Tajikistan, Afghanistan and the problems of the “Greater Eurasia” project, which it was decided to develop again
In one of the previous materials: “Is there potential for creating a Eurasian value zone or Greater Eurasia as an economic pole”, the prospects for the formation of the Eurasian economic bloc as a separate and independent player were analyzed. The material is part of a small series where trade relations and value chains are analyzed in detail.
Greater Eurasia
The world is actually diverging into value clusters, which even such an institution as the IMF cannot ignore. The whole question is: how these clusters are formed and what combinations are chosen not only by the largest, but also by players with less influence. Somewhere they simply go in the wake of changes, somewhere they contradict them on their own account and end up with economic losses, and sometimes something more than just losses.
They have been talking about “Greater Eurasia” for years; this project, like the one described in another material “The Path to India,” in our country either swells or subsides in politics, sometimes it is seized upon as the “main geopolitical concept of the future,” sometimes it is forgotten. Either we need USSR-2.0, then Europe from Lisbon to sunrise, and so on for twenty years in a row.
Recently, at the large-scale “One Belt, One Road” forum in Beijing, the Russian leader clearly outlined his priorities: the direction of trade “to the South” through three main corridors (China, Southeast Asia, India), the value cluster – “Greater Eurasia”.
That is, although all the indicators indicate that Russia is moving (and confidently) into the Chinese macroeconomic value zone, we decided to move along a different path, our own, separate one. Details and abstracts can be found in the material "One Belt, One Road" Forum. Important aspects of the positions of Russia and China".
It is no secret that the greatest irritant to society at the moment is migration policy. But this migration is external, simply the most noticeable and negatively bright tip of the iceberg, which is a kind of layer cake, where completely different layers exist at the same time, but very selectively interact: geopolitical schemes introduced by the management system, concepts that are developed by the levels below, overlap at each other and contradict each other, dozens of public-private projects being implemented outside the general plan, lobbying interests, etc.
The result of this layer cake was that when Moscow needed to re-establish a stake in the region, it had to act outside the normal project logic: goal setting, reserving funds, selecting elites, penetrating institutions, investment channels, trade channels, entering politics, etc. , but to use a rather complex combination of levers.
At one time, Moscow used such levers with relative success in Syria - through pressure at the desired key point, the policies of many players unfolded at once. The problem was that after achieving a certain effect, such a policy still found itself face to face with the traditional step-by-step scheme and began to stall.
In terms of Central Asia, there are two such levers involved today. The first one that is widely heard is a gas project based on the capabilities of the Central Asia - Center network and the internal networks of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The second, much less obvious and less “understood”, is the relationship between the Taliban movement (banned in the Russian Federation) and Tajikistan.
Curtsies
Many have drawn attention to the fact that this year Moscow has a much busier schedule of meetings not only in the “Central Asia” area, but also specifically in terms of interaction with Dushanbe. Some observers are observing with outright bewilderment Russia's obvious nods towards Dushanbe. And it must be said that migration lobbyists in Russia feel this trend very well, coming up with initiatives, one more “wonderful” than the other.
It would seem that another cycle of “pivot to Asia” has begun. Nowadays, few people will remember what discussions were held in 2018–2019. experts from different sides spoke weekly about the entry of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan into the EAEU, seemingly “a little more, a little more,” but everything traditionally disappeared somewhere.
However, there is a rather interesting feature that needs to be discussed separately.
This year, until May, there were very substantive negotiations on recognizing the Taliban government (banned in the Russian Federation). In the month of May, events occur within the Taliban itself, after which work on interstate platforms on this problem is actually curtailed.
From January to May, various players at the UN are discussing the possibility of considering the issue of recognition. The United States opposes this, as does the opposition to the Taliban, by the way. By May, the conditions for dialogue were ripe, and then the Taliban themselves, seemingly a very interested party, issued an order that women were prohibited from working in UN structures in Afghanistan.
This looks all the more enchanting since the discussion of their recognition was being prepared within the framework of the UN. The details of this collision, but in fact a provocation, which was moderated from the outside, playing on the contradictions between currents in the Taliban itself, can be read in the material “Afghanistan risks becoming a victim of the American game again”.
Let us note that the current fate of a player like I. Khan, who was still lucky in many ways, oddly enough, also turned out to be tied not to Ukraine or China, as was often described, but to exactly the same issue.
The discussion on the topic of recognition was reduced to zero, but delegations from the Afghan opposition, represented by the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (A. Masud) and the Freedom Front of Afghanistan (Z. Yasin) movements, began to visit Russia frequently.
This turnaround looked quite sharp, given the efforts that had been made for a long time to build channels of interaction with the Taliban. Delegations came to meetings organized by the State Duma, as an initiative of one of the parliamentary parties. That is, it seems to be official, but not from the “main center”. Before this, A. Masuda was mainly seen at venues in Vienna.
