Transnational Challenges: Terrorism, Narcotics, and Lethal Weapons (Breakout Session 7).
As did a number of students, I had an opportunity to speak in person with Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE; Figure 1) after his speech that opened the Friday evening plenary. Senator Biden discussed with us the need to cultivate ties among moderate Islamic clerics and leaders. He explained that this effort was needed to sow the seeds of liberal democracy in the regions that were under discussion at the Asilomar conference. I cheated a bit and discussed a domestic issue also with Senator Biden (presidential primary reform, the subject of my upcoming article in the peer-reviewed journal, PS: Political Science and Politics) while I had the chance. Senator Biden is from the state where one of the former reform efforts originated and I jumped on the opportunity to touch base with him about this.
|
photo by Marilyn Dudley-Rowley
|
|
Michael Modler (left) and Thomas Gangale (right), students with the San Francisco State University International Relations program, discuss issues in Iraq with Senator Joseph Biden (center) at the 57th annual meeting of the World Affairs Council of Northern California at Asilomar.
|
Because of this opportunity with Senator Biden, we missed much of that Friday evening plenary (Central Asia After the Cold War), however, we were able to have some “face-time” later with two of its speakers at the receptions: Olivier Roy, Senior Research Director of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris and Barnett Rubin, Director of Studies and Senior Fellow, Center on International Cooperation, New York University. With Roy, a group of us discussed the world-ocean concept of the late R. Buckminster Fuller, which has some resemblances to some of the geopolitical ideas of Halford Mackinder. This was the first I had heard of Fuller’s ideas in this sector. Catching up with Barnett Rubin, my significant other discovered that the Lake Van Kirghiz of Turkey and their interests were likely not even considered at the meeting in Bonn, Germany that laid the basis of the provisional government in Afghanistan. The Kirghiz Afghans’ removal after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan rescued and relocated about what was then half the population of the Wakhan Corridor to Turkey. My significant other had pulled together the transnational organization that airlifted them en masse there between 1981-1982. As their chief negotiator and sponsor in times past, she is concerned about their interests now that things are changing in Afghanistan. While Dr. Rubin had heard of the late Dr. Louis Dupree, the United States’ primary Afghanistan expert with whom my significant other had worked with to effect the Kirghiz’ relocation, he had not heard of the event itself. My significant other said to me after the conversation with Dr. Rubin, “There’s an i that wasn’t dotted, a t not crossed.” She is especially concerned that there may be Kirghiz in Turkey who want to return to the Wakhan Corridor and take their place in what passes as governance there and their very existence has been passed over in the hurly-burly of events. She is not satisfied with the dismissive stance that the Lake Van Kirghiz are better off in Turkey anyway because the Wakhan is governed by warlords. Her position is that that was the case when the Kirghiz lived there and that they should be allowed to decide about their former homeland that they had been forced to flee in the late 70s.
Face-time with speakers like Senator Biden, Dr. Roy, and Dr. Rubin exceeded my expectations in terms of my participation. I thought that perhaps I would be relegated to participation as an audience member only going into the conference.
We attended the Saturday morning plenary chaired by Dr. Gail Lapidus, Senior Fellow, Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. I found this very enlightening on several points. Dr. Vitaly Naumkin of the Moscow International Center for Strategic and Political Studies gave an expansive example of how Islam has straightened out the strangely drawn borders and political bedfellows of the region. I was aware that the Central Asian republic borders were artificial and didn’t represent very well actual ethnic distributions, but Dr. Naumkin’s example really brought that into view. While I was aware of the “transnationalizing” influence of Islam from reading Samuel Huntington and others, this really gave me a real-world example to consider. Professor Mohiaddin Mesbahi of Florida International University spoke about how the collapse of the U.S.S.R. had left the Central Asian republics reluctantly independent and how, now, their governments are very corrupt, their leaders using their governments as their personal tools. I could not help but reflect how Josef Stalin had used the Soviet government as his personal tool and wondered if the lessons of history had only been learned too well by the inheritors of the Central Asian polities. Professor Mustafa Aydin of Ankara University described how his countrymen at first welcomed the independence of the Central Asian republics because of the historical roots of the Anatolian Turks in Central Asia. However, the idea of brotherhood among Turkey and the republics has been problematic because the Central Asians don’t want outsiders in their affairs. They are suspicious of “pan-Turkism.” Dr. Aydin also addressed the conflicted identity of the Turkish themselves which significantly presents an obstruction of Turkey being a “model” to its Central Asian “brethren.” To make matters worse, after the Soviet collapse, Turkey “overpromised” and could not provide enough developmental aid to Central Asian countries. This discussion met my expectations about Turkish involvement in the region.
