FIVE MORE 'STANS WE MAY INVADE

NPR - During the months-long debate over U.S. policy options for Afghanistan, critics of the war effort questioned whether the global fight against al-Qaida really depends on what happens in Kabul and Kandahar. Recent developments in the region, however, have raised the opposite question: Can the war in Afghanistan be contained in that country?

"You have global problems in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. All is connected, and especially with Central Asia," says Jean-Louis Bruguiere, a European Union envoy on terrorism. Bruguiere's concern, shared by U.S. intelligence officials and other analysts, is that the conflict in Afghanistan could spread to its Central Asian neighbors - Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Until now, Central Asia hasn't been associated much with the Afghanistan war. But Bruguiere highlights what he calls an "arc of conflict" encompassing Pakistan, Afghanistan, the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, and Russia.

"And beyond Russia, we have Europe," says Bruguiere, a former investigative magistrate in France and the author of a new memoir, What I Could Not Say.

In the mindset of the Taliban and other Islamist movements, Central Asia is now part of the general theater of war.