Central Asia and the Lingering Soviet Identity

By Major Daniel J. O’Connor, U.S. Army

Strongman power dynamics, deep-seated corruption and rampant suspicion of outsiders have been well-noted aspects of Soviet society.  However, over 27 years since the Soviet Union splintered apart, a great deal of the Soviet culture, mentality and world outlook appear to survive in Central Asia.  As the region struggles to modernize and update its very existence, Central Asia insists on retaining much of this identity, which in turn prevents the very modernization it seeks and keeps the region from becoming a serious player on the world stage in the areas of economics, education, and standard of living.  It is vital for policy-makers, analysts and military minds to better understand this concept, as it will continue to affect bilateral relations and the potential for stronger security cooperation between the U.S. and Central Asia.

For the purpose of this narrative, Central Asia is defined as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, with specific focus on Uzbekistan, as “Central Asia’s geopolitical center of gravity.” Central Asia has been seen by many academics as a backwater, with the West “increasing[ly] reluctant --

particularly in the post-Afghanistan world -- to trouble itself with a small, poor, Central Asian state whose version of Western-style democracy often discredits the concept.”  To a certain extent, this is understandable.  The region is surrounded by major powers and instability with the Russian bear to the north, China’s economic machine to the east, the instability of the Middle East to its west and India to the south.  However, the area’s importance became briefly clearer following the events in New York on September 11, 2001.  As the U.S. military sought a staging base for its operations in Afghanistan, several options became available, to include two major bases used by coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan: The K2 Air Base in southeastern Uzbekistan, and Manas International Airport outside of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.  The support that was provided displays the strategic relevance of the region.  Several wise generals and top U.S. officials have maintained that we can surge troops, equipment and almost anything else we need to bring the fight to the enemy.  The one thing we cannot surge is trust.  It is vital to keep this in mind before discounting the importance of Central Asia, especially considering the unavoidable truth of the post-Cold War non-linear battlefield.

Power Dynamics

Post-Soviet Central Asia has been characterized by strongman dynamics.  This is a natural continuation of the archetype leader from the Soviet Union, in the mold of brutal leaders like Stalin, idolized for his strength and power over all other characteristics.  This continuation was also a direct result of the power vacuum left behind by the removal of heavy-handed control from Moscow.  It would be foolhardy to think that the newly independent Central Asian republics could have jumped directly from Soviet rule to true Western democracy, but in many ways, the strongman politics left in the stead of the Soviet Union were a step backwards.  This concept is illustrated nowhere better than Turkmenistan, where the then-Soviet Republic enthusiastically supported the preservation of the Soviet Union.  After the Soviet Union broke apart, Turkmenistan retained much of the Soviet way of life, with social benefits such as “free water, gas, and electricity as well as subsidized bread, gasoline, and public transportation.”  However, along with this came crushing repression, turning Turkmenistan into “a police state more reminiscent of the Stalin era than anything seen in the later Soviet period.” 

This same idea was visible all around the Former Soviet Union (FSU), including in Tajikistan, where current president, Ammonal Rahmon, took power after the bloody Tajik Civil War.  Rahmon quickly consolidated power by marginalizing various groups that were further from his power base, such as the Pamiri people, who were located in the high mountain regions of eastern Tajikistan.  Rahmon’s method proved effective, as the Pamiris now mostly prefer isolation in their mountain home holding feelings that they hold a subservient position in Tajik society, while the Rahmon administration in Dushanbe continues to struggle with issues of poverty, endemic corruption and the narrowing of political power to a single family.  Another regional example is Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who took power after the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan in 2005.  The Tulip Revolution, which saw the previous president, Askar Akayev, flee to Moscow, was hailed in the west as a watershed in Kyrgyzstan’s democratic development, but Bakiyev’s tenure would prove to be equally corrupt and by some measures even more divisive.  In particular, Bakiyev marginalized the Uzbek population in his country with economic policies, political maneuvering and harsh rhetoric.  Many analysts attributed Bakiyev’s policies as directly contributing to the strained relationship between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz.  These tensions boiled over in 2010, when ethnic clashes occurred near the Kyrgyz city of Osh.

