Page 60 - bne IntelliNews monthly magazine May 2024

60 Opinion
bne May 2024
PANNIER
Caspian military drills that exclude Russia and Iran have some people in Moscow asking questions
Bruce Pannier
Five countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) are planning to conduct military exercises and Russia is not one them.
At the conclusion of a meeting of the defence ministers of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan on April 4 in the Kazakh Caspian coastal city of Aktau, the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry’s press service announced that the Birlestik-2024 (Unification 2024) military drills would take place in Kazakhstan this July.
The announcement said that troops from all five countries would participate but did not specify how many.
The exercises were described as “operational-tactical command and staff exercises” aimed at carrying out “combat training tasks in... a zone of armed conflict.”
The Birlestik-2024 drills will be held on Kazakh territory at the Oymasha training grounds in the western Mangystau Province and at Cape Tokmok, south of Aktau on Kazakhstan’s Caspian coast.
Unusually, Azerbaijani troops will link up with Central Asian military forces for the drills (Credit: president.az, cc-by-sa 4.0).
www.bne.eu
With the instability brought about by the Russia and Ukraine conflict, the need for higher defence and security footings is all too apparent in capitals across Central Asia and the Caucasus. / mod.gov.az
Kazakhstan’s troops have conducted joint exercises with Russian troops at Oymasha several times, and also with Uzbek forces.
The inclusion of Azerbaijan in these exercises is intriguing.
In various combinations, the four Central Asian states involved in the Birlestik exercises have conducted military exercises many times since their 1991 independence,
notably after the Taliban seized Kabul in September 1996
and continued their advance northward through Afghanistan toward the Central Asian border.
Russian, Tajik and Uzbek troops held drills along the Afghan border in early August 2021 as the last foreign troops were leaving Afghanistan and the situation there was falling apart.
Troops from the Emergency Situations Ministries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan conducted training in Kazakhstan’s Almaty Province in late September that year.
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and in the past have joined troops from two other member states, Russia and China (and later India and Pakistan),
for exercises on the territory of one or more of the Central Asian countries. The SCO holds its “Peace Mission” exercises biennially. Central Asian states send servicemen to participate. The latest one was in 2023.
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are members of
the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Uzbekistan has twice been a CSTO member. Its last withdrawal from the defence bloc was in 2012.
The CSTO regularly conducts drills with its members.
A notable moment for the CSTO came in January 2022 when it deployed a small force to guard key facilities in Kazakhstan during that month’s widespread unrest.