very large reserves of oil. According to a member of Clinton's National Security Council, "The Caspian and Kazakh basins are going to be the major source of world energy in the twenty-first century. The

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

47

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

reserves are up there with the Persian Gulf." Presi dent Clinton made it quite clear that no pipeline route would be allowed to run through Iran, nor would any partner in the consortium sell any of its interest to Iran. Recently, however, the Clinton Administration has changed its position on Iran and will probably not oppose the construction of a pipeline through a part of Iran ending in Turkey. Both Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan had huge natural gas reserves, some say in excess of 18 trillion cubic meters. To develop these oil and gas resources, the majors and Azeri entrepreneurs have put a consortium together, the Azerbaijan International Operating Consortium (AIOC). The Azeri, Chirag, and Deep-Water Gunashli fields have a Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) with seven countries: British Petroleum (17.1267 percent ), Pennzoil (US 4.8175 percent), Exxon (US 8.0006 percent), Unocal (US 10.0489), Amoco (US 17.01 percent), Delta (Saudi Arabia 1.68 percent), TPAO (Turkey 6.75 percent), Itochu (Japan 3.9205 percent), Statoil (Norway 8.5633 percent), Lukoil (Russia 10 percent), SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic 10 percent), and Ramco 2.0825 percent). A different group has been formed to develop the Karabakh Prospect: AGIP (Italy 5 percent), Pennzoil (US 30 percent), SOCAR (7.5 percent), Lukhoil (7.5 percent), and LukAGIP (50 percent). The latest prospect to receive parliamentary approval in Azerbaijan was the Shah Deniz Prospect. British Petroleum and Statoil (51 percent), TPAO 9 percent), National Iranian Oil Co. (10 percent), Elf (France 10 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), and SOCAR 10 percent). Some of the same oil companies are developing fields in the South China Sea. Chevron is the largest such company. Both the major oil companies have expressed real concern for the security and environmental consequences of exporting oil either by pipeline or tanker via the Black Sea. There are oil ports on the Black Sea but only one route for tankers to follow in getting oil to the Western markets: through the Turkish straits to the Mediterranean Sea. The straits consist of three connected bodies of water. The first is the Bosporus, the narrow channel from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, and the third is the Dardanelles. The Bosporus is the crux of the matter. Passage through it is difficult, in both nautical and legal terms. Supertankers may use the route only by prior agreement. Ship's captains or pilots have to navigate a 17.5mile passage between the Black Sea and the heart of Istanbul which involves four right-angle bends. At Kandili, where there are two tight bends in just a few hundred yards, the waterway between Europe and Asia is just 2,200 feet wide. Since there are some 4,000 ship movements in the strait every day, this passage requires prodigious effort. Even with medium-sized

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

48

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

tankers, the waterway has to be closed for almost three hours. For a tanker of 250,000 tons, a supertanker, the waterway must be closed for much longer. Thus, in addition to the snail's pace of tankers, they all face the danger of a collision and an oil spill. The Black Sea is already seriously polluted, and Turkey seems determined to prevent further degradation of its waters. The Montreux Convention of 1936 makes the straits international waterways, and the Constantinople Convention of 1889 also makes the straits open to all vessels. However, the size of the tankers is quite limited because of the height limit of 58 meters. Furthermore, no real supertanker may possibly transit the Bosporus without the real danger of running aground because of its draft. These daunting issues are not the end of the problem. Like China, Turkey has a minority problem. The Kurds live in southeastern Turkey, and any pipeline through disputed territory might be sabotaged by rebellious Kurds. China is a major player in this game. It too, has unruly tribal dissidents on its borders in Xinjiang. China's remarkable growth rates required huge new energy sources and promised to revolutionize the economics of oil. China is now a net importer of oil, and it needs huge finances to develop its Karamay and Tarim basin oil fields. In November, 1993 China became a net importer of oil, and its trade deficit ballooned to 600,000 barrels a day by the end of 1996. Kent Calder's article in the March/April 1996 Foreign Affairs, entitled Asia's Empty Tank offers more detail, but the need for oil in huge amounts exists. Unless China is willing to rely on synthetic gas as Adolph Hitler did during World War II, it may have to resort to other means to ensure a reliable supply of oil. The first move in this great game was an agreement in August 1997 between China and Kazakhstan to build a pipeline some 1,300 miles to a destination in China's Xinkiang Province or even further east. In late April, 1997, Chinese officials signed agreements with General Motors calling on that company to manufacture about 100,000 cars per year. It's unfortunate that a country already so burdened with problems arising out of pollution decided to create more; it had a golden opportunity to avoid the need to build highways, filling stations, and refineries to service a growing flood of cars. China could have opted for French, German, or Japanese high-speed trains to various cities, instead of highways and the urban sprawl associated with the automobile. Beijing is not concerned with environmental degradation from the automobile; the arrival in China of General Motors and other American companies merely feeds China's dollar reserves. The vindication by force of its interest in Taiwan would unquestionably bring military confrontation with the United States. However, the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 declares that the United States expects the future of Taiwan to be settled peacefully and that any effort to decide it by force would be of

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

49

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

"grave concern" to the United States. For the time being, China seems willing to rule Taiwan from Beijing and occasionally flex its muscles as it did when the Taiwanese president accepted an invitation to visit the United States and his old college in 1996. President Clinton did not hesitate to send two carrier forces to the Straits of Taiwan as China conducted "live fire" exercises during the elections on Taiwan. Clinton has seemed more cautious recently. He saw the Dalai Lama in Washington, but along with other officials not known for their anticline policies. However, in no case should the United States appear indifferent to the safety or the independence of Taiwan. The proper American goal is the continual deferral of any change in Beijing's view of Taiwan as a wayward province it will eventually reclaim. In the meantime, Azerbaijan has problems with its neighbors. In Volume 143, No. 59 of the Congressional Record for May 8, 1997, Senator Robert Byrd described one of them. Entitled American Interests in the Caspian Sea Region, Senator Byrd stated in part: Mr... Byrd. Mr... President, American involvement and interests in the Caspian Sea Region, have been increasing recently. While this region is new on the political map of American policy makers, in that the newly sovereign nations there were formerly Republics under the rule of the former Soviet Union, they represent very substantial new opportunities for the United States. From the point of view of energy reserves, the tremendous hydrocarbon resources which are available for development in the region are of world-class potential. The extent of the resources which apparently exist, particularly in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan could well serve as an long term alternative to Western dependence on vulnerable supplies of Persian Gulf oil...

Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act enacted in 1992 reduces the assistance the United States might offer to Azerbaijan It provides that U.S. assistance "may not be provided to the government of Azerbaijan until the President determines and so reports to Congress, that the government of Azerbaijan is taking demonstrable steps to cease all blockades and other offensive uses of force against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh." Thus, the government of the United States may not provide financial support through the Export Import Bank or risk insurance via the Overseas Private Insurance Corporation (OPIC). Furthermore, Armenia can freely accept arms from Russia to use in its low level dispute with Azerbaijan. According to a letter to Senator Byrd, the Azerbaijan ambassador to Washington noted in part: "I would remind you about the one billion of an illegal arms shipment from unofficial sources in Russia [delivered] to Armenia," creating a strategic imbalance for my country. Signed by Hafiz M. Pashayev, Ambassador, on May 8, 1997.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

50

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Russia engages in these deceptions to ensure the continuance of the low level dispute with Nagorno-Karabakh. Moscow has no interest in helping Western countries to ship oil out of the Caspian Sea basin via pipelines controlled by major Western oil companies. Control of the pipeline routes is a Moscow objective. Some authorities suggest this opposition springs from attempts by the United States to expand NATO. Boris Yeltsin said with respect to the expansion of NATO: "Just a the document says, decisions are to be made only be consensus. If Russia opposes any decision, it will not be adopted." Clinton Administration officials deny that Russia has any such veto. In that case, Russia will drag its heels on ratification of Start II, the treaty that reduces the number of Soviet nuclear missiles aimed at the United States. Poland and the Czech Republic argue that Russia will be allowed to join NATO before them, while Clinton officials say that NATO expansion was only intended to stabilize Central Europe by admitting Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. The Clinton proposed NATO expansion was and continues to be a major mistake. Instead of being admitted to NATO, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary should be satisfied with their membership in the NATO Partnership for Peace. The Partnership for Peace began in 1994. As an initiative of the United States, the PFP existed to establish strong links between NATO and its new democratic partners in the former Soviet bloc. Some twenty-six countries have joined. It is obvious from a list of these countries that they would not be entitled to a security guarantee under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty of April 4, 1949 with the exception of those countries already members of NATO. Russia is a member of the PFP and NATO. They include Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belaurus, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova, Poland, Rumania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan Despite the right of any member to consult with NATO, its Secretary General has not yet dealt properly or at all with a serious dispute on its agenda, the civil war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. NATO was established in 1949 to serve as a defensive shield against Russia in Western Europe, and this treaty worked well to absolutely deter the first or any use of nuclear weapons. Russia has now refused to forswear a first use of nuclear weapons. The International Court of Justice issued an Advisory Opinion on July 8, 1996 concerning the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. The justices of the ICJ were unanimous in concluding "that any use of nuclear weapons contrary to Article 2 (4) of the United Nations Charter, and not vindicated by Article 51 [would be] unlawful." See 91 American Journal of International Law 64 (1997). In only one dispute, Armenia seems to have prevailed in 1992, when Congress enacted the Freedom Support Act.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

51

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

On behalf of the Secretary of State, the report required by Congress was sent to Senator Byrd by letter of April 15, 1997. It stated in part that "This report to Congress addresses the request of the FY statement of managers accompanying the FY Foreign Operations bill as incorporated in P.L 104208. The Caspian Basin region is made up of the five littoral states of the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan. With the exception of Iran, these littoral states are all mem beers of the PFP. With potential reserves of as much as 200 billion barrels of oil, the Caspian region could become the most important new player in world oil markets over the next decade..." A month earlier than the letter from Azerbaijan's ambassador, the State Department sent a letter to Senator Byrd dated April 15, 1997. In part, it read: Dear Senator Byrd: On behalf of the Secretary of State, I am transmitting to you a report as requested by the Joint Exploratory Statement of the Committee of Conference accompanying the Foreign Operations Export Financing and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1997, as enacted in P.L. 104208, that contains a plan for action for the United States Government to assist and accelerate the earliest possible development and shipment of oil from the Caspian Sea region to the United States and other Western markets...

Resolution of regional conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh, and Chechnya is also critical for successful and comprehensive energy development in the region. It is utterly absurd to allow one party to a dispute -- Russia in the civil war between Armenia and Azerbaijan -- to prolong that dispute by shipping arms unofficially to Armenia. Yet, that is exactly what Russia did. It seems obvious that Russia is trying to sabotage Start II as retaliation for expansion of NATO. Instead, Clinton should abandon the expansion proposal and substitute the Partnership for Peace in the interests of collective security. NATO was originally intended to deter nuclear war in Europe. The Partnership for Peace now includes every country in Europe - Russia is a member. The Partnership fills the void in Central Europe, resolves disputes and provides troops for Nattered peacekeeping. American foreign policy should concern itself with reducing the number of nuclear weapons controlled by Russia. At least one of its former republics; Ukraine has already sold nuclear missiles to Libya and Russia has sold some to Iran. By midday, 1997 it was too late for Clinton to abandon the idea of enlarging NATO. However, he may want to consider positioning existing NATO forces closer to its southern flank. Defense planners argue that the gravest risks of future military conflict spring from myriad centers of instability along this flank. Turkey, for example, threatens Cyprus. Kurd dissidents within Turkey and Iraq are a threat to Turkey itself, and brush-fire disputes in Abkhasia, Armenia, and North Ossetia could turn into larger fires. The next war in this unstable area

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

52

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

might grow out of explosive factors, such as economic difficulties, water shortages, religious fanaticism, or immigration. And the Mediterranean region supports the world's busiest shipping lanes; to keep oil flowing and commercial goods moving among the Western economies. Furthermore, at least one of the countries on NATO's southern flank still has nuclear weapons. Too many NATO forces are committed to Germany, an area where the Russian threat has all but vanished. Some of the 84,000 American forces in Germany as part of NATO might be better positioned in Azerbaijan. The oil in Azerbaijan has now become a huge source of petroleum which Russia has been trying to control. No official estimates of oil reserves have been released, but the major oil companies -- mostly American -- are thought to be looking at 200 billion barrels in the Caspian Sea Basin. Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev, once a seasoned Communist trained in the old Soviet Union, has now seen the wisdom of seeking hard commitments from Washington and the oil majors. During the 199294 war, Armenian troops seized some 20 percent of Azerbaijan, known as Nagorno-Karabakh and still occupy this region. An unnamed diplomat in Baku noted that "The reception Aliyev got in Washington would have been totally unthinkable even two years ago. The [high level meeting: President Clinton and Secretary of Defense William Cohen] certainly had an impact on the Armenians. They see Azerbaijan making very important gains in the West, and also enjoying a new closeness with Israel and therefore with the Jewish lobby in Washington. Either the Armenians make peace now or wait until Azerbaijan builds up its lobby and uses its oil money to build a powerful army, possibly one trained by the American military. In a few years this army is going to be strong enough to crush Armenia militarily, so it's in everyone's interest to negotiate a settlement [of the Nagorno-Karabakh] now." An American pipeline financed by the major oil companies seems even more certain to run through Turkey to Ceyhan, a port on the Mediterranean Sea and bypassing the Black Sea. Passage through the Bosporus is fraught with navigation hazards, and tankers still have the Dardanelles to navigate. If the route through Turkey is chosen, the choice will have been approved by the United States; the Clinton Administration will have agreed to help the Kurds of south central Turkey. President Clinton will have to redeem American promises to the Kurds going back to 1991 and even earlier. Russia's President Boris Yeltsin has been frustrated by his own diehard financial people. And Western oil companies have become equally frustrated by roadblocks raised by the new Russian capitalists; they want the oil to remain in the ground so they can keep more of the oil profits for themselves. Western oil companies have begun to cut their Moscow staffs and redirect their attention to the Caspian Sea Basin, including Kazakhstan. In 1987, Russian oil production was about 12 million barrels

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

53

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

a day, but it has now dropped to 6 million barrels per day in 1997. Victor Orlov, Russia's Minister for Natural Resources recently said that "without new financial support, Russia's oil production could drop to 3.6 million barrels a day. However, the sheer vastness of Russia and its harsh climate, its limited network of pipelines and the burden of outdated Soviet era technology have made oil development a herculean task. Pennwell's pipeline map for 1994 shows few pipelines to the Northern reaches of Russia. In Siberia, for example, the cost of drilling for and recovering slow-flowing oil is very high. Even so, Orlov's deputy argues that foreign companies are making a mistake in insisting that all of their new investments take the form of production-sharing agreements because of the difficulties and delays in arranging them. The major oil companies would rather wait. Amoco, for example, has put its Priobskoye project in central Siberia -- 4.5 billion barrels in reserves -- on hold. There were too many investors trying to divvy up the spoils and demanding more from Amoco. This bureaucratic mess has led the Western majors to move on the Caspian Sea. Kazakhstan is a nuclear power by virtue of the fact that certain Sovietmade nuclear missiles are located in that country and have been ever since the years before the Soviet collapse in 1991. The United States could help terminate this status by persuading Kazakhstan to accede to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The United States and Russia have promised Kazakhstan they would guarantee the territorial integrity and security of Kazakhstan following the destruction of Soviet ballistic missiles and the elimination of nuclear-armed aircraft on Kazakh territory. To make matters more complicated than ever, Kazakhstan remains dependent on Russian oil, and Russia has been actively undermining Kazakh efforts to develop and export its own petroleum resources.

In the waning days of 1997, Iran struck it rich. President Mohammed Khatami opened the first gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Iran. Until four years ago, Turkmenistan's natural gas was exported to Europe through pipelines controlled by Russia. In 1993, however, Russia shut off its pipelines asserting of its Soviet-era domination of the Caspian Sea Basin. That act by Russia left Turkmenistan starved for cash. Two days

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

54

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

earlier, President Khatami and the Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Wilmaz, endorsed plans by Royal Dutch Shell to study the feasibility of a 940mile, $1.6 billion natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan, crossing Iran and ending in Turkey. France's Total SA has already signed a $2 billion deal to develop Iran's huge South Pars gas field. These in-your-face deals by Total SA and Royal Dutch Shell have clearly weakened sanctions. Expect more denials from Washington that a particular deal violates the IranLibyan Sanctions Act. At the end of the millennium, one of the real dangers to be found in Iran is its persistent attempt to buy or steal nuclear technology and missiles to launch a Russian-made nuclear weapon, probably at Israel. Despite the partial embargo, Iran has enough loose money to either buy the components or use foreign experts to assemble one or more nuclear weapons. Furthermore, Iran sponsors terrorism, and the mere possession of one of these weapons of mass destruction would play out as nuclear blackmail. Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin of Russia and Vice-President Al Gore of the United States both agree that Iran was making a vigorous effort to acquire the critical components of nuclear weapons and missiles to launch them. Ruses have denied their country is selling the technology to Iran, but nonproliferation experts said the larger problem was with the vast, unprotected military-industry complex. In other words, the Russians don't have anything even close to an accurate inventory of weapons grade plutonium or uranium. These radioactive materials could once have been found in Russian research facilities, fabrication plants, and storage facilities, but many so-called "suitcase-size nukes" have simply disappeared. Currently in 1997, Russia was helping Iran build a nuclear power plant near Bushehr in Iran. Bushehr is located on the Persian Gulf, not far from Iran's border with Iraq. Elections in Iran may ease the way toward establishing better relations with the United States. Its unilateral sanctions have not been successful, and its friends in Europe resent accepting this aspect of American policy in the Middle East. An independent and economically accessible Central Asia is in the best interests of the United States, and major American oil companies may have to deal with Iran as more stable for any alternative pipeline route. The French oil company, Total, has signed a $2 billion contract with Iran, and President has foolishly said he will apply the sanctions of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act to this contract. It is rather difficult to determine just what the Clinton Administration might do without jeopardizing relations with France. That country will simply not accept any claim that Washington may export its policy by interfering with one of France's domestic oil companies in dealing with Iran.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

55

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Iran

On May 25, 1997 Iranians went to the polls in record numbers. When the votes for president were counted, Mohammed Khatemi had won with some 60 percent of all votes cast. Khatemi is thought to be a moderate Muslim, and he is unlikely to have enough power to change the system. Indeed, he won't even try. Iranian authorities seemed to believe that the vote was not to change the system, but only to establish an environment for new ideas and new people, and a more responsive government. Ultimate authority will continue with Iran's religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The outgoing president Hashemi Rafsanjani must step down because he may only serve two terms. However, he will retain great influence as head of a newly-expanded Expediency Council. The Council of Guardians will continue its role screening candidates for Parliament and the presidency. For all his revolutionary credentials, Khatemi, a Shiite Muslim, is considered a relative liberal whose election could presage a gradual warming of relations with the West. If so, the incidents like that in Berlin might end. On April 10, 1997 Bonn, the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany sent a telefax to its consulates around the world. In part it stated: The German Government is greatly dismayed by the Berlin Court's determination regarding the participation of Iranian government bodies in the crime committed in the Mykonos trial. These determinations, which were made by an independent German court, must be taken into serious consideration in Germany's assessment of its relations with Iran. The participation of Iranian government bodies in this crime, as established in the opinion of the court, represents a flagrant violation of international law. Such conduct in the sphere of international relations is unacceptable. The German Government therefore prevails upon the Iranian Government to abide strictly by the rules of international law.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

56

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Two weeks after the so-called Mykonos Affair, in which four Kurds were shot and killed in Berlin's Mykonos Cafe, ended with exchanges at all levels. The assassins were Iranians acting with the approval of the highest level officials in Teheran. The rapid disposition of this affair suggests that the United States might profitably discuss the end of sanctions against Iran that have accomplished no valid American policy initiative and may do its legitimate policy objectives a great deal of damage. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, and Richard Murphy have written an article in Foreign Affairs for May/ June, 1997, in which all three make the same point. The dual containment of Iran and Iraq in the Middle East has simply not worked. Six years after the end of the Persian Gulf War, Saddam Hussein is still in power, and the international consensus on continuing the containment of Iraq has frayed noticeably. The strident campaign of the United States to isolate Iran has driven Iran and Russia together, and the United States and its Group of Seven allies apart. And the presence of American military units for the express purpose of helping the Gulf Cooperation (GCC) from external threats has been exploited by hostile elements to take advantage of internal social, economic and political problems, not the least of which is the growth of fundamentalist Islam. In 1996, the Congress enacted and President Clinton signed the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996. The United States imposed sanctions unilaterally and no European country supports them. The Clinton Administration should sit down with its allies in the Middle East, Europe, Japan and define what each other's interests really are. Only such highlevel consultation may produce policies toward Iran that stand a good chance of being sustainable. Washington should do nothing to preclude Central Asia's eventual access to pipeline routes carrying oil to the West. So far, Washington has said the Iran Libya Sanctions Act does not apply to a natural gas pipeline that passes through part of Iran with natural gas going from Turkmenistan to Turkey. Over the last seventeen years, the United States has sought to contain Iran's aggressive behavior, including its military buildup, development of weapons of mass destruction and support for international terrorism. This policy had been implemented by a series of measures, including Executive Order No. 12959, 60 Fed. Reg. 24757 (1995) which imposed a virtually absolute embargo on trade with Iran. After issuing this Executive Order, the Clinton Administration tried to convince our Western allies to take similar action. Its efforts in this regard were a complete failure. Indeed, despite vigorous U.S. protests, a French oil company, Total, reached an agreement to develop Iranian oil fields off the coast of Sirri Island. The French company displaced a major American oil company, Conoco. Not to be politically outdone, a Republican controlled Congress enacted the Libya and Iran Sanctions Act of 1996 and signed by Clinton on August 5, 1996. He used the occasion to deliver an address entitled "American Security in a Changing World." The act requires the President to impose

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

57

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

two or more of six listed sanctions if he determines that a "U.S. person" with actual knowledge has made an investment of $40 million or more that "directly and significantly contributed to the enhancement" of Iran's ability to develop its petroleum resources. The Libya and Iran Sanctions Act and the Helms-Burton Act both represent Congressional attempts to interfere with the constitutional power of the president to make and execute foreign policy. Our major trading partners irritated by Republican posturing have initiated complaints against the United States, utilizing the dispute mechanism of the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Association. This dispute has so far obscured the sound policy of reestablishing relations with Iran since America's relations with Iran ended in 1979. Students of history may want to see how the United States managed to lose control of its own foreign policy with the help of a Democratic president. Were the president to conclude that establishing relations with Iran -- this country elected a new president in May, 1997 -he would need to have the support of all the nations of the Gulf Coordinating Council. Present U.S. policies have not been effective: The policy of unilateral U.S. sanctions against Iran has been ineffectual, and the attempt to coerce others into following America's lead has been a mistake. Extraterritorial bullying has generated needless friction between the United States and its chief allies and threatened the international free trade order that America has promoted for so many decades. To repair the damage and avoid further self-inflicted wounds, the United States should sit down with the Europeans, the Japanese, and its Gulf allies and hash out what each other's interests are, and how policy disagreements should be handled. Only high-level consultation can yield multilateral policies toward Iran that stand a good chance of achieving their goals and being sustainable over the long term.

Iran, once known as Persia, is an Islamic Republic ruled by mullahs with no secular training. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, for example, was born in 1934 and left home in 1948 to study theology in Qom. He followed Ayatollah Khomeini into politics in 1963, joining the pantheon of clerics opposed to Muhammad Reza Shah. Americans have a special memory of Khomeini. He inspired the revolution that left the Embassy of the United States in Teheran occupied by fanatic Shia students and fifty-two Americans as hostages, all embassy personnel, who were not released until January 20, 1981, moments after Reagan was sworn in as the new president. President Jimmy Carter was loathed by the clerics of Iran. He had given shelter to the dying Shah, and America, as well as some European powers, were the great Satans of the Western world. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini may have defined the shape of the Islamic revolution in Iran, but he had the help of the entire population; opposition to the revolution had been crushed soon after the occupation of the American embassy. Khomenini died in 1989, and he was replaced by Ali Khamenei, another of the clerics of Qom who acted with Khomenini and joined in his Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

58

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

defiance of the Shah. Rafsanjani was a pragmatist, but state-sponsored pragmatism was not enough. Iran desperately needed cash to finance its revolution, and America was not going to help Iran get it. The second oil shock occurred in 1980 -- the first had occurred in 1974 -and the price of oil rocketed up to about $40 a barrel. American drivers began looking for more fuel-efficient cars, and Europeans merely paid the new price and hoped for relief. When fanatic students occupied the Teheran embassy, the United States froze Iran's assets and the process of freeing these assets from liens seemed a never-ending process. In 1993, Rafsanjani mobilized the technocrats and Iranians living abroad who had the professional education essential to operate a government. They were particularly important as Iranians to operate the oil industry from the wellhead to the port from which oil was exported, Abadan. The factors that led to the destruction of Abadan were all present at the outbreak of war between Iran and Iraq and in fact were responsible for this war. Saddam Hussein had conspired and murdered his way to the top of Iraq's government. Hussein saw a neighboring country where the population was 100 percent Shia, while Iraq was only 60 percent. However, Khomenini was exporting revolution, and Hussein did not like the possibility of religious fallout in Iraq. Hussein also saw that Iran had not one, but two revolutions, the Shia uprising against the Shah and the raging dispute between the clerics and the secular population..Husssein saw the possibility of a holy war financed by Iranian oil. His territorial ambitions plus the religious fanaticism on both sides collided, and a war that ended in 1988 began. The United States sided with Iraq and domestic companies got Department of Commerce permits to export dual-use hardware, i.e., weapons to Iraq. These weapons were later used against American troops in the Persian Gulf War in 1990 and 1991. Ever since Great Britain became Iran's major employer, local politicians were obliged to show their hatred of the British. Division of payments for oil were never fair to the Iranians. Between 1945 and 1950, for example, Anglo Iranian Oil Company registered a £250 million profit, compared to Iran's £90 million in oil royalties. A substantial part of the company's dividends went to its British owner, the British government. So it wasn't difficult to mobilize the Iranian masses in a spasm of hatred of the British for making a profit on Iranian oil. The masses had other festering grievances, mostly religious, that the clerics could exploit.. In 1951, Mohammad Mossadegh was chairman of the Majlis oil committee. For this reason, Iran nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951, a move that included the world's largest refinery at Abadan on the Persian Gulf. By 1954, the political situation had changed. The members of the new consortium retained the name of the company, but gave it a foreign cast of members to conceal the fact that the British would still own 40

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

59

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

percent of the consortium. The National Iranian Oil Company has been the company that was formed in 1951 to operate the assets acquired by Iran when it nationalized the oil company. A wily member of the Iranian parliament, or Majlis, Mohammed Mossadegh was the catalyst of nationalization, and he nearly precipitated violence. Truman and then Eisenhower saw Mossadegh as someone strong enough to keep the Communists at bay, but the British saw this as an inflated fear of Communism. Mossadegh was a Moslem cleric and not even close to Soviet-style Communism. Pursuing nationalization was Mossadegh's answer to foreign ownership of Iranian oil. Some respected oil geologists suggest that world oil as of 1996 will be completely depleted by 2040, forty-four years into the future. This gloomy prediction probably did not include oil from the Caucasus with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and the oil fields of the Caspian Sea Basin. Iran cannot appear in any historical perspective without reference to this contention. Geologists have been wrong before, and one need only mention Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, North Sea oil and Libyan oil discovered after influential writers had said the world was headed for an oil shortage. The world's major oil companies were always looking for countries with both oil and political and/or economic stability. In the aftermath of World War I, Great Britain, the United States and the Netherlands produced the world's largest oil companies, and their postwar concessions were a form of colonialism. Gradually, however, Iranian nationalism and the religious faithful of Muslim united to reduce the control of their oil by foreign oil companies. A brief history of Iran puts today's Iran in relation to its past. In the mid11th century, Iran was conquered by the Seljuk Turks under Togrul Beg. In the four centuries that followed Iran was dominated successively by the Seljuks, the Mongols under Genghis Khan and later by Timurlane and his Mongol hordes, and finally by Turkomans. Their rule was ended by Ismail I, who claimed descent from Ali, the fourth caliph. He was regarded as a saint by the Iranians and proclaimed himself shah, marking the founding of the Safavid dynasty (15021763) and the establishment of the Shiite doctrine as the official Iranian religion. The rule of Ismail lasted until the Ottoman Turks took over and captured Baghdad in 1623. A hundred years later, Iran had declined in power, and it was finally conquered by an Afghan army led by Mir Mahmud. In 1724, Russia and Turkey, taking advantage of the confusion within Iran, worked out an agreement dividing that part of the country occupied by Russian and Turkish troops. In what was left over, a warrior king, Nadir Shah, formed an army that drove the Afghans out by 1729, and two years later he invaded India capturing Delhi in 1739. In a very few years, Nadir Shah succeeded in driving all foreign troops out of Iran, including the Turkish troops.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

60

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

The 19th and 20th centuries were marked by the struggle between Great Britain and Russia to expand their respective spheres of influence within Iran. During the Cold War, the United States and Great Britain tried to keep the Iranian Tudeh Party from acquiring political power. They succeeded in 1953. The Tudeh Party was of Communist persuasion, and it had made some progress in organizing workers at the Abadan refinery. Stability in Iran was critical to both Great Britain and the United States, and the Soviet Union sent messages to the West saying that oil was critical to them. However, the swelling volume of oil was critical to the postwar recovery of a devastated Europe with economic assistance via the Marshall Plan. The major oil companies all had contracts with Saudi Arabia and proceeded to build Tapline to get this oil to Europe by the shortest possible route. This turned out to be through Saudi Arabia itself to Jordan and on to Sidon in Lebanon for transfer to tankers. Ibn Saud, then king of Saudi Arabia, advised the United States it might have to cancel Aramco's concession because of pressure from other Arab states originating in anti-Jewish sentiments surfacing in 1948 with the formation of the State of Israel. Moreover, the United States had effectively guaranteed the territorial integrity of Saudi Arabia as well as its independence. The huge revenues from sale of oil to the West was the sole source of Ibn Saud's wealth, so he could cancel the Aramco concession only at the risk of losing all that money. In Iran the problem was only marginally different. Having nationalized oil, Iran demanded a higher percentage of the profits as a condition of letting Great Britain get back its concession rights. America's Central Intelligence Agency supported by Britain's MI6 managed to unseat Mossadegh and the return of the Shah from exile. Shah Reza Pahlevi lasted until 1979, when Ayatollah Khomenini replaced the Shah and converted Iran into the Republic of Iran, an Islamic republic. Britain and France were threatened with expropriation of the Suez Canal in 1956. Only two years earlier, France had suffered a humiliating setback in Vietnam. French forces had to surrender at Dien Bien Phu with a final settlement worked out in Geneva. By 1956, two-thirds of all the traffic through the Suez Canal carried oil. In the same year, the United States had declined to support Nasser's grand project for Egypt, the Aswan Dam. Nasser was quick to get his revenge and turned to the Soviet Union for weapons. Leaders in both London and Paris saw the danger of losing oil from the Middle East. Oil was not really discovered in Libya and Algeria until the mid1960s, and Syria could shut off Tapline oil before it got to waiting tankers in Sidon. London's international finances were precarious, even though it had given India its independence in 1947. In the immediate postwar period Britain, as the direct result of its wartime expenses, had gone from being the world's largest debtor to being the world's largest debtor.Its gold and dollar reserves were sufficient to cover three months of imports in 1956, and its revenue from Middle East oil contributed to its

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

61

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

foreign earnings. The loss of income from oil would literally bankrupt Great Britain, so Prime Minister Anthony Eden and France's Guy Mollet were quick to agree on a plan that really required President Dwight Eisenhower's support in 1956, an election year for him. Israel saw the problem in ways not readily grasped by Washington. Nasser was preparing for war against Israel. And Great Britain was in precarious financial health as stated by its Permanent Undersecretary of the Foreign Office: I am convinced that he [Eisenhower] is wrong....If we sit back while Nasser consolidates his position and gradually acquires control of the oil-bearing countries, he can, and according to our information, resolved to wreck us. If Middle East oil is denied to us for a year or two our gold reserves will disappear. If our gold reserves disappear, the sterling area disintegrates. If the sterling area disintegrates, and we have no reserves, we shall not be able to maintain a [NATO] force in Germany, or indeed, anywhere else. I doubt whether we shall be able to pay for the bare minimum necessary for our defense. And a country that cannot provide for its own defense is finished.

