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  • Are Special Wars Really New and Special or Are They Old Dirty Tricks?

    John Schindler, the former NSA official and professor at the US Navy Academy, has a theory of "special wars" — basically running wars like the Russians do in order to be able to fight them.

    Except, I'm quite sure neither he nor any supporters would like that reductive description of the concept.

    I love John Schindler's stuff — don't get me wrong. I always marvel that someone that young who didn't directly fight the Soviets in the dissident trenches understands so much about them and their methods, and is even able to teach others about it methodically. It restores my hope in the NSA after Snowden, which for me, like CableGate, is at least in part about the failure of government to keep out the adversarial hacker culture that accompanies wikification and moving life online.

    Schindler has been absolutely right on Snowden and all things related to it, so I take seriously any theory he comes up with about how to fight the Russians better, especially now that they have really gone full-tilt into enemy mode. I'm all for containment, Cold War, deterrence — the works because all of that is required with this kind of real threat to the West.

    So how hard will it be to put "special war" over politically, given the Obama "progressives" and what is to come if they succeed again in 2016?

    Here's where Schindler first wrote about it at length and more this week since it was covered in the New York Times.

    I've been thinking about it since last year, and have questions about it:

    Ever since I heard of Schindler’s “special war” theory last September, I’ve pondered whether I like it or not — but then, war isn’t something you “like like” – as you do a Facebook kitty. There’s the Catholic theory of “a just war” which should have as its goals the ending of war. Does it fit?

    I wonder how some of its aspects are to be distinguished from what used to be called “CIA dirty tricks” — and maybe it’s not. For those who don’t want to endorse drones and mass killing, “special wars” is an attractive alternative. And indeed, any moral person has to ask why we wouldn’t opt for “special wars” that are more efficient, require much less troops, seem brainier, and are more pin-pointed. That is, a drone might have “collateral damage” or hit women and children or wedding guests while going after the fighters who deliberately mingle among them — there’s lots of angst about drones become of the remoteness of the operation of them. Then massive numbers of troops — as in the “surge” in Afghanistan — that just seems to get lots of our soldiers killed, and not win the war anyway — precisely because we live in the age of “special wars” which the Russians and the Taliban for that matter are really good at.

    So wouldn’t we rather have an intelligence agent parachute in and assassinate the Pakistani ISI operative who is sustaining the Taliban, or infiltrate a political party, or get inside the prime minister’s office, or whatever it is that you do, instead of massing troops around borders and trying to drone away militants. In the old days, that’s what the CIA did, and it worked in some places, but it got a bad rap.

    That’s my question then. Once “special wars” gets going, how will it deal with the bad rap? The Russians and even some Ukrainians think the US has mercenaries parachuted into southeastern Ukraine already (we don’t); what if we start really doing that sort of thing?

    Next, there is so much wrong with the military — scandals in the top leadership, suicides, massacres of civilians, PTSD– as I’ve noted before, I think this is a mismatch between the reality of what war is, and the PR campaign that the armed forces insist on retaining, which implies that you “learn a skill” and “get a job” through the military — meaning that the poor people who come into this setting think their goal is to get a skill and be assured of a job, instead of going into dangerous places and killing people. So that begs the question: can we make “special wars” with *this* army?

    In general, I’d like to see less contractors in the armed services and government in general — most problems we’ve had — think of Snowden – are related to them. So would “special wars” be done with contractors? I think it would be better to have permanent, trained, regular armed services doing this.

    We also need more HUMINT, foreign languages, education — how will that be assured? Can existing academies like West Point create the cadres of the “special wars” or does some other academy have to be created?

    Finally, what about the moral problem of “becoming like them”? The Russians are good at “special wars” because they’re cynical nihilists exploiting illiberal ideas like nationalism or Eurasianism. Can you get good at “special wars” and remain decent?

     

    So basically, it comes down to this: if Schindler means that we should get better at fighting the Russians who use this whole array of Bolshevik methods, from disinformation to masking to lying to agitation and propaganda — by using more counter-intelligence and counter-propaganda, I'm for that. But how much will we be lying, cheating, disinforming, faking, masking, ourselves then?

    Would it involve committing terrorism against civilians?

    That is, I'm for exposing propaganda, calling out lies, vigorously challenging all the bullshit coming out of the Kremlin and broadcasting much more of it than we do. I'm for getting a lot more clever about dealing with this ruthless enemy in the Kremlin. Some of that requires clandestine work that the public will have to take on faith needs to be done, and the less they know about it, the better. But how to get that through in the age of Snowden, where the default of most young people is to distrust government and imagine the US is the greatest evil in the world?

     

     

    Related articles
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    Russia's New Ability To Evade NSA Surveillance Is Either A Crazy Coincidence Or Something Much Worse
    ON POINT: Russian Provocateurs Prepare The Ukrainian Battlefield
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    Putin's Attack On East Ukraine Began Today: What This Means For Europe And The US
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    HUMINT And The Drone War
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  • WikiLeaks Propaganda Stunt “Mediastan” Smears, Endangers Local Central Asian Journalists

    Pressure
    WikiLeaks barged into offices all over Central Asia, pressuring independent journalists like these reporters at the highly-respected Asia Plus to instantly sign agreements on WikiLeaks' terms to publish US cables about their country. Here Marat Mamadshoev and a colleague are being told to sign the agreement immediately, but decline.
     

    I'm sickened by Mediastan, the latest propaganda piece by anarchist impresario Julian Assange.

    This is my quick take upon first view of this video (so sorry if there are mistakes or names missing, they will be fixed). It's available for rent ($2.99) or pay $7.00 plus on Vimeo. Naturally, I'm unhappy that I had to give a dime to WL, which I oppose on principle — and I have to wonder how it is that Paypal could agree to accept these payments when it has blocked payments directly from WikiLeaks (and I plan to raise this issue with both Vimeo and PayPal).

    This piece of vile stuff is supposed to be Assange's attempt to provide an "antidote" to a movie about him coming out in theaters October 18 which he doesn't like called The Fifth Estate (it's too critical) which he trying to kill off in various ways.

    Perhaps he's counting on the fact that most people don't know anything about Central Asia, and will merely be impressed that he and his merry band of hacksters caroming around the perilous but picturesque mountain roads of Central Asia — complete with Soviet-style policeman stopping and searching traffic, tunnels under repair until who knows when, and lots of sheep blocking the road — are the coolest of cypherphunk hipsters going on a " journalism" trip through dangerous territory.

    Except it's not at all that. What this journey consists of is a bunch of people from the region whose first names only are given within the film (but see the credits below), and the discredited journalist Johannes Wahlstrom, son of the notorious antisemite and provocateur Israel Shamir. Discredited — because of the tendentious way he has covered Israel-Palestine issues, and disgraced because he is accused of falsifying quotes and of antisemitism.)

    So an unintended bonus is that with Wahlstrom narrating most of the film — when the Great One Himself isn't butting in and pontificating — is that WikiLeaks cannot claim anymore that Shamir and Son don't have anything to do with them and don't represent them. They most surely do, as this film proves.

    Johannes is a Russian speaker because he likely grew up in Russia or at least speaking Russian with his father — who has played a sordid role in the Snowden affair, too, about which you can read on my other blog, Minding Russia. But he and the other handlers or minders or whoever the hell they are really have no sense of this region, whatever their Russian language ability, and burst in aggressively — and disgustingly — to try to strong-arm local news media in dire straits in Central Asia, where there is a huge list of murdered, jailed, disappeared and beaten journalists, into publishing WikiLeaks cables.

    Another bonus is that one of the Russian-speaking journalists on the tour admits openly that he fabricated stories at his job (supposedly because he felt himself to be pressured to do so by  his bosses and their need to sell newspapers) and then was ultimately fired. This is just about the level of journalistic quality we can expect throughout this film.

    (The reason I mixed up Wahlstrom and this Russian in an earlier version of this blog, since corrected is because both are accused of fabrications; the Russian admits it in the film, Wahlstrom denies it. And while some WikiLeaks operative @Troushers is accusing me of "lying" here in my summary of the dialogue of this Russian journalist, I stand by it — indeed he openly admits he fabricated letters and indeed the implication is that he was pressured by his boss, who needed to sell papers even if he didn't say literally that phrase — Internet kids are so literalist. The  obvious reality is, the theme throughout the entire film is that editors and journalists in mainstream media only do things to sell newspapers — i.e. the obvious point of the snarky portrayal of Bill Keller and Sulzberger talking about traffic for a column of Bill's "half supportive" of Obama. Here's the script verbatim from Dmitry Velikovsky, from Russkiy Reporter, who has been active in covering Manning's trial in the past. Russkiy Reporter also sponsored the showing of the film in Moscow.

    Velikovsky: I began with some funny study. I was obliged to edit the column "letters of readers". But the problem was that there were absolutely no letters to edit. But the column should be published twice a day. And so I was obliged to to invent those letters me myself. And I just invented a lot of them.

    Wahlstrom: did you get some, any letters at all from real readers?

    Velikovsky: Yes we got some maybe three, four or five in two months but they were all containing some critics.

    Wahlstrom: but these letters you didn't publish.

    Velikovsky: I wanted to publish those letters in the factual content of the newspaper because I found it rather important to have some kind of self criticism. But our marketing department had no self criticism and they forbid me to publish it. So i invented letters about problems of veterans, problems of pensioners, problems of no matter whom. So that's how I became a journalist.

    Cue tinkly music…

    Astoundingly, this aggressive, beligerent crew have no sense of themselves in this film, so imbued are they with their self-righteousness, even as they beam in Julian Assange on Skype who instructs the locals how they are to treat this material.

    It's very clear WikiLeaks has absolutely no interest in the substance of the local stories, they just want to collect partners — or conversely, shame those potential partners who refuse to deal with them for various reasons by making them look like they are boot-licking lackeys of the United States.

    They tape phone conversations with people that are rather sensitive — like a journalist in danger discussing whether he should publish a story about somebody who wants to run a coup in Tajikistan (!) — and we have no idea if the people involved were informed that these calls would be taped — and included in the film.

    The single most damaging aspect I've seen in this agitprop trash is that the utterly unsupported claim is made that the local press are paid by the US Embassy to print flattering things about the US in order to get the leaders and publics of these countries to bend over while the US uses them as a launching pad and staging area for their war in Afghanistan.

    The WikiLeaks people are too ignorant and blinded by their anti-American ideology to understand that a) the US has no need for this because these countries have cooperated anyway b) these tyrants have their own interests in playing off the US against Russia and China c) it doesn't matter as the US is  pulling out of Afghanistan next year anyway.

    Now, I write as someone who for six years worked at EurasiaNet and Open Society Foundation and wrote critically about the US role in Central Asia, particularly about the severe human rights and humanitarian issues — about which the US government was oftne silent — and the issues around the Northern Distribution Network, the supply path to Afghanistan from Russia which enabled the US to bring non-lethal cargo to NATO troops.

    I probably wrote more than anybody on the WikiLeaks cables in Turkmenistan, strategically located between Iran and Afghanistan and other Central Asian countries with heavy US involvement, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. You can search for all these articles and those of my colleagues here eurasianet.org

    I also worked in the past as a free-lancer for RFE/RL ("(Un)Civil Society" and "Media Matters") and never experienced any censorship — I wrote and published directly to the site. I recall only instances when care was taken in covering mass demonstrations once in Ukraine to make sure that the article didn't incite people — as RFE/RL has a history of being charged with causing uprisings, i.e. in the Hungarian revolution and invasion by Soviet troops. RFE/RL is funded by Congress, but it doesn't have overlords hanging over you as you write — there is far more independent coverage there than anything you'd see at RT.com, the Kremlin-sponsored propaganda outlet or Al Jazeera.

    I have no relationship whatsoever to the US government, so I am certainly qualified to say that this film is an unfair hatchet job on people in harm's way — oh, so typical of WikiLeaks.

    The film opens with the WikiLeaks crew rolling through the mountains with Mehrabanb Fazrollah of Pyandj, Tajikistan, born 18 October 1962, in the back seat of the car telling his story. He was held five years in Guantanamo about which you can read some here.

    Through a series of astoundingly leading questions, broad innuendos or outright promptings, the WL gang incites Fazrollah into saying he really knew nothing of any military significance, and his jailing was all for nothing, and boy is he mad. I don't know anything of his case except what I've read in the papers, but the duplicitious smiles and repeating of what foreigners want to hear are very old stories to me from having traveled in this region (I haven't ever been in Tajikistan but I've spent years travelling to Russia and other countries and interviewing Tajiks outside of Tajikistan).

    Assange claims bitterly that this poor fellow spent five years ""to find out about a couple of fucking refugees in Tajikistan".

    Actually, that's not even what the cable said or even what the man in the film says. They said there were 100,000 refugees. This is relevant of course regarding the Northern Alliance and the Tajiks in Afghanistan. The fellow is charged with membership in the Islamic Movement of Tajikistan (IMT) allied with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a group on the American list of terrorist organizations.

    Sorry, but this is not nothing, these are real terrorism movements, even if supposedly in decline (like, you know, Al Shabaab was in decline and chased out of their stronghold when they hit Westgate Mall in Kenya?)

