For at least the last seven or eight years, the Prokudin-Gorskii collection of color photos of the Russian empire taken in the early 20th century, gets noticed and reported by journalists, history buffs, and photography enthusiasts. Less well known is that the Turkestan Album, a series of volumes on the people, architecture, history, and economy of Russian Turkestan commissioned by General von Kaufman, the Empire’s first Governor-General in Turkestan, was also digitized by the Library of Congress and made available several years ago. (Many thanks to Fergana News for writing about this, which reminded me that I had a draft post on this from 2007.)

The bulk of the photos in the collection were taken in 1871 and 1872, while some images in the historical volume date back to 1853. The collection contains well over 1,000 photos and is a phenomenal resource not only for a glimpse into Central Asia of the mid- to late-19th century, but also into how the Russian Empire viewed the people of these territories.

(P.S. — Fergana News also recently posted some interesting photos of clay structures in Uzbekistan taken between 1974 and 1989.)

Last week, the US Helsinki Commission held a hearing on Kazakhstan’s stability, looking at the violence in Zhanaozen and the recent parliamentary elections and questioning whether or not Kazakhstan is as stable as its government claims. The testimony, which can be found here is interesting and worth taking a look at. Included with the expert testimony are also statements from Kazakhstan’s embassy and from the Alga People’s Party and People’s Front.

Sean Roberts identifies in his testimony several changes in Kazakhstan’s economy and society to which the government has been poorly prepared to respond and which increase the possibility that recent violence in Kazakhstan is the beginning of a longer period of less stability. They are:

1. The rapid growth of Islam’s popularity in Kazakhstan’s society, an process going on since the early ’90s has recently become more apparent in public. This public religiosity, which does not suggest the threat of terrorism or a near term move toward political Islam, is poorly understood by the government and the country’s secular middle class.
2. The growth of ethnic Kazakh nationalism, also ongoing since the early ’90s, but recently taking on new characteristics that heighten tensions.
3. Rising and unmet economic expectations.

I’m paraphrasing, but on the first two items, Dr. Roberts argues that the thoroughly Soviet education and background of Kazakhstan’s leadership leaves it out of touch and unable to adequately respond to the public. The government’s response to labor strikes, including the violence in Zhanaozen, he says, show that the government was not prepared to deal with dissatisfaction over unmet economic expectations. Dr. Roberts says that these challenges are not extreme nor likely to cause widespread unrest in the near term, but that the stagnancy of the political system means that the government lacks mechanisms to deal with large socio-economic changes. [Note: Alima wrote about the crisis of unmet expectations at length recently.]

This is good, succinct analysis of the situation that puts risks to Kazakhstan’s stability in good context. The risks are there, the government is ill-prepared to deal with them at present, but it’s unlikely that it will be overwhelmed by them soon.

These risks, however, aren’t present only in Kazakhstan. They exist in similar forms and combinations throughout Central Asia. Growing segments of society throughout the region are bringing (or attempting to…) Islam into the public square, where it is responded to with shock and terror by secular officials. National economies are failing to meet the expectations, and in many areas, even the basic needs, of the public. And though nationalism is not so clearly a problem the way it is Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in the rest of Central Asia, there are small signs that society is challenging the state’s monopoly on defining what it means to be Uzbek, Tajik, Kyrgyz, etc.

In talking about risks to stability, there is often a tendency to focus on presidential succession, the specter of fundamentalism and political Islam, and a more recent tendency to talk about replication of the Arab Spring. Recent history should make it abundantly clear though, that analysts, experts, and observers are taken by surprise in the region. Game-planning what happens after Karimov dies or a resurgence of the IMU activity in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan might be worthless because they assume state and society lack the mechanisms to respond to and manage succession or terrorist groups.

The greatest risks to stability throughout the region are medium- to long-term risks arising from the three aforementioned factors and the oppositional relationship between state and society. Devising a list of indicators and warnings based on the three factors Dr. Roberts identifies — rising public religiosity, increasing nationalism, and under-performance in the economy — are more likely not only to lead to better anticipation of the trajectory of stability in Central Asia but also to provide a better idea of when serious risks to stability are likely to arise.

Photo by Tiina Oikarinen

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.

The BBC has a very nice photo series up right now called Tajik Village Life. It’s a quick nine, with the obligatory old person looking wistful and remembering the good ol’ days, but the the photos are nice and the scenery stunning.

