Central Asian Challenges
The road ahead for Russia.

By Ariel Cohen, research fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Heritage Foundation, and the author of Russian Imperialism: Development and Crisis.
October 4, 2001 1:45 p.m.

ot since Vietnam have U.S. forces faced terrain this harsh, a humanitarian tragedy this desperate, and an environment this difficult to understand. The Russians have already learned their lesson in the ten-year-long war and occupation of Afghanistan, which ended with the Soviet Army's withdrawal in 1989. The U.S. military had better learn, and learn fast.

The Russians hope not to bog down again in a ground war, and have advised the same to the U.S., according to government officials and military experts interviewed here. Russian military experts also believe that the ethnically Pushtun, fundamentalist Taliban's morale is higher for now than that of the Northern Alliance troops, who are primarily Tajik and Uzbek.

After two weeks of attacks, the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance — including the forces of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, an important regional chieftain — has been unable to take Mazar-i Sharif, a strategic town located northeast of the capital Kabul. The town has an important airfield which may make operations in the area easier.

The Northern Alliance believes that any offensive against Kabul is premature. This is several days after promises to take Kabul and, more importantly, the airstrip in Bagram, a key Soviet-era air base just north of the Afghan capital, over which the two sides have been engaged in years of fighting.

According to the Russian NTV evening news, the leaders of the Northern Alliance — which is militarily inferior to the Taliban in personnel numbers, mobilization reserves, and fire power — are still claiming they can defeat the radical mullahs in Kabul and Kandahar. However, they are now demanding that Russia and the West furnish large amounts of arms, ammunition, money, medical supplies, and food.

Planners in Washington, Brussels, and Moscow are starting to focus on the nightmare this war may become. The military weakness of the Alliance; the pending humanitarian disaster, as scores of refugees flee the war zones; and the potential instability of Central Asian regimes, all are part of the equation.

Speaking at the fifth-year celebration of the capture of Kabul, Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader, declared Wednesday that his regime will not distinguish between Afghanis who are supported by American or by Russian bayonets, and that their fate will be the same — death.

And earlier, the Taliban rulers said that they will "liberate" Bokhara and Samarkand, the ancient Central Asian capitals that lost their independence to the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century.

According to UN sources, Central Asian republics and Iran are expecting over 350,000 refugees if the fighting spreads, and scores more if the war effort is sustained over months. Mullah Omar's calls to Afghanis who left their impoverished country to go back to their homes might not be heeded.

But the alternative is gruesome. Central Asian countries are destitute and have no infrastructure to accommodate the refugees. Moreover, Tajikistan is suffering the most severe drought in its history, and according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, up to one third of its population is in danger of malnutrition.

A high-level Kremlin source, speaking on condition of anonymity, believes that in the short run, there is no threat to the stability of any of the Central Asian republics. In the long run, however, things may look grim, especially if the Northern Alliance is not brought up to speed militarily.

The Kremlin official said that the most immediate threat to Central Asian states existed in the first days after the September 11 attacks. There was a chance that the Northern Alliance would be overrun in the aftermath of the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the military leader of the Alliance, the source said. He added, however, that there are three reasons why things may still go wrong.

First, the Taliban is expected to stir trouble, from skirmishes and attacks on Russian and Western forces in the region, to mass terrorism and full-fledged coups. The three "frontline" states — Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan — already harbor hundreds of radical Islamist fighters, organized in underground cells or hiding in the vast mountain ranges of Central Asia (such as those belonging to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan). These groups could be supported by Taliban fighters who, Russian intelligence suspects, may infiltrate Uzbekisan and other states in the flow of refugees.

Secondly, the Kremlin official notes, Central Asian regimes are not sufficiently stable. They are heavy-handed in their treatment of non-violent Muslims, especially the clergy. The region's governments are too poor, too passive, or too corrupt to provide ample social services and economic development. As a result, Islamists move in, and have a strong case to make to the desperate population.

The Central Asian states have not yet developed a model that allows the moderate clergy to operate, while cracking down on the real troublemakers. The region knows no real political alternative to Hizb-ut-Tahrir (Army of Liberation), the Islamist party started in 1952 by a Palestinian Arab in Jordan. The party calls not just for establishment of a Sharia (Islamic law) state, but also for the recreation of the Khalifate, or vast Islamic kingdom, in all of Central Asia, and eventually throughout the Middle East. (The party stops short of openly advocating violence, however, leaving that to the likes of the IMU.)

In the end, the Russians are concerned that the Northern Alliance and Central Asian militaries may not be sufficient to oppose the Taliban. Northern Alliance commanders have no formal military training and are former tribal warlords, if not village chieftains, says Col. (Ret.) Victor Gartmann, a German ex-Soviet officer who was promoted to general of the Turkmen army after setting up officer training there.

Prior to that, Gartmann built, trained, and advised the 18th Division of the pro-Soviet Afghan regime, which controlled an area of over 100,000 square kilometers south of the old Soviet-Afghan border between 1981 and 1984.

The veteran commander believes that only extensive training and provision of ample firepower — primarily the old Soviet weapons, such as T-55 tanks, BTR armored personnel carriers, and GRAD multiple rocket launchers — can save the Northern Alliance in the long run, and pin down large numbers of the Taliban forces. "I am willing to give up my office job at a tourism college in the Moscow suburb and go advise my Afghan friends again," he says. He also notes that his "friends" speak hardly any Russian, let alone English: "All they speak is Dari."

The important ingredient of victory, he believes, is reactivating the old Soviet-led tribal networks in northern Afghanistan. "Three million Uzbeks and Tajiks cannot overrun eight million Pushtuns," Gartmann says plainly. "If the Taliban are not engaged in the south [of Afghanistan], and are able to send sufficient firepower to the north, things will get dicey."

Should the Taliban cross the border of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) along the Amu Darya river, Russia will be obliged to act to protect the security of treaty members. "Moscow will have to consider throwing everything it's got into the Central Asian theater of operations. And it ain't going to be pretty," Gartmann says.

The anti-terrorist coalition is learning just how difficult the war against the Taliban is going to be. The looming crises in Central Asia include important military, humanitarian, and internal political dimensions that politicians and military planners are only beginning to understand.