Food, Protest and Political Instability in Central Asia
BY ERIC MCGLINCHEY
The local impact of global climate change is suddenly acutely present in Central Asia. A coincidence of extended drought in Central Asia and Australia and the transfer of food crops to ethanol production have resulted in a dramatic spike in commodity prices throughout Eurasia. Importantly, Central Asia is not alone in confronting the duel pressures of rising energy and food prices. An April 2008 World Bank study finds the world price of maize increased eight percent and wheat seventy percent between 2005 and 2007. Over this same period, the price of oil has more than doubled. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, protests over rising commodity prices have erupted in cities across the globe. In Haiti, food riots in April left six dead and led to the ousting of the Prime Minister. In Vietnam, farmers patrol their rice fields with guns so as to discourage crop theft. And in London and Washington, long-haul truck drivers have stalled city traffic in protest to soaring fuel prices.
Curiously though, while people have taken to the streets elsewhere, Central Asians have not turned to public demonstration in response to inflation. This comparative equanimity is all the more surprising given the unique pressures Central Asian economies face. Land-locked and a thousand miles from the nearest seaport, Bandar Abbas in Iran, Central Asians confront a distribution network that heightens costs of many commodities far beyond the global average. Add to this a challenging topography of 21,000-foot high mountains and vast arid deserts and a rail, road and air transport system riddled with corruption and one wonders if the current quiet might be the calm before the storm.
Why though, should Central Asia be of concern to us here in the United States? After all, the radiating effects of the domestic sub-prime mortgage crisis and our own rising commodity prices offer sufficient distraction and worry at home. Nine-tenths of Americans, according to a March 2008 Pew Research study, “Dismal Views of the National Economy,” are downcast on the US market. Though we may empathize with Central Asians, simply keeping our own house in order—and for many simply keeping the house—is a struggle.
Acknowledging these considerable domestic economic challenges, I nevertheless offer three reasons for why we should be concerned about the increasingly likely food crisis in Central Asia. First, should the international community not devise contingency food aid plans now, while Central Asia’s small food stores remain, timely and equitable delivery of aid when a food crisis emerges will be difficult if not impossible. Second, the countries where a food crisis is most likely to emerge in Central Asia—Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan—are also the countries that are most politically fragile. A food crisis that sparks widespread social unrest could readily become a political crisis, drastically complicating humanitarian relief efforts. Lastly, though Central Asia may be unfamiliar to many in the US, for those who are serving in the military or who have family members in the military, the region has now become familiar territory. Central Asia broadly and Kyrgyzstan in particular is critical to NATO operations in Afghanistan. Sustained political instability in Central Asia would markedly complicate US and allied efforts in Afghanistan.
PLANNING FOR A CRISIS WE HOPE NEVER COMES
The Hurricane Katrina relief effort is a painful illustration that delivering aid, even in a country with immense human capital and resources, is difficult. In countries with emerging economies the challenges of aid disbursement are further heightened. Ben Barber notes, for example, that while “starvation and disease make for pathos and dramatic press,” the international community’s attempts to ameliorate food crises are often derailed at the local level—by unscrupulous bureaucrats and black marketers. Central Asia states, with an abundance of unscrupulous bureaucrats and narcotics traffickers ready to adapt their trade to a shortage food economy, present the further complication of the near complete inaccessibility of many rural populations at exactly the time when food aid would be most needed. Three-fourths of Kyrgyzstan and nine-tenths of Tajikistan are covered by high mountains. Although the majority of Kyrgyz and Tajiks live in cities and towns in lower-lying river valleys, the many high-mountain road passes that link outlying population centers and link these centers to the capital become impassible for extended periods in the winter. In short, in contrast to relief efforts in more temperate and less mountainous regions, in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan food aid must be in place well before a crisis if it is to reach populations when it is most needed.
FOOD AND THE WEAK CENTRAL ASIAN STATE
Not all Central Asian states are politically fragile. President Nazarabev, the long-serving ruler of Kazakhstan, has adeptly mixed windfall oil revenues with political patronage to create a loyal and effective cadre of bureaucrats. President Karimov, the equally long-serving ruler of Uzbekistan has pursued a different but, as of yet, effective tactic—relentless and bloody repression of all political dissent. Public protest, though not entirely absent in Uzbekistan, is routinely met with government bludgeons, if not bullets. In May 2006, thousands of protesters gathered in the central square of Andijan, a city in Uzbekistan’s Fergana Valley. Encouraged by rumors that President Karimov was en route to Andijan to personally acquaint himself with their economic hardships, these protestors were instead met by circling helicopters, armored personnel carriers and a hail of gunfire.
