At the end of the 19th Century, Lord Curzon, then the British Viceroy of India described the Great Game that was then being played out in Central Asia and the Southern Caucasus between the world's great powers - in particular, Czarist Russia and the British Empire: "Turkestan, Afghanistan, Transcaspia, Persia - to many these names breathe only a sense of utter remoteness ... To me, I confess, they are pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for the dominion of the world". Today, a century on, a New Great Game is being played out in the same region. The stakes of this game are higher. Its potential consequences are far more dangerous.
The prize of the New Great Game is oil. Major new discoveries in Azerbaijan and Khazakstan in the 1990s led Dick Cheney to declare to oil industrialists in 1998, two years before he became the US vice president: "I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian." Once in office he went on to recommend that the Bush administration make energy security a priority of US trade and foreign policy and identified the Caspian as a rapidly growing new area of supply.
There's a catch to this New Great Game. The problem with Central Asian hydrocarbons, unlike those of the Middle East or Africa, is transport. It's a long way from Azerbaijan or Khazakhstan (the biggest producers) to the nearest seaports providing an outlet to the markets of the industrialized world. All the potential routes for pipelines present political problems: Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, Georgia. So the New Great Game is not just about oil exploitation, it's about pipelines to and this is what makes the story so complex and so fascinating.
The US is not the only power with its eye on Central Asia. Moscow, which gave up formal control of the region with the break up of the Soviet Union has nonetheless been understandably determined to maintain its influence in its backyard. China, whose economy is rapidly outgrowing its own energy resources, also has economic and political interests in the region, as do Iran, India, Pakistan and Turkey. It is no comfort that most of the countries with interests in Central Asia are also nuclear powers.
Since 9/11 a new ingredient has been added to the Game. The New York attacks provided the justification not only for a US led assault on the Taleban regime in Afghanistan but also for a significant increase in the US military presence in this largely (but not entirely) Muslim populated region.
Against this geo-strategic background Lutz Kleveman, a German born journalist with an Anglophone outlook (he has worked mostly for the British and US media), takes us on a guided tour of the region in a book which mixes political analysis with anecdote and journalistic reportage. Traveling at no small risk to himself from Azerbaijan and Georgia, to Afghanistan and North Western Pakistan by way of Chechnya, Kazakhstan, China, Iran, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikstan, and Turkmenistan, Kleveman puts together an impressionistic but ultimately convincing picture of a region much of which was for decades of Soviet rule more or less impenetrable to most foreigners.
The picture that emerges is of course very heterogeneous. Most of the states of the region have as much to distinguish them from each other as they have in common. Even among the former Soviet Republics there is a great deal of variety, from the embattled failing state of Georgia which has lost large chunk of territory to Russian backed rebels, to the weird secular dictatorship of Saparmurat Nyazov of Turkmenistan who has renamed the days of the week after himself and members of his family, to the increasingly repressive regime in Uzbekistan with which the US is now, post 9/11, strengthening military cooperation.
By weaving China, Iran and Pakistan into the narrative, Kleveman not only demonstrates the importance of those countries' strategic interests in Central Asia, but provides himself with some rich material for the travelogue sections of his book. One important omission in this respect is that Turkey is not included on his itinerary, nor is there much discussion of Turkish interests, even though Turkey has long claimed Central Asia as part of its cultural and linguistic sphere.
In spite of the complexities of the politics of the region, Kleveman presents a clear, coherent and readable account which clearly draws out his main themes - the interface between the US' "war on terror", oil, and the often violent local and regional politics of Central Asia and Southern Caucasus. The account would have been clearer for this reader had the editors thought to provide a map of Central Asia.
Kleveman's conclusion is bleak. The US' agenda in the region is dominated by two overriding concerns: energy security and counterterrorism. These two concerns (which have become dangerously intertwined here as in the Middle East) have led the US to adopt policies that are likely in the medium term to foment more political repression and violent conflict in the region and to increase local support for radical Islamist groups that share a growing hatred of the US and the West.
