[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
ISLAMIST MILITANT THREATS TO EURASIA
=======================================================================
JOINT HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, EURASIA, AND EMERGING THREATS
AND THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM, NONPROLIFERATION, AND TRADE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 27, 2013
__________
Serial No. 113-5
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DANA ROHRABACHER, California Samoa
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio BRAD SHERMAN, California
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
TED POE, Texas GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MATT SALMON, Arizona THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina KAREN BASS, California
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
MO BROOKS, Alabama DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
TOM COTTON, Arkansas ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
PAUL COOK, California JUAN VARGAS, California
GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III,
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania Massachusetts
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
RON DeSANTIS, Florida ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
TREY RADEL, Florida GRACE MENG, New York
DOUG COLLINS, Georgia LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
TED S. YOHO, Florida JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
LUKE MESSER, Indiana
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats
DANA ROHRABACHER, California, Chairman
TED POE, Texas WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
PAUL COOK, California BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas
------
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade
TED POE, Texas, Chairman
JOE WILSON, South Carolina BRAD SHERMAN, California
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
MO BROOKS, Alabama JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
TOM COTTON, Arkansas JUAN VARGAS, California
PAUL COOK, California BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III,
TED S. YOHO, Florida Massachusetts
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
The Honorable Robert O. Blake, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of
South and Central Asian Affairs, U.S. Department of State...... 9
Mr. Justin Siberell, Deputy Coordinator for Regional Affairs and
Programs, Bureau of Counterterrorism, U.S. Department of State. 18
Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., senior research fellow for Russian and
Eurasian Studies, The Heritage Foundation...................... 37
Mr. Jacob Zenn, research analyst, The Jamestown Foundation....... 48
Mr. Nathan Barrick, strategic consultant, CLI Solutions.......... 71
Stephen J. Blank, Ph.D., research professor of National Security
Affairs, U.S. Army War College................................. 76
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Dana Rohrabacher, a Representative in Congress from
the State of California, and chairman, Subcommittee on Europe,
Eurasia, and Emerging Threats: Prepared statement.............. 3
The Honorable Robert O. Blake: Prepared statement................ 11
Mr. Justin Siberell: Prepared statement.......................... 20
Ariel Cohen, Ph.D.: Prepared statement........................... 39
Mr. Jacob Zenn: Prepared statement............................... 51
Mr. Nathan Barrick: Prepared statement........................... 73
Stephen J. Blank, Ph.D.: Prepared statement...................... 78
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 100
Hearing minutes.................................................. 101
ISLAMIST MILITANT THREATS TO EURASIA
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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2013
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats and
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittees met, pursuant to notice, at 1 o'clock
p.m., in room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dana
Rohrabacher and Hon. Ted Poe (chairmen of the subcommittees)
presiding.
Mr. Rohrabacher. This hearing of the joint subcommittees of
the Foreign Affairs Committee will be called to order. And I
call to order this joint hearing. It is of both Europe,
Eurasia, and Emerging Threats, and the Subcommittee on
Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade. Now let me see what we
have got here, okay.
After Chairman Poe of the Subcommittee on Terrorism,
Nonproliferation, and Trade and I, and the ranking members of
each subcommittee, Mr. Keating and Mr. Sherman, after we each
take 5 minutes to make our opening remarks, each member will
have 1 minute to make an opening statement, alternating between
the majority and minority members. And without objection, all
members may have 5 days to submit statements, questions, and
extraneous material for the record subject to the length
limitation in the rules, and hearing no objection, so ordered.
This is essentially a hearing about terrorism and how to
fight it, so it is relevant to bring up the plight of Dr.
Afridi. With the understanding of my colleagues and those that
have come to hear this hearing, Dr. Afridi is the man who
confirmed the location of Osama bin Laden in his Pakistani safe
house. Defense Secretary Panetta said Dr. Afridi played a
pivotal role in making it possible for our Special Forces to
administer justice to bin Laden for his role in plotting the
massacre of 3,000 Americans on 9/11.
Pakistan gave this mass murderer safe haven. Dr. Afridi, a
Pakistani physician, risked his life so justice could be done.
Then we left him behind, and this hero is now sitting in a
Pakistani prison. Dr. Afridi has been tortured, and his family
threatened. Those are hostile acts by Pakistan against the
United States, and belie the notion that Pakistan is an ally of
ours in the war against terrorism.
So I would hope our Assistant Secretary Blake, I hope he
takes back to Foggy Bottom, the message of the American people
that the State Department needs to get Dr. Afridi released from
prison using whatever pressure on Pakistan is needed. We cannot
defeat terrorism in Eurasia or anywhere else if we cannot
recruit allies. And we are never going to be able to recruit
allies if we betray those who side with us against this
ferocious and horrible enemy that all of us in humankind face
of radical Islamic terrorism, and yes, other forms of terrorism
as well.
Since September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United
States, American policy toward the Central Asian states has
aimed basically at facilitating their cooperation with the
United States and NATO stabilization efforts in Afghanistan.
The level of cooperation by the Government of Uzbekistan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, their level of cooperation with these
three governments has been outstanding since 9/11. There has
even been a respectable level of cooperation with Russia in
Afghanistan and in other regional hotspots.
During most of this period, terrorism in Central Asia was
kept to a minimum. However, since 2010 there has been an
increase in violence by Islamic militants in Central Asia. A
closer look at security risks in the region north of
Afghanistan is long overdue, and it is imperative as we move to
a U.S. pullout of troops by 2014 that we focus on what that
will result in, in those countries just north of Afghanistan.
The point of today's hearing is to examine what efforts the
United States is making to keep Central Asia stable and to
improve relations with the states in the region. That means
helping out our friends, and yes, remember those, by helping
the enemy of our enemies we are conducting ourselves in the
most efficient way of providing defense for our own people.
Just 2 days ago, a congressional delegation led by myself
and including Mr. Poe returned from the region. The members of
the codel were impressed with the commitment of the Uzbek
Government to work with the United States to thwart the
catastrophic consequences of the Taliban retaking power in
Afghanistan. We were also impressed that there are brave forces
anxious to fight and defeat radical Islam in that area. For
example, there is the MEK whose leaders we met in France that
stands vulnerable, yet it is willing to do what it can to
resist the Mullah dictatorship in Iran.
The Baloch National Insurgency, whose representatives we
met in London, were dedicated and courageous people who are
under fire in Iran and Pakistan, both terrorist supporting
regimes also that repress, they not only threaten their
neighbors but threaten their own people in the name of militant
Islam. In short, radical Islam threatens us all. We should be
supplying those courageous opponents of those who threaten us.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rohrabacher follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. With that said, I would now turn to the
chairman of the Terrorism subcommittee, Judge Poe.
Mr. Poe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Islamic Jihad Union may be the most dangerous of all
Islamic militant groups in Central Asia. In 2004, they
coordinated three nearly simultaneous suicide bombings outside
the United States in Israeli Embassies and the headquarters of
the Uzbek chief prosecutor in Tashkent, the capital of
Uzbekistan. They killed Uzbeks and one Israeli Embassy security
guard and another personal security guard of the Israeli
Ambassador.
IJU is typical of terrorist groups in the region. They want
to establish Islamic rule in the region, and they want to
institute Sharia law, ban music, and have second class
citizenship for all non-Muslims, and women. They have close
ties to al-Qaeda and northern Afghanistan and the safe havens
of Pakistan. They train with al-Qaeda. They live with al-Qaeda,
and they even get funding from al-Qaeda. If they had it their
way, they would take over Central Asia just like the Taliban
went into Afghanistan. The issue is, can they? Will they
overthrow the governments of Central Asia and establish Islamic
rule? That is one of our questions today.
Up until this point, the governments of the region have
been successful in pushing them out of the region and into
Afghanistan and even Pakistan. However, my opinion is that some
of these groups left on their own because they wanted to gain
more skills, learn how to fight and be better terrorists, if we
can use that phrase. Has the fighting and training in
Afghanistan actually made them stronger?
Afghanistan, in my opinion, is in all kinds of trouble. It
seems that Pakistan can't wait to cause more instability in
Afghanistan after our troops are gone. Pakistan is already a
safe haven to militant groups in Pakistan. We can expect them
to do the same in Afghanistan. This is another reason we ought
to be cutting off funding to Pakistan. We don't need to pay
them to hate us. They will do it for free. If the Taliban
emerges to control substantial portions of Afghanistan, then
groups could be ``golden boys'' of the jihad movement and get
substantial funding and training. I am talking about the IMU
and the IJU. These groups are growing and evolving with the
times.
Reportedly, they have gotten involved in drug trafficking
on the borders of Afghanistan. The porous borders and corrupt
government officials mean truckloads of drugs drive across the
Afghan border into Central Asia almost every day. According to
the United Nations, up to 80 tons of heroin and 20 tons of
opium are smuggled through Tajikistan's 835-mile border with
Afghanistan on a yearly basis.
These groups are not just running drugs across the border,
they are taking over towns. One of the larger terrorist groups,
Hizb ut-Tahrir, is imitating Hezbollah and starting to provide
social services in remote towns that feel neglected by their
central government. And much like Hezbollah in Lebanon, they
are winning over the people.
The IJU is using Twitter, or at least trying to. In
January, the IJU established two Twitter accounts only to have
them suspended by Twitter. Twitter, in my opinion, of course
was following the law. The IJU was designated as a foreign
terrorist organization by the State Department on June 17th,
2005. Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act states
that it is unlawful to provide a designated FTO with ``material
support or resources, including property, tangible or
intangible services, and among them communication equipment and
facilities.''
After I and six other Members of Congress raised this issue
with the Department of Justice in September, Twitter finally
took down the Somali terrorist group Al-Shabaab's account in
January. There is no reason why Twitter should not consistently
follow the law, take down two other officially recognized
foreign terrorist organizations, Hamas and Hezbollah, who began
tweeting in 2009 and 2011. More and more terrorist groups are
recognizing the value of using Twitter as a tool to spread its
recruiting and its ideological concepts.
Terrorist groups like those in Central Asia and around the
world are not going away, they don't want to go away, and they
are going to continue to grow. We need to see the obvious. We
cannot be taken by surprise. We must be prepared now and deal
with terrorism wherever it raises its head. And I yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Your Honor. Next we
have the ranking member on our Eurasian subcommittee,
Representative Keating from Massachusetts.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing. It is timely and we look forward to it. This is our
first subcommittee together, and I would like to make note that
I very much look forward to working with you and all the
members on a large number of interesting topics.
In regards to today's hearing, as the International
Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan prepares to drawdown
in 2014, the question of stability and security in Central Asia
is crucially important, not only for our region, but also for
U.S. policy. I believe that we face an immensely complex, yet
long overdue task of bringing our troops home safely, and we
must further work with our allies to mitigate potential
instability and spillover effects of the drawdown to the
neighboring countries there.
Needless to say, even though the expected drawdown will
occur, I believe that Afghanistan will remain one of our
central international challenges. To that effect, Central Asia
will play a crucial role in retrograde operations. It has been
no simple task for these nations to support the United States
through Operation Enduring Freedom and beyond. They are
concerned with their domestic unrest and rising extremism
within their own borders. But ultimately, they too have much to
gain from a sustained partnership with the U.S.
At the forefront of these benefits rest the
administration's vision of expanding the Northern Distribution
Network into a viable conduit for interregional trade between
Central Asian states and a wider global community. I look
forward to hearing from all of you in regards to this
testimony. And additionally, I believe the U.S. engagement
provides Central Asia states with an opportunity to strengthen
their respective governance structures in their own rule of
law, so that the full economic potential of the region and its
people can be realized.
Currently, the U.S. faces a serious policy dilemma in how
some of the governments have chosen to weed extremists or
militants out through authoritarian rule. As we have seen in
countless examples, most recently throughout the Arab world,
authoritarian techniques breed resentment, resistance, and at
times, violent insurgencies. This is a vicious cycle and we
will have to figure a way to work with our Central Asian
partners to break it.
I particularly want to point out that labeling any form of
dissent or opposition to current governments as ``terrorism''
can be, in instances, a particularly unhelpful approach. There
is a very real terrorist threat within the region and blurring
the lines and definitions will only serve to aid recruitment
and to increase potential violence.
I am troubled by the lack of freedom of expression and
information in Central Asian republics. On a recent trip to the
region, members of the congressional delegation were not able
to access the Web sites of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,
EurasiaNet, Freedom House, Transparency International, Amnesty
International, and a host of other acclaimed informational
sources that work well internationally.
In this regard, I would suggest that U.S. security
assistance to the region should be reviewed under this context,
and further aid should be contingent upon further democratic
improvement. If political, economic and human rights reforms do
not take place in Central Asian republics, I fear that the
region will not be able to attract investments or create jobs
needed to secure stability. This, in turn, increases the
potential of the nonviable, ungovernable and, in fact,
illegitimate states.
The U.S. and Central Asia share a mutual interest in the
security of the region. It is important that we work together
for these goals. And I look forward to hearing our witnesses. I
am particularly interested, since I know that Secretary Blake,
you testified yesterday and I appreciate coming forth today,
your vigor in this situation to once again make yourself
available. And with that I yield back my time, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much for that very
thoughtful opening statement. And now we have Brad Sherman who
is the ranking member on the Terrorism subcommittee.
Mr. Sherman. America has focused its attention on Iraq and
Afghanistan. That is where our troops were deployed. But the
worldwide war on terrorism is both wide in scope and
unfortunately long in duration. Just a few months ago Americans
became aware of Mali, and I want to commend my colleagues for
holding these hearings as we focus on a number of areas that
may turn out to be just as important as Iraq and Afghanistan in
our efforts to deal with extremist Islamic terrorism.
We are dealing with an area of the world where the borders
were drawn by Joseph Stalin, first as minister for minorities
in the Soviet Government and then as the ruler of the Soviet
Union. In Africa, various illogical borders are now sacrosanct.
They were drawn by Europeans mostly out of ignorance and
happenstance and chance. And those borders split ethnic groups
while linking other ethnic groups together in nation states
that are still struggling and gradually developing their own
national identity.
With Stalin there was nothing by happenstance or chance. He
deliberately divided and grouped ethnic groups in Central Asia
and also in the Caucasus so as to make it difficult for these
republics to ever be independent or to ever function
effectively. Just for example, the Fergana Valley is divided
among three different countries, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan. We see in Tajikistan, Uzbeks making up about a
quarter of the population, all in an effort to make it
impossible to do what now has to be done and that is have
effective independent republics in Central Asia.
And we have a number of terrorist organizations including
the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which has been active in
Central Asia, operating with the Taliban even before 9/11. It
is an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The
Islamic Jihad Union is a terrorist organization that has
conducted attacks not only in Uzbekistan, but Afghanistan and
even Europe.
We need to cooperate with our Central Asian allies in
dealing with terrorism. One of the dilemmas the U.S. faces in
Central Asia is that several of those states have poor human
rights records. Terrorism is used to justify these human rights
abuses, but all too often they are not against terrorists but
rather against political opponents. Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan,
Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have provided major logistical
support for our coalition forces in Afghanistan and that is to
be appreciated.
Then we focus on the Uighers in northwest China. These are
a Turkic-Central Asian people living in an autonomous region.
I, in the past, have said I believe in a One China, One Taiwan
policy. One wonders whether we will support a one Tibet and
then a one East Turkestan policy. We have to get along with
China, and perhaps dismembering their country in such a greater
respect or at least advocating such dismemberment may not put
the negotiations on the right foot. Still we have to advocate
that the Uighers are treated fairly. It is an autonomous region
that deserves that level of autonomy, and every ethnic group
deserves to be treated fairly. And America's voice on behalf of
human rights needs to be loud, even if we are dealing with a
country that owns almost as much U.S. debt as one can imagine.
I yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Mr. Sherman. The only
one of our members who will be taking advantage of their 1-
minute opening statement is Congressman Yoho of Florida who is
a member of the Terrorist subcommitee. You are recognized for 1
minute.
Mr. Yoho. Thank you to the chairs and the ranking members
of the respective subcommittees for holding this hearing.
Hearings like this give us the opportunity to have some
accountability and transparency to how our tax dollars are
being spent, and to examine if our efforts in Central Asia are
worthwhile pursuits, which I believe they are. I look forward
to the testimonies of the witnesses today, and hearing their
thoughts and reading them in the record, because I am going to
have to leave here in a little bit. Thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, thank you very much for that very
succinct 1-minute opening statement. We will have two panels of
witnesses this afternoon. On our first panel we have Robert
Blake, the Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian
Affairs. As was noted earlier, he testified just yesterday and
we appreciate that, your more than cooperative efforts on
working with the Hill. He was appointed in May 2009 as
Assistant Secretary, and he oversees U.S. foreign policy with
India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Maldives, Bhutan,
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and then Kuryakistan, which I am not
pronouncing right, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. He previously
served as Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives. And from
2006 to mid-2009 he was the Ambassador there, and then Deputy
Chief of Mission at the U.S. Mission in New Delhi, India, from
2003 to 2006. Mr. Blake earned a B.A. from Harvard College--is
that Harvard University or Harvard College, one of those two--
in 1980, and a Masters Degree in International Relations from
Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in 1984.
Also with us is Justin Siberell, the Deputy Coordinator for
Regional Affairs and Programs at the Bureau of Counterterrorism
at the Department of State. He joined the State Department
Foreign Service in March 1993, and assumed this position in
July 2012. Mr. Siberell was most recently Consul General for
Dubai and the United Arab Emirates. Overseas assignments
includes service at U.S. Embassies and consulates in Baghdad,
Iraq; Amman, Jordan, for example; Alexandria, Egypt; and,
Panama City, Panama. Mr. Siberell was raised in California--
where, what city were you?
Mr. Siberell. In northern California, but my mother is from
Los Angeles, Los Angeles native.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. And attended the University of
California at Berkeley, where he received a Bachelor of Arts
and a degree in History.
So with that said, gentlemen, we welcome your opening
statements. We are going to be kind of trapped for time here.
If you could keep it down about 5 minutes and then submit the
rest of your remarks for the record that would be deeply
appreciated.
Ambassador Blake, you may proceed.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ROBERT O. BLAKE, ASSISTANT
SECRETARY, BUREAU OF SOUTH AND CENTRAL ASIAN AFFAIRS, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Mr. Blake. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and
Chairman Poe, and thanks to all the other members of the
committee. I am delighted to be here today to testify and I
look forward to working with all of you. As you said, Mr.
Chairman, I have a longer statement that with your permission I
will submit for the record.
Chairman Rohrabacher, let me just start by thanking you and
Chairman Poe for taking a codel to Uzbekistan. That visit was
very well received and we really appreciate the time and
trouble that you took to do that. I am pleased to testify today
as we enter an especially critical and dynamic phase of our
relations with Central Asia. Despite the real gains in
stability in Afghanistan, our planned drawdown in Afghanistan
and continued use of the Northern Distribution Network has
raised anxiety levels among our Central Asian partners about
the increased potential for instability and extremism,
especially beyond 2014.
I will let my colleague from the Bureau of Counterterrorism
expand more on the specifics of the Islamic militant threat,
but I will start by saying that we do not assess that there is
an imminent Islamic threat to Central Asian states.
Nonetheless, this is no time for complacency. Our foreign
assistance programs seek to build the capacity of Central Asian
countries to address transnational threats, such as those posed
by Islamic militant groups that members of the committees
discussed, while promoting regional economic integration and
development.
We also use our engagement as a mechanism to tackle issues
related to human rights, rule of law and corruption, and
promote economic growth, as failure to address these could
contribute it to militancy. To achieve these objectives we are
using a combination of diplomatic engagement and bilateral and
multilateral assistance. On the diplomatic front, the United
States holds annual bilateral consultations with each of the
five Central Asian states. These consultations, which I chair
with the Foreign Ministers or Deputy Foreign Ministers of each
country, form the cornerstone of our bilateral relationships.
Through these we convey a consistent message that
democratic reform, respect for freedom of expression and
religion, and an active civil society all contribute to
stability, while cracking down on dissent and driving it
underground may create more favorable conditions for
radicalism. Our public diplomacy and assistance programs also
reinforce our objective of strengthening respect for human
rights and the rule of law.
Mr. Chairman, our bilateral security assistance is helping
build the Central Asian states' capacity to address and counter
a broad range of threats including terrorism. In 2012, the
United States provided approximately $215 million of security
assistance across the range of Central Asian states. The bulk
of this assistance focused on building capacity of law
enforcement agencies to address transnational threats including
terrorism and narcotics trafficking.
We recognize that our interest in combating terrorism and
other cross-border threats are shared by others, so we are
engaging with others who are active in Central Asia in a
cooperative approach to regional security and stability. I have
made it a personal priority to expand significantly our
consultations with Russia, China, the EU and others on Central
Asia. And we have seen successful cooperation on a number of
key initiatives that are outlined in my written testimony.
Let me conclude by reiterating that we do not assess there
is an imminent Islamist militant threat to Central Asian
states. The limited threat currently posed by Islamist
militants to Central Asia, however, is no room for complacency
or retreat. The Central Asians face a broad range of challenges
that, as in many other societies, could fuel radicalism in the
long run and threaten the security interests of the United
States and our allies. Addressing these challenges demands our
continued vigilance and engagement in the region.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Blake follows:]
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STATEMENT OF MR. JUSTIN SIBERELL, DEPUTY COORDINATOR FOR
REGIONAL AFFAIRS AND PROGRAMS, BUREAU OF COUNTERTERRORISM, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Mr. Siberell. Chairman Rohrabacher and Poe, Ranking Members
Keating and Sherman, distinguished members of the committee,
thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.
As you have heard from Assistant Secretary Blake, we are in
a critical and dynamic phase in our relations with Central
Asia. Though the five Central Asian states have by and large
been spared large-scale terrorist attacks in recent years, the
governments in these states are concerned about how the
region's security will fare after the drawdown of ISAF troops
in 2014.
The most capable terrorist groups with links to Central
Asia, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the
Islamic Jihad Union, remain focused on operations in western
Pakistan and Afghanistan where they fight U.S., coalition, and
local security forces in alliance with the Afghan Taliban, the
Pakistani Taliban, and the Haqqani Network. Neither the IMU nor
IJU are considered exceedingly powerful individually, and we
assess they will likely remain focused on operations in the
Afghan-Pakistan border region even after 2014. However, as
Assistant Secretary Blake noted, while these groups do not pose
an immediate threat to Central Asia, we are well aware of their
ambition to destabilize their home countries.
To address this threat, and as part of our broader
relationship with Central Asia, the United States carries out a
number of counterterrorism-focused capacity building programs
that seek to develop law enforcement capabilities within a rule
of law framework. Ultimately, counterterrorism and rule of law
goals are closely aligned and mutually reinforcing. The better
our partners become at using law enforcement tools to identify,
disrupt, and then prosecute, adjudicate, and incarcerate
suspected terrorists, the less they may feel, or claim, the
need to resort to extra-legal methods to crack down on domestic
threat.
As an example, through the State Department's Central Asia
Regional Strategic Initiative, we are enabling the FBI to
provide its Automated Fingerprint Information System to the
Government of Uzbekistan. This system will make it possible for
authorities to more effectively identify fugitives and terror
suspects, and complements ongoing FBI agreements with
Tajikistan and the Kyrgyz Republic. RSI funding is also being
applied to a community policing project in Tajikistan and the
Kyrgyz Republic to encourage counterterrorism cooperation along
the two countries' shared border. By building trust between law
enforcement and key figures in local communities, this project
aims to encourage law enforcement authorities to work more
closely together.
The State Department's Antiterrorism Assistance program is
active in four of the five Central Asian countries, with an
emphasis on border security and increasing counterterrorism
investigation capabilities. ATA programming in the Kyrgyz
Republic is aimed at assisting local authorities to detect and
deter terrorist threats against the Transit Center at Manas
International Airport and the Northern Distribution Network. In
Tajikistan, ATA programs focus on strengthening border
controls, particularly along the Afghan border. We are engaged
in talks to resume ATA programming with Uzbekistan which was
suspended in 2005 as a result of human rights concerns.
State Department counterterrorism assistance also focuses
on disrupting terrorist finance flows. Under this program we
are providing cross-border financial investigation techniques
training for Kazakhstani officials designed to improve their
capability to detect, interdict, and seize illicit cross-border
cash used to finance terrorism.
Finally, and also as noted by Assistant Secretary Blake,
the State Department works through multilateral bodies to
advance counterterrorism objectives, including the OCSE and
U.N.-specialized agencies. For example, U.S. funds are
supporting implementation of the Global Shield program in
Central Asia by UNODC, INTERPOL, and the World Customs
Organization. Global Shield is a worldwide program that
increases the capacity of law enforcement officials to detect
and seize precursor materials in the manufacture of IEDs, and
to improve the prosecution of IED-related interdiction cases.
Our counterterrorism programs align with and complement
assistance administered by partner U.S. Government agencies,
such as USAID, the Departments of Defense and Energy, to
address counternarcotics, counterproliferation and border
security objectives.
