Different Stans

Registan Makes Sure Nobody Ever Questions the SNB -- Really

Three-card monte, Paris, 2006. Photo by Nelson Minar.

Sarah Kendzior's at it again -- first re-telling the Uzbek suicide student story yet another time, and yet another time not conceding that it may well have been an SNB (secret police) disinformation plot to discredit the opposition and the human rights movement. Then, she re-warms her academic theory once again on the coals of Registan.net implying that if "everybody's a spy" and there is such deep lack of trust between people in Uzbek society, then...we never really have to face the fact that the SNB really *does* do bad things, because it's just "paranoia" seeping into the society.

It's the PERFECT theory for the regime symps and protectionists around Registan.net and it's the sort of thing that becomes very compelling to the "progressive" mind. The progs always hate it when people see fundamentalist Islam behind every bush or exaggerate the threat of regimes in such a way as to distract what they see as the main problem of the world -- the US. So if they can get an anthropologically-validated theory of "SNB-as-metaphor" -- merely affecting people's psychology and not what-it-is -- why, we can dispel this silly belief that the secret police are really terrible.

Kendzior even manages to turn Arendt inside out even as she quotes Arendt:

"In a system of ubiquitous spying,” the philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote, “everybody may be a police agent and each individual feels himself under constant surveillance."

Yes, they do. Because...they are (in states like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union about which Arendt wrote).

But then Kendzior turns around and renders that actual police state and that actual constant surveillance as merely "virtual" (a sleight of hand not unlike three card monte):

On the internet, Uzbeks can access censored information and debate controversial topics like politics and religion – though not without awareness that they are being watched. They can operate in relative secrecy, cloaking themselves in anonymous avatars, or connect through semi-closed social media networks. What they find harder is shaking the SNB’s long shadow, its psychic hold. The SNB inhibits whatever space it inhabits – physical, psychological, and virtual.

See how that worked? Real secret police -- and then just people *imagining the secret police when they might not really be there*. Real secret police -- and then just a "psychic hold" which is merely about the "anthropology" -- how people perceive their state and surroundings, without really caring anymore what the reality is.

The story of the students questioned by the SNB told earlier this week which I questioned thoroughly here is recycled yet again, to become more persuasive in the telling (Kendzior used the same technique in establishing the suicide girl story, then appearing to be very cautious about *not* debunking it; then taking her time to debunk it; and never admitting that it might be an SNB plot.)

Every day, there are human rights violations in Uzbekistan and a hardy human rights community and independent press that reports on them. Registan never, ever covers those stories. There are the trials of religious believers charged with extremism about which we know very little, but whose relatives come to complain about torture. People picketing injustices. Harassment of journalists, lawyers, human rights activists, cultural people in all kinds of contrived ways. None of this EVER captures the attention let alone the imagination of Registan because it would carve too close to the bone on the regime - and Registan is never really about questioning the fundamental power of the Uzbek establishment (or the US government and foreign policy establishment that now supports it).

So instead, we get *this* story. A story that -- as I pointed out already -- even if true, is being put to a certain use. That certain use is to let people in official US educational programs like FLEX know in no uncertain terms that they better watch out -- they better completely scrub even the benign human rights topics that seem pre-approved like HIV/AIDS or trafficking or child rights -- and shut up.

We get it that people are asked to work for the SNB all the time. In fact, it's assumed that many of the people who remain publicly active in some way in Uzbekistan have at least agreed to report certain things to the SNB or to agree to have "conversations". Those who don't are the ones jailed or tortured. The point isn't to question THAT the SNB does this sort of thing; the point is to question the uses to which Registan is putting it now, with academic backing from Kendzior and others on the site.

The entire Gulsumoy Abdujaliova story could have been contrived by the SNB itself; indeed, I supply good arguments for why it likely could have been. (And also explain how carefully a human rights leader worked to research it and ultimately disprove it.) Yet Kendzior once again blames NOT the SNB, but people who "have fabricated claims of SNB abuse in order to discredit others or promote their own agendas."

There's no evidence for this insinuation that emigres made up the story to gain attention or some kind of bizarre street cred as victims. The opposition leaders said they were fooled and in fact conceded the exposure of the story. And we are still left with this: the woman who told the story says she herself was put up to it by the SNB.

Turkmen Voters in Ashgabat Don't Turn Out

Woman votes in Turkmen elections, February 12, 2012

Turnout in the entirely choreographed and tightly controlled Turkmen elections was a historic 96.28 percent, making President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov the world leader with the greatest mandate from his people (because virtually all of them seem to have voted for him).

