Civil Society In Central Asia

Civil Society in Central Asia

Civil Society in Central Asia Edited by

M. Holt Ruffin Daniel C. Waugh

Center for Civil Society International The Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Nitze School of Advanced International Studies Johns Hopkins University

in association with University of Washington Press Seattle and London

© 1999 the Center for Civil Printed in the United States of America

International

All reserved. No of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including nh,"ttn,"fir,,, n~COf(11ng, or any information or retrieval without from the putll1S11er. in Central Asia! edited M. Holt Daniel C. em. p. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-295-97795-7 1. Civil :-i"".'l'!tv._A Central. 2. Asia, Central--Politics and Govemment--1991 M. Holt II. Daniel Clarke. JQ1086.C58 1999 98~33178 30 1'.0958'09049--dc21 CIP Civil

The paper used in this meets the minimum of American National Standard for Information Sciences--Permanence ANSI Z39.48-1984. Printed

for

Contents Preface Maps of Central Asia

Introduction M. Holt Ruffin

vii viii, ix

3

Civil Society in Central Asia S. Frederick Starr

27

The Legal Regulation ofNGOs: Central Asia at a Crossroads Scott Horton and Alla Kazakina

34

Freedom ofAssociation and the Question ofIts Realization in Kazakhstan Evgeny A. Zhovtis

57

Government and Nonprofit Sector Relations in the Kyrgyz Republic Erkinbek Kasybekov

71

Environmental NOOs and the Development of Civil Society in Central Asia

85

Kate Watters

Kolkhoz and Civil Society in the Independent States ofCentral Asia Olivier Roy

109

Prospects for Development ofan Independent Media in Kazakhstan Oleg Katsiev

122

Can Uzbekistan Build Democracy and Civil SOCiety? Abdumannob PoIat

135

Civil Society and Identity in Uzbekistan: The Emergent Role ofIslam

158

ReueJHanks

Islam and Tajikistan 's Human and Ecological Crisis AzizNiyazi

180

Women's NGOs in Central Asia's Evolving Societies UIa lkramova and Kathryn McConnell

198

The Real Work: Sustaining NGO Growth in Central Asia Jay Cooper

214

Organizations Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan Turkmenistan Uzbekistan

Online Resources E-mail Lists Web Sites Internet Access Centers in Central Asia

235 264 280 291 295

313 315 320

Appendices About the Authors

325

Glossary

330

Preface

T

he analytical essays in the first part of this book are in part the product of a two-day conference held in 1998 and by the Center for Civil International and the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at the Nitze School of Advanced International Jobus ~LV'P_U"" in Wasbington, D.C. At that of issues and views were and debate was sometimes In the of free inquiry, we did not seek a authoritative POSiltlCm rf'"r",rt11tHT how to view Central Asia, particularly with respect to issues of civil The essays in the book reflect a wide range democratic tives, concerns, and and no essay should be taken to reprethe Central Asia-Caucasus Instlhlte, sent the views of the International. the inclusion of any in for Civil the section on nongovernmental organizations in Civil in Central Asia should not be interpreted as an endorsement by the publishers of that ",.«n"7" tion's purposes, or any other it may make about itself. Center for Civil !'inl""!v International ;ol1)Or:atl()fl of New York and the Earhart Foundation of Ann for generous which made possible both this book and the conference descnbed above, Important for that conference was also by The Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at the Nitze School of Advanced International Johns whose chairman is S. Frederick Starr. Additional funding for this hook was by the Central Asia Institute of Hozelnall, iVIUUI4Urumtt;",,, an additional aspect of these relations, for better or for worse, has been programs intended to these new nations quickly emerge as economica By vibrant democracies of a Western Expectations wishful tllillKlltlg) have not always been matched by acute analysis and unlrierstandllI1g. Many programs have been to "transitions," but a look over the current and economic raises serious questions as to how effective or realistic they have been and what the future may hold. Perhaps one might ask whether the history of a nation such as the United States is really relevant for countries whose societies and traditions are so different. Even if one were to grant the the emergence of "civil Western models, is it reasonable to that such a trans" formation can occur in a matter when the institutions in question took "..."tif\1~~ to evolve in other societies? The answer to this is probably negative, but does this mean that in the are in vain'? Not hopes for democratization and economic 3

4

M. Holt Ruffin

necessarily. The sudden arrival of independence created a need in all Central Asian societies to find new social and cultural values to replace those of Homo sovieticus. The search for these new values has introduced some degree of fluidity and openness into previously closed political cultures, with many Central Asians seeking to revive ancient traditions of Islam, others seeking to introduce institutions of the advanced industrial democracies of Europe and America, and still others looking for some uniquely Central Asian hybrid of Islam, limited democratization and rule of law, and statist approaches to economic development While the response of governments in the region has been to try to "cap" all activities, secular or religious, that might pose serious political threats, a considerable amount of nonpolitical associational activity is now permitted in Central Asia that was never possible in Soviet times. This has given rise, in turn, to policies by the United States, members of the European Union, and private international donors to seek to strengthen the institutions of civil society in Central Asia through programs aimed at training, equipping. and directly financing selected nongovernmental organizations in the region. Underlying this policy is the view that if the governments of Central Asia's new nations are not ready for foreign assistance programs oriented to political or economic reform, opportunities exist for projects targeted directly at citizens of those societies. If such assistance can yield strong and independent citizen organizations, even those of a necessarily nonpolitical character, could this not translate eventually into the democratization of political institutions and hberalization of the economies in Central Asia? Indeed, in many respects, a focus on civil society has been the best option for U.S. foreign assistance when dealing with the authoritarian regimes in Central Asia. The United States has learned from long experience that governmentto-government foreign assistance programs directed to authoritarian regimes can experience large amounts of "leakage" due to corruption. In the worst cases, such assistance can strengthen a repressive apparatus without buying either a reliable ally or a commitment to democracy. By contrast, foreign assistance programs that focus on civil society can help create the preconditions for democracy in states which are not currently democratic. In strengthening grassroots citizen organizations, such programs strengthen principles of citizen participation and activism, of government accountability to citizen concerns, and of civil rights-including the basic right of citizens to organize in order to press for more rights. Also, when indigenous citizen organizations that provide human services or humanitarian relief receive support from abroad, real ties are built with the outside world which can endure political upheaval and changes of government leadership. In addition, these indigenous organizations achieve a certain prestige within their own society because of their international connections. Together all

Introduction

5

these factors affect a nation's political culture, help mitigate authoritarian. xenophobic, or insular attitudes that usually exist to some degree within any nation-Central Asian, European. or American-and diminish the constituencies of extremist leaders and movements.

The Conference That Preceded This Book For a combination of reasons, an emphasis on civil society strengthening programs has seemed a propitious focus of U.S. policy toward Central Asia at this particular time. But, to consider the question more deeply, to what degree can one speak of civil society in Central Asia? Is it a meaningful concept at this stage of development of these five specific countries? What parts of American experience have relevance to institutions of cultnres based on the steppe and the oasis, the khan and the imam? And if we can in fact "jump start" some institutions, laws, and customs--most of which took decades and centuries to evolve in our own society--are any particular efforts more likely to succeed than others, in the course of just three to five years in Central Asia? To investigate these questions more thoroughly, Center for Civil Society International and the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute of the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in 1997 sought support for a conference and a subsequent book on the theme of "Civil Society in Central Asia." The Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Earhart Foundation of Ann Arbor, Michigan, each made generous grants for the project, and in late March 1998 we convened the conference in Washington, D.C. It was a very lively two-day event. Attendance was considerably higher than anticipated and the quality of presentations and discussions that followed each presentation was outstanding. After the conference, and based in part on the discussions, the presenters reworked their papers and then submitted their final drafts. The result is Civil Society in Central Asia. This book, then. is an effort to provide some answers to difficult questions, with the understanding that its effect may be to pose more problems than it solves. In the balance of this introduction we provide a brief historical overview. to set the stage for the contemporary situation of Central Asia. Then we will deal with some of the conceptual issues which underlie the papers in the book and provide an overview of their substance and some additional material to supplement what they contain.

Historical Background The five nations of Central Asia constitute a region roughly half the size of the United States, not including Alaska. In area. Kazakhstan accounts for more than

6

M. Holt Ruffin

two-thirds of the region, but Uzbekistan, with more than 23 million inhabitants. has the largest population. The predominant languages of the region are related to Turkish, except in Tajikistan, where most citizens speak a form of Persian. Ethnic pluralism characterizes Central Asia, and no country is without significant minorities. Kazakhstan, for example, has nearly 17 million inhabitants

(1996 figures), of whom 46 percent are Kazak:h and 35 percent are ethnic Russians. Other minorities comprise the balance. Of Kyrgyzstan's 4.5 million people, 52 percent are Kyrgyz, 18 percent are Russian, and 13 percent are Uzbek. Tajikistan's 5.9 milliou people are 65 percent Tajik and 25 percent Uzbek. The most ethnically homogeneous countries are Uzbekistan, which is 80 percent Uzbek, and Turkmenistan, 77 percent of whose 4.2 million residents are Turkmen. (Uzbeks and Russians take a 9 and 7 percent share, respectively).' The overwhelming majority of inhabitants in Central Asia consider themselves Muslims. In 712, only eighty years after the prophet Muhammed's death, a force from the Umayyad Islamic empire based in Baghdad took most of what is now Uzbekistan and introduced Islam to Central Asia. Over the course of the next few centuries a number of great armies either swept into the region-e.g., under the Seljuk Turk Sultan Sanjar or Genghis Khan-or arose within it. Foremost among the latter was the army ofTimur (Tamerlane), who ruled in the latter part of the fourteenth century. For twelve centuries, however, until the Soviet period, Islam was a vital part of Central Asian life. Russia's first thrust into Central Asia, under Peter the Great, is remembered as a resounding defeat, when the czar's task force was anrlihilated at Khiva in 1717. Russia's expansion to the south and east was only beginning to gather force, however. and a century and half later, in 1873, General Konstantin Kaufmann, veteran of campaigns in the Caucasus. took Khiva and established permanent Russian control throughout Central Asia. Between the middle of the nineteenth century and 1917, several million Russian farmers (many of them freed serfs), artisans, and merchants emigrated to Central Asia,l The sequence of events that resulted in Central Asia's incotpOration into the USSR is a complicated one. Communist parties in the region harnessed nationalist sentiments to help the Bolsheviks prevail after the November revolution of 1917. But once the civil war was over, the nationalist elements had to be suppressed. A turning point in this effort was the murder in late 1921 ofEnver Pasha, a would-be leader of an independent ''Turkestan,'' who had been recruited by Lenin. In 1924 in order to weaken further any pan-Turkic aspirations, Stalin reversed Lenin's creation ofa single Central Asian Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Republic and began the policy of "national delimitatiou," to carve Central Asia into five smaller, and less powerful, political units. These corresponded in name to major ethnic groups in the region, but the borders Moscow drew did not always match their geographical distribution, whether by

Introduction

7

accident or design remains a matter of controversy. Between the early twenties and mid-thirties, the borders and status of the Central Asian republics cbanged-Kyrgyzia, for example, began as an "autonomous oblast," then became an "autonomous republic," then at last a "Soviet Socialist Republic." By 1936, however, the Soviet Socialist Republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan had all been established with essentially those borders that they have today. It is an interesting fact-and one which may indicate how little Central Asia was a regional political force in the old Soviet Union-that no summit meetings took place among the leaders of Central Asia's republics during virtually the entire Soviet period, that is, until June 23, 1990, when the five met in Bishkek (then Frunze), on their own initiative and in the absence of Russia, and signed an Agreement on Economic, ScientificTechnical and Cultural Cooperation.3 During the Lenin-Stalin years numerous policies were implemented that would thoroughly "Sovieti7..e" Central Asia: Islamic schools, courts, and mosques (more than 98 percent of the latter) were closed or destroyed; Russian became compulsory in schools; and Cyrillic came to take the place of Arabic and Latin alphabets. While these policies were not entirely successful-several essays in this book indicate some of the ways in which Islam survived the sustained campaigns against it-they have been summarized accurately as follows: With regard to the Central Asian region they [the Soviets] took extreme measures to eradicate the cultural and political traditions that had evolved over the centuries. This meant the physical extermination of the intellectual elite and the arbitrary creation of national borders. Wherever ethnic groups considering themselves Muslims experienced a sense of their own unity, an ideological program of atheism was forcibly put into effect and panIslamism was marked for eradication, as synonymous with medieval backwardness and fanaticism. 4 Not only Islam, but virtually all institutions of civil society in Central Asia were suppressed in this period.5 With incorporation into the Soviet Union came aU the hallmarks of that system: rapid urbanization and industrialization, the system of collective farms, and mass education, to name a few. To appreciate the speed of urbanization, for example, consider Dushanbe. It had only 6,000 inhabitants in 1925, four years before Stalin sliced "Tajikistan" out of Uzbekistan, leaving the latter with the two ancient and predominantly Tajik cities of Samarkand and Bukbara. The new capital city of Dushanbe grew rapidly-much of the growth from immigration by Russians, but much of it also from misguided economic policies, explained in

8

M. Holt Ruffin

Aziz Niyazi's essay later in the book-so that by the early 1990s it had 600,000 inhabitants. This was urbanization over two generations by a factor of 100, and it has intensified in the years since independence. While many Russians have left Dushanbe, the civil war that broke out early in this decade added many more thousands of refugees to the city, further stressing its capacity and concentrating population in the capital. Along with urbanization came mass compulsory education and the development of universities and scientific-technical institutions throughout the region, perhaps the most positive legacy of Soviet rule. Decidedly negative, however, were the region's total isolation from all non-Soviet Bloc countries, the imposition of the Soviet economic system, and the great damage done over many years to the environment, e.g.• through the cotton monoculture in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, based largely on water diverted from the Aral Sea, and years of heavy atmospheric nuclear testing in Kazakhstan. The effects of Soviet economic development policies on Central Asia is a topic for another book, but suffice it to say that Moscow's central planners-not comparative advantage, rates of economic return, global demand, or, least of all, the desires and values of Central Asia's popuiations-, important human services and engage in social and political ",h,,,,,·,,,,,, but do not have the same civic character as the classical NGO. and values of those in control of the fq1!res,enl:ati'ves of government or pu:Ua:llturor)v In most cases both of NGD benefit But it is the classical NGO which better embodies the idea of civil taking VOlUll\,"(, P11t on certain foodstuffs and children's from the tax are available for services rendered by and educational org;anJizatl0l.1b,>,31 As a matter, NGOs have had exe~ffii:ltion. VAT is assessed at the of and vendors are unwilling to entertain about since are held accountable to the tax service under trust-like In pracfor a VAT refund. However, entities thmughtice, NGDs would have to too wen that the way to a tax audit know is to a refund, Properly Tax. The tax is based on aU assets reflected on an I"nirp ....w;c .. balance including fIXed and assets. Under Kazakh and Uzbek tax legislations, nonprofit organizations pay property tax only on property used in business activities, The tax is imposed at the rate of Yz of the value of the property in Kazakhstan and at the rate of 4 in Uzbekistan. 3s

