OSCE Unbound

Turkmen Coup Cat

OK, I couldn't resist when I read this cable on Wikileaks...

Butters.photo

 

Tweeting #OSCE2010 and Livstreaming the OSCE Summit -- and a Soviet-style Newspaper

People often look for "Twitter revolutions" -- or debunk them -- in major events like a demonstration of 100,000 people on the main public square when elections are contested.

But the actual Twitter revolutions often shows up in small places or in the interstices of large events that don't even seem to be about revolutions per se, or even self-consciously, social media itself. And I suppose that's when you know social media is really "changing the world". But...is it?

Eleven years ago, during the OSCE summit in Ankara, of course, we didn't have Twitter. We had email and faxes, but they weren't quite so ubiquitous. I recall getting only a few emails or faxes back then from Ankara (I didn't go, although I worked on various issues leading up to the summit, I had colleagues who attended). People didn't have email back on their cell phones then even if they had a cell phone (and they were far less prevelant), and it would have been difficult to find an Internet cafe to send email -- it wasn't necessarily standard in 1999. I don't recall having Internet so readily available even at home in the 1990s -- it was in the 2000s, although of course we had it at work.

Now, the OSCE summit in Astana is casually being tweeted by various people, young people who are either low-level staff or reporters or NGOs, tweeting largely funny, social, superficial things. President Medvedev had only one tweet to say he arrived in Astana -- the Twitter feed doesn't seem to have any heads of state commenting.

A Kazakh woman who describes herself as "giggly" and is quite astute at times describes the different colour ties of the various heads of state -- but also works in comments about how the parallel conference seemed to be very selective as to its invited participants and seemed to be "a bunch of people from mail.ru who make bucks from grants on hot topics and are active on social media".

I found myself having to tweet to one of those earnest @parOSCE boosters that you know? Civil society is *not* just NGOs, and not just NGOs who go to international conferences. You almost think it would be startling not only for the heads of state, but for these professional civil-society-c'est-mois sorts to see actual civil society in its more pluralistic manifestations -- local grassroots environmentalists not organized into grant-taking entities, priests and imams, parent and teacher groups, labour unions (one never hears of them at OSCE, ever!), even businesses.

Hillary's speech at a town hall (fortunately not related to the parallell summit but separate) seemed to impress -- her call for media freedom and mentioning of jailed journalists.

A man expresses surprise that Lavrov and Otunbayeva both have their head phones off to listen to Ban Ki Moon because they both know English -- "Respekt" he tweets.

Another young Kazakh fellow tweets that some of the delegates are *sleeping* during his president's speech! Imagine that! And he isn't jailed for reporting this, of course.

The same guy tweets that judging from the faces of some of the delegates sitting in the meeting, "they could give a fuck," he writes (in Russian).

It's always interesting to me to see how Russian is tweeted -- for example, instead of writing out "kakoi-nibud'" they write "k-nit'" or even "kin'". If typing with Latin letters (the type of phone they have?) they use a "4" for the "ch" sound.

Several expressed unhappiness that Central Asian leaders were speaking in Russian, and of course, President Nazarbayev is chairing the meeting in Russian. One twitterer applauded the OSCE General Secretary Marc Perrin de Brichambaut for at least adding some Kazakh words at the end of his speech.

Native language concerns, the colour of ties, the expressions on faces -- and the fact that both Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel were "looking good" -- these are the concerns that these young people on cell phones or i-pads with access to Twitter are tweeting from this world summit about august matters of state and somber topics like the war in Afghanistan.

Perhaps it's an accomplishment of Helsinki itself that they are embodying its principles of free speech and "knowing and acting on one's rights" almost unconsciously, rather than reporting the sort of thing that people used to try to smuggle out of labour camps to get into the OSCE meetings.

One woman noted that her efforts to tweet from a Kazakh ISP seemed to be blocked and she wondered if it was deliberate and wrote, essentially, "I won't be tweeting anything bad." [She tells me that she meant something different -- although it wasn't clear -- that "tweeting isn't so bad," i.e. let me tweet, it wasn't about the content but the form apparently.]

It's hard to reproduce twitter snippets, streams, convos -- follow me at @catfitz or use the hash tags #OSCE2010 or just #OSCE to see the stream of tweets I'm referencing here, or check out #parOSCE for the (already past) discussion of the parallel conference.

"A good thing about the OSCE2010 is that noow the world will know that we don't live in yurts and ride on camels," one young man wrote.

