Tajikistan is only somewhat more ethnically homogeneous. Of its 6.5 million people, fewer than two-thirds are Tajik and more than 25 percent are Uzbek (who are viewed with some hostility by the Tajiks), while the remaining Russians account for only about 3 percent. However, as elsewhere, even the dominant ethnic community is sharply—even violently—divided along tribal lines, with modern nationalism confined largely to the urban political elite. As a result, independence has produced not only civil strife but a convenient excuse for Russia to continue deploying its army in the country. The ethnic situation is even further complicated by the large presence of Tajiks across the border, in northeastern Afghanistan. In fact, almost as many ethnic Tajiks live in Afghanistan as in Tajikistan, another factor that serves to undermine regional stability.
Afghanistan’s current state of disarray is likewise a Soviet legacy, even though the country is not a former Soviet republic. Fragmented by the Soviet occupation and the prolonged guerrilla warfare conducted against it, Afghanistan is a nation-state in name only. Its 22 million people have become sharply divided along ethnic lines, with growing divisions among the country’s Pashtuns, Tajiks, and Hazaras. At the same time, the jihad against the Russian occupiers has made religion the dominant dimension of the country’s political life, infusing dogmatic fervor into already sharp political differences. Afghanistan thus has to be seen not only as a part of the Central Asian ethnic conundrum but also as politically very much part of the Eurasian Balkans.
Although all of the formerly Soviet Central Asian states, as well as Azerbaijan, are populated predominantly by Muslims, their political elites—still largely the products of the Soviet era—are almost uniformly nonreligious in outlook and the states are formally secular. However, as their populations shift from a primarily traditional clannish or tribal identity to a more modern national awareness, they are likely to become imbued with an intensifying Islamic consciousness. In fact, an Islamic revival—already abetted from the outside not only by Iran but also by Saudi Arabia—is likely to become the mobilizing impulse for the increasingly pervasive new nationalisms, determined to oppose any reintegration under Russian—and hence infidel—control.
Indeed, the process of Islamization is likely to prove contagious also to the Muslims who have remained within Russia proper. They number about 20 million—more than twice the number of disaffected Russians (circa 9.5 million) who continue to live under foreign rule in the independent Central Asian states. The Russian Muslims thus account for about 13 percent of Russia’s population, and it is almost inevitable that they will become more assertive in claiming their rights to a distinctive religious and political identity. Even if that claim does not take the form of a quest for outright independence, as it has in Chechnya, it will overlap with the dilemmas that Russia, given its recent imperial involvement and the Russian minorities in the new states, will continue to face in Central Asia.
Gravely increasing the instability of the Eurasian Balkans and making the situation potentially much more explosive is the fact that two of the adjoining major nation-states, each with a historically imperial, cultural, religious, and economic interest in the region—namely, Turkey and Iran—are themselves volatile in their geopolitical orientation and are internally potentially vulnerable. Were these two states to become destabilized, it is quite likely that the entire region would be plunged into massive disorder, with the ongoing ethnic and territorial conflicts spinning out of control and the region’s already delicate balance of power severely disrupted. Accordingly, Turkey and Iran are not only important geostrategic players but are also geopolitical pivots, whose own internal condition is of critical importance to the fate of the region. Both are middle-sized powers, with strong regional aspirations and a sense of their historical significance. Yet the future geopolitical orientation and even the national cohesion of both states remains uncertain.
Turkey, a postimperial state still in the process of redefining its identity, is pulled in three directions: the modernists would like to see it become a European state and thus look to the west; the Islamists lean in the direction of the Middle East and a Muslim community and thus look to the south; and the historically minded nationalists see in the Turkic peoples of the Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia a new mission for a regionally dominant Turkey and thus look eastward. Each of these perspectives posits a different strategic axis, and the clash between them introduces for the first time since the Kemalist revolution a measure of uncertainty regarding Turkey’s regional role.