The Legal Regulation ofNGOs

53

Tax Benefits to Companies and Individuals Making Donations to Nonprofits Tax legislation in the CAU generally provides a basis for a claim of deduction or credit against the taxable income of commercial entities and/or individuals on account of qualifying charitable contributions. Please note that Kyrgyz tax legislation extends this tax benefit only to individuals. By contrast, pursuant to Uzbek tax legislation, this tax benefit is applicable only to legal entities. Under Kazakh tax legislation, both legal entities and individuals are entitled to the above-mentioned tax benefit The total amount of contributions which can be deducted from the taxable income of commercial entities and individuals, however, should not exceed 2 percent of taxable income (in Uzbekistan 1 percent), and even these contributions must be given to specific nonprofit organizations for specific purposes (e.g., donations to charitable and ccologica.l organizations, public associations for the disabled, and religious organizations).39 For example, if a commercial entity in Kazakhstan bas taxable income of$10,OOO and makes a charitable contribution oUI,OOO, the company may deduct only $200 from its taxable income. These provisions are fairly new and the local tax authorities have developed sporadic enforcement standards and frequently seem skeptical about claims of charitable contributions. Contributions cannot be carried forward and tax deductions cannot be deferred to a subsequent year. Unlike most Western countries, the tax system of the CAU does not allow a carryover of any contributions, so that a tax deduction may not be deferred to a subsequent year (the same solution is taken by the tax legislation of the Russian Federation).4Q As applied in Kyrgyzstan, the system bas been even more drastic, with local tax inspectorates claiming that quarterly accounting without carry forward is required. In the United States, for instance, while a corporation is limited to charitable contributions of 10 percent of its taxable income, any contnbutions ineligible in a given year for deduction may be carried forward for up to five succeeding years, subject to certain limitations. While these corporate benefits are better than none, they are unlikely to stimulate more corporate giving. Few domestic commercial entities now claim charitable donatious because declaration of such contrIbutions only draws attention to their income and potentially subjects them to greater tax scrutiny. Grants Received by Nonprofit Organizations. Kyrgyz and Uzbek tax legislation lacks provisions governing domestic and foreign grants to nonprofit organizations. According to Kazakb tax legislation, no profit tax shall be levied on grants to nonprofit organizations.'" Kazakh tax legislation explicitly provides that grants received for charitable purposes and utilized for purposes other than

54

S. Horton and A. Kazakina

to taxation. In received from charities for their charitable purposes are i"xp'm.."t.~ri from profit tax. In the Cabinet of Ministers has are exempt, infomlal clarification to the effect that foreign-source at least pending more formal law-making on the lOU"J""", Conclusion and Recommendations

orgamz:abons in the their in the since face serious obstacles in Central Asia. We should re{;kon with the likelihood that a substantial number of local NGOs will fail fonowing donor assistance. Efforts in the interinl should be the withdrawal "''''''''.'''n"" a basis for sm;talnalnUty will play an important role in this process. The CAU nOj.JUVJ",-,,,, have taken some important toward a which nrtun."t,. the sector. much more needs to be done. Comand reJiOf!l;anlzatlolls need to be adopted in the immediate future. Although such must foHow in the of the Civil Codes, further guidance is needed with to the and reorganization their amnolmy to engage in commercial activities 'Wtl'fH)'l1' J';v~..:u,..u.IU14 status, and the tax treatment of nonprofits. Since current tax fails to encourage charitable giving, it is important to further enhance incentives for individual and corpowill not be taxed. It is as well as provide that also to provide for fundamental tax advantages for nonprofit zations and to ensure that bona fide receive the benefits of tax ex~:ml)tlll!ns. to Public Associations Laws, taken as a group, we recomWith elirninatulg the and of the mend: charter of a association note as the approach taken the Russian Federation, whose law "On Public Associations" eliminated the prior which for requirement), and state into activities of public
Environmental NOOs

101

fanners how to use the vermiculture reCjl1Illqu~~s and provide them with a "starter kit" OfWOrnlS. Additionally, Taza-Gul has marketed the biohnmus to dacha owners and others with the viable and its sustainability.33 While the ofNGO-government takes place at the local level, a few environmental NGOs are working with government at the national for a coalition of more than environmental level. In NGOs, caned the Citizens' Council on the has teamed up with the Minister advising him on national environmental issues. The group also lobbies the to support international acts and international conventions on the environment. Among their successes are the passage of a 1996 environmental education law and the increase in size of the Balka 54 have also lobbied the and the Council and an ('{\1nt-P'''PTlf',P ad,:lrel,SlIlg the International Convention on Desertififor the next session of the cation. Ratification of the Convention is Parliament. the in cooperation with the International Center for Not-for-Profit l.J1W reworked an alternative law on social org;amlZations and submitted it to the parliament for discussion, which will take at the [aU 1998 session ofparliarnent. 35 PpT'h",~" the most of environmental NGO-government collaboration involves the Almaty-based group, Green Salvation, which has been instrumental in the of three new nature protection laws in Kazakhstan. Green Salvation was invited by the to participate in WOlfKllltg groups that developed legislation, which resulted in the passage of the Assessments and the Law on Protected Law on Environmental ,",U,,'''''''Y pruttlC:lP,LtU1lg in the working group on a new draft law The reconunendations of the working group are passed on ""'rTi~i",'>nt as it reviews the draft that NGO opinion is heard at go'Velnlllelltt. 36

Establishing International Contacts The fmal element in successful environmental NGO contributions to civil is the of international contacts. While environmental NGOs tend to be most successful when the establishment of an international network is a tool ill for the concerns of a conununity. international networking frequently through discussion with locally-based international NGOs or and grows through e· as activists access infonnation resources not otllerwise available to them.

J02

Kate Watters collea.gm~s around the enables environmentaljsts to take "rt,...".-h",nti ..." outside of their immediate communities. Such con-

provides a network of colleagues for collaborative work, but also to new through 1:ellovvSflms and abroad programs. The opportunity to travel to other countries and witness fIrsthand-~and participate in-the envirollmental movements, and scientifIc communities provides environmental activists with invaluable It also enables them to educate their international vV'W~b~'~" about little understood Central Asian issues. of Central Asia's "tr'~'HJ, .."t environmental leaders have had just such international experience. travel to Russia and other parts ofthe as wen as to and the United environmental NGO leaders not only but skills orgi.miZa!tioxls and their communities when return home. The NGO cmUHl.QD, "-'....'in'.." , is comprised of leading Central Asian b10diconservationists who work to ensure Central Asian into international Biostan has in international !)m«ll,,'ers~lty conservation conferences, one on combating de~,ert.ll:l(;atl.on, members of the group attended the 1995 mCN conference in H>l"U",uau, ilitv with international donors that to demonstrate in their own countries. Because so have the few Western foundations are prepared to fund in Central Asia, it is extremely that activists from the have the opportunity to meet with those funders who are supporting, or considering supporting, PfO!lects in their countries. Another critical component of successful international networking is the opportunity for Central Asian environmental to work in pal1:rH~rsli1ip with international NGOs. in the envIronmental V;'lclV'. and patronage are of the same type as before the USSR and have reshaped, from inside, the Soviet local apparatus. Even at the economic level, a symbiosis was found between the Soviet system and traditional patterns of collective tenure (according to a qawm system) and private plots. The concept of a collective land tenure based on an identity group coupled with private plots owned by a father and his sons (even married).

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which bas been inherited from the past, bas been repeated within the kolkhoz system. (Houses of the sons are often built on the father's plot.) By eliminating the "Begs" and "Khans," the Soviet system paradoxically upheld the local "communities» against a process of social and economic differentiation. which. for example, bas unraveled neighboring Afghani.stan:~ This does not mean that social and cultural differentiation ceased to exist. The prestigious families (pir and ;shan, or religious leaders, and khwaja, a sort of aristocracy with religious legitimization) retained their prestige but generally lost their economic position-except the ones. like the ashrafofKhojent, who managed to enter, after the purges of 1937, the top levels of the local Soviet apparatus. In particular many religious families (affiliated to a Sufi brotherhood) retain their social status inside the kolkhoz system.' In a word, the kolkhoz system is "traditional," not only as a "Soviet" system but also as the expression of a Muslim segmented society superficially reshaped along Soviet administrative lines, whose main achievement was to create administrative and political stakes for this segmentation (power inside the Party's structures). Although the government directed and planned the kolkhoz's production, state control inside the kolkhoz amounted to almost nothing in terms of police and intelligence. The kolkhoz was dependent on the state in many respects: inputs (gas, fuel, seeds, fertilizer, etc.), marketing, accountability, etc. Accounting was done by the state banks, prices and production quotas were fixed by the state, etc. But the kolkhoz was rather autonomous in its domestic management. Generally, no security forces (militias and KGB) were based in the kolkhoz and sometimes even not in the surrounding "Soviet of villages.'06 The agent of the state was supposed to be the local party apparatus, but an party members were by definition kolkhoz members, bom and brought up in the place, with family links to all the would-be "enemies of the people," such as the mullahs. Although the kolkhoz had its own hierarchy and conflicts (because of the prevalence of some clans and families), it protected its members from outside encroachments. Religious practice was in fact alive inside the kolkhoz, and the mullah. known by everybody, was simply registered as a "brigadist" or tractof driver. This protection extends today outside the kolkhoz. Kolkhoz members who settle in cities benefit from the kolkhoz's protection. through a network of patronage inside the republican party structure. Does a kolkhoz member have a problem in finding ajob or getting out of the grip of the militia? Call the kolkhoz chairman, hoping that he might pull strings. In Central Asia, unlike in Russia, the basis of political power is always linked with regional networks of rural apparatchiks. Is there a threat in town, fOf any reason? Take asylum in the kolkhoz. This is how three generations of mullahs have been able to survive. On the other band, the apparatchiks who succeeded in town will help their fellow kolkhozians. Unlike in Russia, most of the present political leaders of Central

Kolkhoz and Civil Society in Central Asia's Independent States

115

Asia have a rural background and often a "home-kolkhoz." But of course this creates a lot of differences between well-connected kolkhozes and the others, which in both cases leads to a growing self-identity, for the best or the worst. Every child of a kolkhozian is a member of the community, even if he moves to town. Even in this case, be is entitled to get a kolkhozian private plot and house. This explains why, when asked about the number or"kolkhozians," kolkhoz leaders give two figures: the "population" of the kolkhoz and the "workers" of the kolkhoz, with usually a ratio often to one between the former and the latter. For example, the Lenin kolkhoz in Dushanbe bas 26,000 "inhabitants" and 1,400 "workers," and at the Rasbidov kolkhoz in Kasansoy (Uzbekistan), the ratio is 22,000 to 2,000. 7 Kolkhoz leaders are seen more as the new notables than as party apparatchiks. Leadership was usually held inside the same family. Kolkhoz chairmen have many ways to extract perks. They have the better houses and cars. But they behave more as traditional notables than as apparatchiks eager to live in a different society, as did their Russian counterparts. A Russian apparatchik likes indoor cozy restaurants, apart from the workplace, to enjoy private parties with friends. Central Asian notables look for conspicuous feasts and lavish banquets (my) with as much of their constituency as they can afford. Private events (a son's circumcision, children's weddings) are celebrated in public and are part of the legitimization of the notables. A part of their wealth used to be redistributed among kolkhozians. Independence bas probably accentuated this social role of the former apparatchiks, which runs against the logic of privatization, that is, of a society of individuals without groups and notables. s There was no turnover of kolkhoz leaders in Central Asia. The leading families were well-rooted in the local population (sometimes they had ties to an older leadership, tribal or religious; sometimes they were descended from the elites created by the Bolshevik Revolution). Abdulfatab Otanazarov came to Dushanbe from Fergana in 1931, founded the Lenin kolkhoz in Dushanbe in 1953 and headed it until the eighties. Still alive and well respected in 1993, he had fifty-eight descendants. among them the present chairman. This importance of the "dynasties" of kolkhoz leaders is expressed by the changing of names after independence-the Soviet name is often dropped in favor of that of the founding father or of the chairman who shaped the kolkhoz's identity during the post-Stalin era. In the village of Zilkha (Fergana) the Lenin kolkhoz thus became "Kinjabaiev"; in Kulab, kolkhoz Sbatalov (a Red Army commander) became Zarifov. Another pattern is the return to the old name of the village. Less frequently the Soviet name was retained, specifically when the kolkhoz was built on reclaimed lands that had no historical names (Rah-i Lenin near Khojent, Lenin Yolu in Kasansoy).

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In sum., a kolkhoz should be seen, even during Soviet times, as almost a "tribal" unit, with a sense of a common identity based on solidarity and loyalty to its leaders, whose links with the state were supposed to benefit the whole community. This sense of a common identity went further than the usual social protection and paternalism given by any Soviet enterprise. How did it work after independence?

Autonomy in the Kolkhoz and the Households: The Ijam System The end of the Soviet system meant first the end of automatic state support. The predicaments of the kolkhoz are well known and have been worsening since perestroika and independence: lack of new lands and irrigation water, overcrowding, low productivity, no access to cash and foreign currency. Few people were eager to leave the kolkhoz for fear of becoming isolated and left without support. It is important to note that throughout Central Asia, politics in rural areas have little to do with democracy and human rights but more with networks of patronage. To be a member of an "identity group" is seen as the best protection against rival groups or state encroachments. Two logics are at work for the rural Central Asian: to keep the kolkhoz as an umbrella, as his own "tribe," and to promote inside the kolkhoz his own solidarity group, usually the awlad. The bulk of peasants endeavor to get more autonomy for their family inside the kolkhoz framework, but are reluctant to sever their ties with it. At the same time, many (but not all) kolkhoz leaders understood that in order to improve productivity, they had to give up the ''brigade system" and give more autonomy to the extended family. How to improve production and still maintain or even reinforce the traditional solidarity group? A system appeared in most of the republics, with common patterns even if expressed in different legal terms, because of the variety of national laws. That is the sharecropping system of ijara. Under the ijara, the kolkhoz remains the ultimate owner of the land, but plots are allocated to an extended family on a long-term basis (usually five to twenty years). The group makes a contract with the kolkhoz, which usually includes some of the state's requirements in terms of production quotas. The kolkhoz provides materials (tractors, seeds, fertilizers, water) and the crop is shared according to the input of the entire kolkhoz. Peasants can sell on the market their part of any surplus. Interestingly, this system is close to a traditional sharecropping system still in use in Afghanistan (the "fifth" system, whereby a sharecropping contract divides the crop in five supposedly equal parts corresponding to land, water, seeds. plow, and labor). Many other elements of this system are also reminiscent of the customary "Muslim" agriCUltural system ("mulk." private property; -amlak or miri, state lands

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allocated to individuals with a hereditary customary right of occupancy; -ihya, right of appropriation for redeemed land), even if not expressed as such. The ijara system is more in line with pre-Soviet customs of sharecropping than with modem forms oflease and cash payments. Although gara may stimulate productivity, it does not solve many of the kolkhoz's familiar problems (overpopulation, lack of cash, excessive dependence on the state for inputs, bottlenecks in transportation). Thus many kolkhoz chairmen are trying to develop other activities to employ the local manpower while strengthening the kolkhoz's autonomy. They usually try to engage in small agro-processing industries, which use local product and export it to cities or even abroad. They also try to make deals with external business partners and even foreign firms (for buying seeds, for example). The need for productivity and diversification pushes them toward business, entrepreneurial management, and small-scale industrialization. The consequence is that many local leaders, although apparatchiks, are looking for more autonomy toward the state-access to foreign currency, the right to go on the market, an end of the quota system, or the right to be paid at market prices. These nea-notables have more political weight and connections than private farmers. But they are no longer the emissaries of a central bureaucracy, because their interests are now divergent. They are surely politically conservative and linked to networks of patronage, but the interests of the urban ruling elites are more and more disconnected from those of the kolkhozian. The state wants to extract from the peasantry industrial crops (cotton), while farmers prefer food crops. In fact, the interests of the state and the kolkhozes are nowadays on a divergent path. As usual, the states are more concerned with industrialization and urban development (or at worst with corruption and perks made on foreign contracts, customs duties, and privatization) than with the welfare of the countryside. The state is looking first for cheap raw materials and is not ready to invest in the agricultural system. It imposes on the kolkhozes accountability requirements which are an obstacle to development and prevent the kolkhoz from going directly to the market. In political terms, the new state bureaucracy is less and less based on rural networks. During Soviet times the Communist parties of the Muslim republics did not have access to the "statist" means of power (army, security forces, custom duties); they were obliged to rely on rural networks of support, from whence they originated. Now that the inheritors of the apparat have access to these traditional state instruments, they need less support from the countryside. So while Central Asia's nations remain rural, their elites are becoming increasingly urban. What we see in many kolkhozes. but not in aU, is the emergence of a new kind of manager: the "apparatchik-farmer" who endeavors to modernize his