You can see the Russian-language livestream here on kiwi, a Kazakh TV station [um, yeah, just because something has TV cameras and broadcasts a summit live to the Internet doesn't mean it is an actual TV station, it's a...an....Internet broadcast thingy. This shorthand caused several regional hands like @musya to become indignant at my "many incorrectnesses".]

Moving on the fast lane with the Twitters, where people basically write what they want (it's not even so much self-censorship that they don't try to write more about human rights and democracy problems, but simply a different modern culture and outlook), it comes almost as a shock to go look at the Soviet-style newspaper put out for the conference that reminds me of the sort of Soviet tabloid that used to be put around foreign hotels or available on your flight to Moscow.

The Astana Times has anodyne pieces about the conference itself, and for 10 days now, has hugged the picture of Nazarbayev meeting Obama (but not at the OSCE in Astana, at the Lisbon summit) lol. Although Astana Times should be putting up fresh photos of their beloved leader, the temptation is just too great to keep showing Obama with the radiant Kazakh prez.

Other articles let us know that a labour problem is -- of course -- being solved. And...this just in. Seems it may not be a bad idea to raise camels in Siberia, after all.

 UPDATE:  Meh, everybody's a critic, especially if they are a barcamper (oh, that reminds me, I have to find my notes about all the barcamp ideologies and how rigid they are and write that up, it's a cult, like TED).

But hey, this was just a light blog trying to give a little flavour in English of what the Russian Twitter stream was like out of Astana. So I was corrected that kiwi "is  not a TV station" (it's an Internet broadcast thing, and of course, it's not easy to make a TV station in Kazakhstan, as I should know, having worked on these very issues probably when some of these people were still sitting with their crayon boxes).

I was also told that in fact there wasn't concern about the tweets being blocked by the Kazakh ISP provider (although it's been confirmed that a number of web sites ARE blocked in Kazakhstan so it's definitely a valid concern) but it was more like "hey, this isn't working, let me tweet, tweeting isn't so bad" i.e. not "I'm not going to tweet anything bad". But...as always with twitter, 140 characters, especially 140 characters in shorthand Russian, isn't always going to be clear.

BTW, @musya, there is nothing so self-important as self-imported translators of Russian tweets into English during historical events. I know, because I myself have felt myself to be Terribly Important to the Metaverse when I translated Russian-language tweets during, say, the atrocities in southern Kyrgyzstan. Yes, we must all make do with such burdens on the Internet as People With a Sense of Mission, present company included, it comes with the territory.

I don't see any other things to correct, but there's the comments below. Basically, I think what a few readers resented was the portrayal of Kazakh NGOs as superficial and writing about ties and lunches and facepalms instead of, oh, I dunno, torture in their prisons, the case of Zhovtis and others, the Uzbeks being extradited, and other more somber things. The reality is, all of these grim things have been said and re-said  many times in the course of the three review meetings. At the actual summit, if you aren't there, it's good to get a flavour of it from those who are there, which will be made up of small tidbits, like the fact that the facial expressions of some of the delegates there broadcast the "I could give a fuck" message.

But, it is what it is. Bored NGO staffers watching the summit on a video feed in the Pyramid write somewhat glib or funny tweets. Understood. They may have already done their serious messaging elsewhere and they have other venues for it.

I do take exception, however, with the notion conveyed that you can't express serious thoughts on Twitter, or that it is not a medium for that. Of course you can. There are many people who do put very serious news accounts and thoughts on Twitter, fitting into the one line, or running a bunch of lines. It's ok.

I'm interested in hearing more about the NGOs who aren't GONGOs in Kazakhstan and who maybe didn't get into the restricted parallel summit, and what they think of the OSCE process and issues, so I'll be looking for that.

Is the Summit Less than the Whole of Its Parts? Part 1

This poster recently appeared pasted on a street sign near the State Department in Washington, DC.

The run-up to the summit in Astana has been a debilitating and demoralizing process, and the diplomats and NGOs who stuck it out to the end to try to keep waving the Helsinki flag are to be commended. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Astana and was scheduled to speak at an NGO event. All well and good.

Even so, participation in this entire distended fandago has come at a cost, and it has involved some erosion of our principles and some compromise, and a little bit of that frog-boiling-in-water syndrome that OSCE enterprises always seem to involve.

