Different Stans

"I'm from the Country" -- But What Kind of Country Am I From? Belarus Pioneer Kitsch as Subtle Protest

 

This video of a 13-year-old Pioneer girl in Belarus named Ksyusha Degelko singing a song "I'm From the Country" to a hip-hop beat has gone viral on By-net and had already 600,000 views on April 25 -- but  seems more than a little tongue-in-cheek and a bit meta, even from one so young. (And yes, she's already been mashed up with Rebecca Black's "Friday" -- and worse.)

You get the impression she realizes -- as Sannikov explained everyone is realizing now -- that she lives in a dictatorship, and is poking a bit of fun at it by being absolutely straight-faced, singing about long skirts instead of mini-skirts, and her town, Soviet-like, named "October," and herself as a leader of the Pioneers (well, the official Belarusian Youth Organization as it is called now.)

The KGB has evidently sensed something is "up", naviny.by and the Belarusian radio station Evroradio report, and has come to her town and poked around to determine if the song is really patriotic. The song was written by a teacher, Andrei Pauk, who led a contest in a local children's cultural center.

The KGB was said to be particularly interested in these lines:

"Долой мини-юбки! Короткое, узкое! Теперь покупать будем всё белорусское!", "Достанем из недр наших фосфор и калий, чтобы в достатке работал аграрий!"

"Down with the mini-skirt! Short and narrow! Now we'll only buy everything Belarusian!

We'll reach to the depths for our phosphorus and potash so our agriculture will work to the fullest!"

(Well, it rhymes in Russian, and sounds a lot funnier, believe me.)

But Ksyusha says she didn't upload the video, some one in her circle of friends must have put it on Vkontakte, the Russian social network.

She's worked her way up to win the provincial finals, and I guess they are waiting to see if she will be the victor in the national contest. So far, the authorities have refused to show the entire video on TV, but a news program ran excerpts.

 BTW, the skittish Belarusian Service of Radio Liberty will likely give this story a pass because *gasp* the little girl sings in Russian. That isn't supposed to happen in Belarus, where people are supposed to speak Belarusian. Even Evroradio had to ding her and ask her if she knew any Belarusian songs; she said she knew Belarusian but couldn't think of any off the top of her head. Poor Ksyusha has also had to put up with all those hate-comments any young girl has to put up with on social media sites.

 

 

Andrei Sannikov: "A Tank Ran Over My Life...But Solidarity Saved Me"

 

Andrei Sannikov, the alternative presidential candidate in Belarus, and Zmitser Bandarenka, his campaign manager, were arrested in December 2010 merely for gathering on a public square in Minsk to protest the fraudulent elections, and were sentenced to long terms in jail -- and finally released two weeks ago the day before Orthodox Easter Sunday.

As the Estonian President Toomas Hendrik said, the release demonstrated that a united EU policy of sanctions against Belarus worked.

I remember a certain European campaigner who dreamed that we would all be walking around the streets of a free Minsk by Easter Sunday, April 2011. We weren't. Instead, our friends were in jail, being tortured. It was just awful. I urged sanctions, including on business, and he claimed they would "only hurt the people" and "not be effective" -- a very old story. Well, for Easter 2012, we weren't walking on any free streets yet, but at least Andrei and Dima were released, that's something. And it was due to the sanctions, which were in fact increased, and there is no way you can demonstrate them as "harming the people" -- who first and foremost are harmed by Lukashenka and his oprichina, and the Kremlin.  The US instituited sanctions on some businesses; the EU sanctions were mainly visa blacklists. They need to hold strong on this until the rest of the prisoners are released.

I was happy they were released, but I realized how bad I had felt every day they were in jail, and how I still didn't feel they were free -- they are essentially under a kind of house arrest. No sooner did he arrive home than Sannikov was summoned to the police and he will have to report regularly -- he is on a kind of parole, as is Bandarenka. They are both in poor health, especially Dima who had a terrible spinal operation while incarcerated.

Lukashenka got on television immediately to warn them that they better not act up, or he'd throw them right back in jail -- ugh. The tyrant also warned that if the European Union ratcheted up the pressure, they'd go back again, as well. So they are hostages. Sannikov's wife and small son are hostages as well, he said; in fact, his wife, Irina Khalip, a respected journalist who was herself jailed and sentenced, is still under house arrest and has had KGB guards even present in her house -- and couldn't come to meet Sannikov in prison as a result, as it was evidently the kind of public event (with lots of news cameras, etc.) from which she is barred. Sannikov still has a foreign passport, but it's not clear to him whether he can travel, and it's not clear whether his family could come with him in any event.

