Translation of sabinareingold’s post (RUS)

It’s no secret that I travel fairly frequently to neighboring Kazakhstan, specifically to Almaty, of which I am a longtime admirer. I know the city well, but that will not be the subject of this post (perhaps, someday I will write about what it’s like through a Kyrgyz woman’s eyes). My concern is currently elsewhere.

So, you’ve decided to travel to Kazakhstan. Brace yourself: you have a thrilling encounter with the border guards coming up.

During my travels, I have had the pleasure of many meetings with these fine individuals; it even occurred to me that I should write a portrait of a typical officer on the Kazakh-Kyrgyz border, but for now, I will limit myself to the distinguishing features of this species, whose members inhabit both sides of the checkpoint.

1. Rudeness – this is the principal quality required for the job. Curse words are not uncommon. Border guards say whatever they like because they know that it’s up to them whether to let you pass. And don’t you dare talk back to them – it is impossible to prove afterwards that yours was a response to theirs.

2. Flirting – if you are of the female sex, you are in even more in luck, because then you will never be starved for attention. This includes winking, sleazy phrases like “You’re not married, are you?”, requests for your phone number, etc. On my last trip, when I was going through passport control, an officer stood by the entrance handing out immigration forms. He tried to play cat-and-mouse with me: first, he made it look like he was handing me one, then he pulled it back, and again, smiling a greasy smile all along. One of my friends was held up at the passport control kiosk because she wouldn’t smile for the camera eagerly enough: “A smile! Why aren’t we smiling? Let’s try again!”

3. Excessive curiosity – Bektur Iskender described how he got interrogated about everything down to his hairdo. On my last trip, I went with three other girls. The border guard who was checking our documents before the passport control took an active interest in where we were going, with what purpose, for how long, when we would be back and didn’t forget to ask “Will you leave me your phone number?” The same questionnaire followed during the official document check. I’m sorry, but everything is already in the immigration form!

4. Eager for bribes – I have the impression that laws exist only so that these people could take bribes. There is always something to complain about. For example, minors are not allowed to leave the country without a notarized document proving that the parents entrust their offspring to the chaperon. But you can skip this formality by giving a bribe. I have done so many times while my mother was out of the country and unable to get me the necessary papers. Each time it cost me 1000 tenge, and each time the border guards smiled nicely and asked:

“So, what are we going to do?”
“How much?”
“Well… why don’t you suggest a price…”

The conversation about bribes usually begins with insinuation. This is given the huge number of people crossing the border. Shameless. It is illegal to let people under 18 through, but the law is ignored in the majority of cases.

5. Familiarity – on the return journey from Kazakhstan (again, during my last visit), the border guard barely bothered to look at my immigration card and said:

“My dear, you have overstayed your visa.” (using the informal “you”)
“Look more carefully, there is an attachment.”
“Oops, sorry, I didn’t notice.”

He casually tossed my passport back and let me go.

First of all, when addressing people one doesn’t know, it is proper to use the formal “you.” Second of all, what’s with the “my dear,” which he said with such condescension? Who is he to speak like this to people crossing the border? His job is to check documents and allow people through. Such behavior is unacceptable in the workplace!

The lack of professionalism is evident everywhere. In my opinion, they should at least try to give manners a chance. Then again, what’s the use, right? :)

Translation of Askhat’s post (RUS)

Information about fasting during Ramadan is published at oraza.info, a website that also allows users to leave comments and ask questions. It’s amusing to read comments written by people who are observing the fast for the first time, because despite the occasional silliness you know they have the best intentions.

I’m referring to frequently asked questions like “Am I allowed to kiss my boyfriend?” “Am I allowed to color my hair?” “Am I allowed to swallow my own saliva?”

Looking at these posts, we can conclude that the number of faithful in our country is growing, but I should also point out that the problem of religious illiteracy persists. One aspect of it is that people looking for information about the faith are not interested in understanding, but rather in knowing stuff “just in case.”

When you discuss New Media with experts, you get the impression that, with time, people’s priorities shift from learning and discovery to knowing and staying up-to-date. The same applies to the religious sphere. It’s not bad, and I’m not trying to judge anyone; however, the nature of our information flow is such that people spend their time catching up instead of reflecting on gained knowledge – and in matters of religion, if a person takes some kind of advice, he should fully understand its meaning.

For example, let’s go back to the question about swallowing saliva. During the fast, one may swallow one’s spit, because it is constantly secreted by our salivary glands, which we have since birth, but it is forbidden to collect spit for drinking. In other words, it is a controllable behavior. The same logic applies to feelings of indignation or love.

The topic of fasting is currently very popular in internet forums. Those who are keeping the fast share their experience with others, complaining about difficulties waking up early, discussing what they eat for breakfast, etc. This is all very laudable, but I should note that many people are under the impression that fasting is simply the refusal of food. Little is said of the “visual” and “auditory” fast, but what can one do?

Of course, it is difficult to become a true Muslim in the course of a month, but Islam teaches one never to stop seeking knowledge, and if one does it properly, then he is fulfilling his religious obligations and can feel the wonder of the faith.

Now, how is your fast going?

Photograph by Flickr user Caio Basilio (CC-Usage)

The writing phase of the CyberChaikhana project is finally coming to a close. Over the summer I penned the last chapters. A that remains to do now is to finish the chapter on gender, and then to do a final review and harmonization of the total manuscript.

Throughout this week, I will be releasing the rough drafts of the remainig chapters. Today I begin with the history, current status, and meaning of religion in the region. This is perhaps my favorite topic, and the chapter as it currently stands is definitely the most academic of the entire book. Good luck! ;-)

The Conversation of the Gods

Central Asia has always been a battleground, and not just between empires.  Ideas, especially in the form of religions, have also sought to conquer the region toward their own ends. Yet, according to neweurasia’s Paksoy, unknown to these forces, a far older belief system has persisted right through to today.

In the beginning was Tengri—Over the past quarter of a century, fragmentary literary and oral evidence indicating a distinct monotheistic belief system centered around an ancient Central Asian deity has emerged: before Christ, Allah, and Buddha, there was Tengri.

Tengri was a deity of the sky and water.  Hence, the belief system built around it, a.k.a., “Tengriism”, was ecologically sensitive from the very start, linking morality, nature, and society.  Shamanistic vision questing was also an essential feature.  So, how does one measure the influence of a belief system on the world?  By the wars waged in its name?  The number of adherents?  The other belief systems it subsumes?  Or, the way it regulates societies?  By all of these measures, Tengriism constitutes not only the earliest historical belief system, but also the archetypal value system of humanity.

Tengriism survived the frequent conflict waged on Central Asian territory by the later arrivals Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Marxism.  However, no wars were waged in Tengri’s name, nor did the deity seek converts.  Tengriists did not even create a centralized clerical structure, or, indeed, a clerical class.  But when gods speak, the earth trembles.  It is thus little wonder that their conversation has taken the form of titanic dramas between religions.  Such wars always get a lot of attention, but the way in which they cross-pollinate and create new traditions has not be adequately examined.  When new belief systems arrived, Tengriism did not fight them, for it already had deep roots. Whichever belief system was layered upon it, spiritual or political, Tengriist beliefs and practices continued unabated as the hidden bedrock.

Such was the reality throughout the many rather repressive regimes that ruled Central Asia over the centuries.  For example, some Soviet era dissidents identified themselves with Tengri: “Tengriist, Communist, Atheist” was the self-description of one prominent spokesperson of a movement in the 1970s and 1980s.  Earlier, when Islam arrived on the back of invading armies, the ensuing fight was not about the belief system but about the distribution of wealth. Tengriism not only stood its ground, but also began transforming, indeed, Tengrifying clerical Islam. As a result, Tengriism eventually gave birth to a series of new Islamic polities that were more Tengri than Abraham or Muhammad in essential character.  Of course, the political tug of war surrounding these communities prevented the open articulation of the name Tengri.  Instead, Tengriism persisted in the form of local court registers, permitted under the designation of “local custom”.

