How serious is the Islamist threat in Central Asia? What is the future of Russian influence in the region? Is a regime change in Uzbekistan imminent? Whither Kyrgyzstan? Dr. Eric McGlinchey recently sat down with neweurasia to offer his expertise on all these questions and more.

McGlinchey is an Assistant Professor of Politics and Government at George Mason University, a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Program on New Approaches to Russian Security, and is an advisor to the Eurasia Program at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). He is among the first of a new generation of scholars offering policymakers a fresh perspective on Central Asian affairs. (neweurasia has covered several of his presentations.) His research focuses on Islam and social mobilization, information communication technology, and authoritarianism in Central Asia.

neweurasia: To start out, could you just tell us a little bit about your current research? I understand you are writing a book.

Eric McGlinchey: The book hopefully will be done by the fall. It looks at variations of authoritarian rule, posing questions such as, “Why has authoritarianism in Kazakhstan been more durable than authoritarianism in Kyrgyzstan?” “Why have we seen this recent destabilization in Uzbekistan, what are its sources?” In political science we call that the independent variable. The big question is what explains these variations. The first causal factor I am pointing to in my research is the continuity of Soviet-style patronage politics. The second one is part of a more recent, separate research project – the role of ideology. Why do some states have viable ideologies? For instance, I would argue that Kazakhstan has a fairly viable ideology of state-led economic growth, whereas Kyrgyzstan does not seem to have much of an ideology at all. As a result, we are seeing a rise of alternative ideologies, which gets back to a second project on political Islam, how Islam interacts with social mobilization.

To clarify a little bit, that [research on political Islam] will be part of this first project, which explores the reasons why Kazakhstan has a more stable, authoritarian government than, say, Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan. But after my recent research in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, I am beginning to realize that I am just touching the surface of this issue. So once that first book is done, the second project is going to be solely devoted to the issue of social mobilization and political Islam.

The third project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, is about information communication technology in Central Asia. We are beginning to look at a broad range of quantitative and qualitative data to ask a number of questions, many of which are especially relevant to neweurasia. That Democratization article is a first stab at some of these issues.

ne: That is a great lead in, because I have a few questions about the Democratization piece.

McGlinchey: It’s got some problems.

ne: Like what?

McGlinchey: I suppose it’s not a great idea for a scholar to undercut his own research, but…. Actually, I will be teaching this article very briefly at an OSI conference in Budapest in August, and one of the reasons why I want to use it is to get at one of the biggest challenges for political scientists in Central Asia today, which is: how do you actually measure the thing that you are trying to look at? That article is trying to measure internet openness in Central Asia, but the way one measures it is problematic. One of the things we wanted to argue in that article is that the internet is more open in Uzbekistan than than one would anticipate given the nature of the authoritarian government. So the openness is measured relative to the degree of authoritarianism in the country. One of the things that always confuses people in that article is that it says [the internet in] Uzbekistan is surprisingly open, and [the internet in] Kazakhstan is surprisingly closed, but that measure is relative to the regime type that you can’t use across all cases.

I think that is indicative of the challenges political scientists face in general. How do you measure Islam? How do you measure internet openness? How do you measure the degree of authoritarianism in places where it’s incredibly difficult to get solid quantitative figures? A lot of times you end up giving a qualitative description of what you are looking at, rather than a hard, quantitative measure of the dependent variable. I think that article illustrates this very well. We can improve on what we’ve done, but you have to publish sometime.

ne: So the article isn’t necessarily saying that the internet is more open in Uzbekistan than in Kazakhstan, just that – given the regimes in question – you would expect Kazakhstan to be more open than it is and Uzbekistan to me more closed than it is.

McGlinchey: Exactly, that’s what we’re trying to say. There has been some confusion when we have presented it. People will say, “How can you describe Kazakhstan as closed and Uzbekistan as open.” And when you compare the two together it is confusing, but when you go to Uzbekistan, it’s always surprising how easy it is to use the internet, despite the fact that certain sites are blocked. Still, you can get around [those filters] and [the internet] is much more open than you would imagine, particularly relative to the press that’s available in other formats. The internet is much less regulated than, for example, TV and radio. In Kazakhstan there is far less internet access than you would expect, given the way the Kazakh state is. It’s not that Kazakhstan is democratic – it certainly isn’t – but it’s much less authoritarian than the Uzbek state. It’s quite hard for the average user to access the internet, whereas in Kyrgyzstan you can just pop into an internet café and pay 10 cents. In Kazakhstan there are far fewer cafes and far less access points than even Uzbekistan.

ne: The OpenNet Initiative simply measures the number of sites blocked in a given country when composing their reports and evaluations. What other sorts of measures do you look at?

