воскресенье состоялся телефонный разговор президента России Владимира Путина с президентом Узбекистана Исламом Каримовым. Как сообщили РИА "Новости" в пресс-службе главы российского государства, в ходе разговора обсуждалась ситуация, складывающаяся в Афганистане и вокруг него, а также практические вопросы взаимодействия двух стран в борьбе с международным терроризмом.

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The US State Department recently issued a security bulletin covering Uzbekistan, which has emerged as a key logistical point for the US anti-terrorism effort. US transports have reportedly ferried military equipment to Tashkent for potential use against the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan. Uzbek authorities have not confirmed the presence of US warplanes in Uzbekistan.

"As a precaution against the potential deterioration in security conditions outside the capital and consequent disruption of travel, the personnel of a US Government-affiliated organization located outside the capital are preparing to leave the country," the bulletin said.

Local observers said the advisory covered Peace Corps volunteers. A Peace Corps source told EurasiaNet that the decision to evacuate volunteers was preventative in nature, and ought not to be viewed as a reflection of actual security conditions in Uzbekistan.

Primarily, the evacuation advisory was influenced by the overwhelming calls from parents of Peace Corps members expressing their concerns about the safety of their children. Uzbekistan shares a roughly 80-mile frontier with Afghanistan. US officials indicated that early action was necessary because volunteers are scattered throughout far-flung regions of the country, some of which have unreliable communication systems.

Media observers say a general lack of information about security developments, both in Uzbekistan and across the region, make it difficult to gauge the possible safety threat to Peace Corps volunteers. At present, state-controlled media, though claiming a pro-US stance, makes no concrete mention of Uzbekistan's participation in the US's anti-terrorism struggle. The government's silence helps foster anxiety and misinformation among the population.

The Peace Corps opened its humanitarian assistance program in Uzbekistan in 1992 and 415 of its volunteers have served in the country to date. It currently administers the program with nearly 150 volunteers who serve a two-year term, living in communities throughout Uzbekistan's regions, offering technical assistance in the education and health sectors. Volunteers are English teachers, business education teachers and health educators, living on the level of the local population, often with "host families," receiving stipends commensurate with local salary levels. They communicate predominantly in the Uzbek language.

Volunteers were told September 22 that they should consolidate in regional capitals. According to a humanitarian aid worker in Ferghana City in Uzbekistan's Ferghana Valley, a Peace Corps leader there received a telephone call on his mobile phone during a meeting on the formulation of new educational projects. "When he [the Peace Corps volunteer] returned back to the room, they were told to immediately stop the conference and that Peace Corps volunteers were to go back to their towns or villages, collect their belongings and go within an hour to the city and to report to Tashkent the following day," the source told EurasiaNet.

"We were upset when we heard," said one Peace Corps volunteer who was serving in the Ferghana Valley. "We were in shock. Some of our counterparts were crying, they were sad. They weren't worried at all about their safety. They had no idea of any potential problems in the region, because they have no information."

Most Uzbeks living in Uzbekistan's regions receive their news from Russian TV news programs if they can afford to purchase a satellite dish. Uzbek state news has reported nothing about Uzbekistan's security situation, or about the extent of the country's cooperation with the United States. One volunteer said that at the school where he taught he held a discussion with the students about what kind of information they had. "The information was really bad, mostly from Russian television, where they got ideas like there were 11 planes involved in the crashes in the US, instead of four. Or that Russia had offered assistance and the US was refusing it," he said.

Peace Corps volunteers themselves, many of them isolated in areas with poor communications links and limited access to Internet, also felt concern over the lack of information. "We have no understanding of what's going on. There are rumors that American troops may have closed the border. We don't know why we're leaving. No one's been very up front with us," said one volunteer.

One volunteer who lives in a "Kishlak," or a rural Uzbek village, said that she didn't want to leave. "I love the language and the country. It took me nine months to learn the language and culture, to learn about the people. It was hard work and it took a while to get settled in."

Given the close bonds that they have forged with local residents, parting amidst uncertain circumstances is difficult for many Peace Corps volunteers. "I don't want to leave my host family. When I came to tell them the news, they were crying their eyes out," one volunteer said. "I had only one hour to say goodbye to them. They didn't understand why I was leaving. They said, 'it's peaceful here-why leave?'"

Relations between local citizens and Peace Corps volunteers are amicable. According to a Press Release put out by the Peace Corps, explaining their decision to evacuate neighboring Turkmenistan the previous week, " there is nothing to currently indicate that action would spill into Turkmenistan and the Turkmen people have been very supportive of our volunteers. When the US bombed Afghanistan two years ago, PCV's were not the object of sudden animosity in any of the four Central Asian countries in which we serve."

Similarly in Uzbekistan, relations with Americans have been more than cordial and after the September 11th events, there was an outpouring of sympathy and condolences expressed by Uzbeks. "Everywhere I went after the incidents," said one volunteer, "people said how bad they felt, even total strangers in the bazaar."

"We had such big plans for projects that we were going to do together," said a humanitarian aid worker who has worked closely with Peace Corps workers. "It felt like they had suddenly died. They were such great people and they were helping us to develop all our projects."

But as for the question of potential threats on the security of the local people that are left behind, nothing is known. One student in Ferghana said that "most people don't know anything about their safety here. They tell us nothing on the news, neither on Uzbek channels or Russian channels. Is it so unsafe here that Americans are leaving?"

