Rupee News

While several reporters in Russia and the US have recently woken up to the Afghan war spillover into Central Asia, Rupee News has been monitoring the seesaw for years. AfPak countercurrents beyond the Oxus to AfPakAzUzbKazTurkKyr-istan. Several recent incidents on the Amu darya (Oxus River) which forms the boundary line between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan have caught the attention of international analysist and Afghanistan watchers. This autumn, many Afghan officials, including Mr. Karzai  have expressed repeated concern bordering on panic that the Taleban are transferring forces to the north of the country. Discussion the move, on September 23, Afghan General Mustafa Patang said hundreds of militants had arrived in the north. They should have not have been surprised. The insurgent control most of Southeastern and Western Afghanistan. It is but logical that they go after the last remnants that they do not control. The move to the North was all the more obvious since the warlord Dostum was in exile abroad.

AfPak countercurrents beyond the Oxus to AfPakAzUzbKazTurkKyr-istan

Uzbekistan is scared of IMU/Taliban reprisals on supplies to Kabul Anti-Occupation forces choke US Afghan war

• The Central Asian Republics (CARs) have once again allowed their territories to be used as the supply chain to bring in military freight into Afghanistan.
• The new supply lines are actually the old supply lines used by the USSR. The Uzbeks and the Pakhtuns know these routes well
• The Central Asian Republics (CARs) were never immune from the Afghan war and are increasingly being dragged into the vortex of conflict.
• The exponential increase in Taliban  activities in the German controlled Kunduz province, a region close to Tajikistan foretells the Pakhtun strategy to disrupt the supply NATO lines from the northern route.
• On October 12, President Hamid Karzai confirmed that the insurgents were moving men to the north. He astonished the reporters by claiming that they were using military helicopters to do so–obviously hinting at collusion with Afghan military personnel.
• In May, police were targeted in and around the eastern city of Andijan, while in August the deputy head of the interior ministry’s counter-terrorism department, Colonel Hasan Asadov, was killed.
• The bulk of these foreign fighters are assumed to belong to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which was active in Central Asia in the late 1990s before relocating to Afghanistan and then, after 2001, to lawless parts of Pakistan. Estimates of their numbers range wildly from a few hundred to 5,000.
• The Taliban seized two fuel tankers in Kunduz in early September. NATO responded with an air strike on civilians which caused an international crisis.
• Increased attacks on German military vehicles puts pressure on Berlin to withdraw the troops from the military base in Termez.
• Central Asia’s most feared Islamic group is back in the news, with reports that it has regrouped in northern Afghanistan close to the border with Tajikistan. At first sight, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, IMU, looks positioned to mount a repeat of the incursions it mounted in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan a decade ago, especially as a string of armed attacks were reported over the summer. By Ainagul Abdrakhmanova, Aida Kasymalieva, Inga Sikorskaya, and Anara Yusupova in Bishkek, and Lola Olimova and Аrdasher Tahamtan in Dushanbe (RCA No. 595, 18-Nov-09)

The implications of the IMU activity in Pakistan

So aren’t the Taliban supposed to be Pakhtuns? Isn’t the area next to Uzbekistan controlled by Uzbeks? What is the synergy between the Uzbeks and the Pakhtuns? Is the Northern Alliance relevant in today’s Afghanistan? The US seems to think that by using the Northern routes to get supplies into Afghanistan, it can avoid the trials and tribulations it has faced from Karachi to Khyber. As the supply lines move to the CARs (Central Asian Republics) so will be sabotage and the reprisal attacks to cut the supplies. Tough lessons in geography

The Taliban threat to coalition air bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and to the French airfield in Tajikistan is now matter of concern not only to ISAF, and NATO but also to Dushambe, Ferghana and Samarkand.

President Obam’a advisor Bruce Riedel has it only partially right, its not just AfPak, its the AfPakUzKaTurkKyr problem. Chaudhry Rehmat Ali described the link of the Central Asia Republics to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 1940s. It part of a mosaic. It’s like a multifaceted orchestra. Tune one and the other one goes out of sync. Colonialism, Communism and the Crusades (both old and new) have tried to manufacture new realities based on the results of the World Wars.

