BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan -- One at a time the government's top critics seemed to go to jail, or simply disappear.Read the whole thing, here.
Syrgak Abdyldayev, a local journalist, began to investigate whether the attacks had anything to do with a team of Russian-speaking specialists who arrived last year to advise the Kyrgyz government. He published several scathing articles accusing the government of shunting aside its opponents and turning to Moscow for financial support, including one in February that likened Russian aid to "oxygen for a sinking submarine."
Then Mr. Abdyldayev became a victim. Three men attacked him with metal pipes as he left his newspaper one evening in March, broke both his arms, his ribs and a leg, and stabbed him 26 times in the buttocks.
Times are changing in Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous Central Asian republic that not long ago was a hoped-for springboard for Western-style democracy in the former Soviet Union.
The president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, has steered Kyrgyzstan sharply back into the orbit of Moscow. In January, Mr. Bakiyev jolted Washington by announcing he was evicting the U.S. from an air base that has been crucial to the supply of troops fighting in Afghanistan. And political freedom here, as in Russia, is in decline. The Kyrgyz and Russian governments deny any link to the attacks on Kyrgyz critics.
In the West, hopes were high that the global financial crisis would rein in Vladimir Putin's assertive foreign policy. But here, as in other parts of the former Soviet Union, hard times have had the opposite effect: The Russians are coming back.
Russia has been hit by the crisis, but remains far richer than its former satellites, and it has used its largess to regain clout near its borders, in what President Dmitry Medvedev calls the "zone of privileged interests."
I wonder if neoconservatives are vindicated by this turn of events? See Robert Kagan, "End of Dreams, Return of History: International rivalry and American Leadership."
3 comments:
I'm more worried about Russia's aims in Western Hemisphere politics and to a lesser extent in Central European power politics. I think our problems in those areas have led to more dangerous rivalry in Central Asia and East Asia. This is unfortunate because a neo-czarist Russia is not a natural ally of Islamic movements of any kind, and there is some precedent (i.e. Teddy Roosevelt) for relatively good relations with Russia in East Asian power politics. But our very real problems with Russia, in our own "sphere" and in Europe, have led to these perilous problems in Asia.
In case my post was vague as to why this rivalry in Asia is "dangerous," it's because if it explodes into an all-out conflict, only Islamists and possibly China can really gain from it as they laugh at both us and the used up old bear behind our backs. At the same time, the Russians and everyone else should never be allowed to violate our time-honored and precious Monroe Doctrine, and they should not control the European part of MacKinder's "heartland" as they did in the Cold War. Our Russia problem is perilous, then, because we should not appease them on these things but also need to be weary about the bigger picture.
I honestly can't see us winning every proxy influence war with Russia, but we can be damn loyal to our allies in the area, like Georgia. While right now with Obama and with the recovery from the mistakes of the Iraq War (eff the JCS's old school crap idea), we need to send a message to Moscow that they need to watch out. America recovers quickly and they don't want to be around when we re-assert our might in the area.
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