The Suez crisis arose at the same time the Soviet Union invaded Hungary, and Khruschev told the United States that sending American troops to the Middle East or in any way interfering with Nasser would invite a Soviet reprisal. Khruschev should not be criticized for this form of irony. It was also in 1956 that he enlivened a four-hour session of the Russian Duma with the details of Stalin's evil. Apparently, the CIA had somehow gotten a copy of this speech, and the media in the United States played this story straight. Nikita Khruschev was his own man, not a successor handpicked by Stalin. But no matter who ruled the Soviet Union from the Kremlin, Middle East oil kept growing. In his book, The Prize, Daniel Yurgin noted that "Out of every ten barrels added to free world reserves between 1948 and 1972, more than seven were found in the Middle East." Enrico Mattei saw all this and decided he would negotiate with Iran. The company formed to do this was Azienda Generali Italiana Petroli (AGIP). It is still active in 1997 after its real start in 1953. Earnings from natural gas within Italy financed AGIP's activities outside of this country. Mattei's objective was to join what he called the Sette Sorrelle, the Seven Sisters. This cartel included Jersey Standard, Mobil, Chevron, Texaco, Gulf Oil, Royal Dutch Shell, and British Petroleum. Actually, Comite General du Petrole (CFP) was the eighth sister from France. Mattei was not admitted to this club, so he simply bided time while he negotiated with Iran's Shah in 1957, after the Suez crisis. Under the terms of the deal finally worked out, the National Iranian Oil Company got 75 percent of the profits to AGIP's 25 percent. This was approved by Iran, but the Seven Sisters were appalled; the arrangement ended the treasured 5050 deal. Unfortunately for Mattei, oil in commercial quantities was never found

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

62

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

beneath the land ceded to the partnership. Iran was, however, still firmly within the American sphere of influence. American global strategy involved the use of its troops in various Middle East nations. They were there to train Iranian officers in military maneuvers using American arms sold to the Shah's government. According to a pattern in all these countries, Iran, the host country, granted American military advisers, their support staffs, and families immunity from the national laws of Iran using their terms of a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). Locally, this was seen as just evidence of Pahlevi capitulation to the United States. In October, 1964, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenini delivered a fiery denunciation of the SOFA including his belief that the SOFA violated the Koran. In the violence that followed, the Shah decided to exile this spokesmen of the Shia. He was sent first to Turkey and finally to Paris, a city from which he would return to Iran in 1979. During the years from 1964 to 1979, Americans in Iran did a great deal to earn the contempt of the Iranians. In her book, The Iranians, Sandra Mackey details much of the insensitivity to local culture that so offended the ascetic Shia religion and the poor before whom Americans flaunted their wealth and foreign culture. Iran has been on a relentless arms-buying spree for at least five years -- Khomenini died in 1989. It has tried to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and it recently acquired its third Kiloclass submarine from the former Soviet Union. Iran has publicly opposed the Arab-Israeli peace treaties and has continued its financial and logistical support of terrorism. The Clinton Administration has imposed sanctions on Iran because of its state-supported terrorism. This is only one reason that the 9, The Persian Empire of Muhammad Reza Shah describes it all. This book was published in 1996 by the Penguin Group, an imprint of Dutton. Another book published by Simon & Schuster in 1996 was entitled God Has Ninety-Nine Names and written by Judith Miller describes Iran during the period from 1979 to the present She makes the point that within less than 24 months after 1979, Iran and Iraq were at war with each other. According to Khomenini, this war was religious and had to be won by Iran. Even so, the war itself, which was finally ended in 1988, "was said to have cost between $60 and $70 billion and left Iran deeply in debt. The human cost was immeasurable: More than 400,000 were said to have been killed and twice that number wounded, many of them in human-wave attacks in 1983 and 1984 that had appalled and terrified the West. Miller had revisited Iran several times, and the book had her views spread out over five years. After her visit in 1995, she wrote as follows: The Islamic revolution was at an impasse not unlike that of the shah almost twenty years ago. Riots and other evidence of mass discontent could no longer be dismissed as aberrations. Liberals and hard-line intellectuals were at war with their government, if not with the system itself. The middle class was disenchanted,

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

63

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

and even many of the poor despised the mullahs and their unfulfilled promises... Not since the Shah's Peacock Throne had the legitimacy of Iran's government been in such doubt. Rafsanjani may not have seen himself as Iran's Gorbachev, but the "Islamic glasnost" in Iran reminded me most of my visit to the Soviet Union just before the collapse of communism...

The Clinton Administration has opposed any pipeline route through Iran. In her book, Judith Miller offers a pessimistic view of the Middle East. "The World Bank," she wrote, "forecasts that the population of the Middle East will reach 448 million by the year 2000 and 1.17 billion by 2100. Yet Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Lebanon boycotted the UN Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994, and the Arab Middle East lags behind most developing nations, and far behind East Asia in every World Bank component of productivity growth -- spending on education, worker training, and the number of women in the work force. Arms purchases, by contrast, remain staggeringly high. The Middle East now buys almost 50 percent of all arms sold to the Third World."

Since 1991, Iraq has been compelled to allow inspections of all sites requested by the United Nations Inspection Team, a group that has had American members from the very beginning. During the Persian Gulf War, Iraq had shown its ingenuity in manufacturing weapons forbidden by treaty. These included chemical weapons, containing toxic bacteriological material as well as nuclear weapons and the missiles to launch all three. What has been taking place seven years after the fighting stopped has all the trappings of an Arab revolt. While the United States assured its Arab allies that the isolation of Iraq would change Baghdad's behavior, the only tangible effect of the campaign has been the widespread suffering of the Iraqi people from the sanctions imposed by Security Council Resolution 686. Arab critics also advance the view that the United States has not honored its commitment to act in an evenhanded manner in promoting a broader Arab-Israeli settlement. Israel has agreed to trade land for peace as part of the settlement process. However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must first assure himself and his fragile coalition in the Knesset that Israel's security has not been compromised. Assurances along these lines have been moving slowly with terrorist bombs from Hamas in

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

64

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

the foreground and grandiose expectations in the PLO background. In 1991, Yasser Arafat was quick to announce PLO support for Saddam Hussein. The scene is no different today. Women demonstrating in Baghdad have invited Hussein to drop his bombs and/or missiles on Tel Aviv. The Republic of Iraq was once part of the Ottoman Empire. Following the defeat of the Ottomans at the end of World War I, the United Kingdom put Iraq under a British mandate installing Amir Faisal as king in 1921. At that time, the British knew there was oil present but no one knew just how much oil there really was in Iraq. Effectively, Iraq was created out of land that had been conquered by the Ottomans with no defined boundaries. For administrative purposes, Ottoman Iraq was divided into three central eyalets of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra. These three provinces only roughly reflected the geographic, linguistic, and religious divisions of Ottoman Iraq. Kurds and non-Arabs lived in the northwest. Iraq was largely Muslim; the Shiite Arabs lived in the south, while the north was predominantly Sunni. The monarchy ruled Iraq until 1958, when there was a series of coups and countercoups. Finally, by virtue of aligning himself with the military, Saddam Hussein succeeded to the position of president. In the 1970s, power began to solidify behind the Baath Socialist Party headed by Hussein, partly from the use of force and partly from the sale of oil. Were it not for oil and water, Iraq would be a small nation of the Middle East. On August 2, 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait and was driven out by armed forces marshaled by President George Bush. Even before this violation of international law by Saddam Hussein, Iraq had been at war with Iran from about 1980 to 1988. The bloody and drawn out battles that lasted the next eight years killed hundreds of thousands on both sides, and the war ended in 1988 very much in the way it was fought-stalemate. Iraq made no secret of its intention to obtain nuclear weapons, having purchased a plant from the French. Israeli aircraft destroyed this plant in 1981, setting Iraq's nuclear ambitions by many years. During this period, a great many American companies sold so-called dual-use products to Iraq. One example was a helicopter sold to Iraq and identified as one for the use of civilians for transportation. It was seen, however, being used in the war against the Americanized forces in 1991. As a direct result of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the United Nations Security Council adopted resolutions with strict sanctions. Iraq was not allowed to sell its oil on any market. However, Iraq is probably the second largest oil producer in the world, second only to Saudi Arabia. During the Gulf War, allied aircraft bombed Iraq with considerable damage to the Iraqi military's command, control, and communications network. In mid-January, 1991 allied troops launched the ground war. By

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

65

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

February 27th, A ceasefire agreement was signed by the United States and Iraq and the latter agreed to accept certain obligations all spelled out in various resolutions of the United Nations Security Council. Among other obligations, the Iraqis agreed to cooperate with the Rolph Ikeus, chairman of the agency set up to keep track of nuclear weapons. Evidence gathered failed to show Iraqi possession of any nuclear weapons, but their technology was quite close to a dangerous level. Some evidence of a capability of producing nerve gas was found, and the Iraqis were also fairly advanced in the production of chemical warfare agents. Unfortunately, Iraq continued to pursue its warfare against the Kurds of Iraq, many of whom were able to move over the border into Turkey. In fact, six years after the ceasefire, Iraq was still a military power and still refusing to comply with Security Council resolutions. Notwithstanding, the Security Council agreed to allow the sale of oil from Iraq in the amount of $4 billion, all of this for humanitarian uses. Saddam Hussein is still in full control of the Iraqi military. He has never hesitated at brutally eliminating opposition, so none has publicly surfaced. Iraq has proven oil reserves estimated at between 100 billion and 122 billion barrels. Its reserves are distributed among 73 known fields, only 15 of which have so far developed. No export of any of this oil may be sold until Iraq complies with various resolutions of the United Nations Security Council. Two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, flowed around Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. Ever since 1984, Iraq and Syria have sought to settle their quarrel with Turkey. That country has built the Ataturk Dam and impounding the water flowing into these two rivers where they arise within Turkey. Under the Protocol of 1987, Turkey has undertaken to supply a monthly average flow of 500 million cubic meters at the TurkishSyrian border, until the "filling up" of the Ataturk Dam is completed.

Iraq

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

66

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Iraq maintains that it has "acquired rights" relating to its "ancestral irrigation" on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. According to Iraq there are two dimensions of acquired rights. One outlines the fact that for thousands of years these rivers have given life to the to the inhabitants of Mesopotamia and thus constitute an acquired right for its people. Therefore, no upstream riparian country is entitled to take away the rights of these inhabitants. The second dimension of acquired rights stems from the existing irrigation and water installations built in reliance on water. Iraq has some 1.9 million hectares of agricultural land in the Euphrates Basin, including the ancestral irrigation left from Sumerian times. Syria has a different approach. It claims acquired rights, even though Syria was never a country before the Ottoman Empire ended in 1919. Additionally, Syria claims that the waters from these rivers must be shared among the riparian states according to a quota to be determined. The rivers are international water courses which must be described as "shared resources." Turkey understandably differs from both Syria and Iraq. The idea of sharing the common resources through a mathematical formula represents a complete contradiction with the principle of "equitable utilization" which is the core of codification exercise in this field. Additionally, Syria has argued that Turkey has delivered Syria polluted water out of the share permitted by the Protocol of 1987. Turkey has further argued that neither Syria nor Iraq has the amount of irrigible land claimed by both. The Euphrates River flows first through Syria and the Tigris River flows entirely through Iraq, but they join at the Shattal-Arab before flowing in to the Persian Gulf. These rivers are also joined by a manmade Charter Canal within Iraq. This water dispute may yet be argued before the International Court of Justice. However, neither Iraq nor Syria have much interest in that court. Turkey controls the water. Oil is another matter. The Organization of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) was organized by oil-rich Arab states in 1960. Its primary objective was to protect the price of oil. The majors had driven them to this point, where the Arabs were losing control of prices. The five founding members -- Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and Venezuela -controlled 80 percent of the world's crude oil exports. It was not until 1973 that the power of OPEC was used successfully by its founders. In 1973, President Nixon was beginning to sense the problems that were to flow from Watergate. The Saturday Night Massacre had seen the firing of an attorney general and the resignation of the special counsel. In another part of the world, Syria and Egypt invaded Israel in the Yom Kippur War of October, 1973. The surprise was so total that Henry Kissinger believed Israel might be overrun unless the United States got munitions to Israel in a way that did not anger the OPEC Arabs. The Soviet Union was shipping supplies to both Egypt and Syria, so a case could be made for the proposition that the United States had to protect its position in the Middle East, even if it meant arming Israel. Other OPEC members were not

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

67

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

pleased with anything less that a complete oil embargo against the United States. In fact, Iraq had walked out of the meeting because its oil minister didn't get the embargo he wanted least, not until later. When the embargo was finally imposed, oil prices took off. There was also panic at the American pump. Prices increased fourfold, to $11.65 a barrel never to return to the old level. In fact, the price was to increase even further in 1979, the year of the Second Oil Shock. Iran had become a Moslem state with its own ayatollah in charge, hysterically addressing the students who believed every word he used.. Even though Iran had been joined by Saudi Arabia in seeing price moderation as good policy, others were planning action. Kuwait was one member of OPEC with its own ideas. However, one factor had been ignored by all members. The importing states launched a campaign to manufacture energy-efficient automobile engines and appliances. Price controls on oil continued even after Nixon resigned because of Watergate. Furthermore, the search for oil continued around the world. In 1969, Phillips drilled a hole in the North Sea and brought in a huge oil field. The Brent oil field in the North Sea had an estimated 270 billion tons, or about 355,000,000 barrels. In 1963, the Shah outlined a six-point reform program he grandly called the White Revolution. Its goals were to create a literacy corps, establish suffrage for women, nationalize forest and water resources -- Mossadeq had nationalized oil in 1954 -- and introduce employee profit sharing in industry. The White Revolution succeeded in alienating just about all interest groups. The clergy opposed it as being inconsistent with the Koran. Overall, it was shoddily planned and haphazardly carried out. The peasants, for example, lost a great deal. Each member of a peasant family was given 25 acres of land, a hopelessly inefficient parcel. Furthermore, the new owners lacked the requisite tools and know-how to deal with the new responsibility given them. Up until this land reform, landlords provided whatever was needed by the peasants working the land. Nine of Iran's most powerful mullahs sharply criticized the Shah. Ayatollah Khomeini openly criticized the Shah from Qom. The Shah had him arrested, brought to Teheran for torture and expelled from Iran. He lived in Paris, returning in triumph to Teheran in 1979. In 1964, the Majlis or Parliament of Iran passed a bill giving American military personnel and their dependents full diplomatic immunity. Described as the Status of Forces Agreement in the United States and the Capitulation's Agreement in Iran, it came before Parliament after an intense campaign by the American Embassy. The reaction in Iran was bitter. The Capitulation's Agreement meant that any crime committed by an employee -- or any of his dependents -- of the U.S. Department of Defense working in Iran could not be prosecuted under Iranian law. Even if the United States chose not to prosecute, the Iranian government could not take the case. Two weeks after this bill became law, the United States

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

68

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

extended a $200 million loan to Iran specifically for the purchase of military equipment. The Iranian public felt doubly betrayed. Once again, their national sovereignty had been sold to an outside power. President Lyndon Johnson expressed admiration for what the Shah was trying to do. However, in the United States by early 1973 was facing an energy crisis during the Nixon presidency. The Yom Kippur War made a precarious situation even worse. Saudi Arabia and the OPEC nations agreed on a price increase and a reduction in production. While the Shah did not participate in the oil embargo, it spearheaded the price increase to about $12 per barrel. OPEC states agreed to this doubling of the posted price, and Washington never forgave the Shah. Iran and the other members of OPEC had another problem. Spending their new oil wealth. From 1973 to 1975, Iran went on a spending spree changing its economy to reflect the new spending power. This new power distorted local institutions, the social structure, the economy and the outlook of the people who still got next to nothing from all this oil wealth. The Shah only said it was being spent to improve living conditions. Like all central planning decisions, the Shah's plans completely failed to put money in the hands of the peasants. Most of them migrated to the cities in search of work. However, it was not until 1975 that Great Britain finally saw the oil from the North Sea. For that country, it cushioned the effect of the Second Oil Shock. The Shah of Iran was modernizing its economy and alienating the mullahs in the process. The Shah could not imagine being on the losing side of a bitter struggle with the clerics. In 1979, an illness, cancer, compelled the Shah to seek medical attention in the United States. A year earlier, Ayatollah Khomeini had been expelled from Iran; the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad had to worry about its Shiite population. During this period of escalating chaos, the oil industry in Iran faced strikes of laborers and technicians. There was also a rising level of discontent in Iran fueled by Khomeini in Paris; he spoke to the masses using tapes played on the state-owned radio. By the end of 1978, 4.5 million of oil exports from Iran stopped. Finally, on January 16, 1979 the Shah left Iran for the last time. His departure was celebrated by the Iranian masses, some of whom had suffered at the hands of the Shah's secret service, Savak. The Shah's departure was the beginning of the Second Oil Shock; the First had occurred in 1973 with reduced shipments of oil and panic. The Second Oil Shock was worse but fueled by panic and fears of a permanent shortage. The importing oil companies bought a lot more of today's oil, because the knew prices would rise. In fact, the oil companies bought oil far in excess of anticipated consumption. The rush to fill inventories resulted in the purchase of about 5 million barrels a day of extra demand. Panic buying drove the price of oil to $34 per barrel, almost 300 percent more that it had been since 1974. The United States did not suffer a real shortage; Saudi Arabia diverted more oil to Aramco. Japan, however, took a major hit and had to scramble to find oil to fuel its

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

69

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

humming economy. In the meeting of March, 1979 OPEC told its members they could charge whatever price they could get. It was a "freefor-all." At the domestic end of the line, President Carter was blamed for the oil shortages, and even worse, the gas lines at service stations around the country. Some OPEC countries continued to reduce their output to keep prices high. Iraq extended its oil embargo to Egypt. Anwar Sadat had just signed the Camp David Agreements of 1978, and Iraq bitterly opposed any peace with Israel. On November, 4, 1979 Iranian students occupied the American embassy in Teheran. The grievance of the occupiers was the Shah; only a few days earlier, he had been admitted to a New York hospital under an assumed name. In early October, 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan These events and a meeting in Caracas of OPEC opened the oil producers to the charge they were losing touch with reality. The average price of oil was then $32 a barrel with oil being sold on the spot market at even higher prices. A worldwide recession then brought prices down, but there was more to come. In mid1980, Iraq attacked Iran in a war that was to last until 1988 and cost the lives of over 1.5 million soldiers on both sides.Saddam Hussein struck hard at Iran's oil facilities in Abadan and Ahwaz, seriously damaging them The Iranians counterattacked choking off Iraqi pipeline and exports via the Persian Gulf. In its initial phases, the Iraq-Iran war removed about 4 million barrels of oil per day from the world market, and the spot price of oil hit $42 a barrel and panic buying took off again. However, by November of 1980 consumption was declining, so it made sales of oil inventories more useful, even at a loss. And Saudi Arabia was increasing its OPEC quota by 900,000 barrels a day. Finally, by 1981, the oil producers rationalized price by fixing it at $34 per barrel. Worldwide inflation was the cost of all this, and the Federal Reserve Bank had raised interest rates to 21.5 percent. Western governments were not without remedies for inflation. They could and did encourage oil importers to dump inventories of oil to bring prices down to a level more consistent with a collapse in demand. And non-OPEC oil was being sold on the world market. Finally, even with the Gulf War still in the future, the jockeying for price and market share continued and by 1997, the world price of oil had stabilized at $20.50 per barrel. Daniel Yergin's great book, The Prize, should be read by those in need of further economic history. To understand both the Arab politics and Saddam Hussein, one need first assume that the history of the Middle East has always been defined by personalities. In 1980, for example, the situation was dominated by Saddam Hussein and the Ayatolloah Khomeini. While Iraq launched the attack against Iran in !980, Khomeini had committed Iranians to a war he saw as religious, one Iran could not afford to lose. Khomeni was a head of

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

70

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

state who did not have the mandate of a popularly elected leader, so Iranians had to treat the war as a crusade. Saddam Hussein did not have the mandate of a popularly elected leader either. In 1989, an Iraqi Samir AlKhalil, wrote a book, Republic Of Fear,which was published by the University of California Press. He goes a long way in describing why Iran was perceived as the loser of this war. Whenever Iranians fought in defense of their homes and towns, in effective isolation from the clerical leadership, by all accounts they did well against vastly superior odds....The nature of the combat was such as to place life at a premium, and so tactics evolved that tended to guard it. When the clerics took over, the military conception changed dramatically. The idea became to use the occasion of war to prove how good a Muslim was; winning versus losing took on an entirely new meaning.

There was no Islamic definition of military strategy, but Khomeini and the other Iranian clerics simply used recruits that were driven in human wave attacks. They were mowed down. And dying from poison or nerve gas was quite different from invoking the mercy of Allah by hurling themselves on the Iraqis who shot them. Hussein, however, was able to present himself as the embodiment of the state. In fact, he probably was the leader with no opposition within Iraq. His Baath Party had, at Hussein's orders, executed all those who might have threatened his role. Saddam Hussein had a ready-made enemy, Kuwait, an Arab state, and Iran, a Persian state. Iraq had a history of animosity; border disputes, ethnic differences, and religious differences. However, without any real mandate, Hussein had to find an alternative source of legitimacy, even though symbols were all he could offer. Nasser was an Egyptian symbol of Middle East leadership, even though his role ended with the Six Day War against Israel. Hussein saw himself as the new "leader" of the Middle East, ruling Iran as part of his kingdom, fighting a just war against a long time enemy. Hussein also had to find a secure role for his military; a foreign war against a traditional enemy would keep the military and its leadership occupied and reduce the chances of a military coup. Hussein also saw that his military had the best arms and weapons technology his oil income could buy. The French and German arms merchants were only too happy to sell Iraq the latest, including the plant capacity to build a nuclear weapon. Later Hussein would argue he wanted only nuclear power, not weapons. In 1981, Israel was internationally condemned when its jets destroyed the French-manufactured Osiris nuclear reactor. Israeli jets may have the range to destroy Iran's new reactor being assembled by French experts in 1997 at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf coast. The Israelis must first satisfy themselves that this reactor is being used to produce weapons grade uranium. And Germany sold the wherewithal to use chemical warfare. Iraq Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

71

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

used that horrifying weapon in the closing days of the Iran-Iraq War against Kurds and Iraqi Shiites. Near the end of this war, Iraq had launched more than 160 al-Hussein stretch Scuds against the Iranian capital of Iran. Hussein's search for an identity based on missile power had begun. By 1989, Hussein's engineers had assembled three of these Scuds and one other rocket to produce the three-stage Tamouz 1 "space launch vehicle." It had an estimated range of 250 miles. This missile caught intelligence agencies by surprise; they first saw it on Iraqi television. The Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988 on terms favorable to Iraq However, it was a tremendous financial catastrophe for both sides, not to mention the terrible loss of life. An entire generation on both sides were killed. However, the war also solidified Iraq's position with the United States. Two years later, the United States would regret this during the Persian Gulf War. That war began on August 2, 1990 when Iraqi armed forces crossed the border with Kuwait and occupied the entire country. In fact, Iraq annexed Kuwait as its 19th province. President George Bush began the slow expensive maneuver of assembling an Arab force led by the United States. During the period before ground forces became active in January, 1991, American military softened up the Iraq command and control facilities with "smart weapons" guided by on board computers. After a brief ground war, a cease fire agreement was signed on February 27, 1991. Hussein's attention was then directed against the Shiites and the Kurds. Personnel of the United Nations also went through all or nearly all Iraq's weapons warehouses or plants to find the missiles used by the Scuds and other longer range weapons plus evidence of a nuclear or chemical weapons capability. Because Iraq had launched no long range missiles attacks on Iran between August, 1987 and February, 1988 Saddam Hussein's claims were viewed with scepticism by Western observers. But following Iran's attack on Baghdad with three of the Scud Bs it had imported from North Korea on February 29, 1988, it rapidly became apparent that Hussein had spent the intervening months quietly building up, a sufficient stockpile of al Hussein missiles to make a major strategic impact on the course of the Iran-Iraq War. Over the following three weeks, Iraq fired nearly 200 al Hussein's at Teheran, Isfahan, and Qom, causing some 8000 casualties, about 2000 of them fatalities. The psychological effect of these attacks on ordinary Iranians were considerable -- nearly a quarter of the population of Teheran abandoned the city. This fact was one of the factors contributing to Iran's decision to sue for peace in July, 1988. The end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 saw the beginning of two trends in Asia and the Middle East. First, Saddam Hussein embarked on a voyage that was to rearm Iraq to the point it was the "heavy hitter" of the Middle East. Second, Hussein took all reasonable measures to conceal his purchase of arms at a time when, because of oil sale sanctions, he could

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

72

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

not openly buy arms. See Security Council Resolution 661 of 1990 for text of sanctions. The text of the Decision Taken by the Security Council Committee established by Resolution 661 (1990) concerning the situation between Iraq and Kuwait in the discharge of its responsibilities under Security Council resolutions 706 (1991) and 712 (1991). Essentially, this document spelled out the procedures Iraq must follow if it wished to purchase humanitarian supplies. The money was to come from an escrow account administered by appointees of the Security Council. Before the Allied Forces were put together by agents of then President George Bush, his Secretary of State, James Baker had toured the Arab world to drum up support for the attempt to oust Iraq from Kuwait. In his tour of the Middle East, Baker had promised the Arab states there would be a postwar conference leading up to a settlement of the Israeli-Arab conflict. On January 31, 1991 the United Nations General Assembly adopted its Resolution 45/68. Its language reached a level of international mendacity not previously considered. Both the United States and Israel voted against this resolution. It notes in part: "Aware of the ongoing uprising (intifadah) of the Palestinian people since 9 December 1987, aimed at ending Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory since 1967." The resolution referred to the status of the West Bank between 1949 and 1967. On the latter date, Jordanian troops were driven out of the West Bank which Jordan had occupied in violation of both international law and the United Nations Charter. During the years between 1949 and 1967, Jordan never once took any action to comply with Resolution 181 (II), the Partition Resolution of 1948. Indeed, on April 15, 1951,Jordan announced its annexation of the West Bank as an extension of its Hashemite Kingdom. No polemicist, including Yasser Arafat has ever rationalized the Palestinian claim that the West Bank is "our land." The claim that this land was somehow converted from its status as territory occupied by Jordan to "territory occupied by Israel" is quite simply wrong. See Security Council Resolution 242 of November, 1967. Arab states that joined the U.S. led coalition in 1991 have breather a collective sigh of relief. Iraq agreed that American inspectors could resume work trying to ferret out the weapons hidden by Iraqis after the inspectors first left Iraq. The Arabs never liked Saddam Hussein who often forced Arabs to make disagreeable choices. When Hussein marched into Kuwait in 1990, Egypt, Syria, and Morocco sent troops to join the coalition. They were sent on the express word of James Baker, Secretary of State under President George Bush, that the ArabIsraeli dispute would receive the full and favorable attention of the United States. Some six years later, nothing much had happened. The Arab world sees that the United States as reneging on the agreement with respect to Israel. Arabs expected they would be rewarded for their cooperation by

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

73

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

American pressure on Israel to reach lasting settlements with its neighbors. On April 8, 1991 the Security Council adopted its Resolution 686. The full text of this resolution appears at 30 International Legal Materials 847 (1991). The Security Council Resolution 686 "demands that Iraq... 3(d)Provide all information and assistance in identifying Iraqi mines, booby traps and other explosives as well as any chemical and biological weapons and material in Kuwait, in areas of Iraq where forces of Member States cooperating with Kuwait pursuant to Resolution 678 (1990); and...