The Tengriist legal tradition, now in Islamic trappings, was a living, breathing form of the old shamanism, and to the credit of the judicial systems of the time, courts allowed these beliefs to be the ultimate arbiter of proper behavior, hence underpinning justice.  Later, when Islamized groups began moving West into Europe, the Islam they brought with them was this Tengrified version, still exerting influence through oral tradition, literature, and law—perhaps even the European Union is, in its secret heart, Tengriist.

—Paksoy

Other bloggers have noted the deep currents of ancient faith that course through the region.  Kyrgyzstan in particular has captured the imagination of the following two bloggers, a tourist and an anthropologist who visited the Talas area:

1000 years of Manas—Before leaving Talas, I managed to see Manas-Ordo, a complex that is such a part of the local character that people here say you haven’t really been to Talas if you haven’t been there.

Manas is a legendary Kyrgyz hero who searches for a home for his people. Together with his advisors and knights, he battles larger foes, until winning a battle at which he is killed.  Probably based on the experiences of a range of military leaders, their achievements are ascribed to this single character.  While books of the legend are available, even in English, Manas’ exploits are traditionally passed down orally by storytellers called manaschi.

The Manas-Ordo complex includes a horse track, a museum, a rose garden surrounded by 40 statues of Manas’ soldiers, a sheep-slaughtering site, and a yurt where fortunes can be told.  It was all built in 1995, during the “1000 Years of Manas” celebration. He’s portrayed here as a real character: he’s said to have weighed ten kilos at birth, was two and half meters tall in adulthood, and was born and raised in Talas.  They found the grave of a man who matched the physical dimensions; today, a large rock stands beside it that’s said to have been lifted by Manas before each battle as a sign of luck.  If he could lift it, everything would be ok; if he couldn’t, he wouldn’t go fight.

Besides Manas, what distinguishes Talas is that it was the site of a decisive battle between Muslim (Turks, Arabs and Tibetans) and Chinese forces in 751 CE.  The Muslims’ success in driving out the Tang Chinese army brought Islam into the region and changed the course of Central Asian history.

—jj

Keeping the sacred secret—Worshipping at sacred sites is an ancient cultural practice in Kyrgyzstan.  Although much of the vocabulary of worship in the Kyrgyz language is Islamic in origin, the meanings have been adapted and expanded over time:

Sacred sites are called “mazars”, originally Arabic for “a place which is visited”, i.e., a place of pilgrimage like a Muslim saint, but now designating any sacred spot, even pre-Islamic ones.

The caretakers of mazars are called “shaykhs”, again originally Arabic for “elder” and now more generally a guardian of holy places.  The word also appears in “mashaykhs”, meaning “saints” and “monks”, “kojoshaykhs”, actually from the Persian “kojo” for “master”, now a wish-granter.

And the pilgrims whom the shaykhs oversee and whom the mashaykhs and kojoshaykhs receive are called “zyiaratchys”, also originally Arabic, from “zyiarat” for “pilgrim”, now meaning anyone who sojourns to sacred mountains and hermitages.

I went to the holy site of Nyldy ata in the northern village of Özgörüsh.  I met two zyiaratchys who were staying there for the night.  When I asked them why they had come, one of them replied that he wanted “to find the truth of this life” and had been recommended to this site by a shaykh.

But overall the two zyiaratchys were reticent about their reasons.  They mentioned that they were receiving “dem saluu” from a Nyldy ata shaykh.  This is a curative treatment to rejuvenate a person physically and spiritually.  It requires perfect mental and ritual purity; they had come to this mazar in the belief that it would accomplish this for them.

While in Nyldy ata, I also heard the word “bata” many times.  This means “blessing”, and it was sought from spirits, Allah, and even the owner of the mazar.  There is also a lot of education in lore and traditional morality.

The strong belief of the Kyrgyz in the power of mazars, as well as in their ancestors’ spirits and the phenomena of worshipping at sacred sites in general, is actually conducive to both the local culture and ecology.  These rituals also help them define their place in society and help them to feel part of something larger than themselves.

—Zemfira

However, we must also be very careful of the observer problem: bloggers bring their own biases into every analysis, and so there is a veil of perception between themselves and their subjects.  As the next two bloggers point out, such epistemological issues are not merely academic.

They might be Muslims! Students or survivors of the Pax Sovetica know all too well the kind of madness for dialectical logic that was built into the Marxist-Leninist guiding principles of everything Soviet, dominating academic as much as political discourse. Less commonly recognized, though, is the healthy survival of this legacy in contemporary scholarly literature and journalistic “pop-lit” on Central Asian Islam. Authors from a variety of Central Asian, Russian, and American/European perspectives have tended to produce an almost infinite variety of assessments of the Islamic religious life and traditions of the peoples of Central Asia that insist on placing it at one extreme or another of a dialectical spectrum. At one end is “real Islam,” which means a wide variety of things (though most often something dangerous and foreboding). At the other end is a special “Central Asian” Islam, which in various contexts serves as a sort of euphemism for shamanism dressed up as Islam, institutionalized folklore, secular religion, or a collection of national cultural practices that have some vague historical relation to a religion brought to the region by Arab conquerors and Sufi missionaries centuries ago.

As Devin Deweese reminds us in his book, “Islamization and native religion in the Golden Horde”, the idea that somehow Central Asian Islam is not “real” remains one of the common stereotypes that characterizes the literature on Central Asia. Academics and social commentators advance this conclusion to different ends. Many Central Asian scholars themselves follow in the footsteps of the Russified Kazakh academic Valikhanov even after the end of Russian or Soviet rule and defend their modernity and progressive development in Sovietesque high-modernist terms. They submit to the old assumption that religion is a disease that afflicts backwards societies and seek to distance themselves from it, asserting that they were either “never really Muslims in the first place” or that Communism or modernity itself had severed them once and for all from that part of their history. In an influential outsider version of this argument, we find American scholars who claim that the Soviet experience of anti-religious fervor and persecution combined with rapid modernization in forced isolation from the rest of the ummah permanently altered the character of Islam in the region, subsuming religious practice into national and local identities.

On the other end are those commentators, scholars, and members of Central Asia’s own Muslim community who argue that Islam in Central Asia was and ought to be “real” and “normative” and that therefore Central Asians are subject to all of the generalizations that accompany these categories for the commentator who applies them. For those within Central Asia, particularly in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, this can translate into a demand that Islamic interests be represented in national government, as in the case of the Islamic Renaissance Party in Tajikistan. Or, alternatively, it often serves as the backbone for the argument that syncretic, autochthonous, or generally extra-textual practices like mazar visits, the veneration of saints, or what Deniz Kandiyoti and Nadira Azimova call “propitiatory” rituals ought to be purged from institutionally and communally accepted religious praxis.

This polar paradigm for evaluating the quality and nature of religion in Central Asia has enjoyed a great deal of unfortunate use, no matter how clearly cumbersome it is to apply, and I should note that it existed already long before the end of the Soviet period, e.g., among the disciples of Alexandre Bennigsen.  It feeds into alarmist claims about “political Islam” that are especially harmful to the people of Central Asia themselves because they tend to consistently drum up support for repressive authoritarian (but safely secular) regimes and serve to legitimize further curtailment of already painfully limited civil and human rights in countries like Uzbekistan. Tellingly, rebuttals aimed at this “alarmist” camp often do not question the basic premise of the logic being used, as if they are passively agreeing that if Central Asian Islam is real then it is inherently violent, dangerous, and categorically opposed to modern secular government.

Instead of posing a challenge to this basic premise, responses tend to fly to the opposite pole of the paradigm, defending Central Asians as safe and benign people who are, after all, “not really Muslims” or are actually Sufis (the good kind of Muslim), shamanists, or scientific atheists who merely enjoy their national traditions and folklore.  But is Sufism somehow un-Islamic?  Are the practitioners of prehistoric religions supposedly more amenable to modernism than Muslims?  Or are atheists supposedly more tolerant of social diversity? These bizarre arguments are no more explained by these assertions than why praying five times a day, going to Mosque on Fridays, fasting during Ramadan, or circumcising boys is apparently a sign of a passionate secret desire to overthrow secular government, kill Christians and Jews, and stone women to death for showing their faces to strangers.

