Geostrategy in Central Asia
On the other hand, it has been continuously vulnerable to attack from all sides throughout its history, resulting in political fragmentation or outright power vacuum, as it is successively dominated.
[citation needed] Alfred Thayer Mahan, the father of U.S. geostrategy, outlined the geostrategic divisions of Eurasia in his 1900 piece The Problem of Asia and Its Effect Upon International Policies.
"[6] The Geographic Pivot is an area on the continent of Eurasia which is either landlocked, or whose rivers and littoral fed into inland seas or the ice-locked Arctic Ocean.
Because of the rapid mobility that the steppe lands allow, Mackinder points to the historical tendency of nomadic horseback or camel-riding invaders coming from the east into the west.
This triangular projection south into Central Asia was part of an area inaccessible to the sea powers (Britain, the U.S., Japan, and France primarily).
The area is an ethnic cauldron, prone to instability and conflicts, without a sense of national identity, but rather a mess of historical cultural influences, tribal and clan loyalties, and religious fervor.
Pakistan's status has been upgraded to a "major non-NATO ally" because of its central role in serving as a staging point for the war in Afghanistan and for providing intelligence on Al-Qaeda operations in the region.
Afghanistan, which had served as a haven and source of support for Al-Qaeda, under the protection of Mullah Omar and the Taliban, was the target of a U.S. invasion in 2001, and ongoing reconstruction and drug-eradication efforts.
[8] Western observers and governments have claimed that Russia, China and the former Soviet republics have used the language of the War on Terror to quash minority separatist movements as well as some religious groups.
The low volume of drug seizures (about 4 percent of the estimated total opiate flows) indicates the lack of state power to regulate Central Asian borders as well as the corruption of its officials.
Three of Central Asia's southern states, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, share a collective border of about 3,000 km [12] with Afghanistan, which produces about 70 percent of the world's heroin.
[11] Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan share a border with the Chinese province, Xinjiang, through which drug traffickers access major opiate producers such as Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.
Veterans from the war started to bring back heroin in small quantities, but as soon as its potential large profits were realized, criminal groups took over the trade.
[13] Although the IMU, whose power was at its peak in the late 1990s, claimed to fight against the region's civil government in the name of the caliphate, it also appeared to be highly motivated by the drug trade.
Arguably, the IMU used incursions to create instability in the states and distract law enforcement to more easily transport the new heroin harvests.
[24] Also pointing to high-level government corruption in the drug trade, Turkmenistan's president, Saparmurat Niyazov, publicly declared that smoking opium was healthy.
