DUSHANBE, October 24, 2009, Asia-Plus — It is difficult to imagine Central Asia’s geopolitics within the next 20-30 years without Russia, Tajik independent expert, Dr. Rustam Haidarov, said in an interview with Asia-Plus commenting on the results of President Rahmon’s state visit to Russia.
According to him, each country in the region should take into account this circumstance while creating its foreign policy.
“In my opinion, Russia today has only interests in Central Asia but not friends,” said the expert, “To protect its interests in the region Russia may act to the prejudice, for example, of Tajikistan’s interests and Tajik politicians will have to accept the situation.” “Today’s geopolitics in Central Asia bears a strong resemblance of commodity exchange – everyone wants to sell something to somebody at higher price so Central Asia’s states have to argue with Russia about different issues, whether gas sales, deployment of bases, construction of facility, or investments.”
“There are enough other sellers and buyers in the region such as the United States, China, the European Union, Iran and other rich countries,” said Haidarov, “On the other hand, Central Asia’s states do not have clear policy toward Russia and everything some countries of the region do is done on the basis of subjective wishes and not based on principles of expediency, efficiency and so forth.”
He considers that if there are problems in relations between some Central Asian countries and Russia, it is not Russia’s fault. “They just should be able to negotiate with Russia. Even such world powers as the United States and China try to negotiate various issues concerning their national interests with Russia and do not dictate their terms to it. Central Asian politicians should realize that it is impossible to use language of ultimatums and claims in relations with Russia, they have to be able to conduct negotiations with Russia.”
In his opinion, Tajikistan has quite a number of problems that are too hard to be solved with participation of Russia. “These are labor migrants and hydropower engineering as well as quite probable military conflict with Uzbekistan over the water problems,” said Dr. Haidarov, “Moreover, we should take into account that Americans are on the verge of defeat in Afghanistan and the Taliban will sooner or later come to power there, and then Tajikistan will need Russia’s military assistance to strengthen its defense capability. All this spectrum must be taken into consideration in problems of the Tajik-Russian relations.”
As far as Russia’s policy toward Tajikistan is concerned, the expert noted that Russia should realize that if it is interested in protection of its interests in the region, “it should be interested in strong and stable Tajikistan, to which it has promised assistance with economic development, but very few has been done in this direction.”
“All actions of Tajik president regarding construction of hydropower facilities meet with full support of the country’s population, and Russian politicians should take this into account,” the expert said.
In the meantime, some experts consider that Tajik leader’s talks with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev have produced no significant results.
Radio Liberty’s Tajik Service repots that Tajik analysts told it that Russia was not ready to discuss the main issues concerning Dushanbe: the rent for a Russian military base in Tajikistan and Russian participation in the Roghun hydroelectricity project. Experts in Tajikistan say Russia”s involvement in construction of Roghun would likely irritate neighboring Uzbekistan, which considers the new plant a threat to its regional monopoly on water, RFE/RL’s Tajik Service reported. .
