Rico over at turkmenistan.neweurasia.net has a new post, shedding light on Turkmen Gas production.

Hulegu has the latest in the Andijon controversy, which ever more becomes a smear campaign against my professor at SOAS, Dr. Akiner.

Also, Nathan has an extensive post about what seems to be the begin of retaliation against Uzbekistan.

neweurasia, Thinking-East’s dedicated Central Asia and Caucasus offshoot, has semi-started operations, with Rico Isaacs being the first active blogger on turkmenistan.neweurasia.net – one of our country blogs. Rico’s first post is on President Nyazov’s latest dismissal. Interesting story, make sure to read the story linked in the post.

We are still looking for interested bloggers to cover the Central Asian or Caucasian country of their choice. All blogs are online now (though yet idle), except for the Tajik one. The URLs are generic: http://countryname.neweurasia.net

From Registan’s comment section:

Agree with Nathan and David that there’s a lot to take issue with here, and that anyone with any Central Asian knowledge and/or critical thinking skills who has the patience to read Akiner’s entire report could pick it apart logically and factually if s/he wanted to dedicate the time.

One thing that is immediately clear to any reader is that Akiner had a very busy day. In fact, on closer inspection of the report, she had a nearly impossibly busy day. In any event, looking closer at how she spent her time can give readers an idea of how careful her research was likely to have been.

She says she was there for 12 hours (this was almost two weeks after the end of the events, by the way) and interviewed 40 people. That’s an average of 18 minutes per interviewee without even factoring out travel time in the city, meals, waiting for interviewees to show up. She says she also “walked around the city”, inspected the jail and the school, and paced out the entire square in front of the Hokimiyat in order to get a rough measurement – this would have all taken time too. Akiner, however, claims to spend 20 – 45 minutes with each witness – a mathematical impossibility.

She notes that she spoke with a classroom of about 15 madrassah students – and while it is somewhat disingenuous to pad the number of “witnesses” you had by counting all the participants of a class discussion, assuming that she included these 15 as witnesses make her account of her day a little more palpable, though still unlikely. Without the 15 madrassah students from the class discussion, it is actually 25 witnesses, that gives an average of about 28 minutes per interview (again, if Akiner spent every second interviewing people, which she clearly did not).

Akiner indicates that she spoke with 12 categories of witness (Akiner calls anyone she talked to a “witness”) besides madrassah students: madrassah teachers, imams, mahalla committee members, cemetery keepers/ gravediggers, doctors, prisoners, prison staff, bazaar traders, government officials, law enforcement officers, independent human rights activists, one hostage. So her remaining 25 interviewees were presumably divided among these categories (mostly official appointees or state employees with something to lose—notice the absence of anyone who was actually in the square, except for the hostage and perhaps law enforcement officials).

It also appears that at least several of these remaining witnesses were mahalla leaders, as Akiner relies on them for death estimates, citing a range of 3-10 deaths per mahalla (one would hope that she didn’t just ask two mahalla leaders to get this range) this eats into the remaining 25 witnesses with people whose testimony, as just neighborhood leaders, would not be particularly useful.

So really we’re talking about 20-odd interviews that probably lasted 15-20 minutes each after factoring in all of Akiner’s class discussions, inspecting of buildings, measuring public squares and walking around town. This is still an extremely tight interview schedule, which implies that someone was bending over backwards to get her all this face time (and presumably, most interviewees would be going through those who organized the interview and, thus, could be briefed or intimidated beforehand). Additionally, most of these interviews were of people who were either direct state appointees or de facto appointees (mahalla heads and official imams) who have to more or less tow the official line.

So the real question is how did this report get so much attention? For God sakes, an entire lecture tour?!! Akiner herself even admits she is not writing as an academic, but as a layperson.

Oh, and Starr’s assertion in the introduction that HRW was hiding dead bodies in Tashkent is just plain ridiculous. It’s a shame that someone so detatched from reality is allowed to continue to teach. He should be sued for libel.

It’s up at Commoner Sense. Click here for your weekly dose of democracy-related news from the blogosphere.

All made this summer.

That’s the famous Mir-i-Arab, one of the two functional medressas during Soviet times.

While the outside of the typical Bukharan house looks fairly bleak, the patios are surprisingly green, spacious and elegant.


A close-up at Samarkand’s Registan.



Again the Mir-i-Arab.


The two tourists, Ben (l) and Sven.

Bukhara’s skyline.

Read the whole thing.

Via IFEX, I received a couple of Emails lamenting the attack on Editor-in-chief of “Zhany muun” newspaper, Jyldyz Bekbayeva, and Mahmud Kazakbayev, a reporter with “Demos Times” newspaper and the founder of Allians-Press advertising agency.

Just yesterday, the Times of Central Asia, an English-language publication from Bishkek, was closed down amidst unclear charges. Laurence had it on Registan yesterday.

Can there be a connection between these three incidents? I don’t think so. The first two assaults rather speak for a grown lawlessness in the Kyrgyz south. The Karasuu incident is clearly linked to organised crime, whereas the attack in Osh should be seen in the light of the Ombudsman Tursunbai Bakir’s wounded pride. The Times of Central Asia, though not a very prominent news source for us internet users, is widely read on the spot – catering for the NGO-folks in Bishkek and beyond. The reasons for its closure seem all but blurry until now. One cannot say much about it before more information sees the light of day.

These news come at the same time RFE/RL runs a story on independent media in Kyrgyzstan:

It may prove a long and difficult process [the transformation to a totally independent media] . But Kyrgyzstan does appear to be the only country in Central Asia capable of making such a move. With its existing small but independent media, the foundations are already there.

Kyrgyzstan has, after the March events, still a long way to go before one can speak of a truly free media landscape. The article discusses impediments that might obstruct progress on this way, such as the involvement of Russian-style media oligarchs with a political agenda (well, they are not only found in Moscow).

The three incidents under discussion in this post should not generate a biased picture, they should rather point at problems that cannot be solved by good legislation only: Criminals, local administration, and regional power struggles can be more dangerous for a free press. Bekbayeva and Kazakbayev would most probably agree.

Update:Matt responds to the Registan post over the Times closure:

I always found the Times to be fairly pro-Akayev. Nevertheless Bakiyev is getting away with destroying one of the most liberal environments Central Asia has, without a word of condemnation from the West. I appreciate the sentiments of “maintaining stability” but surely this guy is behaving no better than his predecessor. Theres an interesting article about the media situation over at the Central Asia – Caucusus Analyst, the link is on my blog for those interested.

The article mentioned is here. It offers a more sombre view than the RFE/RL piece.

So far, unfortunately, the electoral campaign and the post-election developments indicate that the new regime is wary of implementing real democratic reforms, most importantly the reform of mass media.

Laurence Jarvik has a post on Dr. Akiner’s visit to Washington DC’s SAIS at Johns Hopkins. Apparently, an executive of the International Crisis Group tried to get her fired. Nathan comments.

I am really interested in returning to London next week to – among other courses – make an independent study project under Dr. Akiner’s supervision.

Related post here.

The new Carnival of Revolutions is up at Quid Nimis. Go check it out!