Groups paid by the US to promote democracy in Central Asia are under sustained assault, not only from those governments but also from Russia, which is locked in conflict with Washington for dominance in the region's former Soviet republics.
The US needs military bases and permission to use the airspace in the region to service its forces in Afghanistan, and it holds large oil and gas investments in some of the countries.
But the US also pays a handful of organizations to aggressively promote democracy in Central Asian nations, many of which are ruled by longtime presidents who do not allow competitive elections. Several also have close ties to Russia.
The nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) -- and US diplomats supporting them -- are under near-constant harassment from their host governments and from Russia.
Russia has always looked askance at democracy programs, but following popular uprisings that led to changes of government in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan over the last year, it began inveighing against them, saying the US was trying to create "franchised revolutions," as Tass, the Russian government news agency, put it recently.
The US spent US$75.6 million on programs promoting democracy in Central Asia in the most recent fiscal year for which figures are known. In Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine, US-financed groups gave training and assistance to opposition groups that ousted leaders.
In Moscow, the lower house of parliament gave preliminary approval late last month to a law that would, if put into effect, severely restrict, if not close down, many NGOs working in Russia, including the pro-democracy groups. US officials and other experts said Russia was pushing Central Asian states to enact similar laws.
As a result of these and other pressures from Russia, said Nelson Ledsky, a former US State Department official who now leads the Central Asia programs for the National Democratic Institute, "we have run into considerable difficulty in the last six to eight months, everywhere, because the Russians have mounted an organized campaign wrongly accusing" the US of working to foment revolution.
The institute is a government-financed agency established by Congress and often working under government mandates. In many foreign countries, it is regarded as a branch of the US government.
Russia places accusatory news articles and commentaries in Russian-language newspapers across the region, US officials and officers of the pro-democracy groups said. One in Kazakhstan asserted recently that Ledsky's organization, and others like it, "are like secretive, revolutionary spies."
Many of those working for the groups are under constant scrutiny of their host governments, which harass them to show their displeasure. In Kazakhstan, as an example cited by nongovernmental groups, tax authorities conduct surprise week-long audits that paralyze operations. Immigration officers sometimes seize workers' passports.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver