Avuncular American

Coup anniversaries: Algeria 1992, US Capitol 2021

Soviet era BMP tank

Thirty years ago today, tanks filed past our window at the American consulate in Oran, Algeria's second city.  We'd put the kids to bed, said good night to our dinner guests, when I noticed that there was unusual traffic noise just below.  It was surreal: a tank was maneuvering to make a U-turn just in front of our venerable building.  Up and down the boulevard, a line of tanks and APCs.  Algeria's coup ousting its president, overturning an election, and jailing the winners was underway... triggering a bloody civil war that lasted a decade.  January 11, 1992: see LA Times report.

The January 6 anniversary of the Trump attempt to overturn the U.S. presidential election is barely over, but articles and interviews with scholars of authoritarianism, of democracy-ending regimes, and of civil wars continue to remind us that the danger has not passed.

Barbara Walter, a University of California San Diego political scientist who was part of a study commissioned by the CIA to identify precursors to political violence in other countries, has started to see some of the main signs in her own country.  Her podcast in the New Yorker makes sober listening.

I am not suggesting that the actual coup by the Algerian military, leading to a decade-long civil war that killed hundreds of thousands is akin to the attempted "constitutional" coup by defeated president Trump and his supporters culminating in the violence of January 6, 2021.  That embarrassing fiasco is being dealt with by the January 6 House Select Committee and by the Justice Department.  But Professors Walters' principal points - that civil wars are preceded by demonization of the opposing side and that the breakdown of democracy is a precursor to violence - make me very concerned about the Algerian "model" and its relevance to the US.

Contrary to the US, Algeria had no long history of democracy, and prior to the brief window of free elections in 1990 and 1991, it was always a foregone conclusion that the governing FLN party would win.  Until it didn't - twice losing to the Islamist party FIS in the country's first fair elections.  And it was the fear on the part of the privileged elite -- the army and oligarchs who'd been benefiting from Algeria's oil and gas riches -- that democracy would end their decades-long kleptocracy, which precipitated the coup.  After the ensuing bloodshed, they tried to rewrite history and made noises about the threat of "democratic terrorism" to justify their action.

In the US, we have a political party, the Republicans, which works to stoke fears of the end of privilege by a white, rural population on its way to becoming a demographic minority.  In state after state, laws are being put in place to cement minority rule through elections that will be tilted in their favor.  And political demonization has gotten literal, with Congressional and other prominent Republicans mouthing Q-Anon crazy talk about Democratic politicians.  Death threats against elected officials are in their thousands, and we've already seen in 2020 armed militias threaten state capitols.

"It could never happen here" is something that fewer Americans say with any certainty.  That's what I'm thinking about today, the anniversary of when I witnessed a "successful" coup.

Cartoonists as the Footsoldiers of Democracy

If ever there was a time to watch this 2014 film, it's now.

If ever anyone doubted that political cartoonist is a high-risk occupation, yesterday's Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris is devastating proof.

"Les Caricaturistes: Fantassins de la Démocratie" is the definitive documentary on political cartoonists from every part of the world.  It's a chance to discover an NGO which helps defend their efforts on behalf of free speech, "Cartooning for Peace," begun in 2006 under the auspices of then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Le Monde's "Plantu" is the star of both film and NGO, never missing a chance to explain the art behind the message or to share the spotlight with his cherished colleagues throughout the world.  Last night he was on the TV news, with his same message of perseverance in the face of the terrorism perpetrated in Paris.

This short (1.5 hours) documentary sketches sympathetic portraits of this diverse group of heroes, who all face, in varying degrees, the threat of violence (or at a minimum, exclusion) in their countries.  A Syrian cartoonist whose hands are broken by Assad's thugs.  A Venezuelan journalist who's called a whore and a lesbian for daring to ridicule Chavez & Co.  Russia's premier political artist, who can't publish anything in Putin's Russia, and drives a night taxi to earn a living.