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kolkhoz by diversifying its production, giving more flexibility and autonomy to the peasants, and going to the market as an autonomous economic actor. Such a kolkhoz tries to retain its sociological basis and to become an actor in a free economy. But they need to bypass the state and to find customers and counterparts elsewhere. The only ones they have sometimes found are small Western private enterprises. As far as I know no program sponsored by NGOs. the IMF, or the EuroPean Bank has taken a look at this process. But, even if these entrepreneurial chairmen are in a minority, their approach has merit because it does not have the drawbacks of straight privatization. How to Follow IMF Injunctions and Preserve the Social Fabric: WIndow Dressing Privatizations

Refotmist kolkhoz management runs into two oppositions: the political will of the state or some regional apparatchiks who want to keep the kolkhoz under administrative control, and the politics of liberalization launched by the IMP, which is based on individuals not solidarity groups. Reform policy can destroy the fabric of rural society, to the benefit not necessarily of a new class of private entrepreneurs but of local Mafia and the "nouveaux riches." States officially approve of IMF injunctions, but fear extensive privatization and usually turn a blind eye on the particular way a so-called privatization has been undertaken. In fact, the campaign of privatization in Central Asia, when it has been officially launched with state support (as in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan), has apparently regularly been diverted by the local structures. Let us take an example in Uzbekistan: officially the law encourages kolkhozians to leave the kolkhoz and to get land. They are classified asjermir (farmers) and given access to loans and private bank accounts. In fact, a review of the process in the Fergana district (May 1997), shows that most of these "private farmers" have contracts of the ijara type, and do not hold full title to the land. Around 95 percent of the "farmers" (who themselves account for some 6.5 percent ofkolkhoz families) in the district ofFergana are called ijaradagijermirler, farmers with a leasing contract. usually of twenty years, and they still retain their kolkhoz membership. Only a handful of farmers are totally independent (mustakil jermirler), but even they cannot sell the land. In some cases it seems that the kolkhoz itselfhas encouraged some of its members to apply for the status of "private farmers" in order to get access to credits which are not bestowed on kolkhozes. It is a frequent pattern to see some privatization being done according to the nature of the agricultural activities: herders tend to go private more often than cotton growers. One interpretation is that cotton growers are still under state constraints (for use of machinery; fertilizer. pesticides, and other inputs; quotas of production; and state fixed prices).

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But a closer examination shows that things are more complicated. It is true that herding kolkhozes are more often tribally organized than the others, but it is not a general law (cotton-growing kolkhozes might also be organized along a traditional segmentation as in Turkmenistan). It is also true that most peasants would like to get rid of compulsory cotton growing and are not eager to grow cotton on privately owned lands. But if we look more closely at the patterns of privatization. we obtain another explanation. Herders more easily go private because there is less irrigated land involved (that is, "real" land). For example, the Zarkent kolkhoz (in Marghelan, Fergana), which owns 5,000 hectares (half in cotton and wheat), is a very conservative one and as of 1997 was still organized into brigades. Notwithstanding that all the herders (that is thirteen families) went ''private,'' all are still ''members'' of the kolkhozes. The first reason is that together they used only 130 hectares, the privatization of which does not deprive the kolkhoz of any valuable lands. The other reason (not mentioned by the kolkhoz leaders) is that the "private herders" have access to loans in cash, which are not provided to the kolkhozes. Given the close ties between the "privatized ones" and the others, it seems that the loans are in fact collectively used. By the same token, the sixty families cultivating the orchards of this kolkhoz made an association of ''farmers'' under ijara. Thus the bulk of the land remains in kolkhoz bands, but this double-standard privatization nevertheless supports the government's statistics on privatization.imd allows the kolkhoz to use some of the facilities "given away" for privatization. In a word, privatization is accomplished in a way which does not alter the traditional patterns of the collective identity, and eventually is used to "divert" the incentives of privatization toward more collective needs. This is a typical case of "window dressing privatization." Of course, this does not mean that most of the privatizations follow this pattern. In other cases, people wanting to go private belong to suppressed or excluded segments, which explains their exit from the kolkhoz. In many other cases there is a discrepancy between the beneficiaries of the "official" privatization, that is a single household (or nuclear family), and the way people tend to recreate (or to revert to) traditional extended families, bound with solidarity ties. I do not have statistics to offer, because most of the available figures are prepared by actors with vested interests. However. I think the ambiguous ways that privatizations occur in the field is a matter worth exploring. On the other band, even the window dressing privatizations are part of a process of ''reappropriation" by the existing society, which is a positive fact, even if the result might be more the re-creation of new "Begs" than the birth of independent private farmers. To summarize, privatization in Central Asia. when implemented, does not mean at all the creation of a new class of individual actors, market-oriented and

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supporting democracy and direct representation. In fact. almost everywhere it seems that so-called privatization has respected the traditional networks and solidarity groups. In Kazakhstan, the discrepancy in privatization figures between the different oblasts show that many of these privatizations are certainly window dressing. In Kyrgyzstan, there are stories that "privatized" land has many times been attributed to koJkhoz chairmen (which,. by the way, reminds one of the process of privatization in tribal areas at the time of French or British colonization, when the cadastrial survey attributed the common lands to tribal elders). Enforcing privatization is not necessarily leading to the emergence of a class of individual farmers. It might lead to the destruction of the rural social fabric at the expense of the bulk of the kolkhozians, who could be turned into tenant farmers or wage laborers. The kolkhoz maintains social safeguards and even a kind of "political protection" for its members. It is undoubtedly the basis of a civil society in rural areas. The problem is, of course, the ambivalent nature of such a kolkhoz, for it also promotes social and economic conservatism. A successful transition depends on the leadership of the kolkhoz, which could react to the transition in very different ways. But any real reform in rural areas should start from the existing society and not endeavor first to destroy it. A possible policy would be to encourage the kolkhozes, which are trying to modernize and diversify their structures, to become some kind of "cooperative" of autonomous farmers, with an elected leadership, like the cooperatives in Western Europe. which join in several activities (buying seeds and fertilizers. food processing, canning, marketing) and also have a separate legal existence (trademark, right to proceed in courts and to borrow money, etc.). Democratization should start from inside the kolkhoz. The kolkhoz, even under another name or in another guise, will remain for a while the expression of a "nco-traditional" social fabric in Central Asian rural areas. It should be reformed, but respected for what it is: a safeguard, a source of protection (social, economic, and political) from the state or other power (Mafia), but also as a way for autonomous farmers to be inserted into the new economic order.

Notes l. For an in-depth field study of modem kolkhozes in Turkmenistan. see Bertrand Bouchet, ''Tribus d'autrefois, kolkbozes d'aujourd'hui:' Des ethnies aux nations en Asie centrale, ed. O. Roy, Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Meditemmee, January 1992,

Aix en Provence.

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2. Valentin Bushkov, ''The Population of Northern TlYikistan between 1870 and 1990," in State, Religion and Society in Central Asia, ed. Vitaly NalJll'lkin, Ithaca Press, 1995. 3. For a more compJete analysis of the translation of solidarity groups see Olivier Roy, La Nouvelle Asie centrale ou la Fabrication des nations, Le Seuil, Paris, 1997 (to be published in English by Tauris). 4. Jon Anderson, ''There Are No Kh/ins Anymore," Middle East Journal, no. 32, 1978. 5. The Lenin kolkhoz in Dushanbe "owns" the shrine ofYaqub Charkhi, a Muslim "saint" who introduced Naqshbandism in the area in the fifteenth century. During the Soviet period, the shrine was officially changed into a museum and attended by caretakers, who were in fact from "holy" families, but were paid as local employees. As a rule, many people with Jlin, lshlin and zade in their names are members of such religious families. 6. Which means that for a population of sometimes 20,000, there was no representative of the police or security forces, a ratio largely superior to French rural areas, for example. 7. Any kolkhoz mentioned in this paper without footnote was studied during my fieldwork in Central Asia from 1990 to 1997. 8. This traditional redistribution of wealth in exchange for prestige and allegiance does not make sense in Russia. For the extension of the system after independence in Kazakhstan, see Cynthia Ann Werner, ''Marketing Gifts: Economic Change in a Kazakh Village," Central Asia Monitor, no. 6, 1997.

Prospects for Development of an Independent Media in Kazakhstan Oleg Katsiev

T

he history of independent media development in Kazakhstan reveals many of the obstacles to the emergence of civil in Central Asia, In the circumstances of transition from the Soviet system, where individuals' constitutional and freedoms are only gradually being established and there is still insufficient check on abuse of authority, th.c media can critical role. the has to the initial n"",... ""n_ ment of independent private media by increasing its control over infonnation and limiting the views and criticism of govemment officials and 'Illis essay reviews the history of media in Kazakhstan since its and focuses in on the tender process that was initiated for the licensing of broadcasting The slg:mtllCaJlce of the tender process has been ignored by those in the West who wish to see democratic development in Kazakhstan and by Kazakh citizens. This essay argues that the process has with a tool to enforce its control over the broadcast media, The implications of this for Kazakhstan and more It."""""~uy for Central Asia are very serious. When the Soviet Union each of the newly independent countries inherited an information structure that had both advantages and drawbacks, In summary, the features of this structure were as follows: centralization of information sources, fmanced the state budget and the Communist Party and then state institutions; controlled traditional style of Soviet and agitation reflecting the pnon1t!es of Communist ideology; [ec.nn()lOjglCal backwardness in equipment and the means of infomlation limited resources tor setHlnal1clng, in the absence of a developed market and due to 1T''''V1''\,'''''''",T\f''P in money mdl.epen,1elJltly of the state budget; lack of a framework regulating the information industries, Of· nrirn'~rv lfnnn,rt,,,,,·p has been the continuation for state-run radio and where the state's interests rather than citizens' pn~Iel~en.lces held sway, The state owns all the technical equipment-~ brc!aocru,tnI,g centers, satellite facilities, and the like. Since very few :arl,vprtt~lrn(J

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private enterprises could afford their own transmission facilities, to operate they would have to lease equipment from the government. Given budgetary constraints in a period of economic transition, though, government control and financing have not meant adequate funding for equipment upgrades or the purchasing or development of new programs. For private radio and television to have the fInancial means to innovate and maintain its independence is increasingly the exception. Another feature of the broadcasting scene in Central Asia since independence has been the continued access to television originating in Russia. This has both positive and negative effects. On the positive side, Russian television is at a higher technical and creative level than that originating in Central Asia. For local stations to compete for audience, they must either make shows better than the Russian ones--a difficult task for want of finances and qualified professionals-or develop completely different material based on local material and traditions. Since Kazakhstan has such a high percentage of ethnically Russian and Russian-speaking population compared with other Central Asian countries, the «Russian legacy" has been partly responsible for the more rapid development of the electronic media there than in the other Central Asian countries. Unfortunately, the response to the challenge of Russian broadcasting has more typically been to take advantage of its relative popularity and accessibility and make little effort to develop alternative programming. To the degree that other programming is offered by local stations it may involve largely the broadcast of pirated copies of foreign movies. Thus any "creative" effort is confIned to local advertising spots. While, as we shall see, the local authorities wish to take advantage of the Russian broadcasting for their own financial gain, at the same time increasingly the government and relatively broad segments of society have reacted negatively to the content of the Russian programming. Russian stations are not bound by the same political constraints (at least insofar as Central Asian politics are concerned) as the local Central Asian stations. Thus political commentary on the Russian channels may be unacceptable. Entertainment on those stations often caters to the worst of popular taste for violence and erotica; a broad spectrum of society-government officials, Muslim clergy, writers and public fIgures, and especially the older generation in the population at large-react very negatively to this. One response to these problems of the Russian broadcasts is to limit their distrIbution through state-controlled television. At the same time, given the signifIcant proportion of Russian population in Kazakhstan and the popularity of much of the programming, it is politically inexpedient for the government to consider seriously switching off the Russian signal. Rather, in 1998 the state supported creation of a local company, "ORT Kazakhstan,» which rebroadcasts

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programs from the Russian ORT but sells its own ",i.,prilnlHg the former. As President Karimov has noted: ··1r!Cf{~S.m2 "1)1'U ...."U values have enabled us to take a new approach towards values the Jevaluation of concept and of social development, and [the] whole process of reformation and renewal:,01

Notes Political Culture and Civil I. Vladimir Tismaneanu, in Russia and the NY: M, E. p.4. New States Chan(lllo,ke, State and Civil in Political 2. Publications p, 9. Edward "Nation, nationalism and civil society," Nations and NatlOrla.lI.sm, vol. 1,no. I, 1995,p.1l6. 4. Michael Moscow's Muslim C'h,alltmge, revised edition NY: p.87. M.E. 5. 6. No other colonial power attempted to although there were instances where Islmn to political as in While the French administration to crush the mS1urgcnc;y there never was a for the wholesale elimination of Islam and its rf'nlfl",r>m,r>nrhy an alternative loeolo'gy. 7. One of votive witnessed is connected to the enormous Koran stand located within in Samarkand. Near the stand are several trees, in which are often tied on them, S. There are numerous examples, n~,t,c,,,lllriv a Wahhabi cm;.1ern Uztle~(Jstan. See Leon Aron, "The movement in Central Asia and, in Issue, Soviet Union's Soft Muslim Central

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1990, pp. 43-46; Merhdad Haghayeghi, Islam and Politics in Central Asia (New York: Sf. Martin's Press, 1995), pp. 92-95; I. Ermakovand D. Mikul'skii, Islam v rossii i srednei azii (Moscow: "Lotos," 1993), pp. 225-35. 9. An excellent refutation of the fundamentalist scenario may be found in Roger D. Kangas, "The Three Faces ofIslam in Uzbekistan," and Lowell Bezanis, "Exploiting the Fear of Militant Islam," both in TransiJion, vol. I, no. 24, (29 December 1995). 10. Alexei V. Malashenko. "Islam and Politics in the Southern Zone of the Fonner USSR," in Central Asia and Transcaucasia: Etlmicity and Conflict, ed. Vitaly V. Naumkin (Westport, Cf: Greenwood Press. 1994). p. 117. 11. For more on the origins of the term "Salt" and Central Asian history in general, see Elisabeth Bacon, Central Asians under Russian Rule: A Study in Culture Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966), pp. 17-18. and OIafCaroe, Soviet Empire (New York: St Martin's. 1967), p. 39. 12. Reports in 1989 that the Meshketian Turks, a Muslim minority living in the Fergana Valley, were mostly Shiite and that bloody clashes between them and the Uzbeks were the result of SunnilShia conflict were in error. The majority of Meshketians are Sunnt. A good discussion of the Meskhetians may be found in S. Enders Wimbush and Ronald Wixman, "The Meshketian Turks: A New Voice in Central Asia," Canadian Slavonic Papers, vol. 17, nos. 2 and 3,1975. 13. See Ann Sheehy, "The Andizban Uprising of 1898 and Soviet Historiography," Central Asian Review. vol. 14, no. 2,1966, pp. 139-50. 14. Daria Fane, "Ethnicity and Regionalism in Uzbekistan," in Ethnic Conflict itl the Post-Soviet World: Case Studies and Analysis. ed. Leokadia Drobizheva, Rose GottemoelIer, Catherine McArdle Kelleher, and Lee Walker (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996), p. 279. IS. A general discussion of the Jadids may be found in Helene Carrere d'Encausse's chapter entitled "Social and Political Reform." in Central Asia: 120 Years ofRussian Rule. ed. Edward Allwortb. (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1989). For a more detailed account of one of the leading Uzbek Jadids, see Christopher Murphy, "Abdullah Qadiriy and the Bolsheviks," in Muslims in Central Asia: Expressions ofIdentity and Change. ed. Jo-Ann Gco!!S (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1992). 16. Of course, during the latter years of the Khrushchev period, there was a renewed crackdown on religion. 17. This is not to argue that some aspects of Islam were not affected by Soviet efforts at eradication. Data collected on religious fasting among women indicate a large generational gap, with most women born in the 1920s and 1930s observing the fast, while less than 20 percent of those born in the late 1960s do. See Magali Barbier, Alain Blum, Elena Dolkigh, and Amon Ergashev, "Nuptiality, Fertility, Use of Contraception, and Family Policies in Uzbekistan," Population Studies, vol. SO, no. 1,1996, p. 74. 18. I. A. Makatov, "Novyi podkhod neobkhodim," Nauka i reiigila, no. 8, 1988, p.43. 19. S. L. Nigai, "Razvitie sotsialisticheskoi obriadnosti kale faktora sovershenstvovaniia mezbnatsional'nykh otnoshenii v usloviiakh obnovleniia sotsializma," Obshchutvennye nauki v Uzbekistane, no. 2, 1990, p. 26. 20. V. Imlov, "Kuda vedetulitsa vedushchaia k khramu"" Sovetskaia Kirgiziia, December 1'6, 1987, p. 3. 21. Abdujabar Abduvakhitov. "Islamic Revivalism in Uzbekistan," In Russia's Muslim Frontiers: New Directians in Cross-Cultural Analysis. ed. Dale F. Eickelman (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993), pp. 82-83.

