This was seen as a foreign policy move that has not yet been taken by China or Russia, both of which have close strategic and economic ties with these five countries. With growing Chinese footprints in these countries in both the defence and security segment as well as the economic sphere, it has become imperative for India to have a “robust foothold” there, sources said.

India, which considers the Central Asian countries part of its “extended neighbourhood”, firmed up plans to hold the summit meeting when the foreign ministers of these countries visited New Delhi in December 2021 for the third round of the India-Central Asia Dialogue.

India had invited the presidents of the five Central Asian nations as chief guests at the Republic Day celebrations, which was to be followed by a summit meeting, but the plans were cancelled due to the spiralling third wave of the Covid pandemic.

PM Narendra Modi’s Address

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, addressing the virtual summit featuring presidents of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyz Republic, on 27 January, talked about an ‘ambitious vision’ for the future.

In his initial remarks at the Summit, Modi said, “We all are concerned about the Afghan situation and this makes cooperation between India and Central Asia all the more important for regional stability and security.”

The prime minister called for defining an ambitious vision for cooperation between India and Central Asia in the coming years.

Mutual cooperation between India and Central Asia is essential for regional security and prosperity, Modi said.

Modi had paid a visit to all Central Asian countries in 2015. Subsequently, there have been exchanges at high levels at bilateral and multilateral forums.

The event was held to commemorate 30 years of the establishment of India’s diplomatic relations with these nations, witnessed unanimity on taking cooperation to the next level for boosting regional connectivity and security. The leaders agreed on considerably enhancing India-Central Asia trade, which is only about $2 billion at present, nowhere near China’s over $40 billion.

The prime minister and the five presidents decided to set up a joint working group on Afghanistan, with a broad consensus emerging on issues such as combating terrorism and drug trafficking.

Increased Significance

In July 2015, Modi became the first Indian prime minister to visit all Central Asian countries to boost strategic and trade ties. He also met the leaders of these countries in 2018 on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting that was held in Qingdao. However, the strategic importance of the five Central Asian countries “has increased” ever since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021. New Delhi believes these countries will prove to be beneficial for India in having some sort of a channel open with the Taliban regime that is currently in power in Kabul, they said, even as the Modi government has started sending humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.

Ties between India and Central Asia started taking a decisive turn as the US government signed the so-called peace deal with the Taliban in February 2020, and fears began to mount about Afghanistan in the aftermath of the NATO’s pullout. Prior to that India mostly looked at Central Asia from the perspective of energy ties.

As India closed all its embassy and consulates in Afghanistan, it also took the initiative to host the Delhi Regional Security Dialogue in November 2021, which was chaired by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval. All security chiefs from the five Central Asian nations attended the meeting along with Russia and Iran, to send a message to the Taliban government.

Chinese Influence

New Delhi’s Central Asian outreach assumes significance amid China’s efforts to strengthen ties with these nations that are part of the eight-member SCO, which also includes India. What gives Beijing a geopolitical edge is the fact that it shares borders with three of the five countries.

Two days before the India summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping interacted with Central Asian leaders and announced an assistance of $500 million to support livelihood programmes in these former Soviet bloc countries. He also listed several big projects of strategic importance that had been completed, including the China-Central Asia natural gas pipeline, the China-Kazakhstan crude oil pipeline, the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan highway and the China-Tajikistan expressway. In a bid to counter the Chinese challenge, India has extended a $1-billion line of credit for infrastructure development projects and offered to provide more training slots and scholarships to meet the requirements of Central Asian countries.

After the recent unrest in Kazakhstan, Russia sent troops there as part of a peacekeeping mission to restore order, while China firmly backed the beleaguered nation’s efforts to curb violence.

Background

“The inception of the India-Central Asia Dialogue at foreign ministers’ level, the 3rd meeting of which was held in New Delhi from 18 to 20 December 2021, has provided an impetus to India-Central Asia relations,” said an official statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs.

“The participation of the secretaries of National Security Councils of Central Asian countries in the Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan held in New Delhi on 10 November 2021 outlined a common regional approach on Afghanistan,” it added.

The issue of maintaining close ties with the Central Asian countries, when it comes to Afghanistan, was something that was also discussed between Prime Minister Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the India-Russia Summit held in December 2021.

Besides, India is also keen to strengthen trade and energy ties with the Central Asian countries with a focus on increasing connectivity. New Delhi has pushed for the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) and the TAPI (Turkmenistan Afghanistan Pakistan India) pipeline for natural gas during the summit.

Comments

The summit is a huge stride for India’s diplomacy and is a first step to carve out its zone of influence.

India should know what it wants out of the Central Asian region and use its influence accordingly. Countries with interests in Central Asia have their own groupings and connect: China from economic (BRI), Russia from strategic (CSTO), Turkey from ethnic (Turkic Council), and the Islamic world from the religious (OIC) It would be befitting for India to give a poignant cultural and historical perspective to the region through a summit-level annual meet. The aims are different – targeting Russia, sabotaging China’s BRI, thrusting Islamisation, economic linkages, military cooperation, trade, lobbying, etc.