    You would never know from Assange's sneers that this is a country that was in a civil war for years, that it had the highest number of journalists murdered — some 50, nearly as many as Algeria, also in a civil war at the time, that these journalists were killed by Islamists because they were secular or visa versa because they were not approved Muslims killed by state security. The war is a complicated one but to pretend that terrorism and war isn't a factor here — right next to Afghanistan — is absurd.

    This is of course the game, too, of the International Relations Realist school in Washington and elsewhere, who minimize terrorism and laugh it away as a fantasy of Pentagon planners. But the reality is that both are true — real terrorist acts have occurred here and there are in fact real Islamists pressuring secular society including press, and there are also fake terrorists that the oppressive government thinks up to keep itself in power. And you know something? I surely do not trust Julian Assange and his crew of losers to tell the difference.

    I will never forget in my life the terrified face of a Tajik journalist  who had been receiving death threats that I helped rescue from Tajikistan in the 1990s — and it was a brave man going the extra mile inside the US Embassy actually that got him and his family out of there.

    In the film, after reading some cables on Gitmo — and as I said, the cases may be innocent, but the WL goons are hardly the judge, and there are real complex problems of terrorism and pressure on secularism in these countries — Assange and Wahlstrom sit and guffaw about a line in a memo they've found about Bildt getting in touch with Karl Rove instead of really trying to understand the complexities of the region They find this such a smoking gun and so "evil" that they roar for minutes, but we don't get the joke.

    The translator asks outrageously leading questions and they all laughed and carried on and made it clear they sympathized with the Tajik taken from the battlefield from Gitmo and don't interview him impartially or critically at all. In the same way the pick up a memo from someone named Michael Owens, and start roaring about the US "empire of the 21st century" — which is of course a rather lack-luster claim these days — some empire of the 21st century which they are just now leaving, eh?

    Then they read from cables — only partially — with a "scene-setter" — talking about how the Tajiks have "unfailingly" allowed their overflights, which is all they really wanted from them. They then purport to read from a cable implying that these "imperialist Americans" in Dushanbe want to "make the local media more pro-American" and will first plant positive stories in the Russian media, then pay the local media to reprint them in the local  press.

    They don't actually cite from any document or give any source, and it isn't in any known cable from the WikiLeaks Cablegate already published that the US Embassy engages in this practice.

    So without anything to bolster this claim, WikiLeaks smears gazeta.ru, Interfax, and Ekho Moskvy, claiming that they've somehow engaged in this practice.

    It really is an outright lie. I have read the Russian-language press in this region for years. They are critical of the US and there aren't these glowing planted pieces they imagine. And the US doesn't need to engage in such a silly, crude practice.

    First of all, CENTCOM, the US military command for the region of Central Asia, has its own official news service, but more to the point, it has its own supported English- and Russian-language Internet news service everyone knows they are behind as they tell you, that it uses to put stories for the local media  to pick up – where they are identified as such and sourced from this page, not hidden under bylines or mastheads from the indigenous media.

    Secondly, none of these papers in the region have very big readerships — they don't have the capacity. We are talking about newspapers with 50,000 or 100,000 or 500,000 possibly at the most, but more at the low end. It's just not a way to reach people. Internet penetration is very low in some of the countries — it's about 60% in Russia but drops down sharply as you go East.

    The US already has Voice of America as an outlet to cover the perspectives of the US, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty which serves to enhance or enable struggling local media — they have open partnerships with some local stations, and because they are far more independent than the official media of these authoritarian states, they have more credibility. To be sure, RFE/RL are not going to be radically antithetical to the foreign policy of the United States, any more than the BBC or Al Jazeera or RT.com. But unlike Al Jazeera and RT.com, RFE/RL really tries to cover critical local news without fear or favour, and proof of that is just how many journalists have been arrested, jailed or expelled over the decades. The US government doesn't need to crudely pay somebody to hide behind, in other words. But these, too, don't have a huge audience outside the intelligentsia in the big cities.

    The fact is, WikiLeaks has not produced proof of this disreputable claim, because they've cited one cable only partially where it sounds like a proposal that one doesn't know was fulfilled, and in citing another cable, in Kyrgyzstan, it appears that the Kyrgyz foreign minister presents this idea, and that it doesn't come from the Americans.

    To be sure, paid-for press and infomercials and advertorials are rampant in this region in the official and unofficial press. But to claim that these brave independent outlets take payments to portray te US nicely is just an outright smear for which there isn't an iota of proof. It puts these brave people in danger to suggest it.


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  • Youtube Feed of Uzbek Suspect Fazliddin Kurbanov — Hate for Russians, Americans, Love for Jihad, Explosives, and Power Rangers

    Boise da id. Email lingiz ishlayaptimi

     Fazliddin Kurbanov commented and liked 2 months ago

    I love idaho and exactly boise and eagle. This is. A wonderful place on the world. Very niat. Welcome. Idaho

    Moving to Idaho

    ourotherplanet by ourotherplanet • 3,232 views

    Fazliddin Kurbanov and 15 others liked 11 months ago

    Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU)

    deseagle42 by deseagle42 • 10,593 views

    http://alemarah-iea.com/eng… Real news about Afghanistan

    bbc aljazeera Taliban طالبان Afghanistan افغانستان nuristan نورستان islam terrorism…

    As it happens, there are quite a few people named "Fazliddin Kurbanov" in the world. But as this particular Fazliddin Kurbanov has a very heavily used Youtube account with hundreds of videos in Russian and Uzbek about jihad (that would be much harder for him to do in Uzbekistan itself, where Youtube is blocked), and as he mentions Boise in a comment on another person's Youtube account, and even writes in English "I love Idaho" four months ago — it seems like it is the same person as the suspect. How many Uzbeks with this particular name could there be in Idaho?

    Even if it is not, but some other would-be jihadist, it deserves a close study because it seems to be an anatomy of the "self-radicalizing" jihadist — the Youtubizing would-be terrorist who learns to hate from agitprop videos made in the Russian language by…whoever it is makes these youtubes in Russian (we know the Russian government itself funds iran.ru, so I wonder if the Russian intelligence services also run the youtube jihadist business too in order to annoy the West).

    Watch as he lurches from hating Russians and loving Idaho to hating American soldiers and then studying how to make bombs…

    I'm going to reject in advance any claim that analyzing the social media of suspects — whether it turns out to be right or wrong — is somehow an illegitimate or immoral activity. If you make a public account on social media and put comments and content on it, sorry, but other members of the public will comment on your content, especially if you become a suspect in a crime. If it's not you, but your content draws critical comment — too bad. Don't go on Youtube then if you don't like being discussed. There was far, far too much net-nannying around the Boston marathon bombing suspects, with the liberal and leftist media being the worst at silencing critical speculation and debate about Islamists and anarchists, and then turning around and indulging it in themselves with speculation about the right-wing extremists.

    I have no confirmation that this account belongs to the same person who has just been arrested, but it seems as if it is, and it deserves discussion in any event.

    As you can see from this page of numerous videos, Sarah Kendzior's (and the other Registanis') theories of the Russian language disappearing and people preferring only their native Uzbek is shot all to hell. Maybe the behaviour is different in a 20-year-old or a 15-year-old (although I don't see that it is), but in this 30-year-old, we see the classic pattern of the post-Soviet space — Russian as in fact a lingua franca, often written in Latin letters, used to be able to be understood to more people — other Russian speakers, whether they are Chechens or Kyrgyz or Russians themselves. The post-Soviet space is a very big space, and the far-flung empire includes Eastern Europe where people also still understand Russian. So this is the language of the Internet, like it or not. You wish people spoke English, and might then be more educated — they aren't.

    To be sure, Fazliddin uses Uzbek too. But he uses Russian more. Maybe it is easier for him to express himself in a language that was one he was forced to learn in school, and it works for the technical things he wants to express — oh, about how to make ammonium nitrate.

    Every youtube you can see in this list is "legal" — there are none of those blank spaces from where Google has pulled some of the most severe jihadist videos as you can see from Tamerlan Tsarnaev's much smaller Youtube list. This list has numerous violent, hateful videos — showing American soldiers being killed; cheering on Chechen resistance leaders and terrorists; showing sorrow for Muslims killed and blaming America — maybe Google isn't as active in removing Russian videos. There are also numerous jihad videos in Uzbek and various classic Islamic videos, i.e. how to wear the hijab, what kind of beard to grow.

    What stands out for me in this stream is the hate. Youtube is an infamous place of hate, with people writing the most hateful comments imagineable, but usually they are anonymous. Here's a guy, under his own name, spending hours and hours writing in Russian, with Latin letters, the most vile statements about Russians.

    Kurbanov's likes are a strange medley of everything from Power Rangers to jihad videos to news about drones to Chechen warriors.

    Drones – License to Kill for example, and a video about the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan — a number shared from Muhammad Foruq in Albania who also collects Islamist videos with Russian subtitles like this one from the Islamic Jihad Creative Studio Badr-at-Tauhid.

    Like the other jihad kids, this guy likes to learn about Free Masonry, the secret society. There are a lot of truck videos, suggesting that like other Uzbek emigres and emigres in general from the FSU, he is driving a truck for a living (Muhtorov did as well).

    But most of all, there is the vile stream of hate to Russians.

    "Russians are fucked," he wrote two weeks ago.  "Chechens are good guys," he wrote about Chechen Diary which is a famous documentary series by the Belarusian film-maker Pavel Sheremet, who himself suffered reprisals in Belarus and Russia for his work covering the Chechen wars.

    Most of all, he feels resentment — to the "new Uzbeks" — affluent Uzbeks in an advertisement that others admired but which prompted him to say "herd of sheep".

    So much does this guy hate Russians — and official Uzbeks like the president's daughter, Gulnara Karimova — that interestingly — for someone who was planning a terrorist act in America — that he has his to say about the Russian spy Anna Chapman:

    Пидаразы а не ученые где вы были 20 лет назад. Говорили абезяны были чумошники руские всё варуют у американских ученых бараны

    That's typed in Cyrillic (other Russian-language comments are in Angrusski with Latin) and he uses a term that is a huge insult, with a kind of variation that means something like "You vile pederasts". "Pederast" is usually the term people in this part of the world use for any gay person, not just child molesters.

    "You are pederasts and not scientists where were you 20 years ago. They say Russian chumoshniki were monkeys, they steal everything from the American scientists, the sheep."

    I see this word "chumoshniki" as in "dirty chumoshniki" on Internet fora in Central Asia all the time and I think it's an ethnic slur based on the word "chum" or nomadic tent or something. Someone in the field may know.

    Every other clip has a comment to the effect that "Russians are monkeys" — a typical insult.

    A clip on "Obama's minimum wage disappointment." Let's crank up the mal-adjusted immigrant theme, shall we, because if you are poor, you get to blow up a building!
    A number of videos sympathetic to the Chechens, devastated in two Chechen wars, and also about the Soviets in Afghanistan.
     
    "You're a fool," writes Fazliddin about a video on Kadyrov, the Putin-installed head of Chechnya. "You listen to the Russians."
    A video on Chechen resistance leader  Shamil Basayev, responsible for a number of terrorist acts and killed by the Russians — Fazliddin writes something like "you Russians come here, we'll fix you."
     
