Modi Has His Task Cut out with Central Asia Gambit

One year into office, Prime Minster Narendra Modi’s foreign visits fall into a pattern. He has focused on the neighbours, G7 members and China and its periphery. He has a penchant for longish tours of a week or more, that contemporary majorpower leaders avoid, requiring to balance domestic politics and foreign policy. The PM combines the attendance of BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summits, at Ufa, Russia, with visits to each of the five Central Asian Republics (CARs) — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Jawaharlal Nehru visited the region in 1955, when it was still a part of the USSR. P V Narasimha Rao turned to them as they became independent nations, realising their strategic potential,  particularly as Afghanistan slipped into a state of internal instability.

Manmohan Singh’s two  trips  were to  the richest in resources, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, the most populous. But the problems that stymied the relationship  with the region were a lack of  connectivity, restrictions on India importing uranium among others until Nuclear Suppliers  Group’s approval in 2008 and sanctions against Iran. While Afghanistan, under President Hamid Karzai, has remained reasonably stable  post -2001,  the US wrestled with growing Chinese presence in CARs. It developed a northern supply route as an alternative to the southern one via Pakistan for supplies to its troops in Afghanistan. A new  “Great  Game”  is  underway with the  Russian  and  Chinese  interests converging and the US shifting focus to the Asia-Pacific. The One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative of China is complementing the Russian proposal for a Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), encompassing, to  start with, its erstwhile provinces. This Chinese re-invention of its old Silk Road and maritime connectivity is a hub-and-spoke plan that facilitates the import of raw materials and the export of finished products to markets far and wide.

China is envisioning eastward connectivity via Russia to Europe, to the Gulf via Iran and Pakistan, to South Asia through Nepal and Myanmar and to East Asia by  rail and maritime links. Thus, its offer of  SCO membership to India, alongside a similar offer to Pakistan, implies that India is subscribing to its connectivity vision and not questioning even the Chinese transit corridors through Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK).

Indian trade with the five Central Asian Republics is around $2 billion annually, mostly  with  Kazakhstan. A  reality check  is necessary in view of altering alignments in the region. China announced a $46 billion investment in a Gwadar-Xinjiang trade corridor. An Iranian gas pipeline may follow the same route. China  established a foothold in Turkmenistan, having globally the fourth largest gas reserves, when President Xi Jinping inaugurated the Galkynysh gas field in 2013, supplanting Russia as the main importer of Turkmen gas. A new pipeline is under construction to carry this gas to China by 2020. Iran has been watching these developments as it finds its own role as future supplier undercut.

In the past, it allowed some switch trade for central Asian gas and oil by buying for its use in North Iran while exporting a like amount from its resources in the South. Contrariwise, Russia and China would like to maintain monopoly over Turkmen gas. The possibility  of  the  TAPI  pipeline  bringing Turkmen gas to India via Pakistan and Afghanistan runs into the additional hazard of  instability in Afghanistan, as the pipeline skirting mountainous North would have to take the Southern route through the Pashtun-Taliban region. The proposed Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline was hampered by  sanctions  against Iran and the vagaries of India-Pakistan relations. Now, when P5+1 talks  with Iran seem headed for a nuclear deal and possible lifting of sanctions, India may find that the IPI deal is no longer on the table as China has inserted itself as buyer and has an elated Pakistan providing connectivity.

Euphoria over India partnering the proposed transit and trade corridor announced by Oman, Iran, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan connecting Gulf to Central Asia in 2010 may be premature. An International North South Trade Corridor (INSTC) exists since it was agreed to by Russia, Iran and India in 2000, later subscribed to by a dozen-odd more countries. It was to connect the Indian Ocean, Gulf and the Caspian Sea in a multi-mode corridor to curtail the distance and time for transit of goods to Europe, bypassing the Suez Canal. In actuality, it slowly fell into disuse due to excessive multiple transfer costs en route, non-return of containers from Russia, little reverse flow of trade etc. On  the  positive  side, the  five CARs may wish to reduce the stranglehold of their new partner China or avoid the iron fist of Russia. In the past, despite Indian goodwill, China outplayed India to get the Kashgan oilfield in Kazakhstan. India had to settle for the smaller Satpayev field in the Caspian. Indian initiative ‘Connect Central Asia’ launched in 2012 focuses on education, medicine, information technology and energy. Indian grant of $17 million for hydro-power to Tajikistan  and  development  of  an  airbase  in  the  1990s  for supplying the then beleaguered  Northern Alliance that was fighting the Taliban, are tentative or old linkages now overtaken by newer realities.

Thus, Modi  has his task cut out to create space for India. The menace of terrorism, drugs and the challenge now posed by the Islamic Caliphate of the ISIS as well as the resurgence of Taliban are concerns that India shares with the CARs more than with China, which dubiously uses Pakistan as cat’s paw. Similarly, Russia would not like to have China dilute its historical role. At the same time, both Russia and China are paranoid about being contained by the United States as well as its allies in Europe or, as in the case of China, in the Pacific.

The complexity of the region is dictated by the overlapping Persian and Turkic civilisational footprints. While Tajikistan is firmly in the Persian zone, two major centres of Persian culture — Bokhara and Samarkand — lie in Uzbekistan, a result of Stalinist cultural re-orientation. In Samarkand lies Tamerlane, the marauder of North India, the slab atop his grave cracked when attempted to be moved by Nadir Shah. But the region also enriched Indian art, architecture and thought. Modi needs to spell out new engagements, surpassing the transactional links of Russia and China and overriding what India lost in 1947 when the Gilgit Scouts under a British commandant raised the Pakistani flag, cutting off India from its geographical Central Asian link.