McGlinchey: First of all, I think the OpenNet Initiative is wonderful, and I am very happy they are doing such important work. I think the challenge for doing things like “hard science” in these areas is that you have to contextualize it. I don’t know how much figures that Kazakhstan has fewer sites blocked than Uzbekistan really tells us – I think that’s what we would all expect. I think the real paradox is the discrepancy between the type of regime and level of filtering.

ne: According to your article, ICT constitutes one of the few development interventions that has actually worked in Central Asia. You argue that in countries like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, where the international community has provided a lot of the resources for ICT infrastructure, foreign aid has successfully opened up the press – at least in the online sphere. Are there any other examples of successful development interventions in Central Asia?

McGlinchey: In a decently designed research project you don’t necessarily know what the answer to your question is going to be before you do the research. That was the case with the ICT project. The manuscript I am working now argues that political aid actually helped prop up the Kyrgyz authoritarian government. My earlier work points to the negative dimensions of aid. So for me this is particularly interesting and somewhat challenging to my own research because here is a case where political aid actually helped.

I think the reason why ICT [aid] works is because technology is seen as a marker of development. For example, Uzbekistan doesn’t want to be left behind all the other countries and have poor communications technology. Countries seem to be more willing to comply with the strings attached to these “status-oriented” policies. Internet and technology is very desirable, whereas democracy isn’t desirable [from an autocratic regime’s perspective], so if they really want it, they are perhaps more likely to be flexible. I think you can find other examples where that would be the case. Georgia, for example, is liberalizing not because it necessarily wants to, but as a precondition for becoming closer to NATO and someday joining the European Union.

ne: That logic doesn’t seem to currently apply to Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan really wants to be chairman of the OSCE, but that desire didn’t end up prompting positive constitutional reform. In fact, Kazakhstan seems to be sliding in the opposite direction despite the OSCE incentive.

McGlinchey: The OSCE issue is interesting and I think there was great hope that Kazakhstan would liberalize. Although the OSCE would be great for Kazakhstan, you don’t have the same incentives as the European Union. The OSCE would be nice, but I don’t see what realistically it gives to Kazakhstan.

ne: So the reality is that at the end of the day Kazakhstan doesn’t actually stand to gain that much from OSCE chairmanship?

McGlinchey: I think there are two things going on here. First, Kazakhstan doesn’t really stand to gain that much from it. And secondly, Kazakhstan has a lot that we want. Kazakhstan’s got oil, Kazakhstan’s got gas, Kazakhstan’s got uranium. From my perspective, Kazakhstan thinks it’s got a bargaining chip. If we are talking about development aid or political aid, some countries don’t have as much leverage. But Kazakhstan is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, it has oil and gas that Europe desperately wants, so I think Kazakhstan realizes it is in a strong position. It’s not clear to me that the OSCE has much influence at this point.

ne: Well, the very moderated response on the part of the US government seems to be indicative of that point.

McGlinchey: I’m sure there is a lot going on in the State Department, and economically they are on solid ground saying that Kazakhstan has made fairly good reforms. There are also areas that have been disappointing, but there has been reform. The effect of cutting off gas to Ukraine [by Russia] was very destabilizing, and I think everyone wants to make sure there is an adequate supply; Kazakhstan is a big part of that solution.

ne: Do you think Kazakhstan will continue to balance alliances with Europe, Russia, and the United States? Or it will eventually have to choose one? How do you see the long term stability of that arrangement?

McGlinchey: It’s a really good question. My sense – which is not necessarily empirically grounded here – is that Kazakhstan’s playing a very good game; why stop? Russia needs Kazakhstan. Russia needs Turkmenistan. One of the big challenges Russia will be facing in the future is that its gas supply is not increasing. Russia supplies a lot of gas to Europe, but it itself is not increasing production. Russia really can’t meet its obligation to Europe without Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. So I think Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are in a fairly good position because of their ability to provide these natural resources. Russia really can’t therefore dominate Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

At the same time, if Kazakhstan can get [concessions] out of the West, and out of China – I would include them in this equation. It’s going to be challenged by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and maybe some of the other regional pacts like the CIS agreements, but not sufficiently that it will alienate any one of its strategic partners. So I would say yeah, absolutely ride the fence.

ne: Kazakhstan’s not the only Central Asian country that’s seen some political backsliding in recent months. For instance, Tajikistan President Rakhmon is making some rather odd cultural-political reforms. Why? What is he up to?