That includes my introductory remarks. Thank you again for
the opportunity to discuss these issues with you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Siberell follows:]
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----------
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Mr. Siberell. And I
will at this point recognize Judge Poe, the chairman of the
Terrorism subcommittee, to have him have his opening line of
questioning.
Mr. Poe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen, for
being here. The one thing of many that I learned in Uzbekistan,
Mr. Ambassador, was that their forecast for the future is
bleak. They think when we leave Afghanistan the Pakistanis will
support the Taliban. That they will move into southern
Afghanistan, that Iran will influence Iraq more and move in
that region, and I am sure you have heard all of those things.
They are very concerned about their country and terrorist
networks moving into their country.
I have a lot of questions. I will ask them and we will get
to as many answers from both of you as we can. These groups
that we have mentioned that are in the region, Central Asia
specifically, where do they get their money? Where do they get
their money?
Somebody say something, the clock is running.
Mr. Siberell. Well, when it comes to the IMU, as an
example, it was mentioned this is a group that has its origins
of course in Uzbekistan, has been adaptable over the years.
Moved to Tajikistan at one period, was in Kabul as noted in the
late 1990s, and where it began its affiliation with al-Qaeda.
It works out of the Pakistani tribal areas in cooperation with
the Pakistani Taliban with the Haqqani Network in some cases.
These groups are therefore tied into the tribal networks that
finance the broader terrorist work in the tribal regions of
Pakistan, and then into western Afghanistan where they----
Mr. Poe. But where do they get their money? Where does that
money come from that ends up in Uzbekistan?
Mr. Siberell. Yes, there are a variety of financing sources
for the groups in Afghanistan. Some of it continues to come in
from outside sources as it had traditionally with al-Qaeda
into, the Haqqani Network, for instance, we know raises money,
continues to raise money in the Persian Gulf states. They raise
money through illicit activities through narcotics trafficking.
They do it through criminal activity, through extortion. There
are a variety of criminal and illicit activities that they
undertake to raise money in that area.
Mr. Poe. Has the FTO designation had an effect on IJU and
IMU?
Mr. Siberell. The FTO designations do give us the
opportunity to work with partners around the world, including
through multilateral organizations such as FATF and the U.N.
bodies, to seize funds, to investigate financing flows. So the
FTO designation is a highly useful tool by the State
Department, by the FBI, by DOJ, and other law enforcement
agencies.
Mr. Poe. When the United States leaves Afghanistan, the
Department of Defense has made a determination that it is
cheaper to leave that equipment, some of the equipment there,
not bring it home. That is a Department of Defense decision.
Two questions about that. How do we know some of that is not
going to end up in the hands of the bad guys? And second, is
any of that going to be available for our partners in the
region like the Uzbekistan Government?
Mr. Ambassador?
Mr. Blake. Sir, they are still reviewing exactly what
equipment is going to be left in Afghanistan, and then what
equipment might be available to our friends in Central Asia. My
supposition is that the equipment that might be made available
would be nonlethal assistance, and we have already had some
discussions with the Central Asian states about what they might
be interested in. But again, this is still in a very
preliminary stage.
Mr. Poe. And how do we make sure that any equipment,
especially the lethal equipment, ends up in the hands of the
bad guys?
Mr. Blake. Well, again, I think most of the lethal
equipment is probably going to be taken out of Afghanistan, and
that points to some of the points that were made earlier about
the importance of these retrograde operations. Many of the
Central Asian states do not want to see lethal equipment
transiting through their territory, so a lot of that will have
to be probably flown out or perhaps transited out through
Pakistan.
Mr. Poe. And there are other players in the region. There
are the Chinese, there are the Iranians, and there are the
Russians, all just looking to move in, in my opinion. What do
you see as their role in Central Asia as the United States
leaves Afghanistan?
Mr. Blake. I think I perhaps differ slightly with your
characterization. I think both the Chinese and the Russians
share our objectives of seeing a peaceful transition. The
Chinese have been putting a lot of money into Central Asia into
the infrastructure networks, and I think, overall, support this
idea of regional integration as do the Russians. But we still
need to work with them a little bit on getting them to do more
in Afghanistan itself. The Chinese have invested in the Aynak
copper mine, for example, but they have not invested to the
extent that say the Indians have.
Likewise, we have tried very hard to work cooperatively
with the Russians on Central Asia and to be very transparent
with them and figure out ways that we can work together. I
think we have shared objectives in Central Asia and in
Afghanistan, so we will continue to pursue those common
objectives.
The Iranians have not, interestingly, played that large a
role in the region. Most of the countries of Central Asia have
stiff-armed them and kept them away, fully aware of our
concerns and others' concerns about their support for their
efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. They all share our
misgivings and our opposition to Iran acquiring a nuclear
weapon. So again, to the extent that they have relations, they
have them to allow transit through Iranian territory so that
they can get their goods to a port in the Indian Ocean. And
again, I think all of them have been supportive of
international sanctions efforts.
Mr. Poe. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Your Honor, and next
we have Congressman Keating.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am intrigued by the
idea of a New Silk Road in Central Asia, Mr. Blake, and it is
an initiative that can serve to further democracy, as I
mentioned, economic development, communication throughout the
region, and I know what a difficult task this is. First of all,
how do you plan to overcome issues like corruption and some of
the basic issues that you have to do to have this be
successful? Secondly, do you envision participation from people
from the outside, outside donor nations or international
organizations like the Asian Development Bank or World Bank?
What is your view of this?
Mr. Blake. Thanks for that very important question,
Congressman. The New Silk Road idea was conceived by Secretary
Clinton. And it was a response to the fact that as our military
pulls out, a great deal of spending is also going to go with it
and therefore have some impact on the Afghan economy. So we
need to turn the Afghan economy from a aid-based economy to a
trade-based economy. And to do that we need to build up the
regional infrastructure to enable that to happen.
So we have been very supportive of regional efforts to
develop the roads, the rails, the energy pipelines, and the
electricity distribution network to integrate this region more
fully. Both Central Asia and South Asia remain among the least
regionally integrated regions of the world, so this is a very
large task that we are undertaking. But I think that we used
last year productively to help gain a regional consensus in
favor of this idea, so really everybody now agrees to that.
And the challenge now is really to put this into motion and
to get some of these projects off the ground. So for example,
we are working extremely hard to encourage the Turkmenistan,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, India pipeline, which would be an
enormous step forward, to link the huge gas reserves of
Turkmenistan with the energy-hungry economy of India, and also
provide hundreds of millions of dollars in transit revenues for
Afghanistan and Pakistan. So all four countries very much
support this and I think the program is making good progress.
We are strongly supporting efforts by these countries to accede
to the World Trade Organization precisely to open up their
economies and reduce corruption. And we are very much working
with the Asian Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank,
the World Bank, and many others to gain their support for all
of these efforts, because they are really going to take the
lead on most of the mobilizing and the financing for this.
Mr. Keating. And I think that both of you might have
mentioned one, specifically, about the need in a democracy to
have freedom of expression. And I am concerned about what I
mentioned in my opening remarks about the inability to have
that kind of communication available to people, particularly
when we have looked at what happened with the Arab Spring, with
the social communication and other means. I am concerned about
that being suppressed, and I want your observations, if you
could share them, in terms of where that stands now in that
region and what potential that might have for the kind of
freedom of expression that a democracy requires.
Mr. Blake. Again, a very, very important question. We have
consistently stressed to our friends in Central Asia that
counterterrorism requires a multi-faceted approach. Certainly
there has to be a counterterrorism and a security element.
There needs to also be strong economies to provide jobs,
particularly for young people. But also there needs to be good
governance, and we often talk about the experience of the Arab
Spring.
And two of the very important lessons for the countries of
Central Asia is, number one, that they need to address
corruption, and number two, they need to provide more space for
civil society. And that means journalists, freedom of
expression, civil societies that hold NGOs, and unfortunately
the trends are moving in the wrong direction in Central Asia
for the most part. Most of the countries looking ahead to the
transition in Afghanistan are whittling away at the space for
civil societies.
I have just returned from Tajikistan, and I made public
remarks about our concern for that and I spoke to the President
about that, because in the long run this is very risky policy
for them to take because they are going to drive moderate
people underground if they don't have access to an ability to
express themselves.
Mr. Keating. Well, quickly, if I could interrupt. Mr.
Siberell, you mentioned about the need, and you just mentioned,
Ambassador, about corruption, about the need for rule of law. I
am concerned, quickly, if you can look at the overall region
there and see where the state of the rule of law is. A lot of
the justice is administrative rather than what we are familiar
with, I believe, at least from my own meetings with people, but
where does that stand in terms of police and the justice system
to really keep a rule of law so we can deal with corruption?
Mr. Siberell. Thank you, Congressman. As articulated in the
National Strategy for Counterterrorism, we will pursue our
counterterrorism policies within a strong rule of law framework
and consistent with American values, in particular, human
rights safeguards. And all of our counterterrorism assistance
has built into it an observation and a respect for a need to
protect human rights safeguards by governments who receive our
assistance. As an example, our ATA program, one of our
principal counterterrorism programs, has as one of its three
congressionally mandated requirements, the protection of human
rights safeguards, in addition to building capacity to fight
terrorism and to building a strong bilateral relationships in
the area of counterterrorism. So rule of law framework is not
inconsistent with effective counterterrorism. In fact, they are
mutually beneficial and required to be sustainable over the
longer term.
Mr. Keating. Thank you. I am a little over my time. I yield
back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. The chair will now
proceed with his 5 minutes. With Uzbekistan, I have been
working with Uzbekistan for about 25 years now, maybe actually
more than that, and they were instrumental in helping us defeat
the Taliban after 9/11. Just to note, our own Government, along
with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, bear a huge responsibility for
the fact that the Taliban existed in the first place, and some
of us were opposed to that and fought against that, but it did
come back and bite us on 9/11. But without the Uzbeks' support
and full, just total cooperation utilizing their territory in
Termez and other places along that southern border, their
southern border, the northern border in Afghanistan, we could
never have defeated the Taliban as we did. Yet, we all know
that Uzbekistan has never been, at least in my lifetime, a
country that could have been on the acceptable list of human
rights, levels of protection of human rights.
Where do we draw the line here? I mean we know, for
example, one of the things that the Uzbeks are declared
against--so they help us defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda,
people who had massacred 3,000 of our own people, radical
Muslims, and in fact, some of the things they are criticized
for in Uzbekistan for denying religious rights and freedom of
speech are basically trying to prevent radical sects of Islam
from taking hold. They are not permitting the Wahhabis to come
in, and with hate-filled agendas establish little working
groups there in their various communities. How do we draw the
line there about what is in the long run interest of a free
society and a stay of stability in that region and protection
of our own rights, our own say national interests?
Mr. Blake. That is a very important question, Mr. Chairman.
Let me answer that by saying first that when we started out 4
years ago we decided we wanted to use these annual
consultations to really establish a greater level of engagement
and thereby establish greater trust between the United States
and Uzbekistan, and kind of build up from the ruins of what
happened in Andijon where essentially we rapidly cut back on
virtually all of our programs in Uzbekistan.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right.
Mr. Blake And looking forward now, we need Uzbekistan to
have good relations with Afghanistan. We need Uzbekistan to be
supporting this regional integration vision that I outlined
earlier. They have the largest population in the region. They
are centrally located. They have played an enormously important
role in building the main rail line to Mazar-i-Sharif. Uzbek
electricity lights Kabul these days.
So there is a lot of important work that is already going
on. They have, as you said, quite a lot of anxiety and
suspicion about the future. We have sought to reassure them
about our enduring commitment to Afghanistan and to the region.
And again, I think looking forward it is very much in our
interests to continue to work very closely with the Uzbeks.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Do we sell weapons to Saudi Arabia?
Mr. Blake. I can't really tell you, sir. It is not my area
of--yes, we do, of course.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay, so we sell weapons to Saudi Arabia.
Are the Saudis more protective of human rights than the Uzbeks?
Mr. Blake. I don't want to try to get into comparisons, Mr.
Chairman. But let me just say with respect to Uzbekistan and
weapons, as you know we have begun a very careful and
calibrated approach to supporting now their defensive needs
because they have real threats that they face, not just because
of their support for the Northern Distribution Network, but
because groups like the IMU and the IJU are actively targeting
them. So it is in our interest to help defend themselves
against those threats.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, it also is they see part of that
effort as preventing radical Islamic groups, who hate us as
well, I might add, who would turn their country into a radical
Islamic Caliphate, or whatever they want to call it. They see
that stopping that from happening is important to their
interests, but also it is important to our interests. And
ironically we are selling weapons to the Saudis and, quite
frankly, I think there are elements within Saudi Arabia that
are financing the very groups that are going in trying to make
them radical Islamic, anti-Western, an anti-Western country.
