Vice Premier Rashid Meredov at UN General Assembly in 2008.
After essentially re-appointing himself in the charade elections this month, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has re-appointed his cabinet.
And despite the predictions made by some in the past, Rashid Meredov, the foreign minister and vice premier, has been re-appointed to his posts, turkmenistan.ru reported.
Also, in a separate resolution, Meredov has been appointed as chair of the Commission on Caspian Sea Issues (which is supposed to resolve legal conflicts with Azerbaijan about borders and resolve the overall legal status of the Caspian Sea with the other littoral states, particularly Iran and Russia, which don't recognize the concept of bilateral resolutions).
Meredov is the last official to remain in government from past dictator Saparmurat Niyazov's cabinet (Berdymukhamedov himself wasn't in the cabinet).
In 2009, Chary Ishiniyazov, a former Turkmen diplomat who knows the inside story of Turkmenistan wrote an article for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in which he reported the two remaining Niyazov cabinet members -- Meredov and the unfortunate Tachberdy Tagiev, who was once responsible for the oil and gas industry. Tagiev was dismissed in 2010, some say because of something to do with possibly warning foreigners that the gas reserves weren't as vast as claimed, but now he has essentially disappeared, hopefully not into jail.
Meredov represents Turkmenistan when Berdymukhamedov doesn't come to the UN General Assembly (see above). Of course he's plugged into every single foreign relationship, and most of those foreign relationships revolve around oil and gas. So he's a very, very important personage, a personage who has (as we know from WikiLeaks and travellers' accounts) plays the role of liberal to other ministers' role as conservatives and who represents then a certain "stability" for the regime.
Scare quotes, because nothing about tyranny is ever really stable forever.
Berdymukhamedov dismantled the obvious signs of Niyazov's tyranny, the funny names for the days of the week, the stunted years of school and de-staffed health clinics, and some of the obvious trappings -- his face on bills and walls, his cult-book, Ruhnama everywhere.
But the essential Soviet-style totalitarian system inherited and enhanced by Niyazov is still in place and not going anywhere any time soon. Meredov is part of that equation, and while we can take seriously Amb. Ishiniyazov's prediction in 2009 that he might lose his job "soon" (because no job is safe in Turkmenistan's volatile government), it seems he has managed to cling to the apex of power for now.
Almazbek Atambayev has stepped into a scandal, EurasiaNet's David Trilling tells us today, at the unveiling in Moscow of a new statute for the epic Kyrgyz hero Manas (for whom the base where the US military is now located is named).
But Trilling doesn't quite get all the nuances from the original Russian texts (he's just learning Russian).
The story was troublesome enough, but if regnum.ru reported Atambayev accurately, he didn't say that Manas was "ethnically Russian" in the sense this is conveyed in English, i.e. someone of actual Russian ethnicity. If he said that in Russian, he would have said "etnicheskiy russkiy".
But that's not what he said. He said "ethically Russian" in the sense of *Russian Federation,* i.e. the country that is on the territory of what is now Russia today. That word is different -- Rossiyanin. This is a word that Russians began to use in Russian some time after Russia, too, gained its independence from the Soviet Union and the "Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic" became the Russian Federation, and the citizens, who are all different ethnic groups, not only ethnic Russians, became Rossiyane, also translated as "Russians" in English for lack of a more precise term.
To be sure, "ethnic Russian" in that sense sounds as odd as "ethnic American" would sound. America is made up of people of many different ethnicities.
Here's what Trilling wrote:
First, during the unveiling of a statue for Kyrgyz mythic hero Manas in Moscow on February 24, which Atambayev personally helped finance, the president said that Manas, in whatever distant past he inhabited, was “an ethnic Russian” because he and the ancestors of the Kyrgyz both originated in Siberia.
«Мы не случайно открываем памятник Манасу Великодушному в столице России, - сказал А.Атамбаев. - Россия, Алтай - это малая родина Манаса, где родился великий Манас и где прошло его детство. Наши далёкие предки долгое время жили на обширной территории Западной Сибири. Народы Киргизии и России связывает общая история. Манас - этнический россиянин!»
My translation:
"It is no accident that we are opening this monument to Manas the Great in the capital of Russia," said A. Atambayev. "Russia, Altay, this is the small homeland of Manas, where the great Manas was born and where he spent his childhood. Our remote ancestors lived for a long time on the broad territory of Western Siberia. The peoples of Kyrgyzstan and Russia are connected by a common history. Manas is an ethnic Rossiyanin!"
As you can learn from Wikipedia and probably better sources, the people from which the great Manas originated were Turkic, i.e. not "ethnic Russian."
The Epic of Manas (Kyrgyz: Манас дастаны, Turkish: Manas Destanı) is a traditional epic poem claimed by the Kyrgyz people dating to the 18th century, though it is possibly much older. In some earlier versions, however, Manas is identified as Nogay. This opens the possibility of Manas having spoken a dialect of Turki similar to that of the Kazakhs and Nogay people today.
Then the story underwent changes:
Changes were made in the delivery and textual representation of Manas in the 1920s and 1930s to represent the creation of the Kyrgyz nationality, particularly the replacement of the tribal background of Manas. In the 19th century versions, Manas is the leader of the Nogay people, while in versions dating after 1920, Manas is a Kyrgyz and a leader of the Kyrgyz.
Attempts have been made to connect modern Kyrgyz with the Yenisei Kirghiz, today claimed by Kyrgyzstan to be the ancestors of modern Kyrgyz. Kazakh ethnographer and historian Shokan Shinghisuly Walikhanuli was unable to find evidence of folk-memory during his extended research in 19th-century Kyrgyzstan (then part of the expanding Russian empire) nor has any been found since.
Toktayim Umetalieva, described by Trilling as a "firebrand" uses the term etnicheskiy russkiyhere on 24.kg -- and perhaps that's what riled her even more? She believes the president's speech-writers should be fired.
Umetalieva doesn't seem to mind that a statue was put up in Moscow, nor does she seem to be advocating a version of the Manas story that disavows the connection to what is now Russia, but she wants to get it exactly right:
Атамбаев не имел права в одночасье изменить историю двух народов. Об исторических моментах нужно говорить продуманно, аккуратно. Служба протокола должна объяснить президенту, что такое «этническая принадлежность» и кто такие россияне. Все мы имеем право на ошибку, но только не глава государства. Может быть, народы РФ и КР имеют общие корни, но исторические пути у них разные. Сейчас народ нашей республики пребывает в недоумении, и Алмазбек Атамбаев должен объясниться перед ним.
