Daniel Kimmage

January 17, 2005

Analysis: Uzbek Government Allows Monitors In Torture Probe

Do Uzbek police inspire respect as upholders of justice or fear as practitioners of torture? Two men died in police custody in Uzbekistan on 2 January. Samandar Umarov was a prisoner serving a 17-year sentence for being a member of the banned Islamist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir. Rayim Quldoshev was a resident of Jizzakh called in for questioning after a dispute that occurred on New Year's Eve. Very different in their particulars, the two cases share a crucial common element: allegations that both men died as a result of physical abuse.

December 31, 2004

Central Asia: A Year In Review

Click here --> /specials/yearend/2004.asp for more stories looking back at 2004.

November 19, 2004

Analysis: Tajik Independent Newspaper Waiting For A New Day

Tajikistan's independent weekly "Ruzi Nav" (New Day) has been waiting for what its name promises since tax police shuttered the Jiyonkhon printing press in late August. In the interim, days have stretched into weeks. The newspaper has appealed to both Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov and the international community, tried unsuccessfully to find other printers in Tajikistan, gone to the trouble of running off an edition of the newspaper at a printer in neighboring Kyrgyzstan, and seen that edition confiscated by the transportation tax police at Dushanbe's airport. "Ruzi Nav" now awaits a ruling from Tajikistan's Culture Ministry even as the editors ready a lawsuit.

November 15, 2004

Analysis: Kazakh Breakthrough On Uzbek Terror Case

The violence in Uzbekistan earlier this year killed over 50 people The explosions, shoot-outs, and suicide bombings that struck Uzbekistan on 29 March-1 April and 30 July killed more than 50 people and left a host of unanswered questions in their wake.

November 04, 2004

Analysis: Arab Observers On The U.S. Presidential Election

Bush declaring victory on 3 November Most Arab observers approached the U.S. presidential election without the burden of high expectations. President George W. Bush has not fared well on the editorial pages of Arab newspapers, yet Senator John Kerry seemed to offer few concrete policy alternatives and generated scant enthusiasm. But with U.S. troops still in Iraq, and U.S. power seen as a decisive factor in virtually everything that happens in the region, the presidential contest drew intense scrutiny from Arab opinion makers. The arguments, insights, and hopes that follow are only a small part of the wide-ranging Arab debate that began over the struggle for the presidency and will now shift to the ramifications of a second term for President Bush.

October 28, 2004

Analysis: Religion, State, And Fear In Central Asia

This story is one of many featured on RFE/RL's new Religion And Tolerance --> /specials/religion/ webpage.

September 28, 2004

Analysis: Taking To The Streets In Uzbekistan

Wild-eyed religious extremists are the stock characters for most discussions of potential unrest in Uzbekistan. But while outbreaks of violence in 2004 have drawn media scrutiny, the daily cares of most people in Uzbekistan are far removed from the "Al-Qaeda links" and "terror plots" that mainstream media find so compelling. The following story, based primarily on reporting by RFE/RL's Uzbek Service, shows that more prosaic concerns are capable of bringing ordinary people out into the streets.

September 20, 2004

Analysis: Terrorism, Common Ground, And The CIS Summit

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) has always been an organization of countries united more by the shared burden of an ambiguous past than by a common vision of the future.

September 10, 2004

Analysis: Kazakhs In Beslan? The Multiethnic Face Of Post-Soviet Terror

A Russian prosecutor's statement that Kazakhs may have been involved in the bloody siege in Beslan has prompted an official Kazakh request for clarification. At the same time, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev has called for increased security measures at home. The backdrop to these unfolding events is a purported post-Soviet terrorist international that remains as elusive as it is troubling.

August 30, 2004

Analysis: A River Runs Through It

Ashgabat already boasts a 40-meter-high, gold-plated statue of President-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov that rotates a full 360 degrees each day, the better to bask in the full glory of the sun's rays. But the Turkmen capital lacks one indispensable accoutrement of a truly great city -- a mighty river. Now, plans are afoot to remedy nature's oversight. And while they are of a piece with other grandiose projects conceived under the watchful eye of Niyazov, they are also part of an older Soviet legacy of schemes to subordinate and remake the natural world.

