Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) propaganda video. Comments on Youtube suggest they get some resistance from their compatriots.
I was delighted to give an interview to CA-News, which is a Central Asian news online publication based in Bishkek associated with AKIpress.org (in Russian).
But because there are a half dozen or so mistakes in the translation that makes me sound like I'm saying the opposite of what I actually said [fortunately fixed within a day!], and because not everybody reads Russian, I'm reprinting the original Russian questions and my answers in English below. I've asked them to make the corrections. I don't mind, because this is an important independent publication and I support its mission. I think they do a good job.
I'm not sure how they came to ask me, a person who is not a formal expert on the region, for such an extensive interview, but they did, perhaps in search of independent analysis.
Although I've spent a career of 35 years in this field where I have travelled extensively throughout Eurasia, and lived and worked in Russia and travelled frequently to Russia, Belarus, Poland in particular for OSCE, I have never been to a single Central Asian country. I worked in the Central Eurasian Program at OSI for six years without such a boon. It's not for any lack of desire; it just so happened that at different times when I was actually invited to go to Kyrgzystan when I worked with various human rights groups, or Kazakhstan when I was a public member at the OSCE, it simply happened that I couldn't go. I doubt I could get a visa to Turkmenistan, having written critically about it for OSI for six years, or Uzbekistan, where I also wrote critically for two years -- and of course before that, I edited two weeklies for RFE/RL and other publications for many years.
Even so, I study the regional Russian-language and English-language press very carefully, go to all the conferences I can, and interview people directly either when they visit the US, or when I see them at international conferences or over email and Skype. That's certainly not a substitute for a personal visit, where you can get the feel of things and have many important one-on-one conversations. But in lack of direct exposure on my skin of the winds of Central Asia, I'm no different than most pundits who have either never been there, or have been there only infrequently, and don't even speak any regional languages.
I do think there's an advantage to having a critical independent view of this critical region. I think those not in formal structures can speak out more loudly about the corrosive effect on human rights that the US and Europe have had; the ongoing pernicious role that Russia plays; and the troublesome future of Chinese domination -- not to mention the ways in which the oppressive autocratic regimes play these factors off against each other to keep themselves in power and their people miserable.
You have nothing to lose if your job does not depend on some certain perspective. I find that the status quo in the human rights movement is to minimize the threat of terror or unrest and play up the awfulness of the regimes. That's a whitewash, given the groups in the region that have many, many more thousands of adherents that Western-style human rights groups -- like Hizb-ut-Tahir.
As for Washington, I find that far from there being the "neo con" belief that a) there is rampant terrorism and a horrible threat of Islamization and/or b) some imminent "Arab Spring" coming, there is actually nothing of the sort. Oh, there's that one paper at Jamestown Foundation or something, but that's it.
That is, those on the left, the "progressives" and the "RealPolitik" adherents constantly pontificate as if there were some horrid neo-cons or hawks or conservatives saying these things, but in fact these groups, which have dwindling influence in any event, either are following RealPolitik themselves or don't even care at all about this region (mainly the latter).
So in my view, there is this whole fake industry of anti-anti commentary, which runs like this:
"There isn't any Islamic threat at all in this region, perish the thought, it's just a poor region with dictators who in fact go overboard suppressing legitimate Muslim activity"
"There's no Muslim fervour in fact, these states are Sovietized and secularized".
"Nothing is going to happen when troops leave, it is all wildly exaggerated and people who say that seem not to realize that the US troops are the conflict generator, not the IMU"
"Russia has little influence any more in this region; it has less gas extraction, it has less money, it has length troop strength and its efforts to make a Warsaw Pact -- the CSTO -- or a Soviet Re-Union with a customs union have mainly failed."
And so on.
While each one of those statements can be true up to a point, they also lead to this strange endorsement of the status quo in these regions that in fact ends up serving the regimes, in my view.
Russia's influence is considerable, and it has been behind unrest by its action (as it was in Bakiyev's ouster and its threats to Atambayev) or inaction (with the pogroms in Osh). The remittance economies are huge -- for the labour migrants from Tajikistan in particular, but increasingly Uzbekistan and even Turkmenistan. That means that Russia winds up dominating the lives of these countries through some of their most vulnerable citizens -- not just the mainly male workers but the females left back home as head of households with children. The Russian language did not disappear from this region, even if it is taught less, because dominating Russian mainstream media, and Russian-controlled social media like mail.ru and Vkontakte, are very big factors in the media space in this region.
As for terrorism, sure, it gets exaggerated and the regimes "do it to themselves". But there are also real terrorist acts that occur. There is a sense that the presence of US troops in Afghanistan has ensured a kind of "frozen conflict" in this region that isn't on the official list of the frozen conflicts. The IMU has been tied up mainly fighting NATO troops. So when they go away, then what? Where do they go, those 5000 or 8000 or however many fighters there are? (And probably there are analysts saying they are only 2000, but who really knows, what, you did a door-to-door survey, guys?) Will they peacefully melt back into the countryside and farm happily? Or what? I think it's okay to look at that question critically without being branded as a terrorism hysteric.