My translation:
Atambayev did not have the right in a moment to change the history of two peoples. You must speak carefully and correctly about historical issues. The [presidential] protocol service should explain to the president what "ethnic affiliation" means and who Rossiyane are. We all are entitled to make mistakes but not the head of state. Perhaps the peoples of the Russian Federation and the Kyrgyz Republic have common roots, but their historical paths are different. Now the people of our republic are confused, and Almazbek Atambayev should explain himself to them.
"The iconic silver bugles of The RIFLES have been heard across the Kazak Steppes sounding out their distinctive bugle calls to the Riflemen," British army, on training of Kazakh army in 2009.
Fergananews.com brings the news that the British defense minister is touring Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan this week.
EurasiaNet doesn't have anything on this yet, but the government news wire Kazinform reports that Rt. Hon. Philip Hammond MP is meeting with President Nursaltan Nazarbayev.
They are talking in the usual Soviet-style comradely atmosphere about the usual vague topics like "educational exchange" and "regional security".
"Our military officials are studying in programs for military preparedness in Great Britain," enthused Nazarbayev.
Prime Minister David Cameron is going to visit Kazakhstan. No human rights groups anywhere appear to have made any statements, likely because they had no notice of the trip, just mentioned in the regional media today. Says Kazinform:
Peace-keeping occupies an important place in the military cooperation between Kazakhstan and Great Britain. Proof of this are the annual Steppe Eagle exercises. Kazakhstan has also made its contribution to the process of normalization of the situation in Iraq as a part of the Multi-national Froces, where the engineering mine-detection squad of the Kazakh Army received high recognition.
Most likely they talked about the war in Afghanistan, and the Northern Distribution Network, the cargo delivery route to NATO troops. But that's not mentioned in the official media.
There's only a terse announcement on the Uzbek Foreign Ministry site about Hammond's visit and we're not likely to get more from the Uzbek media. Latvia's defense minister just visited Uzbekistan, olam.uz reports.
Nothing on the British Ministry of Defence website, but you can read there about a British soldier's body armour which saved him from a Taliban's bullet -- the British are serious about fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, but they, too, are drawing down troops like the US.
Mr Mike Hancock: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what discussions he has had with his counterpart in Uzbekistan on the withdrawal of UK military equipment from Afghanistan via rail; and if he will make a statement. [85226]
Mr Philip Hammond: There has been no ministerial-level engagement with the Uzbek authorities on the subject of the withdrawal of UK military equipment from Afghanistan by rail.
The highest level engagement by Ministry of Defence officials has been by the assistant chief of Defence staff (Logistic Operations), the two-star military officer responsible for the support of UK forces in Afghanistan and the efficient and cost-effective draw-down of those forces. As part of a wider programme of liaison with countries in central Asia, the present and previous incumbents of that post have visited Uzbekistan three times, in August 2010, March 2011 and November 2011, to conduct discussions with Uzbek officials, including the Defence Minister. These discussions have included the role that Uzbekistan might play in the draw-down of UK forces in Afghanistan but to date no decisions have been taken on the way forward.
Obid-khori Nazarov, the emigre Uzbek imam who survived an assassination attempt in Sweden last week, is still hanging on, in critical condition in a Swedish hospital, uznews.net reports as of February 24:
“His doctors have informed us that he remains in a very serious if not critical condition,” said Per Thelen, a spokesman for the police in the town of Jämtland.
The imam was shot multiple times and once in the head, which means his condition will remain serious for some time, but there isn't an update this week. Police are investigating the assault at a national and international level, says uznet.
And they are ruling out extreme nationalists as possible culprits. In the little town of Stromsund, there apparently is only one radical nationalist (!) and police say "It's not him."
I think it's highly unlikely it's any kind of European nationalist for the simple reason that Nazarov was not a public figure speaking in Swedish or English. He was known in the Uzbek community, but while those in the field are familiar with his story, he's not an international figure. Of course, there might be just some random hater who felt like there were "too many" Muslims emigrating to Sweden, but that doesn't seem likely.
What is far, far more likely is that the SBU, the Uzbek intelligence agency, executed or engineered this attack. The imam was on his way to prayers at the mosque when he was shot (not coming from the mosque, as originally reported. That suggests someone could have been watching him and known his schedule.
You would think the Uzbek regime would appreciate a moderate Muslim who said he did not believe in violent overthrow of the government and did not believe in the imposition of a caliphate or theological government and would leave him alone -- but they don't at all, and that's what we have to realize.
There's an idea in some circles that the West should promote moderate Islam as a kind of preferable option in Muslim countries. But I think this is wishful thinking, because if there's anything that a regime like Karimov's would hate, it's something that might actually be successful in replacing him and that might actually be successful in gaining support in the country.
Was Nazarov growing more popular? He seemed popular enough -- I don't know, I don't have the facts.
The hypothesis that some rival Uzbek emigre shot him also doesn't seem plausible. There don't seem to be enemies or rivals of this type -- it's not as if some more extreme believer seemed upset with him (that I can tell -- we don't know of course). The secular journalists who criticized his unwillingness to endorse free speech of course aren't the sort of people who will shoot anyone.
Uzbek refugees are all telling the Swedish media that they believe the assassination attempt is the work of the SBU, says uznews.net. And they're likely right, and not only Sweden, but all European countries providing reguge to Uzbeks need to examine how safe they are, and need to be confronting the Uzbek government with questions.
The imam's followers are praying for him, and human rights activists in Europe are calling for an international investigation, uznews.net reports:
Mutabar Tajibaeva, the prominent activist now based in France, and the political commentator Kamoliddin Rabbimov used the term ‘outrage’ to describe their reaction to the crime which took place on 22nd February in the Swedish town of Stromsund when a man opened fire on Obid-kori Nazarov.
They outlined again the incredibly tough life story he has had:
From 1990-96, Nazarov was the Imam of the Tukhtaboy mosque in Tashkent. In 1996 he was sacked from this post and his house near the mosque was demolished on government orders.
In 1998, criminal charges, which according to Tajibaeva and Rabbimova were fabricated, were brought against Nazarov, forcing him to flee Uzbekistan.
In 2004, in Tashkent, his son Khusnuddin disappeared without a trace just after being questioned by the Tashkent police. His whereabouts are still not known.
Nazarov was tracked down to Kazakhstan where he had gone into hiding. In autumn 2005 a group of his associates were detained by the Kazakh security forces and then handed over to Uzbekistan.
In 2006 Nazarov was allowed to enter Sweden as a refugee. But even there the Uzbek authorities did not leave him alone, demanding that the Swedish authorities extradite him to Uzbekistan.
He is also known as Obidkhon Sobitkhony, says AP, and they also added that international media is denied access to Uzbekistan. That's an interesting admission not often made -- but it's true that foreign reporters are very scarce in Tashkent.
