The Phantom Threat: Amphibious Problems in Central Asia
Source: facebook.com
Front-line region
So, Central Asia is again becoming a front-line region, while the forecast is rather unfavorable. The Taliban can have any peaceful intentions towards their neighbors right now. However, rapid population growth in a stagnant economy means a progressive increase in demographic pressure. With a high degree of probability, it will splash out on the neighbors.
Meanwhile, this threat is already leading to the militarization of the region. Border countries are building up their military potential. The problem is that it can be implemented within the region as well. The Tajik-Kyrgyz conflict, which received another continuation in July, became the first "black swan" of its kind.
How big are the threats?
Let me remind you that the reason for the collision was the lack of water. The place is part of the Fergana Valley in the Isfara Valley. Isfara is a "mighty" stream less than 1/7 from the Moskva River. At the same time, about half a million people live in its pool. The result is predictable - the river is completely dismantled for irrigation.
At the same time, the political geography of the basin is quite typical for Fergana. The upper reaches of Isfara belong to Kyrgyzstan. Below is the 35 thousandth Tajik enclave of Vorukh, which is cut off from the main territory by the Kyrgyz village of Aksai.
Regular border conflicts have become a natural result. According to the Tajik side, the first of them occurred in ... 1974, in fact, and gave rise to an eight-kilometer "bridge" that cuts off Vorukh from Tajikistan. The next one, already with two dead, was in 1989. In the post-Soviet period, clashes have become quite regular. By 2014, during the penultimate drought, it came to mortar attacks.
Since 2018, the chain of dry years has begun again in Central Asia. In 2020, water scarcity has taken on rampant proportions. The reason was mainly the delay in the beginning of the melting of glaciers by more than a month.
As a result, seven years later, the situation in 2014 repeated itself in a proportionally more severe form. At the same time, a significant number of victims from the Kyrgyz side was caused by the massive participation of the local Tajik population in the pogroms.
Apocalyptic predictions on the topic of "water hunger" have long become commonplace. In other words, the situation in the Isfara basin is perceived as a kind of model of the situation that may develop in the entire region in the foreseeable future.
How real is this threat?
In the media, it is often presented in a vulgarized form - as a physical shortage of drinking water for a growing population. In reality, in 2011, 91,6% of the water consumed in the region was used for irrigating agricultural land, while the remaining 8,4% was consumed not only by the population, but also by industry. Now the share of "farmers" is lower, but insignificantly.
Roughly the same situation will continue in the future. According to the UN forecast, the population of Central Asia will grow by 2050 million people by 14. That is, slightly more than the growth of the population of Uzbekistan alone in the post-Soviet period (13 million). For the region as a whole, it grew by 33,7 million - in other words, 2,4 times more than expected by the middle of the century.
Thus, the water problem in Central Asia is of decisive importance exclusively for agriculture. However, in his case, it is really critical.
The densely populated part of the region is a completely man-made environment, totally dependent on artificial irrigation. By the end of the Soviet period, the share of irrigated arable land in the region was close to 100%. The latter is not surprising. For example, in Uzbekistan, sown areas in 1992 amounted to 4,75 million hectares against 2,1 million within traditional oases.
In the post-Soviet period, there has been both a reduction in cultivated areas in general and a decrease in the share of irrigated lands. However, in 2011, even in Kyrgyzstan, 75% of the cultivated area was irrigated, in Tajikistan - 85%, in Uzbekistan - 89% (FAO data). In Turkmenistan, the area of irrigated land was larger than the sown area - 102% due to the need to irrigate pastures.
The share of irrigated land in agricultural production is even higher than in the total area - for example, in 2016, only ... 1,5% of products were received on the non-irrigated lands of Uzbekistan.
At the same time, a very remarkable background for the reduction of irrigated areas until recently was ... an increase in the flow of local rivers due to the accelerated melting of glaciers. At the same time, the share of crops of very “moisture-consuming” cotton has sharply decreased.
At first glance, the situation is paradoxical, however, more than explainable - at the second.
There is a "water division of labor" in Central Asia. Sources of water resources are concentrated in the two poorest countries - Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The main consumers are Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and the second receives water actually through the first. At the same time, the Tajik part of Fergana, where one third of the republic's population lives, depends on the Kyrgyz runoff. In turn, the north of Kyrgyzstan is "at the mercy" of China, which controls the upper reaches of the Ili.
Accordingly, the problems of “donors” and consumers are fundamentally different. For Kyrgyzstan and the main part of Tajikistan, this is trivial poverty that hinders the development of water supply systems in line with population growth. Or at least support existing ones.
Thus, the shortage of drinking water in the zone of the recent conflict had an obvious context.
“In the Tajik part of the basin, an average of 29,1% of the basin's population is provided with drinking water. Residents use water from ditches and imported water. Pumping stations and water lines are worn out and almost unusable. The situation is similar in the Kyrgyz part of the Isfara basin. Water is supplied only 2-3 hours a day ... In addition, diseases such as typhoid and hepatitis are widespread due to the poor quality of drinking water. "
In turn, the situation in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajik Fergana is a direct derivative of relations with the "water-bearing" neighbors.
For the "donors" of the reservoir on their own territory, it is, first of all, a source of electricity, the maximum consumption of which falls on the winter. As a result, water pours into the empty fields of neighbors, often flooding them. On the contrary, there is not enough water in summer. The donors have no money for the construction of alternatives to hydroelectricity and the purchase of energy resources.
In theory, the problem is completely solvable, but there were problems with the desire to implement this theory for almost three decades. By virtue of geography, Turkmenistan is the last in the water queue and its position in any case would have little effect on anything. As for Uzbekistan, which is key in this case, Islam Karimov left the USSR with huge reserves of "national pride", claims to hegemony in the region and a rapidly manifested pro-Western orientation. As a result, Tajik-Uzbek relations finally returned to normal only in 2017–2018. The position of Karimov's Tashkent in relation to Kyrgyzstan can hardly be described otherwise than as arrogant.
