Page 3 - Small Stans and Causcasus Outlook 2022

Executive summary

For the ‘minor Stans’—Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan—as
well as to a lesser, but still profound, extent across the South
Caucasus, the year started with a real shock to the system in Central
Asia as social unrest broke out across Kazakhstan. The Kazakh
‘palace’, perhaps questioning the loyalties of the security services and
armed forces, even invited in Russian troops to ensure the subsequent
crackdown was thorough. How Kazakhstan’s clans now go about
settling the redistribution of wealth and assets (between themselves
and to a smaller extent for the population) will have clear ramifications
across the region in both politics and economic policy. As will what the
stunning episode will do for Moscow’s influence across the ex-Soviet
Stans and Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.

Kyrgyzstan will this year see further moves by populist autocrat Sadyr
Japarov, a leader who at first struggled to gain acceptance from the
Kremlin after taking the presidency following an uprising at the end of
2020, consolidate his illiberal power. Like all the Stans, the country may
also experience further substantial impacts on agriculture from drought
conditions driven by climate change. The China debt trap is another
worry.

That’s also the case for Tajikistan, a slightly less prosperous nation than
Kyrgyzstan, making it Central Asia’s poorest. The neighbours will no
doubt remain at odds over their longstanding, intricate border
disputes—which flared up into armed clashes last year—but a bigger
concern for Tajikistan, as it is also for Uzbekistan, is the situation in
Afghanistan. If Afghanistan under the internationally shunned Taliban
regime falls into chaos—economic and humanitarian catastrophes
could well eventuate—there could be serious spillover effects, possibly
even involving militants at the border for Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and
perhaps also for the third Stan that neighbours Afghanistan,
Turkmenistan.

Remote, tightly controlled autocracy Turkmenistan remains an
economic basket case (note the lack of data on the country in this
report; reliable information is just not available) with little more than its
one big plan: export more gas to China. Actually, tell a lie, the Turkmens
are also pursuing hopes of sustainable arrangements with the Taliban
that will allow them to build the long-sought-after TAPI pipeline to transit
gas to Pakistan and India, via Afghanistan, but with the US now more
or less out of the regional picture, the financing of it could come into
question. There are some hints, meanwhile, that possibly the most
bizarre ‘personality cult’ dictator of them all, Turkmenistan’s Gurbanguly
Berdimuhamedov, might be planning, this spring, to vacate the throne

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