In Beijing this week Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov signed a treaty of partnership with China that set the seal on a $600 million oil deal with the China National Petroleum Corp., along with 14 cooperation agreements on trade, customs, high technology and energy.
The Uzbek leader is evidently not isolated, despite his blunt rejection of calls from UN, US and European leaders for an independent inquiry into the deaths of at least 169 people when troops suppressed the May 13 "bandit uprising" in Andijan. (Other sources claim that more than 500 civilians were killed.)
Karimov met Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao during his three-day visit to Beijing, who said that they "firmly backed" his measures to restore order. Meanwhile top Russian officials endorsed Karimov's claim that his troops in Andijan were fighting a Taliban-backed Islamist movement. They also supported the official Uzbek version that the trouble began when Islamic militants attacked a police station and then an army post, seizing arms, before staging a violent assault on a prison to free 23 detained Islamist businessmen.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has said that the operation in Andijan was planned and prepared with local dissidents and Islamists from the Ferghana Valley region and also from Afghanistan "from the Taliban camp and external extremist forces of the Taliban-type". Lavrov said that the role of Taliban supporters was the result of the amnesty offered by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to Taliban members not guilty of "atrocities against the Afghan people".
"If we continue to condone terrorists and apply 'double standards' to them, including the notion of a moderate wing to the Taliban, the entire region is heading for a crisis," Lavrov said.
The Russians know that it is rather more complicated than that. Deputy foreign minister Valery Loshchinin noted, when interviewed by Radio Mayak. "The difficult socioeconomic conditions, a certain weakness of power, the Islamic factor - all this combined with popular discontent over living standards make the situation so explosive."
True or not, the official Russian version of events, along with China's readiness to sign oil deals and hail Karimov in Beijing, makes it clear that the Uzbek leader has diplomatic and material assets that buttress his position, and also emphasize the strategic importance of this region of Central Asia.
Tucked into that crucial geographic space between the nuclear powers of Russia, China, India and Pakistan - with Iran possibly poised to join them - Central Asia occupies some prime geopolitical real estate. This region, where Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and the Russian Orthodox Church all meet, also contains significant quantities of oil, some 50 million very poor people and vast quantities of lucrative opium and other narcotics. Ousted Kyrgyz President Askar Akaev has claimed that drug lords were among those who overthrew him and that his successors are "practically hostages of the narcotics mafia".
All this makes for a potentially explosive mix and Karimov is not the only Central Asian leader looking for reliable friends and diplomatic options, in the wake of the Andijan killings and the earlier revolution that toppled the leadership of neighboring Kyrgyzstan.
The largest of the central Asian states is oil and gas-rich Kazakhstan, whose President Nursultan Nazarbayev warned in his State of the Nation address last month that "we are witnessing superpower rivalry for economic dominance in our region. We have to address correctly this global and geoeconomics challenge."
"We have a choice between remaining the supplier of raw materials to the global markets and waiting patiently for the emergence of the next imperial master or to pursue genuine economic integration of the Central Asian region," he added. "I chose the latter."
The problem is that there are competing ways of pursuing that integration. Russia seeks to maintain economic and political influence through the much-faded institution, the Commonwealth of Independent States, along with its control of oil pipelines and its access to military bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. China seeks to exert its influence through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the regional security forum that it founded. Chinese foreign minister Li Zhaoxing will attend the next meeting in Kazakhstan on June 4.
Kazakhstan itself is trying, with UN backing, to develop a regional economic grouping called SPECA - Special Program for Economics in Central Asia - that will be independent of the great powers, which includes Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, with Afghanistan about to join. But the big powers have ways of making their influence felt, not least by rallying to the support of a controversial figure like Karimov in his hour of need. The more they back Karimov now, the more they trust that he will depend on their support in the future.
But the Russians and Chinese are not the only players. The United States has its military base at Manas in Kyrgyzstan and the K2 (Karshi-Khanabad) base in Uzbekistan. Indian oil companies already have 15 percent of Kazakhstan's Alibekmola oil fields and a 10-percent holding in the Kurmangazi fields. India has also been negotiating to invest in hydroelectric power schemes in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and at least 20 percent of Uzbekistan's energy output. That is the deal China has now tried to preempt, with its deal to invest and bring modern technology to 23 Uzbek oil fields. The Uzbek oil sector is in trouble; output fell 7 percent last year, to just more than 130,000 barrels a day.
On the horizon is looming something far bigger. Next month China is scheduled to unveil its first independent energy giant, the Great-Wall United Petroleum Company, which will start by raising roughly $600 million to focus on gas exploration deals. Designed by the China Chamber of Commerce for the Petroleum Industry to bring together over 100 small private firms to compete with the state-owned PetroChina, Sinopec and China National Offshore Oil Corp., the new Great Wall company is expected to be more welcome in countries like Kazakhstan where the state-owned firms might arouse some suspicion.
That will not be a concern in Uzbekistan, where Karimov and Beijing see eye to eye on the need for stability and the dangers of dissidents. China has its own concerns with the Muslim Uighur minority, some of whom seek autonomy for the region of East Turkestan in China's far-western Xinjiang province.
"East Turkestan separatists have carried out a lot of terrorist incidents in China. The Uzbekistan side fully understands and supports the Chinese government's stance on this issue," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan said this week, as Beijing's leaders declared their support for the Uzbek president.
Analysis: Uzbek leader escapes isolation
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