The AP report:

Pakistan’s defense minister said Tuesday that the country should reopen its Afghan border crossings to NATO troop supplies after negotiating a better deal with the coalition.

Pakistan closed the crossings over two months ago in response to American airstrikes that accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at two Afghan border posts. The closure has forced the United States to spend six times as much money to send supplies to Afghanistan through alternative routes.

You can frame this two ways:

• The U.S. is spending an exorbitant sum to send supplies through the NDN (read: Uzbekistan), so therefore everything is a failure and the silence will fall; or
• The expansion of the NDN (read: Uzbekistan) has created sufficient political space and pressure on Pakistan that they’re finally willing to climb down and play ball on transit routs and other issues.

Of course, both frames are true, at least to a degree. In the current status quo it’s unlikely Pakistan will agree to much more than allowing the transit routes to reopen (not coincidentally further enriching the Pakistani military-run trucking mafia along the way), just as it’s unlikely paying even $87 million more per month for transit costs through Central Asia will bankrupt the U.S.

From the U.S. government’s perspective, however, they’re now getting movement out of Islamabad, and that’s really what they want. Mission accomplished, then?

On Thursday, Twitter announced that it would begin to selectively block tweets on a country by country basis. The decision prompted an immediate outcry from free speech advocates as well as a more measured response from scholars of social media, several of whom praised Twitter’s relative transparency while noting that it has no choice but to comply with the regulations of individual governments.

One of the most passionate defenders of Twitter’s new policy is Zeynep Tufekci, who described it as an “excellent policy which will be helpful to free-speech advocates”. Tufekci sees Twitter’s selective censorship as an improvement over the broad censorship practiced by other internet companies, in which content deemed offensive by one is deleted for all. Under the new guidelines, a tweet deemed inappropriate by the leaders of a particular country will only be censored within that country.  To the rest of the world, it will be labeled as “blocked”, a development she describes as “excellent” because it renders state attempts to suppress speech transparent.

Tufekci, a scholar and advocate of free speech in the Arab world, has been criticized by some who see her post as a rationalization of censorship. While I disagree that this is her intention, her article does prompt troubling questions about the nature and purpose of Twitter: both for activists and their supporters. Tufekci’s thesis proceeds from the assumption that local activists get global followings. It assumes that Twitter activists are internationally connected and have a network of trusted advocates who will notice, and care, when their words are censored. This view is reflected in guidelines for online activists released by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, on which Tufekci consulted, that place the onus of activism on international digital networks facilitated by interpersonal trust.

In some parts of the world, particularly in the Arab region that is Tufekci’s focus, these points might make sense. But for much of the world, they highlight a fundamental misapprehension of the role social media plays in activist networks. The weaknesses of Twitter’s censorship policy reflect the weaknesses of Twitter itself.

*             *             *

Last summer, two Uzbek journalists, Malohat Eshonqulova and Saodat Omonova, went on a hunger strike to protest censorship and corruption in Uzbekistan’s state-run media. For one month, they tweeted the details of their strike from the Twitter account @Malohat_Saodat. They spoke of their physical agony, of the challenges facing reporters in Uzbekistan, and of the hypocrisy and corruption of the government of Uzbekistan. They posted videos of their strike to YouTube, and tweeted the links. Most of their tweets were in Uzbek, although some were in Russian. By the time of their final post, they had tweeted 730 times, had amassed around 65 followers, and had attracted no international media attention or global outcry. Malohat and Saodat’s near death on Twitter scarcely merited a retweet.

Why did this happen? First, Malohat and Saodat were writing in Uzbek, which few outside Central Asia can read. I translated some of their tweets into English and encouraged people to follow them, and several people did in response. But their case still attracted little interest. This brings me to my second point – almost no one cared about Malohat and Saodat because they were Malohat and Saodat. They were two journalists from Uzbekistan, a country with which few profess familiarity and whose activists do not use Twitter as a primary social medium.

Malohat and Saodat were subject to Twitter’s inherent popularity contest, in which the very few command the attention of the very many. In this system, well-connected English-speaking activists serve as the Justin Biebers of political dissidence: they attract followers based on brand recognition, and give the illusion that self-made internet performance breeds success. Malohat and Saodat did many of the things their Arab counterparts did, shortly after their Arab counterparts did them. Yet the world remained indifferent to their plight.

