Regional Outlook : The West Is Looking at South Asia in a New Way : A new, potentially worrisome grouping of nations is taking shape in the minds of policy-makers.

Some have dubbed it the Greater Middle East. Others call it the new Islamic Bloc, Northwest Asia or Southwest Asia--the disparity reflecting different views of its geographic dimensions.

Whatever its final designation, a new region--stretching across a landmass from Turkey to India, from Kazakhstan to the Maldives, from the shores of the Black Sea to the Bay of Bengal--is taking shape in the minds of global policy-makers. Its emergence is among the most visible--and sizable--responses to political change around the world over the past year.

Although still little-recognized, the new Asian bloc promises to attract much of the world’s attention as the 1990s unfold. “It’s almost like discovering a new continent,” marveled a senior U.S. official. “This region opens up a host of new possibilities--for diplomacy, for political growth, for cultural discoveries, for resource exploitation and economic development.”

At the same time, the official warned, “It’s one of the regions most apt to face great turmoil and change in the near future.”

The new Asian grouping pulls together countries that just a year ago would have been considered a nearly impossible mix: the world’s most populous democracy with the world’s only modern theocracy; a stalwart member of NATO with several former Soviet republics; a nation independent for more than two millennia with countries less than a year old.

“Membership” in the region, which extends what has long been known as the Asian subcontinent at least 1,200 miles north and about 2,400 miles west, is still being defined. But the core nations include Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and six former Soviet republics--Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Among the fringe nations that may end up being included are Armenia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka.

On paper, this newly defined region is among the world’s poorest. “It’s a fascinating area, but it’s still essentially a backwater,” said a senior Bush Administration Mideast specialist.

Yet the region has such potential that the Administration has started language-training programs, reallocated personnel and reorganized departments to deal with it. To mark the first anniversary of Operation Desert Storm, the Pentagon’s Central Command hosted a symposium on the new area last spring. Across the country, scholars at universities and think tanks have launched projects focusing on the region, while several major foreign policy magazines published pieces on parts or all of it.

The new region pulls together countries that have historic connections, but which have long been linked with other lands.

Almost one-third of the region comes from Central Asia, an area known as Turkestan until it was conquered and colonized by the Russian czars in the 19th Century and divided into smaller states by the Soviets in the 20th Century. Turkey and Iran have been attached to the Middle East, although they always stuck out as the two non-Arab Muslim countries, while the final third made up South Asia.

The collapse of communism was the biggest single factor in the regrouping: The Soviet demise led the southern Muslim republics to declare independence last year and sped the victory of Muslim moujahedeen rebels in Afghanistan this year.

Communism’s demise has since reverberated through some neighboring nations: The end of the West’s preoccupation with containment has allowed Ankara, for example, to look east to Asia rather than just west toward Europe for allies and trade.

The new regional focus has been further encouraged by the Islamic resurgence, which is increasingly filling an ideological vacuum and helping restore historic ties, and the European Community’s formal unification, which has led other regions to strengthen their ties--to be competitive and for security.

Last spring, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and five former Soviet republics formed the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO). Other nations are eventually expected to join ECO, although it will take years to become a coordinated alliance.

The potential--both auspicious and ominous--plays out on several fronts.

Physically, the region is rich in agriculture and minerals. Since the individual states all have troubled economies and limited development technology, the area is ripe for cultivation and exploitation.

Larger than the United States in area, the region has a population of almost 1.2 billion. That is more than four times the U.S. population and represents more than one of every five people on the globe.

Ideologically, the region’s very emergence is a byproduct of communism’s collapse. Yet, with the exception of India, democracy has hardly taken firm root.

So far, the area, home to more than 40% of the world’s 1 billion Muslims, is instead redefining the parameters of the Islamic resurgence. Islam is the dominant faith in each country except India. And even India--where Muslims account for 11% of the population or more than 90 million people--has more Muslims than any state in the Arab Middle East.

The numbers are so massive that Pakistanis coined the designation “Islamistan” to describe collectively the region’s Muslim states. The impact “has already shifted the balance of power in the Muslim world away from the Arabs,” said Graham Fuller, a former CIA national intelligence officer now with the RAND Corp.

By the end of this year, the new region is expected to have three officially Islamic republics--Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. And in Central Asia, Islamic parties are among the most dynamic new movements. Well into the next century, “Islam will be the primary source of political and cultural identity in this region,” predicted the senior Mideast specialist.