Security Council Resolution 687 picked up the language of Resolution 686. In part, it invited "Iraq to reaffirm unconditionally its obligations under the Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, signed at Geneva on 17 June 1925, and to ratify the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction, of 10 April 1972." These are all obligation that were in existence before Iraq attacked Kuwait. This fact did not however, prevent Iraq from using poison gas in its war against Iran. Hussein did not hesitate to use mustard gas against Kurds in 1987. On February 26, 1998 the New York Times published an article "How Iraq's Biological Weapons Program Came to Light" written by By William J. Broad and Judith Miller; a nightmarish and horrifying detail of how Iraq has plans for its Arab and Jewish neighbours. Robert Gates, formerly Director of Central Intelligence , wrote an Op Ed piece in the New York Times for November 14, 1997. In part it read: "Since the end of the war, the Iraqis, trying to preserve their programs for chemical, biological weapons, have lied to United Nations inspectors and engaged in a deadly game of hide-and-seek. For diplomatic reasons, the United Nations has never fully revealed the extent of physical abuse and mistreatment of inspectors in Iraq. Nor has it fully revealed the extraordinary deception, subterfuge, trickery and obstructionism used by the Iraqis." International arms sales did not begin or end with Iraq. In fact, the United States has the dubious distinction of being the world's largest arms seller. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) monitors arms sales. Sales by the United States were as follows in the year indicated. $9. 36 billion (1991), $10.71 billion (1992), $10.68 billion (1993), $9.84 billion (1994), and $12.55 Billion (1995). In addition, American companies sold a total amount of arms during the same period of $17.36 billion. Russia sold

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

74

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

$16,40 billion, France sold $8.70 billion, United Kingdom sold $24.10 billion, China sold $4.90 billion, Germany sold $7.80 billion, and Italy sold $1.2 billion in the period between 1991 and 1995.Third World countries around the world are lining up to qualify as purchasers using guidelines that have made sales by the Pentagon quite simple. During the administration of President Ronald Reagan, his staff and others came up with the Missile Technology Control Regime. The MTCR is an informal, non-treaty association of states that had an established policy or interest in limiting the spread of missiles and missile technology. Its origins went back to the 1970s when the United States became aware of dangers posed by the missile programs of some developing nations. Several events, including South Korea's 1978 ballistic missile test, Iraq's attempt in 1979 to purchase retired rocket stages from Italy, India's July 1980 SLV3 test, and the former German firm OTRAC's 1981 testing of a rocket in Libya, contributed particularly to America's apprehensions. See: "Chronology of the Missile Technology Control Regime." The MTCR has attempted to control weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The principal multilateral arms control regimes limiting WMD are the 1925 Geneva Protocol, the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Western governments may have helped slow the spread of WMD, but they have made only limited efforts to enforce compliance; unfortunately, the Western governments have sometimes chosen to accept violations. A glaring example of such acceptance of violations was Iraq's open use of CW against both Iran in its war with that country, but also against segments of the Iraqi population, i.e., Kurds and Shiites. One of the difficulties in enforcing limits on WMD is the fact that some of the components and the technologies are dual-use, that is, they may be used in both civilian and military programs. By 1998, one must assume that Iraq has all the missile technology it needs to threaten Europe, even the United States with missile attacks. In the Persian Gulf War, Iraq used the Scud missile successfully, and it would be foolish to assume they have not improved their missile technology and range. However, because of the secrecy factor, Iraq may have warheads containing any particular toxin used in chemical warfare. They're all deadly. Recent reports of the United Nations suggest that Iraq has some 16 ballistic missiles armed with biological warfare warheads in violation of sanctions imposed on Iraq. A CIA report on Iraq's pre1991 CBW capability noted: ...that Iraq worked to adapt a modified aircraft drop tank for biological agent spray operations in December, 1990. The tank could be attached to either a piloted fighter or to a remotely piloted aircraft that would be guided by another, piloted aircraft.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

75

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

The tank was designed to spray up to 2000 liters of anthrax on a target.

Along the same lines, other countries are well-advanced in producing chemical warfare components. In 1988, Libya built one of the largest chemical weapons plants in the world and has persistently pursued opportunities to acquire longer range missiles from North Korea. Iran could threaten all of Europe with missiles, having acquired the technology from China. Biological weapons may be produced from widely available pathogens; they are cheap and easy to obtain. In fact, even a facility like a brewery has the de facto capability to produce biological weapons, and these agents are weight-for-weight, thousands of times more potent than the most lethal chemical weapon. In February 1998, Great Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Washington and held a joint press conference with President Clinton. Even before leaving London, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) released a report listing what the United Nations Special Commission on Munitions (UNSCOMM) subject to inspection in Iraq. The list showed only what UNSCOMM had discovered between 1991, when the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 687 of April 3, 1991 and what had been destroyed. It is a list of the horribles and Saddam Hussein has now made a diplomatic solution virtually impossible by forbidding UN inspectors from inspecting sites in Iraq they are legally required to inspect. See http://www.britain-info.org/ President Clinton has sent three carriers to the Persian Gulf plus some 3,000 Marines and Great Britain has sent one aircraft carrier plus an unspecified number of ground forces. Saudi Arabia has refused to let its facilities be used for an attack against Iraq but Kuwait has a longer memory. Republicans in Congress are now looking for an end game, so American forces won't have to stay in the Middle east too long. Initially, Senator Trent Lott and some other Republicans seemed gung ho on the use of force against Iraq. However, they now seem less eager, thinking Clinton may be in the middle of l'affaire Lewinsky when he's needed most in his constitutional role as Commander-in-Chief of the armed force.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

76

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Every five years since 1949, China has had a meeting of the National Congress. The 15th National Congress ended on September 18, 1997 after approving the work of the 14th Congress. There were a few differences. One of them was the death in February, 1997 of Deng Xiaopeng. The 15th Congress predictably approved Deng's theory and that it must guide all the Communists actions over the next five years. China's military establishment of three million men would be reduced by 500,000, and socalled state-owned enterprises (SOE) would be sold off. These SOEs have a long history. They were set up to cope with China's rising unemployment. Would be foreign investors were told they would have to provide jobs for Chinese workers. More often than not, these SOEs were acquired from the foreign investors who were given fourteen years to recover their investment plus a reasonable return on capital. These foreign investments were incorporated pursuant to China's Joint Venture Law, a great many incorporated between 1978 and 1980. With termination of the fourteen-year deals, ownership vested in China's government, and China had a major problem; it could not find enough skilled employees to operate the hotels or plants built by foreign investors. With reversion to local Chinese ownership, they began to lose money, so they were subsidized by Beijing. By 1998, China had a problem. Deputy Prime Minister Zhu Rongji has been betting that an expanding service sector, along with trade and foreign investment, should help employ the next generation. Many leaders in Beijing have lost their heads over other less risky bets. On the block as redundant, there are tens of millions of workers who will be laid off, particularly in the rust-belt cities of Harbin, Shenyang and others in rural areas. Chinese leaders, however, have been looking fearfully at Asia's ballooning bank debt and local currency problems. Even locally, China has problems. Shanghai, for example, has a 40 percent office vacancy rate. Property values in Hong Kong have dropped precipitately, and tension has risen. At a recent meeting of bankers and investors in Hong Kong, Zhu Rongji , China's new economic chief, Zhu avoided answering a question worrying everyone present. How does China plan to transfer ownership of some major but unprofitable companies from the government to some form of share-holding without casting a lot of workers out into the street.? According to The New York Times for September 23, 1997, China has some $130 billion in foreign currency reserves. Presumably, part of this huge fund will be used to subsidize China's "iron rice bowl," the promise of cradle to grave security for the unemployed. What's left over will probably be used to get a bigger bang for the buck of 2.5 million soldiers and sailors left after the reduction in the armed forces. Modernizing China's armed forces over three years may be extraordinarily difficult. As it appears later in this chapter, China simply does not yet have the indigenous talent to develop a modern jet fighter or even to develop its own in-flight refueling capability. Two of China's four Russian

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

77

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

submarines have broken down because of poor maintenance. And pilots trained in 1960-era jet aircraft are reluctant to trust high-tech radar's in their new Soviet-made jets. Furthermore, the bulk of its weapons are still several generations behind those of other powers in the region, such as Singapore, Malaysia, and even Taiwan. China is a long way from having graduated enough aeronautical engineers and designers from its universities. And they're only beginning to graduate enough talent to design and manufacture the technology needed to supply a modern military establishment. It is very costly to purchase this hardware from the United States or a company in Europe without having the indigenous talent to develop new models of, for example, a tank or a jet fighter. One might conclude that banks would not lend money to Chinese companies to develop the country's own military infrastructure. Banks will liquidate huge loans made by China's banks for political reasons, not the creditworthy to failing state enterprises. China which claims status as developing or third world state is almost certain to buy arms for its newly-lean army, navy, and air force. And if the people cast into the street by plant closures throughout China, resort to street protests as they did in Jiangmian City in Sichuen, the People's Liberation army (PLA) will be flown to the trouble spots to quash insurrections, just as the PLA was used by Deng against students in 1989 at Tiananmen Square. During the last several decades, China has built a Laogai, or prison system, throughout China equal in all respects to Russia's Gulag Archipelago. Nonviolent dissidents in Tibet and Sinkiang will be the first to disappear. As it did in the Tiananmen Square, China treated student protests as counterrevolutionary or "rightist" conduct. The National Congress has really changed nothing. A few members of the Politburo resigned rather than suffering demotion, and a few new faces appeared. The Congress certainly endorsed the events of 1989 and anointed those responsible with more power. Jiang Zemin was one of them, and he was a guest of the United States in late 1997. In a recent book about China, The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress, its authors suggest that "China has committed itself to an economic strategy that will succeed only through intensified integration into the world economy." The Hong Kong transition will test this policy seriously as to matters that extend beyond 1997. Both the United States and the United Kingdom have asserted an interest in Hong Kong's post1997 political welfare. In 1992,Congress enacted the Hong Kong Policy Act, while the UK enacted the Joint Declaration of Policy with China in 1984. Both documents establish an interest in Hong Kong's economic autonomy, political stability, and human rights. When faced with these challenges, China's leaders gave higher priority to political control than Hong Kong's economic welfare. These were all developments that occurred during Deng Xiaopeng's lifetime. Whether the direction he took will change with

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

78

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Li Peng and Jiang Zemin. Li Peng may not succeed in getting his old position in 1998, and Jiang Zemin's status was confirmed as the supreme leader. China's paramount leader died on February 19, 1997. The death of Deng Xiaoping was not unexpected; he had been in declining health for as much as three years before he actually died.. Publicly, Deng's death affected only the leadership succession. Jiang Zemin became the primary Party official; he had been president until Deng died. Next in line was Prime Minister Li Peng. Deng's funeral took place in the Great Hall of the People, and some 10,000 guests attended this affair in the huge structure located in Tiananmen Square, the scene of a savage massacre of students ordered by Deng in June, 1989. Jiang may not last long, although there is nothing to indicate he has not gotten the support of the Peoples' Liberation Army (PLA). By the year 2000, the Peoples' Republic of China (PRC) will have a population of 1.2 billion people. Nearly 270 million of these people will not have a job. China's rise as a great power in the last decade all occurred while Deng was paramount leader. Mao Tsetung was Deng's predecessor and died in 1976. More than anything else, Deng was preoccupied with power. Deng was born in 1904. He spent five years in France working for subsistence wages as part of a workstudy program. Back in China during the 1930s and 1940s, he was close to the pinnacle of power of the Communist Party. Deng was a close friend of Zhou Enlai, Prime Minister in 1937. After World War II, Deng, a fellow traveler on the Long March of 1934 with Mao, joined Mao in declaring the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949. By `1954, Deng had become General Secretary of the Communist Party with the approval of Mao. Even as General Secretary, Deng was not immune from the fall out from Party disputes. In 1967, Deng was exiled during the Cultural Revolution. His political rehabilitation was supervised by the Red Guard. However, in 1954, Deng, newly appointed, used his position to get rid those party regulars who responded to Mao's invitation when he said "Let all flowers bloom in the garden of socialism." Those imprudent enough to accept this invitation in full measure paid a penalty supervised by Deng. He led a witch hunt against them. Deng apparently ignored the Great Famine in China between 1958 and 1961, even though some 30 million people simply starved to death while Mao continued to order the export of food. A famine was not possible for those who accepted and followed Marxist-Leninist principles. Peasants who starved to death were lying according to Mao. Moreover, even today, the amount of arable land within China has been relentlessly reduced as the population relentlessly increases to 1.2 billion people by the year 2000. Even the remaining land has been over-cultivated while pesticide residue has leached the soil and polluted the watershed from

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

79

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

which rivers are fed There will no doubt be further red tides -- one was reported in Hong Kong Harbor in 1994 -- and they will be increasingly toxic to humans. A red tide occurs from the combination of human, untreated waste, pesticide runoff, and other contaminating chemicals such as PCB (polychlorinatedbyphenyls) By July 1, 1997 Hong Kong and Kowloon will all revert to rule from Beijing. If the new leadership there is unable to manage the shift, Jiang Zemin and his colleagues may all disappear. Instability is a distinct possibility, particularly in those areas of China with a significant Muslim population such as the Uighur autonomous area in Sinkiang where there has been recent violence. Deng left a political legacy of economic reform so pervasive that there has been a rising tide of prosperity in the last five years or so. During this period of growth, China ran a favorable balance of trade with the United States. Each year from about 1991 to the present, the United States ran a trade deficit in an amount that grew every year. Chinese businessmen loved it, and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) made a huge profit. The deals it made were one-sided. Boeing, for example, sold its passenger jets but Army generals insisted that there must be local content. The tail assembly of the Boeing 737 was made in China, and American workers lost their jobs as a result. To swing these deals, China established Chinese National Aero-Technology Import and Export Corporation (CATIC). It is owned by the government. Buyers within the United States were Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. In Europe, the only buyer was Airbus, so China could whipsaw Boeing and/or McDonnell to get the best deal for China.The best deal was almost literally a complete plant in Ohio with all the computer-operated machines an aircraft manufacturing facility needed. If McDonnell Douglas, for example was reluctant to sell the computeroperated machines, the representatives of CATIC would simply remind managerial personnel that Airbus was being approached in Europe. Finally, McDonnell Douglas capitulated, and lost 4000 jobs in Ohio. This deal is more fully described in War By Other Means: Economic Espionage in America by John J. Fialka in early 1997. Other American companies have been standing in line to open shop in the PRC. They include companies from IBM to AT&T. The American-Chinese Business Council lists some 500 companies all willing to lobby Congress to continue the status of Most Favored Nation (MFN). China is the largest market in the world, and chief executive officers have been drooling at the profits to be made, even though China has a demonstrably poor record on human rights. The collapse of the Soviet Union has encouraged many Chinese to begin thinking about their liberty as being the foundation of a new political alignment in the autonomous regions of Central Asia. In Western China Xinjiang is one such autonomous region with a Muslim minority. Ethnic Uighurs who are Muslim and speak a distinct Turkic language make up 60

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

80

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

percent of the population of 16 million in what is called the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region. Its capital city is Urumqi. On its Western border lies Kazakhstan where an international consortium successfully developed oil wells producing some 600,000 barrels per day. One pipeline runs to the Black Sea via Georgia. A another pipeline may run through Azerbaijan and Turkey to a port on the Mediterranean Sea. South of Kazakhstan are four countries now independent of Russia, Kyrgistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan.They are all Muslim. Some 18 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is said to be available in Turkmenistan. Some Uighurs who reached Alma Ata in Kazakhstan described the violence of February 25th in Uurumqi as a spontaneous uprising against persecution. Three bombs exploded, killing five people and wounding dozens of others. The Uighurs say the Beijing government uses excessive force in quelling local violence. Even worse, the local ethnic Chinese deny them access to mosques and religious teaching. They also say they have become increasingly impoverished by the diversion of state investment funds for irrigation and agricultural improvements to areas settled by Han Chinese immigrants. With an unconscious irony, Dr. Abdul Qader Tash, Editor-in-Chief of Arab News wrote a polemic in the February 13, 1997 issue. In part, it reads as follows: "Since China annexed Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang), the authorities have claimed that it was an autonomous province because of its special ethnic, religious and linguistic characteristics which distinguish it from the rest of the country. In fact, however, that autonomy is mere window dressing. The Chinese treat the Uighur area as a colony and its people, the Uighurs, as aliens who must be exterminated and humiliated.....Millions of ethnic Han Chinese Buddhists have been brought to different cities, towns, and villages of [the Uighur] area and settled there....Chinese authorities have also adopted inhuman measures to implement birth control in the province. Uighurs fleeing their country tell stories of compulsory abortions being performed on Muslim women, especially in rural areas..." These charges from the Muslim world make a rough sort of sense. China's government has unleashed a fierce rhetorical campaign against what it sees as the grim threat of Muslim separatism. Leaders in Beijing see this threat as far more credible than the Chinese conquest of Tibet in 1951; when the Dalai Lama was unarmed. The government has also encouraged Han Chinese to emigrate from the dense, overpopulated areas of the Chinese coast, e.g.., Shanghai. In Xinjiang, locals resent Hans who get the best jobs on the construction sites and the oil fields. Nuclear tests at Lop Nor made the Uighurs feel unsafe from radiation danger. In any case, the Uighurs are essentially unarmed, even though the level of violence has increased in the last few years.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

81

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

With respect to its army and air force, the PRC has gotten mixed reviews. Richard Bernstein and Ross Monro just finished a book entitled The Coming Conflict with China. Unfortunately, it was published before Deng's death. Thus, its readers will not be enlightened by the chaos that will certainly exist. This variety of news will be suppressed by Xinhua, China's national press agency. The chaos will last at least until October, the month in 1997 that the Peoples' Congress meets to confirm action taken by the Party. Robert Ross, a Professor of Political Science at Boston College has another view, one he expressed in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs. Unfortunately, he too published before Deng died, though he could not have been unaware of Deng's silence due to illness for about three years before publication. Even so, Ross offered two theories and commented that "The difference between these two policy packages is significant, but they share a concern for China's increasing ability to destabilize the regional balance of power and threaten vital American interests. In both cases, this concern is based on incorrect assumptions about Chinese strategic capabilities. The reason there is not a 'China threat' is not because China is a benign status quo power, but rather because it is too weak to challenge the balance of power in Asia and will remain weak well into the 21st century. Nevertheless, China is not a second rate power. It has the ability to inflict considerable damage on a wide range of U.S. interests." The independence of Taiwan has been a source of friction between Beijing and Washington ever since 1992. In that year, President Bush said the United States would deliver about 18 jet fighters to equalize China's acquisition of the Soviet Sukhoi27. Then in 1996, Beijing carried out military maneuvers in the straits separating the mainland from Taiwan. The United States sent a carrier to patrol the area. President Clinton was concerned. Later analysis confirmed the missiles used by China were so primitive they could have veered off course and hit Taiwan. China has one other major concern that may create friction during the process of assimilating the new leaders in Beijing. They wish to join the World Trade Organization, and Beijing's application to do so has already been sent to Geneva. There it will run into worldwide opposition based on China's dismal human rights record. Membership in the WTO is by two-thirds vote from the members, and as of December 15, 1996 there were 130 members. Accession by the People's Republic of China is not a sure thing, since human rights groups have been lobbying to exclude the PRC. In Geneva, China will face risks, no matter what questions it answers. These trade negotiations involve not just the conditions of China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), but they are about the pace at which China will reform its economy and open its society. If, for example,

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

82

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

the consequences of opening its economy presage further unemployment, does it follow that joining the WTO will weaken the Communist Party's grasp on power? If China wants to compete in world markets, it will have to open its own. Or is China already so powerful that it may join the WTO on its own terms? The thinking in Washington is that with a policy of engagement with China, it may have some effect on questions involving China's treatment of Hong Kong, Tibet, Taiwan and human rights in particular. In any case China will probably have to disclose and end its subsidies of state-owned industries. Were these industries left free to compete against free market companies, a substantial number of them would face bankruptcy. According to the Economist of March 8, 1997, state industry owes the Bank of China, itself state-owned, some $540 billion. It continues: "Nine-tenths of all bank loans go to the state sector. Household and corporate savings are drawn off in the prosperous coastal areas and, through the state credit plan, are recycled to those parts of the country where state industry looms large: the northeastern smokestack plants built with Soviet help in the 1950s, and (often defense) industries that settled in the Chinese hinterland in the 1960s, this time, to escape Soviet attack." China has its own domestic problems; the state-owned industries, many of them hovering on the edge of bankruptcy. Widespread violence of unemployed textile workers began in June in Mianyang City, a city of 5 million known as Science City. It is home to 160odd scientific research institutes of various levels. They employ over 130,000 technical personnel including over 7,000 professors, researchers and senior engineers. In June, 1997 more than 100,000 unemployed textile workers took to the streets of Mianyang City and demanded government assistance. They accused local officials of stealing their unemployment funds. In July, 1997 there was violence during a demonstration in Sichuan, a state in the Southwest of China. The demonstration was touched off by more than 100,000 workers who may have lost their pensions. They were unemployed from the closing of a bankrupt state-owned business. China is full of these companies, but the Communist rulers in Beijing have to close unprofitable companies. They are concerned at the closure of many inefficient state-run factories will lead to labor unrest that may spiral out of control. However, the rulers will have to deal with the consequences, in this case, violence that ended only when Beijing sent in troops to disperse the unemployed workers. This sort of violence is likely to increase as China enlarges its market economy. Unprofitable industries cannot compete for market share in this economic environment. At the September, 1997 Communist Party Congress approved a plan to shift the ownership of all but 3,000 state-owned enterprises to the private sector. Actually, the vast majority of China's 300,000 state-run enterprises are small and inefficient. They are also a severe threat to the nation's

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

83

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

economy. They are unprofitable and state-subsidized for years by banks that need access to capital now tied up in money-losing enterprises that cannot compete with newer, non-state companies. The problem, however, is not simple. No one wants to buy a losing company or even shares in that company. Employees have been compelled to buy shares, and their anger is expected to surface, when Beijing closes the door and applies for the Chinese equivalent of bankruptcy protection. Thus, some 297,000 will probably close over the nest few years. Their employees will be unemployed and angry. Plant closures have begun throughout China, and Beijing officials anticipate the worst. Wang Zhongyu, Minister of the State Economic and Trade Commission is committed to a market economy. But he already knows that only the strong survive. However, China has some 100,000 jobs that will be lost as the result of closing all or most of the weak companies. Another worry is the corruption at the managerial level. Managers often fail to pay workers and abscond with a company's assets. Four fifths of China's land mass is rugged and inhospitable. Thus, its population has inevitably moved to the coastal areas to the point that only a small percentage of its total population live in the more remote provinces. Tibet, for example, is an autonomous province, and authorities in Beijing are moving Han Chinese to permanent homes in this hostile area, while at the same time, these authorities have systematically reduced the Tibeten population and their monasteries. Open support of the Dalai Lama represents an invitation to criminal prosecution as being counterrevolutionary. In Sinkiang, the Uighur population outnumbers the Han Chinese population. Separatist tendencies have surfaced recently, and Beijing sees this autonomous area as vital to the Chines economy. Almost two-thirds of all China's oil is thought to exist in the Tarim Basin, but not much exploration for oil seems to exist, even though China became a net importer of oil in 1995. Some demographers have estimated that the least fractious two-thirds of China's population, about 800 million, live in the eastern one-fifth of its entire land mass. To move more people into the essentially underpopulated areas of China breeds resentment on both sides. The Han Chinese do not want to leave their home in the overpopulated eastern areas of China, and in the relatively unsettled areas of China, e.g.., Tibet and Sinkiang, the Tibetan minority and the Uighur majority see a threat enforceable by the military, a Han Chinese majority excluding Uighurs from land they see as their own. These population transfers have a hidden cost. China has less arable land and agricultural quality water to support the need for food these transferees will need. Nor will they have enough fuel. Even in the heavily settled east, there is barely enough fuel to cook one meal per day. Deforestation has simply eliminated wood as fuel or as a material for building a dwelling. China's environment reflects this loss.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

84

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

China's Environmental Crisis An Inquiry into the Limits of National Development by Vaclav Smil describes the environmental cost of unsustainable growth. Smil writes that: "In China the environmental demands brought by the quest for a better life are greatly accentuated both by the size and growth of the population: severe environmental pressure is exacted by merely feeding the people. I cannot see the fact that China must feed slightly more than one fifth of humankind from less than one-fifteenth of the world's farmland simply as a welcome stimulus to engage human ingenuity in a contest with "the raw forces of nature."

The cause of alarm has not yet reached the level of governmental decision in China, even though the Three Gorges Dam designed to generate electricity by damning the Yangste River was widely criticized for its adverse effects on agriculture. Neither the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank will commit funds to this huge project; it will require the relocation of some 1.2 million people. A number of Chines writers have described the degradation of China's environment. Because of the rapid population growth, the increasing pressure on food and fuel production has resulted in deforestation, overexploitation of natural resources, and conversion of lakes to cultivable land. These activities have led to further damage of vegetation cover, destruction of ecosystems, erosion, aggravation of natural disasters, shortages of fuel, feed, and fertilizer, exacerbation of production problems, and difficulties in increasing food production.

This description appeared in Improving the Environment by Fu Lixue and other writers in an anthology published in Beijing. Published in 1995, the paperback, Who Will Feed China, asks the question the new leaders of China must answer. In the period between 1958 to 1961, China suffered one of the worst famines in its long history. Some thirty million people died, and until recently the fact that there had been such a horrifying famine was treated by Mao as a closely guarded secret. This was a conservative figure; some authorities put the dead at over forty million. Jasper Becker's book, Hungry Ghosts, published in 1996 describes this famine, noting however, that it was not unique. In 1876, for example, China had a major famine, in which some thirteen million people died. Widespread famines occurred in 1924, 1941, and 1946. The Great Famine occurred during the period between 1958 and 1961. It began a year after Mao decreed the Great Leap Forward which itself occurred after the Anti-Right purge of the counties in 195455. However, unlike any previous famine, the Great Famine affected all of China, not just those areas with rich harvests. The Great Leap Forward was straight Communist Party doctrine developed by Mao, who

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

85

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

himself had no education. He was only a peasant and believed the selfserving reports of the Party functionaries that grain crops had reached historically high levels. In fact, they were far lower than ever. The Party functionaries all the way to the top believed that all problems had a scientific solution. However, they believed quacks like Lysenko and Michurin, fools who fawned on Stalin and they caused a famine in the Soviet Union, the news of which was kept secret. No one wanted to discredit the heroes of the Soviet Union. China had its own Michurin. Shi Yiqian was a bogus geneticist and grew grapes on a persimmon tree. Shi must have had Mao's ear, because in 1958 China drew up an eight-point Lysenkoist blueprint for all Chinese agriculture. The People's Daily even started a debate on how China should cope with its food surplus Everywhere Mao went, the people heard the glowing reports of astounding successes in the fields. In fact, these reports were all bogus, and there was really no way of knowing the real size of the harvest. The State Statistical Office had been dismantled, and its local offices throughout China had been converted to propaganda organs.The fact that no reliable statistics were available did not prevent Mao from calling most of the peasants liars for hiding grain. And because Mao accused the peasants of hiding grain, his recommendation was a cue for all the Party officials to follow suit. Thus, those peasants who didn't meet their grain quotas became the targets of a Communist witch hunt. The Party had officials at every level of government. Even a small village had its Party Secretary, and this petty official had the power of life and death over every farmer in his village. If the local Party Secretary accused a farmer of hiding grain, he was usually convicted of a crime against the state. It made no difference that the accused was starving for lack of grain or anything to eat. Mao refused to accept that there was in fact a shortage and refused to open the state granaries Over the years from 1958 to 1961, China doubled its grain exports and cut its imports of food. Exports to the Soviet Union rose by 50 percent, and China delivered gratis to its friends in North Korea, North Vietnam, and Albania. As a result, more Chinese died from starvation, and, even worse, Mao rejected any thought of limiting population growth. Indeed, local Party officials created a nightmare of terror and torture. By early 1960, people began to die of starvation or died because of some crime they were alleged to have committed, or from the torture inflicted on those who had allegedly hidden grain. Some 15,000 Soviet advisers left China, completing the division of Party theology between Stalinism and Communism Chinese-style. Mao probably welcomed the departure of Soviet technicians; they could not report to Nikita Khruschev what was really happening in China. According to Jasper Becker in his book, Hungry Ghosts, there was evidence from a document issued by the People's Liberation Army, that the morale of its troops was in doubt, because some of the soldiers openly

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

86

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

blamed Mao for the death of their relatives. This report, dated 1963, was obtained by the State Department in Washington. In 1988, the United States Department of Agriculture issued a World Grain Database. This remarkably useful resource contains the yield. area, and production of each grain in every country from 1950 forward. Amongst other thing, it shows that if countries become densely populated before they industrialize, they inevitably suffer a heavy loss of cropland. China was no exception to this development. If industrialization has been rapid, the loss of cropland quickly overrode the rise in productivity, leading to a decline in grain production. In 1995, Chinese authorities were "sounding alarm bells." They were President Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Li Peng both of whom inherited more responsibility and power after Deng's funeral. Observers should expect to hear more in the National People's Congress in October, 1997. In the meantime, the government has allowed the price of grain to rise enough to encourage farmers to remain on the land, but not enough to create urban unrest that could lead to political upheaval. As of early 1997, adjoining North Korea faces starvation, another famine. It is not known whether China would ship grain out of its granaries to feed the people of North Korea. This is a political question that will be answered in Beijing. In any case, the dire situation brought about by the rulers of North Korea and a poor harvest for two years running will certainly serve as a wakeup call in Beijing. Tensions in the South China Sea were heightened in March of 1997. Vietnam lodged a protest over oil well drilling in the Spratly Islands which Vietnam had placed in its continental shelf and international economic zone. In all, six countries in this area all claim an interest in the Spratly Islands, which are thought to have extensive oil reservoir. China is not militarily endowed with armed forces to defend its claim against Singapore, Malaysia ,the Philippines, and Brunei. These conflicting claims are a cause of instability and miscalculation, as Richard K. Betts notes in his essay in East Asian Security. One example [of instability] is the discord over who owns the Spratly Islands....In one sense, the issue is trivial and hard to see as the source of major conflict, since the islands are tiny, barren, and isolated.....That insignificance, however, abets miscalculation and unintended provocation. Moreover, if important amounts of oil turn up in the area, greed will compound national honor as potential fuel for conflict.