Ditto the question of "Arab Spring". No one thinks there is any Arab Spring coming to Central Asia. I don't know of a single pundit or analyst saying this. Yet again, there is the "anti-anti-" industry making this claim, mainly from the Registan gang. The problem is that when you adopt that scornful skepticism, you stop seeing reality when it appears. As Paul Goble put it, there is a way in which talking about the Arab Spring is a little spring in itself. And there are signs of unrest here and there, and you don't know how they will turn out.
Remember, the same gang at Registan -- Sarah Kendzior and Katy Pearce -- were predicting with firm determination that discussion of oppression on the Internet was causing a chill in use, a decline in use, and even the shuttering of popular discussion pages. They implied that there would never be any Twitter revolution in Azerbaijan, that it was going to be slow and incremental and we shouldn't artificially speed it up by over-amplifying human rights cases.
Yet thousands of people keep demonstrating in Azerbaijan despite the news of repression, and they keep using Internet tools to make their case -- tools that Pearce is now blithely measuring with machinopology as if she had never written that Internet use would be chilled by such expression. It hasn't been. Facebook membership boomed. Will this "spring" last forever? I truly doubt it. Not with potential European and American oil interests -- and actually existing Russian and Iranian oil interests -- in this mix. Everybody will blame the West for the crackdown in Azerbaijan that is likely to be inevitable and thorough, and fume at the regime-tropic USAID grantees that they ignored last year (or even cooperated with) as the smoking gun of American perfidy. But it will be Russia's money and military role that will be the bigger factor.
This is how I'm seeing it, in the end: To the extent Russian wants or needs conflict, or is weakened and can't efficiently prevent or manage conflict, there will be conflict in Central Asia after NATO troops are withdrawn.
Part of that resistance to Russian state intrusion will be Islamic ferment. If analysts were busy telling everyone these were secular Soviet states and Arab Spring can't happen, they will be uncomfortably confronted with the reality that Islam is a great organizing tool in countries where it has historic roots, and this need not be seen as a threat to the West. Yet because they've been engaged in such an industry telling us it's not a threat to the West, they will be embarrassed when in fact it will be -- as they emblematically were when the Egyptian woman activist just feted at the State Department turned out to be such an anti-American hater, 9/11 celebrator, and horrid anti-semite on Twitter, and not because she was hacked -- a fiction State had to indulge in to save face.
Answer to Questions from Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, independent analyst on Eurasia, blogger at Different Stans
http://3dblogger.typepad.com/different_stans
Как вы знаете ЦА является ареной геополитических игр США, России и Китая. Кто из этих стран оказывает наибольшее влияние на процессы происходящие в ЦА?
Undoubtedly, Russia will have the most influence on this region because it has the greatest historic ties, geographical proximity, political and military relationships, language capacity – and is the source for the remittance economies. It also has Russian-language TV and radio broadcasting and Internet accessible throughout the region which are likely the way it most makes its influence felt – although Russian TV is no Al Jazeera, it is more independent than most Central Asia media. It’s fashionable for Americans in particular to say that Russia’s influence in dwindling here because some young people are learning English and studying abroad. But the overwhelming majority of the populations still use Russian as their lingua franca with Russia and each other – not English. Russian language use is reduced, but still ubiquitous. Russia has the greatest geopolitical and trade interests and of course the military relationships with its troops particularly in Tajikistan. Russia heavily influenced political transitions in Kyrgyzstan and even if it only exists as a fulcrum against which Uzbekistan and others define their independence, they are still engaged. The intellectuals of the Central Asian countries have understandable reluctance to engage with Russia and Russians, but given the large representation of their guest worker population, their reliance on Russian media to have alternative coverage of their own countries (to a limited extent) they will likely go on reach the democratically-minded publics in Russia and Russian-speaking countries and through the world arenas where Russian is spoken such as OSCE and the UN.
Sadly, the US will not have the capacity or the funds or the personnel, especially Russian-speaking personnel all of which have dwindled considerably in recent years, to be able to have much of an influence on this region after the withdrawal of the troops. Like other Americans who care about the region of Central Asia and particularly its human rights and economic well-being, I look with dread on the withdrawal of the NATO and US troops in 2014 as a time when there will be increased instability in Central Asia and a possible spillover effect, especially knowing that the US does not have the resources and will not make them available to really help this entire region, starting with Afghanistan’s recovery. There is a grave risk this could set it up for a repeat of the same weaknesses and conflicts that occurred after the Soviet withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and after the break-up of the USSR.
