One way to help facilitate the intensification of exchange is the provision of a reliable legal system. In the case of Kazakhstan, one innovative solution has been the creation of the Astana International Financial Centre which opened in the summer of 2018. The centre has a court presided over by some of the most distinguished British lawyers of recent decades, headed by Lord Woolf, former Lord Supreme Court Judge in England and Wales. The court’s mandate is to consider commercial and civil disputes based on the principles of English legal proceedings—and offer comfort to investors wary of being trapped by local laws that are hard to understand and a judiciary that may not appear to be as independent as it should be.76 This is aimed at attracting foreign investors in general but also with one eye on the floats of state-owned businesses like Air Astana, the Kazakh national carrier, Kazakhtelecom, the biggest mobile operator in the country, and Kazatomprom, the world’s biggest uranium miner.
The possibility of doing well from large-scale infrastructure investments has drawn attention from surprising sources. The launch of the construction of the section of a major new gas pipeline linking the Galkynysh field in Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India drew optimistic comments from the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, in words that come as a welcome change from reports of violence and instability in Afghanistan. “South Asia is being connected with Central Asia through Afghanistan,” he said, “after more than a century of division.” In a rare show of solidarity between India and Pakistan, the minister of state for external affairs in India praised the pipeline as “a symbol of our goals” and “a new page in cooperation,” while the then prime minister of Pakistan, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, voiced his belief that the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline “will lead from a gas pipeline into an energy and communication corridor.”77
Such optimistic noises prompted sour faces in Iran, where the head of the National Iran Gas Company, Hamidreza Araqi, said that the pipeline would never be built. Far more sensible, he said, was for Turkmenistan to send gas to Iran and to swap it for gas that Iran would in turn send on to Pakistan directly. Apart from the fact that this proposal depends on a pipeline between Iran and Pakistan that does itself not exist, it has since been reported that progress has been made with the TAPI line after all, that a section will open in 2019—albeit without the compressor stations that would allow it to operate at full capacity. But such is the demand for energy in Pakistan that it has been thought better to cut corners and open quickly than take the time needed to make operations run at optimal capacity.78
In any event, and rather surprisingly, the fears that instability in Afghanistan would preclude a major infrastructure project ever leaving the drawing board were assuaged by warm words offered by none other than the Taliban. “The TAPI pipeline is an important regional project whose groundwork was initiated during the Islamic Emirate’s rule,” said the Taliban in a statement released in early 2018. Construction work had been delayed because of US military presence. “In areas under its control, the Islamic Emirate announces full cooperation on implementation of the project,” the statement added. As a result, said the Taliban, “there will be no delay in this important national project.”79
This is one element of an apparent change in Afghanistan that has seen signs of what some regard as encouraging dialogue between the Taliban and the government. “We have held discussions with the leaders of the tribes, politicians, teachers and members of civil-society institutions,” said Gul Agha Sherzai, minister for borders and tribal affairs, in the spring of 2018.80 The fact that neighbouring countries have not just encouraged such dialogue, but offered to host discussions can also be seen as a sign of determination of multiple countries to conciliate and consolidate and work together to resolve problems.81
The noises from inside Afghanistan have been encouraging enough for General John Nicholson, head of US and NATO forces in the war-torn country, to say that discussion of peace “gives us hope that this is an unprecedented moment.” NATO’s senior civilian representative, Cornelius Zimmermann, agreed, adding that “in my time in Afghanistan, I have never heard or experienced such a bold move as the one by President Ghani.”82
That assessment is based in part on more bullish views about what is happening in Afghanistan. Recent months have seen momentum “shifted in favour of Afghan security forces,” says a recent military update prepared for the US Congress. The Taliban’s “lowering expectations” can be seen from the move away from all-out confrontation to “guerrilla tactics and suicide attacks.” Even after a major attack on Ghazni in the summer of 2018, Western military commanders stayed upbeat. “We have an unprecedented opportunity, a window of opportunity for peace right now.”83
That may be the case. But the fact that US officials increasingly travel around Kabul “by air to avoid suicide attacks on the streets” reveals much about the frequency and scale of disruption just within the Afghan capital itself—and how important it is to treat the enthusiastic noises about a supposedly improving situation with caution.84 One who does so is President Trump, who reportedly let his feelings about General Nicholson be known in a meeting at the Pentagon in July 2018. “I don’t think he knows how to win,” said Trump. “I don’t know if he’s a winner. There’s no victories.”85
At the end of 2018, Trump lost patience altogether, announcing plans to withdraw from Afghanistan, offering a cease-fire to the Taliban and ordering the recall of half of the US troops in the country in the coming months, as a prelude to a total pullout.86 In any event, only the most determined optimist would be brave enough to bet on a swift return to peace in Afghanistan, given the history of the last four decades—whether US troops completely withdraw or otherwise. And while the words of conciliation and support might seem encouraging, the reality of relying on the Taliban—a label that belies the disaffected group of individuals who choose to cooperate as and when interests align—requires a stern constitution, regardless of long-term US military presence in the country.87
The Taliban’s interest in supporting the pipeline should also be understood for what it is. Rather than being a gesture of solidarity with the Afghan people or an expression of a willingness to cooperate with the government, the purported backing for the TAPI pipeline also points to a sophisticated awareness of how to take advantage of the vast mineral wealth of the country, which has been estimated as being worth not billions, but trillions of dollars. According to the US Geological Survey, Afghanistan may hold nearly 60 million metric tons of copper, 2,200 million tons of iron deposits, 32,000 tons of mercury, and millions of tons of potash, as well as huge reserves of rare earths such as lithium, beryllium, niobium and caesium.88
The Taliban has realised that Afghanistan’s mineral wealth offers opportunities to get rich—as well as to buy more weapons, recruit more supporters and build stronger power bases. As a result, they have paid particular attention to securing regions that have existing mining activities, with an eye on continuing to exploit the resources and even to expand operations. According to one report, in 2014, “the two mining areas of Deodarra and Kuran wa Munjan alone provided around $20m to armed groups, according to rough but conservative estimates—equivalent to the government’s declared revenue from the entire extractive sector” for the whole of the previous year. In 2016, meanwhile, fully half of all the revenue from lapis mines went to the Taliban—a sum again to be measured in millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars.89
The same is true of the funds that flow from hydrated magnesium silicate, the “softest mineral known to man,” more familiar to consumers as talcum powder. Afghanistan is blessed with significant deposits that can be translated into hard cash. It is not just the Taliban leaders who have moved in on hydrated magnesium silicate mines; so too have members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant–Khorasan province (ISIS-K), many of whom were part of the failed attempt to create a caliphate centred on Raqqa and Mosul following the disintegration of Syria and nort
hern Iraq in 2013. ISIS-K has focused on gaining hold of resource-rich territories and in some cases doubling the workforce to make mines not only stay open but to expand production.90 Strange as it may seem, parents powdering a baby’s bottom in Bogotà, San Francisco, Lagos, Kolkata or Wuhan to combat nappy rash are involved, albeit unwittingly, in a chain that connects them to the struggle for power in the heart of the world.
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The success of both the Taliban and ISIS has raised fears of contagion—not only by fundamentalist ideas but also by disruptive and militant techniques and tactics inside Afghanistan as well as outside it. It is striking, for example, that some studies note that significant numbers of ISIS supporters who fought in Syria and Iraq had Central Asian backgrounds and many of them were used for suicide missions.91 Terror attacks committed in New York, Stockholm, St. Petersburg and Istanbul in 2017 were perpetrated by men from or with strong links to Central Asia.92
This is one reason why there has been a sharp rise in the willingness of countries of the Silk Roads to work together on intelligence matters, including cooperation between armed forces. In addition to Uzbek and Tajik forces announcing plans to conduct joint operations for the first time, for example, initiatives have been announced for manoeuvres of Russian and Uzbek troops in the Forish mountain range, and for combined exercises of the armed forces of Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan and China.93 These follow the Prabal Dostyk (literally “robust friendship”) exercises which have been carried out by soldiers from Kazakhstan and India since 2016, whose aims are “to enhance [the] existing military relationship…and achieve synergy for joint conduct of operations as and when the requirement arises.”94
In the summer of 2018, combined military exercises by forces from the countries of the Silk Roads that are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation took place near Chelyabinsk in the Urals. These included soldiers from Russia and China,95 and they also saw the presence of troops from India and Pakistan—the first time that the two countries have ever taken part in a joint military exercise.96
A spate of incidents in the last few years on Iran’s border with Pakistan have resulted in commitments from both countries to work more closely to deal with militants who have regularly targeted border guards. In April 2017, for example, the killing of ten border guards of Mirjaveh county in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan province in an ambush by militants operating from inside Pakistan prompted politicians, diplomats and army chiefs in Tehran and Islamabad to resolve to work more closely together in the future—although not before the Iranian ambassador was summoned to explain comments by a senior Iranian general that military action would be taken against Pakistan if there were any further attacks.97
To suggest that the countries across the heart of the Silk Roads work together, see eye to eye and focus on mutual benefits is not just an oversimplification, but also understates the structural problems, petty rivalries, personal animosities and difficulties that could equally be used to characterise the region. Highlighting recent proposals to enable gas-swap deals between Iran and Turkmenistan, for example, masks the fact that the two countries have been locked in dispute since the start of 2017; then the latter claimed it was owed $1.5bn dating back to sales a decade earlier, when a cold winter forced Tehran to import gas—whose price Ashgabat promptly increased by nine times to take advantage of its neighbour’s predicament.98 The lack of progress in discussions to settle matters has now led to a lawsuit being filed at the International Court of Arbitration.99