I had not yet developed to large degree any notions of Chinese involvement in Central Asia and these were expanded by Bates Gill’s presentation. Dr. Bates Gill occupies the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He brought into view the role of China in the region. He pointed out the Chinese perspective on the region. China’s thirst for energy is growing and its neighbors in Central Asia are sitting atop 90% of the world’s oil reserves, but delivery to China is currently a problem. It is currently more interested in investment in the region, not resource extraction. While it “learns the ropes” in the Central Asian venue, it has stepped in and settled some disputes among its Central Asian neighbors.
Most of the speakers addressed Iranian interests in this plenary. Dr. Aydin said that Iran, like Turkey, does not have the resources to develop Central Asia. Dr. Mesbahi pointed out that while Iran and the Central Asian republics might find desirable an oil pipeline to the Persian Gulf, the United States is blocking such a project. He said that lack of such a pipeline is preventing Central Asian development. Dr. Mesbahi also brought up the Iranian ties to Farsi-speaking Tajikistan and the relationship with Azerbaijan, there being 18 million Azeris in Iran.
All the speakers mentioned threats to the environment and the impact of AIDS and heroin in the region. After the plenary, we attended the breakout sessions.
Session 4, The Impact of China, Iran, and Turkey in Central Asia featured the same speakers as in the plenary, with much the same comments as before.
Session 1, Identity and Conflicts Throughout Central Asia, featured Dr. Anara Tabyshalieva, Chair of the Institute for Regional Studies, Kyrgyzstan, Dr. Vitaly Naumkin, and Martha Brill Olcott, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Dr. Tabyshalieva reiterated what was heard before about the Muslim identity being primary before ethnicity in Central Asia, and about the “artificialness” of the national boundaries having been imposed by outsiders. Dr. Naumkin reiterated what he had spoken on before, about the ambiguity of affiliations and the intermix of cultures in Central Asia. Dr. Olcott addressed potential changes that might come to the region soon. The next election year in Kyrgyzstan is 2005 and the Uzbek president is in ill health, for example. One thing that was especially enlightening to me was her description of what she called “the Diaspora Uzbeks,” These are Uzbeks living outside of Uzbekistan who have real capital and want a president who will facilitate economic opportunities. She said that those Uzbeks might be able to influence elections. Another thing that was an eye-opener to me came from her presentation. She said that the Central Asian countries are Israel’s closest friends in the Muslim world. This is because of the Russian Jews who have become indigenous to these countries and their affiliations.
The third plenary session on energy, development and economic reform foreshadowed much of the following material in Breakout Session 5.
Session 5, Oil and Gas featured Ambassador Steven Mann, Senior Advisor for Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy and Julia Nanay, the Senior Director of PFC Energy, where she provides risk analysis for clients wanting to invest in oil and gas in Central Asia.
Ambassador Mann mentioned a number of topics that I had already heard up to this point at the conference, i.e., how development was slow in the oil-rich Central Asian countries, the amount of corruption, poverty, and the environmental degradation. However, I did learn from him that Kazakhstan has the largest Caspian Basin reserves of oil and that it produces one million barrels/day. He said it was just a matter of time that Western energy companies would develop Caspian energy. That is because they have better, cleaner technologies, can withstand liability and legal action, and are interested in branding themselves as environmentally friendly. Ms. Nanay suggested a direct correlation between the increase in oil production and the American shift toward Russia in terms of oil supply diversification. I had not known that. The subject of running a gas pipeline across Afghanistan came up. Ms. Nanay said that there was little interest in a trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline, what with the region being too unstable. I noticed that several times in the conference, the idea of running oil and gas pipelines through sections of Central Asia and environs emerged. However, each idea was associated with “the Resource Curse,” a term used by Ambassador Mann. In other words, resources tend to be located in unstable, slowly developing areas and getting them out involves crossing other unstable, slowly developing areas. Other impediments to resource transportation came out of the Oil and Gas breakout session. For example, Russian oil and gas companies, like Gasprom, have had a grip on north-south transportation, a monopoly that U.S. policy is intent on breaking. However, this could be difficult, I reasoned, when I later learned that President Putin wants Russia to lead a Eurasian gas cartel. Among the many environmental issues surrounding oil and gas delivery out of Central Asia is that the Bosporus is limited in how much tanker traffic it can handle. I was not acquainted with these complexities, and learning about them exceeded my expectations about what I would learn about the region.
