Wednesday, 23 January 2019 18:16

Europe's Easternmost Port Featured

Anaklia

Europe's Easternmost Port

By S. Frederick Starr

European Interest, January 23, 2019

 

What is one of the world’s largest dredging vessels doing in Georgia, a country that is several thousand miles from the nearest ocean and boasts some of Europe’s highest mountains? It is there because little Georgia, with a population of only 3.7 million, is constructing a major international deep sea port on its Black Sea coast. Anaklia, as the new port has been named, will be a game changer in just about every respect.

Anyone who has observed the huge ships in the Bosporus at Istanbul knows the problem Anaklia is designed to solve. An ocean-going freighter from the Americas or Africa can pass into the Mediterranean at Gibraltar or arrive from the Persian Gulf via Suez. All of these, as well as large ships from any port in Europe, can pass easily into the Black Sea. But if their cargo is headed to the East—Azerbaijan, Central Asia, China, Afghanistan or even Pakistan—there has not been any port on the eastern end of the Black Sea that can accommodate them.

The same problem existed for goods coming from the East. China has pushed hard to open a transport corridor across Central Asia to the Caspian Sea and beyond. But for now, most western-bound traffic heads north from Kazakhstan through Russia. New Caspian ports being built by Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan will enable goods to go directly West by rail from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Georgia and on to Turkey. But the alternate sea route from Georgia to the rest of the world has been blocked by the absence of a deep-sea port. Such a port must accommodate ships with a draft of up to seventeen meters. That will be Anaklia.

Once functioning, Anaklia will be the only deep -sea port east of the Bosporus able to host “Panamax” vessels, i.e., those that can traverse the widened and deepened Panama Canal. Goods crossing from Anaklia can then proceed by ship into the Danube system, or by train to anywhere in Central or southern Europe. Or they can proceed directly to the Mediterranean and beyond.

Since 2017 hundreds of workers from the surrounding area have been hard at work constructing the new port. In the near future they will begin building Anaklia City, which is designed to be a free-trade zone and regional commercial center serving Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Russian Caucasus, and northeastern Turkey.  Because of the country’s central location, its sixth place ranking (out of 190 countries) in the World Bank’s “Ease of Doing Business” report, and to its having the second lowest perceived incidence of crime in Europe, according to the NUMBEO Crime Index,[1] Georgians hope that firms from both Europe and Asia will find it convenient to base their Silk Road offices in the new city.

Mention of the Silk Road reminds us that over the millennia the territory of Georgia and the Caucasus were integral parts of the great trade routes connecting Europe with both China and India. Archaeological finds from ancient sites close by Anaklia confirm this. More recently, many countries have eyed the route from the Caspian Sea through the Caucasus to the Black Sea as key elements of the emerging continent-spanning transport corridors.

Thus, barely a year after the collapse of the USSR, the European Union launched its TRASECA program (Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia) in order to open the Caucasus and Central Asia to the West. Then Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and western partners teamed up to build a new pipeline from the Caspian to the Mediterranean and then a new highway and railroad from the Baku clear through Georgia and Turkey to Istanbul and beyond.

Simultaneously, the newly independent countries of Central Asia lying to the east of the Caspian launched their own programs to build roads and railroads that would link with the emerging corridor through the Caucasus. To this end, Kazakhstan undertook a massive project to create transport infrastructure stretching from its border with China to the Caspian shore. In the same spirit, Turkmenistan planned and constructed both road and railroad links between its border with Afghanistan and its Caspian shore.

Topping off this massive multinational effort were the construction of no fewer than five entirely new ports on the Caspian Sea itself.  Throughout the Soviet era the Caspian had served mainly as a north-south sea link between Iran and Russia. Thanks to these initiatives arising from both the Caucasus and Central Asia the Caspian has been transformed into a major corridor of east-west transport.  To achieve this, the littoral countries—Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan –have constructed modern new ports at Aylat, Aktau, and Turkmenbashi to serve what they expect to be the massive growth of east-west and west-east transport over the coming years. All three of these mega-projects will pour goods through Anaklia and will in turn serve as entrepots for goods being sent east from Anaklia.

How does China figure in this picture, and especially its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)? Announced in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, BRI mapped out infrastructure projects that would be necessary in order to create a global transport network centering on China. Significantly, it also created a fund that could eventually reach hundreds of billions of dollars, to be parceled out mainly as loans to partner countries so as to enable them to pay for the construction of roads, railroads, and ports on their territory.

Notwithstanding the fact that all of the above projects appear on Chinese maps of the BRI network, they were—with one exception—funded entirely by the countries themselves and not by China. The exception was the road and railroad across Kazakhstan, which received partial funding from China beginning in the 1990s. For both countries this was a strategic decision. Kazakhstan saw these loans as the only way to open east-west transport across the country and to break Russia’s monopoly over its foreign trade, and China saw it as essential to preventing its trade with Europe from becoming totally dependent on Russia’s Trans-Siberian Railroad.