Sannikov and Bandarenka wrote an appeal for pardoning last fall, and have waited all this time for release from prison -- Lukashenka toyed with them, but fortunately the EU and US and other Western nations kept up the pressure (I don't know whether Russia did anything, but I did bring appeals to the Russian ambassador here in NY and raised Sannikov's case with him and other ambassadors including non-Western in the hope something might turn the key.)

It's Sannikov's conviction -- and I share it -- that the EU sanctions are what did the trick to get him out. And now it's important to keep them up, as he notes, to get all the other prisoners released -- notably Nikolai Statkevich, one of the other alternative presidential candidates, and others who took part in elections or dissent about the tyranny of the Belarusian state.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with asking for a pardon; indeed, any political prisoner must do this in order to save himself for further activism and of course save his family from further oppression. I recall Gorbachev was finally prepared to release the hundreds of political prisoners, after doling out only a few in 1986-1987 -- he finally accepted Sakharov's plea that the entire list had to come out. But he insisted that they ask for pardons or clemency. This was a nasty process, as it meant to some that they had to "promise to sin no more". Some of them crossed their fingers behind their backs as they did this, or they quite reasonably pointed out that they indeed would not violate *just* law, but silly laws like Art. 190-1, anti-Soviet defamation, they wouldn't abide by.

Lots and lots of prisoners of conscience in the Soviet era signed these requests or pledges as mere formalities and thought nothing of it, and indeed they shouldn't have. But some minority of "plantados," as they are called in Cuba, resisters who refused to cooperate in any way, refused to sign anything. And then of course pressure was put on them that things would go worse for their families. They held out anyway. Their fellows in the dissident movement urged them to sign and stop being thrown in punishment cells and risking death. Finally the last few came out. They should never have been put through this treatment. There is no shame in signing anything you have to sign to get out of wrongful political imprisonment.

The EU needs to keep harping, however, on the fact that people pardoned are people not rehabilitated or free (the very notion of "rehabilitation" is of course Soviet and wrongful -- there should be a blanket amnesty and be done with it, and they should be free to resume their activities.

Sannikov gave an interview to Novaya Gazeta's Elena Kostyuchenko which I thought contained a very important message: solidarity is what saved him, it's what chips away at the dictatorship. Principled sanctions by outsiders like the EU; then solidarity by those outside and inside the country to the extent possible. That's what does it.

My translation of the interview:

Andrei Sannikov:  I was anticipating release every day, every minute. But it happened, like everything in Belarus happens, in an atmosphere of secrecy; they ordered me to gather my things and didn't tell me where I was going. Since I had already gone through many prisons and colonies, it could have been the usual transport or the usual provocation. Then I was shaken down totally...searched, and all my things checked. Then they said "an order has come to release you." I was not shown the pardon decree. That was it. They drove me from the prison colony to the railroad station...

My status is completely unclear. I don't know what happened there and what it was about. They did return my passport -- I can be grateful for that much.

I don't know what will happen with my life now. I haven't seem my family and son for so long, it's like a tank ran over my whole life...

I can hardly tell you anything coherent about what I am expecting. I have to restore my life now. That's the first and main task. And that's all I lived for there -- for the time I would return to my family, and finally that has happened. After awhile, I can say something.

But I realize that I have come out...I have returned to a completely different country. This concerns not only the prices and the new value of the ruble, and what is happening in Belarus. It seems to me all the masks have been torn away. This is a dictatorship, and that's clear to everyone. And the head of the state even admits this. This absolutely changes the situation, it seems to me. But politics are very far from my feelings and senses now.

I'm finding it hard to believe. It's hard for me to hold myself back. It's good that people, friends, Irina's parents have come to visit us. Otherwise, my eyes would be moist. And I would just give way to my feelings. But it's good that I am held back, that people are nearby.

My son...Danka said that he was feeling shy. And I said that I was shy, too. We haven't seen each other in a long time. And believe me, that's the most important thing now.

...Ira wrote and told me, and I hadn't expected it, that there were so many people who suffered for me, worried about me, fought for me. Only solidarity, most likely, saved me. And my family. An enormous thanks to all of you.

There are lots of articles on charter97.org about the release of Sannikov and Bandarenka. Also Sannikov did an interview on an NTV talk show (see above), the transcript in English is here.

Mainly he calls for the release of all the remaining political prisoners, and thanks people for working on his case.

Bandarenka gave an interview to the newspaper Korrespondent saying that as long as Russia backed the Belarus regime, little change would happen, quoting Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet political prisoner now in Israel: "A little dictatorship exists as long as there is support from a big dictatorship."

Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslav Sikorski has said no modernization of Belarus is possible until political prisoners are released:

”Every person is born with certain rights: right to live, to choose leaders. When these rights are taken away, people fight for them. We, the Poles, have experienced the bitterness of captivity, and we carefully perceive the voice of the Belarusian civil society. The reflections over an incentive resulted in preparation of this dialogue. The program the European Dialogue with the Belarusian society for modernization was launched three weeks ago in Brussels. The Warsaw seminar is the first in the cycle. Its purpose is to elaborate ways of modernization of Belarus. The implementation of the reforms should begin only when the people of Belarus want it, and only if they implement them themselves. We don’t want to force you, but Poland wants to help.

Belarus is in urgent need of modernization. In the economic freedom ratings by Freedom House, Belarus is on the 42nd place. Reform deadlock, high prices, no perspectives for the young, a very weak flow of investments. The state capitalism leads to corruption, people’s purses are getting thinner. This controlled, “tamed” economy will sooner or later lead to a grave crisis. Market economy, in its turn, helps establish a free state. Poland wants to become Belarus’ companion, and that is why we launch this initiative."

This is a variation of the ideas expressed by Nobel Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov, physicist and human rights campaigner, who always linked peace and progress with intellectual freedom and human rights, and told the detentniks back in the day that there wouldn't be nuclear disarmament and arms control until there was intellectual freedom and release of political prisoners.  Sakharov was probably more of a socialist than Sikorski, but Sakharov didn't think the economy would be fixed by Soviet-style solutions, either. Belarus is in a shambles; people depend on the state for their low-paying jobs and some sort of food rations available even at high prices and that's how the regime persists. Lukashenka can keep pointing to the economic wrenchings of Russia or Ukraine and get people to cling to him.

As Index on Censorship has said, Sannikov and Bandarenka are released, but Belarus is still not free...

 

 

 

Thought Crime or Conspiracy for Action? The Mehanna Case and the Minimizers of Terrorism

I've written before about the vexing problem of those working overtime to minimize terrorism and written a great deal about the case of Jamshid Muhtoror, the Uzbek refugee who has been arrested on charges of providing material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

The judge's decision has come down in a case that has some similarities, that of the Boston-based US citizen Terek Mehanna.

And not surprisingly, Joshua Foust has gone to bat for this man, sentenced to 17 years on charges of providing material support to Al Qaeda. Foust believes he has been unfairly tried and handed an overly-lengthy sentence for "thought crime," although he concedes that he deserves something like an eight-year sentence for lying to a grand jury.

As usual, there isn't a single comment questioning Foust -- and he never answers polemics in a forum like PBS where he'd have to behave himself under their likely "civility" TOS rules and argue with ideas instead of engaging in his usual nasty shenanigans. There's a bunch of adulatory re-tweets by people who don't even appear to think about the issues or read the indictment or dig deeper, but just take the "text as long as your hand" and click and click some more to like or retweet because it seems to fit the zeitgeist of suspecting every terrorist case as concocted by evil Amerika bent on subduing the world in the name of counterterrorism.

So I commented as follows:

Foust's article represents a troubling minimizing of the threat of terrorism and questioning of law-enforcement that we've seen throughout his analysis of the Muhtorov case. See, for example this discussion.

It's important when Foust and others such as Glenn Greenberg are crying "thought crime!" to read the full indictment [you have to click through a maturity wall because I believe it contains links to graphic beheading videos.]

Foust doesn't seem to concede that this case involves a *conspiracy*, that is, participation in a criminal group or network. His defense hinges on the idea that Mehanna never contacted any terrorist. But he indeed associated with others who tried, even if they failed, to get training with Al Qaeda. He associated with others who in fact had training in a terrorist group; in fact one of them was the person he lied about to a grand jury -- *that* was the lie. He lied about the purpose and intended destination of a trip to Yemen, and lied as to whether he had received any assistance on this trip -- he said no, although he had. Foust concedes that lying to a grand jury is a problem, but it's important to point out what the lie was about: associating with a man trained in a terrorist camp, and lying about the true purpose of his visit to Yemen, to get terrorist training.

Is this guilt by association, the bugabear of forums' geeks and literalists all over the Internet? Well, if you don't want to be accused of the actions of a group, don't actively, willfully, knowingly, deliberately associate with a group and attempt -- even if you fail -- to meet the main criminals in it and gain training in a terrorist camp.

There's also the question of material support, which Foust has rejected before as "overbroad" -- he never seems to concede that supporting a terrorist group is unlawful, or -- just when it seems like law-enforcement might in fact narrowly demonstrate to him -- he jumps to say that it wasn't really support anyway.

Translating for Al Qaeda and helping their propaganda networks of jihad films and hatred of the US, gleefully showing beheadings and glorifying the 9/11 terrorist attack and such, this is indeed helping a terrorist group. Just because Mehanna didn't physically come into contact with Al Qaeda but only translated and published and communicated on the Internet doesn't meet it isn't *material* help. Is the Internet always and everywhere to sanitize every act for Foust, so that any extremism is always to be excused as "Interneting while Muslim" as he and other sympathetic bloggers have described it?