—Noah

Nothing but a bogey man—I think “radical Islam”, “ethnic and other conflicts”, “terrorism” and many other very scary and abstract terms make up a huge myth. Of course there is some threat to security, but it is far more exaggerated than it is in reality. I come from Central Asia, I lived there for more than twenty years. I have never experienced radical Islam. I have been to the Ferghana valley, which is supposedly the most radical spot in Central Asia. But I am sorry to disappoint many Westerners who want to hear terrible stories about crazy radicals, because I have experienced nothing of the sort. Yes, I have witnessed and experienced violence and discrimination on the basis of gender and age, which somehow could have alleged ties to Islam. And yes, I have also met several Central Asians who became somewhat more religious after having lived abroad. But for me, radical Islam or fundamentalism is as exotic, abstract, and terrible as it is for many Europeans.

More importantly, the discourse of fear seems to be instrumentalized by the ruling elites here to legitimize their regimes. By making people believe that the authorities are responsible for maintaining peace, the rulers are able to maintain their power.  In the case of Uzbekistan, this means expanding the military’s control over the nation.  Many there complain about economic, political, and other problems, but then when they release their frustrations they always add: “… but thank God we don’t have war. Look at Tajikistan, Afghanistan, what they had to go through, there are so many wars everywhere, and there is nothing worse than war. And no matter how bad our president is he provides us with peace.  There is no one else who could hold this country together.”

—Nafisa

During the Twentieth Century, the rich religious tapestry of Central Asia with its primarily Islamic form went up against the atheist scissors of the Soviet Union.  Ironically, however, perhaps the differences between an avowed religion like Islam and an ideology like Marxism are not like night and day, as the next post proposes.

Divine communism—When trying to discuss the status of religion in a Stalinist country like Turkmenistan, I think observer are missing a key point.  They seem to be under the assumption that in Stalinism, ideology is against religion.  However, I think the opposite is the case: they are actually, but secretly, one and the same.  You’ve got to get down, dirty, and metaphysical in order to really see what I mean.  Here are my two reasons why, based upon Turkmenistan’s Marxist heritage.

First, the grandfather of Marxism, Hegel, believed that God was really Freedom, and that Freedom was moving history along to an end point, and at that end point was a utopian government.  So, the Marxists pretty much just followed his line of reasoning and deified the government.  The Party became the community of believers, the technocrats its priesthood, the factory the church, the body of legislation the shariah, the Worker’s Republic the afterlife or resurrection, and the Chairman, well, at least was a vicar, if not God Himself, the great planner and final arbiter of judgment.  This wasn’t just some state ideology with a cult of personality; it was a religion.

Second, were all this not enough, Marxism had a full-blown mystical side, too.  Of course, this depends on what I mean by “mysticism”.  For me, it’s essentially the striving for a deep-seated change in the very character of a person or society that results from or causes ascension to new states of being.  This kind of alchemical viewpoint was very much at work among the Marxists’ biggest theorists:

“The human species, the coagulated Homo sapiens, will once more enter into a state of radical transformation, and, in his own hands, will become an object of the most complicated methods of artificial selection and psycho-physical training” (Leon Trotsky).

“Will the new socio-economic system reproduce itself in the structure of the people’s character? If so, how?  Will his traits be inherited by his children? Will he be a free, self-regulating personality? Will the elements of freedom incorporated into the structure of the personality make any authoritarian forms of government unnecessary.” (Wilhem Reich)

You can call it hubris or foolhardy nobility; either way, it’s downright mystical.  So, if even as staunchly an atheistic system as Marxism can end up being so spiritual, then what exactly is the difference between ideology and religion?

—Averroes

With this in mind, perhaps it is possible to better understand a nation like Turkmenistan, where a nativized form of Stalinism seeks to regulate and even replace traditional forms of spirituality.

This is for God and this is for our idols… “Almost nothing.”  This is the answer of Felix Corley from Forum 18, the Oslo-based news service focused on religious freedom, to my question about whether there has been any positive change in Turkmenistan regarding the freedom of thought, conscience, and spirituality.

The country’s constitution guarantees religious freedom.  However, the government’s Council for Religious Affairs actively regulates all religious activity, executing what many observers interpret as a secret policy to discourage spirituality.  The primary targets are, of course, the Russian Orthodox and Muslims, who together comprise the majority of religious believers in Turkmenistan.

Minority religious communities, like Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholics, Hare Krishna devotees, and Baha’is, frequently find themselves the victims of police raids.  Those who change their religious affiliation, especially from the two major faiths, are treated as spies.  The 2009 International Religious Freedom Report, released by the United States Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, remarks, “Ethnic Turkmen who choose to convert to other religious groups, especially lesser-known Protestant groups, are viewed with suspicion and sometimes ostracized.”

Corley summarizes the situation thus: “The Islamic community is controlled from the inside, with the president or his officials naming the chief mufti and senior imams and restricting Islamic education to state-run facilities.  All other communities are controlled from outside, by restrictions, threats, raids, and in extreme situations more direct pressure such as sacking from work, detention, beatings, and public vilification.”

Much of what I said here probably comes as little surprise to you the reader.  “Yeah, it’s a totalitarian regime,” you’re probably saying, “They want to control people’s minds.”  But have you ever stopped to think of what that means?  Brainwashing can be literal, such as when the authorities use psychiatric torture to bend the wills of dissidents.  But the brainwashing is more profound than just neurochemical manipulation.

The situation for pacifists is especially telling.  That’s because more often than not pacifists are motivated by ideology, whether the tenets of a specific creed, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the values of a general humanism, as in the case of conscientious objectors.  They are arrested and convicted to prison terms because the constitution makes military service compulsory and describes it as a “sacred duty”.  That the state would choose these words isn’t ironic or a joke.  The reality is much more unsettling: the authorities have literally replaced God with themselves.

For example, the president is portrayed as a supernatural person with special powers on a mission to protect the country, and this becomes a free pass for the government to do whatever it wants.  Indeed, the authorities are even trying to replace the Qur’an itself with Niyazov’s “spiritual guide book”, the Ruhnama.  Reading lessons are compulsory throughout schools, including universities, and it has been placed on the same shelf as the Qur’an in mosques.  There is even a mosque engraved with inscriptions not of the Qur’an but of the Ruhnama!

But is a clash between two gods—Niyazov and Allah—quietly in the making?  Islam has deep roots in Turkmenistan, and as my neweurasia colleague Prof. Paksoy points out, it also taps into some very old pagan currents.  Whatever happens in the short-term, there is only so long that Islam as a force can tolerate the government’s oppression.  If Protestantism couldn’t be successfully co-opted in Nazi Germany, we shouldn’t be surprised if Islam, which is a far more systematic religion, rears its head eventually in Stalinist Turkmenistan.

In fact, it seems that interest in Islam is reawakening among the population right now.  Perhaps divine law, which has stronger philosophical and emotional grounds to claim objectivity (or at least authority), will be able to buck against the narcissism of the ruling regime.  I don’t know, but it’s written in the Qur’an, “They set aside for God a share of their produce and of their cattle, saying, ‘This is for God’—so they pretend—‘and this is for our idols’” (6:136).  Maybe it’s a question of faith that one day the idol of Niyazov will fall.

—Annasoltan

Thus, the deep continuities of Central Asian spirituality channel as much the spirit of Marx as that of Manas and Muhammad.  Yet, to conclude, at the conversation of the Gods, Allah is determined to win the debate, but it’s not always clear whether it is really Allah who is speaking…

The prayer carpets of Marx—In earlier eras, Central Asia was as often an exporter of religion as a recipient of it.  However, during the past two centuries, the balance tipped and Central Asia became a target of proselytization, including from the anti-god, Communism.  The sources of these efforts to variously Islamicize, Christianize, or atheistize Central Asians are diverse, and now continuing with renewed vigor.

As to “Islamism”, the use of Islam as a political movement, military power, and program to rejuvenate post-colonial Muslim societies, what is this thing exactly—is it veiled nationalism, or something darker?  Is it monolithic, or complex?  And what does it mean for the region’s spirituality?

