Indigenous nations professing Islam occupy the southern half of the Eurasian continent, limited to the West by the Mediterranean Sea and the Western European peninsula, to the South by the Indian Ocean, to the West more or less evenly distributed throughout India and dominating Bangladesh, occupying East Turkestan in Western China all the way to Tibet and the Gobi desert, in the North the Muslim super ethnos inhabits the Caucasus, Idel-Ural and Kazakhstan. In Eurasia, there are such world players as China, India, Russia and the European Union (with the USA), often acting as a single whole in relation to Muslim countries. A special feature of China is its large population and lack of mineral resources. The Chinese government encouraged the transfer of industrial production to China, luring low labour costs, high worker discipline and complete disregard for environmental issues. But even the entire production of international industrial corporations could not completely occupy the Chinese labour market, so Chinese businessmen began to specialize in mass industrial plagiarism and disregard for copyright, and the market for counterfeits was almost our entire planet. However, global trade is successful with low logistics costs, so, Chinese products will be competitive only when delivering products by sea, and the Strait of Malacca and Taiwan are controlled by the United States (with the European Union). The Western world has leverage over China to bypass it. Beijing financed the construction of the deep-sea port of Gwadar in Pakistan and built the Karakoram Highway from East Turkestan to Pakistan, and it is planned to build a railway there. China is also building logistics routes to Europe through Russia, through the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus to Turkey. Everything is logical for China, except for one thing: the indigenous population of East Turkestan are Muslim Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz who do not want to be Sinicized, and the construction of the Karakoram Highway is a movement not only to Pakistan but also from Pakistan and Afghanistan, including ideas Taliban. While communist China was behind the Iron Curtain, the world did not know about the genocide of Muslims in East Turkestan, but now China itself has built a logistics route to Pakistan.
Pakistan, with 218 million inhabitants, is the second most populous Muslim country in the world after Malaysia and also has nuclear weapons and long-range missiles to boot. As a legacy of the colonization of the British Empire, Pakistan received a military conflict with India over the state of Kashmir, inhabited by Muslims. A significant part of the country’s budget is spent on the confrontation with India, but it is not enough and the country is forced to borrow money. Pakistan’s external debt now stands at 84% of GDP. As devout Muslims, the Pakistanis would like to help their fellow believers from East Turkestan, but China is Pakistan’s creditor. The Chinese cannot harshly demand debts from Pakistan, since if the political situation in Pakistan destabilizes, unrest could spread to East Turkestan.
Afghanistan, having won the war with the United States and driven out a corrupt government, was left with a hungry population, a destroyed country, frozen foreign accounts, a lack of industry, and an agriculture based on the cultivation of opium poppies. The only world power that has offered infrastructure projects to Afghanistan (for the same reasons as Pakistan) is China.
The geopolitical problem of India is that, as a single region, India existed under the rule of Muslims – the descendants of Babur and Temirlan. Pakistan, unlike India, has a historically centralized Islamic statehood under the control of the Ghaznavids, Arguns, Afshars and descendants of Temirlan; in the event of destabilization, India is more likely to break up into separate states with separate languages, religions and different mentalities. In India itself, Muslims make up 14% of the population or more than 200 million citizens, whose sympathies, of course, are on the side of Pakistan, which also increased after the nationalists came to power in India.
The next major geopolitical player in Eurasia is Russia. As a legacy of the USSR, Russia received large reserves of mineral resources in the Urals and Siberia, in regions that are not the historical lands of the Russian ethnic group. Russia had well-established logistics routes in the form of gas and oil pipelines to markets in Europe and had ports on the Black Sea, which, however, are limited by the Bosphorus, which belongs to Turkey. Thanks to Putin’s policies, Russia has lost the market for gas and oil to Europe. Russia’s influence in the world was built on the general belief that the Russian army was the second in the world, but during the war with Ukraine, it turned out that this was a bluff. Russia’s last trump card is nuclear weapons, the combat effectiveness of which and their quantity may also turn out to be a bluff. Taking advantage of this, Azerbaijan regained control over the territories occupied for 30 years by Armenia, a Russian satellite. The countries of Central Asia are cautiously emerging from Russia’s influence, and there is hope for the sovereignty of the Caucasus and Idel-Ural.
