Join the spring 2023 Rumsfeld Foundation's Central Asia, Mongolia, the Caucasus and Afghanistan (CAMCA) fellows for a presentation on the regional economic and political implications of Russia's war in Ukraine. Speakers will examine various strategies to better protect their sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity and improve conditions for further economic development. Register for this in-person event to discuss these issues and learn why the U.S. should support the CAMCA countries in this challenging international environment.

Moderator: S. Frederick Starr, Chairman, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at theAmerican Foreign Policy Council

When: Tuesday April 25, 2023 - 3:00-4:30 PM EST

Where: American Foreign Policy Council, 509 C Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.?subject=CAMCA%20Forum%20Registration">Register via email

 

Published in Forums & Events
Tuesday, 01 November 2022 18:58

Can Central Asia Seize the Initiative?

By S. Frederick Starr

October 30, 2022

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/can-central-asia-seize-initiative-205553

TNI

The meetings by heads of state in Issyk-Kul and Tashkent earlier this summer showed clearly that America’s abrupt departure from Afghanistan last year and its long-term neglect of Central Asia did not mark the end of history. Quite the contrary.

SINCE THEIR independence from the USSR, the five Central Asian states that emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Union in 1991 have been the object of great power dreams. Russia, with steady persistence, has tried to lure them back into its sphere of influence, if not of direct control, through economic and security alliances. The United States and Europe have worked to develop them as market economies, and to implant civil society and democratic institutions there. Meanwhile, China assigned them key roles in its Belt and Road Initiative and loaned them billions to develop economic strengths that complement Beijing’s own. Applying Julius Caesar’s classic divide et impera maxim, all these major powers have offered rewards for cooperation and withheld them from the recalcitrant. As a result, the Central Asians risked becoming mere objects of great power maneuvers and not subjects in their own right.

This summer, the Central Asians themselves took two steps to overcome this fate. First, on July 21 the presidents of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, meeting at Issyk-Kul in the Kyrgyz Republic, signed a far-ranging agreement to coordinate their efforts by forging a web of institutional links. These cover areas as diverse as trade, economics, social policy, ecology, medical research, and security. Such a regional consultative structure is urgently needed. Until now, Central Asia has been the only major world region that does not have its own web of institutional ties, i.e., a structure for formulating common policies and organizations capable of implementing them. This left the region at the mercy of major powers and of neighboring states, all of which have proven adept at playing Central Asians off against each other.

Furthermore, on July 26 the same regional states, supported by senior officials from several dozen other countries worldwide, including the United States, Russia, India, the European Union, and China, convened in Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent, for the purpose of expanding contacts with the new government in Kabul. Their immediate goals were to eliminate threats from extremist bands operating from Afghan territory and to identify changes in Taliban policies that would open the door to broader interaction between Afghanistan, its Central Asian neighbors, and the world. These meetings covered areas as diverse as information, finance, and women’s and minority rights. Their longer-term objective was to improve relations to the point that the Central Asians could open direct transport corridors through Afghanistan to Pakistan, India, Southeast Asia, and Iran.

Whether these two ambitious initiatives will succeed is an open question. Their very existence, however, reflects the Central Asians’ determination to shape their own destiny and to emerge as a world region with linking institutions comparable to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Baltic Council, or other regional bodies worldwide.

WHY, THREE decades after gaining independence, have the Central Asian states suddenly focused on linking arms and collaborating? Three very different developments gave rise to this important movement. First, the unplanned and abrupt American withdrawal from Afghanistan left the Central Asian countries facing a chaotic and potentially dangerous neighbor to the south. Besides threatening a rise of instability across the region, the tumult in Afghanistan extinguished the hope of opening southward trade routes that would give the Central Asians direct access to the Indian subcontinent and the booming economies of Southeast Asia. The importance of that potential “door to the south” cannot be overestimated. Without it, all Central Asia would be left under Russia’s economic and political thumb and unable to constrain China’s economic incursions. Only with such a corridor to South Asia would these countries be able to affirm their own sovereignty and independence while at the same time establishing balanced and constructive relations with all the major political and economic powers.

Second, Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine sent a shock wave across all Central Asia, not least because, like Ukraine, all the states in that region had only recently freed themselves from Russian rule and now feared that Moscow was trying to impose it anew.  This was no mere paranoia on the part of the new sovereignties. Had Vladimir Putin not compared himself to Peter the Great, who expanded Russia’s territory by conquering neighbors? Had Dmitry Medvedev, head of Russia’s Security Council and former Russian president, not announced that the attack on Ukraine was but the first step towards reassembling all the lands that had formerly been part of the Soviet Union? Central Asians had already established contacts with the West, but those links did not suffice to enable them to counterbalance pressures from the north and east. The obvious next step was to create new economic and political links with South and Southeast Asia. But this requires reopening links of communication and trade that have lain dormant since the rise of the Soviet Union.

