Different Stans

Tajik Opticon #5

1907 Solar Eclipse Expedition by Sergei Prokhudi-Gorskii, Russian Photographer in Central Asia.

This is my little newsletter on Tajikistan that comes out once a week on Saturdays. If you want to see past issues, look to the column on the right down below for the key word "Tajikistan". If you want to get this in your email or you have comments or contributions, write [email protected]

o One Step Forward (Facebook Re-Opened), Two Steps Backward (Twitter, Russian Sites Closed)

o Could You Ever Turn an Anodyne Development Job in Dushanbe into Anything Real?

o Will Tajikistan Really Become Like Yemen, Guys?

 COMMENTS:

Oh, geez, didn't we just all laugh at the Tajik minister of communications and get Facebook opened up again with the help of the US ambassador?! And now Twitter is down and all the Russian social network sites!

Yes, this is terrible. Most likely it will end in two days. Or maybe 7 days. It's not like Russian troops in Tajikistan are going to get those sites right back up, any more than whatever US military are in Tajikistan got Facebook working again but...Russian troops need those sites, too, so it's not over yet. It's more about which providers are hooked up to which members of the Family in charge of the whole country, and what's in it for them. Watch this space.

Also I think the head of the Internet Service Providers Association, which is independent but subject to governmental directives, got it about right -- it's not about perfidious US envoys who care only about their own California corporations or Russian indifference to their own business people, as @etajikistan was implying last week; it's more about the Tajik elections in a year. Every single resource available, administrative or otherwise, will be deployed in keeping the same set in power.

We all worry about how Tajikistan will develop, especially when foreign NGOs are increasingly blocked, social media is blocked, and domestic NGOs defunded or de-legitimized. How will these groups survive?

TAJIKISTAN SHUTS DOWN TWITTER AND OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS

Tajikistan has ordered local Internet providers to block Twitter, one of more than 100 sites including popular Russian-language social networks starting next week, an industry representative told AFP Saturday.

"The (government) communications service has sent Internet companies a huge list of 131 sites that must be blocked in the country from Monday," said Asomiddin Atoyev, the head of the Tajik association of Internet providers.

So while access to Facebook was opened up last week, now Russian sites are being blocked:  Vkontakte [In Touch], Odnoklassniki [Classmates], the most popular social networking sites in Russia with many users in the ex-Soviet Union, and Mail.ru, an email service.

The head of the Internet Service Providers provides an explanation:

"The next presidential elections will be held in Tajikistan in November 2013, and this will bring even more harsh control of Internet resources and independent media," predicted the head of the National Association of Independent Media of Tajikistan, Nuriddin Karshiboyev.

MISSING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA FIX? TAJKINO HAS DVDS FOR YOU

Just in time for the holidays, Tajikkino has released a DVD box set collection of documentaries on Emomali Rahmon's activities as Tajikistan's president during the last 20 years.

Each year of Rahmon's presidency is detailed on a separate disk, twenty in all, with the remaining seven disks of the 27-disk collection dedicated to Rahmon's role in developing various sectors of the country.

Among those seven are films such as "Emomali Rahmon and Food Security" and "Emomali Rahmon and Energy Independence."

US CALLS FOR RE-INSTATEMENT OF TAJIK HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP

The US seldom says anything about Tajikistan from Washington, but the US mission to the OSCE is empowered to make critical statements -- and thank God it does. Here's a statement as delivered by Ambassador Ian Kelly, to the Permanent Council, Vienna, December 13, 2012

The United States notes with concern that a court in Tajikistan ordered the NGO Amparo to close on October 24, 2012, citing alleged minor administrative irregularities in the organization’s operations. We support Amparo's recently expressed intention to appeal the court's ruling, as the organization seeks to continue its important work. Amparo has worked tirelessly since 2005 to empower the youth of Tajikistan through human rights education and to monitor the human rights situation of some of Tajikistan’s most vulnerable groups, including orphans and the disabled. Amparo is an integral part of the burgeoning civil society tapestry in Tajikistan. Its efforts are precisely the sort of activities that every country should encourage in its civil society in order to strengthen the rule of law, democratization, and respect for human rights.

The United States calls on the government of Tajikistan to reinstate Amparo’s license to operate consistently with OSCE commitments to respect and protect freedom of association.  We further call on Tajikistan to refrain from similar actions against other NGOs working to improve life for Tajikistan’s people.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

WANTED: A LAWYER WHO CAN TAKE THIS SILLY DEVELOPMENT JOB AND MAKE IT INTO SOMETHING USEFUL TO PEOPLE

Here's a typical USAID development sort of "rule of law" job description -- (it's called ROL in the business, although ROFL might be more appropriate in some settings, given their judicial systems). The title is "Program Director" and the program is "Equal Before the Law".

This time it's at the Eurasia Foundation, but it could be any of these still-existing US-funded sort of jobs.

And if it's anything like the hundreds of other jobs in this business, the person who is drafted to fill it will be hired because he has already proven himself as a US bureaucrat, and is able to fill out elaborate report forms and draft budgets, and not because he can actually push the envelop in Dushanbe.

When I read the wimpy job description, I wish they could add things like this:

o Establish contact with practicing lawyers who defend human rights victims and do what you can to assist their work even quietly and help them if they get in trouble; meet those lawyers who protested the whopping punitive fines on their media clients, or those still brave enough to try to help those accused of extremism;

o Keep trying to get the Tajik authorities to lift their ban on the registration of the human rights group Amparo and let lawyers into the courtrooms where "extremists" are being tried;

o Make sure you invite a wide variety of people to your programs, not just the approved and combed government lawyers or officials but people both with and without law licenses;

o Help people with everything from literature and ideas to contacts and pointers to sources of funding to go behind your own silly little program;

o Be careful what you tell diplomats, you could be WikiLeaked. Practice good online security and be well-behaved offline -- nobody likes drunken, ugly Americans who also hit on the locals;

o Keep your go-bag packed by the door, because you may be expelled suddenly because you are doing a good job -- and have a zip drive of your stuff ready to roll and easy contact of all major news and diplomats who can easily protest your expulsion;

You get the idea. I don't think enough people do it this way. Yeah, I get it that I'm writing a description for a Human Rights Watch job that in fact should also have in it "Be willing to accept and roll with death threats emanating from close watch of your personal life by creepy people."

But still. More can be injected into these anodyne roles and never is.

IS IT MALEVICH OR IS IT TAJIKISTAN?

Is this Kazimir Malevich's famous Black Square painting? Or is it Kulyab at night? You have your answer from the Tajik blogger Hasavor, who blogs in Russian here (and hasn't gotten the memo yet from foreign planners that would instruct him to stop using Russian so we can all share in his insights). Translation:

"How is it possible that in a country that sells electricity to Afghanistan and builds the highest flagpoles in the world, gigantic (although empty) libraries, enormous mosques and super-expensive residential complexes for rich people doesn't have enough electricity for ordinary people"?

"We continue to live in the stone age. The people are chopping tees for firewood, heating stoves with dung fuel and buying up coal for the winter."

h/t Global Voices.

RIPPLE EFFECT OF BAN ON FOREIGN-FUNDED ACTIVITIES

Like Russia, which has gotten a lot more attention doing this, Tajikistan has cracked down on foreign-funded activities; in October, there was an official ban on foreign-funded seminars and conferences. Hey, do these CIS leaders attention their on Russian-funded conferences where they plot and harmonize these things?!

I'm going to try to be very upset that somebody can't have an all-expense-paid seminar in Dushanbe, truly I am, but the real problem with this is that the per-diems that can keep Tajiks alive also dry up with something like this and the contacts that can be helpful even in silly development jobs.

And of course, scrutiny of foreign funding then is the next thing to come.

Western diplomats are shocked at the ban, since international NGOs play an enormous role in the country’s economy, public health, and infrastructure.  Students are traditionally the main target of these NGOs in developing countries such as Tajikistan, which is still recovering from years of stagnant Soviet rule.

This role isn't without its controversies as we've reported regarding the Agha Khan Foundation.

h/t @ericamarat

HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT NGOS IN TAJIKISTAN?

Wanted: More pretty mountains, less ugly realities. Photo by dwrawlinson, 2006.

The question then becomes how you can support NGO activity in Tajikistan if the government bans it.

And you have to ask the question that if the government is banning it for some, why isn't it for others? And what is to be done about sorting this out?

This organization -- about which I know nothing directly -- appears to be trying to solve the problem of how you survive when the UN doesn't renew your original start-up grant and when perhaps you don't have other options with other big funders.