Session 7, Transnational Challenges of Terrorism, Narcotics, and Lethal Weapons featured Friedrich Steinhausler, Lyudmila Zaitseva, and Vitaly Naumkin. Dr. Steinhausler is the Chair of Biophysics and Physics at Salzburg University and Dr. Zaitseva is Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.
This session held the most interest for me in terms of that part of my research that dovetails with my significant other’s interest in the “transnationalization of terrorism.” We use a human factors approach in our research, examining transnationalized terrorism in terms of the human-technology, human-environment, and human-human interfaces. All of these interfaces were touched on in Session 7, exceeding both our expectations regarding the conference!
In terms of the human-technology and human-human interfaces, Dr. Steinhausler addressed “dirty bombs” and similar weapons that he called “weapons of mass disturbance,” since they create more fear than mass destruction. He pointed out that Central Asia and environs lend themselves to the production of these weapons. Central Asia had all the biochemical and nuclear facilities prior to 1991 to produce tons of hazardous materials and weapons. He pointed out that while most of those facilities were destroyed, the brains were not. Scientists, engineers, and technicians were left behind to languish in poverty. Schemes to keep weapons specialists employed have been pitiful. This is something that my significant other and I know about close at hand, specifically in terms of the inter-governmental agency headquartered out of Moscow that gives make-work “manned Mars expedition” projects to these former weapons specialists. My significant other has worked on such a project in Moscow. The people that worked on that project made only a few dollars a month, then their pay was often held up for two or three months at a time. And, as Dr. Steinhausler observed, these people aren’t stupid, they know how much they are worth. They are disgruntled employees who are subject to going to work for those who can give them what they are worth. However, Dr. Steinhausler pointed out, there are two steps in making a black market-type weapon useful. One, somebody has to get his hands on the materials. Then, two, he has to weaponize it, to deliver it. There, he says, we have been lucky.
Dr. Zaitseva continued the discussion in terms of the human-environment interface by pointing up Central Asia’s geographical position. It lies between 600 tons of radioactive materials in Russia to the north and Iraq to the south and a great many disgruntled employees all along the way. Another example of the human-environment interface that she discussed was the drug route used by Afghan and Pakistani drug traffickers to get their products to the north. The same route in reverse would likely be used to transport hazardous weaponizable materials. She pointed out the poor border guard presence despite efforts to enhance that infrastructure. She said that we likely have not seen everything that has gone across the borders in the area in question in the last 10 years. Dr. Steinhausler later mentioned how the border guards have been using gamma radiation detectors dependent upon alpha imaging that can’t detect weaponizable plutonium.
Dr. Naumkin’s discussion suggested that he had already done some ethnographic research into the drug trafficking networks in the region. He told how Muslims had been subverted with the idea that helping with the drug trafficking was going to something good. That often the drug trafficking was the only income in Afghanistan and Tajikistan lent to the growth of the drug network. He told how even some of the humanitarian transportation infrastructure had been used for drug trafficking.
All members of this panel are engaged in what they called the Stanford-Salzburg Initiative that is expected to produce a report on what can be done to ameliorate the situation. My significant other and I plan to follow up with all members of this panel in order to enhance our own research. So, this session greatly exceeded both our expectations in a very useful way.
During the receptions and dinner that followed, we interacted with former Congressman Tom Campbell who was about to officially take over the chairmanship of the World Affairs Council of Northern California, then proceeded on to his installation at the Annual Meeting of the Membership. Among other things, we discussed the Foreign Service with him, potential mid-life career paths for my significant other and I. This meeting segued into Plenary 4, Islam, State Formation and Political Reforms. We ducked out of the Merrill Hall Tent during this time on occasion in order to chat with a number of the older members of the World Affairs Council of Northern California. At the reception that followed, we connected with several younger students to obtain their perspectives and discussed these far into the night. Exhausted, we just managed to make it through the last plenary (where American security interests in Central Asia were summarized), the box lunch, and last farewells.
References
Fettweis, Christopher J. 2000. “Sir Halford Mackinder, Geopolitics, and Policymaking in the 21st Century,” Parameter, U.S. Army War College Quarterly, Summer 2000.
Sempa, Francis P. 2000. “Mackinder’s World,” American Diplomacy, Winter 2000, Vol. V, No. 1.