The third factor that gave rise to the new spirit of regional vitality on display at Issyk-Kul and Tashkent was the rise of Shavkat Mirziyoyev as president of Uzbekistan. His predecessor, Islam Karimov, had solidified Uzbekistan’s independence by walling the country off from its neighbors, including the other four Central Asian states and Afghanistan. Uzbekistan advanced, but at the price of the resentment of its regional neighbors and the hostility of the West, which condemned its heavy-handed treatment of its own population. Mirziyoyev, Karimov’s former prime minister, brought a sharp change of course after his election in 2016. In a series of dramatic moves, he instituted legal reforms, set about developing a market economy, and loosened many long-standing controls on the Uzbek populace. Most important, he declared peace with all Uzbekistan’s neighbors, opened cross-border contacts and trade, and began systematically reaching out to the other Central Asian states. By so doing, he launched the movement that bore fruit in Issyk-Kul and Tashkent.

What was actually accomplished in the region-wide protocol—formally known as the Agreement on Friendship, Neighborliness, and Cooperation for Development of Central Asia in the 21st Century—that the five presidents agreed upon in July? The document includes thirty-two sections that are designed to “consolidate their efforts” for mutual benefit. Of course, it commits signatories to respect existing borders, to not interfere in the internal affairs of other partner countries, and to resolve differences peacefully (sect. 2). But it goes far beyond this. Thus, section 5 calls for mutual support in the face of threats to the “independence, sovereignty, and territorial wholeness” of any member state. Backing up this call, the protocol (sect. 6) commits the signatories to abstain from joining any military bloc that might threaten any of the five states, and to forbid their territories to be used by any foreign state for activities directed against any of the other member states.

Nor were these mere words. Section 7 calls on the parties “to realize mutual action to develop collaboration in military and military-technical sphere on issues of mutual interest.” This parallels Article V of the Washington Treaty that governs the actions of NATO members, which states that an attack on any NATO member is to be considered an attack on them all. Section 7 also commits the signatories to coordinate their actions with respect to all other international and regional organizations to which they may belong. Among threats requiring such coordinated action are specified: terrorism, extremism, separatism, international criminal groups involved with narcotics and arms, and human trafficking. However, the same logic would extend to all other threats to the sovereignty of any member state. The goal, states the protocol, is to establish all of Central Asia as a “zone of peace.”

The many other chapters of the protocol commit members to develop structures for cooperation in legislative and judicial matters, transport, logistics (sect. 14), and all activities affecting trade and investment. The document then goes on to commit members to joint action with respect to the reconstitution of the depleted Aral Sea (sect. 19). Topping off this ambitious agenda is the call for closer links among the academic institutions of member states (sect. 20, 21), structured exchanges of teachers and specialists, the sharing of fundamental and applied research (sect. 24) in diverse fields, including medicine and technology, and the development of common information systems (sect. 23). Tourism also claims a place in the document (sect. 27), which calls for region-wide tours supported by common visas.

One may object that the five presidents papered over important differences between the languages, histories, and cultures of the signatory states. Anticipating such criticism, they went out of their way to affirm that Central Asia constitutes “a single historical and cultural space” (sect. 25), in which diverse peoples have fruitfully interacted and collaborated for millennia. Their agenda called for studying and making known these neglected commonalities. Moreover, the presidents acknowledged that within the borders of each country are linguistic, cultural, and religious minorities. On this delicate issue, they all agreed to support such minorities within their borders and enable them to thrive without compulsion from the national governments (sect. 26).

Three of the presidents signed the protocol at the Issyk-Kul meeting, while the other two—Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan and Serdar Berdimuhamedow of Turkmenistan—gave assurances that they would sign at the next meeting of the group. The former evidently wanted first to resolve the conflict on the Tajik border with Kyrgyzstan, while the latter, in office for only three months, wanted first to consult with his colleagues in Ashgabat. Both assured their colleagues of their support for the project.

 

 

S. Frederick Starr is founding chairman of the Kennan Institute and chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute.

Published in Staff Publications
Friday, 23 September 2022 19:11

Social Reforms in Kazakhstan

By Albert Barro and Svante E. Cornell

Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program
Silk Road Paper
September 2022

Click to Download PDF

Executive Summary

Screen Shot 2022-09-23 at 2.49.25 PMSince President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev came to power, a series of reform packages focusing mainly on the political and economic sectors have been launched in Kazakhstan. But as has been seen in instances of public dissatisfaction over recent years, social issues are at the heart of the concerns of the population of Kazakhstan – a population that saw great improvements in living standards from 1992-2008, but somewhat of a stagnation since then. Having achieved middle-income status, many people in Kazakhstan now focus increasingly on the quality and accessibility of education, healthcare, and social protection. In his September 1, 2022, address to the nation, President Tokayev acknowledged this priority by focusing considerable attention to reforms in the social sector that would improve education, healthcare and social protection and in particular provide a more equitable delivery of services in these areas to the population.

In the education sector, Kazakhstan has a history of large and comparatively successful reforms. The Bolashak (future) program, launched almost immediately following independence, provided opportunities for high-achieving students to study abroad, and over ten thousand have done so. But Kazakhstan’s reforms have not focused solely on higher education. One of the most successful programs has seen the rollout of nearly universally available preschool education, and efforts to improve the status, pay, and training of teachers in primary and secondary education. Kazakhstan joined the Bologna process, and the implementation of  nternational standards has done a lot to improve the education system.