You sell calendars of the beautiful Pamir mountains.

So if you're indignant about the failure to sustain NGOs, why, you can go buy a £9.95 calendar from this outfit that supports eco-tourism in the Pamirs, META, founded by UNESCO and now 'restructured' and struggling to exist on its own.

Someone will explain to me why the Agha Khan folks left these people out, or maybe it's a different opera -- I have a lot to learn. But the idea is one that might work for others.

I'm just trying to figure out who can pose for "March" for the "torture" concept that some other groups need to illustrate their causes on their calendars.  Anybody to pose for "June" for "domestic violence"? Ok, back to the pretty mountains...

HOW MANY TAJIKS CAN FLUSH THEIR TOILETS?

Outhouse in Bulunkul, Tajikistan.  Photo by kvitlauk, 2009.

"Only 5% of population have access to safe drinking water and drainage in Tajikistan," says the scare headline based on a UN report at CA-News.

But that's incorrect and misleading, so you have to go see what the original report said by looking at the UN News Centre.

"Access to clean water one of most pressing environmental challenges," is the way the UN directly states it.

This is how they wrote the story more clearly:

The EPR finds that only one third of Tajikistan’s 7.2 million inhabitants have access to chlorinated piped water. Some 30 per cent rely on spring water and the remainder of the population depend on river and ditch water sources. Only five per cent of the population are connected to public sewerage.

They also mention the tailings from mines as does CA. We're going to keep hearing about those 55 million tons of radioactive waste in every conceivable way under every conceivable rubric -- because it makes a good scare headline -- until the cows come home -- or they don't, and die glowing. It's not as if nothing is being done about this problem, as we reported, but it's a perfect storm of problems in Tajikistan, and this is just one more thing.

TAJIKS LOVE THEIR FELLOW PERSIANS AND HATE THE JEWS:  IRANIAN TV

You know how I said we don't have very many polls really to explain the attitudes of Tajiks to Islam, extremism, the treatment of suspected Islamic extremists and terrorists in their country, and so on. Well, we don't.

But, to fill the gap, there is always Iranian TV!

Say, if you want the polls to come out right, pay for them yourself and put them on state-controlled TV in an authoritarian state, I always say.

But there's more -- and totally predictable, about Israel:

The Zionist entity was least favorably viewed with 57.5 percent of respondents choosing negative and very negative to describe their feeling about the regime. England and France followed the Zionist entity with 30.6 and 28.8 percent respectively.

Evil Satan America is not even mentioned, and perhaps not mentionable.

Well, this is what you get from a poll about the two Persian speaking members who are members of the Economic Cooperation Organization, as Iranian TV helpfully explains.

HOW IS TAJIKISTAN NOT LET YEMEN? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS

Nate Schenkkan ‏@nateschenkkan asks on Twitter:

Serious question: if we project out 5-10 years, how much does Tajikistan look like Yemen in this description? http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/12/19/zero_farce_thirty?page=0,2

In the piece he links to, about the controversial film about hunting bin Ladn called Zero Dark Thirty, Ty McCormick interviews Ali Soufan, who says this:

We also need to study the incubating factors that promote terrorism. What are the factors in South Yemen that are making people and tribes join al Qaeda? For example, one sheikh, when asked why he was sheltering al Qaeda fighters, responded that the government had promised to send him six teachers. Fahd al-Quso brought 16 teachers. In some areas al Qaeda has also supplied electricity and water. These things don't cost much, and we used to give billions of dollars to the Yemeni government, but most of it went to line pockets. It did not reach ordinary people. So we have to deal with the roots of the problem: What are the incubating factors for terrorism? And there's no cookie-cutter approach to this. What works in South Yemen probably won't work in the north of the country, and what works in Saudi Arabia probably won't work in Libya, because there's a range of incubating factors. Sometimes it's sectarian, sometimes it's tribal, sometimes it's economic, but the roots are never religious or ideological.

We could add that what works in Yemen won't work in Tajikistan, either. But for Ali to tell us that the roots are "never" religious or ideological is just plain daft. Of course they are religious -- extremist forms of Islam -- and of course they are ideological -- and some Islamism got its start with copying Marxism-Leninism, and it's okay to say that. Every single Central Asian regime sees it that way, and our job isn't to pretend they aren't seeing some real problems with extremism (how did the Arab Spring turn out) but to persuade them to address it in less abusive ways.

Ideas matter, people think about them and study them and talk about them and then sometimes they do them, and we should follow that and not blank it out of the equation. If it were possible to fix countries by just 10 more teachers for every Al Qaeda gifting of teachers (and what kind of teachers those might be!), USAID would have triumphed in every corner of the world by now; OSCE too.

Come on, Yemen and Tajikistan are not really so alike, although to the "progressives" in Washington with their my-focals, any place where there is American activity can all seem alike and all evil.

Here's how these two are different:

o Yemen 24.8 million Tajikistan 7 million

o Yemen has considerable Saudi Aid backing it up; Tajikistan has some but nearly nothing like Yemen

o Yemen gets some US aid, but a lot more from Russian and China -- say, ditto Tajikistan but the dynamics are different as the number of US military in Tajikistan is dwarfed by the number of Russian military.

Asia Times explains it all for you:

Russia has stolen a march over the United States in the multimillion-dollar arms market in cash-strapped Yemen, whose weapons purchases are being funded mostly by neighboring Saudi Arabia.

The Yemeni armed forces, currently undergoing an ambitious modernization program worth an estimated $4 billion US, are equipped with weapons largely from Russia, China, Ukraine, eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics.

With the attempted bombing of a US airliner on Christmas Day by a Nigerian student, reportedly trained by al-Qaeda in Yemen, the administration of President Barack Obama has pledged to double. Yemen’s military and counter-terrorism aid, to nearly $150 million, to strengthen the besieged government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

I've just spent the same half hour looking online that I've spent many times before trying to find the exact dollar number for how much US military aid goes to Tajikistan, and it's hard to do and there aren't clear answers -- but I think it's a VERY safe belt that it is not $4 billion, you know? It's more like that $150 million to Yemen, that looks very insignifant to Russia and China -- whose aid never stirs the blood of the NGOs and the pundits in Washington like US aid.

Yes, Nate can say something like this not only because Russia and China simply don't bother him as much as America -- he's American and in America and it's easier to reach: CENTCOM is directly involved with Tajikistan -- they're easier to scold than Russia not only because they are closer to hand but because they tell you what they are doing.  We also know about the "secret drone war" in Yemen because we have free media to cover it; the Russian free media, such as it is, is preoccupied usually with other things.

TAJIK  PARLIAMENT APPROVES LAW AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Wedding musicians in Khorog, Badakhshan, 2011. Photo by Evgeni Zotov.

RFE/RL reports a new law responding to the problem of domestic violence in Tajikistan:

The law includes a statement that the elderly should play an active role in preventing domestic violence among young families.

The advice of elders carries significant weight in traditional Tajik society.

According to official statistics, more than 200 women took their own lives in 2010 and a majority of the cases were related to domestic violence.

Nate Schenkkan frets that this "a bit mild."

Yes. But it's better than -- if you'll forgive the expression -- a stick in the eye.

One does have to worry about a law that tries to solve modern problems -- all the men having to go work abroad and some of the women also having to go do that now, too, instead of herding goats -- and then tries to perpetuate ancient solutions to them from institutions that have now broken up (like the family) or which, like the elders may help certain patriarchal traditions best left discontinued, like wife-beating.

UNFPA also tries to get the Islamic elders in Sudanese society to do more to get the African men to stem the epidemic of rape of women. Sometimes it works. Generally, it doesn't.

WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT BIG NEIGHBOURS AND BIG POWERS THAT DON'T HELP YOU VERY MUCH

Alexander Cooley ‏@CooleyOnEurasia tweets about a new report from Finland:

Interesting and topical new @FrideEUCAM working paper on the security-development nexus in #Tajikistan http://www.eucentralasia.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/PDF/Working_Papers/EUCAM-WP12-Tajikistan-EN.pdf

The report is by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland EUCAM Security and Development project implemented by FRIDE and the Karelian Institute of the University of Eastern Finland -- and one bonus from clicking on that link is that you will sort out all these acronyms and what they mean.

 

The EUCAM-SD is a key component of the EUCAM programme and focuses on the links between security challenges in the Central Asian region and the need for development in the broadest sense, including governance, poverty reduction, ethnic tension and social equality.