Now why are the Uzbek secret police chasing him so hard? Because he has a following, and because if he is as moderate as he claims, then he's a lot, lot harder to discredit, especially to the secular elites. And the more they have chased him -- and now with this assassination -- the more the SBM likely makes him more popular.
I believe that even when a person is a victim of a terrible act of oppression like this, a blow against religious liberty for everyone, precisely because he is a public figure addressing public issues, you have to be able to discuss the significance of his public teachings. I light a candle in my church and pray for his recovery and the safety of all our Uzbek colleagues in emigration and I worry about "defamation of religions".
Registan.net leaves out any controversy surrounding the iman, and any criticism. This isn't just reticence about a victim; it's part of the culture of the Registan/Eurasia/liberal think-tanks to remain uncritical about Islam in Central Asia, and posit some bogey-man of a conservative, illiberal intolerant Muslim-hating "power" somewhere that is whipping up hate and evil, rights-eroding wars on terrorism over simple religious belief. Here's the relevant paragraph:
Nazarov is an interesting religious figure. A conservative who emerged from the now in retrospect freewheeling period of religious debate in final years of the Soviet Union and early years of independence, he is originally from Namangan, but he made his name preaching at Tashkent’s Tokhtaboi Mosque. Frank and Mamatov, describing recordings of his lectures, say that his common sense and humor contributed to his popularity. Monica Whitlock’s The Land Beyond the River describes Nazarov’s troubles with the Uzbek state and the official religious establishment. In his words, he said he became a target when he refused to praise the government in his sermons, and he turned the accusation that he politicized religion on its head, saying that it was the state politicizing faith by forcing clerics to serve the state. After he accepted a gift of literature from Ferghanachi, Uzbeks who had settled in Saudi Arabia, he was accused of being a Saudi agent. What finally led to his expulsion as imam of Tokhtaboi was a sermon condemning the disappearance of Abduvali Mirzaev, another conservative, independent imam who angered Karimov’s government.
When seeing this much "texture" of "expertise," few dare to ask what the implications are for the secular space in society. The Uzbek government claims Nazarov is linked to terrorism -- this likely has no merit whatsoever, knowing how much Tashkent lies and covers up these cases.
I think you have to keep an open mind and criticize what is a threat to liberty anywhere, and that's both this assassination attempt and any attempt to suppress free media or women's rights in the name of Islam.
But Registan continues to weave the wishful thinking about "if only" moderate Islam were allowed to thrive, why, it would "expose" extremists and all would be well:
Nazarov’s theology is very conservative and overlaps with that of Central Asian extremists, but there is no compelling evidence that he is in fact involved with terrorist organizations. In past statements, he seems to suggest, in a somewhat cryptic fashion, that had he (and presumably other conservative imams) been able to openly preach in Uzbekistan, he would have been able to identify and defuse violent extremists.
As for me, I shall remain true to myself. We have been very open up to now. But the government is forcing our congregation to choose: either to go with the Muftiat, or to hid. If some new underground movement starts, I shall not be able to answer for it.
Number one, if this "very conservative" ideology in fact "overlaps" with extremists, then...you have to condemn that extremism. It's not acceptable in a liberal democratic society such as the Registanis rely on themselves for their intellectual existence, and there's no reason not to advocate it for even authoritarian countries like Uzbekistan.
Number two, I'm not at all a believer in the "power to diffuse" of the moderates. If anything, the extremists would likely target figures not as orthodox as they are as greater threats even than the Sovietized secular state of Karimov, and Karimov may even artificially pump up some extremists as an object lesson to scare others away (and lure some innocents to certain torture and jail).
And how does this "diffusing" system work, exactly? Moderate imams get to decide who is extremist and send them to jail in this unjust system? How is that different than having the state do the same thing? Or theoretically, they get to attract young, enthusiastic people, or for that matter, old, desperate people in larger numbers and keep them away from the extremists. How's that thesis coming along? It's not the ideas of some moderate Muslim in some American university that are spreading in Uzbekistan; it's the ideology of Hizb-ut-Tahir and other groups because they likely offer less ambiguity and they are likely more zealous about preaching.
I think the entire concept of religious engineering has to be questioned.
@joshuafoust That's some title. Maybe for a follow-up you can wave a red flag in front of a bull, or throw a lit match into a gas tank
@joshuafoust I'm kidding around. The article is not nearly as inflammatory as the title -- which is just asking for trouble
@joshuafoust And when you're done strangling, you can write about how their rights didn't matter
@joshuafoust HR matter to those who have to fight for them. Their stakes matter too. But I also wonder about choices, leverage in Uzbek case
Here's my entry at PBS (below), in case it is deleted. Nobody likes to have their propositions called "immoral" or their attacks on human rights groups "immoral". But immoral is exactly what it is -- and calculatedly so. It's not just professionally cynical or establishment-pragmatic -- it's deliberately, nastily, aggressively provocative. It's part of a very long-running assault on the human rights paradigm and the civic groups that espouse it. The origins for the motives of eliminationist animus that Foust has on this just aren't clear. As I said, he's more cynical than the Germans with their own Realpolitik which finds ways to raise human rights issues and more cynical than the Central Asians who at least feign human rights framework.
Inclusion of human rights is a moral precept; exclusion is an immoral precept (there's a debate to be had about how much the human rights obligation can prevail in international relations, but Foust simply excludes it.)
Joshua Foust's proposition of radical Realpolitik is immoral -- and unnecessary. America puts great stake on its reputation for moral governance. So to demand that human rights be retired is immoral because in fact human rights are a moral part of liberal democratic governance which have been part of US foreign policy at least since the Clinton era. In fact, as a principle, they have never been jettisoned, even if the implementation is skewed by geopolitics and America's own sanctioning of torture has blackened its global reputation.
Calling for human rights not to be "paramount" is also entirely unnecessary, as the US and EU and other countries forthrightly make human rights a part of their foreign policies and policies in multilateral institutions. Furthermore, the Central Asian countries that routinely and massively violate human rights also feign the incorporation of human rights policy as the coin of the realm.
Foust always posits an imaginary government that is faced with an imaginary dilemma of having to entirely junk its human rights advocacy in favour of grim geopolitical necessity -- and equally posits an imaginary human rights lobby that demands absolutism in human rights and boycott of all regimes that violate them. Neither of these imaginary creatures exist. In fact, Angela Merkel raised the latest urgent human rights issue of an investigation of the shooting of workers in Zhanaozen *publicly* when she visited Kazakhstan. That's actually more than Hillary Clinton did on her trip to Uzbekistan in November. Both leaders also engaged in quiet diplomacy and the resolution of at least a few political prisoner cases is credited to such diplomacy. The early release of prominent human rights advocate Evgeny Zhovtis is credited to repeated advocacy for him since his arrest in 2009 and a recent trip to the US by a Kazakh delegation came as his release was announced.
