Drawing on decades of study about the area, Professor Frederick Starr is among the “old guard” of Central Asia academics. Most people with an interest in the region will have come across his work.

Starr is a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He focuses on oil and gas politics, Islamic faith, culture and law.

Sitting down with neweurasia for almost two hours, he answers questions on an extremely broad range of issues. Many questions reached us from the wider neweurasia community and touch upon issues close to the hearts of our writers.

neweurasia: To start out with, what constitutes “Central Asia” in your view?

Starr: Far more than the five former Soviet republics. For example, before the advance of Russian colonial rule, you had absolutely regular communication by horse from what is now Tajikistan down to the northern areas of Pakistan. This continued right up until the 1930s when the borders were finally sealed. I knew an old man who literally took a horse down there from Khorog, went across the hills, played polo for three days on that horse in this town in what was then northern Kashmir, then partied for a couple of evenings, got on his horse and rode back. He stayed entirely within one cultural zone, which includes former Soviet central Asia, Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, parts of northwest India, Khorosan in Iran, and Xinjiang. Yet because of the bias imposed by our respect for the former Soviet border, we are not yet framing it in its full dimensions.

neweurasia: What kinds of issues are you focusing on right now? What are you researching?

Starr: Let me separate that into second person singular and second person plural. This institution [the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute/Silk Road Studies Joint Center] has about a dozen books underway. The institute is deliberately designed to be small, but it’s small the way an accordion is small. Right now, for example, we have twenty-four scholars in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan working on the Fergana Valley. They are really working flat out on this issue and they will produce an exciting book. We have a large team of Azeris doing an analysis of the development needs of those areas of their country occupied by Armenia, posing the question: What would happen if these areas were suddenly freed? The Azeri government would have a multimillion dollar bill on its hands. We are helping them think this through with some development experts. Then we have other projects going on as well. We are helping the Afghans set up an institution in Kabul for the preparation of future Afghan strategic analysts. Young Afghans will start by doing research with Western analysts but will then be on their own. There is also a book coming out on Tatarstan written by an American women who speaks Tatar. This lively volume includes some interesting material on linguistics and the status of the language.

As to my own research, I just finished a long paper that constitutes advice to any future administration, Democratic or Republican, on what to do with this larger region. Nothing you wouldn’t expect – things are, I think, fairly clear. I also have a big book underway – this is my personal major writing project; I think it will be about a five pounder. It will be written for the educated generalist, not the narrow specialist. It is going to be on the “golden age” of Central Asia from the eighth to the tenth century. It will make the argument that this region was in many ways the intellectual and economic center of the world at that time. The book will revolve around three questions: First, what did they achieve? The answer is an amazing amount. For example, modern Indian and European medicine were most significantly influenced by Persians living in Central Asia who wrote in Arabic. They were experts in field after field – mathematics, astronomy, geometry, you name it. This region produced the most seminal works since antiquity, much of which we have mistakenly assumed was done by Arabs in the Middle East, but was actually done by Persians writing in Arabic. For instance, Al-Khwarezmi from what is now northwest Uzbekistan invented logarithms, and hence got naming rights. The name of his book was Al-Jebra, hence the word algebra. In school I always learned that it was invented in the Middle East, but in fact it was the work of a guy from central Asia.

The second question is: Why did it happen? How did this incredible intellectual fermentation in so many fields occur? What caused it? The third question that I address, and in many ways the most interesting, is: What stopped it? Why didn’t it just roll on and on and just keep flowering out? The easy answer – that happens to be wrong – is that the Mongols screwed it all up. That’s kind of the Persian answer. But it isn’t true, because there is clear evidence that the bloom had gone off the rose many years before the Mongols showed up. I don’t want to become an apologist for pillaging and raping, but the Mongols did not destroy the Central Asian renaissance. So what did cause it to decline? I link the causes with both economic and religious factors.

It’s absolutely the most extraordinarily interesting material. I’m not writing this because I’m an expert; I’m writing it because I want to learn. I think the core reality of the field that you and your fellow bloggers are dealing with is that none of us is really an expert. Stated differently, our expertise is very narrow and very thin. Anyone putting himself or herself forward as a comprehensive expert on this infinitely complex region is blowing smoke. There’s just too much there, and we can only learn about a corner of it. In short, I think a good deal more humility is called for.

neweurasia: Turkmenistan is poised to redenominate its currency. From your perspective, what outcomes will that bring about for the people? How will that affect inflation and the economic picture as a whole?

Starr: Two things. First, I will regret the passing of the old Turkmenbashi currency. I have a collection of bills from when he was old and a newer collection from when he was younger and his hair had mysteriously grown dark again.