There are many poltergeists in the Khyber and many hobgoblins in the Amu Darya. For years we have shed light on the pull and push theory. Can the $80 Billion Think Tank industry not comprehend the simple truths described by Peter Senge in his seminal book “The 5th Discipline“.  They theory goes as follows. When the Police cracks down on drug dealers on 42nd street, the drug dealing does not disappear, it simply moved to 52nd street or gets dispersed over a bigger area out of reach of the police raids. Similarly when the US bombs the insurgents in East Afghanistan, it is but obvious that they will find shelter and hideouts onthe Durand Line and beyond. As the US drones bomb FATA, areas in Pakistan are affected destabilizing parts of the NWFP.

According to Afghan officials insurgent activity in Kunduz involved non-Afghan militants of Central Asian Republics, Uzbeks, Tajiks and others. Neither the Uzbeks nor the Tajiks can live peacefully in their own countries. Both countries have brutal dictatorships in power. Pushed from Swat and Waziristan, the Uzbeks are now returning to their original bases along the Afghan Uzbek border. A militant commander General Mustafa Patang, told newspaper reporters on September 12 that “hundreds” of militants had come to northern Afghanistan from the tribal areas of Pakistan.

It is pedagogical to note that the oil rich Central Asia republics are being courted by all the major superpowers, and by the wannabees. Many think that the reason why the US invaded Afghanistan was not because of any threat from any cave dwellers, but from the possibility of a Pakistani dominated Muslim Central Asia. The US therefore used many proxies to thwart the inevitable march of history and the unification of the areas of the birth (Samarkand) life (Lahore and beyond) and death (Kabul) of Babur.

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan grew out of the resistance to the brutal dictatorship of Islamov who is know for boiling his opposition in big vats. The US of course has no problem with dealing with these human right abusers. Desperate and hounded the Uzbeks headed to Afghanistan to fight the Russians. The IMU Pakhtun alliance primarily was against the US and the occupation of Afghanistan. Hounded from pillar to post they then lost their way. Ensconed in their new home in FATA, they were unable and unwilling to get leve. The Pakistani Army forcibly dislodged them. Now they return to their ancestral homeland. 

There has been much discussion of dictators and democracy in Pakistan. Amazingly the US media and the American government doesn’t seem at all bothered by the excesses committed by dictators in Central Asia.

Mr. Islam Karimov is one of the worst dictators on the planet who boils his opponent in water. Uzbek President Islam Karimov is is scared out of his wits that the war in Pakistan will spill over to the other “tans”. He barely survives the perpetual onslaught of his own insurgents. By bringing money from Moscow and Washington he thinks he can survive popular dissent.  A South Korean deal with Mr. Karimov provides him with a fig leaf to hide his double dealing with the USA while promising Russia that he has kicked the US out of a base. With assistance  from SouthKorea, the US has reestablished a strategic presence in Uzbekistan - kind of. The Uzbek  Korean agreement on US access to Navoi airport gives Karimov the plausible deniability in front of Moscow that he has cut a deal with the United States. In fact he has, but not directly.  Washington will play along because it gets what it needs – a transit base which can be used as a replacement for the lost American base in Kyrgyzstan scheduled for a possible.

The seeds of the IMU grew in Uzbekistan’s Fergana Valley in the early Nineties, when Yoldash was a leading figure in an Islamic group called Adolat based in the city of Namangan in Fergana Valley. A crackdown ordered by President Islam Karimov forced members to flee the country, and many became caught up in a civil war in neighbouring Tajikistan, where they fought alongside Islamist forces against the government, with Jumaboy Khojaev, otherwise known as Juma Namangani, as their military commander.

It was after the Tajik conflict ended in 1997 that the IMU emerged as a distinct force whose agenda was to topple secular governments in Central Asian states, first and foremost in its homeland Uzbekistan. To this end, IMU guerrillas launched a series of raids into Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in 1999 and 2000. These attacks made international headlines and alerted regional governments to shortcomings in their security forces, but did not pose an existential threat to these states.

By this time, with bases in Afghanistan, the group had formed an alliance with that country’s Taleban rulers, and when the US-led Coalition arrived in late 2001, the IMU put up resistance in Kunduz. Namangani was killed, and the survivors escaped to Pakistan’s lawless fringes Relief Web

The Taliban know that they defeated the USSR by disrupting their supply lines–hence the incessant attacks on the Karachi to Khyber to Kabul supply chain. The US was forced to find other sources of supply so as to reduce its dependence on Pakistan. The Taliban are now counting on the IMU to help them disrupt the supply lines from Russia and beyond. Rupee News reported on the inevitability of this about a year ago. Our analysis showed an intense and close alliance between the Tajiks, the IMU and the Taliban. This is the vortex of violence that existed before the US arrived. Eight years later, the problem has been exacerbated. In 2001, many of these groups would listen to the Americans and the Pakistanis. There was much positive equity for Washington then. Today the US has lost that positive energy and faces a huge backlash.

