Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO)

In News

• Recently, Kazakhstan’s President has called in the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) to help quell protests over the hike in fuel prices in the country.

About

• The oil-rich country of 19 million people has seen mass unrest in the opening days of the new year over the government’s decision to end subsidies on liquefied petroleum gas.
• Although the decision was taken three years ago, on January 1, fuel prices became fully market-based. 
• The cost of LPG, which many Kazakhs use instead of petrol or diesel to run their cars, soon shot up, doubling in some places from 60 tenge ($0.14) a litre at the end of last year to 120 tenge by January 2. 
• Protests immediately broke out in Zhanaozen and it did not take long for them to spread around the vast country, snowballing from a specific grievance about fuel prices into broader demands for regime change.

Image Courtesy: Kazakhstan  

Almaty

• It was the Former capital of Kazakhstan from 1929 to 1997.
  • Later the government relocated the capital to Akmola (renamed Astana in 1998, and Nur-Sultan in 2019)
• It is the largest city in the country with a population of 2million.
• Almaty is still the major commercial and cultural centre of Kazakhstan, as well as its most populous and most cosmopolitan city.
• The city is located in the mountainous area of southern Kazakhstan near the border with Kyrgyzstan in the foothills of the Trans-Ili Alatau at an elevation of 700–900 m, where the Large and Small Almatinka rivers run into the plain.
• The city has been part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in the area of music since November 2017.
• The city was the host for a 1978 international conference on Primary Health Care where the Alma Ata Declaration was adopted, marking a paradigm shift in global public health.

Collective Security Treaty Organisation

• Background and Formation: 
  • When the Cold War drew to a close in 1991, the Warsaw Pact, an alliance of eight socialist states, and the Soviet Union’s answer to NATO, dissolved. 
  • Less than a year later, Russia and five of its allies in the Commonwealth of Independent States, which was nothing but a loose club of post-Soviet countries, signed a new Collective Security Treaty.
  • It is an intergovernmental military alliance that was signed on 15 May 1992, which came into force in 1994.
  • This is also referred to as the “Tashkent Pact” or “Tashkent Treaty”.
• Converted to military alliance: 
  • Although it wasn’t as powerful as the Warsaw pact, in 2002, as Central Asia loomed larger in geopolitics — America had invaded Afghanistan the previous year — it declared itself the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, a full-blown military alliance. 
• Members at present:
  • It has six members: 
    • Armenia, 
    • Belarus, 
    • Kazakhstan, 
    • Kyrgyzstan, 
    • Russia and 
    • Tajikistan. 
    • Uzbekistan had quit the alliance in 2012.
• Purpose:
  • It’s purpose is to ensure the collective defence of any member that faces external aggression.
  • The organization supports arms sales and manufacturing as well as military training and exercises.
  • It has been described by political scientists as the Eurasian counterpart of NATO, which has 29 member states, while the CSTO has just six.
• Headquarters: 
  • Moscow , Russia.
• Terms and Conditions for CSTO members:
  • While CSTO membership means that member states are barred from joining other military alliances, limiting, for example, their relationship with NATO.
  • Members receive discounts, subsidies, and other incentives to buy Russian arms, facilitating military cooperation.
  • Membership presumes certain key security assurances – the most significant of which is deterring military aggression by third countries.
  • In the CSTO, aggression against one signatory is perceived as aggression against all.
  • It however remains unclear whether this feature works in practice.
• Operations:
  • Canal operation: Anti-drug regional operation
  • Nelegal operation: To counter the illegal migration and human trafficking.
  • Proxy operation: To counter the crimes in the cyberspace
  • Nayomnik operation:  To prevent the possible involvement of the citizens of CSTO member states in the terrorist activities and to eliminate the resources of the international terrorist organizations.

Article 4 of CSTO

• For the first time, the organisation invoked Article 4, which is very similar to NATO’s Article 5. 
• Article 5 says that the response may include armed force, but it does not mandate it. 
  • All that NATO actually promises is to take “such action as it deems necessary” to restore and maintain security. That could be anything from nuclear war to a stiff diplomatic protest.
• CSTO invoked Article 4 owing to the growing chaos in Kazakhstan as the President blamed foreign-trained “terrorist gangs” for the protests. 
• Armenia, which holds the rotating chair of the CSTO, said the group had agreed to send in peacekeepers. 
• In addition to Russia and Belarus, Tajikistan and Armenia also agreed to send contingents.

Conclusion

• CSTO troops should be used to guard strategic facilities only. It should not breach a nation’s sovereignty.

Source: IE