We have to think in terms of the Cold War.  The real target of the competition between Communism and Capitalism was the Central Asian polity itself.  But then, after a while, Central Asians began assessing these alien thoughts, which appeared to be contrary to their own desires and expectations.  As a result, they decided to take action, in order to remove these outside obstacles to their own lifestyle.  This initially came with independence; for some, it now continues as an internal struggle within the Central Asian republics themselves.

Yet, we come to a new question: how well do these aspirant agents of change understand the basic precepts of their own belief system?  Or have they understood their belief system perfectly but are willing to deliberately distort its tenets for short-term interest?  This is the great unanswerable, for the answer is wrapped up in the particular weavings of the individual mind.

But I see within these “Islamists” something less individual and more ancient: the shamans of yesteryear, who resisted the incursions of Hellenism, of Buddhism, and then of Islam, each time taking on the trappings of the one conqueror to fight the next.  They now wear the guerrilla uniforms of Muslims, but they pray upon the prayer carpets of Marxism.

—Paksoy

Delayed reactions—You hear a lot these days about the “return of Islam” in Central Asia, as though the ghost of bin Laden is haunting the streets of Astana and Tashkent scaring children.  But “Islamic fundamentalism”, “Islamism”, “political Islam”, or whatever you want to call it, is a very multifaceted phenomenon.  In the global network of Islamic radicalism, al-Qaeda and its various offshoots are the oddballs, wannabe Marxist universalists among a huge crowd of parochial localists.  So, how can we understand the “return of Islam” as it’s really happening in Central Asia?

First, considering that these are Turkic and Farsic cultures deeply influenced by different religions, I think “fundamentalism” as normally thought of in the West won’t happen here beyond a few ultra-extremists.  Second, Central Asian “fundamentalism”, such as it may exist, is emerging from a confluence of disgruntled agrarian and ex-proletariat elements, opportunists seeking to exploit traditional beliefs for personal gain, and interest groups from the outside who wish to exact leverage on the region for their own benefit (yep, I’m thinking of both Pakistan and the Taliban).  But there’s something deeper going on here, with roots further back in time.

I believe the “return of Islam” is ultimately the result of the abortion of the last century’s Jadidists.  This was a secular-nationalist movement whose aim was to establish a homegrown relationship between mosque and state, and which was eventually thwarted by the Soviets.  Under Communism, secularism, as commonly understood in an American or liberalist sense, was really a misnomer.  Instead, it was more extreme laïcité, with a profane ideology taking the place of religion, and the state, although officially atheist, nonetheless acting like a theocracy.  Islamic revival in Central Asia isn’t just because of the ideological vacuum left behind in Marxism’s fall; instead, it’s one of history’s greatest delayed reactions.

The real question is if it can be properly controlled and even channeled. So far, I’m not impressed by the policies of the various ‘Stans.  Kazakhstan seems to think it can just buy off Muslims with prosperity; Kyrgyzstan just seems to ignore the problem entirely; while Turkmenistan thinks it can fantasize it away and Uzbekistan thinks it can gun it down.  Only Tajikistan seems to have its head on straight: give the Muslims a voice in society in the form of political and social associations—and then politely steal their votes during elections. ;-)  But in all seriousness folks, the “return of Islam” doesn’t have to be a problem, and I mean it when I say that Tajikistan is sort of doing the right thing insofar as it allows Muslims some kind of voice in society.  Ironically, Rahmon et al may be presenting the best version of Jadidism’s dream today.

—Averroes

Call for Participants

“Painting a Fairer Picture: Improving the Coverage of Ethnic and other Minorities”

A distance learning journalism course for media professionals and bloggers from Central Asia

Transitions Online (TOL), a Prague-based international publishing and media development organization and partner site of neweurasia, is currently offering a distance course, focused on covering minority issues. The course was developed by TOL, specifically for the region of Central Asia.

Applications will be accepted from media professionals and citizen journalists from any of the countries of Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan). Citizens of those countries that are currently resident elsewhere are also invited to apply.

Participation is free of charge.

During the course participants will take 5 theoretical modules. Each module consists of a text on a specific subject, questions about the text, and a practical task (writing exercises). Throughout the course an experienced trainer will answer any questions from participants and provide detailed feedback on the written assignments. The working language is Russian.

The duration of the distance-learning course is 5 weeks.

Participants that successfully finish the course will be awarded TOL certificates and those that score the best will be eligible for fully funded places at TOL journalism training courses in Prague.. Also, successful participants will be offered an opportunity to become paid contributors on Central Asian issues to TOL’s award-winning Internet magazine (www.tol.org).

The National Endowment for Democracy – a private, nonprofit organization created in 1983 to strengthen democratic institutions around the world – funds this project.

To learn more and to register http://www.tol.org/client/training/course/21726-painting-a-fairer-picture-improving-the-coverage-of-ethnic-and-other-minorities.html

You can apply submitting your CV and cover letter to  <balanovskayal@tol.org>

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Applications are accepted until September 20th, 2010.

The Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan border near Osh. Photo by Panoramio user igor_allay.

“Exchange of fire”

“They have violated our borders! And they were drunk!” “They have violated our borders!”

While such an exchange of shots could seem to be childish games and amusing, “ordinary citizens are becoming nervous about this”, the RFE/RL’s Uzbek service reported commenting on the latest cases of detaining officers and citizens of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan by each side.

The detentions started with a group of Uzbek citizens stopped and detained on the Kyrgyz territory in mid-late August. The Kyrgyz side launched a criminal investigation into the “illegal crossing” of the state borders by four Uzbek servicemen. Uzbekistan was quick to respond naming the detention “illegal” and later responded in a similar manner, on Kyrgyzstan’s Independence Day on 31 August, with two cases of detaining Kyrgyz border guards who have reportedly also violated the border crossing regulations and were “armed, aggressive; and drunk”.

Effect on the population

Well, it is for the first time one hears Kyrgyz border guards detained any Uzbek official whether civil or military. Uzbekistan reacted harsher by detaining a Kyrgyz colonel, lieutenant-colonel, lieutenant and private “to match” the four detained Uzbek officers. In the light of the recent events in Osh and Jalalabad, the local population living in border zones is becoming very anxious as to the standoff’s end, local observers suggest.

“This can become very ugly, since both parties are military bodies hence they have firearms and other weaponry,” a local resident said.

The impact on the local population can be further aggravated by the fact that Kyrgyzstan, already suffering a major budget deficit due to the April and June turmoil, does not have funds to construct 60% of the Osh-Batkent-Isfana which was meant to bypass and detour two Uzbek and one Tajik enclave on the Kyrgyz territory.

Standoff

The standoff, meanwhile, was apparently provoked by the closure of a transit route in southern Kyrgyzstan due to “aggressive attitude of Uzbek border guards” as of 23 August, Kyrgyz authorities reported. Uzbekistan, on the other hand, explained its actions as means for safety before the Independence Day celebration on 1 September.

The area in question is a high-mountainous region with roads in already poor condition. Being forced to take a worse detour road had taken about 100 protestors to the street there on 1 September 2010.

Deliberately or not, but an Uzbek website is further worsening the situation by describing the already poor-image-bearing Kyrgyz servicemen as “drunk, aggressive, assaultive and harassers” which was painted for the Uzbek citizens after the bloodletting events in southern Kyrgyzstan.

Kyrgyz officials are too fuelling the tension by claiming one of the two top-rank detainees is wounded, referring to a certain piece of “own information”, and Uzbekistan not taking medical care of him.

“Hostage exchange”

The only way out of the situation, experts suggest, is exchanging “hostages”. Doing so would be an independence holiday gift for both neighbors! However, even that seems to be a vague option, since both parties officially detained the other country’s officers and launched criminal investigations into the border trespassing cases.

“I only hope this will not be the second episode of what we saw in June [presumably in Southern Kyrgyzstan; Sartpayev]; if so, it’s a regional war with one [presumably Uzbekistan; Sartpayev] side definitely taking over the other,” a local resident wishing to stay anonymous said.

Outside of some obvious moments, the signs of Orozo in Naryn are quieter, subtler, and half the time you either need to know exactly what’s going on, or bring things up directly to learn what’s going on.