*             *             *

This is a story of Twitter activism before Twitter censorship. Now imagine what will happen once Twitter begins selectively censoring. What will become of the activists who lack both clout and Klout? Tufekci argues that Twitter’s transparency arrangement will focus attention on maligned activists – but this assumes that people outside the censored region will care. In reality, it is people within a particular region who follow regional crises most closely. Malohat and Saodat were ignored by the world, but they were followed closely by Uzbek activists and Uzbek independent media. I do not know what Uzbekistan’s policy on Twitter will be, but given its long history of internet censorship it will likely be one of the countries that demands Twitter block controversial content. And so cases like Malohat and Saodat’s will disappear from Twitter entirely, hidden even from their limited target audience.

Tufekci is correct that Twitter’s policy is realistic – as she points out, “the Internet is not a ‘virtual’ space, and cyberspace is not a planet which can float above all jurisdictions forever.” But realistic does not mean right. Twitter’s policy privileges the already privileged, hurting nascent dissident movements and the regional activists who struggle to promote them.

In 1978, Edward Said defined orientalism as “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.” The Muslim world, he argued, is rarely seen as significant and complex in its own right, but derives its significance from its relationship with the West: a comparative framework that guarantees a delusory bias. The Orient is the West’s “surrogate and underground self”, an “Other” that allows the West to define its cultural identity while justifying its imperialist goals.

Though ostensibly meant to include the broader Muslim world, the theory of orientalism has never worked well with Central Asia. As I’ve previously noted, Central Asia is “not the “other” but the other’s “other” — Russia’s orient, a region whose history and political complexities are poorly understood even by some who proclaim to be experts; a region whose best-known ambassador is Borat. Unlike the Arab world, Central Asia is not demonized and degraded in the Western public imagination: it is disregarded. The region connotes nothing – except perhaps obscurity itself.

There is a certain irony, therefore, in the new identity that has been forged on Central Asia since January 2011: that of the Arab world’s aspirational doppelganger. Since revolution first broke out in Tunisia and Egypt, countless analysts have speculated about whether unrest would “spread” from the Arab world to Central Asia. Never mind that comparatively little has “spread” from the Arab world to Central Asia in recent years (hyberbolic claims of Hizb-ut Tahrir domination notwithstanding), or that Central Asians sometimes take a dim view of these revolutions, or that the Soviet legacy shapes Central Asian politics far more than anything taking place abroad. Instead, Central Asia is often presented as a Middle East in training: they are Muslims, they have oil, they have dictators, so their policies and protests must have the Arab Spring as their guiding impulse.

Central Asia is not unique in this regard. Hundreds of riots, rampages, strikes, skirmishes and complaints the world over have been labeled “the next Arab Spring” by analysts eager to understand not only where the Arab revolutions are going, but how they spread in the first place. What differs is that the social, political and cultural conditions of most revolutionary contenders are analyzed, whereas for Central Asia, they are assumed. Occupy Wall Street, for example, is often said to be influenced by the Arab Spring — because the protesters themselves have claimed this affiliation. Russia, to name a closer case, is said to be entering a period of political unrest — and the complexities of this situation, as well as its key players, are thoroughly debated. In contrast, few Central Asians have predicted uprisings in their own region. Most claim the opposite. Yet nearly every story about Central Asian politics carries a perfunctory reference to the Arab Spring, with the result that protests and policies that emerge in reaction to domestic strife – as was the case in Kazakhstan – are assumed to reflect and respond to events abroad.

In this way, Central Asia is a region subject to a strange sort of “reverse orientalism” – a region deemed meaningful only by virtue of its similarity to the Arab world. This is particularly unfortunate because, as Rami G. Khouri observes, “the popularity of the ‘Arab Spring’ term across the Western world quietly mirrors some subtle Orientalism at work, lumping all Arabs as a single mass of people who all think and behave the same way.” Much as the mainstream Western press often fails to distinguish between individual Arab countries, it also fails to distinguish between the Arab world and Central Asia, emphasizing broad, sweeping similarities – religion, resources, repression – while playing down the sharp differences in politics, social life and history that determine the likelihood of political change.

