From Sunday’s Washington Post:

“Forget President Bush’s ‘axis of evil.’ Who are the overlooked autocrats we should be paying attention to but aren’t? Outlook asked people in the know for their nominations:”

Islam Karimov, President, Uzbekistan

Karimov’s acts of barbarism in the name of security are infamous. By some accounts, he has had his victims boiled alive and had others tortured with beatings, electric shock, asphyxiation, rape and burns. Having come to power as a Communist Party official in the former Soviet Union, he has ruled since the collapse of the USSR through a series of suspect elections. He won the presidency with 86 percent of the vote in 1991 and extended his mandate in 2000 with 91.9 percent of the vote.

– Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Saparmurad Niyazov, President, Turkmenistan

Also known as “Turkmenbashi,” Niyazov has been his country’s absolute ruler for the past 20 years. The worst features of the Soviet totalitarian system are preserved in Turkmenistan: a gulag of penal colonies; the confinement of dissenters in psychiatric hospitals; show trials; and refusal to permit dissenters to leave the country. Within the country, Niyazov is hailed as a national prophet, and his book, “The Ruhnama,” is treated as a sacred text. Though Turkmenistan derives vast revenue from its natural gas reserves, its population of 5 to 6 million is impoverished, education is severely restricted and even reports on infectious diseases are prohibited.

– Aryeh Neier, President, Open Society Institute

Also see the main article.

Larry Diamond will be visiting Williams to discuss his new book, Squandered Victory, which, for all you Central Asia people, reads much like The Devil and the Disappearing Sea, except that the scale (financially, geostrategically, historically, etc.) is exponentially larger, though it lacks Rob Ferguson’s wry humor.

Below are some draft questions I’m preparing for my interview with him. Please add your comments, suggestions, concerns, criticisms, etc. I’m hoping to have a good discussion about institutional vs. cultural strategies for democratization and the larger issues of US foreign policy. I’ll provide a wrap-up afterwards, so stay tuned.

• Your theory of democratic transition focuses on the development of civil society – non-governmental groups that check authority, organize people and advocate on particular issues. In Central Asia, these groups exist, but they are a creation of external donors, whom upon whom they are financially dependent. When I interviewed locals, they could not identify any such groups or describe their role in the national political process. Thus, it seems as though these groups largely do not contribute to the democratization of their country, since they do not have (or need) popular support. Do these groups qualify as civil society? If so, how can they establish popular support? What should donors’ policy be?

• The specter of Islam Karimov looms over all of Central Asia – a dictator able to maintain order at the cost of the liberties and, in several cases, lives of his own people. He represents one side of a zero-sum decision facing the governments of the republics – the stability of autocracy vs. the potential economic benefits of political liberalization. For many governments, particularly that of Tajikistan’s Emomali Rakhmonov, Uzbekistan presents a compelling example of the benefits of state control – Karimov held high-profile meetings with Putin and Hu Jintao after massacring hundreds of civilians at Andijan. How should democracy promotion programs (and their respective governments) respond to the threat of Karimov?

• In Squandered Victory, you say:

“Success in these difficult circumstances requires a substantial commitment of international human and financial resources, delivered in a timely fashion, and sustained over an extended period…Resources must reach the people of the society - ideally, with local participation and ownership.” (307)

How will you accomplish a sense of ownership in societies not founded on the rule of law? How do you prevent grant dependency? What about examples of corruption? (such as The Devil and the Disappearing Sea or, not to pick on the World Bank, the Dushanbe Water Supply Project, begun in at least 2001 - $17 million later, Dushanbe has no clean water).

• The book asserts that

“we cannot get to Jefferson and Madison without going through Thomas Hobbes. You can’t build a democratic state unless you first have a state, and the essential condition for a state is that it must have an effective monopoly over the means of violence.” (305)

How do states go from this “prisoners’ dilemma” situation to a Jeffersonian democracy?

• Who should take responsibility for democracy in a world of self-interested actors? What incentives should be provided to different actors within a country’s domestic political sphere?

• How can civic nationalism avoid the dangerous repercussions of ethnic nationalism or increased authoritarianism?

• What should the role of elections be in the overall democratic transition? How important are they?

…especially if they have never heard of it? We’re going after them…wherever they may be! (Thanks!)