Second, the fact that the government is addressing the currency problem is obviously welcome. However, you don’t solve the long term issues of inflation in a gas and oil producing country simply by producing new bank notes. This is a complex issue that goes well beyond fiscal and monetary policy. It has to do with the fundamental problem that oil and gas wealth, which will obviously increase hugely in Turkmenistan, has the effect of producing inflation no matter what the color of the hair of the person on the bank note. What this does is drive up the cost of inputs for anything that people might need in order to sell Turkmen products abroad. For instance, it will drive up the cost of equipment needed for producing cotton or fruit. But it will not at the same time allow you to increase your prices accordingly to cover that added cost. Therefore, what windfall profit does is gradually destroy the agricultural and industrial sectors of oil and gas producing countries, or parts of countries. By the way, this is precisely what happened in Louisiana in the 1920s. The Turkmen state can introduce currency reforms, but if they don’t address this fundamental issue, the currency reform will have no effect and they will have a classic case of “Dutch Disease.” I think this will be one of the basic challenge facing the Turkmen government for the next decade.

neweurasia: What do you think are the prospects of Western countries for improving human rights in Turkmenistan? At the end of the day, what do Western countries care more about: democracy and human rights, or gas and oil?

Starr: I think that the development of good government, open government, consultative government, i.e., democracy and human rights, are beyond all question highly desirable. The question is: How do you get from here to there? I think in the case of Turkmenistan, more so than in other countries of the region, it is necessary to take a very strategic approach, which means a long term approach. The key ingredient there has to be education. Compared to the other countries of the region, even with Afghanistan or Iran, there are just far fewer young Turkmen men and women who have studied abroad and had direct experience with an open societies. Of those who went abroad, many did not return. It is therefore pointless to talk about good government and democracy when they remain abstractions for most people in the country. The most important thing for Turkmenistan – and something I think the government there would acknowledge – is to develop and disseminate modern education. That, I would say, is step one. Step two is related to those government agencies in that country which are best positioned to impede progress in these areas. I have in mind particularly the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which, with its many local offices and internal police, can kill both market economies and democracy in the cradle. These institutions are largely the same as during the Soviet Union, often comprised of the same people. If we in the West – not to mention in Japan, India, and many other countries that have as great an interest in these issues as we do – wish to see change, it will be necessary to work with the Turkmen government, not just wag fingers at it. We must help them do the hard, slow work of re-training some of those people and develop a different bureaucratic culture that will allow good governance, democracy, and a market economy to flourish.

neweurasia: You are sometimes perceived as something of a controversial figure. Why do you think that is?

Starr: That’s for others to judge.

neweurasia: What made you pronounce Kazakh parliamentary elections in 2004 and presidential elections in 2005 “free, fair, and democratic”?

Starr: That is false. Read the statement. Both were issued not by me personally or alone but by a group which, in the latter case, included the former head of the OSCE’s review committee from the year before, Robert Barry, a tough-minded but utterly dispassionate observer. We did not say that the elections were “free and fair” or that the OSCE’s judgments were false – in fact, we supported their conclusions in both reports. Our conclusions, instead, were that both elections represented an improvement over the previous ones. This is not what we wished, this is what we perceived. If you read both of the OSCE reports, they said the same thing. The difference is that we lead with the statement regarding progress, but the OSCE, fallowing its internal guidelines, had to lead with the statement that the elections did not fully meet what are in effect the standards of Denmark or the Netherlands. No surprise there! There are still lots of problems and a lot to be done, but there has been progress nonetheless. The OSCE itself acknowledged this when it offered the presidency to Kazakhstan.

I think the key question for anyone following these issues is the direction of change. If the direction of change slips into the negative, that is a real cause for concern; this can happen and has happened in the region. But as long as there is movement in a positive direction overall, it seems to me that one should be encouraging it, fostering it, and to the extent possible, rewarding it, which is just what the members of the OSCE did when on their own volition they elected Kazakhstan chairman.

neweurasia: Why did the United States and Europe support Kazakhstan’s bid for chairmanship of the OSCE?

Starr: In my understanding, the US did not support Kazakhstan’s presidency immediately, but did support it in due course. My own view is that the meeting in Madrid produced a remarkable statement from the Kazakh foreign minister Tazhin, who by the way represents a new generation for the region as a whole. He conceded, very directly, that Kazakhstan still has some problems at home to address. Rather than dodge the issue, he enumerated the steps the Kazakh government intends to take before and during its presidency.

Now, it is too early to say whether the government of Kazakhstan will succeed in this or even that it will do what it said it would. However, as an acknowledgment of areas in which work is necessary to meet OSCE standards, as a commitment to OSCE standards, and as a statement of readiness to do what is necessary to make such changes, I think it was remarkable. Obviously, the countries that were present thought so and they voted in favor of it. Now, we’ll have to watch. Obviously, holding Kazakhstan to its own commitments is an important priority.