One could argue that focusing on these differences obscures the fact that seemingly stable regimes are falling fast. The number of dictatorships that have been overthrown in the past year prompts big questions: How do revolutions spread – if they can be said to spread at all? How does technology create awareness of dissent and revolt among disparate populations? How well does revolutionary currency travel? Answering these questions requires a comprehensive approach. But if one is going to speculate about the prospect of revolution in a particular place, then the political particularities of that place must be given equally serious consideration.

“The worst aspect of this essentializing stuff,” wrote Said, “is that human suffering in all its density and pain is spirited away.” Predicting a “Kazakh Spring” after an incident like the shootings in Zhanaozen trivializes both the struggles of Arab dissidents and the pain of Kazakhs who endured a serious, but unrelated, tragedy. Similarly, not every move a Central Asian dictator makes is in reaction to uprisings in the Middle East. Censorship and repression have a long history in Central Asia – yet they fail to merit media attention unless they are linked to a more popular plight.

The outbreak of violence in Zhanaozen, a small oil town in Western Kazakhstan, has caused people to sit up and notice that Kazakhstan, despite its carefully cultivated reputation as a stable modernizing state, is not immune to social upheaval (if it has ever been) and that some internal discontent is brewing within the country. However, because of the fairly peripheral position of Zhanaozen on the national stage, the real contours of the conflict have not been discernible even to those inside the country and clearly cannot be so easily explained by any of familiar scenarios which have been in the air since the velvet revolutions occurred in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan and since the eruption of the Arab spring.

The riots and subsequent clashes with police coincided with Kazakhstan’s Independence Day of December 16. For seven months prior to the disturbances, oil workers of the OzenMunaiGaz, a subsidiary of the national company KazMunaiGaz, had been engulfed in a bitter dispute with both the company and the government over regional and industrial hardship coefficients. The whole fiasco seems to have started from a simple misunderstanding.

A new jurist for the oil workers union, Nataliya Sokolova, who formerly worked as a head of the HR department with KarazhanbasMunaiGaz, a nearby oil company, jointly controlled by national Kazakh and Chinese oil companies, informed the workers that they had been underpaid the regional hardship coefficient. The workers initiated litigation during which it was found that they had, in fact, been paid the coefficient in full but had been misled by their jurist, Nataliya Sokolova, as to how this coefficient should be calculated. They were told that that their current wages in their totality should be multiplied by the coefficient, which would make them double. In a well-covered in the opposition media and highly controversial case which unfolded in the summer, Sokolova was charged with incitement to social hatred and sentenced to 6 years in prison. As a result, the majority of OzenMunaiGaz workers returned to work (OzenMunaiGaz employs about 9000 people) although a significant proportion of them – about 1300 workers – continued the strike and, after demanding reimbursement for the coefficient payments, were subsequently fired, whereupon they went to “occupy” the town’s main square now demanding re-installment to their previous positions with OzenMunaiGaz. Several negotiations and mitigations of the conflict initiated as recently as November by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security have been inconclusive.

The general mood in the oil town was gloomy throughout the fall. The December 16 riots started from the town’s main square – the site where the strikers had gathered and from where city administration had planned to organize the usual Independence Day program. From extensive footage of the opposition K+ channel (owned by self-exiled former Kazakh oligarch, Mukhtar Ablyazov) which has been stationed in the area since spring, together with official footage from the Attorney General’s office, and from amateur footage shot by onlookers, we know that the violence erupted on the square with the beating of a police major, the smashing of stage equipment, and the burning of the Christmas tree. After several administration buildings had been attacked and set on fire, including the office of OzenMunaiGaz, the municipal office (akimat), the bank, the hotel and several shops, the police re-grouped and used live bullets to disperse the protestors. 16 people were confirmed to have been killed in the clashes and ensuing violence in the town.

Police claim that they were shot at and that there was real danger – not only to themselves but also to other citizens in the vicinity. Three criminal cases have been opened to investigate possible excessive use of firearms by the police, and dozens of criminal cases have also been opened to investigate any conspiratorial elements and organization behind the rioting, arson, beating of police officers, and looting. The situation was somewhat pacified with the arrival of the President at the scene of the clashes, amidst promises that the families of those who were killed would be paid retribution to the tune of approximately 6,700 USD (1 million tenge), regardless of how and when they died, and oil workers would be re-employed.