As massive human rights violators, the Central Asian regimes are more cynical than Foust in dumping human rights, but when it comes to international relations, Nazarbayev and other Central Asian dictators at least feign the human rights paradigmn, wanting to be seen as "respectable" by the international community. Kazkh officials recently met with a representative of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights about the killings of workers, and Interior Minister even claimed that he welcomed an international investigation (the Foreign Minister then "considered it" but never issued the invitation to the UN investigators). While such manifestations of ostensibly human rights cooperation are made in bad faith by the Kazakh regime, the West can use the game to try to incrementally get concessions and progress. And they do, there are constant efforts in this regard, although most of them are in the realm of quiet diplomacy.
For their part, human rights groups like Human Rights Watch call not for boycotts but engagement of these regimes with public human rights condemnation as part of the mix. They seldom get states to do this, but they do *some* of it and it's a constant effort. There aren't any groups that call for such rigid conditionality with the Central Asian regimes that in fact they should forego the Northern Distribution Network -- Foust's main concern -- the route to deliver cargo to NATO troops in Afghanistan. They recognize the exigencies but call for more public statements -- in fact, US officials do sometimes make them as do Germans and other Europeans.
Underlying Foust's brand of Realpolitik of the likes that not even the original inventors of the term (the Germans) maintain is the premise that human rights advocacy just doesn't work -- it's pointless to try with these authoritarian regimes because they are cynical and do nothing. For one, the individual cases resolved or small incremental steps are worth it, but even in Realpolitik terms, Western states realize they cannot repeat without consequences the indifference they showed to civic struggles in the Arab world for decades while they propped up dictators. That's why the conversation has changed. That's why it's no longer about the binary think-tankian "either/or" of "human rights or geopolitics".
And again, even in Realpolitik terms, there's a realization to be had that without at least more basic human rights compliance, business propositions are doomed to failure, too. If the idea, as Foust is suggesting, is to drop human rights in favour of pragmatic business transactions, they don't work, either. Ask Germany, which is still trying to collect debts from corrupt Uzbek state businesses and has suffered raids on their business properties in Uzbekistan and even the hassling of the German ambassador. Ask the UK, where Oxus Gold, a British company, had its assets seized and its chief engineer arrested and sentenced falsely for espionage, and was forced to flee. Ask Turkey, which has had its businesses summarily closed on grounds of "religious extremism." Everyone knows how tremendously corrupt and dangerous business is in Eurasia, and its precisely for the same reason that makes for a bad human rights climate: absence of the rule of law. Especially since the destruction of the independent bar in Uzbekistan, the very same justice system that sanctions torture is unavailable to stop state corporate raids or extortion.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has tried to make this proposition herself to the Uzbeks, in a speech in November from the floor of a new GM plant outside Tashkent, that human rights and democracy progress will lead to more prosperity on the "new Silk Road". While this premise runs the risk of putting the business cart before the human rights horse, at some level the Uzbek regime itself knows that modernity is related to things like increased Internet penetration, which is why they cautiously begin to allow this albeit with heavy censorship -- censorship that their increasingly savvy population gets around at least in some small degree.
In the case of Germany's transaction to get the rare earth metals, this is a pragmatic one in which both Kazakhstan and German have a vested interest, for different reasons, to want to avoid further dependency on China. I don't think you can say that Germany now looks for cheap goods especially to Central Asia merely because they are in debt-ridden Europe and need cheap goods -- their paramount interest in Central Asia is about gas and oil resources and the NDN route.
I was supposed to work in the 1980 Olympics and wasn't able to when the US decided to boycott it over the invasion of Afghanistan. As I lived through this era as an adult I don't recall at all that this was a "bitterly controversial" move (Foust is merely cutting and pasting Wikipedia here) even if it had its critics. The boycott was not a significant factor in Carter's failure to gain re-election -- the Iran hostage crisis was, along with domestic issues of the economy. The boycott could never have succeeded without significant popular support, as we have only to compare it to the Beijing Olympics where even mass movements of concern for Sudan (where China has oil interests) and Tibet were insufficient to cause a boycott.
While human rights groups always raise human rights concerns at the time of trade agreements or transactions, they seldom insist on radical conditionality. In the article in the New York Times linked by Foust, one source says, "“I don’t see a problem in signing contracts with Kazakhstan as long as we keep human rights on the table,” said Nico Lange, director of the Kiev office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation." While never as strong as human rights groups would like, Merkel *did* keep human rights on the table.
“Business should be, as much as civil society, interested in governance on the rule of law, transparency and accountability,” said Ms. Aidakulova and Mr. Artemyev of the Soros Foundation. “This sets the environment in which business interests will be effectively protected.” Indeed.
Human rights remain paramount, and not only for human rights activists; governments, even Central Asian governments concede them, and the "balance" of international relations is not one achieved without them. In fact, every day officials in bilateral and multilateral settings don't just wring their hands helplessly but keep pushing the envelope and having some modest successes -- it is not a static situation.
Indeed, the US does have leverage which it never publicly articulates. If the Central Asian governments truly are interested in not having a spillover of the Taliban and other extremist groups across their borders, then their assistance is required to the US in winding down the war and establishing post-war security. Are they truly interested in preventing post-war conflict or not? They always claim to be working against terrorism even as they round up thousands of innocent devout Muslims. Are they really going to stop cooperating with the NDN if we call them out on their torture? Just because one WikiLeaks cable shows Karimov threatening to pull cooperation on the NDN over a State Department prize going to an Uzbek dissident doesn't mean that we can't keep using this leverage to push for human rights progress. The whole reason Uzbekistan signed ILO conventions against forced child labour or introduced habeus corpus or other reforms is because they feel the pressure for at least the semblance of progress, which occasionally has a by-product of reality.
All of the regional governments are uneasy about the US presence, but they handily play it against another presence even more vexatious to them -- Russia -- and against a new economic partner they also remain very ambivalent about -- China. All these governments also get handsome fees through the NDN and lucrative business contracts. So they are not going to be dumping the US because they raised the issue of political prisoners, publicly or privately.
Swedish authorities say that Obid-kori Nazarov, the Muslim cleric in exile in Sweden shot yesterday, has been transferred to another clinic following an operation but his conditions has worsened, uznews.net reports. Unconvincingly, the Swedish police official told reporters that Uzbeks need not feel in danger in Sweden. Oh, surely not after nine of them have been extradited and now one very prominent one has been shot! With the help of the UNHCR, Nazarov had obtained political asylumin Sweden in 2006.