McGlinchey: I wish I knew. I think [Rakhmon] feels like he is on fairly solid ground to do pretty much whatever he wants. They just had the ten year anniversary of peace so Tajikistan is fairly quiet at this point; maybe he feels somewhat emboldened. Political scientists are very reluctant to psychoanalyze government leaders. There is an immense amount of money spent on Tajik weddings, I suppose, and I can see why from an outsider’s point of view you would want to limit them. But they are a bit bizarre.

One thing to keep in mind – my colleagues in Tajikistan always joke about Rakhmon. One can joke about the president and be fairly safe in doing it, so there is political space for criticizing the government in Tajikistan where there wasn’t in Turkmenistan.

ne: Your upcoming article in the Indiana publication (”Divided Faith: Trapped between State and Islam in Uzbekistan,” in Jeff Sahadeo and Russell Zanca, eds., Everyday Life in Central Asia. Indiana University Press, June 2007) is much more experiential in tone.

McGlinchey: Yeah, it takes an anthropological approach.

ne: There is such a vitriolic debate about the question of religious extremism in Central Asia, and your article touches on some of facets of the debate. Why are people’s views on this topic so divergent? What information sources are the different experts looking at? What information are you looking at for your research?

McGlinchey: I can’t really speak to what information sources other scholars are using, but I can tell you about the sources that inform the work that I’ve been doing recently. For example, I just spent three weeks in Kyrgyzstan, and I met with Islamic leaders, civil society activists, I met with the “extremists,” i.e. Hizb ut-Tahrir, I met with reputed members of the group called Tablighi Jamaat, which is a Pakistani-based missionary group.

The reason why I tend toward the “This isn’t really extremist Islam” side of the fence is that I think people are very quick to point to Salafi Islam, conservative Islam, and identify this as extreme Islam. For example, Sadykzhan Kamalov, who was a former mufti in Kyrgzystan in the early 1990s, is often pointed to as a bordering on the extremist side. I spoke with Sadykzhan for two hours in Osh in what I perceived to be a very open conversation. He openly said, “Yes, people call me extremist and radical, but I just believe in a conservative form of Islam. I don’t necessarily believe in mazar worship in that is prevalent here in Central Asia – I just have a stricter interpretation of Islam.”

This doesn’t mean that Sadykzhan is an extremist or a radical. In the early1980s under Gorbachev, you begin to see some divisions within Central Asian Islam between more conservative Islam and more “traditional,” liberal, Central Asian Islam. Some people point to Kamalov [on the conservative side] and say, “This is extremism, this is radical.” When I sit down with these people and have extended conversations with them, and they openly acknowledge that they diverge with traditional Central Asian Islam, I think it is clear that these aren’t terrorists, these aren’t extremists, they aren’t even necessarily politically minded, they just are a different form of the religion.

This isn’t to say that Hizb ut-Tahrir, it’s not to say that other Islamist groups don’t exist. They do, but their presence among the population at large is nowhere near what their presence, for example, on the internet is, or how effective their media campaign is. I was able to get Hizb ut-Tahrir and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) videos in Osh. If I, a foreigner, can get it, just about anybody can get it. The fact that these videos and this literature is present, however, does not mean that extremism is rampant. You can get literature from the Moonies in Central Asia as well, but no one is talking about that.

I think one has to live in the society and talk to the people, not just one time, but several times, to get a sense of who they are before one concludes that they are extremists. Some people who are repudiated to be extremists aren’t necessarily so.

ne: So what does happen when a foreigner walks around the Osh market asking for IMU videos?

McGlinchey: Well, I didn’t just walk around the bazaar. I know a lot of people in Osh… I am doing research on the topic so I know a lot of like-minded people who have access to this stuff. So when I meet with Hizb ut-Tahrir members or get videos, I am working with Kyrgyz or Uzbek colleagues who these people already know and trust. So I’m not just wandering around. I’ve been well received by all these folks, including Hizb ut-Tahrir.

ne: Does the government mind that you are talking to banned Islamist groups?