I could only take the time to skim it now, but it looks useful. Let me say this: this report comes from a country that has also itself had to grapple with the problem of having a very big neighbour on its border who, well, Finlandized it. Tajikistan has that same big neighbour, too.

Shop in the Pamir mountains. Photo by Sugar Melon.

"Private Economy Contributes More Than 60% of China's GDP"

The founder of this chic Chinese restaurant chain in China has fled to an undisclosed location. Photo by Foodnut.

I don't cover China much, but some of the springs and dynamics that are true of all the communist regimes apply here, too, of course.

One of the memes I constantly object to is the notion that China is organizing its economic reform from the top down, "perestroika-style," while avoiding the messiness of Gorbachev's other program, "glasnost," which only brought down the whole system. For one, I don't think you can have one without the other, and for two, there is nothing wrong with bringing down the system -- and then people in fact don't realize that you really haven't done that anyway in these cases (see Russia, Ukraine).

One thing to take a close look at is how communism, or "state capitalism" as the Trotskyists like to call it, really works.

And I think that one thing we conclude from "really-existing socialism" is that it is, well, corrupt. I submit that this is a natural outcome of not only the communist ideology, but the socialist ideology.

In any event, "Life itself shows us," as Gorbachev himself use to say, that the corruption that develops inevitably even under "reform communism" in fact is responsible for the seeming "successes" of that "perestroika model".

Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in the whole Bo Xilai case and all its works.

But today there was a particularly stark admission of this: 60% of the Chinese economy comes from a relative handful of rich families who are starting to flee the country.

You've heard of countries where half the GDP is made up of remittances -- here's a country, nominally communist with a controlled economy, where in fact more than half of the GDP is made up of rich families behaving like capitalists -- well, capitalists with the special privileges that communist systems with their nomenklatura lists give them -- you know, oligarchs. Oligarchy is merely another phase of communism.

"The private economy contributes more than 60 percent of China's GDP and it absorbs a majority of employees. So if private business owners emigrate with their capital, it would mean less investment in the domestic market, so fewer jobs would be created," Wang Huiyao, director of the Center for China and Globalization, told the state-run China Daily today.

The fleeing millionaires mainly made their money in real estate, foreign currency and deposits and stocks, among other fields, according to the report. They are mainly leaving Beijing, Shanghai and coastal provinces such as Zhejiang, Guangdong and Jiangsu. (Read more: BRICs Outpace U.S. in Millionaires)

So when China natters on about socialist or communism or human development or whatever it natters about at the UN, it's helpful to recall all this about their actual GDP's actual source, and where it is headed.

 

Registanis Makes a Parody Account of Me

Hilarious!

An anonymous Registani -- probably Nathan Hamm -- has made a parody account of me called Grumpy Catfitz. The pics aren't easy to "share" as they are gifs set not to copy easily, so you have to go read each Twitter post to see them.

Joshua Foust, Sarah Kendzior and Ethan Zuckerman have all eagerly followed the angry kitteh.

They take my tweets and grind them into a meme generator and they are hilarious -- I'll have to make some myself!

Why does suspicion fall on Nathan Hamm? Well, because the grumpy kitties started not long after this post about GooGoogsha's new awful video in which I mentioned Hamm's "strangely incoherent" piece about Karimova and Uzbek culture -- and that probably spurred him to do his usual anonymous drive-by swiping.

It's funny, in Second Life, the Woodbury goons, an offshoot of Anonymous/4chan sort of culture, have created elaborate artwork, griefing textures and objects, memes, catchphrases, etc. around my simple critique of them as Bolsheviks. They make detailed Stalin uniforms and boots, star pins, giant blimps, huge Stalin gothic palaces, Soviet flags, etc. and bombard me with them. Hamm hasn't approached anything near that creativity, but then, maybe they don't teach Photoshop in defense analyst school.

Yes, these adults at Registan stoop to the level of 4chan...

RL effigy of myself being gobbled alive by a Communist chicken in Second Life, by Woodbuy/Anonymous. My glasses have fallen off, like Piggy's.

More on the Immorality of Drones and Evil Robots

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by The Flaming Lips

Joshua Foust, the former defense contractor who now serves as a non-senior analyst at John Kerry's American Security Project, has yet another piece published on the liberal PBS site about why the Obama Administration should continue to feel good about drones.

It's in response to a report by Human Rights Watch called appropriately Losing Humanity.

The premise is basically -- oh, you civilians and peaceniks filled with FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt as the geeks called it)! You just don't get it and you just aren't cool because you can't realize how efficient drones are and don't realize how much we already use robotic stuff. Silly you, and stupid you! And smart me!

My answer:

The reason a lot of science fiction is scary is not because it's about machines, but because it's about people -- people against other people, and not under a shared sense of the rule of law.

The computer code that runs the killing machines is made by humans and is a concretization of their will, not something uncontrollable or entirely automatic and escaped from their control.

More importantly, the decisions about where to deploy the machines that involve targets drawn from Panatir data-dredging, or heat-seeking missiles or counter-mortar systems are made by humans. Before drones are deployed, humans sometimes have to do things like call up leaders of countries and seek their intelligence and their clearance. So, in the first place, nothing that is portrayed here as automatic is in fact as automatic as Foust strangely makes it seem, because it's in a context and a system where humans do make decisions about the very theaters of war in the first place.

Yet precisely because in our time, the weapons are far more automated, and in the case of drones, there is a greater acceleration and precision -- and therefore ease and seeming moral comfort -- in their use, we have to look at the moral dimension. Foust seems content if drones just don't miss very often or don't have much collateral damage. But if they get so easy to use, won't the temptation be to do more killing with them and make them more automatic? Where will it stop and who will be authorized to make the judgement call?

There's also the question of whether it's really the case that drones *are* so precise, given how many reports there are from human rights groups and local lawyers about non-combatants, including children, who are hit. These victims can't seek compensation, as their counterparts killed by regular US or NATO actions with more traditional weapons can, because drones are in a secret program run by the CIA, and not the military. This is apparently because of the need to keep them secret, apparently particularly from the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

So this raises questions of governance, as to whether we can morally retain these weapons as secret and unaccountable, and whether we should put them under the regular armed forces' leadership.

More automation can in fact decouple the moral imperative from the results of the action of weapons particularly because of the acceleration and capacity for devastation.

Foust has a curious coda to yet another unconscionable piece in defense of drones as efficient war-machines -- he posits the idea that a less active role by people -- i.e. less compunction about use and nature of targets and consequences -- could somehow be a goal, and that more automation need not diminish our values. How?

In fact, if these programs reflect our values, they would have to become less secret, and attacks less common. Foust has already stripped away the moral context by pretending to find all kinds of "good" uses of "automation" that in fact a) aren't automation as he claims because of the prior choices about war in the first place, and theaters of war, and targets and b) have more unintended consequences than he prepares to admit.

As Foust notes, the Pentagon released a directive on "appropriate levels of human judgement," but Foust seems to think the radiant future can contain more automated processes if we can just all agree on our priorities.

There's nothing wrong with a cultural heritage that seems autonomous robots as deadly; they are. Pentagon planners and the CIA don't wish to kill civilians who are not combatants. Yet they do. They do because the targets often tend to have their families around them and the military can't wait until they get into the clear. That's the crux of the problem.

There's a strange notion that raising any moral questions about killing machines, as Human Rights Watch has done, is motivated by "fear". It seems simply to be more motivated by morality, and also the practical sense that machines don't have consciences, and code never renders human interaction as perfectly as real life.

Related articles

"I Have a Drone"

Pentagon: A Human Will Always Decide When a Robot Kills You

The Inherent Contradictions of Registan's Narrative

A video of the massacre by the now shuttered K+ Internet video news site.

What a difference a year makes.

A year ago, Joshua Foust of American Security Project was arguing in the Atlantic that the massacre of workers in Zhanaozen didn't matter that much, because it was a local conflict, unrelated to any terrorist group, and not really a threat to the Nazarbayev regime.

I debated him on the Atlantic comments; so did Nate Schenkkan, then writing for EurasiaNet and now at Freedom House.

Foust's minimizing of the dreadful events of Zhanaozen was consistent with his overall Real-Politik theories summarized in his Why Human Rights Aren't Paramount at PBS (which I also debated in the comments.) Indeed, the theories of pragmatism ultimately conceding the status quo for the region's regimes is something Registan writers are known for -- a concept I call "The Small Game".

