More Troops Needed for US bases in Central Asia

Russia and China call for closure of US bases in Central Asia
By John Chan: WSWS : News & Analysis : Asia
30 July 2005

Russia and China call for closure of US bases in Central Asia.

However, having established a footprint in Central Asia for the first
time in history, US imperialism does not intend to leave. During a
visit to China on July 10, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
maintained that the US would not withdraw from Afghanistan.

Over the past several years Washington's presence in Central Asia has
provoked growing nervousness. While the invasion of Afghanistan was
camouflaged as a war to eradicate terrorism, the true aim was to
realise long-held US strategic ambitions to deploy military forces for
the first time into the Central Asian territories of the former Soviet
Union and attempt to assert dominance over the resource-rich area. From
the bases it now controls, the US is able to exert a continuous threat
against countries in the region, including Russia, China and Iran.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a grouping of China,
Russia and four Central Asian republics, issued an unprecedented
statement at a summit meeting on July 5 in Kazakhstan calling on the
United States to set a deadline for the removal of its military bases
in Central Asia.

While supporting the Bush administration's general rhetoric that a
"war on terror" is being fought, the SCO declaration stated:
"Considering that the active phase of the military anti-terrorist
operation in Afghanistan has finished, member states ... consider it
essential that the relevant participants in the anti-terrorist
coalition set deadlines for the temporary use" of military bases in
the region.

Sergei Prikhodko, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, told the
media that it was not a demand for the US to withdraw immediately, but
it was "important for the SCO members to know when [US] troops will
go home". The SCO used Washington's own propaganda that the US-led
coalition forces in Afghanistan have brought peace and democracy to the
war-devastated country to argue that the American military no longer
needed its bases in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

Three days later, the lower house of the Russian parliament ratified a
15-year bilateral agreement between Russia and Kyrgyzstan to double the
number of Russian troops at its airbase at Kant, east of Bishkek.
Earlier this year, Russia announced plans to deploy more combat
aircraft to Kant.

Washington established airbases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to support
the US invasion of Afghanistan in November 2001. Three-and-a-half years
later, the bases are still operational and garrisoned by hundreds of
American troops. In Kyrgyzstan, American and Russian aircraft are
located within two minutes flying time from one another.

The SCO declaration demonstrates that Russia and China are taking
tentative steps to challenge the US military presence in Central Asia.

Formerly known as the "Shanghai Five", the SCO was established in
1996 by China, Russia, and the former Soviet Central Asian republics of
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Uzbekistan joined in June 2001,
when the body was restructured with a permanent secretariat
headquartered in Beijing. The perspective underlying its formation was
to create a "strategic partnership" between China and Russia, with
the aim of developing economic cooperation in the exploitation of
Central Asia's rich oil and gas reserves.

All the member-states of the SCO initially endorsed the US invasion of
Afghanistan, both to avoid any conflict with Washington and to exploit
the "war on terror" for their own agendas. Moscow used it to
legitimise its war of repression against Muslim separatism in Chechnya,
while Beijing justified a crackdown against separatists in its Central
Asian, Muslim-populated province of Xinjiang. The regimes in the
poverty-stricken Central Asian republics seized upon "terrorism" to
justify suppressing social unrest and political opposition.

US policies in Central Asia since 2001 have challenged Russian
influence in particular. The Bush administration backed the so-called
"colour revolutions" in the former Soviet republics of Georgia and
the Ukraine. In both cases, pro-US political forces brought down
governments that were aligned with Moscow. In March this year, another
"revolution" in Kyrgyzstan culminated in the installation of a new
regime that is attempting to balance between the US and Russia. In May,
both Washington and Moscow tacitly supported the Uzbek
government-which has collaborated closely with the US-when it
brutally suppressed a rebellion in the city of Andijian.

As the geo-political struggle develops, the SCO has increasingly come
to be viewed in Russia as a means of shoring up its influence over the
Central Asian republics and forging a closer relationship with China,
as a counterweight to the US.

Andrei Grozin, director of the Central Asia section of the CIS
[Commonwealth of Independent States] Institute, told the Russian
newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta on July 4 that the SCO might "create a
working, functioning structure to support stability and to preserve
those political systems that have taken shape in the post-Soviet
Asiatic states".

Sergei Markedonov, a researcher at Russia's Institute of Political
and Military Analysis, told the Moscow-based RIA Novosti newspaper on
July 13 that the recent political unrest in Central Asia showed that
Russia, in cooperation with China, needed to function as "a regional
policeman".

China also has definite strategic interests in Central Asia. Beijing
has financed a network of pipelines in Central Asia to Xinjiang
province as an alternative source of oil supplies from the Middle East.
US predominance in the region, or US-inspired political instability,
could disrupt China's plans, as well as potentially encourage ethnic
unrest in Xinjiang.

The call to end US military bases in Central Asia was most likely
decided during meetings between Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao,
who visited Russia from June 30 to July 3, just before the SCO summit.

In a bilateral statement, "World Order in 21st Century," issued on
July 2, China and Russia warned of the danger of "unilateralism" in
international relations, called for a greater role for the United
Nations, and stability in the Korean Peninsula. Hu told reporters after
his talks with Putin: "We reinforced our mutual support on key issues
like Taiwan and Chechnya, which concern our vital interests."

At the SCO summit, the Central Asian regimes lined up with Moscow's
and Beijing's rhetoric against "unilateralism"-a codeword for
US global hegemony. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev declared:
"There should be no place for interference in the internal affairs of
sovereign states".