Kazakhstan also invested in elite institutions – the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools and Nazarbayev University, which have catered to high-achieving students. These institutions have obtained ample resources and have been highly successful – NIS scores in PISA tests, for example, are high above the average in OECD countries. Kazakhstan’s difficulty has been to replicate this success across the width of the education system. Access to education in rural and remote areas remains difficult. And whereas NIS and NU have benefited from academic and financial autonomy, the same is not the case for regular schools, whose principals have much less freedom to run their institutions the way they see fit. In other words, the rest of the public school systems suffers from state bureaucracy. And regular schools – particularly in rural and remote areas – lag far behind the NIS in standardized testing. This should come as no surprise given the disproportional part of the education budget that is allocated to the NIS and NU.

The question going forward is to what degree the NIS and NU model can be replicated in the rest of the education system – which does not benefit from having selected the best students and given them the most resources.

Human resources are a particular challenge: finding qualified teachers for the needs of Kazakhstan has proven difficult, and is made even harder by the government ambition to develop trilingualism: that not only should
Kazakh, Russian and English be taught, but that certain subject matters should be taught in these languages. While the initiative is laudable, in practice the country so far lacks teachers with language skills to be able to
teach in all three languages. This suggests that some initiatives in the education sector may have been overly ambitious; but it should be recalled that Kazakhstan has aimed high; and even if it has not quite met its own
ambitions, the initiative has nevertheless produced results as can be seen from the rapid spread of English proficiency in the country.

Healthcare reforms in Kazakhstan are in many ways similar to the education sector. Certain reforms have aimed very high and proven remarkably successful. Capabilities at the high end have been developed, including a medical school at Nazarbayev University, advanced cancer treatment and research, and the development of an indigenous pharmaceutical industry. In addition, Kazakhstan has rolled out a compulsory health insurance system that is sustainable in the long run. Just as in the education sector, however, the difficulty has been in scaling these advances up to meet the needs of society as a whole. One challenge has been to provide adequate primary healthcare services that run independently of major hospital systems. Another has been to train enough medical staff to provide adequate coverage of the population. Indeed, Kazakhstan needs to double the ratio of doctors per capita to meet the OECD average. In particular, providing adequate access to medical services in rural and remote areas has proven difficult to implement.

Still, the advances are visible. Before the pandemic, Kazakhstan saw rapidly improving life expectancy numbers, reaching 73 years, a strong improvement over numbers in the 1990s. While the pandemic was a temporary setback, the country has also learnt valuable lessons on the weaknesses of its healthcare system.

In the field of social protection, Kazakhstan has succeeded in putting in place an adequate system to protect the unemployed, the disabled, as well as mothers and children. In addition, a strong and sustainable pension system has been introduced. Still, the country faces challenges: an aging population that will complicate matters, and the continued persistence of high-level corruption and mismanagement of assets and investments.

Social reforms are intimately linked with the broader reform agenda that President Tokayev has made into a centerpiece of his presidency. The success of social reforms will depend in no small part on the development of the broader management system in the country and on the nature of Kazakhstan’s state institutions. The potential of social reforms can only be fulfilled if the political reforms aiming to change the nature and culture of state institutions, to develop a new reality where the state exists not for its own sake, but to provide services to the population of the country. Given President Tokayev’s stated commitment to seeing all of these reforms through, it remains to be seen how successful Kazakhstan will be along this path.

Click to Download PDF

By Svante Cornell and Albert Barro

June 3, 2022

https://www.euractiv.com/section/central-asia/opinion/with-referendum-kazakh-president-pushes-for-reforms/

Euractiv logo

The proposed constitutional changes, following five months after the greatest unrest in the country’s modern history, accelerate the efforts by the country’s president to push for controlled political reforms. The EU, while focusing on Ukraine, should continue to engage with strategically important Central Asia.

In January this year, protests over energy price hikes spread in Kazakhstan and turned violent in the country’s largest city of Almaty. This crisis displayed the growing restlessness of the Kazakh population, but also the in-fighting among the country’s elites.

It seems clear that the violence was triggered by elites that resisted President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s political reforms to safeguard their privileges.

However, President Tokayev emerged from the crisis with greater authority over the country’s governing institutions. The price to pay was calling on peacekeepers from the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation.

But while many believed this would leave Tokayev indebted to Russia, events since January have proven otherwise. President Tokayev has refused to endorse Russia’s war in Ukraine. At home, far from halting his reform efforts, he doubled down: On 6 March he presented a fast-tracked package of political reforms to the nation and promptly submitted it to a constitutional referendum scheduled for 5 June.

The constitutional amendments, approved on Sunday, are closely consistent with the reform initiatives promised by Tokayev in his 16 March address to the nation.

Key themes from his address that are reflected in the amendments include revisions to the president’s powers, reformatting of the representative branch of government, improvements to the electoral system, and strengthening of human rights institutions.

