"Evidence From Uzbekistan" was Dr. Lawrence Markowitz's subtitle for tonight's talk (the title is above) on the role of the Prosecutor in Uzbekistan's legal system at Georgetown University's Intercultural Center, as the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies 2005 Nava'i Lecturer in Central Asian Studies.
Dr. Markowitz was just plain "Larry" when I met him in Tashkent a few years ago. Boy, was I impressed in those days. He was on a Fulbright-Hays, and seemed to know more about every little "kishlak" in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan than any other American. Here, in the USA, as Dr. Markowitz, he seemed more careful about what he said.
The audience seemed pretty high-powered, from the questions. At a reception afterwards, I spoke with someone from USAID, someone from a legal reform project who said she was a Supreme Court fellow, someone from the State Department, and someone who seems to have been on the Georgetown faculty and may have been a State Department official of some sort in Tashkent.
What struck me was that no matter how much I pressed them and tried to provoke an answer, not one could say for certain that the US did not provide funds, indirectly, to terrorist groups or support groups in Uzbekistan. I was told that any relevant emails may have been erased, and although I could file a FOIA request, and although support for terrorist groups or supporters is against regulations, that the recipients of US dollars actually don't have to certify or track the money to guarantee that none of it reaches the wrong hands. Ostensibly, due to the difficulties of doing business in the country. So, for example, a terrorist or member of a banned organization could possibly be a supplier or contractor or employee of an American NGO or Uzbek organization receiveing American money...and no one in Washington would be able to tell. They don't do thorough background checks, apparently. And while I can file a FOIA request, I apparently cannot find out exactly who my American tax dollars ended up going to pay in Uzbekistan, or what banned parties they may have belonged to.
The problem with such an answer, is that while it may be true, and perhaps understandable (I was told on another occasion that USAID had funded Shining Path guerilla leaders in South America), is that it cannot reassure the Uzbek government, which accused the US government of supporting Islamist terrorists responsible for the recent Andijan violence. Nor can such a non-answer reassure anyone that President Bush is very serious about his so-called "Global War on Terror."
Ironically, such answers show American aid isn't "Strengthening the Rule of Law" in Uzbekistan at all. For if the US is supporting illegal Islamist organizations, either directly or via hiring individual members of those organizations, then the US is contributing to undermining the law in Uzbekistan. Supporters of Osama bin Laden, or those affiliated with them, make questionable champions for the American legal system.
Ironically, based on these admittedly anecdotal, informal (and possibly unreliable) conversations over drinks with anonymous sources, I wonder whether lax administration and oversight of American aid programs by USAID and the State Department may have seriously harmed American interests in Central Asia--and cost our country a military base of some geopolitical significance...
UPDATE: More on Markowitz's talk at Neweurasia.net and on the Sunshine Coalition website.