 

http://www.bedetheque.com/

In the early '90s in Algeria, I remember cartoonist "Slim" taking on the establishment and the reigning social (dis)order, even before he took on the rise of Islamism (which eventually led to his exile).  In a former one-party state, Slim's cartoons were of an amazing candor, and really funny: in a country where orphans of slain moujahid freedom fighters from the 1950s and 60s were provided great advantages (which led people to invent a heroic forebear), he had a 1990s baby in carriage saying, "some day, I'll be the son of a moujahid."  Today, in Algeria, Ali Dilem in Liberté continues to wield his pen, and is appropriately biting about the assassination of the Charlie Hebdo journalists.

Caricaturistes of course can't include every political cartoonist; Steve Bell, the often outrageous and sometimes unfathomable (he was very clear on the Paris killings) Guardian veteran, isn't featured, nor is our own Brussels favorite, Pierre Kroll of Le Soir (here's Kroll on yesterday's murders, Morts de Rire).

Belgian-Israeli cartoonist Michel Kichka believes that political correctness, even more than censorship by authorities, is the greatest threat to the freedom of expression practiced by his profession.  For his part, Plantu paraphrases Franklin Roosevelt's admonition to Americans after Pearl Harbor: "we have nothing to fear but fear itself."  Plantu, like his slain counterparts at Charlie Hebdo, fears nothing, except this: "I am afraid of the fear of others."

That's the wonderful thing about the wave of solidarity shown in the face of this assault on the freedom of expression, and it's the uplifting message of Caricaturistes: those in power (and those who would like to wield power at the point of a gun) fear ridicule, and the Cartoonists are there to show that the (fill in the blank) has no clothes.

Mideast Christians Beyond Christmas

Chances are that last week, as Christmas was being celebrated, your TV news included a segment on the Christians of the Middle East.  It's an annual staple, and provides jarring images like Santa confronting Israeli troops at a checkpoint near Bethlehem.

Throughout the Middle East, ancient Christian communities are being uprooted, if not extinguished.  Pope Francis, in a letter addressed to the Christians of the Middle East, wrote of their "leavening" effect:

You can help your Muslim fellow citizens to present with discernment a more authentic image of Islam, as so many of them desire, reiterating that Islam is a religion of peace, one which is compatible with respect for human rights and favours peaceful coexistence on the part of all.

William Dalrymple, the Scottish author of From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East, in a recent Guardian article, sees the exodus of Christians as the end of secular Arab nationalism.  He quotes the late Lebanese AUB professor Kamal Salibi who detected a "fin de race" fatalism among eastern Christians, a net loss for the Arab world: "It is Christian Arabs who keep the Arab world 'Arab' rather than 'Muslim'."

In his recent Foreign Policy report on Alexandria Egypt (my home for two years in the Eighties) "The Lighthouse Dims," James Traub sees the end of the cosmopolitan ideal:

North Africa used to be a civilizational crossroads in which Muslims, Christians, and Jews not only lived alongside one another but also shared one another's language and culture. This mingled society, formed from many intense particularities, is what we call cosmopolitanism. It was born in the Middle East, and it now seems to be disappearing there, including from the one place where the cosmopolitan ideal reached its supreme realization: Alexandria.

Recently I renewed ties with an old friend, a Palestinian Christian who was a fellow volunteer at a Boy Scout center in Ramallah in the early Seventies.  He and his family are now exiles from their home in Jerusalem, victims of what the Israelis call the "center of life" policy, which renders stateless Palestinians who have the temerity to go abroad on a work assignment.  His wife recounts their ordeal in this article.

Whether it's Israeli policies of harassment and land seizures (which of course affect all Palestinians, whether Muslim or Christian), or flight in the face of ISIS terrorism (William Dalrymple refers to the ISIS "Christian-free zone"), Mideast Christians face what could be, in the very lands where Christianity was born, the end of their long history in an entire region.

