Turkish-Armenian activists hold photos of ancestors killed during the 1915 mass killing of 600,000 to 1.5 million ethnic Armenian during a vigil held on Apr. 24, 2014. Almost 100 years after the event, Turkey is slowly coming to terms with a part of its history that many have labeled a genocide. Credit: Joshua Kucera/EurasiaNet

By Joshua Kucera
ISTANBUL, Apr 29 2014 (EurasiaNet)

Turkish-Armenians are welcoming Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s offer of “condolences” for the mass killings of Armenian that began 99 years ago during the Ottoman era. But opinions are mixed as to whether Erdoğan’s words will lead the renewed action toward reconciliation.

Erdoğan’s comments on Apr. 23 stopped well short of acknowledging that the deaths of between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 constituted genocide, an admission that the Armenian government has sought since the country gained independence in 1991.“Turkish society is changing. They are putting pressure on the government about the Armenian genocide." -- Yildiz Onen

Erdoğan framed the tragedy, as Turkish officials have traditionally done, as occurring amid the chaos of World War I – a period when Ottoman citizens of every nationality were dying in large numbers.

Nevertheless, both the timing and the substance of Erdoğan’s comments took many in Turkey by surprise. Armenians mark Apr. 24 as Genocide Remembrance Day.

“It’s a turning point in history,” said Yildiz Onen, an Armenian activist in Istanbul who was one of the speakers at a small ceremony on Apr. 24 at the Heydarpasa train station in the city.

It was from that station that Ottoman authorities expelled more than 200 Armenian intellectuals from the city on Apr. 24, 1915, a step that Armenians now mark as the beginning of the genocide.

“It’s a big change,” said Garo Palian, a member of the central committee of the Peoples’ Democratic Party of Turkey. “They say that they are sorry about what happened, that was the most important thing in the statement.”

Not all the speakers at the Istanbul ceremony were impressed by Erdoğan’s words. Turkey needs to “move beyond empty condolences and to take steps toward the acknowledgment, recognition, and restitution of the Armenian genocide,” said Raffi Hovannisian, an Armenian politician and former presidential candidate.

The fact that Hovannisian could complain in public, at an event commemorating the 1915 tragedy, is in itself a sign of significant change in Turkey.

In 2005, novelist Orhan Pamuk was charged under the notorious Article 301 of the Turkish penal code with supposedly “insulting Turkishness” when he said in an interview with a Swiss magazine that “a million Armenians were murdered.”

A year later, another novelist, Elif Shafak, was charged under the same provision for addressing the genocide in her book, “The Bastard of Istanbul.” (Neither was convicted).

Turks have begun taking responsibility for what happened in 1915, and the government is following, Onen said. “Turkish society is changing. They are putting pressure on the government about the Armenian genocide,” Onen added.

Erdoğan’s government in recent years has cracked down on media and free speech, especially on individuals and news outlets critical of his government. Yet it has at the same time created more space for debate on what had been sensitive nationalist questions like the status of Armenians and Kurds.

For decades, Turkey’s government espoused a “national narrative that shaped an entire worldview around WWI … of threat and betrayal by outsiders and by inside traitors like the Armenians,” Jenny White, a visiting professor at Stockholm University’s Institute for Turkish Studies, said in an email interview with EurasiaNet.org.

“The AKP [Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party] abandoned this narrative in favour of a more expansive and global story of Turkey as heir to a world empire with vast, movable borders that embraced former enemies Greece and Armenia and, by extension, minorities in Turkey,” White continued.

Erdoğan’s new narrative, however, has been challenged in recent months by the prime minister’s crackdown on critical media and the revival of the “rhetoric of fear and betrayal by outsiders and disloyal insiders.”

Erdoğan’s statement about the events of 1915 marks a possible attempt to reset the narrative concerning a more globalized Turkey. “[It’s] a big and positive step,” White said.

The prime minister’s comments even gave backhanded praise to his government’s critics. “In Turkey, expressing different opinions and thoughts freely on the events of 1915 is the requirement of a pluralistic perspective, as well as of a culture of democracy and modernity,” the statement said.