The Swedish police gave out no information, and Tord Andersson, a Swedish journalist said that Stromsund, where the imam was shot, was a quiet town in which nothing like this had happened in memory. He also discounted a hypothesis that the Muslim imam could have been shot by theoretical Swedish nationalists angry at a growing Muslim population.
But...how will the SBU's involvement be established, do they leave business cards or do they just follow you on Twitter? The gun was found near the scene of the crime -- very common method of Russian and other post-Soviet gangsters so that they don't have the evidence on them.
With tens of thousands of followers and admirers, he is considered one of the most powerful opponents of the regime of President Islam Karimov.
Both RFE/RL and Lillis add that first, Nazarov fled Uzbekistan in 1998 to Kazakhstan where he spent eight years, but in 2006 "promptly fled to Europe after Kazakhstan’s intelligence services rounded up nine of his Uzbek associates living in Kazakhstan and handed them over to Tashkent." This was after the Andijan massacre in 2005.RFE/RL reports that he broke years of silence in a 2006 interview.
Lillis also adds a quote from uznews.net:
"He “never felt safe” in Sweden, Uznews.net reported, moving house frequently and keeping locations secret for fear of the long arms of the Uzbek intelligence services."
This is a very bad sign for any Uzbek exile trying to stay safe in Sweden or for that matter any other European country. Have there been any other attacks of this nature on Uzbeks in Europe? There are plenty of stories about secret police following and harassing exiles and students, but have there been attacks this severe?
RFE/RL also reminds us of the persecution of his sons and even disappearance of one. Central Asian family-style repression -- awful.
And now for the controversial part.
Typically, this EurasiaNet author doesn't mention that Nazarov himself calls for censorship of free speech for the sake of Islam which indicates he may espouse a belief ultimately in the Islamic caliphate (theocratic government), despite creating a different impression in his 2006 interview. He has certainly vigorously debated the secular liberal independent journalists since then, who have been covering his story all along -- as I noted. Lillis alludes to that problem with this biographical notation:
Nazarov gained popularity as an imam in Uzbekistan in the 1990s, where his fiery sermons led President Islam Karimov’s administration to cast him as an opponent at a time when the main challenge to Karimov’s rule came from clerics with wide public followings.
"Fiery" as in "no free speech except for Islam".
The RFE/RL interviewer in 2006 asked him if he was a terrorist and wanted an Islamic state to be imposed. He said, "I do not support a change of government with arms. We believe things can get better through peaceful means."
What he says next gets us quickly to the HRW line Ken Roth promulgated recently about the need to tolerate "rights-respecting Islam":
RFE/RL: Do you want an Islamic state to be established in Uzbekistan?
Nazarov: Islam does not mean the establishment of an Islamic state. It is wrong to think that those who preach Islam preach the establishment of an Islamic state as well. We don't think about an Islamic state -- we just want those thousands of Muslims who want to pray freely or wear headscarves to exercise their freedom to do so. We want those thousands of Muslim prisoners of conscience who have been tortured there to be released. This is our wish. If there was freedom of religion in Uzbekistan it would be Muslims who would benefit from it. That also would be very suitable for Christians and other religions. We want a society where human rights are respected and freedom of religion is guaranteed.
I'm not so sure that the 5,000 or 10,000 people who have been tortured and held in prison for years and years are -- understandably -- going to emerge with such tolerant notions as Nazarov espoused in 2006. The Muslim Brotherhood didn't, after years of torture and imprisonment in Egypt.
But here's where you have to be a bit concerned:
RFE/RL: Do you support the Uzbek secular opposition which is calling for democratic changes?
Nazarov: We support democrats willing to rescue the Uzbek people from oppression, stand for their well-being, and help them. Islam teaches us to cooperate for the good and to stand against evil. So we support opposition that working on that common good aims.
This all sounds completely anodyne and tolerant, except it contains an escape clause: only opposition that supports the common good -- as defined by devout Muslims -- can be supported, and recognized only if they "rescue the Uzbek people from oppression" -- again as defined by this cleric. While some of what Nazarov says is encouraging for hope in a tolerant Islam taking hold some day in Uzbekistan, this last bit (and the later uznews.net debate) indicates the need to press further.
Few people are going to want to do that, now that this imam, characterized as a moderate Muslim leader, has now been made a high-profile victim.
Even without such compelling circumstances, the community around Open Society Institute/Human Rights Watch/other grantees often find it hard to say something critical about the Muslim victims they rightly care about whose rights are violated, when the victims themselves have ideas that are a threat to other people's rights. The cases of torture, imprisonment, and even now assassinations and attempted assassinations of course appear far more dramatic and compelling than a free speech or women's rights problem. This is the Gita problem that Amnesty International had.
In Lillis' piece, the reference to "clerics with wide public followings" is supposed to accomplish two things for us: a) let us know that this is the form that widespread dissent took b) that Karimov "cast" them wrongfully precisely because they challenged his rule.
But both of these narratives have to be challenged. In this secular, Sovietized state, was there really widespread popularity for radical clerics? There might well have been -- RFE/RL says there are "tens of thousands" of followers, but I think it needs a critical examination. That's not to suggest that Uzbeks were instead attracted to secular human rights groups -- they weren't. And there are thousands of religious prisoners in Uzbekistan who likely constitute the proof of popularity of non-state religious groups, some of them were willing to risk jail, others were caught up unwittingly.
Despite these numbers in prison and what they might mean, it's worth asking the question: when people came out on the square to protest in Andijan, their concerns appeared to be more related to social justice and basic rights like housing or living conditions, not to insistence on the right to follow fundamentalist Islamic groups.
The other narrative is about Karimov. Does Karimov crack down on these people only because they challenge his power? That's a good thing for them to be doing, most would agree, because he's a tyrant responsible for untold misery.
But when he does that, does he also have some legitimacy with some sectors of the elite who don't want to give up their non-religious lifestyles and don't want the clerics to win? And maybe even some grudging support from the larger population? That elite may be a fervent base of support into which Karimov can tap at will, and that may be one of the critical reasons why "spring doesn't come" to Central Asia which few want to look at -- those loyal supporters of Karimov with the jobs and regime-doled perks are a nasty bunch, and having them as the spearhead of the movement for secular rights and freedoms everyone would like to keep isn't very fun.
These are the same issues that of course Egyptian secular dissidents faced regarding the Muslim Brotherhood, and it's worth pondering, despite the constant vetoing of any debate on the influence of the Arab Spring imposed by the Registanis. The issues are the same -- secular Soviet-era dictator with elite base and army, popular resistance taking a religious form -- but some very big differences, namely, the fact that Russian TV is no Al Jazeera! And Internet penetration far less and Western support far less.
