A hip-hop dancer sponsored by the US is part of the cultural exchange approach the Administration has employed to engage with Uzbekistan. Photo: US Embassy Tashkent.
The pressure of the Soros-funded EurasiaNet articles, even criticizing the Administration on selling out dissidents for the sake of the NDN , as well as the shadow defense ministry pundity circuit exemplified by Registan.net (the Kerry-for-Secretary-of-State lobby?) is finally making the State Department fight back a little.
In a speech at Johns Hopkins SAIS, where he was welcomed by regime-enabler S. Frederick Starr, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Robert O. Blake, Jr. has this to say:
Contrary to suggestions in some recent articles, we do not see our engagement with Central Asia as an either-or choice between developing security relationships at the expense of core values like human rights. Progress on one issue can help reinforce, or create incentives for, progress on other issues.
Those "recent articles" likely include the well-placed op-ed piece in The New York Times by Joshua Kucera saying the US was hypocritical and should remain silent (although begrudgingly conceding the weird claims by both Blake and Secretary of State Clinton of "improvement" -- I've noticed that it often happens with these State and blogger sparring partners that they somehow observe the niceties in their gentlemen's disagreements as they are all sort of in the same club).
And given the readers and audience for Registan, Blake could have even mean this piece by Joshua Foust that implied there was some horrible moral dilemma around either delivering military aid through the middle-man of Uzbekistan, or raising human rights issues.
Blake is at pains to say that there isn't such an either/or. And by combining the articulation of the different policies -- fighting terrorism, delivering aid to NATO, promoting regional prosperity on a "new silk road" and raising human rights in a carefully-structured framework -- he tries to persuade us that the US really is being all things to all men.
I'll be the first to say it's fake, however, even while conceding that the US does more than Foust or Kucera claim and that those bloggers' hyping of fake moral choices isn't really how the US government works (as I outlined in this post in reply to Foust's attack on the human rights movement for contrasting hypocritical US postures for Belarus and Uzbekistan and insisting on ownership of the Uzbekistan problem.)
Why is it fake? Because all human rights concerns are shoe-horned into this rickety and ridiculous structure called "he Annual Bilateral Consultations" (which sort of get held twice a year because they have the actual consultation and then assessment of it). Human rights is mixed in with a lot of other silly -- and expensive -- USAID-type development stuff and even more dodgy American Chamber of Commerce in Uzbekistan fandagos.
And indeed, our strategy for Central Asia explicitly states that our efforts to strengthen and broaden relations with Central Asia should not impinge upon our strong support for democratic development and universally recognized human rights. U.S. engagement in the five Central Asian states consistently focuses on political liberalization, good governance, civil society capacity building, and addressing human rights concerns – as well as a wide range of other important interests such as non-proliferation, energy, economic development, and educational exchanges.
By creating this four-part package of everything from baggy USAID programs funnelling money to corrupt local khokhims, ineffectual if well-meaning notions to encourage local municipal programs, to having both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Amb. Melanne Verveer patting women entrepreneurs on the head, to mentioning a few forlorn cases of prisoners -- in fact human rights gets very, very diluted. Indeed, as I reported, it's been turned into a hand-maiden of good business.
The ABCs shouldn't be the only place human rights is funnelled -- there should be periodic vocal statements by US officials responsible for human rights about cases and issues of concern -- like the five-year additional sentence just handed to Muhammad Bekjon, brother of Erk party leader Muhammad Solih, or the persistence of forced child labour in the cotton industry despite government claims to the contrary. Germany and the UK do a little more of this; the US can, too, without losing its precious cargo lane.
And indeed, the ABCs aren't the only place where the US "puts" human rights -- it can go in private bilateral talks at OSCE or the UN or other settings of international meetings or bilateral trips by Uzbek officials to the US. But these could be more vocal and even if kept out of the press, could involve more collaboration with human rights groups.
The USAID and related development programs at State and through Congress should be reviewed with an eye to whether they really promote and protect human rights. Do they have staff in them who try to push the envelope and go under the radar and really help dissidents, unjustly disbarred lawyers, human rights reporters, prisoners' relatives? Or do they just collect their per diem and help reinforce the regime?
Yet as Blake's speech indicates, the US is very wedded to its existing rigid structure for "dialogue":
We feel strongly that the best way to advance U.S. interests across the region is by enhanced engagement at all levels with the Central Asian governments, civil society, and people themselves. A cornerstone of this engagement has been the Annual Bilateral Consultation process that I chair with each of the five Central Asian countries. These consultations are a face-to-face structured dialogue based on a jointly developed agenda that promotes candid discussions on the full spectrum of bilateral issues, including human rights, religious freedom, science and technology collaboration, economic development, defense cooperation, and other subjects either side would like to discuss.
