Gen. Petraeus meets President Karimov in Tashkent in 2009. Photo: US Embassy in Tashkent.
Sarah Kendzior has a perfectly dreadful article posted on AlJazeera where she is a frequent contributor. "Does it matter if the West gives military aid to Uzbekistan?" she asks, sucking a thumb that she has turned up in fact for military aid because she's never seriously questioned it. She and the other gaggle of former defense analysts at Registan.net generally support the status quo of US policy -- and that means supporting these regimes, albeit with occasional criticism for credibility's sake -- because we need them to get in and out of the war in Afghanistan.
AlJazeera has a skewed view of the world tilting to the anti-American, pro-Palestinian, "progressive" line that dovetails with Kendzior's crowd -- and they censor or just don't cover stories. I had never known them to censor comments that were legitimate, i.e. not spam or obscene, but for some reason, I saw my comment disappear, and then when I tried to respond to Richard Szulewski, I couldn't post.
I have a few articles in the queue of Kendzior's I've been meaning to sit down and analyze for their flaws in thinking and bad faith, but I put it off until I have the time to really sit for hours and think and analyze line-by-line -- I find most people who have swallowed her line whole need a very careful rebuttal line-by-line or they won't even think of resisting her -- that is if they bother to pay attention in the first place. She is not well known in the fields of either anthropology for Eurasia or in the field of communications or Central Asian studies but she is aggressively making herself known by Twitter, the conference circuit and blogging -- which pass for scholarship these days.
Her article is a stupendous circle-jerk of thinking, as she links to her own piece in argument ("Stop Talking About Civil Society"); then she links to her fellow believers around Registan and Joshua Kucera, a like-minded comrade from EurasiaNet who turned in an awful piece back in 2011 in the New York Times that said "say and do nothing" about human rights because you can't influence Central Asia anyway. It really was pernicious, and seemed to serve the interests of those on the Hill and at State trying to get the Senate Appropriations committee to drop sanctions on Uzbekistan so they could get some modest military help which was a way of papering over a poor relationships and trying to keep the NDN going. An awful business, and Kucera even took a factoid handout from State later, that no one else got, and published it as evidence that State didn't think human rights progress was necessary really anyway, for exigency factors, even though before, they'd postured about progress as if it *was* necessary to convince reluctant senators concerned about human rights implications. Like I said, a bad business...
But Kendzior's arguments are attractive to the do-nothing RealPolitik crowd, so it's worth thinking them through.
Association for Human Rights in Central Asia proposes siging a petition against military aid. I signed it. Kendzior signed it too but she takes a pirouette to tell us she did it as a matter of private conscience, even if as a public intellectual and thinker, she doesn't believe in it. Way to show your hypocrisy, Sarah. And no need to bother.
Says Kendzior:
Analysts have long debated the ethical and strategic ramifications of providing Uzbekistan with military equipment - largely unidentified but allegedly non-lethal - in exchange for a transport route to neighbouring Afghanistan. But the heated discussion that has emerged has more to do with the moral anxiety of Westerners than with the rights or safety of Uzbeks.
What is intended as activism rooted in a critique of Western militarism actually amounts to an endorsement of Western effectiveness, because it rests on the belief that the West has leverage, that our opinion matters, that the fate of nations hinges on us. The hard truth is that in places like Uzbekistan, it does not.
Well, that's supposed to mean that we ought not debate, because hard-assed authoritarians are going to be brutal anyway. Well, why not? We can move the slider up and down on this, surely. I will never forget a retiring general of the NDN who said at a conference that he told Petraeus and others that the US shouldn't have prostrated so much to Karimov. We shouldn't have. And neither should Kendzior. And that *is* what she does when she coldly and nastily tells every human rights activist they don't matter and therefore should do nothing, as if their advocacy is merely some bourgeois affectation of blinded Western imperialists who don't realize the evils of their own country or its clients (which is a line that plays nicely into the ALJ narrative).
Yes, it's important to call out public figures' immorality when they get too clever by half. It is immoral.
In fact, it *does* matter. Uzbekistan is avidly trying to keep us as friends so that it doesn't have to go into the arms of Russia and China only. It wants its independence from the former and doesn't want to become dependent on the latter. Oh, and Turkey, too. So they like dealing with the US in terms of business and military matters as it gives them some options and choices. We can exploit that to try to get concessions on political prisoners or terms of how we *are* going to prostrate ourselves which is *not that much*. We should always and everywhere call out the Uzbek regime's bluff -- they claim they need help with terrorism and will be cooperate with the war effort in Afghanistan because of that need? Okay, be helpful then.