The instability which has afflicted the region in recent years - the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the Syrian revolution and the ensuing ISIS onslaught - has meant the flight of Christians from countries where they had been protected minorities, with sizable populations.  The Arab world's loss - Christian Arabs were the intellectual founders of many of the modern nation-states - will likely be permanent.  As Professor Salibi said, "Each time a Christian goes, no other Christian comes to fill his place..."  

Nos années Marocaines

Farewell party: Marie Hélène and Jerry Loftus with Moroccan friends Mohammed and Majdouline

No need to tell readers what we've been up to from July 2010 through June 2014 - there are four years of posts to read from TALIM Director's Blog, when I headed the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies.

But those were unforgettable times, when we were given a chance to shape a cultural program at America's only National Historic Landmark in a foreign country.  "Our Moroccan Years."

It isn't possible to sum up in one blog post what this place means to us, and though we have now returned home to Brussels, we'll always have a special place for Tangier and the people we got to know thanks to the Legation.

Like Mustapha Temeli (photo, right), who, with his attention to detail and wide-ranging skill set, helped make the Legation museum's exhibits stand out.

Today in Morocco, people are celebrating King Mohammed VI's 15th anniversary of his accession to the throne.  Throne Day - we always looked forward to the Moroccan Air Force feats of acrobatic prowess over the Bay of Tangier.

As international media continues to bombard us with bad news from what seems to be an entire swath of the world, from Libya through Syria and Iraq and over to Afghanistan and Pakistan, let's pause to reflect on the good news country that you rarely hear of - Morocco.

While things aren't perfect there (and where are they perfect?)... lopsided income distribution, high levels of un-or-underemployment, etc. ... Morocco after 15 years of "M6" can be a happy place to live.  And that's thanks to Moroccans and their enlightened monarch.  There's something to be said about a royal tradition dating back centuries, and a sense of nationhood that pre-dated the short lived colonial era.

And while Morocco too is concerned about the inroads made by radical Islam and the potential for blowback among volunteers for the myriad wars inflaming the region, it has taken steps to reinforce Morocco's traditionally moderate form of Islam.

Yes, Morocco made its mark on us.  Our long goodbye - the car ferry trip over to Tarifa and Spain, Tangier fading into the distance - continued after we arrived in Brussels.  When we went to pick up our footlockers sent by a transporteur, we had to smile at what was an outpost of Morocco in the capital of Europe.  Among the excess baggage sent via long distance bus was a watermelon - loose, with a name taped to its undented skin.

Someone had sent a expatriate relative a watermelon - with love from Morocco.

Of Gods and Men and Algeria

Des Hommes et des Dieux

Though this film portrays terrorism and its victims, this is not another "post 9/11 film."  In fact, the events it portrays transpired between 1993 and 1996, and had nothing to do with America, George W. Bush, or Iraq.  The victims were French, and the perpetrators Algerian.  But which Algerians?  One of the film's characters even gets to utter the question raised by countless Algerians and outside observers, "Qui tue qui?" (Who is killing who?).

Image: Why Not Productions

For the monks of Tibhirine, that question may never really be answered with certainty.  What is certain, however, is that Xavier Beauvois has given us a unique film - the Cannes 2010 Jury Grand Prize winner.  A film that is very difficult to categorize, neither a "thriller" nor just a film about monks or terrorists. That said, it has plenty of suspense, even if pretty much everyone knows of the eventual fate of the monks.

Our time spent with the monks gives us a sense of their world, before Algeria's decade-plus of bloodshed intervened to change their pastoral idyll forever.  It is the portrayal of the monks' lives, and their anguish over the violence taking over their adopted country, which is so powerfully rendered in Des Hommes et des Dieux.  The spectator is transported to Algeria in the mid-Nineties, and the sigh that a monk utters over the sheer beauty of the landscape of the high steppes and forested hills is something that one can almost feel.  And the sense of impending loss.

