In the second of a two-part series on Central Asia, Eric Walberg considers the relevance to Egypt of the remarkable re-orientation in Central Asia's political and economic life in the recent past

19/4/7 -- So what are the lessons for Egypt and the Middle East from Central Asia's experience since independence and its recent re-orientation away from the United States towards Russia and China? And can Egypt provide answers to some of Central Asia's many problems?

Well, all these "republics" are really more or less dictatorships, despite regular elections and even the odd revolution (Kyrgyzstan), with their autocratic legacy from Soviet days, paralleling Egypt's contradictory colonial legacy. Democracy is a word without much substance. So not much to learn there. Kazakhstan presents a nice public image -- secular, Westernised, rich, relatively open -- but Egypt lacks its immense resource base, and besides, it is really more like a part of Russia culturally and economically.

Tajikistan suffered a disastrous civil war in the 1990s based on tribal differences, though the oppositionists were/are also more assertive of their Islamic heritage than the ex-communist leaders. They are formally part of the government but have little power and elections are pro forma. Again, not relevant here.

Kyrgyzstan, where oppositionists (led by a powerful mafia figure) stormed the parliament and seized control of the government in February 2005, perhaps looks tantalising to frustrated oppositionists here, but the result was really just a failed state where the US has reduced, but still significant, power. US companies and NGOs come and go as they please and the Kyrgyz government regularly rounds up anyone who looks a bit too Islamic. But this revolutionary scenario is not a likely one for Egypt, where the state is strong, and where the US is unlikely to gamble on letting it collapse, considering the real opposition in Egypt is religious and well organised, rather than mafia- like and apolitical, as it was in Kyrgyzstan. Despite the many NGOs here in Egypt hard at work giving seminars on nice interrogation procedures to police and teaching young people about the advantages of Hollywood culture and political plurality, the US will provoke no "banana" revolution à la Kyrgyzstan -- the stakes are just too high.

Uzbekistan is more the model that fits Egypt, and suits the US despite the chilled relations between them after the events in Andijan in 2005. In any case this cold shoulder may soon warm up -- possibly, however, with the help of Egypt, as Uzbekistan suffered no significant sanctions for its sins and the initial US and European protests following the 2005 massacre look increasingly like crocodile tears -- a blip in the radar. The US government has been discretely trying to mend fences ever since and restore relations without any Kyrgyz-style "sunshine revolution" (as coined by Uzbek oppositionists in 2005). Washington now realises it made a very big miscalculation in trying to overturn President Karimov back in 2005 and has been eating crow ever since.

The upcoming visit of Karimov to Egypt -- without a doubt approved by the White House -- is an important opportunity for Washington to mend fences through a client state. No doubt the US hopes that Karimov will be convinced by Egypt's example, with its controlled repression of the Muslim Brotherhood and big doses of McDonalds and Hollywood, that he will be assured that Egypt's scenario is applicable to Uzbekistan, and that he won't have to worry about any more tulip or sunshine revolutions. No doubt President Hosni Mubarak will be telling his colleague: "Let bygones be bygones. Please return to the fold." This was apparently the plan during Karimov's recent state visit to Pakistan, though there was no public evidence to suggest that it worked.

Once again, the inertia of history has taken its toll. You can't swim in the same river twice, as President George W Bush is learning again and again. The new orientation in Central Asia has established strong roots, and misguided US foreign policies have even raised the eyebrows of the Egyptian political establishment. So the road east looks like clear sailing for Egypt too. But for all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the shift of Central Asia towards China and Russia, what are the lessons here for Egypt?

To answer that, let's first ask what has really changed? And what do these superpower politics and economics mean to the people, as opposed to military planners in Washington and the tiny local elites who now will take their business to Moscow and Peking instead of New York? The economies of Central Asia are still solidly market driven. Life in Uzbekistan is still a kind of parody of Western consumerism. In fact, suicide rates of young village teens have skyrocketed in the past decade -- clearly poor village teens' envy of their well- sneakered, iPODed peers is just too hard to stomach. And the line-ups to get green cards to the US or visas anywhere are much like in certain other countries which shall remain nameless. Uzbekistan looks like another soulless backwater in the making, subject to the whims of its economic masters abroad, despite its rich heritage and natural resource wealth. Déjà vu?

Both Egyptian and Central Asian societies were governed by Islam for over a millennium, until the arrival in the 19th century of their Western imperial masters. The important question we must address is: Is Islam an anachronism for Egypt and Central Asia today, or a great legacy? Will the inertia of history bring back the spirit of Islam -- to channel society's energy into culture and worship as opposed to the pursuit of material goods -- as the spiritual conscience of the anti-globalist/anti- imperialist movement?

Yes, Egypt (and not only Egypt) could join the SCO, increase trade with Russia, cool its ties with the US in favour of ever-so-slightly more reliable ones with the new counter-vailing powers, but the real question is: What direction should Egyptian society take? The SCO et al are really just alternate vehicles for the pursuit of an impossible American dream of material wealth for all. Cooperation with other Muslim states, say, within the ICO, looks more interesting, but would mean burying nationalist hatchets, leaving Islam as the cohesive underpinning of a new direction in social life.

My fervent hope is that Egypt, building on its great Muslim and nationalist heritage, can itself provide a positive example for Central Asia (as opposed to the pathetic one the US is counting on it showing during Karimov's upcoming visit) and lead the way for such countries as Uzbekistan and its neighbours to square the circle -- to integrate Islam more fully into their political and social fabric. Of course, very much against the wishes of US and Israel, but so what?

Let Egypt find the real but elusive "third way" to live here in the dunyo. Not Blair and Schroeder's cynical middle way between consumerist capitalism and consumerist socialism, or as a footnote to China's economic bulldozer, but a social programme based on consensus and Islamic principles of social justice and spirituality as central to the lives of the people. Central Asia -- and in a sense, under Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Egypt too -- tried a secular version of social justice, but failed. But both countries have an untapped Islamic heritage, and in the case of Uzbekistan, its 80 years of Soviet atheism and 16 years of even more oppressive "independence" show the incredible resilience of Islam, which remains the dominant theme in most Uzbeks' lives. This is the light at the end of the tunnel for so many Central Asians and Egyptians.

And is there a lesson for America in all this? Its role in provoking this re-orientation of Central Asia eastward is clear -- the "democratisation ideals" of US policy in the post-Soviet-collapse period have been exposed as self-serving and have as a result undermined not only ex-Soviet governments but American national security (or at least its agenda of world hegemony). A classic case of "blowback". At one point after 9/11, with the exception of isolationist Turkmenistan, the US had military bases or at least troops in all the republics, but the new shift east has left only small bases in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and amidst loud and frequent calls to close the base, Kyrgyzstan increased the rent from $2m to $150m last year. President Nazarbayev recently announced on Russian TV that, "there will never be a US base on Kazakh territory". Of course the prize airbase -- in Uzbekistan -- was lost shortly after "Andijan" and there is little chance that this will be regained.

Central Asia, for one, is a more unstable place than before Washington championed its regime- change agenda, and leaders in the region now view the American government not as a force for stability and progress, but as a dangerous agent of chaotic change. This hardly seems to be a good way to make friends and win the struggle against Islamic radicalism.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/841/in5.htm