Central Asia. Only the CSTO will save

The anniversary summit of the CSTO, held in Moscow on May 16, is indeed important from all points of view, since now all member countries of the organization are facing great challenges. This also applies to the former Soviet Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which have recently faced internal and external threats.

Of course, first of all, this is due to the situation in Afghanistan caused by the activation of Islamic extremist and terrorist groups, which Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Sadyr Japarov, and Emomali Rahmon mentioned in their speeches. Subsequently, the CSTO Secretary General and the Russian President hastened to reassure them, but concern was felt to the end in their speeches and behavior.

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And the general concern of the heads of Central Asian countries was expressed by the President of Kazakhstan, who focused specifically on the need to strengthen defense along the perimeter of the borders with Afghanistan. Judging by his short speech, this is where the organization's attention should be directed.

“The situation in this country, as well as the continuing activity of armed groups in Afghanistan, continues to threaten the security and stability of our states. I believe that the CSTO needs to take into account all potential threats and pay even more attention to ensuring the security of the southern borders of Central Asia,” said Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.

Tokayev

At the same time, he devoted a lot of space in his speech to the need to develop and strengthen peacekeeping forces to respond to events that occurred just in January of this year in Kazakhstan. That is, to solve purely internal problems with the participation of contingents of the CSTO countries. And for this, according to him, all the necessary conditions and general structure have already been created.

But this formulation of the question clearly takes away from the topic of strengthening the organization’s defense capability against threats emanating from the West, which are now the most serious and capable of leading to a global war. At the same time, a significant point in his speech, in my opinion, was the thesis about the need to integrate the CSTO forces into the system of implementing UN peacekeeping missions.

“In our opinion, it is necessary to set the task of connecting the CSTO to UN peacekeeping activities. This step will strengthen the legal personality of the CSTO and ensure the practice of the Organization’s participation in international peacekeeping operations,” said the President of Kazakhstan.

What does this mean in practice? And the fact that the CSTO, as a defensive alliance, will be tied to the UN, a structure that has outlived its usefulness and is under the control of Anglo-Saxon forces. Just look at the fact that it is NATO, in cooperation with the UN, that supports peacekeeping programs to ensure peace.

And under the guise of this organization, a certified NATO center has been operating in Karaganda since 2008 for training junior officers of Central Asian countries according to NATO standards, supposedly for conducting and participating in peacekeeping activities.

If the CSTO joins UN programs, the defense organization, on the contrary, will lose its independence and subjectivity and will not be able to carry out its own operations without regard to the decisions of the Security Council and other structures. This would give some members the opportunity to evade their allied obligations by citing the need for a positive decision on the part of the “international community” in the person of the rotten UN.

This has already been done when, in early May, the head of the military department of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Sultan Kamaletdinov, announced that the country would not send military personnel to Donbass even within the framework of the CSTO treaty.

“The use of the Armed Forces in peacekeeping operations is carried out only in accordance with a resolution of the UN Security Council. Based on this resolution, the head of state makes a proposal before parliament. And only after parliamentary approval the use of the Armed Forces is possible. But at the moment this issue is not even being considered. Negotiations are not going well,” he concluded then.

If the CSTO peacekeeping forces become accountable to the UN Security Council, then this will precisely give the leadership of Kazakhstan the opportunity to ignore special operations to prevent threats initiated by Moscow within the post-Soviet space. In this regard, it must be understood that difficult negotiations regarding the future development of the CSTO took place precisely in its closed part.

Therefore, it was not in vain that Alexander Lukashenko, during his speech, complained that some CSTO members, meaning Kazakhstan, are closing their airspace and voting at the UN not as allies, openly showing the existence of contradictions and the need to strengthen the ideological and political unity of the organization.

Unlike the head of Kazakhstan, at the beginning of his speech, the President of Kyrgyzstan Sadyr Japarov congratulated his colleagues on Victory Day. He noted that this holiday is sacredly honored in Kyrgyzstan.