August 20, 2004

Analysis: Terror In Uzbekistan

The aftermath of a bombing in Tashkent this spring. Perpetual Polemic Terrorism, and particularly terrorism with a perceived or avowed Islamist agenda, has sparked an increasingly acrimonious debate. Broadly speaking, two positions, both of which condemn terrorism -- without exclusively defining it -- as an unacceptable form of political violence, delimit the debate: 1) that terrorism emerges from the confluence of legitimate grievances and unresponsive government, and that the best way to fight terrorism is by creating viable mechanisms for effecting political change and addressing festering concerns; 2) that terrorism represents an ideological commitment to violence so willfully and profoundly at variance with acceptable standards of civilized behavior that it must be stamped out with the harshest measures the law allows, or else it will metastasize like a cancer.

July 26, 2004

Kazakh Slavery Case Underscores Wider Problem

For four people in southern Kazakhstan, the hope of eking out a meager existence led to a nightmare of human bondage. The story of their descent into slavery underscores a growing problem in a region where extreme economic inequality provides fertile ground for an age-old form of exploitation.

July 22, 2004

Analysis: U.S. Aid To Uzbekistan: Carrots And Sticks

Did President Karimov expect Washington's move? On the evening of 13 July, the U.S. State Department announced in a press release that Uzbekistan has failed to meet its reform and human-rights commitments under the two countries' 2002 Strategic Partnership Framework. The decision, which effectively freezes up to $18 million in fiscal year 2004 military and economic aid, garnered approving comments from the human-rights community and set off considerable speculation among observers about the future of U.S.-Uzbek relations. But it also touches on the larger question of the clashing priorities that pervade Western engagement with the "tough cases" of Central Asia.

July 13, 2004

Analysis: Kyrgyz Spy Scandal Takes Domestic Turn

Initial reports promised a surefire sensation. On 2 July, news agencies broke the news that Kyrgyzstan's National Security Service (SNB) had arrested 10 high-ranking officials from key ministries on espionage charges. Only a day earlier, a top SNB official had warned parliament that religious extremists pose a growing threat to the country. Suddenly, the air was rife with rumors that militants had penetrated the highest reaches of government. At least one report suggested that extremists were planning to seize power....

July 06, 2004

Analysis: Russian Ambassador Leaves Turkmenistan

Like many couples with a complicated history and considerable cause to quarrel, Turkmenistan and Russia prefer to stress the positive in public. For Turkmenistan, Russia is one of few countries to place a premium on engagement with an increasingly isolated partner best known for its mercurial leader's foibles and quirks. For Russia, a long-term contract to buy huge quantities of Turkmen gas allows Gazprom to maintain a high volume of lucrative exports to Europe at a time when the state-controlled gas monopolist faces declining yields from existing fields and lacks the billions of dollars needed to develop new production assets.

June 14, 2004

Analysis: Labor Migration and Tajik-Russian Relations

Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov (file photo) Labor migration is not just about impoverished people leaving their homelands for the greener pastures of countries where they can earn higher wages. Increasingly, the phenomenon serves as the focal point for a welter of issues that go beyond the economic realm to fuel ethnic and cultural tensions, set the stage for xenophobic politics, and even alter the dynamics of international relations. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of Tajikistan and Russia.

May 31, 2004

Analysis: Dictator As Clown Grows Stale

Charlie Chaplin had it figured out in 1940: Modern-day dictators can be a scream. Unchecked power, grotesque ambition, and mass-media cult of personality combine to produce a ludicrous spectacle.

May 27, 2004

Bayat: Nothing But Questions

The discovery of a new extremist group in Tajikistan poses troubling questions. For now, those questions have less to do with the phenomenon of Islamic radicalism than with the extravagant coverage the issue often receives in the media.

May 24, 2004

Interview: The U.S. Military Presence In Central Asia

RFE/RL Central Asia analyst Daniel Kimmage interviewed Roger McDermott in London on 19 May. McDermott is a research associate at the University of Kent and the author of "Defeating Global Terrorism: Developing the Antiterrorist Capabilities of the Central Asian States."

May 05, 2004

Analysis: Eleven Questions About Uzbekistan

The following is an interview with Janusz Bugajski, the director of East European studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.