Meanwhile, the Government of Georgia moved quickly to expand its relations with China and to make sure that its Anaklia project would occupy a significant place on China’s global transport maps. It had already convened a “Silk Road Forum” in Tbilisi in 2015 and then in 2017 held a “Belt and Road Forum,” with strong representation from China. Georgia also bought twenty-eight Chinese freight locomotives and agreed to collaborate with China on developing both its energy network and agriculture. By that year China had become Georgia’s third largest trading partner, an increase of forty times since 2002, and had taken out loans from six different Chinese financial institutions.

These developments might tempt one to conclude that Georgia has been thoroughly drawn into China’s transport orbit and perhaps developed a dangerous financial dependency as well. This appears not to be the case. It is true that Chinese firms have invested in the free industrial zone at Poti, one of Georgia‘s two other Black Sea ports, but the sums involved are not large, and the U.S. is an active participant in the more important project, namely, upgrading Poti’s port. And it is also true that the Anaklia project is expected to receive up to $400 million in loans from the diversified pool of four European, American, and Asian financial institutions, with China’s new Asian Infrastructure Development Bank providing only 25% of the total. Further funding comes from the Government of Georgia and private Georgian investors.

Thus, the fact that Anaklia appears with a star on recent Chinese maps of BRI does not mean that China controls it either directly or indirectly, through debt. To their credit, the Georgians have worked out a constructive relationship to China and BRI, just as they have done with Europe and TRASECA. China has even broached further transport projects with Tbilisi. But Georgians are far too protective of their sovereignty to allow China to control them through debt.

From top to bottom Anaklia has a strong Atlanticist stamp. SSA Marine of Seattle, one of the world’s largest port managers, will run Anaklia’s terminal. Bob Watters, SSA Marine’s senior vice president, sees the growth of Anaklia’s cargo port as “very exciting.” Anaklia City’s judicial and mediation services are expected to operate on the basis of British law. German, Swiss, and Danish logistics giants are expected to dominate west-east shipping. Mamuka Khazaradze, a Georgian entrepreneur and banker who founded and presides over TBC Holding, the founding member of the Anaklia Development Consortium.

It is no secret that what was once the southern border of the Soviet Union is today one of the world’s major geopolitical fault-lines. Recent events in Ukraine and Crimea vividly remind us that that that line runs from the Black Sea straight through the South Caucasus, from Georgia to Azerbaijan. Inevitably, it involves not only the new ports at Anaklia and Aylat but their counterparts on the eastern shore of the Caspian as well: Kazakhstan’s Aktau and Turkmenistan’s Turkmenbashi. Georgians have not forgotten the Russian army’s invasion of their country in August 2008, nor can they ignore the pressure Moscow is exerting against Ukraine’s Black Sea ports at Kerch, Berdyansk, and Mariupol. However, for the time being Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, have kept their silence about Anaklia. To be sure, in an interview with Russian journalist D. Aslomov, Lavrov hinted that Russia would respond to any military activity in Anaklia, but he went no further.[2] Perhaps he and Putin want to avoid further conflict with Europe and America or, more likely, are not prepared to oppose something favored by its nominal ally, China. Or perhaps they have concluded that the new port does Russia no harm and could even benefit its impoverished and conflicted provinces in the North Caucasus.

If Anaklia poses no direct threat to Russia, it will be a positive boon to Central and East European countries that were once under Moscow’s sway. For Poland, it mitigates the risk of depending on the unreliable Belarus-Russia border and the railroad line running south to Kazakhstan, which Russia could close at any time. Polish goods will be able to reach Anaklia through the Krakow-Constanza route or via Katowice and Odessa. Indeed, Polish producers are already looking to Anaklia as the gateway through which they can reach markets in Central Asia, China, the Middle East, and India. Similarly, Romania will benefit by being linked to the East through its major port of Constanza, while other Central European countries will gain similar access via the Rhine-Danube Corridor and its direct link to Constanza. Meanwhile, of course, Europe’s Mediterranean and North Seas ports will be able to send goods to the entire East through Anaklia. If this happens, Georgia’s new port will have enabled Poland to implement its centuries-old dream of connecting the Baltic and Black Seas.