“Some may perceive this climate of freedom in Turkey as an opportunity to express accusatory, offensive and even provocative assertions and allegations. Even so, if this will enable us to better understand historical issues with their legal aspects and to transform resentment to friendship again, it is natural to approach different discourses with empathy and tolerance and expect a similar attitude from all sides.”

The milestone in opening up discussion of Armenian issues, Onen said, was the 2007 murder of the Armenian newspaper editor Hrant Dink by a teenage Turkish nationalist. At Dink’s funeral, an estimated 200,000 people marched, chanting “We are all Armenians.”

“Things were opening but the big step, unfortunately, was the funeral,” Onen said.

But the trial of Dink’s killers was seen as a farce by both Armenians and by international monitors. Armenian activists in Turkey say that Erdoğan should back up his conciliatory words with action to call to account members of the security forces who are believed to be complicit in Dink’s murder.

“If he does that, we’ll see that the speech is sincere,” Palian said.

With a year to go before the centennial of 1915 killings, pressure is already building on Turkey to take positive PR steps. Yet, how much farther the Turkish government can go on the genocide issue remains unclear. Ankara’s situation is complicated by internal and external politics.

Turkey’s next general elections are scheduled for June 2015, meaning the 100th anniversary events will come in the middle of what could well be a contentious political campaign. Acknowledging the Armenian genocide could infuriate Turkish nationalists, a key voting bloc.

Internationally, too, the circumstances are not propitious for dramatic steps to reconcile with Armenians. Turkey abandoned a previous attempt at rapprochement with Armenia in 2010 by saying that it couldn’t restore relations until the conflict between Armenia and Turkish ally Azerbaijan was resolved.

Turkey has become dependent on Azerbaijani investment, and the crisis in Ukraine has increased the importance of natural gas transit from Azerbaijan to Europe, furthering strengthening Baku’s leverage in Ankara.

Ultimately, Erdoğan’s comments didn’t seem to win his government many points in Armenia. “The successor of Ottoman Turkey continues its policy of utter denial,” said Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan.

Hayk Demoian, the chairman of the Armenian Genocide Museum and Institute in Yerevan, said in a statement on the museum’s website that “I have to confess that this is an important step, but regretfully not in a direction of revealing the truth, facing the history and enabling reconciliation between Armenian and Turkish peoples.”

Editor’s note:  Joshua Kucera is a journalist based in Istanbul. He is the editor of EuraisaNet.org’s Bug Pit blog. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Central Asian states do not face an “imminent” threat posed by Islamic militants, but they need U.S. assistance to help defend against potential dangers, according to top U.S. diplomats.

Such assistance, it appears, may include drone aircraft delivered to Uzbekistan, which democratisation watchdogs rank as one of the most repressive states in the world.

“We do not assess that there is an imminent Islamist militant threat to Central Asian states,” said Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake, speaking at a hearing held by the U.S. House of Representatives on “Islamist Militant Threats to Eurasia” on Feb. 27.

“The most capable terrorist groups with links to Central Asia, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan [IMU] and the Islamic Jihad Union, [IJU] remain focused on operations in western Pakistan and Afghanistan,” added Justin Siberell, the State Departments deputy coordinator for counterterrorism. “Neither the IMU nor IJU are considered exceedingly powerful individually, and will likely remain focused on operations in this same region, even after 2014.”

The hearing took place as Congress, the State Department and Pentagon discuss expanding military aid to Central Asian countries, in particular Uzbekistan. These countries have cooperated with the United States in establishing transportation routes for U.S. and coalition military cargo to-and-from Afghanistan, a network known as the Northern Distribution Network.

Some Central Asian governments are arguing that they need U.S. assistance to protect themselves against Islamist militants following the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014.

The threat may not be imminent, but extending security assistance to the Central Asian states is justifiable, Blake maintained.

“Although the threat has been kept at bay, as our forces withdraw from the region we must continue our efforts to help prevent terrorist recruitment and strengthen the Central Asian countries’ [counterterrorism] capacities, so they can defend themselves in a responsible and measured fashion,” Blake said.