We are publishing a paper by Anthony Bowyer of IFES on parliaments and parties in Kazakhstan which I think is very interesting, because Bower, who is very hi9ghly qualified, reviews the evolution of the parliamentary institutions and the parties very meticulously. In his view, there are still many matters to rectify but there has been a good deal of real progress – which should really surprise no one.

neweurasia: In the age of resource nationalism, what are your feelings towards recent changes in the Kazakh oil and gas market? Is the renegotiation of the Kashagan license and the more confident tone of the Kazakh government just a natural step on Kazakhstan’s way to becoming a “mature” state? Or do you think that the growing assertiveness will eventually deteriorate investors’ confidence?

Starr: Well, it is too early to say. My impression is that this is not a prelude to Putinization. I think the Kazakhs at every turn have shown themselves far subtler, and to have a broader perspective, than to do that. What it does represent is the rise of normal politics in Kazakhstan, which includes a good dose of nationalism of the kind that is common to all countries after independence. Let us remember that the US certainly showed such a tendency after the end of the revolutionary war and particularly after the new constitution was passed. I think we have to understand that it is normal. The defense of sovereignty is part of the Kazakhs’ political dialogue: Those Kazakhs shouting for nationalization are one voice in an ever more complicated discourse. But I don’t think we should panic. Kazakhstan so far has shown itself to have a far deeper and perhaps a less cynical understanding of the world economy than has Russia. Therefore, I am not waiting for some other shoe to drop.

neweurasia: In your opinion, is the export of Central Asian oil and gas via non-Russian territory to Europe a viable alternative to current export routes? As this is also largely dependent on Turkmenistan’s export preferences, have you noticed a change in tone since the new President Berdymukhammedov has come to office in Ashgabad?

Starr: I think there has been a dramatic shift that was occurring already during the last six months of Niyazov’s presidency. He pulled off a remarkable series of strategic moves which was probably directly related or responsible for the strain that eventually caused his heart to give out.

In April 2006 Niyazov made a big trip to China, on which he took practically the whole government – I was wondering who was ruling in Ashgabad during that month. He came back with an immense contract and proceeded to give a press conference in which he for the first time stated his great gratitude towards his country’s two great partners in the gas enterprise, namely China and Russia. I think this was the first time that Gazprom had realized that Niyazov had another partner besides themselves. What Niyazov had in fact done with the Chinese was to break the Gazprom monopoly on Turkmen gas.

At the same time, Niyazov opened contact with Turkey on gas, making a small contract without saying how he is going to get it there. He also began discussions with both the Americans and the European Union on the possibilities of trans-Caspian export routes. He was very active during the last two years of his life promoting the trans-Afghan pipeline and engaging India in what had previously been an exclusively Pakistani, Afghan and Turkmen project. So this was a period of hyperactivity culminating in his death.

I think therefore that for the new president the question was whether he was going to continue this shift of course that had already begun or pull back from it. So far, he has continued it. The two really stunning developments were that the Kazakhs, Turkmen and Uzbeks, without any bravado, and in a low-keyed fashion that would have to solicit the admiration of any poker player, calmly announced that they were henceforth going to expect world prices for the gas that they sold to Russia. This process of raising the sale ;price to Russia also began under Niyazov, even though it culminated after his death.

This is a dramatic development, and even though the Turkmens, Kazakhs and Uzbeks will never acknowledge that they conspired together on this – and maybe it didn’t need much conspiring – it represents a dramatic success against Gazprom, which had previously been profiting immensely from buying low in Central Asia and selling high in Europe. Now the question is whether Gazprom will try to pass on the price increase to the Europeans.

The other really stunning development after the death of Niyazov is the very cordial relations that Berdymukhammedov has managed to establish with his all his neighbours. These include multiple trips to Ashgabad from Nazarbayev, Berdymukhammedov’s very cordial meetings with Karimov and Karzai, his very friendly contact with the Iranians and, by far the most important change, an absolute breakthrough on a human level with Azerbaijan. Ilham Aliev has no problems dealing with Turkmenistan. Niazov felt that Geydar Aliev condescended to him, which I am sure he did. But, Ilham Aliev is a very calm, pleasant person and I think they get on very well. Problems that were seen as insurmountable before they started meeting face to face are now viewed as practical issues with practical solutions. This, far more than any achievements by European or American diplomacy or business, paves the way for an opening of trans-Caspian pipelines.

All the old ideas that Russians and Iranians would complain because of ecological danger absolutely vanished when we consider the deep pipelines Russia proposes to build and is building across the Black Sea, with no complaints about ecological danger. I think some kind of a trans-Caspian pipeline is moving inexorably forward. The interesting question to me is how much gas will turn out to be in this vast new field in Turkmenistan. Will it be enough to supply the Chinese, and will it perhaps also supply even India through the trans-Afghan pipeline? These are all heady possibilities, but if I may circle back to your first question, if any or all of them succeed it really poses the inflation problem in the most acute way.