At first glance Turkey might seem to pose a problem for Anaklia. Has it not invested heavily in the railroad connecting Baku and Istanbul by way of northeastern Anatolia? But Georgia has been a partner in that Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project from the beginning and sees the rail and sea links not as competitors but as complementary to one another. Moreover, Anaklia will give eastern Turkey’s agricultural hinterland ready access to a deep-sea port, whence foodstuffs can be sent to diverse markets on several continents.  Much the same can be said of northern Iran. To be sure, the Iranians are working hard to complete a modern rail line from Turkey to its new Gulf of Oman port and free trade zone at Chabahar, currently under Indian management. This could eventually provide competition to the railroad running between Baku and Istanbul, although important impediments (of which sanctions are only one) would first have to be overcome.  But if shippers from India wish to get their goods to northern Europe or North America, a far more efficient route than sending them by rail from Chabahar to Istanbul would be to trans-ship them directly to Anaklia via the railroad connection through Baku.

Finally, we should note the potential value of Anaklia to the countries of Central Asia. Uzbekistan, for example, is the world’s fourth largest producer of raw cotton, much of which it still markets through the distant Baltic ports, which they reach via the Russian railroad network. Both Tajikistan and Turkmenistan grow cotton as well, and share Uzbekistan’s difficulties in getting their crop to market. Anaklia could greatly speed this process and also cut costs.  Other products of landlocked Central Asia could reach markets more efficiently by being shipped from the eastern Caspian ports of Aktau or Turkmenbashi to Aylat in Azerbaijan and thence by a short overland trip to Anaklia.

These scenarios are undeniably attractive and would seem to justify the cost and labor involved in creating a completely new port and commercial center. But are they the whole story?  What are the pitfalls that might befall the Anaklia project and which of these have the potential to delay or even prevent its full development?  A sober answer to this question must be included in any fair assessment of this $2.5 billion project.

A first factor that threatens to dim Anaklia’s luster is the sheer inefficiency of the TRASECA corridor to date. Over the entire decade since 2010 the transit of European goods through Georgia and Azerbaijan has steadily declined.  Border crossings have often slowed to a snail’s pace and tariffs along the route have been volatile, even though signed agreements should have prevented this.  Bluntly, the European Union’s vaunted TRASECA Corridor is by no means competitive today and shows few signs of becoming so in the immediate future. EU offices face more urgent tasks and many of the countries along the TRASECA route from western Europe to Georgia and Azerbaijan are preoccupied with what they consider more immediate problems. Of course, Anaklia itself will create pressure to improve this situation, but there is as yet no sign that the EU will initiate the process.

In the absence of a functioning deep-water port on Georgia’s Black Sea coast, and with the Caspian ports of Aktau and Aylat only now beginning to flourish, nearly all cargo from China has reached Europe by crossing Kazakhstan and then diverting northward to Russia’s Trans-Siberian Railroad, and thence to northern Germany. Anaklia, working in tandem with Aktau and Aylat, should attract a significant part of this Europe-bound trade to the Caucasus route, i.e., to the EU’s TRASECA. The exact extent of this shift will depend less on governments than the judgment of the market.  At any rate, China itself seeks to make greater use of the Caucasus route and therefore has supported Anaklia.

A major long-term argument against the viability of Anaklia is that China’s productivity is bound to decline over the coming decades as its labor force shrinks and the number of its retirees soars. Demographic data confirm that this process has begun, and is unstoppable.[3] This development will limit Chinese production and hence China-Europe trade. Tending towards the same outcome would be a greater emphasis on high-value-added goods, which may mean less bulk to be transported.

Meanwhile, the size of the labor force of the Indian sub-continent (India, Pakistan, and Bangla Desh) is soaring while the number of its retirees remains relatively small. With a labor force that will be twice the size of China’s within a generation, it is all but inevitable that the Indian sub-continent will become a world economic center, as indeed is already happening. This will generate great demand for east-west transport, which will be met by a combination of sea and land routes. The Great India Road, India’s counterpart to the Silk Road to China, is older and longer than the China route. Until it was cut by the Soviet borders, it also carried more goods and was less frequently interrupted than the Silk Road between China and Europe. This route went straight to the Caspian shores at Baku, Azerbaijan and thence to the Black Sea.

The revival of this long-forgotten Great India Road will more than make up for any long-term decline of Chinese shipping through Anaklia that might occur. Indeed, the first steps towards this revival are already being taken. Thus, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan are working to revive what they call the Lapis Lazuli Corridor from their common border clear to Europe via the Caucasus.  And only recently Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Russia signed a deal to complete the rail connection across the width of Afghanistan to Peshawar in Pakistan.  Meanwhile, two newly built ports on the Arabian Sea– Pakistan’s Gwadar and Iran‘s Chabahar– will enable goods shipped from the East to proceed westward by land, with the route through the Caucasus to Anaklia being a strong option.

There is no lack of hypothetical impediments to the future success of Anaklia. Among them, none is more compelling than the possibility of continued low international prices on oil. This would reduce the cost of shipping goods from China to Europe by sea and could therefore cut into the volume of land cargo from the East that should feed Anaklia. But that shift would at the same time benefit Anaklia by reducing shipping cost for the deep-sea vessels it will accommodate. In other words, like all the other potentially retarding factors discussed here, there are good reasons to think that this one may not prove significant, if it emerges at all.