    Here's another sample of his typical comments, this one on a video of a fight between Chechens and the OMON riot police, apparently addressed to the guy who uploaded the video:
    Oleg feliks slishay huella. Вы руские отсосали наши хуйи и дасехпор сасете ачем ти гавориш ебан ебаныч мы вас и ваш омон мочем ти смотришь видео вы руские чмошники проиграли все гасни как и раньше гаснули свами уже переписоватся заподло алкашы недоделоные
    Oleg feliks, listen, are you fucked. You Russians sucked our dicks and still suck them and you fucking tell us you'll fuck us and your OMON, look at the video, you Russian chmoshniki lost, you're dying out, it's even shameful to take your census, you're pathetic alcoholics.
    Interesting — four months ago, Kurbanov wrote a comment about a Russian-language video on female suicide bombers that condemns them:
    Te beliy baran poprobuy is za svoyey religiy pojertvovat saboy mi umerayem I ubevaeym vas. Ati chto zbelal bla svoyey religie kazol huy drachil I drachil balshe. A perebacha tak perebelano chto zombi eto ti I nekto bolshe. Kafiri
    You are a white sheep. Just try to sacrifice yourself for your religion we are dying and we will kill you. And what have you you done with your fucking religion you goat jerking off a cock and more. [?] You're a zombie and nothing else. Kafiri (infidels).
    And yet on another video in this series about the shakhidki (female suicide bombers) he writes matter-of-factly "Because do not fear death as you do." This comment was five months ago; the other one was four months ago, maybe his mind shifted on this issue.
    A video about Zhirinovsky — and more "Russian goats" comments.
    The film "Chechen Trap" gets this comment: "Posholti nahuy beliy russkiy baran i ruskiy rab" which is "Go fuck yourself you white Russian sheep and Russian slave."
    As with other Russian-speakers in the Islamist set on Youtube, he has both videos with naked women, and quite a few videos showing how to wear the hijab.
    Anti-Christian propaganda — the real name of God is Allah in the Bible, Islam in the Bible, etc.
    To Russians who made a propaganda film about how Arabs fighting for Islam on Russian terroritory had been "liquidated," our Idahoan geopolitician has this to say:
    vot eto tochnoe dokozatelstvo chto ve obezani a asobeno ti samaya haroshaya i takimi vi i ostanetes poka ne achnetes i ne primite pravdu zasun tvoyu nauku ne sebe v jad a vzad tvoemu otsu i togda uvas budet nastoyashaya evolitciya a karan dlya ludey a ne dlya odezayan
    Here is exact proof that you are monkeys and you are especially good and you will remain that way until you come to your senses and accept the truth stick your science up your ass and the ass of your father and then you will have real evolution but the Koran is for people and not monkeys.
    Like I said — the wisdom of the ages.
    Fazliddin liked the video about the Taliban's jailbreak and the American soldiers crying after an ambush — a film that in fact someone was trying to use to illustrate what terrorist propaganda is.
    And here's some fuel for the argument that US support of the Karimov job fuels jihad — Fazliddin posts he video, made by a Russian  news team, about renewal of US military aid to Uzbekistan.
    Here's a popular video about an American jihadi. Films on Mecca; chants of "Allohu Akbar" to films about the Islamic resistance.
    Shaikh Muhammad Yasir / Advice to the Ulema and Dua'at. "Stop Killing Muslims in Burma".
    Here's a helpful video with a very helpful disclaimer that really worked1

    9/11 Hijackers – Mohammad Atta and Ziad Jarrah

    BruceLee2343 by BruceLee2343 • 23,673 views

    This video is soley for educational purposes and references and is not by any means used for incitement of terrorism. Or terrorist acts.

    Okay…

    A film about a thief who converted to Islam prompts the comment, "inshaallah kazakistan stanet islamskoy derjavoe" — "Inshallah, Kazakhstan will become an Islamic power."

    The losses of the Russian army in Chechnya…Shariah courts…more how to wear a hijab…

    As for one of the truther videos about how there weren't really planes at the twin towers, our Youtube jihad specialist exclaims:

    "vi shto vse sumashetshie eto teroristi neponatno"
    "What are you saying, are you mad, those are terrorists, don't get it."

    As for a video about the murder of Daniel Sysoev, well, that was alright in Fazliddin's book:

    vapervih etot chelavek ne svetoe a kazol potomushto oh sam nachel oskarblat musulman tak vam enado chumoshniki i vapsheto russkie narod kak vi sami govarili sozdani iz obezani obezyanii garilla martishka aran gunani ponemaete kto vi
    First, this person is not sacred but a goat because he himself began to offend Muslims, you deserve it you chumoshniki and in general the Russian people like you yourself are created from monkeys, you're monkeys, gorillas, chimps, understand who you are
    Power rangers…namaz (Muslim prayers…what is it with Power Rangers and Iron Man and jihadists?!
    About ten months ago, Fazliddin began to watch more 9/11 movies and movies about how to make flash powder, how to make igniters. How to make ammonium nitrate, and videos of massive explosions…
    A video about how to make a car bomb with C4…okay, bring him in…
    There are three or four videos from RFE/RL in Uzbek about Muhtorov, and he has substantial comments in Uzbek — maybe someone can translate those.
    Related articles
    Uzbekistan national Fazliddin Kurbanov Arrested on Terrorism Charges
    Uzbek terror suspect to appear in court
    Uzbek Man Nabbed in Idaho Over Terror Plot
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    Authorities arrest Uzbek man in Idaho terror case
    No comments on Youtube Feed of Uzbek Suspect Fazliddin Kurbanov — Hate for Russians, Americans, Love for Jihad, Explosives, and Power Rangers
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  • Will There Be Conflict in Central Asia After US Troop Withdrawal? Interview with Me in CA-News (English Original)

    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.

    (more…)

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  • Tajik Opticon #8

    Prokudin-Gorsky Small

     This is my little blog on Tajikistan that comes out on Saturdays. I was travelling abroad and working on a project this last month so I missed two weeks, but I hope to be back on track. If you are reading this on TinyLetter you will have to come to my blog Different Stans for the links in RU and TJ as these are blocked by this mail system. Write me at [email protected] with comments or requests to be added to the mailing list.

    HEADLINES

    o US Secretary of State Visits Tajikistan

    o Tajik President Calls on Army to Resist External Threats

    o Journalist Stabbing a Warning for Tajik Opposition

    COMMENTARY

    Assistant Secretary of State Robert O. Blake, Jr. visited Dushanbe February 20-21 and met with President Emomali Rahmon. There is nothing on the US Embassy Dushanbe web site (yet) about this meeting, and only a picture on the Embassy Facebook page; very little anywhere else.

    The independent Tajik press reported an alleged offer to make Tajikistan available for NATO equipment withdrawals, but the official did not seem very high level and later the same press reported just on the English-language page reported "Washington reprotedly does not plan to use Tajikistan’s infrastructure
    during the withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan." So the US seemed to be saying "thanks but no thanks". Too mountainous?

    Into this vacuum of information steps a Russian analyst as usual, speculating that the purpose of Blake's trip was to shore up commitments from Dushanbe to let US and NATO military "obyekty" (installations) stay on the territory of Tajikistan. It's interesting that he doesn't say "troops," although there are some US "troops" in Tajikistan doing training and advising. He talks about the "obyekty" (facilities) which in a sense are what the US is already helping with by donating equipment.

    The Russian analyst Anatoly Knyazev from the Institute for Oriental Studies believes the US will bribe officials and support a "thin layer" of students and nationalist intellectuals ("thin layer" is old Soviet Pravda parlance for a discredited social class not according to the Marxist-Leninist plan). This "thin layer" – the Oreo cookie filling smushed between Russia and the US and ready to be dipped into the milk of China (so I'm visualizing vividly now) is not really going to be allowed to succeed, as the US won't fund them, but they will be used to put pressure on Rahmon. Mkay.

    Meanwhile, USAID is busy funding comic books in the Tajik language, so I don't think anyone's going to be colouring outside the lines…

    Note that in the US photo op, Rahmon is smiling and the chandelier is featured. Note that in the Tajik photo op Rahmon is frowning and the wallpaper is featured. Also, note that the flower display at these things are always done beautifully.

    The Tajik military parade last week provided an opportunity for Dushanbe to show off their hardware including some still-shiny Chaikas. Haven't seen those in awhile.

    The trial of the suspect in the killing of the security official in Badakhshan last year has opened, and surprise, surprise, it's behind closed doors.

    There was a bit of a kerfluffle with an Iranian presidential candidate speaking of a "Greater Iran" and Iran "taking back" Tajikistan, Armenian and Azerbaijan, but…well, when we saw the phrase "presidential candidate" we knew that this story couldn't be true, because those things are real in the Iranian dictatorship. Anyway, Ahmadineajad is coming to Dushanbe for the spring festival of Novruz in a few weeks and surely they'll sort things out. Meanwhile, we learn from RFE/RL and @eTajikistan that 29% of the 2000 plus foreign students in Tajikistan come from Iran.

    Other comments in italics below.

     

    Blake and Rahmon 2
    Photo by US Embassy Dushanbe

    U.S. Official Calls For Fair Tajik Presidential Election

    U.S. Assistant Secretary for South and
    Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake has called on Tajikistan's leadership
    to hold a fair, democratic, and transparent presidential election in
    November.

    Blake started his two-day visit to Dushanbe on February 20 and has met with NGO representatives and civil-society activists.

    No doubt this meeting had more people in it than Blake's meeting in Turkmenistan.

    Blake and Rahmon
    Assistant
    Secretary of State for Central and South Asia Robert O. Blake, Jr. and
    President Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan, February 20, 2013. Photo by President.tj.

    President.tj reports:

    It was emphasized that the US continues to provide support to
    Tajikistan's initiatives to intensify its struggle with terrorism,
    extremism, unlawful narcotics trade, and to further assist in the
    strengthening of the defense of the state borders with Afghanistan, and
    material and technical provision of the relevant state agencies.

    Flowers
    Photo by President.tj

    Tajik Ambassader Wants Tajikistan Off Jackson-Vanik (h/t @ericamarat

    DUSHANBE, February 14, 2013, Asia-Plus — Tajik Ambassador to the
    United States, Nouriddin Shamsov, has called on Washington to remove
    Tajikistan from Jackson-Vanik restrictions.

    According to Silk Road Newsline, Ambassador Shamsov has noted that
    Tajik economy shows steady progress, the country will officially join
    the WTO on March 2, 20012 and it’s time for the United States to
    graduate Tajikistan from the restrictive Jackson-Vanik amendment.

    “My government anticipates continuing effective bilateral cooperation
    with U.S. Government to lift as soon as possible the Jackson-Vanik
    amendment which would impede as we do believe full fledged membership of
    Tajikistan in the WTO and further promotion of bilateral trade and
    investment relations with the Unites States of America,” Shamsov told a
    panel on the WTO at the at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute (CACI) in
    Washington on February 13.

    "No Obstacle" to NATO Transit Through Tajikistan h/t@TheBugPit

    Tajikistan is ready to offer its territory for transit of freight by
    international allied forces in Afghanistan, and there are no obstalces
    regarding this issue. Davlat Nazriev, head of the Agency for
    Information, Press Analysis and Foreign Policy Planning of the Foreign
    Affairs of Tajikistan announced at a briefing.

    "In the event of an appeal from any country, this question will be reviewed through the established procedures," he emphasized.

    Russian Analyst Sees Blake's Trip as Demand for Support of US and NATO Installations 

    The purpose of Robert Blake's visit to Dushanbe is to obtain a final decision on the issue of deploying American and NATO military facilities on the territory of Tajikistan, since the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan has already begun, and the US immediately demands hard guarantees, says Aleksandr Knyazev, coordinator of regiona programs for the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Seciences, regnum.ru reported February 20.

    In the expert's opinion, "It is still not too late for Russia to stop this process, otherwise before the end of this year, another process may be initiated regarding the withdrawal of the Russian military base from Tajikistan. Evidently the US is placing its bets on Rahmon according to the principle, 'he's a bastard but our bastard," and it's understandable that they are absolutely indifferent to the nation of this regime when it's a question of the strategic plans for deploying part of the troops withdrawn from Afghanistan in the countries of the region."

    Knyazev sees the situation crudely — bribes to key officials, and support for a "thin layer of Westernized youth" and some of the intelligentsia that are "nationalist-minded"  and see the West as "the lesser of two evils". This "layer" will activate "numerous Western NGOs for 'colour scenarios', not to really bring them about but as "a lever of pressure on Rahmon".

    Border Ceremony
    Photo by US Embassy Tajikistan

    US Equipment for Tajikistan

    The United States Embassy in Dushanbe, Export Control and Related
    Border Security program (EXBS) and Office of Military Cooperation (OMC)
    provided twenty-two All – Terrain Vehicles (ATV’s), thirty-three light
    trucks and additional tactical equipment to the Government of
    Tajikistan. The ATV’s will be distributed to border posts throughout
    Tajikistan to assist Border Guard units in their efforts to combat
    contraband from entering and transiting the country.  The light trucks
    and tactical equipment will similarly benefit Border Guard detachments,
    outposts, and units, increasing their capacity for securing the Tajik
    border from external threats.  

    Deputy Chief of Mission, Sarah Penhune participated in a donation
    ceremony at the Border Guard Facility in Dushanbe.  Ms. Penhune
    remarked, “The United States Government shares the goals of the
    Government of Tajikistan to combat the threat of contraband and drug
    trafficking and recognizes that keeping Tajikistan’s borders secure is a
    national priority.  The Border Guards are the first line of defense for
    Tajikistan from external threats, and they are frequently required to
    carry out this important work with limited resources, in very difficult
    terrain, and often during very challenging weather conditions.  The U.
    S. Embassy EXBS and OMC programs are pleased to assist the Border Guard
    in their efforts to combat the threat of contraband and drug
    trafficking.”

    Tajik Parade
    Where the Chaikas are still in service…Tajik Military Parade, Photo:  Presidential Press Service.

    Tajik President Calls on Army to Resist External Threats

    At a meeting to honour the 20th anniversary of Tajikistan's Armed Forces, the president called on the military and law-enforcement agencies to take into account growing "threats of modernity" such as terrorism, extremism and narcotics, regnum. ru and president.tj reported.

    "I have noted many times and emphasize once again that security the security of the state and nation, protecting civilian life and the socio-economic development of the country directly depends on the political situation, law and order, guarantee of the rule of law, combatting crime and protecting our boarders," the news agency Avesta reported, citing the president.

    Suspects Tried For Killing Of Local Tajik Security Chief

    Two suspects in the high-profile killing of a top security official have
    gone on trial in Tajikistan's restive Gorno-Badakhshan region.

    Supreme Court judge Mirzoali Karimov confirmed to RFE/RL that the trial
    started on February 19 in the southeastern province's capital, Khorugh.

