You're listening to a stage talk titled Mapping
Military Power. This week we were joined by geopolitical
and defence analyst Michael Hilliard from the
Oxus Society. Michael spoke about their recent
mapping exercise collecting years of data to
pinpoint the scale of military power per region
in Central Asia. My call was also joined shortly
on stage during the talk by Mitchell Pullman,
an OSINT researcher who helped with the mapping
project. Within the talk, we discussed all sorts,
from drones to Chinese influence. You can find
links to all the resources mentioned in the talk
in the podcast description. This talk was hosted
by me, Charlotte Mar, on Thursday the 6th of
November, 2025, in the Bellingcat Discord server.
Let's get started. Okay, welcome to another stage
talk. Today, we're talking about military forces.
We'll be looking at the central question. How
do you map an army and its resources? What features
represent military power? Here to enlighten us
is Michael Hilliard. Michael is a Director of
Defence and Security Analysis at the Oxford Society
for Central Asian Affairs. where he leads the
new and expansive Armed Forces of Central Asia
project. Drawing on his experiences as a policy
advisor and defence analyst, a former conflict
journalist and the host of the geopolitical podcast
The Red Line and Spotlight on Central Asia, by
the way, you must listen to them and I'll pop
the links to those in the chat later, Michael
can answer complex security questions using data.
Today he's going to unpack their latest report
on the military force of Uzbekistan. a region
known as a leading military power in Central
Asia, as well as highlight the useful military
units and map tracker created as part of the
larger armed forces of Central Asia project.
By the end of the talk, we should have a better
understanding of the military might of Central
Asia and the power dynamics at play there, as
well as how we could develop a similar mapping
exercise in other regions of the world. As we
talk, please make sure to add your questions
in the chat box via the message bubble icon.
in the top right corner of your screen, as I
just mentioned. And please note, within your
question, if you do not want me to read your
username out, as this is going on podcast platforms.
Okay. Over to you, Michael. I'm going to mute
and give you the floor. You're far too kind to
me, Charlie. It's great to be here again. I absolutely
love the last time I was here and I am here today.
I'm going to share my screens with you a bit,
but obviously we're here for the podcast. Let's
talk a bit about the project. I've been heading
up and effectively talk about what Becca's done
a bit. Obviously we have our second chapter of
the Armed Forces of Central Asia report, effectively
giving what is probably the most comprehensive
analysis of the five Central Asian republics.
We're releasing each chapter alongside a bunch
of maps. So this is the second chapter or the
public version of that chapter. And so far we've
located about 5 ,400 military and security locations
across Central Asia. So quite a lot of work on
that one. Now, part of the re -prompt we got
here today is effectively looking at how to measure
military and security power. I think that's an
interesting question. So there are a lot of outlets
online who do, and for lack of a better word,
try and put a number on firepower. And I think
it's very difficult to do that most of the time.
militaries really aren't easily to quantify on
how good they are at what they do. I'm not going
to throw a GPF under the bus. I'm just, you know,
this is kind of the one I see quoted the most
in public studies. I want to take a look and
kind of talk about the problem with trying to
quantify things on a really solid number. Looking
at three militaries. And effectively here we
have Australia, Indonesia, and Uzbekistan. And
you can see here the national GDP, Australia
is much larger. But so is the military budget.
Most countries do tend to kind of go to that
way, where the military budget goes up and down
depending on how rich the country is. Bigger
budget, more money to play with, understandable.
But when you dive into sort of more military
analysis, you start to see things like this.
You'll start to see effectively, if you're not
looking at my screen, where Indonesia, even though
it's got a much smaller military budget, has
like 400 ,000 personnel in its active service.
Whereas Australia's only got about 58 and Uzbekistan's
only got about 48 and then it gets bigger once
you put paramilitary in. But that doesn't make
sense comparing what we just talked about, which
is military budgets being, you know, Australia
being the much largest one. And then again, it
changes again when you start looking at things
like tanks per person, you know, as an example,
Uzbekistan actually has effectively 73 personnel
for every tank, whereas Australia has about 481
and Indonesia's got about 2 ,900 people per tank,
which is a little off on the ratios. So even
when you look at military budgets, it's hard
to quantify how much that translates to, I guess,
the ability of that military and what it needs
to do. There's quite a lot of reasons for that.
We're also, if we look at the percentage of the
active force in each military, whilst Uzbekistan
and Indonesia have most of their military, 75
% nearly, put towards, let's call it the active
ground forces. I'm only talking about the actual
military here. The Indonesians have very little
within their air force and the Uzbeks, understandably,
have much less within their navy or naval forces.
Again, because militaries are kind of made for
purpose. And this is why it's really difficult
to quantify exact numbers on what a military
is capable of. Australia, it's built its entire
military around doing a few really quite niche
tasks. We are pretty good at going out and putting
a battalion somewhere in the South Pacific or
in the South China Sea, holding that ground.
When we insert places, we're pretty good and
we have a lot of equipment and technology with
us. But if you were to ask Australia to plonk
on a field or you were to ask Australia to run
a long mountain warfare campaign, we might not
be very good in that. Indonesia, if you look
at that as a military effectively is much, you
know, it doesn't have the kind of air force that
a lot of other countries have. It doesn't have
the massive, uh, tank forces, you know, that
less even as Bekistan has, which is a much smaller
GDP and budget. But again, it's designed as a
military that can quickly respond anywhere around
the country. And again, because it's an archipelago,
anywhere across that massive archipelago, very
quickly, you know, whether it's crushing riots
or responding to a threat. knowing that it will
probably be a while before they get resupplied.
People design their militaries to deal with the
situation they're in. And it's why I really do
enjoy looking at militaries because you do get
a good look at long -term planning and long -term
thinking. For Uzbekistan, I think that is the
most obvious out of them. And what I've got on
screen for people who are watching, but you can
also check it out in the report, is where the
major brigade level stuff is in Uzbekistan. What
you can see pretty quickly is the Most of your
tank units, your kind of real heavy, I'm thinking
old kind of Soviet style stuff is right there
down the south, right near the border with Afghanistan.
They view that as the conventional threat. It's
also the approaches that you'd use to go toward
Tajikistan, we'll talk a bit about that later.