A government commission to address grievances and to improve the living and working conditions of the Zhanaozen citizens has been created and has conducted several working meetings with residents and laid off oil workers. Towards the end of December, 1,622 workers have been re-employed, and are now getting paid even though there are, as yet, no ready jobs for them to fill. In an interview with several Kazakh bloggers, the official representative of the KazMunaiGaz, Alik Aydarbayev, said that they are planning to open a new drilling company in Zhanaozen in order to permanently employ workers. The wages of OzenMunaiGaz oil workers, including those employed in supporting services as drivers and unskilled workers, are already the highest in the country starting from about 1000 USD for the low-skilled and averaging 1700-2000 USD for highly-skilled workers.

The roots of the problem are manifold but the one with which almost all experts seem to agree is that of rising claims and entitlements to the “oil pie.” Oil revenues constitute a quarter of the Kazakh government’s budget (a part of the revenues also goes to the National Oil Fund) and people in the oil towns of the Western region are well aware that these oil revenues which, among other things, help to build Astana and fund other modernization projects around the country, come from their land. While the expectations of aspiring middle classes are being gradually fulfilled in Kazakhstan, there remain pockets of discontent. The crisis of rising expectations is spreading in Kazakh society starting from highly qualified government-sponsored students who, having graduated from prestigious American and British universities, return home expecting prestigious jobs with world compatible salaries, to that of the low-skilled oralmans (Kazakh government sponsored ethnic Kazakh repatriates) and rural migrants who flock to the oil towns in the hope of high-paid jobs available in the oil industry.

The labor dispute which led to the violence in Zhanaozen was the first case where the demands of the Kazakh oil workers for higher wages were firmly refuted and found illegal in court leading to tragic consequences. For many years, wages in the oil industry have been rising steadily; however this rise in wages has gone unmatched by the comparable rise in the quality of life for the people of the Mangystau region. One reason for this is the lack of infrastructure for the money to “stick.” While KazMunaiGaz paid high wages to its employees, social investment in the town lagged behind not in the least because of the exploding population growth. Despite the fact that oil production in Zhanaozen had already peaked in Soviet times, the population continued to increase doubling from 60,000 in 2000 to almost 120,000 today. The cost of living in the town, where everything has to be delivered, also remained high. On top of this, many Zhanaozen workers landed themselves in debt by taking home loans wherewith to buy apartments in Zhanaozen and in the regional center of Aktau. Needless to say, many rural migrants now employed in the oil industry lack cultural capital and professional skills. And the efforts at their socialization and professionalization by the government and by KazMunaiGaz remain dismal. The distortions of the oil industry are unmediated in Zhanazoen creating a culture of the oil frontier where all kinds of people come to make money –not to live. To an observer, there exists a clear gap between the white-collar and blue-collar employees of KazMunaiGaz and its subsidiaries. The white-collar employees come from the well-educated often western-educated elites who are often re-moved from the realities of the region and the people on the ground. Expectations from oil revenues distribution are very high and the public company which, unlike other companies, employs only Kazakhstani workers and pays them high wages is blamed for nepotism and flagrant mismanagement from top down.

Anger directed at the KazMunaiGaz “fat cats,” however, does not translate into wholehearted support for the oil workers in Zhanaozen. While many in the opposition camp at home and abroad are seen as being quick to jump on the bandwagon of any protest of any ideological stripe whatsoever, from proletarian solidarity to regionalist and tribal grievances, as long as it is against the current regime, it is also remarkable that quite a sizable number if not a majority of the commentators on the Kazakh web sites, while mourning the tragedy and loss of life that befell Zhanaozen, have little sympathy with the plight of the oil workers. There is vigorous debate in society as to whether their demands are justified (especially considering wages and salaries in other regions), and whether, like in the case of government-funded Kazakhstani students who graduated from Western universities, the state itself has not created the expectations it cannot fulfill. By showering money and public goodies on the rebelling town, the government, these commentators and analysts believe, is creating a moral hazard and opening a Pandora’s box of competing claims and demands impossible to fulfill. Also, investment in the wider population of Kazakhstan in stability and order should not be underestimated. Stability, peace and order is not just a matter of reputation for the regime, it is a basis of the “moral order” upon which the aspiring middle classes plan to build their lives. Many people in Kazakhstan realize that inter-ethnic and inter-regional agreement is not to be taken for granted and resent the tactics of the oil workers who, in pursuit of narrow interests are seen as ready to jeopardize the stability of the region and the whole country.