Meanwhile, local citizens who work for the Peace Corps are worried about their financial futures. For now, they will remain on the job, wrapping up various projects. Their longer-term future is less certain. According to a source at Peace Corps headquarters in Washington DC, the office will stay open as long as possible. If conditions permit, new volunteers could be sent to Uzbekistan within seven to nine months.

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The command of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance announced Friday that one of its commanders, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, is stopping the offensive against Mazari Sharif, a strategic town located northeast of the capital Kabul, and that the offensive against the Afghan capital has been postponed.

This is only 24 hours after promises to take Kabul and, more importantly, the air strip in Bagram, a key air base just north of the Afghan capital, partially controlled by the anti-Taliban forces.

Still, the former head of operations of the Uzbek general staff, Col. Shamil Gareyev said Thursday that Central Asian countries are "ideally suited" for launching a military offensive against the Taliban.

He was echoed by Alexander Ramazanov, an Afghan vet officer who served until recently with the 201st Russian division deployed in Tajikistan, who believes Americans will have no problems operating from still-sturdy Soviet era infrastructure in these remote and dusty lands.

"Americans may have a culture shock when the Russian technicians will offer them warm vodka to drink, or the locals supply cannabis and heroin dirt cheap," a Russian national security analyst here quipped. But this is no laughing matter for U.S. planners who should realize that the troops may face lack of regular facilities, clean potable water, and the home would be 12 time zones away.

Central Asian countries regularly battle outbursts of dysentery and cholera, and even Russia wasn't spared this year.

Nevertheless, there is no geopolitical alternative for a Central Asian deployment, Russian believe.

Vladimir Mukhin, a retired Soviet officer and a military commentator for Nezavisimaya Gazeta here suggests that in addition to the large air base in the Tajik capital Dushanbe, air fields in Parkhar, Kagaita near Termez in Uzbekistan, and Mara, only 40 miles north of the Afghan border, may all be used in the pending military offensive.

They are large enough to base jet attack aircraft, such as the Russian war horse Sukhoi SU-25/SU-27, or receive heavy transport planes. The air bases are also necessary to handle helicopters to ferry supplies to the Northern Alliance units.

However, the military weakness of the Northern Alliance is looming large and needs to be addressed. So is the pending humanitarian disaster, when hundreds of thousands of refugees may flee the battle zones. This would demonstrate to planners in Washington, Brussels and Moscow just how difficult this battle would be.

Not since Vietnam, and possibly, World War II, have U.S. forces have faced the terrain this harsh, and an environment so difficult to understand.

The U.S. military better learn, and learn fast, Russian experts warn. As of now, the U.S. Armed Forces lack language skills and terrain familiarity, and may need to rely on the Russians, the Uzbeks and the Tajiks, who have had plenty of bitter experience in the region.

The Russians already have learned their lesson in the long and bloody war in Afghanistan, which ended with the Soviet army withdrawal in 1989, and they are in no mood to bog down again -- at least not with their own troops, government officials and military experts here have told United Press International.

According to the Russian NTV evening news, the leaders of the Northern Alliance, which is militarily inferior to the Taliban forces in personnel numbers, mobilization reserves, and fire power, are still saying they can defeat the radical mullahs. However, they are now demanding that Russia and the West furnish large amounts of arms, ammunition, money, medical supplies and food.

Military experts in Moscow are also appraising the morale of the ethnic Pashtun, fundamentalist Taliban as being higher than that of the Northerners, who are primarily Tajik, Uzbek and Khazara.

Speaking at a celebration in Kabul, Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, declared that his regime will not distinguish between Afghanis who will are supported by American or Russian bayonets, and that their fate will be the same -- death.

There are reports that Taliban's armed gangs are forcing tens of thousands of youths, and young men, particularly Tajiks, into their military.

Omar called on Afghanis who left or are leaving their impoverished country to go back to their homes. Central Asian republics and Iran are expecting more than 150,000 refugees if the fighting spreads, and possibly many more if the fighting is sustained over months.

These countries are poor and have no infrastructure to accommodate the refugees. Health officials are already warning of epidemics due to lack of potable water and malnutrition.

Tajikistan is stricken by the most severe drought in its history, and according to the United Nations, up to one-third of its population is in at least some danger of starvation.

The relief agencies may need thousands of tons of food flown in -- fast -- and the rest shipped by train from the ports on the Baltic and Black Sea, or trucked across inhospitable and unsafe Kazakhstani steppes, probably in protected convoys.

The first Eurasian battle of the 21st century is imminent - and may stay with us for months, possibly years, to come.

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A Kremlin statement said the two leaders had talked by telephone about "the situation taking shape in Afghanistan and around it, as well as practical issues of mutual action by both countries in the war on international terrorism."

Uzbekistan borders Afghanistan, which is sheltering Osama Bin Laden, Washington's prime suspect for the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Its main airport in Tashkent is the largest in former Soviet Central Asia and it has a number of other air bases near its southern border with Afghanistan.

The Kremlin statement gave no more details, but suggested the leaders had discussed concrete ways in which to support possible U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.

The conversation followed consultations on fighting terrorism held over the last few days by U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton and Uzbek and Russian officials.

Bolton, who is undersecretary for arms control and international security affairs, is coordinating support from ex-Soviet Central Asian governments for the U.S. "war on terrorism" following the plane attacks in New York and Washington.

The United States is seeking global cooperation as it tries to drive bin Laden out of hiding in Afghanistan.

Putin said on Monday he would allow U.S. aircraft on humanitarian missions to fly over Russia, and would not oppose Central Asian states offering the same facility and even use of their air bases.

Afghanistan's other northern neighbours are Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.

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