Beauvois has given us a beautiful film, and the casting is perfect.  Lambert Wilson as Brother Christian, the Prior of the monastery, has an ascetic intellectual steel behind wire-rimmed glasses beloved of French priests.  He resents the intrusion of the warring factions on the monks' work, though his decision to stick it out in the isolated mountains causes him constant anguish.  Olivier Rabourdin as Christophe is riven with doubt, and closeups of his eyes replace any need for extraneous dialogue.  Brother Luc, played by an avuncular Michel Lonsdale, has seen it all - literally.  During Algeria's war of liberation in the Fifties, Luc was taken prisoner by the FLN, only to be released when they realized that Dr. Luc Dochier was treating Algerians - both FLN fighters and civilians.

Despite the difficulty of treating such a subject, Olivier Beauvois gives us a very subtle film, one that hints at the ambiguities of the record.  The monks recoil at the violence perpetrated by both sides, and their stubborn insistence at staying with the villagers who depend on them for employment, for medical treatment, and for intelligent conversation becomes an annoyance to the combatants.

A hovering helicopter gives a premonition of the fate that may have befallen the monks, the loud, whirling blades audible as they pray in their chapel.  Is it Army protection, or something else?  In 2009, former French military attaché in Algiers General François Buchwalter testified that the monks were in fact killed in a botched attack on what the Army took to be an Islamist group.

Of Gods and Men is an ode to a group of incredibly brave men, beautifully acted and filmed.  A fitting memorial to the monks buried on a hillside in their beloved Algeria.

Israel: Swift Sword, Into Foot

In the heady days after the Six Day War, when the IDF vanquished numerically superior forces on three fronts, retired US Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall wrote Swift Sword: The Historical Record of Israel's Victory, June 1967.  Now, the title might have to be Spin Swiftly: Israel Inflicts Own Goal In Showdown With Aid Flotilla.

All the spin in the world isn't helping this time.  The Israeli MFA deployed its multilingual team of spokespeople, native speakers of English, French, Arabic, and the infinite diversity of languages brought back from the diaspora by the Aliyah.  To little avail.  When the IDF commandos wind up alienating 81 year old diplomats like retired US Ambassador Edward Peck, they probably have lost already.  What are they going to do, sink the next ship with Nobel Peace Prize winners aboard?

Israel may have the best spinners, but if the message is in contradiction to your very foundation - "Let my people go" - then audiences will quickly figure it out.  Yes, it would be nice if the Palestinians could deploy their own diaspora, who probably have as wide a linguistic background as the Israelis.  For now, they choose people whose imperfect command of English and of PR 101 leaves them at a distinct disadvantage.  The other problem: Israeli spokespersons represent a country, and Palestine does not yet have that status.

Which brings us to the heart of the problem.  As Israeli writer Amos Oz says today ("Israeli Force, Adrift On the Sea") in the New York Times

the only way for Israel to edge out Hamas would be to quickly reach an agreement with the Palestinians on the establishment of an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as defined by the 1967 borders, with its capital in East Jerusalem.

Amen.  Minus that, flotillas will continue to float - and rockets will resume flying.

(Image: Mother Jones)

Algerian Elections June 1990

The most impressive tactic in the mass demonstration was the silence.

The bearded FIS - French acronym for the Islamic Salvation Front - demonstrators wound their way up the hills of Algiers in perfect order, even arranging their own ambulances in case of mishaps (there were none).  The silence was eloquent, and it showed better than any banner or slogan that the new party could impose discipline.  But could it get out the vote?

(image, Jurist, University of Pittsburgh)

It was spring 1990, and I had just arrived in Algeria to take up my new job at the American Embassy as head of the political section.  I had actually left a tropical paradise several months early to get to Algiers in time to cover the first contested elections since Algerian independence in 1962.  I knew it would be interesting, but I was unaware that I'd be a witness to a sea change in this North African country's history.

Twenty years later, we can look at Algeria's municipal and regional assembly elections of June 12, 1990 as a dangerous experiment in democracy, one that degenerated into a quasi-civil war after the Army canceled parliamentary elections that the FIS was slated to win in January 1992.  But that conventional wisdom is based on a certain determinism.  Algeria need not have descended into more than a decade of bloodletting.

