Atlantic Sentinel

Author: Catherine Putz

  • Kerry’s Surprise Visit to Afghanistan Yields Draft Agreement

    Negotiations over an agreement for some American forces to remain in Afghanistan after 2014 have been stalled for some time but an unannounced visit to Kabul by Secretary of State John Kerry seems to have yielded some progress — and a draft agreement.

    Among the major differences holding up the negotiations for a Bilateral Security Agreement are longstanding Afghan demands for greater control and better access to American intelligence as well as the stipulation that remaining forces not be subject to Afghan law. Additionally, Afghan are concerned that the agreement lacks a security guarantee to protect the country from Pakistan while permitting the United States to conduct unilateral operations in Afghanistan. (more…)

  • Tajikistan’s Islamists Back Secular Candidate to Send Message

    The outcome of Tajikistan’s November presidential election is easy to predict. Emomalii Rahmon will be reelected in a landslide. However, the ballot will also list Oynihol Bobonazarova, a secular lawyer and human rights activist recently tapped by the opposition, including Central Asia’s single legal Islamist party, to run against the first and only president of the former Soviet republic.

    Bobonazarova is at first glance an odd choice for the United Reformist Force, an opposition coalition comprised of Islamists, social democrats and several nongovernmental groups.

    The Islamists boycotted the 2006 election and failed to put up a candidate for a 2011 by-election for a vacated parliament seat, saying in conjunction with the boycotting social democrats that until election laws were changed, government officials will always be able to manipulate the outcome in advance. Although the Islamists did not encourage their members to boycott the 2011 election, it is clear the opposition forces in Tajikistan are dejected about their chances of electoral victory in any settling.

    The upcoming presidential election marks a potential breaking point for perennial president Rahmon. Elected in 1994 and again in 1999. A 1999 referendum extended the presidential term from five to seven years, and a 2003 package of constitutional amendments included a provision permitting a second consecutive term. Although the limit of two terms exists on paper, supporters of Rahmon argue that the limit only applies to elections following the 2003 adoption of the amendments. Rahmon is set to run again this November. (more…)

  • Chinese Leader Follows Silk Road, Signs Energy Deals

    While the American “pivot” to Asia seems stalled in light of the Syrian crisis, China’s pivot west, to Central Asia, is in full swing. Crisscrossing the region, in a path reminiscent of the Silk Road, President Xi Jingping has been making numerous well received speeches and deals from Ashgabat to Astana.

    Unsurprisingly, many of the agreements arising from this trip relate to the energy sector. In Turkmenistan, the Chinese leader helped inaugurate the start of production at the world’s second largest gasfield, Galkynysh, while also finalizing a deal for the Chinese state-owned energy corporation, China National Petroleum Corp, to build facilities which should process 30 billion cubic meters of gas per year. (more…)

  • Breakdown in Afghan Security, Taliban Peace Talks Predictable

    The breakdown in both the bilateral security agreement talks between the Afghan government and the United States and the peace talks with the Taliban were far from unexpected. The issues of sovereignty and power remain central to both Afghan and Taliban concerns. While the primarily American concern is the war, and its ending, the main Afghan and Taliban worry looks toward the peace.

    Nominally, it started on Wednesday with the raising of a Taliban flag — black lettering on a white banner — and the revealing of a name plate reading “Political Office of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” in Doha, Qatar. Though the opening of a physical Taliban office was heralded by many as a progressive step toward reconciliation, it was also at the heart of the breakdown.

    The opening and use of a Taliban office provides the perception of political legitimacy, and therefore legitimate competition, which the unsteady administration of President Hamid Karzai can ill afford.

    In addition, continued American steering of the peace process illustrated time and again the lack of confidence in the staying power of the Afghan republic. (more…)

  • Afghan Factions Meet in France as NATO Prepares Withdrawal

    Representatives of four Afghan groups met near Chantilly, France this week. While the meeting, organized by the Foundation for Strategic Research, is nowhere close to a negotiation, the gathering at least presented an opportunity for the various sides to talk.