Apparently, it’s kind of like soylent green; it’s people. Specifically, it’s about where those people are.

At least, that’s according to this article at FrontPage in which the authors use Central Asia to argue that a one-state solution for Israel and Palestine is simply impossible.

Just as the new calendar year was about to begin, new violence broke out in the village of Andarak in southern Kyrgyzstan. Internecine violence among the ethnic groups of Kyrgyzstan has been flaring up periodically for years with the worst outbreaks in 2010. Kyrgyzstan may be the closest thing to be found in Central Asia to a “bi-national state,” the sort of state that some are proposing be imposed upon the Middle East as a “solution” to replace Israel. …there are lessons to learn from the violence there about the viability of multi-ethnic states in the Middle East.

Hogwash.

I’ll plead complete ignorance on anything to do with Israel and Palestine if only because then we can all avoid having a discussion about it. However, the incidents of communal violence in Central Asia over the last two decades — including Tajikistan’s civil war, to which the authors make reference — say very little about the viability of mutli-national states in the abstract. To collapse violence in poor, corrupt societies with fragile governments down to the sole factor of ethnicity is a step beyond ignorant; it’s lazy. Kyrgyzstan’s internal faultlines cut many different ways, and even the ethnic faults are more complicated than they might seem. Similarly, Tajikistan’s civil war was not simply one region against another.

The Middle East, let alone Israel and Palestine, can probably move on.

But sally forth is what our authors do and come up with a surprising lesson from Central Asia:

Ironically, there is a related positive lesson for the Middle East from the same region. While relations between ethnic Slavs and local Muslims in Central Asia have often been tense and can be potentially explosive, recent violent confrontations have been relatively rare largely because of the massive out-migration of the Slavs to Russia and the Ukraine. Ethnic Germans also largely emigrated. Ethnic Russians and Ukrainians simply moved to those nation-states in which their kin are the dominant majority.

Could not the Arab-Israeli conflict be resolved at least partly through a similar out-migration of “Palestinians” and their relocation into the predominantly Arab ethnic “homelands,” much like the resettlement of Central Asian Slavs?

It’s not even worth commenting on the factual claims. Just take it in, be unsurprised that FrontPage published it, and appreciate the irony of the authors including a line about American ignorance of Central Asia.

I’ve been trading arguments with Alexandros Petersen and Raffaello Pantucci the last few months about whether or not China is really gaining influence in Central Asia (see some of that here and here). I still haven’t seen much evidence that China has been terribly active or even successful in building a network of influence in the region. But today, Alexandros published a provocative new twist on the debate at my friend Steve LeVine’s Foreign Policy blog:

It would be more accurate to say that Beijing’s choice of Turkmen, Kazakh and Uzbek gas over Russian has forced Gazprom to reassess its regional strategy. While price negotiations with Moscow have slogged on over the last five years, the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) has cobbled together and upgraded largely existing transportation infrastructure to create the China-Central Asia gas pipeline (pictured above). The resulting shift in the region’s energy geopolitics reflects China’s rise.

It also reveals a Beijing whose intentions are inherently geopolitical. The deliverable for Beijing is stability — client states with predictable, subservient governments. The Chinese analysis is that they are the adults in Central Asia, while Russian and Western actors breed instability.

What’s so interesting about Alexandros’ argument is the number of Chinese analysts and officials he quotes as disagreeing with him. Indeed, as with the first piece I read by them last year, the arguments for Chinese motivations and plans are implied, but not actually proven or even supported factually.