As of today, however, there is no other way of getting the gas out of the country than via Russia. If the Turkmens continue to extract a very good price out of the gas export to Russia, it makes sense to continue this relationship. However, it is quite conceivable that if there is a pipeline from Turkmenbashi over to Baku for gas, the Kazakhs may well choose to link up with that. They could use the same Caspian shore pipeline they have been talking about and run it in the other direction, sending Kazakh gas to the West via Baku as well.

These are all wide-open questions; I have no idea how that will work out in detail. The direction of change has been and will continue to be one that gives these countries more choice in the marketing of their most valuable products than they had in 1991. And if I may say, I think that this is also the purpose of all Central Asian diplomacy today: i.e., not to allow one country or a set of countries to impose themselves upon them, but to create a lot of contacts abroad, open a lot of possibilities, which they can then balance against each other and strengthen their own sovereignty that way.

I am a kind of Central Asian patriot for the region as a whole: I think it has interests and the countries in it have interests that the big powers should respect. They have not always done so. I think that positive developments in Central Asia will be hastened by greater security. If the Europeans, Americans, Japanese, and whoever else, are not interested in talking about security, which happens to be the biggest concern of the regional governments themselves, then they cannot expect those governments to be willing to talk about their agenda.

neweurasia: Speaking about security, probably one of the most polarized debates is circling around Islamic extremism: You hear everything, from “there is none – it is all fabricated by the national governments” to “it’s a huge problem”. What is your evaluation?

Starr: Well, I think all positions are true. There are dangers and it would be naïve to deny them, we have seen solid evidence of this – and not just the IMU.

neweurasia: What are you referring to?

Starr: I am referring to the use of money and training from certain Gulf states and Pakistan. This of course was greatly facilitated by the collapse of the USSR and then by the Tajik Civil War. This left a legacy of genuine problems and genuine dangers that have not yet been fully addressed. No country in the region is free of them.

That said, I think there is also a tendency among some Western analysts to catastrophize. The reality is that, firstly, these are for the most part Sunni traditionalists who don’t view either Iran or the Arab world, including the Saudis, as keepers of the faith, but rather as perverters of it in one direction or another. Sunnis of greater Central Asia view themselves as the true keepers. To the extremists they say: “Don’t lecture us. If anyone has the right to lecture anyone, it is we that have the right and responsibility to lecture you”.

This sentiment exists, and it is not without a historical justification. Over the centuries it was reinforced by the late rise of a Shiia Iran under the Saffavids and by the even later appearance of Wahabbism in Arabia, which occurred fully eight centuries after a central asian, al Bukhari, codified important aspects of the faith at the time of the great Central Asian Samanid dynasty. So as far as the Central Asian are concerned, they are the keepers of the faith and both the Shiia and Wahabbis (not to mention more recent strains of extremism) are mere upstarts.

Added to this is a very strong layer of secularism championed by a large secular intelligentsia, the positive legacy of Russian rule. In the Arab world the only convincing model of a secular state is Lebanon, and it is in bad shape. And in the Turkic world the only secular model outside Central Asia and the Caucasus is Turkey – and it is not in such a great state either. Maybe the Central Asian countries will develop some new model that can actually be successful. The evidence both for great danger and for a smooth evolution is pretty strong. If you take 16 years as a whole, I think it is impressive that the Central Asians have navigated these complicated waters as successfully as they have.

neweurasia: There is an argument that goes: “The governments in Central Asia, particularly Uzbekistan, use Islam as a scapegoat to crack down on opposition to the regime of any kind.” So the argument is not really so much about whether it exists, but that they are creating an excuse to crack down on civil society. What do you think about this argument?

Starr: I think when in 30 years we look back on this period, we will be struck not by the differences, but the similarities between the various governments over the first fifteen years of their independence. For example, their policies towards religious extremism have been remarkably similar. There are differences of nuance and degree, but they all have treated this as a neuralgic issue and have all shown a certain ruthlessness in addressing it.

Again, looking back in 30 years, I suspect that we will also acknowledge this was not because these governments were all powerful and that they had managed to eliminate all divergent voices, either outside of the state or within the governments themselves. I think we will probably see in 30 years that this tendency to authoritarianism, which has been felt everywhere, is a response to two things. First, to their objective condition as small and fragile states in an exceedingly difficult neighborhood, surrounded by nuclear powers and interacting daily, far more than they would prefer, with all the biggest economies and biggest military powers of the planet. This put the Central Asians on guard and made them acutely aware of their weaknesses, not their strengths. Second, these authoritarian tendencies around the region were fostered by a sense of the weakness of their own new institutions, new laws, and new property relations, not to mention new armies, etc. My sense is that Uzbeks had the most acute sense of the dangers they faced and acted accordingly, for better or worse.

