Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have completed their parliamentary elections according to schedule, despite the American prognosis that Central Asia is ripe for revolution

The revolutionary winds blowing in from Georgia and Ukraine across the Central Asian steppes seem to have lost their way in the Pamir mountains. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have completed their parliamentary elections according to schedule, despite the American prognosis that Central Asia is ripe for revolution. Actually, Tajikistan was not quite on the revolutionary calendar. The democratic choice in Tajikistan - if President Imomali Rahmonov's People's Democratic Party of Tajikistan had indeed been unseated in the February 27 elections - lay between the Communist Party and the Islamic Renaissance Party. To say the least, neither of these opposition political parties would have been an agreeable partner for the "transformationalists" in Washington. Besides, Rahmonov had never stepped on American toes. Tajikistan was also too much of a "basket case" from the American point of view - the effort was simply not worth the while. In fact, Tajikistan ought to be the litmus test of ultimate American intentions in the Central Asian region. It ought to be in the first circle of American regional policy. It is the only country where an avowedly Islamic party stands legally registered as part of democratic life. For the neo-conservatives in Washington, Tajikistan ought to be an absorbing crucible where a certain churning dear to their thought processes is going on. Besides, from a practical angle, the country borders Afghanistan, where 18,000 American troops remain billeted for the foreseeable future engaged in an indeterminate war. The security and stability of Afghanistan and Tajikistan are inter-connected. Tajikistan is also a major gateway for the Afghan opium trade. Moreover, Tajikistan impinges on the complex experimentations with social engineering and representative rule currently under way in Afghanistan.