Foust, a former defense contractor and now an avid apologist for drones as the "smart" weapon, is known for his wildly nasty attacks on numerous human rights leaders, activists, and pundits who don't agree with him.

Given how much he had downplayed Zhanaozen, I confronted him, noting that his position was little different from a respected regional specialist, Martha Brill Olcott, who also didn't think that the regime would be threatened by any "Arab Spring" type movements -- whom he derided.

I came to her defense; Foust replied savagely; a State Department official who defended me and said I was only defending Olcott found his comment was removed -- developments I summarized here.

I continued to press for more investigation of the Zhanaozen events, just like all the major human rights groups. I interviewed a brave Russian journalist who had covered the massacre and had one eyewitness who said there were many more bodies of victims than officially reported; this was the question many were asking at the time.

Foust's persistent minimization of the massacre and his mean-spirited dismissal of the Russian journalist earned him lengthy takedowns from a notorious character named Mark Ames who is little better in his own track record. In a parallel development, another Registan writer, Michael Hancock-Parmer, bashed the woman Russian journalist in shameful ways which got a pile-on in the comments. Then a former professor of this author, Elise Anderson, took him to task for his questionable methods, and strikingly, Sarah Kendzior came along and evenutally creepily maneuvered the woman -- who in fact was spot on -- into conceding she might be wrong and ostensibly shouldn't have publicly harmed her student's online rep by dissing him. Say, does that method sound familiar!

We may never know how many people in fact were killed in Zhanaozen, although there do not seem to be 70.

But the events unleashed tidal ways of repression with grave consequences in ways that I think none of us had conceived when were were obsessing about the initial event itself and the body count -- on both sides of the debate.

Nate's account -- based on his eye-witness reporting and monitoring of the trial of Kozlov -- provides all the chilling details:

In the last year, the government has moved relentlessly and methodically to crush the country’s already limited civic life. Hundreds of locals in Zhanaozen and nearby Aktau were detained, and many of them likely tortured. Thirty-four oil workers were convicted of organizing the riots in a mass trial where detailed allegations of torture were ignored. The government investigation swept up a whole slew of civil society and opposition activists as material witnesses and possible defendants, before settling on Vladimir Kozlov.

Kozlov, leader of the unregistered opposition party Alga, and two codefendants were convicted in October of “inciting social hatred” against the government in order to create conflict in Zhanaozen. Somehow Kozlov—who even in the prosecution’s conspiratorial version of events never distributed or advocated the use of weapons—has become the one responsible for unarmed protesters being shot in the back. His trial, which Freedom House monitored and reported on, was marked by procedural irregularities and built around the testimony of his former fellow activists, many of whom had said they were tortured in their own trials.

I met Kozlov myself at the OSCE's Human Dimense Implementation Meeting before his arrest in 2010, and even then, the Kazakh ambassador and head of delegation interrupted his speech at the meeting and threatened him with charges of "inciting violence" merely because in his remarks, he said that when the opposition eventually came to power, it would address all the massive human rights violations of the regime. "We will come for you," he said -- and by that he didn't mean any violent reprisal, but trials for their human rights crimes.

As Schenkkan notes, despite the fact the government tried some people said to be responsible for the shootings, there is a very incomplete response:

The government of Kazakhstan has highlighted the fact that some local officials were tried on corruption charges, and a handful of police officers were found guilty of “exceeding authority” for their role in the Zhanaozen events. But specific and well-substantiated allegations of torture went uninvestigated. Despite President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s initial pledge that there would be an independent international inquiry, no such probe has materialized, even after the UN human rights commissioner explicitly requested it. One year later, we still do not know who gave the order to use live fire on unarmed protesters, and dozens of officers who participated in the shootings have faced no charges at all.

And as he notes, this has served to unleash a huge crackdown on civil society, such as it is, in ways I think we didn't anticipate a year ago:

Now the Kozlov conviction is being used to shutter media outlets associated with the opposition across the country on grounds of “extremism.” The verdict held that Kozlov led an “organized criminal group” funded by exiled oligarch Mukhtar Ablyazov, establishing a guilt-by-association logic that could be used to punish practically anyone engaged in civic or political activism. The outlets that are being closed, like the newspaper Respublika, the online news site Stan TV, and the satellite broadcaster K+, have interacted regularly with all prominent figures in political life or civil society in Kazakhstan. Kazakh human rights activists are talking grimly about their country sliding toward conditions associated with Uzbekistan, long regarded as the most ruthless and aggressively repressive government in the region.

Yet the Real-Politik writers at Registan express no regrets or make no apologies for their minimizing of the events there -- Foust even said that if in fact 70 were found to be killed, maybe the regime would be shaken, but it wouldn't be by a few dozen -- a curious algorithm.

Now, Registan is taking the usual star turn, pretending to be a platform for discussion and debate, and providing space to the Kazakh ambassador, who naturally downplays all the negative events and attempts to spin them madly.

Giving this Kazakh official space is, I think the sort of thing most NGO advocacy organizations or even policy organizations might be reluctant to do -- the very frame lends a patina of legitimacy the regime certainly doesn't have. You can always call a dictator mouthpiece for a comment and quote it in your own article without having to yield your platform to them in faux free debate while people like Kozlov sit in cold jail cells. It's bad faith, really, to do that.

Meanwhile, Shenkkan, who obviously cares about Kozlov and did everything possible to monitor and report on his unfair trial and the other negative developments in Kazakhstan, regretably lends legitimacy to Registan's bad faith by submitting a guest post to Registan. (Note: the Kazakh ambassador gets his own byline in a separate box as "an opinion piece"; Shenkkan has to fit in under Nathan Hamm's byline as a "guest post". Difference in rank!)

Again, Registan is not a place of good faith or fairness, but a place very much of bad faith when it silences critics and defenders of critics who are legitimate, and pretends that's alright. Shenkkan shouldn't be part of that methodology or that company and lending the site the patina of legitimacy himself -- he was always seized on and quoted or offered space by the Registanis when they blocked or ignored or savaged other EurasiaNet writers and human rights advocates simply because he was a nice guy with really great regional knowledge who likes to get along with people.

In discussing Kazakhstan's national narrative, Foust now cunningly shifts his own narrative from one that minimizes Zhanaozen, or trashes Russian journalists trying to cover the atrocity, or people who confronted him with his minimization, and starts chiding Kazakhstan in dulcet tones about how it is not behaving like a mature, young wealthy state should be. The main message of the piece, in the undertow: Nazzy is bad on human rights, but who cares, he's opening up the mineral rights to foreigners again.

Last year, we were told that Russian journalists exaggerated things, "human rights are not paramount," the regime would stand, and human rights nervous nellies were too idealistic. Now, says Foust regarding the accusation that Respublika, Kozlov's publication, is "extremist" that it is not worthy of the regime:

Put simply, such an unnecessary attack on Kazakhstan’s still-fledgling political opposition is not the behavior of a growing, confident, young, dynamic country, which is what Kazakhstan clearly wants to be. It is the behavior of a weak, insecure, terribly afraid regime. Which could potentially be dangerous in the long run, not only in the case of another Zhanaozen massacre but more subtle forms of repression like further limiting speech and setting harsh limits on public gatherings.

It's not clear how subtle forms of repression are "more dangerous" than massacres, but let's welcome Foust to the Newly-Acquired Conscience Club because now he's scolding the regime about human rights lagging the way he used to scold other people for calling out the regime or his soft touch. I guess that's because it's okay to say these things now...or something....

Foust only has to plant a few dog whistles in his column to get the usual suspects turning out in the comments and basically sniping at the opposition, their newspapers, and castigating the very notion of any alturistic international community, because it is only interested in resource extraction, to hear them tell it. Mission accomplished!

 

 

 

 

Pakistani Clerics to Demonstrate Against Killings of Polio Vaccine Workers

We learned the other day of the awful acts of the Taliban once again in killing health workers who were merely trying to vaccinate little children in Afghanistan.

The toll is now up to 9 persons killed for doing their jobs.

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has suspended the vaccination program and denounced the killings.

But what we don't always hear -- the news can get drowned out -- is that Pakistani clerics are denouncing this outrageous act by the Taliban, which is supposed to have some kind of religious basis (but is more about security insanity gone among, as the Taliban believes the CIA is using health workers to spy on them, due to the fact that the CIA allegedly obtained a doctor's cooperation in hunting bin Ladn.)