Or...the leader of the world with the greatest control over his population. Something like three million people out of the nearly five million total population in Turkmenistan were said to be registered to vote, an miraculously, 96.28% of them were all able to brave a cold snap in the region and their own internal misgivings about a completely fake system, and cast their votes. Or at least, this is the story the official government website published.

There was some dissent, however. Some people who stayed home. Or some people who spoiled their ballots. Even this official news article tells the story:

94.20% voted in Ashgabat

96.23% voted in Ahal velayat

96.15% voted  in Balkan velayat

96.46% in Dashoguz velayat

96.43% in Lebap velayat

96.96% in Mary velayat

OK, so in Moscow, sure, the bloggers and Facebookers and Tweeters turn out 50,000, even 100,000 demonstrators in the street against fraudulent elections. But that's Moscow.

In Ashgabat, God is in his heaven, but the Tsar is very close. So in the white-marbled capital, if you get a whopping 2.08% less turnout than the national aggregated total, that is how the dissent is manifested. You have to worry about some of those 2.08% possibly cowering in their high-rises now, worrying if the MNB is going to come in the door any minute and haul them off to jail for not performing their civic duty.

Oh, and look at that stronghold of resistance, Balkan velayat. You have to imagine heads are rolling this evening. Only 96.15%! such slackers! Saboteurs!

In the US, dissidents claim they represent "the 99%". In Turkmenistan, the 2.08% is as good as it gets -- and don't laugh, that's a lot of brave souls. Yes, this means something -- if in the capital, where the agitation was greatest, where transportation was most convenient (no riding camels for miles to the voting booth), where people likely have the most education and watch the most television -- and this, this embarrassing result. This defiance.

I think now Berdymukhamedov can brag to his neighbours that he has had the largest turnout in the region. Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev swept to power with only 95.5%. Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov obtained only 90.6% turnout and only 88.1% of the vote.

But you have to know Berdymukhamedov is worried about those intellectuals in the cafes in Ashgabat. Those instigators and trouble-makers that should have been sent out to collect the harvest instead of stirring up all this trouble!

Remember that figure: 2.08%. They're the ones to watch!

They weren't among the 2.08% resisters. But their brothers and sisters might be!

Registan Scares Young People Away from US Exchange, Human Rights

Three-card monte hustle in NYC. Photo by RunsWithScissors.

Whenever you see Registan.net run an article about human rights, you have to ask: hmm, what's up here?

They may appear as if they care about human rights issues, and part of building up their street cred is to tell critics suspicious of their support of the establishment that they are wrong or out of touch or haven't read the archives and seen all their Genuine Expressions of Concern.

So at first blush when you see a lurid story about two young men intimidated by the National Security Service of Uzbekistan (the KGB's successor), you're supposed to think, "Oh, they care."

Well, no they don't, because Joshua Foust has blasted human rights activists in the West relentlessly, all over the place, and critics of Uzbekistan's brutal regime who risk appearing on Registan constantly find themselves facing legions of anonymous ankle-biters trying to make them fall off the ledge of their position.

So what's this really about? It strikes me that it is more of the same effort to try to accomplish two things:

o scare off supporters of the opposition or human rights groups, especially in the younger generation, especially related to anything in the US or Europe;

o enable the ankle-biters to come on in full force to knock any such supporters of human rights and  harass and bully them into giving up -- and enabling their positions to stand without challenge.

Both of these purposes are served one again with a post about how the SNB (National Security Service, Russian initials) is threatening Jizzak activists.

With pictures even -- imagine!

Two Uzbek participants in a US educational program called FLEX (Future Leaders Exchange) and Awareness Projects International found that when they returned to their home town of Jizzakh after studying in the US, they were questioned and warned and threatened if they continued their "human rights activity".

Now, what does this remind you of? Yes, the suicide girl story -- she, too, returned to her home town of Andijan, was supposedly interrogated, threatened -- and then committed suicide. This sparked a tide of stories in social media about a Facebook-related suicide -- and it was all revealed as a hoax. That hoax  I believe was perpetrated by the SNB, with the help of uzmetronom.com and other regime supporters, and amplified at first by Sarah Kendzior on Registan. Ultimately, it didn't work to scare people off the Internet, or so it seems (and as I pointed out, maybe they never even heard about it, so low is Internet penetration in Uzbekistan).

So now we have a possibly "more believable" story in which the two young men don't commit suicide, Facebook-related or really, but return to tell their tales -- and on Registan, of all places! With pictures, even!

And in this story, the two boys handily make it back to the US, where they alert US officials to the interrogation and threats.  Hmm. Usually people like that not associated with the opposition or human rights groups (far and few between as we know) who still have relatives there (which these kids must, as they returned home?) don't talk. They don't make more trouble for themselves and their relatives.

