EX-SOVIET ASIAN REPUBLICS ARE NOW COURTED BY THE U.S.

The five countries that emerged in Central Asia after the collapse of the
Soviet Union a decade ago -- Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan -- are unknown to most Americans but are now
being urgently courted as the United States seeks to destroy terror bases
in nearby Afghanistan.

Until a month ago, even many officials in Washington tried to avoid dealing
with these countries, whose complex challenges range from surging Islamic
militancy to lucrative drug trafficking.

With the exception of the Pentagon, which early on recognized that the
Central Asian states might someday prove a valuable security asset,
American and many other diplomats viewed them as dangerous places, and best
avoided.

Defense Department officials dispatched senior officers to the Central
Asian countries soon after they became independent. The focus on military
cooperation rather than promotion of democracy proved a success, with none
of the five Central Asian leaders -- almost all of them holdovers from the
Soviet era -- displaying much interest in Jeffersonian ideals.

The region's presidents range from the relatively benign autocrat Askar
Akayev in Kyrgyzstan to the dictator Saparmurad A. Niyazov in Turkmenistan,
center of one of the world's most bizarre personality cults. Mr. Niyazov
views himself as a demigod and has ordered that his image adorn every coin
and bank note and that it be displayed in every public place.

These leaders are not new types in Central Asia. For centuries the region
was the domain of colorful emirs and khans. Some fostered artists and
scientists whose extraordinary achievements during the Middle Ages pushed
the Islamic world far beyond then-primitive Europe. Others are remembered
for developing excruciating forms of torture.

Central Asia remains rich in cultural heritage and natural resources,
including huge reservoirs of oil and gas. But it is also dominated by
rulers whose ruthlessness in crushing dissent has, according to some
specialists, fed the very extremism they seek to suppress.

"If you're too tough on people, something's going to happen," said an Asian
diplomat who spent several years as an ambassador in Uzbekistan, where
human rights groups say thousands of Muslims, accused of being Islamic
insurgents, have been unjustly arrested, tortured and even killed.

"The instinct out there is to repress," the diplomat said, "which might
have worked when the lid was on tight, as it was during the Soviet period.
But now some people who feel victimized by repression are turning to
Afghanistan for help."

In the last two years religious radicals, evidently with Afghan support,
have mounted armed attacks in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. They have
proclaimed their desire to turn those countries into Islamic states modeled
after Afghanistan.

In the bazaars of the Fergana Valley, the teeming heart of Central Asia,
vendors sell cassettes of sermons in which radical clerics call the
faithful to rebel against their leaders and replace them with others who
share the Taliban's ideas.

"There's a real nervousness about the rise of Islamic radicalism," said
Martha Brill Olcott, a scholar who has written extensively about the
region. "It's not a threat in the short term, but in the long term it is.

"Leaders there want to reduce or eliminate that threat, and they'd welcome
American help in doing that. But they don't want to get involved in the
American operation in ways that will destabilize their regimes and their
countries."

All of the five Central Asian countries were essentially forced into
declaring independence as the Soviet Union collapsed, even though they were
spectacularly unprepared for the challenges of nationhood.

During the 1990's, leaders of all five nations played the United States and
Russia off each other. Now Washington and Moscow, seemingly united in the
anti-Taliban cause, are well positioned to join together in seeking Central
Asia's help.

Three of the five Central Asian countries share borders with Afghanistan.
United States troops have been sent to Uzbekistan partly because it has the
only year-round access to the border over a decent road.

Turkmenistan is less likely to help, because President Niyazov is deeply
wary of foreign influence. The third country bordering Afghanistan is the
region's wildest and most lawless, Tajikistan.

The Tajikistan-Afghanistan border is long and porous, but impassable for
much of the year. Tajikistan is also deeply unstable, racked by civil war
and with a government that controls only part of the country. The rest is
run by clans and warlords, some of whom support themselves with a thriving
drug and weapons trade.

Central Asian warriors spent much of the 19th century defeating Russian and
British invasions. After their lands were forcibly incorporated into the
Soviet Union, guerrillas fought the Red Army for years before being
crushed. To this day, family and clan weigh stronger in many areas than the
nation.

That web of loyalties means that populaions do not automatically follow
their presidents and may oppose the closer ties to America.

American diplomats have been reluctant to deal with the warlords,
especially those whose power rests on controlling lucrative heroin-
smuggling routes. But many of them fear that a radical Taliban-style
government would destroy their standing.

Thus they could find common cause in Afghanistan, much of which is also
under the sway of hereditary chiefs who instinctively support whichever
side seems likely to win the next war.

Like their counterparts in other parts of the world, Central Asian leaders
wonder about the staying power of the United States. Many believe that the
Americans helped create the current situation by effectively abandoning
Afghanistan after Afghan rebels financed by Washington succeeded in chasing
Soviet troops out in the late 1980's, and by doing much the same to
Pakistan, leaving it awash in weapons and militant Islamic guerrillas.

These leaders fear that Washington will turn its attention elsewhere again
after achieving or failing to achieve its first set of goals.