So here's what some Pakistani clerics are doing to respond:

An alliance of Pakistani clerics will hold demonstrations across the country against the killings of polio eradication campaign workers, leaders said on Thursday, as the death toll from attacks this week rose to nine.

Tahir Ashrafi, who heads the moderate Pakistan Ulema Council, said that 24,000 mosques associated with his organization would preach against the killings of health workers during Friday prayers.

"Neither Pakistani customs nor Islam would allow or endorse this. Far from doing something wrong, these girls are martyrs for Islam because they were doing a service to humanity and Islam," he said.

Heart of Darkness in Pakistan

Women and children wait for vaccinations in Afghanistan.  Gates Foundation, 2011

A terrible atrocity in Pakistan today:

Gunmen shot dead five women working on U.N.-backed polio vaccination efforts in two different Pakistani cities on Tuesday, officials said, a major setback for a campaign that international health officials consider vital to contain the crippling disease but which Taliban insurgents say is a cover for espionage.

Not only the Taliban, but some elements of the Pakistani government, have been on this kick about distrusting doctors and health workers since  a doctor was accused of cooperating with the CIA to help zero in on Osama bin Ladn and assassinate him. That doctor, Dr. Shakil Afridi, is now in prison and being mistreated, and there have been campaigns to try to get him released.

Humanitarian organizations are usually so careful about not cooperating with the sides in conflicts, particularly the states (I feel they are less careful with rebels), that it's an unfounded charge to claim that polio vaccinations are a cover for spying. What's to spy on, anyway, poor villages eking out a subsistence? Situations with malnourished kids, abused mothers and drug-addicted fathers? Is the secret that there is no secret?

I'm also reminded of the Heart of Darkness -- and Apocalypse Now, which is adapted on it. There's this monologue:

Kurtz: I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror... Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies!

I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it... I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us.

The UN released a tepid statement:

"We call on the leaders of the affected communities and everyone concerned to do their utmost to protect health workers and create a secure environment so that we can meet the health needs of the children of Pakistan."

But the dyanamics here aren't about people "doing their utmost". The humanitarians should pull out. They should stop creating the semblance of normalcy. That puts the onus on the government of Pakistan and the Taliban to realize their isolation and lack of resources. It doesn't do the children any good if they are vaccinated, but then their tiny arms pile up -- or even the bodies of their helpers, some barely past childhood themselves, pile up:

The women who were killed Tuesday — three of whom were teenagers — were all shot in the head at close range. Four of them were gunned down in the southern port city of Karachi, and the fifth in a village outside the northwest city of Peshawar. Two men who were working alongside the women were also critically wounded in Karachi.

Two women were gunned down as they literally gave the drops to children.

A man was also executed earlier who had helped with the polio vaccination.

This is a terrible situation -- 56 new cases of polio were registered in Pakistan. It has begun to reappear again in India, Tajikistan and elsewhere in Central Asia.

So do you risk not innoculating children because five people are gunned down? There is conflicting information about whether the program is suspended or not -- the UN needs to clear that up ASAP and in fact, the program should be at least temporarily suspended. Nobody should be supplying the Tailban with fresh victims to make their point.

The Taliban are like the men described by Kurtz in the Heart of Darkness, who had a heart of darkness himself. They were absolutely ruthless -- as he realized with diamond-like clarity -- and in fact really were fighting for ideals, even their families.

So leave them with that and let them contemplate and take the consequences for their brutality, I say.

Just in case you want to think about sanctions instead of in fact softening the sanctions regime as the UN is busy doing now:

Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed responsibility for both attacks by telephone to The Associated Press.

Related articles

Pakistan: Karachi polio killings: Vaccination workers shot

Gunmen Kill Polio Workers in Pakistan

Pakistan polio worker shot dead

President Zardari summons report on anti-polio activists killings within 48-hours

Polio: Eradication Efforts in Pakistan Put Focus on High-Risk Pashtun Community

Tajik Opticon #4

 

1907 Solar Eclipse Expedition by Sergei Prokhudi-Gorskii, Russian Photographer in Central Asia.

This is my little newsletter on Tajikistan that comes out once a week on Saturdays. If you want to see past issues, look to the column on the right for the key word "Tajikistan". If you want to get this in your email or you have comments or contributions, write [email protected]

COMMENTS:

OSCE is very active in Tajikistan and has had a lot of programs this month; it's hard to know how much traction this mission in Tajikistan really has, sometimes because the people they involve in programs are so few, i.e. a dozen or a few dozen border guards hither and yon, doing joint studies with Afghan counterparts or going abroad to study. Does it work? What are the metrics for determining that it works? OSCE, like USAID, is used to justifying itself with numbers like (say) "We had 266 trainings this year in which 1,432 people took part and acquired leadership skills and hands-on knowledge about how to build a sustainable economy" blah blah.

Meanwhile, that economy could actually being going to hell in a hand-basket, but at least the numbers work on the charts and graphs in the Powerpoints. There really is only one test for all these border trainings, however: whether they will help the border hold after 2014, when the US and NATO troops have departed.  And then, it's not just picking up X kilograms of drugs that will make a difference, but whether overall the level of the drug trade is reduced and whether terrorism or militancy spills over from the neighbours. 

As for OSCE's program to offer legal aid at street-corner tables to hundreds of people on Human Rights Day, that's great, but what about the rest of the year? They had tables out in Khujand, but that didn't help the mothers and teenage sons tried on vague charges of "extremism" and given long sentences earlier this month. How can OSCE get a permanent legal clinic going?

Amb. Susan Elliott met with the Tajik communications tsar embroiled in the Facebook closure, but by then, he was going to open it anyway and it was pretty much over nothing. @eTajikistan says this sort of high-profile tweeted visit from powerful America sends the signal that essentially, American only cares about its Silicon Valley darling Facebook, and not about torture in Tajik prisons, as it hasn't had the same kind of high-profile meeting with the Ministry of Justice about getting the ICRC into the prisons.

Well, yeah, sure, but tant pis, the Minister of Justice isn't available to take a tweeted meeting like that with anybody. It's not that the US cares more about Facebook than torture; it's that the Ministry of Justice of Tajikistan cares about neither, and maybe just barely is willing to talk about the one and not the other without having a fit.

I'm a big believer in what former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright used to say, "Just because you can't do everything doesn't mean you can't do something." Facebook is what Amb. Elliott can do; it's doable. ICRC is not what Amb. Elliott can do, it's likely not doable. That doesn't mean that NGOs shouldn't try and make all their snarky tweets, I'm all for that, too. Still, somewhere, you need a scorekeeper who says, "Hey, that was doable and this is not doable and have you tried pressing the EU, Russia, or India on these issues?" They have influence, and they are part of the world community, and Russia especially purports to be very keen on human rights abroad these days, especially in America. Put them to work on these international humanitarian issues they claim to love, and get them asking about the ICRC for a change. India is the world's largest democracy and cares about torture and is on the Security Council now and does a lot in Central Asia. Ask them to do this, too!

Twitfights are often instructive. In between posts about Western-funded educational opportunities, paradoxically, like many other young people on Twitter from this region, @eTajikistan rants about the exaggerated notions he has of America's evils in the world -- because he can see them on Twitter and in the world press -- and seldom actually discusses the evils in his own homeland or region -- which are hidden from local official press and not covered as much by the world media -- and then doubles back and bangs on the symbol of that evil West -- the American ambassador -- for not behaving like the Tajik opposition and human rights community (that isn't able to function full strength) and bashing the host Tajik government everyday.

This paradigm repeats all over the world where America is involved -- lather, rinse, repeat. And some think the answer is to reduce perceived or actual American evils, by doing things like apologizing for Masri -- and that's all fine as far as it goes and I'm all for that. But the human rights violations and challenge of terrorism are so far greater in these countries of Central Asia and with so far less remedies, that somehow, the @eTajikistan types have to be persuaded to get some corrective lenses for their magnified view of America and myopic view of Russia, the region, and their own country. Some think -- again -- this is achieved by American apology tours (yes, they are that) and breast-beating. The problem is -- that doesn't work on somebody like Beg Zuhorov. He knows deep down the real problem in the world isn't that America didn't apologize to someone they held wrongfully but let go; the real problem is that Tajikistan has nabbed too many people wrongfully they will never let go, so it's not a fair fight.

Even so, America has to thread this needle, and that means not just getting figures like Amb. Elliott in fact to do more for human rights and pressuring the Tajik government more, but asking the @eTajikistan types of the world to figure out how they will someday assume the responsibility of challenging their own dictator rather than obsessing abroad about America and Israel. I don't say that is easy. I do say it is necessary.