“With Uzbekistan, we’ve begun a very careful, calibrated approach to supporting the defensive needs – because they face real threats, not just because of their support to the Northern Distribution Network, but because of groups like the IMU and the IJU are actively targeting them.”

While Islamist threats do exist in Central Asia, they do not necessarily justify expanded U.S. assistance, said Nathan Barrick, a consultant for CLI Solutions working on a contract for U.S. Central Command, who also testified at the hearing. The threats are likely to be minor, and the security services of Central Asia have proven effective in containing them, he said.

“The desire in Central Asia for U.S. assistance in countering Islamist militants is not the same as a ‘need’ or ‘requirement’ for U.S. assistance,” he wrote in testimony for the committee.

Stephen Blank, of the U.S. Army War College, said that whatever the terror threats in Central Asia, the U.S. military would probably not be able to do much to counter them.

“To bring about good governance that would preclude the outbreak of terrorism in these and other places is probably beyond our capability and resources. … And the U.S. military is no more equipped to undertake those responsibilities than is the rest of the government,” he said in his testimony to the committee. [Editor’s note: Blank is an occasional commentator for Eurasianet.]

Ariel Cohen, of the Heritage Foundation, added that “U.S. assistance must be careful not to strengthen the repressive law enforcement and security services components that the regimes deploy against political opposition.”

The prospect of additional military aid to Uzbekistan has alarmed human rights activists, who assert that Uzbekistan exaggerates the threat of Islamist radicalism to justify its harsh dictatorship. Activists also say U.S. equipment is likely to be used against existing or future political opponents or protesters.

Blake attempted to downplay such concerns, saying he was confident “that the approach we have taken with Central Asia helps proactively strengthen the region’s capacity to combat terrorism and counter extremism, while encouraging democratic reform and respect for human rights.” He also said that Uzbekistan taking steps to improve its respect for human rights “will enable us to do more on the weapons side.”

Some members of Congress did not appear to be so concerned about Uzbekistan’s human rights record. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who was recently named chairman of the Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats Subcommittee, returned on Feb. 25 from a trip to Uzbekistan, where he met with President Islam Karimov.

Rohrabacher suggested that the Uzbek government’s restrictions on human rights are justified because of the threat of Islamism. “Some of the things that they are being criticised in Uzbekistan for denying religious rights and freedom of speech are basically trying to prevent radical sects of Islam from taking hold,” he said. And he recommended treating Uzbekistan like Saudi Arabia, another country with a poor human rights record to which the United States sells weapons for strategic reasons.

Ted Poe, a Texas Republican and chairman of the subcommittee on terrorism, nonproliferation, and trade, was in Uzbekistan with Rohrabacher, and said that Karimov’s concerns about Islamists were justified.

“They [Islamist groups] want to establish Islamic rule in the region, institute sharia law,” he said. “If they had their way they would take over Central Asia just like the Taliban took over Afghanistan. The issue is, can they?”

The particulars of expanded U.S. aid to Uzbekistan remain unclear. The White House agreed last year to reinstate military aid to Uzbekistan after freezing it for several years as a result of human rights concerns. The United States has already said it will provide Uzbekistan with global positioning system equipment, night-vision goggles and body armour. U.S. policymakers are now discussing various proposals for new aid, though few details have emerged.

After the hearing, Blake told reporters that the State Department has formally notified Congress of its intent to supply Uzbekistan with unmanned aerial vehicles, or drone aircraft, but State Department officials declined to provide any details.

Blake told the committee that “his supposition” was that the U.S. aid would not include lethal equipment. “Uzbekistan is not asking for major weapons systems, at least not offensive weapons systems. Their major ask of us these days is to help them defend themselves,” he said.

But Rohrabacher said that in his conversation with Karimov, the president indicated that he wanted dramatically expanded military cooperation with the United States. “They made it clear to us that they would prefer replacing all of their former Soviet equipment … with American equipment,” he said.

The United States is also expanding assistance to Uzbekistan’s law enforcement agencies. The FBI, for example, is providing an Automated Fingerprint Information System to Uzbekistan, which “will make it possible for authorities to identify fugitives while still in custody” and for Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to share that information, Siberell said.

