Unfortunately, the BBC interview didn’t air, but you can download it. Like most, I don’t like hearing my own voice, so I don’t know how it sounds. Chris Vallance (whose site has lots of other cool stuff), who did the interview and made it all presentable and whatnot tells me it’s good. If you’re an audiophile and must hear my voice in a higher bitrate, let me know and I’ll email you the higher quality file.
And for those who missed it, I wrote an article for openDemocracy. It’s already a little out of date, but I think it turned out pretty well.
This post was written by...
Nathan Hamm – author of 2040 posts on Registan.net.
Nathan founded Registan.net 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 clients on Central Asian affairs, specializing in how socio-cultural factors shape risks and opportunities. Follow him on Twitter or drop him a line.
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Hi Nathan. That Chris Vallance link doesn’t seem to work, but I was able to get the MP3 by going to: http://www.registan.net/~revrend/images/registan.mp3
Cheers,
Rebecca
Thanks! It should all work now.
Really good article. Best use of sparse information I have seen in print on this. Balanced and responsible.
One comment: At the end, you say “The United States is indisputably Uzbekistan’s most important western partner, but it has yet to form a cohesive and consistent approach to the country across all its agencies.” I think an inconsistent approach IS the U.S. approach to Uzbekistan– and not a bad one. The embassy doesn’t want to have a united front and push issues too hard, this would be bad diplomacy. Fostering some disorganization in policy by allowing different agencies and different contractors of those agencies to do pretty much what they want allows the U.S. room to manoeuvre. A sure way to get blacklisted here would be to produce a consistent policy across all agencies.
Matt, you certainly make a good point. There is something to be said for some good cop/bad cop. What I’m most concerned about are the big things–things like the Pentagon giving additional aid after the State Department cut it.
Hey Nathan,
I linked this from our blog. Not that you’ll get a deluge of traffic from us, but nevertheless, getting interviewed by the BBC is awesome!
-Schwartz