Last week Google Translate announced that it now has over 200 million monthly users. As Alexis Madrigal noted in the Atlantic, this means that Google is now translating as much in a day as a human being would in a year – an amount of text equivalent to a million books.

Google Translate is far from perfect – its garbled prose, creative grammar and bizarre word substitutions have been dubbed “Dada Processing” – but it is one of the few Google products one can unequivocally say does more good than harm. Because of Google Translate, millions of people access ideas that would have once remained impenetrable. The default dismissal of foreign media is gone.

Since its inception in 2006, Google has added 65 languages from every region in the world, with two notable exceptions: Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. No languages from Central Asia make the Google cut, despite the fact that they have far more speakers than many of the languages that do. Pashto (50 million), Uzbek (21 million), and Uyghur (9 million) are not included. Neither are the African languages Hausa (40 million), Yoruba (19 million), or Zulu (10 million). The sole inclusions from sub-Saharan Africa are Swahili and Afrikaans, a language which derives from Dutch. In contrast, Icelandic (310,000), Welsh (480,000), and Irish (60,000) – as well as every other European language – are represented.

Translation has the potential to shift the politics of perception. Here Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa share something else in common: they are already on the losing side of this game. These two regions are the least likely to be covered by the international media and the most likely to be dismissed as barbaric, obscure or irrelevant by non-specialists.

Political scientist Laura Saey recently wrote about the problems that plague media coverage of Africa: the paucity of international correspondents, the callous framing of tragic events, the echo chamber of repeated coverage, the tendency to ignore regional diversity, the casual racism and condescension. These practices mark Central Asian media coverage as well. “If it takes hundreds of deaths or a revolution to make you report on a country, don’t cover its ‘humorous’ political and economic failures,” Matthew Kupfer wrote last week on Registan, bemoaning the international media mockery of Kyrgyzstan’s inability to pay its bills.

Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa share another important similarity: their events are framed through the languages of colonization. Most international coverage of Central Asia is written by people who speak Russian. Similarly, sub-Saharan Africa is covered by speakers of English, French and Arabic. This is not the fault of the reporters: when bureaus assign so few people to such large regions, one cannot reasonably expect them to know all the local languages, and so it makes sense for them to rely on a lingua franca. But such reliance is problematic when it comes to the internet, because there is so much room to do better.

It is increasingly common for news agencies to cover a country by reprinting claims made online. This is why CNN films Facebook pages and why complex conflicts get reduced to “Twitter revolutions”. But without an ability to translate local languages, reporters rely on whatever material they can understand – meaning that, to give one example, Russian-language content is often used to represent what is going on in Uzbek communities. Internet content created by speakers of languages like Uzbek – often preferred by citizens of Uzbekistan even if they do know Russian – is ignored.

As a result, important insights and debates remain invisible to the outside world. “There is another internet, a secret internet, in which meaningful political conversations take place in Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Turkmen, and Tajik, yet the majority of the world remains none the wiser,” I wrote in 2010, countering Evgeny Morozov and others who found Kyrgyzstan’s online media irrelevant. This is as true today as it was then.

Google is moving in the right direction: translation for Kazakh and Kyrgyz is being developed, and Google Africa is soliciting contributions from Africans interested in expanding the site’s capabilities. One hopes that these additions will increase the regional knowledge necessary to write with depth and compassion. Nothing substitutes for human translation, especially of Central Asian and African websites filled with jokes, idioms and poetry. But Google Translate can give a sense of what people are concerned about, which may help shift coverage away from the trivialities and biases cited by Saey. Moreover, it allows citizens who only speak regional languages to access foreign media and translate their own works for a broader audience – a feat which the excellent Global Voices has achieved on a more selective scale. For citizens involved in politics or international affairs, this is an invaluable gift.

“There is never interpretation, understanding and knowledge when there is no interest,” Edward Said wrote in Covering Islam, critiquing media bias toward the Muslim world. Central Asia and sub-Saharan countries face a related but arguably more severe problem: it is hard to create interest in places that most do not consider as individual, complex entities. In the digital era, impenetrable means invisible; invisible means irrelevant. Adding more local and national languages to Google Translate is a small step toward remedying this problem.

I had the pleasure of attending the Eurasia Foundation’s 2012 Gala Dinner last night. They were using it to kick off their Sarah Carey program, which tries to connect young professionals in the US with young professionals in Eurasia, and to give their first annual Sarah Carey Award for the advancement of civil society.

Their first awardee went to Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering. Pickering is one of those rare people in DC who is not only really smart, he has a peculiar talent: he can remember your name. I’ve run into him on occasion at events around town — the Century Foundation Task Force on Afghanistan, some panels, stuff like that — and even though I am a nobody in the grand scheme of things he still recognizes me and greets me by name. It sounds like a random thing to focus on, but that actually matters a lot to people, and I think it contributes to the stellar reputation the man has (as does the fact that he has more than one fellowship and scholarship named after him).