And the United States and Uzbekistan are in talks about reinstating aid under the State Department’s Antiterrorism Assistance programme, which aids law-enforcement agencies and which had been suspended as a result of human rights concerns, Blake noted.

*Editor’s note: Joshua Kucera is a Washington, DC-based writer who specializes in security issues in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East. He is the editor of EurasiaNet’s Bug Pit blog.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

China is increasingly active in Central Asia, building pipelines and infrastructure projects, as well as expanding its diplomatic and cultural presence in the region.

At the same time, Beijing is shoring up its control over Xinjiang, the restive province that borders formerly Soviet Central Asia, relying on ambitious development projects, encouraging settlement by China’s majority ethnic Han, and acting aggressively to contain expressions of indigenous Uyghur nationalism.

But it has been difficult to define the main motivation in China’s so-called Western policies. Scholars and analysts studying China’s activity in Central Asia differ on what is the driver: whether the effort to pacify Xinjiang is intended to build that region into a secure platform from which to expand economically into Central Asia, or the opposite – that Beijing is building up its Central Asia ties in order to more strongly bind Xinjiang to the rest of China.

The most notable Chinese projects in Central Asia have been pipelines, especially a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan. China also is working to improve transportation networks in the region, building new roads and tunnels, for example, in Tajikistan. In addition, it has provided low-interest loans to Central Asian countries in the wake of the recent financial crisis, and has sought to increase educational and cultural contacts.

But what China’s goal is with these projects remains opaque. Part of the reason is that Central Asia remains a low priority for the government in Beijing, and so policy is shaped on an ad hoc basic via deals made by various companies and government organs, said Alexandros Petersen, an analyst and fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center who studies Chinese policy in Central Asia.

“There is no grand strategy for Central Asia on the part of Beijing,” Petersen said. “What there is, however, is a confluence of all the activities of these multifarious actors which, regardless of what Beijing wants or doesn’t want, means that China is nonetheless the most consequential actor in the region.”

In some ways, China’s ties with Central Asia resemble those that it is building in Africa and Latin America, with a strong focus on resource extraction.

Beijing’s strategy toward Central Asia “may be a reflection of China’s larger strategy toward the external world, which involves a lot of natural resources coming in and a lot of trade going out,” said Sean Roberts, a professor at George Washington University and expert on Central Asia.

“And Central Asia is just a perfect storm,” given that it is both rich in natural resources and a key to exporting goods as the first leg on westward transportation routes that China is working on building.

But other analysts argue that, in the case of Central Asia, that energy extraction focus is secondary compared to the need to pacify Xinjiang.

“The stability of East Turkestan is the most significant, both in terms of attracting foreign direct investment, or any kind of investment, to the region or providing a safe ground for trade and international economic interactions,” said Kilic Kanat, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania at Erie. (East Turkestan is the name some use to describe Xinjiang).

“Yes, the stability of the region will contribute to the global economic perspective of China, but … they feel they need to put their house in order first.”

China’s strategy of pacifying Xinjiang and quelling separatist movements there has been rooted in economic development. But it has not worked out as originally envisioned because Uyghurs’ dissatisfaction has to do with cultural and political rights, rather than economic issues, and because economic development in any case has only widened the wealth gap between Uyghurs and the Han Chinese, Kanat said.

Nevertheless, China’s strategy towards Central Asia may be a function of its need to pacify Xinjiang, Petersen said: “The engagement in Central Asia … has to do with security concerns about Xinjiang, number one, and only secondly, after that, is it about resources and economic development.”

Kanat, Petersen and Roberts all spoke at an event on Dec. 13, “Borderlands, Development and Indigeneity: China in South, Central, and South-East Asia,” held at George Washington University in Washington, DC.

Editor’s note: Joshua Kucera is a Washington, DC,-based writer who specializes in security issues in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East. He is the editor of EurasiaNet’s Bug Pit blog.

This article originally appeared on Eurasianet.org

U.S. officials are happy with a programme that helps steer Pentagon contracts to local businesses in Central Asia. But Central Asian governments are grousing that they aren’t making enough of a profit off of the Afghan war.