It is worth noting that the protest by Vietnam was lodged with the Ambassador of China in Hanoi and after the death of Deng on February 19, 1997. China had sent a drilling crew to the Spratly Islands, and Vietnam reacted in predictable fashion. These islands are 500 miles south of the closest point in China. Is this enough to create an unintended provocation or was it intentional?. During a speech to the People's Liberation Army (PLA) general staff in late 1992, there was a deliberate Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

87

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

leak to the Hong Kong South China News. The Chinese government had decided to acquire an aircraft carrier and settle the Spratly Islands by force if Vietnam did not accept Chines terms by 1997. No operational carrier was acquired by China, but it has other options. Having acquired Sukhoi jets from the Soviet Union, China could offer its tiny Navy air cover from fields on Hainan, a mere 250 miles from the Spratly Islands. China simply does not yet have the ability to project its air or sea power to any great distance. Singapore is far more sophisticated in its purchase of military hardware. The same is true of Malaysia. Indonesia offers new corvettes in its Navy, but its military staff may see the Spratly Islands as not threatening its own supply of oil. Singapore and Malaysia have different views of the importance of these tiny islands -- there may not be quantities of oil significant enough to tip the military equation at all. And, for its part, China may be having nationalist conflicts in both Sinkiang and Tibet. Recently, Beijing was the site of bombs exploding on at least one bus with some killed and wounded. The Security Service issued orders suggesting the bombs were planted by Uighur nationalists. Sinkiang is a Chinese autonomous province with some seven million Uighurs and eight million Han Chinese, many of them having been ordered to move from their homes in other parts of China. The Uighur population, however, has been living in the northwest section of Sinkiang, the Tarim Basin, said by Beijing to be rich in oil. The new rulers of the PRC have not yet had to disperse a student protest in Tiananmen Square, the venue of such demonstrations since the May Fourth Incident of May 4, 1919. In this early use of Tiananmen Square, this area had its beginnings as a national symbol of protest. On May 4, 1919 young Chinese took to the streets with banners to protest the government's agreement to accept the ceding of Germany's territorial concessions in China to Japan while the Treaty of Versailles was being negotiated following World War I. The warlord ruling North China at the time responded by beating and arresting scores of demonstrators. Instead of ending their protest, students widened it by dispersing throughout the city and continued delivering political speeches about the corrupt government and its humiliating appeasement of Japan. Slightly more than six years later, another student demonstration protesting the killing of thirteen Chines anti-imperialists. The demonstrators called for the abolition of unequal treaties that gave foreigners extraterritorial immunity under Chinese law. On March 18, 1926 students once again marched to Tiananmen Square to protest warlord Zhanh Zuolin's capitulation to new Japanese demands. After World War II, this venue continued as a site for devotional demonstrations favoring Mao and the Communist Party. Mao died in 1976, and a tomb was designed for the Great Helmsman. On April 5, 1976

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

88

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Zhou Enlai and thousands of Chinese defied a ban on demonstrations by students who believed Zhou was both fair and moderate. This demonstration had its origins in the Cultural Revolution ordered by Mao. Deng himself was reeducated by Red Guards. Then, in 1978, students and other Chines looking for at least some democracy began pasting up posters criticizing past Communist Party policies. This protest was named the Democracy Wall, but Deng, who, by this time, had been rehabilitated, took a firm hand end even these A student activist, Wei Jingsheng was arrested and sentenced to fifteen years in prison on charges of having sold state secrets to a foreigner. He was released in 1993 in an effort by the government to enhance its chances of bringing the 2000 Olympic Games to Beijing. During the period from about 1978 to 1989, critics of Deng argued that altering the structure of government to exclude democratic political change was self-defeating. China, they said, could never attain the level of political stability essential to support long term economic growth. This political schizophrenia continued right up to June 4, 1989 and the historic student demonstration of that period. The entire world saw this demonstration in Tiananmenn Square via television. In a remarkable book recently published by Random House, the past of China was captured by the simple camera. Its title was The Chinese Century A Photographic History of the Last Hundred Years. This collection of previously unpublished photos was edited by Johnathan D. Spence and Annping Chinn. In an Editor's Note the following is worth noting "The photographs reproduced in this book are the result of extensive research in archives, museums, and private collections around the world, in China, Europe and America..." China in the late nineteenth century retained astonishing continuities with what we know of the country in the third century B.C., when it first became a unified state ruled by an autocratic Emperor. Successive regimes might have standardized the written language, put in place a massive centralized bureaucracy, and built canals and road systems to link the big commercial centers, yet in 1890 Chinese lives remained generally unaffected by these changes. Most people still spoke dialects unintelligible to those from other regions, practiced folk religions in a bewildering array of local temples, raised families and arranged marriages according to local traditions, and dealt with the bureaucracy at any of its levels only when they absolutely had to. There was, indeed, no way that the traditional state could control public expressions of dissent were not tolerated by Deng. China was vast, approximately the size of the continental United States, and considerably larger than Europe. The climate and geography of the country ranged from the freezing ice-coated winters and short growing seasons of Heilongjiang on the borders with Russia to the north to the lush tropical agriculture and fisheries of the southwest on the borders

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

89

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

with Vietnam and Burma, and the arid windblown deserts that stretched from the edges of Tibet to the outer reaches of Turkestan.

No history of China can be complete without the invaluable photographs in The Chinese Century and the text that accompanies them. There are hundreds of them plus an excellent description of not just the photo itself, but also text with a brief summary of the history to which it relates. In one scene, there is a dramatic photo showing the utter devastation caused by the flood of 1991 in Anhui. In this great manmade natural disaster, the provincial government of Anhui blasted holes in the dikes on the Huai and Chu Rivers overflowing because of late spring rains. The ensuing flooding left 900,000 homeless and a further three million cut off to save the area's coal mines, power plants and down-river cities from being flooded and the less easily controlled urban population put at risk. Shanghai was only one example. The figures may not be entirely accurate, but some four million Chinese are unemployed in that city alone, victims of the Anhui flood and the loss of arable land in China's rural areas. During the Cultural Revolution, China had brought into cultivation all untilled but fertile soil - and had done colossal environmental damage by plowing up steppe grassland, stripping hillsides, and draining and cultivating lake beds and the overflow catchment areas adjacent to great rivers. The story of Hong Kong is still another example of speculation leading to major uncertainty after this area reverts to China after June 30, 1997.With Deng's death on February 19, 1997 one may wonder just what this man did. Although Deng's reforms were of great significance, they consisted of nothing more complicated than abandoning a system that had failed catastrophically twenty years earlier. Curiously the same system failed in the Soviet Union two decades before that. Statistics are often unreliable, so they are viewed with mistrust by writers of history. During the 1960s and 1970s, China's most critical security threat came from the Soviet Union, which caused about two-thirds of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to be routed to the north and northwest in defense of Manchuria. In 1972, Richard Nixon traveled to Beijing and started the slow rapprochement with the United States, partly as a counterweight to Soviet influence and occasional border clashes along the Manchurian border with the Soviet Union. Mao died in 1976. After the maneuvering for leadership succession, which Deng Xiaoping won, he called for defense conversion, but also for a military campaign beyond China's borders. However, he did not foresee the generally poor performance of the Chinese army when it invaded Vietnam in 1979. On that occasion, the PLA penetrated deep into Vietnamese territory and occupied several small provincial capitals. It could not convince the public, either abroad or at home, that the PLA had won, because it had

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

90

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

suffered heavy casualties. So, instead of teaching the Vietnamese a lesson, as Deng had instructed, the PLA was taught a lesson it is still working on. The Soviet threat was minimized by Russia's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and Deng believed the PLA needed testing by had failed catastrophically twenty years earlier. Curiously, the same system failed in the Soviet Union two decades before that. Deng must share the responsibility for ignoring the lessons of both earlier failures. While economic reforms have propelled China in the right directions, the peasants have gone back to the situation they were in before the Communist Revolution. The peasants are once again small landowners but with less arable land to divide up. Deng's successors must deal with the virtually intractable problem of finding employment for a growing surplus of labor in the country's rural areas. Chinese leaders also supported defense conversion, while, at the same time, actually reducing the size of the PLA by 25 percent. The million plus troops out of jobs were added to the huge number of Chinese for whom Mao had promised a better quality of life. Thus, at a time when military spending probably tripled, the outward appearance was economic growth of the civilian economy. The PLA actually owned many companies dedicated to civilian production, and this fact has been shown in the type of aircraft the Chinese air force has been using. Its aircraft are old, probably obsolete Soviet aircraft. Having been stunned by the Persian Gulf War and America's use of "smart weapons" and modern aircraft, China seems to have a long way to go to convert its military into a well-armed and efficient military force. The last time it was seen in action was 1989. Then, Deng authorized the PLA to suppress the student protest in Tiananmen Square. The slaughter of unarmed students is hardly the sort of training Chines troops will need to invade and regain Taiwan, even though Beijing has stated on more than one occasion that it will reacquire Taiwan by peaceful means. This statement is on the same level of truth as it is currently displaying in Hong Kong. The United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China signed a "Joint Declaration....on the Question of Hong Kong on December 19, 1984. There are a number of paragraphs in this declaration that should be noted. With effect from July 1, 1997 the PRC has established certain polices; one of them was based on Article 31 of the PRC Constitution. It permits "the state to establish special administrative regions when necessary." Thus, Hong Kong will become the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and effectively govern this former Crown colony. Article v of the basic policies reads as follows: The current social and economic Systems in Hong Kong will remain unchanged, and so will the lifestyle. Rights and freedoms including those of the person, of speech of the press, of assembly, of association, of travel, of movement, of correspondence, of strike, of choice of occupation, of academic

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

91

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

research, and of religious belief will be ensured by law in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

In the period between 1984 and 1989, Hong Kong factions tried to expedite the pace of democratic change; they wanted to have a democratic governing body before the 1997 turnover. In 1989, however, the student protest in Tiananmen Square occurred. On June 3, 1989 and for days thereafter, Beijing ordered the PLA to crush this demonstration. In fact, the PLA killed hundreds, some say thousands of unarmed student protesters. Over one million Chinese in Hong Kong demonstrated in favor of the students. Beijing made sure that this sort of protest would not be allowed when its handpicked legislature ruled Hong Kong. The Communist government of the PRC has a long memory; it had not forgotten the student protest of 1989. On March 28, 1990 the National People's Congress (NPC) convened in Beijing. By unanimous vote, the NPC established the Hong Kong Special Administrative District effective on July 1, 1997. Another resolution enabled the NPC to set up the Basic Law Committee which would advise the Standing Committee on the interpretation and amendment of the Basic Law. A third resolution established a preparatory committee in 1996; it would be responsible for setting up the first government of Hong Kong. At least half its members would be from Hong Kong, and the other half would be appointed in Beijing. The rulers there provided no judicial system allowing legal challenges to actions of the government of Hong Kong. At least two years before the turnover, Beijing had made it clear that democratic elections in Hong Kong would never occur. The Beijing government disclosed that the Legislative Council would all be appointed not elected by Hong Kong voters. The courts established by the rulers in Beijing will not protect human rights or property rights. Furthermore, American-owned businesses in Hong Kong will have to toe the Communist Party line or face eviction after cancellation of their corporate licenses for conduct considered counterrevolutionary by Beijing. Competition may but will probably not occur, except on Beijing's terms. In 1997, Tung Cheehwa, the shipping magnate was chosen in by Beijing as Hong Kong's first appointed Chief Executive. Tung declared that "Hong Kong was extremely vulnerable to external forces." The new government," he said, "must strike a balance between civil liberties and social stability, personal rights and social obligations, individual interests and the common good." With Tung's proposal, all organizations and societies will now be required to register with the police. In the past, organizations had only to notify the government of their existence. Furthermore, the local government will have the power to ban any organization "in the interest of national security." It is really quite difficult to visualize any situation in Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

92

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Hong Kong with all its police and PLA military units that could possibly threaten local security. National security would involve some vital interest that had to be protected by the state. Free speech is expected to disappear after June 30, 1997. Article xii also states that: The above-stated basic policies of the People's Republic of China Joint Declaration will be stipulated, in a Basic Law of the Hong Kong regarding Hong Kong and the elaboration of them in Annex 1 to this Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China , by the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China, and remain unchanged for 50 years.

The National People's Congress is Beijing's "rubber stamp" organization for all laws The last paragraph of Article XIII in Annex 1 provides that "The provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights as applied to Hong Kong shall remain in force." Curiously, no one listed the language of the portions of these documents that were to remain in effect. In view of this ambiguity, Beijing will probably argue that these vital documents have no force or effect, having been passed by the United Nations General Assembly about forty-five years ago. None of these solemn documents and the promises made in them in 1984 seem to bother the Chinese today. For all practical purposes, the leaders in Beijing have ordered the Basic Law of 1990 shredded. Predictably, the reaction in Hong Kong was one of anger. Christine Loh, an independent lawyer who will lose her seat when the PRC replaces Hong Kong's elected legislature, said in the New York Times, "The proposals cast a pall of doubt over the future of every civic, community and non-governmental organization in Hong Kong. No one in Hong Kong has serious worries about social stability. As a society, of course, we do have real problems to tackle corruption, for example. But it is perfectly clear that social stability is not one of our problems." At Commercial Radio's morning talk show, "Teapot in a Tempest, " callers were fierce in their denunciation of Tung's proposals. When one caller wondered whether it would do any good to express opposition, the popular host of the show, replied "If they get 300,000 letters saying the same thing, they will notice." Emily Lau, an independent legislator who had been strongly critical of China's approach to Hong Kong described Tung's proposals as dangerous and unnecessary. She announced a protest for the weekend and planned to march to Tung's office. Such a peaceful protest would not be approved by the police after June 30, 1997. The South China Morning Post, the leading English language newspaper expressed alarm. "It has not been explained why the police require greater powers and how they will be applied," one of its editorial writers noted. "But the fact that the changes are felt to be so important by the future

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

93

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

authorities can only be seen as a sign of a more restrictive approach which places insufficient faith in the civic sense of the people of the territory."

The five countries shown in the maps below are all newly independent countries of the former Soviet Union. Geographically, they form what is loosely used to describe Central Asia. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and centrifugal force drove those countries on the periphery to demand and get their political independence from Russia. The entire area has a population of about 44 million people, with Uzbekistan the largest with 21 million, and Kazakhstan second, with 17.3 million They are also new members of The North Atlantic Cooperation Council. The Secretary General of NATO, Dr. Javier Solana visited these countries in March, 1997, presumably to discussed their new status as members of The North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NAAC). With the exception of Tajikistan, the people of these countries all speak a Turkic language, but they have difficulty understanding each other. Tajik, the language spoken is a dialect of Persian similar to Farsi and Dari. The people of Turkmenistan, for example, speak Turkmen, while the people of Kyrgyzstan speak Kirghiz. have their own variation. However, the official language is Russian. About 56 percent of the 17 million people in Kazakhstan speak Kazakh, but the language of inter-ethnic communication is Russian.

Tajikistan & Kyrgystan

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

94

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan & Kazakhstan

Approximately the same linguistic mix exists in Uzbekistan. Before the collapse of the old Soviet Union, the Soviets ethnic tensions in Central Asia had their origins in Moscow. Large groups of Turkmen, Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Kyrgyz were forced by the Soviets to move from one Central Asian republic to another. Uzbekistan, with its population of twenty-one million people suggests it may have the greatest potential of the five Central Asian republics to fill the role of political anchor in the region. President Islam Karimov has announced that October, 1997, was the 2500th anniversary of Khiva in Uzbekistan. Karimov was its president until a five-year term expired whereupon he authorized a referendum extending his term. Reports of the election were mixed. However, there has been no one publicly disagreeing with the administration's figures of a 99.6 percent vote approving the outcome. Karimov insisted he was committed to economic reform and democratic institutions. However, Karimov's plans for opening the country to democracy and foreign investment clashed with the Communist's fear of losing control of power. There is no independent press, protest meetings are forbidden, and opposition political parties were banned before the referendum vote. Efforts to diversify the cotton-based economy depended largely on foreign investment, but corruption and broken promises drove some foreign investors and deeply offended those entrepreneurs that chose to remain. The population has been secular in its orientation, and security police kept it that way by intimidating the mullahs and Islamic fundamentalists. Alcohol was freely available in the major cities of Tashkent, in the Uzbek capitol, Bukhara, and Khiva. Bukhara was different in at least one important area. It was a city regarded as holy by Nakshbandi Moslems. They represented the view that the Koran did not require others to adopt any particular religion. Its mullahs derive their faith from the Koran, but must preach tolerance and a peace. This order named after its 14th century founder, preaches an all-embracing form of Islam that abhors sectarianism and orthodoxy. It claims 40 million adherents in dozens of countries.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

95

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

When early Moslem armies invaded a city and began to kill women and children, Mohammad, the Nakshbandi order believes, stopped them. They are infidels, the soldiers said. However, Mohammad replied by saying the soldiers were once infidels themselves. Music from nearby Tajikistan offers persuasive evidence of its culture. It was probably composed long before the ugly civil war within its borders in 1997. Music by Yulduz Usmanova sung in Uzbekistan offers another aspect of Central Asia's culture. The New York Times ran a story on Uzbek culture on December 8, 1997. Datelined Bukhara, its author offered a tantalizing glimpse of a culture that had all but disappeared. "The Silk Road, one of history's greatest trading routes, once traversed Central Asia and the caravans that passed through Bukhara and other cities, including Samarkand and Tashkent, left a rich cultural heritage. People here became expert in a wide variety of crafts. Men wore richly embroidered caftans, women covered themselves with jewelry, and girls collected handmade objects of beauty for their dowries."...An exhibition of 19th century Uzbek textiles was at San Francisco's deYoung Museum until March, 1998 when it opened in Washington. During the 13th and 14th centuries, the Mongols, a nomadic and warlike people, ruled much of China and Central Asia. Genghis Khan, for example, captured entire cities sparing only the artists, artisans, and craftsmen. He killed the rest of the population, but the artists were sent to various areas and spent their lives creating silk pieces, tapestries, and even clothes. Museum experts have been doing detective work to locate the origins of this evidence of Central Asian culture.

13th Century Mongolian Tapestries

Anne Wardwell and James Watt were the researchers who unearthed at least one piece now on exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is entitled "When Silk was Gold: Central Asian and Chinese textiles. In 1989, Mrs Wardwell acquired a 13th-century tapestry of gold and silk. It had images of winged lions with long tails looped around rosettes. A year later, another tapestry from the same period arrived at the museum. It was emblazoned with eagles, dragons and panthers which also had tails looped around rosettes. Mrs Wardwell knew she had solved the puzzle when they

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

96

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

were seen together. One was woven by artists sent east, and the other by artists in the Iranian world. This finding supports the idea of migration by artists. Other pieces in the exhibition include some from Uzbekistan, a few from Tibet and some by Uighur artists from what is now Sinnliang. In his travels, Marco Polo carried pieces from these areas back to Venice, but his routes were known as the Silk Routes in the 13th century. Kazakhstan is in no position to be the political anchor, even with its oil fields. There has been too much ethnic hostility that recently surfaced with the end of monolithic Communist control. The six million Russians in the republic, formerly the favored class, now face the hostility of a society dominated by Muslims.. Furthermore, Kazakhstan has serious pollution problems, obsolete technology, and not much experience in foreign markets. However, Kazakhstan has the oil, and in huge amounts. As a result, major western oil companies and Lukhoil of Russia and China's petroleum ministry were all pressing Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev to sign production agreements for oil. However, Russia lost this round. In October, 1997, Nazarbayev told Russian Prime Muinister, Victor Chernomyrdin that Kazakhstan would sign production sharing agreements with France's Total SA, Royal Dutch/Shell, a British Petroleum-Statoil alliance, Italy's AGIP SpA, and Mobil Corporation of the United States to develop some of its very valuable offshore oil fields. Russia has taken the position that the Caspian Sea is an inland lake, not a sea. Consequently, one of its littoral states cannot exploit resources that belong to all its littoral states. International law does not support this position. This so far unresolved dispute has already sent tremors through an $8 billion international oil consortium to the south, but on the Caspian Sea. Since 1991 and the independence of some former Soviet republics, Russia has remained something of a big brother to most of these republics, such as Kazakhstan. As a result, Russia retains a strong presence in Central Asian states like Kazakhstan. It is obligated to Russia for access to Sovietbuilt pipelines to export their oil and gas. Russia lost some of this big brother status when, in 1997, it deployed Cossack troops along its border with Kazakhstan. It was an ugly reminder of Cossack colonization of the Kazakh steppes, attempting to move the borders of the old Tsarist empire to the detriment of the once-nomadic Kazakhs. Tajikistan features civil war between two different Islamic groups and oldstyle Communism. Democracy seems unlikely in mountainous Tajikistan, and the civil war, every bit as savage as the war in Bosnia, seems without end. As recently as August 1997, there was no one capable of brokering a peace agreement. Originally, the fighting forced tens of thousands of Islam-led Tajiks to flee to Afghanistan. The winners carved Tajikistan into fiefs run by local war lords who allowed Emomali Rakhmonov to operate

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

97

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

as the nominal leader of these war lords. He has no power of his own. Russian jets have intervened occasionally in this vicious civil war with no end in sight. Furthermore, every time there is an earthquake in the region, ordinary activities stop. In 1911, an earthquake in the Pamir Mountains occurred, and several cubic kilometers of the Mizkol Range slid down, burying the village of Osoi and damming the Murgob River Valley. Sarez Lake, created by this dam, is some sixty kilometers long. The disintegration of this dam would release a wall of water that would destroy everything on its way to Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Periodic plans to lower the water level or channel it in a benign direction have run out of money. A major earthquake would probably breach the dam and lead to destruction on a vast scale. Both the Russian Tsars and the Soviet Union after 1921 confirmed Uzbekistan's position in Central Asia. The Russians elevated Tashkent to their military and administrative center soon after conquering it in 1865. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Stalin simply incorporated Uzbekistan into a Soviet republic. It was still the seat of Russia's military presence in Central Asia when the USSR collapsed in 1991. However, before 1991 Soviet rule had developed Uzbekistan's economy siting major plants for the production of aircraft, buses, and tractors, as well as refineries for oil from neighboring Turkmenistan. However, the real economic importance of these five republics is a solid base of natural resources of which oil and natural gas seem the most promising. Kazakhstan, for example, will soon be producing 200,000 barrels of oil a day developed by Chevron and other international oil companies in the Tenghiz field alone. In Turkmenistan, there are still enormous reserves of natural gas; some say in excess of 45 trillion cubic meters. Other natural resources of great importance to industry, such as gold, tungsten, and manganese are abundant in Uzbekistan. Agriculture is favored by weather suitable for cotton, and Uzbekistan has become one of the world's largest producers of this export commodity. Saparmurad Niyazov is the Communist president of Turkmenistan and recently announced the construction of a natural gas pipeline into Iran. He won the presidency in 1992 unopposed . Niyazov has the unnerving habit of firing his trade ministers. Once an exporter of natural gas to Russia, Turkmenistan has been boxed in by that country. Russia closed down Turkmenistan's only pipeline to Eastern Europe, forcing Niyazov to sell gas to neighboring countries controlled by Russia. These countries, however, could not pay their bills in any convertible currency. Turkmenistan was left with over $1 billion in unpaid bills. The new pipeline to Iran won't help Turkmenistan for almost a year; money paid by Iran for gas must first be applied to the cost of the pipeline. Niyazov has never explained the details of the Iran pipeline; he relies instead on his own image machine to bolster his standing.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

98

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Chinese officials have claimed for years that the Tarim Basin in Sinkiang had vast oil reserves. They have now given up looking and worked out a deal with Kazakhstan. On August 1, 1997 Kazakhstan announced it had granted the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) the exclusive right to negotiate a contract to develop the Uzen oilfield. China is also talking about investing over $1 billion to build a 1,300mile pipeline to carry Kazakh oil to China. More controversially, it wants to send some of the oil across the Caspian Sea by tanker to Iran for onward delivery to Europe. China will have local problems with ethnic Uighurs in Sinkiang through which the pipeline would be built. Uighurs are a distinct ethnic group without a country. In this respect, they resemble the Kurds, and they are just as troublesome. Furthermore, Chinese attempts to put down rebellion may draw angry reactions from Uighur emigres. If Kazakhstan's government ignores Uighur feelings it might find itself the focus of Turkic wrath. Nursultan Nazarbaev, Kazakhstan's president, seems determined to move its capital city from Almaty to Akmola, Hardly anyone has shown much enthusiasm for this move to a climate in winter that's well below zero. Almost in anticipation of China's agreement with Kazakhstan to develop the Uzen oilfield, the Clinton Administration announced it would drop its opposition to oil and natural gas pipelines. They ran through about 740 miles of Iran to Turkey, probably its port city of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea. The date of this announcement was July 25, 1997 just days before the inauguration of Iran's new president, Mohammed Khatami, described by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as a "moderate." The Clinton Administration also said that shipping natural gas or oil through a part of Iran would not violate provisions of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act signed by Clinton in 1996. This seems a rather narrow interpretation of a law enacted to prevent Iran from benefiting Iran financially. The natural gas would come from Turkmenistan, and the oil would flow from wells in the Caspian Sea Basin. Uzbekistan's rivers originate in the mountains of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, but the water is largely lost to irrigation and evaporation. The diversion of the waters of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya for irrigation has caused the Aral Sea to shrink by almost half. The Aral Sea has become increasingly saline, and its waters have been polluted by chemical fertilizers and insecticides carried into it by feeder rivers. Water and soil pollution in Uzbekistan were legacies of the Soviet occupation from 1924 to the present time.. Eventually, this spreading pollution caused serious environmental damage affecting the health of the Uzbek populace. In June, 1990, Uzbekistan declared that its own laws displaced those enacted by the Soviet Union and applied uniformly throughout it within all other Soviet republics. After 1991, opposition

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

99

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

parties were allowed to organize but were later suppressed, and Islam Karimov was elected president in 1994 as chairman of the People's Democratic Party once controlled by Communists. In 1989, Karimov was First Secretary of the Uzbekistan Communist Party Central Committee. In 1995, the Secretary of Defense in Washington, William Perry visited Tashkent. He praised Uzbekistan as "an island of stability" in Central Asia. Its officials responded in kind by being the only Central Asian to back the American embargo against the sale of Russian nuclear reactors to Iran. Up to this point, the United States had treated Central Asia as an afterthought in terms of European security. In 1997, the view from Washington has changed; five Central Asian countries are members of the second tier of states belonging to NATO. via the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic became associate members of NATO. Article 10 of the treaty establishing NATO permitted the addition of only European countries to NATO; Asian countries required a different status. They could be added as second tier states without amending the NATO treaty and asking the Senate to ratify the treaty as amended. The Caspian Sea blocks pipelines from Turkmenistan to the west except via Iran. However, Russia takes the position that the Caspian Sea is not a sea at all, but a lake. As such, it must be jointly exploited by the individual countries along its shores. This position prevents Turkmenistan from excluding Iran or Russia from negotiations contemplating the sale of natural gas to Europe or Pakistan and India or at least through Russia to Europe. With consent from Moscow, Turkmenistan may tunnel under the Caspian Sea to ship gas to Turkey and eventually to the Mediterranean Sea, but only at a cost considered prohibitively high by Western oil companies that would be building the pipeline. In February, 1997 Russia's Foreign Minister, Yevgeny Primakov, offered a compromise. He proposed dividing the Caspian Sea into zones. Azerbaijan, however, has refused to accept this proposal and maintained its position that the Caspian is a sea, not a lake. The United States supported this position. Presumably, Clinton brought this up when he met with Russia's Boris Yeltsin in March, 1997. Until the status of the Caspian Sea has been settled, oil and gas delivery by Turkmenistan to Europe is on hold. Kazakhstan has the same problem. It is one of the four countries with borders on the Caspian Sea. Iran and Russia are the other two. In June, 1997 a major American oil company announced it wanted to build a $2.3 billion pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. The key to this deal was Afghanistan. It had to be at peace with those countries around it and peace had to exist within Afghanistan. For a few hours in June, these conditions existed. However, the Taliban extremists were again fighting each other. The opposition to the Taliban is made up

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

100

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

of Uzbeks and another faction led by a leader of the Hazara people. Russia is not far from being the principal opposition to the pipeline from Turkmenistan. Moscow blocked natural gas exports from Turkmenistan to Europe, and not religious warfare within Afghanistan has blocked another route that would earn hard currency for Turkmenistan. Old warriors of the Soviet Union might have told the warring factions in Afghanistan how hopeless peace might be; the Soviet Union had forces in that country from 1980 to 1989 and retreated in defeat. Tajikistan has had a civil war in the last three years. It has also experienced three changes of government during the same period (1994). The current president Emonmali Rakhmonov was elected to the presidency in November, 1994, yet he has been in power since 1992. Underlying the civil war are deeply rooted regional and clan-based animosities that pit one group primarily from a particular region against a secular and Islam-led opposition in another region. There seems to be no end in sight. Government and opposition representatives have held periodic rounds of United Nations-mediated peace talks. In September, 1994, government and opposition leaders agreed to a ceasefire. Russianled peacekeeping forces are deployed throughout the country, and Russian border guards are stationed along the Tajik-Afghanistan border. In its westernmost region, Sinkiang an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China is keeping a wary eye on this civil war. It might spill over and stir up unwanted nationalism amongst those Uighurs living in China. It was noted earlier herein that Dr. Solana of NATO visited all of the five states listed in the title of this chapter, except for Tajikistan. NATO regarded that country as so involved in a civil war with Russian troops patrolling Tajikistan and its borders with Afghanistan that it could not be considered for membership in the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. The forty states participating in the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) and other member countries of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) able and willing to contribute, were invited to join the NATO member states of the Partnership for Peace. Some twenty-six accepted and in most cases Individual Partnership Programs have been agreed and are being implemented. The extension of NATO programs into Asia occurred only because the former Soviet Union, now the Confederation of States (CIS) shed some newly independent states, and some states declared their independence from Russia but remained members of the confederation. Five of the forty new members were spun off from Russia in one way or another during or after 1991. They are: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

101

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Other former Russian states now members of NACC include Armenia, Belaurus, Georgia, Moldova, and Azerbaijan. This indirect expansion of NATO was severely criticized in Moscow as a move designed to further weaken Russia. President Yeltsin reluctantly agreed to this indirect expansion; he may have had no choice because of the weakness of Russian forces. Most of them had not been paid for months, and some of the soldiers wanted to be relieved of any obligation, i.e., conscription, to serve in the military. Active duty Russian troops were already serving in Tajikistan and Georgia as peacekeepers. Moscow did not have the funds to pay the others, except during intermittent periods when Moscow was driven to pay the armed forces. The United Nations has followed an indirect route to peace in Georgia. It has an Observer Mission in Georgia with the tongue-twisting acronym of UNOMIG. This mission was originally established to verify the ceasefire agreement of July 27, 1993 between the Government of Georgia and the Abkhaz authorities After fighting broke out in September, 1993, the Mission was given an Interim Mandate by the Security Council. Finally, there was a new ceasefire in May, 1994. The peacekeeping Mission had new responsibilities. It was responsible for monitoring the separation of forces -- CIS and Abkhaz forces, verify that troops from either side to remain in the security zone, and to control the position of heavy military equipment. As of December 31, 1996 the Mission had personnel from twenty-two nations including the United States acting essentially as observers. They were also charged with the responsibility of maintaining the "territorial integrity of Georgia." The United Nations has elected to treat the fighting in Georgia as a civil war limited in scope. Georgia is a member of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. The NACC, however, has temporarily deferred to the United Nations mandate which is moving in the same direction as NACC, toward stability or peace. Nuclear weapons made in the former Soviet Union are the source of widespread concern Many of these weapons of mass destruction were originally in Kazakhstan, and they remained there after this republic acquired its independence. By the end of 1993, Kazakhstan had been officially accepted as a member by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria. Article III of the Agency's Statute authorized the IAEA "to establish and administer safeguards designed to ensure that special fissionable and other material, services, equipment, facilities and information... are not used in such a way as to further any military purpose." The objective of most Western countries has been to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons. They have moved forward on this issue with Start I and Start II in 1993, and the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty ratified in 1967. Start II was signed by Russia and the United States calling on both to slash their nuclear arsenals of long-range

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

102

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

weapons from 7,500 to 3,500 each. Both agreed to eliminate their huge land-based missiles that carry up to ten warheads each. The Senate ratified this treaty in 1996. The Duma, Russia's parliament has yet to take it up. The headlong rush of President Clinton to expand NATO has left President Boris Yeltsin with a club over Clinton's head. If Clinton tells Republican hard-liners in the Senate that the NATO expansion gives Russia no vetoes and that NATO expansion will push right up against Russia's present borders, Yeltsin will tell the Duma the motives behind the NATO expansion are unclear. Once the Duma sees NATO's expansion as unclear, Start II will never be ratified there. In a related move, Russia and Ukraine signed a friendship treaty on May 30, 1997 treaty affirmed the 1954 transfer of the Crimea to Ukraine. At the time it collapsed in 1991, the Soviet Black Sea Fleet was based in Sebastopol, and the treaty affirmed Russian ownership of the fleet. This means only that Russian forces necessary to operate the fleet may transit Ukraine for that purpose. While Ukraine did not oppose the NATO expansion, it had no interest in joining NATO.

