Russia\'s Nezavisimaya Gazeta (Independent Newspaper) published a report about the recent meeting of Common Wealth of Independent States (CIS) deputy foreign ministers in Moscow, but for Uzbek media the meeting was a non-event. What is clear however is the increasing irrelevance of the CIS as an international organization.
The lack of Uzbek interest and the fact that the meeting was for deputy foreign ministers - not head honchos - is an example of its growing obsolescence. The attitude of governments\' is that the CIS is obsolete and its reforms are redundant. But still they hang on to the hope that some kind of advantage, material or political, may be squeezed from it.
The Russian newspaper wrote that the meeting in Moscow discussed, \"How to make the CIS more effective and more capable of rapidly responding to any events and threats.\" And considered \"Establishing a standing body consisting of chief prosecutors, interior ministers, national security, border guard, tax and customs chiefs of the CIS countries.\"
This new body is necessary, as the paper put it, to \"increase the strategic role of the CIS Heads of State Council and relieve the leaders of the CIS countries of deciding less significant issues that could be solved by the relevant ministries and government agencies.\"
This explanation is not entirely plausible, the CIS heads of state are not so busy on the global political stage that they must ignore domestic and regional problems, which it must be said are created largely through their own inaction. CIS leaders appear tired of the organization but are at a loss as to what to do with this useless alliance. However, no one seems to have the guts to disband it in the same manner that the USSR was disbanded almost overnight 13-years ago. Alliances created as alternatives to the CIS such as GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova), Organization of Central Asian Cooperation, CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization, Eurasian Economic Community, and Shanghai Cooperation Organization, are also inefficient.
In the early 1990s, the CIS offer a support mechanism for economic development to Uzbekistan. At the end of 1991 Uzbekistan declared itself to be an independent nation. But President Islam Karimov quickly signed up to the CIS to preserve the country\'s economic links with the industrial powerhouses of the former Soviet Union and to prevent inter-ethnic conflicts as seen in neighboring states.
Over the following three years, Ukraine declared itself to be an associate member of the CIS while never clarifying what that actually meant. Turkmenistan stopped even feigning interest after the promise of economic and political support from Turkey and Iran. The breakaway republics of Trans-Dniestria and Abkhazia sought membership although as \'renegade states\' they were clearly unwelcome. The CIS remained a very loose alliance incapable of even disciplining its army\'s troops who abandoned their duties with impunity to return home.
During the first four years of its existence, members of the CIS signed more than 800 agreements dividing ex-Soviet property and assets, mutual debts were also determined. Russia was forced to shoulder the entire Soviet debt as the former Soviet states blankly refused to have any responsibility for it.
As the engine of integration and a geographical juggernaut, Russia became the leading CIS economy and its former republics became highly dependent on this commercial relationship. In October 1994 members of the CIS approved an Integration Plan to create a unified system of customs and payments along with a grandiose plan for a free trade zone. The document was never implemented even though at that time 70 percent of Uzbekistan\'s foreign trade was with other CIS states, and 60 percent of that with Russia.
Between 1995 and 1998, Uzbekistan entered the international marketplace. Uzbek cotton and gold was in high demand and foreign companies opened national offices and initiated cooperative projects. The European Union increased the import quota for goods in an attempt to woo Central Asian away from \'Big Brother\' Russia.
The feeling in Tashkent was that Russia no longer held the reins of power and Moscow was now described as a \'strategic partner\'. Today as Tashkent orientates itself towards the European Union and the United States, President Karimov may dream of integrating the Uzbek economy with the West. But now, as it has been since the break up of the USSR, without drastic reforms and the guaranteed protection of private property in Uzbekistan, the dream will never materialize.
The CIS remains a talking shop and reforms are rarely implemented. This lack of tangible unity resulted in the informal division of \'blocs within the bloc\' gravitating either towards or away from Russia- pro-Russian (Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan); countries under Russia\'s influence (Armenia, Turkmenistan, Moldova and Georgia); and countries seeking absolute independence from Moscow (Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan).
Even within the single CIS bloc, a kaleidoscope of structures emerged such as the Single Economic Space of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan; the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan; and the Union of Russia and Belarus. These ultimately meaningless institutions set unrealistic and unachievable economic goals and by their very existence emasculated the idea of integration.
Uzbekistan shied away political agreements and assumed no military obligations, preferring to strengthen bilateral relations with each individual CIS country on its own terms. Tashkent also proposed a single emblem and flag for the CIS that would give the Commonwealth a supranational character similar to the European Union.
During the period 1999 to 2002, Uzbekistan quit the CIS Collective Security Treaty and joined GUAM. But the additional \'U\' in the new title GUUAM, stood for little more than \'U-turn\' as no sooner than Uzbekistan joined the organization, it changed its mind and left it.
By the close of 2002, commercial transactions with CIS states represented just 40 percent of Uzbekistan\'s foreign trade. And the dream of an integrated CIS turned into a bureaucratic nightmare as first neutral Turkmenistan and then all the CIS states introduced visa regimes, a universally unpopular move which many citizens branded punitive.
The Taliban invasion of northern Afghanistan cast a dark shadow over Uzbekistan, but not one CIS partner hurried to help Tashkent protect its southern border.
The aftershocks of the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington reverberated through out Central Asia. The US-led \"coalition of the willing\" established Ganci airbase near Bishkek and gained permission to us the local military infrastructure in Uzbekistan and Tajikstan. Russia, deeply perturb by an American presence on its former territories, opened the Kant airbase just kilometers from Ganci and tried to get Tashkent on side by lowering customs duties, offering economic favors and investments in the Uzbek economy. The CIS held a series of meetings in the light of international developments with the focus now determinedly shifted from economic to security concerns. The fight against the common enemy, international terrorism, became the CIS\'s new reason d\'etre.
Meanwhile, the CIS protests against OSCE interference in the region\'s internal affairs. And when Tashkent felt offended by the requirement of the European Bank for Reconstruction adn Development, Moscow was quick to step into the void with promises of investment in oil and agricultural production.
The CIS turned a blind eye to violations during the December 2004 parliamentary elections in Uzbekistan, to the satisfaction of President Karimov. Moscow and Tashkent declare there \'strategic partnership\' to be alive and well and a credible alternative to the United States and Europe.
But such maneuvers are little more than a game. The CIS\'s days are numbered and it is questionable if the Bloc ever had any real political or economic clout.
The recent CIS meeting in Moscow provided another nail in the coffin. It has already been decided to dismantle the organization\'s more useful, or at least promising, structures such as the Council of Defense Ministers, the economic court, and the interstate statistics committee. The CIS Executive Committee is to cut its staff by a third. Of course, the reforms are touted as efficiency measures, but the CIS as it stands serves to prevent rather than promote integration in the post Soviet domain.
Tashkent will support these measures, for a while. So long as an internal challenge to the Uzbek government exists, the CIS will be used as an instrument to protect the political status quo. This - the long arm political regimes - is what the CIS has become.