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Reuef Hanks 22. Ibid., p. 8t. 23. Ibid., p. 83. 24. L. Usmanov, "Opredelit Ii 'Islamskii faktor' budushchee strany?" Nezavisimaia

Gazeta, January 6, 1994, p. 3. 25. Mebrdad Hagbayeghi, Islam and Politics in Central Asia (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), p. 96. 26. Ibid., p. 97. 27. Alexei MaIashenko, "Islam and Politics in the Southern Zone of the Former USSR." In Central Asia and Transcaucasia: Ethnicity and Conflict. ed. VitaIy V. Naumkin (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 1994), p. Ill. 28. Haghayeghi, Islam and Politics, p. 99. 29. One can often guess the ethnicity of a woman on the streets of Tashkent from her physical appearance. Jeans or a dress above the knee and discernable makeup will virtually always be the mark of Slavic, Korean, or Armenian women. The majority of Uzbek and other Muslim women typically wear ankIe~length dresses and little make~up in public. Some in the old city ofTasbkent and other more traditional locations appear only in hijab. 30. While teaching in Uzbekistan in 1995. I heard several accounts from students and colleagues of parents and/or grandparents being forced to drink or eat during Ramadan, of pressures to publicly consume alcohol during Communist Party or Komsomol functions. etc. 31. The figures collected tend to support some of the Soviet data gathered on the subject offasting. See T. S. Saidbaev. Islam i obshchestvo (Moscow: Nauka, 1978). p. 180. 32. Alexandre Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Muslims o/the Soviet Empire (Bloomington,IN: Indiana University Press, 1986), p. 12 33. M. A. Tolmacheva, "The Muslim Woman in Soviet Central Asia," Central Asian Su~, vol. 12, no. 4. 1993, p. 534. 34. Ibid., p. 537. 35. I conducted this survey while teaching on a Fulbright lectureship in Tashkent in the faIl of 1995. 36. Sergei Poliakov, Everyday Islam: Religion and Tradition in Rural Central Asia (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. 1992), p. 78. 37. Ibid" p. 111. 38. Ibid., p. 77. 39. Ibid., p. 78. Poliakov claims that private real estate transactions may be blocked by the mahana, thereby preventing those who might wish to leave the neighborhood from doing so. 40. Alexei V. MaIashenko, "Islam and Politics in the Southern Zone of the Former USSR," in Central Asia and Transcaucasia: Ethnicity and Conflict, ed. VitaIy V. Naumkin (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), p. 110. 41. Keith Griffin. ed., Social Po/icy and Economic Trans/ormation in Uzbekistan (United Nations Development Programme; International Labour Office, 1996). p. 151. 42. Alan Godlas, "The Life and Teachings of the Uzbek-Herati Naqshbandi shaykh known as Sufi Islam: a Window into the history and worldviews of 19th Century Central Asia," The Journal a/Central Asian Studies, vol. 2, no. 2 (SprioglSummer 1998). 43, Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. For this information I am indebted to Prof. Hurram Barakaev, the director of the Khoja Akrarfund. who gave me a tour of the complex in the summer of 1998.

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46. This phrase is from the organization's charter. 47. ERK (published in Tashkent), July 17, 1992, p. 2. 48. Anatoly Khazanov, After the USSR: Ethnicit>', Nationalism. and Politics in the Commonwealth 0/Independent States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, J995), p.138. 49. Daria Fane, "Ethnicity and Regionalism in Uzbekistan," in Ethnic Conflict in the post-Soviet World: Case Studies and Analysis. ed. Leokadia Drobizheva, Rose Gottemoener, Catherine McArdle Kelleher and Lee Walker (Armonk. NY: M. E. Sbarpe, 1996), pp. 282-83. 50. Nezavisimaya Gazeta, March 21,1992, p. 3. 51. Roger Kangas, "Recent Developments with Uzbek Political Parties," Central Asia Monitor, no. 4, 1992. 52. See James Critchlow, "Islam in Fergana Valley: The Wahhabi Threat," Report on the USSR, December 8, 1989, and Mebrdad Haghayeghi, Islam and Politics in Central Asia (New York: St Martin's Press, 1995), pp. 92-95. 53. See Mehrdad Haghayeghi, Islam and Politics in Central Asia (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995),92-95, and Abdujabar Abduvakhitov, "Islamic Revivalism in Uzbekistan," in Ruma '1£ Muslim Frontiers: New Directions in Cross-Cultural Analysis, edited by Dale F. Eickelman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). 54. The full text of the law appeared in Pravda Vostolm, February 26, 1991. 55. In July of 1992, Abdurahim Pulatov, one of the leaders ofBirlik. an opposition group, was savagely beaten in Tashkent and forced to flee the country. This followed several other assaults on the group's leadership, apparently with the approval and perhaps participation of government security forces. 56. Although the Uzbeks make up approximately 70 percent of the population, there are over 100 ethnic groups living in Uzbekistan. 57. Dialog, Tashkent: no. 8, 1991. pp. 74-79. 58. Tashkentskaia Pravda, January 21, 1998,7. Although great effort bas been made to replace Russian place names and terms with Uzbek equivaJents in Uzbekistan, Russian literary figures appear to be exempt from this trend, perhaps out ofrespect for their genius. The only two metro stations to retain Russian names in Tashkent, for example, are Pushkin and Gorky stations. 59. Islom Karimov, Uzbekiston: Along the Road 0/Deepening Economic Reform (fashkent Uzbekiston, 1995), p. 9. 60. Ibid., p. 26. 61. One of the members who had escaped a jail term related this information to me while I was in the Fergana Valley in October of 1995. 62. Martha Brill Olcott, "Central Asia's Islamic Awakening," Current History, April 1994, p. 154. 63. L. A. Bezanis, "Menace, Myth or Self-Fulfilling Prophecy? Reflections on the Islamic Threat and Forces Opposed to Theocratic Rule in Former Soviet CentraJ Asia," unpublished manuscript, September 1993, pp. 35-47. 60. Jtogi Vsesoiuznoi perepisi naselenia 1989 goda. Chislenost' i razmesbchenie naselenia SSSR. Chast I. Published by East~View Publications, Inc. 1992. 65. Bezanis, "Menance, Myth. or Self-FuIfiUing Prophecy?" p. 52. 66. Olcott, "Central Asia's Islamic Awakening," p. 154. 67. Karimov, Uzbekistan: Along the Road o/Deepening Economic Reform, p. 225.

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Bibliography Allworth, Edward. The Modern UzbeIrs: From the Fourteenth Century to the Present. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1990. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined C..ommunities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983. Chandhoke, Neera. State and Civil Society; Explorations in Political Theory. London: Sage Publications Ltd., 1995. Deweese, Devin. Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. 1994. Gellner, Ernest. Encounters with Nationalism. Cambridge. MA: Blackwell, 1994. Gleason, Gregory. The Central Asian States: Discovering Independence. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 1997. Griffin, Keith, cd. Social Policy and Economic Transformation in Uzbekistan. United Nations Development Programme, International Labour Office, April, 1995. Fierman, William, ed. Soviet Central Asia; The Failed Trans/ormation. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991. Haghayeghi, Mehrdad. Islam and Politics in Central Asia. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995. fsaacs, Harold R. Idols ofthe Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. Kaiser, Robert J. The Geography ofNationalism in Russia and the USSR. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Karimov, Islom. Uzbekistan: Along the Road ofDeepening Economic Reform. Tashkent: "Uzbekiston," 1995. Khazanov, Anatoly M. After the USSR: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Politics in the Commonwealth ofIndependent States. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. Kolstoe, Paul. Russians in the Former Soviet Republics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995. Lewis, Bernard. The Political Language ofIslam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 198B.

Mehmet, Ozay.lslamic Identity and Development: Studies ofthe Islamic Periphery. New York: Routledge, 1990. Pehe, Jiri. "After the Soviet Empire: Civil Society in Democratizing States." Current, March 1996. Poliakov, Sergei P. Everyday Islam: Religion and Tradition in Rural Central Asia. Ed. Martha Brill Olcott; trans. Anthony Olcott. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1992. Poznanski, Kazimierz Z., ed. Constructing Capitalism: The Reemergence ofCivil Society and Liberal Economy in the Post-Communist World. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992. Royce, Anya Peterson. Ethnic Identity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. Rywkin, Michael. Moscow's Muslim Chalknge. revised edition. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe,I990. Sagdeev, Roald, and Susan Eisenhower, eds. Central Asia: Conflict, Resolution, Change. Chevy Chase, MD: CPSS Press, 1995. Shlapentokh, Vladimir. Munir Sendich, and Emil Payin, eds. The New Russian Diaspora: Russian Minorities in the Former Soviet Republics. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994. Shtls, Edward. "Nation, nationality, nationalism and civil society," Nations and

Civil Society and Identity in Uzbekistan NatiOTIfJ/ism, vol. I, no. 1, 1995. Smith, Anthony D. Theories OfNationalism. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. :=-_--::.--:-:---:-_. The Ethnic Origins ofNations. New Yark: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Tapper, Richard. cd. Islam in Modem Turkey: Religion. Politics and Literature in a Secular State. New York: I. B. Tauris, J994. Tismaneanu, Vladimir, ed. Political Culture and Civil Society in Russia and the New States ofEurasia. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1995.

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Islam and Tajikistan's Human and Ecological Crisis Aziz

The material which lie in scientific and technical progress, with aU their ex~:epitlOnal U11lportance, will not solve the fate Scientific and teclmical progress will not bring happiness, if it is not supplemented by considerably in the social, moral and cultural life of humanity. The life the inner imJ:>eUl..'i of their activity are very difficult to predict, but this is oftbe human what in the end the wreck and upon.! civilization 1974

To the world at the catastrophic situation that has in Tajikistan is little understood. At the root of the strife which has dominated the news are serious While Islamic tradition in the counits nature and relationship to the current crisis are little appreciated. The of Western countries has been to model development on the values of industri.alized secular democracies. In traditional Islamic which are concerned with a balanced aPtlmllcl1 to human ae','el'oplneJlt and the conservation ofnatlIIal resources, may be the to stable long-term de'felc)prnerlt. This essay will review the naum:: of Islam in discuss the connection between the "Islamic revival" there and the crisis that in terms the way in which local tradition the and then propose in Inay hold the solution to of stable de'fe14lprneIlt.

Tradition [slam to the which is Tajikistan quite early on--in the second half of the seventh century. Toward the end of the The author is to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for its kind This article is adapted from Aziz "Islam in Tradition and ModJU:lj,xwn, State ajournal ofttle Keston Institute (Oxford, England), Issue}, 1998. With of Keston Institute. Its translation from Russian is Geraldine and Lola sections is by Daniel Waugh.

180

Islam and Tajikistan's Human and Ecological Crisis

181

century the dynamic new religion of the Arabs was already becoming established among a significant proportion of the population in the area between the rivers Amu Dar'ya and Syr Dar'ya. In the tenth century Islam became the state religion of the Samanid empire, which Tajik historians generally regard as the flI'St formation of the Tajik people into a state. The entrance of the Tajiks into the young, lively Islamic world was accompanied by the advent of high culture, flourishing scholarship. and the growth of the economy. This Central Asian territory between two rivers on the periphery of the Islamic world saw the development of a unique Islamic sub-civilization that combined the monotheistic tradition of Abraham with elements of ancient beliefs primarily linked with a settled, agricultural way of life. Philosophical, social, and moral thought reached unprecedented heights in Central Asia between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. This intellectual ferment came about under the influence of Sufism. which to a certain extent had distanced itself from the strict orthodoxy of scribes and lawmakers. The Sufis brought a fresh wave of spirituality into the Islamic tradition. The moral and social values they formulated permeate the whole of classical Tajik-Persian literature, which can be rightly regarded as the quintessence of Central Asian Islam. Nowadays, the Tajik peasant, mullah, engineer, or academic tries as a rule when discussing belief to support his arguments with the poetry of Jami, Saadi, Khaftza, Rumi, Rudaki, and other sages who brought together in their work the elevated philosophy of the unity of the universe, the folk epic, and fundamental morality. The Quran and Sunna were undoubtedly their main inspiration. Modem Tajik proverbs, sayings, and parables are full of Quranic and early Islamic motifs handed down through medieval poetry.2 At the basis of Islamic moral ideals is the socio-poJitical doctrine of the Naqshbandi, which is widespread among Tajik Sufis. It is better known locally under the name Khojagon.$ Condemning the asceticism of earlier mystic brotherhoods, the Naqshbandi urged fellow Muslims not to turn their backs on worldly problems and called upon their spiritual leaders to move close to thrones and exert all their influence on the ruling powers to prevent despotic rule over merchants, manufacturers, and the peasantry. With this as their aim, Khojagon sheikhs became mentors to sovereigns, attempting to implant in their souls the seeds of kindness, nobility of spirit, and the fear of God. They sometimes put quite heavy pressure on those who were excessively tyrannical, willful, and harsh in their treatmen.t of their subjects. This doctrine was particularly clearly manifest in the activities of the Naqsh-

bandi Sheikh Khoji Akhror. who by means of conviction and heavy pressure on rulers great and small succeeded in easing the Jives of simple folk by preventing destructive raids and bloody civil wars. The achievement of justice

