Global Policy Forum

by K Gajendra Singh *

In the sleepy Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh early this November, an economic cooperation agreement was signed between China and the 10 nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that will create the world's biggest free trade area when it comes into force on July 1, 2003. It covers 1.7 billion consumers with a GDP totaling US$3.56 trillion with two-way annual trade of $1.2 trillion. The agreement will eliminate tariff and non-tariff barriers on goods and services and will give special differential treatment and flexibility to the newer and poorer ASEAN member states - Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. China also decided to write off its Cambodian debt of about $200 million.

China and the original six ASEAN states - Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand - will be in the free trade zone by 2010, while Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam will join by 2015. The agreement also soothes Southeast Asia's worries over China's entry into the World Trade Organization earlier this year. An ASEAN study estimates that the new agreement will raise ASEAN's exports to China by 48 percent, and China's exports to ASEAN by 55 percent.

China and ASEAN also signed a nonbinding declaration to reduce political and military tension in the South China Sea. China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei have claims to all or part of the strategic and resource-rich sea lanes and islands, such as the Spratlys. Confidence-building measures include prior warnings of military exercises to reduce the chances of conflicts.

A day after the agreement, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi signed an accord to form a free trade area with ASEAN, but the details are vague, being more of a pact for a framework, with Koizumi saying that its realization was at least a decade away.

Observing all of this from the sidelines, and attending such an ASEAN meet for the first time, was India, which declared that it, too, was eager to negotiate a free trade pact with ASEAN. But as many in East and Southeast Asian know, India is often long on words and short on delivery, and the question remains whether the Indian leadership can overcome its geography and its history.

Many believe that the country's destiny lies in the subcontinent, known as Hindustan in history, and with its natural cultural linkages with Turkistan and Iran via Afghanistan that date back over the centuries. These people claim that New Delhi's latest declaration has been made without much thought, and is an attempt to escape from the failure to resolve its current problems with Pakistan and in Kashmir.

The region comprising India, Pakistan and others in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and the Central Asian Republics (CARs) presents a depressing spectacle. Beset with problems of economic underdevelopment, the countries are mired in ethnic, religious, territorial and other disputes and problems.

In Afghanistan, the pro-US Hamid Karzai has not been widely accepted as president outside of Kabul, and the situation remains unstable. Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders and cadres have gone into hiding in southern Afghanistan and Pakistan, especially in the latter's northern mountainous regions and the sprawling city of Karachi. Such elements and ethnic minorities in neighboring states like Tajikistan in and around the Ferghana valley remain a source of constant concern.

And with its policy of strategic depth in Afghanistan unraveled, Pakistan, in spite of joining the US war against terrorism, remains paranoid about Kashmir, where it has not kept its promise to stop cross-border terrorism. Kashmir is in the blood of Pakistanis, said President General Pervez Musharraf. For India, the issue goes to the very backbone of its secular fabric. These opposite perceptions of the Kashmir coin make it a koan (Zen riddle).

Now, more than ever, perhaps, it is time for a fresh, unorthodox look at a canvas extending beyond India and Pakistan. With the sole superpower (the US) now calling the shots, it is pertinent to look for solutions in line with the economic and strategic interests of South Asia and Central Asia that will subsume political and other differences. The first step is to try cutting through the past 150 years of British and Russian colonial fog separating South and Central Asia, which share millennia of history, culture and civilization.

The time is right, then to seriously promote the concept of a free trade zone, and later even an economic community, for the countries of the two regions, shifting the emphasis from the current agenda of ethnic, linguistic and border strife to one of close economic cooperation and integration, as in the Europe Union, or nearer home, ASEAN, and its alliance with China, which should make the leadership in South and Central Asia sit up and take note.

If the Europeans could overcome their vast differences, having constantly fought wars against each other, why can't the South and Central Asians? Meanwhile, they are the only ones unprepared for the world as a new global bazaar and the economic challenges of this century.

Culturally, linguistically, ethnically and spiritually no other regions and people have so much in common. An area with continuous history and the cradle of most civilizations and the majority of the world's religions, where Indo-Iranian and Ural-Altaic languages have mingled with local languages to produce a rich mosaic of tongues.

The region has had a number of incipient and small economic communities in the past. The Persian empire under the Achameneans ruled from Persepolis, stretching from Turkey to Uzbekistan and north India. In 517 BC, Roman emperor Darius ordered Scylax, his Greek subject from Caria (western Turkey) to survey the Indus river, and Herodotus' chapters on Indian history are based on records of that exploration. Under Devputra Kanishka's rule from Peshawar in nowadays Pakistan, traders and preachers moved freely and flourished in his empire, which covered most of Central Asia and Xinjiang down to central and east India. During the 16th century AD, traders moved freely in the empires of the Moghuls of Hindustan, and the Uzbek Shaybani Khans of Khawarizm on the Aral Sea, the Shi'ite Safavids of Iran and the Ottomans of Turkey right into central Europe. A hundi (based on the hawala - trust - system still in existence today) issued in a Delhi bazaar was valid in Istanbul or Bukhara.

Although the British quit the sub-continent more than half a century ago, it was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the independent Turkic speaking Central Asia Republics, such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan, that dramatically changed the political, economic and strategic situation in the region.

Tashkent, Dushanbe and Bishkek, the capitals of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, are as close to Delhi by air as Chennai. Now independent and sovereign, they look elsewhere, despite their almost umbilical past connections with Russia. The population of the CARs is only about 65 million, but the republic of Kazakhstan is as large as India, and the CARs are extremely rich in energy resources and other raw materials, such as gold, uranium, iron and non-ferrous metals.

Apart from restricted contacts since 1947 between India and the CARs, then part of the USSR, and except for a century and a half when the Indian sub-continent was ruled by the British and Central Asia by the Russians, there has always been natural interaction through travel, trade, migration and conquest between the sub-continent and Central Asia, Iran and Turkey.

Aryan tribes from India migrated from north of the Black Sea and the Caspian and Kazakh steppes during the second and first millennium BC. Later, Turkish tribes marched from the eastern Asian steppes to the Indian sub-continent, Iran and Turkey, then known as Asia Minor, where earlier Greek, Roman and Hellenic thought, culture and polity, which forms the basis of Western civilization, had already evolved. This was the result of the interaction of incoming Greeks with the existing higher Asian civilizations of Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt and India. Home to over 40 civilizations, Turkey has more Greek sites than Greece and more Roman monuments than Italy.

Although the idea of an economic community will take time to be accepted, it must be studied and promoted for the well being of the nearly 2 billion people of the region. With so many members, there will be less fear of Indian domination, a Pakistani obsession.

At the hub of exchanges, Pakistan and Afghanistan would gain the most; even more than they currently earn from heroin exports and smuggling. India could be a massive market for manufactured and raw materials from Kazakhstan to the Maldives and from Iran, if not Turkey, to Bangladesh.

The new community would be overtly and covertly opposed by many. How would China, the US and Russia react? China would certainly oppose it covertly, and could use Pakistan as a Trojan horse. After the unraveling of the USSR, US foreign policy has been erratic in Central Asia. First it tried to use ethnically closer and secular Turkey against Islamic fundamentalism from Iran and Afghanistan. But Saudi Arabia provided the bulk of the funds for mosques and literature. Jihadis in the CARs are Wahhabis, the austere and no-frills Islamic form enforced in Saudi Arabia.

Many leaders of the CARs and the Caucasus region have in the past leaned towards Russia, and they have earned criticism from the US for their lack of democracy. But after September 11, the erstwhile pariahs became partners against terrorism. They were invited to Washington and wined and dined. Military agreements have been signed with almost all the states and aid worth billions of dollars has poured in, mostly in the defense sector. But US policy on Iran, which now forms a part of the so-called axis of evil, is counterproductive, and India and Russia are working towards a north-south corridor through Iran for trade, which could also link India with Central Asia.

Many former top US officials now meet with the leaders of energy-rich Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, and during his visit to India over two years ago then president Bill Clinton spent more time with India's Ambani family, which has growing interests in the petroleum and energy sectors with sights set on Central Asia, than with the Indian prime minister. US President George W Bush, his deputy and most of his senior advisers are connected with the energy industry. Energy-short India, with a billion-strong population, can absorb US finance and technology in which the Indian Diaspora of nearly 2 million in the US could also play a critical role.

With the US and India thus moving towards a closer strategic relationship, the US ought to welcome a wide trade grouping in the region, and it could also act as a counter to the expanding EU and the China-led ASEAN block. It would force China to look West, away from the Pacific, a fond hope and strategic aim of the US and many others. By bringing the CARs into the grouping, Russian influence in Central Asia could also be neutralized. Energy resources in the CARs would compete with Russia's (as well as be a counter to Arab and Iranian sources). The natural outlets of the CARs are south (Asia), as geography and history tell us.

An economic community would contribute towards helping Afghanistan, in particular, which has few natural resources and which cannot afford to rely on foreign aid. Afghans have a long history of trade, being at the crossroads of Hindustan and Turkistan, China and Iran. An economic community would change Afghanistan from a Kalashnikov culture based on opium cultivation to one of trade and oil and gas pipelines.

Previous groupings in the region have been still born, while SAARC is a moribund organization that keeps diplomats busy but does little for economic cooperation and integration. A fresh start is a must. To begin with, an initiative could be taken by non-government and other organizations. The leaders of India, Bangladesh, Iran, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan could take up the challenge through various channels, including their parliaments. Later, other countries would join in.

After the recent comments by France's former president, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, that admitting Turkey to the EU "would be the end of the European Union" because Turkey had "a different culture, a different approach, a different way of life - it is not a European country", it should be clear that full membership for Turkey will remain only a chimera. Turkey could serve as an important and dynamic member of the new grouping.

An enlarged economic community for South and Central Asia in the early 21st century need not remain a dream if the leaders of the regions wake up, look beyond their noses and take up the challenges.

*K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal.