World Politics Watch reports on Senator Biden’s activism over Kazakhstan’s reform party.
Biden’s office is refusing to release the letter to the press. However, in a telephone interview, the Delaware Democrat’s chief of staff, Alan Hoffman, acknowledged the letter addressed the Kazakh government’s apparent attempts to interfere with the efforts of new political parties to organize, particularly the pro-reform Atameken party. The party’s young leader was in Washington recently complaining to journalists and U.S. policymakers about his country’s “draconian law on political parties.”
Well, except Nathan already dug up the letter, adding some trenchant criticisms of how Biden is choosing to contextualize Kazakhstan. As Nathan said, criticizing Uncle Nazzy’s antipathy to opposition parties is fair game… but the problem is trying to force Kazakhstan’s problem with democracy into the Middle East. That’s a hard sell.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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