Pickering, however, didn’t say much in his talk — some thank yous, a bit of boilerplate about how important civil society is. That was a bit of a disappointment, since I’ve heard him say some really interesting, engaging things before. But following him was Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, who had some very interesting remarks.

For context, I was sitting next to Muktar Djumaliev, the Kyrgyz ambassador to the U.S. Secretary Burns made several comments about freeing imprisoned journalists, opening civil societies, and calling out some governments on their poor performance on human rights, press freedoms, and political rights. Ambassador Djumaliev adopted something of a stone face during the speech, which surprised me a bit — I half expected him to scrunch his forehead or turn down a corner of his mouth or something. He did not seem to enjoy it much.

Either way, it was a great time. It’s rare I gush about these things because most of them kind of blur together and don’t really mean much (I’ve not yet mastered the art of acting like a precious new born at every single event with some big name at it, then dropping names afterward to appear part of the pundit-scene). But last night was good, and I have such enormous respect for Pickering that I wanted to highlight what happened.

And plus, the Eurasia Foundation does really damned good work as well, so I don’t mind giving them a bit of good press either.

The following is a guest post written by Azamat Seitov of the Regional Policy Foundation, Polit.uz. It was originally published there.
***

The last of the EurAsEC summit in Moscow demonstrated that for all the optimistic public statements, the integration processes are not advancing well in practice.

It was predicted that the summit will announce the replacement EurAsEC with full fledged Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). However, the results of the summit were more than modest – comprehensive agreement on formation of EEU can be signed only by January 1, 2015.

Among the few documents signed during the Moscow summit, one can single out such agreements as the decision on launching the Eurasian Economic Commission, as well as the unification of the passport and customs control in the Customs Union (by contrast, during the previous summit there were signed about 20 documents).

Analyzing the results of the summit the editor in chief of the “VK” A.Vlasov said that “the contradictions between the three major players of the Customs Union and the EurAsEC have reached a new qualitative level, where most of the questions would not fit into the agreement circle.” According the member of the Scientific Council of the Moscow Carnegie Center A.Malashenko, “EurAsEC should be regarded as a kind of cocoon, from which something might come into the light, whereas the Eurasian Economic Union is so far nothing more than Russian-Kazakh bilateral relations.”

One of the main deterrents of the Eurasian economic integration, whichRussiaso desperately wants accelerate, is that the rest of the participants are not prepared for what might follow the economic union – political integration.

In this regard, it is worth to note the statement of Dmitry Medvedev, who said that the participants of summit had a productive, sometimes fairly sharp discussions on how to further promote integration processes. “In fact, this means that the summit was not meant to produce decisions, but to determine the position of the summit participants for the near future.

According to the “Kommersant” newspaper, one of the issues that caused controversy at the summit was about the authority of the EEU during conclusion of international agreements with third countries. Moscow believes that it is the prerogative of the Eurasian Supreme Economic Council, which consists of the heads of member-countries. Minsk for its part insisted that all contracts should be agreed at the national level (with preservation of the nation state’s right of veto). During the summit, Lukashenko also insisted that member states had the right to veto decisions of the future structure.

Astana is opposing the acceleration of conversion of the EurAsEC into the EEU referring to a number of unsolved technical issues. According to the expert of the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies D.Aleksandrov, Belarusis interested in the transformation of the EurAsEC, since Minsk is little connected with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. In contrast to Minsk, Astana seeks to strengthen its ties with regional neighbors.

The presence of protest in Kazakhstan society is another reason of the cautious attitude of Astana towards accelerated integration. According to Kazakh economist M.Kairlenov, reducing volumes of tax revenues, poor performance of the private sector, which is main powerhouse of the job creation, demonstrate the signs of crisis inKazakhstan. “On the background of such a tense environment to integrate means to increase social tensions, since integration increases the vulnerability of the ordinary people», expert said.

At the same time, Russiais expected to continue its intensive push for EEU during the upcoming presidential term of Vladimir Putin. The realization of the idea of Eurasian Union is the centerpiece of Putin’s master plan to unite the efforts of the former Soviet republics to strengthen the Russian position in the geopolitical competition with the U.S., EU and China.

According to N.Kuzmin, the Kazakh political scientist and foreign policy expert, “the proclamation of the Eurasian Union is a campaign with a very powerful symbolic resource.”

Setting the 2015 as the deadline for the formation of the EEU, is possibly associated with the confidence of Moscow that by that time the United States will turn their attention to the Eurasia again, since towards that deadline Washington will be relieved from its commitments in Iraq and have significantly reduced the number of troops in Afghanistan, whereas the wave of “colored revolutions” in the Arab world will pass away. Therefore, by 2015, Washington will have both the military and diplomatic resources available to turn the attention to the Eurasian region. In addition, by that time the US will have the ballistic missile defense sites ready for deployment inCentral Europe.

The primary target of the Russian foreign policy within the Eurasian Union is Ukraine. As V.Tkachuk, the director general of Ukrainian Foundation for Democracy “People First” notes, “within the framework of establishment of the Eurasian Union Russia insists on the entry of Ukraine into the Customs Union. Moscow is closely interested in its resources, infrastructure and human capacity.” One of the main instruments of pressuring Ukraineis intensive Russian economic expansion and the threat of trade wars.

The Russian foreign policy drive might well be reflected on the other post-Soviet countries. At the EurAsEC summit Dmitry Medvedev said that the observer states (Armenia, Moldova and Ukraine) should be forewarned that in the event of their non-alignment with the Customs Union, they might face some difficulties. At the same time Russian bans on Ukrainian cheese imports was seen as an attempt to put pressure onKievto reach an agreement on closer integration. Active discussion of the possible ban on the supply of dried fruits from Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan on the pages of Russian media is in fact a warning to the national elites of these countries about the consequences that they may face in case of not joining the integration process, led by Russia.

It’s no secret that the Central Asian direction has a special place in Moscow drive towards EEU. According to the findings of «Stratfor» (USA) analysts, Russia considers Central Asia as a strategic foothold. In their view, the Central Asian republics “play an important role for Russia as a defense against the Islamic world and Asia, as well as energy and economic partners.” Kyrgyz political scientist M.Sariev believes that “if Russia’s attempts to unite the CIS countries will fail, it would mean a serious blow for Russia and it risks becoming a backyard of Europe or raw material appendage ofChina.”

Experts suggest that Moscow’s push for acceleration and deepening of integration processes is associated with the desire to protect the Russian interests in the event of upcoming change of political elites inCentral Asia. In particular, Stratfor analysts wrote that “Russia’s goals in Kazakhstan is to continue the integration with the Central Asian country through common economic space and, eventually, through the Eurasian Union, to arrange the transfer of power so that the results were favorable to Russia … Nazarbayev’s departure from the political scene will create uncertainty and instability in the country – both in political and security field.”

The report of the RAND expert and analytical center (USA), which was prepared with the financial support of the military and the U.S. Air Force, stresses that Russian military and political pressure on the countries of the Central Asian region is based on Moscow’s desire to prevent the consolidation of U.S. military presence in the region on a sustained basis.

RAND analysts have expressed concern that Russia due to her increasing weakness and fear of completely loosing the influence, might seek to confirm the control over the region by force. In that case Moscow military pressure can trigger ethnic, religious and territorial conflict in the region.

To achieve the return of the post-Soviet countries into its orbit of influence, Moscow could use the existence of the so-called “pain points” in the Central Asian countries. As an external pretext one can use the chronic domestic instability inKyrgyzstan, which would allow disseminating the so-called “controlled chaos” into the adjacent territories. It is also possible to use the heartlands of the Central Asian countries. For example, in case of Tajikistan such a heartland is the eastern part of the country, specifically, the regions of the ​​Rasht valley, where, according to analysts of Stratfor, the Government of the Republic of Tajikistan has limited control.

The RAND analysts believe that if a conflict breaks out in the region, Russia will seek to play a key role in it and try to prevent external forces from participating in its resolution.

As a whole, Moscow continues its active foreign policy to promote the EEU, which will provide Russia not only geopolitical benefits (strengthening the status and international influence), but also the economic incentives in the form of expanding the map of investment opportunities in neighboring countries.

However, Moscow’s political ambitions are not supported by adequate technical basis, developed; the Customs Union still did not turn into the effective instrument that would allow negotiating effectively the schemes of multinational agreements.

In current setting, the formation of the Eurasian Economic Union would mean the reorientation of the economy of its members on Russia at the expense of their integration with the global markets.

Russia clearly has influence and leverage in Central Asia like no other power. Russian remains the lingua franca of the region. The region’s economies connects to the world largely through infrastructure that flows through Russia. Household economies too, are kept afloat by opportunities to work in Russia. The Russian security and intelligence organs maintain robust links directly to important individuals throughout Central Asia.

Just how influential is Russia, though? A large chunk of the analysis in the media, especially from pundits, and from politicians fails to quantify Russia’s role and influence. When there are so many avenues through which Russia can exert influence in Central Asia, it becomes easy to reflexively point to Russia as the root cause for almost everything under the sun.

To wit, the founder of WND (your exclusive source for the political commentary of Chuck Norris!) says that Russia is behind Uzbekistan’s unpredictable and greedy responses to requests from the US to move specific equipment on the NDN.

Uzbekistan has offered the most direct route into Afghanistan but now it is raising the ante just as neighboring Kyrgyzstan similarly began to make it more difficult for the U.S. to use Manas Air Base for supply efforts.

Both appear to be responding to pressure from Moscow to make it more difficult and more expensive to provide the supplies. Now, the Pentagon is looking to use the Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan trucking route.

Not even a shred of evidence is offered to back up the claim that Russia has anything to do with Uzbekistan’s behavior. And it is absurd to imply in a round-about way that the KKT route, which traverses three countries where Russia’s influence is usually more strongly felt, would in some way avoid this problem of Russia trying to gum up the works. But hey, rather than quote anyone, look for some evidence, or display higher-level reasoning, just blame Russia, right? This article comes from WND’s premium weekly global intelligence bulletin, and it’s probably safe to assume seeing Russia behind vast geostrategic plots plays well with their subscriber base.

