Earlier this week, Small Wars Journal published an article by Matthew Stein, a research analyst currently working at the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, discussing the role of videos recorded and posted by citizen bystanders in the information battle to control the narrative over the police’s violent crackdown on protesters in Zhanaozen last December. Stein’s article provides a fairly straightforward summary of the different videos showing the police firing on protesters and how the ways in which the government has built a narrative for the incident. On the significance of the appearance of these videos, Stein writes,

Finally, the significance of these videos is that the people of Zhanaozen were able to get information on the incident out into social media despite the government’s control over access. People using social media to publicize incidents that might not otherwise be noticed is not a new trend, as can be seen from worldwide events in 2011. However, this is the most noteworthy example from Kazakhstan, much less Central Asia, of this happening. Due to the effect that the first video (Zhana Ozen 3) had, it will not be the last time that people in Kazakhstan document an incident on video and make it available for a wide audience.

Dissemination of documentary evidence without state filtering is a fairly recent phenomenon in Central Asia, though some, including myself, would argue that Kazakhstan is late to this, at least in regard to high profile events, especially compared to Kyrgyzstan, where there are several earlier examples, including 2010′s overthrow of President Bakiev and especially the ethnic violence in Osh. More importantly though, the significance of information going unfiltered into social media and out to a wide audience is overstated. As internet use increases in Central Asia, it should come as no surprise that some of these people use the internet to distribute content like the Zhanaozen videos.

In his final paragraph, Stein points to the emergence of a struggle between state and society to control the narratives around controversial events. There is a story to be told about how these authoritarian states respond to erosion of their information dominance, but in many ways, it is singularly uninteresting. Almost every state tries to shape narratives, and in Central Asia, the state controls the story by keeping political groups, social and religious groups, and the media on a short leash. Central Asian governments have stepped up some restrictions and monitoring of social media. Security services are adept enough at disrupting off-line political activity planned online, and governments are finding ways to convince people to avoid the internet.

Like my colleagues here at Registan, I have found expectations of a Central Asian spring in the near term or the assumption that the Arab Spring would have a measurable impact on Central Asia to be based on fundamental misunderstandings of the region. Political culture matters. A lot. Government plays a critical role in nurturing fear, distrust, and political apathy, but their success is aided enormously by their political opponents and the societies they govern perpetuating this culture themselves. And research on Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan suggests that at least in the near term, the internet has exacerbated these problems.

Of course, all of these things — the relationships between state and society, the discussions within society, and political and cultural attitudes — are dynamic. Timelines extend well beyond the near term. The documentation and discussion in social media of events like Zhanaozen or ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan is important because it preserves events. Stein is looking in the wrong place for meaning. The real significance of this documentation and presentation is in how and whether it changes society’s modes and norms for discussing sensitive political, social, and cultural topics and how those changes subsequently change political culture. The state’s reaction is just a continuation of a long-running dynamic.

I do not find the future as bleak as we sometimes make it sound when we focus on the near term. It is, of course, incorrect to characterize any popular uprising as entirely reliant on the internet. Twitter, facebook, etc. can only catalyze offline factors. Trends like the popular revival of Islam, failures of economies to meet rising expectations, the growth of ethno-linguistic nationalism, and demographic shifts all suggest heightened chances for political instability in the medium- to long-term. It is difficult to look at how the internet is being used in Central Asia at present and not see it playing an organizing and catalyzing role in the future should these trends keep drifting Central Asia toward instability. However, it is absolutely impossible at present to predict how or when the internet will play an appreciably important role. The only thing that is certain is that more clarity on these questions comes from focusing on discussions and practices within society than from monitoring the state-society dynamic.

In the last two months, we’ve born witness to more incidents of illiberal democracy or democracy’s “doubles” here in Central Asia/Eurasia, from Kazakhstan’s parliamentary elections which many say was an experiment in pseudo-pluralism; to Turkmenistan’s surreal presidential election that has left those of us on the outside (and, indeed, many of those on the inside) scratching their heads wondering what it was all about to begin with; to Russia’s intriguingly complex and probably historical presidential poll. Still to come in the next few years are parliamentary elections in Armenia and Tajikistan, and presidential elections in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Tajikistan, none of which are expected by Western observers to be free and fair. The question I hear a lot from non-specialists is: why are these societies even bothering with the charade? At the moment, this is the shape of my answer:

Central Asian/Eurasian politics can be easily dismissed as tired Sovietisms re-worked into cynical caricatures of the West. Unfortunately, as I get to know this part of the world better, I’m increasingly not so convinced that it’s us Westerners who are being mocked; instead, what’s happening to the concept of liberal democracy here is actually very much part of a universal phenomenon. Just ask any civil society activist and they’ll tell you how “liberal democracy” can and is frequently bastardized to mean “popular legitimacy”, and “popular legitimacy” is, in turn, bastardized to mean “approval for the regime’s policies”. The uncomfortable reality is that this as true in the archetypal liberal democracy, the United States of America, wherein elected officials routinely and conveniently distort the widespread (albeit diminishing) voter apathy of the country to mask the hijacking of policy-making by special interests, as it is true in, say, Kazakhstan, whose consistently high voter turnout (in comparison to the USA), masks the authoritarian tendencies of the dominant ruling party (all the more so if the turnout figures prove to be false). In both cases, what we’re really dealing with is legitimacy-engineering, intended to buttress a constellation of elites and their related pet institutions and industries by a transference of moral authority from the grassroots to the top.

Make no mistake, the target of the legitimacy-engineering is primarily internal: the grassroots itself (particularly the electorate), as well as rivals for power (real or perceived). The electorate, thanks to a terrible education and media system, simply don’t know any better; the rivals, having achieved a position of relative elitism to have access to more information, do know better but catch the hint and respond accordingly (i.e., silence and subterfuge). Insofar that the legitimacy-engineering has an external orientation, this is a secondary, although not unimportant goal, namely, to deflect criticism via the logic of national self-determination. Indeed, democratic elections can accomplish what divine right of kings or Marxist dialectical materialism never could, namely, to give the impression of collective agreement with respect to a regime’s choices. And yes, in all of this I am talking as much about my homeland as I am about the Central Asian/Eurasian states (I am probably sounding like a very bitter expatriate right now). The benefactor of the legitimacy-engineering is not as clear in the American context as in the Central Asian/Eurasian one, but in both cases, it’s really a system that’s receiving the moral authority, not just the man on top.

Yet, speaking of the men on top, just as presidents of the United States can be prone to messianic depictions of themselves — either of the Terror or Hope variety of eschatology — Central Asian/Eurasian presidents notoriously have a penchant for the salvific. Besides the late Niyazov, Karimov spring to mind, and in his own way, Bakiyev had a tinge of the deliverer to his administration, as well, and Putin and Aliyev frequently co-opt still-fresh memories of societal turmoil in their favor. Along these lines, I actually have a begrudging respect for Nazarbayev: his golden handprint in the Baiterek is actually not so much an expression of megalomania as it is a statement of fact, namely, that he has left an indelible mark upon his country, like it or not, for better and for worse. That’s more than I can say for all the “Change” that’s happened in the United States since 2008 (at least in my cynical moments). But again, in all cases, the target is internal, the goal still is and always is legitimacy-engineering. The era of elections setting the course of a nation rather than approving a pre-set path — if it ever existed — is fast receding into the past here and in the West.

But then there’s Turkmenistan. I think, unfortunately, this country is an outlier. I’ve got a sinking feeling in my gut that it is increasingly fruitless to seek any kind of rationality oriented toward the outside world from the Turkmen president, even vis-à-vis his immediate neighbors, much less the West. If there is any logic to his behavior, then it’s most likely in response to internal power dynamics, the nature of which are invisible to the outside eye (although there are clues). But before we start thinking that this is still in keeping with the overall trends in managed democracy, we should consider the thoughts of my colleague Annasoltan, who has come to fear that what we’re really looking at in Turkmenistan is the possible mental deterioration of Berdimuhammedov. The presidential election, then, may have really been driven by the illogic of ego and insecurity: this time around, the legitimacy-engineering was directed not at the grassroots, but by the establishment toward the president himself.

Power-plays and madness are not mutually co-exclusive, of course, and in fact the latter can sometimes be a pretty good tool in the former, just ask Caligula. Moreover, determining how much of this exercise in megalomania was the initiative of Berdimuhammedov and how much of it arose from the overall regime, and for which purposes, could be enlightening. Until those facts can come to the light of history, unfortunately, all the rest of us can do is stand outside Turkmenistan’s parallel universe and wonder about its strange physics, a political physics in which the logic of liberalism and democracy are twisted to reduce an entire society into instrumental extensions of one single ego.

Last month Ethan Zuckerman, a senior researcher at the Berkman Center of Internet and Society, gave a lecture on how his “cute cats” theory of the internet applies to the Arab Spring. For those of you unfamiliar with the theory, Cory Doctorow sums it up in an rapturous review of the talk in the Guardian:

Zuckerman’s argument is this: while YouTube, Twitter, Facebook (and other popular social services) aren’t good at protecting dissidents, they are nevertheless the best place for this sort of activity to start, for several reasons.

First, because when YouTube is taken off your nation’s internet, everyone notices, not just dissidents. So if a state shuts down a site dedicated to exposing official brutality, only the people who care about that sort of thing already are likely to notice.

But when YouTube goes dark, all the people who want to look at cute cats discover that their favourite site is gone, and they start to ask their neighbours why, and they come to learn that there exists video evidence of official brutality so heinous and awful that the government has shut out all of YouTube in case the people see it.

Doctorow goes on to claim that the everyday use of social media technology leads to a sort of inadvertent activism. Accustomed to sharing apolitical content online, citizens use the same technology to post evidence of state atrocities:

The first thing that comes to mind after you capture a mobile phone video of the police murdering a family member isn’t “Let’s see, I wonder if there’s a purpose-built activist tool that I can use for distributing this clip?” Rather, the first thing that comes to mind is, “I’d better post this on Facebook/YouTube/Twitter so that everyone can see it.”

In Zuckerman’s view, the rote relay of controversial content enables revolution, as it provides a way for citizens to air their grievances (before the state censors them) and inflames their curiosity and rage (after). Zuckerman is careful to refrain from labeling the internet as some sort of miracle medium, instead inscribing its power to its very banality: it is a social platform, but one that turns political as revelations of state crimes enter the social sphere. He claims that this is what happened during the Arab Spring.

Zuckerman’s theory is a refreshing alternative to the common caricature of internet users in authoritarian states as revolutionaries in waiting. But it suffers from a fallacy that plagues much of internet scholarship: studies of the effectiveness of the internet in fomenting revolution are usually limited to where the internet was effective, because those successes, by definition, are the ones we know. The “failures” – the many countries where the circulation of evidence of state crimes through social media prompts no change in state practices, and in some cases, dissuades citizens from joining activist causes – tend to go unmentioned. They are, I suspect, more the norm than the exception, and they have proven the rule in former Soviet authoritarian states.

Why has online activism in Central Asia failed to inspire the kind of public support we see in the Arab world? That is a big question, one that would benefit from the sort of long-term ethnographic examination that is sorely lacking in study of the internet, as fellow Berkman researcher Jonathan Zittrain has noted. I suspect the answer lies less with problems unique to the former Soviet Union than it does with a central assumption of the “cute cats” theory: that the exposure of wrongdoings inspires people to make things right. In authoritarian states, the circulation of state crimes often serves to confirm tacit suspicions, and in some cases, to reaffirm the futility of the fight. Fear, apathy, cynicism and distrust as are as common reactions to these quasi-revelations as are outrage and a desire for change.

This is not to say that the internet is not important. In many states, it is the only medium through which state brutality can be exposed. But the reception to online media varies as to the political culture of the people involved. The following cases speak to greater problems of trust, fear and apathy in post-Soviet political culture – problems that the internet does not solve, but often exacerbates.

The “donkey bloggers” of Azerbaijan. In 2009, activists Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizada were arrested after posting a satirical video of government corruption and wastefulness on YouTube. The case attracted international outcry as well as intense attention among the frequent social media users with whom Milli and Hajizada socialized online. Yet in the aftermath of the case – both activists were released in November 2010 – support for political protest decreased among frequent internet users, as a forthcoming article I co-wrote with Katy Pearce for the Journal of Communication makes clear. Why did this happen? At the time of the case, Azerbaijan, unlike many other former Soviet states, had an open internet, all the better with which to publicize the horrifying repercussions of using the internet for political purposes. The online publicity surrounding Milli and Hajizada’s plight did not inspire citizens to rise up, but to rethink the risks of participating in online activism.

The Osh events. The June 2010 violence in southern Kyrgyzstan was documented online from the moment it occurred: witnesses posted updates on Twitter and Facebook; observers uploaded their photos and videos to LiveJournal and YouTube; and Kyrgyz websites were awash in commentary – much of it speculative, accusatory, and inflammatory. As I noted in 2010, online coverage of the events constituted “a catalogue of sins, searchable and accessible, impervious to the human desire to move on”. The circulation of state and citizen atrocities through social media networks like Facebook and Twitter heightened a sense of futility surrounding the government’s capacity to intervene, and the population’s ability – and desire – to forgive.

Zhanaozen. “Kazakh Spring” is the “fetch” of Central Asia: try as you might, it’s just not going to happen. This is not to say the bloodshed in Zhanaozen, Kazakhstan isn’t horrifying or important: it absolutely is. But there is no indication that the intense online discussion of the events, and circulation of videos showing police brutality, is going to lead to Arab Spring-style unrest. Instead, Zhanaozen reveals the extent that Kazakhstan’s authorities will go to make those who document the state its next target. It also highlights the diversity and contentiousness of online media among both Kazakhstani and Western audiences. Much as Zuckerman predicted, the videos from Zhanaozen have been widely circulated through social media, but their reception is far from uniform. As in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, news reports are viewed with skepticism, the motives of those both involved in the issue and reporting it are relentlessly scrutinized, and the risks to those who engage in political pursuits (even pursuits as banal as posting a video online) are all too clear.

Effective use of social media in authoritarian states is not only a matter of circumventing government censorship, but of securing and sustaining citizen trust. Both Zuckerman and Doctorow have spoken at length about the need to create tools that are safe and effective for activists, and their efforts are admirable. But the development of tools through which corruption and brutality can be exposed leads to an uncomfortable question: and then what?

Xandra Kayden, a senior fellow at the UCLA School of Public Affairs, is unhappy with RFE/RL:

There is something weird and rather disturbing about Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) – a U.S.-funded media outlet that is famous for broadcasting information during the Cold War to support our friends and undermine our enemies – attacking an ally over our mutual enemy, radical jihadism…

If there were ever a nation wary of terrorism in that part of the world, it is Azerbaijan. It is both too close to Iran culturally and too far apart from it in temperament, desire and fundamentalist religious commitment. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has been vehemently and relentlessly attacking Azerbaijan for closing mosques that preach Islamic fundamentalism, banning head scarves in public schools and imprisoning radical clerics. It is perhaps also worth noting that the ban of head scarves in schools was based on addressing socioeconomic issues and not based in religion. While it may have gone a little further than some nations with large Muslim populations in Europe, it does not have a majority population of “others” who can overwhelm the development of terrorism by its sheer existence. On the other hand, it does have a population that is quite mindful of the dangers – especially to women – of a radical takeover. Fighting back is a lot harder for a nation to do once a foothold has been gained, as we have seen in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

And so on (you get the point, but do read the whole thing to make sure I didn’t miss some nuance somewhere). Xandra seems to misunderstand the role of RFE/RL: yes, it was meant to be pro-American propaganda, to an extent, but it was credible in the former Soviet Union—and now, not coincidentally, inside Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan—because of its ability to criticize U.S. and allied policies. In fact, it was the remarkable ability of RFE/RL journalists to maintain their editorial independence despite funding from the U.S. government-funded BBG —something not afforded the actual propaganda outlet Voice of America—that gives RFE/RL its value.

So in that sense, Xandra’s argument is a bit off, as it rests on an incorrect assumption about the purpose, role, history, and behavior of RFE/RL journalists. By her logic, the RFE/RL reporters who criticize Pakistan’s policies in the NWFP, or who highlight Kyrgyzstan’s continuing issues with ethnic clashes, are similarly engaging in the undermining of allied Muslim countries. It is terrible logic, in other words.

Xandra is also wrong to react against criticism of Azerbaijan. The Azeri government has a history of attacking the institutions of free speech and lashing out at legitimate opposition figures through false claims of libel, defamation, and stirring rebellion. The government has a nasty habit of imprisoning political prisoners. Furthermore, the government is not shy of using threats of violence when it confronts those preaching a religion it dislikes.

This is the government Xandra Kayden is defending from mean old RFE/RL pointing out that banning the headscarf—not a “socioeconomic move,” as she says, but a very obvious move to limit Muslim freedom of expression (a move which, not coincidentally, happens to be a major recruitment tool for Islamists)—is a really bad idea. “U.S. foreign policy and concerns are certainly not served by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in this instance,” she claims. This is clearly not true: everyone is better off if RFE/RL is allowed to maintain its editorial independence, and can criticize oppression even in U.S. allies.

So what gives?

Xandra routinely attends meetings organized by “The ELS Independent Research Center” (Google it if you wish; I got repeated warnings of the site being infested with malware and declined to risk seeing what they have to say). Best I can tell, ELS is an Azerbaijani government-funded NGO which conducts exit polls for elections—they reported, quite rightly, that the 2010 elections were all pro-Aliyev.

Here’s the thing, though: the OSCE agreed that the technical conduct of the election was mostly okay, except for some candidates who were intimidated to drop their opposition. But ODHIR also reported that there was substantial suppression of the opposition, a suppression of alternative voices during the campaign process, and an undemocratic domination of the ruling party.

So the election wasn’t great, and Xandra Kayden has financial ties to a government-funded NGO. That’s bad as far as it goes, but Xandra is also a major figure in the League of Women Voters of America. It would make sense, after some consideration that she would react against a negative portrayal of a headscarf ban, as many American women simply don’t believe that a Muslim woman could ever make a free and un-coerced decision to cover her head. Also, the LWV has a habit of liaising with Azerbaijani government-funded advocacy groups to promote the “voting” that accompanies elections.

Of course, none of this is especially nefarious, except for Xandra Kayden’s negligence to reference her substantial ties to the Azeri government in her bio at the end of her op-ed. It is important context when gauging the credibility of her defense of the Aliyev regime’s attempt to suppressing the religious liberties of Azerbaijani citizens. When contemplating why she’d lash out at a respected news organization like RFE/RL to defend a man universally considered a tyrant, who runs a country no one thinks is free or even very functional, I sure would like to know she’s just the latest of a long line of American intellectuals (and Andrew Brietbart) the Azerbaijani government had funded to produce a more positive impression of the country in the public here.

By not disclosing her financial and other ties to the government in Baku, Xandra Kayden is misleading the Washington Times’ readers into thinking she represents an objective, academic assessment. She does not. Xandra Kayden has a vested interest in defending the Azerbi ban on headscarves, and she should have stated that when writing about it publicly.

Here at Registan.net, we’ve almost made it a sport to poke fun—sometimes gently, sometimes not—at the ridiculous antics of the family members of the Former Soviet Union states. It should come as no surprise that many of the dynasties currently choking Central Asia are, in fact, rotten to the core… though, as Steve LeVine points out, the Wikileaks cables give us some depressingly precise details:

The cable, sent January 27 by Charge Donald Lu, is an impressive profile of Aliyeva. One section relates a story regarding her “substantial cosmetic surgery.” During a 2008 visit to Baku by Lynne Cheney, the wife of then-Vice President Dick Cheney, the youthful-looking Aliyeva and her two daughters mingled with White House, U.S. embassy and security staff while they awaited the arrival of the Cheney vehicle. “Which one of those is the mother?” a puzzled U.S. Secret Service agent asked of his colleagues, referring to the three Aliyeva women. No one could figure it out on sight, before one finally decided, “Well, logically the mother would probably stand in the middle.” On the other hand, Lu found a downside to the facelift: “On television, in photos, and in person, she appears unable to show a full range of facial expression.”

Oh, snaps. Steve goes on to detail some digs taken by Tashkent-based diplomats at our favorite social punching bag, Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbekistan’s dictator, Islam Karimov. It’s all pretty standard stuff—outrageous acts of vanity, hints and the occasional outright example of shocking thuggery propping it up, floating on a veritable sea of corrupt-to-the-core business deals enriching single families at the expense of their entire countries.

It’s easy to go overboard with this stuff. Yes, these are bad people—not just the worst sort of tacky post-Soviet new money but capricious, petty, and even violent criminals in many cases. But there’s no need to exaggerate, which is all too easy to do if you’re not careful. For example, Der Spiegel ran a story similar to Steve’s, claiming to detail shocking examples of American-coddled excesses in places like Kazakhstan. The problem, as Christian Bleuer notes, is that big chunks of it are, in essence, faked.

Let’s not forget the U.S. isn’t the only country actively trying to secure its access and influence in the region. The Wikileaks cables also detail French companies (abetted by French diplomats) indulging the excesses of Turkmenistan’s Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, for example (whose excesses are, sadly, not so different from his predecessor’s). So America, while possibly the most visible, is not the only Western country feeding into the familial excesses of Central Asia.

So yes, let us wring our hands that foreign policy involves dealing with bad people; but please—maintain a little perspective too.

(Before you even start: this does not prove the “value” of Wikileaks. None of this is new, at all, for long-time watchers. All Wikileaks provides is a convenient hook for talking about it again. Nothing more, nothing less.)

…because he just decreed that the Azeri people’s debt to the state owned gas company is kaput.
Wait, did I say “decreed”? I guess this isn’t a vote thing after all. It’s just Caucasus economics.

Aliyev looks great to his people (and his parliament). He gets to be a father of the people just like his dad. And considering that all he really did was creatively title a tax break, its a pretty solid PR win. Eternal Remont says as much in less words.

It’s nice to see that Azerbaijan, for all of the freedom-of-press issues and single-track-economy issues at least ostensibly has Azeri folks’ interests in mind. Even though I enjoyed my time in Azerbaijan myself, every time I think of the country now I think of Carpetblogger, who is hardly an Aliyev mouthpiece. But as much as Azerbaijan has gotten ragged on pretty often in the past, it is an actual country with an actual economy. It is far more like the countries to the west of it than it is to the ones on the other side of the Caspian, I would wager. It even has a national book! Written by one of the more fascinating men I’ve read about (Lev Nussinbaum has a better reason to hate Communism than you do: Stalin slept with his mom).

So there is something definitively there to get punditized. Aliyev’s annulling of Azeri debt probably has investors in Azeri industry (read: BP) disgruntled, and it looks more like real governance than anything else going on between the Black and the Caspian. So there’s something that could be responsibly discussed, which beats things like “zOMG! Circassians are a threat to Russia and thus must be looked at like Chechens or maybe like Ossetians or was it more like Georgians!”

