Did Nazarbayev abandon his brainchild which was so widely publicized only a year ago? During Nazarbayev’s March 19 visit to Tashkent, Uzbek president Islam Karimov, who made lengthy comments on “eternal friendship and brotherhood”, carefully avoided the thorny subject of a union between Central Asian states, modeled after the European Union, a utopian scheme according to some analysts,. Events that followed Nazarbayev’s visit to Uzbekistan show alarming signs of further deterioration of relations between Astana and Tashkent. On April 19, Bauyrzhan Akhmetov, a 24 year-old resident of Saryagash district of South Kazakhstan region, was severely beaten unconscious by Uzbek border guards and abducted to Uzbekistan where he was later hospitalized with life-threatening head injuries. The Kazakh Foreign Ministry in its note of protest qualified the behavior of Uzbek border guards as “unacceptable, unlawful in legal and political terms”. The Foreign Ministry of Kazakhstan demanded Akhmetov’s immediate release. To escalate tensions further, Uzbekistan retaliated to Kazakh accusations of border violations with the ban on exports of Uzbek vegetables and fruits to South Kazakhstan. Local government members from South Kazakhstan who planned to conduct talks with Uzbek counterparts on April 25 were told that the Uzbek side was not ready to receive the Kazakh delegation.

Tajik president Emomali Rakhmonov, who recently visited Astana, promised deliveries of Tajik vegetables. But the outcome of the talks was far less productive than expected in terms of long-term energy cooperation with Kazakhstan. In reality, Tajikistan relies more on Chinese markets for the export of its energy resources. In the near future, the competition between Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan in this direction could escalate into fierce disputes.

Relations between Astana and Bishkek are not as warm as they were in Askar Akayev’s era. Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiev will face a great deal of sticking points during his upcoming visit to Kazakhstan, scheduled for June 5-6. Although border agreements between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan were formally signed, they is still awaiting ratification. In many sections of Kazakh-Kyrgyz border, the control is so loose that border authorities of Kazakhstan are no longer in a position to handle the growing flow of illegal labor migrants from Kyrgyzstan. Obviously this issue will be top on the agenda of Nazarbayev’s talks with Bakiev. Armed skirmishes that took place on the Tajik-Kyrgyz border on May 12 serves as a reminder of vulnerability of Kazakhstan’s southern borders to increasing threats of extremist attacks. However, Bishkek resists, under various pretexts, attempts by Kazakhstan to turn back the tide of labor migrants and would like to preserve the status quo on the border. The visiting state secretary of Kyrgyzstan, Adakhan Madumarov, said in Astana on May 12 that the Kyrgyz side extended its proposals on border regulations to the Kazakh authorities, and probably some of the problems will be solved before the two presidents meet in Astana. Another issue which may overshadow Bakiev’s visit to Astana is the continuing dispute over energy and water resources. Kyrgyzstan stopped supplying South Kazakhstan with relatively cheap electricity, with the explanation that no appropriate agreements were signed between the governments. The problem is that the agreement on using jointly the energy resources of Kyrgyzstan’s Toktogul hydroelectric power station, signed in April by Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, has not been ratified up to the present day. According to Madumarov, Uzbekistan shows little interest in the agreement.

Over the last two years, Kazakhstan intensified its efforts to boost its international image, receiving high-profile policy makers from the United States and European Union. U.S. Vice president Richard Cheney on his May 6 visit to Astana praised Kazakhstan’s role as the key strategic partner in Central Asia. Such assessments may have some ideological value for Astana, but in practical terms help very little to settle its deep-rooted differences with its neighbors. More than that, some political scientists fear that continuing competition between China, Russia and United States sows the seeds of disunity among Central Asian nations, setting them against each other. Theoretically, it would be only in the best interests of the three great powers to deal with a politically stable and economically prospering union of independent states in the oil-rich Caspian region. The chaotic character of relations between Central Asian countries and lack of will to form a viable economic and political alliance indicates that it will take decades for Nursultan Nazarbayev’s dream of a union of Central Asian states to become a reality.