Whereas your rapid response units are often out
near the capital, Tashkent, or in the Fagana
Valley, partly to do with the fact and when we
interviewed lots of Uzbek military officers and
personnel. They kept bringing up events in 2005
in an incident called Andijan. Effectively, what
happened is there was an uprising, a very small
uprising at the beginning, who actually managed
to take a military base by surprise because they
were just not very well coordinated at the time.
The success there gave them a bit of a boost.
They went on and took a MIA outpost. They went
on and took more and more outposts in the town.
Eventually, they had taken most of the administrative
block in the city and then eventually the military
comes back and roars back into town a few days
later and thousands will die afterwards. There
is a huge reaction to that following the 2005
events that Uzbekistan has decided that one of
its major priorities right now is to make sure
it can quickly respond to things. And it's something
that doesn't matter how high or low through the
military, you keep hearing this, had we been
able to respond quickly while there's 30 people,
well, less people would have died, which I see
the... very morbid logic behind it, but it's
interesting. Again, this is a military that's
built for quickly responding to crises. The conventional
stuff's down toward the border with Afghanistan,
because it's obviously a slight conventional
threat. And most of your rocket or heavy artillery
stuff is actually near the center of the country,
which means you can effectively pivot at where
it needs to go. And again, these are logical
decisions that kind of make sense. When we look
at kind of Uzbekistan, I guess, in the context
of the five Central Asian republics, that being
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, almost every graph you are going
to look like, you know, is effectively going
to look a little bit like this, but on screen,
imagine you're at a one to 10, 10 being the best,
one being the worst, Kazakhstan is always going
to be kind of a 10, Uzbekistan is usually going
to be, let's call it an eight or a nine, Turkmenistan
would be about a four or a five, and then Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan are going to be down in the ones and
twos. Not saying they're bad, but just I'm trying
to make it as easy as possible. This here is
military spending. And again, that tracks. We
saw that GDP matches military spending, except
in Central Asia's case where, whilst Uzbekistan
tends to spend much more than you'd expect as
a share of regional military spending, Kazakhstan
tends to spend much less. But it's also because
Kazakhstan is so much richer than the other states
that it can effectively afford to spend 1 % of
GDP or a bit above. and still be the dominant
player effectively. Whereas Uzbekistan is traditionally
spent toward the 4 % mark and starts to dip back
down toward two as things start to stabilize.
But again, I think military, even if we're looking
for a way of quantifying things, military spending
doesn't even do that either. Because not only
does it get a bit wonky when you start getting
to purchasing power, it's obviously cheaper to
keep the Russians armed and sort of in the field
because they spend less per soldier than it would
be, let's say, compared to the Americans. But
at the same time, you also have what gets included
in that. Military research, for instance, gets
included quite often within the US DOD budget,
but in China that often doesn't. It's a separate
budget. And that starts to make things really
wonky. Again, we have what was Bekistan with
quite a large military and is the largest by
numbers, but does that mean they actually have
the best military? I'd argue probably not, particularly
when we start to look at things like paramilitary.
So these are... If people who really know what
they're looking at, let's call MIA forces. Effectively,
they're not going to have the heavy artillery,
they're not going to have the heavy tanks. They're
mostly designed for internal operations. They're
better trained at riot control, better shields,
that kind of stuff compared to your standard
military. And Uzbekistan actually has the lowest
out of the five Central Asian Republics ratio
of paramilitary to military. In other words,
if you combine that number together, 63 % sit
within the conventional military. with 36 % sitting
within border forces, MIA forces, emergency services
forces, which means they have quite a heavy,
still somewhat Soviet military sitting at the
core of this. And that's a big problem because
when you have a massive numbers military, it
does help with unemployment. It does help with
a whole bunch of other factors, but it also really
hurts your ability to... So if you spend money,
because you're spending way too much money on
wages and pensions. If we go back to nominal
GDP, this is what I was talking about, where
even though Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are somewhat
similar military power wise, the GDP by Kazakhstan
is just so much higher in the region and growing
at a much higher rate. And there's a whole bunch
of reasons for that. Even if we look at, as you
can see from the pie chart, but for people, Kazakhstan
alone makes up about 60 % or 57%. of the entire
region's GDP. So it's not unusual to expect that
they would be the core military power, even though
they haven't got the largest military in the
region and have got less tanks or whatnot. Part
of the other thing you want to look at when assessing
military capabilities is who their suppliers
are and how over -reliant they are. And I guess
you'd almost on a scale of things, look to someone
like Uzbekistan on nearly one end of the scale
where Russia or the USSR supplied let's call
it 85 -ish percent of all of their equipment.
And I guess this is an interesting one for me,
I guess. It's almost a drinking game for Central
Asia analysts. We see all these headlines coming
out of Turkey selling this or China selling this.
And that's true, but it still doesn't make up
anyone near the maturity of what they use. And
part of this is just simple economics. For Uzbekistan,
if let's say you're the defense commander and
you went, hey, what are we going to do about
tanks? And they go, well, we could buy an American
tank for $8 million, but we need new mechanics.
It's going to cost $8 million. We need new manuals.
We're going to train the guys and we could get
sanctioned. If we have problems with Americans,
we need to buy new gearboxes and yada yada. If
you go with the Russians though, you can probably
spend 20, $30 ,000 on a modernization kit, slap
it in and call it a day. So you do find that
if they don't need to spend the capital, they
tend to just slap modernization kits and new
coats of paint on Russian equipment, which is
why Russia is still pretty dominant for the kind
of basics and consumables. That changed a little
bit over 2020 through 2023, as Russia effectively
diverted more of its industry toward the war
effort and, you know, what was left for the export
market was competed for by India and whatnot.
But, you know, it was back in time really just
starting to roll back and Russia is taking a
bigger part in their procurement as we speak.
I guess what the interesting thing though is
when it isn't a decision between new tank and
modernization kit and, you know, equipment versus
equipment. that's where the really interesting
part is happening. And that's where you ask them
to see China and Turkey and a few other places.
Because when it comes down to, well, I need to
buy a Russian drone or a Turkish drone, they
tend to go and not with Russia. They do have
some Russian drones. They do have some Russian
bits and pieces, but yeah, it is a testament
to, we think Russia is pretty good for basic
consumer. It's, you know, basic bullets, basic
gearboxes. They're not so good for the high tech
stuff at the moment. I think they're slightly
distracted elsewhere. The other part you want
to look at, and I get a lot of people don't include
this when they start to look at military power,
is the ability to be self -sustainable. If you're
Australia, we can kind of keep some of it going
ourselves. We're not great for that, but we can.
