ABSTRACT
The Central Asian states – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan – have one major priority: to ensure their security. Historically situated at the confluence between Russia, the Muslim world and the Chinese world, they acceded to political independence in 1991 upon the fall of the Soviet Union, and each had its own specific problems to resolve: fear of political Islam (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan), potential inter-ethnic tensions (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan), rising unemployment among the younger generations (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan), massive work migrations (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan), energy/food crisis to solve (Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan), etc. Their security is therefore multiform: it can mean security to protect the independent states born in 1991 (protection against invasion by a neighbour), security of the nation as an imagined ethnic group (protection against demographic or cultural domination), security of the established political regime and its elites (avoiding interference by external actors, domestic competition, and preserving status quo power), security to protect states from nontraditional threats (avoiding Islamism, civil wars, and so-called low-intensity conflicts), and human security (ensuring minimal services for the population). These forms of security are sometimes contradictory as Central Asian predatory regimes have monopolized power and misappropriated national wealth, thus intensifying human security challenges. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are quasi narco-states where the ruling elites are an integral part of drug-trafficking. This creates a dilemma for political security of the regime as well as for protection against non-traditional threats.