Take the Jaramazan singers. In this tradition, boys walk door to door and sing a special song. In the lyrics, they talk about how they’ve ridden down from the far mountains on either a stallion or an ox, and come specially to the house they’re at to present the song. In theory, then, the people in the house are supposed to bestow on them some of their dinner, or maybe some loose change.

This year I’ve heard the kids off in the distance a few times, had two boys approach my cab as I was getting out, and once approach the outdoor seating area at a restaurant. It’s the kind of thing, however, that if you didn’t know what it was, you might very well not even notice.

Then there’s the fasting. Once again, you wouldn’t know anyone even knew about this custom if someone didn’t remind you. During Orozo this year, I’ve been to three different workshops, the largest one holding well over 50 participants. When we got started that day, our MC asked if anyone was fasting, so as to prepare for lunch. Only one person said they’d abstain. At the other, smaller workshops, the issue never even came up.

One might infer from all this, perhaps, that Islam has a pretty weak hold up here in the mountains. Direct questioning, however, leads to another opinion.

“Yes, of course I should be fasting,” said one thoughtful passenger in a taxi I was recently sharing. “Yes, it is very good to observe Orozo. However, my stomach has been ill for the past two years. If I were healthy, I’d fast. I used to.”

“I have a son, he’s your same age,” said one of the women at a recent workshop I hosted. She was from a little village. “He’s a very good boy,” she bragged, “he works hard, and never drinks.”

I like it when people tell me this. It usually translates to, “he’s not an alcoholic, but he’ll have a few shots at big parties.” Not this time, though.

“No, he really never drinks. Right now, he is observing Orozo. He studies the Koran. He is a very good boy.” Her pride for him filled our marshrutka, and the other women nodded and whinnied in agreement.

This seems to be the story of Orozo in Naryn, and of the Islam out here in general. “We Kyrgyz are Muslim,” they say in earnest, but they don’t put on airs. “We’re not devout Muslims, though.”

While every boy is circumcised, and at some point or another, every woman wears a scarf, when it comes to day to day behavior, if you weren’t looking for the Islam, you might not even know it was there.

Translation of megakhuimyak’s post (RUS) and a foll0w-up to his last post (RUS) on this topic.

News from Kazakhstan’s “currency market”:

“Snow Leopard” gold coin. Made of 24-carat gold. Mass: 31.1 grams, diameter: 32 mm. Edition size: 1500 (1000 for the domestic market).

“Moonwalker” coin from the “Outer Space” series. Mass: 41.4 grams (outer ring made of sterling silver. Mass: 14.6 grams; disk made of tantalum, mass: 26.8 grams). Diameter: 38.61 mm. Edition size: 4000.

Coin from the “Customs and National Games” series. The reverse side shows the raising of the shanyrak (the dome of a yurt) during assembly, an important ritual in making a home for the family. The coin is made of sterling silver. Mass: 31.1 grams, diameter: 38.61 mm. Edition size: 5000.

For megakhuimyak’s previous post on Kazakh coins, click here.

Would a Roza Otunbaeva be possible in Turkmenistan, and if so, would it really change anything? Image by neweurasia's Schwartz (CC-usage).

Editor’s note: Would a Roza Otunbaeva be possible in Turkmenistan, and if so, would it really change anything? neweurasia’s Annasoltan weighs the pros and cons in the third part of her ongoing series. “I wouldn’t be surprised if dreams of an Otunbaeva were exploited by a Niyazova,” she writes. “But on days when I’m feeling more optimistic, I believe that maybe a woman could bring something different.”

In my last post, I discussed the living and professional conditions of my countrywomen, which is pretty bad but has some potential precisely because of the areas to which we’ve been relegated. Now I want to directly address the question of whether a woman could ever become president of Turkmenistan, and if she did, would it really change anything?

Frankly, there isn’t much confidence in the current political system to expect that it would ever bring truly capable and popular leaders to the surface, either male or female. But besides that, most women who are actually in politics are virtually unknown and usually end up on the political stage by indirect means. Generally speaking, few to none of my countrywomen are politically educated, anyway. Most of all, the Soviet nomenclature system is gone, so that means no one would want to see “lightweight” women coming from nowhere into the boys’ club of politics.

Remember that a woman is supposed to be the epitome of “tranquility”. So, if she is tough, men will not see her as such, but as a cruel and mean person, and women will forsake her as too competitive. And the standard set for the presidency is all the more impossible for a woman, as there is an endless list of extraordinary skills and achievements she needs to accomplish, far above that of a man, even a demi-god like Niyazov. To attain to the Turkmen presidency, a women’s going to have to be a god, as much figuratively as literally!

But the real question isn’t if but so what? Turkmenistan’s no Kyrgyzstan, which has undergone two pro-democracy revolutions and in some respects seems to get more liberal in its ideals as the years go by, at least liberal enough to entrust a woman, Roza Otunbaeva, with the country’s most important job (although leave it to men to make such a mess of their country, especially in the Osh area, and then beg a woman to clean it up for them…)

By contrast, Turkmenistan is so entrenched in personality cultism, not only ideologically but bureaucratically, that it seems the only way someone can be a president here is by being a totalitarian. Some observers pessimistically believe that only a Gorbachev-style strongman — someone who can resist the temptation of believing in his own personality cult while using it to bring about real liberal reform — can bring change to Turkmenistan.

On days when I’m feeling more cynical, I’m really tempted to agree. Today is one of those days: I don’t think a woman is any necessarily more likely to be a truly decent president for Turkmenistan than a man. Considering the dog-eat-dog tactics that she would probably have to resort to even to reach the presidency, it’s a good chance that she’ll be even more of a deceitful crook. I wouldn’t be surprised if dreams of an Otunbaeva were exploited by a Niyazova.

But on days when I’m feeling more optimistic, I believe that maybe a woman could bring something different. The traditional viewpoint isn’t wrong: we’re natural caretakers. Yes, that quality could make a woman president even more totalitarian — a mother hen refusing to let her chicks out of the nest — but it could also make her more noble and open-minded. I’ve also talked with a lot of young people in my country, and they all say that if a woman carried a sincere promise of genuine change, then they would support her. That’s not bad to hear at all. :-)

Author’s note: Actually, there are very few Otunbaevas in modern history. It seems that Kyrgyzstan’s new president managed to climb the ladder by her own skills and merits. Most other women have usually had the help of a key male: Güljamal Khan, the last independent Turkmen leader, succeeded her husband Nurberdi Khan; Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto rose on the network of her assassinated father; India’s Indira Gandhi, the daughter of India’s first prime minister, made use of the Gandhi and Nehru networks; the Philippines’ Corazon Aquino began her unlikely rise to power when her husband, the opposition leader Benigno, was assassinated; and over in Uzbekistan, Karimov’s daughter Lola is set to succeed him (check out this cute “inauguration speech” by neweurasia’s Timur).

Translation of Adam’s post (RUS)

Today, I went to the library and the mosque.

The library showed evidence of great progress. I thought I’d be reminiscing about my student years, but no, I was immediately disoriented by the bar-code reader for member cards. Next, I was awed by the ability to order a book through the internet using a public computer. On top of that, you can now bring your laptop along, because they have outlets next to all the tables. And, behold, in the professors’ hall, where I was allowed to work (my first academic privilege, five years after defending my dissertation), you feel like you’re in Lenin’s office, down to the green lampshades.

My trip to the mosque had the same purpose as the trip to the library – to gather materials about the mosque. The road to the temple is awful. When are they going to get rid of that awful commercial strip along Pushkin St. between Zhibek Zhola and the Mosque? I found no research materials at the mosque, but was told to contact their PR manager.

Are we modernizing or what??

Editor’s note: With an average age of 24, Tajikistan is one of the world’s youngest countries. But this may be a curse rather than a blessing, argues neweurasia’s TajikVoice in the second post of a series exploring youth culture in Tajikistan, this time, the return to religion: “Religion today has replaced the Communist Youth [but] the key thing is to have a charismatic leader: a Communist Youth Organizer or a mullah.” [Translation of TajikVoice’s post (RUS). Read the first part here.]