No one would argue that China is expanding its economic presence in Central Asia. But that expansion hasn’t been without its hiccups or resistance. In 2007, for example, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said very explicitly that he was unhappy with the unbalanced economic relationship between Astana and Beijing. Earlier this year, Eurasianet ran a story detailing the resentment many Kyrgyzstanis feel at China’s overpowering economy as well. And Tajikistan’s parliamentary vote to cede some territory to China a year ago sparked unease both within Tajikistan and within neighboring countries.

So while China might want to have a stronger presence in the region (and again there’s not really much evidence for that apart from tea leaf reading), it is not a done deal. Locals remain unsure. But then this bit leapt out:

A CNPC representative put it in these terms: “Some regional partners like to use our presence as a foreign policy tool.” He was quick to add, “Chinese companies are not involved in politics.” I heard the terms “non-interference” and “harmonious relations” more times than I could count. But, addressing the Turkmen deal directly, a senior policymaker with the Chinese energy ministry said, “Energy is the basis for a wider relationship with Turkmenistan, which we see as a major, long-term partner in the region.” Kazakhstan has far more oil, in addition to much natural gas, but Turkmenistan appears to be at least equivalent and perhaps more consequential to China. When I asked whether the relationship with Turkmenistan was important in diversifying China’s energy import options in light of recent civil unrest in Kazakhstan, he answered simply, “Yes.”

That’s a curious claim, since the pipeline that transports the oh-so-valuable Turkmeni gas east to China has to go through seven hundred miles of Kazakh territory. See here:

The Central Asia-China Pipeline.

Whatever China’s relationship with Turkmenistan, it won’t be a hedge if a major crisis in Kazakhstan cuts off that pipeline. Still, despite Alexandros’ seeming skepticism of the Chinese desire for “harmonious relations” with Central Asia, there is reason to take them at their word: academic studies of Chinese foreign policy show a marked preference for diplomacy over force, and for enforcing regime stability even at the expense of Chinese territorial goals.

It makes for a marked contrast to China’s relationship with Pakistan. Especially on issues of terrorism, China has been less than shy about openly exerting pressure on Islamabad to gain concessions, going so far as to spark the Lal Masjid crisis in 2007. That’s in part because Chinese investment in Pakistan is not just a matter of some Chinese companies either investing or building local subsidiaries, but the result of large, politically significant projects like the Gwadar port and large military sales. In contrast, pressuring a Central Asian government to, for example, round up some Uighur activists it doesn’t like anyway is barely worth mentioning, especially because it imposes no cost on the leaders who do it.

It’s important to keep in mind that China is not operating in a vacuum, and that other countries — Russia, Turkey, the U.S. — have also spent lots of time and money trying to buy influence in the region. The U.S., which just announced it’s pumped $1.4 billion into the Kyrgyz economy through the Manas air base since 2001, has had a difficult translating its huge expenditures into actual influence (and in the case of Turkmenistan barely even tried, anyway). Russia and Turkey, as well, have seen their political fortunes wax and wane.

Still, the effects of Chinese policies in Central Asia are not the same as the policies themselves, and this is what Alexandros (and his common writing partner, Raffaello Pantucci) is arguing. But, despite the big talk about Chinese plans for doing… something influential in the region, there just isn’t data that there is a concerted, long-term plan for establishing decisive Chinese control. And that’s the big problem I have with this formulation: it is a deductive analysis of what China might be doing, but there just aren’t enough data to conclusively say that this is what China intends to do. And more important, there’s no sense of whether it’s a good thing, a bad thing, — and if the U.S. should respond, much less care about it.

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?

Chen, Jay, ed. A Small Key Opens Big Doors. 50 Years of Amazing Peace Corps Stories, Volume Three: The Heart of Eurasia. Travelers Tales: Palo Alto, 2011.336 pages, includes Foreword, Preface, Introduction, Acknowledgments.

Disclosure: Jay Chen is a friend and fellow Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV). We served in the same group in Kazakhstan starting in the summer of 2005. I even submitted a story to this collection, and while I’m not surprised it didn’t make the cut, I was surprised to see my name in the Acknowledgments in the back. The tone of this book is quite different from most reviewed for Registan’s readers, but it undoubtedly shares many valuable American impressions of Central Eurasia. In full disclosure, there are chapters by a few RPCV friends from Kazakhstan.