When you're, let's say, the central agents here,
almost everything they have is imported in. For
Uzbekistan, as a classic example, when they have
their planes, which are getting quite old, needing
repairs, they can't do anything by basic repairs
in their own facilities. They end up sending
them off to Belarus or Russia to get that done.
Which if you can imagine, let's say you're in
a conflict with Tajikistan or one of your other
regional players. Do you think Belarus is going
to be hop, skip and jump to want to fix your
planes? Not really. And you kind of have to take
that into account when you're starting to plan
and war game out a number of these scenarios.
Even you know, something like here, which is
the Churchill aircraft repair plant just north
of the Capitol, north east of the Capitol. This
has been pretty under repaired for a while and
is suffering quite badly. And frankly, you know,
even though a lot of these States would probably
benefit from, you know, combining their money
and getting this back up and running like it
was during the USSR times, kind of doesn't get
that because no state trusts each other enough
to do that. Now, and this is again, we'll weigh
into military calculations here. And again, this
is one of the reasons that I think it's difficult
to kind of put a number on, you know, exact number
of how powerful a military is. Now, when you're
looking at mapping bases, there are a few things
you can look for. So actually, I want to kind
of, before I get into the mapping stuff, let's
go right through this and I'll come back to that.
The two things I found really interesting in
this study is effectively, no, lots of things
I found interesting, but one of the most interesting
things is looking at purpose -built. So as part
of this, we ran a bunch of war games, getting
a bunch of military and security experts in and
sat down and worked out how each guy would respond,
what the situation is, what they're capable of,
and effectively what the outcomes are likely
to be. Now, the two we ran for the Uzbek chapter,
where one was an ISKP, so Islamic State Khorasan
Province, effectively gathering up on the Afghan
side of the river and launching a, using kind
of rubber boats and dinghies, an attack into
the southern city of Termez where the Uzbek -Afghan
friendship bridges. Now, this was so difficult
for the ISKP team that we actually need to give
them an absurd amount of concessions to even
get them off the ground. We need to say that
there was no riverine patrols that night. There
were no surveillance that night. People were
asleep when they weren't watching at the watchtowers.
They took the massive base just over the bridge
here. by surprise and pretty much everyone surrendered
immediately. All stuff that even in the start
of the chat we get is absurd and not going to
happen because every other time we didn't give
these concessions, the enemy forces would kind
of build up on the other side of the river and
be immediately eliminated. And it just shows
you that if Bekazdan has thought about this,
Bekazdan knows this is a threat and has built
up so much in the way of defensive materials
and force down here that it's really good at
doing that. They pretty quickly pushed the ISKP
forces back. And even in this absurd scenario
where they get a lot further than they would
in reality, the whole thing ends in, I think
it's about 24 or 36 hours. They're meant to do
that. Then we ran another scenario. And this
is what I think surprised a lot more people is
an Uzbek invasion of Tajikistan. Now, Uzbekistan
being the largest military in Central Asia, Tajikistan
being the smallest. Particularly with the fact
that the Tajik capital is only 40km away from
the Uzbek border, you'd think, well, this is
an easy fight, Uzbekistan should win this, not
a problem. And we're modeling off effectively
water disputes. They decide that they want to
go for an invasion and take the northern capital
of Khujand and Dushanbe at once. Again, they've
got a massive military, it is in the realm of
possibility. But immediately logistics becomes
just so much of a problem. You are effectively
marching your troops over long distances with
very little in the way of ability to keep them
supplied. And whilst we kind of had to give them
an artificial parameter as well, saying that
the Russians wouldn't fire on them if their Russians
weren't fired on first. And the Uzbeks were able
to build up prior to the invasion completely
by surprise, which again, I think is not possible.
Day one goes fairly well as expected, Uzbekistan
can pack a real punch on day one. They can even
get in the north in better punch and they can
really kind of get right to the outskirts of
the major city. On the southern front, Dushanbe,
the capital of Tajikistan, they can get right
to the edge. But once you start getting into
your day seven -ish of the scenario, things really
go badly. Where A, the Uzbeks aren't trained
to do urban warfare very much anymore. It's not
really what they're aiming to do. B, the logistics
are just not there. They don't have the mobile
refueling stations. They don't have the logistics
trucks. They don't have the communications staff
and the dedicated communications and logistics
units. Their stuff is still coming from hundreds
of kilometers away in Termez at this point. They
don't have the suitable railway units to get
this all up and running. And you end up having
this situation where they just end up losing
way too many men. trying to fight this urban
campaign without trying to maneuver themselves
away from the Russians as well. So the end result
is effectively that the Uzbeks almost inevitably,
because their top priority will be to make sure
the administration remains stable, is they pull
back. They go, it's not worth our time. Let's
pull back. And that's a pretty bad scenario.
If you've gone in, you lost 20 ,000, you're probably
less than that. You've lost, I think it's about
8 ,000 personnel. And you've gained effectively
little to nothing. So it ends up being a pretty
disastrous scenario for the Uzbeks. And again,
a lot of people would take that away and say,
well, obviously the Uzbek military is a weak
military and on paper, their score is higher
than the Tajiks. They should have won this. But
it's just because they're not really designed
to do that. You know, this is a military that
is mostly designed to respond quickly to internal
uprisings or pressures, respond to border skirmishes
where the Olympics are really good. If it's a
short, sharp campaign, they're really good at
that. But if it's a prolonged logistics heavy
campaign, not really. And again, it comes down
to that kind of what we talked about earlier
with the tanks. If you're a defense commander
and you say, you know, sir, what should we buy?
Should we buy all the stuff we need to go invade
Tajikistan? Well, probably not. If you're not
thinking you're going to be doing that, you put
that money towards communications equipment and
pensions and everything else you need to. And
again, that can give me a bit more easy sleep
at night knowing that none of these militaries
are really preparing or even halfway prepared
to launch massive invasions of the other. So
if you're trying to measure military power, I
guess, which was the kind of prompt here. I don't
know if you can, you can kind of rank things
first to fifth in this region, but only because
it's so blindingly obvious in order they're going
to go in on almost every single metric. But that
doesn't mean you can actually expect easy victories
because their numbers are higher. Tajikistan,
when we wargamed their invasion of Kyrgyzstan
went really badly and they ended up pulling back
on I think day 10 or something. Kyrgyzstan and
Venetian Tajikistan, higher number, still can't
get past even the first, you know, can get past
the first major city, but can't make it further.
