China’s ambassador to France already said last year that “countries that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union 'don’t have effective status under international law.” I guess that’s telling.
Unless it was before Russia was revealed as weak, and all of the above were offered, that doesn’t seem like a very fair trade. The status quo suits China’s interests very well.
Yeah. If Russia collapses as a result of this war they’re absolutely going to want a strong hand in the Far East and maybe even some of the stuff north of Kazakhstan (that is, the Siberian federal district proper).
@CanadaPlus@Scrof
I'm willing to bet that the Chinese are going to invade the part of Russia that used to China's; possibly with help from North Korea, within 4 years.
Central Asian countries have always made a strong play for being the master of their own destinies. Policymakers in the region tout their ability to sit in the driver’s seat and navigate international relations through balancing everyone against each other. Yet last month’s high-level engagements with China and Russia have instead served to highlight Central Asia countries’ growing bonds with both powers and the shrinking room for maneuver they have in international relations.
The invasion of Ukraine has thrown Beijing’s role in Central Asia newly into question, both in terms of Moscow’s bandwidth to play a security provider role in the region while Ukraine consumes its military, and fears about how Moscow’s revanchist eye might turn toward the region.
In Kazakhstan, this fear is acute given the ease with which one can look at the country through Moscow’s eyes and see a very similar history that could justify an incursion as Putin did in Ukraine. The nation shares a long border with Russia and has a large ethnically Russian population that often feels targeted by national policies seeking to advance the Kazakh language. Senior Russian figures (including Putin) have questioned the nation’s statehood. Back in September 2014, after he first pushed an incursion into Ukraine, Putin seemed to deny Kazakh statehood in a speech, saying that then-President Nursultan Nazarbayev had “created a state on a territory that never had a state.”
Consequently, when Xi visited Kazakhstan in September 2022, a lot of public noise was made about his declaration that China would support “Kazakhstan in safeguarding national independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Among more optimistic public commentators, this was seen as a clear message to defend Kazakhstan against potential Russian aggression.
In contrast, speaking to officials in Kazakhstan and the wider region, we found a far more sanguine picture. Most of them noted the similarity in what Xi said in Kazakhstan to what China had said about Ukraine before the Russian invasion (and even in the peace plan proposed by China), and China’s lack of action in stopping the conflict there. “We are on our own” was one particularly stark assessment we heard in Kazakhstan.
This highlights both the fact that China and Russia are eager to coordinate in Central Asia and that their basic aims in the region are the same. This complicates diplomacy for the Central Asian governments that have long sought to play the two countries off each other. And it is a perfect articulation of the shrinking geopolitical space that Central Asia increasingly finds itself within.
Entirely surrounded by powers in some level of conflict with the West, Central Asia finds its options are increasingly limited. This is not to say other options are not available—simultaneous to the Xian summit, Kazakhstan hosted a high-level economic forum with the European Union; the United States is a constant presence; and Turkey has made a great deal of noise about Turkic influence in the region over the past year via the Organization of Turkic States. But as the ties that bind China and Russia thicken, Central Asia will struggle to really balance against them.
On February 20, Kyrgyz authorities conducted the sixth repatriation operation and repatriated 28 women and 71 children who had been stranded in refugee camps in northeastern Syria since the fall of the Islamic State (IS) in 2019 (Kaktus Media, February 20). This operation brought the number of Kyrgyz nationals returned from Syria and Iraq to 511, including 129 women and 382 children, and completed the repatriation program that began in March 2021 (Kaktus Media, March 16, 2021, February 16, 2023, October 22, 2023, August 30, 2023; Fergana, December 8, 2023).
Upon arrival, these women and children will enter the long and complex rehabilitation and reintegration (R&R) process. This ensures that they will adapt to peaceful life in Kyrgyzstan and present no security threat to their home country. Questions pertaining to their prosecution and the provision of psychological, social, and economic support will decide the fate of Kyrgyzstan’s R&R program. In broader terms, Kyrgyzstan’s latest repatriation operation signaled the end of a Central Asian jihadist era, which saw thousands of Central Asians join terrorist groups in the Middle East since the advent of the IS and its caliphate. However, it is too early for the region’s governments to relax, as the terrorist groups in neighboring Afghanistan and the ongoing war in Gaza may provoke another wave of extremism.