On the other side of the ledger are the many potential benefits that Anaklia may bring. First, it will facilitate trade and interaction between Europe and China. China’s BRI has elicited a skeptical response from many in the West and many elsewhere as well. However, neither in the Caucasus nor in Central Asia are the declared interests of China, Europe and the United States in conflict. In fact, these are regions where one could imagine East and West working out practical understandings. If Anaklia could help bring that about, it will have been an agent of compromise in a situation otherwise defined by conflict.

Second, Anaklia–port and city–will be as the biggest development project ever undertaken in the western Caucasus. As such, it has the potential to impact positively on the entire region, including both Russia’s North Caucasus, Armenia, northern Iran, and the poorer regions of western Georgia itself.  In light of the fact that these regions have been several times been riven by conflict since the collapse of the USSR, the economic and social development Anaklia fosters is bound to be beneficial.

Third, the benefits this new port and commercial center will bring to Georgia itself are notable. They will create thousands of jobs, most of them requiring modern skills and a significant number of them being in emerging sectors of technology and finance. This in turn will diversify Georgia’s economy and make it more self-sustaining, which in turn will render the society more modern and forward looking. Anaklia looks both east and west, but its strongest impact on Georgia will be to strengthen its ties with Europe and the Atlantic world. Georgians themselves have already declared integration with European life and culture to be their strategic objective. By offering European economies a new path by which their products can reach the East, it will strengthen Europe’s appreciation of Georgia, not just as an attractive if curious distant land but as a country that contributes directly to Europe’s own welfare.

These and many other considerations underscore the value and importance of Anaklia for the United States. True, it will bring profits and jobs to the port’s builder, Conti Group of New Jersey, and to SSA Marine of Seattle, which will oversee its operations. And by expanding the channels for continental trade across Eurasia, Anaklia (and the upgraded but smaller port at nearby Poti) will create opportunities for American manufacturers and their branches in Europe, and for American firms in such diverse areas as shipping, logistics, insurance, hotels, and storage. These important developments will all have a positive impact regionally, involving equally Azerbaijan and its new port at Aylat, and both Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, with their new Caspian ports. Others who will benefit from the expanded corridor created by Anaklia will include Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, all of which figure prominently among U.S. interests. Such developments will help both Washington and Brussels to define a new strategy towards the Caucasus and Central Asia, one that stresses continental trade through the region, and which is prepared to find common cause with other powers–including China, Russia, and India–so long as they respect the sovereignty and self-determination of both regions. In the end, Anaklia benefits all countries that seek a new order in the Caucasus and Central Asia based not on confrontation and interference but on trade and cooperation.

Anaklia is a fifty-two year project and it is only now beginning its second year.  Many aspects of its future development have yet to be worked out, and its impact on the world around it for now remains hypothetical. What is already clear, however, is that Georgians are capable of conceiving, planning, and carrying out highly complex and significant projects that serve their country, their region, and the world.  Not bad for a country of 3.75 million that is better known for its wine and tourism than for its contribution to continental commerce.

[1] NUMBEO is a crowd-sourced global data base covering consumer prices, perceived crime rates, quality of health care, etc.

[2] https://toinformistoinfluence.com/2018/12/17/interview-with-sergei-lavrov-a-peek-into-the-bizarre-language-of-russian-propaganda/.

[3] See S. Frederick Starr, “From Thailand to Hamburg: Eurasia’s Emerging Southern Corridor,”   Horizon, (Belgrade), 2018, No. 11, pp. 2 ff.

S. Frederick Starr is chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute with offices at American Foreign Policy Council in Washington and, the Institute for Development and Security Studies, Stockholm. He is the author of LOST ENLIGHTENMENT: CENTRAL ASIA’S GOLDEN AGE, now translated into 21 languages.
 

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  • Protests in Georgia | Laura Linderman
    Monday, 18 November 2024 16:37

     

    In Georgia, opposition parties have accused the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party of stealing recent elections, leading to protests and calls for an investigation into electoral violations. Discrepancies between official results and exit polls have sparked demands for snap elections supervised by an international body. The European Union has called for a thorough inquiry into allegations of voter intimidation and multiple voting. The protests are also a response to fears of Georgia shifting closer to Russia, with Western support at stake. The situation could lead to EU sanctions, further complicating Georgia’s aspirations for EU and NATO membership.

    For more details, check out the video.