McGlinchey: I don’t think so; nothing has happened. Uzbekistan is a different story – I ran into some trouble there. But Kyrgyzstan thus far has been fine. The thing that I am concerned about, particularly in the Uzbek case, is making sure that I don’t endanger anyone with my research. Some of my colleagues in Uzbekistan have run into trouble with the authorities - not connected with my research, but it just shows that you have to be very careful when you work in a place like Uzbekistan. My Uzbek contacts in Osh have to be very careful as well.

ne: What’s the current situation with Islamist groups like the Akromiya and the IMU? We haven’t seen any serious terrorist attacks in Central Asia in several years now. Does that mean that extremists groups like the IMU are on the decline, even if conservative Islam as you defined it is on the upsurge?

McGlinchey: This is the classic challenge for political scientists. Every time one tries to quantify Islam, one runs into difficulty. The piece I did for Asia Policy and Comparative Studies of South Asia discuss this issue. Granted, there haven’t been any explosions recently, though some point to the Batken incident last summer as an example of the IMU – I’ve heard three different stories about that situation, from just simple drug running, to people who wanted set up an independent Ferghana political entity, to the IMU explanation.

They’re [the IMU] is still there. The video I picked up [in Osh] was rather recent, 2006, and was very professionally done.

ne: What was the IMU doing in the video?

McGlinchey: Blowing up tanks, etc. I think it was shot in Afghanistan. I don’t really make of the stories by the Pakistani government of the IMU being taken out in the provinces over there. I suspect that Pakistan might be making this story of the tribes turning against the IMU a little more grandiose than it was. The tribes are so divided against one another in Waziristan as it is, so I just don’t know what’s going on there.

The IMU is still around, they just don’t seem to be very popular among the [Central Asian] population at large. The Hizb ut-Tahrir, in contrast, seem to be becoming even more popular, from what I can tell from the measures that are available. What I found surprising is that they are not just prevalent in the south [of Kyrgyzstan] anymore; they are in the north too. And not just Bishkek, either, they are all the way out in the northeastern and northwestern provinces. On the southeastern side of Lake Issyk-kul there are entire villages where more than 50% of the residents are reputed to be Hizb ut-Tahrir members. So that was a bit of a surprise to me.

ne: So it is definitely safe to say that Hizb ut-Tahrir is expanding.

McGlinchey: They are expanding, but again, when people claim to be Hizb ut-Tahrir members and then you speak to them… They can quote the slogans, but whether it is a serious and reliable social movement is less clear. In my mind I sometimes equate [this phenomenon] to the LaRouche movement on college campuses. Members may have the talking points and they have a visible presence, but the movement itself enjoys little support. So it’s not like mass numbers of Kyrgyz are going HT at this point.

ne: When neweurasia interviewed Martha Olcott, she made the point that overt terrorism is not the only way Islamism threatens people in Central Asia: “People feel that these [Islamist] groups pose a threat to their way of life, that if they are allowed to exist in an unmanaged fashion - just allowed free reign, to be legal, spread their ideas as they wish, free access to the media, free access to the meetings – that the kind of secular society advocated by the elites would simply not occur.” To what extent to you think these Islamist groups threaten the secular way of life in Central Asia, even if they are not necessarily violent? Do you see this expansion of Hizb ut-Tahrir as a threat, even if not a terrorist one?

McGlinchey: It’s not too difficult to understand why Central Asia – or any population for that matter – searches for non-secular explanations to things in life; so, we are talking about belief. People gravitate towards belief, especially in times of difficulty. Yes, there is a threat to secular Central Asia to some extent, although I think if your read some of Adeeb Khalid’s work, you will realize that secular Central Asia was perhaps never really terribly secular. I think Martha Olcott also does a good job of demonstrating that same point in some of her recent Carnegie papers, where she discusses, particularly in the ‘70s and ‘80s, this rebirth of Islam.

So as far as there being a Soviet, secular past to idealize… yes, perhaps there is something being lost, but at the same time I think it is a universal human desire to turn to some kind of religion or idea that expresses some kind of idea that helps explain life, and I think that’s what a lot of people are doing in Central Asia. Some people are turning to Hizb ut-Tahrir, but the vast majority are not. The vast majority are turning to a more moderate kind of Islam. A lot of them are even turning to Christianity. I think this is a natural process that you are seeing in a lot of places. You are wearing strangely tinted glasses if the only thing you see when you look at Central Asia is Hizb ut-Tahrir.

ne: One area that I’ve noticed your research diverging from that of other scholars is in regards to the current health of the Karimov regime. Correct me if I am wrong, but you argue that the current Uzbek regime is faltering, and we are likely to see a new one take its place in the not too distant future. Are we likely to see a revolution soon in Uzbekistan? How soon? Is this a good thing? What kind of regime is likely to take its place?