You know, this is the trouble we're trying to
rank military power, I guess. So I'm going to
obviously turn it back to Charlie and she's going
to have some questions. But yeah, to, I guess,
be an overall summary is it's very, very difficult
to put hard numbers on things. Yeah. And I haven't
mentioned railroads yet. I'm sure someone will
point that out, but Lots to talk about with the
Uzbek chapter here. Yeah. Someone has just mentioned
railroads, as you said it. Perhaps we can dive
into that in a second. But to start with, I wanted
to ask, and maybe this is an obvious question,
but this is a lot of research, a lot of data.
It's fascinating to see the practicalities of
it through your war game scenarios. What were
your main sources of data for? this particular
Uzbekistan report and how long and how many resources
does it take to build a report like this as part
of the Armed Forces of Central Asia project?
This has effectively been a two year project.
It's been massive to put together. And it's been
combing through everything from, you know, government
reports, you know, through NGO reports, through
to weapons inspection reports, through to social
media posts. You know, the wonders of social
media have made it not only very easy to find
certain bases, but also how to gain a lot of
context clues on what's there and what's not.
When you're trying to find a unit, the amount
of units we can't pin to a certain location,
all of a sudden we'll find a local primary school
did a excursion out to the base and took a bunch
of photos from within the base. a random Facebook
or Telegram group is just insane. So it's effectively
talking with lots and lots of experts, people
who know this region quite well, talking with
a lot or reading a lot of these reports and piecing
together thousands and thousands of points of
data to effectively try and have a pretty good
data set to run with. And then once you get that,
you can start to piece together other pieces.
And the fortunate thing is that a lot of these
militaries are still somewhat similarly structured
and based as what they were during the Soviet
era, which does give you a baseline to start
with. But generally, yes, it's just been, it's
been two years of an entire research team kind
of putting, pulling together a huge amount of
data points. And how difficult is it to map kind
of independent power? Like how much influence,
for example, do foreign allies have on military
power in central Asia? You mentioned some of
Russia's influence. Yeah. How does that come
into play when you're looking at writing a report
on an individual country's power? This is some
of the most difficult and I think, you know,
it happens to everyone all the time where I think
everyone has different, you know, we all do our
math and everyone will do different scores and
everyone will kind of have a different approach
on this, but it's what we weight differently
I think that has, is where people tend to differ.
you know, I found particularly working with different
members of the team is that whilst I tend to
put a lot more weight on logistics and economics
to drive things, then other team members tend
to think more about cultural dynamics and tend
to think more about, you know, how the industry
will work or various different factors that do
drive their kind of what is important and what's
not. When it comes to, I guess, the Russia question,
Russia is definitely the kind of the military
power in the region. And I think it's weird to
say, because when you go to the region, Russia
is culturally losing a bit of a step. You know,
it's only been in the last couple of years, I've
gone, you know, flown into these countries and
I've spoken Russian to them. And I get back,
hey, we speak Uzbek here. I go, yeah, well, I'm
sorry. You know, my bad. This is the cultural
shift. But when it comes to the military and
security services, a lot of those guys were trained
in Russia. They're still very friendly with Russia.
All their manuals are often in Russian, particularly
with the very Zinni command. Their primary language
might even be Russian. It's also a interesting
kind of tidbit is when you do a lot of training
exercises that as much as China is starting to
come back in and do a little bit more, the soldiers
distrust the Chinese a fair bit and they don't
drink with them. They don't have as much fraternization
with them, particularly at the sort of NCO level
and above. So Russia is... Yeah, still very much
the supply power and the guy supplying the majority
of the military equipment here, but also is still
kind of the influencer when it comes to the higher
ends of security and military forces and probably
will be for at least the next 20 years or until
that generation of the guys that are kind of
coming into the service now reach the top levels
of power, which again, it's a bit of a delay.
Yeah. So the other one you're talking about is
how you can measure what power is in a base.
So I got a few examples and obviously I have
to describe the people listening, but you know,
when you look at bigger basis, you, this, you
know, it's a kind of a concept of when you have
a really small business to give an example, a
bit of an analogy here, if it's just you and
one of the guy, that's what you need. But the
moment you get to kind of 10 people, well, now
you're kind of need an accountant. And then once
you get to 50 people, you probably need a HR
person. You need an office manager and, you know,
you just kind of need all these extra supplementary
things. The bigger the base gets or bigger the
company gets in our analogy. You know, I'm looking
at a screen here, but this is quite a large base.
This is out in Samui in Kazakhstan. And once
you get to a base of this size, you start to
need additional motor pools. You start to need
probably dedicated communications units. You
start to need a dedicated explosive storage warehouse.
It's just outside of town. Those are kind of
things that you don't need for the smaller basis.
So, you know, if we go to these, some of the
smaller ones, let's call a brigade size. Yes,
they do have large motor pools because they have
to keep the vehicles somewhere. They do have
dedicated barracks because of the people living
there and you can get a good idea on how many
people tend to live there. They do have usually
the parade grounds, which are quite common across
these guys, but they don't have the kind of massive
fuel and explosives dumps that you see in much
of the larger base. So, it's probably going to
be smaller and less capable. If we look at, let's
say, going down another rung to border outposts,
you know, the one on the right for people who
have the visual here is actually the Chinese
base in Tajikistan. And as much as people have
made a massive deal about it over the years,
when you actually look at particularly the construction
photos when it was originally built, you know,
there's not a massive supplies of fuel here.
There's not massive supplies of vehicles here
either, even on the surface. And it just shows
that whilst yes, it's a, you know, an important
data point to take into account. This is not
a base you'd launch a massive invasion with.
This is effectively a base you use to long -term
guard a road. And so if they don't have the ability
to kind of sustain operations by themselves in
a good way for a long time, it gives you an idea
on what their base's purpose is probably going
to be. But yeah, I'll take another question before
I ramble too much. I guess this is a good point
as well to mention, re -mention the map that
you have got going that tracks kind of military
vases. Please do have a check that out. I have
put it in the chat, but it will also be in the
podcast description as well as all of these links.