Let’s try something different today. A big part of some folks’ frustration with getting involved in Central Asian happenings is that they have a difficult time jumping in to the deep-end of the subject matter that gets covered here. To remedy that, I’m going to try to explain some trends in energy policies within Central Asia…using lyrics of Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues.

The Man in the Coon Skin Cap / In the big pen / wants eleven dollar bills / you only got ten
Any of the large energy projects that are going to, by definition, require a whole lot of investment. None of the -stans would be able to drum up enough capital by their own governments alone. They are all just branded as more-or-less inept, blundering, kelptocracies by people who are ignorant of the area. And this won’t change without the opportunities that real investment will afford. But the IMF-esque sources of money tend to come with the sorts of conditions that can cripple a developing country. Check that link…note how the astute writer notes that Central Asia is between South Asia and East Asia. Unfortunately, the IMF has really put the screws to the folks they want to help. In their 2009 projection, they note that “In contrast [to the rest of the countries], Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are projected to register robust growth in 2009…” So the three countries with the least IMF support are the ones weathering the global depression the most. Hmm. Fortunately, China, India, the Aga Khan Foundation, and Iran would be more than ready to fund projects that the IMF won’t.

Maggie comes fleet foot / Face full of black soot / Talkin’ that the heat put / Plants in the bed but
China’s pollution is pretty much the stuff of legends at this point. Any project they get a part of in Central Asia will likely be gargantuan, but it’ll also lead to who-knows-what sort of consequences. I’m actually returning from an energy conference where one of the keynote speakers praised that “China is a country run by engineers while America is a country run by lawyers.” That statement can be parsed in many ways, but it does sort of explain some of the more awkward parts of China’s Central Asian policies. Who knows what would happen if policies like that started happening in the Fergana Valley. But as glaciers melt and the Fergana becomes that much more fertile, especially relative to the rest of Central Asia), it could become the Next Big Economic Region.

You don’t need a weather man / To know which way the wind blows
OK, this is sort of a stretch, lyrics-wise, but Central Asia is home to some of the flattest stretches of the flattest land on Earth. As such, it makes a pretty good sandbox for emerging wind-power technology. Mongolia has gotten a pretty decent start, but its a country with low energy usage…it can support those sort of possibilities. It will be really interesting to see what happens with Uzbekistan’s experimentation with wind power. It’s another country that is a pretty big energy importer (as well as water importer) for the region that badly needs to diversify. Wind power is too expensive to be practical now, but I’m open to anyone who could prognosticate the future of wind power in Uzbekistan better than I. Again, depending on the practicality of wind power, it could become just as important as hydropower is for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Any frame of energy independence for the steppe states would seem to change future relations between the water importers and exporters as related to dam-building.

Lookin’ for a new fool / Don’t follow leaders / Watch the parkin’ meters
Carbon Sequestration is the new big thing in the energy world. Or at least was at the energy conference, which was led by Big Coal…sequestration allows them to keep doing what they are doing without any changes, just burying stuff and hoping it will go away (just plants are not enough to sequester the sort of CO2 being thrown up there). But even experts are skeptical about it, mostly because nobody has any clue whatsoever at what the long-term effects are of shoving noxious gasses far underneath the surface. Central Asia is a long way from US Voters, though, and projects like this get serious consideration…because what’s the Tien Shan from New York? If the opportunity comes to get a sweetheart deal from some corporation in exchange for the opportunity to do carbon sequestration in the Kazakh or Turkmen gas fields, I would be skeptical, to say the least. Unless this turns out wonderfully or something.