Afghan and Tajik Border Officers Complete OSCE Training-of-trainers Course

Afghan and Tajik border officers completed today in Dushanbe an OSCE training-of-trainers course as part of a series of training courses to enhance the capacity of Tajik border troops and Afghan border police to detect and interdict illegal cross-border movement.

During the two-week course – the third in a series organized by the OSCE Office in Tajikistan - nine Afghan border police officers and 12 Tajik border troops guards learned about modern teaching methodology and how to prepare and deliver training materials in an interactive learner-centered manner. The course also introduced the main components of training programme development.

Previously Afghan and Tajik border guards completed a management course in November.

OSCE Supports Workshop in Tajikistan for Judges and Journalists on Defamation charges Involving Media

A workshop for judges and journalists on jurisdiction in defamation and insult lawsuits involving the media concluded today at the OSCE Office in Tajikistan.

The two-day workshop was organized by the OSCE Office jointly with the Council of Justice of the Republic of Tajikistan. It took place against the backdrop of a series of civil and criminal defamation and libel lawsuits filed by public officials and agencies against a number of independent media outlets from 2010 through 2012.

OSCE Office Donates Equipment for Training Financial Control Officers in Tajikistan on Fighting Corruption

The OSCE Office in Tajikistan handed over on 8 December 2012 equipment and educational material for a training centre to be set up to train officers of Tajikistan’s Agency for State Financial Control and Fight against Corruption.

“On 9 December we mark International Anti-Corruption Day,” said Hans Peter Larsen, the Deputy Head of the OSCE Office in Tajikistan, during the handover ceremony. “Corruption remains one of the main obstacles for good governance and economic development in Tajikistan. Corruption raises the costs of public administration, distorts the allocation of state funds and undermines public trust in the authorities. To effectively counter corruption, knowledgeable and experienced specialists are needed, and through supporting the training centre, we seek to contribute to successfully addressing the problem.”

OSCE Supports International Human Rights Day Events Throughout Tajikistan

Tajik citizens wait to receive free legal consultations at a market in Khujand on 10 December 2012. The consultations were provided as part of a week of events organized by the OSCE Office in Tajikstan to mark the 64th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Photo:  OSCE/Yaeem Ashraf

The OSCE Office in Tajikistan, together with partners in government, civil society, local authorities and international organizations, today concluded a week of events throughout the country marking the 64th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

Authorities and civil society in Khujand, Garm, Kurgan-Tyube, Kulyab and Shaartuz, as well as in Khorog in the autonomous province of Gorno-Badakhshan, engaged in local-level dialogue, supported by the OSCE, on human rights issues relevant to their communities.

In Khujand, over 200 free legal consultations were provided in six towns, including in three village markets. 

Lots more at the link above -- it's worth watching to see whether 600 people showing up for consultations just for one day yield any effect or have any follow-up.

Tajikistan Joins World Trade Organization

Speaking of international multilateral institutions, Tajikistan has now joined the World Trade Organization (WTO).

I think this means exactly nothing.

Oh, wait, in fact a sourpuss in Russia thinks it's a negative development. Could this be due to the fact that the world seemed to take a lot longer in letting Russia into the WTO than Tajikistan?

Russia thinks that having to remove or fiddle with all those tariffs is going to harm small business in Tajikistan. Er, small business in Tajikistan? Well, half the country's GDP comes from remittances with that "small business" consting of labour migrants. I await a credible third-party report on the impact of joining the WTO on Tajik small businesses or indeed...anything at all.

US Ambassador in Dushanbe meets with Tajik Communications Official -- Facebook OK

Amb. Susan Elliott and Beg Zuhorov, Communications Minister in Tajikistan, December 7. Photo by US Embassy Dushanbe.

Amb. Susan Elliott, who is our ambassador to Tajikistan, tweeted the following, with a little Twitpic, on December 7

@AmbElliott Communications Service Chairman Zuhurov and I had a very good meeting. Facebook is no longer blocked in Tajikistan. pic.twitter.com/wSTJVv4b

Tajik Communications Minister Trolled

Here's the video in case you missed some Russian wits calling up and pretending to be "Sergey Brin" the "translator for Mark Zuckerberg" to ask about Facebook. Other bonus: on this video, Beg Zuhorov tells us that what bothers him about Facebook isn't just that vague "extremism," but that "people order each other" on Facebook. That doesn't mean prostitution (although it could); he means that people pay others to give them "likes" and write nice things about them. I have to say I find this a really great idea for monetarizing the vapidness of FB in ways that hadn't occurred to me. There are currency convertibility questions here and pricing issues, of course, but I wonder what a "like" for a prominent Tajik would cost?'

UN Warns Tajikistan About Radioactive Waste

EurasiaNet's David Trilling tweets in alarm about the 55 million tons of radioactive waste flagged by the UN in a warning to Tajikistan, linking to a summary of a report in Reason of a Raw Story article.

The former Soviet republic, where Stalin’s empire once mined uranium to create its first nuclear bomb, is still stuck with about 54.8 million tonnes of unsecured waste from the now mainly abandoned mines, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) said.

The waste is “not treated, not confined, not secured,” agency spokesman Jean Rodriguez told reporters in Geneva.

Most of the sites are near Khujand. 

The uranium used when the first Soviet nuclear bomb was successfully tested on August 29, 1949, was extracted in northern Tajikistan.

This sounds hugely big and scary, but it's important to put it into a bit of perspective -- all the Central Asian nations have this; even Turkmenistan, however, has agreed to let NATO help them clean up, and NATO has done some clean up.

Central Asia Online says even that Tajikistan has asked for help with this -- something you don't get from this scary Raw Story version of the news.

Now we all get it that Central Asia Online is engagée and might be inclined to present a more upbeat version of this story, but the fact is, Tajikistan has already gotten aid to do this clean-up:

Tajikistan already receives some assistance, but not enough, he said. Of the 1.156 billion RUB ($34.9m or 166.4m TJS) annually disbursed by the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC) to help clean up Soviet-era nuclear waste, more than 20% goes to Tajikistan.

But that’s just a fraction of what is needed. Cleaning up 400,000 tonnes of waste at a site near Chkalovsk in 1991-1992, for example, cost about US $10m (47.7m TJS), said Numondzhon Khakimov, director of the oblast branch of the AN Nuclear and Radiation Safety Agency.

So is Tajikistan just looking for another angle for international aid? How can we tell? And is even another $10 million from the US really such a huge cost to prevent further contamination of the environment and harm to people's health? 

Russia pays the lion's share of the costs of this clean-up; poorer countries in Central Asia and Belarus refuse to. OSCE has done its share, says Central Asia Online -- it has put up signs around saying "Warning! Radioactive!" in different languages.

I'd like to see some competent international NGO that monitors these things be allowed to come in here and make a health assessment and also UN agencies gaining access, rather than just issuing warnings. I'd also like some third party to assess what NATO says it is doing, and how complementary OSCE, NATO and the UN are on this effort.

Video Footage Shows Alleged Ill-Treatment Of Tajik Inmates

Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe posted this video reporting ill-treatment in Tajik prisons -- the subject of the UN Commitee Against Torture's critical review last month as I reported.

RFE/RL's Tajik Service obtained multiple videos from relatives of a group of prisoners serving time in the country's northern city of Khujand. The relatives claimed the videos, apparently shot from within the prison, were recorded on a mobile phone and sent to them.

Are mobile phones going to be the death of these regimes? No, because Beg can get them turned off any time in a heart beat, the state controls the providers.

Even so, people struggle to get the story out because of awful things like this:

Tajikistan has come under widespread criticism after two inmates, Ajik Qayumov and Hamza Ikromzoda, were found dead in their prison cells in Dushanbe in recent months in separate incidents. Ikromzoda's brother claimed his body showed signs of torture, including burns allegedly caused by a hot iron.

The worst thing in the world would be if they went to all that trouble to get that video out, and nobody paid attention...

Can Human Rights Groups Walk and Chew Gum at the Same Time?

I've written on the broader subject of whether or not international and local human rights groups can condemn violations of the rights of terrorism suspects AND condemn violation of the rights of terrorist *victims*.  In part this contemplation was inspired by a Twitfight with @eTajikistan, an anonymous Twitterer who appears to be from Tajikistan, but not in Tajikistan. He writes posts like these:

@eTajikistan dear @AmbElliott If U could have an equally "good meeting" w/ #Tajikistan's Justice Min to allow #ICRC access2 prisons that would b awsome!