In 2010, the U.S. Congress and Department of Defence changed regulations on how supplies can be procured for troops fighting in Afghanistan. The changes aimed to encourage a larger share of supplies to be bought from sources in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Pakistan.

Later, the programme was altered to focus only on the five Central Asian republics. The hope in Washington was that spreading the wealth, in terms of Pentagon contracting, would strengthen the support of Central Asian governments for the Northern Distribution Network (NDN), a network of road, rail and air routes that now comprises the main supply line to U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

NDN stands to be a critical element in ensuring that foreign troops meet a 2014 withdrawal deadline.

“The procurement of supplies (to include construction materials) and services from the CAS [Central Asian states] will provide economic opportunities and bolster stability in that region and could impact positively our ongoing negotiations with the CAS to gain regional access and permissions to support current and future supply and retrograde operations in Afghanistan,” wrote Frank Kendall, the undersecretary of defence for acquisition, technology and logistics, in a September 2012 memo.

“In addition, procuring products and services from the CAS will reduce the distance, complexity, risk, and cost associated with these operations.”

Since 2010, U.S. forces in Afghanistan have purchased about 40 million dollars worth of office supplies, construction equipment and other goods from businesses in Central Asia and the Caucasus, according to officials from the General Services Administration, the U.S. government agency that provides supplies for federal government offices.

That is more than expected, and in the coming year the U.S. expects to make another roughly 50-60 million dollars in local purchases, said Joel Lundy, the GSA’s programme manager for Central Asia and South Caucasus local sourcing and logistics.

“We’re very pleasantly surprised,” he said.

The 40 million dollars pertains only to products bought by the GSA, and does not include food, fuel and other categories of goods the United States procures in the region.

Of that 40 million dollars in local goods, 51 percent has come from Kazakhstan, 39 percent from Georgia, nine percent from Uzbekistan and small amounts from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, according to Boban Simonovski, programme manager for TWI, the company contracted by the GSA to implement its purchasing programme in Central Asia.

Officials from the GSA and TWI described the programme at an Oct. 24 event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.

The most common items bought in Central Asia are paper towels, toilet paper and cleaning supplies. The largest single item is printer cartridges, which alone account for 9.1 million dollars of the total. The cartridges aren’t produced in Central Asia, but are purchased through a distributor in Kazakhstan.

The GAS has produced a catalog for U.S. forces in Afghanistan of 140 items that can be bought from Central Asia. Lundy said Americans in Afghanistan have been pleased with the quality of goods they get from Central Asia, and have asked for more to be put in the catalog because locally procured items can be delivered much faster than their U.S. equivalents.

That has done little to assuage the concerns of Central Asian officials, particularly those of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, who frequently complain to their U.S. partners about the paucity of business, Lundy acknowledged.

“The Uzbek government was probably the loudest among the Central Asian countries, they say: ‘You said you were going to buy from U.S. – why don’t we see 100 million dollars being spent each year in our country by the DoD?’ But doing business in Uzbekistan has been hampered by the common business practice there of paying for goods upon order, rather than upon delivery as the U.S. requires,” Lundy said.

Lundy added that officials in Kazakhstan want the Pentagon to buy more locally manufactured goods. “The Kazakh government is very sensitive when U.S. Central Command goes to them and says ‘here’s what we spent in your country in support of the NDN, to keep allowing our trains to roll through,’ they say ‘well, how much of that is manufactured here? We don’t care about anything else,’” Lundy said.

Central Asian governments had unrealistic expectations of the business they could do with the United States, said Marc David Miller, executive director of the Kyrgyz-North American Trade Council. This was an opportunity for Central Asian businesses to get a jump start in international markets, but Central Asian governments didn’t think of it that way, Miller said.

First, they had in mind the fuel contracts for the Manas air base, as a way for government officials to enrich themselves, and also thought they would be able to dictate to the U.S. what to buy and how much.

“Local governments did not take this seriously enough, they saw it as a way of generating cash for whoever controls the purse strings,” he said.