And it's on screen for those in the audience
now. Michael, quickly, do you want to just quickly
do an overview of this? I've also got somebody
who worked on the project who would like to jump
in, Mitchell Polman. They've asked if they could
join the stage as well to help. So perhaps while
you're talking through the map, I can invite
them on and they can chat a little bit as well,
if that's okay with you. Sure, go ahead. Yeah,
obviously the map I'm looking at at the moment
is got a little more data than the public versions
of these maps that we sell. But the map here,
you can see that Uzbekistan I think has got about
1400 pins by itself. Effectively, what we've
done is tried to sort it into different categories
so you get a bit of a snapshot. As you can probably
see here, let's take it down to the larger units,
which are brigade and above. Again, for anyone
military and security oriented in the audience,
I'm going to use brigade and massive air quotes
for this region of the world. Effectively, the
idea of the map is that you have this central
resource that you can effectively go... Oh, I
wonder what's in, actually, let's go to Termez
because we were talking about Termez as an example
earlier on. And I can just turn on a bunch of
pins and I have a really good idea of what is
in the city and where everything is. Because
for playing our war games, it's really useful
to know where everything is, but also generally
it's just good to know the capabilities of each
garrison. For instance, here, you can see up
here in the north of the city is where the air
defense batteries are and all the radar batteries
that are effectively monitoring the south here.
You know, here's the naval port. You can see
there was a green pin. It's part of the riverine
flotillas. And it's just, it's just pouring together
oodles and oodles and oodles of data. I mean,
Mitch, you were working on this project as well.
I mean, you can attest on just the sheer quantity
of data you have to kind of pull together for
a map like this. Oh yes. Can you hear me? Loud
and clear, far away. Okay. Yeah. You've pretty
much got it covered, Michael. I just wanted to
say that it was actually surprisingly easy to
track down some of this information. It wasn't
all that long ago that Uzbekistan was being referred
to as the North Korea of Central Asia, and I
was a little surprised. You could actually even
find addresses and street addresses and telephone
numbers of military units in the equivalent of
an Uzbekistan phone book. It's right there online.
It's all in Uzbek, of course, but it's there.
Sometimes they even list, you know, the individual
units that are at a military base. So it was
kind of surprisingly easy. I'd say that it was
easy for some of them. In the early stage of
the project, there was the low hanging fruits,
other guys in the phone books. But when it comes
to more sensitive areas, particularly when it
comes to things like air defense batteries, that's
where things get much more difficult. Unlike
the Russians tend to be a little more consistent
with their military unit numbering, the Central
Asians are really scattershot with it. Yeah,
I was going to say that was sort of the bigger
challenge was the numbers. And names of units
changed all the time and keeping track of who
was where and what was who was a bit of a challenge
for us, I think. Yeah. I mean, this is part of
the project is obviously putting together massive
data piles, which is far beyond what goes in
the public version of these, of effectively everything
we know about, let's say, you know, 11506. And
it will be, hey, here's three reports we have
that talk about it. Here is, you know, photos
of the base that have been taken from a couple
of YouTube videos that we've got. And, you know,
here's the size of the motor pools, which should
indicate that there's this many things here,
you know, putting all that together and effectively
trying to build a bit of a concept of what's
there and what they have capable. Again, I also
used, really odd at times. Sorry. I also used,
there were online, Uzbek military journals, newspapers
that are online and going through them, you could
oftentimes find, you know, good information or
at least clues. You know, even photos sometimes
of, you know, that went to unit locations and
things of that nature. And again, a lot of the
time you have to just build these massive data
piles and dumps because you're trying to piece
together multiple different parts of information.
You know, you know, There's a commander who is
from this base. You know, he's done a news interview
at this facility, which you can geolocate to
here. You don't know what branch he's on, but
then you find a different report, you know, which
effectively shows that commander not at that
base, but the patch he's wearing would indicate
he's from this unit. And you just have to have
all these links together to kind of combine a
little data later on. You know, sometimes it
can be that difficult. Other times it can be
even more difficult. Other times I remember looking
at some drone footage coming out of, I think
it was Uzbekistan. It was Uzbekistan. I'm trying
to figure out where is this drone footage from
and you're sitting down with a cup of tea thinking
you have to geolocate it and then pull down the
file name and it had Fagana Airport written in
it. So sometimes it does get a little easier
than others. But I think we'll take more questions
because we've got quite a lot of questions coming
through. Yes, thank you. ever be professional.
Michael, thank you. And thank you, Mitch, for
jumping on and giving us some insight into the
open source research that you were doing there.
Just a little PSA, obviously, this is the Bellingcat
community, so we have to be careful. If you are
working with personal data, please be careful,
particularly when it involves militaries and
make sure you follow procedures. But thank you
so much, Mitch, for coming on and chatting. I've
got a bunch more questions to throw at Michael,
though, if that's all right. So, so many. I wanted
to start at the top because some people have
been waiting a while. Fade asks, how do you see
the advent of commercial drones, which you've
just mentioned, in warfare improving slash hindering
logistics in the future? Could hex copters be
used to supply at the unit level? So that's a
really great question and it's the million dollar
question I get asked more than anything else
about this region. Drones can hinder and hurt
and it really depends on what kind of a drone
it is and what it can do. Again, people kind
of think drones and I think they tend to think
of the kind of bi -racked RTB -2 stuff when a
lot of drones are mostly just there to either
be a exploding munition or they're there just
to do reconnaissance. And if let's say, I am,
you know, pull up and barb talk, I'm going to
pull up and move up to Dushan, but if I'm, let's
say monitoring that single road we have to go
on to kind of approach the capital, you know,
having drones Uh, monitoring that area is going
to be great. It means I can effectively keep
a close eye on what's coming through. And I know
that, Hey, you know, there's three tanks that
have just come through this area, but also there's
eight fuel trucks and you can attack much more
easily into the, in this, the soft targets. And
again, it comes down to that classic problem
of a tank without fuel is just a really weird
car. Um, you know, If you, if you can attack
the logistics and the soft points, it makes any
war scenario much more difficult. And this is
in our war gaming of sort of a Tajik invasion.
The Uzbek team had massive problems with effectively
the Tajiks just sitting in the foothills launching,
you know, lots of small kind of needling drone
attacks in the logistics line because it is a
really narrow choke point to get toward the capital.
When sort of hex copters, hex copters are great
for reconnaissance. They're good for munitions,
but when you're trying to supply a front, you
were talking massive quantities between tonnage
most of the time, because soldiers just burn
through lots and lots and lots of equipment.
And particularly once you start to get the bigger
unit levels, you know, whether it be everything
from medical supplies to blood, to ammunition,
to fuel, to food, to, you know, whatever you
need, that's probably too difficult to try and
do by Higgs Copter at the moment. So at this
point, it's making it much more difficult and
you have to spend a lot more of your resources
and troops protecting your rear areas. But drones
are evolving at a pretty rapid pace. So I'm never
going to say never. Okay, coming in quick and
fast. Silverknife, one of our lovely moderators,
asked earlier about significant shifts. You mentioned
at the beginning, I mentioned at the beginning
as well, that Uzbekistan was seen as this big
military power, but Kazakhstan on paper, to a
point, has kind of overtaken that. Have you seen
any significant shifts in structure, deployment
and composition as you've been going through
these reports? Absolutely. And I think this is
the really fascinating part of these militaries
is whilst they all kind of imagine you're looking
at a bunch of cakes. everyone's kind of got the
same sponge cake. They're all somewhat similar
inheritance from the Soviet Union, but where
they've changed the flavoring tells you a massive
amount about what their priorities are and how
they want to structure things. Uzbekistan has,
let's say, its ground forces and its air and
air defense forces under the ministry of defense,
very standard to everyone else. Its internal
troops under the MIA, pretty much like everyone
else, and its emergency services get a separate
department, which is like everyone else except
Turkmenistan. But then you have things like the
the National Guard and the Presidential Security
Service, which are fairly new. It was under the
previous leader, Kareemov, who effectively ran
the country almost as close as North Korea, who
had so much power concentrated in what would
have been the KGB back in the day, the State
Security Service or SGB back then. The State
Security Service at that point controlled the
Frontier Service, which is the border guards,
the internal troops, a big chunk of the Special
Forces, the National Guard and the Presidential
Security Service. But now that Karimov has died
and the head of the SGB at the time, Ian Lotov
has been moved on. A lot of the powers have been
ripped out from that agency and distributed to
other agencies. And I think watching which agencies
get extra resources and which ones don't give
you a really good insight into the kind of the
internal power dynamics going on. That as an
example, the National Guard, which was originally
part of the security agencies, originally was
kind of, was going to go to the Ministry of Defense.
And then it was a bit, do I trust the Ministry
of Defense? So it became a separate unit and
was given, you know, would protect the president
at one point. And then all of a sudden, had the
president ripped out the president's security
service from the national guard and made an own
separate unit that can investigate anyone as
well. So it's those kinds of changes that seem
quite subtle and an administrative on paper,
but you know, actually tell you quite a lot of
what's going on behind the scenes. Yeah, let's
go to the next question. Yeah, that answers your
question. Absolutely. Just with that in mind,
have you tried to address the temporal? dimension
with these projects, because obviously the reports
themselves are PDF documents, which kind of sets
it in tone. Is that kind of where the military
unit map comes into play? Where is that going
to be updated live? Have you thought about the
kind of time sensitive nature of a lot of this
information? Yeah, so for our paid version of
this effectively, you know, when a event happens.
So like, for instance, there was just a shootout
on the border between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
We can identify that pin quickly and kind of
pin the story there and say, Hey, look, this
is what happened. This is the pin you're looking
for. This is the result of that. But at the same
time, I also wanted a version, a public version
of this, which doesn't give everything, but does
allow, particularly for the OSING community,
rather than spending a million years like I have
and just staring at mountains of bitumen. um,
you know, you can quickly identify which bases,
which, and know where the pinch points are going
to be. Uh, so yeah, we will be updating, uh,
as we learn new locations, as things change,
as things open up, I'll keep adding them to the
both map, both the public and private. Uh, but
also, you know, right now, obviously we've done
all the mapping for all five countries, but as
each chapter comes out, we will be releasing
that country's pins as well. So the next one
out is Kyrgyzstan. So that should be exciting.
Amazing. And I think someone's in the chat already
put the purchase link in there, which is awesome.
Thank you for sharing that. We've had quite a
few questions on how you overcome deceptions
and what are the key characteristics of deceptions
usually seen in Central Asia. We also had a follow
up question on that in terms of have we seen
any interesting evidence of these powers making
efforts to insulate themselves against Chinese
espionage as well as we're talking about hidden
details. I mean, Chinese espionage is a great
question. And I think Tajikistan is the one you
probably talk about more for China. There was
a few years ago, about almost a decade ago now,
I'll show you the whole thing. China effectively
announced this base out here, the PAP facility,
which is technically not a military because people
are on police, but we're going to get into that
another time. And everyone thought that was kind
of going to be China's first step into the region
to be a military player in the same way the Russians
have, because Russia has quite large military
deployments out here. In fact, the largest military
base outside of Russia is in Tajikistan, apart
from what's in Ukraine at the moment, but that's
a whole other thing. The Chinese though, At the
same time, we're dealing with problems in Gwadar
in the south of Pakistan, where effectively what
was happening is they put more personnel in to
run the port. Those personnel would come under
attack because the locals would take jobs or
for a whole myriad of reasons. And then they
put more security personnel in to protect those
personnel to which that would just exacerbate
the problem and you end up having a terrible
cycle. So what's happened is the Chinese have
looked at the headaches they've got in Pakistan
and then looked at Tajikistan and said, I don't
want any of that. I'm just going to throw money
at you. I will pay you Tajikistan to just put
on extra border outposts, build extra border
facilities, put on extra border guards because
I don't want to deal with this headache. And
whilst that has somewhat solved a small problem
for China, it also creates other problems. So
that for instance, Tajikistan has incentives
to somewhat exaggerate border problems at times.
Where looking at some of these shootouts that
we see reported in the media that Tajikistan
talks to China and says, look, look what's happening,
we need more money. And then we call locals in
the area and we find out it's kind of one farmer
who was drunk and trying to shoot some goats.
At the same time, you also have problems like
what we've seen just in the last couple of weeks
in particular, is out in kind of an area called
Satagor, which I've put up on the map for people
who are watching live. You know, you have effectively
a gold mine on the Afghan side, which is funded
by China and a gold mine on the Tajik side, which
is also funded by China. And because the water
keeps getting diverted and other water problems,
the two sides are now shooting at each other.
But China is also funding security services on
both sides. At the same time, China has just
built massive border guard training facilities
just north of here as well. So China is somewhat,
simultaneously, I guess, very involved in almost
every angle of the border problems. not in a
kind of boots on the ground way that I think
people were anticipating or looking for when
this issue first came up. So it is a super interesting
dynamic when it comes to China trying to deceive
them. I mean, they will exchange some information,
but depends what they will exchange will depend
on what sort of information it is. But there's
also just a You know, again, it comes down to
that security services problem of, you know,
a lot of these spies and a lot of the mid -level
officers don't trust the Chinese very much. The
whole bunch of reasons, and I do find it interesting
when you talk to particularly Tajiks, you know,
you kind of ask them questions like, hey, China
just built this massive highway for you. That's
pretty great. I mean, this is effectively, you
know, people were dying on this fire all the
time. This has cut your commute time by an hour.
How do you feel about it? And the response will
often be something like, well, they built a big
enough tanks, didn't they? which is just absurd.
China's not going to do that, but it just shows
you this kind of underlying dynamic that quite
often comes up in the region. All of that in
mind. And there's some funny comments in the
chat right now about China playing both sides.
Is there any concern when you're doing these
military infrastructure mapping that the information
could be misused? How do you deal with... the
problem of malicious actors when you're working
on these, particularly when you're doing war
games and exercises like that. We're very careful
in what we do put public and what we don't as
well as who we do contract with. It's why you
can't just buy the data. You effectively have
to be kind of vetted before we, you know, what
level of data we see. I mean, if it's just kind
of mapping stuff, we're a bit more open about
that. But if it's coming down to like how many
tanks for each base, that's a much more thorough
process. Most of this stuff is going to be particularly
in the public realm, not knowing, but it will
be fairly easy. It's not going to make a massive
difference to any actor. It will for Osinter
in keeping tabs on what's going on. And we've
also made a decision to keep black sides off
this, mostly for my... I have to go to the region
every now and again, and I prefer not to spend
the rest of my life in this big prism. But yes,
we've had obviously lots of conversations about
what does get included and what doesn't. And
it's why we had to glaze over a bunch of very,
very specific details. We had a question earlier
about concern saying, should we worry? Do you
believe a real invasion is imminent? Dushanbi,
for example, that you mentioned earlier. When
you're doing these war games scenarios, have
you come across any that have been likely or
have caused concern? No. So this is an, it's
an interesting question. We start pretty much
most of the scenarios saying we do not think
this is going to happen, but there's two problems.
One, when you brief quite often diplomats or
non -military people, they often might not understand
what you're trying to tell them unless they've
got lines on the map, which, you know, having
the war games to kind of put them in front of
them and go, hey, look, here's what the likely
scenario plays out, makes everyone easier to
understand. But two, it's also a way of, you
know, I feel actually much more comfortable and
confident that, you know, this region is relatively
stable because of these wargaming. Because A,
it just shows that none of these guys are really
prepared to fight a long campaign. None of these
guys are gearing up for a long campaign and none
of them have shown really any interest in preparing
for a long -term campaign. And that's probably
a good sign. I think almost all these militaries
are, you know, imagining that they may end up
in a border skirmish or they may end up in a
kind of three -day, you know, you go 10 Ks back
from the border and I don't think you'd notice,
but generally it's been fairly, particularly
on a conventional point, you know, campaign averse,
which is good to see. That doesn't mean that
there is no chance of things going wrong, particularly
when it comes to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan or
Afghanistan, Tajikistan, but at least on a sort
of massive conventional scale. No, I think that's
a lot of things would have to go wrong before
we get to that point. So no need to panic everyone.
We can all have a deep sigh of relief. I've just
put the... Sorry, the other point I will add
quickly is they're also all incentivized to not
go to war. And this is one of the interesting
things that I've seen from both sides is that
everyone wants to seem like they're stable because
there's more tourism, there's more added advantages.
But when I do consulting for particularly energy
companies and mineral companies that are looking
at Central Asia as an option, the classic story
I continue to see is, hey, we're currently mining
X or Y in Sahel or in Central Africa. We're looking
to diversify. We're looking to move our operations
somewhere else. And we're looking at Central
Asia because we know that they are more stable,
more reasonable. They don't tend to go to war
and that I could build a mine. And because of
the way that mining works, that quite often you
lose money for the first 10 years, but you make
a bunch on the back 20, long -term Central Asia
looks a lot more stable. And this is where the
money is coming from. It is coming into the region.
image of stability. So everyone is driven not
only in themselves to keep things stable, but
also even if let's say when Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan
have their border skirmishes, you can guarantee
everyone in the region is calling them saying,
please shut up. We're trying to be stable here.
Can we all just knock it off a bit? So everyone
is making significant efforts to try and make
sure this region doesn't break out into a war.
And Mitchell just backed that up in the chat
saying all the nations are very much integrating
their economies and settling their border disputes
now. All five presidents are now here in Washington
together today. Thank you for that little addition
there. We have so many questions in the chat
about, there's a lot of people wanting access
to your resources now and asking whether you
have special accommodations for independent contractors
working with academic or CIVSOC institutions,
for example. Do you have any? That is possible.
I would obviously suggest you can email me and
my details are all on those websites and we can
have a chat about it then. That'd be the best
way to get in contact. Fabulous. So you heard
it here first. Please email the dedicated email
with your application. to get access to the paid
version. But it's great to see so many people
interested in really delving into the data here.
I was just going to say, it's been fascinating
to watch all the Central Asia people come out
of the woodwork and see more interest in the
region as time goes on. I think this is part
of the reason I got into this project in the
first place is that every other one of my friends
who works on the Africa desks or in Europe or
whatever, particularly in the South China Sea
areas, they all have all of very similar resources
they can go to, to look up where things are and
understand very quickly what bases exist. Central
Asia just doesn't have anything. So it's finally
good to have kind of a central resource I can
put in the third screen, remember where each
base is. Yes. And if you are in the Discord server
and you're interested in this particular region,
we do have a space for you to chat about it.
It's called Crocuses Central Asia, and I've just
linked it in the chat now and I'll put it in
the Discord. I'll put it in this stage talk description
as well on the podcast. So please do hop in there
and continue the conversation from today within
there. That is the space for you. I know your
expertise is in Central Asia, but you mentioned
that your team also works across lots of different
regions. And at the very beginning, In your speech,
you were talking about how it's quite unique
in Central Asia that you're able to kind of rank
the militaries. How difficult is it to kind of
take this model and look at other regions of
the world in regards to military force? What
would be your advice if somebody is looking to
do this in a different region? And what were
the kind of key factors that you had to think
about when approaching this particular project?
I think the reason that it's a little easier
to do here is because of the geography, because
they are very similar economic stylings, they're
very similar geographic realities. If you're
trying to, let's say, rank Australia versus Indonesia,
and you were to say, you could either rank it
as, hey, what are they capable of if we put them
in a giant flat field with no terrain and just
plopped all their military resources on either
end of the field and said, go boys. And yeah,
you could probably work out something of that
variety, but I think that's a little unrealistic.
You know, if you're looking at something like
Australia versus Indonesia, Australia could absolutely
take some of the small islands, no problem. The
Australian Navy is really, really capable, but
the Australian ground forces are quite small
because we don't anticipate that we're going
to be fighting massive land wars anytime soon.
So again, it just gets, you know, unless you're
dealing with specific cases or you're trying
to, you know, rank countries on their ability
to do a specific task. So let's say, if I was
to try and figure out if Uzbekistan invaded Kazakhstan
or Kazakhstan invaded Uzbekistan, who could get
further? That would probably be Kazakhstan. But
does that mean there are better military? It's
tough to say. And again, because there's also
going to be geographic realities that ruin a
lot of this. Again, you put them in a plain field,
Uzbekistan wins against Tajikistan every day
of the week. But because of the fact that there's
such a narrow choke point approaching Dushanbe,
that logistics aren't built up for this, that
a lot of the, you have to cross certain river
points that are quickly going to be occupied.
It just makes it much more costly for Uzbekistan
to go on the offensive and gives massive advantages
that you wouldn't get if you were Tajikistan,
if it was just kind of a plain map. I either
recommend you try and rank things on a specific
metric. If you're looking at Air Force projection
capabilities or supply capabilities, or how many
tons a day can you put into the field? That's
something you could try and measure. Overall,
it gets a bit difficult. And again, I think another
example of this is everyone, when they try and
measure tanks, looks at the stats on the chart
and says, oh, well, this tank can fire further
than this tank. And I think it's a little bit
deceptive. When you look at the American tanks,
everyone points to them and goes, oh, they're
so fuel intensive. And that's correct. They are.
But if you're the Americans and you have the
American logistical capabilities, you're allowed
to be fuel intensive. They built the tanks around
doing that. You look at a South Korean tank and
you go, oh, it's so slow. But then you realize
that the tanks in South Korea are mostly built
to kind of hunker down and take on waves of advancing
Paul Hyam and North Koreans, which that tank
is kind of perfect to do that. Again, militaries
build things for purposes and that will obviously
change your rankings and how capable things are.
And trying to match a, you know, take the American
tank, for instance, and give it to Uzbekistan
where they have a pretty average logistical capability.
It's going to effectively drain Uzbek fuel reserves
very, very quickly because it's just not made
for their purpose. Absolutely. And a really good
example there. Obviously you spoke to us previously
too. I've just put the link to your previous
talk in there. So people can also listen back
to that on researching Central Asia. We've only
got a couple minutes. I want to ask you one last
question. And this is based on the fact that
we've had quite a few stage talks recently on
paramilitaries. And you mentioned the, you had
that amazing graph earlier about the disproportionate
percentage of paramilitaries in the different
regions. Is it more difficult to map paramilitary
power than traditional military power? And how
do you kind of go about doing that? Well, I think
it is more difficult to try and map paramilitary
stuff because it's much softer capabilities.
You know, it's easy to map, try to look at the
amount of tanks or look at the amount of vehicles
or look at the amount of logistical capabilities
someone has because a lot of it's, you know,
things you can point to. Whereas with paramilitaries
quite often, how good they are at cracking down
on a population or how quick they are at, you
know, riot control, that kind of stuff is much
softer and you really have to spend more time
watching military exercises or watching, you
know, trying to get your hands on video of these
guys doing training exercises or interview people
at how quick it took them to do that. Or, you
know, smuggled out videos of, you know, let's
say Turkmenistan of the internal security services
cracking down on a city, how quickly they can
shut down the internet, that kind of stuff. it
becomes a lot harder to measure and you're usually
running off much smaller data sets, which will
obviously complicate things going forward. But
there are things you can piece together. It just
becomes a bit harder, I guess, particularly if
you're trying to put a score on things. Thank
you, Michael, for your amazing insight once again.
As I mentioned, we have had previous talks on
paramilitaries very recently. We had the New
America group come in and talk about mapping
militia networks. Recently, it's a fascinating
discussion. Do listen back to that if you're
interested in these kinds of conflict networks.
I tell you, you would have had Candace and Ben
on for that one. We did. Yes, exactly. They are
fantastic. I can't recommend particularly Candace's
work more heavily. It's amazing. But in the meantime,
please do check out these fantastic resources
that we've shared today on Central Asia, particularly
the new Uzbekistan report. And thank you so much
for joining us. Michael, thanks for coming in
and talking about your work. And we'll be back
in two weeks time with another stage talk. Thank
you all. Thanks again for having me. And if anyone
has any questions, feel free to email me and
I'm always happy to try and answer any questions
people have. But it's been an absolute pleasure
to be here. and hopefully I'll be back when we
release the next chapter of this thing in a while's
time with Kyrgyzstan. Absolutely, we'll be itching
at the bit to have you back on. Thank you for
listening to the stage talk. If you'd like to
catch a stage talk live where you can ask the
guest questions, join the Bellingcat Discord
server by visiting www .discord .gg slash Bellingcat.
The music you've heard is titled Dawn by Newer
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