The shift could have major implications for the West. “As Islamic republics develop in these places, we will have to keep a close eye to ensure they do not emerge as dangerous adversaries,” the specialist said.

So far, none seems to be threatening, he added, and several Islamic parties are among the most active forces for democratic reforms, particularly in Central Asia.

Strategically, the region’s frontiers abut four other vital properties--Europe, the Persian Gulf, Russia and China--that give it strategic depth and long-term importance even to countries that are oceans or continents away, such as the United States.

American officials say a top concern is that instability in the region--the potential for which is already high--could endanger important U.S. allies in neighboring lands. “It will be at least as chaotic as the Arab world,” said a U.S. intelligence official.

Russian officials predict that both former superpowers will get involved.

“Will this be a new Middle East? It could be even worse,” commented Mihail Konarovsky, a ranking Asian specialist at the Russian Foreign Ministry. “Russia and the United States will have just as much interest in peace in southern Asia.”

And the dangers of war are not limited to typical Third World conflicts. Two regional players--India and Pakistan--have nuclear weapons, plus chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles. Kazakhstan was a key base for Soviet nuclear arms, which have yet to be removed. Iran, which already has chemical weapons and missiles, is working on a nuclear program, according to the CIA.

Over the next few years, virtually all of the core states face either internal or regional challenges, U.S. experts said.

In Central Asia, “The existence of territorial and other disputes among these states and between some of them and their neighbors, and the presence of the same ethnic groups in both the territory of the new states and their neighbors, provide fertile ground for all types of conflicts,” Shireen Hunter of the Center for Strategic and International Studies writes in the latest Washington Quarterly.

Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have historic territorial and ethnic disputes with each other, for example, while both have large communities in Afghanistan that could affect its longevity as a nation.

“There is a real possibility that the northern half of Afghanistan--the area north of the Hindu Kush historically inhabited by Tajiks and Uzbeks--could choose to separate from Afghanistan and join their co-ethnics,” Fuller predicted.

Many Bush Administration experts agree. “These countries are all very artificial. Afghanistan is the first one. The reason it has the boundaries it does is because they were convenient to separate the British empire and the czars’ empire and the Iranians,” the U.S. specialist said.

Now, he added, the long-delayed conflict among the Afghan communities may finally ignite--and eventually redraw the map.

The region is littered with similar flash points. Potentially one of the most volatile is Kazakhstan, where both Kazakhs and Russians make up about 40% of the population in what was the Soviet Union’s second-largest republic.

As Kazakhs restore their rule, language and culture, and as two strong nationalisms face off, speculation is rife that Russian strongholds in the north and east might attempt to secede.

Another area of longstanding friction that could erupt and, in turn, affect other players both in and outside the region is the Iran-Iraq border.

“When the Iraqis come out from under, they’ll be right back at the same old kind of militaristic nationalism that they were before, whoever is in power. In that case, Iran will have to watch it. I anticipate the emergence of a major Iran-Iraq confrontation sometime in the next 10 to 15 years,” the senior specialist said.

The most dangerous of all potential clashes, however, would probably pit India against Pakistan, both Administration and private experts contend.

As the new region takes shape, predominantly Hindu India fears replication of the Mideast scenario--in which its position would be akin to Israel’s. New Delhi’s fear is of “finding itself surrounded by an arc of Islamic fundamentalism,” a State Department official explained recently.

But unlike in the Mideast, both sides already have all three weapons of mass destruction. “If there’s going to be a Third World nuclear conflict, it’s most likely to happen between India and Pakistan,” the senior specialist said.

Pakistan might be able to draw support, either from volunteers or from other nations in the region. To preempt that potential and prevent itself from being isolated, India recently has become more involved in trade and diplomacy in the nearby Muslim countries, particularly in the former Soviet republics. “India is eager not to be outflanked,” the State Department analyst said.

U.S. and Russian analysts believe the new region is unlikely to unite as a formal political and economic bloc anytime soon.

But it will still move toward consensus action as historic cultural and religious ties as well as current economic, political and environmental problems pull the diverse nations together, they say.

Although Administration experts and private analysts do not foresee a major role or demand for the United States in the new region, U.S. officials concede that the West could get drawn in because the pattern of events in the area and the implications extend beyond its own borders.

“The breakup and regrouping of nations,” said Fuller, “will obviously be deeply destabilizing for the entire world.”