Recognising that much of January’s unrest arose in protest against the government’s “super-presidential” structure, Tokayev’s reforms aim to reduce the power of the presidency. The president will no longer be permitted to be connected to a political party during his tenure, and his close relatives will be forbidden from serving as senior public servants or as heads of public sector institutions. Furthermore, the president forfeits the right to cancel actions by regional mayors.

Reducing presidential power is matched with the strengthening of parliament. Presidential appointments will now require Senate approval, and the Supreme Audit Chamber, which will oversee the national budget, is to report biannually to the lower house of parliament.

Furthermore, while in the past, the upper house adopted laws, this is now shifted to the more representative lower house, reducing the senate’s role in approving laws passed in the lower chamber.

This shift is magnified by introducing a mixed electoral system for the lower house, with 30% elected in single-member districts and 70% by party lists. Steps are also being taken to lower the obstacles to forming new political parties.

The amendments address several human rights issues too. A key amendment is the establishment of a Constitutional Court to which citizens, along with the Prosecutor General and Human Rights Commissioner, can appeal directly to challenge violations of constitutional rights. The Prosecutor General and Human Rights Commissioner also receive greater independence from other state bodies or officials.

Some initiatives that President Tokayev promised in his March address to the nation are not included in the amendments. A key area is the clarification of the rights and responsibilities of the media.

One of the most pernicious criticisms of Kazakhstan’s record concerns the rights of journalists, who are often persecuted under defamation laws. Tokayev promised a draft law on the media, which will be met with great anticipation.

The changes to Kazakhstan’s political system will not turn the country into a parliamentary democracy anytime soon. They remain within the fundamental paradigm that has been President Tokayev’s intention since his election in 2019: top-led gradual change to the existing system to make government more effective and provide greater openness without losing control.

Still, compared to Tokayev’s earlier reform packages, these reforms represent a shift: earlier reforms sought mainly to make the state deliver better services to the people and shore up its legitimacy that way.

They only aimed to build participatory and competitive politics very slowly at the local level. By contrast, the current reform package indicates that President Tokayev now sees a gradual liberalisation of the political system at all levels as necessary for the system to maintain its legitimacy.

While the EU and US are preoccupied with the Ukraine war, they should pay attention to events in Central Asia. Following the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the region has largely disappeared from the sights of Western policymakers.

This is a mistake, as the region will be crucial to the long-term containment of both Russia and China. Supporting reform processes in Kazakhstan and its neighbour Uzbekistan, particularly the difficult implementation of reforms that are now on the books, would go a long way to helping stability and progress in the region.

A longer analysis of Kazakhstan’s reforms can be found here.

Svante E. Cornell is Director, and Albert Barro a Project Associate, with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, a Joint Center affiliated with the American Foreign Policy Council and the Stockholm-based Institute for Security and Development Policy.

Published in Staff Publications

Following the January 2022 crisis, President Tokayev fast-tracked a political reform package planned for later in the year, and submitted it to a nationwide referendum scheduled for June 5.  The constitutional amendments accelerate the pace of reform in the country, but conditions for their implementation will not be easy given a difficult economic and geopolitical environment. These reforms represent a shift: while earlier reforms sought to build participatory and competitive politics only very slowly at the local level, the current reform package envisages a gradual liberalization of the political system at all levels in order for the system to maintain its legitimacy.

When: Wednesday, June 8, 2022, 11:00-12:00 EST

Participants:
 

Svante Cornell, Director, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at the American Foreign Policy Council

Nargis Kassenova, Senior Fellow and Director of the Program on Central Asia at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies (Harvard University) and Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations and Regional Studies of KIMEP University (Almaty, Kazakhstan) 

Moderator:

Fred Starr, Chairman, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at the American Foreign Policy Council

When: Wednesday, June 8, 2022, 11:00 AM- 12:00 PM


Register on Zoom. The event will also be live-streamed on the CACI Facebook page and here, on the Silk Road Studies website.

Published in Forums & Events

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News

  • Protests in Georgia | Laura Linderman
    Monday, 18 November 2024 16:37

     

    In Georgia, opposition parties have accused the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party of stealing recent elections, leading to protests and calls for an investigation into electoral violations. Discrepancies between official results and exit polls have sparked demands for snap elections supervised by an international body. The European Union has called for a thorough inquiry into allegations of voter intimidation and multiple voting. The protests are also a response to fears of Georgia shifting closer to Russia, with Western support at stake. The situation could lead to EU sanctions, further complicating Georgia’s aspirations for EU and NATO membership.

    For more details, check out the video.

