Soviet defector Lunev in 2000: The 'Eurasian Union': Putin's New Alliance
The 'Eurasian Union': Putin's New Alliance
Col. Stanislav Lunev
Wednesday Oct. 25, 2000
While Washington fantasizes about a mythical partnership with Moscow, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is busy creating strategic alliances with other nations. Putin, who inherited a strategic relationship with Beijing, quickly established a similar alliance with India and in the last couple of weeks signed a pact for military cooperation with five so-called newly independent states.
Russia and five other former Soviet republics agreed Oct. 11 on ways to pool their combined military powers against insurgencies and movements for independence in volatile Central Asia. Putin and the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan (three former Soviet Central Asia republics), Belarus and Armenia signed a pact setting up the legal framework for rapid deployment of joint military forces.
Their agreement for creation of a new military bloc officially reflects these leaders’ growing concern about the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. One focus of their attention is Afghanistan, where the fundamentalist Muslim Taleban militia controls about 95 percent of the country, including the capital. The leaders of Russia and the other five former Soviet republics described Afghanistan as a "center of international terrorism and drug-trafficking" and as a clear threat to Central Asian stability.
Concern over the Taleban has breathed new life into the anemic Collective Security Council of the so-called Commonwealth of Independent States, which officially replaced the former USSR in 1991, but so far had produced little except vague declarations. This most recent agreement is more specific, laying the groundwork for fast joint military action if the need arises.
Official statements in connection with the new military pact sound good, but the reality in this area is a little different. Taleban, of course, is backing Islamic militants who are challenging the governments of practically all the former Soviet Central Asia republics.
And the Taleban is unofficially providing hospitality to some international terrorist organizations – in particular, to the infamous Al-Qaida terrorist group of Osama bin Laden, which may have been responsible for the recent deadly bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.
The group is also being sought in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 persons, including 12 Americans, and injured 5,000 others.
As usual, the Taleban has officially denied these assertions, but there is no doubt that it is heavily involved in the international development of radical Islamic fundamentalism, the growth of which has already become a real danger for many countries.
But the major reason for instability in the area of former Soviet Central Asia is not connected with any foreign involvement, and has mostly domestic roots. It is known that the present leaders of Central Asia’s so-called newly independent states are former bosses of local Communist Party organizations who inherited from the Soviet era the Byzantine ruling method of intrigue combined with traditional feudal Muslim philosophy.
They maintain strong control over the populations of their countries and heavily repress any opposition to their regimes. As international observers from human rights and non-government organizations have noted, in all the former Soviet Central Asia republics there is practically no freedom of speech, press, religion (excluding Islam), and other rights granted to people of the free world.
In other words, in this area there are different types of dictatorships, where the opposition doesn’t have any other choice but to try to establish itself by military resistance to the totalitarian regimes. This opposition doesn’t have sufficient support from the U.S. and other traditional democracies, but is receiving aid from the Taleban and international radical Muslim groups who are acting out of their own interests in Central Asia.
Instead of supporting democracy in this area, Washington established close ties with the totalitarian regimes of Central Asia. For example, the U.S. is developing relations with Nursultan Nazarbayev’s corrupt dictatorship in Kazakhstan, where the administration failed to defend political freedom and free enterprise.
Fortunately, until now the U.S. administration was not directly involved in support of the dictatorship. But it failed to vigorously resist Nazarbayev’s violation of human rights, his dissolution of the Kazakh Parliament on two occasions, and above all, the closing of the only two opposition newspapers and the rigging of the 1999 election.
These Central Asian regimes are receiving strong support from Moscow in fighting opposition, which it traditionally describes as "terrorist" groups and organizations.
Russia has military bases in all Central Asian countries, and their totalitarian regimes cannot exist without Moscow’s military power.
Kazakhstan had one of the former Soviet Union’s major oil reserves, and it continues to be a most significant partner of Russia in the oil business. It is also located along the oil-rich Caspian littoral. Russia and Kazakhstan are already important allies, and their closeness is based on the totalitarian views of their two leaders.
Russia has about 25,000 troops in Tajikistan, an impoverished nation still recovering from a 1992-1997 civil war. The totalitarian regime of this country survives solely because of the presence of Russian troops, who last month were put on the alert amid fears that militant opposition, with the support of about 100,000 Afghan refugees, could spill across the border.
Kyrgyzstan, once considered a haven of stability in the region, has also suffered from forays by a militant opposition. During the most recent outburst of fighting, in August and September, militants clashed with government troops in the mountainous area where the borders of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan converge.
With a new military alliance, Moscow will have more chances to keep control over this area, which is extremely rich in natural resources, and to influence the totalitarian regimes of the other Central Asian countries. A new so-called Eurasian Union could be a sufficient addition to Moscow alliances with Beijing and New Delhi, where anti-American sentiments play a significant role.
Washington cannot, or does not want to, recognize the international movement Putin is directing for the creation of a coalition of powers that is already challenging domination by a so-called U.S. unipolar world, sometimes even challenging America directly.
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20011109015917/http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/10/25/132556.txt