So the open question is this: will the secular elite supporting Karimov view this assassination attempt with indifference or even tacit support, and prevail? Or will the anger undoubtedly unleashed among emigres and Uzbeks inside Uzbekistan over this sinister assault spark even more protests and backfire on the SBU, if indeed they are behind it -- and will this protest prevail?
Insecure adjunct professor threatens to call police over...my blog (!). For the record I've never, ever in any fashion, "threatened" this thin-skinned academic; meanwhile, she has written denunciations of me to my employers.
Sarah Kendzior, an anthropologist and loyal supporter of the controversial Registan.net, has done it again. Although she's threatened to actually call the police over my criticism of her ideas (!), I'm not going to be intimidated.
At the end of her handling of the story, you are supposed to conclude that a) nothing really bad happened after all and b) the regime is actually sort of cuddly, because it does pathetically awkward and humorous things like this.
Isn't that what always happens at Registan where inevitably, the reader is always driven to leave the regimes alone and is distracted from the main point of their awfulness?
As for the "performance art" bit -- yeah, I get it's tongue-in-cheek, but it's actually a common trope of the liberal intelligentsia -- light ridicule of these regimes rather than a forthright acknowledgement of their sinister nature is often a way they cope with them and simultaneously minimize them (especially by contrast with the US, with they inevitably find more sinister).
Kendzior speculates -- and even by her own admission, without a shred of evidence -- that what was really bothering the Uzbek censors were some articles on sex -- those were apparently recent entries. To be sure, there have been a number of morality crackdowns lately -- the vetting of rap lyrics; the behaviour code for students; the shuttering of lingerie stores. So sure, maybe this, too, although the thought that people even on the Uzbek filtered Internet are getting their porn thrills by reading...Wikipedia seems like rather a tall story.
Kendzior is among the writers on Registan who remind us that Russian is dwindling, that it has lost its influence, that young people don't speak it anymore. That's why it's especially funny that this time, she wheels out the theory that people are going to read the Russian pages of Wikipedia from Uzbekistan, making the blocking of the Uzbek pages pointless -- and thereby minimizing the regime's actions.
I actually think Russian isn't dwindling in Uzbekistan or Central Asia (maybe because I see people speak and write it all the time especially in international or regional contexts?) and that they do read the Russian pages, but that's not the point.
Sarah is only thinking of what people passively may *read* on Wikipedia in Uzbek. I think the regime is likely much more worried that they will *write* in Uzbek on Wikipedia. It's a whole realm of do-it-yourselve editing that opens up a real challenge to a regime like Tashkent has, with special agencies filtering the press and social media and controlling every publication. (Of course, there is a cabal at the English language Wikipedia that controls everything, particularly ruling on controversial articles, and they are authoritarian and non-accountable much like a regime, but that's another story).
There's also the fact that the articles in Uzbek offensive to the regime aren't necessarily things like "Islam Karimov," about which there is almost nothing, or "Mohammad Salih" -- ditto -- but things outside of Uzbekistan, like "Arab Spring" or "Syria". I don't read Uzbek, but even I can tell that the "Arab Spring" article looks longer than anything in the Uzbek media -- which is zero.
An Uzbek on Twitter has also explained that the Uzbeks, even if they know English or Russian, are likely to search in Uzbek, and the regime doesn't want all the searches in Uzbek leading to Wikipedia (which is what happens with the Google algorithms -- they are fixed so as to reward Wikipedia because it remains at the top of the search returns due to...always being at the top of the search returns and linked the most.)
Once you decide that your job is not to explain away what the Uzbek regime is doing, and your job is not to minimize what they are doing or ridiculing it so as to make it seem harmless, your mind can be opened to seeing what may have driven them. I think that the writing of Wikipedia itself in unapproved ways, and possibly the Arab Spring type material may have been a factor. And I think the idea that the killing of search as a factor also makes sense.
Obid-kori Nazarov was shot by an unknown assailant in the Swedish town of Stromsund as he was returning from noon prayers. The gunman fired several rounds and disappeared, leaving behind a pistol silencer found later by police.
The imam is recovering from an operation in the hospital and is listed in critical but stable condition.
Daniil Kislov, editor of Fergananews.com, on Facebook offered two hypotheses for the culprits: 1) Uzbek intelligence; another imam was assassinated in the Russian city of Ivanovo in September; 2) ill-wishers and rivals in his own religious community.
I'll go with Door No. 1, as I don't see that two imams being shot abroad is going to be explained away by business or religious disputes. Of course, we'll likely never know.
In Russia, lots of people get assassinated -- journalists, human rights defenders, bankers. The murders never get investigated. But in Sweden?
Sweden in fact just deported nine Uzbeks back to certain torture in Uzbekistan two weeks ago -- Uzbeks in Sweden say the Swedish welcome mat seems to have been taken up.
But the imam had been allowed to stay -- so the SBU may have come after him. Strange, the Swedes can't manage to get Julian Assange extradited from the UK to face questioning in a rape case, but they can send 9 Uzbeks back to certain torture and now have an imam shot on their soil. What's up?
Nazarov fled Uzbekistan in 1998 to Kazakhstan, charged with forming an extremist organization and even plotting terrorism. But so many devout Muslims are charged in this way in Uzbekistan, with thousands rounded up, tortured and imprisoned, that it has to be taken with a grain of salt. He then fled from Kazakhstan to Sweden in 2006 after getting refugee status from the UNHCR. Sweden had made the decision to allow Nazarov to remain for the last five years; that would suggest that he wasn't the terrorist Tashkent claimed.
Nazarov is not without his critics, including uznews.net, which criticized him in 2008 on a Radio Ozodlik show for not defending freedom of speech, and being willing to censor expression in the name of Islam. Later uznews.net also complained of being attacked by emigres for frankly covering disputes in the Swedish Uzbek emigre community. The perils of journalism in these fractured communities.
The imam supported the resolutions pushed at the UN by the Organization of Islamic Community (as it is now called) in favour of proclaiming "defamation of religion" a human rights offense. The West pushed back and ultimately in a resolution co-sponsored by the US and Egypt last year another resolution was passed in the Human Rights Council that avoids the notion that you can't criticize theocratic states and makes a more narrowly-defined offense that speaks of hate speech that constitutes incitement to imminent violence, which is the language US Supreme Court ruling.
Friend of free speech or no, I think it's unlikely the imam was shot by "rivals" in Sweden. This story highlights the problem of both pious Muslims as victims and pious Muslims as inciters of human rights violations -- and it's in fact rare for liberals, as in fact these journalists at uznews.net and Radio Ozodlik did, to speak up in criticism of this fact.
All Uzbek emigres abroad have to feel unsafe.