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within the state was associated first and foremost with the necessity of implementing the commands ofsharia law in the very system of power. In . the apt words of the Sufi poet and philosopher Sheikh Abdnrrakhman Jami, Khoji Akhror "made sharia law and beliefs a yoke for all snItans' necks ...... In the eyes of the Naqshbandi followers, who measured norms of social relations by the Khanfit mazkhab, truth and shatia law were not bard and fast dogmas. Sufi leaders, including Khoji Akhror. called upon those in power "1:0 use the shatia law in accordance with the spirit of the age.'" In this way a considerable range of possibilities for political reform and the regulation of economic relations was opened up. The principal aim of just rule was considered to be the maintenance of a quiet and peaceful life for the workers, most of whom were peasants. In the Naqshbandi tradition agricultural work is holy and the oppression of the peasantry is sacrilegious in that it undermines the basis of the state. Indeed, the entire history of this Central Asian river valley region testifies to the fact that when villages grow poor, towns empty and palaces fall into ruin. As long ago as in the fIfteenth century Jami, an indisputable authority of the Khodjagon, warned: The peasant labor is the basic work In winter and in summer it is hard But if the peasant sweat faIls not upon the soil The fate will bode us trouble and starvation/; In the ftfteenth century the Naqshbandi teachers placed greater value on protection of the unfortunate, promotion of the interests of the majority, and service of the people than on mystical practices. At that time the tradition of intervention in politics by the spiritual authorities fmalty became established under Khoji Akhror. A motto of his is well known: "In order to fulfIl one's spiritual life in the world, it is necessary to use political power." The spiritual leaders began to correct the actions of secular leaders, but stopped short of replacing their power with that of the clergy. This idiosyncrasy of the Central Asian religio-political tradition is important for the understanding of the Islamic movement in Tajikistan today, especially since the Tajik mullahs themselves emphasize the fact that the Islam of the region is predominantly of the Naqshbandi type. In Tajikistan today (population 5.5 million) no fewer than 95 percent of believers are Muslims. Like official Islam, so-called folk Islam is widespread within the local culture. For centuries Arabic Islamic tradition has been adapting

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itself to local beliefs, and it has absorbed the customs of the peoples of Central Asia. In all parts of Tajikistan pre-Islamic rites have been preserved; for example, worship of saints and sacred objects and a belief in magic and miracles.7 The ancient agricultural rites and festivals of the Zoroastrian and pre-Zoroastrian period are widespread among Sunnis and Ismaelis alike; these are primarily linked with the worship of nature and the cults of fertility, fire, water, and earth. The mythical figure of Grandfather Ploughman (Bobo-i Dekbkon or Khoja Dekbkon) is particularly revered everywhere: according to traditional Muslim genealogy the Ploughman line descends from Adam. Villagers carefully preserve risola-genealogicallists of the names of holy "Khodzha Dek.hk:ons."s Before Soviet rule was established in Tajikistan each town and village had its own sacred places-the burial-vaults of devout spiritual leaders, sacred stones, trees, reservoirs. Places where famous Sufis had stayed for a time were also considered holy. Tajiks called them kadamja- "places where the foot of a holy one has stepped." These could be picturesque groves, majestic waterfalls, striking cliffs, springs, or caves. From the mid-1920s onwards the inhabitants of tens of thousands of tiny villages were transferred to larger settlements and towns; but the people maintained their spiritual connection with their small homeland, with the holy sites of their ancestors. A reverent attitude toward holy mazars9 continues for another reason, too: some Muslims, in the Garm group of regions and in Darvaz, for example, observe the custom of consecrating the newborn in the burial-vault of a local saint, who according to folk belief then becomes the baby's invisible life-time protector,to For various ethnic and cultural groups in Tajikistan the most revered Sufi burial vaults have gradually become objects of special veneration. Kulyab Muslims regard Sheikh Amir Said Khamadoni (fourteenth century) as their guardian, and Muslims of the Leninabad oblast regard Sheikh Muslikhiddin (sixteenth to seventeenth century) as theirs. The inhabitants of the Gissar Valley revere the burial vault of Mavlono Yakubi Charkhi (fifteenth century). while those of the Yavan Valley revere that of Domullo Kilichali (eighteenth century). II As recently as sixty to seventy years ago particular family groups, and sometimes even whole settlements and regions, would regard themselves as murid (followers) of a particular ishan (a Sufi spiritual leader) or of a whole family of ishans. Ishans, otherwise known as pir (Pious elders), generally came from the revered families of Seiid or Khodzha, whose genealogies go back to the families of the prophet Muhammed, of his closest associates, or of renowned Sufis.12 Elders in Tajikistan say that up until the revolution it was rare to meet a person who did not have a pit; in the eyes of simple folk anyone who did not would be considered to have lapsed from the faith. It is noteworthy that when elderly people are recalling the names of tribes and ancestors in their family tree, they

184

Aziz Niyazi

often mention that they were murids of one or another family of ishans. The last few decades have of course fundamentally altered traditional relationships; but even today Muslims from the most varied social groups still observe customs of religious class subordination, although certainly not as strictly as before. One indicator of a particularly respectful attitude toward Sufi leaders is the fact that most of the Tajilc leadership since the start of perestroika has been chosen from renowned ishan families. 13 On the whole, the Naqshbandi Islam in Central Asia has reconciled sharia law with pre-Islamic beliefs and customs. This mixture oflearned and folk Islam is so moderate, so distant from radicalism, and so much in accord with the spiritual mood of the most varied sections of Islamic society that it has showed significant tenacity in the new conditions of harsh modernization of society. In Soviet Tajikistan the "struggle against the survival of religion" did not inflict serious damage on the Islamic tradition. Islamic customs were not observed at work. but they were foDowed at home. Officially religious schools did not exist, but in fact local experts on the Quran and Islamic customs often taught children the fundamentals of religion and traditional morals. Some children were taught by their fathers and grandfathers. Documents produced by atheist departments give the number of mosques as just a few dOzeD, whereas in fact there were hundreds. Believers gathered for religious conversation and prayer in one another's homes, tea-houses, clubs, and "red comers" (recreational rooms in Soviet factories), where prayers would often be said in front of portraits of the classical thinkers of Marxism-Leninism. The pearls of Sufi literature, works thoroughly permeated by religious philosophy, were published and republished for decades; with superb commentaries on Sufi symbolism by orientalists, they were inexhaustIble sources of wisdom. The "atheist struggle" usually consisted in attempts to eliminate the cult of saints, magic rituals, and lavish expenditure on Islamic festivals, the usual targets of local atheists. Qergy were generally criticized as greedy and semiliterate, but intellectual disputes on the teachings of the Quran were hardly ever organized. In the late 19808, for example, there were reports from atheist departments about amulets confiscated from Muslims which were meant to demonstrate the effectiveness of the struggle against religious relics. Paradoxical as it may seem, the activity of Central Asian atheists in many ways recalled that of puritanical foreign Muslims and of the few local groups which were in favor of purifying the faith and putting an end to eclectic folk Islam. "Learned" Islam was preserved by the local intelligentsia, particularly those in the humanities. They began to fulfill many of the functions of the traditional class of the ulama (highly-educated theologians). Within the walls of acadernic institutes of philosophy, history. literature, oriental studies and eastern manuscripts, medieval Islamic texts were collected and studied, and sound works on

Islam and Tajikistan's Human and Ecological Crisis

185

Islamic history and philosophy were produced. The obligatory atheistic formulae they contained did not affect the scientific significance of these works; they were a formality and were not taken seriously. Thorough research was carried out, mainly on SUfISm and Ismailism. Academic specialists frequently outshone mullahs and ishans in their knowledge of Arabic, medieval sources, and the classical Islamic sciences: some of them, indeed, were from respected ulama families themselves. It is significant that much of the social program of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan was worked out by academic scholars who had a head start in the intensive study of the works of contemporary Islamic socio-political thinkers and the experience of islamicization in Arab countries, Pakistan. and Iran. At the end of the 19808 it was these humanities institutes which concentrated intellectual study on the subject of the national renaissance, which naturally included the religious renaissance too. There was indeed a price to be paid for free thinking: the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Tajikistan Academy of Sciences was closed down. The official Islamic clergy, though small in numbers, received sound theological training at the Bukhara medresseh "Mir-I Arab,» at the Tashkent Islamic Institute, and at universities in the Arab countries. Highly educated members of the Islamic clergy would always have a few pupils. They were able to pass on the religious knowledge they had accumulated regardless of whether they were serving in official mosques or not. The so-called self-taught mullahs, who were hungry to perfect their knowledge, would travel to visit the famous religious leaders of Uzbekistan, mainly in the Fergana Valley, most often in Andijan, but also in Termez, where the outstanding educational traditions of the Deoband Dar-ul-ulurna (the most famous Muslim university in India) was maintained illegally by several members of the ularna from local SeUd families who had completed their religious training under renowned Deoband teachers at the beginning of the century. Toward the end of the 19808 there were more than 1,500 unofficial mullahs in Tajikistan. They did not constitute an organization, and most of them kept out of politics. They chiefly concentrated on preserving tradition, organizing and registering local communities, and collecting funds for building mosques. By 1988 there were 17 official mosques in the country but thousands of unofficial ones. It was natural that as soon as the authorities relaxed religious persecution there was a rapid renaissance ofIslamic institutions. By the end of 1991, 130 Friday mosques were already functioning in Tajikistan, as well as 2,800 smaller mosques and prayer houses and 150 Quranic schools. Of the 120 Islamic societies which had been registered, 50 were so-caned pure Islam societies which follow traditional religious practices with particular zeal. Most of the clergy in the new mosques (95 percent) are from the ranks of demoted former clergy.14 A natural religious renaissance has thus taken place; but Central Asian Islam

186

Aziz

has remained untouched hy the of currents estahlished elsewhere in the East The natural process of refonn which had heen at the start of the twentieth had heen interrupted. Furduring the years power there had heen a process of compulsory this was nonintellectual and was not the result of processes coming to fruition within Islam. Elsewhere--in Iran, India, and Pakistan-Islamic social had heen developing for decades, digesting the eXlneY'ierlce of both West and hut in Central Asia Muslims were .....'·~~'M' concerned with the hasic features of a tra.dltiollllU" rl,,'JPI.O,fi6·rj ous while the state took over wholesale concern for social Uyjctuf'le1l~lya 2.

P''''U'''"5'gnlphlcal isolation from industrial centers. Unofficial rel)[gi()us ''''''''!:

associations providing short-term technical assistance in management, bUSllnt~S-planming,

and lml'lT'OVlf1

production, as well as and marketing of agricultural products. Bulat Directof, tel.:

509386. facilitates contacts between local .,.nt"""",ri",~,, and U.s. firms interested

in 1""'''''''''''' ties, tr,,-nd"""ina tec11l'l1:}!OGY, technical assistance and trade and investment Murat ""''',,"U'.'''V Manager tel:

Action Center for Working youth of Almaty U,eHTp PaOOqeH MOnOp;eJKH AAMaTbI "Action" k.4J6

Almaty

Tel:

52-36-97

Contact: Gul'zhakhan Biboldiyova

on youth. It provides legal consultations for low-income young and them to buy or sen slnP,rlnlen-h, The group is to establish an information network on nOllslflg for in

Adilet Historical-Educational Society of Kazakhstan Ka3aXCTaHCKoeMCTC~~[K()­

npocBeTHTenbCKoe06:Dle~r'BO

"AAwIeT"

pro Abaya39 480013 Tel:

53-17-21 Contact: Saule Aitmambetova

Organizations

238

Adilet, meaning "justice," conducts research on the history of political repression in Kazakhstan and promotes human rights.

Adilet School of Law ~eT

BbIcmasr 1IIK000a

npaBa

pro Gagarina 135-A 480046 Almaty Tel: 46-02-90 Fax: 4646-ll E-mail: [email protected] Contact: Victor Malinovsky, Director; Gulsara T1enchieva, Professor The motto of this private, noncommerciallaw school is ''Towards a free and responsible individual through market economy, civil society and lawful state." To this end, the school offers an interdisciplinary approach to the study of law. combining legal education (constitutional, contract. civil, criminal, and business/financial law) with the social sciences (ethics, economic theory, Latin. history, political science, psychology, and computer skills). Courses focus on the comparison of Kazakhstan's legal system with those of other countries. Faculty consists of over 40 professors and instructors, several of whom bave worked abroad, and visiting lecturers from the United States. In addition to their regular coUrses, Adilet instructors conduct annual three-month preparation courses for applicants to humanitarian institutes. They also teach law to 150 upper-level students at Secondary School # 94. Adilet has a comprehensive library of modem legal literature and an electronic database of1egislation in Kazakhstan. It founded a publishing house, Adilet Press, which produces

books by well~known Kazakhstani scholars, compilations oflegislation. and minutes of seminars and conferences. The school also publishes two periodicals of essays by law professors and students; a joumal, Adilet ScientifIC Works, and a student newspaper, The Daily Lawyer (in English). Adilet helped found the Center of Legal Information of Kazakhstan in April 1996. in collaboration with the American Legal Consortium, the Institute of State and Law of the Kazakhstan Academy of Sciences, the Kazakhstan State Law University, and the Library ofthe Kazakhstan Academy of Sciences. Graduates of Adilet typically pursue careers in government, private enterprise, banking, consulting firms, courts and joint-ventures. The schoo! has branches in four other cities in Kazakhstan: Kokshetau, UstKamenogors~ Taraz, and Astana.

Aid to Artisans Shevchenko St. 100, etazh 6 480091 Almaty Tel: 62-1544

Fax;

~86H06,69-29-97

E-mail: [email protected]. [email protected]

ATA works to assist artisans and craftspeople around the world to sen their work locally and in the global marketplace. It provides training and consultation at aU stage of the craft trade, including product development, production. business training. market research, marketing, and sales. ATA also provides local artisans links to the New York Intemational Gift Fair, which attracts more than 50,000 buyers from aI] over the United States. The group runs a five to ten day training program at the gift fair for

Kazakhstan producers and exporters new to the U.s. market. ATA also offers craftmen access to its network of more than 35 member companies who are buyers of decorative arts, handcrafts, fashion. home furnishings, and textiles. These companies work directly with ATA clients to help them develop products that will sell and provide them with direct contacts in the marketplace. The group makes 3040 grants of $500$1,500 per year to emerging artisans and craft~based associations worldwide. ATA has been working in Central Asia since 1996 as part of the Counterpart Consortium to support nongovernmental organizations. Ak Bota League for the Guardianship of Disabled Children nlllI'a "Ax. GoTa" no oneKe AeTeId-JiIHBWlHf\OB

Almaty Tel: 5246-16

Almaty Helsinki Committee AllMaTHHcImA: XeJIbCHHCImA: KOMlilTeT

Mikroraion Koktem I, d. 29, k. 17 480070 A1maty TeIJFax: 29-41-05 Contact: Ninel' K. Fokina Almaty Women's Information Center AAMaTHHcImA: }KeHcImA: V1H<j;lopMaI1;HoHHbIlll{eHTP ul. Volodarskogo 15-15 Almaty

Tel: 67-84-26 Fax: 50-61-87 E-mail: [email protected] Contact: Alfia Abikenova, Regional Coordinator; Gulnara Kusherbaeva

239

AWIC addresses issues of gender discrimination in Kazakhstan and works to promote equal rights through education and leadership training. It sponsors conferences and talks. works with the media, and publishes its own journal to disseminate information about violations of women's rights and the activities of women's organizations in countries around the world. AWIC also lobbies for legislation in protection of women's rights. One of the center's primary goals is to maintain an on-going informational exchange between women and women's organizations in Kazakhstan, the NIS, and other countries. AWIC sponsors monthly discussion groups and seminars on current women's issues. including one on Discrimination and Violence Toward Women, held in Almaty in September 1997. In November 1997, an AWIC-sponsored seminar on women's studies resulted in the creation of the first women's studies group in Kazakhstan. American Councils for International Education: ACTRIACCELS pro Seifullina 531, kom. 208 480083 Almaty Tel: 63-20-56, 63-30-06 E-mail: [email protected]. in U.S.: [email protected] Web: www.actr.org

American Councils used to be ACTRf ACCELS, or the American Council of Teachers of Russian and the American Council for Collaboration in Education and Language Study. It continues to operate as ACTR in Russia and as ACCELS in the remaining 11 countries of the new independent states. It is an "educational association and exchange organization devoted to

240

Organizations

improving education, professional training, and research within and about the Russian-speaking world, including the many scores of non-Russian cultures and populations in the regions of central and eastern Europe and Eurasia." Specifically. American Councils: • Administer more than 20 exchange programs, ranging from three months to two years in duration, with the countries of the former Soviet Union • Manage student advising centers in Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan • Administer standardized testing in the NIS for the Educational Testing Service • Publish textbooks and materials for the teaching of Russian and English as foreign languages ACTRIACCELS administers 13 educational advising centers in Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine. The centers maintain libraries that make written, audio-visual, and CD-ROM resources, including ETS test preparation materials, available to visitors. The organization has 42 offices in 12 countries of the NIS, a staffin excess of2oo, and ongoing relationships with more than 500 U.s. and NIS schools, institutions ofbigher learning. and NGOs.

