Writing for Scotsman.com Chris Stephen decides that Kyrgyzstan is such an obscure place that he can just make shit up and no one will be wise to his game.
Tajikistan goes to the polls today and Kyrgyzstan tomorrow, but opposition in the two countries has not enjoyed the same support from America as Victor Yuschenko’s party did in Ukraine.
What is missing from central Asia is American aid. Washington poured in help and expertise for the revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine. American money financed newspapers, think tanks and parties.
In both Georgia and Ukraine, PR experts advised on strategy, and Americans trained opposition youth groups in non- violent resistance.
In the case of Ukraine this paid off handsomely, with the youth group Pora – the name means ‘It is time’ – setting up the so-called Tent City protest in the heart of Kiev.
But in central Asia, America fears the beneficiaries of popular discontent may be Islamic parties who are hostile to the West. Kyrgyzstan has also helped America build an important air base for flights in and out of Afghanistan.
These kinds of things are, of course, topics that one can research on the internet. Were Mr. Stephen reporting from Bishkek, I would give him something of an easier time because the phones and internet access can sometimes be unreliable. I wonder if he even picked up the phone to call anyone for the story.
Right now I’m cold and want to do nothing more than to wrap myself in a quilt and watch Dersu Uzala, so I’m not going to dig through State Department reports right now. But hey, feel free to knock yourselves out.
Nope, let me just show you this (which I got from Publius Pundit). Click to make it bigger.
Looking at the Uzbekistan numbers, I can tell these totals exclude military aid which is useful because it would be meaningless for the discussion at hand. Rounding quite a bit, we’ve got $41 per capita for Kyrgyzstan for the five-year period, $11 per capita for Ukraine, and $80 for Georgia. If Mr. Stephen is correct, we would expect that Ukraine and Georgia would have high numbers while Kyrgyzstan would have a low one. Like I said though. He’s making this shit up.
And then he makes the ludicrous claim that the US holds back money because social instability could lead to anti-Western Islamic parties taking power. If that were the case, we would expect that the US ambassador would stay quiet and silently help the government consolidate power rather than publicly call for President Akayev to honor his commitment to step down when his term expires, etc. Heck, we’d probably expect that the US would give a grand total of $0 if this fear of social instability was so great.
Damn, just go read this post again to be reminded that there are some journalists out there who are actually doing their jobs.
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Duly noted on the Journal and the Scotsman article. The Orange Revolution was a splash of ice water, for me, regarding certain journalists and political forces in the west. The coverage of Central Asia appears to be worse in many cases.
Hoping for a good day in Kyrgyztsan, will stay tuned.
OEC
One of the Oxbloggers once said something about noticing how wildly wrong the press got an issue he knows a lot about. One must naturally wonder then how well they’re covering the things we may not know much about.
Sad but true.
OEC
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