    The sessions are being held behind closed doors.

    Tajik Activist Stabbed in Moscow

    A well-known Tajik journalist and activist has been stabbed in Moscow.

    Bakhtior Sattori told RFE/RL in a telephone interview on February 20 that an unknown assailant attacked him near his apartment.

    Sattori said he was stabbed in the stomach and face on February 19.

    Tajik Investigator Gets Two-Year Prison Sentence For Suspect's Death

    A court in Dushanbe has sentenced police investigator Abdurahmon Dodov
    to two years in prison for negligence that caused a suspect's death in
    custody.

    In 2011, Bahromiddin Shodiev was arrested in Dushanbe on suspicion of theft.

    The following day, he was taken in a comatose state to a hospital, where he died 10 days later.

    Before he died, Shodiev regained consciousness and told relatives he had
    been beaten until he confessed to crimes he had not committed.

    Journalists Stabbing a Warning for Tajik Opposition ht/ @randomdijit

    A Russian human rights activist who has worked closely with Sattori suggests
    [ru] that the assault on Sattori was a “political order,” and that the
    journalist was punished for his ties with Quvvatov and his recent
    attempts to mobilize international pressure in order to prevent the
    politician's extradition to Tajikistan. It is unclear what the
    journalist himself makes of the attack. In his interview with Radio
    Ozodi, Sattori said [ru] he did not know whom to blame for an apparent attempt on his life. A bit later, however, he told [ru] BBC he knew who was behind the attack, suggesting also that this was a powerful person within the Tajik government.

    @asodiqov

    Is the stabbing of a Tajik journalist a taste of things to come ahead of presidential election? http://goo.gl/XjNPx  #Tajikistan #Sattori

    Ukrainian Court Extends Detention For Former Tajik Prime Minister

    A court in Ukraine has ruled that former Tajik Prime Minister Abdumalik
    Abdullojonov can be held in detention for up to 40 days while
    authorities await documents from Dushanbe regarding his possible
    extradition.

    Abdullojonov was arrested on February 5 at Boryspil Airport near Kyiv on
    an international warrant after arriving from the United States.

    Kiva Projects in Tajikistan

    1293497
    Salimboy has raised 41% of the $1075 he needs for a small business.

    Could you buy some mutton for Abdumanon or livestock for Salimboy? Or perfume for Sanifa?

    $17,696,350 have been lent to projects in Tajikistan through Kiva.

    A Greater Iran? h/t @joshuakucera (Translation from Russian)

    Tajikistan's Foreign Ministry has made an official announcementi n which it has condemned the statement by Ayatollah Said Muhammad Bokiri Harrozi, a presidential candidate, that in the event that he becomes president of Iran, then Tajikistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan will be returned to Iran, news.tj reported.

    The Foreign Minister noted that the statement appeared on  http://cheshmandaz.org on February 5.

    Iranian President to Visit Tajikistan in March

    Ahmadinejad will visit Tajikistan in the last week of March to meet with the Tajik president, attend Novruz celebrations, and attend the launch of Sangtuda Hydropower Station No. 2

    Most Foreign Students in Tajikistan for Iran h/t @eTajikistan

    eTajikistan
    ‏@eTajikistan

    #Tajikistan's 2130 foreign univ students: Iran 29%, Turkmenistan 17%, Uzbekistan 12% Afghan 11% India 9% http://www.ozodi.org/content/article/24910091.html … @RadioiOzodi

    Now here's the Russian which will be easier for many to read.

    Video by state.gov

    Secretary of State Kerry Discovers "Kyrzakstan"

    Tengrinnews.kz and other regional media poked fun at newbie Secretary of State John Kerry when he seemed to speak of a new country, "Kyrzakstan," in his speech at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. They picked up Global Post's coverage of Kerry's speech — no other US or English-speaking media seems to have the story. Said Kerry:

    "They support democratic transitions in 'Kyrzakhstan' and Georgia,
    mindful from our own experience that it takes a long time to get
    democracy right, and that it rarely happens right away.”

    In a telephone conversation Kerry also thanked Kazakhstan for agreeing to hold talks on Iran's nukes.

    State.gov's transcript has it correctly as "Kyrgyzstan". But at about 30:14 or so on the video tape, you can hear Kerry make a slight muff of the name of this Central Asian country. Even so, the overall message in support of democracy, lest anyone think only the neo-cons will carry this torch, is clear:

    We value human rights, and we need to tell the story of America’s
    good work there, too. We know that the most effective way to promote the
    universal rights of all people, rights and religious freedom, is not
    from the podium, not from either end of Pennsylvania Avenue. It’s from
    the front lines – wherever freedom and basic human dignity are denied.
    And that’s what Tim Kaine understood when he went to Honduras.

    The brave employees of State and USAID – and the Diplomatic Security
    personnel who protect the civilians serving us overseas – work in some
    of the most dangerous places on Earth, and they do it fully cognizant
    that we share stronger partnerships with countries that share our
    commitment to democratic values and human rights. They fight corruption
    in Nigeria. They support the rule of law in Burma. They support
    democratic institutions in Kyrgyzstan and Georgia, mindful from our own
    experience that it takes a long time to get democracy right, and that it
    rarely happens right away.

    In the end, all of those efforts, all of that danger and risk that
    they take, makes us more secure. And we do value democracy, just as
    you’ve demonstrated here at UVA through the Presidential Precinct
    program that’s training leaders in emerging democracies.

     

    Big Gas Find in Tajikistan

    @edwardlucas Byebye water melons, hello gas & oil #Tajikistan nat gas reserves est 2x #Norway's. … via @TajAnalytical @eTajikistan

    @joshuakucera

     
    Wow: so is this natural gas find in Tajikistan for real? Double Norway's reserves?

     

    Tumblr_mi2hjyF0t31qaejg5o1_500
    Children Get Help from MSF on Drug-Resistant TB

     

    o Julie Judkins, representative of the Appalachian Trail, visited Tajikistan recently through a US program and spoke about the importance of community trails.

    Here's her photos and text.

    o @USAIDCtrAsia

    We hosted a training for 18 #Tajik children’s book writers/illustrators to improve books in #mothertongue & we'll publish 30 new kid's books

    Dushanbe
    Dushanbe apartment building, September 2012. Photo by Eric Haglund.

    Related articles
    Prospects of Tajik-US cooperation to be discussed in Dushanbe
    Tajik Opticon #6
    Tajik Activist Stabbed In Moscow
    No comments on Tajik Opticon #8
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  • All I Want from Progs is Some Perspective

    All I ask of "progressives" is a little…perspective. A little balance, at the very least!

    I'm not like Joshua Foust. I don't justify drones in any way. I have grave misgivings about how moral it is to be battling by remote control as if you were in a video game like this. I'm not persuaded that the supposed good done from drones — taking out various terrorist leaders who are known to attack US troops (and that's why I don't put "suspects" coyly around the term) — outdoes the harm. The harm is turning the population against you if you have too much "collateral damage" — or any, especially if it's children.I haven't been persuaded, like a lot of people, that the good achieved in curbing terrorism has been outweighed by the wrongs perpetrated against the innocents and the incitement of anger and hatred in the population.

    But hey, let's get a little perspective on this, shall we? I don't even mean the perspective that might come from examining the actual terrorists killed and examining their actual bad deeds — something that the press should do more of than it does.

    I mean the perspective that comes from looking at other bad things in the region, and seeing what they're about, too, which, like Iraq, comes from admitting that the overwhelming majority of civilians are killed not by US troops or NATO troops but by the Taliban and its allies, i.e. terrorists.

    Yesterday, I had to watch as all the liberal youth shared around with each other hundreds of thousands of times a picture taken with Instagram of a child's head in the sights of a sniper's gun. The child wasn't killed; it was just a picture of a sniper showing a child in his sights. This picture, whose provenance was said to be somewhere else online (which I couldn't find, using Google image search), was posted by a young IDF soldier. And so lefties like Jillian York @jilliancyork who has openly advocated a "one-state solution" that would involve obviously diluting the Israeli population deliberately and changing the nature of its society, were part of what spread this picture around (she has something like 26,000 followers around the world). Her comment? To put in scare quotes "the most humane army in the world". I don't know who says this or whether its an IDF motto, but I think we'd have to concede that by contrast to lots of other things in the world, including the US military, the IDF is more careful – it has gotten so through vast experience — about trying to avoid the killing of civilians.

    So today, we read all the stories of 90 Shi'a Pakistanis killed by Islamist terrorists who don't like their brand of Islam.  That's just one day. Ninety people! People who were so angry that they refused to bury their dead in protest. Imagine, for Muslims whose religious ritual demands that they bury the dead quickly. Then, the pictures of Western news services of wailing people clinging to dead bodies with the headline "Letting Go," as if they need therapy, and a recognition of the Western-devised stages of grief, instead of continuing their outrage at the abnormality of losing civilians in this fashion, due to terrorism.

    And none of those hundreds of thousands of Twitterers who could cluck in indignation at an Israeli soldier putting up an indecent and vicious picture of a sniper with a child in his sights could find it in their hearts to protest the mass murder of these 90 — from one day. And there are incidents like that constantly, which is why the numbers of civilians killed by terrorists in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya are so much greater than by any Western troops involved. Not to mention the 60,000 or more killed in Syria, many children. Never one-tenth of the rage about *that*, sponsored by Russia, in contrast with the fueld outrage of the BDS movement over Israel.

    So along comes the New York Times, which in its quest for readership and clicks and revenue is now putting up cartoons and interactive thingies to try to attract the Internet children upon whom their future relies. The NYT would never have published such a crude, propagandistic screed in its pages as journalism or even an op-ed piece, but the lure of interactivity and visuals let them put up Drew Carie's clever anti-drone propaganda.

    Propaganda, because he crudely portrays a KGB agent as gleefully gloating over the US "becoming not like itself" — which of course only distracts from the fact that among the clients for drones in the world is Vladimir Putin, a real KGB agent who is really in power, not just in a cartoon. And so on.

    Propaganda, because not only does he create a one-sided if funny cartoon without any sense of context about the rest of the world, he actually has the nerve to cite Zamyatin's We — a work of literature protesting the Soviet Union — and make it somehow morally equivalent to the United States. 

    Propaganda — because to the extent the US has become like Jeremy's Panopticon, it's more due to Google than the NSA.

    Propaganda — because in fact, as the cartoon shows, forces opposed the use of drones in Seattle and stopped them.

    My response below, in the NYT comments.

    ***

    By making his fictional character as a KGB
    man gleeful that America has become like his own agency, ostensibly from
    the Cold War, he handily distracts from the fact that the real dangers
    from drones will not come from America, which is a liberal democratic
    state under the rule of law with a free press, but from Russia, which
    still has an actual KGB agent as its leader, or China or other
    authoritarian states that jail cartoonists like Drew Christie instead of
    publishing them in a leading newspaper. It creates hysterical
    self-absorption by the "progressives" who fuel their fantasy that
    America is the greatest evil in the world.

    Putting the focus on
    the government's surveillance also has the function of distracting from
    Google and Facebook other Big IT companies that do far more surveillance
    of us, with our avid and enthusiastic participation, than any
    government drone, and with far less recourse to due process. Google is
    making an unmanned car and will be able to further scrape data from your
    every movement once you start using it, and nobody is caring about
    that, only big scary Obama drones or Seattle drones. I'm all for
    watching those, as they shouldn't be run by the CIA and innocent people
    have been killed by them and their families cannot even be compensated
    because they are in a secret program.

    As usual, there is no
    perspective on the left. Obama kills two US citizens deemed to be
    terrorists; in Pakistan in just one day, 90 Muslims were killed by their
    fellow Muslims.

    Related articles
    Rights group adopts Hamas' version of Gaza offensive
    More on the Immorality of Drones and Evil Robots
    PHOTO: Sniper Condemned For Posting Photo Of Child In Crosshairs
    US drone attacks unacceptable, Jilani tells Senate body
    Leaked Memo: How Obama Justifies Drone Killing of Americans
    No comments on All I Want from Progs is Some Perspective
    , , ,

  • Tajik Opticon #7

    Prokudin-Gorsky Small
    1907 Solar Eclipse Expedition by Sergei Prokhudi-Gorskii, Russian Photographer in Central Asia.

    This is my little newsletter on Tajikistan that comes out once a
    week on Saturdays. If you want to see past issues, look to the column on
    the right down below for the key word "Tajikistan". If you want to get this in
    your email or you have comments or contributions, write
    [email protected]

    COMMENTS:

    I'm going to bookmark this page at Registan, Central Asia 2014 The Terror, scoffing at Jacob Zenn's piece, Militants Threaten to Return to Central Asia After Withdrawl of Nato. And the best way to see who is right is to come back in a year and see what we have.

