RIA Novosti, Russia
July 15 2005

Operation Active Endeavour for the Caspian Sea

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti military commentator Viktor Litovkin.)

The Volga delta city of Astrakhan recently hosted an international
conference on establishing the Caspian Sea naval cooperation task force
(CASFOR) to be made up of warships from Caspian littoral states. Russia
pushed the task force as the most effective way to counter threats
in the area, primarily terrorism.

The conference was organized by General of the Army Yuri Baluyevsky,
head of the Russian General Staff, and Fleet Admiral Vladimir
Kuroyedov, commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy, and was chaired
by the Russian Caspian Flotilla commander, Vice-Admiral Yuri Startsev.

During the conference, President Vladimir Putin was also in
Astrakhan, on a familiarization tour of the border-guard units in the
region. There were no official reports of him attending the conference
or sending his greetings, but it is clear that such events are not
held without the Kremlin’s agreement and support.

Interestingly, all Caspian littoral states, including Turkmenistan and
Iran, participated in the conference, despite current disagreements,
in particular on where borders in the sea should run. What made
them pool their efforts? The terrorist threat? No doubt. A drive
to protect their economic exclusion zones, rich in fish and energy
resources? Certainly. However, what matters the most – and it is clear
to any unbiased observer – is the wish to preempt the United States and
NATO and keep them out of the land-locked Caspian Sea, into which they
are desperately trying to get under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

Warships of NATO countries and NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP)
partners patrol the Mediterranean on a permanent basis. Suspicious
ships are stopped and searched as part of Operation Active Endeavor,
checked for illegal migrants, dangerous cargo and terrorists and
escorted to their destinations. Similar operations are also planned for
the Black Sea, which is fervently opposed by Moscow. If Washington and
Brussels also show up on the maritime borders of Russia, Kazakhstan,
Turkmenistan, Iran and Azerbaijan under the pretext of “maintaining
freedom of navigation and security on busy trade routes in the vicinity
of the Caspian area,” the sovereignty of the Caspian littoral states
will be somewhat limited. This will not benefit anyone, least of all
Iran, whose relations with Washington remain hostile.

There is no doubt that the United States and NATO are beefing up their
military presence in the region. Cases in point are the hundreds of
U.S. instructors training the Georgian Army, the U.S. commandos who
came to Azerbaijan to guard and defend the Baku-Tbilisi-Batumi-Ceyhan
oil pipeline, and NATO’s proactive mediation to settle the
Nagorno-Karabakh crisis and dispatch NATO troops there as peacekeepers.

However, there are several minor but key obstacles to conducting an
Active Endeavor in the Caspian, of which the main one is the legal
status of CASFOR, which should exist under the auspices of a common
political organization. There is no such organization in the Caspian
area. Russia and Kazakhstan are members of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) and Collective Security Treaty Organization
(CSTO). Neither organization, however, includes Iran or Azerbaijan,
though Iran has been granted observer status at the SCO. Turkmenistan
is a member of no organization and, under its constitution, is a
neutral state. Clearing these legal hurdles would be difficult. In
addition, the Caspian states would have to obtain approval from the
United Nations for an operation similar to Active Endeavor.

There are other difficulties as well, including working out the status
of the operation, and establishing the chain of subordination to its
command and the legal procedures necessary for boarding parties to
search suspicious ships. For example, NATO men are not entitled to
board foreign ships without their captains’ approval, and nor do
they chase non-compliant ships, as Russian border guards do when
they go after poachers. They just alert the Mediterranean states’
authorities, who order local police cooperating with NATO meet
recalcitrant ships in ports of destination. What will be the modus
operandi in the Caspian, where ships can disappear into cane-covered
marshes instead of proceeding to their destinations? The question
has to be considered thoroughly, which was one aim of the conference.

Still, the problems above seem minor compared with the principal one:
Turning the Caspian into a sea of peace and harmony, a zone free of
the terrorist threat, and having the Caspian states do that themselves.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress