Transcript 0:00 [intro music] Hi, welcome to Trendlines, a podcast on global affairs brought to you by World Politics Review. I'm Judah Grunstein, WPR's editor-in-chief. 0:13 Until he died in early September, Islam Karimov had been Uzbekistan's only leader since it became an independent state in 1991 after the breakdown of the Soviet Union. 0:24 In addition to using a repressive surveillance and security apparatus to root out and eliminate all opposition, Karimov also managed to imprint his image on notions of Uzbek national identity and even morality. 0:37 Sarah Kendzior will join Peter Dury a little later to explain why that has major implications for Karimov's successor and regime stability in the aftermath of his rule. 0:47 But first, I'll be talking with WPR senior editor, Freddy Deknatel, about the stories we've covered this week. Hi, Freddy. How you doing? Good, Judah. How are you doing? I'm feeling great. 0:57 So what would you like to talk about this week? 0:59 Uh, well, the first piece that came across my desk that I thought was interesting to discuss, uh, was a briefing on the recent African exodus from the International Criminal Court. 1:10 Uh, recently, three countries, Burundi, South Africa, and then Gambia in quick succession, announced that they would leave the ICC, uh, mainly over feelings that the court unfairly, uh, focuses on African countries and ignores abuses and other crimes in other parts of the world. 1:29 Uh, and Julian Hattem, who is a journalist based in Kampala, Uganda, wrote a piece explaining why the ICC essentially sealed its own fate in the way that the court was structured and the way that African countries that were quick to sign on to the ICC sort of got what they wanted out of the court in the, in the early days, about 10 years ago when it was set up, and now, uh, they really sort of just see the court as a nuisance and as a threat to their own power, whether that's in Burundi or in South Africa or other countries. 2:02 This has been a theme over a number of years already, this building resentment in Africa over the ICC, in the sense that it's essentially become a court to prosecute African former leaders and even sitting heads of state, like Sudan's, uh, President Omar al-Bashir. 2:21 This recent series of announcements of actual intentions and even informing the court, uh, that, that countries would be leaving, uh, does come as something of a surprise, especially in the case of South Africa. 2:34 Uh, in other cases, uh, it's, it's somewhat cynical in the sense that it's, uh, it, it's in many ways, uh, an attempt to, to forestall investigations in the case of Burundi, for instance, and possible future investigations in the case of Gambia. 2:48 There's two interesting sides here. 2:49 On the one hand, the African story of, of countries that were quick to sign up to the ICC, um, and, and, and again, sort of the cynical point was that they, they bought into it because in 2002, when the court was finally established, uh, in, in, in many of these countries, in the case of Burundi, they were either just emerging from civil conflicts or civil wars, or they were winding down. 3:11 And so the court sort of, uh, international justice or prosecuting crimes in those countries helped leaders that were still trying to consolidate power or were dealing with insurgencies or separatist movements. 3:22 And now, s- 10 or 15 years later, uh, in South Africa, less so, but in the case of Burundi in particular, where you have a leader who's consolidated power, um, the court no longer is useful in a, in a sense because it's not helping them consolidate power. 3:40 It's actually threatening their hold on power. 3:42 And so that's sort of the under- underlying problem of, obviously, it's a court that's meant to go after international crimes and war crimes and possible genocide, um, but there's certainly this political game behind it that, that really questions what kind of justice is really on the table. 4:00 The, there, there's also a question of national pride and sovereignty, and, and I think that this, even if it's, uh, sometimes, again, cynically used, uh, I think it's under- underestimated, uh, especially in the West. 4:14 Uh, basically, for the ICC to, uh, pursue a case, a given country has to be either unable or unwilling to pursue the case in its domestic courts. 4:25 Uh, in a lot of cases, in post-conflict scenarios, the courts were unable to do that, um, and even if now they are more, it's more a case of them being unwilling than unable, turning a case over to the ICC really is this admission of, uh, of incompetence or a lack of sovereignty that especially given the history of Africa under colonialism and post-colonialism, uh, is something that, uh, that, that causes a lot of problems for domestic leaders. 4:56 Um, that, that same sense of, uh, historical resentment and, uh, a real sort of fierce pride in sovereignty is also on display in another story we covered this week, um, that I wanted to talk about, namely the, the sort of rhetoric, uh, that's coming out of the Philippines, uh, under the new president, Rodrigo Duterte, with regard especially to the Philippines' relationship to the United States. 5:21 We ran a briefing, uh, this week by Jonathan Berkshire Miller on one particular aspect of this, uh, of this dynamic. 5:29 Uh, last week, Duterte was in China, where he made very high-profile remarks about separating from the United States that were consistent with a, a string of, uh, of declarations he's made that has really called into question the relationship with the U.S. 5:47 And as Jonathan points out, immediately after that visit, uh, Duterte went to Tokyo, where he met with, uh, the Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe. 5:55 It really highlighted the challenge that Duterte represents is a significant one, but also how there are mitigating factors that will- Probably keep it manageable for the United States. 6:06 In this case, uh, Jonathan talks about, uh, the degree to which Japan can play the mediator in terms of US-Philippine ties. And I thought that it was a good corrective. 6:17 Uh, there's been a lot of alarm and, and a sort of narrative of the Duterte effect, how, uh, other Asian states might, uh, defect from, uh, the US, uh, the US coalition, uh, to, to sort of push back against China's more aggressive posture these days in the region. 6:35 There are a lot of structural barriers to that kind of widespread effect, and Jonathan, uh, illustrated one of them, which is these countries' ties within the region itself. 6:45 We've had other coverage in the past about the damage that Duterte has already done to US-Philippine ties. 6:51 But, uh, even if things continue to get worse in some areas, uh, there's, there's other zones of cooperation and other, other areas of ties, especially when it comes to trade, uh, and investment. 7:03 This highlights, uh, the, the security engagement that, uh, the US has made under the Obama d- administration's, uh, pivot or rebalance to Asia. 7:13 Uh, the Philippines under, uh, Duterte's predecessor was one of the more outspoken and willing, uh, partners of this US effort to create a coalition, especially over the South China Sea territorial disputes. 7:30 But it's only one aspect of that pivot, um, the other being, uh, economic aspect, the economic aspect represented by the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. 7:41 And that aspect of the pivot, uh, will be a, a major element in President Barack Obama's, uh, legacy when he leaves office. 7:54 That really now depends on who succeeds, uh, Obama in the presidency, which brings us to the US presidential election, uh, which we also covered this week, uh, in, in, in a column that I actually wrote about, uh, the ways in which there are these major issues at play in terms of the US global role, where the US should be committing resources and not, uh, in terms of alliance structures, uh, the, the need to address the major issues that, uh, that global trade have created in terms of disruptions. 8:30 And that unfortunately, because of the nature of the, the two candidates in this year's election, uh, a lot of that kind of debate has, uh, has been overshadowed or nonexistent. 8:41 Uh, I'm talking very particularly about the fact that, uh, Hillary Clinton, uh, for whatever her flaws, is a very qualified candidate with very serious policy positions, whereas Donald Trump, having raised legitimate questions, uh, is such a, a, a clearly unqualified candidate, uh, that it undermines the importance of those, of those questions that he's raised, uh, especially with regard to US alliances, trade, and just in general, uh, US engagement with the world. 9:11 Uh, so I, I felt like that was something that d- that is unfortunate because the next president is really going to have to address some of these things to respond to the kind of populist revolt that we're seeing now in the US and that we've seen in other parts of the world. 9:26 Yeah. 9:27 We're just, you know, facing down the final, thankfully the final days of this election here in the US and, you know, given what's been happening in the news just in the, in the last few days, let alone the last week or month, wondering what will happen between now and Tuesday. 9:42 But, you know, for all of the sort of circus-like atmosphere of this long election, there is this, you know, smart point that you brought up in your column that 9:52 Trump's carny-like candidacy has overshadowed a few legitimate criticisms that he's offered about America's role in the world, about the relationship between the US and its allies. 10:04 Obviously, coming from anybody else, some of the points he's raised about how much military spending US allies contribute to NATO, for example, those are on, just on, on, on the f- you know, merits alone, those are, those are worthy issues to discuss, and the issues around them about the state of the global order, the US's place in it, are legitimate points also. 10:26 Um, but like you said, they've been overshadowed because they're coming from Trump, who has been... I mean, you c- to say he's unserious is, you know, super understatement. 10:35 Um, he's just been this, um, you know, version of a huckster, which you, uh, as you put it in an, in an earlier column. 10:42 And, and that's really overshadowed not only those issues that I mentioned, but also the deeper challenge of this populist backlash in the US that if Trump loses next week, uh, we can be pretty sure it's not going to be going away. 10:56 Uh, whether that's because of the underlying economic, um, situation of people who've been left behind by globalization and free trade, which is something we've covered on the site recently, or because of just the backlash against political elites, which is, again, not a exclusively American story given the Brexit vote in Britain and other populist movements in, in, in, in Europe. 11:21 Exactly. So this is definitely going to be an ongoing challenge, uh, that the next president will have to address. 11:28 Uh, and unfortunately, they'll be doing that without the benefit of a really broad, uh, national discussion, uh, to get a sense of, uh, how the American people wanna set the, uh, the f- the terms of the debate. 11:41 All right. I think with that, we can, uh, kick it over to Peter for the report. Sounds good. Good to chat, Judah. Likewise. 11:47 [upbeat music] [gunshots] This is the sound of the Andijan massacre captured by the BBC in 2005 when they recorded a conversation with a source in the Uzbek town. 12:10 No one knows how many people died that day, but estimates range into the hundreds, including the BBC's source. 12:19 Responsible for these deaths were the troops of President Islam Karimov, who died in September of 2016 after ruling Uzbekistan since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. 12:35 For this week's report, I'm joined by Sarah Kendzior, a freelance journalist and researcher who focuses on Central Asia, to talk about Karimov's legacy, which is more complicated than the sheer brutality of his regime might indicate, as well as the challenges facing his successor. 12:53 Islam Karimov was the first, and until recently, the only president of Uzbekistan, which is a former, um, Soviet republic that became independent in 1991. 13:03 Before he was the president, uh, Karimov was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. 13:11 When Uzbekistan became an independent state, uh, in 1991, he took power and then began a progressively, uh, repressive rule that lasted until this year, until, you know, either late August or early September when he died. 13:26 I'm not specifying [chuckles] the exact date because there's a discrepancy between the official date of death, uh, which is September 2nd, 2016, and when he probably died of a massive stroke around August 27th. 13:47 The secrecy surrounding Karimov's death, says Sarah, are representative of his style of government. Karimov led a paranoid and brutal regime that put his hold on power well above considerations for human rights. 14:02 The Andijan massacre is a testament to that. But the displays of mourning upon Karimov's death were nonetheless real. 14:12 Large parts of the population see him as a father figure who skillfully shaped himself into a personification of Uzbekistan's morality after independence. 14:29 There have always been a very insular and, and secretive state. 14:33 It's a holdover in some ways from the Soviet era when the KGB and the Communist Party engaged in the same sort of practices, and Karimov and his administration carried those practices into Uzbekistan being an independent state, even though on paper, technically, it was a, a democracy and it, um- You know, another example of this is the Andijan massacre in, in May 2005 when there was a mass protest in the eastern city of Andijan about the imprisonment of some businessmen, uh, who were both devout Muslims and popular businessmen in the region. 15:04 They had been arrested. People came out to protest. The protest grew into, you know, tens of thousands of people. 15:10 And as a result of that, the Uzbek government dispatched military forces into the region who just shot indiscriminately into the crowd and killed 700 people. 15:19 If you lived in Uzbekistan and you were not in Andijan, you would not necessarily be aware that this massacre even took place. 15:26 Like, I had friends who lived in the capital city of Tashkent, you know, which is a, a good distance away, who heard about it through me in America, and I was reading about it through outlets like BBC Uzbek, and, you know, and even in The New York Times and, and English language outlets that were covering this massacre, which is still the biggest massacre in the former Soviet Central Asia to this day. 15:47 Um, you know, it's a, a pivotal event in Uzbekistan's history, but people didn't know about it. And so they've always tried to cover up what was going on. Um, since Andijan in particular, they've become very paranoid. 15:58 Um, when he died, many Uzbeks were posting, you know, that this is not just the death of the president, this is the death of the father of Uzbekistan. 