Their story is likely true; it's hard to know, as the SNB isn't exactly on Twitter telling us when it interrogates students. But it's likely it had the desired effect -- the US officials running FLEX or other educational programs probably felt spooked and wrapped up their programs even more tightly. No more "human rights" chatter.

Why did I say "human rights" in quotation marks? Well, because what they did was indeed human rights related, but more in the anodyne vein that is allowed even in these countries -- issues like HIV prevention, "youth leadership,"  or even forced child labour -- which the government hasn't eradicated, but which it has accepted as a topic that it claims to have done something about.  Done right, all these topics aren't safe or anodyne, but they can become a substitute in some US-sponsored programs trying to steer clear of hard-core topics like torture or political imprisonment.

These kids may have been very sincere in what they were doing (one of them said he studied the structure of the Uzbek regime and even called Karimov's third term "unconstitutional" -- so even their mild educational/summer camp programs really may have been seen as a threat) and maybe really experienced what they experienced.

Interestingly, they hewed to the USAID/US exchange menu of the "safer" rights: "Nurullayev says he also discussed mistreatment and sexual abuse of women, the widespread use of forced child labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry, and the catastrophe of the Aral Sea." Again, it may be perfectly feasible that a young Uzbek man on his own became concerned about sexual abuse of women and child forced labour and the environment, just like a New York liberal, but that's usually not the menu for groups inside the country that tend to focus on political and religious imprisonment, freedom of expression, torture, etc. -- or the "social justice" side of the rights equation related to education, jobs, travel abroad for work.

Now, that doesn't mean that I think people inside Uzbekistan hew to "Western values" that prefer hard-core civil rights to the softer social issues. It's a different point: it's precisely the USAID crowd that promotes the softer issues in their programs and that's where it sounds like it comes from, not from indigenous concerns (which wouldn't necessarily be free expression, either!)

But regardless of whether the stories are true, or the experiences valid or concerns sincere, the uses to which this story is now going to be put benefit...whom? Not the human rights movement. Not US educational programs. But the regime, because now people reading it will say, "Oh, we need to make sure educational programs don't cross the line," and young Uzbeks will say "Oh, we need to make sure we don't go overboard or we could get in trouble." Mission accomplished.

That's what I said about the suicide student's story; that's what I said about Kendzior's role in purveying it. To be sure, she debunked the story, but not before it had a good long run, my efforts to fight the ankle-biters led me to be banned from Registan (!) and the message sent was very well established: don't mess with the Uzbek regime.

The reason I think this story of the two students may be regime-sponsored -- or at least instigated by the regime at this point to "send messages" -- is because the Turkmen government has also gone after FLEX at this time -- and we know the security services of these countries compare notes and do things together, inside or outside of the CSTO.

So Turkmenistan put pressure on FLEX in recent weeks as well, deliberately holding a competition for students right at the time as the FLEX exams were being held, and asking teachers about their students' participation in it -- it seemed they wanted to discourage them from getting near a US program. They could formally assent to the program by signing exchange agreements with the US, but then turn around and harass participants.

Ultimately, I would say: treat this story critically. Ask about the details and the implications. Ask why Registan is pushing it, all of a sudden, and not, oh, Human Rights Watch or something...

And if US officials have any starch in their shirts, they should march right up to the Ministry of Education and ask why SNB agents are harassing participants in a program that is officially part of an exchange agreement, and not start filtering all the content.

Russians Protest Kremlin's Support of Murderous Syrian Government

Photo by Ernest Mezak, member of Memorial Society in Syktyvkar at a picket in front of the United Russia Party office, February 9, 2012.  This was a demonstration staged by Komi's Memorial against the Russian government's position on the Syria crisis.

An interesting factor in the waves of Russian protests recently against the autocratic Putin and election fraud:  for the first time since 1968, protesters are taking up the awful aspects of Russian foreign policy.

Back in 1968, you will recall that eight brave Russian citizens went out on Red Square to protest the Soviet-led invasion of then-Czechoslovakia. Two of the women were released, the rest went to jail. I know most of them. It was a rare flash of interest in affairs not directly inside the Soviet dictatorship -- but even when things became a bit more free in the 1980s, Russians tended to be preoccupied with their own affairs -- and still are. They have enough to do just trying to gain their own freedom.

One of the slogans the Red Square demonstrators had on their posters during their short-lived action was "For our freedom, and yours" -- actually, an old Polish saying that means that when you fight against a tyrannical government that oppresses other countries, too, you are fighting "for our freedom, and yours." They put some of their slogans in Czech -- Ať žije svobodné a nezávislé Československo!" (Long live free and independent Czechoslovakia).

