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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 06/04
The OSCE in Central Asia: A New Strategy
September 11, 2002
Abstract
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) emerged in a wave of euphoria surrounding the events of the late 1980s in the former Soviet bloc. Building on the achievements of its predecessor, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), it has played a key role in state-building and democratisation in many areas of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
The five newly independent Central Asian states that emerged from the collapse of the USSR were original members of the organisation but movement towards democracy and open economies has been much slower than in Europe. As a result, in Central Asia the OSCE is present in five states with nondemocratic systems of government that frequently flout the commitments on which the organisation is built.
Many of these states are weak and have not yet developed strong civil societies. Socio-economic disaffection is high. Political exclusion has provoked radicalisation among fringe Islamist and other groups, who have sometimes turned to violence. The consolidation of power by small elites has excluded others from the political process, thereby stirring political tensions.