The theses presented by the Afghan opposition were obvious: the Taliban does not control the spread of ISIS cells (banned in the Russian Federation), they do not fight opiates properly, there is no inclusiveness in power, which the Taliban previously announced, and the Taliban clearly does not plan to do so. At the same time, the Taliban are strengthening their military presence along the Tajik border and threatening Dushanbe for supporting the opposition based in Panjshir.
The nuance is that among the five countries closest to Russia and having a common border with Afghanistan, only Dushanbe has such tense relations with Kabul. China is negotiating with the Taliban, and from time to time you can even hear about various contracts. Iran not only resolved water issues in Helmand, but also signed several investment agreements with the Taliban. They are very interesting, and you can read about them in the material “Iran-Afghanistan trade strategy may puzzle US”.
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, which, by the way, are quite dependent on the Kush-Tepa canal being built by the Taliban, do not publicly demonstrate the growth of concern. This does not mean that there are no frictions, for example, on long-standing issues of military equipment, but still there is no public dive with harsh statements. Representatives of the Taliban periodically come to Tashkent to discuss commerce. In November, for example, together with representatives of Qatar, they discussed the Trans-Afghan Railway project.
But in Dushanbe, despite the fact that there is commercial activity in Afghanistan (border trade, electricity), on the political field with the Taliban everything is more than complicated. E. Rahmon openly supports Panjshir, and, judging by the reviews among Tajik experts, helicopters fly there and from there.
The question is, why does Dushanbe need this friction?
Why does Dushanbe need friction?
There are several reasons for this, but two are especially worth highlighting.
The first is China's projects related to the Wakhan corridor. This section is extremely difficult in terms of terrain, but it is an access to the railway to lithium deposits. It would be strange if Dushanbe did not try to emphasize the influence on this area, adjacent to GBAO and in the south close to Panjshir ("Geopolitics on the peaks of the Hindu Kush"). The question is that we need to act carefully with China.
The second reason is internal political. The issue of the Tajiks in Panjshir is something akin to the issue of the Russian World in our country. This is the rallying element of the agenda. Unlike Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, Tajikistan does not have a clear elite political core - the country consists of three politically competing regions and GBAO, which is always on its own and “on its own”.
There has been a long discussion in Tajikistan about how ready E. Rahmon is to transfer leadership to his son, and so far it is clear that neither one nor the other is ready. In Turkmenistan, this process of nomination took place based on the old, established elite base, and the son of the leader of Turkmenistan, in general, was freed from internal opposition, which allowed him to calmly gain experience in politics.
But in Tajikistan, if such a mastodon as E. Rakhmon is replaced by someone weaker or less experienced, a variety of scenarios cannot be ruled out, including those supported from the outside. In the same GBAO, E. Rakhmon does not favor the Aga Khan Foundation, but how the structures actually incorporated into the odious USAID will behave is also a question.
But, on the other hand, the confrontation with the Taliban gives Dushanbe good chances to be permanently integrated into the current international agenda. These include negotiations in Vienna and Brussels, interaction with China and the United States, and, of course, with Moscow.
When it became clear that the Taliban have very little chance of developing into a single governing structure from a network structure, and they are playing very well on this in Washington, and it also became obvious that over the past year and a half the Central Asian “five” have essentially turned into a separate foreign policy player, relations between Tajikistan and Afghanistan have become the same potential lever that was mentioned at the beginning of the article.
In fact, it’s not that the Taliban are not fighting ISIS, but they cannot suppress them; Washington and Brussels constantly turn anti-Taliban rhetoric to their advantage; inter-elite problems in Tajikistan really pose a security threat.
But security is precisely the point through which one can institutionally and politically increase influence in Central Asia as a whole, making up for lost time. It is already extremely difficult to compete with China in the region, but by using leverage, it is quite possible to increase influence. It is clear that, taking into account the current and future energy balance, gas projects will eventually exceed the starting mark of 2,8 billion cubic meters. m. So it is with the issue of security: the border with Afghanistan is also our military base.
Documents were recently signed that formalized a common air defense zone in the region. But it is clear that air defense is not aimed at Aviation China, Pakistan or Iran. The Taliban retained aviation from the previous government of A. Ghani. Nobody wants to check where it could potentially fly, but the political leverage is quite decent. No one in Central Asia can relegate the issue of security from Afghanistan to the background, which means that the political possibilities of this lever for Russia have been and will be relevant.
In some ways, resolving security issues through Russia is also beneficial for China, which quite sensibly assesses that this is much better for the prospects of the Wakhan corridor. But China and Iran have their own relations with the Taliban and much less with the Afghan opposition, which means that Moscow will, one way or another, have certain limits for geopolitical maneuvers.
Migration lobby
Needless to say, Dushanbe has monetized all these trends and aspirations on our part and will continue to monetize them in a variety of forms. The problem is that this largely coincides with the interests of that notorious “migration lobby.”
On the one hand, a network of Russian language schools is being developed, on the other, an excess of free hands is heading north, the issue of lifting past administrative bans on entry into Russia is being discussed (and this, according to various estimates, is up to 500 thousand people), quotas for studying at universities, various initiatives arise such as the construction of separate medical centers, cultural and others.