Moreover, Turkey itself could become at least a partial victim of the region’s ethnic conflicts. Although its population of about 65 million is predominantly Turkish, with about 80 percent Turkic stock (though including a variety of Circassians, Albanians, Bosnians, Bulgarians, and Arabs), as much as 20 percent or perhaps even more are Kurdish. Concentrated in the country’s eastern regions, the Turkish Kurds have increasingly been drawn into the struggle for national independence waged by the Iraqi and Iranian Kurds. Any internal tensions within Turkey regarding the country’s overall direction would doubtless encourage the Kurds to press even more violently for a separate national status.
Iran’s future orientation is even more problematic. The fundamentalist Shiite revolution that triumphed in the late 1970s may be entering its “Thermidorian” phase, and that heightens the uncertainty regarding Iran’s geostrategic role. On the one hand, the collapse of the atheistic Soviet Union opened up Iran’s newly independent northern neighbors to religious proselytizing but, on the other, Iran’s hostility to the United States has inclined Teheran to adopt at least a tactically pro-Moscow orientation, reinforced by Iran’s concerns regarding the impact on its own cohesion of Azerbaijan’s new independence.
That concern is derived from Iran’s vulnerability to ethnic tensions. Of the country’s 65 million people (almost identical in number to Turkey’s), only somewhat more than one-half are Persians. Roughly one-fourth are Azeri, and the remainder include Kurds, Baluchis, Turkmens, Arabs, and other tribes. Outside of the Kurds and the Azeris, the others at present do not have the capacity to threaten Iran’s national integrity, especially given the high degree of national, even imperial, consciousness among the Persians. But that could change quite quickly, particularly in the event of a new political crisis in Iranian politics.
Furthermore, the very fact that several newly independent “stans” now exist in the area and that even the 1 million Chechens have been able to assert their political aspirations is bound to have an infectious effect on the Kurds as well as on all the other ethnic minorities in Iran. If Azerbaijan succeeds in stable political and economic development, the Iranian Azeris will probably become increasingly committed to the idea of a greater Azerbaijan. Thus, political instability and divisions in Teheran could expand into a challenge to the cohesion of the Iranian state, thereby dramatically extending the scope and increasing the stakes of what is involved in the Eurasian Balkans.
THE MULTIPLE CONTEST
The traditional Balkans of Europe involved head-on competition among three imperial rivals: the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Russian Empire. There were also three indirect participants who were concerned that their European interests would be adversely affected by the victory of a particular protagonist: Germany feared Russian power, France opposed Austria-Hungary, and Great Britain preferred to see a weakening Ottoman Empire in control of the Dardanelles than the emergence of any one of the other major contestants in control of the Balkans. In the course of the nineteenth century, these powers managed to contain Balkan conflicts without prejudice to anyone’s vital interests, but they failed to do so in 1914, with disastrous consequences for all.
Today’s competition within the Eurasian Balkans also directly involves three neighboring powers: Russia, Turkey, and Iran, though China may eventually become a major protagonist as well. Also involved in the competition, but more remotely, are Ukraine, Pakistan, India, and the distant America. Each of the three principal and most directly engaged contestants is driven not only by the prospect of future geopolitical and economic benefits but also by strong historical impulses. Each was at one time or another either the politically or the culturally dominant power in the region. Each views the others with suspicion. Although head-on warfare among them is unlikely, the cumulative impact of their external rivalry could contribute to regional chaos.
In the case of the Russians, the attitude of hostility to the Turks verges on the obsessive. The Russian media portrays the Turks as bent on control over the region, as instigators of local resistance to Russia (with some justification in the case of Chechnya), and as threatening Russia’s overall security to a degree that is altogether out of proportion to Turkey’s actual capabilities. The Turks reciprocate in kind and view their role as that of liberators of their brethren from prolonged Russian oppression. The Turks and the Iranians (Persians) have also been historical rivals in the region, and that rivalry has in recent years been revived, with Turkey projecting the image of a modern and secular alternative to the Iranian concept of an Islamic society.
Although each of the three can be said to seek at least a sphere of influence, in the case of Russia, Moscow’s ambitions have a much broader sweep because of the relatively fresh