Some observers believe that the U.S., which has long had a cosy relationship with Kazakhstan for energy and geopolitical interests, sold out to Astana last spring when it was negotiating participation of Kazakhstan in the Northern Distribution Network that delivers non-lethal supplies to the troops in Afghanistan via Central Asia. In fact, the U.S. dragged out these negotiations for months, tried to do what it could -- and surprisingly, even deployed President Obama himself to publicly raise the case of jailed human rights leader Evgeny Zhovtis. It's not every day that you use up the chit of having the leader of the Western world raise a single case like that -- and not win it -- but in this case, losing was winning, because it only served to point up to the Kazakhs that Obama himself was willing to take up the rights of an individual, and it only highlighted the unacceptable obstructivism of Astana on the case.

Yet, in the end, the exigency of the NDN overflight needs, energy and trade concerns, and a fear of undermining an organization in which in fact Clinton had renewed U.S. engagement all conspired to create the less-than-moral concession to Astana to hold the summit. According to OSCE, only 38 of the 56 participating states sent their heads of state  -- and that's all to the good.

Next summit, in free Minsk in 2020?

Zhovtis was put away in jail on the eve of Kazakhstan's assuming the chair, and kept out of action so as not to influence it -- although he was able to smuggle out some statements and appeals (his last one noted that he had begun to be punished for doing so). It was Zhenya's idea to have Kazakhstan chair the OSCE in the first place, in the belief that it might shine a spotlight on human rights abuses and possibly serve as a spur to improve them.

It didn't.

Turning back on Live Journal hardly counts if one of the main opposition blogs on LJ is still blocked. As the OSCE rapporteur on media has protested, a journalist, Ramazan Esergepov, still remains in prison (his "state secrets" being nothing more than reporting on a criminal case that in a normal country would be open to reporting by the press). And on and on.

When I say our principles became somewhat tattered, I mean that we were forced to paper over the lack of human rights progress and the shocking negligence in responding to the pogroms in southern Kyrgyzstan in order to do business with people of ill will, and their GONGOs -- which was one of the most odious features of all these review conferences, spread in time and place over three cities in three months -- and I'm not sure, to the benefit of human rights.

The Turkmen human rights activists who have been coming to OSCE were jerked around, and while some were let in finally in Warsaw and Vienna, some were not, and ultimately none of them got visas for Astana. There was the blunt and thuggish message, regrettably tacitly conceded by being also relayed by Western diplomats, that "their safety could not be guaranteed," i.e. they might have to be extradited back to Turkmenistan on a trumped-up Interpol request from Ashgabat. Shame on them. The Turkmen dissidents have sent out an appeal. Chief among their points is that the OSCE office in Ashgabat has long since stopped trying to promote democracy and is merely simulating it -- if it were doing its job probably, I say, it would be kicked out. And that would be ok, as it could then decamp to Vienna and serve as the office-in-exile until such time as the government is willing to normalize.

The parallel summit -- oops, I mean the...parallel conference did in the end come off, with 177 participants, 59 of whom were from Kazakhstan, and an additional 11 of whom were ODIHR staff  (among the guests was -- I'm not kidding! -- Nina Belyayeva, the Russian lawyer and expert on associations (I'll say!) who was appearing in her capacity as an ODIHR expert on NGO law. She advocated that the police and NGOs work together).  Of course, quite a few out of the 59 from Kazakhstan and a certain number of others were GONGOs.

At least some of the worst OSCE problems were mentioned -- the killing of journalists, ideas for how to try to gain more solidarity, education, and action for threatened reporters, and the harassment and killing of human rights activists, and how to get better protection for them.

But it must be said: the NGOs compromised in having their meeting in Astana. In part, it was about the things that didn't get said that were "too big" -- the failure of OSCE even to land a police mission in Osh, the failure to cope with the violence in southern Kyrgyzstan, and the spillover and implications of the war in Afghanistan. To be sure, someone raised Askarov's case and at first got an unacceptable response....

I personally think it would have been more honourable to have the meeting outside of Kazakhstan, and on better terms -- without GONGOs and without Kazakh government officials taking up the scarce air time.

Wikileaked Astana: Dancing and Boozing Lifestyles of the Power Elites, Soft Whispers of the Translators -- and China Eyeing Support of NATO's NDN

Hillary Clinton is heading to Astana for the OSCE Summit, and is supposed to attend a civil society event, which will evidently help "send the message" that the independent sector needs to be strengthened in Kazakhstan. It's also a level below the president -- and that's a good thing. I think it would definitely be the wrong idea for President Obama to show up at this coerced affair and have to be photographed with the Dictators' Club -- Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and the other Central Asian despots.

I've been meeting to write a longer post about this summit -- but it's so...demotivating...to contemplate it that I keep putting it off.

