A Kosovo On The Central Asian Steppes

By M K Bhadrakumar
August 7, 2010
Courtesy Of "Asia Times Online"

A robust geopolitical thrust by the United States aimed at creating a role for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in resolving conflicts in Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan promises to rewrite the great game rivalries in Central Asia in anticipation of an Afghan settlement.

The US initiative poses political challenges to Russia, which is a member of the 56-member OSCE, and China, which is not. The security vehicles piloted by each the respective two regional powers - the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) - are being outmaneuvered by the US.

Yet, coming in the wake of the deepening crisis in Kyrgyzstan and the endgame in Afghanistan, the US initiative does convey an air of positive thinking and carries a sense of immediacy, while neither Russia nor China has any counter-strategy available.

Paradoxically, Russia and China could seize the initiative if the OSCE plan to stabilize the situation in Kyrgyzstan somehow crash-lands and ethnic tensions, violence and anarchy ensue. But that would be a dubious blessing as Russia and China too are stakeholders in regional stability in their own ways.

'B Team' For The Afghan War

The unkindest cut of all is that it is Kazakhstan, which both Moscow and Beijing counted to be their most sober and thoughtful regional partner, which is heading the OSCE chariot. As Kazakh President Nurusultan Nazarbayev firmly asserted, "There is no doubt a new OSCE strategy on Afghanistan is necessary."

The US is delighted, and as a quid pro quo, Washington has accommodated the Kazakh leaderships' desire to chair an OSCE summit meeting within the year in Astana and thereby claim a legacy on the world stage. The last time the OSCE held a summit meeting was in 1999. This is also the 35th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act. [1]

"Kazakhstan's strategic approach to the Afghan issue became one of the foundations of a historical consensus reached there [the OSCE inter-ministerial meeting in Almaty on July 16-17] on holding an OSCE summit in Astana before the end of 2010," Kazakh State Minister and Foreign Minister Kanat Saudabayev openly admitted.

Kazakhstan will host a special OSCE conference in Astana on October 20-21, when the Afghan issue and the role the OSCE could play in the Hindu Kush will be at the top of the agenda. The conference factors in the current search for a political solution to the Afghan problem.

"I would like to emphasize the importance of changing the very paradigm of combating today's challenges which come from Afghanistan, shifting emphasis from military means to eradication of sources of these challenges,'' Saudabayev said. ''Helping the Afghans move from the military conflict to a constructive track is a main objective of the OSCE and the [US-led] international coalition."

Astana elaborated on its thinking in a paper titled "Efforts to intensify cooperation with Afghanistan", according to which the OSCE can offer help from its niche competencies in soft security and civilian affairs. These would include training personnel belonging to Afghan security bodies involved in narcotics control, guarding the border and customs, assisting in the conduct of elections and monitoring, and helping develop Afghanistan's democratic and political institutions.

Kazakhstan proposed - evidently, with Washington's backing - that the OSCE should appoint a special representative for Afghanistan and have an OSCE presence on the ground there. Moscow promptly objected, informing the OSCE's permanent council in Vienna last month, "Referring to border, customs and anti-drug projects to assist Afghanistan ... we [Russia] cannot support the idea of the OSCE operating on Afghanistan's territory, nor can we support attempts to extend human rights and democracy obligations to this country. Nor do we see any grounds for creating the post of OSCE special representative for Afghanistan."

Russia's sense of indignation is understandable. The US has stolen a march over Moscow, which for the past five or six years has been pleading that the CSTO can act as a constructive partner for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in stabilizing the Afghan situation, but Washington studiously ignored the plea. Now, the US is bringing in the OSCE (which includes Russia) as a "B Team" into Afghanistan so that NATO can concentrate on the major security tasks of the counter-insurgency.

Plainly put, the US is preparing for a prolonged involvement with the developing security paradigm of Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Moscow Being Reactive

Yet, Russia is forced to react with one arm tied behind its back. The US misses no opportunity to characterize its initiative in Kyrgyzstan as a fine example of US-Russia cooperation in the best spirit of US President Barack Obama's "reset" with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev.

Moscow cannot openly dispute the US interpretation at a time when the "reset" is delicately poised. Besides, Moscow has hoped that cooperation in Afghanistan would itself develop into a major template of the "reset". As for the OSCE role, Moscow has been all along seeking a transformation of the body as an effective security organization and the US initiative in Kyrgyzstan conforms to the Russian wish. Again, Russia has shied away from playing a role in stabilizing the Kyrgyz situation unilaterally and has taken a cautious stance, fearing a Kyrgyz quagmire that could be financially burdensome.

Evidently, Russia cannot also object to the US initiative in Kyrgyzstan under the circumstances when China chooses to sit on the fence simply watching the battle of wits between Washington and Moscow. Also, the two key Central Asian countries - Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan - are themselves warming up their relationship with the US.

Generally speaking, Washington is having a sort of "reset" with Astana and Tashkent as well. Now, these two Central Asian capitals are essentially trying to emulate Russia's example of prioritizing ties with the US. On its part, Washington is also being pragmatic about its democracy project in Central Asia that used to irritate authoritarian regimes in the region.

Clearly, there is a paradigm shift in Central Asia and the credit goes to US diplomacy; US influence is on an upward curve. The fact is that unlike Russia, which has acted in an ad-hoc manner, the US is coming up with a comprehensive approach to the Kyrgyz crisis and the CSTO's credibility has suffered.

Testifying before the Helsinki Commission in Washington last week, US Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake was frank about the US's intention to keep its military presence in Kyrgyzstan for the foreseeable future. He said:

We are not in competition with any country for influence in Central Asia ... Maintaining the Manas Transit Center is an important national security priority for the United States, but that center can only be maintained if Kyrgyzstan itself is a stable and reliable partner and we ourselves are totally transparent in the functioning of the center. The center is an important part of our partnership, but our focus has been and remains developing our overall political, economic and security relationship.

The US has also lost no time pushing through a big aid program for Kyrgyzstan's economic reconstruction. The international donor conference held in Bishkek, the Kyrgyzstan capital, on July 27 was sponsored by the World Bank but it bore Washington's imprimatur. The donors' pledge of US$1.5 billion for Kyrgyzstan over the next 30 months exceeded Bishkek's own request. In political terms, it unmistakably underscores that the "United States has a strong commitment to Kyrgyzstan", as Blake put it.

In a July 30 speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Blake made it clear that Washington was in no mood to concede Central Asia - "a region of significant importance to US national interests" - to Russia as the latter's backyard. He said:

We recognize that other countries have interests in Central Asia. But we don't accept any country having exclusive interests. We maintain it is in the interests of all countries in the region to undertake policies that can produce a more durable stability and more reliable partners for everyone, including the United States, in addressing critical regional and global challenges, from non-proliferation to counter-narcotics to energy security and combating terrorism.

Another Kosovo? 

Having said that, the audacious US strategy is also not without real risks and Kyrgyzstan's medium-term prospects are worrying. The political landscape is highly fractured and there is no certainty as to how a new constitution will work in practice and whether elections expected in October will be free and fair. Clan politics are acute and the interim government in Bishkek remains weak.

Furthermore, regional divisions in Kyrgyzstan are deepening. Kyrgyz nationalist rhetoric is becoming strident, insecurity continues, the Kyrgyz-Uzbek ethnic divide remains enormous and minority Uzbek grievances are largely unaddressed. With the security bodies and law-enforcement agencies showing bias against Uzbeks, revenge attacks are possible.

Meanwhile, as Martha Olcott, a prominent US expert on Central Asia, put it, "Uzbeks are unlikely to simply fade away ... small numbers of young men also seem to be drifting into the jihadist camps and networks in Afghanistan, and beyond in Pakistan. All this means that even if the Kyrgyz government is able to keep the lid on ethnic tensions in the south in the near term, the events of June [the pogrom against ethnic Uzbeks] could have serious ramifications in both Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan for years to come."