Tajik president Rakhmon and Kyrgyz president Bakiev, in contrast to their wealthy Kazakh and repressive Uzbek counterparts, have neither the natural resource riches nor the brutal security apparatus to sustain unchallenged rule. Indeed, their own political biographies illustrate how tenuous politics is in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Rakhmon nominally was elected president in 1994. Given Tajikistan’s intermittent civil war though, Rakhmon needed a United Nations-brokered ceasefire in 1997 before he could consolidate power throughout the country. Bakiev’s short tenure as Kyrgyzstan’s leader is similarly marked by conflict. Bakiev’s pathway to the presidency emerged only after his predecessor, Askar Akaev, fled the country in March 2005 in the wake of mounting public protests. Given that these 2005 protests were sparked by electoral vote manipulation and poor economic policy—two attributes that equally define the current Kyrgyz executive—Bakiev’s hold on the presidency appears no more certain than that of his predecessor.
Add to these preexisting strains massing public frustration over rising food costs and the already weak Kyrgyz and Tajik administrations become ready candidates for regime collapse. Under different conditions, mass protests leading to the unseating of non-democratic governments such as the current Kyrgyz and Tajik administrations might be a welcome development. Here, though, there is little to suggest that which might emerge following Kyrgyz and Tajik regime collapse would prove more democratic and capacious than the current governments. Rather, the more likely outcomes would be either (1) the replacement of one weak and illiberal government with another weak and illiberal government, (2) prolonged instability or (3) illiberal governance and political instability.
Liberal political reform, as Dankwart Rustow convincingly argues, emerges not out of government collapse, but rather, as a result of a hot ‘family feud’ between status-quo and reform-minded political elites. Political elites agree on democratic rules as a means to institutionalize uncertainty. It is only when competing factions perceive no absolute advantage—scholars of transition have compellingly illustrated in the Latin American and post-Soviet cases—that elites agree to resolve impasse by leaving open the possibility that, through free and fair elections, all parties have a fighting chance to be voted in and out of power. Sudden regime change, even if cloaked in a discourse of liberal reform, rarely lead to sustained democratic outcomes. And it is exactly this sudden change that food protests in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan would most likely produce.
CENTRAL ASIA AND STRATEGIC US INTERESTS
Central Asian states have hosted US and NATO-ally forces since the outset of military operations in Afghanistan in October 2001. The US Air Force’s 376th Expeditionary Wing is currently based at the Manas Airport, just outside Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek. The 376th is the primary refueling wing for air operations over Afghanistan. The importance of the Manas base markedly increased when, following Washington’s criticism of the Uzbek government’s repression of the Andijan protests in May 2005, the Karimov regime forced the American military out of Karshi-Khanabad, an airfield ninety miles north of the Afghan border.
Importantly though, Central Asia’s strategic importance is much more than military bases and airfields. Political instability in the region, in addition to hampering NATO operations, would produce new conduits for narcotics trafficking and open new safe-havens for economically and ideologicall organized paramilitary groups. Indeed, such transnational groups are already present throughout the region. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that, in 2006, fifteen percent of all opiates produced in Afghanistan were shipped through Central Asia to foreign markets. And militant groups like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan have long found common cause and refuge among the Afghan Taliban. Increased political instability in the Central Asian countries bordering Afghanistan would facilitate narco-trafficking and further the capacity of regional paramilitary groupings.
Lastly, fears of public protest and the concomitant potential for political instability are producing fundamental changes in economic policy even in Central Asia’s most capacious state, Kazakhstan. This April Nazarbaev announced a four-month ban on wheat exports so as to protect the Kazakh population from price increases—and his own government from public protest. This export restriction has both regional and global implications. Kazakhstan, in addition to being the fourteenth largest oil exporter, was in 2007 the world’s fifth largest wheat exporter. The potential inflationary effect this export ban could have on wheat prices both in Central Asia and internationally is considerable.
AVERTING CRISIS
As much as Central Asia offers potential for instability, so too, does it offer substantial promise for averting crisis. Although the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union left Central Asians, Tajiks and Kyrgyz in particular, among the world’s poorest populations, the Soviet legacy did not produce enduring enmities. Post-Soviet Central Asia is not a conflict zone. Just the opposite: Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan enjoy the good fortune of vibrant and capable domestic civil society organizations. Both countries, moreover, are familiar terrain for bilateral and multilateral international aid organizations. As such, despite the region’s distance from market, difficult topography, widespread poverty and pervasive corruption, much can be done now to ensure that foodstores are in place in time for anticipated shortages next winter. Such foresight would ensure the dividends of early action—the averting of food insecurity, public frustration and political instability—and hence needs to be contrasted with the economic, humanitarian and strategic costs of inaction.
Eric McGlinchey (emcglinc@gmu.edu) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs (http://pia.gmu.edu). This article was first published in print and citations have been removed due to space limitations, but are available from the author.