After the October revolution of 1917, Lenin and later Stalin forcibly inculcated the Central Asian Republics of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. In the 90s all of them became independent.It has been decades, but the entire mosaic of the “Tans” cannot be solved in compartments.  

The Ferghana Valley of  Uzbekistan has many links to the South Asian Subcontinent. Zahiruddin Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire was born in Ferghana and lies buried in Kabul. One reason While the offensive goes one, one of the factors effecting situation is the presence of hardened foreign fighters. The Uzbeks have been present in Pakistan and Afghanistan. These Uzbeks came to Pakistan during the 80s and some of them got married and stayed in FATA. They continued to come down. One reason they came down was because of the pressure on the IMU.

Washington is like a blind man, looking for black vat in a dark room which isnt there. While is looks for the ephemeral Quetta Shura in Balochistan, and sends Balckwater to hund down Al-Qaeda in Karachi, the real “Ho Chi Minh” trail is actually situated across the Amu Darya. Unable to face reality, Washington is stuck in the paradigm painted by Delhi and its obsession with Pakistan. The Tajiks are fighting the government in Dushambe. The Taliban are helping them, just like the Tajiks helped the Taliban fight the Americans. However no story appears in the Western press about the duplicity of the Tiajik government or the trail of terror from Uzbekistan. Hillary Clinton does not go to Dushambe and lecutre the Tajiks about the “existential threat” to their country. Admiral Mullen doesn’t travel to Ferghana and blame them for his failures in Afghanistan.

They are everywhere–in plain sight, in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, along the Tajik-Afghan border and deep into Uzbekistan. They are fighting against corruption, cruelty and have a unified state before it was taken over by Lenin and Stalin.  This frontier is as difficult as it was in the 16th century when Baur came down across it. It is as porous as it has been since the days of Taimurlane and Alexander. It is inhabited by smugglers today as it was during the time of the Mongols. The mountain got warriors of the IMU find mountain pathway routes through Tajikistan to Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan. The IMU knows this terrain well–it has lived in it for decades. It used the same routes in in the 80s and then again in the 90s. The US and the media has been blind to their presence, and has just suddenly woken up to the wider conflict of Afghanistan that has engulfed all her neighbors, Pakistan, Iran, China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

If [Tohir] Yoldash is indeed dead – which a recent report throws into some doubt – there are questions about whether the IMU will survive in its present form under a new leader or break up into smaller factions. Some experts also suggest that the group has relocated to Afghanistan not entirely by choice, but because the combination of a major Pakistani ground offensive and United States unmanned planes on a mission to pick off al-Qaeda’s top men is making their stay in South Waziristan untenable. RelifWeb

The coalition members and the Central Asian states are not completely aware of the dangers of the wider conflict. The Russian and Chinese were so alarmed that they formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to protect themselves from the insurgency. They discuss security issues every years and hold exercises to thwart the IMU, and the Afghans. Noticias de Rupia | Nouvelles de Roupie | Rupiennachrichten | новости рупии | 卢比新闻 | Roepienieuws | Rupi Nyheter | ルピーニュース | Notizie di Rupia | The Dawn | Military Strategy | Strategic Thinking and Policy Institute | Failed States | Pakistan Historian | Gandhi Unmasked | PAKISTAN LEDGER |  پاکستاني کھاتا |  RUPEE NEWS  | November 21st, 2009 | Moin Ansari | اخبار روپیہ |

The Asian Pipeline grid puts Pakistan as a central node in both the TAP and the IP pipelines. In 2008, despite huge opposition from Washington, Iran and Pakistan decided to move forward with the pipeline without India. The Turkmenistan Afghanistan Pakistan (TAP) pipeline is also in the works. The key letter missing from both of them is “C”. if the TAP become TAP+China and the IP becomes IP+China, this will integrate Central Asia as never before.

Pipelines through Turkey Iran Pakistan Pipeline

Iran Pakistan Pipeline The politics of IPC, IPI, TAPI, TAPIC

Blaming Pakistan won’t help the war on terror.  Re-engineering all of Central Asia is not within the scope of the current American project. Giving the US some sort of face saving victory is. However hard “they” try, the “compensating feedback” pulls the “tans” together.