This is a book  is travel literature of a unique variety. Unlike most of the books printed by its publisher, there is very little actual travel. This is not a surprise to those familiar with the US Peace Corps, which typically involves only two big trips: from and to your home in the United States. For my own part I recall having a strong desire to distinguish myself from other Americans and foreign travelers while abroad – I was not a tourist, or a missionary, or a Foreign Service employee. I was attempting to come to some better understanding of the people around me (with the implied snobbery that the others were not). And so, this is a book less of introspection and more of first, second, and thirtieth impressions of a cultural, political, religious, and economic experience still confusing to Volunteers after two or three years of living as close to another culture as deemed “safe” and “useful” by the US government.

This is not an official Peace Corps publication. Naturally this has its pros and cons. A mixed blessing is that the texts have not been sanitized, cleared, censored, or otherwise edited by the US government. Also, the selection is visibly skewed to those the editor and publishers were able to contact and coerce into writing. One of the concessions, it would seem, is that no rights are being claimed – the stories are all listed in the back as “published with permission from the author,” though most have never appeared in print before. Judging from the countries and times represented, this book is not an overall representation of Peace Corps’ efforts in Eurasia – but it does not claim to be such. There is a heavy emphasis in two areas: Kazakhstan in the mid-2000s (seven chapters) and Turkey in the 1960s (thirteen chapters). One of the contributors, Sandy Lee Anderson, is described as active in maintaining ties with her fellow 1960s Turkey Volunteers. Combine that with the fact that she lives in Washington, D.C. – a stopping point or career location for many RPCVs – and the focus on Turkey becomes less surprising.

The editor has gathered a group of stories that span the gamut of writing styles and tones. There are stories of those who loved their sites and those that were less comfortable. There are humorous stories and touching stories. There are more than a few of the type so common in Peace Corps: I learned a lot more about myself when I learned a little bit about others. And yet there is also the lingering sense of career guilt – more than a few express pride or defensiveness, “I have never regretted my two years.” I certainly don’t regret my time in the Peace Corps – but why should anyone that returns safe and suffers no criminal or other actions during their term?

I recommend this book to those looking for a very human, realistic, organic view of Peace Corps from within. In the same way that I cannot prove that no PCV ever went on to become a CIA spy, these stories make it clear that the majority of volunteers would constitute an unwise investment on the part of America’s clandestine actions. A spy does not want to learn another person’s culture – he must do so in order to better oppose it. Spies spend less time on understanding and more time on mimicry. PCVs may not be as linguistically skilled as the more serious Foreign Service employees and missionary workers – but they bring a very different mindset to the game. A valuable mindset that does not always compute to those only concerned with geopolitics and Great-Game style intrigues. But those who deny its value and impact do so out of ignorance.

Story contributions by Country, Term of Service

Mongolia, 2001-2003
Turkey, 1969-1970
Moldova, 2000-2002
Ukraine, 2003-2005
Turkey, 1966-1968
Ukraine, 1993-1995
Bulgaria, 2004-2006 (2 stories)
Macedonia (evac), Romania, 2001-2002
Turkey, 1965-1967
Tom Fleming, 2003-2005
Mongolia, 2000-2002
Turkmenistan, 2003-2005
Armenia, 2003-2005
Kazakhstan, 2006-2008
Turkey, 1966-1968
Uz 2005 (evac), Kaz 2005-2006
Poland, 1994-1996
Turkey, 1962-1964
Ukraine, 1993-1995
Turkey, 1966-68
Romania, ??-??
Mongolia, 2006-2008
Turkey, 1964-66
Armenia, 2007-2008
Ukraine, 1999-2001
Mongolia, 2001-2003
Turkey, 1963-1965
Kazakhstan, 2005-2007
Ukraine, 2005-2007
Turkey, 1962-1963
Bulgaria, 2002-2004
Albania, 1995-1997
Kazakhstan, 2005-2007
Turkey, 1960s (??-??)
Kazakhstan, 2005-2008
Moldova, 1991-1993
Turkey, Yemen 1960s (??-??)
Kazakhstan, 2005-2007
Kyrgyzstan, 1997-1999
Ukraine, 1993-1995
Kazakhstan, 2004-2006
Turkey, 1964-1966
Poland, 1991-1993
Kazakhstan, 2001-2003
Bulgaria, 2004-2007
Iran, 1965-1968
Turkey, 1960s (??-??)