Turkey, like China, took full advantage of the collapse of the USSR and increased the welfare of its state and citizens by opening new markets after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Funding for science has increased and Turkey is already presenting its achievements and ambitions to the whole world, even in the space field. The increase in the level of economic influence could not but affect the level of political influence, and Turkey was able to provide political and military assistance to Azerbaijan in the liberation of the occupied lands. Turkey also benefited from the Russian-Ukrainian war, however, a devastating earthquake with 50 thousand dead showed that Turkey has not yet fully strengthened economically.
The countries of Central Asia and the former republics of the USSR, upon gaining independence, inherited economic dependence on Russia: a mining industry using Russian equipment and focused on the supply of raw materials to Russia; a common energy system with Russia; corrupt pro-Russian governments and supplying Russia with unskilled labour. New logistics routes for selling products are being created together and with financing from China, which leads to a transition from dependence on Russia to dependence on China. The obstacle in the Muslim arc of Eurasia is Iran, which is not only an obstacle to the logistics of Muslim countries, but also, through its policies, has made Muslim cooperation impossible. For the past thousand years, Iran has been a Turkic power, the last Turkic dynasty of the Qajars ceased to rule here only in 1925, and until now the North of Iran is a zone of settlement of the Turkic nation of the Oghuz branch: the Azerbaijani Turks and Turkmen. Thanks to the actions of first the United West, and now Russia, Iran is an obstacle to the land logistics of the Turkic countries, but this problem could be solved by establishing friendly relations with Iran; becoming a logistics hub would be beneficial for Iran as well.
The Islamic world of Asia is a single historical region, united more than once under the rule of one state and one ruling dynasty. The Muslim countries of Eurasia have a large population (almost 400 million), a sufficient amount of natural resources, seaports and control of important sea straits, large armies with modern practical experience in military operations, and nuclear and missile technologies. But so far they do not have the political will to unite and jointly confront their historical rivals, who also occupy historical Muslim lands – Russia, China and India.
What is the geopolitical position of Kazakhstan in this mosaic of interests?
There is no doubt that the main problem of Kazakhstan is avoiding dependence in all areas on the Russian Federation. Kazakhstan and Russia have the longest land border in the world and are forced to be geographical neighbours and have economic and military cooperation. But the regions of the Russian Federation bordering Kazakhstan are not the indigenous place of development of the Russian ethnic group; in the west, Kazakhstan borders with the former lands of the Nogai Ulus, in the northwest with the lands of the Tatar-Bashkort ethnic group, in the north and northeast with the lands of the Siberian Tatars, in the east with the Altai Turks. Consequently, the vector of interaction with the Central Government of the Russian Federation in Moscow must be gradually transferred to interaction with regional governments, primarily with Kazan and Ufa, and support their independence. Perhaps not openly or directly, but Kazakhstan needs to start supporting the national governments of the nations of the Russian Federation in exile. The keystone of the arched arc of the subjects of the Russian Federation is Idel-Ural; if the independence of this region is declared, the European part of the Russian Federation will be cut off from Siberia and this empire will collapse. In this case, Kazakhstan will solve the problem of dependence on Moscow, receiving the Turkic states of Idel-Ural as a safety net against Russia.
Russian political scientists are afraid that Kazakhstan, if it loses its “master” in the form of Russia, will fall under even worse dependence on China, but is communist China really that strong? East Turkestan is separated from Central China by the high mountains of Tibet, the only route where the railway and highway passes lies between Tibet and the Gobi Desert and this artery can be easily blocked by a small military force. Mentally, culturally and historically, the Turkic and Muslim population of East Turkestan is not connected with the Han Chinese, but with Central Asia: the Uzbeks, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz. The Chinese “re-education” camps, where Muslims are imprisoned without committing crimes, without investigation and court verdicts, have not solved the problem of the assimilation of the Turks with the Han Chinese, but on the contrary, have embittered the population of East Turkestan. Unlike the end of the 20th century, when China became a partner of the United States and Europe and where they moved their production, at the beginning of the 21st century, China’s political relations with the United States began to change. Multinational corporations from China gradually moved production to Southeast Asia with cheaper labour and governments unencumbered by global ambitions. That means, the Uighurs can receive support from the US government by providing, together with Taiwan, a “second front” against China in the West. The dream of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan would be a sovereign Uyghurstan, which, like Idel-Ural, could be a buffer between Central Asia and China.
