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.