Zuhorov is of course the fellow who became world-famous for presiding over the closure of Facebook for two days or so, saying it was at "the people's" request due to "extremism" as we reported, and then promised to shut it off, and did.

@eTajikistanDear @BarackObama & @HrClinton: Human Rights Day came & went & you forgot to apologize to Khalid el-Masri for illegal #torture & #rendition!

@eTajikistan West’s implicit message to #CentralAsia: We'll tolerate your #Torture, #ExtrajudicialExecutions & vote rigging but keep hands off #Facebook!

And so on. In between posts about Western-funded educational opportunities, paradoxically, like many other young people on Twitter from this region, @eTajikistan rants about the exaggerated notions he has of America's evils in the world -- because he can see them on Twitter and in the world press -- and seldom actually discusses the evils in his own homeland or region -- which are hidden from official press and not covered as much by the world press -- and then doubles back and bangs on the symbol of that evil West -- the American ambassador -- for not behaving like the Tajik opposition and human rights community (that isn't able to function full strength) and bashing the host Tajik government everyday.

This paradigm repeats all over the world where America is involved -- lather, rinse, repeat. And some think the answer to winning over the hearts and minds of disenchanted young people like this  is to reduce perceived or actual American evils, by doing things like apologizing for Masri -- and that's all fine as far as it goes. But the human rights violations and challenge of terrorism are so far greater in these countries of Central Asia and with so far less remedies, that somehow, the @eTajikistan types have to be persuaded to get some corrective lenses for their magnified view of America and myopic view of Russia, the region, and their own country. Some think -- again -- this is achieved by American apology tours (yes, they are that) and breast-beating. The problem is -- that doesn't work on somebody like Beg Zuhorov. He knows deep down the real problem in the world isn't that America didn't apologize to someone they held wrongfully but ultimately let go and might be persuaded some day to compensate; the real problem is that Tajikistan has nabbed too many people wrongfully they will never let go, so it's not a fair comparison.

Even so, America has to thread this needle, and that means not just getting figures like Amb. Elliott in fact to do more for human rights and pressuring the Tajik government more, but asking the @eTajikistan types of the world to figure out how they will assume the responsibility of challenging their own dictator rather than obsessing abroad about America and Israel. I don't say that is easy. I do say it is necessary.

Why Would You Tweet Something Like This?

Speaking of Twitter, the State Department is now requiring that tweets have to be cleared 48 hours in advance. And I personally think this is a very good idea for officials, not civilians. The entire fatuous "Twenty-First Century Statecraft" stuff that Alec Ross has hawked around the world is not only incredibly utopian in nature, it is incredibly content-free, especially when you get to violent places like Pakistan, where he was, or it is incredibly ideologically-driven, rivulated with crappy theories about undermining of institutions, empowering of wired elites, and non-hierarchical running of the world.

Fortunately, these world-domination plans have been tripped up now by State itself, which is going to require a 48-hour clearance on tweets (since that's faster than the 30 days for statements, that's considered a victory for the forces of transparency).

I think people should be free to tweet as they please in the media and NGOs, and individuals who don't have thousands of followers aren't public figures who shouldn't be held to the same standards as those speaking to smaller groups, but governments of elected and appointed representatives  should be expected to comport themselves properly and hew to the country line. Don't work in government if you don't like that country line, you're not required to.

And you know, just basic, I dunno, common sense. Why would you tweet a picture of yourself in a scenic place with your security guards? Why do the secret police's work for them and give them pictures of such people up close and personal that they may not have? Or why give various non-state rogue actors pictures of such people that they might not have? Or why let the people of Tajikistan see you in scenic poses with your bodyguards, which in their culture doesn't exactly make you seem accessible? Everything about it just seems wrong, when we are a country that just lost four diplomats in Benghazi.  Twitter isn't the place to give the shout-out to security people -- your Christmas bonus in their mailbox is. Tradecraft before statecraft, people.

 

Turkmen Secret Police Hack Independent Turkmen Website

The logo of Chronicles of Turkmenistan, the publication of the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights

For the third time this year, the website Chronicles of Turkmenistan at chrono-tm.org has been hacked, and has been down for over three days.

Past hacks have been nasty, but this was likely the nastiest and most enduring to date -- the site was disabled, but then pornographic pictures were put up in its place, and insults of the site's manager, Farid Tuhbatullin and his sons.

More information (in Russian) is at a separate Blogspot page, where these independent Turkmens plan to keep posting news.

They also have a Facebook page -- but they warn readers that "layki" (i.e. "likes," which sounds like the word "barks" in Russian!) could reveal users' interest in independent Turkmen news to the authorities.

They also have a Twitter account (in Russian).

The group is keeping up their work publishing a multi-part series on the 10th anniversary of the coup attempt on past dictator Sapparmurat Niyazov.

I was wondering if perhaps this hack was related to the 10th anniversary -- which was November 25 -- but it came somewhat later.

The site owners believe it was related to a report they published about the death of two Turkmen students pressed into unpaid state service in one of those huge mass productions of people singing and dancing for the dictator on a state holiday. The two young men died after falling ill at the parade rehearsal -- they were ordered to dress lightly and it was cold, and they worked long hours.

Their report can also be found at the Russian news site Lenta.ru still.

Chrono-tm.org reported that the mass performance was cancelled after the deaths, but I see various official ceremonies still went forward on or around December 12 for  "Neutrality Day," as the Turkmen state calls the day in which it pretends that it hasn't been supine to -- at various times and places and sometimes to all four at once -- China, Russia, Iran, and the United States (in that order).

I had to wince when I saw the way this story was covered at Eurasianet.org, where Chronicles of Turkmenistan was described as "operated by members of Turkmenistan’s opposition-in-exile".

I winced because we spent the last ten years trying patiently to make a distinction between the Turkmen human rights movement in exile and the opposition in exile. For some, this might be a distinction without a difference, and it's blended in the case of other groups, but since it can be a matter of literally life or death and how the regime targets them, it seemed like it was worth making.

Truly, an opposition group is different than a human rights group, even though with a country like Turkmenistan, even the mildest human rights documentation is going to feel "political" to the regime and feel like a threat to their power, and then feel like "opposition". That's why you get Putin threatening human rights groups and charities under the "foreign agents" act. A group like the TIHR starts out trying merely to keep the record and tell the story and giving voices to others, but soon, due to the constant assaults on themselves they are driven into a corner next to the opposition, such as it is, which isn't much for Turkmenistan -- the secret police is pretty thorough.

It would have been easy to make a tiny opposition party, or an opposition group with a newspaper, or just an exiles club that took vocal political positions -- there are a number of them scattered around the world.

But Farid and his colleagues specifically made the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights -- a modest name that doesn't indicate any institutionalization or global ambitions -- because they saw the task with Turkmenistan to be much more basic than making a lonely and likely small exile party -- the very task of free flow of information itself about this closed, authoritarian nation located between Iran, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan and tracked through by the great powers.

The TIHR haven't made a political program nor do they create manifestos about how they would like to see their homeland arranged -- all of that is premature in any event as the dictator isn't going anywhere and civil society is essentially crushed. Instead, they tried to simply publish the news, accompanied by commentary from different perspectives and even humorous Youtube videos and cartoons.

So here's my stern request to those who have supported and helped this site: you have to step up and do better than this.

It's no good blaming the victim and indulging in knowier-than-thou pronouncements about how people who are hacked haven't attended to their craft or their security.

I recall seeing one of the hacks and it looked like a common SQL injection hack which might have been prevented, but some of these other assaults are more serious and sophisticated and devastating -- as only hacks from a state with resources can be. And yes, it's certain that the Turkmen secret police hacked this site. Do you know anyone else who would care about a Turkmen exiles' site enough to hack it? Okay, then, let's stop the pretend-impartial speculation.

I'm aware also of a past well-intentioned but unexpectedly inept attempt to help that ended in making things worse, and that shouldn't have happened.

What's needed here isn't the most sophisticated white-hat nerds to resist attacks, or "free" open source software that starts a meter running of coders at $50/hour; what's needed likely is a simple commercial site like Typepad or other services that have scores of engineers that do nothing all day but fend off attacks for you as they protect their sites overall. These engineers at commercial platforms have gotten very good at deflecting and resisting hackers -- and mopping up after them quickly when they occur. So that's what's needed, along with the support to sustain it.