    Members of the Afghan High Peace Council, the Northern Alliance, Hezbi Islami and the Taliban came to France for the talks.

    “If you want peace, it’s usually between people who don’t agree,” said France’s foreign minister Laurent Fabius ahead of the meeting, “and over there they don’t talk to each other. So there will be discussions but it won’t be negotiations.”

    2012 dawned with the hope that peace talks between the Taliban and the United States would progress. The former agreed to open a political office in Qatar and the Americans opened up to discussions about the release of prisoners held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Then, in March the talks stalled over the details of the Guantánamo prisoner transfer among other sticking points. The Taliban accused the American negotiators of being “shaky, erratic and vague.”

    As the year draws to a close the situation in Afghanistan remains bleak. 2012 was not only plagued by stalled negotiations but by an increase in “green on blue” violence — the killing of NATO soldiers by Afghan security forces — and vague, if any, improvements in security throughout the country. Although the Western alliance doesn’t plan to leave the country before 2014, withdrawals are already underway.

    The French government had no direct involvement in the meeting in Chantilly but officials were present. The meeting came at an auspicious time, a week after the French withdrew the last of their combat forces from Afghanistan and the British announced that they will be withdrawing nearly 4,000 soldiers next year, reducing Britain’s presence down to just over 5,000 troops by the end of 2013.

    The meeting in Chantilly was not expected to result in any breakthrough toward a peace agreement. As it took place behind closed doors, we might not even learn soon whether anything was accomplished.

    A Taliban spokesman said there would only be speeches, no political commitments and no negotiations. This, of course, could mean plenty of talking and no listening. On the other hand, gathering these disparate individuals together and allowing them a safe place to speak their positions is a step in the right direction.

  • Afghanistan’s Karzai Dismisses Helmand Governor

    Afghan president Hamid Karzai, in a declared attempt to fight corruption, has dismissed five provincial governors from their posts. Among those dismissed is Gulab Mangal of Helmand Province, a particular favorite of international forces. Mangal’s dismissal does not come as a surprise and makes a certain degree of sense in domestic political terms.

    Karzai has tried numerous times to push Mangal out of office but always pulled back at the objections of the American and British forces stationed in Helmand, the largest of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. That he has finally ousted Mangal indicates that Karzai is looking beyond the opinions of Western allies and 2014, when NATO is set to withdraw, with an eye for his own job security.

    In place of Mangal, under whose watch Helmand became the deadliest posting for NATO forces, Karzai is installing General Naeem Baloch, a little known member of the Afghan intelligence service and a man more closely allied with Karzai’s inner circle. (more…)

  • Kyrgyz Political Crisis Prompts Premier’s Resignation

    Kyrgyzstan is once again in political crisis. The product of a stagnating economy, accusations of corruption and the failure of the government to rapidly deliver promised prosperity, the latest iteration of the Central Asian republic’s political turmoil highlights both weaknesses that are inherent to parliamentary democracy and the latent potential of Kyrgyz civil society.

    Often hailed as a democratic success in a region that is ruled by autocrats, Kyrgyzstan’s political instability inhibits economic and societal progress.

    Twice since independence has Kyrgyzstan removed its president from power. Askar Akayev, elected as the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991, was pushed out of office in 2005’s largely nonviolent Tulip Revolution. Riots and demonstrations two years ago forced Akayev’s successor, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, to flee the country. A referendum subsequently approved the switch from a presidential to a parliamentary system under a new constitution. (more…)

  • Badakhshan-Tajikistan Clashes Risk Sparking Insurgency

    The response by the Tajik government to the murder of a security official last week — sending troops into the capital of Gorno-Badakhshan — may cause more harm than they anticipated.

    Major General Abdullo Nazarov, the head of the regional branch of the State Committee on National Security (formerly the KGB) was apparently stabbed to death on July 22. Two days later, Tajik troops marched into Khorugh, nominally seeking to arrest Tolib Ayombekov, the head of a border post on the Afghan-Tajik frontier and an opposition commander during Tajikistan’s 1992-1997 civil war, who has been accused of the general’s murder.

    Last Wednesday, a ceasefire was declared but the two sides remain at an impasse. Ayombekov’s forces refuse to surrender their weapons or their leader while the Tajik government, headed by autocratic President Emomalii Rahmon, is not perceivably ready to “save face by collecting some weapons and withdrawing.”

    Andrei Grozin, head of the Central Asia Department at the CIS Institute in Moscow, was quoted as saying that “any campaign that does not end quickly risks getting bogged down in the harsh mountain winter.”

    A letter confirmed accurate by sources close to EurasiaNet paints a grim picture in Khorugh, effectively held hostage by the cease fire.

    99 percent of local people support these commanders. It’s a small town. Everyone is related. Everyone is family, friends. There is not a specific group the government is fighting: All local men are involved.

    Reports on casualties are varied. Government figures estimate seventeen troops, thirty militants and one civilian while other estimates are higher — particularly concerning civilian deaths. Opposition sources cite two hundred overall casualties.

    The most recent reports out of the region are inconsistent. Reuters reported that some rebels have begun to surrender after government threats to resume their assault but the report has not been picked up or corroborated by other news sources and only cites Tajik government officials. The situation remains tense in any event.

    The shutting off of Internet, mobile and telephone services to the region makes it all the more difficult to decipher precisely what is happening. Early in the conflict, authorities severed access to YouTube in particular and as of Sunday, the websites of at least one Russian television channel and the BBC were blocked. (more…)

  • Russian-Tajikistan Base Deal Revealed Prematurely

    Russian Ground Forces commander Vladimir Chirkin said recently that Russia and Tajikistan will soon achieve “results that will be advantageous for both sides” from the protracted talks between the two on the fate of Russia’s military base near the capital of Dushanbe.

    Chirkin went on to claim that the draft agreement allows for Russian retention of the base for 49 years, rent free, as it has been for the past decade.

    The Tajik Foreign Ministry, however, stated that General Chirkin’s claims were “premature” and “groundless,” stressing that negotiations continue behind closed doors.

    Tajik foreign minister Khamorokhon Zarifi indicated in a statement on Monday that the negotiations were progressing. He was disparaging about Russian defense officials revealing details of the talks to the public, saying that “in a normal, law governed state, there is a specific responsibility for these actions, as this is disclosure of state secrets and important information.” (more…)

  • Clinton’s Apology Reopens NATO Supply Route

    Pakistan has agreed to reopen NATO supply routes into Afghanistan after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apologized for the deaths of Pakistani soldiers during an airstrike last November.

    The United States spent an additional $100 million per month to transport supplies to the NATO mission in Afghanistan through Central Asia while the route was shut. The Salala raid, as Pakistan refers to the incident which touched off the closure, topped off a bad year for American-Pakistani relations.

    “We are sorry for the losses suffered by the Pakistani military,” Clinton said in a statement that was issued by her State Department. (more…)

  • NATO Supply Route Through Pakistan Remains Closed

    Despite rumors ahead of last month’s NATO summit in Chicago that an agreement between Pakistan and the United States to reopen the supply route into Afghanistan was imminent, both sides are still very far apart on a deal.

    On Monday, the American negotiating team withdrew from Pakistan. Officials insist that the talks have not collapsed but have come to the point where politics takes over. The team, made up of technical specialists, has been in Pakistan for 45 days.

    A Pentagon spokesman, Commander William H. Speaks, said that the technical consultations have largely been completed, and the United States remain ready to send officials back to Islamabad when the Pakistanis are ready to conclude an agreement. The State Department’s Victoria Nuland made similar comments, that the United States have decided to “take a break” but are prepared to send the team of negotiators back to Pakistan.

    A number of issues have stalled the reopening of NATO supply routes. Technical aspects, such as price, military aid and infrastructure improvements have been sticking points but it is the issue of an apology has stalled final agreement. (more…)

  • Turkmenistan Finally Puts the “T” in TAPI

    On Wednesday Turkmenistan finally signed agreements with India and Pakistan’s state energy companies to clear the way for the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline.