So it is a rather confusing situation if you do as I do,
and I believe in human rights and should be part of our agenda,
but at the same time we don't want radical Islam to be taking
over countries, because they don't believe in any human rights.
Mr. Blake. Yes, but again, Mr. Chairman, as you I am sure
found out during your visit to Uzbekistan, they are not asking
for major weapons systems, at least offensive weapons systems.
Their major ask of us these days is to actually help them
defend themselves, and then also to have more business. They
want to get more jobs for their people.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Mr. Ambassador, they made it clear to us
that they would prefer replacing all of their former Soviet and
Russian military equipment, much of it left over from the Cold
War, they would like to replace it with American equipment. And
it is going to be very interesting. We find is that in our
interest? How do we make that determination, if their human
rights are not at an acceptable level, but they are not at an
acceptable level because they are repressing radical Islamic
forces that would make their country even worse? This is a
jigsaw puzzle and I hope we will be working on it together.
Mr. Blake. Let me just add 30 seconds of commentary on
that----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Go right ahead.
Mr. Blake [continuing]. Which is to say that as you know we
sought and received an exception from Congress to the ban that
previously existed on providing any kind of military assistance
to Uzbekistan. So we have used that to provide defensive
equipment, as you are well aware, but we have also made clear
to the Uzbeks that it is important for them to make progress on
human rights, and as they make that progrss that will enable us
to do more on the weapons side.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, I am hoping that the progress that
we are talking about in human rights isn't, well, we are going
to convince them now to permit some radical Islamic sect from
setting up a well-financed by the Saudis, setting up operations
all over their country, which will eventually turn it into a
country that hates us and doesn't want to cooperate with us. So
these are----
Mr. Blake. It is the kind of human rights that Mr. Keating
was talking about. It is the kind of thing that they need to do
because it is in their own interest to do.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes.
Mr. Blake. When an American businessman comes to Uzbekistan
and cannot turn on the internet and check how his stock is
doing, that is not going to help them very much. So these are
things that are going to be good for them to do. It is not just
something that is good for----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, we certainly agree on that, and we
will sort of work on trying to find out where the rational
place to put the line is on these decisions. I will now turn to
Mr. Sherman who has been involved in these issues for a long
time.
Mr. Sherman. A long time. As I understand our official
human rights formula, it is the number of human rights
violations divided by the number of million barrels of oil
exported by the relevant country. And I think if you used that
formula you would have better things to say about Saudi
Arabia's human rights policies.
Focusing on Saudi and the Gulf states, maybe 10, 12 years
ago, Saudi Arabia's policy on Islamic extremism was if you
don't do it here you can finance it there. Now that deal was
kind of ripped aside by Khobar Towers, but seems to be back to
some degree. Is there a lot of private Saudi money going to
these organizations that we list as foreign terrorist
organizations, and if so, is this in violation of Saudi law or
consistent with Saudi law? And I realize while this affects the
areas that you are responsible for, Ambassador Blake, you are
not charged with being the expert on Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Blake. Well, I will just say that the former Special
Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador
Holbrooke, and then his successor, Ambassador Grossman, have
spent a great deal of time in the Gulf talking to our friends
in the Gulf about cracking down on a lot of these sources of
funding that occur. This is not official funding. This is from
private sources. But nonetheless, we need their help to get at
that and to stop that from recurring, because obviously it is
quite an important thing. Many of these groups are attacking
our troops in the region so we have a very substantial and
direct interest in this.
Mr. Sherman. Then of course the Saudis or private Saudi
forces, I think actually governmental Saudi money, is going to
the worst elements of the Syrian opposition. Whether the worst
elements of the Syrian opposition are worse than the worst
elements of the Assad regime I leave to another hearing.
I want to focus a little bit on public diplomacy and
reaching out to people. In which languages and with what
capacity does the Voice of America reach Central Asia, and what
can we do to reach out to more people with a message that is
believable?
Ambassador?
Mr. Blake. I don't know all the different languages. I know
they broadcast in several languages and certainly in Russian,
and that is important but that is not sufficient. And so we
have very active programs, for example, exchange programs, but
a huge range of public diplomacy programs through things like
our American Corners that you will find all over Central Asia
that are immensely popular.
Mr. Sherman. I do want to focus on Voice of America and
other broadcastings. So if you could provide for the record,
where are we able to erect radio towers? Are we restricted just
to short wave, or are we reaching people on the radio
frequencies that are going to be in the car? Which languages?
How many hours a day? All the things that your fine staff will
put together and I look forward to reading.
Next, what is Russia's attitude toward our involvement in
this, what they call the near abroad? Sometimes they seem to
want us to go, sometimes they seem to want us to stay. Do they
perceive themselves to have the capacity to assume in Central
Asia the role that we have played over the last decade?
Ambassador?
Mr. Blake. As I said, Mr. Sherman, we have worked quite a
lot, I personally have worked quite a lot with the Russians
over the last 4 years on Central Asia. They have a shared
interest in seeing a successful transition in Afghanistan.
Thirty percent of the drugs that come out of Afghanistan go
through Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and most of it ends up in
Russia. Likewise, they don't want to see extremist groups being
able to organize in Afghanistan or Pakistan that could pose a
threat either to Russia or radicalize groups that are in
Russia. So again, I think we have a shared interest and for the
most part we have been able to work very cooperatively with the
Russians on things like counternarcotics, on health issues.
There is no denying that there are elements sometimes within
the Russian Government who sometimes oppose what we do, but
overall I would assess that we have had a reasonably
cooperative relationship.
And again, we have worked very hard with the Russians to
also encourage them to support this regional integration
effort. Many of the Central Asians are concerned by Russian
alleged plans to start a Eurasian economic union that they
worry might try to close off some of these trade patterns that
are now emerging. So that is why, again, making sure that all
these countries accede to the World Trade Organization is so
important, because World Trade Organization obligations would
trump any Customs union or other obligations.
Mr. Sherman. I yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. We have Mr. Marino.
Mr. Marino. Thank you, Chairman. Well, gentlemen,
Ambassador, I would like to direct this to you, and if you then
want to follow-up, please do it. I want to expand a little bit
on the Saudi Arabia, the money that we are spending there, the
oil that we are buying there, the terrorist organizations that
are being funded. I didn't quite hear what State is doing about
it, or is it just that we have a situation where, what a
tangled web we weave and we have to turn a blind eye because of
the oil situation?
And I agree with Congressman Sherman. I am sure there is
some, if we dig deep enough there is some crazy mathematical
scheme or formula that somebody at State has sat down and drawn
up and made the determination on which way we go. But seriously
now, specifically what are we doing and what else can we do to
get the point across to the Saudis?
Mr. Blake. Well, I don't really have much more to say
beyond what I have already said, but let me ask Mr. Siberell
who can tackle the counterterrorism side of it.
Mr. Marino. Okay.
Mr. Siberell Thank you, Congressman. I think the first
thing that is worth noting is that Saudi Arabia itself has been
a victim of al-Qaeda terrorism. It has fought its own war with
al-Qaeda, quite a vicious war which includes assassinations and
attempted assassinations of senior leadership. So they are
working, they share our objectives in fighting al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula and in Afghanistan, and we have worked
cooperatively in that as do most of the other Gulf states.
What they have done is try to work against funding. They
have cracked down quite effectively on official funding, as it
were, from official government agencies. What we have now is a
problem of private donations to extremist groups. Some of those
are legacy relationships that of course go back to the 1980s
when these groups were raising money out of Afghanistan and the
Gulf states quite openly. So we have worked with those
governments, and as Ambassador Blake noted, our Special
Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan has spent quite a
lot of time in the Gulf states to try to dry up and work
against that funding that continues to flow in some cases,
privately, for instance, through the Haqqani Network, which is
one example of Saudi funding that continues.
Mr. Marino. How about the state of Qatar? Do you see any
funds from there going to the terrorists as well?
Mr. Siberell. Well, I would say broadly that there is
evidence of private donations that emanate from a number of the
Gulf states. We do work closely with each of the individual
governments through diplomatic, through intelligence channels
to try to identify and then work against those funding streams.
Mr. Marino. Let us switch countries for a moment. I am
quite a bit concerned about China. I recently got back from a
trip to China and they were very polite and very kind to us,
but they say one thing and do something else. From my studies,
I have been researching that there is a tremendous investment
in Afghanistan by China, and it zeroes in primarily on minerals
and precious ores. What influence is China going to have on
Afghanistan, the rule of law, the government? And I think
Afghanistan is looking at China as simply a cash cow. Can you
elaborate on that, please?
Mr. Blake. Well, as you say, sir, the Chinese have
undertaken some investment. I wouldn't want to exaggerate it. I
mean they have not undertaken as much as the Indians have, for
example, and in fact we would like to see them do more in terms
of investing certainly in a lot of the regional infrastructure
that will be needed, because that would certainly be very
welcome and they have done a lot of that in Central Asia. But
as you point out very correctly, they do not take a position on
things like rule of law and things like that. That is not part
of their foreign policy.
Mr. Marino. Hasn't China also given, donated money to
Afghanistan for so-called humanitarian purposes? So that is
going to have a definite, I would think positive influence on
the Afghanis.
Mr. Blake. They have an assistance program, but again it is
relatively modest compared to say the Indians. I would say it
is about one-tenth of what the Indians provide. So again, a lot
of humanitarian assistance and infrastructure assistance like
that would be very welcome from the Chinese, and we would like
to see them do more.
Mr. Marino. Okay, you have 29 seconds, and either can
answer this. What is the motive between India and Afghanistan
and China and Afghanistan?
Mr. Siberell. Well, I think they take a very different
position. India has taken a very, kind of wholistic view of
what needs to be done there. And they have a $2 billion
assistance program, they have invested heavily, they have
hosted an investment conference. They have been a champion of
this regional integration vision. And I think China has taken a
far less wholistic view and a much more self-serving view,
frankly.
Mr. Marino. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I would now like to welcome a new member
to Congress, and from our area there in southern California.
Congressman Lowenthal has a distinguished record in the
California legislature, and we now welcome him to the foreign
policy arena.
Mr. Lowenthal. Thank you, Congressman Rohrabacher. I look
forward to working with you, and I appreciate those kind words.
My question, Ambassador, I would like to kind of dig down a
little bit more and understand, it is almost to follow-up.
These are, I think, the complexity that I think that
Congressman Rohrabacher has said, and also I want to follow-up
on the question or the issues that were raised by Congressman
Sherman about the role, our relationship with Russia in this.
You have indicated that we and the Russians really share common
goals for independence and stability of Central Asian nations.
And yet in the report that we have back, and I am not saying
that these are in opposition, but I would like to understand
more. The chair indicated in the report that we may be
providing, and you pointed out it is nonlethal, military
assistance to Uzbekistan at the same time that the Russians may
be providing up to $1 billion in arms to Kyrgyzstan, and that
that country may not extend our lease for the military base
after 2014.
So I am wondering, while we may have common goals, are
there some competing roles between Russia and the United
States, and have we entered into any kinds of discussions with
the Russians about who we are supporting and who is not, and is
there any competition going on?
Mr. Blake. As I said, Mr. Lowenthal, welcome to the
committee.
Mr. Lowenthal. Thank you.
Mr. Blake. We have, and I personally have very, very
detailed conversations with the Russians several times a year
where I go at least a day, or if not more, to talk to them
about all these issues. Again, our interests are not always
completely synchronized. I will give you one example on human
rights. I have just come back from Tajikistan and we talked
about there with the civil society about how there is kind of
shrinking space for them. And they said that one of the
influences is that because the Russians have cracked down on
Civil Society that has given the rulers in many Central Asians,
kind of emboldened them to do more to crack down in Central
Asia. So that is an example where Russia has not played a very
salutary role.
But again, I think on a lot of the very important issues we
have been able to cooperate with them, certainly on the NDN,
the Northern Distribution Network and things like that. That
said, Russia has an overwhelming influence in Central Asia and
many of the Central Asian states chafe at that influence. They
do not want to be as reliant as they are on the Russians. And
that is just a normal human reaction. A country like Tajikistan
has 1 million Tajiks working overseas in Russia. They derive 40
percent of their GDP from the Russians, from those remittances.
They import 90 percent of their fuel from Russia. So the
Russians have enormous leverage over them, and of course no
country likes to be subject to that kind of leverage.
So for that reason, all of these countries have welcomed
greater engagement by the United States. They have welcomed our
efforts to promote American trade and investment. They have
welcomed our increased assistance programs, and we have
welcomed the opportunity to do that.
Mr. Lowenthal. Maybe the follow-up is, do the Russians
welcome it?
