The King is Dead. Long Live the King.

So much for friendly-old Berdy.

Radio Liberty has sent around a statement that one of its contributors in Turkmenistan was beaten and tortured in recent days for refusing to stop reporting for the American-funded broadcaster. Sazak Durdymuradov, whom Radio Liberty says is a history teacher who files reports on educational and constitutional reform, was seized from his home three days ago. According to the report, his beating and torture occurred at the same time that senior Turkmen officials were talking with European Union officials about human rights in the capital of Ashkabad.

Western governments have largely withheld judgement on Turkmenistan's new president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, hoping that he is different from his megalomaniacal predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov. Berdymukhamedov has raised hopes by taking down ego-driven statues memorializing Niyazov, and reviving the right of young Turkmen to a full education, among other things.

But the human rights situation doesn't appear to have changed much.

Photo: Nicolai Bangsgaard

Rights: Creative Commons

Becoming Quieter on the Caspian

The prize in the Pipeline War is Turkmenistan. Russia and China -- especially the former -- are far ahead of the West in the contest. One reason has been their willingness to look the other way on the issues of human rights, rigged elections and presidents for life.

Chris Chivers of The New York Times weighed in over the weekend on the American response, which is to lower the volume on the moralizing.

There has been a U.S. policy shift on the Caspian, and that's to tell the presidents that they don't have to be like Norway to get along with Washington. As long as they stay on the good-behavior -end of the spectrum of the generally badboy former Soviet states, they're all right.

Some quiet diplomacy is needed in the region. The U.S. is right to give the benefit of the doubt, for instance, to Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov as long as he continues to methodically dismantle the legacy of his predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov.

The aim of the U.S. policy is to help to continue to carve out some long-term breathing room for the region from Russia by championing the trans-Caspian and Nabucco natural gas pipelines to Europe. So far, Turkmenistan has been more favorable toward Russia's competing system, the Nord Stream and South Stream pipelines.

Yet there's a line not to be crossed.

One is pandering. Chivers provides an astonishing public remark by Julie Finley, U.S. ambassador to the OSCE. Speaking to Kazakhs in Europe a couple of years ago about their seizure of unflattering newspapers, Finley said, “Maybe you saved some readers some waste of time, anyway.”

And a second is Uzbekistan. Chivers describes a recent visit to Tashkent by the apparently irrepressible Admiral William Fallon, commander of the U.S. Central Command. Fallon is seeking to help thaw currently frozen relations with Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov, who holds the distinction of being the former Soviet Union's most brutal dictator.

“I told them that we couldn’t do much about the past, but that we could look at the future,” Fallon said of his discussion with the Uzbeks.

With respect, that's incorrect, Admiral Fallon. There is no respectable future relationship with Karimov until, for starters, he proves that he has stopped torturing and killing his people.

Unlike some of the region's other leaders, Karimov took no road to post-Soviet ruthlessness. He began there. My own initial sign of that was back in January 1992, two weeks after the Soviet collapse, when I crossed the street from the Hotel Uzbekistan to talk to the Pulatov brothers at Birlik, the then-Tashkent-based opposition group whose office was across the street. At the bottom of the stairs was a pool of blood. Inside, I learned from the more active of the two Pulatovs -- Abdumanop -- that his brother Abdurahim had been knocked on the head with a pipe by an unknown assailant.

The situation has declined since. Karimov regards entreaties by westerners such as Fallon not as an opportunity to re-open a perhaps positive economic path for his people, but a display of weakness, evidence that he still calls the shots in the dance with the foreigners.

It will probably require Karimov going the way of Niyazov before normal relations with the West can resume.

Photo: saidanddone
Rights: Creative Commons

Turkmenistan Starts to De-Bizarre: Libraries Legalized

It's true that outsiders (including myself) have spent a good 15 years making Turkmenistan the butt of our Central Asian humor. But in our defense, everyone from ordinary Turkmen to Central Asia's presidential circles felt the same way. When you'd simply mention the name "Turkmenbashi," local people couldn't contain themselves.

That of course was what Saparmurat Niyazov insisted that people call him -- Turkmenbashi, or Father of all Turkmen.

Well, all good fun must come to an end. Niyazov died a year ago, and today his successor, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov (a dentist by profession who my friends at Registan.net insist on calling "Stomatalogbashi, or Father of all Dentists) began to discard some of the country's weirdest laws.

Berdymukhamedov announced in a nationally broadcast news conference that Turkmenistan needs a few libraries. Some working cinemas. An opera. A ballet. A circus.

What's next -- will he trash the Ruhnama, the delusional Niyazov tract that's required reading of all Turkmen?

I for one hope that Berdymukhamedov does not melt all the Niyazov statues for scrap. Humor, after all, is the root of sanity.

Photo: Jensimon7
Rights: Creative Commons

Presidential Humor From Central Asia

Thanks to David Hoffman for this entertaining link. For identification purposes: From left to right, Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov, Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev, Turkmenistan's Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and Tajikistan's Imamali Rakhmanov.

Photo: chrisdecurtis
Rights: Creative Commons