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  • Greater Central Asia as a Component of U.S. Global Strategy
    Monday, 07 October 2024 13:50

    By S. Frederick Starr

    Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program
    Silk Road Paper
    October 2024

    Click to Download PDF

    Introduction

    Screenshot 2024-10-07 at 9.55.36 AMWhat should be the United States’ strategy towards Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the region of Greater Central Asia (GCA) as a whole? Should it even have one? Unlike most other world regions, these lands did not figure in US policy until the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Though the new Baltic states entered Washington’s field of vision in that year, in those cases the Department of State could recall and build upon America’s relations with independent Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania during the inter-war decades. For the US Government after 1991, GCA was defined less as sovereign states than as a group of “former Soviet republics” that continued to be perceived mainly through a Russian lens, if at all.  

    Over the first generation after 1991 US policy focused on developing electoral systems, market economies, anti-narcotics programs, individual and minority rights, gender equality, and civil society institutions to support them. Congress itself defined these priorities and charged the Department of State to monitor progress in each area and to issue detailed country-by-country annual reports on progress or regression. The development of programs in each area and the compilation of data for the reports effectively preempted many other areas of potential US concern. Indeed, it led to the neglect of such significant issues as intra-regional relations, the place of these countries in global geopolitics, security in all its dimensions, and, above all, their relevance to America’s core interests. On none of these issues did Congress demand annual written reports.  

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    Today this picture has dramatically changed, and the changes all arise from developments outside the former Soviet states. First came America’s precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which brought important consequences. As the U.S. withdrew, new forces—above all China but also Russia and the Gulf States—moved in. Also, America’s pullout undercut the region’s champions of moderate Islam and reimposed a harsh Islamist regime in their midst. And, finally, because Central Asians have always considered Afghanistan as an essential part of their region and not just an inconvenient neighbor, they judged the abrupt U.S. pullout as a body blow to the region as a whole. Now the scene was dominated not by the U.S. but by China and Russia competing with each other. Both powers presented themselves as the new bulwarks of GCA security, and reduced the U.S. to a subordinate role. 

    While all this was going on, the expansion of China’s navy and of both Chinese and European commercial shipping called into question the overriding importance of transcontinental railroad lines and hence of GCA countries. Taken together, these developments marginalized the concerns and assumptions upon which earlier US strategy towards GCA had been based. With Afghanistan no longer a top priority, American officials refocused their attention on Beijing, Moscow, Ukraine, Israel, and Iran, in the process, increasing the psychological distance between Washington and the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus.  

    It did not help that no U.S. president had ever visited Central Asia or the Caucasus. This left the initiative on most issues to the GCA leaders themselves. Thus, it was Kazakhstan and not the State Department that proposed to the U.S. government to establish the C5+1 meetings. It was also thanks to pressure from regional leaders that the White House arranged for a first-ever (but brief) meeting between Central Asian presidents and the President of the United States, which took place in September 2023 on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. By comparison, over the previous year Messrs. Putin and Xi Jinping had both met with the regional presidents half a dozen times. Hoping against hope, the Central Asian leaders hailed the C5+1 meeting as a fresh start in their relations with Washington. Washington has done little to validate this 

     

    Additional Info
    • Author S. Frederick Starr
    • Publication Type Silk Road Paper
    • Published in/by CACI
    • Publishing date October 2024
  • Press-Release: The "International Kazak Language Society" Presented the Kazakh Translation of "Geniuses of their Time Ibn Sina, Biruni and Lost Enlightenment", in Washington DC
    Tuesday, 22 October 2024 13:36

     

     

    PRESS-RELEASE

    THE INTERNATIONAL “KAZAK LANGUAGE” SOCIETY PRESENTED THE KAZAKH TRANSLATION OF “GENIUSES OF THEIR TIME. IBN SINA, BIRUNI AND LOST ENLIGHTENMENT”, IN WASHINGTON D.C.

     

    Author Dr. Frederick Starr places great importance on  making his work accessible to a broad audience

    October 21, 2024, Washington D.C. | The American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) in Washington, D.C., hosted the presentation of the Kazakh translation of the book, “Geniuses of Their Age: Ibn Sina, Biruni, and the Lost Enlightenment”, authored by the renowned American historian Dr. Frederick Starr. This translation was initiated and realized by the International Kazakh Language Society (Qazaq Tili), with the support of Freedom Holding Corp., and in collaboration with the Embassy of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the USA.

    Dr. Starr's book, “The Genius of Their Age: Ibn Sina, Biruni, and the Lost Enlightenment “, explores the lives and contributions of two outstanding figures of the Eastern Enlightenment, Ibn Sina and Biruni, whose intellectual legacies shaped both Eastern and Western thought. It highlights their significant contributions to science, medicine, and philosophy, and their role in the broader development of human knowledge. A major portion of the narrative details their biographies, achievements, and the lasting impact of their work on the intellectual heritage of the world.

