The Security 'Environment' in Central Asia:
Environmental Issues and the National Security of Uzbekistan
Keely Lange
PhD Candidate in Government
University of Notre Dame
Executive Summary
Are environmental issues threats to national security? This question has been answered in the affirmative by the preponderance of security literature. The uphill battle for the acceptance of non-military issues onto the national security agenda has been won. What remains are numerous, more nuanced questions regarding the timing, the criteria, and the motives for claiming these issues as security threats. Uzbekistan has unequivocally listed the environment as a threat to its national security, placing ecological threats into its National Security Concept; the question that remains is, 'why?'
My research presents both the obvious and what I believe are the more subtle answers to this question. The obvious answer to the question is that Uzbekistan confronts some of the worst environmental devastation on the planet. The desiccation of the Aral Sea and its ramifications for the economy, for public health, and for the regional environment writ large are problems of a magnitude and complexity that defy resolution. Vast segments of the population of Uzbekistan are sick with environmentally-related illness, a problem in its own right and as it drains resources both from the economy with declining productivity and from the military with increasingly large percentages of youth physically unfit to serve. The land, too, has become less productive, potentially undermining the sustainability of the hard currency income based on cotton exports.
It is, however, the water- its contamination, its unpotability, and its scarcity- that generates greatest attention in the security sphere. The current situation is the result of shoddy Soviet infrastructure and mismanagement of the region's water, perpetuated and exacerbated by the now independent republics. As sovereign states, with occasionally divergent national interests, the policies each pursues is often at odds with the Soviet designed regional infrastructure and regional resource distribution plan. The allocation of this precious resource in an arid region is leading to increasingly tense relations between Uzbekistan and its neighbors. The hydropolitics literature is replete with examples of the perils of shared water basins.
Conversely, there are numerous examples of shared watercourses bringing neighbors together in treaty obligations and other cooperative arrangements. Although the Central Asian republics have signed numerous accords on these issues, none has been adhered to in its entirety. The lack of current coordination is best exemplified by the energy/environmental security situation along the Syr Darya. During the Soviet period, a reciprocal relationship existed between upstream countries releasing water for downstream agricultural use and downstream countries sending energy resources upstream in exchange. Since independence, this arrangement has broken down with serious deleterious effects, and relations between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan remain conflictual on this issue.
The picture presented above demonstrates how the environment threatens the national security of Uzbekistan. Its territory and population are greatly endangered and its economy suffers as a consequence. The foreign relations with neighboring republics are jeopardized. This is the obvious case for why the environment is on the Uzbek national security agenda.
However, theories of national security suggest several conditions belied by the situation in Uzbekistan. Declaring an issue a 'national security threat' is supposed to be a red flag to the citizenry that an issue will somehow be treated differently: more money or manpower will be allocated, more secrecy will shroud the issue, etc. These conditions do not obtain for the environment in Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan has not allocated more resources to address these environmental concerns and ecological information is treated with far greater secrecy in Turkmenistan, while Uzbekistan has increasingly become more open about such data.
I believe that, counter to national security theories, Uzbekistan's national security agenda, especially as it relates to the environment, is not addressed to its citizenry, but rather to an international audience. I do not believe Uzbekistan intended to treat environmental concerns significantly differently as a 'national security threat', but rather it hoped that the international community would do so. Recognizing that the environmental problems it faces are beyond its ability to manage or the possible remedies beyond it ability to finance, Uzbekistan used its national security agenda to market its environment to the international aid community. While this may seem self-evident to regional specialists, it offers a new understanding of security that has profound impact on both theory and policy.
I also believe that the situation speaks to an increasingly common problem in international relations: when the impact of a regional threat is not experienced evenly throughout the region. Terms such as 'regional security' are frequently used in the literature and seem to imply that all members of that region share the same concern and to the same extent. More often, I believe, this is not the case and instead the situation arises where a 'threat' is a matter of national security to some states, but only a policy concern for others.