There remain those for whom life still has something to offer, and that’s religion. I expect a blow to come from here. Tajikistan has suddenly become a mass of young men in white skullcaps and white robes, carrying prayer mats, and girls, covered up until there’s nothing left to see.

A large section of young people is sincerely devoted to worshiping Allah and spends time in mosques listening to sermons. What they say in these sermons – God only knows. This is real power. I’m sure whatever they tell these guys in the mosque, they will go ahead and do.

Religion today has replaced the Communist Youth. Throughout history, governments have made use of organized movements with rigid principles to control the most powerful force in society – the youth. Thirty years ago, this was the Communist Youth. Now it’s religion. Maximalism, which is so common among young people, makes them extremely ideological – and ideological people are oh so easy to manipulate.

The key thing is to have a charismatic leader: a Communist Youth Organizer or a mullah. This is why young Tajiks glare so rabidly at anyone not keeping the fast during Ramadan, loudly discuss those not attending mosque and force their religion on other people, completely blind to the existence of other confessions.

We Couldn’t Care Less

Of course there is a small percentage of young people in Tajikistan who aren’t indifferent towards their future and are able to think and make decisions for themselves. But they are just waiting for their diplomas and the opportunity to leave Tajikistan forever in search of freedom and happiness.

This is the difficult situation in which the country’s young people find themselves, but even more difficult is the future that awaits a country without youth.

(c) photos by the author

Orozo, the month of fasting before Ait, to the foreigner, shows itself in bits and pieces, as do many things here in Kyrgyzstan. This year, it was heralded in, ironically, by the neighborhood drunk.

He’s a nice guy. We first met when I was digging a trench to help drain the road this spring. He and his friends were all three sheets to the wind. One grabbed my shovel to dig while he sung me a song. Since then, his only faults are holding my hand a little too long when he greets me, and insisting a little too forcefully that I buy him a bottle. On this, the first day of Orozo, his behavior was no different.

“This is Orozo! You know! We are Muslim! Orozo!” His words were all excited, his breath sweet, as usual, and his eyes glassy. “No eating from sunrise to sunset! No drinking! Orozo!”

“And you? Are you observing Ait this year?” My question was genuine. The Kyrgyz around me are generally pretty easy going about their religion. It was quite conceivable, I thought, for him to tell me he wouldn’t be eating during the day, and ignore his particular indiscretion. Needless to say, I was wrong.

“No, no,” he said honestly, with no sense of inferred cynicism, “I’m ill.” And he flicked his throat, confirming for me that he was, indeed, drunk as a skunk. “Come,” he said next, confirming his character, “buy me a bottle, let’s drink.”

It is easy, however, to forget in general that Orozo is going on here in Naryn. I have only one acquaintance who observes the practice, and I seldom even see him. It wasn’t until later that week, on a Friday, that the holiday poked its head over the tall grass again.

“Hey, what’s that man hollering about?” I had stopped a neighbor boy who was running past me while I trimmed our hedges. I was referring to a man driving up and down Naryn’s Lenin Ave. with a megaphone. Though we were on a little side street and couldn’t see what was going on, his method of announcement was pretty clear. Normally this kind of ruckus happens as exuberant wedding parties celebrate loudly in large motorcades, but this was different.

“He’s talking about Islam, about Orozo,” the boy told me, “he’s telling everyone to go to the Mosque.”

“Oh, okay.” I said, and then dimly moving on to weather-chat, I asked, “so, where are you off to in such a hurry?”

He was kindly didn’t even bat an eye, “to the Mosque.”

Right.

Just like any other holiday in Kyrgyzstan, the Independence Day celebration starts with prohibitions. Here you can see a roadblock, which cuts of one of the main streets. Several roadblocks all over main streets of Bishkek usually create traffic jams.

Another prohibition is access to the main square for the time of President's official speech. Access was limited for people with some permissions, but as usual, people with government and law enforcement badges could pass through easily.

At 10 am in the morning, there were more police then people.

They blocked people without permissions and most of them (including me) could not even hear President Otunbayeva's speech. Her stage is located in the far right corner on the photo.

So people just had to stay in the sun and wait while the President finishes her speech and officially opens the memorial to the Victims of April 7 events.

On the positive side, it was a good day for this lady who sells gas water with syrup (or without) from an old Soviet water machine. It was very hot and a cold water was in demand.

and for this photographer who makes photographs for 40 soms a piece.

*

Ice cream ladies had their day as well. 35 degrees of temperature were surely helpful.

It was the day when children finally get the proper attention from their parents.

... and they can be with them all day long.

*

Parents can also have some fun while kids are splashing in the fountains.

or just go and get refreshed in the fountain as well.

Departing the square, I noticed the cover on the fence, which was damaged during the April events. It is was not fixed yet.

wp

There’s uproar among the youth in Turkmenistan today after the government decided to ban the popular social networking site, agent.mail.ru. Currently, it’s inaccessible via both TM Cell and MTS (about whom I’ve reported before). The website had eventually experienced a small surge in Turkmen users, especially young men and women who used it to get to know each other.

It’s an open secret that one of the main purposes of agent.mail.ru is dating. The site certainly facilitates meeting potential partners: just type in the city, gender, and age in the search engine, and within only a few seconds, voila! Lovely, smiling faces appear. You can even find young women in bikini shots or Odalisque poses — some as young as 16! Another big advantage is the availability of chat rooms, which are easy even for the less techno-savvy to use, and is cheaper in the long run than mobile phones.

Many young Turkmen users think the government’s decision is inexplicable. Unusually, the ban hasn’t been reported in the state media. And many doubt that the authorities’ concern is about political content (although I can’t speak for the level of encryption offered by agent.mail.ru, and whether chat rooms could be used for political purposes). However, it’s consistent with their decision in the spring to ban other new media and social networking websites, like Facebook and YouTube.

While the ban has been deplored by its users, it’s also been hailed by some older Turkmens (and non-users) as a welcome move. They have legitimate fears about the spread of child pornography and internet addiction. These are real problems, and exactly because the internet does not regulate itself, it’s reasonable that government must therefore do the regulation.  They also see something else — a threat to traditions.  Here’s what one elderly Turkmen told me:

“Thank God [this has been done], this way, the youth has been saved from worst to come. The people should not be allowed to do things which do not correspond to our culture and traditions.”

Those “things” include dating — which for many Turkmen means sex outside marriage.

So, it seems that the general Turkmen society is realizing the potential of the internet. The freedom it brings has a positive side by undermining the authority of our totalitarian regime, but potentially a negative side, too, by undermining the authority of our culture’s traditional morality.

We have to remember that ours is not a normal government. It uses these problems as an excuse for extreme censorship. Not only this, but I also get worried when I hear about “Turkmenness”, because it’s too frequently a pretext to damn every new thing as “alien”. You know, the Soviets talked about “harmful remnants of the past” to make room for their new ideology,  but today, protectionists damn everything new as the “work of the devil”. Such a sentiment only plays into the authorities’ hands.

We can have new, modern technology and still be Turkmens. Many of the Arab countries have managed to adopt new technologies while preserving their distinct cultures. Technology and tradition are not enemies!

The ban of agent.mail.ru is another blow against the slowly burgeoning Turkmenet, an online community that will prove critical to our political, economic, and cultural development in the future. However, I doubt it will really stop our society’s young. In fact, they’re already turning toward other social networking websites to connect. Such is the infectious-like nature of the internet, and I believe it wil be these new netizens who will eventually define real “Turkmenness”.

Editor’s note: With an average age of 24, Tajikistan is one of the world’s youngest countries. But this may be a curse rather than a blessing, argues neweurasia’s TajikVoice in the first post of a new series exploring youth culture in Tajikistan. “Young people are not interested in anything, be it their future, the future of the country, their career or opportunities in their native Tajikistan.” [Translation of TajikVoice’s post (RUS).]

Do you remember the association game? Mother – child – fun – game – football – goalkeeper – ball – grass, etc. If somebody tried to play that game with me today and started with the word “youth,” I would probably get confused, pensive and lose.

I don’t want to seem like a pessimist, but my associations with “youth” have to do with something bad, evil, pointless and wasteful. I’ll tell you a secret: I’m 27 years old, and this is not an old person’s monologue about the perennial “fathers and sons” issue.