McGlinchey: I would hate to imagine that there could be something worse than Karimov out there. I guess I could imagine something worse than Karimov – Stalin, for example, was worse than Karimov, probably, if one can measure how bad killing people is. I would not regret a change in power and my hope is that it would be marginally, if not considerably, more respectful of respecting rights than the current regime is in Uzbekistan.

There is no guarantee that whatever replaces Karimov is going to be democratic. I think that is point is demonstrated by [Kyrgyz President] Bakiyev. Bakiyev in a lot of respects has taken Kyrgyzstan in a negative direction, even when compared with Akayev. I’m no big fan of Akayev, but I just don’t think much good has done under Bakiyev. The point is that what replaces Karimov may not be - and probably won’t be - democratic. It probably won’t be a revolution; I don’t think what happened in Kyrgyzstan was a revolution either. You had probably had maybe 10,000 people, if that, out on the streets. That’s not a popular revolution, that’s an uprising.

And I think the same thing will happen in Uzbekistan. There may be an internal power struggle with a small number of people bringing about a change in power. Although, one difference is that Karimov has demonstrated an ability to repress in a way that Akayev either couldn’t or didn’t want to. So he may be able to withstand an uprising better than Akayev.

There are several reasons why I think the current Uzbek regime is facing challenges to its very existence – getting to your original question. A lot of people focus on Andijan, but Andijan was only one of several events in 2005. In Karshi, in Kokand, in Namangan, there were a number of protests. These were all connected to economic reasons, such as changes to laws regulating selling goods in the bazaar, which a lot of Uzbeks saw as a direct hit to their economic welfare, and they started protesting. These incidents got very little coverage in the press, but they were very important. In Kokand they marched on the mayor’s office and burned a couple of police cars. Keep in mind, in Uzbekistan, any kind of protest is very unusual.

I think we are beginning to see more and more localized centers of economic wealth throughout Uzbekistan. The more that you get these independent centers of wealth, the more the government patronage machine is challenged, and the more likely that regional administrators will be bought off at the local level; pretty soon Karimov simply won’t be able to rule their regions. I think this will lead to the gradual demise of the Uzbek government. If power continues to slowly break off from the capital, eventually one of these regional heads will be powerful enough to challenge the center and get rid of Karimov.

ne: If you had to place bets, do you think Karimov is going to change the constitution to stay in power?

McGlinchey: At this point he already has no constitutional basis to be in power without an election. He’s already in breach of the constitution. [Editor’s note: There is a loophole in the Uzbek constitution. While President Karimov’s term expired on January 7th, 2007, but the presidential elections will not be held until December, 2007.]

Gugusha [Gulnara Karimova] is in no position to be running the government; she’s not particularly well liked in Uzbekistan, so passing it on through the family would be problematic. He might be able to pull off a Yeltsin-Putin type thing, and find someone who can rule in his name, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a “referendum” and 92% of the Uzbek population opted to change the constitution to keep him in power.

ne: Judging by the recent interview you did with RFE/RL, you take a somewhat dim view of the state of Kyrgyz democracy. In the interview, you argue that a couple thousand people in the streets are controlling politics in that country, which is not really democracy at all. However, there is undeniably a much greater degree of freedom and civil society active in Kyrgyzstan than even Kazakhstan. How bad is the state of political development in Kyrgyzstan, especially when compared to other Central Asian countries? Is it likely to get worse, in your opinion?

McGlinchey: I think the wonderful thing about Kyrgyzstan is that people are willing to speak their mind and express their opinions in a relatively civil manner. There is some kind of cultural explanation for why we observe so much activism and protest. I don’t think it’s simply because the government is more permissive, I think there is something that runs deeper. Of course, I always hesitate to make cultural centralist arguments like this, but I think there is something in the Kyrgyz culture that 1) encourages people to speak their minds and mobilize, and 2) places limits on that mobilization. You don’t see very often armed conflict, though there are obviously exceptions – you have Aksy, and 2005, but 2005 wasn’t nearly as bloody as Aksy. But there is something cultural that is a driver of continued political liberalization.

I don’t think democracy depends on the leader. If there is going to be democracy or liberalization in Kyrgyzstan, it is going to come as a result of this contestation. I don’t think there is anything inherent about Bakiyev that is going to produce this sort of liberalization, nor are any of the other political actors in Kyrgyzstan convincingly democratic, even the ones who pretend to be. Instead, it will be this give and take - a stalemate, really – that is going to force democratic rules of the game.