I think we are tone-deaf to the cataclysmic changes that occurred even in those Central Asian countries that seem to be resisting change. These changes left the governments and their leaders acutely aware of their own fragility and of their own weakness. We see them as all-powerful and overweening. While we rightly document their missteps and overreactions, from their standpoint, they are driven by the awareness of the areas that they not control and of the fragility of the entire arrangement. The good news is that, 16 years after independence, their sovereignties are all intact and even getting stronger. Maybe we are approaching the time when everyone can calm down and start developing normally!

neweurasia: How fragile do you think some of these states are? Are any of these regimes on the verge of collapse?

Starr: I think we have to use our language carefully. We only use the word ‘regime’ when we do not like someone; elsewhere we speak of ‘governments’.

Obviously, there will be changes. Neither Mr. Karimov nor Mr. Nazarbayev is young and, eventually, they will leave the scene. I think, in both cases, we have to acknowledge that there is a very talented young generation of really competent men and women. Also, both governments, whatever we may think of their leaders, have serious personnel policies that have engaged a lot of these talented people already and will be able to do so in the future.

So, obviously, there will be a change in leadership, a change in regime, if you like, but I would not rush to the conclusion that this means chaos and gross discontinuity. I think that these are very bright people who understand better than we do the need for some kind of orderly processes.

The only place where I worry the process might not proceed successfully is Kyrgyzstan.

So far the gains of the Tulip Revolution are modest indeed. One hopes they coalesce around some new and more democratic approach but the path so far has been difficult.

neweurasia: One of the stickiest issues among Central Asia pundits is the Andijan massacre. Some say that only with the benefit of years or will the truth be revealed. Almost four years after the event, are we any closer to understanding what happened?

Starr: That is a very wise point. My feeling is that this will go down in history as a monument to the possibility of grossly distorted reporting and analysis in a period of massive and all-embracing information. Even when you are awash in ‘information,’ you can miss essential elements and your analysis can be seriously flawed.

Let me give you one example. A BBC reporter reported, and then was endlessly quoted, that these were unarmed demonstrators. Doubtless, there were many unarmed folks in the square that day. Mysteriously, a couple of years after the event, three separate tapes done by individual citizens in Andijan turned up, showing these events. A couple of the tapes showed clearly the BBC reporter (actual an ethnic Russian serving as a stringer) coming onto the scene and walking by rows of demonstrators armed with Kalashnikovs. Thus, these were not simply businessmen peacefully seeking the release of their wrongly detained fellows. The tape reveals nothing of the sort, even leaving aside the fact that nobody denied that they shot their way into the city hall and chased down members of the city council, murdering them in their homes. The “peaceful demonstrators” then proceeded to a maximum security prison, where, having released everyone, they gunned down those who did not want to come with them. As I recall, the US National Guard did not respond passively when the maximum security prison at Attica, NY was under attack.

Many, many people were murdered by the Ministry of Interior troops, who shot very primitively and indiscriminately. Many were also murdered by the people who opened the prison themselves, because anybody who did not go with them was against them. Beyond that, the demonstrators used human shields. This does not in any way excuse the behavior of the Ministry of Interior troops, but it certainly puts it in context.

Finally, I think it is probably worth noting that through most of the 1990s the West worked with the Uzbek army through Partnership for Peace and did so quite successfully. After a decade of such cooperation, the minister of defense was civilian, a scientist, the first civilian minister anywhere in the former Soviet Union. However, the West had not worked with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which remained a kind of bastion of the most primitive, old-fashioned, brutal Soviet-type officials and troops. Some claim the Uzbeks were unwilling, others claim that the West was unwilling. Either way, we should not be too surprised when these utterly unreformed forces behaved as badly as they did.

There have been a lot of increasingly careful studies. I noticed one by Memorial in Moscow. You cannot accuse them of being soft on tyranny, but their figures are not far from the figures that the Uzbek government has issued. The figures of the New York Times, which claims a minimum of 350 casualties, are based on its reporter who went to the morgue, where he found a corpse tagged with the number 350 and assumed that the victims were numbered from 1 to 350. This did not turn out to be the case. Also, there seems to be no basis for reports of 2000 casualties, as put forth by several of the NGOs.

None, to my knowledge, has issued a correction.

Finally, let me say the obvious: we can all agree that a clinical and completely dispassionate and thorough analysis is needed, which will take time. The closest we have come to that is the Memorial study, but others are needed. That said, what is amazing to me in retrospect is how eager Western governments were to assume the worst and to act on it, as if they had more thorough and accurate knowledge than they actually possessed. The CIA and Western European intelligence did a disastrously poor job on this. It seems to be a case of using bad intelligence to justify bad actions.

