C5+1 and the Forgotten Geography of Central Asia
In modern diplomacy, Central Asia usually means five post-Soviet states: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. But how fixed are the region’s boundaries, and who gets to define them? Should Central Asia be understood as the five states that have emerged as a distinct political space? A broader historical and cultural region that includes Afghanistan, parts of Iran, western China, and Mongolia? Or an even more fluid system of economic, transportation, and strategic ties? New details about the origins of the C5+1 format involving the United States bring us back to precisely this question. Frederick Starr, one of the most consistent proponents of the Greater Central Asia concept, recently wrote that including Afghanistan was considered during early discussions of the American regional mechanism. In that case, the formula could have been C6+1. What makes this episode interesting is not that Afghanistan supposedly almost became the “sixth country of Central Asia.” More importantly, even before C5+1 was launched in 2015, there were different ways of understanding the region: political, historical and civilizational, and strategic. Those differences persist today, while closer relations with Afghanistan and Azerbaijan have once again raised questions about Central Asia’s boundaries. Political Central Asia and the C5 Politically, the definition is relatively clear. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan gradually developed from a geographical grouping into a distinct political category. C5+1 reflects precisely this logic. The joint declaration adopted in Samarkand on November 1, 2015, established regular cooperation between the United States and the five Central Asian states. Afghanistan was part of the regional agenda but was not included in the format itself. The “five plus an external partner” model has since proliferated. Germany uses the Z5+1 formula, from the German Zentralasien. Similar regional mechanisms operate with Japan, South Korea, the European Union, China, India, Russia, Italy, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and other partners. The proliferation of these formats reflects the extent to which external partners increasingly treat the C5 as a regional actor in its own right, while the five countries themselves are also increasingly acting in that capacity. But political Central Asia is not the only way to view the region. As part of UNESCO’s multivolume History of Civilizations of Central Asia project, the region was understood much more broadly. This historical and cultural space included not only the five former Soviet republics but also Afghanistan, northeastern Iran, Pakistan, northern India, western China, and Mongolia. UNESCO specifically noted that these were not rigid political boundaries but an area shaped by long-standing cultural and historical ties. This does not offer a “correct” alternative map. Rather, it shows that the region’s political, historical, and civilizational boundaries do not necessarily coincide. It was against this background that Starr proposed the concept of Greater Central Asia in 2005. This represented a third, strategic way of viewing the region. His idea was less about redrawing the geographical map than about changing American policy. In Starr’s view, the five post-Soviet republics and Afghanistan should be...