Since the picketing of Gulnara Karimova's fashion show in New York by human rights activists (joined by PMU members in exile), the PMU first suffered the assassination of Fuad Rustamhojaev, a PMU leader in Ivanovo who had been present at the group's founding in Germany. I wrote about the assassination here, for which I was denounced by the PMU as insufficiently sympathetic to the cause.
The headline was chosen by the editor, not me; I had suggested wording more about the shock to the community not suggesting failure of a cause. Not for the first time the EurasiaNet editor changed the meaning of a story. He had a curious insistence to remove some very pertinent facts from the story as well -- I had written that the killers spoke Uzbek and seemed to argue with the victim before shooting him, a fact that suggested a) they may have been known to him b) that made the likelihood of Uzbek intelligence chasing an emigre stronger, i.e. it wasn't the Russian mafia. This information was removed as "destroying the flow" (?!).
I'll have to find that denunciation somewhere online, but it was typical of prickly emigres for whom nothing is ever enough. And the PMU not surprisingly split, not only due to personalities or priorities, but apparently because of harassment of some relatives and threats. I don't think we can draw a straight line between their picket in New York and the assassination in Ivanovo, but no doubt the SBU wasn't happy about that picket. In an odd twist, Rustamhojaev in fact imported textiles from Uzbekistan to Russia, so it doesn't seem likely that anything that happened to him was related to a picket against forced child labour in the cotton industry. Rustamhojaev was also the local imam, serving as the lector in the mosque because there was no permanently-assigned imam in that locale.
The Andijan Justice group then split off from the PMU, and perhaps it's just as well, as before, their focus had been more narrowly devoted to the issue of exposure of the massacre and justice for the victims, not overthrowing the regime. The PMU was started by Mohammed Salih, a long-time exile and head of the Erk party who is criticized as authoritarian and standing in the way of progress -- like all emigre party heads, nothing new here. I have no knowledge of this particular situation exept to say that it is like so many emigre situations, and the regimes fan the flames and keep it that way deliberately with provocations.
After the assassination and the split, then came the story of the "suicide student" proven to be a hoax where Salih's name was invoked, with the student supposedly given instructions to murder him (?!). That was a red flag from the beginning that it was a planted story.
Then there was yet another incident where the same Uzbek emigre said to perpetrate the hoax supposedly wrote to a theology student with instructions to distribute leaflets and got him into trouble in Uzbekistan (he said he had published the story like many others, including Registan, which was first to promote it in English, and denied writing to the student).
I hope Sweden takes this attack seriously and investigates it thoroughly. They should also follow up on those nine people they returned -- did they get any diplomatic assurances? All in all, a bad situation.
Uznews.net has covered statements by exiled Uzbek human rights activist Tolib Yakubov that the information coming out about Muhtorov regarding his sister, jailed at age 19 on murder charges, is misleading. Tolib insists the sister was indeed guilty. He describes a spate of a half dozen grisly murders of private cab drivers at the time, who were killed with pistol shots, then thrown in the canal; some were dismembered. Then their cars were chopped up and sold off as parts Tolib says the sister was a “lure” for a gang that got taxi drivers to stop, then robbed and killed them
Jamshid’s sister, Dildora, a student at the Jizzakh teacher’s institute and secretary of the Jizzakh Criminal Court, was arrested with two young men. It’s that last detail – a college student with a part-time job in a court (?) that made me wonder if this was one of those gang/organized crime police fighter stories which abound in this region.
Naturally, one has to wonder why it was necessary to kill so many taxi drivers, when it was sufficient to rob them, and whether this was more complicated stories of gangland executions. Tolib, whose group was familiar with the case at the time, is convinced that the then-19-year-old sister was guilty, but he concedes that she was tortured and that the justice system is unfair and you can’t get due process. Even so, he thinks where there’s smoke there’s fire and the prosecution proved her guilt and her punishment was apt. She was sentenced to 17 years of prison. Things being what they are in Uzbekistan, the relatives of the cab drivers started coming to the Muhtorovs’ house and threatening them with reprisals. That’s why Jamshid Muhtorov wanted to leave for Kyrgyzstan.
Fergananews.com now has recently run a long piece on Muhtorov, half of which is a re-hash of Western press and what’s been on Radio Ozodlik already, and half of which is an interview with an Uzbek man in the US who says he knew him, that appears to be new material.
For some reason, fergananews.com never mentions in the re-telling of the story the pertinent piece of evidence proffered by the FBI that Muhtorov told his daughter "goodbye" and that he would "see her in heaven," before heading off with his one-way ticket to Turkey with not a lot of money, two phones and a GPS device.
Fergananews.com isn’t sure whether the man they’re interviewing, whom they call “Bakhtiyor,” is the same fellow who has come forward to the US authorities, but they think there is a possibility. He refused to allow his name to be published. “Despite his anonymity, we have every reason to believe him,” says fergananews.com
First, they address the legend of his human rights activity – over and over again, not only Registan and the more “progressive” sympathetic blogs looking for the terrorist’s unhappy childhood have called him a “human rights activist”; the mainstream mid-Western press in the US has called him this, too, as it is part of his background visible on the Internet.
But Bakhtiyor says, “Jamshid primarily defended not those without rights, but rich people. This was like deals with businessmen. I don’t think he was a real human rights activist, he never became one, having worked as head of the Jizzakh section of the Ezgulik human rights organizations for two years. Jamshid simply made use of the fact that the authorities after Andijan began to pressure the opposition. And that that his sister was tried supposedly on fabricated circumstances. But his sister really was in fact mixed up in serious murders. An incident was indicative of this. In around 2004, there were searches of the Muhtorovs’ home on suspicion of production of fake vodka, and these suspicions were not groundless; this is in fact what he was doing at home. How could such a person became a religious fanatic later?”
Bakhtiyor says that when later he was contacted by Jamshid in the States, he didn’t recognize him – he’d grown a beard, and had bruises on his forehead from prostrating himself in prayer. He said this was “the sign of a jihadist.”
“Great internal changes had taken place,” he said. He had changed his name to “Abu Mumin” and gave other names to his wife and children. The children began to recite the Koran. “I saw these children, and I felt very sorry for them,” said Bakhtiyor.
Yes, to be sure, just growing a beard or acquiring prayer bruises or getting your children to read the Koran doesn’t at all mean you could be turning into a terrorist. Bakhtiyor goes on to say, however, that Jamshid “kept repeating that he was ready to give his life for the ideas of Shariah, and called on me to follow his example and drop ‘all this nonsense – democracy.’”
He kept talking about overthrowing Karimov “in a few years we will take over the khukumat” [government].
The two argued, and then Jamshid came back and said that he had a “sheikh” in the US now – an Arab, not an Uzbek.
