War On Terror
In the context of the United States' War on Terror, Central Asia has once again become the center of geostrategic calculations. Pakistan's status has been upgraded to a "major non-NATO ally" because of its central role in serving as a staging point for the invasion of Afghanistan and for providing intelligence on Al-Qaeda operations in the region. Afghanistan, which had served as a haven and source of support for Al-Qaeda, under the protection of Mullah Omar and the Taliban, was the target of a U.S. invasion in 2001, and ongoing reconstruction and drug-eradication efforts. U.S. military bases were also established in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan (the Uzbek presence was later withdrawn), causing both Russia and China to voice their concern over a permanent U.S. military presence in the region.
Western observers and governments have claimed that Russia, China and the former Soviet republics have used the language of the War on Terror to quash minority separatist movements as well as some religious groups. The ethnically diverse former SSRs such as Uzbekistan have sometimes reclassified ethnic separatist attacks as terrorist attacks and prosecuted them as such.
Read more about this topic: Geostrategy In Central Asia
Famous quotes containing the words war and/or terror:
“In health of mind and body, men should see with their own eyes, hear and speak without trumpets, walk on their feet, not on wheels, and work and war with their arms, not with engine-beams, nor rifles warranted to kill twenty men at a shot before you can see them.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“We become lovers when we see Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet makes us students. The blood of Duncan is upon our hands, with Timon we rage against the world, and when Lear wanders out upon the heath the terror of madness touches us. Ours is the white sinlessness of Desdemona, and ours, also, the sin of Iago.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)