Central Asia: Rethinking the anti-democratic crackdown

Stephen Blank 4/03/06

A EurasiaNet Commentary

Just over a year after Kyrgyzstan's Tulip revolution, the democratization process in Central Asia finds itself in a dark age. Any hope of promoting a renaissance of liberalism requires a reconsideration of the forces at work in the region. It can be argued that the crackdown is a product of greed, as well as of ideology.

Governments in Central Asia and elsewhere in the Commonwealth of Independent States have employed a variety of tactics, including intimidation and repression, to rout democratization movements. Even in Kyrgyzstan, the only Central Asian nation to join the revolutionary trend of 2003-2005, reform efforts have stalled. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

In trying to justify their counter-attack against democratization, Central Asian leaders, using state-controlled media, have trumpeted the spurious charge that the revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan were instigated from outside, namely by the American government and/or foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In connection with this, Central Asian leaders have either taken action, or are considering moves to restrict NGO activity. Uzbekistan has forced most foreign NGOs to cease operations in the country. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Pending legislation concerning philanthropy in Kazakhstan, meanwhile, would effectively enhance government oversight on NGO operations.

Uzbekistan has been the most aggressive state in trying to thwart civil society development. Moving swiftly after the Andijan massacre of May 2005, Uzbek President Islam Karimov's administration has not only crushed the NGO sector, it has snuffed out any trace of an independent press. On March 7, Uzbek media announced new government regulations that prohibit Uzbek citizens from working for foreign news organizations without official accreditation. This, combined with restrictions on foreign news organizations themselves, has enabled the government to reinforce its near-monopoly on information. Concurrent with the crackdown has been a foreign policy shift away from the United States towards Russia. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

A closer look at the Andijan massacre can help explain the Karimov government's repression. Greed played a prominent role in unleashing the tragic chain of events. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Human rights activists have documented that the trigger for Andijan confrontation was an armed attempt to free local businessmen who had been jailed on charges of belonging to a radical Islamic group called Akromiya. The entrepreneurs insisted they were merely pious Muslims and vigorously denied any connection to a radical Islamic organization. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Two explanations have been mulled as to why officials targeted the Andijan entrepreneurs. According to several sources, the businessmen engaged in a wide variety of charitable works that won them wide popular support. Worried that the entrepreneurs were developing into an alternate local political authority, officials in Andijan ordered their arrest, one explanation goes. Some observers add that that officials may have wanted to take over the lucrative businesses owned by the entrepreneurs, and thus authorities concocted the Islamic radicalism charges.

As the experience of the Andijan entrepreneurs indicates, the full dimension of anti-democratic repression in Central Asia cannot be properly understood unless one realizes that a major motive for it is essentially greed. The Andijan tragedy might not have occurred if greed did not play such a large role in the official decision-making process.

Subsequent Uzbek policy decision can also be linked to avarice on the part of the country's leaders. For instance, a Rand Corporation report in 2005 suggests that one reason for Karimov's mounting unhappiness with the former American air base at Karshi-Khanabad was his knowledge that the family of former Kyrgyz leader Askar Akayev, then in power in Bishkek, was making a fortune off of concessions at the US base at Manas, outside the Kyrgyz capital. Ultimately, Karimov opted to expel US military forces from Uzbekistan after he could not reach new base-terms with American officials, the report stated, basing its assertion on interviews with Washington-based Uzbek diplomats.

Clearly, the ruling elites in Central Asian states are engulfed in corruption and criminal activities. The point here is not merely to emphasize that local leaders have grown corrupt by virtue of their possession of near-absolute power. Rather it is to point out that in Central Asia, laws to the contrary, there are no property rights.

Since one of the oldest lessons of political theory is that without such rights there can be no rule of law or liberalizing reform that is a precondition for a transition to democracy, we need to focus on this glaring absence of property rights to advance the causes of reform and development. We need to understand that prosecutions, like those of the Andijan entrepreneurs, are motivated not only by fear of dissent, but also by the greed of high officials, their bureaucracies, and retainers.

The absolutism that now characterizes Central Asia's political system invariably entails the manipulation of a country's assets. Rapacious leaders are utilizing state property more to enrich themselves rather than benefit the nation. Income generated by the lease or sale of state assets, or rent granting, has emerged as one of the key means used by Central Asian leaders to consolidate their authority.

This technique of rent granting on the basis of ever greater extraction of mineral wealth or outright expropriation is particularly suited to regimes like those of Central Asia that depend on keeping various clans happy through the regular provision of "spoils." Thus the cycle of rent granting and rent seeking become the daily preoccupation of both ruler and ruled, both at the center and in the provinces as the Andijan example suggests.

While such a system may seem outwardly stable, in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan there is good reason to believe that we are seeing failing states hollow out before our eyes. Thus, the anti-democratization trend stands a good chance of culminating in upheaval. Any attempt to reverse the current, dangerous trend will stand little chance of success unless those promoting change pay attention not only to the need to promote basic civil and human rights, but also to the defense of property rights. Without the latter, the former can neither be achieved nor secured.

Posted April 3, 2006 © Eurasianet