Conceivably, as a perceptive Kyrgyz expert wrote in the Guardian newspaper recently, "There are three possible templates for the future: that of Sri Lanka, where a powerful guerrilla organization emerged after ethnic riots; that of Chechnya, where a nascent nationalist movement fell prey to Islamist networks; and that of Uzbekistan, which reacted to Andijan [the uprising there in 2005] with overwhelming repression. None of these is very inspiring."

Indeed, some Russian observers discern a fourth template as the most likely scenario - Kosovo. They feel that the US is proceeding according to a carefully choreographed plan where the induction of OSCE policemen is a necessary first step.

After all, the 52 unarmed OSCE policemen put in place under the group's plan can't do much to stabilize southern Kyrgyzstan. They are most likely to fail in a hostile environment where the Kyrgyz majority population appears to be opposed to the OSCE's intervention. A Moscow politician who is a member of the Russian Duma's international affairs committee said:

If anything happens to these OSCE policemen, orders will be given to bring in armed units to Kyrgyzstan. Who is going to send military units there? Of course, it's NATO. There's a US military base in Manas, a French air base in Dushanbe, a 154,000 NATO military contingent in Afghanistan. What's the problem? If that happens, we will witness a very interesting situation that will resemble the one in Kosovo ... And the threat of active Western interference according to the Kosovo scenario is very realistic.

Above all, the OSCE deployment may be designed to soothe tensions, but its downstream impact could be quite to the contrary. It could well turn out that the presence of international observers might embolden ethnic Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan to pursue autonomy.

To an extent, the US is already pandering to latent Uzbek separatist sentiments in the Osh and Jalalabad regions in southern Kyrgyzstan. Whether this is a calibrated approach happening in concert with Tashkent is a key question with immense consequence to the future trajectory of the geopolitics of Central Asia, and indeed Kyrgyzstan's own integrity and viability as a state.

A surge in Uzbek separatist sentiment in southern Kyrgyzstan would be bound to trigger a backlash of Kyrgyz nationalism and it would only be a matter of time before some Kyrgyz "strongman" took the stirrups and rode to the center stage, brushing aside the US-backed Kyrgyz democrats in Bishkek to take matters to a point of no return.

If that happens, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan - given the Vorukh ethnic enclave in Batken province in southern Kyrgyzstan - would almost inevitably be drawn in, locking in three of the five Central Asian states. In sum, it could be Yugoslavia all over again.

Note 

1. The Helsinki Final Act was the final act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe held in Helsinki, Finland, during July and August of 1975. Thirty-five states, including the US, Canada and all European states except Albania and Andorra, signed the declaration in an attempt to improve relations between the communist bloc and the West.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea

, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Germany's Failed Spy Mission In Kosovo

The ineptitude of three agents in Germany's foreign intelligence agency has endangered one of the organization’s most important operations: building up its secret network of informants in Kosovo. It has also strained diplomatic relations between the two countries.

By SPIEGEL Staff
December 12, 2008
Courtesy Of Der Spiegel

The company is located in one of the better neighborhoods of the Kosovo capital of Pristina, in a large single-family house on a hill overlooking the valley at the edge of town. The white building is surrounded by a wrought iron fence. On a pole near the front entrance hangs a sign with the engraved company logo -- the letters LCAS -- and below that, three bands of color: black, red and gold.

A Mitsubishi Pajero with Munich license plates is parked behind the fence. The curtains are closed, and halogen spotlights with motion detectors have been installed under the eaves. A pair of garden shears is lying in front of the door, and there is a grill on the deck. The rear side of the property, with its neatly mowed lawn, is also fenced in.

The Germans moved in last fall and have always been very friendly, says the neighbor, Hajredin Shale, who also noted that one of them regularly went jogging. But he didn't see much of the three men. He says they lived alone, had no visitors, spoke no Albanian, and never said much more than hello.

Now, Shale's opportunity to get to know his neighbors better has passed. On Saturday, the three men left Pristina on a special flight headed for Berlin. Soon, the trio -- Robert Z., Andreas J. and Andreas D. -- will face a committee of German parliamentarians who have taken an interest in their case. Most likely, they will never return to Kosovo.

Faces On The Front Pages

And why should they? They entered the country as agents of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the German foreign intelligence agency. The operation ended with the trio on the evening news and their faces plastered across the front pages of German newspapers. Such attention is hardly a boon for the careers of secret agents.