    This is the second translation of Dr. Starr's work into Kazakh, following the successful release of his first book, “Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane” by the International Kazakh Language Society.

     

    The translation of this latest work was inspired by and aligns with the vision outlined in Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s recent article, “Renaissance of Central Asia: On the Path to Sustainable Development and Prosperity.” In support of promoting a shared vision for Central Asian prosperity, the book, which sheds light on the region’s profound intellectual legacy, was translated into Kazakh and made accessible to the public.

    The book presentation was attended by the author of the book Dr. Frederick Starr, member of the Board of Directors of Freedom Holding Corp. Kairat Kelimbetov, and Rauan Kenzhekhan, President of the International Kazakh Language Society (Qazak Tii).

    "This book is a tribute to the brilliant minds of Ibn Sina and Biruni, who made monumental contributions to science and thought long before the European Renaissance. The book also honors other scholars such as al-Farabi, al-Khwarizmi, Omar Khayyam, Abu-Mahmud Khujandi, al-Ferghani, and others whose names have entered the world's intellectual heritage. These two geniuses from Central Asia not only pioneered in various fields of knowledge but also developed research methods that are still relevant today,” said Kairat Kelimbetov, member of the Board of Directors of Freedom Holding Corp. 

     

    Rauan Kenzhekhanuly, the President of the International Kazakh Language Society, emphasized the significance of making Dr. Starr's work accessible to Kazakh readers: "The translation of this book into Kazakh is significant for us. Dr. Starr's work offers profound insights into Central Asia's historical contributions to global knowledge and underscores the region’s role as a vibrant hub of intellectual and scientific discourse during the Enlightenment. By reconnecting with the foundations of our region's 'golden age' and learning from both its successes and declines, we can pave the way for a collective future of prosperity and innovation."

    The book was translated and published by the International "Kazakh Language" (Qazak Tili) Society with the support of Freedom Holding Corp. Thanks to the support of the American Foreign Policy Council and Rumsfeld Foundation for hosting and partnering. 

    The International "Kazakh Language" Society (Qazak Tii: www.til.kz) is the largest non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and promoting the Kazakh language and cultural heritage. Through education, translation projects, and international collaborations, the organization aims to bridge cultures and empower future generations to embrace their identity while contributing to a more interconnected and culturally diverse world.

    Freedom Holding Corp. is an international investment company that provides a range of services, including brokerage, dealer, and depositary services, as well as securities management and banking services. The company was founded in 2013 by Timur Turlov, a Kazakh entrepreneur and financier.

    The book is available in the libraries of educational institutions in Kazakhstan, the digital version can be accessed for free on the Kitap.kz portal.

  • Dysfunctional centralization and growing fragility under Taliban rule
    Wednesday, 11 September 2024 14:35

    By Sayed Madadi

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    Ever hungrier population

    According to the most recent data from the World Bank, Afghanistan is now the poorest country in the world and the per capita income has declined to 2006 levels. The Taliban’s return to power exacerbated an already worrisome economic and humanitarian situation. Pushed to the brink by recurrent droughts, chronic cycles of violence, and poor governance, the insurgent offensive that captured Kabul last August created a shockwave that neither the economy nor the people could absorb. Before 2021, the latest poverty rate in Afghanistan was 47% and 35% of people reported that they were unable to meet their basic needs for food and other essential goods. Now, according to the World Bank and the United Nations, more than 95% of the population is poor, with more than 70% suffering from food insecurity. In an undiversified and limited economy that does not have much to offer, only a staggeringly low 2% said that they did not face limitations in spending. Rising prices caused by high inflation, the liquidity crisis, and a massive drop in international trade, coupled with sharply decreased household incomes, have reduced purchasing power for millions and increased unemployment to record levels, even as an estimated 600,000 people enter the labor force annually.

    Many of these sources of fragility, of course, existed before the Taliban came to power. For over a century, Kabul has grown in monetary wealth, human capital, and opportunities at the expense of the rest of Afghanistan. The economic wealth and metropolitan character of the capital has come with the centralization of state power and revenue collection since 1880. For decades, lack of opportunities — and later on conflict — brought the best and the brightest from around Afghanistan to the capital, thus gradually draining the provinces of intellectual capital and economic resources. Historically, the Kabul-based kings gave land titles and trade monopolies to traditional power-holders in return for revenue, while the latter extorted the local population to raise what was required to pay Kabul. The central state relied on the periphery for resources, soldiers, and legitimacy, but hardly provided anything in return.

