Shift in geopolitics has US linking C Asia to sub-continent

India, which has nursed ambitions of a larger role in Central Asia, is expected to be the linchpin of this new grouping—if the Bush Administration takes its new ideas towards their logical conclusion.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US bureaucracy continued to deal with Central Asian Republics (CARs) as part of its Russian bureau. The CARs were also integrated into its pan-European structures.

After the Cold War, political pressure from the US Congress led to the creation of a separate bureau of South Asian Affairs. And now, as it focuses on Afghanistan’s stability and warily eyes China’s growing influence in Central Asia, the Bush Administration has begun to see the advantages of creating a new regional approach that brings South and Central Asia together.

A few years ago, China had set up the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) along with Russia and the five Central Asian Republics—Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The SCO has emerged as Beijing’s principal tool in the region as it pushed its economic development westwards from the coastline and began to tap the energy resources of Central Asia.

Besides, China and Russia have also been pressing for a withdrawal of US military presence from Central Asia that was established after 9/11.

The Bush Administration, in turn, has unveiled a strategic partnership with Kabul. It has also strongly supported the Indian initiative to draw Afghanistan into the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC)—it was admitted as eighth member last month.

India would hope that this bureaucratic regorganisation is followed by greater emphasis in Washington on promoting trade and energy linkages between the sub-continent and Central Asia. Critical to this would be Pakistan’s willingness to offer India transit facilities to move goods to Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Since the fall of the Taliban, India has rapidly expanded its diplomatic and economic profile in Afghanistan. Besides reviving its old consulates in Jalalabad and Kandahar, India set up new missions in western and northern Afghanistan.

Now, the key to greater regional cooperation between South and Central Asia, analysts say, would depend on getting Pakistan to see the economic and political benefits of emerging as a ‘‘bridge state’’. Triangular cooperation between India, Pakistan and Afghanistan could help reorient the CARs in the southward direction and recast the geopolitics of the Eurasian landmass.