This question does not need a very complicated answer. Several reporters and news outlets have reported the fairly simple math of what is going on. ISAF members with large troop contingents need exit routes from Afghanistan. Central Asia is the most reliable route, and governments there are seeking to maximize profits from the withdrawal. Really, this is dirt simple if you accept that these governments actually have their own agency. They know that the cheaper route, Pakistan, is unreliable, especially for the United States, and they are negotiating as big a paycheck as possible, sometimes waiting to see what their neighbor is able to get before agreeing themselves to move some type of materiel (at a slightly higher price!).

Pointing the finger at Russia for this kind of behavior has real consequences. At least in the United States, where politicians must sufficiently demonstrate that they have the vapors and a plan to respond to every single crisis ginned up by the need to fill multiple 24-hour news channels, we end up with leaders huffing and puffing and throwing a wrench in US-Russia relations. Perhaps more importantly though, blaming Russia gives Central Asian governments a bit more leverage in negotiations, allowing them to up the price to offset the overstated pressure they claim to be getting from the Kremlin.

Post photo by Flickr user moaksey.

I don’t want to spend too much time dissecting Mitt Romney’s war-path to the presidency — the one that’s tarred anything he’s touched, and dropped his unfavorability numbers to record lows — because A) I’d hate to alienate any secret Romneycons among my friends, and B) while I do have enough time, I’d rather spend it transcribing minor league interviews, or clipping my toenails, or practicing my Russian case-endings for the seventieth time today. That is to say, I’d like to avoid entering the GOP’s rabbit hole of un-reason, and continue on with my life.

But there are some things that are too good to pass up.

This week served one of those instances. After Obama’s nontroversial ‘hot mic’ comments — the one in which he’d proffer to Dmitri Medvedev more flexibility post-election — many opponents took it to mean that Obama was playing mere lip service to standing firm on missile defense. That he would waver like the milquetoast namby-pamby he actually was. That he was, once more, selling out America to its most fiendish foes.

To which I say: Welcome to realpolitik, the world of back-room pragmatism and diplomatic derring-do. Obama was no more selling out American defense than he was strapping his dog to the roof of his car. He was — a bit arrogantly, maybe, but also a bit earnestly — simply explaining his current negotiating footing to his political counterpart, moving beyond the half-baked photo-ops and into the world of reality. It may have been considered a Kinsley gaffe, but it was far from being as revelatory as, say, Sarkozy’s Netanyahu bash … though not nearly as hilarious as Biden’s BFD.

The subsequent affrontery, of course, is fallacious, more manufactured outrage at a political non-event. The man was simply explaining his pragmatic position, not selling state secrets. He was right, after all: One’s political capital bumps up considerably after a second-term election. (That is, so long as you don’t find a too-curvy intern, or plunk your country in two unwinnable wars.) As such, in terms of gay rights, civil liberties, or, yes, foreign policy, Obama will have greater leeway come Dec. 2012 than he shares right now. That’s simply the nature of the (small-r) republican beast.

Anyway, among the obstreperous responses came one in particular, the one which makes you shake your head like, well, like an Etch-a-Sketch. Romney, all blunderbuss and Bryl-cream, decided that Obama’s fraternizing with the Russkies is a step too far. Thus, he offered this nugget:

‘[Russia is] without question our number one geopolitical foe.’

He goes on to say that Russia “fight[s] every cause for the world’s worst actors,” citing recent pro-Syrian vetoes and Iranian support as evidence that the Kremlin is under-mining American efforts and underwriting America’s enemies at every turn. Romney tethers Putin and the Kremlin to Caracas, to Beijing, to Waziristan and Havana and Damascus, claiming that Moscow has opted for subterfuge at every turn. He believes that Moscow, more than Pyongyang, more than Islamabad, more than Tehran, is somehow — “without question” — our top political foe.

This rhetoric … this rhetoric’s revolting, really. I don’t say this from a personal standpoint — the Russians I know, here and abroad; the language and history I’ve learned; the lives I’ve led. Rather, I say this from a purely geopolitical stance. If Russia-is-the-new-evil catches as a bromide — if our neocons are somehow shifting from the Middle East outward, scoping the last vestiges of international independence — then that’s, at the least, worrying. And it could be so much more. As we’ve seen in the last decade, foreign policy constructed around such hyperbole can only lead to overreach and overspending — or doesn’t Romney remember Iraq? The misreading of the political tea-leaves, the fact that this claim found sympathetic ears in many an American corner, the reality that these Cold War hangers-on still exist: it’s dispiriting, crass, and revolting. It’s a shame.