Kyrgyzstanis in International Terrorist Groups
According to the Kyrgyz security services, 850 Kyrgyz nationals left for Syria and Iraq between 2013 and 2020 (United Nations Development Program/Kyrgyzstan, June 21, 2022). The evidence suggests that foreign fighters from Kyrgyzstan who took part in hostilities in Syria and Iraq were divided into two contingents based on their loyalty to al-Qaeda or IS. The group that sided with al-Qaeda was based around Aleppo and fought within the ranks of groups linked with al-Qaeda’s Syrian wing, Jabhat al-Nusrah. One of these groups was Katibat Imam al-Bukhari (KIB), established in 2011. Its most notable Kyrgyzstani fighter was Sirojiddin Mukhtarov. Widely known as “Abu Saloh,” he established his own group, Katibat Tawhid wal-Jihad (KTJ), in 2014. He also allegedly orchestrated several high-profile attacks, including the 2016 bombing of China’s Embassy in Bishkek (by a Uyghur born in China) and the 2017 Saint Petersburg metro bombing (conducted by a Kyrgyzstan-born ethnic Uzbek Russian citizen) (24.KG, September 10, 2022).
The second contingent was based around Raqqa, Syria and Mosul, Iraq and fought within IS’s ranks. Kyrgyz nationals appeared in several IS-produced videos. The most notable one came in July 2015, when IS published a nine-minute-long “Address to the People of Kyrgyzstan” on YouTube. A religious man speaking in Kyrgyz urged Kyrgyzstani Muslims “to move to the lands of the Islamic State from the countries of kufr (infidelity)” (Kloop, July 26, 2015). Kyrgyzstan’s security services identified the individual as a Kyrgyz national from Jalalabad Province but did not provide further details.
Around 150 out of the 850 Kyrgyz who joined these contingents were men, nearly all of whom died in battle. This left their wives and children stranded in Syrian refugee camps and Iraqi prisons (United Nations Development Program/Kyrgyzstan, June 21, 2022). The Kyrgyz government ended the repatriation of Kyrgyz nationals from Iraq after allowing 79 children to be returned home in March 2021. This is because Iraqi authorities refuse to release the remaining women, who were sentenced to lengthy prison sentences. Thus, Kyrgyzstan has focused on repatriating its nationals from the al-Hol and Roj refugee camps in northeastern Syria, where women and children are not imprisoned. In total, 432 individuals (around three-quarters of which were children, with almost all of the remaining returnees being women) were repatriated from Syria in five repatriation operations carried out in a roughly one-year span through 2023 (Kaktus Media, February 16, 2023, October 22, 2023, August 30, 2023, February 20, 2024; Fergana, December 8, 2023).
Uncertainty Mixed with Clarity and Confidence
The Kyrgyz authorities’ approach to R&R of children consists of placing them at special centers, where they spend several months under the care of medical doctors and psychologists before returning them to family members. This was the country’s approach in 2021 and 2023, when the repatriated children were placed “in a rehabilitation center to receive appropriate services to help them adapt to life in a peaceful and safe environment” (Kabar, February 16, 2023). International partners, such as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and US-funded NGOs, are expected to continue playing a key role together with the receiving families and communities in Kyrgyzstan’s R&R program. ...
Yeah. They’ve doubled down over and over again. Eventually, a martingale strategy like that runs out of resources to wager, but it hasn’t happened yet, and it’s hard to say when it would be, exactly.
They say autocracies look strong until they don’t.
It’s so dumb that happened multiple times. Afghanistan hasn’t being strategically important since around the time the Portuguese first rounded the Cape. And one could imagine a future where the Chinese do it too, if the jihadists in the region start bothering them.
Moscow is looking to South Asia as a source of new immigrants to compensate for the demographic decline of the Russian population and declining numbers of migrant workers from Central Asia.
Such a policy faces enormous obstacles given both the negative attitudes of the Russian population toward immigrants and the Kremlin’s desire to compel immigrants to serve in its military.
Unless it succeeds, the Kremlin may not have the manpower to implement its repressive policies at home and continue its aggression abroad.
Moscow is looking to South Asia as a source of new immigrants to compensate for the demographic decline of the Russian population and declining numbers of migrant workers from Central Asia.
Such a policy faces enormous obstacles given both the negative attitudes of the Russian population toward immigrants and the Kremlin’s desire to compel immigrants to serve in its military.
Unless it succeeds, the Kremlin may not have the manpower to implement its repressive policies at home and continue its aggression abroad.
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