Police arrested the three Germans nearly two weeks ago under suspicion of throwing explosives at the office of the EU Special Representative in Kosovo on Nov. 14. The release of the three Germans from custody marks the end of an unusual diplomatic spat between Germany and the tiny new Balkan nation. At times, the tone sharply transgressed the usually staid diplomatic tenor, says a member of the Kosovo government. At one point, Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff, Thomas de Maizière, warned in a phone call to Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi, that Berlin might consider discontinuing its subsidies.

It remains to be seen how the scandal will affect long-term relations between Berlin and Pristina. However, one thing is already clear. Thanks to the inept behavior of its agents, Germany's foreign intelligence service may have irreparably damaged one of its most important operations.

For a number of years, Kosovo has been a major operational area for the BND. In addition to being politically unstable and located not far from Germany's borders, it is a hotbed of organized crime with links to Germany and is a country where numerous German police officers and soldiers are stationed.

There are no less than three BND departments focusing on Kosovo, including Department Five, responsible for organized crime, the same department that certified in 2005 that Prime Minister Thaçi is a key figure in a Kosovar-Albanian mafia network. At the time, the confidential report was quickly leaked to the media. Thaçi has never forgiven the Germans for that.

Reconnaissance Information

Department Two, responsible for telecommunications surveillance, is also active in the Balkans. In the late 1990s, this section launched operation "Mofa99," in which the Germans tapped phone conversations between members of the controversial Kovoso Liberation Army (KLA). The operation was so successful that a number of German technicians were stationed for years in the Macedonian Interior Ministry to work on "Mofa99." Since then, the BND has maintained an extensive network of informants among high-ranking functionaries of the KLA and the Kosovar administration.

When the intelligence agency wanted to sound out the situation for Germany's armed forces, the Bundeswehr, BND President Ernst Uhrlau authorized an additional operation in 2006. Department One was assigned the task of “force protection,” gathering as much information as possible to guarantee the security of troops on the ground. Pristina was selected as the base of operations for this top-secret mission. Top brass at the BND were pursuing two objectives: maintaining contacts with informants and gathering reconnaissance information.

The operation was handled by Department 11A, which, according to the secret resource allocation scheme of the BND, is responsible for “supporting Bundeswehr operations and coordinating strategic military reconnaissance.” The preparations could begin.

On April 12, 2007, two men, who identified themselves as "Michael Hohenstein" and "Rolf Hagen," registered the company LCAS Logistics-Coordination & Assessment Service Hohenstein & Hagen GmbH at the district court in Munich. The two Bavarians indicated that the purpose of the company was to provide “logistical services,” which is not entirely a lie. The company supposedly has only two employees, and is located in an office park with modern glass and steel buildings on the southern edge of Munich, in Ottobrunn.

The building at Alten Landstrasse 23 presents an ideal front for organizations working undercover. There are roughly a dozen computer and design companies, two law firms and a map manufacturer in this unobtrusive office building. A different company can be found behind each door along the long hallway. They all share a small kitchen and the restrooms, but otherwise have nothing to do with each other.

Top-Secret Mission

A sham company like LCAS blends in perfectly. Nobody knows who works here -- or if any work is being done. The sign on the door has now been removed. A young computer specialist from the other side of the hall says that the company has moved, but adds that he has almost never seen anyone there. The office looks, though, as if it has been used. There is a computer on the desk, and a Kandinsky print is hanging on the wall. That's enough to provide a cover for the top-secret Pristina mission of the BND.

This is where the operation began in September, 2007. On Oct. 5, 2007, LCAS was officially registered with startup capital of €2,500 ($3,175) under registration number 70453415 in the Kosovar capital, and the owner was listed as the parent company in Ottobrunn. The company has no turnover, pays no taxes, and keeps such a low profile that the director of a German employment agency says today: “If this company was active here, I would have known about it.” But the last thing that the young businessmen from Bavaria wanted was publicity for their company.