There is a fine line between anarchy and stalemate, controlled pressure versus the whole system falling apart. There is a great book by O’Donnel and Schmitter with a very appropriate analogy for this sort of situation. They say it is like a multilayered chess game: playing in three different dimensions, the currents are almost impossible to follow, and there is always the possibility that one player will just knock the whole thing over. Both mass discontent and political liberalization are just over the horizon in Kyrgyzstan. In November and December of last year we witnessed the movement toward liberalization. For it to happen, you need contestation, but you always have the chance of uprisings and general chaos.

ne: Two years after the US military was kicked out of Uzbekistan, some are now arguing that Russia is once again clearly preeminent over the US in Central Asia. What sort of Central Asia policy would you recommend to the next American administration after Bush in 2008?

McGlinchey: I would actually question the conclusion that Russia is on the upswing. It may be that I am making too much of this, but if you look at the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) exercises in Russia, Uzbekistan is sending an observer contingent rather than an active participant. Uzbekistan has always been reluctant to go full throttle into the whole SCO arrangement, and I think that is indicative of Uzbekistan and Russia not necessarily being the closest buddies that we would like to think.

There was a sign outside of one of the airports in Moscow that had a picture of Putin and Karimov and said something like, “the eternal brotherhood.” I don’t know how eternal that brotherhood is going to be and I think Karimov is not necessarily the biggest Russia fan, and those feelings go the other way as well.

It remains to be seen where Berdimukhamedov is going to go. There are a lot of very interesting enticements being offered by the West, especially in regards to gas. Russia has a very strong influence in Kyrgyzstan, but at the same time the Kyrgyz are very willing to play with the Americans and Europeans. Things have gotten for Russia in Central Asia, but I’m not sure how long that will last.

Also, if you look at population pyramids across Central Asia, you have a massive increase in youth population across the board. Many of these young people can’t speak Russian at all, and very soon they will be coming to power. I think this is one of many indicators that Russia’s influence is on the wane.

In terms of recommendations for the US, I think my first suggestion would be to pursue an objective strategy toward Islam. This doesn’t mean underestimating how important a factor it is, but I think the “Bernard Lewis school of Islam” has had a very strong influence on current administration, and I would encourage a more objective approach toward Islam.

Secondly, there are a variety of environmental challenges – particularly water – that need to be addressed at the regional level. The third thing is not to walk away from these political programs in Central Asia. In the 1990s, the United States did a fairly good job of trying to engage some of the political actors in the region. Recently, since 2005 in Kyrgyzstan, I think the government’s gotten a little gun shy of political engagement in the region. However, if done correctly, I think political engagement can have a very positive effect.

ne: I thought that your current research indicates that some aid money can actually have an adverse impact. Or are you specifically referring to aid money that bypasses the central government?

McGlinchey: Aid that isn’t transmitted through central government budgets is desirable. Some of the aid in particular that has been problematic has been World Bank aid, these “structural adjustment” loans. [When I refer above to beneficial aid of] the early and mid 1990s, I am speaking more specifically about political aid projects; [Central Asian] governments have a much more difficult time capturing revenue from those sorts of interventions than the massive structural adjustment loans.

ne: Do you have any recommendations for improving the relationship between Europe, America, and Russia? I recall you expressing a sense of frustration at the “Great Game,” antagonistic rhetoric so pervasive today.

McGlinchey: Russia is for at least the next fifty years going to be very prominent in Central Asia. Earlier when I said its influence was “waning,” I meant waning in proportion to that of other countries. Russia has a cultural affinity, a historical affinity, and these things don’t just disappear.

I think the interests of Europe, Russia, and the United States often overlap. Everyone wants stability, everyone wants a fair distribution of resources… well, maybe not everybody, but many. So I think in a lot of respects, given adjustments in the American and Russian administrations, there could be increased cooperation in the region. But yeah, there is no “Great Game.”

ne: Shifting topics a bit, given that the recent “colored revolution” controversy has caused Western funding for Central Asian NGOs to dry up, are there any opportunities for these local NGOs to arise organically? If so, what kinds of opportunities? And how do Western organizations that do continue to fund projects in Central Asia avoid some of the pitfalls associated with the colored revolutions?

