MAY 30 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov unveiled his country’s first military deployment to Afghanistan on May 27, nine days after the lower house of parliament agreed the mission. Kazakhstan will send four officers to Kabul in a non-combat capacity, he told a parliamentary committee.

The Kazakh mission to Afghanistan will probably not decisively tip the 10 year war NATO’s way but it is steeped in symbolism. The deployment will mean that soldiers from Central Asia, which is predominantly Muslim, will for the first time be serving alongside NATO forces fighting the Taliban.

In reality, the Central Asian states have been heavily involved in NATO’s war in Afghanistan for years, allowing NATO to use their airports, military bases, roads and railways to re-supply forces fighting the Taliban.

The Central Asian states have earned millions of US dollars from this supply chain deal but actually sending soldiers to Afghanistan is a far bigger step, as the Taliban recognised when it reacted to the announcement with a thinly veiled warning to Kazakhstan.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is adept at playing off different superpowers and Kazakhstan maintains good relations with Russia and China as well as with the United States.

He has also fostered increasingly close relations with NATO. Sending soldiers to support the war in Afghanistan now makes Kazakhstan a member of the US-led coalition fighting the Taliban and that’s important, no matter how big the contingent.

ENDS