16:06 For the younger generation of Uzbeks, which we should note comprise the bulk of the population, most Uzbeks are under 25, they were saying he was the grand- their grandfather or the grandfather of the nation. 16:16 And so he really had this mythical role as a figurehead because he was the only person ever able to rule the country. 16:23 You know, he, despite constitutional limits, he extended them so that he was in power for 25 years as an independent state and 27 years total. 16:31 In terms of how he shaped the country, he carried on these traditions from the Soviet era of having a massive police state, of having a surveillance apparatus, of using force and threats and torture and jailing and all sorts of ways to control his opponents. 16:45 But as he was doing that, he was actually putting forward a very positive, uh, and patriotic vision of Uzbekistan, of Uzbekistan as an independent country that has a particular kind of moral strength, as a country that's immune from foreign influences, and as a country that is finally independent as the result of a long struggle against foreign oppressors and, you know, internal traitors who have tried to basically beat down the spirit of the Uzbek people, but Karimov and his state were able to rescue it and bring it to fruition and glory. 17:19 Like, that's the kind of image of Uzbekistan that was always presented in his speeches and in popular culture. He did this not by fabricating an idea of what Uzbek culture is. This is not sort of a top-down operation. 17:33 What he did was draw into things that were already popular. 17:37 Um, in part, he did this by tapping into the nationalist tropes and values and rhetoric of the anti-Soviet Uzbek opposition who had become prominent in the late 1980s. 17:48 Uzbekistan didn't have the kind of opposition that you saw in the Eastern Bloc countries like the, you know, the Baltics or Ukraine. 17:55 They didn't have that kind of mass frustration and uprising, but they did have a significant group Of people, mostly journalists and poets, who were trying to bring back Uzbek language and culture instead of Russian, allow Muslims to be able to practice their religion, allow the reopenings of mosques, allow holidays that had been banned like Ramadan and Navruz to return, to allow poets and banned Uzbek literary figures to be rehabilitated in terms of the ones who had died long ago and in terms of, you know, present poets and journalists whose works were banned. 18:26 They wanted to bring all this back and basically promote Uzbek culture as something very important, as something that's separate than Soviet culture, as part of a long tradition that needs to be honored. 18:36 And so when Karimov was tasked as the president filling the void of what the Soviets had left behind and establishing a new kind of Uzbek national identity, he stole the opposition's platform, at times working directly with the opposition. 18:51 You know, there are members of this opposition, which I should note was internally fractured. There are members of them in the parliament helping craft documents like the constitution. 18:59 There were national poets who were banned anti-Soviet activists during the Soviet period who were then promoted into prominence, you know, as exemplars of the new nation. He was very savvy. 19:11 You know, he stole this stuff because people really did believe in it. And then he presented himself as the sole and best arbiter of these kinds of values. 19:20 After he did that, he went and purged the opposition from Uzbekistan. 19:34 Karimov has been succeeded by Uzbekistan's Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev as the interim president, who most observers expect to run and win the elections held in December. 19:46 Mirziyoyev is a regime insider who is unlikely to substantially change the nature of the Uzbek state. But he will also face challenges that Karimov deftly avoided by casting himself as Uzbekistan's sole moral authority. 20:02 What benefited Karimov could prove to be a burden on Mirziyoyev. 20:13 According to the Constitution, the head of the Senate was supposed to be the person who inherited the presidential role until an official election was held. That lasted for about six days, I think. 20:25 And then on September 8th, Mirziyoyev was installed as the president of Uzbekistan. An election is scheduled. It's pretty clear that he's going to win, quote unquote, this election. 20:36 Elections in Uzbekistan have never been judged fair or free by any international observers. They're just sort of formalities. And this looks like it's going to be another one. 20:46 In terms of his own background, you know, the difference between Mirziyoyev and Karimov, aside from the obvious Karimov was the sole president of the nation and had this particular kind of appeal. 20:56 Mirziyoyev was a much more on the ground kind of person. You know, he worked as a provincial governor before being the prime minister. 