On September 9th, Tajikistan marks the 20th anniversary of its declaration of independence. What can be said about Tajikistan 20 years after independence? The word ‘survival’ comes to mind first and foremost. Unfortunately, Tajikistan is defined from the outside mostly by its civil war – not by any connection to the Samanid Empire or the ambitious planned hydroelectric projects. While the war officially ended in 1997, there was continued violence – a direct legacy of the conflict. However, the violence steadily declined. During my recent time in Tajikistan I felt that I was living in one of the safer places on earth. True, crime is low and the state is not exactly under siege, but there are still episodes of political violence. In the last several years there have been serious incidents such as the clashes between government security forces and what appear to be the last of the irreconcilables. Mirzo Ziyoev was killed while Ali Bedaki and Mullo Abdullo were dispatched like the sad remnants of some long-marginalized guerilla force. Of course, this came with a price: the loss of security forces who died in these clashes.

Theses recent clashes have been defined in two different ways. The first argues that the fighting was a sign of the weakness of the Tajik government and a possible prelude the state failure – however one may wish to define it. The second argument notes that all the known “trouble-makers were eliminated,” with the exception of one who has promised to go back to work and play nice. This argument relies on the fact that there are not hundreds of Mullo Abdullos and successors in the field like there are in Afghanistan. Yet the government of Tajikistan still points to other perceived threats. Frequently mentioned are the Islamic Movement of Tajikistan, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Jamaat ut-Tabligh, and other less well-known groups. Of course, few independent analysts believe that Hizb ut-Tahrir and Jamaat ut-Tabligh do anything more than talk. As for the IMU, if they are as pervasive as the governments of Central Asia believe, then I don’t understand how they are so inactive in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. For a ratio of threat assessments to actual terrorist activity, the IMU must be at the bottom of any list – worldwide.

And even further down the actual-threat list is the former Popular Front ally Mahmud Khudoyberdiev – either long-dead or long-retired. Tajikistan’s government structures occasionally bring his name up with the implication that the Uzbek government is sheltering him and hoping to repeat his 1998 incursion into Tajikistan. Whatever the case, he has done nothing since 1998 except be a useful boogeyman for some in the Tajik government.

Of course, the worst of the violent conflict in Tajikistan is long over. But for how long is “no more war” going to be good enough for the people of Tajikistan? Many experts were wrong about North Africa, Syria, etc…Will even more experts be proven wrong on Central Asia? Of course, repression + poverty does not automatically = governments being overthrown. But an analysis that goes a little deeper than the factors mentioned above is required.

Beyond terrorism and insurgency, there is the issue of a weak economy. It may be growing, but from a rather low level. Tajikistan is, in fact, the poorest of the former Soviet republics. And no country on earth relies on the cash remittances of foreign guest workers as much as Tajikistan does. All this with a rapidly growing youth population, very few of whom have decent job prospects. And, as must be mentioned, all of this is taking place in an environment of stifling corruption. Of course, President Rahmon’s master plan relies on the construction of the Rogun hydroelectric dam. The cost is far beyond the means of Tajikistan, and foreign funders are not lining up to support the project in the same way that an Iranian company stepped in to fund the completion of the Sangtuda hydroelectric project. A further complication is the downstream country of Uzbekistan, which feels strongly that the change patterns of water flow will harm its agricultural sector.

The involvement of Uzbekistan merits further attention, as the two countries have been intimately connected throughout recent history, even well before the arrival of the Russians in the region. Culturally, economically and geographically the two countries are connected at the hip. Unfortunately, the relationship is a poor one – especially between President Rahmon and President Karimov. Border crossings are now often a very difficult process, and in some rural areas the border is actually mined and patrolled by willing-to-shoot Uzbek border guards. Uzbekistan cites the dangers of drug trafficking and terrorism and won’t budge on the border issue.

As for drug trafficking, Tajikistan is at the forefront of the heroin trade as a major transit route, Yet, despite claims that drug trafficking is a threat to stability, the drug traffickers here are not of the Mexican variety. They are not in conflict with the state or with the security structures to any significant extent. There appears to be a relationship here, one that can be debated (gated PDF).

And what of Tajikistan’s role in geopolitics? It has recently affirmed its position as being firmly underneath Russia’s “security umbrella,” an obvious enough outcome.

But what of the American factor? With the withdrawal/drawdown of troops from Afghanistan in 2014, will the United States seek to bolster its position in the region, or will it move into a more isolationist phrase? That’s unknown, but what of the Tajik leadership’s perceptions? In a lengthy interview the analyst Arkady Dubnov stated:

I’ve been watching the Tajik leadership’s stance and policies over the last 20 years, and I’ve said publicly on several occasions that Dushanbe overestimates its influence in the region and in the world.