Live and Be Happy or What?

Tajikistan is a unique country: the average age here is 24. It is one of the youngest nations in the world. Just imagine – a country of young people. Life must be a joy here, it would seem. Yet our real-life prospects are not so optimistic. The government has done nothing and continues to do nothing for its youth.

There is not a single stadium where one could play sports for free. There are no free clubs or activities. There is nothing. Everything that functions more or less properly costs money: education, medicine (both should be free, according to the constitution), exams, cultural events, sports activities.

A Sad Dynamic

The younger a country or a person, the poorer they are; the older, the richer. In geriatric Europe, scientists are grappling with the global demographic problem: educated European women just don’t want to have as many kids as before. The solution is, in fact, very simple: limit people’s access to information and everything will go smooth as butter.

The more educated a person is, the less he has to think about how to feed his children. Eastern peoples even have a saying, “If God gives you a child, He will also give you the opportunity to feed him.” Everyone believes in this postulate and keeps on having kids.

This is why the poorest countries (in the material and spiritual sense of the word), such as Tajikistan, Chad, Congo, Zimbabwe and others, are also the youngest. All we know how to do is reproduce.

What’s Left for the Youth?

Returning to the status of youth in Tajikistan, I should mention the indifferent attitude that has developed in the last two years. Young people are not interested in anything, be it their future, the future of the country, their career or opportunities in their native Tajikistan. It’s depressing that the youth has become apolitical. How is it possible that young people are not interested in politics?!

It’s no surprise that some time ago the government closed down all swimming pools, clubs, stadiums, parks – basically, anywhere young people could gather in large groups. They were, and still are, afraid of aggression and conspiracy, which can rapidly escalate into insurrection and revolution.

To be continued…

(c) Photos by the author

Aksoltan Atayeva, Permanent Representative of Turkmenistan to the UN, with representatives of the UN. Photo from the UNDP.

Editor’s note: If you think the image of women in Turkmenistan is bad, the reality is little better. Still, Turkmen women have more indirect and social power than they think, argues neweurasia’s Annasoltan, in this second entry in a new ongoing post series. “I think women could still make a difference by occupying positions that are normally overlooked or undervalued by men. “

In my last post, I briefly explored images of women in Turkmenistan, going back all the way to pre-Islamic times. From Amazons to softies, my have we fallen far. It gets worse when we turn from image to reality, although it’s also not entirely hopeless.

The bad news

In Turkmenistan, and before, in the Turkmen SSR, we have had had to balance careers with getting up early every morning to bake tamdyr in the traditional Turkmen oven and making sure breakfast was ready for their children and husbands. I was having a conversation with a fellow female journalist one day, when she abruptly ended our conversation so she could — I kid you not — barter textiles with the other female workers in her office.

Meanwhile, Turkmen families are exploding with children. Out in rural areas, some families have a minimum of five! So, where are they going to find the time to have any kind of lives of their own?

This is to say nothing about how women are valued in our society — or not. Turkmen parents prefer sons to daughters, and chivalry’s not a concept here. You’ll never find a Turkmen man kissing the hand of a woman, and if you do, he’ll be ridiculed as not acting “manly” (a favorite example of a manly man include the academician Bibi Palvanova).

The good news

Having said all that, I think women could still make a difference by occupying positions that are normally overlooked or undervalued by men.  In Turkmenistan, education and health care are two major areas that have been neglected over the decades. They also happen to be the areas considered the most appropriate for women. As the Turkmen saying goes, our women are “mothers with hearts”.

We actually have more indirect and social power than we might normally believe. Every year 100,000 students graduate from secondary school. Who are their teachers? Women. And you can imagine how much our society is in need of doctors and nurses, especially after all the damage that’s been done to it by decades of totalitarianism (read my special coverage of Turkmenistan’s crumbling healthcare system here). Those positions, too, will eventually be filled by women.

In at least one instance, we’ve seen one woman use these “feminine” positions to her political advantage — Aksoltan Atayeva, a former minister and health and now the head of Turkmenistan’s permanent mission to the United Nations. Not bad.

Which leads me to the next post in this series, when I discuss what it would take for a woman to become president of Turkmenistan. See you then!

Translation of publicist’s post (RUS)

The attitude towards women as mothers is an important measure of development in any modern society. The Save the Children organization has published the results of a study done on the status of women and children in 173 countries around the world. Kazakhstan ranked an unenviable 51st among all countries and 8th among “less developed countries.”

Ranking Our Neighbors

Researchers from Save the Children compiled a Mothers’ Index. In the process of working on it, they developed two other indices, the Women’s Index and the Children’s Index.

The countries where it’s best to be a mom are Norway, Australia, Iceland and Sweden (the last two were tied for third place). Belarus ranked 33rd among developed countries, which made it the highest-ranked country among CIS nations (Russia is 38th and the Ukraine is 39th). Among former Soviet states, Belarus was surpassed only by Estonia (17), Lithuania (22) and Latvia (25). Afghanistan had the lowest ranking.

Motherhood and Childhood in Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan was listed as one of the “less developed countries.” In this category, it was surpassed by Cuba (1st in the Mothers’ Index, 10th in the Children’s Index), Israel (2) and Argentina (3rd in the Mothers’ Index, 13th in the Children’s Index).

Just below Kazakhstan are the Bahamas (9th in the Mothers’ Index, 21st in the Children’s Index), Mongolia (10th in the Mothers’ Index, 53rd in the Children’s Index) and Thailand (11th in the Mothers’ Index and 19th in the Children’s Index).

In compiling the rankings, various factors that influence the status of women and children were taken into account. The Women’s index was based on the following criteria:

• Health (life expectancy, maternal mortality rate, percentage of women using modern contraceptive methods)
• Education (number of years a woman spends on education)
• Economic factors (length of maternity leave, percentage of wage paid to a woman during this period, wage difference between men and women)
• Political factors (number of women in branches of government)

For the Children’s Index, researchers looked at the mortality rate for children under 5, as well as the percentage of those who complete basic and higher education.

Care for Women in Kazakhstan

One of the indicators of a government’s “care” for its population is welfare payment. Fortunately, there is plenty in Kazakhstan, but the quality and amount does not always meet expectations.

In 2009, over 350 000 mothers received childbirth benefits and 140 000 families received childcare benefits, according to President Nursultan Nazarbaev.

“Last year, over 350 000 mothers received one-time childbirth benefits. 140 000 families were paid childcare benefits. For our country, these are very large numbers,” Nazarbaev said during a meeting with prominent Kazakh women. The President specified that the benefits totaled 300 billion tenge.

Additionally, children under 18 years of age received 8.5 billion tenge in benefits. “Of course, we have other sectors we could direct this money – development and industry – but we also believe that [supporting families] is important.”

“The government doesn’t just take care of women, it takes care of the future, because the future of our country is dependent on the welfare of its people, and its level of development is measured by its attitude towards women,” the President emphasized.

How much do women earn in different professions? Do men and women earn different wages in your field? Fill out this Job Survey and find out.

Viola von Cramon, the Green Party representative in Bundestag, says that the Kyrgyz government cannot provide security for the OSCE policemen.

Today the Tageszeitung newspaper published interview with von Cramon, which covers her last week visit to Bishkek and meetings with the Kyrgyz leadership.

As you remember, Roza Otunbayeva & Co. had agreed to the OSCE special police to be located in the southern provinces of the country after bloodshed in June. Last Friday, August 23, on the meeting with Otunbayeva, the Kyrgyz President stated that police could bring a wrong mood in the South and its security could not be guaranteed.

The Green politician understands the reasons for the rejection of the Kyrgyz-OSCE operation.

“The most important is that the security of this mission can be guaranteed locally. After what we have heard, this is not possible,” says von Cramon.

“Sending out the mission [...] will fuel further aggression.”

As neweurasia’s Marat Sartpaev reported,

No single international organization had faced such a criticism and dislike in Kyrgyzstan as OSCE did lately. The dislike is virtually flowing out of the “second capital” – Osh that recently suffered from wide-scale bloodletting events – which is almost daily shook by demonstrations against the OSCE advisory group’s deployment. Several hundreds of “concerned residents in the south” are unhappy with this idea, since they believe “this will lead to the dissolution of Kyrgyzstan as it did in Kosovo, South Ossetia.”