And also, the discussion about the total shortage of labor in Russia has become very active. After all, we have economic growth? Height. Is it logical that there is not enough labor? Logical. Demographic hole? Pit. Try to discuss with the lobby. Let's take statistics, but who is closer to statistics? The synergy here with geopolitics is such that we will see many more initiatives.
It is possible in theory to propose a ban, albeit temporary, on the transfer of individual funds abroad in dollars in order to expand that same ruble zone to the CIS countries, a ban on dollar transfers of wages abroad in order to return a significant part of the relocants that liberals are so concerned about. It’s possible, but it won’t work out, since in our statistics we will immediately find a billion vacationers who urgently need it and just like that, the valuable gift of creativity will disappear from the relocants, migrant workers will not go (see about the shortage), and in fact everything will be blocked by a rather narrow layer individuals. And so it is everywhere and in everything.
This is the same multi-layered iceberg where the geopolitical line, having been “correctly” processed and presented proactively at the levels below, begins to live its own life, which often has a variety of vectors. The lobby is well versed in how to get theses about labor shortages onto the agenda, but not theses about productivity growth. Of course (but whatever), it was decided that the construction industry is our most important driver of growth, and why not the machine tool industry?
There is undoubtedly a logic to geopolitically intensifying oneself, entering the region through leverage and removing American and European tentacles from the Afghan opposition and Dushanbe. But there are also several serious problems.
The first is that levers without a broad economic basis, which leads to the mutual cementation of elites, ultimately have very limited effectiveness.
Here, as in a cartoon, when one character comes out with a “project” for collecting old knitwear: “step No. 1 - collect old knitwear,” “step No. 3 - profit.” What about step number 2? In Syria, we used leverage to shift an entire foreign policy layer, if not layers, we reached a certain point X, and then?
And then there is the economics of a question to which there is no answer. It is unclear how long the status quo will last there; the prospects are not obvious. It’s the same here - we go through pipes and security again, step No. 3 - “Greater Eurasia”, and step No. 2? In theory, we should then massively build joint ventures in Tajikistan, the question is how. We have good examples of joint work with neighboring Uzbekistan, but the fact is that Uzbekistan has a good leverage in the form of Arabian investment funds.
It is quite obvious that in a certain sense, a certain stage of geopolitics in the current schemes is the de facto taking of Tajikistan into the balance sheet. But, if geopolitics and security require costs, then isn’t it actually simpler to take the American approach and, together with China, simply allocate annual subsidies and investment loans, and determine the influx of labor using strict formulas that are fixed through public discussion?
But here, too, there is a counter-problem - Greater Eurasia is still a competitor to Chinese strategies, and where are the limits of competition and where are the parameters of interaction will still need to be determined.
By the way, Tajikistan does not aspire to join the EAEU. But it does not strive largely because, in addition to the preferences provided through the CIS free trade zone, there is also a whole complex of individual interstate agreements in force, which partly duplicates the preferences of the EAEU.
All this makes us think that if we go anew with projects of Eurasian integration, which have both a conceptual right to exist and real geopolitical reasons, then they must be carried out both taking into account current realities and taking into account the accumulated problems and errors in the schemes of the past . All because that very step No. 2 will ultimately be determined by those very interest groups that are better than any layman in all the nuances and gaps of the already created regulatory framework, while introducing simulacra into the public discussion, and the more simulacra, the more and wider gaps and problems.
We have, for example, the Eurasian Bank, the accumulated volume of investments is a little more than $10 billion. ±1 billion dollars per year for such a region. Do we really need a format based on the regulatory framework of the EAEU with its expansion or, with all due respect to the team that created the EAEU on the principle of “through lobbying thorns to the stars,” do we need a new integration format? How will all this fit into Chinese programs, how will all this fit into real trade trends, and not mythologies like “let’s make our way to India - we’ll earn +200 billion” or “the path from China to Europe will bring 100 billion” and others?
Achilles' heel
The Achilles heel of our system is that it works quite effectively for an extremely specific task. There wasn't last year drones, this year there are a lot of drones, a pipe from point A to point B, find ships to export oil, etc.
But when it comes to strategic concepts and multifactor models with a lag of 5–10 years, the system gets stuck in some kind of natural swamp. But it’s not enough to create these models; they also need to be managed promptly.
As a result, geopolitics, not supported by such models and management, even taking into account the effect of leverage, usually comes up against a fork in decisions, in fact, an operational dead end, but lobbying groups make money in any case, even from the inertia of foreign policy combinations.
And in this regard, perhaps the only realistic option is under the new strategy of Greater Eurasia, since they have already decided to go this way, to reform previous integration formats, standards and shake up the existing chains of private interests, including simulacra-narratives on the agenda.
In this context, the proposal of a new format to replace the EAEU in itself can not only revive the discussion, but also set into motion the most diverse layers of the iceberg and mix them up. In our realities, even this would actually be a result.
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