Comments on: Uzbekistan News Roundup: Andijon & Beyond

By: Winds of Change.NET

Winds of Change.NET — Mon, 30 May 2005 05:51:02 +0000

Monday Winds of War: May 30/05

Memorial Day Tribute; Zarqawi roundup; King Fahd; France, the EU, and ‘non’ mean ‘oui’?; Shift in war effort; NATO’s punch; Iran Reports; Lebanese politics; Palestinian prisoner release; Mexican antiterror commandos turn; AQ in Algeria; More probl…

By: Global Voices Online»Blog Archive » Thursday World Blog Roundup

Global Voices Online»Blog Archive » Thursday World Blog Roundup — Fri, 27 May 2005 05:25:38 +0000

[...] discusses the Bangladeshi rock scene. Central Asia: Nathan at Registan.net has a thorough Uzbekistan news roundup. Latin America: Devil’s Excrement continues his regular criticism [...]

By: david l

david l — Thu, 26 May 2005 23:55:51 +0000

its a tough exercise to find successes, and perhaps in a way rather meaningless, and of course impossible to calculate what would have happened otherwise. But I think even the most optimistic observer would probably agree that things have got worse in most areas since late 2001, certainly on the economy. And that’s been the result of government policy, not external factors (although overpositive commentary from some delegations – fmr treasury sec O’Neill for one – did give some in the GoU the mistaken impression that they were doing the right thing). All we really know from the past three years is that politeness hasn’t worked, and that much of the style of US interaction – based largely on some spurious cultural training that suggests Uzbeks should never be disabused of anything for fear of offending them – has not always been appropriate. What Uzbekistan needed was a political appointee, some Texan business type who would have stirred things up a bit.

I think the US will end up disengaging largely from Uzbekistan anyway, eventually, but basically pushed out rather than as a result of its objections to govt policy. Which seems a shame. If you’re going to go anyway, you might as well win some PR points in the process.

By: Nathan

Nathan — Thu, 26 May 2005 23:15:24 +0000

Small, small, small ones. Some that I can think of off the top of my head are the release of Ruslan Sharipov, a drastic reduction in the number arrested after the 2004 bombings as compared to the 1999 bombings, accepting (but extremely inconsistenty) outside investigation of some torture cases, improvements on the exchange rate. I probably should dig up more. It would be an interesting exercise.

Now, I’ll admit that these don’t mean a whole helluva lot to most Uzbeks. Further, I think the Uzbek government has done a splendid job of swallowing up and making irrelevant any gains that may have meant something.

You’re right though, there are limits to what we can do. I think we need to accept that. I am stubborn though and am habitually given to think there’s a solution to every problem. I do think there are new approaches that might be worth trying, but we shouldn’t expect anything too fast or even that things will turn out how we want.

By: david l

david l — Thu, 26 May 2005 22:56:53 +0000

Nathan, I wouldn’t like to call you nuts, but just what are those successes again? I hear that line a lot, but never quite know what is being referred to? There’s nothing wrong with admitting a policy has been a failure (its a failure for the most part because of GoU) and also there is a perfectly good intellectual case for saying nothing can be done to change the situation, and the US should protect its own interests by getting as far away from this lot as possible. I happen to think some things can be done, but we shouldn’t believe there is a magic policy answer to everything.

By: Nathan

Nathan — Thu, 26 May 2005 21:16:44 +0000

Beats me. I wish they'd had some. The world could use some. Actually, I thought the ones from the USCIRF from before any of this happened were pretty good. Apparently not everyone was failing to pay attention as ICG said.

By: praktike

praktike — Thu, 26 May 2005 21:11:51 +0000

OK, gotcha. Yeah, where were the recommendations?

By: Nathan

Nathan — Thu, 26 May 2005 16:25:10 +0000

I think highly of them too. Doesn’t change that I think they exaggerate at times.

That last paragraph on page 17, which I didn’t excerpt, is glossing over quite a bit that I would expect them to know. It might be too much of me to say that the author did so intentionally. It probably was done on autopilot–it is, after all, the standard line on Uzbekistan from a lot of NGOs. Doesn’t change that there’s no reason to do so other than to have a purty-sounding conclusion. I expect better of ICG because the do take time to research and present a balanced picture.

If they are going to assert that there is widespread public sentiment that the US is strongly backing the Uzbek government, I’d love more than just one quotation from one interview and ICG’s “dude, totally, believe us on this one” in the footnote.

I would also love more than just an offhand “we’re a failure” remark. Maybe a discussion of what the failures have been and, call me nuts, identification of where there have been successes. That last sentence–an absolute throw-away line–suggests that western foreign policy has been across the board bad. I don’t think the record supports that. ICG typically offers bullet-points with suggestions. None here, and the suggestion is we need to abandon everything we’ve done in the past. That’s simply untrue, and they should know better.

By: praktike

praktike — Thu, 26 May 2005 16:11:51 +0000

“I also have a hard time believing that the ICG is doing anything but being dishonest for the sake of writing a nice sentence.”

I’ve always thought highly of the ICG. I see no need to impune their motives here.