Compared to the giants of China and Russia, Kazakhstan seems like a midget who wants to defend its interests before the Gulivers, but is Kazakhstan’s situation so hopeless? First of all, you need to understand that China and Russia only seem to be united, whole political players, but in fact, they consist of many subjects – nations whose interests are opposite to the central government, with a different mentality, a different culture, with a different faith, with a different language, with different writing, with a different history, only connected with the metropolis by military force.
On the contrary, Kazakhstan is not alone; Kazakhs are united with thousands of connections with the Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Karakalpaks, Turkmens and Uyghurs – forming a historically united region – Central Asia. Not only culture and religion but also the same political tasks bind our nations, including liberation from colonial dependence, industrial development, and access to world markets. In addition, Central Asia has 70 million potential consumers with the same mentality and cheap logistics, and this is already an opportunity for economic development. Not the Customs Union with Russia, which works only in the interests of Moscow to pump out cheap resources and sell low-quality Russian goods, but an equal union of the countries of Central Asia, this is a benefit for Kazakhstan. Further to the west two Turkic countries have already formed a fraternal alliance – Turkey and Azerbaijan. The implementation of the principle of “two countries – one nation” allowed Azerbaijan to solve the 30-year-old problem of Karabakh, which, in violation of international norms, was occupied by Armenia with the help of Russia.
In addition to Turkic allies, Kazakhstan also has historical Muslim allies. This is Afghanistan, in the 18th century, the Afghan emir without hesitation agreed to send troops to Central Asia for ghazavat with China, Sadyk (Syzdyk) Kenesary-uly left for Afghanistan after the conquest of the Russian empires of the Kokand and Khorezm khanates with the Bukhara Emirate, and the Bukhara emir himself emigrated to Afghanistan, Afghanistan was the mainstay of the Muslim Basmachi rebels in the fight against Soviet power. Northern Afghanistan is home to Turkic Uzbek tribes and forms a single cultural region with Central Asia. Now Afghanistan is ruled by the Taliban, a party banned throughout the world, Afghanistan’s foreign assets are frozen, but the Taliban would never have come to power without the support of the majority of the Afghan population. The chaos in war-torn Afghanistan and the corruption of the former Afghan government, supported by the US military, primarily benefited drug traffickers. With the strengthening of the Taliban’s power in 2023, according to international experts, opium poppy crops in Afghanistan have decreased by 97%, and the world centre of opium drug production has moved from Afghanistan to Myanmar. Afghanistan, together with Iran, is the closest route to seaports for the countries of Central Asia, which means access to world markets, and plans have already been announced to build a railway from Uzbekistan to Pakistan through Afghanistan to the seaports. Pro-Russian propaganda invariably exaggerates the threat of “Islamic extremism” precisely to isolate the Central Asian region from the south, then the only logistical route for Kazakhstan will be through Russia. An example is the notorious CPC oil pipeline, which from time to time, due to the mood of Russian officials, is closed for oil transportation, leaving Kazakhstan without income.
Pakistan is another member of the Islamic Commonwealth and a potential ally of Kazakhstan. It should be noted that Pakistan itself is reaching out to the Turkic countries; during the Karabakh war, Pakistan was the first to offer assistance to Azerbaijan; after Kazakhstan gained independence, Pakistan was one of the first to invite the then President of Kazakhstan Nazarbayev to make a state visit. Pakistan is interesting for Kazakhstan not only as a market for goods and access to the world market through seaports but also as a state with great demographic potential because the war in Ukraine has once again shown that one of the most important factors in a confrontation between states is the presence of a mobilization reserve.
Of course, the main ally of Kazakhstan and Central Asia is Turkey, the modern regional leader of the Middle East, which has a second NATO army, with developed industry, and most importantly, Turkey at all levels emphasizes the kinship of the Turks of Central Asia. Turkey was not accepted into its ranks by the European Community, thereby reminding Turkey that its main interests lie in Asia.
With such geopolitical allies, Kazakhstan no longer looks like a dwarf in defending its interests with Russia and China.
Nurlan Saltaev
TuranToday