    RELATED PUBLICATIONS:

    https://www.silkroadstudies.org/publications/joint-center-publications/item/13520-rising-stakes-in-tbilisi-as-elections-approach.html

     

  • Greater Central Asia as a Component of U.S. Global Strategy
    Monday, 07 October 2024 13:50

    By S. Frederick Starr

    Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program
    Silk Road Paper
    October 2024

    Click to Download PDF

    Introduction

    Screenshot 2024-10-07 at 9.55.36 AMWhat should be the United States’ strategy towards Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the region of Greater Central Asia (GCA) as a whole? Should it even have one? Unlike most other world regions, these lands did not figure in US policy until the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Though the new Baltic states entered Washington’s field of vision in that year, in those cases the Department of State could recall and build upon America’s relations with independent Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania during the inter-war decades. For the US Government after 1991, GCA was defined less as sovereign states than as a group of “former Soviet republics” that continued to be perceived mainly through a Russian lens, if at all.  

    Over the first generation after 1991 US policy focused on developing electoral systems, market economies, anti-narcotics programs, individual and minority rights, gender equality, and civil society institutions to support them. Congress itself defined these priorities and charged the Department of State to monitor progress in each area and to issue detailed country-by-country annual reports on progress or regression. The development of programs in each area and the compilation of data for the reports effectively preempted many other areas of potential US concern. Indeed, it led to the neglect of such significant issues as intra-regional relations, the place of these countries in global geopolitics, security in all its dimensions, and, above all, their relevance to America’s core interests. On none of these issues did Congress demand annual written reports.  

    This is not to say that Washington completely neglected security issues in GCA. To its credit, it worked with the new governments to suppress the narcotics trade. However, instead of addressing other US-GCA core security issues directly, it outsourced them to NATO and its Partnership for Peace Program (PfP). During the pre-9/11 years, PfP programs in the Caucasus and Central Asia produced substantial results, including officer training at the U.S. Army’s program in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, and the Centrasbat, a combined battalion drawn from four Central Asian armies. But all these declined after 9/11 as America focused its attention on Afghanistan. 

    Today this picture has dramatically changed, and the changes all arise from developments outside the former Soviet states. First came America’s precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which brought important consequences. As the U.S. withdrew, new forces—above all China but also Russia and the Gulf States—moved in. Also, America’s pullout undercut the region’s champions of moderate Islam and reimposed a harsh Islamist regime in their midst. And, finally, because Central Asians have always considered Afghanistan as an essential part of their region and not just an inconvenient neighbor, they judged the abrupt U.S. pullout as a body blow to the region as a whole. Now the scene was dominated not by the U.S. but by China and Russia competing with each other. Both powers presented themselves as the new bulwarks of GCA security, and reduced the U.S. to a subordinate role. 

    While all this was going on, the expansion of China’s navy and of both Chinese and European commercial shipping called into question the overriding importance of transcontinental railroad lines and hence of GCA countries. Taken together, these developments marginalized the concerns and assumptions upon which earlier US strategy towards GCA had been based. With Afghanistan no longer a top priority, American officials refocused their attention on Beijing, Moscow, Ukraine, Israel, and Iran, in the process, increasing the psychological distance between Washington and the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus.  

    It did not help that no U.S. president had ever visited Central Asia or the Caucasus. This left the initiative on most issues to the GCA leaders themselves. Thus, it was Kazakhstan and not the State Department that proposed to the U.S. government to establish the C5+1 meetings. It was also thanks to pressure from regional leaders that the White House arranged for a first-ever (but brief) meeting between Central Asian presidents and the President of the United States, which took place in September 2023 on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. By comparison, over the previous year Messrs. Putin and Xi Jinping had both met with the regional presidents half a dozen times. Hoping against hope, the Central Asian leaders hailed the C5+1 meeting as a fresh start in their relations with Washington. Washington has done little to validate this 

     

    Additional Info
    • Author S. Frederick Starr
    • Publication Type Silk Road Paper
    • Published in/by CACI
    • Publishing date October 2024
  • Press-Release: The "International Kazak Language Society" Presented the Kazakh Translation of "Geniuses of their Time Ibn Sina, Biruni and Lost Enlightenment", in Washington DC
    Tuesday, 22 October 2024 13:36

     

     

    PRESS-RELEASE

    THE INTERNATIONAL “KAZAK LANGUAGE” SOCIETY PRESENTED THE KAZAKH TRANSLATION OF “GENIUSES OF THEIR TIME. IBN SINA, BIRUNI AND LOST ENLIGHTENMENT”, IN WASHINGTON D.C.

     

    Author Dr. Frederick Starr places great importance on  making his work accessible to a broad audience

    October 21, 2024, Washington D.C. | The American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) in Washington, D.C., hosted the presentation of the Kazakh translation of the book, “Geniuses of Their Age: Ibn Sina, Biruni, and the Lost Enlightenment”, authored by the renowned American historian Dr. Frederick Starr. This translation was initiated and realized by the International Kazakh Language Society (Qazaq Tili), with the support of Freedom Holding Corp., and in collaboration with the Embassy of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the USA.

    Dr. Starr's book, “The Genius of Their Age: Ibn Sina, Biruni, and the Lost Enlightenment “, explores the lives and contributions of two outstanding figures of the Eastern Enlightenment, Ibn Sina and Biruni, whose intellectual legacies shaped both Eastern and Western thought. It highlights their significant contributions to science, medicine, and philosophy, and their role in the broader development of human knowledge. A major portion of the narrative details their biographies, achievements, and the lasting impact of their work on the intellectual heritage of the world.

    This is the second translation of Dr. Starr's work into Kazakh, following the successful release of his first book, “Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane” by the International Kazakh Language Society.

     

    The translation of this latest work was inspired by and aligns with the vision outlined in Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s recent article, “Renaissance of Central Asia: On the Path to Sustainable Development and Prosperity.” In support of promoting a shared vision for Central Asian prosperity, the book, which sheds light on the region’s profound intellectual legacy, was translated into Kazakh and made accessible to the public.

    The book presentation was attended by the author of the book Dr. Frederick Starr, member of the Board of Directors of Freedom Holding Corp. Kairat Kelimbetov, and Rauan Kenzhekhan, President of the International Kazakh Language Society (Qazak Tii).

    "This book is a tribute to the brilliant minds of Ibn Sina and Biruni, who made monumental contributions to science and thought long before the European Renaissance. The book also honors other scholars such as al-Farabi, al-Khwarizmi, Omar Khayyam, Abu-Mahmud Khujandi, al-Ferghani, and others whose names have entered the world's intellectual heritage. These two geniuses from Central Asia not only pioneered in various fields of knowledge but also developed research methods that are still relevant today,” said Kairat Kelimbetov, member of the Board of Directors of Freedom Holding Corp. 

     

    Rauan Kenzhekhanuly, the President of the International Kazakh Language Society, emphasized the significance of making Dr. Starr's work accessible to Kazakh readers: "The translation of this book into Kazakh is significant for us. Dr. Starr's work offers profound insights into Central Asia's historical contributions to global knowledge and underscores the region’s role as a vibrant hub of intellectual and scientific discourse during the Enlightenment. By reconnecting with the foundations of our region's 'golden age' and learning from both its successes and declines, we can pave the way for a collective future of prosperity and innovation."

    The book was translated and published by the International "Kazakh Language" (Qazak Tili) Society with the support of Freedom Holding Corp. Thanks to the support of the American Foreign Policy Council and Rumsfeld Foundation for hosting and partnering. 

    The International "Kazakh Language" Society (Qazak Tii: www.til.kz) is the largest non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and promoting the Kazakh language and cultural heritage. Through education, translation projects, and international collaborations, the organization aims to bridge cultures and empower future generations to embrace their identity while contributing to a more interconnected and culturally diverse world.

    Freedom Holding Corp. is an international investment company that provides a range of services, including brokerage, dealer, and depositary services, as well as securities management and banking services. The company was founded in 2013 by Timur Turlov, a Kazakh entrepreneur and financier.

    The book is available in the libraries of educational institutions in Kazakhstan, the digital version can be accessed for free on the Kitap.kz portal.

  • Dysfunctional centralization and growing fragility under Taliban rule
    Wednesday, 11 September 2024 14:35

    By Sayed Madadi

    One year ago, on Aug. 31, 2021, the last foreign soldier left Afghanistan. Since then, the situation in the country has only grown more fragile, marked by deteriorating living conditions, widespread human rights violations, and increasing political instability. One key contributing factor to the crisis is a dysfunctional centralized governance structure that has become more paralyzed and unresponsive under Taliban control. The group has greatly aggravated the problem with its rigid religious ideology and exclusive political agenda, but it well predates the Taliban takeover. The situation has steadily deteriorated over the past two decades as a result of a system that undermined local mechanisms of resilience, deprived people of access to basic public services, and marginalized them politically. With the Taliban at the helm, the system now only perpetuates further political exclusion, economic deprivation, and human suffering. The worsening economic conditions and political environment in the last year offer ample evidence of this.

    Ever hungrier population

    According to the most recent data from the World Bank, Afghanistan is now the poorest country in the world and the per capita income has declined to 2006 levels. The Taliban’s return to power exacerbated an already worrisome economic and humanitarian situation. Pushed to the brink by recurrent droughts, chronic cycles of violence, and poor governance, the insurgent offensive that captured Kabul last August created a shockwave that neither the economy nor the people could absorb. Before 2021, the latest poverty rate in Afghanistan was 47% and 35% of people reported that they were unable to meet their basic needs for food and other essential goods. Now, according to the World Bank and the United Nations, more than 95% of the population is poor, with more than 70% suffering from food insecurity. In an undiversified and limited economy that does not have much to offer, only a staggeringly low 2% said that they did not face limitations in spending. Rising prices caused by high inflation, the liquidity crisis, and a massive drop in international trade, coupled with sharply decreased household incomes, have reduced purchasing power for millions and increased unemployment to record levels, even as an estimated 600,000 people enter the labor force annually.

    Many of these sources of fragility, of course, existed before the Taliban came to power. For over a century, Kabul has grown in monetary wealth, human capital, and opportunities at the expense of the rest of Afghanistan. The economic wealth and metropolitan character of the capital has come with the centralization of state power and revenue collection since 1880. For decades, lack of opportunities — and later on conflict — brought the best and the brightest from around Afghanistan to the capital, thus gradually draining the provinces of intellectual capital and economic resources. Historically, the Kabul-based kings gave land titles and trade monopolies to traditional power-holders in return for revenue, while the latter extorted the local population to raise what was required to pay Kabul. The central state relied on the periphery for resources, soldiers, and legitimacy, but hardly provided anything in return.