Perhaps someone can persuade me that "enhanced enagement" is actually helping human rights, but this statement from Blake looks like what I said: that everything from soup to nuts is packaged into the ABCs. The worst feature of this construction is that the agenda is "jointly developed". That means the Karimov regime gets a veto on topics they don't like -- would torture in the prisons or the unjust trials of religious believers be among such topics? And with such a jumble, does business ("economic development") get more play than some of the others?
I realize the US doesn't have a lot to work with, in dealing with Uzbekistan. But I think it could have more articulation and more rigour in how these topics are discussed. I vigorously opposed the McFaul-Surkov Commission for Russia (and its successor) because I don't think with Russia, especially with a far more free and articulate human rights community and opposition (especially now), that you should create creaky vehicles that only reinforce bad actors (like Surkov and the anti-gay Russian commissar who has followed him.)
But a more-defined specifically human rights-oriented commission/scheduled series of bilateral talks might help keep these topics more focused and less subject to that taffy-pulling that comes when you send the ABC delegation over with a business delegation hard on its heels to promote enterprise with state-owned corruptioneers.
To give you an idea of just how hard it must be for even the official human rights promoters of the US government to get anywhere with all this, look at Blake's next paragraph:
The Annual Bilateral Consultation process has given seats at the table to virtually the entire U.S. Government, including the Departments of Defense, Energy, and Commerce, and the U.S. Trade Representative, to name just a few active participants. Each discussion results in a work plan that outlines practical steps to advance U.S. and partner policy goals. The road to achieving these goals is not always smooth, but our continued engagement with the region is yielding results. We also use the consultative process to engage civil society and business communities in each country.
Given seats at the table? You mean it works like that? (Yes, I realize it works like that, but I want to hear them answer.) They all have to lobby for attention and hope they get a seat? Does the human rights and democracy bureau have to fight for attention?
The problem with making work plans for "a consultative process to engage civil society and business communities in each country" with all those State Department desks/interest groupings is that you get caught up in the mechanics and lose sight of the stark fact that there isn't really an authentic and free civil society in Uzbekistan.
Instead, there are some exotic human rights groups that try to remain free; there are some battered former prisoners or relatives of existing prisoners; there are GONGOs that might do some good but are coopted or worse, are instruments of repression; there are fake businesses in the government's pocket, and so on. But that's why you have to be more outspoken on the individual cases and evidence of injustice, you are speaking to a kind of virtual civil society that might some day come into being, on principle, so that you are not aligned with the regime, the regime that will inevitably fall, one way or another.
Now for the topics that most preoccupy Blake:
The threat of terrorism makes very clear the security interests the United States shares with Central Asia. In support of the International Security Assistance Force’s efforts against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and now as Afghanistan is increasingly taking the lead for its own security, the Central Asian countries are serving as vital partners.
Expanded trust and cooperation with Central Asia has made possible the Northern Distribution Network, or NDN. Over the past year, we have expanded the capacity of the NDN to offer critical alternate routes for our non-lethal cargo transiting into Afghanistan to support our troops. These have become particularly important given current challenges in our relations with Pakistan, and Islamabad's decision in November to close the border crossing points to Afghanistan, effectively leaving NDN as the key land route for supporting Coalition Forces in Afghanistan.
Well, there you have it, but it isn't the horrid moral dilemma that the Registanis imagine. They minimize the threat of terrorism and extremism, saying it's all concocted, and don't have a plan for where it really does exist and in part should be addressed by increased rather than reduced religious freedom and human rights.
What I never see here is the calling of Tashkent's bluff. If they are threatening cooperation with the NDN because of any vocal criticism or even private carefully-manicured discussions about "governance," does anybody ever remind them of their own professed claim to wish to deter terrorism? Shouldn't it be Tashkent that faces the "moral dilemma" of either helping the US extract itself from its Afghan quagmire and tolerating some "governance" and "human rights" lecturing (and even concessions) versus reinforcing its dictatorship? Shouldn't those competing claims get tested more often than they do by US interlocutors? (We never see anything like this in WikiLeaks -- the US is a willing player in Tashkent's game to do "just enough to get the West of its back" and exploit the relationship with Washington to tweak the Kremlin.)
Does the US ever send any delegations of religious leaders, including Muslim clergy, to discuss frankly with both state officials and religious bureaucrats the question of how to address Muslim aspirations?
Of course it's easy to sit all day on your blog and come up with ideas that other people in very constrained circumstances could do. The US has done some expert tap-dancing here confronting the claims of fake moral dilemmas thrown up at them by some bloggers -- they do have a carefully-choreographed script and song sheet with which to continue to address the recalcitrant Uzbek regime.
But within that script, there is loads of room for tightening up the act. Why should the US be "building capacity" with local farmers under the thumb of corrupt and authoritarian governments in Uzbekistan, if they are doing nothing about forced child labour? Why is the US not more vigorously using its membership in the World Bank to vet the aid that goes to this regime and fine-tune it better? Why didn't the US work harder to get the ABA and NDI -- much less Human Rights Watch -- back into Uzbekistan as a price for lifting military sanctions?
