The Soros Foundation is running into more trouble in Central Asia. Many of you will recall that OSI-Uzbekistan was shut down earlier this year.
Tajikistan is now criticizing the Soros Foundation:
[President Imamali] Rahmanov raised the issue at the Tajikistan Democrat People’s Party convention, which was closed to the press. The text of the President’s speech was published in Minbari People’s Paper, and it claimed that the Soros Foundation supported subversive radio stations and newspapers such as “Varorud”, “Odamu Olam” and “Ruzi Nav”. He went on to say, “The aim of these mass circulation media is to destroy the Tajikistan administration”.
Kazakhstan claims that the Soros Foundation owes $600,000 in back taxes and penalties.
That the Soros Foundation continues to get in trouble in Central Asia should come as no surprise given the increasing skittishness over all matters concerning political opposition and the importance of Soros programs to both the Ukrainian and Georgian democracy movements.
I also have to wonder though, whether or not Soros’s heart is even in the region right now. Readers of EurasiaNet have probably noticed that it has increasingly been syndicating stories from other sites. When it does have its own original reporting, it has seemed to be of lower quality.
I occasionally go to workshops on Mid-Atlantic grantmakers. The Soros Foundation’s US giving has traditionally been centered in this part of the country, but the caveat has always been that George Soros is a fickle man. The man is known to dramatically change his grantmaking focus and various Soros Foundation offices are at the mercies of the his changing passions. I can’t help but think that his 2004 obsession with US politics (in which he seemingly confused the US political landscape with, say, Ukraine’s and made evident that my respect for him should instead go to the employees of his foundations) has harmed the work of his namesake foundations in Eurasia.
This post was written by...
Nathan Hamm – author of 2973 posts on Registan.net.
Nathan is the Founding Editor and Publisher of Registan.net, which he launched in 2003. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uzbekistan 2000-2001 and received his MA in Central Asian Studies from the University of Washington in 2007. Since 2007, he has worked full-time as an analyst, consulting with private and government clients on Central Asian affairs, specializing in how socio-cultural and political factors shape risks and opportunities and how organizations can adjust their strategic and operational plans to account for these variables. Nathan is currently seeking research, analysis, and consulting opportunities. He can be contacted via Twitter or email.
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{ 5 comments }
That’s certainly possible, but isn’t the more striaghtforward explanation — that OSI is getting some serious pushback and therefore can’t do its job as well — more likely?
I guess I wasn’t clear. I think that Soros may not be fighting back as much or not giving as much in the way of resources as he otherwise might. At the same time though, I have never gotten the impression that he invested as much in post-Soviet Asia as post-Soviet Europe though.
As a German observer thinking bad to the US election 2000 it seems to me rather unfortunate that the US is not more like the Ukraine.
Nathan, the Soros foundation did some really good things in Uzbekistan–especially their arts and culture programs, which were really excellent. They had a wonderful music festival that brought international artists from all over the world. And they had some cooperation from the Uzbek government for that, as the concerts I went to were held in the new Conservatory in Tashkent. They also published books on Uzbek arts and culture, and a memorial volume for victims of Stalin’s purges. My Uzbek teacher used to say the way you could tell a great Uzbek poet was that he was repressed by Stalin (repressed means killed, I learned). The middle-level poets just went to prison…
Meaning what exactly quax? The situations are really apples and oranges, and the suggestion that there is some kind of equivalence, let alone that the US lags behind Ukraine, is patronizing and condescending. I don’t know you personally, so I’ll refrain from my temptation to equate your approach to the world to that of your fellow continental Europeans I encountered in Uzbekistan. Your brief comment does, though, illustrate why I’m much less impressed with the election observers of the world than I am with the likes of OSI/Soros, the British Council, IREX, and many others who are in the trenches every day (fully realizing that these classes of people aren’t mutually exclusive). There’s much more I could and am tempted to say about this, but I’d rather not walk through heavily-trafficked rhetorical ground.
Laurence: Ya, I really liked OSI/Soros programming in Uzbekistan. A lot of it was pretty vanilla, but very needed. I worked (briefly before evacuation) as a Karl Popper Debate coach. Considering that the debates had to be conducted in English and were pretty esoteric, I was very impressed with the number of kids who showed up. I loved the program. It’s non-threatening to the government, but builds skills that students aren’t getting in school and that the country will need down the road. It’s a shame they’re not there now.