    The 2004 constitutional architecture did little, if anything, to change that. As foreign funding flowed in at unprecedented levels, the concentration of political power and economic planning in the capital continued to draw resources and talent from the periphery, eroding the foundations of local resilience. Local and provincial power holders and economic tycoons survived only because they maintained strong ties with those who controlled financial wealth and political decision-making at the center. The immense wealth that the Karzais gained in the south or the riches that Atta Mohammad Noor was able to raise in the north were not possible without the backing of central authorities, which in both cases were highly formalized: Ahmad Wali Karzai was the head of Kandahar’s provincial council and Atta served as the governor of the lucrative Balkh Province for over a decade. Staggering levels of corruption and state capture enabled a select group to easily gain control of the country’s economic riches and move them abroad.

    The population was already struggling by the time the Taliban returned to power. Studies and analysis by the U.N., the World Bank, and independent observers had long warned about increasing poverty, unemployment, and cyclical droughts. After last August, the depletion of human resources and economic wealth and the withdrawal of the international presence in Kabul disrupted value production and business enterprise around the country. The crisis has left millions of people helpless, not only because of their reliance on the Kabul-centric legal regulatory framework, but also because most of the job market — the public sector and the NGOs — was funded by donor money from Kabul. The full international withdrawal shrank the economy by more than one-third and the implications of the political crisis disrupted the markets for much longer than the country could afford. After severe drought and conflict displaced over 700,000 people last year, hundreds of thousands have left Afghanistan since August 2021 in search of a better life.

    The Taliban's inability and unwillingness to provide public services and reinvigorate economic activity led to the further deterioration of living conditions and heightened the people’s vulnerability. The World Bank reported that more than 81% of household heads were self-employed after Aug. 15, 2021. An absolute majority of them are not business owners but job seekers turning to physical labor and street vending to avoid starvation. The Taliban authorities claim that they have increased revenue collection at border crossings, mainly by curbing corruption and expanding ports with taxable trade. However, the regime does not provide even basic public services such as education and health with that revenue. For example, nearly half of schools are closed as the Taliban still refuse to allow girls to access secondary education, resulting in a major decline in public spending. Most of the health infrastructure is supported through international humanitarian aid by the U.N. and ICRC, and the extravagant Afghan National Defense and Security Forces no longer exist. On top of that, only a fraction of public servants go to work, and after months of delays they now receive far lower salaries based on the regime’s new pay scale — labor earnings in the public sector have declined by 69%.

    Therefore, without offering social protection, public services, and economic opportunities, the centralized revenue collection continues to further deplete the provinces of resources that could otherwise help them mitigate the risks of economic and environmental shocks. The Taliban's interference in the distribution of humanitarian aid takes away from the neediest people their only means of survival in the midst of destitution, further compounding local fragility. Despite a year of trials and the infusion of more than $2 billion in aid into Afghanistan, the economic and humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate. Although conventional humanitarian assistance programs help people get by in the short term, they also reinforce a relationship of dependency on aid without developing opportunities for employment and private enterprise, thus reinforcing deeper vulnerability. These approaches — coupled with the Taliban’s centralized and unaccountable governance — build on ineffective modalities that disenfranchise local communities, compound economic deprivation, exacerbate environmental shocks, and intensify human suffering.

    A totalitarian regime

    The political and human rights situation has equally deteriorated under the Taliban. While the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission says more than 1,500 people have been killed by the regime since last August, some independent observer groups report that around 2,000 civilians from the Hazara ethnic community alone have been killed. Protests by women have been repeatedly suppressed and participants have been imprisoned, tortured, and killed. The government is populated entirely by Taliban clerics, excluding all other political forces and non-Pashtun groups. The persecution of Tajiks in the name of quelling the military resistance in the north and of Hazaras justified by ethno-sectarian divisions — the latter are mostly Shi’a — continue. Afghanistan is the only country in the world that prevents girls from getting an education by barring them from secondary schools. Most women cannot work, and a woman’s political agency and social status are tied to that of a man, who has to accompany her, fully veiled, anywhere she goes outside the home. According to Reporters Without Borders, 40% of all media outlets in the country have disappeared and 60% of journalists have lost their jobs. The figure for female journalists is even higher, at 76%.