McGlinchey: I think it’s almost impossible to avoid the “meddling” stigma. One thing that might help is better diplomatic relations at the higher levels. The Clinton administration was very well liked in Central Asia – not universally so, but often well liked. There was a certain understanding and less of a desire to accuse the West of meddling. To be fair, however, there also weren’t any colored revolutions then, so there is a bit of a counterfactual. There is a lot that can be done diplomatically to make aid seem less pernicious.

If Western money disappears, what will happen? One of the differences between today and the 1990s is that now there are very wealthy people in Central Asia. Even in Kyrgyzstan, there are lots of rumors of wealthy people in-country who have been funding the recent uprisings there. So there are sources of money. There are people out there who can fund activist organizations and I think there is a future for a lot of these groups, even absent Western aid. Many of the activist groups that have lost Western funding remain prominent, and I think that is partly a result of these Kyrgyz funders who are helping them out. They can survive with out US aid, which is a positive thing.

ne: In a talk at GMU, Professor Stephen Kotkin recently questioned the word “transitional” when used to describe Central Asian countries, arguing that they are not really necessarily in transition to anything. What are your thoughts? Fifteen years on, has that moniker outlived its usefulness?

McGlinchey: I think Steve was probably referring to the whole transitions school. There was a great optimism after 1991, Huntington’s “Third Wave,” the metaphor of the unstoppable wave of democracy. In that sense, I agree with Steve. The metaphor of transition moving in one direction is probably inaccurate.

At the same time – and I think Steve would probably agree with this, but I haven’t asked him – they are countries in transition, just not in transition to democracy. They are moving toward different forms of state-controlled economies, different forms of authoritarianism, even different forms of political openings. They are changing a lot. There has been a lot of variation over time, and a lot of variation over space. I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater in this transition paradigm, but I would agree with Steve that the endpoint does not appear to be democracy, which was an assumption of a lot of earlier scholarship on post-Soviet regime change.

ne: Now for a related question, though more normative. If these countries are not headed toward a liberal, democratic endpoint, how much should the international community care? How much does it matter that they are not necessarily moving toward values shared in the West? What steps – if any – should be taken to counteract these illiberal trends? Should the West be pushing its values, or just sit back and accept that not every country is going to become a Jeffersonian democracy?

McGlinchey: There are two questions here. One is: should we be concerned? Abandoning the empirical and moving toward the normative, my answer would be, yes, we should be concerned. The second question is: what does one do about it? How interventionist can one be, and how productive is that intervention? I think we are seeing in the Iraq case that sometimes intervention can lead to very negative outcomes.

So in short, yes, I am concerned that activists are oppressed. I am concerned that a lot of my colleagues in Uzbekistan are now refugees. That is not defensible, and the United States should probably take a stand on that. All these countries have signed on to the UN charter, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and I think that is something worth defending. The hardest question is how does one go about ensuring compliance with something like the Declaration of Human Rights, and that is a much touchier issue. How do you bring about change from the outside in a culturally sensitive way? I think that’s where the challenge lies.

ne: Where do you see the field of Central Asia studies heading? How has it already changed from when you first entered it?

McGlinchey: I think there are a lot of younger scholars that are approaching the region in a different way – I would even try to throw myself in there, though maybe I’m not so young anymore. Four years out of grad school, so I’m not so old either. I think there’s a lot more interest in the region than there was in the past, and that the quality of research is getting a lot better. This is partly because we have much better access to sources than we once did.

As I mentioned before, the big challenge that political scientists face is that it is difficult to use traditional political science methodologies in Central Asia. I use surveys and quantitative analysis all the time, but at the end of the day you have to do a lot of qualitative, descriptive analysis if you are going to understand what the situation is life. You can’t just parachute in, get the numbers, and leave. You really have to spend time on the ground. I think there are more and more people who are willing to do that. I’ve been really encouraged, even just reading neweurasia and Registan, at the number of people, by the number of people who have lived over there and can say things based on actual experiences in the region. I think that’s the future of this field, be it history of political science – people who go there repeatedly and can make informed statements.

Political science will remain challenged in getting the kinds of quantitative measures necessary to address the kind of questions we are trying to address. In fact, it’s hard to get any measures at all sometimes – I’ve been struggling with political Islam for two years now, and it’s very hard to quantify what’s going on in terms of social mobilization. That’s just the nature of working in authoritarian countries.

ne: Political science seems to be getting even more quantitative as a discipline. Does that mean, based on what you said, that producing respected research in that field will just get more challenging?

