Central Asia: Five New Nations Ask WHO ARE WE?

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On a rugged, snow-mantled mountainside above Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, Joloi Beishenov tends his flock on horseback, as his ancestors did centuries ago. During the cold season he shelters his 70 sheep in two traditional canvas yurts and lives alone in a spartan wooden shack until the warm weather brings his family up from the lowlands. This spring there is another new season, the opening out of the former Soviet Union; Beishenov has heard about new economic reforms, and hopes to rent from a neighboring state farm the strip of stony pasture he uses for grazing. But he is unmoved by larger questions of politics and religion. He is the kind of Muslim, he says, "who prays to himself." He just wants a piece of land he can call his * own.

Beishenov may soon get his wish. Since the Soviet Union collapsed five months ago, more dramatic changes have been taking place in Central Asia than the sheepherder could ever imagine. Freed from control by Moscow, a vast stretch of the Eurasian continent populated by more than 50 million predominantly Muslim, Turkic-speaking peoples has unfolded to the outside world. The former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan never agitated for the breakup of the union and even served as a passive but powerful prop for the communist regime. Once centralized Soviet control began to split apart, however, they had little choice but to join the exodus toward independence.

The economically underdeveloped states of the south were not ready to deal with such newfangled concepts as political pluralism or free-market economics. The vast majority of the population lives a rural life, cut off from urban political developments. Robbed of their natural resources and even their cultural identity by the Kremlin, the Central Asians were forced to take charge of their destiny overnight. Their struggle to define the future is even more basic than in the old Soviet European republics.

Nevertheless, the outside world is already vying to shape it for them. Presidents and diplomats, businessmen and clergy shuttle in and out of the republics like traders from the caravans that once crisscrossed the great Silk Road to China. After U.S. Secretary of State James Baker made a whirlwind December visit, Washington became the first foreign nation to establish formal diplomatic ties with Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Neighboring Turkey and Iran have been the main competitors for influence, inviting the Central Asians to take part in their rival Black Sea and Caspian Sea cooperation zones. China has cautiously proposed joint-venture projects, and even the South Koreans have offered a taste of free enterprise with a fast-food restaurant in the Kazakhstan capital of Alma-Ata. If an Islamic regime emerges in Afghanistan, the Asian republics can expect strong overtures to bring about fraternal ties.