Tajikistan, in turn, simply has nothing to offer Bishkek in exchange for water for "its" Fergana.
The cost of the issue for Uzbekistan turned out to be a decrease in the total water withdrawal from 64 to 51 cubic kilometers per year, while for irrigation almost one and a half times - from 59 to 43 (2017). At the same time, the sown area decreased by 1/6. As it is easy to see, less than 5% of the initial amount - 3 cubic kilometers - was spent on demographic and economic growth itself. At the same time, the population grew by almost 13 million.
One way or another, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who replaced Karimov, began the settlement of relations with the failed vassals of his predecessor.
Meanwhile, as mentioned above, a series of droughts began in Central Asia in 2018. It remains to be hoped that "transparent hints" will be understood, especially since there are prerequisites for this.
Forecast
What is the future forecast for the region as a whole?
There is a scenario with a 20% decrease in river flow over the next 30 years. However, even the World Bank is less radical, believing that by 2050 the runoff in the Syr Darya basin may decrease by 2-5%, and the Amu Darya - by 10-15%.
At the same time, the value of constructions from climatology to them. Thunberg is highly questionable. Although the Western press has declared the drought to be a consequence of global warming with touching shamelessness, the de facto delay in the melting of glaciers suggests an obvious pause in the process.
Meanwhile, even an apocalyptic scenario does not threaten an inevitable collapse - now from 40% of water in irrigation systems is simply lost, and its reuse in the region is a rare exotic.
However, there are unpleasant nuances in this relatively benign picture.
Firstly, against the middle background there are "excesses" of the Isfara type.
Second, if population growth does not lead to a water collapse, then it will inevitably lead to agrarian overpopulation.
An unpleasant feature of the region is that the growth of demographic pressure is practically not accompanied by accelerated urbanization. At the same time, mainly internal migration is restrained by administrative methods - for example, until very recently, a rigid registration system was in force in Uzbekistan. This saved the same Tashkent from the "Latin American" overgrowth with favelas, but the price of the issue was the aggravation of problems in the countryside.
Actually, from an outside perspective, overpopulation has already reached extreme forms.
On a country scale, Tajikistan is the most problematic. The republic is characterized by the highest rates of population growth in a very problematic situation with sown areas. According to the FAO, between 1991 and 2010, the country's arable area decreased from 860 thousand hectares to 746,9 thousand, while the population grew by almost one and a half times - from 5,4 to 7,56 million. Meanwhile, this happened against the backdrop of a decrease in the share of the urban population from 31,1 to 27,5%.
Over the past ten years, Tajikistan has officially returned to Soviet indicators - thus, plowing has increased by 17%. The population during the same time has grown to almost 9,5 million, by 32%. The share of the “city” has remained practically the same: the proud 44%, which have gone online, is a trivial fake.
Agriculture employs about 45% of the working-age population. At the same time, it is easy to calculate that for each employed person there is about 0,2 hectares of arable land.
By 2050, according to the UN forecast, the population of the republic will grow by one and a half times - up to 14 million. Without a sharp acceleration of urbanization, the prospects are quite transparent.
The noticeably more prosperous neighbors of the republic nevertheless have more than "Tajik" problems of a regional order. Naturally, we are talking about Fergana.
Here, on an area of half of the Moscow region, there is a twice as large population. At the same time, in contrast to the Moscow region, by no means 80% live in cities.
One can get an idea of the scale of land hunger in the Aksakinsky district of the Andijan region - 24,1 people per hectare of arable land. At the same time, 2/3 of the population of the district is rural. In other words, this is about 7 "acres" per person.
The result is predictable. The population of the Kyrgyz part of the valley, which makes up half of the total republican, largely generates chronic maidans. The Uzbek part, in which already a third of the country's population lives, is also not distinguished by loyalty.
At the same time, Fergana's "options" as a generator of interstate conflicts are not limited to gigantic overpopulation.
Formally, there are eight enclaves in the valley, practically more. Thus, the Tajik enclave of Vorukh, which has become a collision zone, in turn cuts off the Leilek region of Kyrgyzstan from the main territory - the construction of a bypass road is a very non-trivial task. At the same time, the borders, which is typical for the Fergana Valley, are controversial. In general, out of 980 km of the Tajik-Kyrgyz border, 504 have been agreed.
At the same time, the notorious water "excesses" are observed along the periphery of the valley.
Conclusions
What are the findings?
First, Tajikistan is the least reliable home front. If the local economy develops in an inertial mode, a political crisis in the republic is sooner or later inevitable. Fergana's "explosion hazard", in turn, is a commonplace.
Meanwhile, Tajikistan and Fergana are geographically connected and potentially represent a single zone of instability with an "outlet" to Afghanistan. At the same time, let me remind you that Tajikistan is the upper reaches of the Amu Darya with all that it implies for Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. In other words, the “domino effect” in the event of destabilization of the republic looks almost inevitable.
However, this is at least a mid-term perspective.
A much closer threat is the escalation of the current Kyrgyz-Tajik conflict. As it is already quite obvious, agrarian overpopulation is a very fertile ground for border disputes. At the same time, official Dushanbe at least follows the instigators' lead, and as a maximum - tries to play hybrid wars on its own.
Meanwhile, Rakhmonov / Rakhmon, who for decades has been practicing the most rabid multi-vector approach, is least of all an example of Moscow's loyal satellite.
In other words, strengthening the Tajik army is necessary, but an imbalance of power between Bishkek and Dushanbe is fraught with escalating conflict.
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