And later in the interview:

The constant refrain from Dushanbe is that if things go wrong with the Russians, they can always try with the Americans. It’s obvious game-playing.

So…Tajikistan will either be showered with American largesse or will be forgotten, or somewhere in between. As for Russia, who knows how that will work out, but Tajikistan needs Russia desperately both economically and militarily. And the Afghan factor? Speculating on how Afghanistan will come to affect its northern neighbors would require more space than is available here. Predicting future geopolitical arrangements is an exercise in futility, so I’ll end on that note.

We don’t cover it obsessively, but we here at Registan.net have been keeping a wary eye on the deteriorating state of regional water arrangements and conflicts in Central Asia. Just about every author here, from Michael Hancock to Misha, has written at some point about how management issues are sparking worry and have the potential to lead to violence.

So I was happy to see RFE/RL’s Muhammad Tahir write a really detailed article about what’s looming on the horizon:

As demand increases and the volume of water in the [Amu Darya] continues to shrink, disputes among the stakeholders over water management are becoming more and more complicated.

Tajikistan’s foreign minister, Hamrokhon Zarifi, told journalists at a July 18 press conference in Dushanbe that “differences of opinion” regarding the river were affecting the nature of overall relations between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and have not improved.

At the center of their disagreement lies Tajikistan’s plan to complete the construction of Rogun, a Soviet-era hydropower dam that is being built on the Vaksh River, one of the source of the Amu Darya.

If completed to its full specifications, said Johannes Linn, senior resident scholar at the Washington-based Emerging Markets Forum, “it would be the highest hydroelectric dam in the world, and this is what makes Uzbekistan concerned.”

“The problem, obviously, is that Uzbekistan feels threatened by what they regard as a potential control of Tajikistan over the downstream water resources and do not want Tajikistan to be able to exercise such control,” Linn said, “while on the other hand Tajikistan feels that it is essential for its long-term development that it uses the water resources at its disposal that are generated in the country to the extent possible — and the intention being without harming downstream neighbors.”

While this is excellent, it’s not moving the needle terribly far. I wish Muhammed had a chance to explore more the problems facing Afghanistan’s water needs, which complicate the Uzbek-Tajik water dispute. Because the route of the Pyanj River, which becomes the Amu Darya downstream and defines the Afghan-Tajik border, moves around there are now Afghan settlements (pdf) on the Tajik side of the border. The Asia Development Bank is trying to develop a regional framework for managing the water supply, but it’s very slow going.

But this isn’t really a complaint about Tahir’s piece, which is very good. There’s just more to this, a lot more, that actually makes the situation seem even less hopeful than he points out. Which is really too bad, because such an important phenomenon deserves much more attention.

The picture above, from March 2009, shows the border between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan on the western side of the town of Kara-Suu. In fits and starts since independence, Uzbekistan has defined its separation from its neighbors by various means, one of which is quite easily seen above in the form of a deep trench dug through a road connecting the two countries.

The image below, also from March 2009 and of the area just to the south of the image above, clearly shows how these border controls are circumvented. Three well-worn paths, one just going around a similar trench cut through a road, connect Tel’man to a neighboring village in Uzbekistan. A comparison to 2003 imagery shows that though the roads at the north and south of this shot were destroyed on the Uzbek side, traffic kept moving.

One can travel along the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan border in Google Earth and find similar paths crossing the border in imagery taken between 2003 and 2009. And despite tighter controls since then, movement across the border is still fairly common and inexpensive. Noah found that the going rate to cross into Uzbekistan and then back to Kyrgyzstan at Kara-Suu is currently about $2.50 each way. Cross border trade is important to livelihoods on both sides of the border, so controls be damned, goods and people will move back and forth.

Sadly, the people who routinely circumvent border controls put themselves at risk when one side or the other decides to get serious about slowing traffic or simply wants to make a point. A recent RFE/RL story highlights that there’s been a sudden rise in shooting deaths on the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border in Batken. Some claim the Uzbekistan’s border service is protecting its monopoly on smuggling, but it’s just as likely that a more mundane explanation for the increase in violence exists.

Obviously, it would be fantastic if the three countries sharing the Ferghana Valley could delimit their borders, allow trade, etc. As unlikely as that’s been over the last decade, it’s probably getting even less likely. Uzbek anxiety about protecting “Fortress Uzbekistan” from unsavory people, ideas, and consumer goods will last as long as Islom Karimov does. And with a Kyrgyz parliament racing to appeal most frenetically to the lowest common denominator, concern over Tajiks buying land in Batken (where there are fewer and fewer Kyrgyz) will likely grow into demagoguery and itchy trigger fingers.