And it is, of course, as imbecilic as you can find. (Or perhaps not, in this election.) In a brief parsing of Moscow’s foreign policy, you’ll find that Medvedev/Putin, while far from the Merkozy friends west of the Danube, aren’t exactly the Sauron and Saruman – the Brezhnev and Kosygin – of yore. Yes, Moscow and Beijing have vetoed the UN resolutions on Syria, and yes, Russia’s supplied Syria with 72% of its arms from 2007-11. But in comparison with the US-sanctioned crackdowns in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia — even forgoing mention of the Greater Israel occupation of Palestinian lands — and the continued occupation of Afghanistan, it’s not as if Russia’s gone out of its way to exhibit belligerency or protectionism. Yes, the base at Tartus and the arms deals are likely driving the intransigence, but even in recent days Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has called for peaceable talks to resume between the two Syrian sides. Libya, and NATO’s purported overreach, still hang stale in the air, and while strong-men like Assad stand low on any sympathy ladder, there’s always something to be said about international border. Russia, at the least, recognizes this (perhaps antiquated) fact, and it’s fair justification for concern.*

*Abkhazia and South Ossetia notwithstanding, of course.

Likewise, Russia withholds support of an Iranian campaign due to the same argument found in Syria — protecting international boundary. However, one need only imagine the oil revenue Russia would reap should Israel/America begin a bombing campaign to understand why Moscow won’t have Iran’s back until the Persian cows come home. And that’s not even considering the bubbling rivalry between Russia and Iran over holdings in the Caspian, with both countries slowly beginning a naval race for strength. (Though there is Russian room for opposition to war: Fears exist of refugees racing through the Caucuses, and, should a pro-west Iran emerge, it could theoretically funnel Turkmenistan’s and Kazakhstan’s oil through, forgoing the Russian hegemon. Gamble either way, I suppose.) So while Russia currently opts for a peaceful, bring-talks-to-the-table path — which is, after all, what nearly 70% of Americans would prefer — they’re far from the Ayatollah’s largest backers. And for Romney to say they are somehow “fighting [Tehran’s] cause” is abjectly thick-skulled, and depressingly predictable.

That’s not to say the Kremlin is the chum the US has always we wanted. (“Uncle Joe” was, unfortunately, a propagandist misnomer.) The missile defense row is ongoing. The horrors of the Northern Caucuses haven’t abated; meddling in Central Asian affairs – look at Manas, look at the EAU – has prevented the US from landing any firm toe-holds; and the war with Georgia (even though, contra John McCain, these defenseless Georgians actually started the fighting) was a blight on both parties. Moscow runs war exercises with Venezuela, regularly bullies Ukrainian and Belorussian — and, by extent, the rest of Europe’s — interests, and, in Putin’s case, runs atrociously anti-American campaigns, the likes of which are regularly seen only in Tehran’s halls. And that’s not including the treatment of journalists, political opposition, or middle-class marchers plying nothing but democratic desires.

So, yeah, Moscow’s had a fair shake of anti-Washington sentiment. But to call them our No. 1 enemy? Has Romney’s pandering really fallen this far? Has he forgotten the nuclear disarmament deals recently struck? Has he forgotten the Russia’s willingness as mediator in North Africa? Is Chinese belligerence somehow lessened? Is the Iranian nuclear threat somehow forgotten? Has he not read a foreign policy piece since 1983?

Dmitri Medvedev — he of iPads and Twitter, as produced as Romney but viewed by nowhere near as despicably by his constituents — came out with the choicest, most delightful words in response:

Regarding ideological clichés, every time this or that side uses phrases like ‘enemy number one’, this always alarms me, this smells of Hollywood and certain times [of the past]. I would recommend all U.S. presidential candidates … do two things. First, when phrasing their position one needs to use one’s head, one’s good reason, which would not do harm to a presidential candidate. Also, [one needs to] look at his watch: we are in 2012, and not the mid-1970s.

Indeed, Romney seems to have read too many Jack Ryan tropes recently. His comment stands as another step in his rightward fall, and serves as more of the GOP’s foreign policy gaucherie, be it Newt’s scatterbrain or Santorum’s bomb-or-bust campaign. (Can you imagine how sane Ron Paul’s come to look through all of this?) It’s another foot in his mouth, another laugh-at-that-gaffe moment that’s enjoyed too many already. It hails the GOP’s obsession with Reagan, in an era the Gipper would have hardly recognized. It’s amazing, really. And it is, perhaps, one more reason why experts believe that America’s No. 1 enemy isn’t Russia, China, or even Iran — but, at the end of the day, itself.

Tara McKelvey reports on human rights in Uzbekistan, sort of:

As I stood at the gate, I held my passport and a notebook filled with the names of both kinds: dissidents who had been outspoken about human rights abuses, along with others who were willing to talk as long as they could remain anonymous. The list included activists, economists, a former government official who had resigned in protest after the Andijan massacre, one woman whose relative, a political leader, had been assassinated, and four journalists…

I thought about what would happen if he and his colleagues in Uzbekistan knew I was a journalist entering their country on a tourist visa, about what would happen to the people on my list. “No,” I lied.