“These people, with whom he had come into contact helped him find work as a long-distance truck driver, and he could earn decent money. Jamshid bragged that he was sending part of his earnings to the birodar, i.e. to the brothers. But then last fall he said he planned to leave the States forever.”
(And here’s where I step in coming from a family with an OTR truck driver to tell you that long-distance truck-driving is grueling, and not a get-rich-quick scheme at all. You can make a fairly decent living, but it comes at the cost of long stretches away from home. Even if you put in very long hours – and you are limited by all kinds of regulations and inspections on how much you can do – it is not a field where you make fantastic sums especially in your first years. While increasingly you do find emigres from the post-Soviet countries, I’ve never heard of bands of fanatic Islamists using it as a recruiting tool – although it is a realm in which cigarette and other contraband-running, drugs, prostitution, etc. are part of the scene – although again, with plenty of police chasing it.)
Now here’s where the story gets weird – and unbelievable, as it has a strange claim that hasn’t been in any source. Asked why Jamshid wanted to leave, and whether he had “problems with the law,” Bakhtiyor says that “two days before Osama bin Ladn was killed, "police put a ankle bracelet on him and his 'brothers' which would locate them” – a picture is even provided at fergananews.com.
Really, guys? Bakhtiyor claims that Jamshid called bin Ladn “Our leader” and was very much afraid the Al Qaeda leader would be killed. This just seems outlandish, and for me, throws into question the whole piece. The FBI slaps ankle bracelets pre-emptively on Muslims two days before they kill bin Ladn? Please.
Fergananews.com asked Bakhtiyor if Jamshid hid his views, and Bakhtiyor says he didn’t, and even seemed fearless, given that a person who had chosen this path could expect to be monitored. “His brothers asked him not to say the name of Juma Namangani aloud and not talk on the telephone about their plans.”
So that’s why they had the code – “the wedding”. Was there a wedding? No, says Bakhtiyor, he was going to live and work in Turkey and let slip that he planned to meet his brother Hurshid there, who was supposed to visit him from Almaty (and that brother has now been arrested). And that he was supposed to introduce him to the “sheikhs” and the “birodar” there. Jamshid’s brother isn’t a jihadist, however; he’s secular, says Bakhtiyor, although Jamshid was trying to convert him, make him grow a beard, etc. but really he just wanted money.
The brother is now in danger of being deported back to Uzbekistan. He could have been arrested at the request of the US or Uzbekistan, says Bakhtiyor. There’s no evidence that a request came from the US. There’s one other brother, Asyl, who is estranged from him, and supposedly he tried to convert him, as well.
“Are you not surprised at the metamorphisis that occurred with Jamshid? First he was a pseudo-human rights activist, then he became a refugee, and then a jihadist?” asks fergananews.com
“Now, after his statements in court, nothing surprises me,” says Bakhtiyor. “For he renounced his ideas so easily which he had preached for several years. Real jihadists don’t act like that, they don’t renounce their ideas, they fight to the end and defend their idea.”
Fergananews.com says their interview raises more questions than it answers, and opens up the possibility – one that I also discussed in my past blogs – that in turning to jihad, Muhtorov was just finding one more hustle. Did Muhtorov deceive his sheikhs and birodars just like he is deceiving the investigation in court, they ask?
“Perhaps Jamshid has become a “bargaining chip” in a deal with Uzbekistan? We have to hope for a fair trial,” says fergananews.com and acknowledges that on that score, Jamshid is going to be faring much better than his brother Hurshid – a secular man who is now going to be sacrificed to Karimov’s war on any manifestation of “Islamism”.
Registan is still playing this as a “thought crime,” minimizing any aspect of terrorism and finding this entire store a fake-up in the “war on terrorism”. Sarah Kendzior finds the nicknames that Jamshid took to be suspicious – she just doesn’t think “a real Uzbek” would be using them, evidently, as she says:
I found no record of Abu Mumin Turkistony appearing anywhere online except in articles about the Muhtorov case, and the spelling is very strange for Uzbek. There is also no record of Muhtorov using Abu Mumin online, except for a Twitter account that connects to the [email protected] email address that the FBI claims is his: http://twitter.com/mjams3476. If you go to this Twitter account, you will see three messages, posted right before the FBI filed the affidavit. Why would Muhtorov open a Twitter account right before he’s going to flee the country for allegedly terrorist purposes, and post these particular messages?
Now that this source “Bakhtiyor” has come forward giving testimony that Jamshid used this name, that of course creates a problem for Sarah’s theory (although of course, we can’t validate Bakhtiyor’s testimony without his real name or knowing if he’s the state’s witness.) People start Twitter accounts and don’t do much with that – maybe they only need them to send one signal or just as a backup. It doesn’t mean anything one way or another. The spelling might be strange just because that’s how the FBI or the US press are spelling it. I don’t see why anyone would find it odd that someone would take a name with the word “Turkeston” in it in this part of the world.
Fergananews.com has the sensational news that Ravshan Muhiddinov, an advisor to President Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan has been found guilty of serious economic crimes and sentenced to a whopping 15 years in jail, according to a report from Radio Ozodlik (Озодлик). "Wow!" is what the BBC Uzbek Service correspondent said on Twitter.
Muhiddinov is the former Minister of Justice of Uzbekistan, the former Deputy Prosecutor General, and was named advisor to the president on July 10, 2011. He was responsible for coordinating the operations of the law-enforcement and oversight agencies. I wonder if he was involved in Uzbekistan's report to the UN Committee Against Torture or had anything to do with sanctioning or punishing torture. Most likely he did.
But he was let go 2.5 months after his appointment and made only acting prosecutor of Tashkent region, which is a come-down after being Prosecutor General and Minister of Justice -- and then he was arrested.
Now, is he guilty? We don't know. They don't have due process in this system he supervised. "Unofficial information" cited by fergananews.com and Ozodlik says this is a "war of kompromat," i.e. various ministries have compromising material on each other's people in their turf battles and use it selectively. Everybody is guilty in Uzbekistan because you have to pay bribes and cut corners everywhere. He was said to have a "roof" in Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who was said to be fighting Rustam Inoyatov, head of the National Security Service (that SNB we're always talking about here!)
So...what happened? The roof leaked?
Ozodlik also ads that Muhiddinov's family are also being pressured and they want to go abroad. The organs always use the "family plan" in the cases and try to turn all your relatives into levers of painful pressure on you.
What else can be concluded from this story? Mirziyoyev has not been fired or has not resigned, as was constantly rumoured. Yet if he was the cover for this guy, and now he's in jail, maybe he's in trouble. Shavkat doesn't appear to have updated that Facebook page of his and my friendship request is still pending. He now has 2,548 friends.
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