Things are changing, albeit slowly.  When Uzbekistan’s first president, Islam Karimov, died in 2016, Shavkat Mirziyoyev was elected president.  While Mirziyoyev was a close confidant of Karimov and worked tirelessly to ensure the fruition of his harsh dictates, after just over a year in power, Mirziyoyev has made a noticeable shift away from his predecessor's policies and is beginning to show more moderate tendencies.  With globalization, the spread of the internet, social networks, and other catalysts of change, it is difficult to say whether this shift was a move to ensure survival of his administration or due to true belief in change, but change is in the air, nonetheless.  The concern from many in the diplomatic and academic community is whether this change will continue towards true democracy and improved relations with the West, or if regional destabilization and internal pressure from the country’s elite could cause a backslide on policy.  And while this change may eventually have remarkable effects on the entire region, at the current time, the Soviet legacy of strongman power dynamics is alive and well in Central Asia.

Economics

In the field of economics, one does not need to look far to see serious issues in current-day Central Asia and a lingering feeling of the Soviet legacy.  During Soviet control, each republic had a piece of the pie.  This is to say that Uzbekistan’s cotton would be shipped out elsewhere to be refined into clothing.  Kazakhstan’s coal would be shipped out to heat other countries in the Soviet Union.  Kyrgyzstan’s strong agricultural sector was the breadbasket for much of the USSR.  Over the last 27 years, Kyrgyzstan would have done well to develop energy options or an industrial sector, as has been seen in certain parts of the FSU, but instead it still relies heavily on agriculture and imports mass quantities of coal from Kazakhstan.  Even after the Soviet Union caused one of the greatest ecological disasters in history with the desertification of the Aral Sea in western Uzbekistan, and after the Uzbeks have received large grants from multiple partners to diversify their agriculture, 20 percent of Central Asia’s most populous state are still engaged in the cotton industry.  Kazakhstan, one of the more successful FSU economies, has suffered the same pitfalls, as it has failed to diversify its economy away from extracting and exporting raw materials.  Its insistence on relying on hydrocarbons has put the country in a difficult situation as oil prices have dropped in the past several years, with exports from the country -- mostly hydrocarbons -- declining by 73 percent in the first half of 2015.  A more simplistic example of this is Turkmenistan and its failure to diversify beyond complete reliance on wealth generated from selling its considerable natural gas reserves.  “The prospect of a prolonged environment of low hydrocarbon prices… and competition from other global gas producers make Turkmenistan’s economy increasingly troubled.”

Tajikistan is currently building the Rogun Dam, which is planned to be a large hydroelectric power plant.  However, this dam is being built on the Vakhsh River, a tributary of the Amu Darya, which supplies much of the water used in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields.  There is concern that diminished water to and already dry Uzbekistan will cause devastating drought and ruin much of the arable land in the country.  While relations between the two nations are currently on a marked upswing, within this example, it can be seen how Uzbekistan’s failure to diversify its economy and continuing to exist on a Soviet legacy economy could threaten its economic future.  It also lends a certain amount of credence to the claim that the “cotton monoculture is more destructive to Central Asia’s future than the tons of heroin that regularly transit the region.”  The region is in serious need of modernization regarding these practices if these countries want to be a player on the world stage, and not simply squeak by.  Serious thought and effort will need to be exerted to build relationships, conduct research and perhaps more than anything, begin to separate themselves from the significant reliance on Russia for economic needs.

Freedoms

Some of the areas that most closely resemble the Soviet Union are the fields of censorship, freedom of the press, and suspicion of others.  Strict control of the general population was a central theme of the Soviet Union and to this day the Central Asian states are not considered free areas.  There is a long history of censorship at the mild end, and imprisonment and torture at the more severe end.  It is impossible to talk about general freedoms without first mentioning Turkmenistan.  With a Freedom Ranking below that of both Afghanistan and Sudan in 2017 , Turkmenistan is considered a fiercely repressed nation.  Turkmenistan is almost completely closed off to the world and is considered by most analysts to be the most isolated place in the FSU.