He stepped over to me. “If you get on that plane and go to Tashkent,” he said, waving his hand toward the jet, “they will deport you. They will send you back on this plane.”

I might have argued, but I lost my nerve that night. I would have been fine, but what about the names in my notebook?

So.. that’s incredibly irresponsible of her, to travel on a fake visa with a notebook filled with the names of open and especially of sources who wish for anonymity to protect their identity. She was right to worry about what would have happened to those people had she been caught — they would have been imprisoned and tortured! As a journalist, she had no moral or ethical basis to risk their lives just so she could get a story, and I’m going to say shame on her for that.

That doesn’t mean the names on her list are blind victims — they surely know the risks of speaking with a westerner, and they know westerners are often shadowed by the SNB to monitor who they speak to. Even so, it’s a crazy risk, and now regular tourists and even scholars have a public record of journalists misusing the visa system to gain access. So… good luck with that one now, guys.

The meat of her piece is pretty vegan as well, if you get my drift. It can be summarized as “the U.S. wants to withdraw from Afghanistan, and to do so requires working with sketchy or monstrous people.” That’s about as interesting as an introductory class to international relations. And it’s not based on a whole lot: it kind of reads like “I didn’t go to Uzbekistan, but I talked to Bakyt Beshimov, who told me Kyrgyzstan kind of sucks, so Uzbekistan isn’t getting better.” It’s the Holiday Inn Express school of journalism.

None of that helps us understand what is happening in Uzbekistan or how the U.S. can navigate the complex moral choices involved in withdrawing from Afghanistan. While she does highlight the very real (and substantial) leverage that Uzbekistan has over U.S. policymakers — something activists like Steve Swerdlow, whom she interviewed, deny exists — she doesn’t have the contextual understanding to explain why such a thing matters or how it shapes the choices U.S. policymakers have to make.

McKelvey spoke with people who have a genuine richness of understanding about Uzbekistan and Central Asia (both Swerdlow and Beshimov have published impressive work), but it resulted in bland platitudes and a big close call of a trip that probably would have put a lot of people at risk. The sheer contentlessness of her piece is just… disappointing.

On February 28, a 40-year old Chinese female was shot dead in Peshawar, Pakistan along with her male interpreter. According to various news sources, she was a “tourist,” which is surprising considering that the Chinese are famous for group tours and that even the boldest of female travelers is unlikely to engage in tourism in Pakistan’s most Talibanized city. Nonetheless, Pakistan’s Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Operations, Tahir Ayub, confirmed that she entered Pakistan on a tourist visa and that she was taking pictures in the bazaar when she was killed.  She was a student of Beijing University, so her bold travel plans may have been related to her studies.

The murder of this lady and her interpreter is unique because the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility, saying it was in retaliation for “atrocities” by Chinese security forces in Xinjiang. While this not the first time Chinese nationals have been murdered in Pakistan, this is the first time the Taliban has claimed responsibility for murdering a Chinese national.

This murder in Peshawar occurred within 24 hours after a group of around ten Uyghurs armed with knives and axes attacked a market in Yecheng County in Xinjiang, near Kashgar, killing as many as 20 people. The Chinese security forces responded by arresting more than 80 Uyghurs. There is no proof that the Taliban actually carried out the murder in Peshawar or that the murder was related to the events in Yecheng, but it is possible given the claim of responsibility and the timing.

Why might the Taliban have an interest in killing this woman and claiming credit for it, regardless of the possible relationship to the Yecheng incident? One possibility is that members of the Pakistani Taliban have been influenced by Uyghur militants from Xinjiang who are based in the tribal regions on Pakistan. A jihadi group claiming to be called the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) has released more than a dozen videos of Uyghurs in the tribal regions of Pakistan engaging in military training with other Central Asian militants. One video featured Chinese Uyghur Memtieli Tiliwaldi, who was later killed by Chinese security forces in Kashgar after he participated in attacks on Chinese civilians in Kashgar on July 30 and 31, 2011.

A set videos called “Tourism of the Believers” has featured a preacher speaking in Uyghur to approximately 30 listeners about jihad and other Islamic issues. It can be assumed that the videos were shot in Pakistan because of the mountainous terrain in the background and the listeners’ traditional Islamic clothing which is commonly worn by men in Pakistan. It can also be assumed that the listeners actually understand the preacher and are not just props for the video since they respond in unison to the speaker’s cues. These videos give good cause to believe that there are at least a few dozen Uyghur militants in Pakistan.

Although Xinjiang and China are not a top priority for the Taliban on par with the U.S. and NATO, some Taliban and Central Asian militants may have been influenced by their Uyghur brethren in Pakistan and taken up the TIP’s cause. This unfortunate lady may have been the victim of a revenge act by such members of the Taliban. Since the attackers have not been caught, they may even have been Uyghurs or Central Asians in Peshawar themselves.

