Odds and Ends from CA 202

The paper below was my term paper for the Central Asian Studies class I took while in Bishkek. It would have been a lot longer and covered other technologies such as wireless mesh networks if I had more time, but it does a reasonably good job with respect to Tor. The tl;dr version goes like this: while there has been some good work done to port Tor to various smartphone platforms, the mobile market in Uzbekistan is still using much older phones with far less memory and computing power. Also check out this presentation I gave for CA 202 on Berdymukhamedov and post-Turkmenbashi Turkmenistan.

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Internet Censorship Circumvention Technology in the Uzbek Political and Economic Context

“I think that there is no necessity to convince you in the fact that the Internet era has begun. At the same time, considering the issues surrounding us in far and near regions, we must NOT forget about the fact that destructive forces that are eager to confuse the youth and “feed” the with incorrect information and thus use Internet as a tool.” - Uzbek President Islam Karimov (“Islam Karimov: I Believe That Journalists Are My Strongest and Trustful Support.”)

As President Karimov hints, part of America’s master plan to promote instability in Central Asia is to foster color revolutions in the region by spreading destructive misinformation via the Internet. The Arab Spring was only a prelude to our designs on Central Asia. However, the Uzbek government has created a sophisticated filtering system to block most people’s access to content relating to political prisoners, corruption, the “massacre” in Andijan, and a variety of other content. After a brief overview of the political context in which Uzbekistan’s filtering system developed, this paper will look at the popular Tor software package and examine whether this technology can be realistically employed in the national political and economic context to successfully corrupt and misinform the youth of Uzbekistan.

To begin, even as President Karimov consolidated his grip on power in the first decade after independence, the Internet in Uzbekistan was relatively free “with the exception of some limited filters for pornography that were implemented on UzSCINET [an Uzbek research network]...the turning point in the state’s relationship to Internet freedom began following a series of attacks in Tashkent in 2004 blamed on the Hizb-ut-Tahrir (Hit) and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan” (Deibert et al. 267). At present, while private ISPs can and do operate in Uzbekistan, the state-owned telecommunications company Uzbektelecom JSC has a monopoly on access to Uzbekistan’s IT infrastructure. In this way “operators and providers are entitled to access international telecommunication networks exclusively through the infrastructure of Uzbektelecom JSC, which facilitates control over Internet content and hinders active competition on the communications market (Deibert et al. 267). However, Uzbektelecom’s monopoly is not absolute. A handful of ISPs “have their own international satellite connections...A growing trend among ISPs is using UzPAK’s [the Uzbek Internet and its filtering system] lines to send messages and satellite networks to view or download information. This solution allows the providers to circumvent UzPAK’s monitoring network and channels’ low capacities” (Deibert et al. 269). All ISPs do still practice self-censorship, especially when pressured by the National Security Service (SNB). “There is no mandatory government publication review, but ISPs risk having their licenses revoked if they post ‘inappropriate’ information” (Deibert et al. 271).

As for the types of websites that are blocked and how they are blocked, “The SNB’s censorship is selective and often targets articles on government corruption, violations of human rights, and organized crime. Usually, it affects URL-specific pages instead of top-level domain names. Uzbek ISPs block entire web sites or individual pages upon SNBs unofficial request. Accessing a blocked page redirects the user to a search engine or to an error message such as ‘You are not authorized to view this page’” (Deibert et al. 271). Furthermore, not only does the SNB monitor the Uzbek Internet, but it also conducts surveillance in collaboration with other regimes, as the agency “regularly exchanges data with Russian intelligence sources and allegedly collaborates with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Academy” (Deibert et al. 271).

All of this said, it is important to keep in mind that “Internet censorship in Uzbekistan is very easy to circumvent...For every blocked website, there are hundreds of mirrors, proxies, cache services, virtual private networks or just something like SESAWE with simple handy tools to bypass any censorship online” ("Neweurasia.net » Uzbekistan: Internet Censorship Is Overrated."). However, not only has the Uzbek government taken steps to expand the extent of its censorship and monitoring (as is the case on the mobile web, where “Uzbek regulators have demanded mobile operators notify the government about mass distributions of SMS messages with ‘suspicious content’” ("Uzbekistan Tightens Control over Mobile Internet”), but numerous questions still exist as to whether some circumvention tools can reasonably be used by a significant segment of the population. This is especially true when the current political and economic situation in Uzbekistan is taken into account.

We will address these questions as they relate to the popular Tor circumvention program. Tor provides anonymous browsing “by distributing your transactions over several places on the Internet, so no single point can link you to your destination. The idea is similar to using a twisty, hard-to-follow route in order to throw off somebody who is tailing you--and then periodically erasing your footprints” ("Tor Project: Overview."). In order to provide confidentiality through encryption and to circumvent local filtering, “the user’s software...builds a circuit of encrypted connections through relays [computers running Tor that can forward traffic] on the network” ("Tor Project: Overview."). This is a generally effective solution on a traditional computer with (by Western standards) low-end hardware and a reliable Internet connection. However, most Uzbeks do not own their own PC. While Internet penetration in Uzbekistan has jumped from 8.8% in 2009 (Deibert et al. 268) to 26.8% in 2011 ("Asia Internet Facebook Usage and Population Statistics."), 12.5 million Uzbeks (by 2009 numbers (Deibert et al. 268)), or 46% of the population, own a mobile phone. With the growth of the mobile web in Uzbekistan and recent efforts to port Tor to mobile platforms, will a larger segment of the population beyond those wealthy enough to afford a personal computer be able to access blocked content through mobile versions of Tor?

Part of the answer lies in the current state of the effort to make Tor run on mobile devices. As Tor user and researcher Marco Bonetti describes, Tor has been ported to several mobile platforms, including the Android OS, the iPhone, the Nokia N900, and the Chumby One embedded computer system (“Mobile Privacy: Tor on the iPhone And Other Unusual Devices”). However, even on these relatively high-end platforms, significant technical and economic issues remain. Much of the cryptographic programming required to run Tor can create a severe drain on a mobile device’s battery. While the exact reasons are beyond the scope of this paper, it can be said that some instructions to a device’s CPU require more of the hardware (and therefore more electricity) than others. In addition, there is an added problem on mobile phones of making sure that Tor knows which device it is communicating with. For a traditional PC, the system’s IP address (the unique 32-bit number that distinguishes it from all other devices on the Internet) generally stays the same and is only occasionally changed by the user’s ISP as new users go online and old users remove their accounts. But on a mobile device which can rapidly change location in a very short time, the devices’ IP address can just as rapidly change. Thus Bonetti claims that developers are still trying to adequately adapt Tor to these new platforms.

Beyond these technical concerns, there remains the question of whether the majority of mobile users in Uzbekistan use the kinds of phones that can currently run Tor. According to Opera Software’s “State of the Mobile Web” report for April 2011, the ten most popular mobile phones in Uzbekistan are all, by Western standards, relatively slow devices with little memory such as the Nokia 6300 (which tops the list) that mostly run Nokia’s proprietary Series 40 operating system and not Google’s Android OS or Apple’s iOS ("Opera: State of the Mobile Web, April 2011."). While these hardware and software limitations can be overcome in the near future (especially as more powerful devices become more affordable in the region), the fact remains that little work has been done to date to bring Tor to these platforms.

In conclusion, there is still much work to be done before America’s corrupting influence can circumvent the Uzbek filtering system and misinform the nation’s youth. What began as a system to block access to pornographic websites on the national scientific and research network has evolved over the last decade into a sophisticated system of censorship and surveillance that takes full advantage of the state monopoly on IT infrastructure, self-censorship due to pressure from the SNB, and collaboration with foreign intelligence services. While numerous circumvention technologies exist (mirrors, proxies, etc.) the technological cat-and-mouse game between the information libertarians and authoritarians of the world also plays out in Uzbekistan as the government considers strategies to monitor the mobile web. If we look at some circumvention technologies such as Tor, it appears that the authoritarians are winning. Not only do serious technical concerns such as power usage and rapid changes of IP address persist, but developers in the West have not yet developed software for a telecom market that is still strikingly less affluent than that of the West, and where smartphones have yet to become widely used.

Sources:
Anons.uz. "Islam Karimov: I Believe That Journalists Are My Strongest and Trustful Support." Published 28 June 2011. Accessed 20 July 2011. .

Deibert, Ronald, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain. Access Controlled: the Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2010. Print.
Pravdin (blogger on neweurasia.net). "Neweurasia.net » Uzbekistan: Internet Censorship Is Overrated." Neweurasia.net. 29 Sept. 2009. Web. 20 July 2011. .

Sadykov, Murat. "Uzbekistan Tightens Control over Mobile Internet | EurasiaNet.org." Eurasianet.org, 15 Mar. 2011. Web. 20 July 2011. .

"Tor Project: Overview." Tor Project: Anonymity Online. The Tor Project, Inc. Web. 20 July 2011. .

"Asia Internet Facebook Usage and Population Statistics." Internet World Stats - Usage and Population Statistics. Miniwatts Marketing Group. Web. 20 July 2011. .

Bonetti, Marco. “Mobile Privacy: Tor on the iPhone And Other Unusual Devices”. Defcon.org. Web. 20 July 2011

"Opera: State of the Mobile Web, April 2011." Opera Browser | Faster & Safer Internet | Free Download. Opera Software ASA, Apr. 2011. Web. 20 July 2011. .

Kalashnikovs and Kumys Part 2: Foreign Policy, or An Untuned Piano

These are my notes from a guest speaker session we had with Osmonakun Ibraimov, who was the Secretary of State (which seems pretty close to our Secretary of State) under the Akayev administration. Fortunately, since only Ibraimov was speaking, this post should be a lot easier to follow. Again, note that what's below is the best I could write down based on a translation of what Ibraimov was saying, and it is often phrased in my own words. My comments are in brackets. The talk was divided into four parts. They were:

1. Foreign policy under the Soviets
2. Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan under Akayev
3. Bakiyev
4. Kyrgyzstan today

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Part 1:

Nobody could enter the Kyrgyz SSR back then. Everything was controlled by the Kremlin. There were lots of streets with Russian names. People didn't know about Kyrgyz history before the Soviet Union. It was as if it all began when Lenin took over [note that the capital was named Frunze after the famous Bolshevik leader Mikhail Frunze].

Kyrgyzstan started hearing about the West, and there was interest in the West and Western democracy. The intelligentsia thought we were far behind. Gorbachev introduced glastnost and perestroika and the USSR collapsed. Everyone wanted independence.

Part 2:

I [Ibraimov] was working in the president's office, and became press secretary. Most of the new ministers were university professors. We started thinking about policy, especially foreign policy. The West helped a lot, but we didn't know how to prioritize, and we didn't understand what a market economy was. Jeffrey Sachs and Jim Baker visited. [George H. W.] Bush visited three times. Al Gore visited later. Democracy wasn't possible back then. Even a few years ago, it was unthinkable that American students could come here to study Russian. But we wanted to help somehow after 9/11, so we gave the U.S. Manas Airbase. The idea was to be friends with everyone who would help, but the priority was given to the West.

Kyrgyzstan was the first country to make radical changes. It became an “island of democracy”, but we ruined it ourselves by the end of the 90s. Akayev's foreign policy reached out to both Moscow AND Washington, and Beijing, too, built relations with everyone. It wasn't either/or or “multi-vector” [my phrase, the implication was that Akayev didn't try to play one Great Power off against another]. Real money came in from this, and we had a chance to not starve. Money came in from Moscow too for roads, etc. that decayed after the Soviet collapse [Something just came to mind while typing this up. If you look at the manhole covers on a typical street in Bishkek, the older ones say “кгсср”, which is an abbreviation for Kyrgyz SSR in the Cyrillic alphabet. The newer ones, unlike what Ibraimov's implies, are not in Russian. They're in Chinese.]

Still, there was pressure from Moscow. Note Putin (and Medvedev too) wanted to start Russian neo-imperialism [I’m not sure if that last sentence is from me or him].

Part 3

Bakiyev was the biggest mistake of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan [gee, I'm so surprised he said that]. He wasn't good at foreign policy, because he was a typical Soviet bureaucrat. He ruined our relations with the U.S., he declared some people persona non grata to make Russia like him (and to get money for government/private interests). He promised Putin he'd kick the Americans out of Manas airbase, but since the Americans invested a lot of money in the airbase, it wasn't possible. Half of Kyrgyzstan's external debt is held by America [I'm not sure if this was a mistake on my part, the translator's, or Ibraimov's, but somebody probably meant Russia]. He threw out two U.S. diplomats; even the USSR wasn't that aggressive. Bakiyev promised the U.S. and Moscow that he would keep his word, but he was the perfect representative of a Silk Road bazaar trader. He sold to the highest bidder. He turned Maxim [his son] into the most influential person in Kyrgyzstan.
You can't ruin relations with any of the three Great Powers, and you can't act under only one. If you only side with one, you piss off the other two. By April 2010, he had pissed off Russia and the U.S. [and presumably China wasn't crazy about him either]. It's no big secret that Moscow wanted to get rid of Bakiyev. The U.S. basically agreed. The 2005 revolution was a huge drama. Bakiyev was brought to power by people in power. They knew he was corrupt, but clan politics won. It wasn't a happy ending. Having a revolution every five years causes a lot of damage, looting, etc. These two revolutions were a direct result of our foreign policy. This fall, there will be a presidential election and I hope there will be American / Russian election observers.

Part 4: An Untuned Piano

Now we have to rebuild our relations. Moscow doesn't like [President Rosa] Otunbayeva. The U.S. likes her; she received an award from the U.S., but Moscow openly dislikes her and thinks she's an American puppet. [Prime Minister Almazbek] Atambayev wants to be friends with Moscow, and is willing to give a little for respect from Moscow and Turkey. This is a situation where we have lost our principles. We used to want to be friends with everyone, now it's going everywhere. We have candidates begging for Russian approval. No one is going to the U.S. The U.S. did invite Otunbayeva and [Ata-Meken party leader Omurbek] Tekebayev before, and they are the two the U.S. might possibly support. Everything depends on who [among the three Great Powers] helps out. China is silent, and we don't know what they think. They seem to be only interested in economic influence. Kyrgyzstan is a headache for the U.S. because the Manas airbase is so important, and problems in Kyrgyzstan are problems for the U.S. in Central Asia. Russia is working in Kyrgyzstan and has its own plans. There's a Russian military base not far from Bishkek.

If America helps out, we're ready to be friends, even if it means becoming enemies with Russia. Some candidates promise to change the constitution, and Moscow wants two things: (1) no parliamentary system, and (2) no American airbase.

We have also had bad relations with Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Uzbekistan said last year that we couldn't protect the Uzbeks, and that's true. Kazakhstan doesn't like our parliamentary system. It's a dangerous possibility for Nazarbayev, since he wants to be president for life. Kazakhstan has influence due to [cultural] similarities and there are a lot of Kazakhs in Kyrgyzstan. Last year Kazakhstan caused this country a lot of [economic] damage when it closed its borders [during the June riots, although he might have been referring to Uzbekistan.]. We take in a lot of goods from China and export them to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Obama is headed in the right direction, even though last year we hated America. Now it's much better, and they really like Obama here [Just months after the “revolution”, they opened a bar and grill named after him]. If America had a Post-Soviet Marshall Plan, it would have been very different. After the USSR collapsed, the U.S. forgot about the place. The money given out wasn't controlled, it was often a one-time event, and it just went to bureaucrats' pockets.

[Returning to the idea of a Post-Soviet Marshall Plan,] Russia couldn't stop such a plan, but America had other problems. Bush Jr. was trying to “export democracy”. He had no idea what he was doing. Americans shouldn't be too aggressive. This is diplomacy. The bottom line is the U.S. was overextended thanks to Iraq and Afghanistan. This is really bad for Kyrgyzstan because we wouldn't want America to leave the Manas airbase. Kyrgyzstan doesn't know what Russia will do, but it doesn't want Russia to dominate here.

But Obama spent all that money to kill Osama Bin Laden, and the war in Afghanistan and the impact of the global recession damaged the U.S. and therefore Kyrgyzstan. The som is pegged to the dollar, and this has hurt the som significantly. From very good concepts we went to horrible results, because we betrayed all our allies.

I don't know who likes us, and I can't predict the outcome of the October elections. If there's no sure winner, the south will be unhappy, and the north is still pissed over Bakiyev [who was from the south]. Now people in the south want their southern candidate, and the north wants its candidate.

[Returning to the October elections, ] Tekebayev altered the constitution and criticized Otunbayeva in Moscow. He basically cursed her. There's no clear answer on what to do going forward. Washington will leave Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan, and we need money badly. The world financial situation is no better, and foreign aid is drying up. The IMF and the World Bank can only do so much. China is building a huge road. It helps a lot, and there is the Shanghai-Paris railroad too. On all sides, China is winning the New Great Game. Although there is Russian aggression, and Russia is also having its own presidential elections. However, Russia needs to concentrate on the Caucasus and not Central Asia.

We're afraid of China. There's so many of them; we're afraid of demographic expansion [my phrase]. For many years we were at war with China [I think he’s referring to the various wars the Kyrgyz have fought with ethnic groups that are now on the Chinese side of the border], but we're not really afraid of Russia.

If Obama and Putin would settle things, it would be much better for Kyrgyzstan. Washington thought things would get better after 2005, but it didn't happen. In 2010, it's the same for Russia. In the fall, there will be some tension over the change of government. It will most likely be a Russian puppet. Right now, the U.S. position is much weaker, the U.S. is less aggressive and more passive, so others can be more aggressive.

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[I asked whether Turkey could have any influence on the presidential election]. I [Ibraimov] don't think they'll have much influence. Turkey has its own goals, and a shared language [I can say myself that, with half a semester of Turkish under my belt, I can make sense of small bits of Kyrgyz, but they're not mutually intelligible]. They want influence in Central Asia, but they're not good at getting it.

[Someone asked about the role of NGOs.] NGOs can have a great role, but there's a stereotype that they work for the West. It's really a mixed picture. If they're civil enough, there is a chance of influence. The biggest danger here is political Islam. Note nobody here liked the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, even though we were glad the U.S. went there, because it changed the balance of power.

It's the same in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. In Russia, anti-American policy is at the top of the list. It's the official policy of Russia. Many people think China has it right, but the financial crisis has left a giant question mark. NINJA loans [my phrase, No Income, No Job or Assets] fucked up everyone. Now America is printing money, and China is printing its money so that you can buy yuans. It's also really hard to understand how China grew so fast. Kyrgyzstan is just a small part of an unclear picture. That's why we're glad you're here. Everyone is interested in other places, and we feel lonely. But America is being spoiled by populist politicians. In Kyrgyzstan, a politician who says “You are going to have to work day and night to raise this country” can't get elected. [As I recall, he also implied that a statement like this isn’t politically feasible in America either, and I agree.]

[Someone asked about the current president, Rosa Otunbayeva.] Otunbayeva was the biggest hope for Kyrgyzstan, but she wasn't what we thought she'd be. Everyone was hoping for change. First, she was supposed to find the April 2010 shooters and stop the robberies. $60 million disappeared and nobody knows where it went. Where are the surveillance tapes that would have recorded this? Second, when the June riots happened, we wanted help, but nothing was done. She's a professional diplomat, she's supposed to take all intelligence into account, but she didn't do that. Corruption grew, and lots of people didn't support the parliamentary system. Most politicians would rather become regional governors than deputies, and the system of regional government is very corrupt. She was supposed to bring Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan together. She shouldn't have pissed off Russia so much, and she should have been more careful with corruption. Right now there are criminals in parliament, and we have a speaker [Akhmatbek Keldibekov] with criminal ties. A lot of Bakiyev's old friends are in power again. All of this was for nothing. Osh is one of our most ancient cities. There might be tension in Kyrgyzstan soon on a regional basis.

Otunbayeva's problem is she hates the opposition too much. She's not diplomatic enough. From the outside, she seems so nice. She's Central Asia's first female president, and she gave some nice speeches, but she hasn't been that great. What about the people who distributed weapons during the June riots? How could she let that happen? She lost a lot of respect and trust. Still, she's the least bad of the people who were in power, and now she's a really weak president.

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Before I end this post, I want to add one observation that doesn’t fit well in any of my posts, but it fits best here given the discussion of the presidential election. In my last life as a Democratic activist in southern Maine (specifically York County 2004-2008), we had a difficult split within the county-level organization. Gallia York County Est Omnis Divisa in Partes Tres: the blue-collar, rural, Republican-leaning area north and west of I-95, the slightly better-off, strongly Democratic mill towns of Biddeford (pronounced “Biddefehd”), Old Orchard Beach, and Saco (which are usually lumped together with towns in Cumberland County and labeled “the greater Portland area”), and finally the much better off tourist towns southwest of greater Portland (this includes the town of Kennebunkport and Walker’s Point, where George H. W. Bush has a summer home). Whenever there was a discussion between activists from different regions, people didn’t always take into account basic differences of organization, political strategy, and PR. You can’t hold a $50-per-ticket wine and cheese fundraiser in a town of 6,000 people where the one place everyone in town visits and shoots the breeze is the town transfer station, aka the dump. Joe Sixpack, a registered undeclared (as independent voters are called in Maine voting records) from Berwick, Maine in the rural northwest who makes $35,000 a year and does construction and repair work in the area can be won over by a state representative candidate just as much as Joseph N. Sixpackington III, who owns a fancy restaurant / gift shop in Kittery, which is about an hour’s drive from Boston. However, the two voters require a completely different choice of body language, rhetoric, and even clothes.

The greater Portland people, who were the most active and vocal members of the county organization, were generally unaware of these differences and sometimes made strategic assessments that did not take into account the political environment that their allies on the other side of the Turnpike were working with. My point is that regional differences don’t just translate to differences in ideology. They can lead to differences in the basic assumptions about the political context in which you’re operating. During my whole time in Bishkek, I kept hearing that Atambayev was going to win the presidential election, largely because he was backed by Russia. Unfortunately, I think I spent my whole time in Kyrgyzstan’s “greater Portland area”, and I have little feel for what folks think in Sanford Osh or Berwick Jalal-Abad. Personally, I agree with this article on how the election is likely to play out.

We're going to take a break from Kyrgyzstan in the next post, where I'll talk about the week I spent touring Uzbekistan and all the sights, sounds and (blocked) websites I saw.

Kalashnikovs and Kumys Part 1: Ethnic Policy, or Why There is Too Much Freedom in Kyrgyzstan

These are my notes from a discussion session we had at the London School called “The April Revolution 1 Year Later: Transition to Democracy or 10 Years Back?”. It was in a question and answer format with some questions submitted from the participants, and we had four Kyrgyz participants and about as many Americans. After struggling with how to present this narrative (as it quickly jumps from person to person), I've decided to present my notes more or less as is. The // symbol is where one person stopped talking and another person started, but note that I only started keeping track of this about halfway through the session. Until the third question, I'm reconstructing the flow of conversation from memory. My comments are in brackets.

What triggered the violence?

It was very unexpected, it started as a small conflict/protest in Talas, and it was thought that the government would stop it. It terrible for folks at university. At the time, no information was available. The phone services stopped working.

// The people who protested were more like drunk/high rioters. If you want change, change yourself. It can't be just a person who demands stuff. For some, the revolution was fake. What has changed? We have tribalism and everything that was associated with the old government.

Who started the revolution?

Remember that the opposition leaders were in prison. It was started in part because they were jailed.
// The idea is we need more control in Kyrgyzstan. It's too free. Here it's easy to get a visa. [At this point in the conversation, I was too distracted by what I was hearing to write it down. The best I can remember goes something like “It's very easy to get a visa, and there's a lot of drugs moving in from abroad. It's like there's too much freedom and we need someone powerful to solve our problems”.]

There was no organization, no stated goal/aim to the revolution, just complaints. When the first revolution happened, I was more positive. The second set us back 10 years. I lost hope in people, our civic consciousness hasn't formed. They can form a mob, but if there's no agreed agenda, it's a failure. Now parliament is arguing and can't share.

Why wasn't there much coverage of the revolution? [The question was interpreted to refer to outside coverage.]

Kyrgyzstan? Where's that? [That was my snarky comment in the notes. I didn't actually say that.]

The U.S. does have bases here, but Kyrgyzstan isn't Egypt, and it's not an important U.S. ally.

When did you realise this was a revolution?

While away [at a university in the U.S.], I heard there was a revolution. Once I came back, there it turned out not to be a revolution. [Between these two sentences, the conversation switched back to the claim that some of the protesters were drugged] In the U.S., first it was mass street protests. Then, at the end, it was half and half, the protesters were paid well and in some ways organized. // In some cases they added drugs/alcohol to make people more rowdy. // My dad came home from work and saw the revolutionaries. They were really drunk. Some filmed mobile phone videos where they looted stores. // Some of them said “They gave us water and I don't remember what happened.” Now some of them are heroes and are buried near Chingiz Aitmatov. This is a crazy idea and I don't accept it.

What was accomplished?

Flats for families of the victims. Is anyone better off than they were a year ago? // There has been some movement to a parliamentary system, not certain it's ready yet. It's hard to change the real social structure. There was good reason for a revolution, but it didn't succeed.

Is there potential for change?

It's awful soon to say anything about that, but if you think of the term “revolution”, I don't see it here. // I see possible outcomes, for example Kyrgyz C-SPAN [my phrase, the parliament sessions are now being broadcast on the national radio stations], everyone can hear that. // [Returning to the protesters again,] Not all of them were drunk or high, some were good people. At least half of them were good. // People who shot at the protesters, it was their job. I would have done the same and died for my country. Then once the revolution got inside, they were more violent. It wasn't revolution, it was mass craziness. // Some shooters were reported mercenaries // Some people were injured.

Can Ata-Jurt build support outside the south? [I submitted a two part question, and this was part 1]

Some people don't think in terms of north and south. Ata-Jurt does have some support outside the south, // but not much. There is a popular former mayor of Bishkek who is in Ata-Jurt.

What does the nationalist trend in Kyrgyz politics mean for the future of Kyrgyz-Uzbek relations? [This was part 2]

Nationalism has become overblown. Amnesty International expected new violence after the first anniversary of the June violence. Kyrgyzstan has been tolerant, and not Kyrgyzstan is accused of being genocidal. I think it's important to remember that people weren't being killed on the same scale as the Germans killed the Jews. We do deserve to develop civic nationalism, Kyrgyzstani nationalism, where we can speak our local language, but not Kyrgyz ethnic nationalism. We studied Kyrgyz for years, and if you like your language, your culture, and your nation, you want to help your people. There were “Soviets” who lost their identity in 1991. // Everything in Turkey is in Turkish. Why don't we speak Kyrgyz in Kyrgyzstan? We need to develop our own love for our language alongside other languages. North/South, Uzbek/Kyrgyz, were all constructs and need to be changed.

Has the revolution inspired other countries?

Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Russia are all afraid, they saw it as a means of instability. How do you negotiate with a parliament? Yes, there's a Prime Minister, but classic West Wing politicking [my phrase] means meeting with multiple stakeholders.

Could there be another revolution in the future?

There will perhaps be some tensions after the elections [in October] and squabbling over the results // For some people, revolution is an easy solution. Some deputies work hard, and some don't. Hopefully parliament will get some change done.

What's the way forward?

We need to toughen up on our borders. We have large mountains that are hard to patrol, and bribes. // Corruption is so much of a part of our system that if you remove it, you destroy it. // I'm only glad Bakiyev is gone if a good person replaces him. The June events cast a long shadow over the Provisional Government. Lots of people from the Bakiyev era are still here. The problem is people haven't gotten involved.

Sam Rayburn once said “Any jackass can kick over a barn. It takes a good carpenter to build one”. Now that Bakiyev is gone, the Provisional Government hasn't built anything to better in its place. Now the presidential elections are two and half months away, and all of the candidates look like corrupt members of the same old clan-based power structures that Bakiyev used to dominate. If you're Kyrgyz and you're not part of that system, and (as we'll see in a later post) you look across the border at Kazakhstan and see people doing comparatively better under Nazarbayev, how can you not want to see a strongman take over?

In the next post, we'll switch from domestic politics (kumys) to foreign politics (Kalashnikovs) where we'll see how Kyrgyzstan's disorganized clan structure has led to a disorganized foreign policy.

6-14-11: Send Uzbeks, Guns, and Money

(Author's note: Even though I revised this after I got back to the U.S., I still don't like how this post turned out. Still, I'm uploading it because it introduces a lot of the themes that I would have more interesting things to say about later in the trip. It was only in the second week of an 8-week stay in the country.)

Wow, Istanbul did somewhat prepare me for Bishkek, but I certainly didn’t expect some things in my first week here. While there was no Internet at my host family’s place, I’m not disturbed by that. What has been difficult is the on again, off again power and electricity. I couldn’t shower at night since that is when everyone waters their gardens. The fact that local food is at least 5 times oilier than anything you can find in America is a problem too. Also, anyone who has been to Bishkek probably knows about or has been in a маршрутка. These are large vans used as minibuses and there is no such thing as personal space on those things. Insert your favorite statement about how we take so much for granted back in the США here.

White whining aside, I’d like to acknowledge two derps I made in the last post. Derp #1: The adjective is “Kyrgyz”, not “Kyrgyzstani” (or is it? we’ll talk about this in the next post). The source I got “Kyrgyzstani” from was pretty legitimate, but everyone (including people in Kyrgyzstan) says Kyrgyz. Derp #2: I think I, and perhaps the KIC report, overemphasized the ethnic component of the June 2010 riots. There are a few common narratives into which it is all too easy to unwittingly pigeonhole complex political developments that we Americans often know little about. It’s as easy to read what happened last year and the current nationalist rhetoric in Kyrgyz politics as “Ethnic Group A hates Ethnic Group B” as it is to read the “Arab Spring” and the “Green Revolution” as “Youngsters fighting Crotchety Old Dictators with their Youtubes and their Facebooks and their Tweety-Twitters”. In reality, all factors need to be considered to fully understand the “sexy” headlines the media throws onto our TVs and web browsers every minute, and I hope to better explain here what is going on in Kyrgyzstan and where this country might be headed.

In my first week here, there was a guest lecture by Orozbek Moldaliev, who at the time worked with (I might have the name wrong) the President’s Department of Strategic Analysis, which seems to be close to our White House Chief of Staff. The lecture mainly focused on explaining last year’s riots, and overall it was a very good talk. I’d like to walk through my recollection of Moldaliev’s talk and comment on a few points. Keep in mind that my Russian was not yet good enough to listen directly to Moldaliev, and I can only talk about what the translator said.

Most explanations of the June ’10 riots have blamed a shady coalition of Uzbek separatists, drug smugglers, and the Bakiyevs for triggering the violence, and I can see some decent evidence for the second factor. It’s a well-known fact that tons of opium travel through Kyrgyzstan from Afghanistan and Tajikistan on their way to Russia and Western Europe, and there’s some evidence (e.g. the fact that Bakiyev disbanded Kyrgyzstan's Drug Control Agency (DCA)) that the Bakiyevs cultivated ties with the drug mafia. Once they were gone, there was no one left to pocket the drug money, and a rearranging of the proverbial chairs was inevitable. This was one point that was briefly discussed in the KIC report, and I think it needed some attention in this post. What has made me seriously reconsider how I think about Kyrgyz politics is his discussion of the real and perceived situation of the Uzbek community. Moldaliev claimed that, while the Uzbeks may have believed they were being discriminated against by the Kyrgyz, in reality the whole system is corrupt. If you're an Uzbek businessman in Osh, and there are Kyrgyz criminals collecting protection money, corrupt Kyrgyz tax officials collecting fines (read bribes), and a corrupt court system (dominated by ethnic Kyrgyz) that does not provide a place to appeal, then you might think that this thoroughly corrupt system is out to cheat Uzbeks. This, of course, raises the question of why there are so few Uzbeks in government. Moldaliev claims that most Uzbeks studied in the Uzbek language schools set up in the 90s that were mentioned in the KIC report, and as a result most Uzbeks are not fluent in Kyrgyz or Russian, the two languages in which all governing bodies conduct their business. Thus Uzbeks have not been purposefully shut out of their government. It's “just the way things are”. Why not make Uzbek and official language? Moldaliev also discussed this. The fact is that only Uzbeks, who make up 14% of the population, speak Uzbek. If people from post-Soviet countries who came to America wanted to make Russian an official language, how popular would that be here in the U.S.? I added in my notes that there's already no shortage of debate over the user of English and Spanish here in the U.S., and our Latino community is at least as large as the Uzbek community in Kyrgyzstan.

Overall, I liked Moldaliev's lecture, even though he was likely giving us talking points put together in the Kyrgyz White House. He was a lot fairer than what many people would say about last year, he didn't repeat the claim that the Uzbeks wanted autonomy last year, and he did state that most of the cafés and restaurants there were destroyed in the riots were Uzbek. What I'm still uncertain about is his point, repeated several times, that Uzbeks were not shut out on purpose, but that “that's just how things were”. I'm going to go out on a limb here and chalk that up to a poor translation. The fact that at least Akayev's government did take some steps to promote Uzbek language schools and culture as mentioned in the KIC report probably rules out a full-blown unofficial government policy of discrimination. However, if there was no problem of inter-ethnic relation in Kyrgyzstan before riots, there certainly is one year later. An article on RFE/RL paints a fairly dire picture of Osh one year after the riots. While the Kyrgyz have a generally negative opinion of these folks who is from away and vice versa, they haven't reached the point where they're willing to take up arms against their neighbors...yet. If a nationalist like Jyldyz “Sarah Palin on Steroids and Armed with Tactical Nukes” Joldosheva wins the presidential elections and takes Kyrgyzstan in a more authoritarian direction, expect a lot more ugliness in the next few years. I'll have more on this later in the post, but right now I think I'm missing something. Oh yeah, this blog is supposed to be about politics AND TECHNOLOGY in the former Soviet Union.

One of the first ads I saw coming out of the baggage area at Manas International Airport was an ad for Beeline KG, one of the phone companies in Kyrgyzstan and a few other Central Asian countries. To give you an idea of what kind of phones people use here, the sign read (in English and Russian) “Experience new 3G technologies!” I looked into what kind of service Beeline offers (given my one year of Russian), and it brought up something I hadn't thought of regarding circumvention technology: while the Tor Project, for example, has done some good work to port its software to smart phones, there has been nothing that I can find about work on the lower-end models that are, unfortunately, ubiquitous in some states that are more inclined to censor the web. I plan to discuss this in more depth as part of a research paper I have to write in my Central Asian Studies class, and I plan to post said paper in this blog.

I've been reading on Eurasianet about arms proliferation in Kyrgyzstan, the brawl in parliament two months ago, and on how the country is increasingly falling under “the law of the crowd”...

Nope, nope, nope, stop the post. At this point in the writeup, I made an ivy-tower argument drawing from Plato's Republic that Kyrgyzstan's experiment with parliamentary democracy is failing rapidly, and it won't be long before an authoritarian strongman of a radically different character from the two oligarchs who used to rule the country takes over. I still agree with this assessment, but I have loads of material in later posts that talks about it, and what's left in this post just isn't of a high enough quality for this blog. Stay tuned for “Kalashnikovs and Kumys” a two-parter on Kyrgyzstan's foreign and domestic policy where I come face to face with some native authoritarians in their natural habitat.