The importance of Russia can scarcely be underestimated. China and Russia signed a strategic partnership agreement in April, 1997. Russia's Boris Yeltsin and China's Jiang Zemin jointly celebrated the execution of this agreement, together with the presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgistan, and Tajikistan, who also signed an agreement that did nothing more than reduce the number of troops close to their common borders. A month later, Yeltsin and Leonid Kuchma, President of Ukraine, signed a friendship treaty. China and Russia are big bruising powers who share the neighborhood with the small fry, but only let them live on the street if they have commodities needed by both, such as oil. The military shake out since 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union hasn't helped either China or Russia. Russia hasn't paid its armed force for months except in devalued rubles, and China has armed itself with obsolete weapons of Soviet origin. So, as two scholars have noted, China is an empty fortress surrounded by the Great Wall.. However, both China and Russia have nuclear weapons so they cannot be moved on to the back shelf for

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

103

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

examination at some later time for policies capable of mass destruction. Both need to be looked at on a continuing basis, in Russia's case here back to 1890 or thereabouts to trace its Communist origins from the Tsar of all the Russians to Lenin and Stalin. For an excellent link to Tsarist Russia. See the Alexander Palace Time Machine. In early February, 1913 St.. Petersburg celebrated three hundred years of Romanov rule over Russia. Only four years later, the monarchy had ended and a bloody revolution converted the government to Soviets ruled by V.I Lenin and Alexander Kerensky until 1924. In that year, Lenin died only to be replaced by Joseph Stalin. The speed at which so momentous a change had occurred was due to a number of factors. Tsar Nicholas II succeeded to his position in 1896 when Tsar Alexander died. Nicholas admitted he had no knowledge of what it took to rule Russia and, in fact, had no interest in being ruler. He was utterly incompetent, and believed in autocracy. His wife, Alexandra, was Queen Victoria's granddaughter and disliked by the Russians. She lived in a manner that did not allow for contact with lesser mortals except for Rasputin, a mad monk who, from time to time, helped with the bouts of illness suffered by the little Tsarevich, a hemophiliac. Orlando Figes, who wrote a massive work on Russia entitled A People's Tragedy, offered a few thoughts on the tercentenary jubilee. In the mind of the ordinary peasant the Tsar was not just a kingly ruler but a god on earth. He thought of him as a father-figure who knew all the peasants personally by name, understood their problems in all their minute details, and, if were not for the evil boyars, the noble officials who surrounded him, would satisfy their demands in a Golden Manifesto giving them the land....But in general the myth of the Good Tsar worked to the benefit of the crown, and as the revolutionary crisis deepened Nicholas's propagandists relied increasingly on it.....In fact, the jubilee took place in the midst of profound social and political crisis -- some would say even a revolutionary one. Its celebrations were set against a backdrop of several decades of growing violence, human suffering and repression, which had set the Tsar's people against the regime.

In 1861, Tsar Alexander II had emancipated the serfs, just as President Abraham Lincoln emancipated the slaves a few years later. This Emancipation was perhaps the beginning of the peasant revolution. With freedom from serfdom, the landed gentry had no labor to work on their estates. Thus, the landed gentry or squires began accumulating debt and continuing to live in style and at great expense. Over time, the squires sold off portions of their land to the peasants. Between 1861 and 1900 more than 40 percent of the gentry's land was sold to the peasants whose growing land hunger led to a sevenfold increase in land values. There was a similar rise in rental values. By 1900, two-thirds of the gentry's arable land had been rented out to the peasants. A depression between 1880 and Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

104

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

1890 forced the peasants to increase the land they ploughed. . This made it more profitable for the squires to rent out or sell the land rather than cultivate it. With a very few exceptions, the gentry had absolutely no idea of how to operate a farm, grow food. The home of the gentry, once filled with expensive furniture and European art gradually fell into decay. A few of the landed gentry were unwilling to see their enterprises go under. Prince Georgii Lvov was one of them. He and his family were neighbors of Count Lyof Tolstoi and capable of work. With his sons, Lvov turned a failing agricultural enterprise around and made a profit from this point on. Lvov and others like him became the liberals of the rural areas of Russia. Prince Lvov belonged to the elected local assembly -- Figes calls them zemsvtos -- and the local rural volost was a smaller unit comprising one or two villages. The peasants resented the local assemblies, because they were never elected to such an office, and the Tsar, together with his ministers saw these assemblies as hot beds of liberalism. While the monarchy relied on the military, it did not treat it at all well. In fact, the mostly conscript army was overwhelmingly peasant, and officers merely perpetuated the feudal system within the ranks. All this led to poor morale. And the demoralization of the army was also connected to its increasing role in the suppression of civilian protests. The defeat of the Russian army during the Crimean War was followed by a humiliating and costly campaign against Turkey in 1877. They left the Russian military fare down on the list of bureaucratic priorities. So even the officer class sometimes had to spend its own money of equipment not considered by the Duma. For various reasons, many peasant migrated to the urban areas and lost touch with the primarily oral culture of the village and the accessibility to the church of those who remained in the rural areas. In the urban setting there were not enough churches to serve so many rootless peasants. The younger peasants aspired to own property themselves; they saw no future in the rule of the elders. The growing literacy of these younger peasants was a source of individualism. Literacy in Russia rose from 21 percent of the Empire's population in 1897 to 40 percent on the eve of World War I in 1914. By building more schools outside the urban areas, the government was hastening its own end. The role of the peasant was to live and work in utter poverty. Without enough capital to modernize their farms, the peasants had to reduce the size of the fallow land. This only made matters worse; the soil was exhausted by being overworked while livestock herds (the main source of fertilizer) were reduced. By 1900, a third of the peasant households did not even own a horse. These peasants had to cultivate the land by attaching themselves to a plough. There was a growing resentment to the Tsar's tax collectors; the peasants invented ways of avoiding the payment of even insignificant taxes. Many peasants migrated to the cities, where they found the Tsar reluctant to better the lot

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

105

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

of the worker through factory legislation.Even when it did enact laws, employers ignored their application with impunity. Radical intelligentsia of this period included many writers, including Karl Marx. In 1872, his Das Capital was submitted to the Tsarist censors. In German, the language of this book was so dense, the censors approved its publication. The first censor noted that "very few people in Russia would read it, and even fewer would understand it." The second censor, noting the book attacked the British factory system, read that the capitalist exploitation Marx described had never been experienced in Russia. The book was an instant success, and its print run of 3000 was sold within the year. In January, 1904 the Japanese attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur in Manchuria. The Tsar and his advisers saw victory as around the corner. However, the Russian army turned out to be poorly armed with obsolete equipment, and the sheer incompetence of the military commanders stuck literally to the military doctrines of the previous century. The government autocracy had shown that it was incapable of defending the national interest, and Russia had to sign a humiliating treaty with Japan in 1905. This was the year in which Russia had its Tiananmen Square massacre but in St.. Petersburg. Some 150,000 workers marched toward the Winter Palace to petition the Tsar to do something about poor working conditions. These unarmed marchers were mowed down by the guns of the Tsar and the sabres of the Tsar's Cossacks. Bloody Sunday followed by strikes throughout the country and student protests closing all the schools of Russia marked the beginning of the Russian Revolution. A national strike in October, 1905 should have alerted the Tsar. Instead, he spent the month hunting. Count Sergei Witte requested an audience with the Tsar, but it was not granted until October 9. Witte had brought with him the outline of a constitutional monarchy, an elected Duma and Cabinet government. Tsar Nicholas signed the agreement presented by Witte, but nothing really was accomplished; the Tsar waited only to the end of what he saw as a crisis and then junked the agreement. The Tsar was unrelentingly hostile to any idea of constitutional reform and remained so until 1917 when events forced him to abdicate. Soon after the violence of 1905, the Jews were retroactively blamed, a charge without evidence but supported by the Tsar and his police throughout Russia. During the post-Bloody Sunday period, V. I. Lenin wrote from Zurich encouraging the rebellious to unite. Alexander Kerensky was one of those who listened and acted in 1917 as did Leon Trotsky. The threat of war in Europe had increased after the events of 1905. The Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires were both breaking apart under pressure from nationalism. By 1914, the Tsar himself was of the view that the time had come for a firm stand against Austria. If it became essential

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

106

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

to protect Russia's vital interests, a war was certain, and Russia was too weak to withstand a long war of attrition which the Anglo-German rivalry was likely to produce. Thus, a violent social revolution was bound to be the result in Russia. The government did not have the trust of the largely peasant army. The Tsar ordered Russian mobilization on August 1, 1914, and the die was cast. In the first few weeks of bloody fighting, the Russians advanced some 140 miles, but a combination of tactical surprise and poor communications forced the Russians to retreat at two key battles, where Russia lost some 250,000 trained professional soldiers. Thereafter, the new conscript army, badly trained and poorly led produced one military disaster after another. Once again the Russian army was ill fed and poorly clothed during the cold winter of 1914. It was not long before the army was ridden with disease. Unexpectedly, the high rate of casualties decimated the troops and placed unsustainable burdens on medical attention and evacuation. The government had dragged conscripts into a war they could not win, and morale sank to new lows to be replaced by anger and revolutionary conduct. The Tsar announced he would take command of the troops at the front, but he had no experience in military command and by leaving St.. Petersburg -- renamed Petrograd -- he allowed his ministers to conspire behind him. In the winter of 1916, desertion of the soldiers began and turned into a torrent. However, when they returned from a rapidly changing front, a combination of cold and strikes led to a bread shortage. In Petrograd, these and other conditions led to a mutiny of the soldiers. The Tsarist authorities lost all military power in the nation's capital. Soldiers and civilians fought side by side and raided depots storing arms. Chaos had to be ended and order restored. It was and on March 3, 1917 the Tsar abdicated. A vacuum at the top was the result, and Prince Sergei Lvov tried to fill it with appointments to a Provisional Government. This body moved like a snail, and it was not at all what Lenin had in mind. He arrived in Petrograd via the Finland Station, presenting his April Theses on the next day. "The Russian bourgeoisie was too feeble to carry out a democratic revolution; and that this would have to be carried out by the proletariat instead.....the whole of Europe was on the brink of a socialist revolution, the Russian Revolution did not have to confine itself to bourgeois democratic objectives. But the practical implications of the Theses -- that the Bolsheviks should cease to support the February Revolution and should move directly towards the establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat -- went far beyond anything that all but the extreme leftwingers in the party had ever considered before." The Provisional Government, however, approved sending a delegation to Brest-Litovsk to discuss an armistice with the Germans. After stalling for time, the Russian delegation agreed to sign this treaty which left the Ukraine to the Germans. At last, Lenin was free impose his revolution from Moscow.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

107

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

The capital had been moved there from Petrograd to signify Russia's Asian orientation. Lenin and Trotsky both approved of this move in early 1918 The White Russians -- these were the conservatives fighting a rearguard civil war with the Red Bolsheviks -- tried to save what they could, and General Anton Dennikin led the so-called Volunteers until his death. As Figes put it: The State Unity Council and the National Centre were the only two groups with any real influence, sharing the posts in the Dennikin government. The former was monarchist and denied the legitimacy of the February Revolution. The latter was Kadet and pledged to restore the Constituent Assembly.....The White leaders...failed to adapt to the new revolutionary world in which the civil war had to be fought. They made no effort to develop policies that might appeal to the peasants or the national minorities, although the support of both was essential. They were too firmly rooted in the old Russia.

The defeat of Germany in 1918 was probably the only development that could have allowed the civil war to continue with the Allied forces supporting the Whites.The Whites also undermined whatever legitimacy they possessed. Peasants deserted in droves, and when caught, they were publicly flogged. This repression only drove more of them into the arms of the Reds. However, in the summer of 1918, the Reds were facing defeat on all fronts. Lenin introduced mass conscription which produced an army of peasants. This had useful consequence; it reduced or ended the domination of the working class in the military, a consequence not unwelcome to Lenin. However, the Reds needed all the men it could get. By 1920, the Red army had grown to five million men, but not all of them were dedicated Bolsheviks. In fact, the army had grown so rapidly, Russian production could not keep up the military's needs. As a result, desertions increased; most of them were peasants who had to grow food for their own families as well as for the army which normally requisitioned food. According to Figes: Half a million Red Army soldiers joined the Bolshevik Party during the civil war. These were the missionaries of the revolution. They carried Bolshevism, its ideas and its methods, back to their own towns and villages, where they flooded into the Soviet institutions during the early 1920s. The whole of the Soviet apparatus was thus militarized... The success of the Red Army increasingly led to the application of military methods throughout the Soviet system.

This may not have been what the peasants wanted, but they really had no choice. The urban crisis of this period in 1920 was only partly caused by the breakdown of Russian infrastructure. The railway system had virtually collapsed, a wartime casualty that slowed the delivery of critical food to

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

108

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

the cities. The rest of it began with reluctance of the peasants to sell food for paper money; it was worthless. As a result, millions of people fled from the cities and tried to settle in the countryside Lenin himself recognized it might have been better for the Bolsheviks had they established a market economy rather that the Stalinism of the planned economy. In 1918, the situation of the royal family took a turn for the worse. Trotsky had planned a show trial for the Tsar with Trotsky himself as prosecutor. Instead, the Tsar and his entire family were moved to Ekaterinberg where he and all members of the family were executed on July 17, 1918. Since this date, evidence has surfaced that Lenin ordered the execution himself.The bodies were later found where the local Cheka had buried them. A 1992 DNA test done in Great Britain showed conclusively that the bodies were of the Romanov family. Historians are not uniformly in agreement that this execution was the first step in the direction of the Red Terror; Trotsky has said "we must put an end once and for all to the Papist-Quaker babble about the sanctity of human life." This is entirely consistent with Felix Dzerzhinsky's conduct as head of the Cheka, later renamed the KGB. He spent half his adult life in Tsarist prisons and labor camps and learned the system from the inside. It was not surprising if he supported infliction on his victims of the same cruelty he had suffered all those years. Maxim Gorky was by far the most outspoken critic of the Red Terror. Indeed, he wrote both plays and books still available in paperback translations. After his death in 1936, Gorky was practically canonized as the father of Soviet literature and ranked with Anton Chekhov, Leonid Andreyev, and Lyof Tolstoy. Gorky's political sympathies are annoyingly obvious, but he couldn't resist a little preaching on his radical opinions. Still, there is something horribly fascinating about watching Gorky's characters in The Summer People brood and argue away the summer as, in the distance, the revolution that will end their way of life may be seen on the horizon. Under Lenin's name, not Stalin's, the Cheka was made immune from criticism and became a vast police state. The Cheka made terror an integral part of the Bolshevik system in the civil war and later. The Cheka, and later the KGB, was the last stop on the road to a Siberian labor camp or death on the part of those who were charged with counterrevolutionary activities. Lenin failed to understand the nature of the party's bureaucratic problem; it was corruption. With a centrally planned economy, the corruption existed at the center as well as at the periphery. Lenin undertook party purges to weed out the undesirables who gravitated to the Bolsheviks as a way of advancement in the party. Lenin often did not

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

109

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

understand the chaos and reduced morale of what he had done. He had, for example,organized a People's Commissariat to inspect the apparatus. It combined the two functions of state inspection and workers' control. Lenin believed this apparatus would make the state democratically accountable. It had the opposite effect, creating a huge new bureaucracy accountable only to Stalin. In retrospect, the Bolsheviks really extemporized as time passed. Communism may have begun as the party of the Bolsheviks, but neither Lenin nor Marx played much of a role shaping party policies based on what they had written years before the revolution. Improvisation produced terror to enforce the plan of the day. At the center of this workers' paradise, was control of the food supply. Smallholding farms produced little for the market, and in the present climate [1920]when there were no consumer goods to buy and any food surplus was claimed by the state, withdrew further into subsistence production and the autarchic nexus of the village. The Bolsheviks believed that the future of Soviet agriculture lay in gigantic collective and Soviet farms.....producing directly for the state. The troublesome peasant -- with his petty proprietary instincts, his superstitions, and his attachment to tradition -- would be abolished by these socialist farms since all those who worked in them would be recast as kolkhoz workers.....Here again, the Bolsheviks were carried away by their utopianism, believing they could create socialism by decree.

This rule by decree could not possibly work efficiently or at all. In 1921, the peasants broke out in open revolt against the collective farm system. A heavy-handed requisition brigade was the spark that fired this revolution. The farmer rebels took advantage of the Reds' weakness in their district by marching on the provincial capital. Typically, the Reds unleashed a campaign of terror which spread rapidly to the point where Lenin himself acknowledged the revolt was the greatest threat his regime had ever had to face. The rebel brigades operated like guerillas and succeeded in panicking the Bolsheviks into taking even more repressive steps. Lenin temporarily succeeded in slowing the peasants and the worker both of whom had been joined by the Kronstadt sailors who had been so successful in 1917. On March 16, 1921 Lenin submitted a resolution to the Tenth Party Congress outlawing the formation of factions independent of the Central Committee. As a result, the Central Committee was to rule the party on the same dictatorial lines as the party ruled the entire country. Another historic resolution replaced food requisition with the tax in kind. The farmers could now sell their surplus after paying a tax set eventually at 10 percent. of the harvest. At least five thousand rebels were executed on Lenin's orders after he had laid the foundation for dictatorial rule, first by Joseph Stalin. Lenin died in 1924. Lenin's almost final act was to create

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

110

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

the post of General Secretary of the Communist Party. Stalin was the first to inherit it from the man he could not tolerate, V.I. Lenin. The French Revolution began in 1789 and produced a constitutional government that continues today, albeit in a form some what different from its early outlines. The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the form it had taken by 1923, produced a tyranny worse in all ways than the Tsarist rule it replaced. After Lenin died in 1924, Joseph Stalin slowly became the absolute ruler of all the Russians. Stalin, born as Vasili Dzhugashvili took another name. Once again the peasants got the short end of the stick. Stalin wrote a memo describing the kulak. This kulak had an annual income of 200 rubles per month, engaged in trade, leased out farm equipment, machines and buildings. In short, the kulak was a capitalist exploiting those who worked. By January 1929 had prepared a draft decree to expedite the tempo of collectivization. Stalin would not tolerate any delays and constantly queried the farmers down to the village level. Any delay was considered counterrevolutionary and penalized by a term in Siberia's prison camps or gulags. During this period of enforced terror to drive the kulaks out, some estimates place the number of those executed at 10 million. Stalin admitted as much in a conversation with Winston Churchill. See Stalin Triumph and Tragedy by Dmitri Volkogonov published in 1992. Nikolai Bukharin was a close personal friend of Stalin and quite popular with the party functionaries. Stalin relied heavily on Bukharin in economic matters, but he made a major mistake. In a heated argument on whether to slow the pace of collectivization, Bukharin agreed and Stalin though the pace was too slow. During the argument, Bukharin described Stalin as "a petty Oriental despot." At that point Stalin was reported to have said "I don't need that man anymore." Finally, seeing that opinion against him was gaining adherents, Bukharin recanted, acknowledging he had been wrong. Ten years later, Bukharin paid a terrible price for his recantation. He was expelled from the party as having sided with Trotsky's terrorists and tried in 1937, found guilty on the basis of fake evidence, and killed. So much for the onetime friends of Stalin. In one memo from Lavrenti Beria, head of the NKVD, later the KGB, that in two year's time, "the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR ....that 30,514 [Russians] had to be shot." This only covered the period from October 1, 1936 to September 30, 1938. One of his biographers felt Stalin was merely trying to get rid of those around him who might side with Hitler's Nazis. It was in 1939 that Stalin's Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav-Molotov signed an agreement with Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler's Foreign Minister providing that Russia would not be attacked. Hitler wanted his rear defended as the Nazis struck France and England. In a secret protocol, Hitler agreed that the Soviet Union

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

111

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

might freely annex the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Red troops did so in 1940. Almost fifty-five years later, the last Russian troops left Latvia and Estonia where they had lived long enough to be citizens of the Baltic states. All three, including Lithuania were independent states by 1991. The world knew the Soviet Union was led by monsters, but it took years to end the Soviet reign of terror. On February 4, 1931 Joseph Stalin addressed the All-Union Congress of Managers in what became one of the few memorable speeches of his career. In fact, the speech was a clue to what would happen by way of brutality when the Soviet Union was attacked by Germany in 1941. One feature of the old Russia was the continued beatings she suffered for falling behind, for backwardness. She was beaten by the Mongol khans. She was beaten by the Turkish beys. She was beaten by the Swedish feudal lords. She was beaten by the Polish and Lithuanian gentry. She was beaten by the British and French capitalists. She was beaten by the Japanese barons. All beat her -- for her backwardness....We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. . We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it or they crush us.

The speech was prophetic. Stalin crushed internal dissent, executing those Russians expressing disagreement. He established the gulags throughout Russia. Stalin threw Russian soldiers against the Nazi army invading Russia and drove it back to Berlin. It appeared in Richard Overy's new book, Russia's War: Blood Upon the Snow (pp3839). Overy also described the terror of the 1930s. Most of its victims were peasants. The collectivization of agriculture led to deaths in the Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Entire villages in both provinces died of starvation. Some 7 million were killed in this manner, either by starvation or by 25year terms in a remote Russian gulag. Despite these savage acts of Stalin and the "show trials" of the mid1930s, where the professional military was sentenced to death, the Soviet Union almost caught up with the backwardness described by Stalin. During the war itself, Stalin ordered all industry to move east of the Urals where the military industrial complex was able to manufacture aircraft, tanks and weaponry used to drive Nazi division back to Berlin. When the war ended in 1945, at least 20 million soldiers on both sides had been killed. The persecution of Jews in Russia is another chapter of a book that needs to be reread: The illustrated history of Jews in Russia is a link to this history of Central Asia. See The History of Jews in Russia: Beyond the Pale. It took exactly seventy years for this totalitarian government to collapse (1921 to 1991). While the Soviet Union lasted, it had deployed its military power to expand its political power. World War II was probably the beginning of its decline, even though it developed a nuclear capability, occupied East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary and

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

112

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

collaborated up to a point with another Communist power, the People's Republic of China. In midMay, 1997 Russia once again announced it would not forswear a first use policy with respect to nuclear weapons. A number of books have explored the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. They include David Pryce-Jones author of the Strange Death of the Soviet Empire and Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire by Michael Dobbs. Afghanistan:Soviet Vietnam by Vladislav Tamarav was another. It was published by Mercury House in 1992. Mercury House also published Without Force or Lies: Voices from the Revolution of Central Europe in 1989-90, an anthology with essays by Vaclav Havel, Andrei Sakharov, Norman Manea, and Adam Michnik to name a few. This anthology was edited by William M. Brinton and Allan Rinzler. Lenin by Dmitri Volkogonov was published in 1994. The World Cultures Report: Ecocide in the USSR offers the best analysis. It begins with a sobering paragraph. When historians finally conduct an autopsy on Soviet Communism, they may reach the verdict of death by ecocide....No other great industrial civilization so systematically and so long poisoned its air, land, water and people. None so loudly proclaiming its efforts to public health and protect nature so degraded both. And no advanced society faced such a bleak political and economic reckoning with so few resources to invest toward recovery.

These and many other books described the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reasons for it. All writers are not in complete agreement on the reasons, but most of them look to the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union in 1980 and the withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1989 under humiliating circumstances as a major reason. The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl in 1986 was not so much a cause of the collapse, but rather a predictable event showing Soviet incompetence. Then, events in Central Europe during 1989 and 1990 showed the beginning of the end. Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany all collapsed after forty years of Communist rule. The Berlin Wall built in 1961 to prevent Germans from escaping Communism was breached in 1989, signaling the end of Communism in Germany. Since World War II, some really distinguished authors have written books about Russia. One of these, The Gulag Archipelago, was published by St..Martin's Press and written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This author was a dissident writing within Russia and paid the price with a nine-year sentence to a prison camp in Kazakhstan. In January, 1998 St.. Martin's Press expects to publish a biography of this controversial writer, once awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. The biography was written by D. M. Thomas who offered new evidence that Solzhenitsyn's first wife collaborated with the KGB against her former husband. He also describes a little-known assassination attempt on Solzhenitsyn's life by the Soviet Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

113

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

secret police. In 1974, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from Russia and settled in Vermont. According to a story in the New York Times, his first wife may have had an editorial relationship with the KGB. There was even a suggestion that his first wife tried to censor The Gulag Archipelago. A friend denied the story. His second wife said it was "impossible to believe that such a question comes from such a paper." Other books by Solzhenitsyn include One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward, and The First Circle. For some time after he returned to Russia, Solzhenitsyn lectured audiences on the immorality of modern Russia, notwithstanding that he finally divorced his first wife to marry a younger woman who had a child by him before the divorce. On at least one occasion, she asked forgiveness from the first wife. Other postwar Russian authors include Andrei Sakharov who was invited by Mikhail Gorbachev to return to Moscow from the prison camp in which he was serving a long sentence for one of those undefined crimes like violating state security. My Country and the World was published in 1975 by Random House. Moscow and Beyond 1986 to 1988 was published by Arthur Knopf in 1988; Sakharov died in 1989. Dmitri Volkogonov wrote two books translated from the Russian, Lenin: The First Account Using All the Secret Soviet Archives was published by The Free Press. The same author wrote Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. It was published by Prima Publishing in 1992. Geoffrey Hosking wrote a more recent account of Russian history, Russia: People and Empire. This book was released in 1997. The author advised readers that the first Romanov, Mikhail, was elected Tsar in 1613 by a council of some five hundred electors. This group included boyars who were members of the old Russian nobility before Peter the Great made military service to the state mandatory. In his chapter on Russian socialism, Hosking defined its nature in revolutionary terms: If one regards Populism and Marxism as two separate traditions, Bolshevism must be seen as a synthesis of the two, Marxist in its original impulse, but borrowing from the Populists the ideas of the peasants as a revolutionary class, of leadership by a small group of intellectuals and of overstriding the bourgeois phase of social revolution to reach the socialist revolution directly. Actually, it would more sensible to regard Bolshevism as the form of revolutionary socialism best adapted to Russian conditions, where it was impossible in the long term to form a mass working party class without strong leadership where the peasants were extremely discontented with the existing state of affairs, and where the bourgeois were very weak. Marx himself had indicated the possibility of just such a revolution in Russia.