    The 2004 constitutional architecture did little, if anything, to change that. As foreign funding flowed in at unprecedented levels, the concentration of political power and economic planning in the capital continued to draw resources and talent from the periphery, eroding the foundations of local resilience. Local and provincial power holders and economic tycoons survived only because they maintained strong ties with those who controlled financial wealth and political decision-making at the center. The immense wealth that the Karzais gained in the south or the riches that Atta Mohammad Noor was able to raise in the north were not possible without the backing of central authorities, which in both cases were highly formalized: Ahmad Wali Karzai was the head of Kandahar’s provincial council and Atta served as the governor of the lucrative Balkh Province for over a decade. Staggering levels of corruption and state capture enabled a select group to easily gain control of the country’s economic riches and move them abroad.

    The population was already struggling by the time the Taliban returned to power. Studies and analysis by the U.N., the World Bank, and independent observers had long warned about increasing poverty, unemployment, and cyclical droughts. After last August, the depletion of human resources and economic wealth and the withdrawal of the international presence in Kabul disrupted value production and business enterprise around the country. The crisis has left millions of people helpless, not only because of their reliance on the Kabul-centric legal regulatory framework, but also because most of the job market — the public sector and the NGOs — was funded by donor money from Kabul. The full international withdrawal shrank the economy by more than one-third and the implications of the political crisis disrupted the markets for much longer than the country could afford. After severe drought and conflict displaced over 700,000 people last year, hundreds of thousands have left Afghanistan since August 2021 in search of a better life.

    The Taliban's inability and unwillingness to provide public services and reinvigorate economic activity led to the further deterioration of living conditions and heightened the people’s vulnerability. The World Bank reported that more than 81% of household heads were self-employed after Aug. 15, 2021. An absolute majority of them are not business owners but job seekers turning to physical labor and street vending to avoid starvation. The Taliban authorities claim that they have increased revenue collection at border crossings, mainly by curbing corruption and expanding ports with taxable trade. However, the regime does not provide even basic public services such as education and health with that revenue. For example, nearly half of schools are closed as the Taliban still refuse to allow girls to access secondary education, resulting in a major decline in public spending. Most of the health infrastructure is supported through international humanitarian aid by the U.N. and ICRC, and the extravagant Afghan National Defense and Security Forces no longer exist. On top of that, only a fraction of public servants go to work, and after months of delays they now receive far lower salaries based on the regime’s new pay scale — labor earnings in the public sector have declined by 69%.

    Therefore, without offering social protection, public services, and economic opportunities, the centralized revenue collection continues to further deplete the provinces of resources that could otherwise help them mitigate the risks of economic and environmental shocks. The Taliban's interference in the distribution of humanitarian aid takes away from the neediest people their only means of survival in the midst of destitution, further compounding local fragility. Despite a year of trials and the infusion of more than $2 billion in aid into Afghanistan, the economic and humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate. Although conventional humanitarian assistance programs help people get by in the short term, they also reinforce a relationship of dependency on aid without developing opportunities for employment and private enterprise, thus reinforcing deeper vulnerability. These approaches — coupled with the Taliban’s centralized and unaccountable governance — build on ineffective modalities that disenfranchise local communities, compound economic deprivation, exacerbate environmental shocks, and intensify human suffering.

    A totalitarian regime

    The political and human rights situation has equally deteriorated under the Taliban. While the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission says more than 1,500 people have been killed by the regime since last August, some independent observer groups report that around 2,000 civilians from the Hazara ethnic community alone have been killed. Protests by women have been repeatedly suppressed and participants have been imprisoned, tortured, and killed. The government is populated entirely by Taliban clerics, excluding all other political forces and non-Pashtun groups. The persecution of Tajiks in the name of quelling the military resistance in the north and of Hazaras justified by ethno-sectarian divisions — the latter are mostly Shi’a — continue. Afghanistan is the only country in the world that prevents girls from getting an education by barring them from secondary schools. Most women cannot work, and a woman’s political agency and social status are tied to that of a man, who has to accompany her, fully veiled, anywhere she goes outside the home. According to Reporters Without Borders, 40% of all media outlets in the country have disappeared and 60% of journalists have lost their jobs. The figure for female journalists is even higher, at 76%.

    The Taliban have managed to consolidate their power within an Islamic Emirate that borrows significantly in structural design from its predecessor Islamic Republic, rather than introducing a new institutional architecture. Save for a few tweaks, the broader framework of the system has remained the same. The judiciary system, for example, and its relationship with the head of state have not changed. The Taliban have kept most political and governance institutions as they were, filling positions across the ministries and provinces with their own appointees. The major institutional change the Taliban have brought has been the removal of elections to establish popular legitimacy: The head of state is now a divinely mandated supreme leader, and there is no legislative branch. These alterations, while substantial on paper, have not changed much in practice. Given the highly centralized nature of the republic with an overly powerful president at the top, electoral processes had failed to produce either legitimacy or accountability for much of the last two decades. In many instances, elections provided opportunities for embezzlement and corruption by enabling actors with ulterior motives to buy votes and then abuse public office to enrich themselves. This was particularly true in the case of the parliament and provincial councils, institutions captured by a handful of kleptocrats who failed to keep an overly strong executive in check.

