Russia and China block the path of American and Turkish expansion into Central Asia
Last week, on July 15-16, the high-level international conference “Central and South Asia: Regional Connectivity” was held in Tashkent. Challenges and Opportunities”, which was attended by representatives of 44 countries, including the heads of diplomatic departments of Russia and China. The forum itself has been prepared for a long time and is dedicated to the topic of developing transport corridors, although the regional agenda itself is clearly changing under the influence of events in neighboring Afghanistan.
The format of the event also turned out to be multi-vector, as delegations from the EU and the USA took part in it. And it is clear why, since the fixed idea of the leadership of Uzbekistan is the project of laying the Mazar-i-Sharif-Kabul-Peshawar railway with a length of about 600 km, which will connect Central Asia through Afghanistan with Pakistan and the Middle East by the shortest route. But this route is more in the interests of European capital, and its construction has already agreed to be partially financed by the EBRD, the World Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, the European Investment Bank and others.
Of course, such a prestigious high-level conference becomes a benefit for Uzbekistan, headed by Shavkat Mirziyoyev, and shows everyone that it is he who is currently the leader and protagonist of Central Asia, on whom transport flows and the modernization of the economies of all countries in the region depend. Naturally, Tashkent wants to absorb all these flows, since the forecast volume of cargo transportation in the first years of operation will be 4 million tons with a further increase to 7 million tons per year.
But as Leo Tolstoy wrote in one of his works, “it was smooth on paper, but they forgot about the ravines.” The fact is that the Road Map for the construction of the Mazar-i-Sharif-Kabul-Peshawar railway was signed in Tashkent by Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan on February 2, 2021. At the same time, it was decided to implement this project over 5 years, for which the governments intended to attract $4,8 billion in loan funds. That is, this happened long before the official announcement by US President Biden that American troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan, and therefore the entire initiative with a transport corridor to Pakistan and India hung in the air.
Therefore, the theses voiced in the speech of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov somewhat sobered those gathered, and his words related to the real situation in Afghanistan.
“Unfortunately, recently we have witnessed the rapid degradation of the situation in Afghanistan. In light of the hasty withdrawal of US and NATO troops, the uncertainty of the development of the military-political situation in and around this country has sharply increased. The Afghan crisis is exacerbating the threat of instability spilling over into neighboring countries. The threat of such a scenario is a serious obstacle to Afghanistan's involvement in regional cooperation. We proceed from the fact that plans for promoting transport, logistics and transport and energy projects connecting Central and South Asia must fully take into account the security situation on earth,” said the head of the Russian diplomatic department.
Sergei Lavrov directly linked the issue of a general settlement in this country with the successful implementation of all economic and transport projects connecting the region with South Asia. Without establishing peace in Afghanistan, achieving these goals is simply impossible. Logically, representatives of the Taliban should have been invited to the event, as a party that already controls, according to various sources, from 65 to 85 percent of the country’s territory. Ignoring this player, who may soon take over all the key cities and the capital, will only lead to the collapse of all tempting plans.
However, Moscow has already managed to establish a dialogue and even received assurances from representatives of the Taliban, whose delegation recently visited Russia, that they will not conduct military operations against the former Soviet Central Asian republics, will block all drug trafficking and will not allow the development of the ISIS movement both in the northern regions and throughout the country. Therefore, the plan of Western banks, the US and the EU to build a transport corridor bypassing China and Iran, as well as as a counterbalance to the “One Belt, One Road”, is clearly failing.
Despite this, the Americans are trying their best to maintain their influence and presence, having agreed at the conference to create a new dialogue platform for consultations on resolving the intra-Afghan crisis, which included Uzbekistan, the United States, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The day before the opening of the event, another meeting of the C5+1 format, which was created in 2015 and became a platform for US interaction with five Central Asian countries - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, also took place in Tashkent. There, Washington also tried to impose its agenda and allow the possibility of establishing its bases and “training centers” supposedly to combat Islamic terrorism.
Therefore, there is no need to create illusions about the very format of the conference, which became a field where the geopolitical interests of the West, represented by the EU and the USA, on the one hand, and Russia and China, on the other, collided. Therefore, all parties tried, through formal and informal negotiations, to discuss all issues and build bridges with Asian countries that find themselves involved in the new geopolitical alignment in the region after the withdrawal of American troops.
The Russian side, represented by Sergei Lavrov, made it clear to everyone that it considers integration issues only through the prism of strengthening the EAEU and building an economic and transport bridge with China and the “One Belt, One Road” plan. That is, it is precisely this construct that has no alternative at the moment for Central Asia, and all attempts to bypass the two great powers or build routes without taking into account their interests are doomed to failure in advance.
“Coordination between the integration associations operating in Eurasia is carried out, in particular, within the framework of connecting the EAEU plans with China’s “One Belt, One Road” project. Together with our partners, we are working to create an interconnected space between the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization through a set of coordinated measures in trade, transport, energy and other areas,” noted Sergei Lavrov in his speech.
This position of Moscow is consolidated and common with Beijing. This is proven by the joint meeting of Sergei Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on June 15 in Tashkent within the framework of the same conference, at which the parties once again confirmed the developed joint course to establish influence in the region. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China confirmed this in his following statement:
“Our leaders have outlined new prospects for bilateral relations, and we are ready, together with our Russian colleagues, to strengthen and advance our strategic cooperation.”
It is interesting that Wang Yi had already been traveling around the capitals of the former Soviet Central Asian republics for several days preceding the conference in Tashkent, where he guaranteed support and protection on behalf of the Celestial Empire. He was going to talk about this with Shavkat Mirziyoyev, since Beijing is extremely concerned about the strengthening of Ankara and pan-Turkist sentiments in the ruling elites in connection with the formation of the Organization of Turkic States, the summit of which will be held in Istanbul in the fall. We will talk about this in more detail in our other article.
And here Tashkent’s position may turn out to be key, since both Ashgabat and Dushanbe unconditionally focus on Uzbekistan. At the same time, as events on the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan showed, the Uzbek leadership turned out to be not so interested in the growth of Turkey’s influence. In any case, Shavkat Mirziyoyev must take into account the opinion of Moscow and Beijing, which at the moment has turned out to be common. And perhaps we will witness a significant slowdown in the process of building this much-touted Organization of Turkic States.
Sergey Lavrov and Shavkat Mirziyoyev.
One way or another, Moscow is interested in the growth of Tashkent’s regional influence and positively accepted the decision of the President of Uzbekistan to gradually integrate into the EAEU, as Sergei Lavrov noted in his speech:
“An integral part of the formation of the Greater Eurasian Partnership is the expansion and deepening of integration interaction within the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union. And I would like to note with satisfaction that in December last year, Uzbekistan joined the work of this union in observer status.”
Accordingly, we can say that the speech of Sergei Lavrov and his meetings with the President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of China Wang Yi show the increased influence and strength of Russia in the region, which demonstrate to everyone that without its participation no other geopolitical projects, including transport and energy routes are simply not possible.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.