Perhaps there might be a case made for Mehanna *in isolation* as merely a devout if extreme Muslim believer with extreme but not criminal views if all he did was view jihad videos or look at jihad websites or discuss them with others of like mind.

But he was in a group and network with others who in fact were attempting to gain training *as terrorists* and intending to commit terrorist acts.

How long are you suppose to wait before expression (not just thought) and intention of criminal action (not just discussion) are to be enacted? If you couldn't see Mehanna's intent, and you couldn't see the intent of all the others in the conspiracy, perhaps you could make a case of "reasonable doubt." But you can see them; it's the Internet.

The arguments that Foust, Greenberg and Mehanna's defense make are understandable, given their world views and professions, but they don't seem to go as far as saying the judge and prosecutors are politicized or actually have violated the law. But the prosecutor made his case and the judge accepted it  -- they did make the narrow distinction between protected speech and unprotected speech. Foust and company just didn't like how it went. The judicial system doesn't treat these cases as isolated within some precious autonomous realm known as "the Internet". They view the intentions on display and the associations with known terrorists and from all evidence, they make a legitimate call that there was knowing and deliberate material assistance to a terrorist group, Al Qaeda. Translation of videos and web site text are crucial to Al Qaeda in their recruitment and propaganda activities.

Foust's rendering of the Muhtorov case here is tendentious as well, as he fails to describe -- again -- what's actually in the indictment, which is not just reading about jihad or not just discussing it on the Internet, but contact with a foreign terrorist organization and preparation of equipment and cash to make a trip to Turkey and meet up with a representative of the Islamic Jihad Union. The interpretation here isn't "overly broad," because it has to do with phoning an actual group member, speaking in code about "weddings" which is said to be the Al Qaeda-style code, telling his young daughter that he would "see her in heaven" and so on. The arrest of Muhtorov was lawful, based on what the prosecution has shown so far.

Foust concedes that the government should have the ability to "stop terrorist plots in their tracks, and it should reserve the right to go after the terrorist networks that facilitate these plots." But he says there should be "limits" so that people who merely talk smack about the US on pro-jihad sites aren't nabbed, and that there isn't a "disproportionate response" to Islamist terrorism. But these people didn't just talk, they associate knowingly and intentionally with *those who do act*. They didn't just talk, *they planned with those who act*. They didn't just read or express opinions, they gathered material support and equipment and planned to hook up with those who commit terrorism. So the US has from all indications acted properly.

Everyone wants fundamental civil rights to be protected in counterterrorism. Yet as Art. 30 of the the Universal Declaration of Human Rights indicates, "Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein." In other words, you have to have some care about the very framework of rights themselves, and not invoke rights merely to usher in extremists who undo all of them for everybody.

In other words, you cannot use one right (Art. 19, freedom of expression) to undo another right (Art. 3, the right to life, liberty and security of person). While the First Amendment goes behind the UDHR's Art. 19 and Art. 29 regarding "morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society," the First Amendment isn't an endless license to plan and execute terrorism. There are Supreme Court decisions that define the limit of speech when it constitutes "incitement of imminent violence". And now we are seeing jurisprudence that establishes that deliberate collusion with terrorist groups to aid and abet them in their violent acts is a similar lawful limitation. Challenge this if you will, but don't pretend it's about "thought crime"; it's about abetting actors and their actions.

I suspect we will see a lot more attention paid to this hitherto obscure
article in the coming years, as indeed it contains the remedy for how
you uphold human rights but prevent those who would undo them for all of
us from succeeding in their deadly intentions.

Foust and others keep wanting to amplify what they see as a vulnerability in the nexus between thought and action that should be left unimpeded to ensure there is no "thought crime". But they have only done this by treating Mehanna in isolation from his comrades and their actions, and failing to admit the nature of the conspiracy here.

Registan Pretending to Care About Human Rights

Nathan Hamm, the defense analyst, is up to no good again at Registan, so it needs to be called out.

For those just tuning in, or those getting merely a Google news delivery on key words, or those only superficially following Registan, it looks like Hamm has been writing pieces about human rights in Uzbekistan lately.

Why, he's merely proving his oft-told point that in fact Registan is really balanced and the bloggers there really do cover human rights and that they aren't just craven symps of Central Asian regimes or the Kremlin or the DOD...or something. Oh, no, never.

I'm reminded of that famous WikiLeaks on Karimov, however, where the US Embassy official quipped that Karimov "does just enough to get the West off his back." Indeed. And we're seeing that lately as he doles out a sick prisoner or does some other little thing even as very bad things continue (like what happened to Elena Urlaeva).

