On the eve of the 5th Consultative Meeting of CA Leaders, which took place in Dushanbe on September 14 and 15 this year, IWPR’s Central Asia office in partnership with the international non-governmental corporation “Search for Common Ground” (“Search for Common Ground”) held an expert meeting on the theme “5-Consultative Meeting of CA Leaders: What’s Next?”
Expert analysts from four Central Asian countries, Dr. Sanat Kushkumbaev from Kazakhstan, political scientist and analyst from Kyrgyzstan, Emil Juraev, political scientist Abdugani Mamadazimov from Tajikistan and Director of the scientific and educational institution “Karavan Knowledge”, political scientist, Farhod Tolipov from Uzbekistan discussed their vision of solving the main problems facing the countries of the region on the eve of the fifth consultative meeting of Central Asian leaders and made their recommendations to accelerate integration processes within the region.
These experts are members of the regional consultative working group “Search for Common Ground”, which has been working since 2015. Especially for the upcoming meeting of Central Asian leaders, they have developed a document, an analytical note with recommendations.
Opening the meeting, IWPR Central Asia Editor Lola Olimova noted that the issues of uniting the countries of the region have been raised long ago and repeatedly. Now, in the context of the war between Russia and Ukraine, there is a real competition for the attention of Central Asian countries. It is all the more important to work out some effective mechanisms or steps, taking into account the interests of each country in the region. Are the countries ready for tighter integration, she asked.
Political scientist Farhod Tolipov, director of the scientific and educational institution “Caravan of Knowledge” from Uzbekistan, said that he and his colleagues had prepared a document, an analytical note, in which they noted the main achievements and problems and gave their recommendations.
Tolipov emphasized that one of the main problems he is concerned about is the slowness and excessive caution with which the leaders of the region’s states treat integration.
“With not very strong enthusiasm, with caution, they even pronounce the very term – “integration”. Limiting themselves to such low-key, non-binding terms as ‘cooperation’, ‘cooperation’, etc.,” he said.
The second problem is that the consultative meetings of the presidents, themselves, are sporadic, irregular and also non-binding on anything.
“This is a consultative format. We, on the other hand, now in Central Asia are sorely lacking permanent bodies for regional integration. Therefore, as we recommend in our note, it is time to move from the format of consultations to the format of institutions, to the creation of permanent institutions. This process is called institutionalization,” Tolipov said.
In his opinion, this whole process, the process of consultative meetings of presidents had an elitist character.
“That is, it was limited to the highest echelons of power. The fate of the region was decided only by the presidents. And they, their political will or lack thereof, determined the direction and dynamics of the regional integration of Central Asia. Civil society, the expert community, activists, and political parties were mostly disconnected from this process. Their participation was minimal. This contrasts, for example, with the European experience, where the integration process was largely successful due to the active participation of citizens, civil society, scientists, analysts, political party activists, etc.,” the Uzbek analyst said.
Emil Dzhuraev, a political scientist from Kyrgyzstan, noted that the problems facing all CA countries, collectively or individually, are in fact many.
These are problems of water resources, land resources, transboundary infrastructure processes, road, irrigation, and, of course, the problems of undefined borders and border issues. The most vulnerable point is, of course, between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
But he noted three, in his view, major problems.
The first is the relationship of each of the countries of the region with third countries, major players in world geopolitics, and the problems and difficulties arising, in connection with this.
“Especially the role of Russia. Here it is probably necessary to understand how big it is in the relationship between the Central Asian countries. This and the growing role of China, and even more so, all the other countries, including, the United States and others,” he said.
The second is each country’s position on Central Asian regional processes, which is not entirely clear.
“For example, to what extent does an individual country, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, consider the issue of cooperation between Central Asian countries to be more important than, say, the CSTO, or the EAEU, or the SCO? That is, these parallel, overlapping memberships and participation of each country in different formats, I think, give a certain fragmentation and lack of clarity, not establishing these different memberships in different committees. I think it will have to be very clearly and fundamentally solved and discussed preferably already in the upcoming meeting in Dushanbe,” Dzhurayev said.
The analyst considers the issue of trust deficit between different countries to be another important problem.
Abdugani Mamadazimov, a political scientist from Tajikistan, emphasized that 32 years have already passed since the Central Asian countries became independent, and one after another, moved to a policy of openness and multi-vectorism. There is fierce competition in the world geopolitics for the attention of the youngest region.
“In the early noughties, since August 2004, Japanese diplomacy developed us a new format, ASEAN+ C5+1. And from 2004 until the withdrawal of American troops, gradually this format became universal, and all big players began to accept this format….. That is, the approach to the region is “don’t dismember and dominate”, but there is a vision of the integrity of the region. Therefore, on the one hand, there is an external view, i.e. our main partners are ready to see us as a single region. Unfortunately, we ourselves are not ready for this yet,” Mamadazimov said.
There are, of course, many internal regional problems, he said. The main problem is the unresolved issues between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. If the countries resolved this issue, there would be less interference or any influence of external players on Central Asia.
“A new problem appeared in the region last year – a huge long canal being built by the new Afghan government, which is collecting a huge amount of water in the Amu Darya basin,” the Tajik expert said.
In his opinion, all these problems should, on the contrary, push the countries of the region to unite.
“Then the severe geopolitical turbulence around Central Asia pushes us to unite, both economically, socially and politically. If we, if we unite, it will be, like, 70-80 million people. This is a good factor for us to find our rightful place in the world community,” Mamadazimov said.
Sanat Kushkumbayev, policy analyst from Kazakhstan, said among other issues, one problem is that the countries are not yet united by any common goals.
“This is important, probably, also from the point of view of strategic continuity, because presidents, parliaments, politicians, they will change. If we see the example of the European Union, which develops step by step, the generation of politicians is changing, but the continuity is preserved. What unites? Values unite,” Kushkunbayev said.
In his opinion, it will be important to unite the region with common values, common tasks and strategic goals. In addition, the parties, the countries can promote mutual benefits. They consist in economic terms and in political terms.
The experts made their recommendations, which were reflected in their analytical note.
Noting the historical connectedness of the region, all experts emphasized that the challenges facing the Central Asian countries are in themselves a unifying factor.
Therefore, it is not by chance that this process, albeit in the cautious format of consultative meetings, was launched five years ago. So there are expectations that there will be next steps, next stages, goals will be set.
“The connectedness of our region, it is historically conditioned and culturally, and this factor, which is immanent, is natural for us. A lot of threads and connections, thousands of these connections, but it is at the political level that all the barriers are opened and the floodgates are opened on the way to this. Therefore, those urgent tasks, issues that are on the agenda of our countries, they must be solved in the foreseeable future,” said Sanat Kushkumbayev.