    TAPI was conceptualized in the 1990s and has been beset with a multitude of problems since. Wednesday’s announcement removes a major obstacle for the TAPI project but many more remain.

    The pipeline would begin in Turkmenistan’s vast gasfields. Initial TAPI plans called for the source to be the Dauletabad field in southern Turkmenistan. More recent plans indicate that a portion of TAPI would come from the yet to be developed South Yolotan field near the Afghan border. (more…)

  • No Good Ways Out of Afghanistan

    Western forces looking to exit Afghanistan over the next two years are playing a game of roulette, looking for the luckiest and cheapest way out of the warzone. Central Asian countries are scrambling to be the most attractive bet. Difficult and still closed, the road through Pakistan remains the preferred route.

    Afghanistan’s neighbors stand to make huge profits as NATO countries move to withdraw their troops and equipment. Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan will remain under American control until the war is over but the base cannot handle all of the equipment which NATO forces must remove from the region. Land routes are numerous but difficult for a variety of reasons and Central Asia is poised to cash in on the scramble to depart.

    Additionally, Central Asian states are more submissive to Russia than America. Russia and the United States have recently begun to negotiate a “retrograde transit” agreement to use the Northern Distribution Network but the Kremlin may well seek to exploit the deal in order to achieve its aims elsewhere.

    There are numerous options for getting into and alternatively out of Afghanistan but none are perfect bets.

    The Pakistan route is the easiest and the cheapest but unreliable. In late November 2011, Pakistan closed the border to NATO traffic in protest after an American airstrike killed nearly thirty Pakistani soldiers by accident. The border is still closed and Pakistan obstinate about reopening it without an American apology.

    The Northern Distribution Network was developed by the Americans as an alternative to the Pakistan route but there are signs that its gatekeeper Uzbekistan will seek to raise transit fees. While Uzbekistan has by far the best road and railroad network among Afghanistan’s neighbors, its price gouging will prompt NATO powers to seek additional alternate routes.

    The trouble is that difficult and pernicious as Pakistan and Uzbekistan can be, alternative land routes through Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are even more troublesome. Bad roads and bad winters are only where the problems begin.

    There is discussion of selling some equipment to the Central Asian republics and thus removing the need to transport such equipment out of the region on NATO’s dime. In February, British armed forces minister Nick Harvey suggested trading military equipment for favorable transit fees. He alluded to the unspecified equipment as being potentially useful in Central Asia’s battle with narcotics and terrorism.

    The United States have been more circumspect about leaving military equipment in the hands of Central Asian autocrats. Robert Blake, the American assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs said that arms transfers to countries along the Northern Distribution Network would be subject to the same restrictions that apply to regular arms transfers. Thus far, the Americans have been unwilling to sell any weapons to Uzbekistan, which has a less than pristine human rights record.

    The bottom line is that Pakistan holds the lucky numbers. The average shipping cost of a container, as reported by Radio Free Europe, from Afghanistan to Karachi is $7,200. By northern routes shipping the same container would cost $17,500. When Pakistan decides to reopen the road to NATO convoys, it is likely to be at a higher price but still able to undercut the Central Asian route.

    Money, power and politics all play a part in this game of supply route roulette. Money is on Pakistan and it is doubtful that by 2014 NATO powers will be interested in taking the longer, more expensive road through authoritarian Central Asia and into Russia’s arms. Islamabad will eventually reopen the border and happily usher the West out of its backyard.

  • Tajikistan: Between a Rock, a Hard Place and Iran

    The head of United States Central Command, General James Mattis, held talks with Tajik president Emomalii Rahmon last Saturday to enlist commitments of continued support for American and NATO operations in neighboring Afghanistan.

    Rahmon told Mattis that “Tajikistan would like to see further strengthening of the development of ties with the United States in the sphere of security and the establishment of peace and stability in the region.”

    On Monday, Rahmon met with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad who came bearing promises of pipelines and railways during the fifth annual Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan.