So what Hamm is doing is writing some very cunningly crafted pieces that can give the superficial appearance of challenging the regime and caring about human rights, but which contain various sandwhiches with contents that in fact deliver other messages.

First, there was the post about the US Commission on International Religious Freedom declaring Uzbekistan "a country of particular concern". They do this every year. They do this for amply documented reasons in their long reports, which include things like Tashkent having more than 5,000 devout Muslims in the prison system who have been tortured and denied a fair trial as they've been detained on various grounds, often appearing as pretexts.

This is a no-brainer, and the US doing this isn't something that even Hamm (or the other owner of Registan, Joshua Foust, who has run an incessant campaign against human rights groups for more than a year, for example in this piece in the Atlantic) can really criticize. After all, if you're going to be part of the establishment, you can't question the government THAT much. And this is the government! It's also obvious, and even the most craven symp couldn't really fault it.

Interestingly, in this post, Hamm even says (!) that the US has leverage of sorts with Uzbekistan because it needs to get out of Afghanistan, Uzbekistan supports that cause, and they should have common interests. Imagine! I guess he's been reading my blog! *Cough*.

Of course, maybe all of this is to do a fake tap-dance to show "daylight" between the positions of Foust and Hamm, but not really, it's more about this:

The moral of the story is, leave the driving to the government. Not unruly and chaotic and obnoxious NGOs. Let the US, in its wisdom, have its advisory commissions; let them render rulings; let the State Department then...ignore them. (Because that's what the State Department does: they listen to this "country of concern" stuff and do nothing, as they've already waived Uzbekistan of the normal restrictions to military aid that might apply. So Hamm can safely pontificate on this subject with hand on heart, knowing that it won't affect a damn thing.)

But the mainly the message is: the government should make these rulings, reports of groups like Human Rights Watch or Committee to Protect Journalists are only to be scorned and sneered at (as Joshua Foust has in fact trashed them).

Next, Hamm turned in another piece about UNICEF, and the sham that is their relationship with the Uzbek government. Now here, there's another twist; if the previous post was all about reifying government commissions and dissing (by not mentioning even) NGOs, now Hamm is slamming a multilateral institution's agency that is, of course, a soft target. Everybody knows UNICEF contorts itself into a pretzel just to get to stay in Tashkent. They...help innoculate children and iodize the water supply or...something. That's why it's all worth it! And it's easy to slam their less-than-honest relationship with the duplicitious Uzbek government because they are helping them do nothing about child labour. UNICEF never condemns forced child labour as such in Tashkent, but has a program where they sort of mitigate it, or at least monitor it...but of course, not like the ILO would, were it allowed into the country.

As we know from WikiLeaks, UNICEF was pretty craven with the Uzbek government on a number of accounts, and the US went along with it. This isn't news. In fact, if I or HRW or anyone else wrote about this, it wouldn't be accepted by Registan because then we'd be gratituously tying these issues to the NDN...or something non-PC in Registan's book.

So Hamm happily bashes UNICEF but inevitably thus deflects attention from the real problem -- the Uzbek government -- and obscures the brave figures responsible for documenting and exposing this in the first place, the independent human rights movement in Uzbekistan and its allies in the international human rights movement. To do so would, of course, challenge Foust's essential condemnation of these groups for even...existing. Or rather, for failing to just simply exist and document the sins of the Uzbek government, but then shut up and not think of ways to get their attention via various proxies like the EU.

It's sad to see people fall for this show Hamm is putting on, because they haven't seen all the viciousness that went before from him and Foust toward human rights groups. Well, they'll figure it out eventually.

Then comes the third post. Indignation about Gulnara! Now seeing that piece, there are those who would be tempted to think that Registan has been on the road to Damascus and decided to stop carrying any water for the regime.

But of course, it's merely that Gulnara happened to set up a nice one-two punch for the "progressives" mad at Komen, the breast-cancer people who got all the PC crowd pissed off when they tried to de-fund Planned Parenthood.

For the sake of bashing the religious right, or conservatives, or anybody else who thinks that Komen should have been able to fund who they want regardless of what any one else thinks (it's a free country), Hamm will cross the street, and even take on appearing to dis Gulnara just like those human rights picketers that Foust and others thought were "all wrong" last year in their obsession with Gulnara.

So all in all, quite the tour de force of bad faith from this poseur.

 

 

Urlaeva Placed in Psychiatric Hospital in Tashkent

Elena Urlaeva, among the best known of the human rights defenders in Uzbekistan, has been placed in a psychiatric hospital in Tashkent by relatives, the independent news site fergananews.com reported.