But other than a few token political prisoner releases, what the US has gotten is only more expulsions of its own funded projects, and US-based non-governmental groups like Human Rights Watch have been expelled. So that prompts Kendzior to her hard-nosed, callused view of how to see this situation -- which comes straight out of Karimov's vision of himself:
And that is the point. Despite the changing relationship between the West and Uzbekistan, the brutality of the Karimov government has remained consistent, impervious to Western influence or Western demands. Uzbekistan's government will do what it wants regardless of how it hurts itself or others. There is no carrot and no stick, only cruel, cold dismissal.
Well, yes and no. Lots of Uzbeks still want to come to the US to study -- and do so and eventually they will grow up and some of them might have some influence on events in their country. Some of them got in political trouble even with very mild educational programs and were forced to remain here -- Kendzior and Registan in fact adopted them. They openly discuss life after Karimov, who will not live forever. So cold or not, cruel or not, dismissal or not, water wears away the stone, exiles discuss, they interact with dissenters inside the country, alternatives are created, the US funds foreign broadcasting, support some NGOs abroad, provides aslyum for some fleeing -- and an alternative political and civic space is made. Certainly more of a political space than would exist if we put Sarah Kendzior in charge of civil society, which she repudiates and says we should stop talking about.
Citing herself, Kendzior discounts that any chaos is coming:
The debate over military aid arrives among speculation that the departure of NATO forces from Afghanistan in 2014 will leave Central Asia in chaos, an outcome predicted by several analysts. This argument assumes that the NATO presence played a significant role in achieving regional stability, a view I disputed in a recent article showing how Central Asian "peace" is structured on citizens' fear of their own governments.
Well, except, she can't be sure. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. And they didn't predict the Andijan uprising and massacre, the Arab Spring and crackdown, the big marches in Russia and crackdown, and so on. If we left it up to these armchair anthropologists that farm out their own surveys to others and don't visit the country to work (and maybe they can't), we wouldn't know anything about unrest in these societies and would be utterly prepared for various scenarios. Oh, I guess we do that a lot, then. But...You have to keep an open mind. Kendzior does not have one. She keeps hammering the same RealPolitik message home as if somebody's budget depends on it. And probably somebody's budget does, and I don't mean her university's.
Kendzior believes ANY talk about possible terrorism or militarism and unrest are just ridiculous. That's insane! This is an area that *does* have some instances of terrorism, even if some are manufactured. There are something like 8,000 Muslim prisoners in jail. Many of them were wrongfully jailed, and that means their relatives are held down only by fear and intimidation -- and that may not last forever, like it didn't last forever in Egypt where people were tortured. We have to care, and we have to develop ways of engaging the regime while in power, those people if they are released and come to power, and everyone else.
She then claims that Akrimaya "didn't exist". But I've heard Uzbek exiles speak openly of its existence as a fact including some that took part in it -- and by that they don't mean some terrorist operation like Al Qaeda, but a Muslim businessmen's society. Here's what I said on ALJ in case it is removed:
It isn't so material to determine whether Akromiya is "real" or not, i.e. was it a fundamentalist Islamist group bent on terror. It was a group of Muslim businessmen who helped each other. And they went to break their fellow businessman out of jail because they thought his jailing on charges of corruption was unfair, and knowing the lack of due process in that country, that is likely. But then they killed policemen and took others as hostages and then human shields as they faced down government troops. So they committed violence, that's wrong, that's illegal, and the human rights groups protesting this massacre always seem to skip over that part way too lightly. Yes, there seemed to have been a lot of women and children who peacefully gathered in the square who were then mowed down by government troops. But government tanks and troops can rationalize their massive human rights violations when the incidents are started by gunmen doing a jail break and a shoot-out, you know?
I think it's the right thing to do not to sell this government lethal weapons. We will not pry them loose from Russia or help them fight terrorism by doing that. Once troops are removed from Afghanistan, we should not be so craven to them. We should attempt to engage them with a series of incremental steps and if they reform or make concessions, adjust our behaviour accordingly.