While talking to Omurbek Tekebayev, Ata-Meken chairman, she noticed that “If there is the aim to democratize Kyrgyzstan, everything must be done to involve and protect ethnic minorities.”

“That is not guaranteed,” was Tekebayev’s respond.

Uzbek community of Kyrgyzstan loses its last hope for protection and justice over the bloody events in southern Kyrgyzstan. Now the situation requires stronger pressure on the current political elite. Otherwise, Uzbeks of Kyrgyzstan should find a refuge in some other country where minority rights are respected. It’s obvious, that they just cannot be citizens of a country of anarchy and chaos; and live in one city with the city Mayor who calls himself a “nationalist.”

For more information

Oh-Beh-Es-Yeh! Ketsin?, by neweurasia’s Marat Sartpaev, available here.

Full version of the interview by Tageszeitung (DE) is available here.

Deutsche Welle’s interview with the Green lady (RUS) is available here.

Translation of mursya’s post (RUS)

We offer our readers a sample of graffiti from good old Karaganda. For more pictures, go to pycm. What can you say about the personalities of the artists based on their pictures?

Editor’s note: Kyrgyzstan’s Independence Day is tomorrow, August 31. neweurasia’s Marat shares his thoughts about the perils and problems faced by his country on its nineteenth birthday, from intense debt to geopolitics to the troubles in the South. “Happy birthday, Kyrgyzstan!” he writes. “I hope this is not your last one…”

With the Independence Day on August 31 getting closer, Kyrgyzstan is facing a serious challenge of being able to preserve its integrity and unity. There are many prerequisites that have occurred and events that suggest Bishkek has to make yet another effort to “keep up the face”. As independence days count the number of years a certain country exists, it can safely be called the country’s “birthday”. What does Kyrgyzstan have by its 19th birthday? What acts committed due to “youngness” does it wish to forget? What lies ahead?

Answering these questions would require a lengthy and tedious study and explanation which we don’t have the time and space for. So let us be brief and get to the point.

Young, vibrant and purpose-oriented Kyrgyzstan, ideally, has a hefty debt burden of nearly 2,5 billion US dollars to be paid after accumulating it during the short span of 19 years (excluding those that creditors have written off in the past thanks to Askar Akayev’s efforts). It also currently has a huge budget deficit which it is trying to cover using foreign funds. An addition to the whooping $2,5 billion? You bet! It is facing a major social and economic crisis.

Kyrgyzstan, young and experienced in the cruel world of economy, has become a puppet in the hands of “third force” (as claimed by the impotent central authorities in Bishkek) at least two apparent times. Poverty and unemployment were so high people accepted the take-to-the-street-and-shout job offer giving it a little, if at all, thought. The “job description” was rather simple: stay out there in the crowd, drink free vodka and eat free meal, and get paid to top it all. Hence, the “Ketsin!” [Leave!] slogan is probably still ringing in both of the ousted presidents’ ears – Askar Akayev and Kurmbanbek Bakiyev. Neither of the “revolutions” was successful by the way. Is it, maybe, because the popular revolutions, as they are called, were not popular whatsoever?

Another issue Kyrgyzstan would very much wish to forget is the two scars that lay on its southern region. And since both “cuts” came across the southern capital Osh primarily, the “wound” is deep and so is the gap between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz parties there. By the way, both sides call themselves victims, point the finger on the other side of the barricade and blame “those rascals and blood hungry ones for starting first”.

As far as the future is concerned, the landlocked and scarce in resources country is going to face several problems which are both lingering for some and are about to arise. A rather unpleasant birthday gift Kyrgyzstan could receive when those Uzbek youth, who have reportedly fled to Afghanistan to train, return with guns in hands and the desire to “die for the right cause” in heart. Not only that, Kyrgyzstan is about to face the challenge none of the Central Asian was ready so far — moving away from the presidential form of governance towards the parliamentary one. Yet another challenge is the scarcity of food for almost 1/3 of the country that the UN reported about recently.

Even this very brief overview of the current state of affairs suggests the Otunbayeva & CO are going to face some major problems and issues in the not so very distant future.

Meanwhile, the country is preparing its next birthday. The US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was among those first to congratulate Roza Otumbayeva on the occasion. Happy birthday, Kyrgyzstan! I hope this is not your last one…

The Turkmen legendary hero Gorogly, but with no women to be seen. Image from the Ruhnama website.

Editor’s note: From rampaging warriors to doting wives, Turkmen society’s image of women has changed over the centuries — much to the chagrin of neweurasia’s Annasoltan. “[Our] people’s idealized woman went from being an Amazon to a softie,” she writes, in this first post of a new on-going series about the status of women in Turkmen society.

My neweurasia colleague Humane has written about whether Turkmenistan could ever have a woman president, and Timur has written one from the perspective of Uzbekistan. Here are my two manat. Let’s start with the image of women in Turkmenistan.

In pre-Islamic times, when the Turkic peoples of Central Asia were nomads, the female characters that appeared in epic stories were actually very masculine-like figures, riding on horseback, hunting animals, wrestling, fighting with swords, and defending their territory against the enemies.

Later, when the Turkic peoples settled into sedentary life, social roles changed a lot, transforming female characters into something more domestic. For example, in the epic story Görogly, a male heroic legend in the oral traditions of the Turkic peoples — a sort of Eastern “Robin Hood” in which the hero defends his clan or tribe against threats from outside — the female figure Gülendam is praised for her hospitality and household work, for the care for her family, and exemplary behavior.

In other words, the Turkic people’s idealized woman went from being an Amazon to a softie. Fortunately, that changed somewhat under the Soviets, when women began to work outside the home and it became more common for women to attain higher education and to work. A few female ministers emerged, too. But overall, their place in Soviet mythology and propaganda didn’t change very much. And it got worse after the Soviet Union collapsed.

Today, the official Turkmen propaganda stresses the traditional role of the woman as a homemaker and mother. The catch-word is “tranquility” — the less active, the better. Other catch-words include “charming”, “caring”, “respectful”, “soft”, and “breakable”, yes “breakable”, as if they’re pieces of glass.

Interestingly, a “First Lady” culture has never developed here as it’s done in other countries, particularly the United States. This only reinforces the message that women need to stay out of the way. Not only that, but it means there isn’t a good living role model for Turkmen girls. Well, unless of course you count Niyazov’s mother, who died in a devastating earthquake in Ashgabat in 1948 when he was a child and whom he later elevated to the status of demi-goddess.

This doesn’t mean the image promulgated by our government is always consistent. For example, in Niyazov’s Ruhnama — which, remember, is supposed to be our new Qur’an – you find this passage:

Pay attention to the jewelery worn by Türkmen girls; the gupba-tuvulga, çekelik-bukav protects the neck from attacks with swords, the gül-aka protects the chest. The bracelet covers the wrist, and various pieces attached on the front and back of dresses prevent injuries from arrows and spears. If the Türkmen girl wears all her jewelery, she becomes like a warrior shielded by her jewelery. Calculations tell us that a woman should be carrying a total of 36 kilograms of silver and gold if she wears all her jewelery. The Türkmen praises the woman highly.

That sounds a bit more like the tough woman of pre-Islamic lore than of the secluded neo-Gülendam otherwise promoted in propaganda.

And then there was Niyazov himself.  Oddly, he used to pose for photographs wearing elaborate diamond rings. He also used to dye his hair, changing it from white to blond, then reddish blond, and finally dark brown, in order to make himself look younger. These actions were so completely alien to Turkmen culture and traditions — almost a sin for Turkmen men! — that the great Turkmenbashy was often nicknamed “Turkmenbajy” — “Turkmen-sister”!

So, that’s my brief treatment of images. In my next post, I’ll explore what it would actually take for a woman to become president of Turkmenistan — and whether that would actually be a good thing for my nation. But I’m also hoping to use this new blog series to explore the whole gamut of issues about women in Turkmenistan, so stick around!