    As I've seen New Realist Eurasia Foundation Young Pro, Kerry think-tanker and long-time defense analyst Joshua Foust of Registan trash Zenn before when he reported factually on terrorists in Kazakhstan, I take it all with a grain of salt. I have no separate information. I have only questions. Zenn says:

    The Southeast Asian militants who returned to their home countries after
    the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan carried out or trained others to
    carry out terrorist attacks, which killed hundreds of people, but, they
    proved much less effective at generating change than the mass social
    movements in the Arab World in 2011. As long as the populations of
    Central Asian countries remain vigilant to the threat posed by these
    militant groups, the fighters returning from Afghanistan will likely be
    able to only carry out sporadic attacks but gain no traction in society.
    However, crises like the ethnic riots in Urumqi in 2009, the ethnic
    clashes in Osh in 2010, the deadly Zhanaozen protests in 2011, and the
    instability in Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakshan in 2012, all have the
    potential to erode government legitimacy, while increasing support for
    alternatives to the present leadership. Most alternatives come in the
    form of opposition parties, but some of those who have been aggrieved
    may turn toward groups like the TIP, Jund al-Khilafah and the IMU
    instead.

    Everything about this statement seems prudent; it doesn't overstate the case — if anything it points out that the last time this happened after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, it didn't amount to much. Of course, that was before the Internet.

    Defense consultant Nathan Hamm is scornful:

    Whether or not terror groups are likely to be more active in Central
    Asia after NATO withdraws from Afghanistan is a useful thing to think
    about, but it is vital not to overhype the risks. The governments of the
    region are phenomenally imaginative at devising and hyping threats to
    justify not only repressive domestic policies but to extract concessions
    from Western governments in the forms of financial assistance and
    tempered criticism of their human rights abuses. Assessments of the risk
    of terrorism need to capture the scale and timeline for the risk. Zenn
    is correct that there is a risk of the “return” of Central Asian terror
    groups at some unspecified point in the future. However, Central Asian
    security services have shown more than sufficient capability to monitor
    and disrupt terror groups. Furthermore, as grim as it is to point out,
    Afghanistan and Pakistan will continue to be much more permissible and
    target-rich environments for all of these groups.

    Both of them seem to think these governments will remain strong, although they face rattling as Karimov in Uzbekistan is going to have a succession and Rahmon in Tajikistan will have "elections" and there could always be another toppling in Kyrgyzstan.

    In any event, for the purposes of this newsletter, the Tajik situation might not be so much "returning warriors" as opportunistic kinsmen or brotherly fighters seeing an opening. We don't know how it's going to turn out. Sure, Afghanistan and Pakistan will always be worse; maybe even Pakistan more than Afghanistan. But that doesn't mean the post-Soviet stans will be quiet. What would be more advantageous, staying in a place where the Taliban and related allies no longer need you and you have no unifying factor with them to fight NATO/the US? Or returning to your own country or travelling to neighbouring kin in order to use your acquired battle skills?

    Nate Schenkken said on Twitter that Islamist terror from returning warriors should be on the list of concerns, but only under something like drug lords; he blames them for the pogroms in Kyrgyzstan. There's nothing to say that the two things can't coexist in one gang, however.

    * Ten Tajiks Killed in Moscow Blaze, Exposes Poor Working Conditions

    * This just in! Rahmon Likely to Win Elections!

    * Tajikistan Caves on Fuel Deal with Russia

    Russian Officials: 10 workers Die in Fire at Moscow Construction Site, All Tajik Citizens (Washington Post) (h/t @randomdigit)

    A fire ripped through a new Moscow building’s underground parking lot
    on Saturday, killing 10 migrant workers and injuring 13 others who had
    been working and living there, city police said.

    All those who died were citizens of Tajikistan, Moscow police
    said in a statement. It said they were killed after a garbage heap on
    the floor they were working on caught fire, but the cause of the blaze
    itself was under investigation.

    Uzbek Cuts off Gas to Tajikistan  France 24 h/t @ericamarat

    The impoverished Central Asian state of Tajikistan said Monday that it
    had been cut off from natural gas shipments by its neighbour and sole
    energy supplier Uzbekistan.

    Why Do Millions Leave Tajikistan for Offshore? etajikistan h/t @nateschenkaan

    The IMF in its report of last year wrote that around US $3.5 billion from Tajikistan was deposited in offshore accounts. Zafar Abdulloev, a Tajik journalist researching economic issues, claims that the entities from Tajikistan with offshore accounts are: Talco, the aluminum factory; Innovative Road Solutions or IRS, and companies belong to the Tajik businessman Hasan Asadullozoda, brother-in-law of President Emomali Rahmon.

    Window on Eurasia: Tehran Must Buy Water from Tajikistan to Overcome Drought, Iranian Deputy Says

    Ali Ironpour,
    a member of the agriculture committee of the Iranian parliament, says that
    Tehran can solve the problems of drought in eastern Iran by purchasing some one
    billion cubic meters of water from neighboring Tajikistan, a step he says the
    two governments agreed to in May 2012.

    Russia, Tajikistan Getting Closer to Military Base/Fuel/Migration Deal (Bug Pit/EurasiaNet.org)

    Russia and Tajikistan have come to an agreement on one of the sticking points
    in their deal to extend the lease of Russia's largest military base in
    Central Asia, reports Tajikistan's minister of energy and industry Gul
    Sherali. As part of that deal, Russia agreed to duty-free fuel shipments
    to Tajikistan, but wanted a guarantee that the discounted fuel wouldn't
    be reexported. Tajikistan had objected, but now has agreed to Moscow's terms.

    And…Russian troops and Tajik border guards are really, really going to be able to check on 1m tonnes of oil products and make sure they never, ever get re-sold anywhere else, Scout's honour?

    Tajikistan Backs Down on Fuel Talks with Russia (bne.eu h/t @dtrilling)

    Moscow insists on the clause because of the high level of fuel smuggling
    in south Central Asia and the risk of fuel delivered to Tajikistan
    being sold on to third countries such as Afghanistan. Dushanbe had
    previously objected to the clause, with Tajik officials saying they
    would be unable to guarantee that gasoline from Russia will not be
    re-exported.

    Trilling thinks Tajikistan has no leverage. True enough, but it has something else — continued non-compliance and pleading the inability to monitor all those mountain roads not even demarcated. This is an regular ritual…

    Russia-Tajikistan Military Base Agreement Runs into “Rough Weather” (Russian & India Report ht/ @cgraubner

     

    Predictions for 2013 from Myles Smith

    Surprise, surprise, Rahmon will be elected.

    Tajikistan’s ever-more-ridiculous elections
    exercise will end predictably, as we all wonder how far Emomali Rakhmon
    can push his authority over economic and political life of the
    ostensibly conflict-averse population. Who among us has not thought that
    this was the year that the country would implode, divide into ungovernable de facto criminal states, and drag the whole region in. He’s gone ‘too far’ with the IRPT, HT, Pamiri clans, Turajonzoda’s clan, or myriad other rivals to maintain his power base. But, it has not happened yet, somehow, so we stop predicting it.

    I agree. We were endlessly hearing how that overcrowded teeming Ferghana Valley was going to explode, too, but then the state managed to sterilize the women and suppress the demonstrations and keep the lights dim…

    Tajikistan Remains Hell for Gays (Global Voices)

    A recent discussion in the country's blogosphere offers a rare
    glimpse into what it means to be gay in Tajikistan and how the country's
    people view members of the LGBT community.

    ‘It means PAIN…'

    … It was decided that the [gay] should be taught a lesson. About eight of
    our classmates beat him up in the bathroom. They beat him up badly;
    there was a lot of blood on his face and clothes…

    Tajik Drugs (BBC)

    Tajikistan is a transit point for one of the most lucrative drugs routes
    in the world. Illegal drugs from neighbouring Afghanistan flood into
    the country on their way to Russia and Western Europe.

    Rustam Qobil travels to remote border villages in Tajikistan to find out how communities are being affected by the drugs trade.

     

    Sports Against Drugs
    INL’s “Sport Against Drugs” campaign, Dushanbe, Tajikistan, February 19, 2012. International Narcotics and Law
    Enforcement (INL) section of the U.S. Embassy and local partner NGO
    National Olympic Academy (NOA) organized an anti-drug dance competition
    titled “Jam Master” at the Spartak Youth Center in Dushanbe on February
    19, 2012.

    ***

    Check out my Pinterest — I want someone to bring me this in the cold of New York City right now like in the cold of these Tajik mountains.

    Related articles
    Tajikistan's WTO membership offers pros and cons – Central Asia Online
    BBC News – Recruiting drug couriers in Tajikistan
    Russia-Tajikistan military base agreement runs into "rough weather"
    No comments on Tajik Opticon #7
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  • Tajik Opticon #6

    Prokudin-Gorsky Small

    This is my little blog about Tajikistan that comes out on Saturdays. I had a three-week hiatus during the region's holidays, which I call "The Land of the Eternal Yolka," and my own holidays, which were actually a chance to get some big work projects done. If you want to read past issues, click on "Tajikistan" under the categories. If you have comments leave them here or write me at [email protected] where you can also get on the list to get this newsletter via email.

    COMMENTS

    Here we go again with the on-again, off-again social media website closures in Tajikistan which have been going on for months and which I've reported on in all my past issues.

    What is the purpose of these shenanigans? Not really to shut down the sites, which likely make money for somebody, and likely related to the president and his family somewhere. It's just to let them know that "they can if they want," and they are in charge here. Post your LolCats if you will, people, but we can pull them on you at any time, for no any reason, or no reason. (Actually, they are a lot like the TOS of most of these services in that respect, because they can ban you arbitrarily at will for any reason or no reason, too!)

    The saga of these American social networks gets Western media attention, but they are used by Tajiks in small numbers *(there are 41,160 Facebook users reported by Socialbakers among the lowest in the world, but still 0.55% of the population, which is about 7.5 million. I couldn't find the Twitter usage right away, but if Twitter in Russia is .3% of iPhone users, then Tajikistan will be even smaller). BTW, this research company says that people don't use the geolocation tag much, so it's a bit worthless to speculate.

    What's more important than whether or not these Western sites get blocked — although they are still significant and an important outlet for some — is how the internal sites like Asia Plus fare, and what the government or its proxies are doing to control the domestic media.

    Despite the foreign minister's claim that he would get 80% of the population on the Internet, the government is going slow and keeping a tight rein on the web. And the Muslim authorities are also letting journalists know they are watching. The Council of Ulems, which is basically an arm of the state as Forum 18's Igor Rotar has explained, recently issued a statement saying that fatwahs were not to be recognized if issued from various unofficial groups. Well, at first that might seem like welcome news, if the official Islamic Council tells people that fatwahs are not going to be recognized. But all they mean is that they themselves get to be the only ones in the fatwah business.

    The journalists' community is not sitting back on  their hands when they hear this sort of thing; Nuriddin Karshibayev, head of the National Association of Independent Media of Tajikistan said this was a mere "recommendation" and that in any event, a fatwah "is not a lawful demand, and looks like interference in the professional activity of a journalist , which is an act punishable under criminal law". Well, good luck with that, as a state-approved and state-controlled entity like the Council of Ulems may be viewed as making "lawful demands" by the regime when it tells TV and radio "not to corrupt youth" and so on. It's obviously a tug of war. I don't know why Karshibayev said, "If the Council of Ulems believes our journalist do not know how to write materials on religious themes, please, let us organize trainings and teach them". Good Lord, that's giving them too much, as you don't want this state religious council in the business of "training" journalists. That must be merely a rhetorial device to call them out (I hope).

    Here's a good article from 2010 which explains why people even turn to Islamic authorities and want to get their fatwahs in the first place: they want some authority to deal with problems that the state can't or won't address, and they want in particular a moral leader to resolve their problems like divorce and division of property. These are people's customs and heritage and they want to turn to them as the secular Soviet and post-Soviet governments aren't helpful. The question is whether these customs, as they become more enhanced, and as the government also exploits people's need for them, become either a toehold for extremism or another conveyor belt for state control or both simultaneously. Certainly the effort to close down two stores that had build informal mosques on their premises lets us know that the state doesn't like freelancing on religion and is ready to invoke both building codes and religious law to accomplish this task.

    The US military is in Tajikistan. What do they do all day, as they wait for the seams to burst on their handiwork in Afghanistan next door after 2014? Well, they are trying to make "infrastructure" in keeping with the Obama Administration's notion, developed under Hillary Clinton and likely to be continued under John Kerry, of a "New Silk Road" that will replace the ground lines of communication (G-LOC) in the Northern Distribution Network with arteries for business and trade.

    To that end, the US deploys the Navy Seabees to help Tajikistan. These are the same Navy Seabees who are busy bees in neighbouring Afghanistan, building a trauma center for the region.

    In Tajikistan, the Seabees are helping the Stroibat. Oh, the Stroibat! Remember them from the Soviet era? That was the division of the Soviet Red Army where a lot of hapless recruits were put to work building roads — and still are. As I'm getting the impression from some history, it seems the tsar, then the commissars would tend to put Central Asians into the stroibat instead of combat units because they weren't sure they'd stay loyal to the cause.

    Perhaps you didn't realize that Seabees despite its spelling comes from
    CB, which is American for "stroibat" — Construction Battallion. As we can learn helpfully from the US ambassador in Cambodia, now that there's much social media out there:

    Since World War II, the Seabees have been building roads, airstrips, and buildings in various locales all over the world, sometimes in support of a specific military objective, as during World War II, but other times to help improve the infrastructure of a developing country.

