Uzbekistan

What to do with a problem like Uzbekistan

by Joshua Foust

The stars aligned and two interviews I gave over the last week for different-language’d public media have been published. The first is with Dutch Public Radio, and it’s about the U.S. decision to lift restrictions on providing certain kinds of military equipment to the Uzbek regime. (See more here.) The second is with VOA Uzbek, [...]

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Turkestan Album

by Nathan Hamm
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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 [...]

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The Uzbek “Military” Waiver

by Joshua Foust
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This B-52 is not a part of the “military aid” the U.S. will provide Uzbekistan. The Wall Street Journal reports: The Obama administration waived a ban on military assistance to Uzbekistan in a move to bolster ties with a nation that is part of a vital supply line to Afghanistan, but was cut off from [...]

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Kazakhstan’s Stability, Central Asia’s Stability

by Nathan Hamm
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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 [...]

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And Daveed Wins Everything, Forever

by Joshua Foust

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross ups the ante in his “friendly” sparring with me on the Mukhtarov arrest: Foust argues that “just because Mukhtarov said some scary things on the Internet, that doesn’t mean he committed any traditionally-defined crimes in doing so. To criminalize this sort of correspondence veers dangerously close to creating thought-crimes.”Again, the correspondence wasn’t criminalized [...]

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The Merits of the Mukhtarov Case, and Why Skepticism Is Not Conspiracy

by Joshua Foust

My friend and frequent sparring partner Daveed Gartenstein-Ross thinks I wrote “an epistemological wreck” about the Mukhtarov case last week. He raises some good points, and also neglects some follow-up work on what we covered here. So in the spirit of collegial debate, I figured I should respond. One thing Daveed and I disagree on [...]

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How Twitter’s New Policy Rewards Elite Activism

by Sarah Kendzior

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 [...]

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Investing. For Victory!

by Nathan Hamm
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A curious press release went out today that urges the US public and government to support investment in Central Asia, especially in Uzbekistan. (Unsurprisingly, it is currently the top news item at The American Uzbekistan Chamber of Commerce at the moment). The release casts US business as the force that should be left behind to [...]

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The Truly Bizarre Case of the Uzbek Rights Activist Turned Terror Suspect

by Joshua Foust
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I wrote earlier today about the weird trumped up Uzbek Terror hype machine, and how it might have snagged a man for committing, essentially, a thought crime. Jamshid Mukhtarov is currently in custody on suspicion of providing material support to the Islamic Jihad Union. We’ll set aside questions of whether the IJU exists anywhere outside [...]

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The Crazy, Trumped Up Uzbek Hype

by Joshua Foust

Yesterday, U.S. federal counterterrorism agents descended on O’Hare International Airport to arrest an Uzbek man, Jamshid Muhktarov, on charges of terrorism. According to U.S. investigators, Jamshid Mukhtarov was working with Islamic Jihad Union, an affiliate of al-Qaeda, when he was arrested Saturday night at O’Hare while changing planes for an overseas flight. Mukhtarov, 35, a [...]

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Uzbekistan’s National Security Waiver

by Joshua Foust

BILLS 112hr2055enr Much ado has been made about the U.S. decision to reengage with the government of Uzbekistan as a part of a regional strategy to both lessen American dependence on Pakistan and possibly chart some sort of regional strategy going forward. Human rights groups are, naturally, aghast at the idea because the Uzbek government [...]

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