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the border. The Faryab province’s strategically important water resources supply
the province itself as well as Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (Volkov, 2013).
These clashes should serve as a wake-up call to the Turkmen government. Today
ISAF is fighting militants in Afghanistan. There are, however, no guarantees that
Afghanistan’s authorities can control the situation when ISAF has transferred
authority to the Afghan government. Turkmen border guards can probably
handle occasional armed smugglers entering Turkmenistan’s territory, but they
are unlikely to be able to handle clashes with larger groups of armed and welltrained
Islamist fighters. That would require additional forces which in turn could
lead to an escalation of tension between the two countries. Perhaps Turkmenistan
hopes that its neutrality will protect its borders from problems coming from
Afghanistan. It is also fully possible, however, both that the Taliban will gain
control of Afghanistan’s northern territories and that they will not respect the
neutrality of Afghanistan’s neighbour.
TURKMENISTAN IS NOT READY FOR AN UNSTABLE FUTURE
In Turkmenistan it is well understood that the withdrawal of ISAF, no matter
how gradual, is the beginning of an unstable future. The risk of instability is
made worse by the uncertainty surrounding Afghanistan’s 2014 presidential
election. According to the constitution, Hamid Karzai has to resign. After that,
the Taliban could well take control of the southern part of the country and parts
of the central regions. A coalition government consisting of the Taliban and the
influential Pashtun groups is quite possible. Northern Afghanistan is already
seeing a process of ethnic groups striving for greater autonomy. All in all, the
north is unlikely to be stable (Ghente, 2013a).
Ashgabat always negotiates with Kabul regardless of who is in power. Today, as
under former President Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan has dialogues with
all political forces, even the Taliban. Good relations with all major actors in
neighbouring Afghanistan are Turkmenistan’s only hope if it is to avoid further
difficulties after 2014. There are, however, no guarantees that the government in
Kabul can control all security-related problems: drugs trafficking, terrorism,
refugee flows and threats to the territorial integrity of Turkmenistan. One cannot
but reflect that in such a situation for closed Turkmenistan it would be useful to
enlist the support of other allies.
The bottom line is that Turkmenistan has the following problems when the ISAF
withdraws from Afghanistan: a weak state organisation, a well-developed
repressive system, a closed society with limited access to information, and high
unemployment. A poorly developed civil society and high consumption of drugs
hardly brighten the picture. The drugs trade is well established across the
Afghanistan–Turkmenistan border with ensuing transit to Iran, Russia and
Europe. The border with neighbouring Afghanistan is virtually open. The
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