Uzbek president Islam Karimov said pro-Western forces "hijack
stability and impose their model of development" on the region. To
show its commitment to the SCO line, the Uzbek government issued a
statement on July 7 insisting that flights from the US air base in
Karshi-Khanabad be confined to operations over northern Afghanistan.
"Any other prospects for a US military presence in Uzbekistan were
not considered by the Uzbek side", the statement declared.

In Kyrgyzstan, the newly elected president, Kurman Bakiyev, told
reporters on July 11 that the US presence in the country should be
reconsidered. "This issue was raised at the SCO summit, since the
situation in Afghanistan has changed. The situation in Afghanistan will
soon stabilise. The country has had presidential elections and is
getting ready to elect a parliament, so the question about the
coalition base's presence in Kyrgyzstan arises."


Geopolitical conflicts to intensify

The US immediately rejected these statements. During a visit to China
on July 10, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice maintained that the
US would not withdraw from Afghanistan. "It is our understanding that
the people of Afghanistan want and need the help of the US armed
forces," she declared at a Beijing press conference. Having
established a footprint in Central Asia for the first time in history,
US imperialism does not intend to leave.

On July 14, the chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers
openly accused China and Russia of "trying to bully" the Central
Asian states into calling for the closure of the American bases. Just
who is bullying whom, however, was demonstrated this week, when US
Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld flew into Kyrgyzstan and rapidly
extracted agreements for the continuation of the airbase in the
country.

The Kyrgyz defence minister told journalists on July 26 that "now, I
agree with Mr Secretary" and that the US base would stay "as long
as the situation in Afghanistan requires". The government of
Tajikistan also fell into line under American pressure, guaranteeing
the US military ongoing use of Tajik airspace and territory.

The Uzbekistan government, which has not given a guarantee to
Washington that the US base can remain and did not give Rumsfeld one
this week, is facing Bush administration threats of an international
inquiry into the May 13 repression at Andijian. On July 12, State
Department spokesman Tom Casey declared: "Certainly, the Uzbekistan
government owes its citizens and owes the international community a
serious, credible and independent investigation."

The geopolitical conflict for influence in Central Asia and access to
resources can only intensify as the regional powers seek to assert
their interests and the US attempts to establish dominance.

A significant aspect of the SCO summit was the granting of observer
status to Iran, India and Pakistan. The Bush administration has
consistently threatened Iran since it was named alongside Iraq and
North Korea as part of an "axis of evil" at the beginning of 2001.
All the SCO states have mutual interests in forestalling any US moves
to overthrow the Tehran regime. The Central Asian republics are deeply
concerned by the implications for domestic stability if US bases on
their territories were used for aggression against Iran. For their
part, Russia and China do not want to see another of the world's
major oil producers being transformed into a US client state.

China has growing energy interests in Iran. Last October, China signed
a long-term $70 billion agreement with Tehran for a 51 percent stake in
Iran's largest onshore oilfield. At the SCO summit, Iranian vice
president, Mohammad Reza Aref, declared his country could become the
"bridge" that connected the SCO states to the resources of the
Persian Gulf.

Russia and China's invitation to India and Pakistan to attend the SCO
likewise involves long-term questions of access to oil and gas. While
currently stalled due to US opposition, both New Delhi and Islamabad
are interested in the construction of a gas pipeline from Iran, through
Pakistan to India. China and India signed protocols earlier this year
to lay the basis for closer political and economic relations.

All indications point to increasing efforts by China over the coming
years to develop the SCO, as the framework for closer relations with
Russia in particular and access to energy resources. The Chinese media
even labeled Hu's recent visit to Russia a "trip of oil".

Since the establishment of their "strategic partnership", bilateral
trade between Russia and China has risen dramatically-and is expected
to grow 20 percent this year, from $21.2 billion in 2004. By 2010, the
trade could reach $60-$80 billion. China is planning to increase its
oil imports from Russia by 50 percent this year, to 70 million barrels.
Chinese oil companies are investigating major investments in Russian
energy companies. Over $6 billion in Chinese loans have already been
provided to Rosneft, the main state-owned oil exporter to China.

A central focus of China's interest is Siberia. Nearly half of all
the proven oil reserves of the former USSR are in the region, as are 70
percent of all Russia's coal reserves. It is Russia's largest
producer of oil, the second largest for coal and a major centre of
metal industries. Some 140 out of some 200 largest enterprises in
Siberia are weapon manufacturers, whose main customer is China. The
area is also home to numerous former USSR research centres in fields
such as physics, aerospace and nuclear power.

Russian rail authorities confirmed that in the first five months of
this year, 3.6 million tons of crude oil had been freighted to China
from eastern Siberia, an increase of 37 percent from last year. To
facilitate oil exports, Beijing has been pushing Russia to build a
pipeline from Siberia to China's northeastern provinces.

Alongside the economic linkage, China and Russia are strengthening
their military ties. The two countries are preparing their first joint
military excise, to be conducted in China, involving 80,000 troops.
Russia intends to send warships, ground forces and long-range bombers.
Although both sides have denied that the exercise is aimed at any
country, there is little doubt that it is a response to the eruption of
US aggression since 2001 and the growing uncertainties in world
politics.

See Also:
Oil pipeline completed: a sign of rising great power rivalry in Central
Asia
[31 May 2005]
More than 500 killed, thousands wounded
Uzbekistan: US "war on terror" yields a bloodbath
[16 May 2005]
Kyrgyz president forced to flee as opposition seizes power
[28 March 2005]
China pushes into Central Asia for oil and gas
[3 January 2001]

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