21:03 When he was prime minister, he was involved in activities like monitoring the cotton industry, which is a form of forced labor that's been practiced in Uzbekistan for a very long time. 21:13 It used to include mass forced labor of children who were forced to pick cotton. Children sometimes still are. 21:19 But nowadays, as a result, actually, of international pressure and one of the few times that that worked, it's mostly adults. 21:25 These adults include teachers and doctors, which means that schools and hospitals are not staffed. So Mirziyoyev was a very active figure in that. He's known as being very brutal. 21:35 He's known as being less intellectual than Karimov. One example of his brutality is last year when he was sent to go monitor the cotton harvest. 21:44 People in one village were so terrified of him that after they had picked the cotton, they glued it back onto the plants because they wanted to show how bountiful the harvest was because they were afraid that he wouldn't believe them and that they hadn't done enough. 21:57 And so that's an example of the way a lot of people are living in Uzbekistan, like in real fear of their government, fear of repercussions if they don't properly please their leaders. 22:07 And that's the kind of reputation that Mirziyoyev has. Mirziyoyev is becoming president during a very difficult time for Uzbekistan. 22:16 If this were 10 or 15 years ago, I would assume that the power transition would go fairly well. But that was a different era. Uzbekistan's economy has taken a real hit, especially in the last five years. 22:30 Migrant labor is a serious form of Uzbeks to survive economically. Remittances make up a big chunk of the Uzbek economy. As a result of the ruble crisis in Russia, people are not bringing back as much money. 22:43 Unemployment among young men is very high. People are struggling to get basic resources like food and electricity and gas in the winter. They're becoming very frustrated. 22:54 Of course, a key way of managing this frustration has been the elaborate security services that Mirziyoyev will inherit from Karimov and that he's still employing now. 23:04 People in Uzbekistan, especially since Andijan, are afraid to rise up and protest their political leaders, either on a local or a national level. 23:14 But one thing that I think is a little interesting about what's happening now and that inaugurates something new is that another reason people were afraid to protest is because Karimov was linked so deeply with what it meant to be a good and patriotic Uzbek. 23:30 And if you read Uzbekistan's opposition literature, even those who really bitterly oppose Karimov are extremely proud to be Uzbek. They love their country. They want their country to be better. 23:43 There's no sort of opposition in that sense. They just basically want the things that are written out on paper to be actually practiced. 23:51 And because Karimov had linked himself so deeply with these national traditions, people didn't want to be seen as opposing the concept of a free and independent Uzbekistan themselves. 24:01 I think with Mirziyoyev in charge, because he lacks this personality cult, some of the frustrations that Uzbeks have been feeling for a very long time, especially economically over the past five to 10 years, may finally be expressed because there's not exactly the same stigma of opposing Mirziyoyev as there was with Karimov. 24:22 It's still an incredibly risky move. You can easily be persecuted. Your family could be persecuted. You could be jailed. There's, you know, it's illegal to organize a mass protest in Uzbekistan. 24:32 There's all sorts of obstacles. 24:33 But I think we might be at the point where economic conditions in Uzbekistan and day-to-day life, especially in rural areas, is so dire that people may feel that they just don't have as much to lose and that this may be the time, you know, to rise up and to, you know, try to take some power in their back ha- in, in their own hands and to, uh, initiate some reforms. 24:55 How long that will take to happen, I... If it happens, I don't know. I, I definitely don't see this as something that's going to happen quickly. I, you know, I think 25:04 it, it's something that may occur maybe after he's officially elected in December and, and people, um, are contending with that as their new reality. 25:12 [Instrumental music playing] Many thanks to Sarah Kendzior for joining us this week. If you'd like to read more about Uzbekistan in the post-Karimov era, you can find her in-depth article on worldpoliticsreview.com. 25:27 If you like what you hear on Trendlines, go ahead and subscribe to it in the podcast app of your choice. 25:32 That way new episodes will be downloaded automatically to your smartphone or computer as they are published, saving you the trouble of hunting them down. Just search for Trendlines in the podcast app you use. 25:43 Trendlines is produced by Peter Dury, who also conducts the report interviews. 25:47 You can follow him and World Politics Review on Twitter, and you can find links to pieces covering the issues we talked about in the show notes on worldpoliticsreview.com. 25:57 Have a great weekend and see you next week for a new episode of Trendlines. [Instrumental music playing]