And then there was this issue of the creation of an impartial international commission. There is no question that the Uzbeks stonewalled on this issue. They did create a commission of their own that happened to include Russia, China, India and all the neighboring countries. They cannot be accused of completely suppressing the facts.

But why did not the European and American proposal make any headway? Well, there is a reason. A couple of years before, there was the famous Shelkovenkov case, in which a man died while incarcerated in Uzbekistan. Several NGOs claimed that he had been tortured to death. One organization, at the time affiliated with Freedom House, went to the Interior Ministry and suggested the formation of an independent international commission to look into the case. The ministry agreed and the commission turned out to be a very solid one, including a former US ambassador known for his impartiality plus the chief forensic pathologist of the province of Ontario. The commission was given full access. It found no evidence that the man was killed under torture and a lot of evidence that he died of suicide, including previous suicide attempts over the course of his lifetime.

Thus, the commission came to the conclusion that it was a tragic event but not murder. The commission held a press conference at the US embassy in Tashkent. The Western press, which had been quick to report in detail all earlier allegations on this issue, utterly failed to cover the commission’s findings. It simply became a non-event. This greatly embittered the Uzbeks, who thought they had been used, and this affected Uzbekistan’s willingness to accede to international scrutiny following Andijan.

neweurasia: Give that the international media ignored the independent commission anyway, as you say, it seems like the Uzbekistani government would have been no worse off had it allowed an international commission into Andijan.

Starr: Certainly! But put yourself for a moment in the position of the bureaucrats who would have had to approve such a commission. The best they could do was to work their way back up to zero, i.e., to proving they had “stopped beating their wife.” They should have accepted a new commission but one can understand why they might have been unwilling to do so.

neweurasia: What exactly was the US motivation to condemn Uzbekistan? One can easily see the motivation of individual NGO’s dedicated to exposing human rights abuses, but it seems that the US Government stood to lose a lot by condemning the country, namely its military base. So what prompted the outcry?

Starr: I think there are two factors here. Some in the government, as well as in NGOs, had an apocalyptic view. They thought that if only the existing uzbek “regime” was out of the way through some great event, then the country would move immediately into a new glorious age. There was an excitement to bring down the house and start over, which is, of course, rather arrogant towards people on the ground, who have to live their day to day lives.

Within the US government, the Bureau of Democracy, Labor, and Human Rights in the State Department had assumed vull power over this issue. Through energetic leadership, it was in a position virtually to dictate policy in State on this issue. Thus, you have the unlikely picture of very conservative forces within State allied with very liberal forces in certain NGOs to squeeze out the middle.. In the short run, with regard to Uzbekistan, they won, in that the Uzbeks basically said: “Thank you very much, we’re out of here.” In the longer run, though, it appears that a more centrist position is taking hold in both Tashkent and Washington. We are entering a post-Andijan era, in which we recognize that there are many issues of concern to us on which the Uzbeks, too, have something important to say.

neweurasia: Have you met a lot of these leaders?

Starr: Yes, I think I’ve met all of them since 1991.

neweurasia: What are they like?

Starr: Let me start with someone who is no longer there – Akaev [former president of Kyrgyzstan]. A very intelligent man, very sympathetic. He is what Jerry Seinfeld would call a “low speaker.” As he became president and gained more and more authority his voice became more and more quiet, forcing everyone to lean forward to hear his pronouncements. He was a nice and well-meaning person and at the same time a tragic figure. I think he just ran out of gas. He was being told by the US in a rather brutal manner that he had to leave office in accordance with the constitution. We should have been telling him this, but we didn’t need to embarrass him in public, which we did. At the same time, many members of his family were deeply concerned about whether they could even live in Kyrgyzstan after he left office. This was an irresolvable tension. When some young punks showed up and walked through a virtually unprotected door at the Kyrgyz White House, Akaev could easily have controlled the situation. But rather than do so, he simply abdicated and let these kids solve his personal Rubrics Cube for him. It wasn’t a revolution; it was simply a regime collapse.

Akaev came from a scientific background, but he was really a bureaucrat for the Academy of Sciences. There were a lot of physicists who ended up in important positions in the first wave following the breakup of the Soviet Union.