By 1917, the unstable amalgam of Russian nationalism and internationalism had probably foreseen the undoing of this revolution. Stalin and other General Secretaries of the Communist Party had engaged in the excesses of power that, with other factors, caused the collapse of the Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

114

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Soviet Union in 1991. One of those factors was elimination of the language spoken in Ukraine. The rulers in Moscow were determined to impose a separate identity on this state. As early as 1863, the Minister of the Interior in Moscow issued a circular prohibiting the publication of books in Ukrainian. Three years later, he prohibited the import of books in this language or its use in the theater. This variety of linguistic warfare occurred throughout Russia right up to 1945 and perhaps later. Even today in 1997, ethnic minorities speaking a language other than Russian occupy territory throughout Russia, or the Confederation of Independent States (CIS). Around the periphery of the CIS, individual republics seek their own identity and total independence from Moscow. The dilemma of the multinational, multiethnic and multilinguistic empires in an age of nationalism was fundamental and perhaps insoluble. An outstanding writer and historian David Pryce-Jones wrote The Strange Death of the Soviet Union published by an imprint of Henry Holt & Co. in 1995. Pryce-Jones approach to the death of the Soviet Union was unique. "Once the satellites had melted like ice in the sun, an ultimate and even existential question faced the Soviet leadership: What was the point of absolute centralized power if not to defend the party-state? With the outer ring of client countries now escaped irretrievably from central control, the inner ring queued untidily for the exit." He was referring, of course, to the ring around the Soviet Union in Central Europe. The ring included Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Rumania. One by one, they melted and ejected their Communist rulers, replacing them with new leaders dedicated to freedom. Many of them did not understand the complexities of a market economy or the loss of authority, so the newlyfreed nations had to experiment with new approaches to what would work. Gorbachev, however, believed to the end that the ideology of Communism to be independent from the mechanism of force without which that ideology was only one among other theories about human nature and society. Today in 1997, Russia sees its inner ring to the South threatened by ethnicity and linguistics. In one relatively small area of Russia, there is a mixture of Caucasian, Indo-European, and Altaic peoples. Caucasians include Abkhaz, Circassian Adygey, Cherkess and Kabardin. Georgians fall into a slightly different ethnic group. In Dagestan, one finds Agul, Avar, Lak, Lezgin, Rutul, and Tsakhur peoples. The Caucasians also include Chechen and Ingush peoples. The Indo-European peoples include Armenian, Greek, Iranian-Kurds, and Slavic-Russian. The Altaic peoples include the Azeri, Balkar, Karachay, Kumyk, and Turkmen peoples. Even the Mongols are represented in this ethnic potpourri. The political status of all of these mini-states is critical.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

115

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Dagestan, for example, was annexed by the Tsar in 1802, and it's now considered an administrative state within Russia. It is located between Georgia and the Caspian Sea. This part of Russia is literally a linguistic stew. The Republic of Dagestan, for example, appears in only a very few maps. However, for the purpose of an oil pipeline, its political status is critical. If this republic is politically independent of rule from Moscow, the oil companies are probably free to negotiate with its administrative hierarchy. Russia has discovered the importance of a market economy. It allows capital investment in Russian enterprises. The most recent example of this is two huge oilfields in Sakhalin. Three consortia are now preparing to pump oil from fields off Sakhalin. Sakhalin Energy Investment plans to spend at least $10 billion to develop this field. Those close to the company say there are one billion barrels of oil and 400 billion cubic metres of natural gas. In the first consortium, Sakhalin Energy has two Japanese partners, Mitsui and Mitsubishi. American partners include Marathon. The British partner is Anglo-Dutch Shell. In the other field, Russia wants to join Sakhalin Energy with its partners, Exxon and Sodeco of Japan. Russia has approved production sharing agreements, but their status is not entirely clear. The Duma needs to end any ambiguity, but its members have not yet seen the value of a market economy. The money has to flow locally instead of flowing via Moscow. Chechnya was the subject of a war with Russian troops and aircraft lasting about two years for the purpose of halting its drive for political independence, a status finally established in May, 1997. .President Yeltsin signed a treaty with Chechnya then, and now its people will begin rebuilding its shattered infrastructure. Oil maps of Chechnya show at least nine oil fields, a few refineries, and pipelines serving both. According to one Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger (19811987) writing in The New York Times, "Iran and Russia," he wrote, "[are cooperating] with regional states to prevent the United States from [developing power] in the Caspian Sea." In fact, Russia wants the United States to approve its use of more conventional forces in the Caspian Sea area. Iran sees the Azerbaijanis as a threat because they may provoke separatist sentiment among its ethnic Azeri population. Iraq may also see an opportunity to exploit its Kurd population and stir up trouble for Turkey; it also has a Kurd population. In Paris, President Clinton signed the agreement expanding NATO on May 27, 1997. In July, all the powers now members of NATO gathered in Madrid to discuss the new nations invited to join. They are Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. At the first meeting of all those who approved the expansion of NATO, there were signs of friction. Some members wanted to expand the number of countries that would be invited to join NATO. Russia, while it may not have expressed its concern, would reject admission of the Baltic stares to NATO. These states are Lithuania,

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

116

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Latvia and Estonia. Their concern should be treated as irrelevant. In 1939, Stalin, with Molotov as Foreign Minister, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler's Minister of Foreign Affairs signed a treaty. For years, however, Russia denied there was a secret protocol that allowed the Soviet Union to occupy the three Baltic States. Stalin announced the annexation of these three states in 1940, a year after this treaty. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia dealt summarily with the demands of the Balts for freedom from Soviet occupation. Finally, Russia acknowledged it had to leave Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The terms of departure and its timing were all negotiated in Vilnius, Riga, and Tallinn and or Moscow. All three of the Baltic states are eager to join NATO, and they view Russia with understandable suspicion. Postwar relations between China and Japan were soured by the violent past. Japan expanded into Chinese territory began in Taiwan, and this island nation was claimed in 1895 by Japan as the spoils of war with China. The Japanese were determined to create in China a model for a new Asia. In 1914 and again in 1931, two uprisings of the island's aboriginal inhabitants were suppressed by the Japanese using a combination of modern fire power and terror. The Japanese brought previously unthinkable ideas of representative government to Taiwan. They greatly improved Taiwanese agriculture and education; they also developed domestic industries and made other changes in Taiwanese culture gearing it to the needs of the Japanese home islands. In 1905, the Japanese defeated the Russian army and claimed sovereignty over parts of Manchuria. The Japanese began investing in the region between Port Arthur and Mukden and as far south as Korea. Many Russian refugees from the Soviet Union moved to the area around Harbin. All this was a provocation to the Soviet Union. In 1932, the Japanese installed the exEmperor Puyi as "Chief Executive" in the renamed Manchuria, Manchukuo. The Japanese were far from being benign occupants of either Manchukuo or Shanghai. The Nanking Massacre of 1937 may stand always as one of the most terrible events in the history of warfare. Japanese troops with armored cars, artillery, supported by planes and warships on the Yangtze smashed through the walls of the city and massacred any Chinese troops they could find. Unable to find officers with whom they might negotiate an armistice, the Japanese engaged in a virtual frenzy of slaughter. The killed and mutilated both adult and child civilians, leaving a trail of horror behind them. As the Japanese moved on to other cities, such as Wuhan, Stalin gave the Chinese some help, some 800 planes and pilots. Stalin believed at the time that it was in the Soviet interest to resist Japanese aggression. Near the end of the 20th century, Russia and China both demanded some sort of relief from the atrocities of the 1930s. And Russia still claims the Kurile Islands as their territory after Soviet occupation during World War

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

117

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

II. Moscow may be ready to discuss this dispute. In late 1997, Moscow and Tokyo issued a joint approval of a $10 billion project to develop a natural gas field in Irkutsk in Russia and build a pipeline to Japan via Mongolia, China and South Korea. Japanese censors seem still at work to make certain its past savagery against Chinese during the 1930s and its wartime atrocities. On three occasions, the Supreme Court of Japan has denied efforts to rewrite textbooks reflecting, for example, the Nanking Massacre. Anti-Japanese nationalism is alive and well in China. When Chinese President Jiang Zemin's visit to the United States ended, he returned to Beijing determined to perpetuate Communism and incidentally his own power. Even though he is 71 years old, Jiang may last for at least 15 years as president. The photograph of Jiang, president of the world's largest Communist country about to ring the bell for the opening of the New York Stock Exchange, the free world's largest center of capitalist trading was surely an ironic symbol. It is this type of economic activity that Jiang sees for China, but free of the ideas that made it work. From Jiang's point of view, the genius of the economic reforms introduced under Deng Xiaoping has to be that they have produced prosperity while preserving the power of the Communist Party. Furthermore, Chinese Party officials seem determined not to follow the route taken by Mikhail Gorbachev. These same officials look across the border with Russia see a country where leaders can be removed from power by voters, where newspapers and television news openly question Kremlin policy, where the Communist Party itself is in eclipse and where the criminal economy outstrips legal enterprise. For his part, Jiang has no interest in any system that could reject him at the polls, a system that rests on human rights. It was crushed in Tiananmenn Square in 1989. Two years later, Gorbachev was ousted by democratic forces that have helped Boris Yeltsin remain in office with free elections. Over time, economic freedom and modern communications may bring new political life to China. But as Americans could see as Jiang traveled across the United States, it will not come easily, quickly, or from the top of this regime. Democracy is not always easy to identify. In the West, because it has always meant liberal democracy -- a political system marked not only by free and fair elections with universal suffrage, but also by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion and property. Foreign Affairs has identified this bundle of freedoms as constitutional liberalism. It is theoretically different from and historically distinct from democracy. Today, these two strands of liberal democracy, interwoven in the Western political fabric, have been coming apart in the rest of the world. Democracy is flourishing, says Fareed Zakaria, Managing Editor of Foreign Affairs; constitutional liberalism is not. A proper appreciation of constitutional liberalism has a variety for American foreign policy. First, it suggests a certain humility.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

118

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

While it is easy to impose elections on a country, it is more difficult to push constitutional liberalism on a society. The process of genuine liberalization and democratization is gradual and long-term; it is a process in which an election is only one step. Hence, the absence of free and fair elections should be viewed as one flaw, not the definition of tyranny. Economic civil and religious liberties are at the core of human autonomy and dignity. If a government with limited democracy steadily expands these freedoms, it should not be branded as a dictatorship. Today, Mr.. Zakaria writes, that in the face of a virus of illiberalism, the most useful role for the United States is to consolidate democracy where it has taken root and to encourage the gradual development of constitutional liberalism across the globe. Democracy without constitutional liberalism simply not inadequate, but dangerous, bringing with the erosion of liberty, the abuse of [power], ethnic decisions, and even war.

The rulers of China took over Hong Kong at midnight on June 30, 1997. The 99-year lease of Hong Kong had ended. The audience in Hong Kong's Convention Center heard Charles, the Prince of Wales and China's President Jiang Zemin followed by lowering the British flag and raising the new Hong Kong flag plus China's own flag. Macao, a Portuguese settlement for several hundred years and about an hour by jet foil from Hong Kong will be turned over to China in 1999, but without the solemn show the British put on as its modest number of troops left to be replaced by the People's Liberation Army. This solemn occasion was the first time in all history that Great Britain had handed over an entire city with some 8 million people to a country ruled by Communists. In ABC's coverage of this event, scenes from Tiananmen Square were shown with the huge picture of Mao Tsetung appearing on the television screens of an estimated two billion people around the world. Communists and capitalists have billed the Hong Kong Special Administrative District (SAR) as "one country, two systems." This description is an exaggeration; "it's one country, no system." Hong Kong's new chief executive, Tung Cheehwa, has surrounded himself with a kitchen cabinet. In the current environment of corruption, his appointed cronies seem more interested in Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

119

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

cutting deals with the power elite in Beijing than demanding democracy with free elections. In the post-handover euphoria, China observers have neglected what China has done to suppress dissent as it did on June 4, 1989 in Tiananmen Square. One should not forget that some of the same officials ordering a military crackdown in 1989 are still very mush in control. Only Deng has gone to whatever reward atheism provides. Jiang Zemin and Li Peng are still quite visible. Willem van Kemenade has some interesting comments in his new book, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, Inc.. If things go Jiang Zemin's way... China will continue to enjoy high economic growth and will become more modern and prosperous, but politically it will most probably remain as conservative, secretive, and repressive as ever... The will of the central authorities has thus far prevailed, its most effective instrument being the power to appoint and dismiss governors, party secretaries, and regional army commanders, but if central control over the over the Government, party, military and public security apparatus suffer a similar regionalization, China will become increasingly feudalized even as it becomes more modern.....If the extractive power of the state [tax collection] continues to go downhill, it will only be a question of years, at most ten, before political rupture follows economic collapse and the country finally disintegrates. In his review of this book, Orville Schell offers a few comments in The New York Times of June 29, 1997. "Willem van Kemenade, a Dutch journalist who covers Asia for the daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad, praises the dynamism of Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms, but expresses astonishment at the limitation of his political vision, saying 'Deng's ignorance and crass ideological blindness to Western democracy is amazing indeed. 'What has been the effect of this disjuncture? In a historical blink of the eye, the Chinese people have evolved from being 'Mao-worshipping blue ants to nihilistic ultraindividualistic, money-worshipping hedonists.'"

To understand the tensions of a Communist society as China surely is, one must always keep in mind the hierarchy of rulers. Under the imperial bureaucracy, the general rule was that an official could never be posted to his native region. However, under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) minority leaders, especially in the regions in adjacent to China proper, were for the first time allowed to become officials within their native areas. Thus, today, we find a strong and powerful stratum of minority officials with a vested interest in continued CCP rule. In fact, many of the

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

120

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

local and regional minority leaders should be characterized as 'hardliners' or even 'maoists.' These labels may not have much ideological substance, but they do illustrate the existence of an ethnically-based elite that is both strong and loyal. The rulers in Beijing know this and encourage the Han Chinese to migrate to newly occupied territory very much like Caesar's Roman legions in Europe 2000 years ago. In contemporary China, the Turkic-speaking and Muslim minority in Sinkiang are ruled by Han Chinese as the Buddhist Tibetans are also ruled by the Han Chinese. Minxin Pei has written an article in the January-February issue of Foreign Affairs. Minxin is an Assistant Professor of Politics at Princeton University. Here's part of his article. The Chinese political system Deng Xiaoping inherited in 1978 resembled a Hobbesian world. No norms governed elite politics. Its key governmental institutions, especially the legal system and the bureaucracy, had been seriously damaged by the economic and political turmoil of the Great Leap Forward of 1958 and the 196676 Cultural Revolution. There were institutions of political participation; under Mao, mass political campaigns and mob violence had been the main forms of participation. Deng was faced with rebuilding China's wrecked political system and reforming its backward economy at the same time... The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), especially its elite, was badly bruised by Mao's dictatorial rule... Another significant reform implemented under 'Deng's rule was the mandatory retirement of party and government officials. Although China's term limits has attracted little attention abroad, they have probably had the most far-reaching effect of any reform on the composition and outlook of the ruling elite. Beginning in 1982, the retirement age of ministers, provincial party secretaries, and governors was set at 65 and their deputies at 60.

Far from moving the Communist Party toward democracy, term limits only prevent local leaders from perpetuating their power. China's provinces are thought to be controlled from Beijing, but splittist trends are already at work in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Guangdong, the Yangste River Valley, and Fujian, all regional economic powers of their own. If these trends continue, Beijing may have to launch a military effort to recover Taiwan. President Jiang did not waste any time in telling a Chinese audience in Beijing the day after the Hong Kong handover that Taiwan was next on the acquisition list after recovery of Macao. With available evidence, China simply does not have armed forces sufficient to recover Taiwan by force. China's army, however, and some small units of the navy appeared on television on June 30, 1997 will have to recover this wayward province without sufficient modern arms. What arms China does have are all but obsolete. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) has an estimated 3.1 million men under arms. This number will be reduced by 500,000 over the next three Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

121

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

years, according to a 1997 vote of representatives in the 15th Peoples' Congress. The main Chinese tank is based on the Soviet design of the T55 built first in the 1950s. The Chinese air force has about 5,000 aircraft, but some 90 percent of these jets are obsolete. The Chinese navy is underarmed and poorly produced by engineers who were victims of the Cultural Revolution. At sea, the largest production surface warship, the Luda Class destroyer, was derived directly from a Soviet destroyer design completed in the late 1940s. China simply does not have the skills essential to design, produce and operate military jets; the 50 or so Sukhoi27 jets are the cream of the Chinese crop, but they were all purchased from Russia. In 1992, China contracted with Russia for the delivery of four KiloClass dieselpowered submarines. So far as is known, China has not either designed or acquired in-flight refueling systems. Nor does the Chinese navy have any aircraft carriers. Furthermore, and this is critical, China has missed the digital revolution in weapons technology. With reverse engineering, an analog system is comparatively simple to duplicate so long as the essential technologies are available. However, digital fire control systems may not be copied without the source code used by the computer to direct fire. To duplicate the essential technology, China would need programmers, and few if any were trained during the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution. In 1991, China saw the awesome display of American power in the Persian Gulf War. The Chinese General Staff has gloomily concluded that it would take at least ten years for China to catch up with the United States in weapons technology. China's greatest effort in command and control has been evident in the field of automated air defense systems. C 3 I stands for command, control, communications and intelligence as the factors that need to be present in such a system. A footnote in Jane's Radar and Electronic Warfare Systems 19941995 states that "Very little seems to be happening on any [new] air defense networking China, and the air defense network in place suffers from major weaknesses such as an outmoded command, control, and communications system." The central question in war or peace in any situation is the estimate each side makes of its chances of success. In Military Capacity and the Threat of War, the editor offers a sobering comment. In the case of China, the central government may have little if any appreciation of the state's actual military capacity. That would hardly be a surprise: military leaders would prefer rosy to frightening reports. Certainly, this was true in the Soviet case: hubris born of ignorance fueled the adventures in Afghanistan and then Chechnya. To the extent that China has a similar system to that developed by Russia, it would seem likely that fantasy will be the order of the day. Fantasy means, for example, that the absence of modern command and control will not be taken into account by decision-makers in Beijing. Under these

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

122

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

circumstances... it is more likely that crisis will degenerate into war -- a war in which China would suffer devastating humiliation.

A scenario involving an attempt to regain Taiwan after settling in and digesting Hong Kong is a distinct possibility. Were a setback of China's grand design to occur, the political leadership in Beijing would have little hesitancy to use its nuclear weapons capacity. Soviet scientists were knowledgeable enough to help Beijing develop nuclear weapons with technology stolen from the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In the last few years, sentiment in Taiwan towards either reunification with mainland China or asserting its independence from China have been debated endlessly. Occasionally, China has gone too far and provoked anti-reunification or pro-independence sentiment. In 1995, for example, Taiwan President Lee Tenghui asked the United States for a visa allowing him to visit Cornell where he was to be given an honorary doctorate. The Chinese vigorously objected, but the State Department granted the visa after some pressure from the Clinton Administration. Lee's trip went off without much fuss until he returned. The China General Staff ordered two war games that heated up the political climate on Taiwan. Then Lee announced he would run for reelection to a second term as president. He won with 54 percent of the vote. Without China's saber rattling, Lee would still have won, but with fewer votes. However, during the 1995 missile tests, the Clinton Administration had sent two carrier task forces to cool off the overheated rulers in Beijing. Aside from Taiwan, China has other minority problems. Tibet, for example, was occupied by China beginning in 1951. Tibet was an independent state at the time of the Chinese invasion. China's annexation of Tibet violated Article 2 (4) of the United Nations Charter which expressly prohibits the acquisition of territory by force or the threat of force. Tibetans are also entitled to self-determination under Article 1 (2) of the Charter. During their occupation of Tibet, Chinese engaged in genocide, a crime under the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Since the invasion that began in 1949, an estimated 1.2 million Tibetans have perished as a result of the Chinese occupation, victims of war, prison camps, torture, and famine. More than 6,000 Buddhist monasteries, temples, and historical monuments have been systematically plundered and destroyed by Han Chinese. Recently, the Dalai Lama has toured the United States and has spoken out on China's denial of autonomy for Tibet and self-determination. Chinese have kidnapped the Panchen Lama, the Dalai Lama's successor and have held this child under house arrest for the last two years. The Dalai Lama himself is so popular, Beijing has made it a crime even to display his picture in Tibet. Jiang maintained a fast pace spreading Communist ideological nonsense and defending China's occupation of Tibet. It was analogous, he said, to Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

123

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

the Emancipation of the slaves by Abraham Lincoln in 1864. Lincoln, however, did not indiscriminately kill the slaves thus emancipated. In Tibet, China has killed Buddhist monks -- an estimated 1 million of them since 1951. Not only this, but Chinese occupiers razed some 6000 Tibetan monasteries during the same period (19511997). While he was touring Philadelphia, Jiang expressed anger at some 200 noisy demonstrators. He asked they be removed so Jiang would not see them. The Mayor of Philadelphia said, "We tried to explain to the Chinese as patiently as possible that we couldn't force the demonstrators off public streets." Jiang even denied China had denied religious freedom, but China still persecutes Christians. The other side then had its chance to reply to this touring dictator. On the occasion of President Jiang Zemin's visit to the United States in October, 1997, Hollywood wrote the script. President Clinton was not amused. Much earlier, he had de-linked the issue of human rights from China's status as an investment opportunity for American and European companies. China had consistently violated rights of minorities such as the Tibetan Buddhists To counter Chinese propaganda, Hollywood released Seven Years in Tibet, Front-line, a public television program, Red Corner, another film and Kundun, still another film produced by Disney. These releases enraged the Chinese. Human rights groups along Jiang's publicized route in the United States demonstrated peacefully in defense of Tibet's right to autonomy and China's denial of that right. Ever since 1951, China has systematically destroyed Tibet's ancient culture by killing its monks and destroying its monasteries. The International Covenant on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, ratified by China, prohibited discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin and prohibited a State from denying minorities the right to enjoy their own culture, religion and language. China nonetheless continues to discriminate Tibetans in employment, education, housing, language and reproductive rights. Tibetans accused of "counterrevolutionary" conduct are sentenced to serve time in jail. Often they are tortured while incarcerated. Torture and inhuman treatment are outlawed by the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel or Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, a convention ratified by China. The Summit meeting between President Clinton and President Jiang Zemin was an abysmal failure on human rights. The only beneficiaries were the Boeing Corporation -- a $3 billion sale of commercial jets to China -- and Westinghouse and other nuclear power plant companies in the United Staters. With respect to events in Tiananmen Square in 1989, Jiang almost casually said "the Chinese made the correct decision to restore stability." Clinton replied by saying "I believe that what happened and the aftermath and continuing reluctance to tolerate political dissent has

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

124

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

kept China from politically developing the level of support in the rest of the world that would have developed." Clinton's words, according to The New York Times, were "a stark admission of failure, unusual in summit annals." In the meantime, torture and other degrading treatment continues in Chinese jails. In fact, the World Bank has funded forced labor camps in Sinkiang. This occurred in 1995. An inquiry after this funding surfaced found that "the government agency that implements the Tarim Basin project was also responsible for administering some prisons and adjacent farms for the [Chinese] Central Ministry of Justice." Despite this finding, the World Bank concluded there was "no evidence to establish outside charges." See Masters of Illusion: The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations by Catherine Caufield (1996). A second area, Sinkiang, is another trouble spot for China. Situated in Northwest China, it is the largest province in the country. It is called the Sinkiang (Xinjiang) Uighur Autonomous Region, occupying one sixth of all China. The Tarim Basin in this area is thought to contain vast deposits of oil; some authorities claim that at least one third of all China's oil is present in difficult-to-drill reservoirs. China. acted quickly in signing a development agreement for the Uten oil field in Kazakhstan rather that spend scarce capital in exploration for desperately needed oil to fuel its expansion.By 1997, China simply could not look to Russia for oil. The relationship between China and Russia was terminated in the 1960, when Soviet advisors withdrew from China after a nasty ideological dispute. The base of Chinese technology was still the legacy left by Soviet advisors. They were far behind the West in deep drilling, secondary recovery and exploration Russia used oil well drilling and pipeline construction that is now obsolete. The Chinese military establishment needs far more than China produces from its early oil fields, Daqing and Shengli. Currently, China produces about 2.9 million barrels of oil per day. See Oil in Asia published in 1997 by the Oxford University Press. Still China must have oil just as Hitler's Panzers had to have gasoline to fuel its war-making capacity. Some authorities suggest that the People's Republic Army (PLA) has cut back a great deal because the military cannot rely on enough oil. The Han Chinese encouraged to settle in this autonomous region have priority in housing and employment ahead of Uighurs. This group represents about 40 percent of the province's population. The Uighur population refers to Sinkiang as Turkestan, claiming that the Chinese have occupied their land. Needless to say, Beijing has had a different attitude toward minorities. The dominant notion was and has been not to integrate ethnic minorities and neighboring peoples, but rather to control them. To this end, Beijing has made it worthwhile for the Han Chinese to migrate to, for example, Sinkiang and Tibet. Thus, control of the outlying regions

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

125

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

and peoples was intended just as much a defense measure as a strategy for imperial conquest. China does have a problem with its minorities. Many of the smaller minorities -- the Mongols, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Tajiks -- have a neighboring country they regard as their homeland. The Uighurs are an exception. They are a nation without a country. Beijing saw a way around its minority populations. In April, 1996 the presidents of five neighboring countries of Central Asia -- China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan -- signed an agreement in which some previously uncertain boundaries were made permanent on agreed lines.. Three of the newlyindependent states took it on themselves to oppose secession of any kind and its political twin, separatism. The five presidents had met in Shanghai, so the agreement was called the Shanghai Communique. Contemporaneously, the Chinese media launched a fierce new antiseparatist campaign. China's policy in Sinkiang is at a crossroad. The Communist leaders seem convinced that only a policy of harsh and permanent repression can guarantee Chinese rule there. If it relaxes its hard-line stand there, secessionist agitation and religious dissent will almost certainly spin out of control. Continued harsh repression could polarize both sides and endanger stability. The Shanghai Communique would be nothing more than a historical artifact. With respect to Russia, there has been an illegal immigration from China. And, as one Russian official said: "If the Chinese influx continues, we will have a situation like that under Genghis Khan. If we don't take effective action quickly, in twenty years' time it will no longer be clear what is China and what is Russia." The Russian government calls this "the peaceful loss of territory to China." Two Russian newspapers report that there are between 2 and 5 million Chinese living illegally in Russia.A few prominent sinologists in Russia predict a Chinese annexation of millions of hectares of land. Russians in the threatened area near Vladivostok see annexation as a cause of war. Some Russian sinologists note that China claims part of Siberia as an inalienable right. The stakes for China are high. In 1995, the PRC became a net importer of oil. It desperately needs oil to fuel its rapidly expanding economy and its military. Oil reserves for all of Sinkiang are estimated at 2.4 billion barrels. Most of this oil is in the Tarim Basin and within striking distance for Uighur raids from within Kazakhstan. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) has been designed for military police actions like a Uighur raid from Kazakhstan. The PLA has about three million men under arms and some 5,000 tanks sold to China by Russia. These tanks are obsolete for this and another reason. The tank itself is obsolete as a weapon since antitank devices are too effective and getting too costly. The authors of

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

126

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

The Future of War: Power, Technology & American World Dominance in the 21st Century, George and Meredith Friedman, make a persuasive case for this proposition. The tank first appeared on the battlefield during World War I. It was a clumsy machine because of its weight and its armor plus guns of increasing power. By World War II, the tank had grown heavier and used thicker armor plus heavier calibre weapons. Military minds were working in parallel on antitank weapons during this period. By 1993, the spiral of technology had produced a tank that weighed 100 tons and relatively inexpensive weapons that could destroy the it. Labeled as the "brilliant antitank munition" (BAT), it will identify any tank whose engine is running. The Army has decided to upgrade the BAT with millimeter wave radar, which will identify targets whose engines are turned off. The antitank technology has so far outrun the technology behind the tank itself. This is particularly significant when the use of cruise missiles situated more than 1,000 miles from the target. The Tomahawk, for example, proved itself in the Persian Gulf War; everyone watching CNN saw a Tomahawk missile search for and find an opening in a Baghdad building with deadly precision. Its guidance system had been programmed from photographs of the terrain path the Tomahawk followed. That was six years ago, and the Pentagon has not been sleeping. The M1 tank currently costs about $3 million, but any one of three antitank weapons could destroy the M1 using a search and destroy missile that costs between $7,000 and $200,000. Other weapons platforms all suffer from more or less the same built-in defect. The battleship, for example, is obsolete because it doesn't have more than 12 to 16 miles range for its shells. With a battleship that close to land or another task force, it becomes highly vulnerable. World War II battleships cost an estimated $1.2 billion. The Navy carrier task force has increasingly been criticized as being too vulnerable to anti-ship missiles. The Aegis defense system now mounted on twenty-seven Aegis-class cruisers was designed to protect carriers from precision-guided missiles. However, the Sunburn, produced by Russia cruises at 1,700 miles per hour out to a maximum range of 55 miles. It travels at an altitude of sixty feet and then attacks the ship at twenty feet, having reached its target in under two minutes from launch. The U.S. Navy considered the Sunburn so effective, it tried to buy one in 1995. The Chinese reported an anti-ship missile even more lethal than the Sunburn and with a range of eighty miles. One may be justifiably skeptical; the Chinese do not have the indigenous manpower capable of designing and producing the missile described. This excursion into contemporary weapons affects the geo-strategic position of Taiwan. By 1997, Taiwan should have -- and perhaps has -- targeted its missiles on China's command, control, communications and intelligence sites as well as Zhongnanhai, the Chinese Kremlin and the housing in which the Chinese

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

127

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

nomenclature live in Beijing. Doing this would be treated as a defensive step in the event mainland China resorted to force to reunify Taiwan with the mainland. In 1990, Chinese military officials visited Moscow with a view to reestablishing cooperation between the armed forces of both countries. Their timing was poor. The former Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 leaving Russia admitting that its arms industries suffered a severe blow when the USSR collapsed. Neither domestic requirements nor a shaky economy support the massive military industrial base inherited from the Soviet Union. The manufacture and export of weapons, equipment, and technology can ease the plight of Russia's arms industries , but there is a political constraint. China must have a demonstrated ability to pay, and, even more important, is the growing friction over Russia's Asian borders. The Shanghai Communique of 1996 did not even touch on the "passive surrender of territory" to China now underway in Eastern Siberia. Some 2 to 5 million Chinese have illegally settled in this part of Russia. Although military priorities can and do change, China's pattern of acquisitions seems logically consistent with its national military strategy and its long-recognized military technology weaknesses. The military acquisition pattern seems to focus on two specific missions: increasing air power capabilities and enhancing China's ability to project and sustain combat forces capable of defending its maritime claims. One of these claims is Taiwan. Another is the Spratly Islands which are under water most of the time and could not support a runway for military jets even when visible. At this point, China has no long-range bomber in its inventory, so targets inland will be assigned to missiles. Using official published figures from China's annual budgets, a very risky business, suggests China has no plans for an AWACS system. The military can and does conceal actual expenditures. Accordingly, the generals may have more weapons than presently in evidence. China may use the Su27 as an air superiority military jet, but it has no plans for a plane capable of close support of ground forces, nor does China have any plans for an antitank aircraft like the American A10, a highly effective jet. However effective the A10 might be, it had to be close to its target to launch a missile. Boeing recently tested a standoff missile, the AGM130. After a demonstration, a Boeing official stated that : "The ability of the AGM130 to fly to its target under INS/CPS control eases the workload on the crew....the US Air Force now has significantly improved operational flexibility to attack high-visibility enemy targets from safe distances." And Tokyo has announced it will join the United States in developing a lightweight ship-launched missile named LEAP. Its system would detect an enemy missile using geo-stationary satellite information, compute its flight path and initiate interception with a combination of high-altitude and

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

128

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

low-altitude missiles. These weapons systems were picked out randomly from Defense News on the Internet. It seems quite clear that the demands placed on the command, control , communications and intelligence capabilities that are required to integrate air, land, and naval forces are enormous today. With the continuing advances in information technology, these military burdens are growing exponentially. The upshot is that the United States has such a jump on China in its ability to conduct modern warfare that America's preponderance in East Asia will increase, not diminish, in the years ahead. A great deal of useful information on this subject may be found in The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China's Search for Security by Andrew Nathan and Robert Ross. China's cumbersome armed forces have traditionally oriented toward the defense of home territory and policing dissident minorities. Its air force has been called "the most highly perfected obsolete aircraft in the world." Benjamin Schwartz, Executive Editor of World Policy Journal, reviewed The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress for The New York Times of July 6, 1997. "'Hardliners'," he wrote, "see a China mounting a challenge to America's position in East Asia. Nathan and Ross, on the other hand, see a defensively-minded state, vulnerable to internal unrest, obsessed with maintaining its territorial integrity and burdened by a military that is technology and organizationally far behind not only the United States, but Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea as well. ...More important, Nathan and Ross emphasize factors other than hardware that constrain China's military influence, pointing to the to the current 'revolution in technology. The demands placed on the command, control, communication, and intelligence capabilities that are required to integrate air, land, and naval forces are enormous today and, with the continual advances in information technology, are growing exponentially. The upshot is that the United States has such a jump on China in its ability to conduct modern warfare that America's military preponderance in East Asia will increase, not diminish, in the coming years.

Amongst other advances in information technology battlefield surveillance will almost certainly lead all others. So-called smart weapons need to be programmed to reach a precise target defined in advance by surveillance's from satellites or low orbit cameras. The Tomahawk, for example, must be programmed to reach its target. The use of this weapon in the Persian Gulf War showed just how accurate the Tomahawk was, and in 1990, it was still in a primitive stage of development. The KH11 is in reality an orbiting camera and so is the system incorporated into the Lacrosse. Both are highly classified, but they do exist and both were used in the Persian Gulf War. Authoritative sources suggest that the KH11 can produce

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

129

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

images with a 3 inch resolution. A military commander can see them as real time images using digital data transmission. This particular combination of surveillance cameras has been highly classified. However, Chinese leadership cannot take comfort in the knowledge that advanced technology battlefield sensors, target acquisition systems, and command and control systems are available on the open market to add to the complexity of the military environment surrounding China. China has tried at least three times to buy modern avionics, first from the United States (terminated in 1989 after the events of Tiananmen Square), the from Israel and Russia. The Israeli program was cut back because China was unable to manufacture the technology provided. Apparently, China has no indigenous talent capable of integrating Russian avionics with a future Chinese national military air command and control system. Were its civilian leaders to use force against Taiwan, they would be seriously embarrassed. The military leaders might not even have described the shortcomings of the PLA.to the political leaders.