In the same way, a group in the Russian region of Syktyvkar in the Komi republic (where, as it happened, the famous writer Dovlatov did his guard duty) has staged a protest at the local office of the United Russia Party, a symbol of Putin. The group is part of the Memorial movement dedicated to remembering -- and preventing -- the crimes of totalitarianism.

The man in the photo here being questioned by police has a sign with Russian, English, and Arabic.

Wikipedia says, "Many of the 'settlers' who came in the early 20th century were prisoners of the Gulag who were sent by the hundreds of thousands to perform forced labor in the Arctic regions of the USSR." So it's that kind of place where people are free thinkers.

I've seen a few Facebook and Live Journal entries here and there talking about Syria and arguing about whether Russia is doing the right thing or isolating itself. This is really the first time in a long while I've seen Russians care about their country's bad behaviour abroad. Of course, the two aspects are intertwined -- the bad behaviour becomes possible because civil society is suppressed inside the country.

 

No, This is Not News

David Trilling of EurasiaNet runs a story about the bizarre behaviour of the World Bank country director in Kyrgyzstan. (It was on the front page of EurasiaNet yesterday - now it's moved to the Inside the Cocoon blog page.)

I saw the same story floating around Kyrgyz news sites and gave it a pass on my roundups.

Why? Because the Kyrgyz sources said that that the man was under medical supervision. There was concern that his unexpected and uncharacteristically erratic behaviour could have been the result of a stroke or a heart attack or something.

It just didn't make sense -- nothing Kyrgyzstan has been doing with the World Bank is so terrible -- at least, no more terrible than Uzbekistan, where the World Bank gives money supposedly to help agricultural reforms that really don't seem to reach farmers, who then resort to forced child labour, for example.

Yet EurasiaNet can't resist exploiting a story like this to take a swipe at Kyrgyzstan and the World Bank:

While the reasons for Kramer’s outburst remain unclear, it is not difficult to imagine an international donor having a fit of outrage in Kyrgyzstan, a country notorious for inefficiency, poor policymaking and corruption.

Yeah, we get all that, but World Bank staffers don't throw glasses at people and storm out of meetings even if privately they are unhappy. It doesn't fit.

Yes, I watched the video and it strengthened the sense that this could not possibly have been deliberate. Also, from the video it doesn't seem as if Kramer "hurled a glass" as Trilling says, quoting 24,kg,  but just knocked over stuff.

There's Kramer, talking calmly and boringly as people do at these kind of meetings, not raising his voice, when suddenly, he gets up and knocks things over. He whirls around strangely, as a woman fends him off, knocking more things over, but then carefully turns back and picks up his folder.

If he were having a stroke or some kind of "hypertonic crisis" how was he able to so methodically pick up his folder -- returning to the desk to pick it up after his outburst -- and go and carefully pick up his coat from the coat rack? That seems odd, but it might be what happens when someone has an attack and is trying to recover by doing routine things.

The other people at the meeting continued the meeting as if nothing had happened, although heads were turned, so it is not likely that he said something that was so dramatic -- it was only his erratic jump and knocking things over and hurrying from the room. 24.kg said he had in fact expressed the willingness of the Bank to work with the government of Kyrgyzstan.

A Diesel user had a bit more on the story from knews.kg:

Andrew Kramer, head of the World bank office, who spoke first, noted the readiness of his organization to provide support to Kyrgyzstan, after which somebody called him on his mobile phone. After listening to the caller, Kremer suddenly shouted something loudly, threw down his headphones for simultaneous interpretation in the direction of the deputy prime minister, breaking a glass that had been standing on the table, and quickly gathering up his things, ran from the meeting room.

Knews.kg added that his colleagues had told reporters that Kramer had an "attack" and that his driver drove him home.

The point is, his colleagues have said he had some kind of "attack," he was taken to the hospital as the newscaster clearly says on the video and 24.kg also reiterated, so...why are we claiming that he's denounced Kyrgyz corruption?

Yes, we all wish the World Bank did more of that, but exploiting this odd incident to make that point really seems off base. Maybe he did have a stroke. Or maybe some bad news on the phone that upset him?

Why does this kind of blog post get done at EurasiaNet? Because there's annoyance in this quarter that the US government has made something of a poster boy of Kyrgyzstan as the democracy model for Central Asia, and the country with the highest level of freedom (press freedom and freedom for NGOs, not perfect, are surely higher than its neighbours).

And there's the US base in Manas, of course. And that means that "progressives" have to knock Kyrgyzstan in compensation, as a kind of corrective to what they see as over-indulgence by the US and possible evil military narratives in play and exploitation of local people. Yet once you crank the dial to go on this radio channel, everything you listen to fits that paradigm -- and maybe you just can't perceive something as what it is.