[Tajikistani President] Rakhmon. He has visited this institution [Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies] twice; I’ve seen him in Tajikistan any number of times. Everyone was very impressed with his rustic Russian. He is really a “good old boy” from Kulyab. He is a macho sort of guy; who builds great palaces for himself and so forth. And yet he is not without shrewdness. He has identified a few very talented young people and brought them along in the government. He has managed to create balance in very difficult circumstances, opening the door to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Thanks to former Ambassador to Tajikistan, Richard Hoagland, a very capable man and the incoming Ambassador to Kazakhstan, as well as the support of AES and a lot of others, he is now doing successfully for electricity what Turkmenistan is trying to do with gas. So in a way, he is a complex figure, with striking moments of great modernity, cleverness, and insight, and at the same time a primitive “good old boy” approach to life that results in him engaging in wrestling matches at public events and so forth.

neweurasia: Who would you most enjoy having a beer with?

Starr: Rakhmon would be a very good candidate for that, but I suspect he prefers stronger stuff..

Regarding Niyazov, I suspect that when his history gets written, the authors will have a hard time linking a person that was often an extremely adroit operator in the international arena with his often bizarre behavior domestically. Not to say that he’s an angel in the former and not in the latter – his former minister of foreign affairs, a man I respect greatly, is sitting in prison now. That shouldn’t be happening. But in many respects his bizarre domestic policy was paired with shrewed foreign policy.

neweurasia: Was he actually crazy?

Starr: When you consider some of his measures, it is tempting to think so. Whether or not this is the case, I think he came to two realizations. First, there was less unity between the Turkmen tribes than among groups of any other Soviet republics. They had always been spoilers, working between Safavid Iran and the Central Asian Emirates for three centuries, playing that no-man’s land. They were always non-aligned. In a very clever way, Niyazov identified and built upon the traditional policy of non-alignment. Beyond that, he understood that under Russian rule, as well as Soviet rule, the fact that the Turkmen had humiliated the Tsarist armies in the 1880s had never been forgotten. Hence they had fewer educated people, fewer publications, fewer scientific laboratories, fewer universities than any other republic. Turkmenistan arrived at independence with almost nothing.

The rationale for what he did – this is not to justify it – was that they didn’t have any symbols of national unity. On their flag, you see the various symbols of constituent tribes, no single national symbol. I think that with the Rukhnama, etc., however primitive and bizarre they are, the underlying goal was to create centripetal force in a country that had no such cohesion in the past. Like Xinjiang, it is a donut country, with all the major settlements sprinkled around a desert. The sane element in Niyazov’s insanity, was somehow to create a centripetal force. Did he do so? It’s hard to see how any of what he did can work in the modern world. I think it will end up as a kind of bizarre footnote. But the effort to generate some kind of center will have to be continued. I believe it is best nowadays to achieve this through education, an area where Niyazov was irresponsible to the point of criminality.

neweurasia: What about Karimov?

Starr: Karimov, again, is a very distinctive personality. He is a very intelligent man with a background in Gosplan – the state planning agency that had a lot of bright people in it. These people were not necessarily socialist ideologues, but their job description almost assumed and required that they take the view that somehow all phenomena of national life can be shaped and coordinated from above. So he brought that professional bias with him after he rose to power.

Beyond this, I would not consider Karimov an optimistic person. He is stone cold sober and wholely lacking in that cheeriness that we consider essential for any presidential candidate. For him the glass tends to be half empty. We have to remember, he came in after the Rashidov affair. Rashidov was an extraordinary figure. In Soviet times, he put in place a virtually self-governing Uzbekistan and there were a lot of barons from that system who, after several failures by Gorbachev to come up with a workable leader, turned to Karimov, and lobbied that after several years of chaotic reign, that the old Rashidov system should be put back in place.

Although we might not think of it as such, Karimov’s government resembles a restoration after a period of chaos in the late Soviet times. I think on the whole, he is very strategic in his thinking. Like Nazarbaev, as he gets older, he is perhaps subject to more anxieties and impulses than when he was younger. The “flip-flop” from the US to Russia and the recent “flop-flip” might be exemplary of this. It is worth asking whether we should expect more such surprises.

Beyond this, one must ask whether Uzbekistan will eventually shift power to the next generation or will power jump a generation abnd end up in the hands of those now in the 30s and 40s.. If it goes to the next generation, people now in their fifties, they will get very bright, competent, young, former Komsomol leaders of the modern generation. That wouldn’t be bad, but it is not the best solution. If Karimov stays on long enough for power to be shifted to people now in their late thirties and early forties, you come up with an entirely different mentality, one which, by the way, Karimov himself consciously created when he paid for young Uzbeks of that generation to go abroad and study.

neweurasia: In 1991, the Uzbek government thought that their country would become the regional hegemon of the five Central Asian countries. Is there a sense of missed opportunity within the elite?

Starr: I think it is a little more complicated than that. It is true that in contrast to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan’s GDP has soared and their foreign policy has been very notable. At the same time, probably by 2020, the population of Uzbekistan will be twice that of Kazakhstan. It is in the centre of everything, it still has the biggest industrial base, it certainly has immense human resources in terms of skills.

