Sri Lanka’s Central Asia gambit

By Uditha Devapriya
This is the first of a two-part article published in The Diplomat.

On Wednesday, August 21, 2024, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Sri Lanka, together with The Geopolitical Cartographer, a Colombo-based think-tank specialising in the Indian Ocean, organised a forum on Central Asia. The event took place in two sessions, one in the morning focusing on transport and logistics in Central Asia and another in the evening centring on economic ties. Both were overseen by the Ministry’s Central Asia and South-East Asia Affairs Division and attended by academics, diplomats, and Ministry officials.

The Forum, which was also attended by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, took place against the backdrop of a series of consultations that the Ministry organised with governments of Central Asian countries in 2023 and 2024. The latest of these, with Turkmenistan, happened in May this year. A month earlier, the Ministry held consultations in Astana, Uzbekistan, where both sides agreed to set up Embassies. Sri Lanka is presently accredited to the region through diplomatic missions in India, Pakistan, and Russia.

Sri Lanka’s motives in Central Asia

Colombo has been eyeing Central Asia for quite some time. Between 2011 and 2021, it sent delegations to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. While these went some way in bolstering diplomatic relations and provided a basis for further engagements, they do not seem to have been followed up. In one sense, the latest round of consultations can be described as a second phase in Sri Lanka’s relations with the region, at a time when both Sri Lanka and Central Asia are recalibrating their foreign policies.

The war in Ukraine and tensions in the Middle East and Eurasia have forced the five Central Asian states – Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan – into a delicate balancing act. While not outright endorsing Russia’s actions in Ukraine, they have been careful not to anger Moscow. Once part of the Soviet Union – which held the world’s sixth largest Muslim population – they have since evolved their foreign policy, which scholars typically refer to as “multi-vector” – essentially, a strategy of extending outward to as many regions and countries as possible without overtly taking sides.

At first glance, this appears to be Sri Lanka’s strategy too. Since the crisis in 2022, which saw a sitting president being unseated by angry protesters over queues and shortages, the government has been trying to chart a new course in its foreign relations. Given the scale of the crisis – the worst in Sri Lanka’s post-independence history – it has been compelled to prioritise some countries and deprioritise others while balancing them with one another. India remains at the top of the list, while China – which, since 2007, lent extensively to Sri Lanka, even if one disregards the lurid sensationalism of debt trap narratives – has taken a backseat. Engagements with the United States and its allies, over areas like humanitarian aid and even infrastructure development, have grown as well.

Second session – Central Asia Forum

There are obvious differences between Central Asia and Sri Lanka. Central Asia is a heavily landlocked region, while Sri Lanka is a small island-state. Yet there is some congruence in the security pressures governing the foreign policy of these countries: Central Asia from Russia, Sri Lanka from India. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the region underwent a period of economic restructuring. These generated mixed results, with some countries recording growth and others plunging into recession.

After the September 11 attacks, Central Asia revived its ties with Russia, and in turn with the US, which at the time was close to Moscow and Vladimir Putin. Since 2010, however, the region has been expanding relations with China. The latter’s dramatic ascent since 2005 has convinced the region of the benefits of closer integration with Beijing, vis-à-vis transport networks such as the Trans-Caspian Route. That has consolidated bilateral trade, which has grown from USD 25.9 billion in 2009 to almost USD 90 billion in 2023.

Central Asia has also become a strategic consideration for Western powers. In the US, the Biden administration has been trying to forge closer ties with the region. This has become important following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

After the invasion of Afghanistan, which borders Central Asia, in 2001, Washington built military bases and expand security cooperation with these countries.

However, the region experienced a fallout from the Bush administration’s interventions in the Middle East. That soured relations between Central Asia and the US. According to one analyst, the Biden administration is now using Ukraine as a ploy to restore those relations. It remains to be seen whether such tactics will work.

In all this, Central Asia has been prioritising its autonomy. Thus, while maintaining ties with Russia, it is also reaching out to China through platforms such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which held its most recent summit in July. At the same time, while voting in favour of Palestine at the United Nations, the region, Kazakhstan in particular, has been maintaining ties with Israel. A recent study shows that Central Asia has increased interactions with other countries from 60 in 2015 to 158 in 2023. Such strategies are typical of states engaged in balancing acts, including Sri Lanka.

In the early 2000s, the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the resulting fallout pushed Central Asia into other regions. These included South Asia. Initially covering Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, Central Asia has now expanded to Dhaka. India has responded positively to these developments. In 2012, the Manmohan Singh administration held the first India-Central Asia Dialogue in Bishkek. Under Narendra Modi, such interactions have widened. Pertinently, platforms like the SCO have provided opportunities for India as well as China, to say nothing of countries like Türkiye, to consolidate ties with the region.

Foreign Secretary Aruni Wijewardene

The gambit: Opportunities and challenges

Given the many parallels in the foreign policies of Central Asia and South Asia, in particular India, does Sri Lanka’s Central Asia gambit make sense? Without overlooking the obvious differences – in size and potential – between them, it must be noted that Central Asia and Sri Lanka have both been guided by two imperatives: a balancing act on the one hand and a more long-term “extending outward” strategy on the other. For Sri Lanka, the balancing act has played out between India, China, and the US. For Central Asia, it appears to be playing out between China and Russia, even if the latter two are too intertwined to let ties with one region, even of mutual strategic importance, overdetermine everything else.

Sri Lanka and Central Asia thus seem to be placed in a positive conjuncture, a crossroads in their histories, that has made a strategic alliance both feasible and plausible. While the 2011-2021 round of consultations took place against the backdrop of the end of the 30-year war and the need to boost foreign investment, Colombo did not feel an urge to reach out to other regions: it was able to secure largesse from Beijing to finance its huge infrastructure projects. It also issued large volumes of ISBs. Now, with both China-funded projects and ISBs coming to a standstill, it is trying to resume from where it left off.

But are strategic alliances enough to sustain bilateral ties in the longer term? At the August conclave, Director-General of the Central Asia and South-East Asia Affairs Division of the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry Sashikala Premawardhane highlighted several sticking points in the country’s ties with Central Asia. Top among them was trade.

Uditha Devapriya is the Chief International Relations Analyst at Factum, an Asia-Pacific focused foreign policy think-tank based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He studied at the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies (BCIS), from where he graduated in 2023. His thesis, supervised by Dr Chulanee Attanayake, was on Sri Lanka Central Asia relations. It won the Prize for the Best Dissertation that year.