Mr. Blake. Well, again, I don't see the Russians working to
try to counter that. I mean I think that we try to characterize
this as a great gain rather than a great game. That is, that we
can all benefit from an expanding pie, and that the overall
objective is to stabilize this region and to provide more open
markets that everyone is going to benefit from and to provide
more responsive governments, that again is going to benefit
everyone because there will be a greater stability.
Mr. Lowenthal. Thank you, and I yield my time.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. We now have with us
another man with a distinguished career in the state
legislature, and as well as a distinguished career in the
United States Marine Corps prior to that, who accompanied us on
our codel to Central Asia.
Colonel Cook?
Mr. Cook. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I guess the title
of today's briefing is ``Who's On First?'' And thank you for
your information. We have been getting a lot of briefings on
the military situation in Afghanistan, and yet I just wanted to
go over a little bit of the diplomacy that relates to the
military. And we talked about what happens when we downsize in
Afghanistan and all this gear, all this military gear which
probably runs into the billions, whether it is going to go to
Uzbekistan or whether it is going to come back to this country.
And yet it is very, very dicey whether we are going to be able
to move that through Pakistan. Certainly tanks and things like
that are the heaviest parts of the equipment and very, very
expensive to fly in and out of Theater. You can only get so
much on a plane. Very, very small.
So my question basically is from a diplomacy standpoint, if
things continue to deteriorate with Pakistan and they decide to
shut down not only the ground corridors but the air corridors,
what kind of impact would that have? Then suddenly Uzbekistan,
who else have we got left? We can't go over Iran, and it is a
landlocked country there. If you could answer that, and I yield
back.
Mr. Blake. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Cook.
I have worked for 27 years for the United States military
and I have tremendous respect with their capabilities. And one
of the great things that our military does is plan, and they
have plans for everything. And they also believe a great deal
in redundancy. So they can put in front of you, a map of all
kinds of different ways to get things in and out of
Afghanistan. My piece of it has been the Central Asian piece of
it, and it has been quite an important one, as you say, when
the ground lines of communication with Pakistan were closed. I
am happy to say that those are reopening now and that seems to
be going in a better direction. So that is certainly welcome
news.
But we will always have options. We will always be able to
fly things through Central Asia. We will be able to fly things
out through the Gulf. We will be able to fly to Russia. We have
multimodal transport options there, and of course through
Europe. So there are still many different options available to
our military, but of course the more the better, and the
Pakistan one remains the one of choice because it is the
cheapest and shortest to the sea where we can get things out
via ship at the lowest cost to the U.S. taxpayer.
Mr. Cook. Yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. Colonel, we will just
send a company of Marines down that road and they will just
clear away all those problems there.
Mr. Cook. I am brand new. I don't want to get into any more
trouble right away.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And Congressman Duncan, go right ahead.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was reading an
article in the Washington Post, February 26, by Joby Warrick,
about the elaborate surveillance operations of Hezbollah. And
it raised a question, because in that article they are talking
about a gentleman that was captured, and I will probably
pronounce this wrong being from South Carolina, but Hossam
Yaacoub was a Lebanese Swiss that was caught in Cyprus
surveilling Israeli tourists coming over to Cyprus, and sort of
a part of a larger surveillance operation and terrorist
operation by Hezbollah as, I think, about 11 days later,
Bulgaria, a group of Israelis, Jewish tourists were bombed
there.
So in thinking about this hearing, I guess the question I
have to ask is what is Iran's role in the region? Have you seen
any evidence of the Revolutionary Guard, the Quds Force or
Hezbollah activity?
Ambassador?
Mr. Blake. Congressman, as I said earlier, the countries of
the region take a fairly clear-eyed view of some of the risks
posed by Iran. They are collectively very concerned about the
risk of a further destabilization to the region were Iran to
acquire a nuclear weapon. Likewise, they are very attuned to
the risks posed by the IRGC and other groups. So they mostly
maintain relations so that they can get access out through Iran
to the Persian Gulf for their goods, because all these
countries are landlocked countries and they need access to be
able to export. But beyond that, again I think they have been
very careful about their relations with Iran and they have all
respected the sanctions regime against Iran.
Mr. Duncan. Are you aware of any sanction violations in the
region that this committee might need to be aware of?
Mr. Blake. No, sir. On occasion there are private
individuals that run afoul of our sanctions. We always bring
those immediately to the attention of those governments, and
those have always been addressed immediately.
Mr. Duncan. Okay. Just shifting gears in the remaining
time, going back to, I think, a question from earlier, what is
Russia's role in the region? I know there is a lot of rivalries
in the region, and how do you perceive Moscow playing one
country against another in deference to our interests there?
Mr. Blake. Well, again, I think the Russians seek to have
good relations with all these countries. Of course they have
longstanding historical ties that date back to the Soviet
Union. So they are trying to do what they can to expand their
trade ties, to expand organizations like the CSTO that will
kind of bring these countries more into their orbit as much as
possible. But at the same time as I said earlier, all of these
countries do not want to be overreliant on Russia, and so they
very much welcome a greater role by the United States and a
greater role by China. So again, I think they are all pursuing
a multi-vectored foreign policy and see that they can benefit
from that.
Mr. Duncan. Mr. Chairman, I don't have anything further and
so I yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. And as before, as we
move onto the next panel, just a couple notes from the
chairman, taking the chairman's prerogative. I am much more
concerned than you are, Mr. Ambassador, about Chinese motives.
I would never suggest they are in favor of a peaceful
transition. They are basically in a relationship with Pakistan,
which I think is highly provocative. I understand that they
have just been given control over a major seaport in the area
there down in Balochistan, and that is a, if there was ever a
reason for the emergency flags or the danger flags to go up it
would be that particular transaction between the Chinese and
the Pakistanis, not to mention the cornering of wealth that the
Chinese seem to be capable of, seeing that they can bribe
anybody and don't hesitate to do so.
And one last note as well, I think that we need to
recognize real cooperation when we see it, and the Northern
Distribution Network, which is basically being done with the
full cooperation of Russia, should be recognized as an outreach
on the part of the Russians to the United States as a means to
try to foster cooperation. They have us right now at a great
disadvantage. If they had animosity toward us and wanted to
recognize it they could, pardon the expression, the Russians
could screw us over anytime they wanted now, but instead they
have decided to cooperate with us and to facilitate the supply
of our troops in that region. I see that as an act of good
faith on the part of the Russians that we should be
recognizing.
And with that said, I want to thank both witnesses. And
does my ranking member have last--no, okay. Thank you very
much, and we appreciate you coming with us today.
Mr. Blake Thank you. We look forward to working with the
committee. Thank you very much.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Our second panel can now be--and as you
are being seated let me remind those in attendance and the
press as well that today I am dropping a House Resolution
calling for the immediate release of Dr. Afridi from a
Pakistani prison in which he is in right now, and also
recognizing Dr. Afridi's courageous help in helping us bring to
justice Osama bin Laden, and anointing him hopefully with a
congressional resolution recognizing him as a hero to the
people of the United States of America.
And this man, if we expect to have people in Central Asia
or anywhere else to step up when it counts, we better not
betray those people who are our friends as we have betrayed Dr.
Afridi. He is very symbolic. And if we have an American hero
like that languishing away in prison because he has helped us,
who else is ever going to help us? Who will help us if we
abandon those who risk their lives for us? We need to free Dr.
Afridi. And there will be a bill on the floor actually being
introduced today to that end. Thank you very much.
And we have the rest of our panel and--all right. We have
for our second panel, Dr. Ariel Cohen who is a senior research
fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and International
Energy Policy for the Heritage Foundation. And he earned his
doctorate at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in
Massachusetts, and he has served as a consultant to both the
executive branch and private sector on policy toward Russia,
and I am sure he will have a comment on my last comment, which
is fine.
And he is also, of course, a specialist in Eastern Europe
and Central European affairs as well as the Caucasus and
Central Asia. He has participated in a long-term study known as
``Russia 2025'' conducted by the World Economic Forum. He is a
former member of the board of directors of the California
Russian Trade Association, and has published widely on the
threat of Islamic terrorism and insurgency in Central Asia.
We also have with us Jacob Zenn who is a research analyst
for Eurasian and African Affairs for the Jamestown Foundation.
A charter member of the National Language Service Corps for his
fluency in Chinese, Arabic and Indonesian--I take it you speak
English as well, so that is--whoa. He has worked and carried
out field research throughout the region, and Mr. Zenn has
received a J.D. from Georgetown Law in 2011 where he was a
Global Law Scholar, and a graduate degree in International
Affairs from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International
Studies. And then he has a B.A. from the International Affairs
at Emory University which he received in 2005.
Then we have Nathan Barrick, a former Army infantry officer
who now works as a national security and international affairs
strategic consultant. He has served as a Central Asian plans
and policy officer, a strategic consultant for the U.S. Central
Command, a commander on Central Asia and South Asia, and as a
branch chief and senior analyst for Central Asia in the Joint
Intelligence Center at U.S. Central Command. He is a graduate
of the United States Military Academy at West Point, with a
degree in military history. He received a Masters Degree from
Stanford University in Russian, East European, and Euroasian
Studies.
And finally we have Dr. Stephen Blank, a research professor
of the National Security Affairs of the U.S. Army War College
where he also works with the Strategic Studies Institute. His
more recent monograph for the SSI is, Russia's Homegrown
Insurgency: Jihad in the North Caucasus. Mr. Blank holds a B.A.
in History from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Masters
Degree and Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago.
Gentlemen, you may proceed, and hopefully you can keep it
to your 5 minutes, and then we will put everything else in the
record and that way we will have some time for questions.
Dr. Cohen, you may proceed.
STATEMENT OF ARIEL COHEN, PH.D., SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW FOR
RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN STUDIES, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Chairman Rohrabacher, esteemed
chairmen, ranking members, and members of the committee. My
name is Ariel Cohen. I am a senior research fellow at the
Heritage Foundation, and I testify in my private capacity.
In the global struggle against violent Islamism, Russia and
Eurasia represent an important front. No less a figure than
Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osma bin Laden's successor, proclaimed this,
and he actually visited the Caucasus back in the '90s and spent
some time in a Russian jail, according to publications.
The jihadis see a strategic opportunity to reach out and
radicalize Muslims, who in many cases have no access to a
moderate and credible version of Islam. They view the area from
the Black Sea to Fergana Valley and the Pamir Mountains as an
area that is potentially ungovernable, where they can train and
use as the base of operations, and they also target the
governments and regimes within Russia itself, like North
Caucasus. And now it is spreading out of North Caucasus'
traditional insurgency area to the heart of Russia, like Kazan
in Tartarstan, the capital of Tartarstan, where the Mufti and
the deputy Mufti were murdered by terrorists just last year.
They have been attacking governments in Central Asia,
especially that of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, for
the last two decades. And in my personal experience, when the
governments reached out to our Government before 9/11, they
told me they were not listened to and not cooperated with and
not helped. This should not happen again as we are withdrawing
from Afghanistan.
Briefly on Russia, the insurgency in North Caucasus is
going on for over 200 years. It has, on and off, strong
religious overtones, and in the last 20 years the Russian
Government spent a lot in treasure and blood to defeat that
insurgency, whereas they had relative success in Chechnya and
pacified it at the price of killing a lot of people and turning
people into refugees, the insurgency spread outside of Chechnya
to other republics of North Caucasus. And now as I mentioned,
the communities, the so-called Jamaat, the organized Salafi/
Wahhabi communities can be found in Moscow, St. Petersburg,
Kazan, Siberia, et cetera. Far from being violent in every
case, they have a great potential for being violent.
And from our point of view, ungoverned spaces that provide
safe havens for terrorist organizations where they can train
and communicate with other groups, the Chechen and other North
Caucasus fighters that have traveled to Iraq, Afghanistan, now
in Syria, to take place in global ``jihad,'' and instability in
the North Caucasus that is affecting our allies in Azerbaijan,
Georgia, and eventually Armenia, all these make the emergence
of radicals in North Caucasus as a threat to our interests and
the interests of our European allies, as North Caucasus is at
the doorstep of Europe.
In Central Asia there are two countries that we have to
work with because these are the most viable and bigger
countries in terms of population, territory, in terms of having
the military capacity and counterintelligence,
counterinsurgency, I am talking about Kazakhstan and
Uzbekistan. And while Kazakhstan expressed its wish and is a
part of, a founding member of the Eurasian Union that is
engineered by Vladimir Putin to be the new federation that is
covering some or most of the post Soviet space, Uzbekistan
chose a different path. They have a good relationship with
China, but they also are reaching out to the United States and
the West to ask for support, as you, Mr. Chairman, mentioned.
