Avuncular American

Eastern Exposure for New European Parliament

Europe is in Eurasia.

It wouldn’t be autumn in Brussels without its slew of conferences to welcome the city’s policy wonks back from a long European summer vacation. This week’s all-day conclave devoted to “The New European Parliament: What Priorities for Foreign Affairs, Security, and Defence?” covered a lot of ground, especially when the subtitle indicated that it would include Transatlantic relations, Russia, Iran, and Central Asia. Despite the perhaps over-ambitious agenda, a number of impressive speakers were packed into the schedule. Full disclosure: I chaired the workshop on “Iran and Central Asia,” obviously an expert now that I've been twice to Uzbekistan.

Chatham House rules prevent me from citing individual speakers, but suffice it to say that there were MEPs, EU Commission and Council representatives, as well as distinguished diplomats and academic experts. The only sparks that flew were intellectual, as the very florid Italian Professore Irnerio Seminatore, director of conference organizer IERI, shared his trademark passion for realpolitik, which he sees as an endangered species in need of protection in this city dedicated to multilateral and intergovernmental organizations. The event was co-sponsored by ISIS-Europe (organizer of this year’s excellent “NATO Shadow Summit“), and the Euro-Atlantic Association of Belgium (AEAB).

If I give short shrift to the workshop on Russia and the EU’s Eastern Partnership, it’s because I couldn’t be in two places at once. Read about the Eastern Partnership on the EU's official DG Relex page. It was also impossible to take advantage of Ambassador Pierre Morel’s dual-hatted expertise as EU Special Representative for Georgia (part of the Eastern Partnership) and EU Special Representative for Central Asia. Luckily for my panel, he put on his Central Asia hat.

Garnering as much knowledge as possible about sometimes-troubled lands to the East is in the interests of Europe and its Parliament. The audience was reminded of Europe’s energy dependence on Russia, but also its deep commercial ties that go beyond gas. The US-Russian talks on Iran, which were barely over when our conference started, were a reminder that Europe’s geo-strategic concerns are shared by the two nuclear giants.

We were reminded of Iran’s once central position in Western assumptions (mostly those of American Presidents) as “an island of stability” in the Middle East.  That same heyday of the Shah saw the birth of Iran’s nuclear program, which is so troubling to its neighbors and to the West.  But given Iran’s long history - Persia was a “world power” for centuries when “the world” was more strictly defined - and its strains of national pride and/or national victim hood, it won’t be easy to woo Tehran from what it considers its right to develop nuclear power (homework assignment: define "Power").

Central Asia’s inclusion in the debate illustrates what one expert called “the discovery of Central Asia” by Western policy makers. As Afghanistan’s and Iran’s immediate northern neighbors, they are affected by dangers of fundamentalism, of instability, and of war, and their voices need to be heard as we look at the wider region.

In all, not a bad way to kick off the conference season, and a reminder that things start in the East (image: sunrise over Eurasia by the talented Tibor Tóth).

This post first appeared in Euractiv's "Blogactiv," a compendium of European opinion.

Setting the Stage for Uzbek Elections

Uzbekistan, as far as I know, has no official national motto, but the phrase you hear most often when officials describe the country's relationship to democracy is "step by step."  In the almost 18 years since the country became independent with the breakup of the Soviet Union, "step by step" has sometimes been translated as "one step forward, two steps back."

Over the past years, elections have been held, parties have emerged, and foreign observers have taken note.  But some of the country's potentially most popular "public movements" which arose in the late '80s and early '90s never received official status, so their vote-getting ability as political parties was never tested.  At the same time, concerns about the rise of political Islam made Uzbek authorities wary of instability and worse spreading across borders with neighbors like Tajikistan and Afghanistan.

Is Uzbekistan further along the road to democracy than it was in late 1991, when the hammer and sickle came down and the crescent and stars went up?  Probably, but largely in an institutional sense rather than a mass democratic one.

I'm not a frequent flier to Uzbekistan, but I have been to Tashkent twice now in as many months.  In July, it was a conference on responses to the international financial crisis.  Last week it was to compare experiences on political parties and parliamentary elections.  Uzbekistan has scheduled elections to its Oliy Majlis or Parliament for December 27.

With the cooperation of the OSCE's Democratization and Rule of Law program, Regional Dialogue (Slovenia), and the US National Democratic Institute (NDI), the Academy of State and Social Construction (ASSC) convened a two-day program on September 29-30.  Election experts and Central Asia analysts from a number of OSCE member states, plus Asian neighbors from as far away as Japan and India shared their observations on organizing elections.

Uzbek officials from the Central Election Commission and from a variety of government think tanks outlined Uzbekistan's preparations for the elections, which included a rather impressive study of international best practice in a number of areas.  Uzbekistan, noting that other countries have set quotas for the representation of women in national parliaments, has maintained its 30 percent figure, but has put the onus on the political parties to implement the recruitment of female candidates.

A more unusual quota has emerged: 15 seats in the new parliament will be reserved for the Ecological Movement of Uzbekistan, not a political party as such.  Though this development should give an impetus to the country's efforts to confront grave environmental problems such as the drying up of the Aral Sea, the move was not without its critics among the international observers.  Why limit Uzbek greens to 15 seats?  Other than their ostensibly "green" approach to environmental issues, where do they stand on, say, human rights, or Uzbek foreign policy?  Questions that remain unanswered, but worth tracking once the new Majlis starts legislating in the new year.

Worthwhile as it usually is to expose Uzbek officials to (mildly) critical observation by international
experts, the amount of "apparatchik speak" in evidence was still quite high.  Sometimes a Western skeptic might ask a party official for his campaign slogan or theme to rally popular support, only to be answered with a timid observation on the need to increase tourism into this distant Central Asian state.  Not the stuff of rousing stump speeches, but a safe bet in a country where being outspoken is still a risky proposition.

By the looks of things, the elected officials around the conference table seemed more at ease in expressing opinions than their party chiefs.  I have a feeling that they have gotten beyond the stage where - according to Dilip Hiro in his new book Inside Central Asia - Uzbek parliamentarians in the early Nineties "had taken to reciting poems honoring [the president] in the chamber."

"Democracy is not a state, it is a process," said one of the Uzbek participants, and I couldn't agree more.  Democracy can be won - hard won - and then lost, if its beneficiaries cease to defend it.  This holds for countries with long democratic traditions, and highlights how difficult the democracy-building process is for countries with no such tradition.  At least by creating the institutions associated with democracy - representative assemblies, political parties, elections - Uzbekistan is further along than certain countries (among them some of the West's "best friends") which have yet to even acknowledge the need for such institutions.

"Step by step" - neither giant steps nor great leaps forward - is at least movement in the right direction.  While the conference was still in session, Uzbekistan submitted its formal invitation to the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to observe the December elections.

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(Photos: top left - former madrassa now an artisans' colony; bottom right - Amir Timur (Tamerlane) Museum)

Ben Hopkins' The Market: Bazaar Trade 101

Pazar - Bir ticaret masali, the latest film (shot in Turkish) by English director Ben Hopkins, has been given the title of The Market: A Tale of Trade (official site) for its international release.  This is trade at its most basic, a bazaar of barter, seen through the adventures of hero Mihram ("Saint Mihram," as he's called by cynics who doubt his ability to stay relatively honest, is admirably incarnated by Tayanç Ayaydin, a 30 year old Turkish actor who, by the way, can do a great bearded Jack Nicholson impersonation).

There is muted humor in The Market, as befits a director whose work includes a title like 37 Uses For a Dead Sheep - Ben Hopkins' 2006 documentary on nomads who populate another corner of eastern Turkey.   The locations are suitably bleak, appropriate for a setting along the border of what used to be the fault line between the Soviet Union and NATO's easternmost member.

Though the story of a smalltime trader on the make is timeless, Hopkins adds an extra layer of authenticity by situating it in the early 90s.  The USSR has recently broken up, neighboring Azerbaijan is dismantling (read pillaging) its Soviet infrastructure and dabbling in "the market" (read mafia) and Turkey is beginning to install a mobile phone network.  The US dollar (cash) is the preferred financial instrument.  Opportunity beckons for Mihram.

The Market: A Tale of Trade offers choice illustrations of many "capitalist" sub themes:

• Everything Has Its Price
• Business Is Business
• Information Is Power

Mihram is both an advocate for and a victim of all of the above.  If your pickup truck is your office, and if items on either side of the border have different "supply and demand" curves, you probably need a good business plan.

If your business plan's major elements are prayer (including a shaky vow to lay off the liquor) and gambling, or is too complicated to explain to your wife, then its chances of succeeding are, shall we say, aleatory.  Luck is a helpful element in any business, but when your multiple commitments, based on the same wad of cash, start to unravel, you have to be luckier than Mihram's track record would indicate.

You can enjoy The Market on many levels: excellent acting by unknown (in the West, anyway) new faces; a feel for life in those indeterminate border zones where rules are something for the books; an allegory for how all of our lives are influenced by "market forces."  Ben Hopkins' "Director's Statement" is definitely worth reading, as it traces how he came to write the screenplay "that dealt with my conflicting feelings about capitalism - my admiration for its creativity and innovation, and my cynicism that it can ever deliver its benefits without inequality and exploitation."

After months of Madoff and banks, bailouts, and bonuses, it's refreshing that Ben Hopkins provides a look at trade, one of the very basics of society's economic relations.  But who other than Hopkins would have thought to stage a timely and timeless capitalist drama on the dusty steppes of Central Asia?

Global Economic Crisis: Uzbekistan Engages Constructively

A prosperous and democratic Uzbekistan could be an extremely important bridge between the Western and Muslim worlds.

AbduMannob Polat, former chairman of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, writing for the Jamestown Foundation

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Last week I participated in a conference in Tashkent, the capital of post-Soviet Central Asia's most populous country, Uzbekistan.  Hosts were the Uzbekistan Institute for the Study of Civil Society (ISCS), who provided the photos in this post.  Full disclosure: the Brussels-based European Institute of International Relations (IERI, for which I do pro-bono work) was a co-sponsor, as were the OSCE and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), organizations with strong democracy-building and rule of law credentials.

The round table was primarily focused on how Uzbekistan has coped with the international financial crisis.  Rather well, it would appear: the IMF (whose Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn visited Uzbekistan and other Central Asian states last month) forecast 7% GDP growth for the country in 2009, down only slightly from 2008's 9% figure.

Some of Uzbekistan's success in weathering the financial storm is down to its isolation; "double land-locked" among other land-locked Central Asian neighbors, it had already survived the wrenching transition from Soviet central planning after the breakup of the USSR in the '90s.  As one Uzbek banker said, the country's mere 6% of mortgage exposure meant there was "no bubble to burst."  It has also helped that the country's President, Islam Karimov, is an economist by training, and has recently penned a book on the crisis.

Though economic in thrust, the conference's sub theme of political reforms was ever-present.  That picture of me on the right is of a very jet lagged neophyte's first hours in Tashkent, trying to answer the local press' insistent questioning about my opinion on Uzbekistan's upcoming (December) parliamentary and local elections.  "Langue de bois" or diplospeak comes in handy at times, but I was honestly able to plead ignorance based on my almost total lack of information on the question.

Other participants were more forthright, with probably the best line from the NDI director: "democracy is the best defense against extremism."  The extremism is Islamic, and was a reference to Uzbekistan's darkest hour in 2005, when long-simmering tensions came to a head in the city of Andijan.  A bloody confrontation between government forces and opposition elements - over which the jury is still out, though a 2007 Jamestown Foundation report provides dispassionate analysis - resulted in Uzbekistan's sidelining by Western governments and NGOs, which is only now starting to be relaxed.

Part of the thaw is plain power politics: Uzbekistan lies astride a critical supply route leading to Afghanistan, and can be a much-appreciated island of stability in a turbulent region.  As AbduMannob Polat, former chairman of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan (and author of the Jamestown study), writes: "A prosperous and democratic Uzbekistan could be an extremely important bridge between the Western and Muslim worlds."  A truism, to be sure.  The conditional tense is crucial: we aren't there yet.  But Uzbek bodies like the Civil Society Institute, with crucial assistance from institutions like the OSCE and NDI (also from the European Union and the Council of Europe), are engaging with the outside world.

As longtime campaigners for the rule of law in Uzbekistan know, the transition from centuries of Czarist then Communist rule does not come overnight.  There are ups, and there are downs.  Dialogue helps, and "constructive engagement" - though dismissed by purists as providing cover and abetting repression - can also be a way of maintaining a positive influence, and has born fruit.  Uzbekistan has an active ombudsman in the person of a respected parliamentary deputy, and the country banned capital punishment in 2008.

I have no illusions that the ways of Uzbek politics are every bit as labyrinthine as those of the Middle East, of which I know enough to know what I don't know, to paraphrase an ex-US Secretary of Defense.  But there is a window opening up, as much for Uzbekistan as for the West.  And it's not just the West: Uzbekistan still must deal gingerly with overtures from its former overlords in Moscow, and President Karimov currently chairs the SCO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

"Great Game" aficionados will put this down to East-West jockeying for influence in a resource-rich, strategically located country, and that cannot be denied.  But that will happen anyway.  Uzbekistan, despite what a NY Times correspondent intimated recently, is not Chechnya.  The question is: are ordinary Uzbek citizens better off with - or without - the presence of Western institutions pressing for rule of law and human rights?  How "righteous" is it to leave them on their own?  Engagement, however problematic and trying on the nerves, can bring results.

Streetcars On the Silk Road: Post From Tashkent

Uzbekistan's capital is the metropolis of Central Asia.  With a population of over 2 million (I heard one guesstimate of 4 million), Tashkent was the Soviet Union's fourth city, just after Kiev.  Its cosmopolitan nature shows, and its people are a kaleidoscope of humanity.

It's a city of wide sidewalks and even wider boulevards, though central planning also endowed it with an impressive public transport system, replete with metro, trams, and buses.  Though the city is marking its 23rd century, you have to look hard to find buildings that predate the devastating 1966 earthquake.

Thanks to a conference colleague from an NGO, a longtime Uzbekistan hand, I was able to see a few of those vestiges, including a madrassa that has been converted into a sort of artisans' colony (lower right).  A taste of what the country has to offer.

I wish I were here longer, maybe fitting in a visit to Samarkand or Bukhara, well-preserved gems on the ancient Silk Road.  Next time, perhaps.  For now, it's conference time - more on that later, when I return to Brussels.