In spring 1990, then Algerian President Chadli Bendjedid, two weeks before the elections, raised hopes when he said that "the time of top-down governance is over.  Ruling party and opposition must be elected, not co-opted or parachuted in by the machine."  Few believed that he was sincere.  After all, street signs in Algiers pointed to the "Headquarters of The Party," as in the single party, the FLN that had led the country to independence from France.

That blasé attitude was certainly present in a little corner restaurant where I'd stopped for lunch on June 12, taking a break from my urban walkabout to observe polling sites.  The man at the table near mine, a civil servant, wasn't even voting.  "Why bother?" he scoffed, "we know what the results will be."  That would have been true before June 1990, but that day, it was to be different.  The party that got out the vote would win.

And that's what the FIS did.  In polling place after polling place, I came across the ubiquitous FIS election observers.  All the parties were authorized to place their watchdogs at the election sites; only the FIS did it with any regularity.  Truth be told, some of the small "democratic" parties probably didn't have sufficient members to allow other than a symbolic presence.  But even the ruling FLN was absent.  Like my lunchtime friend, they said "why bother?"

The rest is history.  The FIS' 4.5 million votes were double that of the FLN, and left all other parties in the dust.  FIS members took up positions as mayors of Algiers, Oran, and all the major cities.  It maintained its hold on municipal and regional assemblies until its dissolution after the January 1992 coup.

Years later, I listened to an Algerian general at an international conference refer to "democratic terrorism" to explain the FIS electoral victories of June 1990 and December 1991, as if voting were somehow illegitimate if you disagreed with the results.  We know where that attitude led.

The world still hasn't come to grips with the quandary of what to do when the "wrong" side wins, especially when it's an Islamist party.  In Gaza, the Hamas winners of the January 2006 elections are still waiting to do their victory lap...

Paying Them To Be Pals

Do you remember the scene in David Lean's epic film, Lawrence of Arabia, where Colonel TE Lawrence, to shouts of "Aurens! Aurens!" rides back to his Bedouin allies in the company of... mercenaries?  "Killers, cutthroats," say the disgusted princes and tribal leaders.  Lawrence has bought himself some protection, but at the cost of the respect of those who are fighting with him for a cause.

A century later, we have lots of modern-day Lawrences in Army and Marine camouflage BDUs, mingling in the Middle East and hiking the Hindu Kush, alternately fighting and tea-drinking with the various bands that make up Iraq and Afghanistan's warring factions.  In Lean's film, it was Ottoman gold that inspired some of Lawrence's Arab allies.  Nowadays, it's more likely to be the shrinking US dollar, shrink-wrapped in bricks of $100 bills.

When I read that the Pentagon's budget is now to include CERP ("Commander's Emergency Response Program") money to woo the Taliban over to "our side," that image of Lawrence's mercenaries looms up.  The $1.3 billion allotted to CERP in Afghanistan may be a drop in the bucket, but as with all such things, has there been much thought given to what happens when the former baddies stop getting money?

Read Shane Bauer's great expose in the September Mother Jones, "The Sheikh Down," for a look at what your money buys in Iraq, where CERP payments created the "Awakening Councils" out of former enemies among the Sunni population.  It's an entertaining read, except the part about the shaking down of the American taxpayer, who gets to pay for "reconstruction" projects at many times their justified price, all in the name of keeping the peace.  Getting a piece, for the sheikhs profiled, is more like it.

But what happens when the money stops?  Surely even Pentagon planners can harbor hopes of a rosy future of declining budget lines when the CERP program "sunsets," to use a term from accounting-speak?  But will the Sunni fighters in Iraq and the ex-Taliban pocketing the payments understand it when the CERP paymasters say "Thanks guys, but our funding has zeroed-out."  Their guns and bombs, bought and paid for by American largess - who will they point them at now?

How about allegations that Italian payments to the Taliban for peace in their sector, when stopped and not communicated to French forces that inherited their zone, subsequently brought the Taliban's wrath on the unsuspecting French?  According to the Times of London, even the US Embassy in Rome protested to the Italian government about such practices.  But now the same thing is in the Pentagon budget?

Tom Engelhardt's "Tomgram" put it squarely: "Will Today's US-Armed Ally Be Tomorrow's Enemy?"  We've been there before, in the self-same Afghanistan:

Let me suggest just one lesson that seems to be on no one else's mind at a moment when a key "option" being offered in Washington -- especially by Democrats not eager to see tens of thousands more U.S. troops heading Afghanistan-wards -- is to arm and "train" ever more thousands of Afghans into a vast army and police security force for a government that hardly exists. Based on the last three decades in the region, don't you think that we should pause and consider who exactly we may be arming and who exactly we may be supporting, and whether, given those 30 years of history, we have the slightest idea what we're doing?

Americans with amnesia should go out and rent Charlie Wilson's War, a slick rendition of how we "bought" the Mujahideen those thirty years ago, who then became the Taliban, who then started getting CERP payments...

AF-PAK-IRAN - Eddies of Instability, or Negotiation Opportunity?

Whatever happened to strategic options?

Discussions of Western policy towards Iran have a numbing inevitability to them.  You're going to hear about the sanctions option, which is always there as a way of warding off the Israeli bombing option.  Two flavors - is that all we have to choose from?

The weekend's deadly attack in Iran's Sistan-Baluchistan region should be of concern in capitals other than just Tehran.  And not only because of intemperate Iranian accusations of US or British involvement, which are probably ludicrous.  [UPDATE: Or perhaps not so ludicrous: see Washington Note post by Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett].  It would appear that the Anglo-Americans have quite enough on their hands without poking the eyes of the Iranians, especially in an area where they have little or no leverage.  After all, it was only last week that Baluchis on the Pakistani side expressed fears of US drone strikes in their region, which were apparently nixed by Islamabad.

Thankfully we are no longer in the era of George W. "Axis of Evil" Bush, whose neat phrase lumped together two deadly enemies - Iraq and Iran - by simple conflation.  They were both Muslim-majority countries opposed to the United States - what more do you need?  Bush's crusade against Saddam eliminated the one enemy who had bloodied Iran, and so delivered Iraq into the Shia camp.  Blowback of which I am sure we will hear more as the US wearies of the occupation.

So why, when contemplating Iran policy, are we limited to options that are more worthy of Bush than Obama?

President Obama, after all, is He of the open hand reaching out to the clenched fist.  It's depressing that we are still arguing about Bomb Iran versus Sanction Iran, without considering Co-opt Iran.  Yes, use shared concern over ever-widening arcs of instability, eddying out from their epicenter in Afghanistan.  Pakistan is belatedly trying to deal with multiple insurgencies on its periphery, which, according to Mark Sappenfield of the Christian Science Monitor, won't necessarily help across the border: "All the major terrorist networks attacking US forces in Afghanistan operate from other areas of Pakistan."

Let's use some of the momentum from today's Vienna 4-way nuclear talks to encourage Tehran to expand the diplomatic option.  How about it, Iran: tired of importing natural gas when you're sitting on some of the world's largest reserves?  Find importing gasoline a tad expensive when you actually export the raw material?

In a neighborhood like Af/Pak, wouldn't you want to ensure a bit of stability in the surrounding countries?  India, large, dynamic, democratic to the east.  Central Asia to the north, with its economies trying to transition from Soviet command to capitalism.  And Iran to the west, looking to the west and its markets rather than obsessing about the Great Satan.

Alistair Crooke, writing in Conflicts Forum, questions whether the West (and the Arab Middle East) is again ready to consider Iran as a regional power, as it was under different management.  Whatever the answer, the recent trouble on Iran's Pakistan border may cause some policy makers - Iranian, American, and others - to consider shared interest in stability, in a region where that is in very short supply.

Image: Af/Pak coffee mug, available through Diplopundit.

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)