Art Therapy ApTTepanIlIllH

ul.Shevchenko,d.48,k.14 480091 Almaty

Tel: Fax:

69-96-25, 46-39-87 61-61-32 Contact: Oleg Pishchev, Irina Saparova

Art Therapy provides creative rehabil-

itative therapy to the mentally ill. The group hopes to increase public and

professional awareness in Kazakhstan about the uses of art therapy for social integration of the mentally disabled. The group plans to develop art therapy training sessions for mental health workers and publish a textbook on the topic.

Artists' Union Almaty Tel: 63-43-23 Contact: Andrei Visbnayakov, Secretary

"Arys" Foundation for the Study of the Heritage of the Repressed Intelligentsia ..APbIC"

00~

HaCJl~

:H3Y'Iemm penpeccHpOBaHHoA

IIIH~

ul. Zhandosova 60, k. 408-412 480033 Almaty Tel: 44-07-93 Contact: Zholdasbek Adaev

Association of Independent Electronic Mass Media of the Countries of Central Asia (ANESMI) AccoIl,lllaJ.l',H.f.l He3aBHCBMbIX 9JleKTOpoHHbIX Cpe;qCTB

M:accoBOA IIIHcJ?oPM:au,mI CTpaH I.l.eH-rpaJIbHoA A3HH (AHOCMl1.) pro Dostyk 85 480100 Almaty TellFax: 63-69-22 E-mail: rozlana@anesmi.•almaty.kz. [email protected] Contact: Rozlana Taukina, President ANESMI was formed in 1993 at a meeting often television and radio

stations in Bishkek. Kyrgyzstan. Today, it is an association of 83 broadcasting television and radio

Kazakhstan stations representing four of the five Central Asian Republics. The association seeks to develop television and radio business in Central Asia, foster good relations between the media and government, influence legls~ lation on regulation of the mass media, and enhance infonnation exchange among television and radio stations in Central Asia. It has advocated laws on author's rights and advertising, and issued challenges to the state on the criteria selected for the redistribution of television and radio channels. ANESMI plans to intensify their lobbying efforts by learning about methods used by the mass media in other countries to influenCe public policy. It has also organized periods of silence on radio and television to mark the deaths and persecution of prominent journalists and professionals in the media sphere. The association has branches in Dushanbe, Tajikistan; Qoqand, Uzbekistan; and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Association of Kazakhstani Authors and Artists Acco~a.tJJiUl Ka3aXCTaHCImX

aBTOpoB H HCnOJIHHTeJ1eii

pro Dostyk 85 480021 Almaty Tel: 63~69-22 E-mail: [email protected] Contact: Askar Nunnanov, President;

Balnur Kydyrbek, Vice-President The association serves the interests of writers. painters, composers, directors. playwrights, scientists, inventors, and other representatives of the cultural sphere. In September 1996, it prepared a draft law on the rights of professional artists and writers concerning trade~ mark and copyright practices. In autumn 1997. it worked with the

241

government on a proposal "for the spiritual development of Kazakhstan" through support of the cultural sphere. Association of Nonprofit NGOs Acco~a.tJJiUl HeKOl4MepQecKHX HenpaBHTeJlbCTBeHHbIX OpraHH3~

alya 104 (care ofCASD1N) 480004 Almaty

Tel:

33-86-10

E-mail: [email protected] Contact: Kuralai Karakulova

The goal of the association is to strengthen the third sector in Kazakhstan by uniting NGOs, facilitating informational exchanges, and encouraging dialogue between NGOs. government structures. and the business world. Currently, 73 nonprofit organizations are members of the association. The association operates resource centers in Semipalatinsk, Astana, and Karaganda which provide technical and organizational support to NGOs and help thern obtain information and equipment for their projects. Association of Single Mothers Acco~artW'l OADHOKHX

Ma-repeA Mikroraion Orbita-4, d. 18, k. 6 480043 Almaty

TeUFax:

2~O-lO,29-93-53

Contact: Lyazzat Iskanderovna,

Director The association locates resources to assist single parents suffering from economic difficulties. It offers free legal and psychological consultations for parents, as well as vocational training and English classes. It publishes a bi-monthly information bulletin, Moldir. with essays and data on conditions for women and children

Organizations

242

in Kazakstan and resources for single mothers.

Association of Young Leaders Accoll.Ha.u;HH IOHbIX ~epoB ul. Kurmangazy 175, k. 43 480009 Almaty Tel: 53-84-93 E-mail: [email protected] Contact: Natalia Ivan.ovna Bakhmutova Association of Youth Support 55 Dzhandosova, k. 448 Kazakh State Academy of Management 480035 Almaty Tel: E-mail:

63-04-74,29-77-77,28-54-41

[email protected]

The association provides assistance to young adults in finding employment or starting their own businesses. It also helps youth Jocateopportunities for professional development or continuation of secondary education, and conducts workshops on leadership skills.

BRIF Center (Central Asian Center of Socia' Data) u1. Furmanova 220, #53 480100 Almaty Tel: 65-62-33, 65-68-23 Fax; 6l-61-32 E-mail: [email protected] Contact: Slava Kozlov, Julia Firsova

BRlF was ~lisbed in 1996 as a center for gathering, archiving, and disseminating data from social surveys and public opinion polls conducted in Central Asia. It was conceived by the managers of the BRlF Agency, a separate commercial information agency. The center focuses on a wide range of social issues, including ecology, politics, ethnic conflict, emigration, immigration, and the media. It receives information primarily from government and independent research

organizations, news/information agencies, NOOs, and international organizations working in the region. In turn, BRlF's statistical reports are used by a wide audience, including these same research organizations and news agencies as well as students, journalists, and commercial entities. Data is distributed both electronically and through print sources such as books, articles, research reports, research manuals, census data and government statistics, computer databases, GIS data, videotapes, etc. BRlF also publishes a montbly bulletin, Opinion, which reports the findings of recently conducted public opinion polls and surveys, announces upcoming events, and lists valuable sources of social information. This bulletin is published in both English and Russian and is available in print or electronic format. Slava Koslov, the center's director, has worked at Radio Svoboda in Budapest and writes the English version of the Bulletin.

Business Womens' Association of Kazakhstan Accoll.Ha.u,m:r AeJIOBbIX JKeHI.ItHH Ka3axCTaHa

ul. Shevchenko 100 480072 Almaty Tel: 69-27-98 E-mail: kazwomen@kazmail.• .kz

The association unites women active in the spheres of government and politics, business and entrepreneurship. science. education, health care, culture, and art. It aims to improve the social status of women through conferences. education. and training programs. The association cooperates with NGOs, the media, and government to realize its goa)s.It has numerous branches throughout Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan

Center for Conflict Management ul. Timiryazev 57V, k. 23 480070 Almaty Tel: Fax:

3-74-17 47-94-49

E-mail: [email protected] Dr. Elena Sadovskaya

Contact:

CCM works to reduce social and ethnic contlict in Kazakhstan and to promote transition to a free market economy and democratic civil society. It conducts research and organizes seminars on contlict prevention and management. Among the Center's recent initiatives are: • Joint Kazakh-American Peace. building Workshop for school teachers and university professors in Alrnaty, September 1995 • Lectures on contlict resolution theory at the Kazakhstan State University and the Institute for Advanced Humanitarian Studies, 1995196 and 1996/97 academic years • Organization of debate training for students at Kazakhstan State Univeristy (in cooperation with the Soros Foundation), April 1997 • Publication of a human rights textbook in Kazakh for school children, containing the full text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. August 1997.

Centra. Asian Foundation for Management Development (CAMAN) ul. Dzharndosov 58, k, 5 480057 Almaty Tel: 44-05-00 Fax: 45-59-59 E-mail: [email protected] Contact: Assylbeck Kozhakhmetov.

President; Zaituna Sarsernbayeva, Executive Director

243

CAMAN was founded in April 1994 by participants of the Conference on International Cooperation in Business Education. The group's primary objective is creation of a Central Asian management development network by fostering cooperation between governmental and entrepreneurial institutions. CAMAN collaborates and exchanges infonnation with well-established international managernent development organizations such as the International Management Development Network (INTERMAN), the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), the American Association of College Schools of Business (AACSB), and others. CAMAN has sponsored several seminars and conferences, including "How to Create and Finance a Business Schoo):' in November 1997, and the "International Conference on Modernization of Government structures on the Eve of the 21st Century," in April 1997. The group also publishes a quarterly journal, CAMAN News.

Central Asian Sustainable Development Information Network (CASDIN) HH4>oPMaIt.JlIOHHruI CeTb no YcTOf4tmBoMY Pa3BHTmO B U,eHTp8.JIbHoA A3HH alya 104 ul. A. Moldagulovoi 32, k. 249 480004 Alrnaty TellFax: 33-86-10 E-maIl: [email protected]. [email protected] Contact: Gulmira Dzharnanova, Coordinator

CASDIN was developed in 1994 by the Center in Support of Environmental Education, which identified the need for an NGO support network in Central

244

Organizations

Asia. The network was originally planned to be interregi.onal, with offices in each country of Central Asia. However, financial constraints and the presence of similar support organizations in other Central Asian countries led to the group's current focus on Kazakhstan. At present, CASDIN offers electronic and print information about hundreds of organizations representing a variety of interests. including ecology. women's issues, law and democracy, children! youth, and social welfare. The network publishes Sustainable Development. a bimonthly newsletter featuring articles by and about members of the local NGO community. Opinion pieces by NGO leaders on such topics as Westem nonprofit models and their applicability to Central Asia are also included. The newsletter also publicizes news and upcoming events (conferences, seminars, grant competitions) relevant to independent organizations throughout Central Asia. CASDIN assists NGOs with proposal writing and provides access to computer, fax, photocopying, and e-mail on a limited basis. It organizes seminars and workshops on NGO management, fundraising, and community involvement. CASDIN was responsible for organizing the first forum of Kazakh NGOs. held in October 1996.

Chance Independent Environmental TV Orbits 4, d. 5, k. 96 480043 Almaty TellFax: 29-28-81,67-03-60 E-Mail: [email protected] Contact: Alexander Komissarenko

Consumers' Union of Kazakhstan CoI03 llOTpe(}HTeJIe:A" Ka38KCTaHa

alya 54-a:: 480100 Almaty Tel: 40-07-91 Contact: Tokhtar Sultanbekov

Contrast Charitable Foundation alya 108 480096 Almaty TelJFax: 233-8610

The foundation promotes the civil rights of homosexuals and greater societal acceptance of sexual minorities. It also provides AIDS education for sexual minorities and youth. Contrast is lobbying for changes in Kazakhstan's cri.minal code regarding crimes connected to homosexuality. It also plans to publish a weekly newspaper and to hold a seminar on "Democracy and the Gay Rights Movement."

Counterpart Consortium Central Asia Headquarters Shevchenko St. 100, etazh 6 Almaty Tel: Fax: E-mail:

62-50-09,62-16-44,69-29-97 60-86-06

[email protected]. [email protected], [email protected] Web: http://www.counterpart.org! Contact: David Smith, Regional Director; Marat Aitrnagambetov, Deputy Country Director; James Gershin. CHAP Regional Director

The U.S.-based organization Counterpart International, Inc. heads a consortium of organizations awarded a USAID grant in 1994 to implement the NGO Support Initiative for Central

Kazakhstan Asia. The program's three COITIPl:mernts facilitating information among NGDs and with the international community, and program for op()ratillg a small Central Asian N(,JOs. The consortium provided 246 grants over $} ,000,000 for 220 NGOs of Central Asia between the beginning of 1995 and June 1997. In addItIon, 'H~rlr~h~'M on various ~m'~Q"~n were conducted this time frame. Highlights ofthe consortium's grants and programs include: • Radio the first

;~'~m'A mass media access. The station broadcasts NGO interviews. .. A Ka:rAlkh consumer group A~,,,~L~~&,A a program of product procedure to increase quality control on imported and domestic tlf(lducts. The Association of Accountants and Auditors of Uzbekistan is nlAriri.", with the ofthe Disabled to and job pl8lceJTIellt services for the disabled. .. Central Asian artisan associations have over for their members in domestic and international sales with Aid to Artisans. LJl
4800 l2 Almaty

Tel:

67-96-85

E-mail: Contact:

Since 1995, GS has contributed regularly to Ec()stan News, an Internet social and environmental issues of Central Asia. It maintains archives of official documents and laws concerning environas mental protection in wen as a and vld,eotapt~s used to document violations of environmental laws and bolster In!1,hv.,, efforts. GS has been active in a number of public to promote _r"M·t~r! Hlvl"'UWl;; the creation in 1996 of

a 165,000 hectare nature reserve in the mountains south

group also participates regularly in a group on environmental issues. GS has held summer ec()loJl;lc:al education camps for schoolchildren in the mountains of the Almaty area since 1995. Members also teach at a ofpuhlic and private institutions, and secondary schools and universities. In addition, the group sponsors environmental cducation for teachers and seminars on sustainable ac'.el,omnC'tlt for members

GS nro,duocs tions. L>VUU',Uf news and issues to the media and NGOs Kazakhstan on a nm,rl"dv basis. Ves/nile is a series of booklets that offer analysis on a broader range sustainable development,

Greenwomen Ecological News Agency Tel:

47-45-37

E-mail:

Contact: Lidia I"""""""', Greenwomen's mission is to a new environmental consciousness within Kazakh " To this the agency disseminates information on the situation in Kazakhstan and other countries of Central Asia through the mass media. Greenwomen was founded by a group of women journalist'> who helped newspaper in start the first Kazakhstan, in 1991. Although the newspaper had only a small it had a circulation of more than 20,000 readers. The government withdrew its financial support for Ecocourier in 1994. In 1995, ('rreenwomcn pubHshing its material in

248

Organizations

national and local newspapers, such as Kazakhstanskaya Pravda, Vecherny Almaty, Garizont, and lndustria/naya Karaganda. It maintains a database of environmental conditions in Central Asia, global environmental problems, educational programs on environment protection, alternative sources of energy, urban environmental problems and environmentally sound technologies and innovations. The agency cooperates with other environmental organizations, including the Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement, and Ecological Center of Karaganda. It has affiliates in Karaganda, UstKamenogorsk, and Kyrgyzstan, and plans to open offices in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in the future.

HIVOS International (Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries)

u1. Shevchenko 28 Alrnaty TelJFax: 62-69-30 E-mail: [email protected] Web: www/dds.nll-hivosl Contact: Inessa Frants, Director This Dutch organization works in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to support the NGO sector through grant projects. In particular, HIVOS focuses on the following sectors ofNGO activity: culture and art, women, sustainable development, human rights, and AIDS awareness.

Information and Research Center for Civic Education p/ya 19 480100 Almaty E-mail: [email protected] The center was created in November 1996 by a group of teachers seeking to introduce civic education courses to

Kazakhstan's educational systemfrom preschool to university levels. The center develops civics curricula and trains educators to effectively teach and develop people's understanding of the value ofa civil society and democracy. When sending an e-rnail message, type "Center for Civic Education" on the subject line.

Information Center of the Kazakhstan Press Club HH€)xlPMaIJ,lIOBllOA ~eBTp Ka3aKCTaHCltoA

npecc-KJIY6

Kurmancharyi 29, k. 320, 321 480100 Alrnaty Tel: 62-82-37 Fax: 62-88-67 E-mail: [email protected] Contact: AscI Karaulova, President The center has conducted over 100 press conferences, 20 seminars, and 6 training courses for journalists with support from USAID, USIS, and the UNOP. It also advocates health and childcare issues. has broadcast 1V programs and radio shows. and disseminates publications on issues of reproductive health and childcare.

Intergovernmental Association ofUlghurs Aksai 4, 57-SO 480127 Almaty Tel: 24-16-78 The association works to preserve and revive Uighur culture, traditions and language. It holds celebrations and festivals and provides education for young people in the Uighur tradition.

Interlegal Kazakhstan HHTepJleraJI Ka3axcTaH

ul. Dzhandosova 58, etazh 8 480057 Alrnaty

Kazakhstan Tel: Fax: E-maiJ: Contact:

45-74-77 44-28-73 [email protected] Sergei Z1otnikov, President

Interlegal's mission is "to assist in the development of civil society and the restructuring of legislation in Kazakhstan" through educational programs and professional and legal training. Initiated in 1993 as a branch office of the international organization Interlegal. the group was registered as an independent, Kazakh organization in 1995. It sponsors seminars and conferences, runs a Legal Information Center, and provides consultation for NGOs on a variety ofJegal issues, from registration to fundraising and taxation. Interlegal conducted an international conference in May of 1994 entitled Recognition of the Third Sector in Kazakhstan, attended by NGO leaders from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Russia. as wen as Kazakh government representatives. Following the conference, Interlegal published a book with the same title, presenting the conference's main themes and findings. The group has produced several other publications, including the book A Practical Text: The Legal Regulation ofActivities ofNon-Profit Institutions in Kazakhstan in 1996, and an annual directory of indigenous NGOs. The Legal Information Center publishes a monthly bulletin, The Third Sector of Central Asia. Interlegal also conducts political and legal research on the third sector and its relationship with government structures in Central Asia. It participates in the legislative process by preparing draft laws on the rights of citizens to organize and on nonprofit and philanthropical activity in Kazakhstan.

249

International Center for Not-for-Profit Law 100 Shevchenko St., 6th floor 480091 Almaty Tef: 62-16-44 Fax: 69-29-97 E-mail: [email protected] ICNL is a U.S.-based organization which works to "facilitate and support the development of civil society on a global basis by assisting the creation and improvement of laws and regulatory systems that permit. encourage, and regulate the not-for-profit sector in countries around the world." It offers technical assistance on the writing of laws and regulations to governments, legislators. and international and nongovernmental organizations. It also sponsors research and conferences around the world. ICNL has published a survey oflaws governing the not-for-profit sector in Central Europe and a comprehensive study of the current laws governing NGOs in Russia. In cooperation with the Open Society Institute, it developed a set of Guidelines for Laws Governing Civic Organizations (published in December 1997 and now available in Russian and Farsi in addition to English).

International Ecological Association of Women of the East MelKAYHapo,ll;HoJl 9KOJlOI'INecKoJl AccoIf,Han;HJtI JKeHIIq4H BocToKa ul. Karasai batira 85, k. 420 480012 Almaty Tel: 63-69-00 Fax: 63-38-02 Contact: Urkiz meva, President

250

Organizations

This is an association of anti-nuclear women activists. In August 1998, it was one of five Kazakh NOOs that participated in the Global Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs in Japan.

Intemationaler Hilfsfonds e. V. ul. Shevchenko, 28 480021 Almaty Tel: 69-63-60, 69-17-28 Fax: 69-66-96 This group, meaning "International Help Foundation," is based in Germany with branches throughout the world, including offices in Kazakhstan and Ukraine. The foundation offers assistance to victims of natural disasters, nuclear testing, and political repression through provisions of fmancial. humanitarian, and medical aid. The foundation's office in Kazakhstan combines this material support with educational programs, professional training, and cultural exchanges. It works to foster public awareness of issues that impact citizens' health and living standards. In t 993, the foundation organized a group of Australian journalists to film a documentary about the environmental and health consequences of nuclear tests in Seroipalatinsk. The foundation is in the process of creating a treatment center for pregnant women whose health has been affected by nuclear tests in Semipalatinsk, and medical services to treat mothers and children with viral hepatitis. The group publishes the University Herald for AI-Farabi Kazakh State University, and the magazine of the Kazakh Academy of Medical Sciences Klinitsist. In its own monthly bulletin, the foundation publishes information about health care, education, science,

and environment in Kazakhstan. Proceeds from these donations have been directed to orphanages in Semipalatinsk and Almaty.

Intemews uJ. Shevchenko 13, pod. 2, etazh I 480100 Almaty Tel: 61-17-58,62-86-85, 50-39-07 Fax: 61-13-90 E-man: [email protected] Web: www.intemews.kzI Internews Network, Inc. was founded in 1982 to "support the independent broadcast media in the former Soviet Union and other parts of the world through training programs and equipment grants." The organization now has 13 affiliates in Europe, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, and Africa, each an independent NOO. Together they are known as Internews International.

IREXIAImaty ul. Furmanova 103, k. 505 480091 Almaty Tel: 63-88-31 Fax: 62-46-94 E-mail: [email protected] IREX was founded in 1968 by a consortium of U.S. colleges and universities to administer academic and research exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union. IREX's activities have expanded both geographically and topically in the past 27 years. They now encompass not only scholarly exchanges, but also professional development, technical assistance, and policy programs dealing with the Newly Independent States, Central and Eastern Europe. and Mongolia. In 1995, IREX launched the Internet Access and Training Program (IATP).

Kazakhstan IATP has established public access Internet sites at more than 65 universities and libraries across the fonner Soviet Union, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Training in internet and e--maiI use has also been offered to more than 100 noncommercial organizations. ISAR-Central Asia u!. Shagabutdinova 128, k. 7 480004 Almaty Tel: 67-71-88 E-mail: [email protected] Contact: Jennifer Gable

ISAR, the Institute for Social Action and Renewal in Eurasia, established its Almaty office in 1993 to support the environmental movement in Central Asia and the development oflocal environmental NGOs. ISAR believes that "providing training to local activists and grassroots groups, and financial support to help them realize concrete projects is the most effective way to encourage citizen activism and public awareness of the region's environmental problems." Since 1993, ISAR Almaty has administered a small grants program through USAID that has awarded approximately $480,000 to over 360 NGO projects. It also offers information and technical support to NGOs, including individualized training in e--mail, desktop publishing, and other computer skills. In 1997, ISAR supplied dozens of computers and modems to NGOs in all five republics, and provides free e-mail accounts to environmentalists in Kazakhstan. ISAR Almaty and the Global Environmental Facility Small Grants Program, Kazakhstan. are currently working on a demonstration climate

251

change project in Aralsk, Kazakhstan. The Maternity and Obstetrics Hospital in Aralsk regularly loses power. The project was initiated to provide the hospital of Aralsk with wind-powered electricity. As part of the project, a local NGO, Ana Umiti, win conduct a public awareness campaign, including the distribution of Kazakh and Russianlanguage materials on simple measures people can adopt to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases and combat climate change. ISAR Almaty maintains a database of Central Asian environmental NGOs and disseminates information about funding opportunities to them. It also conducted a World Bank project in 1997 to organize public forums for NGOs, and a project supported by the Turner Foundation to conduct seminars on successful NGO projects that can be easily replicated. Junior Achievement Kazakhstan School #55 a/ya9 480096 Ahnaty Tel: 32-35-82 Fax: (327) 581-1437 (c/o Zamira Kanapianova) E-mail: [email protected] Contact: Tamara Ilyicheva, National Coordinator

Junior Achievement is a U.s.-based organization which seeks to "educate and inspire young people to value free enterprise, business and economics to improve the quality of their lives." In 1991 Junior Achievement established its first program in the fonner Soviet Union. Junior Achievement Kazakhstan, which was founded in 1992, has three programs:

Organizations

252

• Applied Economics is a full semester economics curriculum for high schools students. The course includes a project in which students start and maintain their own company. • Management and Economic Simulation Exercise (MESE) is a curriculum in which students run their own company in a computer~ simulated international business environment. Participants make strategic decisions which impact the bottom Hne of their businesses while learning to interpret balance sheets, income statements, industry reports, and economic data. The simulation was developed by Harvard Associates. • Hewlett Packard Global Business Challenge is another international business simulation game similar to MESE, with the added twist that schools compete with other schools from around the world. In 1998 the cha1Jenge involved 648 student teams from 39 countries. Junior Achievement Kazakhstan has a staff of six and an annual budget of $62,000.

Kazakhstan Association of Women Invalids with Children ul. Baizakov 109/116 Almaty Tel: 53~1~82 Contact: Bibigul lmangazina, President

Kazakhstan Business ASSOCiation 155 Tole bi, k. 303 48096

Almaty

Tel: 6840·16 Contact: Ludmila Kot~Oglu

The association offers professional training and legal education sessions

for unemployed women, and publishes information bulletins to inform women of support services and professional opportunities. It also sponsors fundraising events such as concerts, lunches and clothing drives to gamer assistance for low-income families, single mothers; and orphans. The group maintains a network of 14 regional affiliates in Astana, Karaganda, Kyzyl-Orda, Turgay, Pavlodar, and south.em Kazakhstan oblasts.

Kazakhstan Composers Association AccoIl,WUJ.H.Sl KOMIl03BTOPOB Ka3aXCTaHa ul. Kupaeva 83, k. 41 480091 Almaty Tel; 62-50-18 Fax: 63..fi9-22 Contact: Bamur Kydyrbek, President

Members of the association meet to listen to and critique one another's musical compositions. The group helps members locate financial support and learn to publicize their work on a professional level. The association also holds concerts showcasing Kazakh composers.

Kazakhstan International Bureau of Human Rights and Rule of Law Ka3axCTaHCKoe

MeJKAYHapoAHoe OIOPO no npaBaM tlen:OBeKa H coO.mo}l;emno 3aKOHBOCTH

ul. Masanchi 5730 k. 404-405 480012 Almaty Tel:

67~8-41

Fax:

62~8-11

E-mail:

[email protected]

Contact: Evgenii Zhovtis

Kazakhstan The bureau was created by a group of human rights defenders and members of the Union of Councils fot' Soviet Jews. Its activities encompass four spheres of human rights activity: monitoring and reporting rights vio~ations. lobbying, independent legal assIstance, and education. The group has consulted government commissions that draft legislation, and has published materials addressing issues of freedom of speech, freedom of association, and the right to due process of law. Each year since 1993, the bureau has offered free legal consultations to approximately 1,000 people. It pr0duced a TV program. "You Have a Right!" broadcast in more than thirty I5-minute episodes. The bureau also produces a monthly information bulletin, issued a 24-page report on the human rights situation in Kazakhstan, and has conducted seven international conferences, some in conjunction with other NGOs. Conference titles have included: "Public Associations and the Authorities: Cooperation in a Democratic Society," "Fundamental Human Rights and Their Protection by Non-Governmental Organizations," and "Problems and Practice of the Death Penalty in Kazakhstan and Other CIS Countries." In 1997, the bureau sent an open public letter to President Nursultan Nazerbaev and the Kazakh. Parliament to promote freedom of the press and protest government restrictions on free assembly. It was one of three organizations to protest the registration requirement for NGOs, claiming that citizens should have the right to form an NGO without government approval. Kazakhstan Press Club 29 Kurmangazy St., k. 320-321

253

480100 Alrnaty Tel: 62-88-67,62-82-37 Fax: 62-88-67 E-mail: [email protected] Contact: Asel KarauJova, President KPC was founded in 1994 to support a

free and democratic medla in Kazakhstan. It has over 100 members, primarily journalists. who participate in the center's press conferences, seminars, round tables, and training programs. KPC's activities include: • A media campaign on pension reform in Kazakhstan, supported by USAID • A campaign on reproductive health, funded by UNDPlPathfinder International • Training for journalists on topics such as privatization and securities market development, the capital market, pension reform, and reproductive health issues • Internet training for journalists • Distribution of press releases to regional and national media sources • Publication of a weekly news bulletin. Media Monitoring Report, summarizing topics of interest from more than 90 regional and national newspapers in Kazakhstan. Subscribers include international organizations, embassies, and private companies. MMR is available in hard copy and via e-rnail, To subscribe, contact: [email protected]. league of Feminists Internatsionalnaya St. 46, k. 5 Almaty

Tel: 32-25-46 Contact: Svetlana Shakhirova

Registered in 1994, the league works to eliminate discrimination based on race nationality, social status, religion. ' culture, age, or health. It researches

254

Organizations

gender issues, advocates for legislation favorable to women, and publishes articles and children's books. The league produces and distributes video and audio infonnational materials, provides counseling services. and organizes women's self--defense courses.

Legal Development of Kazakhstan (LOK) and Almaty Legal Corporatron ut Zenkov22

480100 Almaty Tel: 61-60-33,33-22-26 Fax: 61-60-33,53-16-18 E-mail: [email protected] Contact: Vitaliy Voronov, CEO; Andrei Cbebotaryev

LDK was created in March 1994, through the collaboration of a group of deputies from the "Progress" political party and private citizens concerned about weak rule oflaw in Kazakhstan. LDK's activities include: • Drafting legislation to further democratization • Assisting in the implementation of legal reform • Raising the level oflegal knowledge among the population by publishing and distributing legal literature. providing legal advice. and organizing seminars. In February 1997, LDK members created the Almaty Legal Corporation (ALC), which aims to further the protection of human rights and expand public participation in law-making. In August 1997. ALC founded the studio Rights, which produces and broadcasts television programs on legal and human rights. LDK is currently working on a project, entitled Center-Periphery, to establish a nonprofit legal information

network in Kazakhstan. It also publishes the Legal Development bulletin, distributed to public and political organizations at home and abroad. The group is involved in several other publishing projects, including a reference book on the voluntary sector in Kazakhstan, a manual on legal issues for NOOs, and a manual on working with specific sectors of the population. LDK bas approximately 1,500 members, encompassing the fields of law. economics, and small business development. Branches have been established in seven oblasts of Kazakhstan.

Malvina Non..profit Publishing for Women and Girls HeKOMMepllecKoe H3AaTeJThCTBO

.wm lKeB1IJ,T4H H

AeBOlleK ul. Abaya 23, kv. 32 48009l Almaty Tel: 63-02-42, 32-25-46 Contact: Yurii Zaitsev

Mercy Corps International SeifuUin St. 72, k. 36 480012 Almaty TellFax: 67-78-47 E-mail: [email protected] Contact; Thomas Hensleigh, Regional Director Mercy Corps International is a U.s.based humanitarian organization that seeks to eliminate poverty and promote democracy in transitional or disadvantaged countries. The organization focuses primarily on providing emergency relief services in areas affected by natural disaster or war, and promoting community development and the growth of civil society. Mercy Corps currently operates programs in

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The group has disbursed over $7 million in development funds to Central Asia since 1992. In 1997, it received a USAID grant of 2,000 metric tons of butter oil to sell in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Sales aUowed for the realization of agriculture, business development, health care, and democracywbuilding projects in these countries. Mercy Corps has offices in Kyrgyzstan. Tajikistan, and . Uzbekistan. Its headquarters are In Portland, Oregon.