Of course, Wikileaks is the talk of the town and I went over to the Wikidump to see what they had from Astana.

No one seems to have blogged yet about this cable and another that reveals the lavish lifestyles of these partying former Party types -- and just how capricious and autocratic they are (like that was a secret?!)

Prime Minister Masimov is spotted dancing solo in a club to 1:00 am, and Defense Minister Akhmetov, known to hit the bottle, is reported "eyes-on" (witnessed) showing up drunk to a meeting with a U.S. defense attache and admitting he was toasting some cadets at a graduation.

Gas big-wig Idenov is portrayed barking into his cell phone ordering around a British Gas country director and drinking Coke instead of vodka.

There are lots of horses, and plov, too. And lamb. Lamb that is "well done, never rare...this is Astana, not London!"

Then there's that time they flew in Elton John and paid him a reported million pounds to sing for the leaders.

But we knew that already, didn't we?

These cables have an XXXXX protect over the name of the president's wife's friend and some other words that appear not to be just source names-- and that is yet another indication of how certain cables were  redacted by the Wikileakers, apparently in compliance with U.S. State Department requests, although supposedly they weren't going to heed them.

Foreign Minister Kanat Saudabayev, currently the chair-in-office of OSCE, is featured in the cable, but with nothing more sinister than hosting a co-del -- whose names we don't get, but using the date and other clues, probably somebody could come up with it -- but it's likely already known.

There's also a story of expulsion of Chevron execs from a meeting by KazMunaiGas First Vice President Maskat Idenov over what sounds like merely a fit of capricious temper because the exec (Hollingsworth) couldn't find a cell number fast enough but is really about some power play -- "the ascendant Idenov appears determined to show the international majors that they need to deal with him."

Apparently it wasn't the first time that U.S. oil majors got chucked out of a meeting -- and this is, of course, the same rudeness and crassness we saw on display at OSCE in Warsaw and other venues by our lovely chair-in-office team.

In another cable written (or at least classified/signed by Amb. Richard Hoagland), we get a snapshot of the intellectually-intriguing and information-packed diplomatic life that the Wikileaks *can only envy* because the cables just don't do the actual experience justice -- and it can never be taken away from our foreign service officers:

On June 5, Chinese Ambassador Cheng Guoping hosted the Ambassador for dinner at the restaurant on the 23rd floor of a striking new hotel built in Astana and owned by the Chinese National Petroleum Company. During a fascinating, wide-ranging, three-hour tour d’horizon, the Chinese Ambassador discussed his government’s policy -- and occasionally made personal comments -- on human rights, smart power, President Obama, Afghanistan’s reconstruction, Russia’s policy in Central Asia, Georgian President Saakashvili, Iran’s upcoming presidential elections, North Korea’s nuclear tests, Central Asia’s energy resources, the Manas air base, and the proposed international nuclear fuel bank. The Chinese Ambassador clearly enjoyed the free and easy, open-ended conversation and invited the Ambassador to meet again, at the restaurant, in the near future. Guoping was joined by an unidentified policy advisor and an interpreter, to whom he addressed his remarks in soft whispers throughout the evening.

And here's a pro-tip for human rights activists -- and the State Department officials who try to fend them off:  the Chinese government EXPECTS you to raise human rights -- so raise them!

 Guoping was relaxed, wearing short sleeves and no jacket, and clearly eager to engage and entertain his American guests. He began the evening by referring to the recent visit to Beijing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Without openly acknowledging or discussing the twentieth anniversary of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square protests, Guoping said the government was prepared, and also fearful, for the Speaker to raise human rights and democracy issues during her visit. “She had the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) scared to death on the eve of her visit,” Guoping said, half-jokingly.

I wonder if Pelosi raised anything pertinent after all that.

Note the Chinese flattery -- Obama's Cairo speech, now being critiqued for going soft on democratic struggles, is praised for being exemplary of "smart power".

Here's an interesting tid-bit on the NDN as well -- yes, funny to think of China supporting NATO -- but Afghanistan is in Asia, and China should do more, and do it explicitly. I wonder where this stands now:

In particular, Guoping said that the Northern Distribution Network to transport non-lethal supplies to U.S. troops in Afghanistan has enabled many countries to participate in Afghanistan’s reconstruction. He said that the Chinese government is aware of the U.S. government’s request to transit non-lethal supplies via China and said “we are actively researching this suggestion. In essence, it would mean that the People’s Republic of China would be supporting a NATO military operation, which would be an interesting development.” Guoping confided that China’s MFA and its Ministry of Defense have different opinions on the subject, although he said he expected a decision soon. “My own personal opinion,” he said, “is that we will do the right thing and cooperate with NATO and the U.S. government in Afghanistan.” Guoping said this would be an appropriate issue to raise in the context of the President’s visit to Beijing in July.