What's so awful about Kendzior's ideas is that she winds up with an unjustified quietism and endorsement of the status quo -- the authoritarian regime about which we should do nothing because we have no leverage.
***
I can only repeat what I've said before about why you have to keep a level head about terrorism and not just knock the Jamestown Foundation because they aren't in your tribe:
But what happens when you mount academic theses that unrest can "never happen here" or that Islamic fundamentalism "can't happen" is that you are unprepared with policies when it does. If you've assured the world that there is no Hizb-ut-Tahrir problem whatsoever, forgetting even that there might be if the prison policy changes (and it must if we are to insist on our human rights ideals) -- then when a country *does* grow more religious, even shy of the extremities of HuT, decision-makers are unprepared. If you've spent years telling everyone that Islamic fundamentalism in Tajikistan isn't really a problem any more and the civil war is over and the threat is exaggerated, then you have no framework to understand that pretty much all significant dissent in Tajikistan seems to take the form of Muslim activism, and then policy-makers may view what is normal and natural for a country as suddenly a threat. The very analysis that seeks to minimize unrest or religious revival in opposition to mythical promoters of these concepts then winds up fueling the hysteria they claimed to see in the first place.
As I've said before, the US could do more to tighten up its act even within the circumscribed options it has with Uzbekistan -- remember when Karimov threatened to shut down the NDN because the US gave a human rights award to an Uzbek activist? Karimov is thinking not only about "after 2014" but his own succession. Public and private diplomacy on human rights can be more vigorous.
Kendzior concludes by making it seem as if she is nuanced and thoughtful -- although she's told everyone to stop talking about civil society, she's told everyone that it is pointless to sign petitions, and she's told everyone there is no terrorist threat -- so it's all a sleight of hand and a propagandistic manipulation:
Uzbekistan poses the tough question of what should be done about a country that does not respect international law or its own citizens. There are no easy answers, but one way to start is by acknowledging that the solution does not hinge on Western action, for good or for ill.
Focusing on military aid addresses Western hypocrisy - a subject notable in its own right - but does little to address the everyday challenges Uzbek citizens face. As the issue of Western military aid brings renewed focus on Uzbekistan, we should make sure we do not neglect the quiet, more pervasive forms of violence, the routine brutality that takes place away from foreign eyes.
ALJ eats up anything that talks about "Western hypocrisy" but "Western hypocrisy" is the least of the world's problems because it's dictated by the world's far worse problems: Pakistani intelligence support of the Taliban and related groups; the Taliban and its supporters itself; Al Qaeda; Assad in Syria; Bashir in Sudan and the ongoing state-sponsored civil war, essentially; Putin in Russia and the suppression of civil society there; China hacking the US and suppressing its minorities and extracting resources to grow stronger. Kendzior seldom waxes eloquent on the hypocrisy of any of these abusive forces.
Indeed, the situation in part *does* depend on Western policy in support of internal actors. It has never depended on anything else. Nobody brought about a spring in Prague or Cairo by themselves; they had solidarity if nothing else, but more often somebody to help pay for printing presses, and today, circumvention software. It's a myopic, cynical and most of all immoral view (posing as amoral and pratical). There's nothing wrong with basing American foreign policy on morals.
What's interesting to me more than my own censorship on this article are the people who manage to speak or who are "under moderation" and have to be clicked on now to see, such as Richard Szulewski (in case the post is removed, reprinting here):
Whenever a person starts a supposedly serious article with the phrase..."the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia, a group comprised mainly of exiles from Uzbekistan,"
It shows that further reading is not necessary.
Ms. Kendzior...we get it. As a recent Anthropology PHD your insights are INCREDIBLY valuable to world affairs. You completely understand central Asian politics and the intricacies of Geo-politics...
Or it could be that you hate America and are willing to use this incredibly valuable loudspeaker called AJE to bash anything pro-western.
AKROMIYA is real. YOU have debunked nothing and claims otherwise shows your sheer hubris. My experience in the nation directly contradicts your claims and will be happy to show you proof of the same. Uzbekistan is a nation struggling to find itself after decades under the Soviet thumb. Troubles? Yes. Evil? No.
And you left a quote out M'am..."The threat may not be imminent, but extending security assistance to the Central Asian states is justifiable, Blake maintained."
Please Ma'm...stop your attempts at political analysis. You are embarrassing yourself.