William Ophuls has just written a book entitled Requiem for Modern Politics. It was published in 1997 by Westview Press, a division of Harper-Collins. This book is a sequel of Ecology of and the Politics of Scarcity. In the Introduction to the latest review by Ophuls,he quotes Robert Kaplan who wrote The Ends of the Earth:A Journey at the Dawn of the 21st Century: It is time to understand the 'environment for what it is: the national security issue of the early twenty-first century The political and strategic impact of surging populations, spreading disease, deforestation and soil erosion, water depletion, air pollution, and, possibly, rising sea levels in critical, overcrowded regions like the Nile Delta and Bangladesh -- developments that will prompt mass migrations and, in turn, incite group conflicts -will be the core foreign [policy challenge from which most others will ultimately emanate, arousing the public and uniting assorted interests left over from the Cold War.

There is at least enough natural gas in Central Asia to heat the homes of the world for another century. And with new discovery of oil in the same area of the world, its use may be enough to power the automobile industry in places where the auto does not already dominate a country's culture and inevitably postpones the day of reckoning. As Ophuls notes, "...the more

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

130

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

we succeed in doing so, the higher psychological social and political price we shall have to pay. China pas already passed the point of no return and its institutions operated by Communist theology are essentially designed to disintegrate. Energy from the Middle East should be considered ahead of the oil and gas in Central Asia. In Iraq, for example, semiofficial sources suggest that Iraq has oil reserves of 120.0 million barrels and 117 .9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Neighboring Iran has 93.0 billion barrels of oil reserves in the ground and 741.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Kuwait has 96.5 billion barrels of oil reserves and 52.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Saudi Arabia has 261.3 billion barrels of oil reserves and 188.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The United Arab Emirates have 97.8 billion barrels of oil in the ground and 204.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Bahrain is a small player in the Middle East. It has 0.2 billion barrels of oil and 5.2 trillion feet of natural gas. Beneath the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf lies a vast pool of natural gas, some 282.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas owned by Qatar (pronounced gutter) and 3.7 billion barrels of oil. This North Field extends northeast into Iran, but it is the world's largest natural gas field next to Iran and Russia. Oil experts believe that the North Field in Qatar holds so much gas that it can be trapped in huge quantities for at least 200 years. The rate of imports offers some insight into the centuries ahead. In 1995, for example, the United States, Germany, Japan, Italy and France combined imported about 9.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas liquefied for shipment by tankers as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). The cost of such gas is lower than gas from competitive sources, because the flow of gas is so powerful. Thus, Qatar doesn't have to drill too many wells. Nor is Qatari gas associated with the production of oil; such a mixture is less desirable because it can make gas production more costly and complicated. A cost add-on, however, is the process of converting natural gas into LNG for shipment by sea. In the Far East, only Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have the facilities to unload LNG at a port of entry. So does the United States. Most of Europe may be served by gas pipelines from the Middle East and the gas facilities in Central Asia. Azerbaijan alone claims oil reserves of 200 billion barrels and gas in the ground is estimated at 80 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. Its claims are wildly exaggerated. An Economic and Trade Overview off the Internet observed that Azerbaijan's oil reserves were about 3 billion barrels, but some experts put its ultimate potential at 40 billion barrels. Azerbaijan is one of the oldest producing regions of the world, but like most of the Former Soviet Union (FSU), its oil and gas industry suffers from outdated technology and poor planning which have resulted in

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

131

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

underproduction, waste and severe environmental degradation both on and offshore. The City of Baku has organized and promoted a Caspian Sea Infrastructure Conference in October, 1997. Other areas of the world produce oil and gas in commercially significant amounts. The United States has its Prudhoe Bay oil shipped by pipeline to Valdez, Alaska. Mexico and Venezuela are also big oil producers, and the latter has produced almost intolerable levels of air and water pollution in Caracas and Lake Maracaibo. Indonesia and Brunei have huge oil fields, and Malaysia has natural gas it sells to Japan. For most of July and August 1997, a pall of haze has shrouded Malaysia's capital city of Kuala Lumpur and other parts of peninsular Malaysia. The haze is a recurring problem for Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei. Hong Kong and Shanghai, two of China's largest cities are similarly covered by smog. It is caused by smoke drifting from forests being burned and cleared in nearby Indonesia for agriculture. Clear-cutting of forests has become a recipe for environmental decay afflicting Asia as increasing population combines with rapid economic growth, urbanization and industrialization generating an explosive demand for energy. A recent study by the Asian Development Bank found that the costs of environmental damage in Asia were already (1997) "staggeringly high and that if the region failed to implement better environmental policies, it would pay even more dearly for environmental negligence. Without conscious shifts in environmental policy, most of Asia will become dirtier, noisier, more congested, more eroded , less forested and less biologically diverse. The substainability of Asia's prosperity could be threatened." Vaclav Smil, a Canadian environmental specialist, has estimated that the annual cost of damage to China's natural resources is "probably equivalent to at least 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product -- $552 billion in 1996 -- and may well be as high as 15 percent. In only six of China's 27 largest cities is drinking water quality within state standards. Contamination of crops by polluted water endangers health and reduces opportunities for export of products. And the loss of arable land to urban encroachment and soil erosion means that, by the year 2000, Bangladesh and Egypt will be the only two populous nations with less arable land per capita than China." The government in Beijing may well have had this pending disaster in mind when China's National Environmental Protection Agency announced an environmental forum to be held in Beijing between November 18 and 21, 1997. See http://www.ihei.com/ Smil added another cautionary note. "China like other countries in the early stages of rapid economic development, has been slow to allocate capital for environmental management and now has extensive areas of

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

132

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

badly damaged ecosystems. These factors, together with China's huge population and ambitious development aspirations, make it the world's most worrisome case of environmental degradation. If China were to consume resources at the level of South Korea or Taiwan and import crude oil and grain at the rates comparable to those of other rapidly growing East Asian economies, it would need more energy and more cereal than are currently available on the world market." Recently, the news that the tobacco companies might look with favor on settlement of cases brought by the states encouraged the domestic tobacco companies. Most observers believe these companies would simply switch their future operations to Asia and Europe. However, China is beginning to tighten up its regulation of smoking, principally by raising the tax on tobacco. This tax should currently produces revenue, about $6 billion per year, but a lot of this is simply not collected, and regulation is essentially not enforced. However, Chinese epidemiologic studies have examined the effects of smoking and air pollution on the incidence of many diseases. Of these, the largest impact on public health arises from chronic obstruction of pulmonary disease (COPD), lung cancer, coronary heart disease (CHD), and childhood pneumonia. COPD has been found responsible for about 1.5 million deaths in China each year. The number of deaths in China from COPD are five to six times higher in China than in the United States. Exposure to dust and fumes plus air pollution suggest that the high rates of COPD in China come from indoor air pollution caused by residential fuel combustion. Mortality rates for COPD in rural areas are about 66 percent higher than in the cities. Lung cancer claims about 250,000 lives per year in China The Chinese Environmental Yearbook for 1995 showed that average annual outdoor concentrations of total suspended particulates and sulphur dioxide SO 2 greatly exceeded Chinese and World Health Organizations standards. Pneumonia is the leading cause of death for children in China, killing approximately 300,000 annually. High pneumonia mortality is associated with parents' chronic respiratory infections, crowded living conditions passive smoking, high levels of indoor air pollution from fuel combustion, and parents' delay in seeking medical attention for sick children. These last two factors are thought to be responsible for the fact that the mortality rate from childhood pneumonia in rural areas in China is four times that in the cities. These figures tell only part of the story. Chronic disability from pollution-related lung disease places an enormous load on China's health care system and is responsible for tens of millions of lost work days each year. The economic impact of these pollution-related lung disease is enormous. The medical effect may be even worse. Constant exposure to toxic air quality throughout China tends to reduce the body's attempts to resist other illness, such as tuberculosis, black lung disease and malaria.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

133

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

The completion of the Three Gorges Dam in 2009 may be a trigger environmental disaster than even its opponents claim. Approximately one million Chinese will have been moved to other locations to make way for the huge inland sea created by damming the Yangtze River. Those ordered to move may well face adverse medical effects, and we know that deterioration of the 'environment tends to reduce resistance to illness in general. India, for example, has had four major malaria epidemics since 1994; last year alone 2.85 million Indians got the disease and some thousands died. Malaria is spreading in Asia borne by migrant workers and other travelers. Red tides may also become a problem for Chinese cities on the coast, such as Dalian, Hong Kong, Macao and Shanghai. They are caused by an inflow of nitrogen, phosphorus and untreated waste. Shellfish are particularly affected, often producing neuro-toxins fatal to humans. Red tides have appeared in the Philippines , Hiroshima Bay,and other areas close to China. In fact, Hong Kong had a red tide only two years ago, 1995. China was witness to what is certainly the world's greatest manmade environmental disaster. The smoke and haze from forest fires in Indonesia will have a long term effect of increasing the death rate in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, and Brunei. The Suharto government has declined to accept full responsibility for an act that was made illegal in 1995. No one seems willing to act to prevent a recurrence of this catastrophe. However, air pollution in cities like Shanghai and Hong Kong has deteriorated in the last ten years or so. These are urban environments. In large areas of China, desertification has proceeded at an accelerating pace. This is the process by which an area becomes a desert. with the rapid depletion of plant life and the loss of topsoil at desert boundaries and in semiarid regions, usually caused by a combination of drought and the over-exploitation of grasses and other vegetation by people. This process is evident in rural China in for example Sinkiang. So what China seems to have is a population of at least 1.3 billion people, most of them living in urbanized China and exposed to deteriorating air quality, undrinkable water, not enough food, toxic compounds just about everywhere, and noise that assails the ears with decibels of continuous sound at an unbearable level, and a soil that has been leached by decades of poor agricultural practices. Furthermore, the amount of arable land per capita has reached a level lower than most third world countries. The combination of food shortages throughout China and environmental disaster areas has had serious effect on infant morbidity; the proportion of sickness or of a specific disease in a geographical locality. In neighboring Uzbekistan, infant mortality rose by almost fifty percent between 1970 and 1986. With the single exception of Russia, no other great industrial civilization has so systematically poisoned its land air, water, and people

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

134

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

as has China. Historians might well describe China in the 1990s as one vast Belsen, a death camp operated by the Nazis during World War II. In its book, Death by Default A Policy of Fatal Neglect in China's State Orphanages, Human Rights Watch offers a chilling description of the Shanghai Children's Welfare Institute. In March, 1995 a doctor there Zhanh Shuyun escaped from China carrying with her a substantial archive of secretly obtained orphanage documents. "The documents covering mainly the period 198892 paint a picture of day-today life at that time for the institutional orphans and abandoned children of Shanghai -- one of China's most prosperous cities -- that seems marked by such extremes of official callousness and brutality as to challenge normal belief. In this chapter [it begins on page 117] the evidence contained in those documents is presented in comprehensive detail, with particular attention given core question of extremely high mortality at the orphanage and to the pseudomedical diagnostic and treatment practices that appear, in many cases, to have been its primary cause." China's specious claim to guarantee "the right to subsistence" conceals a secret world of starvation, disease, and unnatural death. The victims are the orphans and abandoned children in custodial institutions run by China's Ministry of Civil Affairs. The brutality found in Shanghai is widespread throughout all of China. The People's Republic of China ratified the United Nations Convention the Rights of the Child in December, 1991. It submitted its first implementation report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 1994. The Chinese government has thus submitted itself voluntarily to international monitoring on the treatment of its minor citizens and may be heard uttering its preposterous mantra that "monitoring" of the welfare of Chinese children is an interference in its internal affairs.

Those oil companies with interests in oil from the Caspian Sea Basin have a critical interest in the Black Sea. So far pipelines from Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have proposed routes ending in existing Black Sea ports, such as Novorossisk, Supsa, and Batumi or even a new facility built especially for loading oil discovered during the 1990s. Already, the Black Sea has more ship traffic than it can safely handle from these ports. These ships, most, if not all of them are tankers of differing dead weight tonnage. These tankers must then navigate the treacherous Straits of Bosporus. A

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

135

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

navigation map prepared and published by the Defense Mapping Agency of the United States in 1996 illustrates just how treacherous navigation through the Straits of Bosporus is and has been for years. Passage through these straits to the Sea of Marmara and then to the Mediterranean Sea through the Dardenelles is awkward but essential to deliver oil to Europe. Passage through the Bosporus may even be impossible for tankers over 100,000 deadweight tons Navigation safety is a paramount obligation, but the Black Sea is the world's largest single reservoir of hydrogen sulphide, one of the deadliest substances in the natural world. A full breath of it is enough to kill a human being. This deadly brew has accumulated over tens of thousands of years. Five rivers empty into the Black Sea: the Kuban, the Don, the Dnieper, the Dniester, and the Danube. The Danube's drainage basin extends across the whole of eastern and central Europe. The inrush of organic matter from five rivers was too much for the bacteria in sea water which would decompose this matter. They feed by oxidizing their nutrients, using the dissolved oxygen normally present in sea

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

136

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Turkey with satellite photo of Pan Bosporus Str. See http://gurukul.ucc.american.edu/TED/BOSPORUS.HTM

water. But when the organic inflow is so great that the supply of dissolved oxygen is used up, then the bacteria turn to another biochemical process: they strip the oxygen from the sulfate ions which are a component of sea water, creating hydrogen sulphide in the process, or H 2 S. In the last fifty or more years, the five rivers have carried runoff from agriculture along their banks. Even more recently, toxic pesticides and fertilizers have been added to the poisonous brew that had already settled to the bottom of the Black Sea. Some authorities mention a possibility so terrible that most scientists prefer not to discus it. This nightmare is known by the harmless word 'turnover,' a phenomenon which has been observed in lakes whose depths are anoxic and charged with hydrogen sulphide. 'Turnover' means a sudden rolling over of water layers, as if the whole balance of pressures and densities which had kept the heavier mass below the lighter, fresh water were reversed and overthrown. Were this to take place in the Black Sea,, it would be the worst natural cataclysm to strike the earth since the

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

137

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

last Ice Age. Neal Ascherson, author of Black Sea, is somewhat reassuring. There are traces of hope in measuring the oxycline, the upward limit of the poisoned undermass. Russian measurements suggest their measurements have shown variations up and down of as much as thirty metres. Ascherson has also noticed that scientists with the most experience were amongst those least ready to issue melodramatic forecasts of doom. Ascherson also points out that humans of the Black Sea Basin -- about 160 million people -- are slowly killing the fish population of the Black Sea, although the process began 2000 years ago. The natural action of natural forces brought about a huge act of pollution: the decay of billions of tons of upcountry mud and leaves and living ooze and dead microorganisms poured into the sea floor since the last Ice Age by the five great rivers of the Black Sea. In the last century or so, fisherman could earn a decent living with small wooden boats and primitive nets to catch the creatures of the sea and sell them ashore. What is being polluted by human agency is not the main body of water (apart from the tipping of drums of toxic waste by Italian ships) but the surface layer whose abundance has shaped the entire prehistory and history of the Black Sea. Monstrous plankton blooms have begun to appear on the shallow northwestern shelf of the Black Sea, where the bottom is above the anoxic level and where many of the important fish spawn. 'Red tides' have formed regularly since the 1970s from the phosphates found in fertilizers. They combine to produce a neuro-toxin deadly to humans. The worst of these was in the Bay of Odessa in 1989. The red tide reached the horrifying concentration of one kilogram for every cubic metre of sea water. As if this litany of environmental disasters were not enough, Ascherson offers another, this time a small, jelly-like creature with no known predators. It was discovery in the Black Sea. Scientists identified it as the Mneniopsis, a native of the shallow estuaries of the United States. Clearly, it got to the Black Sea in the water ballast of freighters. Between 1987 and 1988 one of the most devastating biological explosions ever recorded by science involved this small, transparent creature. It multiplied by the millions and fed on zooplanckton, the food of young fish, and on fish larvae. Its total biomass in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov reached 700 million tons of translucent jelly , and its impact was wildly catastrophic. The Mnemiopsis, however, seem to have eaten the sea to the point of losing all Black Sea fish and moved on the Sea of Marmara This disaster, more than anything else, finally convinced the governments of the Black Sea states that they must take action. Here's what Ascherson notes about the fish population of the Black Sea. A second obstacle to the rescue of the Black Sea's ecology is the attitude of Turkey. Among all the causes of the Black Sea crisis, the most direct and obvious is over-fishing. Species after species is being wiped out, or reduced to a few insignificant

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

138

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

survivors, by genocidal and shortsighted greed which pays no attention to warnings about fish stocks until catch numbers and average weight have fallen below the point of no return. Most of the over-fishing is done by Turks. This is a demonstrable fact, but a fact which Turkish fisherman, politicians and even scientists find almost impossible to admit. Ignorance and the cruel spoils system of Turkish regional politics, contribute to this reluctance. But the most the most powerful motive is patriotic resentment. Once again, the outside world is perceived to be picking on Turkey and meddling in Turkish internal affairs.

There can be no thought that the major oil companies may use the ports of the Black Sea to load oil and/or liquefied natural gas for shipment through this dying sea and on to the Mediterranean Sea via the Straits of the Bosporus. No rescue effort could take place while supertankers were moving through this old route to the sea. The amount of oil involved will more the quadruple the existing traffic. As Ascherson states: "Appalling difficulties confront any program for saving the marine life of the Black Sea. One of them -- the most pathetic -- is the bankruptcy of science in the countries of the former Soviet Union. All around the coasts of Ukraine and southern Russia, from Odessa and Sevastopol to Kerch on the Crimean Peninsula, there once stood a chain of magnificent institutes of marine biology and oceanography. Their standards of research, not only in the Black Sea region but in the oceans, were as high as any in the world, and their equipment -- above all their fleet of specially fitted ships -- was the envy of their Western colleagues.....At exactly the moment when awareness of the desperate situation in the Black Sea began to dawn on the world, this magnificent and indispensable resource was paralyzed by financial collapse. In Russia, money for almost all public scientific bodies dried up to a mere trickle at the end of 1991." At the western extremity of the Black Sea, one finds the Danube River Delta. In the mid1980s this huge area of over 1700 square miles was the subject of an environmentally destructive attempt to transform the delta into farmland. This idea was one of Nicolae Ceausecsu's projects, and it would have seriously degraded what is the world's largest river wetlands. Ceausescu was shot by one of the officers in his own army on December 25, 1989. His violent death was part of the fallout of the revolution in Central Europe. Ceausescu ordered 6000 men to pump the Danube Delta dry and plant wheat and rice. The project was a failure. Water plants died, and animals were driven from some 240,000 acres; even worse, uncounted pelicans and cormorants were shot. These birds were part of a Rumanian project to encourage more fish. The birds were eating the fish, so Ceausescu ordered them shot. In the 1990s, environmental scientists and economists from several countries decided Ceausescu's projects had to go. Since this decision to reverse politics, some 9,000 acres of the Danube

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

139

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Delta have been re-flooded. The agency overseeing this project is the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve. Financing it is the World Bank's Global Environmental Facility. The area reclaimed by flooding had become too dry, and irrigation with river water was difficult because water evaporated quickly, leaving too many minerals behind. The Danube Delta was one of Europe's largest wetlands west of the Volga. Straddling the border of Rumania and Ukraine, is a vast patchwork of islands and swamps river created by the Danube's final split into three main branches. Each branch had its own channels and backwaters where water and nutrients bred a multitude of living things. On the flyways of many migrating birds, the delta served as a breeding, resting, or feeding ground for some 365 species, with large flocks wintering in the delta. In the spring, shad and sturgeon made spawn runs up the river, and there were fat carp, bream, and pike to be found amongst the rushes and water lilies. Marius Condac is now the bird and game warden of the delta and could use more wardens to deal with poachers. A fishing ban for sturgeon has not yet passed, but Condac is hopeful. Unexpected support for the delta restoration project came from the Eastern Orthodox Church. Its spiritual leader, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, made defense of the region's damaged environment Church policy; it exhorts the faithful to respect God's creation. Up the river, countries through which the Danube flows have agreed to clean up the river, but progress has been slow. Two years before, 1995, land re-flooded then showed signs of life. In 1997, this land had rushes and coot nests together with plenty of carp. All this occurred after officials in Turkey had allowed its fishermen a license to kill fish. Ankara had never heard of a relatively new movement supporting the protection of wildlife and wetlands preservation as being more important and valuable than agriculture that barely survived the poisonous waste from the headwaters of the Danube in Germany . The river flowed through Austria, Hungary, and Rumania before emptying into the Black Sea. In the 1970s, the Turkish government decided to make fishing more profitable. The government announced a generous program of loans and grants financed in part by the World Bank. With this money the fisherman living in villages along the Turkish coast of the Black Sea were able to buy or build large boats equipped with new fishing and fish-locating technology. However, the cost of an effective boat began to soar out of reach of most Black Sea fisherman, while the interest charges on loans ruined family after family. Disaster struck in the 1980s. Society in the little ports and villages divided in a desperate struggle between the precariously rich and the chronically poor. Even the big fishing boats began to lose money often returning from a trip with no or very few fish. Owners of the smaller boats gave them up and cast nets during the winter

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

140

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

for meager catches. After some thirty years of hand-to-mouth existence's, the fishermen got more or less to where they were, but there were no fish. Just to the south of the Black Sea coast in Turkey, there are nine provinces dominated by some 12 million Kurds. For some thirteen years, Turkey has been racked by a most brutal civil war with these Kurds. Hardly anyone mentions this ugly war even though Turkey acceded to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on July 31, 1950. In October, 1997, the Turkish government lifted emergency rule in three provinces, Batman, Bitlis, and Bingol. In fact, however, the civil governors still have the same power as before to authorize military operations and expel citizens they suspect of Kurdish national sympathies. Four other provinces remain in limbo. Mus, Mardin, Adiyaman, and Elazig had emergency rule lifted in 1996, and the government in Ankara remains unwilling to settle the brutal fighting by letting the Kurds at least preserve their own culture by encouraging schools to teach the Kurdish language. As of October, 1997 even suggesting anything that might "harm the indivisible unity of the Turkish state" is a crime in Turkey. The two provinces having a common border with Iraq, Sirnak and Hakkari, are still under emergency rule. Notwithstanding, Turkish army units have been pursuing Kurds into Iraq heedless of boundaries. The area in Iraq included land in the No Fly Zone, a policy adopted after the Persian Gulf War. In treating the Kurds as non-persons while, at the same time, wiping out their language and culture, Turkey has violated the European Convention on Human Rights and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. On the other hand, Turkey has expressed an interest on joining the European Union (EU). With inflation at well over 50 percent, Mesut Yilmaz, Turkey's Prime Minister since June, 1997 has no intention of complying with the plan endorsed by the International Monetary Fund. Turkey would not even qualify for admission to the EU; as a minimum, it needs a balanced budget. Evidently, Turkey considers itself free to violate treaties by which they are bound. Turkey has never accepted the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. Recently, however, the International War Crimes Tribunal has been formed to deal the trial of persons charged with the crime of genocide. It arose out of the war in Serbia and Herzegovina and the ethnic cleansing in which hundreds of thousands were either killed or became refugees. This court is located at the Hague in the Netherlands, and it has already tried and convicted several people from Serbia. They were found guilty of violation of the convention on genocide. Turkey is a member of NATO, but it periodically enrages Greeks by overflying their part of Cyprus. Cyprus, of course, is the issue. For violations of the European Convention on Human Rights, see http://www.kypros.org/Cyprus_Problem/hr/hr_8.htm

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

141

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

In Anatolia, a gigantic Turkish project, the Ataturk Dam, has been receiving water beginning in 1990 to flow in behind the dam, creating a huge lake. The dam, or rather a series of dams, has slowed the flow of water downstream in the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Iraq and Syria have both objected to this reduction in their flow of water. Iran has threatened war if its water for agricultural purposes is unreasonably reduced. So has Iraq. Because of the controversy over water rights, the World Bank refused to fund the project, known as the Southeastern-Anatolia Project (GAP). GAP was designed to bring electricity and water for the irrigation of some 30,000 square miles of arid and semiarid land. GAP was also designed to allow Turkey to grow much of the food for the Middle East by irrigating some 4.2 million acres of land. This irrigation would enable Turkish farmers to raise cotton, sugarbeets, tobacco, soy beans and other cash crops instead of the grain they now raise. Turkey has expressed concern over cross-border raids by Iraqi Kurds. Water to irrigate much of Turkeys' Anatolian area is expected to flow from the Ataturk Dam through basalt-lined tunnels designed to avoid erosion. These tunnels incidentally serve as protection from sabotage by the Kurdish militants. What has happened in the Black Sea, one story from Turkey and another, more positive story from Rumania make a critical point first made by Robert D. Kaplan in his 1996 book, The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn of the 21st Century. It is time, he wrote, to understand the environment for what it is: the national security issue of the early 21st century. The political and strategic impact of surging populations, spreading disease, deforestation, rising sea levels in the critical, overcrowded regions like the Nile Delta and Bangladesh -- developments that will prompt mass migrations and, in turn, incite group conflicts -will be the core foreign challenge policy challenge from which most others will ultimately emanate, arousing the public and uniting assorted interests left over from the Cold War.

And this is not all. Saddam Hussein, a hangover from the War in the Persians Gulf (1990-91), has searched the world for nuclear weapons and/or biological weapons and may well have them in 1997. India and Pakistan both have nuclear weapons, and the inventory of missing weapons-grade uranium and plutonium is a sober warning. The cultural mix of Central Asia has never been fully understood at all in the United States. Islam Karimov, for example, was born an orphan and spent his entire life within the Communist hierarchy of Uzbekistan. Karimov would like to emulate Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, but he doesn't know how. He fears what has happened in the Caucasus, where two so-called democrats were lauded for the for their human right, Levon TerPetrossian in Armenia and Ebulfez Elcibey in Azerbaijan They promptly entered into a war that killed 20,000 people and created a million

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

142

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

refugees. In the Caucasus, it required a Soviet era dictator, Geidar Aliyev who overthrew the democrat in Azerbaijan to move toward peace with Armenia. The discovery of oil and great wealth helped Aliyev settle the dispute, or at least put it on hold, pending a decision on the routes for oil and gas pipelines.