China will continue to have the biggest budget for some of these countries and therefore exercise the power of the purse where it chooses to, but this will be narrowly in its own economic interests and not involve regime change.
После вывода войск НАТО в 2014 году из Афганистана, куда будет направлен вектор
интересов США?
The US is already making the pivot to China and South Asia, and leaving behind Central Asia, and is heavily involved in the Middle East and North Africa as its chief focus now. The US cedes this region to Russia for the most part, and is not animated by the zeal it once had to reform Russia.
There is a saying in democracy aid circles that the aid spigots turn on in Congress when there are elections in a country. It’s hard to get the funds to do garden-variety spadework day-to-day on institution-building although this is needed more. But for party-building and election-monitoring, the spigots turn on. By the same token, I fear the spigots will turn off sharply as the troops leave because of the sequestration and military and foreign affairs budget-cutting measures. To be sure, the US has some companies with oil and gas and mineral extraction interests or manufacturing, particularly in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, but you’ll notice that not a single drill bit from a single US company has penetrated the Karakum of Turkmenistan and is not likely to soon. And there’s a limit to how much Central Asian regimes or even societies really want Americans in their country – they seem to prefer more to travel to America for education or jobs. The value of America has often been seen in its Yankee know-how, but these days I think the Central Asians can teach Americans more about the intricacies of how their countries really work than get American models to take root on their soil. The US military is likely to keep a significant advisory presence in these countries as they view it in their interests to do so. But there is a sharp drop-off in attention coming, with the pull of events in Asia and the Middle East sucking away budgets to those regions. There will be those die-hard scholars and activists and business people who will continue to care, but given that these countries are not likely to join NATO let alone the Council of Europe any time soon, they are sadly likely to be neglected.
Также Россия обещала поддержку Таджикистану и Кыргызстану в плане поставок оружия в противовес США,которая планирует оставить афганское оружие Узбекистану.
The US has denied any plans to leave Afghan weapons in Uzbekistan, although recently at a Congressional hearing there was some discussion of giving unmanned airplanes or drones to Uzbekistan, although it is not clear what the specifics are and it does not seem likely it would involve offensive capacity. There are some legal constraints on the sale or gift of lethal weapons to Uzbekistan, reviewed annually, although sanctions against Uzbekistan were lifted last year by the Senate Appropriations Committee to enable military aid for training and some defense, i.e. bullet-proof vests. Assistant Secretary of State Robert O. Blake, Jr. in his last trip through the region in February denied repeatedly to press that there was any plan to have US troops exit through Tajikistan or to leave equipment from Afghanistan – which is estimated to be worth something like $29 billion. Given the budget crunch in the US, we are told that in fact there is every incentive not to leave any weapons and to ensure that it does not fall into “the wrong hands”.
Could this current reality change? The question is to identify the factors that might propel change, and these might involve some upsurge of militant or terrorist activity following the withdrawal of troops. It is actually more likely that refugees will come over the border to Tajikistan or Uzbekistan, fleeing the renewed Taliban, and that tents will be needed, not counter-insurgency – and that the usual problems of telling the rebel from the refugee will ensue. It is always possible that the regimes of Central Asia could manufacture terrorist incidents themselves, or incite them or exploit even existing clashes in some way as they have in the past. US officials recently told Congress that they did not see the threat of Islamic terrorism as very great in this region, and the leading analysts that have the ear of the Obama Administration also tend to minimize the terrorist threat.
Without predicting any Arab Spring or any outbreak of rebellion and suppression like the Andijan massacre, I do think that we have to be willing to be open to looking at the facts when they occur and not endlessly sooth ourselves with the idea that there will be no radical movements succeeding in Central Asia that might attract renewed attention from the US and certainly increased activity of Russia. Islamic fervor, usually non-violent, is the form that civic activism has taken in some countries and this should be accepted as a given instead of discounted for fear of over-dramatizing the fear of unrest. No one was prepared for Andijan; no one was prepared for the Arab Spring; no one was prepared for the huge marches in Russia and the subsequent crackdowns after each of these developments. So you lose nothing by scanning the horizon sensibly and keeping an open mind in interpreting all events.
На фоне последних событий в связи с ухудшением отношений США с Россией,возможно ли развитие событий как это было в 50-х годах на корейском полуострове?