In the 1990s, Uzbekistan moved very cautiously because its leaders wanted to maintain an income stream for the government so that enough resources would be available for schools, hospitals, etc. That worked very well: They preserved a higher percentage of pre-1991 GDP than any of the other countries, down to the end of the 1990s.

At that point, in Kazakhstan, the oil started coming off and also, the Uzbek solution ran out of steam. Then there was a period until about 2006, in which the feeling was that the Uzbeks had missed the boat and that everything is somehow going to come tumbling down. This is the atmosphere in which the Andijan events were received in the West – it was viewed as a cataclysmic moment. Since then, however, Uzbekistan’s GDP growth has been significant. There was a period, 6-7 years ago, in which international agencies assumed that growth in Uzbekistan was negative. Now there is consensus that the GDP is growing.

I think extreme interpretations of Uzbekistan’s role are out of order, and that we should look at it much more clinically. We have to admit they will always be there, that it is a central point, culturally, in terms of transport and communications, of the region – as the Southern USSR was “built around Tashkent”. They are habits of rule that the country inherits from Bukhara, Kokhand and so forth that make it a very serious state. I think anyone who would write it off today would be very mistaken. At the same time, Kazakhstan’s rise, its thoroughgoing reforms, its bold shift of power in key ministries to very young and highly competent men and women, is impressive by any measure and carries huge implications for the future.

neweurasia: Is Kazakhstan worried about a potential rivalry?

Starr: I would insist that certainly the two presidents of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan solidly acknowledge that there are common Central Asian interests and that there should be a Central Asian organization that is free of all outsiders, including Russia, China, the United States, India and Europe. However, Russia will not allow them to have any organization that does not include Russia. This is just a kind of former colonial bullying that will go nowhere but it cannot be ignored at the present. This, by the way, is why Karimov rejected Nazarbayev’s recent proposal of a Central Asia Union. Had Nazarbayev instead proposed a consultative board, association, or any other kind iof grouping that did not imply any loss of sovereignty, I am sure Uzbekistan would have been on board.

Acknowledging that there is a Central Asia which includes Afghanistan, acknowledging that there are some common interests derived from the shared geography, history and culture; acknowledging all that, the fact is that since 1990 all of these countries have become more “like themselves”. They have gone their own ways, and real distinctions between these peoples that were there all the time are now evident to everyone.

That does not mean that they are enemies. They are very used to dealing with one another. The Uzbeks and Kazakh tribes have had 500 years of daily experience with each other. They know where the limits are, and also the possibilities. Karimov and Nazarbayev can sit down and talk easily, as will any future leaders. The idea of playing them off against each other in any way is a non-starter. They have been efforts to do that here, and I think it is bad.

neweurasia: What do you see as the future of Central Asia studies?

Starr: First, a word about the past. There is a prehistory to these studies that is worth recognizing. In the seventies and eighties, a lot of us worked very hard to get FIBIS to translate the main Russian language newspapers in central asia and the Caucasus, and then the local language newspapers. This really gave Central Asian and Caucasian countries reality in Western governments.

Also crucial was the opening of direct contact with the Academies of Science. Moscow would not allow us to have direct contact with research institutes in any of these republics. All links having to be mediated from Moscow. To break this stranglehold, we basically told the Academy of Science that we were going to publish an index, a guide, to the entire Academy of Science network and that if they wanted to participate, we would be honored to join with them, as the results would only be more accurate. They refused, so we told them we would publish it anyway. After a while the Academy’s tsars finally yielded and it got published. For the first time, addresses, phone numbers, people were available to anyone who could read English.

There was also a lot of serious academic work in the historical and linguistic areas going on, even though the mainstream of Soviet studies utterly failed to confront the findings of a generation of scholars who were focused on Central Asia and the Caucasus.

The first post-Soviet decade was dominated by the same modes of analysis we used for the USSR, and had the same Moscow-centric bias. This was natural, since few knew local languages or had spent time in Central Asia or the Caucasus. The post-independence period has now ended, and we have a large number of competent younger men and women who come back from the Peace Corps and other on-site activities with a solid knowledge of local languages. The linguistic factor is absolutely central. The thought of dealing with the Central Asian and Caucasian countries without knowledge of the local languages is a non-starter today. Of course, a traveler in the region can always find someone who speaks Russian. That’s fine. But people express different ideas in different languages and if you make the effort to speak a local language even badly, it will be acknowledged that you are serious and that you have a commitment to them. They will show a degree of candidness to you. I think this era marks an exciting beginning. I think it is very exciting and promising. Those younger scholars now emerging will transform the way we look at Central Asia and the Caucasus in the years to come and I am very excited to be on the scene during this critical transition.

This interview was carried out by our own James and one of Professor Starr’s students, Sven. James, Sven and Ben transcribed the voice recording.