A total of 11 BND agents were stationed at different times in Pristina. They established contacts, investigated the situation and engaged in cloak and dagger operations -- all under the cover of LCAS. Usually, two to three agents were operating simultaneously on location. The last team consisted of Robert Z., Andreas J. and Andreas D. who, like many of their colleagues, had been reassigned from the Bundeswehr to the German foreign intelligence service.

• Part 2: Embarrassing Questions for the BND

Robert Z., 47, is an experienced agent who has served on a number of foreign missions. He was born in Constance and lives in Baden-Württemberg. He lives an inconspicuous life here with his wife and daughter. The neighbors know that he served in the Bundeswehr, “but only in the reserves.” Actually he does “something with computers,” they say. But his dual identity is revealed on his letter box, where both his real name and codename are visible.

Z. and his colleagues were part of a mission so secret both the Kosovar government and the official BND attache stationed at the German Embassy in Pristina knew nothing of it. The German ambassador was likewise in the dark.

On Friday, Nov. 14, around 5:30 p.m., an explosive device was detonated in front of the headquarters of the EU mission, known as EULEX. News agencies quickly reported the attack. BND headquarters and Department One in Pullach, near Munich, were alerted. They asked the trio in Pristina to find out what had happened and file a report for the next “intelligence situation” session at the chancellery in Berlin, where a top-flight group of German security officials meets every Tuesday. As BND President, Uhrlau has to personally report on major incidents, and he likes to be armed with exclusive knowledge.

So the three men hopped in their Mitsubishi on that Friday evening and drove off. Shortly before 9 p.m., Andreas J. got out of the vehicle near the scene of the blast to take some pictures. While his two colleagues waited in the car, the agent climbed into the neighboring building, a construction site, which offers an excellent view of the crime scene. But he wasn't alone: Apparently, other intelligence services were keeping the area under surveillance.

Confiscated A Notebook

As he left the building, the BND agent was stopped by a Danish United Nations peacekeeper who asked him what he was doing there. Andreas J. tried to talk his way out of the situation by explaining that he works for the security firm LCAS. He said that he just wanted to take a quick look at the scene of the attack. They were joined by a German UN official. J. was then asked to hand over his passport, and was searched. Investigators also confiscated a notebook.

This highly unfortunate incident raises a number of embarrassing questions for the BND. Why did the agency send its top-secret undercover agents to the scene when any rank amateur would have realized that there was a considerable risk of running into a police patrol? Why wasn’t the BND resident dispatched on this job? And why did J. take along his notebook, with all its confidential contents, and break every rule of covert operations?

In the confiscated documents, investigators found the names of Kosovo Prime Minister Thaçi and notes about the situation in Kosovo. For Berlin, the BND notebook represents an important piece of the puzzle, perhaps the key to understanding the case. Was it the notes that attracted the interest of political circles close to Prime Minister Thaçi?

In any case, that night the police let Andreas J. go after he named his two partners as witnesses. They could confirm that he was in his office when the explosion occurred, he said.

The next day, Saturday, Andreas J. was allowed to pick up his passport. It looked as if everything had been cleared up. But the next Wednesday the three men were unexpectedly arrested around 9 p.m., placed in a small cell, and intensively questioned. At the same time, authorities searched the LCAS company premises. Shortly thereafter, the BND had to admit the true identity of the three agents, threatening an end to one of the agency’s most important operations.

The incident jeopardizes the BND’s network of informants, which is more extensive in Kosovo than in most countries around the world. Berlin intelligence officials fear that the Kosovo government may now arrest large numbers of informants who have provided the BND with valuable information.

The only small satisfaction for the Germans must be that in Pristina the Kosovars are also looking for a scapegoat for the whole mess. An aide to Prime Minister Thaçi says that at least one important head will roll.

RENATE FLOTTAU, JOHN GOETZ, CONNY NEUMANN, HOLGER STARK, ANDREAS ULRICH

RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS

• Kosovo Spy Scandal: German Agents May Come Home (11/26/2008)

• Spy Scandal: German Intelligence Officers Detained in Kosovo (11/24/2008)

• German Spy Scandal: Kosovo Claims to Have Video of 'Terrorism' (11/25/2008)