In some ways, the United States probably contributed to undermining the discipline of international financial institutions. In 1996,Washington strongly backed South Korea's entry into the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. Membership in the OECD is largely symbolic, but it has certain perks. Members may assume that bank loans to members carry no risk of default. This assumption rests on rules developed by the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. This bank was founded in 1930 as an institution for cooperation among the central banks of the various member countries. Foreign banks around the world, mindful that South Korea's membership was a sure thing, more than doubled their lending to South Korea from $52 billion to $108 billion. As it happened South Korean banks were the biggest victims of the 1997 Asian meltdown, closely followed by Japan and the so-called Asian Tigers like Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore. This latter city-state was home to the world's third largest oil refinery, so it was never in any real danger of financial collapse. In fact, Japan was one of the guarantors of the subscription of capital in the Bank for International Settlements -1,500,000,000 gold francs -- only 25 percent of which has been paid in.However, the public's money was at risk in South Korea and Japan, and it had no input into regulations designed to protect public money. Thus, management of huge loans was never made subject to regulations designed to protect the public. In fact, the financial meltdown was something like the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s in the United States, The savings and loan industry was simply deregulated by President Reagan and not replaced by well-trained financial managers and auditors. Chaos was the inevitable result. During October, 1997 the world's financial markets went into a tailspin. The Dow Jones Index lost some 552 points in a few days. More or less the same were other market indexes in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hong

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

143

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Kong, and Seoul; the indices were all down. The other so-called Tiger states of Southeast Asia had already either devalued their currency against the dollar or speculators had simply sold Thai currency (the baht), Malaysia (the ringgit), Indonesia (the rupiah), Singapore (the dollar), Seoul (the won), and Manila (the peso). Investors in Australia, Brazil, and Russia all lost money when the local currency declined sharply against the dollar. Hong Kong was the big surprise. At the end of June, 1997 Hong Kong was handed over by Great Britain, and its dollar was considered sound. However, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced it would support the local dollar; it had a rate of 7.5 to the American dollar. The three Hong Kong banks that issued these dollars viewed the slight rise in interest rates as one of the weapons used to support the Hong Kong dollar. However, higher rates for Hong Kong are bad, because they deter borrowing, slow the sale of property -- value in Hong Kong rests principally on real property -- and drive money out of stocks and into bonds. Furthermore, the Monetary Authority has about $80 billion in U.S. dollars and said it would use its reserves to defend the local dollar. The People's Bank of China has about $134 billion in U.S. dollars. Using these reserves to defend the Hong Kong dollar would be an exercise in utter futility. In the financial centers of the world, wire transfers of between $1 and $2 trillion a day are routine. To really defend its dollar, Hong Kong will probably have support an interest rate increase. Higher rates pull capital into Hong Kong and spur buying its dollars. While the monetary crisis continues, confidence in the Hong Kong dollar can be expected to decline. If this happens, neither Hong Kong nor Beijing has the resources to buy big ticket imports such as nuclear power plants. There is however, a problem. Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) Inc. just announced it would lay off some 10,000 jobs in Western Europe and the United States. Company executives said the planned to shift thousands of jobs from countries like Sweden and and Germany to fastergrowing markets in Southeast Asia and China. This project may be amongst the first to be cancelled as a result of the global financial crisis. Furhermore, Germany's unemployment figures, now at 11.2 percent, will look worse with the people laid off by Brown Boveri. The Southeast Asia crisis is probably limited to that area and includes China, Taiwan and South Korea. Sharp declines in Asian countries against the dollar make Asian products cheaper, and imported products far more expensive than they were in July, 1997. It was on this date that the Thai crisis erupted. The Thai crisis occurred against an environment of ongoing political corruption. Banks in Bangkok made poor loans with next to no security, and cronyism existed on a wide scale. Furthermore, there was little or no demand for the officebuildings so lavishly built during the last five years. Malaysia is in essentially the same position as Thailand. Its Prime Minister Mohammed Mahathir has had an edifice complex and

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

144

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Kuala Lumpur built the highest office building in Asia. Like Thailand, competitive bidding has not been used to finance the construction of public buildings. Indonesia has beenanother example of cronyism in management and finance. Rich landowners were corruptly allowed to engage in There has been a long time ban on these plants, but China is considered a gold mine for this technology. American reactor manufacturers have jointly developed a cheaper and safer reactor, and they are now lobbying Washington to lift the ban on sales to China. They succeeded when an agreement was announced on the occasion of Presidenyt Jiangh's visit to the United States. The lobby is led by Westinghouse Electric Corporation and ABB Asea Brown Boveri Ltd. with an American subsidiary. They have been partners with Westinghouse, the Bechtel Corporation and Stone & Webster Engislash and burn agriculture. The fires set to burn off trees was illegal as of 1996. The fires lingering on may last for a long time, and the smog generated has polluted the air of Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Sumatra. So far as corporate profits are concerned, American companies that earn significent revenue from Southeast Asian may see their profits in the United States shrink. Southeast Asian products that are exported became less expensive, even competitive with American prices. This means that the trade deficit for the United States can be expected to increase, probably at the expense of American manufacturers of like products. An exception exists with respect to the Hong Kong dollar. Because of its link to the American dollar, the Hong Kong dollar now buys less in this fiancial capital of China. Its leaders have not been entirely successful in supporting the Hong Kong dollarr by buying Hong Kong dollars and dipping into its foreign currency reserves of U.S. dollars. On October 21, 1997 it held firm at 7.15 to the U.S. dollar. On October 28, 1997 it dropped precipately to 7.7325 to the U.S. dollar. On the same day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 552.26 points, the largest singleday dccline in its history. Since then, the Dow Jones has bounced up and down with no apparent trend in either direction. The weakness in Asian countries really began in Thailand. Most countries in Southeast Asia had chosen to tie their currencies to the dollar, with an exchange rate that was fixed or was allowed to fluctuate within a narrow range. Over time, Thailand -- the first of the countries to suffer -- found itself with a currency that was overvalued. Imports flooded in as Thais bought foreign luxury goods, while exports stagnated. Some international investors began to bet that the administration in Bangkok would devalue the baht. It did on July 2, 1997. These speculators then borrowed baht to buy dollars or other solid currencies. The speculators could make a tidy profit if they could later repurchase the baht for less. than they had paid. Bangkok took action by raising interest rates -- making it more expensive to borrow baht -- and prohibited some foreigners from acquiring baht . In

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

145

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

the meantime, however, Thais began to worry. They had borrowed dollars to finance their businesses, because interest rates in dollars were lower. If the baht were to decline in value , they would be in trouble, because the dollaars needed to repay these loans would cost a lot more baht. By buying dollars to protect themselves, the value of the baht declined precipitately. The value of real property also declined in value, and this caused anxiety amongst bankers. Their security was based on a fixed rate for the baht. In Thailand, less real property was secured than in Hong Kong. This is why the Hong Kong dollar went into free fall in Octiber, 1997. Value in Hong Kong depended far more on real property that it did in Thailand. Still, many Thais lost a great deal of money, and so did the very rich in Hong Kong. According to news reports, the Kwok Brothers and Li KaShing lost a combined total of HK$1.5 billion in one day. It was on October 23, 1997 that Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index declined by 10,426 points, or 10.4 percent. On the same date, the Hang Seng had fallen by 22.5 percent since the beginning of 1997. On October 27, the Hong Kong market had spread its troubles to Europe and Latin America as its Hang Seng Index hit another low. On Tuesday, October 28, the communications media reported that the Dow Jones Industrial Averages had lost 554.26 points, and the turmoil was global. Despite statements from Hong Kong officials vowing to support the HK dollar, thre was some evidence that the flight of capital from Hong Kong had already begun, the result of a growing fear that the territory's currency might be delinked from the dollar peg. By October 28, all major countries reported a decline on its stock index; ciyies in each of these countries included Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur Singapore, Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta, Sydnet, Seoul, and Tokyo. In Europe, exchanges in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Rome, Madrid, Vienna, to name a few showed declines with a few exceptions. On October 30, Moody's Investor Service of the United States downgraded its outlike for the entire banking industry in Hong Kong. In Indonesai, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has negotiated a plan leading to austerity in spending. It was supported by Singapore and Japan but only if Jakarta agrees to accept austerity. Japan also offered $billion to Indonesia on the same basis of conditionality. The IMF was also negotiating with Thailand.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

146

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Selection of pipeline routes from Central Asia to the West seems like a long-term process. Cost is only one consideration; political stability is essential. Feasibility is another yardstick. Studies have shown that it would cost more that $16 billion to construct a line under the Caspian Sea, across Azerbaijan, Armenia and Nakhichevan to Turkey. Because of the LibyaIran Sanctions Act of 1996, major American oil companies must of necessity avoid Iran. Turkmenistan already supplies gas to the republics of Central Asia via the Soviet-developed and Russian-controlled system. A line through Afghanistan is not out of the question; it depends on the political nerve of the participants. The Unocal Corporation has already discovered pitfalls there. American women are certain to object because of the way the Taleban fundamentalists treat women in Afghanistan, a reminder that medieval customs still exist and get enforced by the Taleban. However, Afghanistan has another use. If this country threatens to negotiate with Afghanistan, negotiations may well convince Russia that Turkmenistan will pursue alternative routes if Moscow goes on damaging its vital economic interests by providing unsatisfactory and unreliable transit facilities for existing gas exports. As of mid1997, the most realistic prospect is for an improvement in transit conditions through Russia as Western companies secure improved conditions for oil transit through Russia. All parties involved in this aspect of the Great Game agree that there will have to be a new export pipeline. The relationship between politics and pipeline development remains quite close. Russia, for example, cannot have forgotten the humiliating defeat in its war with Afghanistan. Furthermore, any rap Grozny is the capital city of Chechnya now an independent nation. [graphic] prochement between Azerbaijan and Russia might involve Russian support for a negotiated settlement to the dispute in Karabakh. The recent settlement of Russia's dispute with Chechnya offers some tantalizing possibilities. Russia might even soften its position on the Caspian Sea's legal regime. Much will depend on whether Moscow's various factions or power centers will accept what is perhaps, the basic premise of Western activities has been that the economics of oil and gas in Central Asia make winners out of all of them. This premise runs counter to the nationalist belief in Moscow that the attainment of economic independence by Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan is a zero-sum game in which, if the Central Asian republics gain, then Russia surely must lose. On October 23, 1997 Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, Under Secretary for Economic and Business Affairs, appeared before the Subcommittee on International Economic Policy, Export and Trade Promotion. It was a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Ambassador Eizenstat offered comments on the Clinton Administration's policy with respect to pipeline routes out of the Caspian Sea Basin. The Clinton

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

147

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Administration, he said, has "five main foreign policy interests in the Caspian region. They are: The independence and sovereignty of the New Independent States (NIS), and their democratic and market development; Promotion of regional conflict resolution; the increase and diversification of world energy supplies; continued support for U.S. companies; and continued pressure on the Iranian regime to change its unacceptable practices..." "Resolution of regional conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, and Chechnya is critical for successful and comprehensive energy development in the [Caspian] region. The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, for example, has contributed to instability in Azerbaijan and hinders serious consideration of a pipeline from Azerbaijan through Armenia to the west.....In the longer term, the scale of Caspian Basin energy resources not only justifies -- but will demand -- multiple transportation options for moving production out into world markets. ....The United States supports a [pipeline route from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Ceyhan, Turkey as one of multiple routes." Routing a pipeline through part of Turkey avoids any further environmental degradation of the Black Sea. However, such a route may have to be run through territory in which the Turkish army has an ugly civil war with the Kurds. Both sides recognize there is no military solution to this intractable problem. At the end of the 19th century, Azerbaijan was the number one world source for oil. Until the middle of the 20th century, it remained the single largest supplier of oil to Europe. Capturing Baku, Azerbaijan's capitol city, was Adolph Hitler's principal strategic objective when the Nazi armies invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. History records that the Nazis almost captured their objective, but they ran out of fuel before they could reach Baku. Stalingrad was a mere 300 miles away; and the Nazis were stopped at the gates of this city. After World War II (193945), oil companies in the Soviet Union began looking for more oil in the Urals and then Siberia. Russian geologists overlooked Central Asia. Here was a huge area four times the size of France, beginning at the Caspian Sea and extending to China. It 55 million inhabitants are poor, and none of the five countries likes the other. Only Uzbekistan seems politically stable. Geographically, it is the center of Central Asia. Tashkent, its capital is considered the region's chief commercial city, and despite its Communist background, Uzbekistan has been trying to move towards a market economy. Notwithstanding, it was from Central Asia that the Soviet Union launched its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, returning defeated ten years later. Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan share the Aral Sea. Because of the Soviet Union's criminal indifference to the environment, the Aral Sea is now something like 25 percent of its former area, poisoned by pesticides and poor agricultural practices. It is literally drying up from overuse of water

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

148

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

from two rivers that once had enough to irrigate cotton acreage. Most of the water diverted evaporated because the canals were neither covered nor lined. The water slowly became contaminated by pesticides and other chemicals sprayed on cotton and rice fields. Having settled on the seabed, these chemicals are now windblown for hundreds of miles. None of the neighboring states of Central Asia see any possibility of saving what's left of this once rich sea. Some inhabitants even suggest the location of oil refineries nearby, selling the refined products for hard currencies. The discovery of new oil in Azerbaijan has set off a furious search for pipelines to carry oil and gas to Europe and the West. The Caspian Sea Basin may hold oil and gas reserves second only to those of the Middle East. Conservatively, the Caspian Sea Basin -- it includes Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgistan, and Uzbekistan -- has oil reserves of more than 75 billion barrels and some 25 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. The Clinton Administration has announced it would oppose any pipeline that went through Iran. Furthermore, it does not want any pipeline going through a former Soviet oblast (county or province). The image of a few pages ago is a highly stylized view of a critical area of oil geography. It features Grozny, the capital city of Chechnya. The pipelines shown passing through Grozny were badly damaged during the Russian attempt three years ago to subdue Chechen rebels who fought for their independence from the former Soviet Union. In 1996, President Boris Yeltsin sent General Alexandr Lebed to negotiate a cease fire and an agreement that would concede Chechen freedom. It was duly signed by the president of Chechnya after elections in that country. On October 25, 1997 oil began to flow through Chechnya using the wardamaged pipeline. It ran from Baku to Novorossisk hundreds of miles to this Russian port on the Black Sea. A 95mile segment of the new pipeline transits Chechnya and Grozny, its capital. This oil is described as early oil, and some 176,000 barrels will flow through this pipeline by late 1997. Sixty-five years ago, a pipeline ran from Baku to Batumi, a Georgian port on the Black Sea, but it was shut down in 1935. Some of the early oil was bought by Lukoil, a giant oil company in Russia. On the same day the flow from Baku began, the formation of Central Asia Gas Pipeline Ltd. was announced in Turkmenistan. Currently, this company may deliver gas to an as yet un-designated port via pipeline in Afghanistan and Pakistan Unocal has the largest share of this consortium; the other companies have not been identified. The location of pipelines from the Caspian Sea Basin to the West was critical. Depending where the pipelines are placed, power over this OPECfree energy supply may fall to Chechen rebels, irredentist Armernians, Russian or Turkish gangsters, Iranian mullahs Kurdish guerillas or

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

149

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

mercurial chieftains of ethnic groups that nurse ancient grievances of which the outside world knows nothing. Rosemarie Forthye, an American diplomat specializing in international energy issues put it succinctly in 1996: "All options are complicated, and none is trouble-free, because they all either pass through politically unstable areas, involve high costs because of distance or terrain, or are politically risky because they offend the sensibilities of one or more of the regional powers." This language appeared in The Politics of Oil in the Caucasus and Central Asia: Problems, Prospects, and Policy, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, 1996. Eizenstat also reiterated America's support for multiple pipelines. "In keeping with our support for the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline, we have urged the Turks to create a commercially attractive arrangement. On the gas side we are working with Turkey to identify energy alternatives to meet their energy shortages, including gas from the Caspian through the Caucasus. We continue to press Turkey to open its border with Armenia as part of its ongoing, positive role in resolving the Nagorno-Karabaskh conflict." In May, 1997, Turkey signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Turkmenistan and Iran. It allows Iran to buy gas from Turkmenistan, while Iran will permit this gas to transit its territory. Eizenstat stated flatly that this Memorandum did not authorize a pipeline across Iran in violation of the Iran-Libyan Sanctions Act of 1996. "We will monitor future developments under the Memorandum of Understanding and... should we find evidence of investment activity which could enhance Iran's ability to develop its own petroleum resources, we will take appropriate action under this act of Congress." In his comments to the International Economic Policy, Export and Trade Promotion Committee, a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Eizenstat showed a real awareness of the environmental hazards of shipping oil through the Black Sea via the Straits of Bosporus, the Dardenelles and the Sea of Marmara into the Aegean Sea for destinations in Western Europe. The extreme hazards of operating in the Black Sea argue against its use at all as a route carrying oil. Construction of a dual system of pipelines, two for oil and another two for gas built in parallel via Azerbaijan, possibly Georgia and then through Turkey to Ceyhan seem the most feasible at the end of 1997. Attached to this book is a legal opinion written by S. Andrew Scharfenberg. It appeared in the Spring 1996 Issue of the Emory University International Law Review. Its title was Regulating Traffic Flow in the Turkish Straits: A Test for Modern International Law. Its author concluded on page 29: The Montreux Convention has successfully governed navigation in the Turkish Straits for 60 years. Despite its successes, the

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

150

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Montreux regime is not ideal. Much has changed since the signing of the treaty [in 1936]: the size and number of ships on the water, the type of cargo on board, and the needs of interested parties. To compensate for these differences, Turkey has instituted the Regulations with the goal of protecting shipping , the environment, and human life. The Regulations are not perfect and they have aroused a great deal of opposition from other states. Even so, they are Turkey's best hope for mitigating dangers in the Straits [of Bosporus]. The only superior alternative, at least in the eyes of the international community , would be to convene a conference for the development of a new international strait regime for governance of the Bosporus and Dardenelles. But given that none of the parties to the Montreux Convention has called for a new conference or even an amendment to the existing treaty, Turkey is justified in taking unilateral action. The Regulations are consistent with international law and the Montreux Convention. Free passage through the Straits does not mean unregulated passage. The right of free passage is valuable only to the extent that passage is effectuated. Turkey's rules provide practical guidelines necessary for the safe management of heavy traffic in the narrow Bosporus waterway. The Montreux agreement implicitly gives Turkey the power to adopt such a regulatory scheme; reason demands it. Footnotes appear at http://www.law.emory.edu./EILR/volumes/spring96/scharfen_fn.h tml

Additionally, Mr.. Scharfenberg noted that the Montreux Convention might be abrogated by Turkey . Articles 2629 provide for termination of the treaty. If Turkey chose this route, the author suggests that another existing treaty replace the Montreux Convention. If preceded by a denunciation of the Montreux Convention, the Convention on the Protection of the Black Sea Against Pollution might serve as a replacement of the Montreux regime. Alternatively, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) might work, but Turkey has not yet ratified this treaty. In any case, Turkey would support denunciation of the Montreux Convention by asserting the doctrine of rebus sic stantibus. It holds that a significant change in material circumstances warrants a state's decision to ignore the mandates of a treaty. One may safely argue that all the fuss over interpretation of a 60year old treaty occurred because oil was discovered in the Caspian Sea Basin. Turkey may say that the increase in the number of super tankers passing through the Bosporus after loading at Russia's port city of Novoissisk will irreparably damage the marine environment. Russia may continue raising objections that it should be allowed to continue its pollution of the Black Sea as a way of vindicating the free passage through the Bosporus as guaranteed by the Montreux Convention of 1936.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

151

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

During almost five years in office, President Clinton seems to have found several themes that resonate with voters. Even Republican members of Congress find it difficult if not impossible to fault the president on democracy. To Clinton, democracy means free elections and universal suffrage. Dwelling on the next and distinctly different but closely associated concept has so far eluded Clinton in his public discourse. In his article in Foreign Affairs, Fareed Zakaria, its Managing Editor, has taken the next step "liberal or illiberal democracy." By this he means free and fair elections and universal suffrage with the bundle of rights we all take for granted because of our Constitution's Bill of Rights. As Mr. Zakaria puts it, "...this latter bundle of freedoms what might be termed constitutional liberalism is theoretically different and historically distinct from democracy..." Zakaria continued: "Constitutional liberalism, on the one hand, is not about the procedures for selecting government, but rather government's goals. It refers to the tradition, deep in Western history, that seeks to protect an individual's autonomy and dignity against coercion, whatever the source state, church, or society....In almost all its variants, constitutional liberalism argues that human beings have certain natural (or inalienable) rights and that governments must accept a basic law, limiting its own powers, that secures them. It was on June 15, 1215 that England's barons forced the king to abide by the settled and customary law of the land. This was the Magna Carta. In 1789, the framers of the Constitution presented it to the Congress in Philadelphia for ratification. Two years later, Congress was requested to ratify the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution. The Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. It could be said that the Constitution without amendments was merely the structure designed to establish the separation of powers, create a Congress, elect a president, and establish a judicial system. Then Congress provided the bundle of rights of individuals. The First Amendment established freedom of speech, the press, religion and assembly. Congress attempted to protect individuals from unreasonable search and seizure but failed. Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justices Thomas, Scalia, Kennedy, and occasionally Justice O'Connor were heavily influenced by those who protected the police when they over enthusiastically obtained evidence

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

152

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

without benefit of a warrant. Thus, constitutional liberalism does not always follow a straight line; the ideal model is best symbolized not by the mass plebiscite, but the impartial judge. In Central Asia, elections, even when reasonably free, as in Kyrgistan and Kazakhstan, have resulted in strong executives, weak legislatures and a weak judiciary, and few economic and civil liberties. In Kyrgistan. Askar Akayev, elected with 60 percent of the vote, proposed enhancing his powers in a referendum that passed easily in 1996. His new powers included appointing all top officials except the prime minister, although he can dissolve parliament if it turns down three of his nominees for this post. In Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev was elected with a heavy percentage of the popular vote. One of his first moves was to authorize the expenditure of $400 million to build a new capital, Akmola, abandoning Almaty. In this city, temperatures routinely drop to 40 degrees below zero. Those present at the unveiling of the new government buildings were appalled at the waste and described them as Potemkin villages complete on three sides only. Complaints about cost were merited in Akmola, a city about to have a Red Cross soup kitchen. Belurusan president Alexandr Lukashenko was popularly elected but announced he would tolerate no criticism. He also maintains an effective security force to guarantee he doesn't have to listen to criticism. As the dust settles in Iraq and the UN Inspectors expect to renew the search for weapons of mass destruction, Washington should reassess its position. The 1990-91 coalition politics that allowed President George Bush to put a coalition together was a demonstrable failure in 1997. It included Syria, Egypt, and Kuwait plus active forces from the Persian Gulf states. Normally, the Arab states would not combine against another Arab state, in this case, Iraq. Then Secretary of State James Baker promised the Arabs he would pressure Israel to settle differences in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In fact, the first meeting of the coalition began in Madrid in October, 1991. Two years later, the world sat up in surprise, when Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, produced the so-called Oslo Accord. By this agreement with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), it accepted a settlement that in effect committed Israel to withdraw from agreed areas of the West Bank and turn them over to the PLO. Gaza, Jericho, and Hebron were the first areas traded for peace, and there the Oslo Accord stumbled on Benjamin Netanyahu's iron will to guarantee peace for all of the West Bank and the failure of Yasser Arafat's attempt to deliver security to what was left of Israel. President Bill Clinton has tried to blame Israel for the stagnating Oslo Accord. Clinton publicly denounced Netanyahu, not by name, but by position. He told the world he wanted a credible withdrawal by Israel, but asked for nothing from the PLO. No independent state should have such a public whipping from the President of the United States. Israel doesn't deserve such

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

153

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

arrogance in a matter where Washington publicly committed itself to a role as honest broker and nothing more. Israel had even foreseen what Clinton might do after Clinton's reelection in 1996. Israel's Foreign Minister, David Levy, has been cultivating relations with Turkey's military. As of 1993, Israel and Turkey had made considerable progress when the discovery of oil in the Caspian Sea Basin offered Israel a way out of getting its oil from the Persian Gulf. Furthermore, the Arab world has problems of its own making. Saudi Arabia is ruled by a monarchy not at all willing to share its oil wealth. Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrein and the United Arab Emirates are all in the same boat with democracy, not even close. Iraq is the enfant terrible of the Middle East, and Iran shows no signs of willingness to tolerate the United States. Does Clinton think he can rule the international roost by appealing to the Arab world at the expense of the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel? In fact, the Clinton Administration endorsed the concept of reciprocity over two years ago . Reciprocity means that both Israel and the Palestinian Authority accept mutual obligations. Now, some Assistant Secretary of State has denounced Israel for insisting on it. The Arab world broke up the wartime coalition, because Netanyahu refused to surrender to Arab demands on the one hand and, on the other hand, he refused to abandon insistence on a peace resting on reciprocity. Nowhere in the Arab world is there any evidence of constitutional liberalism, the body of law that protects individuals from abuse by the state. The United States needs a new foreign policy, one that recognizes its friends and clobbers its enemies. Our policy regarding Iran needs revision in view of the possible bombing of Iraq. In Turkey and Iraq, ongoing activities might lead inevitably to peace with the division of Iraq. Effectively, Iraq has been divided since 1991. There are three zones, the North and South No Fly Zones and the unnamed zone between them. Iraq's boundaries were wholly artificial, and the state was established by Great Britain in 1923. It conducted a referendum on the question whether Britain's handpicked candidate, Emir Faisal, be approved as king. He was approved, and Iraq was born, carved out of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey was a loser in World War I and paid a price. It lost access to the oil of what is now Iraq. Great Britain transferred Mosul to this new state, even though it was a Kurdish vilayet or province.In fact, the Royal Air Force bombed a village in Iraq. Its inhabitants were mostly Kurdish who refused to pay taxes to King Faisal newly installed in Baghdad by the British. The British also needed Iraqi oil for their navy. To that end, the British collaborated with Iraq in restoring stability by supporting Iraq's persecution of the Kurds. Events in Iran (Persia) followed a similar path. Dr.Muhammed Mossadeq authorized nationalization of the Iranian National Oil Company in 1951.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

154

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

The British froze Iran's financial assets and Iran took the nationalization to the International Court of Justice, where Great Britain lost. The documents establishing the oil company were a "contract" and Iran had only to pay compensation. Great BritainÌs lien on most Iranian assets prevented payment. Britain's role in oil diplomacy in the Middle East was an exercise in military power. Even today, British oil imperialism has not been forgotten. Nor have the Kurds forgotten the ShahÌs betrayal of the Kurds after he signed a treaty with Algiers. Furthermore, Iranian assets frozen in 1951 and 1979 -- the hostage crisis at the American Embassy in Teheran -- are still frozen, but by the Clinton Administration. It has adopted the dual containment policy that believes in isolating both Iran and Iraq. Washington persists in claiming Iran sponsors terrorism. Until the election of 1996, when Iran elected a moderate, President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani failed to deal with the very real possibility that IranÌs clergy funneled money to terrorists. The clergy who have access to vast sums within Iran command their own network. One of the bitter disputes within the Islamic Republic of Iran was whether the Koran believed in the ownership of private property or Islam recognized the state as owner of all property. The clergy were quick to see the advantages of private ownership and installed themselves as owners of vast fortunes protected by the state. When or if the Clinton Administration abandons its insane policy of isolating Iran, that country will not join the United States in undermining Iraq or even joining American troops in attacking Iraq in its present dispute with the United Nations over inspection consistent with Security Council Resolution 687. Persia had been at war almost constantly with the Ottoman Empire. Iran was once Persia with an aristocratic social structure fatally undermined by the democratization brought about by Islam. In Turkey, Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey made certain that the government and the ruled were secular.With the passage of time from 1925 to 1997, Muslims steadily infiltrated the Turkish government. The army was determined to prevent an Islamic majority. In 1997, the army forced the resignation of Necmettin Erkaban. The president of Turkey named Mesut Filmaz to succeed him. In the meanwhile, government officials in Ankara pursued the Kurds and their supporters with unrivalled savagery. Filmaz has tried to arrest this drift toward Islam with the help of the Turkish army. This army is locked in an ugly war with Kurdish guerillas at a cost to Turkey of $5 billion a year. Hardly anyone sees this war as a solution; it must be brought about by diplomacy. On February 10, 1998 Turkey announced it had established an eight-mile zone inside Iraq to prevent Kurdish refugees from fleeing to Turkey. Some 2.5 million Kurd refugees fled into Turkey in 1991, when Saddam Hussein initiated genocidal action.The Kurds have been betrayed by just about everyone, including the Shah of Iran, Henry Kissinger, and Richard Nixon. Even

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

155

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

earlier -- they were encouraged by Articles 62-64 of the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920 -- the Allies promised the Kurds a home, but in renegotiating this treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 omitted any reference to Kurdish autonomy. In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, annexing it as IraqÌs 19th province. This led to the Persian Gulf War which ended when President George Bush prematurely authorized a cease fire and armistice. In the period from 1980 to 1988, Iraq and Iran were locked in an ugly war in which both countries lost an estimated 750,000 combatants each. Iraq launched its attack against Iran on September 22, 1980. Until 1990, the United States has been ambivalent about Iraq, authorizing American companies to export socalled dual-use equipment. Helicopters, for example, were described by Baghdad as being for civilian purposes. Then, Saddam used them as gunships to kill Kurds. Presidents Reagan and Bush supported this dangerous policy. President William Clinton's Administration adopted a dual containment policy in which both Iraq and Iran were effectively banned from trade with the United States to the dismay of European leaders. Congress enacted the Iran Sanctions Act in 1996, and Iraq was made subject to a United Nations-sponsored inspection of sites in Iraq thought to be engaged in the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The Security Council adopted Resolution 687 on April 3, 1991. For the last few months, Iraq has sought to end the United Nations inspections of Iraqi sites, and Clinton has just about exhausted diplomatic solutions. In fact, he has sent three carriers and some 4,000 Marines to the Persian Gulf area. Great Britain has sent one carrier and an unspecified number of ground forces. Unless Congress delays use of a military threat without an end game, American armed forces will bomb Iraq. Russia, still resentful of the NATO expansion eastward under Clinton, had something to say about any military strike. Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev bluntly warned his counterpart, Defense Secretary William Cohen, that a military strike against Baghdad would "affect Russia's vital interests and those of other states in the region." Privately, Iran seems delighted watching from the sidelines as its two worst enemies, the United States and Iraq are poised for military operations. Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, the current president of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and a moderate seems to be using the crisis to bolster his standing with his Arab neighbors as a regional statesman calling for peace. Iranians may watch with satisfaction if American bombs severely damage Iraq's remaining military capability, a goal the Iranians failed to accomplish in its war with Iraq from 1980 to 1988. Since then, Iran has bought arms on the international market to replace those lost during the war. Were Iran to abandon the neutrality of the Gulf War -- it specifically supported all Security Council resolutions, including Res. 687 -- it might end the current impasse and lead to a diplomatic solution.

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

156

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Khatami could do just that by serving as an honest broker between Turkey, its Kurdish refugees on the one hand and its real enemy Iraq, on the other hand. In the post-Persian Gulf War, period, the United Nations authorized certain No-Fly zones approximately sixty miles in depth for the zone in the north. It is patrolled by American jets operating from Incirlik in Turkey. These aircraft were essential when Kurdish refugees fled north to avoid being killed by Saddam HusseinÌs army. Curiously, Kurdistan, the goal of all Kurds, includes the eastern portion of the Northern No-Fly zone. The area includes oil fields not yet fully developed and claimed by the Kurds. Supported by Clinton, Turkey could withdraw from most of Kurdistan and offer to help rebuild the shattered villages Turkish troops destroyed during the last eight years. Money from the sale of this oil would help pay for rebuilding villages. Finally, Turkey could offer amnesty to all Kurds in prison for criticizing the Turkish destruction of Kurdish schools and the damage done to Kurdish culture by Turks.

Books:

Amazon.com is pleased to have The Abridged History of Central Asia website in the family of Amazon.com Associates. All of the books quoted in this online history are available from the AMAZON.COM Web site. Click on the book title to find out more about the book. Chapter 1: Turkey Constantinople : City of the World's Desire 1453-1924 by Philip Mansel The Rommel Papers by Liddell Hart

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

157

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

The Dawn of Peace in Europe by Michael Mandelbaum Chapter 2: Armenia and Azerbaijan The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn of the 21st Century by Robert D. Kaplan Chapter 3: Iran The Prize by Daniel Yurgin The Iranians, Sandra Mackey God Has Ninety-Nine Names by Judith Miller Chapter 4: Iraq Republic Of Fear by Samir AlKhalil Chapter 5: The Peoples Republic of China The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress by Andrew J. Nathan The Coming Conflict with China by Richard Bernstein and Ross Monro Hungry Ghosts by Jasper Becker Chapter 7: Russia Das Capital by Karl Marx The Strange Death of the Soviet Empire by David Pryce-Jones Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire by Michael Dobbs Afghanistan:Soviet Vietnam by Vladislav Tamarav Without Force or Lies: Voices from the Revolution of Central Europe in 1989-90, an anthology with essays by Vaclav Havel, Andrei Sakharov, Norman Manea, and Adam Michnik. Edited by William M. Brinton and Allan Rinzler. Lenin by Dmitri Volkogonov The World Cultures Report: Ecocide in the USSR The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

158

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Moscow and Beyond 1986 to 1988 by Alexander Solzhenitsyn Lenin:The First Account Using All the Secret Soviet Archives by Dmitri Volkogonov Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. by Dmitri Volkogonov Russia: People and Empire. by Geoffrey Hosking Chapter 8: Threat Perception and China's Role in Asia China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Inc : The Dynamics of a New Empire by Willem van Kemenade Chapter 9: The Viability of Central Asia Requiem for Modern Politics by William Ophuls Ecology of and the Politics of Scarcity by William Ophuls Death by Default A Policy of Fatal Neglect in China's State Orphanages by the Human Rights Watch Chapter 10: The Black Sea The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn of the 21st Century by Robert D. Kaplan

Interesting links to other Web sites:

AKA-Kurdistan http://www.akakurdistan.com/ Contested Borders in the Caucasus http://www.vub.ac.be/POLI/ch0101.htm British Information Centre http://www.britain-info.org/ United Nations http://www.un.org/ Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

159

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

ABC News Archive http://archive.abcnews.com/ The World Cultures Report: Ecocide in the USSR http://www.cpss.org/books/ecocide.htm

MAPS Armenia and Azerbaijan

Turkey

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

160

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

The Middle East

Central Asia

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

161

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Kazhakstan and Uzbekistan

Tajikistan and Kyrgistan

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

162

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

163