And I do believe that they are threatened by the Islamic
movement of Uzbekistan, the Islamic jihad of Uzbekistan by Hizb
ut-Tahrir, Muslim Brotherhood, et al. As we are leaving
Afghanistan, the Central Asia will be becoming an area of
rivalry between Russia and China, between India and Pakistan,
and as well as Turkey and Iran who are going to be jockeying
for influence there. And as we saw in Afghanistan, the ISI----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Could you summarize, because we are going
to run out of time and the other witnesses may be cut off.
Mr. Cohen. Yes, sir. Okay. The Pakistani intelligence is
going to be a player with the bad guys, supporting the bad guys
such as the Taliban. So in my testimony, which I am requesting
to be part of the record, I have a list of recommendations that
I think we can do to improve our relationship in Central Asia
to work with our allies to control the insurgency in North
Caucasus and to contain it. And we did not start this war, sir,
but it is our business to finish this war. We cannot just walk
off the battlefield and leave the battlefield to the enemies of
freedom. Thank you so much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cohen follows:]
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----------
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, and your full remarks
will be made part of the record, and I will make sure I get
them for the airplane. Good airplane reading.
STATEMENT OF MR. JACOB ZENN, RESEARCH ANALYST, THE JAMESTOWN
FOUNDATION
Mr. Zenn. Thank you, Congressman Rohrabacher. First I would
like to focus on the core interest that America has in Central
Asia, the stabilization of Afghanistan through which
connectivity to the Central Asian countries is imperative to
build up Afghanistan's economy so that they can have security
in the country. The two are mutually reciprocal. Second, we
need Central Asia to diversify her energy supply, especially
through Kazakhstan oil and Turkmen gas. Third, for the
transatlantic relationship, a strong Central Asia can mitigate
drug trafficking from Afghanistan through Russia to Europe, and
that is the same drug trafficking networks that enrich the IMU
and the Taliban. A strong Central Asia independent from Russia
can also ensure Europe's long-term energy security.
Fourth, combating international terrorism. Nine-eleven
occurred from Afghanistan, and there are Central Asian groups
in those same havens today. These are the same stream of
militants that attacked the U.S. and Israeli Embassies in 2004
in Tashkent. We should not assume that because they are busy
fighting us in Afghanistan today that they have lost sight of
Central Asia, their homeland. The IMU is moving to to northern
Afghanistan today, and we should ask whether it is trying to
reposition itself to reclaim terrorities in Central Asia that
it had seized in the late 1990s, or whether it is trying to
disrupt the Northern Distribution Network. Kyrgyz President
Roza Otunbayeva has said on the 10-year anniversary of 9/11
that it was NATO's operation against international terrorism in
Afghanistan that kept Kyrgyzstan ``safe from large-scale
incursions by Taliban terrorists and other extremist groups.''
Threats by militant groups to return to Central Asia backed by
emperical evidence that the IMU is shifting to northern
Afghanistan should be taken seriously, and serious engagement
with Central Asian countries is essential to combat these
threats.
Fifth, Central Asia is important for our Iran policies. The
religious moderation of Central Asian countries is a bulwark
against Iran theocracy, Hezbollah proxies, as well as Salafism
coming from the Arab world. Moreover, Central Asia is important
for keeping all options on the table including dialogue. The
P5+1 negotiations are taking place in Almaty, Kazakhstan right
now, and they are the most effective method to pressure Iran on
nuclear restraint. And if war does ever break out, we will need
relations with these Central Asian countries to combat them.
And just as a global leader, the United States cannot afford to
abandon its friends in Central Asia to Russian and Chinese
domination. As a global leader, we seek to create a liberal and
democratic world order and the trajectory of Central Asian
governments right now is caught between Salafism, the political
values of Russia and China, and our values, and the younger
generation prefers our values.
On the local level, these Central Asian militant groups
seek to secure their bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan, because
that is how they can ensure the long-term security. On the
regional level, they seek to create an Islamic Caliphate in
Central Asia, which they would call Turkistan, which would
range from Xinjiang in China through Central Asia to the North
Caucasus and up to Tartarstan. On the international level, they
seek the destruction of the American world order and the
creation of a global Islamic Caliphate that would range from
al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb areas in northwest Africa through
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsulas areas in Yemen, all the way
to Central Asia and down to Southeast Asia.
As documented in my testimony and other Jamestown
Foundation works, there are groups like the Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan, Islamic Jihad Union, newer groups like the
Turkistan Islamic Party, Jund al-Khilafah, Hizb ut-Tahrir,
Tablighi Jamaat, who all agree with these aforementioned goals.
And there are scores of other groups, cells, and brigades that
militants flow into and out of, but they don't necessarily have
recognizable names. There are also dozens of Salafist groups
like Hizb ut-Tahrir that are proven to be a vehicle not only
for recruitment into more militant groups and for the spread of
anti-American sentiment but for the funding of militant groups.
They receive their funding from Saudi Arabia to Salafist groups
in Central Asia or Russia, who then send funding to the
militants in Afghanistan.
Funding also comes from drug trafficking. The IMU has shown
that even without strong leaders it is able to depend on its
vassal relationship with the Pakistani Taliban where it can
receive funds from the Pakistani Taliban and that the Taliban
can operate as its operational head telling IMU what to do and
when. It is important to note that the Taliban is Pashtun
based, and therefore the Taliban will always have limits in
northern Afghanistan as well as in Central Asia. However, the
Central Asian militant groups are comprised largely of Central
Asians who can speak the local languages and who can blend into
the operational environment there. Therefore, the IMU is a very
valuable asset for the Taliban.
This is exactly what al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb did in
northwest Africa when they are headed by Arab Algerians but
they used sub-Saharan Africans from Nigeria and other countries
to infiltrate Nigeria such as Boko Haram. There are significant
vulnerable regions in Central Asia such as the Fergana Valley
where ethnic clashes broke out just last month and there were
more severe ethnic clashes in 2010. The IMU has already seized
territory in the Rasht Valley in the previous decade, and
Gorno-Badakhshan, which borders on Afghanistan, is also a
serious threat. In just recent years, Salafists from the North
Caucasus have used their influence on western Kazakhstan, where
we have our oil interests, where they carried out the first
terrorist attacks in Kazakhstan's history with suicide bombings
in 2011, and used rocket-propelled grenades to carry out
attacks in Taraz, a city in southern Kazakhstan.
Now, for the time being, it is unlikely that the militants
will be able to overthrow the governments in Central Asia or
destroy the secular states of Central Asia. But terrorist
attacks can continue to weaken the Central Asian states which
are already struggling with political and social problems due
to the slow transition to market economy and democracy. These
bombings, armed incursions and outbreaks of insurgency can also
cost human lives and material destruction. But if the broader
mission of establishing an Islamic Caliphate in Central Asia is
to succeed, the militants will have to capitalize on the
growing public discontent in the region, where many people
consider governments to be repressive, imcompetent or corrupt.
As a result, it is in our interest to maintain high level
contacts with Central Asian governments so we can continue to
share best practices on democracy as well as use our partners,
South Korea, Japan, and India, to help educate about democracy
and to not give up on this region that wants a future
relationship with the United States.
Thank you for your time. I welcome any further questions
you may have on Islamist militant threats to Eurasia.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Zenn follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, you got most of it in there, didn't
you? Okay.
And we now--Mr. Barrick.
STATEMENT OF MR. NATHAN BARRICK, STRATEGIC CONSULTANT, CLI
SOLUTIONS
Mr. Barrick. Chairman Rohrabacher, members of the
subcommittees, thank you for the opportunity to speak today on
the Islamist militant threat to Eurasia. I have to emphasize up
front that my views are my own and they do not represent nor
reflect the official position of any other organizations that I
work with. Also I would like to start by clearly stating my
agreement with the other experts that there are Islamist
militant groups that threaten the governments in Central Asia.
I also agree that this is an important regional security issue
and that the United States should be concerned. Therefore, I
would desire that my testimony here today not be misconstrued
as an argument to do less.
We categorically should not reduce the level of security
cooperation we have with our partner nations in the region.
However, I would recommend being judicious in assessing whether
we ought to be alarmed, and since we are not operating in an
environment of unconstrained resources, we should also
carefully calculate whether we need to do more than what we are
already doing. First, as the Ambassador mentioned, Afghanistan
will not automatically transition into a safe haven for
Islamist militants after the withdrawal of International
Security and Assistance Forces by the end of 2014.
Within months of ISAF's withdrawal, the militant
organizations are likely to face strategic choices whether they
will shift or continue to fight in Afghanistan. Even if they do
attempt to shift to Central Asia, it is unlikely that their
entire organizations will be committed to that fight. Central
Asian militants are much more likely to be focused on assisting
their militant allies and attempting to garner tactical
successes locally than to be devoting efforts to attack
planning in Central Asia. We are likely to have time to
consider whether Central Asia requires increased assistance
from us, especially since there is an open question on how much
international counterterrorist effort will still be dedicated
to Afghanistan post 2014.
Which brings me to my second point. The security forces in
Central Asia have demonstrated effectiveness in preventing and
responding to militants inside their countries. Indeed, it can
be argued that without much outside assistance, as Mr. Poe
mentioned earlier, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan
forcibly ejected the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan out of
Central Asia and into retirement, even if temporary, or
Afghanistan in the late '90s and prior to the events of 9/11.
Since then, these three countries, and Kazakhstan, have
acknowledged several counterterrorist successes or mitigated
the consequences of the sporadic attacks that have occurred. We
should not ignore nor undervalue their own successes.
An important subpoint must be made as well. The United
States has had occasion to question the methods our Central
Asian partners have used in the past decade to respond to
perceived threats. Specifically, in regards to Uzbekistan, the
difference in perspectives about Andijon in May 2005 resulted
in a breach in the bilateral relationship that has not been
completely reconstructed. United States interests in these
countries, as senior officials have repeatedly emphasized, are
addressed on a broad range of policy priorities. These facts
underscore my firm assertion that we should not do less, but I
also think it should be taken into close consideration in
determining if, and how, we provide more security assistance in
the region.
Central Asia has been recognized and appreciated by many
American and European leaders over the past decade for allowing
passage for logistical support to international forces in
Afghanistan. However, could Central Asia have done more? I
think it would be beneficial to hear from these countries
whether or not, and how much specifically, they believe they
have benefited from past security cooperation with us before we
undertook to adjust our security assistance programs in the
region.
There are other reasonable considerations to inform our
decision making, and those must take into account the
assessments of our military services, unified commanders, and
intelligence organizations. How much capacity do our Central
Asian partners have for expanded cooperation? Do specific
militant groups even have the ability to operate within, or
project into, Central Asia at a level that exceeds our
partners' existing capabilities?
Finally, there is a growing body of academic literature
assessing that militant Islamist beliefs do not resonate with
Muslims in Central Asia. Central Asia is not populated by
Muslims who are just yearning and dying to fight to live in a
Caliphate. The nature of political and economic conditions in
Central Asia do indeed serve as a recruiting ground for
militants, but I want to retiterate that this effect, so far,
has been driven by political and economic reasons and not
strictly for religious motivations.
In the future, if Central Asian governments do not
effectively implement reforms, the political and economic
conditions will present those governments with greater security
and stability challenges. Whether these challenges prompt
existing leaders to maintain more draconian grips on power or
their security organizations naturally assess and prepare for
these threats, there is likely to be a gradual increase in the
repressive tactics that are a two-edged sword for these
nations. On the one edge, these governments can argue that
their security forces have successfully handled threats, but on
the other sharper edge, as many experts in Western countries
believe, these security practices may actually further
facilitate recruitment and stir popular support for the anti-
regime objectives of the militant groups, if not the militants'
Islamist views.
In conclusion, it is reasonable to look at Central Asia as
one place where Islamist militants may turn after Afghanistan
and Pakistan, if they are in fact able to turn elsewhere. The
desire in Central Asia for U.S. assistance in countering
Islamist militants is not the same as a need or a requirement
for U.S. assistance. There is little argument against
sustaining the security assistance and cooperative
relationships we have in Central Asia. However, looking
forward, the ability of these governments to address the
militant threat does not appear to require more U.S.
assistance, and we should leverage this fact in focusing on our
other policy priorities in the region.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Barrick follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much.
And Dr. Blank? We are going to need you to push a button
there. Just remember that that uses energy that is produced by
somebody to get your voice amplified, just to put it in
perspective.
STATEMENT OF STEPHEN J. BLANK, PH.D., RESEARCH PROFESSOR OF
NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS, U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE
Mr. Blank. Well, I hope it is from California, sir. I thank
you for the opportunity to speak to the committee and the
subcommittee. I need to emphasize that my remarks do not
reflect the views of the Army, Defense Department, or the U.S.