Since the region is a critical lynchpin to India’s security policy, the summit will have a waterfall impact to facilitate India’s multifaceted approach towards the region. Central Asia carries no specific stance towards any country, with the exception of Russia. While their strategic visions are often  opaque, they are wary of China.

For three decades, Central Asia remained a cauldron of outside actors. Today, the main security provider to the region is Moscow, which considers Central Asia as its ‘near abroad.’

After the US forces left Afghanistan overnight, the Islamists too have been eyeing to launch their holy jihads to establish new Khilafats there. Regional analysts have estimated that some 8,000 ISIS and Takfiri extremists have been waiting in North Afghanistan to infiltrate across the 2,245 km long porous border.

While leaders of all five states of the CAR have visited India, yet, India’s commercial success has been negligible at a paltry $1.4 billion trade in 2019.

In 2017, India joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) but SCO is only a sluice gate to regulate the Russian and Chinese and prevent them from dominating the region. Moscow tends to use it for regulating India-China tensions.

India’s civilisational influence and still enjoys a range of attributes. The Ferghana Valley was India’s crossing-point (to Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) on the Great Silk Road to connect with China and Europe. Buddhism spread to the rest of Asia from here. This can be the basis of an annual summit. A string of cultural events highlighting the facets of medieval culture, art and painting, including Sufi traditions, should be highlighted.

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Top diplomatic sources posted in South Block told The Sunday Guardian that the Chinese and Russian diplomats were seen vying with one another to establish contacts with the officials of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan when foreign ministers of these central Asian countries were in Delhi for the third round of India-Central Asia Dialogue hosted by foreign minister Subramanyam Jaishankar 18-20 December.
Carrying the message and orders from their respective leaderships in Moscow and Beijing, these diplomats were actually working on the agenda of expanding the footprints of their countries in the Central Asian region. Highly-placed sources told The Sunday Guardian that “Russian President Vladimir Putin chose to call Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the day the India-Central Asia Dialogue concluded (20 December) and made it a point to reassure the Indian leadership to step up Delhi-Moscow cooperation in the Central Asian region in view of the security threat from Afghanistan.”

Sources said that “Putin was earlier supposed to call the PM on some other date around Christmas, but it was advanced coinciding with the India-Central Asia dialogue”. According to sources, a couple of senior Russian diplomats also met with their counterparts from some of these five countries. Similarly, China is learnt to have chalked out a detailed plan for its foreign minister’s visit to the Central Asian countries sometime next month, sources said. Chinese diplomats are said to have spoken to officials of the five countries regarding the plan in what is being seen as a panic reaction to India’s outreach to the region.

While Russia is keen to expand its influence and presence in the Central Asian region so as to secure its backyard in view of the imminent threat of terrorism from Afghanistan, China is trying to fortify its engagement more for its geopolitical and geo-economic objectives. There is no denying that Beijing is also keeping in mind its rivalry with India in the central Asian region as well.

In the last few months, India has stepped up its engagement with the region. Apart from holding talks with these countries at different levels, India has also invited the presidents of all the five nations as chief guests for the Republic Day Celebrations next month. This is not going down well with China, and the leadership of the country is said to be panicky over this. Sources say that Beijing is pressurizing its diplomats to intensify efforts to score over India in the Central Asian region.

The US is also trying to get back in the region which has assumed major significance since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Moreover, the region is becoming the center of a new great power rivalry due to its huge mineral reserves. Undoubtedly, Russia is an important player in the region. China is also firmly entrenched with its Road and Belt Initiative. Pakistan is also not any less active in the central Asian region, with India keeping a close eye on its activities as well. With all this in view, India has stepped up its outreach to the region which is considered by Delhi as an extended neighborhood.

The concern about ISIS, Al Qaeda and other terror groups taking root and spreading extremist ideology and terrorism is a major issue for Afghan region. “Since India’s experience in tackling terrorism is well-known, these republics want its cooperation in the region to deal with any such security threat,” a diplomat says. “That New Delhi is going all out to woo Central Asian rulers is giving many players sleepless nights,” he added.

But India is determined to increase its outreach to Central Asia with greater vigour. Delhi has decided to hold more bilateral meets in days to come, say diplomats. India has offered to increase the slots for Central Asia in its Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Programme (ITEC), which has been New Delhi’s hugely successful outreach to developing nations. “No doubt, connectivity to the region is a major issue. But despite that India had been buying uranium for its nuclear power plants from Kazakhstan,” an official said. Referring to the connectivity issue, PM Modi once said, “The land-locked Central Asian countries can benefit immensely by connecting with India’s vast market. Unfortunately, many connectivity options are not open to them today due to lack of mutual trust. Our investment in Iran’s Chabahar port and our efforts towards the International North-South (Transit) Corridor (INSTC) are driven by this reality.”

PM Modi also visited all five central Asian countries in July 2015 in what underlined India’s emphasis on strengthening ties with the Central asian nations. This was followed in January of 2019 by the first India-Central Asia dialogue in Samarkand in Uzbekistan. The second India-Central Asia Dialogue was held virtually on 28 October 2020.

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