One of the best examples of the brutal legacy of Soviet-style repression in Central Asia is that of Azimjan Askarov.  An ethnic Uzbek human rights activist and writer, Askarov spoke out following the 2010 ethnic clashes in Osh, Kyrgyzstan that left hundreds dead and were seen by many as being precipitated by the policies of Bakiyev.  Askarov was arrested and given a life sentence, in what can barely be seen as a fair trial.  The U.S. honored Askarov’s work to show the atrocities of Osh in 2015 with a Human Rights Defender Award, which contributed to souring relations between the Kyrgyz Republic and the US.  Since then, 

[S]everal human rights organizations have called for Askarov’s release, saying he is a 

prisoner of conscience. Human Rights Watch routinely includes Askarov on lists of 

prisoners leaders in the U.S. and Europe should pressure the Kyrgyz state to release -- 

saying his trial was unfair and politically motivated. The Committee to Project 

Journalists has repeatedly called for his case to be reopened --  saying that he was 

targeted for ‘his role in documenting failures by police to stop human rights abuses.”

Kyrgyzstan, it should be noted, ranked 120 out of 188 countries in the UN Human Development Index and Freedom House ranks Kyrgyzstan as only “partly free.”  This is not at all an isolated example, as one sees similar events throughout the region.  In Kazakhstan, “independent civil society activists and journalists…often get into trouble with the law enforcement and tax authorities.”  In Uzbekistan journalists are still jailed for speaking out against the government.  The Uzbek journalist Bobomurod Abdullayev was under house arrest for some time for his work under a pseudonym for an opposition site out of Turkey, under the official charge of attempting to overthrow the government.  He went a month and a half without being allowed to speak with a lawyer, and some lawyers refused to even represent him.

General censorship is another very Soviet tactic still in wide use in the FSU.  Until recently, most social networking was blocked in Tajikistan.  During the 2017 UN General Assembly, there was a video taken of Presidents Rahmon and Trump meeting for the first time.  The video portrays Rahmon resisting the now-famous Trump “pull-in handshake.”  Shortly after the video was released, the Rahmon administration unblocked social media, effectively ensuring the video went viral, as an illustration of the strength of Tajikistan holding its ground against a larger power.  Thus far, social networking is still open in Tajikistan, as it would seem the Rahmon administration now is seeing that it can use the internet to its own ends.  It is uncertain how long this will last, however, as it was only back in 2015 when the mayor of Dushanbe, normally considered to be one of the most powerful figures behind the president, “banned rock and rap music from the capital’s buses, arguing that it was ‘alien’ to Tajik culture.”

 During Soviet times, there was a constant suspicion of anyone else: people from different towns, neighborhoods and even the apartment building next door.  The concept of informing on your neighbor to prevent anyone from crossing the line socially has a long history in Central Asia and the FSU.  A particularly telling example is that of the Uzbek Army.  The U.S. military works tirelessly to provide space at U.S. military schools for foreign students through the International Military Exchange and Training program (IMET).  Receiving a slot at one of the many prestigious schools is a great sign for any country, as it can provide some much-needed knowledge.  The Uzbek Ministry of Defense has a policy that unless they can send a pair of students to a course, they will not send anyone.  There could be many reasons for this, but many interpret this as an internal control on the Uzbek soldiers to keep each other in line and ensure the government hears back about anything their students may be doing that would be inconsistent with their policies.  This lack of trust can be an issue, especially as it can be extremely challenging to secure two spaces to some courses when many countries are vying for these opportunities.  

The Turkmen have their own brand of extreme suspicion.  A recent event was held by the U.S. Border Patrol in Arizona, to which all the Central Asian states sent a contingent of their own border guards to see the techniques used by the U.S.  Turkmenistan decided not to send any of its border guards to this event.  This is particularly troubling in light of the fact that Turkmenistan has a 460-mile long border with Afghanistan.  Along this border, it is reported that border forces occasionally refuse or are unable to fight back against militants.  Cases of militants killing border guards are frequent.  One skirmish in May 2016 resulted in the death of 27 border guards.  If Central Asia desires to leave behind the legacy of corruption, significant changes need to be made.  However, some analysts in the region think that many of the Central Asian states are poised geopolitically for possibly color-revolution-style events, particularly Tajikistan.  If the regional players want to move towards a more Western model of transparency, they will need to do it cautiously to avoid revolution and violence.

Education

Teaching methods are a constant point of frustration for Western observers.  The old Soviet method of teaching is alive and well.  “Lecture remain[s] the primary mode of instruction and interactive instructional techniques still emphasize students reciting back to the instructor what they ha[ve] been told during the lecture.”  There are currently multiple programs aimed at helping Central Asia change its education system, to include sending American teachers to spend considerable time training local teachers.  The ideas of Western education still have not taken hold, but it seems that most in Central Asia fully understand the benefit of this style, as children of the rich and powerful regularly receive their education in Germany, England, the US and other western countries at top universities, and their primary education at the British school located in Tashkent.

The field of military education has not fared much better since independence.  The Soviets were infamously predictable with their tactics, as they thought there was only one correct way to conduct a frontal assault, react to an ambush or even clear a building.  This in part explains why the Soviets had such a difficult time dealing with Nazi Germany, as the Germans had long since operated on the concept of Auftragstaktik: essentially the idea that Commanders on the ground should assess changing conditions and make decisions based on current intelligence.  This concept is used to varying degrees by many western nations, as is adequately shown by the coalition partners in Iraq and Afghanistan, where many decisions are not out of a book or made by a high-ranking officer, but by a small unit leader on the ground.  This concept that “we in the West do not scrupulously follow doctrine to the letter as though it was a chemical equation” comes as a big surprise to those in Central Asia.  To address this issue, some Central Asian countries have adopted Ministry of Defense Advisors (MoDA).  In Uzbekistan, this professor is located at the Armed Forces Academy.  They help update, modernize and even question training doctrine in an effort to help push forward a better training method.  Great strides have been made by partner nations to help, but until the region can let go of its outdated methods, progress will be slow.

It is important to note, in further detail, the field of military science in the FSU.  All the FSU countries retain Soviet-legacy force structure and equipment to go along with their military training methods.  Russia still has a large footprint in the FSU, to include Kant Air Base in Kyrgyzstan and the 201st Base in Tajikistan.  This has traditionally meant that it is much easier to train with and attain interoperability with the Russian forces that are in the region, something that is unlikely for any of the Western or NATO countries.  What this means is the perpetuation of Soviet-style tactics and methodology.  In addition, due to its “recent experience of military conflict in Ukraine and Syria, Russia’s Armed Forces [have displayed] increased confidence in supporting a more pro-active Russian foreign policy posture.”  This makes it particularly difficult to aid Central Asia in its desire to modernize its forces, equipment and teaching methods.  The general sentiment in diplomatic circles is that regional governments know that if they want the best equipment and training, they should look to the West.  If they want a lot of training and equipment, they should look to Russia.  With the aforementioned economic issues, there is little question that the Soviet legacy will continue to be a powerful force in the military arena, perpetuated by both the continued use of Soviet legacy equipment and constant exposure and proximity to the Russian military.

After 27 years of post-Soviet life in Central Asia, there has been “little progress towards democratic, open societies based on free markets, the rule of law, and respect for human rights.”  While there are clear indicators that many aspects are slowly changing and adapting to our modern global world, it is still far from clear how this will play out.  In another quarter century, the region could look much more like our NATO partners in Eastern Europe, or possibly slide back further into their familiar oppressive ways.  Further, with continued unrest and combat in various areas of the world, specifically relating to violent extremism and radical Islam, another Arab Spring-type event is not out of the question.  While frustrating to many organizations operating in the region, the current revival of tensions between Russia and the West offers Central Asia a certain amount of stability, allowing it to play one entity off another in an effort to receive more support, while keeping everyone at arm’s length.  What effect a weakening Russia or an America uninterested in the traditional Westphalian system of international relations could have, further muddies the waters. 

For a strong Central Asia, the best solution seems to be for each regional player to work away from their status quo of accepting support from multiple partners from both the East and West and move towards a closer union with their regional neighbors on all sides.  This route can provide immense regional stability, strengthened economies and increased independence.  On the part of the United States, it is imperative that we maintain good relations in the region, as Central Asia has proved itself a reliable partner when the West needs it most.  To paraphrase the words of a regional ambassador, we need to rethink Central Asia.  Only in this way can we hope to ensure regional stability, contain the violent extremism that already exists and prevent the next generation of youths from moving in the directions of radicalization.

About the Author

Major Daniel J. O’Connor is a South Asia FAO and serves as the Deputy Chief, Office of Defense Cooperation at U.S. Embassy Tashkent, Uzbekistan.  He received a Bachelor’s Degree in Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies from the University of Connecticut, and was selected

to the inaugural class for the  Major General James Wright Fellowship and attained a Masters of Business Administration from the College of William and Mary.  Prior to accession to the FAO functional area he served as a logistics officer in Afghanisan and Iraq, and at Kwajelein Atoll in the Pacific.

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