Government.
Jihadi or Islamist terrorism is a worldwide phenomenon not
just confined to Central Asia. We find it, as Dr. Cohen has
said, in the North Caucasus, in Central Asia, and we have also
seen evidence of it in Azerbaijan where Iran is attempting to
sponsor terrorist and insurgent movements against the
Government of Azerbaijan because of its pro-Western policies.
At least three plots were uncovered last year by the Azeri
authorities against Azeri, Israeli, and American citizens and
interests in Azerbaijan, including the finding of people with
propaganda and weapons in their possession for such, what you
might call, to use a Soviet term, agitation and propaganda and
incitement to terrorism.
So this is a complex international phenomenon. In the North
Caucasus we are dealing with a truly jihadi terrorist
operation, the Caucasus Emirate, which is closely affiliated
with al-Qaeda, and a subcriber to the ideology of al-Qaeda, and
which the Russians have had very little success controlling and
which they have contributed to by pervasive misrule and
brutality, whereas in Central Asia there is no imminent threat,
as was stated here earlier. After 2014, the situation becomes
more cloudy. Most Central Asian and many expert forecasts of
what will happen in Afghanistan are much more pessimistic than
what the U.S. Army and Government is saying, and we heard
already from Congressman Poe that the Uzbeks are particularly
anxious about the future.
We can expect after 2014 that there will also be the
possibility of succession crises or internal upheavals in
Central Asian states, all of which are authoritarian, most of
which are badly governed. And those kinds of upheavals could
open up the door to the kind of political manifestations of
terrorism we have talked about. As Mr. Barrick has said,
Central Asia Islam is by no means jihadi, but the political and
economic conditions of governance there create the potential
for a mass base or at least a base of recruits who would
subscribe to those kind of ideologies. Because no other
political expression has been granted to them, they can only
express themselves in terms of this vocabulary and this
political rhetoric. So we have those particular areas in the
Soviet Union or Eurasia to use a common word, which are
potential terrorist areas.
I would like to conclude by talking about the U.S.
interests here. The Azeri case is one where, I think, vital
U.S. interests are at risk because Azerbaijan's capacity to
furnish Europe with energy products and because of its
importance in the Caucasus and vis-a-vis Iran, make its support
for Azerbaijan despite its authoritarian government, I would
argue, a vital interest of the United States Government. Our
interest in Central Asia has been well articulated in today's
testimony, but the fact of the matter is that already spending
on Central Asia for 2012 went down. It is going to go down in
2013, and presumably, after 2014 it will go down still more
given the constraints on the U.S. budget and on the U.S.
military that are now coming into effect.
Furthermore, the interest of the United States in Central
Asia has been, as Ambassador Blake has testified previously to
Congress, fundamentally tied to the war in Afghanistan. As our
presence in Afghanistan declines so will, I suspect, our
interest in Central Asia and leaving it open to further
international rivalry such as is called, The New Great Game,
other words have been used, between Russia, China to some
degree, Iran, India and Pakistan, and now Turkey appears to be
gaining interest in this. So those actors as well as the EU,
international financial institutions, and the terrorists will
all be active in Central Asia as we reduce our profile due to
financial and military constraints.
In the North Caucasus we are not going to be able to play
much of a role because the Russians will not allow for anybody
to come into what is sovereign Russian terrority, and they are
certainly not in the mood to listen to us about
democratization, quite the opposite, as we have heard today. So
it is very likely that this phenomenon, particularly insofar as
it is connected to misrule and what my colleague, Max
Manwaring, calls illegitimate governance, is likely to continue
after 2014, and it is by no means certain that when we have
left Afghanistan that we will have sufficiently weakened this
threat to the extent that our partners and allies in Eurasia,
and for that matter elsewhere, can become complacent.
Complacency is probably the last thing that we can expect.
Thank you, and I submit my written testimony to the record.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Blank follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. All of your testimony will be made part of
the record, and I appreciate how difficult it is to get it down
to 5 minutes or 6 minutes. As you know, I used to be a
speechwriter for President Reagan, and it was a lot more
difficult to write these short speeches than it was to write
the long ones, because you have so much to say that is so
important. And I think I will be yielding my time for
questions, and then I will close it out after the other members
have had their say. But I will yield my time to Mr. Marino.
Mr. Marino. Thank you, Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you for
being here. I would like to start with Mr. Barrick, and perhaps
then Mr. Zenn you could answer the question, and then I have
two other questions for the other gentlemen.
Mr. Barrick, you stated that what could be done, what could
the countries in Central Asia do to assist along the lines that
the U.S. has been. I was just at a conference in Belgium, a
NATO conference, and quite a few of the countries keep looking
to the U.S. to do more and more. Do you have an insight on what
Central Asia has done and what more they could do, and how?
Mr. Barrick. Yes, thank you for your question, Mr. Marino.
As Ambassador Blake mentioned earlier, the support that Central
Asia has provided for the Northern Distribution Network has
been vital for the forces there. In my reference to what they
could have done more, I think that relationships have also been
very difficult in terms of when we look at Uzbekistan, when we
look at the negotiations over basing, when we stress that our
presence in the region is going to be temporary. And during the
trip, Mr. Rohrabacher and Mr. Poe both mentioned the concerns
that Uzbekistan has expressed about Afghanistan. But it is
interesting that there are no Uzbekistan troop contingents
supporting ISAF. And that is primarily what I have in mind, is
that despite their concerns there was not an initiative for
them to support militarily the effort of ISAF in Afghanistan. I
think that is one question that they should answer in terms of
how concerned are they, really. Secondly, they could have been
more inviting in terms of allowing international forces to
assist along their borders if they were concerned, and I don't
think that that is something that they are interested in.
Mr. Marino. Thank you.
Mr. Zenn, do you have anything to add to that, sir?
Mr. Zenn. I would simply add that I think what they could
have done for us is to work better on their political
transition in the upcoming years, political liberalization,
because ultimately, at the end of the day the militant groups
will seize on political instability, overly centralized
governments, in order to try to attract people that are
disaffected from the country into their cause.
Mr. Marino. Right. Thank you. Dr. Blank, and then Dr. Coen,
and we are probably going to get buzzed here to go vote
shortly, so I have about, a little more than 2 minutes. What
are Russia and China's interest, and are they seriously
concerned with terrorist attacks against the U.S.?
Mr. Blank. Both Russia and China individually seek to
create a block of space in Central Asia integrated around their
economies, each one supporting the geopolitical interests of
Russia and China and preventing Islamic terrorism from gaining
a foothold either in Central Asia or Russia proper, in the
Russian case, or in Central Asia and Xinjiang, in particular,
in the Chinese case. Their concern is not so much with U.S.
terrorism as with the fact that Afghanistan could become a base
for this kind of terrorism, and they have supported our
military effort there.
But as we described earlier, their support has been
ambivalent and self-serving. Russia supports the NDN but,
frankly, wants us out of Central Asia as soon as possible, and
if we stay in Afghanistan they want us to coordinate all our
moves there with Russia, essentially giving Russia a prior
right of veto or regard over our activities. China has been
less overt in what it wants from the U.S. in the future, but I
would suspect that the Chinese do not want to see us in Central
Asia and are concerned about Islamic terrorism in Afghanistan
and Pakistan, but they are prepared to invest a reasonable
amount of money in Afghanistan. And they are also, I think,
counting on their ability to discipline Pakistan in order to
prevent that from happening in their frontier as well as their
own bilateral ties with the Central Asian and the Russians. So
that is how I would answer that question.
Mr. Marino. Thank you.
Dr. Cohen?
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Mr. Marino. I think there is one
issue that nobody talks about and nobody publishes about, and
that is that there is an institutional connection between the
Government of China and the Government of Pakistan. And that
connection cannot ignore or cannot be divorced of the ISI and
the ISI's role, not just in support of the Taliban, but also in
support of other terrorist radical Islamic organizations in the
region. And looking at the battlefield past 2014, if I was an
Uzbek or if I was a Kyrgyz, I would be really worried about how
weakening the terrorist activities of the Pakistan supported
groups are going to be at the same time when China is moving
massively, economically, into Central Asia and outsourcing
security to Russia.
The Chinese, for the next short term, short term being 30
years, don't care about security. They are happy to make a buck
or a yuan in Central Asia, leaving the security to the worries
of the Russians. But year after year, if you compare economic
statistics, the Chinese beat the Russians in the economic
battlefield in Central Asia. And what we see, yes, Stephen is
right. There is an understanding between Moscow and Beijing
that they don't want us in Central Asia, but at the same time,
what you really see is evidence of increasing economic
competition in natural resources, energy, and other areas
between Moscow and Beijing.
Mr. Marino. Thank you, sir. And I yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. And now, Mr. Keating,
and then I will do the follow-up. We have got 15 minutes before
a vote, so it is working out just right.
Mr. Keating. We don't want to bring you back or have you
stay until after vote, so I will just try and be brief. The one
thing I heard from all our panelists, both panelists, has been
don't overlook the potential that is there. Let us learn from
our other lessons in Central Asia. And that just isn't limited
to our self-interest in using that region as we exit
Afghanistan, it is far deeper than that. I think the fact that
we had this hearing today will demonstrate that we have a great
concern in that regard and that is something that we don't want
to see overlooked.
I think the other area of agreement, the only shades of
difference I might see, one of timing. I noticed that, and it
is my own thoughts as well, that the first thing in the area
that we will, and I think Mr. Barrick mentioned this clearly,
is the economic concerns might not lead us, the failure of
developing those and having that area become vital economically
might trump the need to deal with some of the military concerns
and the terrorist concerns afterwards. But we have to be
vigilant as that goes on. It can't just wait to see if that
happens. That is where some of the other comments were.
With all that being said, we started to talk about China,
Russia, the U.S. economically, and particularly how China uses
Xinjiang to represent their interests as well. We have talked
about the areas of disagreement and Russia not wanting us in.
Can you find, any of you, can you find areas where there can be
points of agreement in that respect? I haven't heard any of the
potential for that from any interest. I will leave that as my
only question, and you can all have the chance to answer it.
Mr. Barrick. I will start on that. I think when we look at
it, one of the organizations that has tried to address this
area regionally, includes Russia, China, and most of Central
Asia, is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and they are
focused on economic development. The problem inside Central
Asia, and this addresses another part of what Mr. Marino was
asking, what can Central Asia do more is cooperate better with
each other in terms of how they work both in security and in
economics. And for us when we look at this region, this region
is bounded Russia, China, Iran, and India, Pakistan, and when
we look at economic integration being something that can
provide stability and support in this region, it involves all
four of those corners working together and cooperatively with
us. And given even our own difficulties and the broader range
of issues that we have with these countries, it shows how
difficult and complex it is. But I still believe economics and
trade is one place where they can find agreement.
Mr. Blank. I respectfully disagree, because all the
evidence shows that there is very little regional cooperation
among Central Asian states. Uzbekistan, for example, is
distinguished by the frequency of incidents of economic
warfare, to use the right term, that it has conducted against
its neighbors like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, too many
incidents to name here in the time allowed. Russia and China
are competing economically. They are not cooperating
economically, they are competing for energy and for
infrastructure investments.
China has its own Silk Road project, essentially, which is,
to be honest, probably more far advanced than ours is and much
further advanced in Central Asia than India's investments.
India has just been a dime late in the day short, a dime short
and a day late in Central Asia and continues to be so. As our
investment goes down this is going to become all the more
evident. So I am rather skeptical about the feasibility, even
though I think it is desirable for such grand schemes to take
place, because the facts on the ground work against it.
Regional cooperation is limited in its extent. The amounts of
money that are required for investment in order to sustain this
are astronomical, and they are certainly beyond our capability.
And the Central Asian governments themselves do not cooperate.
Even when they give aid to Afghanistan it is often on rather
unfortunate terms that they do. So it is a much more clouded
picture unfortunately.
Mr. Keating. There is 20 seconds left, Dr. Cohen. Go ahead.
Mr. Cohen. If I may, on security. There is, on the basic
level, the desire to prevent these governments from collapsing
and being replaced by Islamist radicals, and that is the desire
of Beijing, Moscow, and Washington. So that is a starter. On
economic side, the corruption, expropriation of businesses,
including of some Western interests in Uzbekistan and
elsewhere, is such that there will be no Western investment to
speak of until such time as the rule of law, good governance,
and transparency are improved. It is not impossible. Kazakhstan
did it to a certain extent. There is place to improve, even in
Kazakhstan, but Kazakhstan in comparison got so much more, by
orders of magnitude more foreign investment, especially in the
energy sector. And there should be no reason why the Tajiks,
the Kyrgyz, the Uzbeks will not get the same kind of
investment.