Urlaeva, head of the Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan was admitted to Tashkent Psychiatric Clinic Number 1 on April 5 by relatives who said that "there were medical indications for the hospitalization," fergananews.com reported, citing unamed sources.

Denis Urlaev, Urlaeva's adult son, said that a court hearing was held April 6 which ruled that Urlaeva must be forcibly admitted to psychiatric treatment.

Denis told fergananews.com that Urlaeva was being treated well, that she could have unlimited visits from relatives, and no medications were being admistered, due to the fact that she had high blood pressure and was at risk for a stroke.

"The doctors in the clinic are very nice, but they cannot say how long the treatment may last," Denis said. "The condition is severe for now."

That's one version of the story.

But uznews.net, another independent news site has a different version, where colleagues fear that her distressed state was somehow induced, to bring about a hospitalization in order to prevent her from traveling to Geneva to a UN meeting in May. "Something was done to her," say colleagues.

Here's what uznews.net  had to say about the stunned reaction of her colleagues to a sharp personality change:

"Elena became completely out of touch after returning last Monday from a trip to Turkey, which was a total surprise for many of her colleagues," said journalist Viktor Krymzalov. He said that he had talked to Urlaeva Wednesday and was shocked at her statements. Elena reported that she had traveled to Turkey at the invitation of Muhammad Salih, leader of  the Erk Party and the Popular Movement of Uzbekistan (PMU), where she had completely reviewed her life.

"She was saying we had to believe in Allah and not believe the lying West," said Krymzalov.

Uznews.net said Salih could not be reached for comment as he was reportedly outside of mobile phone range.

Urlaeva was said to make other incoherent statements, such as that school and work were "evil," and that Switzerland (where she was to travel) "did not exist." She was also said to throw her human rights documents off a balcony.

It was so unlike her normal behaviour that friends couldn't believe it was her, says uznews.net.

Urlaeva's mother told reporters that they had finally called an ambulance because her daughter was behaving irrationally, falling into hysterics, breaking dishes, and crying "Allah Akbar."

Two human rights movement colleagues, Bahodyr Namazov and Abdullo Tojiboy-ugli, concerned at Urlaeva's strange statements on the phone went to her apartment to visit her, but she refused to open the door to them, saying without her husband's permission she could not let them in.

Urlaeva's colleagues said that they had never seen her behave in this way, even in the past when she was hospitalized, and that she had always behaved normally. They fear that she could have been brainwashed in some fashion.

Tojiboy-ugli said Urlaeva had been preparing for a major speech in Geneva, and had a number of documents on a flash-drive, but this was now missing.

Human rights activists told uznews.net that they hoped to get a comprehensive examination of Urlaeva's condition.

Urlaeva was forcibly hospitalized in 2001 and again in 2005, but international human rights groups protested that this was a punitive use of psychiatric treatment, and ultimately she was released. She held a hunger strike against forcible treatment in 2005, and later obtained an examination from a Russian psychiatric hospital to prove that forcible treatment was not required.

Urlaeva has been warning for months that authorities were trying to put her back in psychiatric hospital as a way of suppressing her human rights activism.

It's hard to know what this story is really about at this point. Urlaeva has been under enormous stress, and undergoing severe disruption in her family, as her domestic partner was reportedly abusing her, and authorities were attempting to remove her partner's nephew whom they cared for.

I haven't heard of the son Denis involved in her story before, although he has apparently put up a comment on this article in uznews.net on March 16, discounting a reader's claim that he was sentenced and jailed. The slew of hateful comments underneath the article give you a tiny taste of the constant harassment and pressure this woman has lived under.

It strikes me that even if she was in good mental health, the constant stress and harassment she has faced from both authorities and various "irate citizens" who may or may not be incited by intelligence agents could cause a breakdown.

I have had long experience with dissidents who have been put in psychiatric hospitals in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet republics and I would have to say that almost without exception, none of them required forcible psychiatric care, but many of them required some kind of treatment for various conditions such as bipolar, depression, etc. You could not expect the doctors in these settings where psychiatry was horribly abused and indeed used as a punitive arm of the state to provide the appropriate treatment.

Urlaeva has done an enormous amount of work over the years documenting basic human rights violations in Uzbekistan that are indisputable, notably the forced use of child labor in the cotton fields and suppression of freedom of expression and assembly, as well as about socio-economic issues such as treatment of disabled, elderly, workers. And whatever her current mental condition, that work stands and shouldn't be discredited -- although likely not only the regime will attempt to discredit her, but also various water-carriers for Karimov and haters of the human rights movement.