    So the American stroibat, if you will, is very much central to the notion of the New Silk Road.

    In Tajkistan, as you can read below, and see all the pictures, the work has involved training their "counterparts". Except, like a lot of things in this business, they aren't really counterparts. The Navy Seabees are voluntary recruits, and they come from a country where there is a rich and developed private sector in construction, and other competing branches even of civilian construction for disasters like FEMA, not to mention the Army Corps of Engineers.  And even if you look at things like the Roosevelt era and the WPA and the roads and national parks construction, the American state hasn't used the metaphor of "building socialism" in the same way as the Soviet and post-Soviet states have, literally mobilizing workers forcefully into the army, or on volunteer subbotniks and such, to get large construction projects done.

    On balance, it's probably a good thing that these mid-Western kids in the US Navy are teaching the Tajik Stroibat things like how to put in shims on cross-beams.

    But are they displacing what in fact could be better established in the private sector or civilian sector, rather than strengthening the Soviet-style Stroibat? I wonder. To be sure, our Seabees are going to great lengths to "strengthen the local economy," as they put it, buying their construction materials in nearby markets. Those markets might depend on the good will of some state or even religious potentate in that area; there really isn't a "free market" in the American sense.

    Of such mismatches of seeming counterparts, history is made. Will the New Silk Road get built with a series of these kinds of shims, stuck into whatever seeming counterpart they can find hastily before 2015? Look down at the end to see how much money we spend on Tajikistan: a pittance — $45 million for this last year for the non-military projects. So, maybe it's a good thing that building is getting done out of the military budget?

    The military gets in where private business may still fear to tread. Maplecroft cautions against investment in these corrupt and unstable countries. Okay, well I do wonder this: how is that Tajik engineer who headed up the British gold company Oxus' efforts in Uzbekistan, who got jailed when the Uzbek government seized their assets? Eventually, this company stopped complaining publicly. Maybe they made a settlement. What happened to the engineer, Said Ashurov? It seems he is still serving a 12-year sentence for "espionage" while those with foreign passports headed for the exits.

     

    * Tajik Government Still Messing Around with Social Media Sites

    * Religious Council: No Fatwahs! Or Rather,  Just Our Fatwahs, Please!

    * American Stroibat Helps Tajik Stroibat – and So the New Silk Road…

     

    Tajik Facebook And RFE/RL Sites To Be Unblocked In 'Two To Three Days' (RFE/RL)

    The Tajik government's Communications Service chief says the Facebook
    social network and the website of RFE/RL's Tajik Service will be
    accessible again in two or three days.

    Beg Zuhurov told journalists on January 18 that "access to some websites was disrupted because of technical problems."

    RFE/RL's Tajik Website, Facebook Blocked Again (RFE/RL)

    The Facebook social network and RFE/RL's website in Tajik are inaccessible in Tajikistan again.

    Asomuddin Atoev, the chairman of Tajikistan's Association of Internet
    Service Providers, told RFE/RL that Tajikistan's leading Internet
    service providers received SMS instructions from the government's
    Communications Service requesting the sites be blocked.

    However, the service's chief, Beg Zuhurov, told RFE/RL that his service had not given any instructions to block the sites.

    Tajikistan: Dushanbe Web Regulator Creating “Preposterous Impediments” (EurasiaNet)

    Something strange happened in Tajikistan over a late December
    weekend. On a Friday evening, the government’s communications agency
    ordered Internet service providers (ISPs) to block 131 websites for
    “technical” reasons. Then suddenly, a few days later, the ISPs were
    told, in effect; ‘never mind.’

    * * *

    “Instead of creating a favorable environment for further development of
    Tajik IT enterprises, and ensuring their access to foreign markets, the
    regulator creates preposterous impediments,” said Asomiddin Atoev, the
    chairman of the Association of Internet Providers. “Tajikistan recently joined the World Trade Organization.
    The authorities simply do not realize the responsibility imposed by
    many WTO provisions. In particular, these include the creation of a
    favorable business environment, including in the IT sector, the creative
    industry, and [protection of] intellectual property,” Atoev added.

    Theologians at Tajikistan Islamic Center Recommend Media Refrain from Fatwahs (Asia+ Russian)

    (Summary translation) Theologians at the Islamic Center of Tajikistan recommend media leaders and officials of the government's Committee on Religious Affairs to refrain from giving out fatwahs (in Islam, this is an explanation of a certain problem of a religious and legal nature, and also an answer to a question of a religious nature, which a competent person provides).

    "A fatwah can be giving exclusively by the ulems of the Islamic Center and our doors are open to all citizens of the country," says the appeal, which was passed at a meeting of the Council of Ulems [Theologians] of the Islamic Center of Tajikistan and distributed January 19."

    "A democratic state gives the right to all people to express their opinion but in all developed countries, democracy is limited by the frameworks of the law. It is hard to imagine what would happen with our society if individual groupings, for the sake of their own interests, would interpret the canons of shariah in their own way," says the statement.

    Nuriddin Karshibayev, head of the National Association of Independent Media of Tajikistan, has told Asia Plus that the ulems announcment  is only a "recommendation" because the Constitution prohibits censorship.

    "If the Council of Ulems believes our journalist do not know how to write materials on religious themes, please, let us organize trainings and teach them. But getting a fatwah, forgive me, that's not a lawful demand, and looks like interference in the professional activity of a journalist , which is an act punished under criminal law."

    Muminabad has a population of 13,000 with 4 mosques; there are a total of 51 in the whole region.

    Authorities Stop Store Owners from Adding Mosques (Asia Plus – Russian)

    In the village of Muminabad (see some good pictures here), in the administrative center of Muminabad district of the Khatlon region, the owners of two private stores unlawfully tried to adapt them as mosques.

    Sharif Abdylkhamidov, head of the Qulyab regional department of religious affairs, said authorities blocked the store owner on Tursunzade Street in Muminabad who had put in a separate entrance and turned the second floor of the store into a mosque.

     

    Darvaz
    Darvaz, one of the remote border towns near the Afghan border in Gorno-Badakhshan Photo by Brian Harrington Spier.

    Tajikistan Requests Documents On Borders From Russia (RFE/RL)

    The Tajik foreign minister has officially asked Russian authorities to
    provide Dushanbe with historical documents related to borders between
    former Soviet republics in Central Asia.

    Hamrohon Zarifi told journalists on January 17 that the documents are
    needed to clarify Tajikistan's borders with neighboring Uzbekistan and
    Kyrgyzstan in order to prevent problems like those experienced in
    Uzbekistan's Sokh district.

    Tajikistan Driving Hard Bargain With Russia Over Base (EurasiaNet)

    The presidents of Tajikistan and Russia signed an agreement
    in October to extend the presence of the Russian military base in
    Tajikistan for another 30 years. But Tajikistan is dragging its feet on
    the ratification of the deal, waiting first for Russia to carry out its
    part of the deal, to supply duty-free petroleum products and to loosen
    restrictions on labor migrants, according to a report
    in the Russian newspaper Kommersant. The Kremlin wanted all of these
    issues to be dealt with all at the same time, and Russian foreign
    minister Sergey Lavrov just finished a visit to Dushanbe, where he attempted to iron out these issues.

    Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan Present “Extreme Risk” to Investors – Survey (EurasiaNet)

    Investors operating in three post-Soviet Central Asian republics face
    an “extreme risk” of having their businesses expropriated, according to
    a survey released last week in the UK.

    Maplecroft, a Bath-based political risk consultancy, said on January 9
    that it had found plenty of reasons to be wary of the business climate
    in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan after “evaluating the risk to
    business from discriminatory acts by the government that reduces
    ownership, control or rights of private investments either gradually or
    as a result of a single action.” Recent fits of resource nationalism in
    Kyrgyzstan — where the Kumtor gold mine,
    operated by Toronto-based Centerra Gold, accounted for 12 percent of
    GDP in 2011 and more than half the country’s industrial output – and
    rampant authoritarianism in places like Tajikistan and Turkmenistan have
    led Maplecroft to rank these countries among the most risky in the
    world.

    "We're Proud that President's Son Works in Customs" (h/t @joshuakucera) – Russian

    Ever since Rustam Emomali (the eldest son of the president of Tajikistan) began working at the Customs Agency, this service has obtained good results. This was stated today at a press conference by Nemat Rahmatov, first deputy of the Customs Service of the government of Tajikistan.

    "Only in the course of the last year, 88  million somoni were sent to the country's budget by preventing contrabrand of goods. We are proud that the son of the head of state works in our agency, and we hope Rustam Emomali will continue his activity in the customs service," said Rahmatov.

    Seebees
    Seabees assigned to Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 133 work with
    the Tajik Army to rebuild, restore and remodel various buildings on
    Shamsi Military Base in Tajikistan. NMCB 133 is deployed with Commander,
    Task Group 56.2, promoting maritime security operations and theater
    security cooperation efforts in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of
    responsibility. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd
    Class Derek R. Sanchez/Released)

    Seebees2
    Builder Constructionman Taylor Mendonca, assigned to Naval Mobile
    Construction Battalion 133, teaches a Tajik soldier how to shim cross
    slats while building a roof during an international relations project
    with the Tajik Army. NMCB 133 is deployed with Commander, Task Group
    56.2, promoting maritime security operations and theater security
    cooperation efforts in the US. 5th Fleet area of responsibility. (U.S.
    Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Derek R.
    Sanchez/Released)

    NMCB 133 Conducts First Mission in Tajikistan (US Navy) h/t @joshuakucera

    U.S. Navy Seabees assigned to Naval Mobile Construction Battalion (NMCB)
    133 deployed to Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in November as part of a Global
    Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI), the first Seabee mission in
    Tajikistan.

    In support of the Office of Military Cooperation (OMC) and Tajikistan
    Ministry of Defense (MOD), the Seabee crew began construction alongside
    the MOD's construction force, the Stroibat, on phase one of a $1 million
    project at the Peace Support Operation Training Center (PSOTC) at
    Shamsi Base, funded by GPOI.

    To help boost the local economy and establish lasting relationships with
    contractors and vendors, the building materials were procured in nearby
    street vendor markets by Utilitiesman 1st Class Justin Walker, the
    Seabee project supervisor, and Air Force contracting officer, 1st Lt.
    Sunset Lo. The vendors delivered the materials in a timely manner,
    enabling the project to move forward on schedule.

    If you want, you can friend them on Facebook.

    Hit-and-Run Accident in Dushanbe Involves Car with US Embassy License Plate (Asia Plus – Russian)

    A car with US Embassy license plates (004 D 055) in Dushanbe was involved in a hit-in-run accident which killed Loik Sharali on December 29, 2012, Asia Plus reports. Police are investigating, and the US Embassy says they are cooperating.

    Lots of "Yankee Go Home" in the comments there, and recollections of how the US disregarded diplomatic immunity for a Georgian diplomat who killed a girl in an accident in the US. 

    Coaches Handed Over in Dushanbe (Railway Gazette)

    The 15 coaches including a restaurant car were ordered from Ukrainian
    manufacturer Kriukov Car Building Works. Similar to vehicles previously
    supplied to Kazakhstan, they are designed for use in temperatures
    between -45°C and 40°C and are to be deployed on Dushanbe – Moscow
    services.

    Tajikistan:  Recent Developments and US Interests (CRS)

    From Congressional Research Service by Jim Nichols.

    The United States has been Tajikistan's largest bilateral donor, budgeting $988.57 million of aid for Tajikistan (FREEDOM support Act and agency budgets) over the period from fiscal year 1992 through fiscal year 2010, mainly for food and other hunmanitarian needs. Budgeted assistance for FY2011 was $44.48 million, and estimated assistance for FY2012 was $45.02 million. The Administration requested $37.41 million in foreign assistance for Tajikistan in FY2013 (these FY2011-FY2013 figures exclude most Defense and Energy Department programs).

    Related articles
    Tajik Security Forces Kill IMU Suspect, Arrest Nine
    Russian FM in Tajikistan
    No comments on Tajik Opticon #6
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  • Why Can’t Human Rights Activists Walk and Chew Gum at the Same Time?

    It's a good thing that the European Court of Human Rights has pronounced on the case of the CIA's wrongful detention and mistreatmet of Khaled el-Masri as torture. This sheds a needed spotlight on the CIA's widely-denounced rendition program and hopefully will put an end to it as not only a gross violation of human rights but a conflict generator. (Among the persistent theories for the Benghazi attack is a story that the CIA was holding detainees suspected of terrorism in the Benghazi compound.)

    But Jim Goldston, head of the Soros-funded Open Society Justice Initiative, has trouble telling the whole story on the way to making this case part of the anti-American cause. So does the leftist Guardian. So do a lot of people.

    It's a narrative echoed by a lot of NGOs and individuals all over the world, and usually with none of the lawyerly care that Goldston brings to his work.

    The end of Khaled el-Masri's sad story is that he is now in prison again — this time, legitimately — for assaulting the mayor of a German town and starting a fire over a dispute. He is serving a two-year sentence.

