#7
From: "Wallace Kaufman" <taconia@cavenet.com>
Subject: Central Asia's core problem
Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002
"Letter From Uzbekistan" by RAFFI KHATCHADOURIAN ( JRL 6005) emphasizes once more the often overlooked volatility of Central Asia, the West's best hope for diversifying the world's energy supplies, among other things. His focus on the harsh measures of the Karimov regime, however, highlights grim human rights problems, but not the main reason some Central Asians are increasingly ready to embrace violent fundamentalism.
True, even if the snake oil of radical and violent ideologies is being sold by comfortable mullahs and Saudi millionares, people are driven by despair, not understanding, to embrace them. These ideologies offer the one thing that so far Central Asia's regimes have not been able to offer--hope. And the first hope of all people's is not political but economic hope. Where Kachadourian goes astray is in suggesting that somehow US criticism of these regimes is the key to change, that a US military presence is an inevitable irritant, and that only after Sept. 11 aid started to 'pour in'.
In fact, in Uzbekistan, as in all the Central Asian countries, the US has since 1992 financed tens of millions of dollars in programs designed to improve human rights, solve environmental problems, and encourage economic development from microfinance in the Fergana Valley to housing credit in Kazakhstan. In addition to US programs these countries host programs run by EBRD, ABD, and the World Bank. Not all the programs have been well run or wisely designed, but even the best programs, unfortunately, cannot be more effective than the regimes that must pick them up and expand their benefits to the general population.
Housing credit alone, for example, could unlock billions of dollars in equity not controlled by the government, the most democratically distributed equity in the former Soviet Union. For this equity to multiply, of course, it needs infrastructure, both physical and institutional. Mortgage banking was proposed for Kazakhstan in 1993 on the heels of a presidential decree on housing, but only last year was a real housing credit program put on the ground, strongly supported by US funds and assistance.
So far the rulers of Central Asia have not invested effectively in necessary human, institutional or physical infrastructure. Kazakhstan, for instance, has squandered its vast oil revenues on moving its capital to the middle of the steppes where it was for a while known appropriately as "Akmola" or 'white grave' in Kazakh. Simultaneously that move destroyed billions of dollars of investment in the old capital, Almaty. The country's schools languish, its medical system is worse than in Soviet times, investment in its vast farmlands is minimal since no one can own those lands, and corruption continues to drive the entrepreneurial spirit underground or abroad. Meanwhile the president's family and relatives seem to appear in every business venture and the former communist leader with his modest salary has become inexplicably rich.
The people of Central Asia can be well fed, well closed, and well housed, or they can be well equipped to feed, clothe and house themselves. Being well equipped is the preferable course to the dependency on inevitably inefficient and corrupt government charity. So far there is little hope for either course.
It's a red herring to hold the US accountable for the potential disaster facing these countries. Ridding Afghanistan of the Taleban and Al Qaeda certainly buys time for Central Asia, and the presence of US troops in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan is a small risk to take for the potential benefits. But here as with more direct forms of aid, what the rulers of these countries do with the time we buy them is all important.
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