    Ahmedinijad came away from the talks pleased, telling reporters that Tajikistan and Iran are culturally “parts of the same body.”

    Caught between the Americans, a thousand kilometer border with Afghanistan, and a cultural connection to Iran, Tajikistan is indeed stuck economically and politically between conflicting interests and allies.

    Tajikistan is landlocked, mountainous, and the one of Central Asia’s poorest states. Its government is nominally a republic. In reality, Emomalii Rahmon has been ruling the one party dominant state since 1992.

    A political survivor, Rahmon held on to power throughout the Tajik civil war of the 1990s and secured a third term in an election in 2006.

    The country is dependent on Russia and Uzbekistan for energy. Its main sources of income are the aluminum industry, cotton growing and remittances from Tajiks working abroad.

    Uzbekistan recently announced that it will be stopping the flow of gas into Tajikistan, reportedly in order to meet commitments to larger buyers such as China. Regional analysts believe there is more politics to the stoppage than practicality. Tajikistan’s gas demand annually equals about what Uzbekistan produces in a single day.

    The Tajiks are looking for ways to diversify their energy sources and the Iranian promises sound tempting.

    Iran and Tajikistan share a cultural and linguistic history but little else. Ideologically and politically they diverge and economically, neither can quite afford to pay for the Iranian promises.

    Both countries are predominantly Muslim but Iran is a bombastic Shia bastion and Tajikistan mostly Sunni of the Central Asian persuasion.

    Tajikistan is politically secular, as is the norm in Central Asia. Political secularism in the region derives from the Soviet system and is also influenced by Sufism and pre-Islamic regional history. The 2006 election was boycotted by “mainline” opposition parties such as the Islamic Renaissance Party, which receives moral support from Iran and is the only legal Islamic political party in Tajikistan.

    To further illustrate the ideological divide, Tajikistan has been criticized by Iranian representatives for imposing “Islamaphobic rules on the population” such as banning the hijab and preventing underage children from attending mosque.

    Ideological differences are complicating factors not deal breakers but Iran’s promises remain pipedreams because of economics and security.

    Rahmon and Ahmedinijad, joined by Afghan president Hamid Karzai released a statement after talks in the Tajik capital city of Dushanbe which read that the three had “reached an understanding on how to cooperate more productively to accelerate construction of a railway from Iran to Tajikistan through Afghanistan.” They also announced plans to build an “energy line” across the three countries.

    Delegations from Dushanbe and Kabul are scheduled to meet in Tehran in two months to discuss the implementation of the projects, according to the same statement from President Rahmon’s office.

    The reality is that Tajikistan cannot afford the projects. The technical and security challenges of building a pipeline or railway across Afghanistan are unlikely to be easily surmounted. Iran, the target of multiple international sanctions because of its nuclear program, is also unlikely to be able to fund its promises or attract many investors for the risky venture.

    Tajikistan is in a tight spot. Uzbekistan, reportedly irked by Tajik hydropower projects upstream, is squeezing the state by cutting off the gas supply.

    Iran is under siege and scrounging for allies. It hopes to exploit the cultural connection with Tajikistan by offering promises which the Tajik government must realize are pipedreams.

    The war in Afghanistan goes on and while the Americans plot their exit by 2014, they have made efforts to reenlist Central Asian support for the cause.

  • Hope for Afghan Peace Talks After Taliban Walk Out

    Negotiations between the Americans and the Afghan Taliban were seen by many as too good to be true. Now that the talks have officially stalled, the scramble is to explain why and to label this new roadblock as either a tactical pause or an abject failure.

    Subsumed by the stalling are the small stepping stones to progress which the difficult negotiations have produced and the fact that “still, the door is very deliberately ajar,” as former United Nations official Michael Sempel put it.

    Plans remain in place for the Taliban to open an office in Qatar — a move that is seen as a significant confidence building measure.

    Negotiations to define the conditions under which the Pentagon would release five Taliban prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay to Qatari custody are still moving forward, although this would be a controversial transfer if it does go through. (more…)