    Now, perhaps you can craft an entire theory not only about his unhappy childhood and the trauma inflicted on him by the CIA that led him to this sorry pass, where he is now in jail for cause, not accidently.

    So OSI and other human rights advocates just leave out that part out of the story — it's awkward, it doesn't fit, and they don't think it matters. In a strict construction of "trial truth" it doesn't matter, either — whatever the nature of the defendant's character or his separate acts in other settings, if he has been tortured in detention, his rights are violated and that's it, he deserves justice and compensation.

    But in the moral and political universe that these human rights groups always pretend they don't inhabit (but actually occupy only one wing of), the larger issue acutely remains of what the CIA and the US government and the West in general are all to do about a population of young, angry Muslim men some of who actually are guilty of launching attacks on them, some of whom are only guilty of inciting such attacks or yakking them up on the Internet, and some of whom are innocent of any act, while they nurture hostile, extremist views that ultimately ensure a chronic climate of antagonism.

    Step one might seem obvious — have the CIA stop rendering and stop torturing. I'm all for that! Who isn't? Only the most obsessive conservatives in the US would really oppose it. Republicans like John McCain are in fact for publicizing and ending any US involvement in torture of foreigners and secret detention in foreign countries.

    But there's another half of this equation that human rights agitators never, ever want to admit, not only because it doesn't fit their paradigm of innocent victims, and disrupts the narrative of badly treated justice crusaders, but because then they'd have to face down their own clients' antagonism of the rights paradigm — and address the problem of their defense of jihad. In fact, where Amnesty International has gone completely wrong and utterly lost its way is in adopting a concept of "defensive jihad" that exonerates these violent clients and fits them in the same category as "prisoners of conscience", although the classic Amnesty definition of such persons was in fact that they not use or advocate violence.

    The fact of the matter is, if human rights activists only celebrate the victims of Guantanamo as victims, and use it to fuel their anti-American lefty agendas, they aren't credible, and they never do anything long-term to rectify situations like we now face in Egypt, where ultimately democracy and human rights are "a train that takes you to your destiny, and then you get off" as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has famously put it.

    If human rights groups really want to change the world, they need to change this narrative that enables victims of human rights violations — even if rightly established as victims — also to become some kind of heroes of human rights — which they aren't. And that means not hiding the story, but telling it in all its complexities. It means admitting that the cases are not black-and-white and that the principles of justice they fight for have to apply to the civilians harmed by extremism and terrorism as well.

    In dealing with these Guantanamo cases, US authorities face a number of real challenges for which human rights groups really haven't come up with good answers: some of the people they have released have gone on to commit terrorist attacks again; some of them incite hatred and violation of others' human rights, i.e. of women, such as the Cage Prisoners group in the UK; some are mentally ill, either because they started out that way or became that way from mistreatment; some of them would be at risk of being tortured far more severely in their homelands like Yemen or Uzbekistan.

    So what's a liberal if flawed superpower to do? It would be great if these suspects could be transferred to US prisons in US states that appear eager to take them, and try them normally as other terrorist suspects have been tried. It would be great if more European countries would simply take them so that the US doesn't have to endlessly fight the challenge here at home from some districts and some political forces that don't want them here (which perplexingly, seem still to have power, even though we are now in Obama II, and Obama really should must the power to address this chronic situation).

    But…I'm told that when Europeans are asked — when they complain about Guantanamo — to take the prisoners themselves, they look at their shoes. If Spain and Switzerland took some, that's great, but what about the rest? Do you want to keep them suffering to make a point in your hateful and facile anti-American agenda, or do you really want to solve their problems?

    The US really needs to step up its clear and straight-talking rhetoric around this instead of remaining silent and in crouch mode. Part of the way they clear the air is to apologize and provide reasonable restitution to Masri; part of the way is to solidly articulate the real challenges of these people and what they represent and not pretend its a mere civil rights problem. If America — and more importantly Western human rights organizations with high visibility — could provide a way to address the challenges of these violent and incendiary populatinos without pretense, they might provide a model for awful governments like Uzbekistan and Russia and Turkey that endlessly justify their mistreatment of suspects because of the real extremism they espouse.

    Yes, the US makes grave errors in its war on terrorism. But you know, it really time to grow up and stop the litany of "Bush lied, people died" on the Iraq war, when it isn't US troops who massacred most of the 100,000 people in Iraq, but militants and terrorists aided by Al Qaeda, Iran and other hostile actors. Ditto the war in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and its allies kill 85% of the civilians — and where the scene was set not by US support of mujahideen, but the Soviet massacre of a million — a million! — Afghan civilians. Let's get the historical and political framework straight here, people.

    There just isn't enough good public American rhetoric on these issues — it's the sort of connection people like Alec Ross could be making instead of burbling inanely about "innovation" and "shifts of power to the people and end to hierarchies" as he did recently in Pakistan, a place where no shift of power is occuring except to the very present hierarchy of the ISI and the terrorists its supports.

    What's happening as a result of the crouching and dodging and leaving the narrative to "progressives" like Jim Goldston who won't tell the whole story is that entire generations in Eurasia and other areas of the world living under oppression are getting to engage in surrogate politics and chime in with anti-Americans instead of facing their own far more oppressive governments at home.

    Somebody like "eTajikistan" on Twitter, in between tweets about American-funded educational opportunities, is enabled in this immoral climate created by the international elites of the human rights movement to rant endlessly about the need to apologize to Masri or close Guantanamo. But then he never has to do more than occasionall retweet anything about the problems both of the tyrant Emmomali Rahmon and the Islamists he faces. The e-activists living abroad can indulge in a placebo and rant about seeming US support of their government, but not confront either the dictatorship or its enemies that enable it to justify its existence.

    Indeed, one gets the impression that US-funded educational programs, Soros-funded NGOs, and of course the American innovation of Twitter, have enabled entire swathes of intellectuals who should be sweeping around their own doors and addressing tyranny at home to endlessly broom the US and Israel as hated symbols along with a choir that mainly preaches to its own countries in the West.

    I wondered at the endless heckling I got from certain Pakistani journalists and bloggers when I criticized Pakistani government reluctance to take on the Taliban and even support it through their intelligence arm, even as I was critical of drone attacks that have harmed Pakistani civlians. Aren't Pakistani activists able to walk and chew gum at the same time, either?  Can't they condemn the shooting of Malala, the killing of children by drones AND take a whack at those terrorists in the Taliban and Al Qaeda that make it possible for the US to keep justifying its drones? Hello? Why?

    Then I clicked through the screens and eventually got an admission that these Pakistanis were supporters of Imre Khan, already the target of controversy over the US antiwar group CODE PINK's decision to hook up with him to protest drones in a one-sided fashion.

    Or I was dealing with Pakistani immigrants in Brisbane — which provides a home for other Muslim hecklers on Twitter who are long gone from their oppressive homelands — and have found in the anti-Western cause and the hating of America and Israel a comfortable placebo that helps them fit in with their newfound homeland's liberals.

    And the cycle of violence from disaffected angry young men, some of them mistreated, continues, and never gets better.

     

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  • Tajik Opticon #3

     

    Prokudin-Gorsky
    1907 Solar Eclipse Expedition by Sergei Prokhudi-Gorskii, Russian Photographer in Central Asia.

    This is my little weekly newsletter on Saturdays about Tajikistan. You can send news or comments or get it sent by email by writing to me at [email protected]

    COMMENT:

    So the in-your-face Tajik telecommunications official Beg Zuhorov did keep his word as I reported last week and opened back up the Internet sites Facebook and RFE/RL  — after implying they could be shut any time by having announced that "the public" had complained about "extremism" (never explained precisely). It turns out some of the providers didn't even bother to follow the blocking orders, and one of them was owned by President Emmomali  Rahmonov's own son. It always annoys me when a story likes this gets reported by EurasiaNet.org and others as a Bad Thing About Central Asia, and gets  picked up by numerous tech sites, blogs, etc. but then the un-doing of the Bad Thing doesn't get reported. At least RFE/RL had a report about its unblocking but it was never clear what it was really all about.

    While it may be only a coincidence, given how many of these types of trials are, the blockage came just as a group of people were about to go on trial for this nebulous "extremism" in Khojand (the verdict was announced after websites were running again). This seems a particularly strange and brutal case — among the 7 defendants are two middle-aged women and their minor teenage sons, 16 and 18 (the defendant was arrested before he turned 18). They all got very high sentences for "advocating the violent overthrow of the Constitutional order". Helpfully, they pleaded guilty using the exact same language of the charges in the criminal code. But we have no idea what they actually did. It's hard to picture these moms and their teenage sons throwing bombs.

    I have no use for Hizb-ut-Tahir; I have absolutely no hesitation condemning it as extremist and likely cunning and duplicitous about its ultimate aims. It claims that it is merely "peacefully" going about building a caliphate, i.e. theocratic rule, but it never explains what the plans are for all the infidels who don't want a caliphate. Too often, HuT members or ex-members, as somebody always patiently explains in exasperation at your suspicions, are tried and found guilty of real crimes. Even Western countries like Germany have banned the group.

    It's too bad that human rights groups and pundits who see these kinds of awful cases such as occurred in Khujand can't find a way to condemn the way the Tajik government misuses the law and persecutes people — AND condemn the groups that seem to have gotten their clutches into ordinary poor people in this backward country. I'm quite prepared to believe that all these people involved are innocent, and even the repeat offenders at least suffered lack of due process, yet I'd like to see the literature, the activities and the groups behind these cases as well — and I don't see anything wrong with morally condemning them and opposing them, even if the opposition should not take the form of prosecution. There is such a legion of determined do-gooders with the position that HuT is innocent because innocent people are wrongfully prosecuted over HuT that I am the only person in the metaverse with this position. I wish I had more company. If I had more company, and if especially Tajik journalists and human rights activists felt more free to condemn HuT and make the distinctions between the group's reprehensible goals and those victimized around it, I think we might see less victims.

    The World Bank is telling the Tajiks to cut their already very sparse electricity consumption in half. Tajikistan is already a place with blackouts and the lights going off all the time routinely, yet it's like that old Vietnam-war joke about the Soviets writing to the Vietnamese Communists: "Tighten your belts!" Reply: "What are belts? Send them!"

    This outrageous austerity program is unlikely to get consent from the Tajik government, but I really have to wonder why it is even being proposed. Yes, electricity is the cheapest in the world, but the country is also among the poorest in the world AND it is supplying some of its power to war-torn Afghanistan, which the US is usually grateful for. I guess I can think of a lot of things that might be done to save energy in Tajikistan before consumers are told to shut off their lights. It's not like they're leaving their computers and kindles and microwaves plugged in all night running. Example: are there a lot of Soviet-era huge Stalin-type giant buildings all over the place? Why are they being heated day and night?  And is the government looking the other way or even taking bribes while some companies steal electricity, as they do in Uzbekistan? If I were Tajikistan, I'd stall on that outrageous World Bank proposal and tell them to get busy doing a usage and hot spots report for a year and get back to them.

    Seems like the US military also wants to tell Tajikistan not to run their toasters too much: in a tweet, the Central Asia Newswire tells Dushanbe that austerity, not Roghun, is the answer. To be honest, I don't have an informed opinion as to whether it's true that Roghun is the ecology-busting monster that Uzbek propagandists claim — who have an easier time making their case in the world media and world's institutions than Tajikistan. The World Bank has gotten stung around the world over the decades backing big, stupid, expensive, destructive dam projects, and now all that Western NGO yammering against them has caught up with them — and they have to take it out on Tajikistan, I guess. There doesn't seem to be an international multilateral organization that seems to have the stamina to take this issue on — neither the UN, despite the marbled heated halls of the UN Regional Centre for Preventive Diplomacy in Ashgabat, nor the World Bank, or OSCE has been able to get the traction to really decide this for the region – read: stand up to Russia, waiting in the wings, and Uzbekistan, which is nasty.

    So, like a lot of things in Central Asian life, maybe it will be left to the Chinese…

    Surprise — Tajikistan is corrupt, says Transparency International in its latest report. But interestingly, it's not *as* corrupt as its immediate neighbours. There's a 20 point or more gap in their scores, even though all of them are hugging the bottom of the barrel. Now why is that? Is there a fine line between corruption that is deterred through authoritarian persecution (i.e. as in Iran, not an ideal way to handle it obviously) and authoritarian persecution that in fact only leads to corruption to get around it? (Uzbekistan). Or are their cultural factors? Or is it that if you are just too poor, with half your GDP made up of people gone abroad to work,  it's hard to be corrupt?

    Cue up the garden perennial story that the Russian language is dying out because somebody has made a trip to Dushanbe and has anecdotes to tell. Sorry, this old Russian-speaker isn't buying it. Maybe because I speak Russian to all the Tajiks I ever run into in New York or Washington, even 20-somethings, and they never seem surprised or angry. Now, I get it that Russian isn't being taught as much, that young people aren't speaking it as much, and so on. And there's also the living fact that actual native Russian-speakers are being driven out of Tajikistan by repression and poverty — doctors and engineers among the ethnic Russians and Russian speakers of the old Soviet Union are forced to leave — 3661 last year, which doesn't sound like very many, until you realize this is among the tens of thousands who have left since the fall o f the USSR, and they happen to be among many of the professionals. It's brain-drain, which isn't a surprising thing in a country where the dictator turns off Internet pages on a whim.

