This entry has been cross-posted at uzbekistan.neweurasia.net

In an effort to improve notoriously sour relations, Kazakh President Nazarbayev is attending a summit in Uzbekistan on the invitation of President Karimov. Both countries are aspiring regional leaders, but are pursuing very different policies. Surprisingly, however, Uzbekistan’s recent radical change in policy direction may make it slightly easier for them to cooperate.

Before Andijon, and before Uzbekistan kicked the United States out of its airbase at Karshi-Khanabad, Uzbekistan was the most crucial ally of the US in the region, and a key ally in the war on terror. As Kazakhstan strongly covets favor and respect in the West, Uzbekistan’s descent from ally to pariah state in the eyes of the United States and Europe may ease some of the rivalry between the countries.

Also, there is some evidence that Uzbekistan is coming to grips with the reality that Kazakhstan’s liberal economic policies have pushed it far ahead of its neighbor, and that the gap is not likely to narrow soon.

“We know that [the Eurasian Economic Community] is Nazarbaev’s ‘child,’” Esenov says. “It was Nazarbaev who, since the early 1990s, conceived of and created this organization. Although Russia dominates the group, its driving force is Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbaev. By joining this organization, I think, Islam Karimov and other Uzbek officials knew Kazakhstan would become the leader of the region.”

Kazakhstan has been consistently snubbing Uzbekistan by allowing dissidents to evacuate through Kazakhstan, offences that Karimov’s invitation indicates he is willing to accept. After all, Uzbekistan needs all the friends it can get right now, and will have to adapt to a new reality – one where Central Asia’s largest country, not its most populous, is the regional hegemon.

Already the summit has yielded results – cultural “Days of Uzbekistan” to be celebrated in Kazakhstan.