Another motive for the Taliban in killing Chinese nationals in Pakistan is related to China’s developing infrastructure, such as roads, tunnels and bridges in Pakistan which facilitate trade and commerce between the two countries. The Taliban may feel threatened by China as a positive development actor in the country, which is helping to spur Pakistan’s economic development. It serves no benefit to the Taliban if people have more jobs and trade opportunities, especially with an “infidel” country like China. If anything, a better economic condition as a result of trade with China could deter people from joining the Taliban.

By killing Chinese nationals the Taliban may hope to deter Chinese nationals from working in Pakistan and therefore stunt Chinese influence in Pakistan and add friction to the China-Pakistan relationship. The Taliban may also be trying to provoke a response from China through an aggressive reaction or rhetoric to portray China as an enemy since the U.S. is soon leaving Afghanistan and terrorist groups always benefit from having new enemies to justify their existence.

China and Pakistan have been quick to affirm their mutual interest in finding the murderers and respecting each others’ sovereignty, but the overarching issue is whether this incident will become part a larger trend of attacks against Chinese nationals in Pakistan. Thousands of Chinese nationals are working to develop Pakistan’s infrastructure and their projects could get sidelined if the Taliban and other allied extremists succeed in carrying out more of these types of attacks.

Scott Radnitz has a provocative take in Foreign Policy:

On the surface, Central Asia would appear to be ripe for a popular uprising modeled on the Arab Spring. The “stans” are home to repressive governments, high unemployment, inequality, and widespread corruption. Over a year has passed since the wave of protests began to spread across the Arab world. Yet there’s been no comparable sign of popular discontent in this other Muslim-majority region…

Or, more accurately, criminality is integral to the functioning of the system. It is no secret that in Central Asia many government jobs are for sale. People who can afford a lucrative post, whether operating a state agency or running a province, can expect to get a return on their investment. Rulers understand that their subordinates are greedy, and allow them to exploit their position as long as they also perform their basic duties, such as keeping order in the provinces or passing on revenues to the state budget. (This arrangement resembles a practice in pre-revolutionary France called tax farming.) …

Thus, we see a picture of dictatorship that is far from the orderly, meticulous image dictators seek to project. Central Asia’s leaders have distinguished themselves as expert managers of greed and graft, but because this system rests on informal agreements and depends on the personality of the ruler, it is also fragile. The episodes above hint at possible troubles, but the possibilities are more alarming when we consider historical examples of how apparent stability can suddenly give way to instability on a massive scale. What could cause such a breakdown in Central Asia?

There’s a lot to unpack here. I understand the need for framing, but “Arabs are Muslim and Central Asians are Muslims so why aren’t they behaving the same” is an awful frame (I will assume that was decided by the FP editors, since they’ve done similar things to other authors). Radnitz goes on to wonder if the lack of succession for the tyrans of the region is the most likely flashpoint for a sudden breakdown of order.

It’s a compelling story, with one exception: Turkmenistan. The one country where you’d expect a secretive palace politics would lead to a massive breakdown in order and control after a tyrant’s sudden passing, in Turkmenistan we instead saw an orderly consolidation of the local elites to discard the established succession laws and emplace Berdimuhamedov as the new replacement tyrant. In return, the elites of the country — who profit handsomely from the country’s vast gas reserves — continue to profit handsomely from their positions.

Despite the lack of known succession plans in Kazakhstan, this is the most likely result when Nazarbayev kicks it. Right now, the current elite structure benefits greatly from the status quo, so it’s likely that they will organize to continue that status quo when the top becomes a vacuum.

In Uzbekistan, there’s likely to be at least an attempt to maintain a similar continuation when Karimov dies. Despite the grand warnings of total chaos when he kicks it, in all likelihood there will be at least an attempt by the current elite class to consolidate power and just replace the dictator at the top. Using Radnitz’s hypothesis that it’s the distribution of loot that solidifies regime stability, Uzbekistan’s many economic issues could come into play in that scenario, but there’s no way to know if that would be the case.

However, this is where Radnitz’s piece doesn’t quite gel together. His title, intro, and conclusion reference the Arab Spring and Tahir Square. In most cases, those events, collectively, were masses of normal people agitating for regime change — not the collected elites of a given system. Radnitz does not actually discuss why the people of Central Asia are not taking to the streets to demand freedom and whatnot (he also elides past the fact that so far, Tahir Square in Egypt hasn’t really altered the oppression of democracy activists there but that’s probably another post).

In this case, the repressiveness of the Central Asia regimes might offer a clue. The December riots and massacre in Zhanaozen, Kazakhstan, did not prompt massive demonstrations in support of the victims elsewhere in the country. In Uzbekistan, a brief protest movement in Andijon in 2005 led to years of increased oppression but never a repeat of the massive protest that preceded the killing. In Turkmenistan, regime control is so tight that even rappers have to toe a very uncertain line about upsetting the authorities. And in Tajikistan, it’s unclear that there is much of a movement against the Rahmon regime at all, to say anything of a growing society-wide movement.