    Even so, I think programmers for this region, whether at RFE/RL or OSI or OSCE or any institution, have really lost an opportunity due to their hatred of Russians and aversion toward the Russian language. Here was this built-in lingua-franca that you didn't have to pay anyone to teach or learn, like English, which still isn't as widespread as these planners believe. There is all kind of literature — good, democratic literature — published by all kinds of institutions, including even the old CIA-funded bodies like the International Literary Center, now defunct. Here's a lingua franca, by the way, that would enable these peoples to talk to *each other* and others in the CIS who might support them and at least learn about their issues. Yet the nationalists in the State Department or Soros — the people who think that every country has to follow the path of Poland by relying on language and religion to gain freedom — block even the most benign efforts to try to have cross-border Russian materials. The radios don't have Russian-language pages for most of the stans, except Kazakhstan, where the excuse is that there is a large Russian minority. I wonder what their traffic is on that page from all the stans? Somebody in Turkmenistan has to find out free news in Russian from RFE/RL by going to the Kazakhstan page instead of the Turkmen page. The success of fergananews.com and chrono-tm.org in Russian should succeed in making the point to these planners that they are short-sighted and misled. They could be promoting local languages while also trying to use what remains of this lingua franca to promote freedom and understanding.

    Here's When to Schedule Your Trip to Dushanbe, Mark Zuckerberg

    Ever diligent Facebook friends have found out the office hours of Beg Zuhurov, the brazen Tajik official who justified the closure of Facebook on the grounds that "the public was complaining too much about extremism". The official is only at his desk to meet supplicants on Saturdays from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm. Nice! So after a week's hard work, just when you might be sleeping in or spending time with your family or doing your second job to make ends meet, that's when Zuhurov's office is open!

    Fergana.com reported that Tajikistan had blocked Facebook on November 27, and that Zuhurov had invited Zuckerberg "or one of his assistants" to come visit him to discuss the matter. All six Internet providers were ordered to block it and complied; mobile providers did the same.

    Zuhorov made this evasive comment at the time:

    I personally didn't give the order to block the access to the social network Facebook The Communications Service didn't give it either, but if it is necessary, the access will be closed. Every day I receive complaints from people about the contents on the network. The network does not resolve social issues, but purely commercial. Everyone remembers how the civil war began in the country, so then everything then began with criticism. We will not allow war to occur.

    I reported last week that Zuhorov then soon promised to unblock the sites — and he kept his word.

    Are Web Sites Unblocked in Tajikistan?

    But there was still due diligence to be done. Fergana.com asked on December 4 whether reports from RIA-Novosti, the Russian state news agency, were true that Facebook and other Internet sites were unblocked.

    "Access to Facebook is unblocked by the state Internet provider Tajik-telekom," Asomuddin Atoye, head of the Tajik association of Internet providers. "If the state Internet-provider has unblocked Facebook, then I'm sure there will be permission from the Communications Service for other providers and operators as well," Atotyev said.

    Some Tajik Providers Are More Equal Than Others

    Radio Liberty's Tajik Service Radio Ozodi reported that it was blocked on December 1, and apparently later that it  had been unblocked, fergananews.com reported. RFE/RL confirmed that the site was unblocked on December 3. This apparently happened after Tajik state agency for communications sent out SMS messages with "a demand to unblock the site". Fergananews.com was still trying to check whether this was true on December 4, and also discovered that some providers had never blocked the sites in the first place.

    Fergananews.com says a source reported:

    "You know why? Because, for example, the Saturn-Online provider belongs to the son of the president of the country, Rustam Emomalievich, and the Ministry of Communications doesn't touch that company."

    Russian Language Fading Away

    RFE/RL reports: A Tajik who grew up in Dushanbe but only
    recently returned after decades in Russia has noticed a change in the
    Tajik capital. Hardly anyone speaks Russian anymore.

    As Konstantin Parshin at EurasiaNet.org tells it: 

    Evidence is mostly anecdotal, but the linguistic changes are
    obvious to Tajiks who have been away for years. This past summer, for
    example, Ruslan Akhmedov wanted to sell an apartment he inherited, so
    returned to Dushanbe from a small Russian town where he's lived for most
    of his adult life. "I placed an ad in a local paper indicating my phone
    number," Akhmedov recalled. "Out of about thirty people who called me
    during the first couple of days, only three or four easily switched into
    Russian. With the others, I had to communicate in my primitive Tajik.
    Regrettably, I've almost forgotten the language."

    CIS Heads of State Meet 

    The heads of state of the Commonwealth of Independent States met in Ashgabat on December 6.

    Nothing happened.

    The Golden Age, the Turkmen government website, reported:

    The meeting participants considered and discussed a series of issues,
    including organizational. Owing to them, it was made relevant decisions.

    Wait. Did something happen? According to trend.az:

    The Declaration stressed that organized crime, terrorism, illegal drugs
    and psychotropic substances traffic are a serious threat to the security
    of CIS states.


    "We declare our intention to fight against these threats," the document said.

    Russia thinks something did happen, however. Putin hopes to use his leverage hosting the G20 and G8 meetings in Russia to represent Central Asia's intersts. RT reports:

    However, it can happen only on condition that these interests are timely and duly formulated, the Russian president added.

    Developing
    the topic of international cooperation, Vladimir Putin told the
    participants that they should develop and promote a common agenda in
    various other international organizations, such as the OSCE.

    Putin added that the current situation in this organization “was not a source of optimism”. “OSCE
    should have long ago stopped servicing the interests of certain
    countries and concentrate its attention on unification issues,” the Russian leader said.  Putin also expressed hope that when Ukraine takes it turn to chair the OSCE in 2013 it would promote this very position.

    Transparency:  Two-Thirds of Countries Said to Be 'Highly Corrupt

    RFE/RL reports:

    The anticorruption group Transparency
    International (TI) says high levels of bribery, abuse of power, and
    secret dealings continue to “ravage” societies around the world, despite
    a growing public outcry over corrupt governments.


    The annual Corruption Perceptions Index,
    published on December 5 by the Berlin-based group, shows that
    two-thirds of 176 countries are perceived by citizens to be highly
    corrupt.

    Tajikistan is among them, of course.  But as you can see from the map, it ranks only 157, by contrast with its neighbours Turkmenistan, at 170, and Afghanistan, at 174, Uzbekistan at 170, but not as good as Iran, at 133 and just a tad worse than Kyrgyzstan which is at 154.

    Intervention at the OSCE Ministerial Council

    Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a little bit to say about Tajikistan in her speech at the OSCE meeting of foreign ministers:

    In Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, there are
    examples of the restrictions of the freedom of expression online and
    offline as well as the freedom of religion.

    Ok, that's it. The resolution on digital freedom didn't pass, despite now finally — after some hard negotiations — having 47 signatories. Still, 57 are needed in this consensus organization.

    Russians Leave Tajikistan for Russia

    Asia-Plus says 3,661 people left for Russia this year.

    3,661 people have left Tajikistan for Russia under the Russian
    national program to assist the voluntary resettlement of
    fellow-countrymen living abroad to the Russian Federation since 2007.

    According to the Russian Federal Migration Service (FMS)’s office in Tajikistan, 62 percent of them have higher education.

    So these are ethnic Russians or Russian speakers of other "nationalities", i.e. not Tajiks or Tajik-spakers.

    Speaking at the meeting, Viktor Sebelev, the head of FMS’s office in
    Tajikistan, noted that 30 percent of those who had left Tajikistan for
    Russia under the mentioned program were technical and engineering
    employees and 15 percent physicians.  30 percent of physicians that have
    left Tajikistan fro Russia have scientific degrees.

    Court Sentences "Extremists" in Tajikistan

    Asia-Plus reports December 8 that in Khujand, seven people have been tried for "extremism," accused of membership in Hizb-ut-Tahir, which is a "banned religious extremist party" under Tajik law (in Russian).

    Judge Shukhrat Akhrorov said that the sentences were announced in investigation-isolation building no. 2 in Khujand, and that among the convicted were three women and one minor. Most of them pleaded guilty in exactly the language of the law itself, including "the forcible change of the Constitutional order," said the judge.

    Among them were two Chkalovsk residents, Islom Boboyev, 16, and Sukhrob Khafiz, now 18, were sentenced to 6 and 10 years incarceration, respectively, and were serve their terms in prison colonies under "strict" and "common educational" regimes, respectively.

    Others sentenced:

    Mavloniddin Ermatov, resident of Isfar, 28, second-time offender, 3 years strict regime colony

    Sattorkul Kholikulov, 36, resident of Zafarabad district, also repeat offender, 3 years strict regime.

    Mukhayyo Khafizov, mother of Sukhrob, 39, 12 years, common regimen prison colony

    Mukhabbat Khafizov, 28, 10 years prison

    Minir Boboyev, 40, mother of Islom Boboyev, sentenced to 8.5 years, common regimen prison colony.

    The sentences are being appealed.

    According to the Sogdi region prosecutor, "56 active members of religious and extremist parties have had their cases sent to court."

    Earthquake in Tajikistan

    4.7 magnitude, in Murghob.

    Joint Tajik-Afghan Drug Raid

    Tajik and Afghan authorities nabbed nearly 1,000 pounds of drugs in a six-day border operation.

    “The successful 6-day joint operation was launched in northern Afghan
    province of Badakhshan and Khatlon province in [southern] Tajikistan,”
    the Xinhua news agency reported Afghan Deputy Interior Minister Baz
    Mohammad Ahmadi said at a press conference. The seized drugs included
    heroin and opium.


    Thirteen Afghan citizens are now in custody, the minister said. There
    has been no official statement on any Tajiks arrested in the operation,
    although two Tajik women who had been taken hostage by the drug
    traffickers were released.

    No word on any psychotropic drugs.

    World Bank Advises Tajikistan to Hike Electricity Price 50%

        Central Asia Newsire reports:

    The World Bank has advised authorities in Tajikistan to hike
    electricity prices by 50 percent as part of its solution to the
    country’s perennial winter power crisis, local media reported on
    Tuesday.

    The study, entitled “Tajikistan’s Winter Energy Crisis: Electricity
    Supply and Demand Alternatives”, notes that aside from the country’s
    inability to meet energy requirements, consumers are not incentivized to
    use power carefully.

    That article doesn't mention Roghun, yet the US military-funded Central Asia Newswires has some advice on top of the World Bank's report in the tweet sent to link to the World Bank report: 

    #Rogun is not answer to #electricity woes – increasing fares, conserving #energy is

    Automatic Check-in Down at Dushanbe Airport

    Central Asia Newswire reports that Tajikistan’s international airport at Dushanbe have been checked-in the
    old fashioned way for the last two weeks over a pay dispute, citing local media
    outlets.

    David Trilling of Eurasianet.org calls this "one of the world's worst airports" and tweets that it "just got more inefficient".

    Forests and Wildlife Increased in Endangered Area in Tajikistan

    Good news! UNDP reports:

    Tajikistan’s Vakhsh River valley is crucial to the livelihoods and food
    security of millions of people, but the degradation of natural resources
    has been persistent and extensive over the past 100 years. The tugai
    forests, reservoirs of biodiversity and source of income for local
    communities, have been stripped at an ever-escalating rate, either to
    clear land for agriculture or as source of energy.

    But UNDP stepped in with a project to reverse these trends.

    After four years, an evaluation of the project found that tree-cutting
    had declined by 90 percent since 2008, allowing the forest to
    regenerate, while populations of birds and animals increased by 50
    percent. Community members say they feel a sense of pride and ownership
    in what they have been able to accomplish. "Protecting the forests is a
    noble cause that should always be supported," says Bekmurodov
    Kurbonmahmad, a member of the committee.

    Did they stop cutting trees merely because they ran out of them? What are they using for fuel now? Animal dung? And while it's great that the animals returned, how are the people doing?

    In the district of Jura Nazarov, UNDP assisted communities with other
    aspects of sustainable rural development. Almost all of the district’s
    14,000 inhabitants depend on farming, but more than 70 percent of the
    land is no longer arable, after years of poor agricultural and
    irrigation practices during the Soviet era.

            Yet, UNDP says it has good news there, too:

    Seventy-five percent of the respondents reported that they were able to
    sell additional crops, with a 25 percent increase in income on average.
    The extra funds have gone into renovating family homes, hiring farm
    labour to expand production, repairing irrigation systems and sending
    children to school.

    Feeling Glum About Tajikistan? Here's a Nice Promotional Video

    From the Embassy of Tajikistan in the US. It has a nice American narrator with a mellow accent, despite that "Ta-JICK-istan" to rhyme with "ick" and will be broadcast on ABC News. The message is that with US investment and lots of mining, the region will become more stable and the relationship will grow stronger.


     

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