China, on the other hand, is willing to barge in with
massive investment for railroads, for highways, for mines,
dealing with governments, tete-a-tete, directly with the
governments. This puts us at the disadvantage. So not only are
the Chinese eating Russia's lunch, they are eating our
businesses' lunch.
Mr. Keating. Yes, they are state capitalism. Thank you very
much. I yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I would like to thank the witnesses, just
a few questions on my part. One note that the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization has in its language in its own charter
that one of their major reasons it was created was to stop what
they call splitism, meaning self determination of various
peoples who don't want to live with the borders that were given
to them by some dictatorship somewhere or some colonial power.
Isn't this, when you think of that then, doesn't that put the
Chinese, how you say, insertion into this area in a much more
honest light?
Mr. Blank. Well, the campaign against splitism unites all
the members because each one of these states has minorities in
them, and they are all extremely sensitive to the question of
their territorial integrity. And this is, of course, one of the
most fundamental questions in international relations globally.
It is not just Central Asia, it is Africa, for example, and up
until World War II it was Europe. And there are still areas of
Europe in the '90s, like Yugoslavia, where we had this kind of
problem. So they are all determined to preserve the state that
they presently have within the borders that have been set up
over time and are now recognized with them as international
borders.
That does mean that the borders have not been changed.
China has been able to basically compel some of the Central
Asian states to cede territories to them by virtue of China's
economic power over them in the last several years. Tajikistan
is one example, Kyrgyzstan another, and those are the two
weakest states.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, Chinese occupation of Tibet has
something to do with getting people to acknowledge that they
are under Chinese rule as well. I mean Tibet was a sovereign
country at one time and----
Mr. Blank. But Tibet is not part of Central Asia, so I did
not mention it.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. Well, let me ask this about Turkey.
There is a country we haven't mentioned yet, let us just do a
real quick down the line. Is Turkey playing a positive role
now? Has there been a shift? As we know, Turkey has become more
Islamic in the last 10 years, has that been bad? Has that been
something that visually we can see that it is taking Turkey
away from the positive role that we believe it has played
before? But you have only got 15 seconds for comment.
Mr. Cohen. The quick answer is yes. It has been perceived
by the governments in Central Asia, first and foremost by
Uzbekistan, as a negative. They kicked out the Gulen movement
to a school system, and others are very nervous about the same
Gulen movements school system. They do not want more
Islamization at home. These are post Soviet par excellence
secular regimes.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So Turkey, in the last number of years as
it has shifted toward a more Islamic statement, national
statement that is actually identifiable in Central Asia and has
had an impact in its relation there.
Mr. Zenn?
Mr. Zenn. Thanks. I would add that Turkey has very close
linguistic, ethnic, cultural and religious links to Central
Asia, so it is capable of having influence in the region. It is
also capable of being a bridge for us to incorporate Central
Asian countries into Western institutions since Turkey is
incorporated into Western institutions. At the same time it has
played a positive role with many educational institutions.
Mr. Rohrabacher. We know those things, but we also know
that Turkey has been going toward a more Islamic direction.
Mr. Zenn. The question is, in the future if Turkey
continues to move in a more Islamic direction then this could
relate to more Islamist schools in Central Asia as well, so
that would be a cause of concern.
Mr. Cohen. Prime Minister Erdogan just last month announced
that he would like to see Turkey joining the Shanghai
Corporation Organization. And I had an article in the National
Interest about that basically critizing the Prime Minister.
With all due respect, if he wants to be in NATO and the
European Union, he is in NATO, if he wants to be in the
European Union, you cannot dance on two weddings.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Mr. Barrick?
Mr. Barrick. And I would say in response to that that part
of Turkey's interest in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
may have been the lack of development in terms of membership in
the EU. Turkey historically wanted to have a greater role in
Central Asia when it became independent of the Soviet Union,
but I think in their initial approaches in trying to be a big
brother and to capitalize on the connections that Mr. Zenn
emphasized, they didn't play it right. And they stepped on toes
and they did not develop those relationships very well. In
2005, in Kyrgyzstan, it was Turkish businesses that were looted
and damaged in some of the rioting. I think they are cautious
about how quickly they want to get back into Central Asia. And
just like our businessmen have concerns about the environment,
so do the Turkish businessmen.
Mr. Blank. That is true, but nonetheless, one can discern a
rising tide of Turkish investment in Central Asia as Turkey's
economy grows. The question of whether or not they really want
to be members of the SCO is open, but they have certainly
upgraded their profile, moving to become a dialogue partner, if
not an observer, of the SCO in the last few years. So I would
say the jury is still out to what extent Turkey can play a role
in Central Asia, and if it continues to resume the movement
toward democracy that we did see some time in the last decade,
it could provide a model of a state that is at once Islamic but
yet democratic that would be encouraging, I think, to many of
us. But as I said, this all remains to be seen. I think we are
at a very early stage here.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I agree with that. If we see this balance
maintained so that you have more--people forget that Turkey did
have a dictatorship, a military dictatorship basically for
decades, and now as it is becoming more democratic and the
government does reflect the Islamic nature of its people, as
long as that is done in a balanced way and that they recognize
that radical Islam is an enemy of real democracy because it is
an enemy of human rights, we will see how that all plays out
with Turkey. I think that will be evident as we move forward
and we see what groups they try to ally themselves with in
terms of Central Asia, et cetera.
Again, one just last note and then I am going to let Judge
Poe close off the hearing with his comments and questions,
whatever he has. He will have the last 5 minutes. Let me just
note that I think it is vital that we make sure that, number
one, we stick by our friends. That is why I am pushing Dr.
Afridi. It is so important for us not to let someone who is
such a hero who helped bring to justice this mass murderer of
Americans, Osama bin Laden, it is so important for us not to
let him, not to abandon people who side with us, so that people
won't be afraid to step up and be our friend and side with the
democratic forces, knowing they are not going to be left
hanging out on a limb.
With that said, I see two major forces that we need to
bring to play, and if nowhere else their influence should be
brought to play in Central Asia in order to prevent the spread
of radical Islam. Because A, a massive increase in the number
of countries that are under the influence of radical Islamic
dictatorships or Islamofascism as it has been called, would be
catastrophic especially if those countries were the core of
Central Asia. And the two countries we need to work with us in
that endeavor, not only the local countries and local people
involved, but Russia and India. Those are two forces that can
play an important role, and I think it is incumbent upon us to
reach out and try to be as cooperative with those two powers as
we possibly can.
And with that I will leave that sentiment on the table, and
I will let Judge Poe close out the hearing with his questions
or his final statement.
Mr. Poe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks again for
being here. I think the world is having to deal with what was
sown many years ago when different entities, the Europeans
primarily, got out a red pen and started redrawing the world's
map and making new countries and moving traditional boundaries
in Asia and Central Asia. All of a sudden that conflict is
having to be dealt with, with the different countries in
Central Asia as well. That is just my opinion.
I want to go back to something that was talked about in the
first panel. Mr. Marino brought it up, and I would like for you
gentlemen to be a little more specific, if you can, on the
issue of money. It is all about money. Everything is, it seems.
But the terrorist groups, they get their money from somebody or
someplace. Not just al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but IMU and the
IJU, they need money to operate. Where do they get their money?
Who gives it to them? Does any of that money come from actual
governments, and what can we do to prevent the money train? So
it is about money. You can weigh in on it. That is my only
question. We can start with Dr. Cohen.
Mr. Cohen. Judge Poe, I think this is an excellent
question, and our Treasury is doing a pretty good job tracking
the money flows for sort of traditional al-Qaeda because that
is where the priority was. Central Asia was not necessarily
always on the radar screen. But as someone who does not have
access to classified information but who talks to people from
the region regularly and visits the region, I would say there
are two sources. One is the donations, the so-called Zakat, the
traditional Islamic charity that comes from the Gul,f including
Saudi and the Gulf states, Qatar, Kuwait, et cetera. The second
source is drug trafficking, both in terms of growing, in terms
of refining, and even more so in terms of trafficking the
Afghan poppy products, heroin, opium, et cetera.
So you have for the U.S. Government both the Treasury track
to intercept the flow of money from the Gulf, the State
Department track to put more pressure on our friends, the
governments in the Gulf, to prevent private foundations and
individuals from financing the jihad, as they call it, in
Central Asia, but also for our DEA and other law enforcement
agencies to train and cooperate with the governments in the
region. The problem is, some of those governments, like
Tajikistan, are known to be very corrupt, and individuals in
those governments are known to be deeply involved in drug
trafficking. So we have a problem right there.
Russia was loudly protesting our drug policy in
Afghanistan, calling for crop erradication, for spraying the
crops and destroying the crops. That would probably increase
the ranks of the Taliban by 1 million or a couple of million
peasants whose crops were destroyed. So our policy in
Afghanistan was to destroy the labs and try to intercept the
traffickers. It was not efficient enough and the Russians
walked away from a cooperation agreement of combating drugs.
Unfortunately I must say as a lifelong Russia watcher, the
Russian drug enforcement is not without a blemish. It has some
corruption, some serious corruption in it as well.
Mr. Poe. No kidding.
Mr. Cohen. So our options are limited, but we need to work
both on the drug track and on the Gulf track, and to the extent
we can watch, the Pakistani track and other countries outside
of the Middle East who may also provide funds, including by the
way some of the Muslim diasporas in places like London, or in
places like Dearborn, who may provide some donations for this
so-called jihad in----
Mr. Poe. Let me reclaim my time, because there are three
other folks I would like to get to weigh in on this. Mr. Zenn,
specifically Pakistan helping supply money to the Taliban, what
do you think?
Mr. Zenn. Yes, I think Pakistan would help supply money to
the Taliban. There is close relations between the Pakistan and
Taliban, that is historical. And then the next bridge is that
the Taliban has very close ties to the Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan, which is the largest Central Asian militant group.
In fact, the IMU is like a vassal to the Taliban. They operate
together. They are allies. So any money that gets to the
Pakistani Taliban will ultimately get to the IMU as well and a
bunch of other Central Asian militant groups that can help the
Taliban pursue its objectives in Central Asia. And then there
is a large stream of networks between Salafists in Central
Asian home countries or even in Russia or even in the Gulf that
send money to Salafist-jihadists in Afghanistan itself.
Mr. Poe. So it is not unreasonable that the United States
gives a lot of money to Pakistan, a lot, billions, military and
supposedly, just foreign aid. That some of that money goes to
the government and they in turn give that to the Talibanis, as
I call them, and that ends up going into their coffers fighting
against Americans in Afghanistan. Is that something that just
might be going on?
Mr. Zenn. I don't think it is unreasonable to say that
money from the Pakistan Government in some way gets to some
members of the Taliban who then pursue Pakistan's objectives in
Afghanistan, which involve the Taliban and Afghanistan. And
then the Taliban in Afghanistan has its objectives against the
Americans.
Mr. Poe. Just a couple quick answers for the last two. Go
ahead, gentlemen.
Mr. Barrick?
Mr. Barrick. Yes, I concur with Dr. Cohen's description of
how the militant groups get their funding. I would also like to
address Mr. Rohrabacher's comment on friends. And I think we
should treat our friends carefully. And what we need to be
careful of is that we have relationships with China, Russia,
and India, and we should be wary that they don't place us in a
situation where they seek to trade their interests in the
region for ours, because we have more important interests
elsewhere, and that we then disappoint friends that are relying
on us.
Mr. Poe. Dr. Blank, last comment? Let us hear him.
Mr. Blank. To address your question, Congressman Poe, I
agree with my colleagues about the sources of support for the
Taliban, and for that matter for the North Caucasus, which is
the really most violent of all these terrorist movements inside
the former Soviet Union right now, the most active. Every day
there are incidents in the North Caucasus and in the heartland
of Russia. Finally, there is Iran. Now we know that Iran is a
state sponsor of terrorism. We know that they are sponsoring
insurgent and terrorist groups in Azerbaijan. We also know that
they were sponsoring groups in Afghanistan. So those groups are
getting support including funding from Iran and probably the
IRGC or the MOIS, which is Iranian intelligence. So again it
depends on which terrorist group you are talking about. And the
sources of funding are generally very secret, deeply buried,
multiple, and very often tied up with criminal networks of one
sort or another.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. And I think that,
Your Honor, would you like to have a 1-minute summary?
Mr. Poe. No, thanks, Mr. Chairman. It has all been said.
Thank you very much. Everybody has said it.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. Well, I thank the witnesses and
thank all of you, thank the staff for putting together this
hearing today, and with that said, this hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:23 p.m., the subcommittees were
adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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