No Kyrgyz news sites seem to have anything more on that -- if it was the denunciation of  the "corrupt Kygyz government" intended, we surely would have.

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Muhtorov Insists on Innocence; Islamic Jihad Union Insists on Existence

Not surprisingly, terrorism suspect Jamshid Muhtorov, an Uzbek refugee and former human rights activist, is pleading not guilty to charges that he sought to aid the terrorist group Islamic Jihad Union.

He's asked for a lawyer and asked not to be treated as terrorism suspect, i.e. not to be held in special correctional facilities but with the general prison population. He said he has not been allowed to see his wife or an attorney (the state will provide one for him).

"I have been held as a terrorist," Muhtorov said during the hearing. "But I swear to Allah I have never done anything."

Surely he should get his day in court like all suspects in crimes, with all due process. The FBI believes that he contacted the Islamic Jihad Union in Turkey and planned to travel there to assist them in some kind of terrorist attack. The hypothesis was strengthened by his telling his young daughter that he would not see her again, but would see her in heaven.

That seems like the sort of thing you'd tell someone if you were planning to die in a suicide bombing attack, but was that the case? It's hard to think of any other hypothesis. Is it possible his daughter said something like, "But what if you die in a plane crash?" And he said, "Don't worry then we'd see each other in heaven." But...that's not what the FBI claims to have in a phone transcript.

The skepticism about his case from Registan.net and others largely hinges on the notion that the Islamic Jihad Union "doesn't exist." Defying the best efforts of the think-tanking security bloggers, the IJU nevertheless insists that it does exist and just released a video.

The Long War Journal has this to say:

The video, titled "The Path to Paradise, Part 6," was released to jihadist websites in early December 2011 by Badr al-Tawhid, "the media arm of the Islamic Jihad Union," according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which translated the video.

"The first part of the video shows new fighters receiving training in firearms, explosives, and heavy weapons at an IJU camp in 2009-2010, while the second shows the fighters applying this training to clashes and strikes against NATO-led ISAF forces and Afghan soldiers in Khost, Kunduz, and Paktia provinces," a summary provided by SITE stated.

BTW, they make it awfully hard to get a peek at these jihad videos -- you have to give your name, telephone number, and purpose.

There follows an awful lot of detail about this group and their fighting and their whereabouts, and yet Registan may not find it compelling -- I'd have to go research whether they find this particular blog or writer somehow "suspect" -- they often make judgements like this based on mere association.

I can't imagine where this blogger would get so much detail if this terrorist group didn't exist, but I have no independent knowledge about anything to do with the IJU. This video can be viewed here on the MEMRI site, which says "A new video from the Waziristan-based Uzbek "Islamic Jihad Union" contains footage from an IJU madrasa in which young children are shown undergoing military training."

Resettlement Watch, a group that seems terribly preoccupied with the idea that refugees coming to this country could harbour terrorists, has weighed in with great suspicion about Muhtorov. I've posted a comment that I think that isn't a fair assessment of the majority of Uzbek refugees -- I was going to follow up, but trying to log on to a WordPress blog -- as always! -- is just as hard as viewing those jihad videos at SITE -- I give up.

Another commenter asks why there was a special airlift of refugees. But Muhtorov wasn't "airlifted" -- he wasn't even involved in Andijan and isn't an "Andijan refugee" although he is a recognized refugee for the generic reasons anyone would be fleeing Uzbekistan and facing "a well-founded fear of persecution" if he were to return. Muhtorov happened to flee to Kyrgyzstan at about the same time as the Andijan events, and there he spent some months being processed by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and was then eventually resettled in the US. Not exactly an "airlift".

Now why were the people really fleeing Andijan rescued quickly as a group? I can think of a number of reasons:

o the US decided to condemn the massacre and was then given an eviction notice, and they decided to save the people they could while they could
o those people may have given valuable human rights testimony that helped document the facts of the massacre
o I've also heard -- and have no way of confirming -- that some of the Andijan refugees were businessmen who actually helped the US with logistics or even intelligence in their efforts to use Uzbekistan as a route to Afghanistan.

Maybe? I have to wonder how useful such persons really could be. It may have been just a useful precaution of building up contacts among "the opposition" -- the active people who might take over after Karimov passes on.  I don't know. We have to realize that our country has a proud tradition of taking in persecuted refugees and also has a proud tradition of taking in defectors from countries where they sometimes have useful intelligence, and both are in the same stream. It's not like the US deliberately seeds terrorists into immigrant flows. There's also the question of whether Muhtorov "radicalized" once on US soil. There isn't enough information to tell. He came from provincial Uzbekistan where many people are devout Muslims to start with, although he was not known for religious garb and beard while in Uzbekistan.

Meanwhile, the Russians are concerned that Central Asians aren't quite up to snuff to fight terrorism, and just as they are constantly pressuring Tajikistan over its porous and dangerous border with Afghanistan (no angels they), so they are now pressuring Kyrgyzstan.

Dierdre Tynan of EurasiaNet has the story. Paul Quinn-Judge of the International Crisis Group said:

“It is not clear how much of a threat will emanate from Afghanistan. Will this free up Central Asia Islamists to return to Central Asia, for example? Do they have the capacity to challenge security in a country like Uzbekistan? These sorts of questions are completely open. No-one seems to have enough reliable information to make a plausible case either way."

Moscow’s gift of military hardware to Bishkek makes it clear that Russian leaders are worried about the ability of Central Asian states to address regional security threats. Speaking at a hand-over ceremony in Bishkek , Vladimir Pronichev, the head of Russia's border service, warned; "There are tough tasks ahead of us. Trans-border crime is gathering pace in Kyrgyzstan. We know what kind of difficulties Kyrgyz border troops are facing. We intend to continue developing cooperation and our friendship."

I wonder how that "friendship" will go.  Quinn-Judge seems to think that the Kremlin isn't at panic stations yet, reports Tynan:

Quinn-Judge said. "If the Russians were seriously worried, you would expect a more serious deployment of forces and equipment. Absent that, the weapons delivery seems more like a gesture of good will towards a government that, Moscow hopes, will be a little more consistent and compliant than its predecessor."

As the date of 2014 or even 2013 approaches with further US withdrawal and likely more Taliban encroachment, this may very well change.  I don't play down the Russian threat the way the Soros-funded EurasiaNet and the oft-cited Soros-funded ICG do.

Indeed, Bakiyev's ouster stands as a lesson of what happens to Central Asian leaders who aren't "compliant" -- as has been remarked, those bazookas in April 2010 in Bishkek didn't grow out of tulip beds. While there was plenty of home-grown opposition sentiment to Bakiyev, it appears it had some help. In fact, it seems sometimes overlooked that Russian precipitated the April events by suddenly jacking up gas prices and affecting Bakiev and son's cushy fuel deals, including with the Americans at Manas.

As soon as Roza Otunbayeva -- educated in Moscow and Russian-speaking and of a certain Soviet generation -- came into office as an interrim leader, she made overtures to Russia and even asked Moscow to help quell the pogroms in June 2010. It didn't. That's important to remember when reflecting how/whether Russia will amp up its troop presence on the border. A powerful deterrent isn't just "Chechnya syndrome" or "Afghan syndrome" before it, but Uzbekistan, which definitely, definitely doesn't want Russian troops on or near that border, full stop -- and was a key factor in preventing the CSTO from becoming embroiled in the ethnic clashes.

Even so, the Russians stand ever-ready to meddle on pretexts just like drugs or thugs, and now they have more of a foothold with all this new gift of $16 million of military hardware. $16 million! That's a lot more than say, the $100,000 the US is now giving Uzbekistan for night-vision goggles and bullet-proof vests.

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Leading Independent Turkmen News Site Hacked on Eve of Presidential Elections

The Turkmen government doesn't want you to know that not everybody is dancing in Turkmenistan, some people are getting bloody sheep's heads at their door for criticism.

Hackers likely connected to the Turkmen government have DDOSed the independent news site Chronicle of Turkmenistan again a week before choreographed elections.

You would think the dictatorship of Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov had enough leverage over the fake ballot, with total ownership and control of the media, only one state-controlled political party, and clones instead of rivals in the race.

But no. The dictator has to reach out abroad and take down a critical Internet site that might give the lie to the idea that all the people of Turkmenistan are happy and dancing.

They're not. There's discontent that bubbles up here and there on very limited social media outlets in this country; there are the stories that chrono-tm.org is able to publish. And then the grim news that a rare critic finds a bloody sheep's head at her door.

For now, you can read stories in Russian and English from chrono-tm.org's crew here.

Creepy "Message-Sending" of the Turkmen Regime to Critics on Eve of Elections

Sheep's head by home of human rights activist Natalya Shabants. Photo by Chronicles of Turkmenistan

Every once in a while we see the creepy, horrid underbelly of the Turkmen regime, behind the facade of the gleaming white marble palaces.

A human rights activist woke up today to find a bloody sheep's head outside her door,  the independent news site Chronicles of Turkmenistan has reported. Ugh.

No, this isn't a studio head in an episode of "The Godfather," this is real life.

Natalya Shabunts, a human rights advocate in Ashgabat (one of the few remaining public critics of the regime in Turkmenistan), criticized the elections colourfully as being like the Russian fairy-tale about the seven goats. (There are seven very docile candidates who are all under the president's control.) Then, yesterday on February 2, she gave an interview to Radio Azatlyk.

For men in this region, being called "a goat" is a terrible insult, because it's the prison slang term for raped prisoners and is a generic slur for homosexuals. Natalya was invoking a children's fairy tale, but it may have been taken even worse than intended.

While it might have been an angry neighbour who was insulted on behalf of Turkmen manhood who did this, chances are that angry neighbour doesn't have Internet service  or even listens to Radio Azatlyk, and wouldn't have known that Natalya even wrote such an article on chrono-tm.org, which in any case, is blocked.

So it's most likely the secret police "sending a message" -- and a creepy message it is, indeed.

Earlier, on January 31, Shabunts found a cross made of white powder on the mat outside her door. I don't know what that's supposed to mean in this predominantly Muslim country where there isn't any chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, but I think it means "We don't like you, get out."

 

 

 

 

So Wait: Clinton Can Criticize One NDN Partner Publicly But Not Another?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with Kazakh Foreign Minister Feb. 2 in Washington, still from video at state.gov.

Here we go again with this dubious instrumentality regarding the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) -- and a curious double standard where the US can criticize one Central Asian regime but not another

The Kazakh foreign minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov is in town and met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Evgeny Zhovtis,  a human rights leader is being released from prison, so we're supposed to believe that somehow the "transactional relationship" is being "sweetened". I don't think so.

Of course, Kazakhstan could have let Zhovtis out long ago if they wanted to be sweet -- and since they got the Astana summit agreement from  the US back in 2010, they should have let him out -- President Obama himself (!) asked publicly for Zhovtis to be released back then, and NDN overflight permissions were being negotiated then in the summer before the summit -- and granted without any movement on Zhovtis' case (no incentive). The Kazakhs didn't release Zhovtis back then, out of spite, or maybe because they didn't get Obama to come to the summit, but only Hillary. 

(This was a case, like the ill-fated Durban World Conference Against Racism, when, as it was explained to us once aptly by an NSC staffer, "the prestige of the presidency of the United States should not be lowered" -- and rightly so in both cases.)

What's just as fascinating about the meeting this week, however, is that Clinton is being forthrightly and publicly critical about Kazakhstan's human rights record. As the Wall Street Journal reported:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with the minister Wednesday. She urged Kazakhstan to expand freedom of the press and religious freedom—and to hold an open investigation into the strike violence and ensure that responsible officials are held accountable, according to the State Department.

It's good that the US is doing at least that much, while the events are still fresh in the mind -- the US has given up such live, public mentions of the need to investigate the Andijan events since Obama came to office, although it is still mentioned passively in the State Department's Country Reports.

It's also interesting that Clinton could also mention press and religious freedom so explicitly -- despite depending 100 p ercent on Kazakhstan's transit to the war in Afghanistan, as we know from EurasiaNet.

So why can Clinton criticize one NDN partner on whom the US fully depends, but not another, on whom the US equally depends? Is it because Tashkent is more touchy and grouchy about these things and Astana more sophisticated and cynical?

Kucera then quotes Caspian energy envoy Richard Morningstar on what he likes to call the "right" way to raise human rights problems (soon we'll hear Joshua Kucera finally explaining that this is in fact what he meant all along about what human rights activists were "doing wrong"):

“Problems in the human rights area will have an effect overall on our relationship. But I also think that we need to do a better job of how we frame that issue. Countries don't like to be preached at,” said Richard Morningstar, the US special envoy for Eurasian energy issues, speaking at a January 31 conference on US-Kazakhstan relations in Washington. “The issue needs to be framed in terms of, what's in their interest. Whether you're Kazakhstan or anyone else, all you have to do is look around the world at what's happened over the past few weeks, and how do you avoid that? What steps can you create to make a more open society that can avoid those types of situations?”

This is accommodationist and even moronic. Let's not be silly here -- it's not in the interests of an authoritarian regime to allow free press and free association -- that will create alternatives and bring down the government, or at least significantly weaken it. The lesson of every democracy movement in the world in the last 30 years ought to teach us that, if nothing else. It's faux-collegiality and duplicitious 21st Century Statecraft to claim  that not jailing critical press and opposition is going to "help" the regime. It won't, and we all realize that. This is a constructed fiction.

And if anything, the lessons from "looking around the world the last few weeks" might run like this, "Let's keep the army strong because even if the leader topples the regime can remain in place with its armed men" or "let's not let these revolutionaries get out of hand, they might usher in extremists."

The sell-by-date for touting the Arab Spring as a "lesson learned" for the Central Asian regimes is likely past, even though I believe it continues to be a worthy discussion -- and even if it's more about the US itself continuing to "learn lessons" from it all. But the Central Asian regimes can afford to let it pass, or make the same moves that those in power in the Middle East ultimately have made. Let this one go, keep that one.

BTW, the Wall Street Journal gives a nod to the alternative reporting of Elena Kostyuchenko on the death toll (although mistakenly saying "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" when in fact it was Novaya Gazeta -- unlike EurasiaNet (which reported only the official death count and never covered Kostyuchenko's report) or Registan (which actively agitated to undermine Kotsyuchenko's reporting):

The arrests come amid increasingly bold challenges to Mr. Nazarbayev, who has ruled Kazakhstan since 1989. On Dec. 28, Ruslan Sembinov, the local head of the opposition party Alga! in Astana, the capital, was arrested and accused of possessing drugs. On Jan. 23, Vladimir Kozlov, president of Alga!; Igor Vinyavsky, editor of an opposition weekly, Vzglyad; and activist Serik Sapargali also were arrested and charged with inciting social unrest, which carries a penalty of up to seven years, drawing a protest statement from Freedom House, the Washington-based nongovernmental organization.

The three were accused of involvement in riots that unfolded Dec. 16 in the western town of Zhanaozen, where an oil-workers strike has been under way since last May. The government said 16 people were killed that day, but a reporter for the independent Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta quoted a witness as saying she counted 64 bodies at the hospital morgue.

 **

I'm just a wee bit concerned that Clinton keeps showing up for these meetings both in Central Asia or with Central Asian leaders in the exact same nubby white and blue suit. Is it silk? Below, Clinton at a town hall meeting in Dushanbe in November 2011. Photo by State Department.

Kazakhstan's Catch-and-Release-Program

Kazazh Fisherman, 2006. Photo byvoixsynthetique.

The Kazakh Bureau for Human Rights had some very good news yesterday -- long-imprisoned human rights defender Evgeny Zhovtis is due for release in two weeks -- welcome indeed after the years of efforts by Western diplomats (including Richard Holbrooke) and human rights groups to get him out. 

As Kazakh Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanovis is in town visiting Hillary Clinton for talks, there's a tendency to see Zhovtis' release as some kind of "sweetener" for Kazakh-US relations -- as Joshua Kucera writes on EurasiaNet.

That's hardly the case, as the Kazakh government is very busy with its "catch-and-release" program like good fishers of men -- they may have let out Zhovtis -- and that was for a planned 20th anniversary amnesty anyway -- but they're busy putting more people in jail. And on more serious charges that are demonstrably political in nature.

Zhovtis' jailing on charges of vehicular manslaughter when he was sober and the victim was intoxicated shouldn't have led to 4 years of jail in any event; and getting out after more than 2 years shouldn't be seen as any kind of "concession".

The Kazakh regime had to put Zhovtis away during its chairmanship of the OSCE, as he is the leading human rights critic of Kazakhstan. He could be safely let out as a fake gesture when the issue was no longer human rights criticism, but opposition protests during the rigged parliamentary elections -- so under Kazakhstan's conservation program, one can be thrown back into the sea of indifference, and several more can be caught and held as bargaining chips -- or not.

And today there are still more arrests in Kazakhstan -- Bolat Atabaev, theater director and Janbolat Mamay, head of the Ruh pen til club, were arrested and charged with "incitement of social enmity" -- whatever that is -- and forced to sign a pledge not to leave town, the Kazakh International Bureau of Human Rights has reported.

Oksana Makushina, deputy editor in chief of Golos Respublika was brought in for questioning for six hours by the KNB. The secret police wanted to know who organized the press conference for the arrested editor of Vzglyad, Igor Vinyavsky, and showed her a leaflet that is forming the basis for the case being cobbled together against Vinyavsky.

The Human Rights Bureau has described the case as  "crudely put together". Lawyer Sergei Utkin has also been summoned although he is abroad.

Authorites are now confiscating the computers and office equipment, the Bureau and the Committee to Protect Journalists report.

Kucera wonders whether Zhovtis' release could "bury the mounting bad news"? Huh? How could it do that? It's the bad news Zhovtis himself would be reporting more of if he weren't in jail. When he gets out in two weeks let's see how much he is able to get back to his previous level of human rights monitoring and criticism.

Here's the leaflet Vinyavsky is incriminated with -- it says

Kyrgyzstan Got Rid of The Thieving Bakiev Family; That's Enough; Throw Him in the Garbage

Hardly the inciter of "social unrest" imagined, as the Bakiyev story stands as a warning to all dictators in the region even without any posters.

Ah, but we can see how this is going. Kazakhstan is maturing! Measured criticism on human rights may be ok now -- within its limits. But actual opposition agitation actually to challenge the powers-that-be -- no. And the journalism that enables it.