McGlinchey: A lot of the mainstream political science journals do tend to be very quantitative, and there is a stature issue that goes on there. At the same time, there are a number of very good comparative politics journals, in which one doesn’t have to be heavily quantitative to publish. But it does limit the domain in which one can publish, to a certain extent.

I don’t think that just because it is difficult we should abandon quantitative methodology in Central Asia. I certainly use them in the manuscript I am writing right now. I think it can give us insight, even when the surveys are biased. In fact, if you look at the surveys as interviews, they are of course no more or less biased than any interview you might do one on one.

The challenges for political scientists are: 1) you have to be quantitative, 2) you have to speak Russian, 3) you have to speak a Central Asian language, and 4) you have to spend a lot of time on the ground, which can be a big challenge for some people, That represents a lot of training.

ne: I want to ask you a few “fun” questions to reward readers who have stayed with us this far. What do you love most about Central Asia?

McGlinchey: I’ve been going to Central Asia since 1995, and although it sounds a little hokey, I’ve come to really love the Central Asian cultures. I have very good friends in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, so I have attachments at the personal level to these countries. I have a network of scholars, friends, and colleagues that I care about.

Secondly, I just love the landscape of Central Asia. I love the mountains, and I’ve done a fair amount of mountaineering and technical rock climbing there. The Tien Shans make the Rockies look like little hills. These are massive, incredible mountains. You get in a cab in Bishkek, and on the same day you can be on a ten pitch, technical rock climbing wall.

More recently, I’ve been doing a lot of running in the mountains in Kyrgyzstan. I would love to do some of the ultra-marathons I’ve been doing in the States in Central Asia. There is one run that you can do from Almaty through the pass to Lake Issyk-kul that I would love to do.

ne: Do you have any good stories you want to share? Any specific personal stories that stand out in your mind?

McGlinchey: Yeah, there is one story that stands out in my mind every time I get frustrated in Central Asia. In October of 1995, I was a very naïve recent college graduate. I took a train in a communal car with a hundred of what quickly become your closest – or not so closest – friends. Anyway, I got on the train in Moscow, and four days later, not knowing anything about Central Asia, I ended up in Bishkek. And I continued to travel like that throughout Central Asia.

I ended up in Bukhara in the middle of the night, not knowing anything about the city, or how one gets from the train station – which is quite far from the city – to the city proper. So I just ended up sitting on the floor of the train station waiting for the sun to come up. Two soldiers – two militsia – came up to me. One seemed very agitated, one seemed more or less normal. They took me to the back room to interrogate me; this is actually fairly common – I’ve been interrogated many times, usually it has gone fairly well.

This time, however, they managed to find some “drugs” in my backpack. I thought that it was going to be very bad situation – here I am in a country I don’t know and I didn’t even actually have a visa for Uzbekistan. This is a fairly well known technique for getting bribes, so I was preparing myself for a bribe, or a night in jail.

But then the other more normal soldier began getting very upset and started yelling at the agitated one, telling him to leave. Then he apologizes to me and told me that the other guy was trying to shake me down, but that he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me. Then he asked me what I was doing in Uzbekistan, and offered me a place to stay. He took me home to his one room apartment that he shared with his mom, they cooked a massive feast for me, I stayed the night, and he even gave me a book by his favorite author, and I returned the favor with one of my books.

It goes to show that people look out for you in Central Asia. Central Asians are very much community-minded, and I’ve always felt very safe there. No matter what, someone is going to look out for you.

ne: Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you would like to talk about?

McGlinchey: I did want to say something about neweurasia, and this isn’t just a plug to say thank you for interviewing me. My colleague Beth Kolko at University of Washington and I are doing a project on information communication technology; we are very interested in chat rooms, websites – the interaction between new and old media.

What I love about your site is the fact that you actually have a lot of Central Asians contributing. And while I’ll go to RFE/RL, AkiPress, Ferghana.ru, or CentrAsia.ru for the day’s news, I always go to neweurasia to see what people from the region are thinking. It’s been a pleasure for me to watch this phenomenon grow, and to see it turn into something that goes both ways and at an equal level, not just a Western big brother type of thing.

You don’t have to put that in the piece if you don’t want to.

ne: I have no scruples against putting it in the post. Thank you so much for your time!

The “Ask the Expert” series is intended to be part of a dialogue between the online community and Central Asia specialists from policy and academia. If you there are any questions you would like to see asked in future conversations, please email info[at]neweurasia[dot]net. Previously, neweurasia interviewed Martha Brill Olcott and Johannes Linn as part of this series.