*Editor’s note: Joshua Kucera is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C. He is the editor of Eurasianet’s Bug Pit blog.

This story originally appeared on Eurasianet.org.

When it comes to the brewing arms race in the Caspian Sea region, no one can accuse Turkmen leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov of navel-gazing. Ashgabat is now able to back its claims to some energy-rich patches of the sea with considerable firepower.

Abundant energy resources under and around the sea have pushed all five littoral states – Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan – to bolster their naval capabilities. Analysts agree that Russia has the most powerful flotilla on the Caspian. But who is Number Two is a matter of debate.

Iran traditionally has played second fiddle to Russia on the Caspian. Currently, Tehran’s claim to a 20-percent share of the sea is generally considered the biggest obstacle standing in the way of a regional treaty that would facilitate large-scale energy extraction. Russia and other former Soviet states contend that Iran should receive only a 13-percent Caspian share.

According to a late June report distributed by the semi-official Fars news agency, Tehran now plans to deploy an undisclosed number of “light submarines” in the Caspian. The Fars report did not specify how many subs would be deployed, what kind of armaments they would carry or when they would enter service.

According to a major Russian defence magazine, Turkmenistan is challenging Iran as the second leading naval power on the sea. In a special issue of Natsionalnaya Oborona (not online) distributed at the recent KADEX defence expo in Astana, Kazakhstan, a lengthy article detailed the most recent naval doings on the Caspian, and added a little analysis.

Last year, Ashgabat took delivery of two 12418 Molniya-class missile corvettes, Gayratly (Bold) and Edermen (Valiant). The two ships feature 16 Uran-E missile systems each, making them some of the most heavily armed ships on the sea. Iran currently doesn’t have anything that can match the missile corvettes. Turkmenistan, according to Natsionalnaya Oborona, is planning to procure three more Molniya-class corvettes in the near future.

“If Iran is leading in quantity of ships on the Caspian, in striking power Turkmenistan has already overtaken them,” the Natsionalnaya Oborona article stated. “Of course, we don’t live in an era of linear boat flotillas. … Because of that the appearance in the young Turkmenistan navy two, albeit very strong, units does not make the difference, however they are clearly indicating the vector of their development.”

The report also notes that Turkmenistan also obtained two new Turkish fast patrol boats, and that naval infrastructure and a new naval base have been constructed at a “rapid tempo”.

US State Department cables obtained and released by Wikileaks contain some interesting tidbits on Turkmenistan’s naval plans, as well. According to the cables, Turkmenistan started becoming interested in U.S. military cooperation with their navy in 2007. One from June of that year described a meeting between Turkmenistan’s Berdymukhamedov and the then-commander of U.S. Central Command, Adm. William Fallon:

“(Berdymukhamedov) recommended both sides talk about ‘powerful equipment’ that the United States could provide to Turkmenistan to deal with the issue of Caspian security. The CIS’ Caspian Force (CASFOR) had the mission of ensuring Caspian security, but because Turkmenistan was neutral, this was not an option for cooperation,” the cable stated. “Admiral Fallon acknowledged that it would be good for Turkmenistan to work with the United States to help maintain its neutrality and independence from CASFOR.”

The cable also noted that that Turkmenistan might be looking to obtain Excess Defence Articles (EDAs) from the United States, mentioning specifically the former USCG Cutter Point Jackson. “Turkmenistan government officials have rarely asked outright for assistance, but generally are appreciative when they receive it,” the cable said.

Another cable, however, indicated that U.S.-Turkmen military cooperation would proceed slowly. The fact that Turkmenistan is buying its vessels and weaponry from Russia (and to a lesser extent, Turkey) suggests that the United States continues to play a secondary role in Caspian-related military developments.

*Editor’s note: Joshua Kucera is a Washington, DC,-based writer who specialises in security issues in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East. He is the editor of EurasiaNet’s Bug Pit blog.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

The United States and Kazakhstan are exploring the idea of expanding the amount of military cargo passing through Kazakhstan into and out of Afghanistan. The focal point of the discussions is the Caspian port city of Aktau.