The pump don’t work / ‘Cause the vandals took the handles
It’s not related to Central Asia per se, but it’s worth quoting John Robb‘s fuzzy math at length:

ROI (return on investment) for Nigeria’s MEND. Four years of attacks that disrupted one million barrels a day of production (on average) = ~ 1.4 billion barrels disrupted. Direct costs at an average price of ~$70 a barrel and a $20 extraction cost to Nigerian kleptocrats and their corporate allies = $70 billion. Impact of the loss of 1 m barrels a day on the world, assuming a ~$10 premium due to the loss and ~80m barrels a day of global output = $800 m a day or $1.17 trillion. Loss of global economic output due to the premium = ~.5% of $50 trillion global GDP = $0.75 trillion. Total cost = ~$2 trillion. Cost of attacks = ~$1 m. ROI = 200 million %.

ROI = Return on Investment. MEND essentially costs the global economy $200,000,000 for every $1 they spend. I’m sure that the Taliban/Haqqani/IMU/what-have-you have numbers similar to that in their accounts…maybe I should just ask Abu Walid al Masri. At that rate of return, this is less of an insurgency, more of a social and economic revolution.

So hopefully that’s some stuff to chew on, and it should be enough fuel for many blog posts down the road. But one of my favorite quotes about historiography is Philip Roth’s “The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.”

The study of Central Asia is just so fascinating because there are so many open-ended questions that could be answered in a hundred different ways. The young people (myself included) of all educational, ethnic, national, or whatever backgrouns who are getting in on the bottom floor now have the opportunity to do incredible things in the region.

The NYT carries a story today about two Azeribaijani bloggers arrested this week on charges of “hooliganism” apparently in retaliation for a politcally charged satirical video they produced last month featuring a donkey giving a press conference.

English subtitles were kindly added to the video for all to enjoy (but not the postscript: can anyone offer a translation for that?). It’s pretty funny stuff. According to the NYT article, the project responds to a minor political controversy about importing donkeys from abroad. Watching the video, though, that’s clearly only the beginning of issues parodied–they also hit things like petty theft from airport officials and the rights of individuals to set up NGOs, not to mention the state of human rights laws broadly. It seems more likely that Adnan Hajizada and Emin Milli, the video’s creators, were arrested for more than their take on the country’s livestock import policies.

Anyway, the video is funny, and it clearly links itself to a tradition of winking political satire of the Soviet era with music from one or the other of the famous Soviet-era “slapstick” movies (I think it’s either Kavkazskaya Plennitsa or Dzhentelmeni Udachi, the soundtracks are pretty similar, anybody know??). These films were sharp-edged parodies of the absurdities of Soviet life in a form just silly enough to slip past the communist censors–but apparently a German-speaking donkey just isn’t silly enough for democracy. Details are a little sketchy on the grounds for the two bloggers’ arrest, but if the Azerbaijani regime seriously can’t handle a video of a guy dressed in an oversized animal costume playing a violin it can’t be a good omen for freedom of speech on the interwebs in Central Asia Eurasia.

UPDATE (Friday, 17 July): Steve Levine has written a post on this as well with more detailed information.

Over at Foreign Policy, Joshua Keating assesses Azerbaijan’s NATO membership chances to be decent compared to other candidates’ which is kind of like the analytical equivalent of Evel Knievel attempting to jump Snake River Canyon. It’s a bold argument, but I’m playing the part of ABC Sports here and not buying it.

Keating jumps off from a EurasiaNet story on Azerbaijan’s NATO prospects in which an alliance official says that Azerbaijan is potentially a more attractive member than Georgia or Ukraine and may join before either of them. What Keating comes away with is that Azerbaijan’s prospects are better than Georgia’s or Ukraine’s because it has never expressed too much interest in joining, and that not trying too hard to join might be the easiest way to gain entry. This is absurd.

There are enormous obstacles to Azerbaijan becoming a NATO member. In fairness to Keating, he recognizes that these obstacles exist. But the downsides of bringing on Azerbaijan make it about as unattractive a member as either Georgia or Ukraine. The biggest difference is that because Azerbaijan hasn’t talked too much about wanting to join, Russia hasn’t spilled any bluster over bringing Azerbaijan and NATO members haven’t spent any time talking about how bad it would be to make Azerbaijan a member.