Big powers jockey for oil in Central Asia

Military presence: China and Tajikistan held joint military exercises last fall aimed at cracking down on terrorism, confronting crises, and strengthening capacity to handle new threats. LI ZIANG/CHINAFOTOPRESS/NEWSCOM

Big powers jockey for oil in Central Asia

The US, Russia, China, and others have a military or business presence.

By Fred Weir | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

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DUSHANBE, TAJIKISTAN - Here at Dushanbe airport, French Air Force planes sit on the tarmac, their blue, white, and red roundels looking a bit incongruous against the backdrop of the soaring, snowy Pamir Mountains.

A dozen miles away, Indian engineers are quietly reconstructing a former Soviet airfield. In central Tajikistan, Russia maintains a motorized infantry division of 10,000 men at a sprawling outpost, while the US is reportedly training Tajik forces in counterterrorism techniques.

They're all piling into a modern replay of the 19th-century "Great Game," in which the contending Russian and British Empires vied for land and influence amid these same Central Asian desert wastes and towering mountain peaks.

In this round, the main prize is control over pipelines that will deliver an estimated 5 percent of the world's dwindling energy reserves to market. And the players are far more diverse: In addition to the US, China, France, and India, the region's five post-Soviet states are getting into the game, giving the local hazards that stalk them – including faltering authoritarian governments, rising Islamic militancy, and a wave of drug trafficking that originates in the poppy fields of Afghanistan – a new international dimension.

"The game in Central Asia is very much about competition between the powers," says Dmitri Suslov, an expert with the independent Council on Foreign and Defense Policy in Moscow. "But this time the countries of the region are players themselves, using the contradictions between Russia, the US, the European Union, and China for their own benefit. It's becoming very complicated."

It's not only Tajikistan where world powers have taken to flying their flags, especially since the 9/11 attacks focused attention on the dangers of state failure in this volatile region.

In neighboring Kyrgyzstan, gleaming rows of US Air Force KC-135 midair refueling tankers line the airstrip at Manas International Airport; Russia flies Sukhoi-27 fighters from its base at nearby Kant. China is said to be eyeing its own Kyrgyz military presence. And Germany stations 300 troops with helicopters at Termez, in next-door Uzbekistan.

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