It’s really only in Kyrgyzstan where we’ve seen a mass movement coalesce into a regime change. And many Kyrgyz I’ve spoken with have expressed frustration, even regret at what that’s done to their country (the constant upheaval has not exactly served most Kyrgyz well). Other regimes and other publics, too, look at what Kyrgyzstan has gone through trying to establish what the International Community would consider “normal” politics and see something to be avoided, not a shining example to replicate. Many Kyrgyz, too, openly express a desire for a Putin-like figure who can impose order on the chaos, rather than more voting and more turmoil.

So maybe that’s part of the answer as well. Central Asia’s first experiment with democratic revolution hasn’t exactly worked out for them. It makes it hard to argue that other countries — especially relatively well-off places like Kazakhstan — should try to replicate that for themselves.

Frank Jacobs has a really interesting piece in the Opinionator about border areas and government control.

But there exists another type of border, one that doesn’t reflect back our image. In vampiric asymmetry, it offers only the void. There are no barriers, no officials, no capitals on the other side. The world as we know it — reciprocal even across national borders — ends here. One thinks of the American West in the mid-19th century, or parts of Brazil into the 20th. The borderline does not merely separate two territories, but two paradigms: law and order from anarchy, progress from primitivism. Or perhaps, seen from the other side: freedom from oppression, purity from decadence.

In earlier times, such lawless anomalies were surprisingly common, even in the middle of “civilization.” London was riddled by as many as a dozen legal safe havens, where debtors and criminals could seek refuge from arrest [1]. Emerging first in the Middle Ages, they persisted until Parliament abolished the last of them in 1723.

Lawless regions as an analytic construct is of interest to Central Asia hands, if only because there are a few of them in the region and they can sometimes adversely affect international politics. Jacobs highlights an intriguing region, called “Zomia” by Dutch historian Willem van Schendel, where states exercise little or no control over the people who live there. Recently van Schendel expanded this Zomia region to include several of the states of Central Asia, as highlighted in the map above.

The Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan is perhaps the most immediately famous part of Zomia, and that can give you an idea of what the construct means: a region where a government might exist in some form but where control is either absent or violently contested by locals. It is intriguing, to be sure. But Jacobs also gets a few things badly wrong as well.

For one, the map of Zomia—which is posted above—is wrong. Even ignoring the completely arbitrary extent of the shaded area, whoever made the map mislabeled Tajikistan as Uzbekistan. That’s just… well, mistakes happen, even in the New York Times. But if you can’t name the right country on a map, just how much do you know how the social disconnection that may or may not be there?

But there is a more serious mistake Jacobs makes in trying to discuss the idea of Zomia:

In 2009, the Yale political scientist James C. Scott examined the fractious nature of Zomia’s politics in a “counter-narrative” [8] — in other words, from the local point of view. These highlanders, he contended, are not unassimilated because they are untouched by modernity, but because they reject it. This puts them in league with, or at least in the same league as, the non-conformists of Alsatia. This also illuminates, and complicates, our understanding of the Afghanistan-Pakistan conflicts, which might not be all about secular modernity versus religious orthodoxy, but maybe also about city versus village (or, more likely, valley).

Unless one equates modernity with answering to a central government you did not choose, this is all wrong. All of it. I can’t speak to Scott’s argument—I own but have not read his book—but the idea that these transitional regions resist their governments because they reject modernity is nonsense. Afghanistanis and Pakistanis do not reject modernity writ large: they love running water and sanitation and schools and iPhones and electricity and the Internet. Even the Taliban enjoy and appreciate these aspects of modernity. What they are rejecting is a government they view as abusive and unrepresentative. Moreover, most Afghans still identify as Afghans, even (or perhaps especially) when explaining why they reject rule-by-Karzai. So it’s not as simple as rejecting a national identity or modernity.

A similar thread connects the other regions of Central Asia. Southern Kyrgyz don’t reject modernity—they’d love to all drive a Mercedes and live in a big house and have nice things. What they reject is the broken politics of Bishkek. In Tajikistan, it’s hard to say even that the countryside is rejecting the state—the state is so absent in many places it’s hard to say the people there believe in it one way or another very strongly at all.

The idea of a lawless region as an object of analysis is fraught with issues. These regions are not “lawless,” as Jacobs calls them. They just operate under different laws that are neither drafted nor enforced by the state. The tribal areas of Pakistan, for example, actually follow a long-established pattern of competition between local and central methods of control. Similarly, Southwest Kyrgyzstan isn’t rejecting modernity by any stretch, it is just coming under the control of mafia dons who have taken up high-level positions in the local and regional government. It’s not lawless, it’s just a different kind of law, however un-ideal and crappy.

I know the idea Jacobs is getting at: that some regions of the world, seemingly clustered in Central and South Asia reject their governments’ control. That’s fine and fairly accurate to say. But to extend that to then argue that the people in this vast expanse exist in lawlessness and reject modernity is a pretty ridiculous assumption to assign to them. It’s also just not true, at least in a big chunk of the region he’s describing. When trying to make a grand argument about a big topic, it’s important to get the details right.

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?