My contribution to the American Security Project/ Atlantic 20-year retrospective on U.S. foreign policy in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union is up, and it focuses on — what else? — Central Asia. An excerpt:

The terror attacks of September 11 and subsequent invasion of Afghanistan seemed at first to cement the rise of America in Central Asia. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld negotiated the use of military bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, even while the State Department grew less and less comfortable with human rights abuses in those countries. By the time the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, American policy in the area seemed set on autopilot, dominant and victorious.

Then, something changed. In March of 2005, the “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan unseated Askar Akayev, who had ruled the country since 1990, throwing the U.S. into panic that it might lose access to the airbase at Manas. Also that year, in May, Uzbek security forces massacred hundreds of protesters in the city of Andijon, and in the ensuing outcry the U.S. lost access to the Uzbek airbase it relied on to supply the troops in Afghanistan. While the Americans later managed to secure expanded access to Manas, it came at an increasingly high cost.

The mid-2000s also saw Russia emerge from its slumber. Under Presidents Vladimir Putin and then Dmitri Medvedev, Russia slowly revived its campaign for influence in the region, gaining concessions from the Central Asian rulers and sometimes challenging the U.S. for access and resources. As of 2011, Russia and the U.S. could best be called frenemies in Central Asia, with Russia chafing at the continued American presence even while its officials worry about the consequences of an American withdrawal from Afghanistan.

This is less policy analysis than history but I think it tells a pretty interesting story.

My think tank, the American Security Project, has teamed up with The Atlantic to run a 12-article series I edited about U.S. foreign policy 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, which happens on Christmas. There have been some really interesting essays in there that aren’t directly relevant to what we write about here, such as the fate of the U.S. defense industry under austerity conditions, how today is actually the most peaceful period in recent history, and even about the global scramble for energy. Former Senator Gary Hart, the chairman of ASP’s board, wrote a fascinating rumination on U.S.-Russian relations over the last two decades that’s worth sharing.

Alexis de Toqueville’s famous prediction in 1835 that America and Russia, two great continental powers, would someday play leading roles in the world was predated by Russian exploration of the Western American continent as far south as today’s California and thereafter qualified by the landing of a small U.S. expeditionary force in Siberia during the Russian Revolution. But throughout the Cold War, de Toqueville seemed prescient indeed.

The shared global leadership between America and Russia ended two decades ago. The 74 year Russian detour into communism can be viewed only as if rapidly retreating in a rear-view mirror. But the end of the Cold War revealed a curious anomaly in U.S. foreign policy thought. Much to the surprise of Russians and many Americans, including myself, instead of rushing to embrace Russia and drawing it closely into Western economic, political, and security circles, we have resorted to reliance on personal relationships between American and Russian presidents as the basis for our bilateral relationships. And we continue to hold Russia suspiciously at arm’s length.

There has been little, if any, explanation of this suspicion toward Russia and its roots in the American mind, or at least in the minds of certain foreign policy experts. Arguably, we have better relations with China than Russia and spend a great deal more effort in tending to that relationship. In gauging how close or how distant to remain regarding another nation or power, the measure ought to be whether there are more interests in common than in opposition. By that measure, our relationship to Russia ought to be among our closest.

And yet. I hinted in the previous post that I’d have some more about what we can think of in reaction to Kazakhstan’s two decades of independence. Soon my contribution to this collection will be out, which will chart the U.S.’s fraught policy in the region over the last 20 years, and wonders where it’s really going in the future (and if that matters). But for now, I’ll draw your attention to the great work our contributors here at Registan.net did in discussing such an important milestone about specific countries.

• “Kyrgyzstan at 20: What Now?” — Noah Tucker
• “Happy Birthday, Uzbekistan” — Sarah Kendzior
• “Kazakhstan — 20 Years After Independence” — Michael Hancock
• “Tajikistan At 20” — Christian Bleuer

Read those to get a sense of what sort of issues we’re dealing with.