Relations between Turkey and Turkmenistan likewise have become strained after Polimeks, a leading Turkish contractor that has carried out billions of dollars’ worth of construction projects, including hotels, monuments and highways, was accused of defects relating to the roof, pipes and water supply of the new falcon-shaped airport in Ashgabat.100 Failure to pay Polimeks and other companies hundreds of millions of dollars has led to the downing of tools in an embarrassing revelation of the consequences of persistent financial mismanagement that has put extraordinary strain on the economy of Turkmenistan, where having the fourth-largest gas reserves in the world has not prevented rampant inflation, a high unemployment rate and reports of food shortages and of medicine supplies running so low that medication for diabetes and cardiovascular disease is impossible to come by, while the cost of aspirin has trebled.101
Part of the problem lies with low hydrocarbon prices, as revenues from oil and gas collapsed in 2014, halving in the space of six months—and remaining low thereafter. Across Central Asia, the slump in commodity prices had a significant impact on public debt, putting strains on the economy and not so much forcing a check on ambitions as pushing them into reverse.102
In the case of Turkmenistan, the relentless pursuit of expensive vanity projects has not helped. These include an Olympic stadium (that has never hosted or even bid to host the Olympic Games), a winter sports arena (in a country where, as we have seen, temperatures in the summer touch 40°C and rarely dip below a mild 10°C in winter), and the new $2.3bn airport at Ashgabat that is capable of handling 17 million passengers a year—which should definitely be able to cope if there is a sharp spike in the 105,000 visitors who arrived in the city in 2015.103 With any luck, by the time numbers rise, a solution will be found to resolve the fact that the new airport appears to be sinking into the sand.104
Disillusion is such that opposition groups outside the country have reported that citizens have been using newspapers to wipe their backsides as a form of protest, which has in turn led to police being dispatched house to house to inspect toilet facilities in the search for culprits. They have done so because it appears that the tumbling value of the currency, the manat, had led to a rise in the price of basic commodities, including toilet paper. But another reason, according to opposition groups outside the country, is that newspaper is being used because it features an image of President Berdymukhamedov on the front page every day. Given the president received a mere 97 per cent of the vote in the most recent election in 2017, there cannot presumably be many suspects to track down—even if the volume of the soiled newspapers apparently suggests otherwise.105 Difficulties in gathering reliable information from inside Turkmenistan make it hard to confirm whether this is a tall story—and a case of dirty smears appearing in the press.
In some cases, the dramatic fall in gas, oil and commodity prices during 2015 was the catalyst for a process of professionalisation, of clearing out poor practices and stamping down on corruption. Expectations had to be quickly reduced in Kazakhstan, for example, which is heavily dependent on sales of fossil fuels, as the price of oil fell from $115 to $33 per barrel in the space of eighteen months. This led to a squeeze on the sovereign wealth fund that was raided in order to help meet government obligations—with the result that assets fell by nearly 20 per cent in just over a year.106 Inevitably, this led not only to a recalibration of projected spending, but also to a clampdown on those who had done too well in times of plenty—men like Mukhtar Ablyazov, former chairman of BTA Bank, who is being pursued for the embezzlement of $4bn through courtrooms from Kazakhstan to Knightsbridge.107
A similar sobering process had begun in Russia following the slump in prices. The appointment of Elvira Nabiullina as governor of the Central Bank inaugurated a ferocious clean-up of the country’s financial sector, with 276 banks closed in the course of three years and another twenty-eight forced into compulsory rehabilitation programmes—earning Nabiullina the praise of Vladimir Putin for her “energetic efforts [against] banditry.”108
And then, for all the warm words about the joys of cooperation, major projects—including the TAPI pipeline—are neither easy to undertake, nor easy to pay for and in some cases never leave the drawing board. The cost of the TAPI pipeline alone is estimated to run to some $10bn, leading many observers to doubt whether it will ever be completed—and even wondering whether sections that have purportedly been built in Turkmenistan even exi
st at all.109 Financing problems at least make that understandable. The same cannot be said for Line D of the Turkmenistan–China pipeline, which does not pass through war-torn Afghanistan, has an agreed route and has funding in place—and yet shows no sign of being implemented, presumably because of local rivalries in the region.110
Seasoned watchers of the Silk Roads also know that unpredictability and eccentricity are par for the course. In the summer of 2018, for example, Saidmukarram Abdulkodirzoda, the highest-ranking Islamic official in Tajikistan, declared that fighting sports—such as boxing—as well as “games and duels” done for money were a waste of time and thus forbidden under Islamic law. This came as a surprise to Tajik boxers, who won medals at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. (Wrestling is a different matter, according to Abdulkodirzoda, because it encourages physical and spiritual development, and inspires the young “to proudly raise the flag of the country and enhance the image of the nation and state.”)111
For all the positive stories about cooperation and progress, there are still uncomfortable realities to confront in the heart of the world. In the summer of 2018 it was reported that Tajiks crossing the border to Uzbekistan were being prevented from taking more than 40 kg of goods with them—including a maximum of two kilograms of meat and seven of flour.112 This followed the announcement that university professors and students would not be allowed to leave Tajikistan without government permission—hardly a positive sign at a time when collaboration with scholars in neighbouring countries and beyond can surely only be of wider benefit.113
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