While these two assertions seem to be at odds, they actually dovetail. Uzbekistan did not 'market' its environment to the international community because it did not take the threat seriously. To the contrary, there was little the republic could do own its own and recognized its own limitations in this regard. Uzbekistan does experience the regional environmental situation as far more of a national security threat than does its neighbors. The scope of the problem is beyond its individual national ability to handle, both because it lacks the resources and because the problem itself is regional in nature. Uzbekistan's hegemonic policies in other issue areas have left it in an insecure position for relying on its neighbors' goodwill in regional environmental negotiations. Uzbekistan needs outside assistance precisely because the environment threat is so menacing. That said, the profitability for Uzbekistan of international aid, and the attendant corruption, certainly played a major role in the attractiveness of advertising the plight of its environment.
I base these conclusions on extensive interviews in the field and throughout the relevant academic and policy communities and on years of scientific and policy-oriented research on the environment and politics of the region. I matched the reality of the situation to the theoretical expectations, contrasting the behavior of Uzbekistan towards its environmental security threat with that of other threats examined in the national and environmental security literatures.
My research has highlighted several areas that I believe warrant further investigation. One of these areas is the conundrum of the Syr Darya. According to theories of conflict resolution, an iterated prisoners' dilemma should result in cooperation, yet year after year the republics along the Syr Darya 'defect', break the treaties, and further damage the regional environment and relations. How high must the costs of 'defection' go before the parties cooperate? The 'tit-for-tat' has drawn in other aspects of regional relations- land exchanges, transit fees, etc.- which has interesting implications for regional security and for policy making in and towards the region.
Another area for future research is cross-regional analysis. I have spoken to colleagues at several conferences and relevant aspects of the environmental crisis in Central Asia could be fruitfully related to: Australia (salinization and the timing of security), Lake Chad in Central Africa (shared littoral degradation causing dislocation and unequal experience of security threat), the indigenous people of Ecuador and the environmental contamination fostering genocide (Karakalpakistan), the potential use of water as a weapon in the Middle East (Kyrgyz retaliation by flooding Uzbekistan), and the successful division of a previous integrated water management structure between India and Pakistan (the Soviet structure in Central Asia).
Similarly, looking within the same region, numerous other security threats could be addressed with the same framework. For example, why are regional concerns like drug trafficking or the rise of radical Islam experienced as security threats by some republics and not by others. While no regional problem can be solved without the cooperation of all, how do you elicit this type of support from the resource-strapped republics not experiencing the same level of threat?
The question 'how' inevitably involves a policy response. On a macro-level, the driving force behind Uzbekistan's foreign and domestic policy is the belief that it is the lynch pin of the region. Uzbekistan will continue to push the envelope because Karimov believes his country is pivotal to US operations there. However, the current geography of the pipeline politics, the primary US interest in the region, could easily run east-west from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, north and south of Uzbekistan. If it were explained to Karimov in a quiet, subtle way that the countries around him could get very rich and have high levels of foreign involvement/aid without needing Uzbekistan, the position of that republic may be less intractable.
We have learned from experiences elsewhere that where the drug trade remains prevalent, instability (read: terrorism, warlordism, massive corruption) will accompany it. Nor can the drug trade simply be 'stamped out'. Growers need an alternative to the extremely valuable crop insurance that poppy cultivation provides. As the soil becomes depleted from poor agricultural practices throughout the region and water becomes more contaminated, one of the few plants that will continue to grow is the hardy poppy. The region will not be sufficiently stable for secure pipelines until the drug trafficking is controlled and it cannot be controlled by simplistic interdiction and eradication. These programs will need to be coupled with agricultural programs, not simply crop substitution, but soil reclamation, water management, and other more comprehensive plans.
Finally, politics in this region are personal; treaties and agreements are kept more on the basis of the relationship between those making it, than a nation being bound because it signed a piece of paper. Consistently, these republics have broken agreements with each other when these ceased to be convenient. The US has a greater likelihood of having its objectives met and agreements adhered to if there exists a consistent cadre of individuals who are not only familiar with, but also familiar in the region. They are more likely to elicit a genuine commitment by their Uzbek counterparts to ensuring our programs' success.