Kazakhstani authorities want to turn Aktau into a major regional transit hub, enlarging the port, expanding the municipal airport’s cargo capacity and constructing new rail routes to Turkmenistan and Iran.

They are also intent on integrating their vision for Aktau into the U.S.-backed concept of a New Silk Road, which aims to build up a regional transit network that would help stabilize Afghanistan following the pullout of U.S. and NATO troops.

Kazakhstani leaders see U.S. military cooperation, under the auspices of the Northern Distribution Network (NDN), as a means of achieving that goal, Birzhan Keneshev, the deputy governor of the Mangystau Region (which includes Aktau), said in an interview.

“This is a good opportunity for the U.S. military to send goods through our sea port (and) airport… We will get good experience in organising multi-modal transportation businesses, which we have not had until now in Kazakhstan,” Keneshev said. “It’s a good way to set up some joint ventures with the American side, with logistics companies, and get this experience. They can transfer experience, transfer technology, set up IT systems, train people.”

U.S. diplomats, when discussing the New Silk Road project, frequently cite India’s prime minister, who is said to have quipped, “I dream of a day, while retaining our respective identities, one can have breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore, and dinner in Kabul.”

Kazakhstan’s ambassador in Washington, Erlan Idrissov, has adapted that phrase, imagining a day when one can have “breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Aktau and dinner in Dusseldorf”.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s administration is presenting Aktau as a better alternative for NATO than a proposed transit hub at the Russian city of Ulyanovsk. “The closest way to Europe (from Afghanistan) is through Aktau,” said Keneshev. “It’s a long way to Ulyanovsk,” and by using Aktau, the United States “can save a lot of money”.

A Kazakhstani Foreign Ministry spokesman declined to comment directly on the negotiations concerning Aktau. But the ministry provided a statement to EurasiaNet.org: “During 2009-2011, 15,430 containers have already been shipped through Aktau port from the United States and Europe to Afghanistan, i.e. the majority of the cargo passing through NDN.”

“Kazakhstan is ready to contribute to implementing the (New Silk Road) initiative in the form of some new projects. One of them is the Transportation and Logistics Center (TLC) in Aktau Sea Port,'” the statement continued. “It can be an integral part of the Kazakhstan- Turkmenistan-Afghanistan route as part of the New Silk Road connecting Central and South Asia.”

Pentagon planners have been actively seeking to expand their options on the NDN, as problems with transit through Pakistan and, to a lesser degree, Uzbekistan, have caused delays and interruptions with existing transit routes.

Among options under consideration are potential hubs in Russia and India. Taking geography and the fickle nature of Uzbekistan’s particpation in the NDN into account, it would seem any expansion of goods going to Aktau would mean an increase of transit traffic through Turkmenistan into Afghanistan.

U.S. officials have declined to provide details of the negotiations with Kazakhstan over NDN transit. “We’re eager to talk to any governments in the region about options and opportunities that increase access for U.S. and allied throughput into and out of Afghanistan, and that would include Aktau,” U.S. Army Col. Robert Timm, the defense attache at the U.S. Embassy in Astana, said in an interview.

“They have a plan to develop this multi-modal transit hub out there,” Col. Timm added. “Insofar as the development of that creates opportunities for us, we’re interested in looking at that.”

U.S. diplomats have long seen potential in Aktau, even before the development of the NDN. One 2009 diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks was titled “The Strategic Importance of Aktau Seaport.” Another, from 2008, compared Aktau’s role on the New Silk Road to that of Samarkand on the original Silk Road: “Aktau is still a sleepy town in comparison with Almaty and Astana. Its growth potential, however, is significant, particularly when oil from Tengiz and Kashagan is shipped westwards.

“The Kazakhstanis see Aktau as a potential ‘capital city’ of the Caspian region, the central point for transportation, regional educational cooperation, and even tourism. If the cross-Caspian route is the new Silk Road for Central Asia, Aktau may yet prove to be its Samarkand.”

*Editor’s note: Joshua Kucera is the editor of Eurasianet’s Bug Pit blog who also writes on military security issues elsewhere. This reporting was made possible by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

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