    The Taliban have managed to consolidate their power within an Islamic Emirate that borrows significantly in structural design from its predecessor Islamic Republic, rather than introducing a new institutional architecture. Save for a few tweaks, the broader framework of the system has remained the same. The judiciary system, for example, and its relationship with the head of state have not changed. The Taliban have kept most political and governance institutions as they were, filling positions across the ministries and provinces with their own appointees. The major institutional change the Taliban have brought has been the removal of elections to establish popular legitimacy: The head of state is now a divinely mandated supreme leader, and there is no legislative branch. These alterations, while substantial on paper, have not changed much in practice. Given the highly centralized nature of the republic with an overly powerful president at the top, electoral processes had failed to produce either legitimacy or accountability for much of the last two decades. In many instances, elections provided opportunities for embezzlement and corruption by enabling actors with ulterior motives to buy votes and then abuse public office to enrich themselves. This was particularly true in the case of the parliament and provincial councils, institutions captured by a handful of kleptocrats who failed to keep an overly strong executive in check.

    The binary division of a republic versus an emirate was what bogged down the peace talks until they fell apart in the run-up to the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul. The fact that the group has consolidated its power through the very system it so vehemently rejected says a lot about the actual democratic character of the centralized political institutions. The narrowing of the public space under the Taliban, for example, indicates that the degree of openness for debate and democratic practices before 2021 was not necessarily a byproduct of a meticulous institutional design that checked the use of power and ensured accountability. Rather, it was attributable to the personal commitment to democratic values of those in control. For over a decade, Hamid Karzai, who ruled through tribal consensus and appeasement, enabled a conducive environment in which a vibrant media industry and civil society took root. Across Afghanistan, especially in Kabul and other key urban centers, demonstrations against the government were ubiquitous.

    After 2014 when Ashraf Ghani came to power, the democratic space began to shrink for a variety of reasons, chief among them the intolerance of the president and his inner circle. Crackdowns on public protests, silencing of independent media and civil society, and marginalization of political opponents and critics, including through the use of force, became increasingly common. In order to act with the utmost impunity, Ghani maintained a facade of accountability through the ministries while monopolizing state functions by creating parallel institutions at his own office. Since last August, the Taliban, undeterred by any prospects of accountability, have further centralized the structure by removing the subsidiary units of the Arg, Afghanistan’s presidential palace, and have instead directly utilized the formal government bureaucracy to consolidate their power, implement their extremist views of what an Islamic society should look like, and silence any voices of dissent. In other words, the centralized political and governance institutions of the former republic were unaccountable enough that they now comfortably accommodate the totalitarian objectives of the Taliban without giving the people any chance to resist peacefully.

    What lies ahead

    The Taliban, who claimed to represent rural Afghanistan, have further oppressed and marginalized Afghans outside Kabul as their core members continue to settle in the now dual capitals of Kabul and Kandahar. The Taliban’s thinking about governance based on a rigid interpretation of religion and ethnonationalist politics, as much as it evolves in practice over time, has further centralized political decision-making and economic resources in the hands of a few. As economic resources become more scarce, wealth will be controlled by those who hold political power at the highest levels.

    This will only deepen the drivers of fragility and conflict, including poverty, exclusion, and discrimination. With drought likely to become an annual occurrence by 2030, the financial and banking crisis set to continue for the foreseeable future, and the economy expected to keep shrinking, people across Afghanistan are becoming increasingly vulnerable. Moreover, the unsustainably large but still inadequate humanitarian aid budget, which has offered a minimal lifeline to the country, will be in danger of getting smaller in light of recent security developments that further limit the parameters of international engagement with the regime. The United States has reportedly withheld talks about the possible unfreezing of Afghanistan’s central bank assets held by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the U.N. Security Council has not extended travel exemptions for 13 Taliban leaders. These developments also mean that potential foreign investment, even from friendly partners of the regime, such as China, will likely take a long time to materialize. The overall impact of all of this will be to push Afghans across the country further and deeper into cycles of economic deprivation and political instability with substantial implications for health, education, and human rights, especially for women and children.

    However, as much as centralization allows the Taliban to consolidate power in the short run, it equally makes its long-term survival unlikely. The group led a highly decentralized, mobile insurgency where local commanders oversaw the war in their areas in whatever way they saw fit. That was vital to withstand the republican army and its partners, as well as recruit non-Pashtun commanders in the north, which later proved fatal to the republic. But now they are struggling to transform from a decentralized insurgency into a centralized government and what were previously strengths have become weaknesses. Commanders such as Fasihuddin, once trusted with complete authority, are expected to give up their autonomy and obey orders. The regime is also facing difficulties integrating key battlefield leaders into its new official structures in an appropriate way, as the appointment of Qayum Zaker to an arbitrary assignment managing the resistance in Panjshir illustrates. These trends stemming from the centralization of power will eventually push away those who were key to the Taliban’s success — similar to how President Ghani’s exclusionary politics alienated the republic’s natural allies. The Taliban have long prioritized their cohesion over any other political objective. Now, unable to govern and unwilling to share power with other political forces, the centralized regime’s disintegration becomes increasingly inevitable — and arguably has been expedited — as it fails to incorporate even its own senior political and military leadership into decision-making processes.

    Sayed Madadi is a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy’s International Forum for Democratic Studies and a Nonresident Scholar with the Middle East Institute’s Afghanistan and Pakistan Studies Program. You can follow him on Twitter @MadadiSaeid. The opinions expressed in this piece are his own.

     Read at Middle East Institute