Already the pro-Karimov tabloid site infamous for leaking sensational stories about crime and politics has jumped on it, with a headline, "True Believer Urlaeva," claiming that Urlaeva, who was Russian Orthodox, converted to Islam "while recently in Switzerland" (she was actually in Turkey, and planned a later trip to Switzerland in May). "It was exactly this step that caused the psychiatric distress of a woman with heightened sensitivity," snarks uzmetronom.com.

What can you do? It's an old story. I hope that Urlaeva and her family will find the peace and stamina they will need to regain their stability.

 

Why Aren't They Mentioning the Azeri Population in Iran, Hostage to Any Theoretical Action by Israel?

When I first saw EurasiaNet dutifully re-post a story from Foreign Policy, "Israel's 'Secret Staging Ground' alleging that Israel had a deal with Azerbaijan to refuel at Azerbaijan's airbases on the border with Iran, I wasn't surprised. (Baku later denied this, but EurasiaNet didn't note that yet).

That is, I wasn't surprised that Joshua Kucera of EurasiaNet was reprinting Foreign Policy -- there's a close relationship between EurasiaNet authors and Foreign Policy, where they publish. Nor was I surprised that both Foreign Policy and EurasiaNet were running a story to intensify mistrust of Israel  -- the EurasiaNet tilt, like Foreign Policy, is toward the "progressive" line that is quite critical about Israel.

The author of the FP story, Mark Perry, said:

"The Israelis have bought an airfield," a senior administration official told me in early February, "and the airfield is called Azerbaijan."

But -- as Kucera reminds us -- when Israel made a $1.6 billion arms agreement with Azerbaijan, "ikely Azerbaijan's largest single arms purchase ever," he said that it "wasn't because of Iran":

The timing of the deal is misleading: regardless of the ongoing ratcheting up of tension between Israel and Iran, and increasing attention to Israel's intelligence activities in Azerbaijan, these weapons are destined to be used not against Iran, but against Armenia, which controls the breakaway Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno Karabakh. Though it's tempting to think otherwise.

So Kucera denies an Iran-related motivation -- but falls for the temptation to some extent himself:

Is Azerbaijan going to use Israeli weapons against Iran? No chance. Azerbaijan has nothing to gain by attacking Iran, or even by cooperating with an Israeli attack except in the most discreet possible way.

Except in the most discreet possible way, you see.  As Kucera adds:

The exception would be if Azerbaijan's influence were so discreet as to allow Baku some plausible deniability; then Iran probably wouldn't stand to gain from attacking Azerbaijan. According to the FP report, the most likely use for the Azerbaijan airfields would be so that Israeli aircraft could land there after an attack, obviating the need for mid-air refueling en route to Iran, which Israel isn't particularly experienced with and which would reduce the amount of weapons the planes could take on each sortie.

I wondered if this was a clever new kind of plausible-deniability deterrence -- if true -- or a clever new way to claim you don't think Israel is going to do something bad -- and then claim in fact it secretly will.

What I was most puzzled about, however, regarding the FP piece and the subsequent piece in The Bug Pit was this:  why didn't they mention the sizeable Azeri population within Iran?

There are at least 16 million Azeris in the south of Iran (there are no official numbers on this revealed but they are believed to make up 24 percent of the population); they travel frequently across the border to Azerbaijan, where it's like a vacation for them as Azerbaijan remains a secular state and doesn't have the same strict rules. Foreign Policy mentioned this minority, but only in terms of recently fraying relations (they are always fraying over one thing and another) -- the accusations that Azerbaijan was helping Israeli agents assassinate Iranian scientists. And later, only historically, in reference to the posibility raised by retired Israeli Brig. Gen. Oded Tira of enlisting the support of the Azeri minority as a hypothetical (unlikely, as they are loyal to the regime -- they have to be, to survive).

But they didn't mention the sizeable Azeri population within Iran as a powerful deterrent to Baku not really ever embarking on anything that provocative against Tehran.

Indeed, the Azeris of Iran are hostages to anything that Israel and Azerbaijan might do that Iran might not like. Tehran can and does retaliate against them every time there are escalation of tensions in Caspian Sea conflicts, for example -- we've seen this time and again with various scandals -- Azerbaijan makes a pipeline deal that Iran doesn't like, or moves towards positions that Iran doesn't like on Caspian controversies, and they threaten to retaliate.

Oh, but there *is* a "strong, but mostly quiet, alliance" between Baku and Tel Aviv says EurasiaNet because WikiLeaks tells us.

Millions of dollars of Israeli weapons have already been sold to Azerbaijan -- and remember the drone that crashed? That was said to be Israeli-made.

The FP report cites a "a senior retired American diplomat who spent his career in the region and "four US military intelligence officers". There is a lot of detail but it's mainly citing research on the hypotheticals.

After this report came out, I thought to myself: there's a dog not barking here -- Russia. Russia does a lot of the talking on the whole Iran nuclear issue, as an ally of Iran's, and has backslid on progress it once made ostensibly pressuring Iran -- especially as relations have worsened with the US and NATO over Libya.

Why didn't Moscow have anything to say about this supposed move to help Israel ratchet up its deterrent factor (which could also double as a provocation ratcheting up tensions, of course, like all deterrents in the nuclear game)?

Azerbaijan is Russia's ally and close partner on some things (energy) -- and Russia never really seems able to end the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by pressuring Azerbaijan, although as a nominally Christian-majority nation it is historically perceived as Armenia's ally as well. Periodically Russia seems to imply it won't help solve that conflict if it doesn't get its way on this or that gas or pipeline project.  For that matter, Russia is now better friends than it used to be with Israel. Wouldn't it have something to say? It didn't...

Now I read in Commentary the question as to why the Obama Administration leaked the Azerbaijan-Israel story? It sure does seem strategic. Commentary reports:

Veteran Israeli journalist Ehud Yaari has written in the Times of Israel claiming last week’s bombshell from Foreign Policy magazine about Azerbaijan’s willingness to allow Israel to use its air bases to strike Iran was pure fiction...But though Yaari presents some good arguments why it might not be true, unlike magazine author Mark Perry, he offers no sources or reporting to back up his assertion.

Commentary author Jonathan S. Tobin himself reported the story and found it plausible at the time (like FP and EurasiaNet, although Commentary is pro-Israel). He didn't mention the Azeri-hostage factor, either, but he probes in a different direction:

Unless you are willing to believe, as perhaps Yaari and others disputing its authenticity do, that Perry is lying about the fact that senior officials in the Obama administration leaked the story to him, it’s still important to ask why they did so. What possible motive could they have had?

While the story could be true, shining such a spotlight on it, reasons Tobin, reveals:

the willingness of Obama’s minions to circulate the tale speaks volumes about the off-the-record malevolence that lurks beneath the surface of the president’s current charm offensive aimed at Jewish voters.

I don't think you have to scratch too hard on that surface to see the malevolence, judging from the Battle of the Think Tanks recently in Washington, where Center for American Progress and AIPAC and others related on each side of the Israel-Palestine issues battled fiercely on Twitter and the blogosphere, in the end, each side sacrificing staff. You could also look at the 771 plus comments under Perry's article -- the antisemites and conspiracy loons are having a field day.

Tobin cites' Yaari's more practical military concern that FP didn't seem to factor in:

Iran’s friend Turkey is not likely to permit the Israeli Air Force to fly over its territory to get to the Azeri bases.

While he doesn't mention the 16 million Azeris as such, Yaari does mention yet another regional enclave factor -- Nakhchivan, the Azeri enclave borderd by Iran from which Azerbaijan is cut off by Armenian territory.  As Yaari points out, it is useful to open up a map and look at this.

It's my belief that among the biggest factors restraining Baku from providing any huge support for Israel in terms of a possible pre-emptive strike are a) the Azeri minority held hostage b) Russia's disapproval. At the end of the day, Russia cares more about Iran than Israel, and so does Azerbaijan. It's next door. They're the ones that have to live with the Day After.

I'm taking for granted that the hostage factor is a huge restraint, but I'm willing to consider other alternatives based on the brutal pragmatism of this region's tyrants, and their sheer disregard for their own people, even in their own countries. But the belief that minorities can be held hostage and used as pawns is at least as old as Stalin's Prisonhouse of the Peoples, and part of the reason he chopped up the map with so many odd enclaves was to play people off against each other.

When Tajikistan arrested two Russian pilots and accused them of carrying contraband, as part of a larger dispute with Russia about payments for a base and the uneasy relationship with Russia's military presence on their soil, Russia instantly retaliated by saying they'd expel 10,000 Tajik labor migrants from Russia. That's how they roll. Of course, they have their own Russian hostage-population in Turkmenistan, and that has sometimes been a factor in their gas deals with Ashgabat, but lately, since the deterioration of relations after failure to get a price deal in 2009 and mutual acrimony over a pipeline explosion, the Kremlin hasn't done anything for the Russians trapped in Turkmenistan as Ashgabat doesn't recognize their dual citizenship and wants to force them to take new Turkmen passports.

Each one of these countries seem to have each others' titular nationality group, as they call it, in the form of a minority in their own country, and they play on it. But my point here is that you may not be able to count on them going to bat for their own when the chips fly.

Even so, I continue to think the deterrent factor is big on both fronts -- Baku is not going to deliberately harm their fellow Azeris lightly, or cause a huge influx of refugees they can't take care of -- they are still taking care of refugees from the past twenty years of crises. Nor will they fly in the face of what Russia wants.