In his overview of Central Asia’s downward slide, Josh closes by saying we could spend plenty of time reflecting on why each country in the region has become less free and/or able to provide basic services to varying degrees. While true that each government is dealing with its own particular problems, there is a common theme in what’s happened in each of these countries. This suggests that there may be a shared source of this slide. But first, what exactly is it that’s happened?

In a weekend story on Kazakhstan’s presidential election in The New York Times, Ellen Barry describes how the way of holding an election in independent Kazakhstan in 2011 has become the way of holding an election in the late Soviet period.

But documents published in an opposition newspaper a few days before the election suggested that official pressure had pumped up the results. A memorandum faxed to the municipal government in the city of Saran laid out something called “Operation Snowball.” In technical language befitting a military operation, workers were asked to provide officials with lists of their contacts — family members, neighbors, subordinates — and make sure each one voted. This evidently went beyond neighborly encouragement, since, according to the document, the government was to be provided with “a full list of the enterprise’s workers, with family coefficient, and time of vote (100 percent vote to be completed at 11 a.m.).”

It all struck me as a little surreal, but my colleague Viktor Klimenko, who has worked in The New York Times’s Moscow bureau for more than 20 years, felt right at home. In the Soviet Union, Viktor was recruited to work as an “agitator,” assigned several housing blocks in which he was to ensure 100 percent turnout. He went door to door checking lists of individual voters, and then visited again to deliver a short biography of the candidate (there was only one).

Barry says that “this system has been reconstituting itself across the post-Soviet space.” And clearly, the Soviet way of ritually conferring democratic legitimacy on the country’s leadership is not the only artifact of pre-independence government to find its way back into regular usage.

I have wondered recently whether or not there is an under-appreciation for the extent to which current practices of Central Asian governments are the result of the preservation or resurrection of Soviet institutions, modified though they may be. Especially to someone who knows the region well, that might seem like a silly observation, but take the State Department 2010 Uzbekistan Human Rights Report, for example. It starts right off by calling Uzbekistan an authoritarian state and continues to detail many of the very nasty things that go on in Uzbekistan. What really makes Uzbekistan a pervasively oppressive country though is that it’s a totalitarian state with a grand vision for the future run by oligarchs in which coercion and force are for the most part unnecessary because the consequences of being noticed stepping out of line.

Barry notes that this lack of coercion was a feature of the Soviet system,

Viktor, who is rather an expert at matters of persuasion, never came right out and told them that he had been assigned to make sure they voted. He just asked them to vote in the morning, so that he could go home early.

“Everyone would go,” he said. “They had been threatened for 70 years of Soviet power. No extra threats were needed.”

The SOAS report on Uzbekistan’s 2009 cotton campaign [PDF] found evidence that people do not need to be reminded of the consequences of failures to comply with the state’s desires. I am fully confident that one need not scratch very hard to find similar evidence that Kazakhs did not need any reminder of the importance of registering their vote early on election day.

Similarly, one doesn’t need to put forth much effort to find backsliding everywhere in the region (with the possible exception of Turkmenistan, which had nowhere to go but up following Turkmenbashi’s death). Religious freedom is certainly on the decline in Tajikistan, and there are signs that it is declining or at risk in Kyrgyzstan in spite of other liberal advances since Bakiev’s overthrow. Uzbekistan devotes significant airtime and column-space to attacks on foreign ideas that turn Uzbeks, especially youth, away from “centuries-old national and spiritual traditions.”

Obviously, none of these countries are perfectly characterized as Soviet replicants with national characteristics. However, the state-society relationship seems to be fundamentally unaltered. Each government acts as if its primary function is to shepherd its citizens toward a goal spanning from Kazakhstan’s mundane but admirable and realistic desire to be wealthy and important in the international system to Uzbekistan’s abstract, hard-to-pin-down desire to build a distinctly Uzbek super-awesome-state that everyone will avoid looking directly in the eyes because it’s so super-awesome.

That each of these governments has a somewhat to downright adversarial relationship with their respective publics helps, I think, explain a good deal of the “why?” to which Josh referred at the end of his post a couple days ago. But it doesn’t satisfactorily answer the timing. Shevardnadze’s overthrow might be a decent explanation for why the slide began when it did, but the answer for why things seem to have really gotten so bad recently in places like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan might be as leaders feeling that they have little time to secure their legacies. Ultimately, there probably are no answers that satisfy; restricting society may just be a proven, comfortable, and reliable solution to Central Asian elites.

As was already noted the other day, it’s a damned shame.

Despite the boosters out there who think Kazakhstan is on a bright shining path to the future, a number of people seem to be avoiding the spin. Joanna Lillis, for example, is straight up mocking the election observers who say this most recent election was super-awesome. She profiles Daniel Witt, who runs the International Tax and Investment Center, or ITIC.

ITIC, if you recall, sponsored an observation mission that I, too, mocked rather ruthlessly, especially when one of those monitors appealed to its sponsorship to claim he wasn’t in any way compelled to issue statements favoring Nazarbayev’s electioneering. As Hugh Raiser notes, there is “something of the Twilight Zone” between the OSCE mission, which was sharply critical of the election in almost all respects, and people like those on the ITIC mission.

Put simply, this year Kazakhstan’s prospects for a democratic transition regressed sharply, and pressure on any non-Nur Otan parties increased at the same time. The political situation in the country is so farcical that Yermukhamet Yertysbayev, Nursultan Nazarbayev’s political advisor, is now planning to use a business investment organization that just happens to be run by Nazarbayev’s son-in-law, Timur Kulibayev, to foster a “top-down revolution” in Parliament. That is, using the main ruling party to create an opposition based on fealty to that same ruling party. It’s bonkers.

But Kazakhstan is probably the least of these, even if it’s right now the most visible (and, given the angry defenses ITIC observers have begun mounting of criticism for their sycophancy, the most annoying). Kyrgyzstan just celebrated the year anniversary of the revolution that swept Kurmanbek Bakiev out of power, led to several months of protests and appalling ethnic cleansing, and left Rosa Otunbayeva in charge of the interim government.

It was not, as this photo from neweurasia.net shows, an ebullient affair. A year on, the issues that underscored the tragic violence, both against Uzbeks in Osh and against Kyrgyz nationwide, remains unresolved. The government struggles to function, as it is beset with in-fighting and squabbles over petty bases of power. The transition plan, which Otunbayeva crafted to much acclaim, remains at best only partially implemented. The economy remains in tatters, and it remains to be seen if joining the Belarus-Russia-Kazakhstan customs union will help it much. Many analysts are wondering just how long the government can continue in this state, as it is teetering on the brink of abject failure.

To the east, Tajikistan is also sliding into decrepitude. The State Department just downgraded its government to “authoritarian,” where it joins Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. In Tajikistan, the State Department report said, “President Emomali Rahmon and his supporters, drawn mainly from one region of the country, dominated political life. The constitution provides for a multiparty political system, but in practice the government obstructed political pluralism.” The government is so incapable of providing services to its people that it’s had to extend the power rationing system, putting poor people under extreme duress. And there remains fighting at the Kyrgyz border, when there’s not fighting in the central valleys, where an ad hoc groups of Islamists, drug smugglers, and other thugs clash routinely with security forces.

The closed Uzbek-Kyrgyz border continues to keep people on edge. While Uzbekistan deserves praise for its handling of the thousands of Uzbek refugees that fled the border during the pogroms in Osh and Jalal-abad, its human rights abuses have not improved. Just last month, Uzbekistan kicked out Human Rights Watch, the final shred of any international rights monitors that were able to remain there. As Nathan has been documenting, the government has also demonstrated a worrying rejection of international investment, which is preventing the economy from even hinting at recovery or dynamism.

Turkmenistan is still… Turkmenistan. It almost seems stuck in the Brezhnev era, where even mild criticism of the government results in imprisonment in a psychiatric ward (because opposing President Berdimuhamedov is a mental illness, you see). The government seems to be opposed to educating its students, and even something as basic as getting a mobile phone is apparently a nightmarish process.

NOW, none of this is to be all gloom and doom. The region is will not, for example, fall into ethnic war (despite what happened in Kyrgyzstan), nor is there some impending breakdown of the regional or international order. What is so worrying, however, is that each of these countries seems to have made anti-progress in the last couple of years. Some places, like Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan, seem to be stuck in a time warp, while others, like Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, have actually become worse in many respects (though in Kazakhstan, the economy seems to paper over many of the other problems people face).

We could speculate until the cows come home about why this is the case. I don’t think there’s any one reason for it, as each country seems to be struggling with its own issues. Whatever the causes, to see the region experience this kind of a slide is sad. It has such promise, and while progress is by no means a straight line, I wish its national leadership wasn’t so opposed to seeing it do better.