Again, this site is way too important to let it be victimized so that someone can make them an object lesson for their security training workshops. Citizens' journalists and exile publishers shouldn't have to be bogged down in worrying about the mechanics of a web site, which after all, are just like plumbing or garage mechanics and not magical unicorn spells only the secretly initiated can learn.

Meanwhile, the web owners are "routing around" as the Internet always does when it faces censorship and providing some alternatives on Twitter, Facebook, and another blog page. Let's hope they get back up to speed again!

Why Can't Human Rights Activists Walk and Chew Gum at the Same Time?

It's a good thing that the European Court of Human Rights has pronounced on the case of the CIA's wrongful detention and mistreatmet of Khaled el-Masri as torture. This sheds a needed spotlight on the CIA's widely-denounced rendition program and hopefully will put an end to it as not only a gross violation of human rights but a conflict generator. (Among the persistent theories for the Benghazi attack is a story that the CIA was holding detainees suspected of terrorism in the Benghazi compound.)

But Jim Goldston, head of the Soros-funded Open Society Justice Initiative, has trouble telling the whole story on the way to making this case part of the anti-American cause. So does the leftist Guardian. So do a lot of people.

It's a narrative echoed by a lot of NGOs and individuals all over the world, and usually with none of the lawyerly care that Goldston brings to his work.

The end of Khaled el-Masri's sad story is that he is now in prison again -- this time, legitimately -- for assaulting the mayor of a German town and starting a fire over a dispute. He is serving a two-year sentence.

Now, perhaps you can craft an entire theory not only about his unhappy childhood and the trauma inflicted on him by the CIA that led him to this sorry pass, where he is now in jail for cause, not accidently.

So OSI and other human rights advocates just leave out that part out of the story -- it's awkward, it doesn't fit, and they don't think it matters. In a strict construction of "trial truth" it doesn't matter, either -- whatever the nature of the defendant's character or his separate acts in other settings, if he has been tortured in detention, his rights are violated and that's it, he deserves justice and compensation.

But in the moral and political universe that these human rights groups always pretend they don't inhabit (but actually occupy only one wing of), the larger issue acutely remains of what the CIA and the US government and the West in general are all to do about a population of young, angry Muslim men some of who actually are guilty of launching attacks on them, some of whom are only guilty of inciting such attacks or yakking them up on the Internet, and some of whom are innocent of any act, while they nurture hostile, extremist views that ultimately ensure a chronic climate of antagonism.

Step one might seem obvious -- have the CIA stop rendering and stop torturing. I'm all for that! Who isn't? Only the most obsessive conservatives in the US would really oppose it. Republicans like John McCain are in fact for publicizing and ending any US involvement in torture of foreigners and secret detention in foreign countries.

But there's another half of this equation that human rights agitators never, ever want to admit, not only because it doesn't fit their paradigm of innocent victims, and disrupts the narrative of badly treated justice crusaders, but because then they'd have to face down their own clients' antagonism of the rights paradigm -- and address the problem of their defense of jihad. In fact, where Amnesty International has gone completely wrong and utterly lost its way is in adopting a concept of "defensive jihad" that exonerates these violent clients and fits them in the same category as "prisoners of conscience", although the classic Amnesty definition of such persons was in fact that they not use or advocate violence.

The fact of the matter is, if human rights activists only celebrate the victims of Guantanamo as victims, and use it to fuel their anti-American lefty agendas, they aren't credible, and they never do anything long-term to rectify situations like we now face in Egypt, where ultimately democracy and human rights are "a train that takes you to your destiny, and then you get off" as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has famously put it.

If human rights groups really want to change the world, they need to change this narrative that enables victims of human rights violations -- even if rightly established as victims -- also to become some kind of heroes of human rights -- which they aren't. And that means not hiding the story, but telling it in all its complexities. It means admitting that the cases are not black-and-white and that the principles of justice they fight for have to apply to the civilians harmed by extremism and terrorism as well.

In dealing with these Guantanamo cases, US authorities face a number of real challenges for which human rights groups really haven't come up with good answers: some of the people they have released have gone on to commit terrorist attacks again; some of them incite hatred and violation of others' human rights, i.e. of women, such as the Cage Prisoners group in the UK; some are mentally ill, either because they started out that way or became that way from mistreatment; some of them would be at risk of being tortured far more severely in their homelands like Yemen or Uzbekistan.

So what's a liberal if flawed superpower to do? It would be great if these suspects could be transferred to US prisons in US states that appear eager to take them, and try them normally as other terrorist suspects have been tried. It would be great if more European countries would simply take them so that the US doesn't have to endlessly fight the challenge here at home from some districts and some political forces that don't want them here (which perplexingly, seem still to have power, even though we are now in Obama II, and Obama really should must the power to address this chronic situation).

But...I'm told that when Europeans are asked -- when they complain about Guantanamo -- to take the prisoners themselves, they look at their shoes. If Spain and Switzerland took some, that's great, but what about the rest? Do you want to keep them suffering to make a point in your hateful and facile anti-American agenda, or do you really want to solve their problems?

The US really needs to step up its clear and straight-talking rhetoric around this instead of remaining silent and in crouch mode. Part of the way they clear the air is to apologize and provide reasonable restitution to Masri; part of the way is to solidly articulate the real challenges of these people and what they represent and not pretend its a mere civil rights problem. If America -- and more importantly Western human rights organizations with high visibility -- could provide a way to address the challenges of these violent and incendiary populatinos without pretense, they might provide a model for awful governments like Uzbekistan and Russia and Turkey that endlessly justify their mistreatment of suspects because of the real extremism they espouse.

Yes, the US makes grave errors in its war on terrorism. But you know, it really time to grow up and stop the litany of "Bush lied, people died" on the Iraq war, when it isn't US troops who massacred most of the 100,000 people in Iraq, but militants and terrorists aided by Al Qaeda, Iran and other hostile actors. Ditto the war in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and its allies kill 85% of the civilians -- and where the scene was set not by US support of mujahideen, but the Soviet massacre of a million -- a million! -- Afghan civilians. Let's get the historical and political framework straight here, people.

There just isn't enough good public American rhetoric on these issues -- it's the sort of connection people like Alec Ross could be making instead of burbling inanely about "innovation" and "shifts of power to the people and end to hierarchies" as he did recently in Pakistan, a place where no shift of power is occuring except to the very present hierarchy of the ISI and the terrorists its supports.

What's happening as a result of the crouching and dodging and leaving the narrative to "progressives" like Jim Goldston who won't tell the whole story is that entire generations in Eurasia and other areas of the world living under oppression are getting to engage in surrogate politics and chime in with anti-Americans instead of facing their own far more oppressive governments at home.

Somebody like "eTajikistan" on Twitter, in between tweets about American-funded educational opportunities, is enabled in this immoral climate created by the international elites of the human rights movement to rant endlessly about the need to apologize to Masri or close Guantanamo. But then he never has to do more than occasionall retweet anything about the problems both of the tyrant Emmomali Rahmon and the Islamists he faces. The e-activists living abroad can indulge in a placebo and rant about seeming US support of their government, but not confront either the dictatorship or its enemies that enable it to justify its existence.

Indeed, one gets the impression that US-funded educational programs, Soros-funded NGOs, and of course the American innovation of Twitter, have enabled entire swathes of intellectuals who should be sweeping around their own doors and addressing tyranny at home to endlessly broom the US and Israel as hated symbols along with a choir that mainly preaches to its own countries in the West.

I wondered at the endless heckling I got from certain Pakistani journalists and bloggers when I criticized Pakistani government reluctance to take on the Taliban and even support it through their intelligence arm, even as I was critical of drone attacks that have harmed Pakistani civlians. Aren't Pakistani activists able to walk and chew gum at the same time, either?  Can't they condemn the shooting of Malala, the killing of children by drones AND take a whack at those terrorists in the Taliban and Al Qaeda that make it possible for the US to keep justifying its drones? Hello? Why?

Then I clicked through the screens and eventually got an admission that these Pakistanis were supporters of Imre Khan, already the target of controversy over the US antiwar group CODE PINK's decision to hook up with him to protest drones in a one-sided fashion.

Or I was dealing with Pakistani immigrants in Brisbane -- which provides a home for other Muslim hecklers on Twitter who are long gone from their oppressive homelands -- and have found in the anti-Western cause and the hating of America and Israel a comfortable placebo that helps them fit in with their newfound homeland's liberals.

And the cycle of violence from disaffected angry young men, some of them mistreated, continues, and never gets better.