This trip provided me with an excellent perspective on the real way the world works, how humanity's faults can eclipse its greatness. The post-Soviet world of Central Asia is a strange and wonderful place, with colorful heroes and villains acting out often tragic roles - the policeman taking bribes to support his family, the NGO leader repeating the mantras of foreign donors that seem to ring hollow with the general population and, most of all, the market traders who continue with their lives in spite of everything, good and bad. Democracy has made only a small impact in these places – people do not understand how it works or could improve their lives. Although many of the institutions that could reach them and bring them into the political process are more or less in place, their extreme dysfunction due to a near-complete lack of will means that the people they should serve do not know anything about them. This disconnect creates two societies – those who participate politically, influence the process, pay taxes and exist in the public space, and those who do not. The vast majority live in some alternate universe of persecution and hardship. Class is but the beginning of the divisions that segregate countries’ populations into these groups – race in Kyrgyzstan, urban/rural and geographic divisions also matter greatly. These are the challenges facing international organizations – they underpin larger structural issues and prevent institutions from realizing their potential. Programs that work with leaders can have some effect – in small countries personal leadership qualities play a large role in shaping the political atmosphere. Leaders like Mongolia’s ‘founding fathers’ or Munkhbayar of the Onggi River Movement can make a difference and can lead many people by their example. However, their effectiveness is limited when their focus becomes diffused – the NGO leaders of Kyrgyzstan have so many issues to work on that their talent is wasted on monitoring rather than project implementation. Grassroots movements like KelKel seem to be the most democratic forms of political expression – they both mobilize the public and focus on solutions rather than simply complaining about old problems. Combined with a talented and engaged political elite, they might be able to effect positive change, but nothing is definitive. Certainly theories of political transition, neither apply to Central Asia nor are considered by practitioners of democracy programs – they are focused on situations rather than strategy. All of this combines to impede progress with democracy reforms – yet even this sense of ‘progress’ brings up larger issues of the best political systems for the republics of Central Asia. Clearly a system superior to the current ones exists, but it may not be the democracy the United States imagines: one party states are likely to continue, even in Mongolia where the once-unified Democratic Party has all but imploded. I feel that individual rights must be protected at all costs, and as in Mongolia political leaders should make a genuine commitment to their upholding. Rights form the basis of protections against the government – something desperately needed in the Kyrgyz and Tajik Republics. The next step would be public awareness of the rights – this is where NGOs and media could play a strong role. If people knew the extent and limits of their rights (i.e. that they can’t just ask for everything from the government), they would have taken the first step towards creating a sense of a contractual citizenship. Although it may be interpreted through traditional structures like family and diluted by persistent corruption (and societal acceptance thereof), this sense of government’s service to the people (compared with its prior role as the organizer of the people) should empower local groups and help people in different regions, ethnicities and social classes organize. The more extra-governmental groups acting in the interest of particular constituencies, the better – although they may not be able to deliver short-term results, they inform people, build social capital and can step in if emergency situations arise. Given solid, grassroots institutions, international organizations can begin proper work at a higher level, as without the political will generated at the popular level, national NGOs and parliaments cannot be truly representative.
What do all of these considerations mean for policy planners back in Washington? First, each country must be taken with its own cultural and historical circumstances. Programs cannot simply be transplanted, experts ‘parachuted’ (to borrow an image popular among my interviewees) and theories applied without much consideration. America’s Kyrgyzstan policy must necessarily differ from its Kazakhstan policy, but greater decentralization – running more programs out of embassies rather than Washington (and to an extent, expanding beyond the capitals to critical second cities like Osh and Khudjand) will give programs a greater capacity to respond to needs with program staff knowledgeable in the language and background. However, it is extremely difficult to tie other policy objectives to democracy promotion; geostrategy is almost always the trump card, and in this case the tables are often turned, allowing small but strategically significant republics like Kyrgyzstan (and, to a greater extent, Uzbekistan) to play the old carrot-and-stick game with the competing superpowers. If the situation in [Afghanistan] were to be resolved, the United States could turn its attention away from bases and deals with corrupt governments and adopt a harder line. Mongolia might provide a good model, particularly with the Millennium Challenge money. Looking West from Central Asia, I find the question of whether the republics need the United States quite important. Clearly, the ‘democratic’ forces such as the NGOs clustered in the capitals rely on project-based grant money. However, given the problems with them, such as their inability to connect with the public, perhaps they are not the most effective vehicles for democratic progress. If the United States were to abandon them, several bright, well-educated people would be out of a job and particular issues would lose their best advocates, such as women’s NGOs in Mongolia. However, it would force donors to rethink their strategy and NGOs to become better connected in an effort to attain local support. Although groups with the resources of the Sierra Club will likely never emerge in Central Asia, smaller, more localized groups can provide a different approach to the third sector (representing often very specific people rather than generalized issues affecting the entire population) that might yield positive long-term benefits. Certainly a variant of this strategy has seemed to be effective with the Mercy Corps and GER Initiative economic projects which, although not explicitly ‘D + G' projects, have yielded good secondary benefits in this area. In general, more careful thought must be applied to the development of grant programs such as USAID or NED – perhaps the entire RFP system should be restructured to make it more representative and effective. Programs should fit within a general framework so they can evolve together – economic programs should be able to move into areas that have benefited from community development or anticorruption programs. Leadership from the Embassy should be more proactive – it should take responsibility for programs beyond financial transparency measures. Finally, serious policy discussions should be accompanied by discussions of theories – at least if they are not applicable to the situation at hand, they might be able to inspire new solutions and strategies. Democracy in some form can exist in Central Asia, but in order to bring it about, policy and strategic (that is both content and methodological) changes are necessary.
The Central Asia Democracy Project is written by Alan Cordova.