Oh, but there's a price:

Guoping said that Russia is experiencing “severe difficulty” now because of the global financial crisis. He suggested that the government of Russia is eager to improve relations with the United States now because Moscow is concerned that the economic downturn will begin to affect the political stability of the country, “even the stability of the Kremlin.” Guoping said that Russia does not want or need any foreign policy problems right now; “they need to focus on their domestic, economic affairs.” Guoping also said that Russia would like more support from the United States for its insistence on a privileged sphere of influence in Central Asia, in exchange for greater cooperation in Afghanistan. “Russia is convinced that they must dominate Central Asia and the Caucasus. They believe they have vital, strategic, historical interests in the region,” Guoping said. When pressed by the Ambassador to express his own opinion, Guoping said, “I personally do not agree that Russia should be granted a special sphere of influence in the region, but that is their view.”

And here's one for the Sovietologists -- and Russophiles, as it blames the U.S. for Russia's invasion of Georgia instead of placing the blame for aggression prior to the invasion on Russia:

Guoping suggested that Secretary Rice’s July 2008 visit to Georgia before the war in August 2008, might have indirectly encouraged Saakashvili to take military action. He said his understanding was that Saakashvili briefed Secretary Rice on his plans to mobilize Georgian armed forces and when she did not directly object, Saakashvili mistook that as a sign of U.S. support.

Ah, but the life of the diplomat has its hazards:

The revolving restaurant provides a spectacular panorama of Astana, and the empty steppe beyond, but it seems to revolve at varying speeds and sometimes can be a bit too fast on a full stomach and after a few glasses of wine.

One's own stomach may be turning now at how much sucking up our government has done to Kazakhstan.

Should We Have an OSCE Summit?

Not surprisingly, not long after assuming the chairmanship of the OSCE, Kazakhstan wheeled out a proposal to have an OSCE summit -- a controversial idea that is fraught with ramifications that go beyond the simple good idea of having heads of states talk more to each other.

There hasn't been an OSCE summit for years. The last one was in Ankara in 1999, 10 years ago. And for good reason - the Russians want a summit to be all about creating a new European Security Charter, and turning the OSCE document based on a kind of gentlemen's agreement about the Eurasian continent into a binding charter with the status of legal personhood. The West is not interested in renegotiating Helsinki in this fashion -- well, at least parts of the West. Some in Europe are likely willing to go along with this notion because some tool is needed to revive the whole OSCE process and make it relevant, and for some new Ost Politickers, this will be it.

My own rather naive thought is in fact that the same kind of risky gamble that launched the process back in 1975 is needed again -- danging the carrot of something the Russians want (the security charter, the legal status) with a stick of something the West should be able to get (binding human rights treaties and bodies to examine Copenhagen compliance, real resolution of "frozen conflicts," obligations that Russian forces will not be deployed to other CIS or CSTO members -- I'm just thinking out loud). My notion of this bold idea, however, is conditioned on the kind of muscular diplomacy for human rights and democracy for which the Reagan Administration was noted in its day -- and I'm not sure we'd get that now.

The Obama Administration isn't likely to want to get into the enormously challenging and perilous process of handing the Russians a big security charter grab and ramp up the willingness to really step up to the plate on the human rights "baskets" -- not when official policy these days is not to tell other countries what to do and go softly-softly on "internal affairs".

The Kazakhs have sharpened the proposal by saying it's all about Afghanistan -- at a time when they can get NATO countries to focus on the very real experience of the war spilling over into Central Asia, for example with returning fighters from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan -- and when they've gotten the regimes of Central Asia to roll over and accept rail and air transit of freight to help the war effort.

Maybe we should ask Afghanistan to join OSCE.

The down side of trying to get Afghanistan ensnarled in the already complex and dilatory processes of OSCE (there is actually already some engagement, on issues like border guard training, etc.) is that the UN is already engaged, and has a UN Centre for Preventive Diplomacy in Ashgabat full tilt on OSCE-type activities -- and of course NATO and the EU are already involved. The overlay of yet another acronym is not always a value-add.

Answer the poll on my blog below as to whether you think this is a good idea.