Central Asia - Russia - China - U.S.A - Turkey
After 1991, Turkey sought to gain influence in this mainly Turkic region(Central Asia); Iran and Pakistan also showed an active interest, and other Muslim countries offered money and support for the building of mosques and the restoration of Islamic monuments and institu-tions. The central Asian rulers welcomed such offers, and readily discussed the prospects of developing trade and economic co-operation with neighbouring states outside the former Soviet sphere; but on nearly all important issues they still looked mainly to Russia, with which or through which their countries still did most of their business. The habit of accepting guidance from Moscow seemed hard to break.
One direct legacy of Soviet ‘planning’ was posing a fearsome problem for them. The massive diversion, for irrigation of cotton-growing areas, of water from the Amu Darya (Oxus) and Syr Darya rivers had caused great environmental damage. Most alarmingly, it shrank and eventually split the Aral Sea into two parts as the water level continued to fall.
The surface area of the sea fell by two-thirds from 1960 to the early 2000s, replaced by salty desert; large areas around it became infertile and unhealthy; the cotton crop itself was reduced. In 1993 the fi ve republics promised to fi nance a programme to save the Aral Sea, but little money emerged.
China, too, sought better ties with Central Asia, to contain separatists in its restive Muslim regions and to gain access to new energy reserves. In 2001, building on earlier agreements, China, Russia and all of the states in the region except Turkmenistan formed the Shanghai Co-operation Organization (SCO). Off i cially, its purposes were to counteract ‘terrorism, separatism and extremism’ (by ethnic minorities and Islamists) and to improve economic ties. Russia and China both invested in the region’s oil industry; oil pipelines from Kazakhstan to Russia (for export via the Black Sea) and China were completed in 2001 and 2005.
At least as important as strategic and economic ties was a desire to counter American inf l uence in the region – initially by encouraging Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to close their US military bases. All three had supported the US-led war in Afghanistan in 2001, but in 2005 Uzbekistan told the Americans to leave what had been their most important base north of Afghanistan.
Iran, India, Pakistan, Mongolia and Afghanistan have attended SCO meetings; the inclu-sion of Iran in particular, and the SCO’s potential as a military alliance, raised concerns outside the region.
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