The possibilities of sending peacekeeping troops and humanitarian aid to Lebanon were discussed in the Azerbaijani, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz parliaments. This is rather an unprecedented political mobilization in reaction to international developments that do not have an immediate geographical link to the region. Experiencing a plethora of their own economic problems, the Central Asian nations treat humanitarian assistance to Lebanon as a question of religious identity and cultural interconnection with the Muslim world.

Yet, with sympathy towards human causalities in Lebanon, the Central Asian nations have not rushed to openly take an anti-Israeli stance. According to various estimates, some 250,000 Jews resided in various parts of the region at different time periods. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Central Asian Jewish diaspora emigrated to Israel, Germany and the U.S. Many locals still keep in touch with their Jewish friends and former neighbors.

A mild anti-Zionism was imported to the Central Asian societies through the Russian Tsarist and Soviet colonization, mainly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Despite this imported bias against the Jews during the Soviet era, all Central Asian states recognized Israel in the early 1990s. There is a great degree of social and political tolerance toward Jews, as the diaspora produced many renowned specialists in humanities, social and natural sciences.

Today, the Russian influence still impacts the region’s public judgments towards Israel’s offensive in Lebanon. Through Russian mass media outlets, the Central Asian public was mostly exposed to the perspective that considered the Israeli military actions as a disproportionate response and not a U.S.-driven understanding of Israel’s deterrence strategy.

The Tajik Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP), the region’s only recognized religious party, called the government to take a firm position in favor of Lebanon. The IRP, whose political agenda only covers cooperation with Iran and Afghanistan, sees cooperation with Lebanon as an incremental advancement in its own scope of actions.

In Azerbaijan, another post-Soviet Islamic country with both Shi’a and Sunni populations, the political opposition organized a protest in front of the Israeli embassy in Baku. But the Azerbaijani government, a regional U.S. ally, banned the protest. According to Azerbaijani expert Fariz Ismailzade, one of the reasons why official Baku found it difficult to express open support for Lebanon is Lebanon’s links with its archrival Armenia. Lebanon, being home to a significant Armenian diaspora, has recognized the massacres of Armenians in 1915 as a genocide. By contrast, Israel has been refusing to acknowledge the event. Nevertheless, Azerbaijan sent humanitarian aid to Lebanon.

Indeed, political opposition forces in Tajikistan and Azerbaijan attacked their governments by using the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict as a pretext for advancing their own political ambitions. Likewise, ruling regimes used the oppositions’ arguments against them, accusing them of religious fundamentalism.

Despite such accusations, regional political forces that call for distancing from the Soviet past and building new national identities, see it incremental to find historical references in the Arab world. In this search, Lebanon stands as the closest Arab country as regards to the interplay of traditionalism and modernity. The Central Asian states are secular formations, but a cluster of more traditionalist and religious communities call for integration of Islam into domestic politics.

Furthermore, as national histories are being revised after the end of Russian colonialism, the Central Asian intellectual elites emphasize the fact that before Stalin introduced Cyrillic script in 1924, and Latin before that in the case of Azerbaijan, the locals used the Arabic alphabet. Indeed, ongoing “purification” of the national languages involving the removal of Russian words is undertaken with a solemn reliance on Arabic. Few realize that a great part of the terminology related to religion, education, and politics are borrowed from Arabic, as Islam was first brought into the region by the Arabs in the eighth century.

The activity of the radical Hizb-ut-Tahrir movement is another fuzzy link to the Arab world in the Central Asian context. Since late 1990s, the party has been a major security threat regionally and domestically. In order to adapt to the moods in the Central Asian region, Hizb-ut-Tahrir was bound to shift away from one of its foundational ideological goals to destroy Israel. Instead, the party promotes changing secular political governments in the Central Asian states into Islamic ones. Hizb-ut-Tahrir is banned across the region.

The Muslim world’s reaction to the Danish cartoons against the prophet Mohammad was another example when Central Asians felt connected their religious counterparts in other countries. Although compared to other Muslim states in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the Central Asian public’s reaction was rather mild to the cartoon controversy, it was yet another step away from Soviet secularism toward a more global identity based on religion.

The Middle Eastern political developments are often used as a source for political metaphors in the Central Asian intra-regional relations. Kyrgyz ombudsman Tursunbai Bakir, for instance, called the activity of the Uzbek security forces against Islamic radical movements in southern Kyrgyzstan to be reminiscent of Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Realistically speaking, Central Asian official protests or support for Israel’s security policy will not make a difference in the Middle East’s peacemaking or peacebuilding processes. The states simply lack any sizeable international weight in voicing their concerns with the Israeli-Hezbollah war. Domestically, however, the war in the Middle East reverberates in the formation of political and cultural identities among state officials and population. Although not taking sides in favor of Israel, Hezbollah, or the Arab world at large, the Central Asians are rethinking their own relationship to the processes in the Middle East. The relationship may be psychological, rather than political. Yet, as time passes, it might grow into a stronger bond.