    The binary division of a republic versus an emirate was what bogged down the peace talks until they fell apart in the run-up to the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul. The fact that the group has consolidated its power through the very system it so vehemently rejected says a lot about the actual democratic character of the centralized political institutions. The narrowing of the public space under the Taliban, for example, indicates that the degree of openness for debate and democratic practices before 2021 was not necessarily a byproduct of a meticulous institutional design that checked the use of power and ensured accountability. Rather, it was attributable to the personal commitment to democratic values of those in control. For over a decade, Hamid Karzai, who ruled through tribal consensus and appeasement, enabled a conducive environment in which a vibrant media industry and civil society took root. Across Afghanistan, especially in Kabul and other key urban centers, demonstrations against the government were ubiquitous.

    After 2014 when Ashraf Ghani came to power, the democratic space began to shrink for a variety of reasons, chief among them the intolerance of the president and his inner circle. Crackdowns on public protests, silencing of independent media and civil society, and marginalization of political opponents and critics, including through the use of force, became increasingly common. In order to act with the utmost impunity, Ghani maintained a facade of accountability through the ministries while monopolizing state functions by creating parallel institutions at his own office. Since last August, the Taliban, undeterred by any prospects of accountability, have further centralized the structure by removing the subsidiary units of the Arg, Afghanistan’s presidential palace, and have instead directly utilized the formal government bureaucracy to consolidate their power, implement their extremist views of what an Islamic society should look like, and silence any voices of dissent. In other words, the centralized political and governance institutions of the former republic were unaccountable enough that they now comfortably accommodate the totalitarian objectives of the Taliban without giving the people any chance to resist peacefully.

    What lies ahead

    The Taliban, who claimed to represent rural Afghanistan, have further oppressed and marginalized Afghans outside Kabul as their core members continue to settle in the now dual capitals of Kabul and Kandahar. The Taliban’s thinking about governance based on a rigid interpretation of religion and ethnonationalist politics, as much as it evolves in practice over time, has further centralized political decision-making and economic resources in the hands of a few. As economic resources become more scarce, wealth will be controlled by those who hold political power at the highest levels.

    This will only deepen the drivers of fragility and conflict, including poverty, exclusion, and discrimination. With drought likely to become an annual occurrence by 2030, the financial and banking crisis set to continue for the foreseeable future, and the economy expected to keep shrinking, people across Afghanistan are becoming increasingly vulnerable. Moreover, the unsustainably large but still inadequate humanitarian aid budget, which has offered a minimal lifeline to the country, will be in danger of getting smaller in light of recent security developments that further limit the parameters of international engagement with the regime. The United States has reportedly withheld talks about the possible unfreezing of Afghanistan’s central bank assets held by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the U.N. Security Council has not extended travel exemptions for 13 Taliban leaders. These developments also mean that potential foreign investment, even from friendly partners of the regime, such as China, will likely take a long time to materialize. The overall impact of all of this will be to push Afghans across the country further and deeper into cycles of economic deprivation and political instability with substantial implications for health, education, and human rights, especially for women and children.

    However, as much as centralization allows the Taliban to consolidate power in the short run, it equally makes its long-term survival unlikely. The group led a highly decentralized, mobile insurgency where local commanders oversaw the war in their areas in whatever way they saw fit. That was vital to withstand the republican army and its partners, as well as recruit non-Pashtun commanders in the north, which later proved fatal to the republic. But now they are struggling to transform from a decentralized insurgency into a centralized government and what were previously strengths have become weaknesses. Commanders such as Fasihuddin, once trusted with complete authority, are expected to give up their autonomy and obey orders. The regime is also facing difficulties integrating key battlefield leaders into its new official structures in an appropriate way, as the appointment of Qayum Zaker to an arbitrary assignment managing the resistance in Panjshir illustrates. These trends stemming from the centralization of power will eventually push away those who were key to the Taliban’s success — similar to how President Ghani’s exclusionary politics alienated the republic’s natural allies. The Taliban have long prioritized their cohesion over any other political objective. Now, unable to govern and unwilling to share power with other political forces, the centralized regime’s disintegration becomes increasingly inevitable — and arguably has been expedited — as it fails to incorporate even its own senior political and military leadership into decision-making processes.

    Sayed Madadi is a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy’s International Forum for Democratic Studies and a Nonresident Scholar with the Middle East Institute’s Afghanistan and Pakistan Studies Program. You can follow him on Twitter @MadadiSaeid. The opinions expressed in this piece are his own.

     Read at Middle East Institute