Only on Xinhua, the Chinese news site. It looks like, contrary to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the United States’ military presence in Central Asia (at least Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) will continue. This will likely have the effect of maintaing the size of the embassies in both countries, meaning that they will continue to have staff specifically for issues of democracy. Will the new Great Game continue? Much depends on how the United States deals with the unresolved issue of Uzbekistan’s human rights record - which faces major tests in the form of the trial of Internews employees and the future of the Uzbek refugees from Andijan currently in Kyrgyzstan.

A lot of research here in Dushanbe - Tajikistan is a fascinating case study in the immense and numerous challenges facing international aid and development programs. Much of the difficulties in Kyrgyzstan are an even larger influence here: the cultural divide between locals and Westerners is larger, the economic situation more desperate, the government more authoritarian than Akayev at his worst, and on top of a Soviet legacy (or ‘mentality’), there is the immense baggage of the Civil War. More to come soon.

One of the things many people have echoed here and in Bishkek is the ascendence of Russian influence in Central Asia. The five republics still look to Russia for their IR cues, and in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan at least (probably in Kazakhstan and who knows about Turkmenistan) the March events in Bishkek (people here are hesitant to call it a Revolution) scared governments into cracking down. The Internews trial will be a good test case, as Karimov sets the standard for Central Asian authoritarianism. It’s unclear how Bakiev will act - it seems like he is trying to get the get the best of both worlds - that is, the first and second worlds. Will the pressure signal a new Great Game? It seems that there will definitely be implications for and modern Great Power relations. What impact will this have on the progress of democracy? Certainly the Russian-led effort to curtail foreign funding for NGO’s will create problems for American programs - as a recent US House of Representatives hearing noted, “progress continues to be measured largely in terms of civil society development”, and a USAID page noted that “the development of a vibrant civil society is a basic underpinning to democratization”. Thus, even if Russia (or China or Uzbekistan) fails in pushing the United States out of Central Asia, it seems like their means will have as much an effect on the democratic prospects in the republics as their ends. However, it seems like the success of authoritarianism is becoming more likely, particularly if the United States backs down from the recent challenge. We’ll see if Rumsfeld accomplishes more in his upcoming visit than he did on his last.

What does freedom mean in Central Asia?

In a June 28 speech at Fort Bragg, Bush used ‘freedom’ 21 times and ‘free’ 13. Clearly, the words (and the specific ideology behind them) anchor the neoconservative worldview. But what does this mean in real terms? Certainly, statements of support of religious and political freedom fall flat in a region in which repressive governments are actively supported. I would argue that none of the Four Freedoms are widely enjoyed in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (and probably Kazakhstan) and are in jeopardy in Tajikistan.

What can Bush and the US Government do? First, clarify what freedom means across the world. The administration has been very clear on what it means for Iraq, but is this standard supposed to apply to all areas of the world or just the “vital region” (as Bush described the Middle East in the speech)? Where will the line between supporting rights and taking a realist/strategic perspective be drawn? Second, make the power of foreign aid work for the United States by making it more conditional on the degree of freedom (previously defined) in the political realm and public sphere. This policy must be government-wide to minimize contradictions such as keeping a base in Uzbekistan. Place greater conditions on governments to ensure transparency and minimize graft. Finally, increase political support for the places in which democracy has a chance, but is struggling - a few good words go a long way, but they must be delivered in connection with concrete action and a genuine desire to place human rights and political and social freedom atop the agenda, even in areas of geostrategic importance.

It seems that Kyrgyzstan presents an interesting case, as it is by far the most ‘free’ country in Central Asia by what I can infer are the terms used by the Bush Administration. Clearly, there are violations - intimidations of journalists and NGO’s, police firing on protestors, and the censorship of the media. However, much of Kyrgyzstan’s ills, primarily poverty and unemployment, are perpetuated by corruption at all levels of governance. Does bad government constitute oppression? (American leftists, don’t answer that) Clearly, there is some relationship between the two, as widespread acceptance of bribery leads to a tyranny by the wealthy and well-connected (which, arguably, has not changed despite the revolution). However, they are not exactly the same, and Kyrgyzstan’s current plight is different from those faced by democrats elsewhere in Central Asia.