The author is a UK-based analyst and has worked with universities in three Central Asian countries.
LONDON
At the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Heads of Government Council session held on Friday in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, participants highlighted the absence of a joint strategy and issues related to integration as the grouping marked its 30th anniversary.
They pointed out that the divergent approaches adopted by the member states to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences did not reflect much coordination in the intergovernmental organization of nine states, formed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The current member states of CIS included Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The three Baltic States Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have declined to join the forum while lately Ukraine and Georgia have discontinued their membership.
On eve of the 30th anniversary of the forum, the participants focused on the absence of a joint strategy and brought out issues related to integration among CIS states.
As chairman of the council, Belarusian Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko said that the COVID-19 has affected economies. The key economic indicators of the CIS economies are in decline since 2020. "Now the question is how quickly we can recover and at what pace we will start to grow," he said.
He complained that CIS officials took a long time in preparing and approving vital documents. He pointed out challenges that the grouping is facing, identifying them as minimizing restrictions and granting exemptions to boost bilateral trade within CIS economies to make them resilient to external shocks to ensure the economic security of the member countries and harmonize public procurement procedures.
"If we want to progress ahead, it will be necessary to fundamentally reconsider the approach to our interaction, abandon the practice of unconditional protectionism in favor of further liberalizing trade, removing existing restrictions, activating many external ties, and increasing the potential of the Commonwealth", Golovchenko said.
Absence of coordinated strategy
According to Kyrgyz politician Kubat Rahimov the pandemic has brought a knocked down effect to the attempts so far been made for integration among CIS members. What now matters most is to determine how such regional integration arrangements could move forward to avoid getting knocked out as unhelpful and thus totally irrelevant.
Since the spread of COVID-19 in March 2020, member states have been eagerly awaiting three coordinated measures namely tools to track and trace infected persons, a strategy on how to minimize the negative effects, and implementing regulations that could allow the movement of citizens for work within the CIS. For those in particular who are allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) expectations to receive assurances, remedies and support were even higher.
The continuing pandemic crisis could compel some of the CIS member states to make autonomous arrangements to address their pressing needs. Some authorities are eager to determine which powers from among Russia, China and South Korea could prove more effective in salvaging their societies from the pandemic and to help them mobilize their economies towards recovery.
The absence of a coordinated strategy is reflective of poor solidarity and lack of dialogue necessary to build confidence and to act in a consolidated manner, noted Bakhtiyor Mustafayev the head of Uzbekistan’s Strategic Studies Institute at a conference in Kazan, Russia just days ahead of CIS leaders’ meeting.
Rahimov, who is also an expert in regional transport development asked why the Eurasian Economic Union led by Russia has not yet showcased its network of biotechnological institutions as a potent geopolitical instrument to advance regional coordination effectively? He added that an effective mechanism to mobilize the population was eagerly anticipated as a high priority to normalize the CIS economies.
Much attention will be given to measures to restore the economies of the CIS countries after the pandemic. Kazakhstan Prime Minister Askar Mamin pointed to the need to prepare a new agenda for the sustainable development of the CIS economies in the post-pandemic period. In the face of any further shocks, it was necessary to increase the trade turnover within the forum to bring stability to the economies and for ensuring that the balance of payments among the CIS members remains stable. Under new initiatives for economic development, Mamin proposed to expand the agro-industrial potential of the grouping via “a strategy for ensuring food security of the CIS countries, which would cover the entire range of activities encompassing production, processing, distribution, regulation, and consumption of food products”.
The leaders signed a joint plan of action to build the capacities of states to prevent, combat, and control infectious diseases. The documents are aimed at strengthening responses in the face of common challenges, a Russian government official said.
Lift restrictions and open up
Meeting the visiting CIS leaders in Minsk, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, called on the member countries to lift restrictions and open up to each other more actively by restoring transport links, which were reduced during the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The need for implementing an effective and practical joint transport policy within the CIS was raised by Kyrgyz Prime Minister Ulugbek Maripov. He hoped that introducing a digital pass will facilitate freedom of movement and ease work conditions for migrant laborers by allowing their activities to expand and thus help reduce unemployment.
The CIS leaders need to set tangible tasks for the forum to achieve. So far, this forum has served the purpose of a discussion platform. The organization needs to deliver specific results to serve as an umbrella organization in the economic sphere for the Eurasian Economic Union comprising countries located in central and northern Asia and Eastern Europe and in the military sphere for the Russia-led CSTO countries, comprising seven former Soviet states.
The Executive Secretary of the CIS Council Sergey Lebedev noted that circumstances prompt for making the forum more effective. “We are compelled to intensify our interaction seeing it as our salvation and a way out of the difficult situation. There is a desire to resolve these problems jointly, as we will not be able to solve them individually. The peoples of the Commonwealth countries have such expectations,” he said.
To sum up, many commentators from CIS member countries questioned the effectiveness of this platform in helping each other to combat the current crises triggered by the pandemic. This is because, since the spread of COVID-19, the CIS member states are experiencing paradoxes in adopting approaches towards addressing the pandemic.
*Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of the Anadolu Agency.