Remember that the factors that made for the Korean War (in which my father fought) was a Soviet Union bent on spreading communist ideology worldwide, Chinese backing for the North Korean army, and a UN that was ultimately not dominated by Moscow, so that the two phrases “UN troops” and “battled” could appear in the same sentence – something they have hardly done since then. None of those factors now apply. Today, Russia doesn’t have as much appetite for projecting its force worldwide, although it will certainly attend to what it views as its back yard. The question is what territory would serve as “the Korean peninsula”. Tajikistan? You saw that no US or NATO troops came to rescue Georgia over the dispute with the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which Russia has now engineered to seek recognition as states. So how could US troops possibly be mustered to fight Russian troops when they are on their way out, not on their way into the region? My sense is that 75% of what the Kremlin is doing now with the US is bluff – it’s fury over the calling of their bluff and the insistence on the Magnitsky List to punish directly some 60 or so officials related to the death in custody of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and other officials involved in the cover-up, and related financial scams that led Magnitsky to probe them in the first place. There is a great deal of tit-for-tat politicking going on now over the adoption issue, the expulsion of USAID, the claiming that NGOs are “foreign agents” if they get US grants and so on, as we saw in the Soviet period. It is because the nature of the political culture nurtured in the KGB cannot change while a KGB agent is the leader of the country. Even so, I notice that Moscow is not reluctant to accept investment from Intel, Microsoft, IBM and so on and hold technical exchanges with Skolkovo and Silicon Valley. So life will go on as it has always gone on with this “superpower rival” and I do not think there is any Cuban Missile Crisis or Korean War coming, especially not over Central Asia.
Идет бурная гонка за лидерство в ЦА,почему Китай занимает выжидательную позицию? Китай граничит почти со многими странами в ЦА, Каковы реальные планы Китая по ЦА?
I don’t see that China is playing a waiting game with Central Asia – it already has its 51% investment in many companies. The think tanks and NGOs of Central Asia really should get together in a consortium and track the Chinese takeover or heavy involvement in industries in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and elsewhere so we can make a more accurate assessment of just what this is. There is a great deal of anxiety about this for some Central Asians, but I’m not sure that China has the control they imagine. Even so, Turkmenistan’s gas is essentially bought out by China with a more than $8 billion investment in the pipeline to China, and there is not a lot of other foreign investment activity, except from Turkey, Russia still, and Iran. I have directly asked Chinese representatives what their plans are and they are not talking, but their aggressiveness in running the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and organizing exchanges and study and business lets us know that they want influence in this region primarily because of its natural resources. Generally, unlike the US and Russia, China tends to stay out of engagement with local politics when they get involved in a country. Yet in Central Asia, they have done things with political ramifications, like help Ashgabat filter the Internet.
As we see from the double veto on Syria and other resolutions regarding huge humanitarian crises at the UN Security Council, China is not interested in humanitarian intervention or “the responsibility to protect” human rights. So the best bet that the peoples of Central Asia have for a great power that will care about human rights and independent economic prosperity is the US, for better or worse. But we have all seen how woefully weak American advocacy can be in the face of exigencies of the Northern Distribution Network. The harsh Realpolitik of the situation is that to the extent the regimes of Central Asia can make themselves interesting for the US by brokering relations with Iran (as Kazakhstan has) or at least not helping Iran too much (as Turkmenistan has done and Pakistan has not done), and seeming to take lessons from US trainers on border control, particularly against illegal narcotics and terrorists, they will have a relationship. By the way, it has always been my conviction that the war in Afghanistan will continue under other guises in this region as a counter-narcotics war, and that the actions of all the parties involved, whether regional governments or outsiders like US advisors or the terrorists themselves, will revolve around the drug trade. And as the US has not done a terribly good job with this drugs portfolio on its own border with Mexico, and as Russia cannot seem to cooperate with the US on counternarcotics despite losing 30,000 of its people to drug-related deaths, the usual misery will likely continue for some time.
Не давно Турция заявила о желании вступить в ШОС, запад больше не интересен для
Труции? Каково ваше мнение?
The US, NATO and Turkey are cooperating on the Syrian war and recently NATO deployed six Patriot missiles in Turkey which Russia was not happy about but which Turkey, a NATO member, wanted – and got -- to defend itself against Syria. So it hardly seems as if the West “isn’t interesting” for Turkey. But the reality is, Turkey will turn away from the West because the European Union has never been able to invite Turkey into its membership for political and cultural reasons. That is regrettable given the crucial role of Turkey in the region, the presence of Turkish immigrant communities of many decades standing in Europe now, and various pipelines of interest to the EU. Turkey’s acrimonious antagonism to Israel is a stumbling block in relations with the US, and interestingly, the Central Asian regimes have done more to cultivate friendlier relations with Israel. Perhaps it makes sense for Turkey to join the SCO, but the SCO seems mainly to exist as a grant-giving and influence-spreading operation of China in Central Asia than really about actual regional cooperation.
While the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe can be scorned as being too weak, and it was unable to get its police assistance group installed in Osh or keep observers in Abkhazia, nobody else could either, and I still think it is an indispensable organization – the one organization in the world where the US, Russia and the EU are forced to attempt to cooperate and focus on this region’s problems in ways that they will seldom do at the UN. So for better or worse, it is important to try to strengthen and extend the confidence-building, training and human rights programs of the OSCE in Central Asia.