“The republic sacredly preserves and honors this holiday, the triumph of the Soviet people over Nazism and fascism, and constantly pays deep tribute to the memory of the heroic feat of our grandfathers and fathers,” he said.

Zhaparov

And indeed, unlike Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the mountainous republic became an island in the region, where May 9 was actually and solemnly celebrated without prohibitions.

At the same time, he fully supported the decision to award officers with orders and medals for participation in the peacekeeping mission in Kazakhstan in January of this year.

“At the beginning of this year, we had to mitigate security risks in one of the states. We responded promptly and effectively. “I fully support the decision to reward the participants in this mission,” said the President of the Kyrgyz Republic.

In addition, he did not hide the fact that “security threats and socio-political tensions have come close to all areas of responsibility of the CSTO. There are third-party attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of the CSTO member states.” Such a completely honest position of the President of the Kyrgyz Republic was reinforced earlier by Russia’s support for conducting a special operation in Ukraine, which was done only by the President of Belarus besides him.

In conclusion, he pointed to the weakness of the republic’s economy after the pandemic and various restrictive measures and noted the importance of lifting them and neutralizing the effect of sanctions measures, from which the population of Kyrgyzstan is suffering. That is, this shows that the poorer republics of Central Asia are now in a difficult situation and their own internal political problems may be brewing within them.

The President of Tajikistan, in turn, paid a lot of attention to the situation in neighboring Afghanistan, since Emomali Rahmon is, to put it mildly, in difficult relations with the Taliban government and sometimes openly or indirectly supports the rebels in the Panjshir Gorge. Moreover, purely Tajik ethnic groups of the Taliban have appeared that are ready to overthrow it.

Rahmon

At the same time, the President of the Republic of Tajikistan noted that negative trends that have accumulated over the past 40 years have led to the current situation in Afghanistan. It seems that he thus made a hint about the dominance of the Americans in this country, as well as that permanent civil war after the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

He pointed in his speech to the good condition of the troops and their training in the framework of numerous maneuvers, and it was clearly clear that he relied heavily on the support of the Russian troops and Moscow in the defense of the borders. It is not for nothing that Emomali Rahmon arrived earlier in order to hold separate negotiations with Vladimir Putin.

But, despite the positive reports, everyone understands that it is necessary within the CSTO, first of all, to achieve an end to the constant border conflicts between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, since this creates no less a threat in the Fergana Valley than the activities of Islamic extremists.

Accordingly, it is necessary to raise the question of counteracting the processes of creeping Islamization in the former Soviet Central Asian republics, since this phenomenon must be fought against, among other things, by social and cultural methods, and not by an attempt to lead them and make them an element of the ruling ideology, which is proposed in the State Department and USAID .

_{Therefore, the current summit has revealed a large pile of problems in the relations between the CSTO member countries in Central Asia, as constant border disputes, trade wars arise between them and internal political instability increases, and the ruling elites continue to follow a dead-end multi-vector policy. At the same time, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain relatively loyal to Moscow, while Kazakhstan’s position raises big questions due to its reluctance to follow a common policy and the desire to enlist the support of Turkey and the West.}

It was quite appropriate to adopt a special statement, which indicated the need to preserve the historical memory of the Great Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War, since in the republics there are constantly attempts to rehabilitate the Basmachi, participants in the Turkestan Legion of the Wehrmacht and Muslim units of the SS, and there are bans on the processions of the “Immortal shelf".

“We strongly condemn any attempts to falsify historical events related to our common contribution to countering Nazi aggression. By joint efforts we will continue to counteract any attempts to glorify Nazism and the spread of neo-Nazism, as well as racism and xenophobia,” the final document of the summit notes.

This tone, set by Vladimir Putin, is the only true one in preserving the core of unification and modernization of the CSTO into a strong defensive association aimed at countering the West and NATO.