Hationa' Association of Professionals in the Securities Market/HAM. HaJ.\HOHaJlbHruI AccolUlaJ.l.1iUl ilpocpecCUOHaJlbHbIX

YqaCTImKOB PbmKa L(eHHbIX

BYMar/HAMM Tole Bi, 7380 k. 313-316 48009 Almaty Tel/Fax: 69-16-05, 67-30-33

[email protected] www.narni.kz Contact: Gabit Tolkimbaev

E-mail: Web:

NAMI was established as a "legal resource center" by the Association of Investment Funds, It seeks to develop a Kazakh investment market and cultivate the "ethical behavior"of market participants. NAMI publishes the "Invest-Inform" newspaper, featuring information on Kazakhstan's economic situation, and operates offices in nine cities across the country.

Hevada-Semipalatinsk pro Lenina 85 480021 Almaty Fax:

63-12-07

255

Contact: Alina Nesterov8o Coordinator

NevadawSemipalatinsk was established in 1989 when 5.000 people fined the hall of the Writers' Union in Almaty to hear K.azakh poet O. Suleymenov denounce nuclear testing and call for a public meeting the next day. Since then the movement has contributed to the ;uspension of nuclear testing in the area, fostered links with international organizations that oppose nuclear testing, and launched an investigati.on into the level of radiation sickness In the area.

Public Health Center L(eHTp 06~ecTBeHHoro

3.qOPOBbH u1. Furmanova 103, k. 910 480091 Almaty Tel: 62-49-43, 63w67-93 Fax: 63-14-48 Contact: Alia Uval'zhanova

Red CrossiRed Crescent Society of Kazakhstan 06~ecTBO KpacHoro fionyvecmJ,a If KpacHoro KpecTa PecnytS.1IHKH Ka3aXCTaHa ul. Kunaeva 86 480100 Almaty Tel:

61-80-15,61w62-91

Fax: 61·81-12 Contact: Erkebek Argymbaev

The society provides aid to the needy, irrespective of nationality, religion, or social status. It has been active in Kazakhstan since March 1937, and runs five hospitals, a shelter for refugees, 39 social centers, 3 soup kitchens. and 8 "banks" of clothing, medicine, and food for the poor. The Society sponsors more than 300 charitable events and projects in Kazakhstan each year.

256

Organizations

Soros Foundation-Kazakhstan uL Furmanova, 117120 480091 Almaty Tel: 50-38-11,81-14..08 Fax: 50-38-14,81-14-08 E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.soros.org Contact: George Zarubin, Executive Director George Soros established his first foundation in 1979 in New York and his first Eastern European foundation in Hungary in 1984. Today, his network of foundations-the great majority of which are named Open Society Institutes-spans 31 countries and continues to grow. Open Society Institutes operate in most countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. These foundations are dedicated to "building and maintaining the infrastructure and institutions of an open society." Each national institute or foundation operates independently with its own staff and board. The foundation began working in Kazakhstan in 1993 to supports a variety of programs in the areas of educational, social, and legal reform. The Soros Fouu.dation Web site lists all the Network programs and provides e-mail addresses for persons involved with each of them. It also gives the office addresses and telephone numbers for each ofthe national Soros foundations.

Special Olympics Kazakhstan

Cnenman 01IHYIIIt!KC Ka3aKCTaHa

pro Dostik 38, k. 713a 480 100 Almaty TeIIFax: 62-35-24

E-mail: [email protected] Contact: Olga Bakhareva

"Tay" Ecological Center 9KOJlONNecKd n,eHTp "Tay" uJ. Kabanbai batyira 206, k. 39 Almaty Tet: 68·96-05, 42-53-90 Fax: 44-22-33 Contact: Irina Balashova UN Gender In Development Bureau 29 Kurmangazy, k. 53 480021 Almaty TellFax: 60-17-83 E-mail: [email protected] Contact: Galiya Khasanova, Bureau Chief The GID Bureau was initiated by the UN Development Project in 1996 to promote equal gender rights in Kazakhstan. It works with the Kazakh government. parliament, agencies of the UN, and NGOs to accomplish the following: • Identify specific gender issues in Kazakhstan; • Advocate the incorporation of this information in all government decision-making and policy implementation; • Establish gender-sensitive statistical databases; • Increase the proportion of women in policy-making positions; . • Ensure continuous monitoring of gender issues. To this end, the bureau holds training courses and round tables for the government and NGO community, and develops and implements a country action plan on improvement of women's status in Kazakhstan. It also publishes a Women in Kazakhstan Report. a regular bulletin on women's

Kazakhstan issues, and compiles and distributes international documents on women's issues,

Women's League of Creative Initiative JIBra lKeHIll;HH TBOpqecxoA H.lIHlJ;Hanma ul. Kurmangazy 59A, kv. 37 480091 Almaty Tel: 62..Q7~22, 32..Q5-28. 62-21-36 (Women's Clinic) Contact: Asiya Khairulina, President; Aiman Bekullova, Vice-President; Kuralai Akhmedieva, Coordinator of Women' Clinic WLCI was formed in 1994 to support creative endeavors of women in the Almaty area. It has organized several exhibitions oflocal artists' work. All profits from sales at these exhibitions are directed to participating artists. The league also conducted a campaign to provide clothing and food to orphanages, as wen as presents, including a children's book with illustrations drawn by local artists and published by the league. It produces a monthly informational bulletin on Almaty's art galleries. which is distributed to artists' unions, educational institutions, and newspapers. Under a UNDP-funded project, the league established a Women's Clinic in the Women's Pedagogical Institute in Almaty to provide medical exams and information on reproductive health and contraception to women students. With funding from the Eurasia Foundation. the group also conducted a ten-month journalism and computer publishing course for teachers and high school students, It also publishes a monthly independent newspaper for children with the goal of exposing them

257

to basic democratic principles and gender issues.

Youth and the Law Public Association 06JI(ecTBeBHoe 06rbeAHHeHlle MOJIOAe1Kb II npaBO ul. Abaya 50a, k. 624 480004 Almaty Tel: 42-91-75.33-54-14,25-40-34 Fax: 33-95-76 Contact: Kuanysh U. Meduov

Zhan Society for Support of Families with Disabled Children alya36 uf. Aimanova 212 480057 Almaty TeUFax: 45-14-64 E-malf: [email protected] Contact: Aibek E. Dumbaev

"Zhangyru" Kazakh Center for National Rebirth "2KaHI"bIpy" KasaxcKd l.\eHTp H8I/;HOBaJIbHOro B03poE,O;emm: ul. Vinogradova 85, k. 422 480012 Almaty Tel: 61-55-57,63-69-17 Contact: Damen Satybaldiev

Aralsk (3302) Kok~Zhlek-Soclety for

Aral Sea

Region Issues KOK-lKHeK-06mecTBO coAeii:CTBl'IIH pememm:

rrpo6JIe:u: npHapaJIhSl ul. Leningradskaya 2 46811 0 Aralsk Kyzyl-Orda Oblast Tel: 22-25-80, 22-24-51 Fax: 22-22-79 Contaot; Kurushbek Igmagambetov

258

Organizations

Kok-Zhiek addresses issues of ecological security and public health in the AmI Sea region. It is working to establish an informational network for local NGOs.

Baly;kshl (31222) Caspian Nature Kacn:mli Ta6m:'aT per. Chimkentskii 8a 466400 Balyikshi Atirauskaia pblast Tel: 3-69-52 Contact: GaUna Chernova,. Makharnbet Khakimov, Co-Chairs

Caspian Nature seeks to put an end to oil drilling in the Caspian Sea in order to protect the diverse flora and fauna of the sea and its watershed. The group advocates new legislation for environmental protection in the area,. and uses the media and public gatherings to demonstrate against the activity of oil companies. The group collected over 5,000 signatures in initiation of a "fax war against oil companies" in 1998.

Chimkent (3252) Counterpart Consortium Resource Center PecYPCHbnt Il',eHTp KayaTepnaPT KOHcopJ.l;lilYMa ul. Baitursinova 5, k. 97

Chimkent TaWax: 23-85-47 E-mail: [email protected] See the profile for Counterpart under

Almaty.

Karaganda (3212) Association for the Protection of Consumers' Rights ul. Erubaeva 37, k. 109 470061 Karaganda Tel: 41-12-52.74-32-13 Contact: Nazym E. Zhakupova

Charitable Foundation "Democracyt Education, Solidarity" BJIaroTBOPH'l"ellbHbnt ~HA "1::{eMoKpaTIUl. 06pa30BaHHe. C~apHocTb"

ul. Lobody. 3a,. k. 24 47006l Karaganda TellFax:: 58-02-25 E-mail: [email protected] Contact: Sergei Vanner

Human Rights Defense Center of Karaganda ul. Yerubaeva,. 49-7 470060 Karaganda Tel: 58-22-38 Contact: Gennadii Martynovich Nam

The Defense Center conducts civic education programs for elementary and high school children, and seeks to raise public awareness of rule of law and civil rights.

Karaganda Regional Ecological Center 9Ko-Il.eHTp ul. Stepnoi 3, k. 249 470070 Karaganda Tel: 14-56-86 E-mail: [email protected] Contact: Kaisha Atakhanova

The Ecocenter focuses its activity on environmental education. monitoring, biodiversity protection, and nuclear issues.

Kazakhstan Kokshetay (3162) Adilet School of Law AAw'IeT BblcmWl UIKona IIpaBa

uJ. Uritsky 106 Kokshetay Tel: 25~27·98. 25-04-08 See the profile for Adilet under Almaty.

Kostanai (3142) "Young Generation of Ecologists for a Safe and Stable Environment," Kostanal Environmental Education Center ul. Tarana,. d. 118 Kostanai State University 458000 Kostanai Tel: 54-25-89. 39-32-85 Contact: Ludmila Muzichko

259

medical assistance to needy families. and specialized day care for disabled children and helps mothers of disabled children to find employment. Other activities include: • "How to Start Your Own Business," a series of courses for mothers of disabled children on how to start a business at home (1996) • Cooperation with a local hotel to provide meals once a week for disabled orpbans (1997) • Training for 15 mothers of children with cerebral palsy on practical medical and therapeutic techniques

Pavlodar (3182) City Roerich Center alya2072 637000 Pavlodar

Tel: 32-55-11 Contact: Alexandr Yasinskiy

Ecology and Public Opinion Lennontovast. 107, k.12 637026 Pavlodar Tel: 32-55-11 Contact: NikoJay Savuhin

Novo-Kazalinsk (32438) Shapagat Aid Society for Disabled Children and their Mothers 06II:(ecTBO no OKa3aHmO nOMOIIl',H

~eTHY-~aM

H

me MaTepHY "illanaraT" ul. Shalantos-Baradur 20a 468210 Novo-Kazalinsk

Tel:

21-1-29.22-5-90

Contact: Shynara Zhensikbaeva.

Coordinator

League of Women-Muslims of Kazakhstan naBJIo.,~apcKoe OTAen:eHHe .JDII'H EeHlIf,llH-:u:ycYJIbMaHOK

Ka3axCTaHa u1. Pervomaiskaia 15 637032 Pavlodar Tel: 72-09-88, 73-08-40 Contact: Zara Kozhakhmetova

The Shapagat Society was formed in

1996 by a group of mothers concerned about the future of their disabled children in the face of weakened social welfare structures and lack of government assistance. Shapagat provides

Pavlodar Center for Consulting and Information alya2072 637001 Pavlodar or

260

uL

48, k. 67

637013 Pavlodar TEll: E-mail: Contact:

Kolesov The center was created in 1995 with financial. support fyom the American Consortium. It works to promote demmTdtic . foster the rule of Ii legal culture, and sup· the NGO movement in Pavlodar obiast information distribution groups. and consultation to The center maintains a human rights the bulk of which was donated the Constitutional and Institute in rt has also estaband National lished Ii Human LC1?;ISlamm program which offers .Hllmnv distribution of national and international human and a human bulletin.

Pavlodar Consumer Protection Society 428

637000 Pavlodar 32·57·21 Contact: Vladimir Chevnenko

Tel:

The

educates citizens on their in the marketplace. It circulates

''''5''''''''''"''' related to

32-07-78,32-07·40 Contact: Mikhail

Tel:

This promotes Ukrainian cuiture, and folk traditions in Kazakhstan through Ukrainian Sunday a schools for adults and Ukrainian language radio program, and support of civic initiatives in Kazakhtan's Ukrainian ,,"'.TlITIl ....itv The group is to open a school for Ukrainian students, start a lJkrainian newspaper, and establish branch offices in rural areas ofthe Pavloclar oblast.

Union of the Elderly st. k 30 637000 Pavlodar Contact: Ekaterina Dmitrieva T'l'7"rii,,,,,ICl"'''''

Petropavlovsk (3152) Entrepreneurs Association of the Northern Kazakhstan Oblasts npeAllPHHKMa~~eMCeael~­

Ka3aKCTaHCKOM o6nacTJIl ul. Lenina k. 13 642015 Tel: 46·83·59 Fax: 46·10-81 E-mail:

Contact: Vitalii Mikheenko

as consumers have been violated.

Pavlodar Fellowship of Ukrainian Culture TIaIUlogapcKoe TosapJIllIl.ecTBO

Pavlodar

Initiative Support Foundation
The center works to establish social with state and commercial al!:enCHeS of the It has 100 members and offices in five of T'I"rmf'T"hin"

Children'S Fund of Kyrgyzstan nP'1V'U'UTK

,,,. Director, Coordinator

'i,,,:vI
n'I>Mil>,."", incTcELSlrlg i.nn,c,v.·";.,ht'l'1"""t due to the

economic crisis." The

Women's League of Creative Initiative of Kyrgyzstan Jh!ra :lKeHIIl;mI TBOP1tIc(:KC'M l'IHH[(HaTlIIBbI

Dzhal 720038 Bishkek L-¥~.rn"A~

Tel:

21-45-85 E-mail:

Initiative was created in 1995 to support, and sustain the talent and activities of the artists and to cross-cultural art education between and the rest of the world. Speclilc the WLCI inclllde: ~ ...,_,,¥h•• ~

HODS in

for contemporary Ii database of cultural programs.

Women's Support Center pr. Mira Bishkek

kv. #14

Tel:

44-45-10,26-36-50,42-19-08

Fax:

62-18-75

E-mail: bishkek.su, r",,,.ttfl'i"'r1,","'" bishkek.su Contact: Rosa Aitmatova, President

of the Women's Center is to promote women's to provide women with information and ,<mn-rr",,,

their

and to encourage their selt~eml'lllo\rrn(~nt [n its first six months the center conducted Ii survey in Talas oblast and determined that the average "n,~"",,,ln',,.,.."'nt rate among women in the Talas oblast is 80 percent and reaches 95 in some remote rural areas. The center came up with a proposal to establish a Women's Bank, based on the programs implemented by the Grameen Bank and the U.S. Financial International ....".nl,'\V1'n""~t "nn"",'"mi1;",,,

women with small loans at a low interest rate to establish their own small businesses and """r".,.."';.,,,,, Loans win be available to 'lV'il'V7.,t
310

Organizations

faces from around the world. It welcomes new additions to this exhibit.

Sabr Crisis Center for Women and Teens KPH3HCBbn't I{eHTp AJl.H lKeHIJJ,1llH H nOAJXlCTKoB "Ca6p"

ul. Akhunbabaeva 68 703000 Samarkand Tel: 33-66--66, 33-76--90 E-mail: sabr@samunLorg Contact: Mavlyuda Shirinova, Director The Sabr Crisis Center offers psychological and medical help to women and children. Since its founding in 1996, the center has provided consultations (both in-person and via telephone) to more than 1,500 people. Sabr staff also conduct "mobile consultations" in communities throughout the Samarkand oblast.

Samarkand Information Consulting Center Samarkand State University Information Consulting Center University Boulevard 15 703004 Samarkand Tel: 35-14-98,31-06-66 E-mail: [email protected] [email protected] Contact: Ravshan Sabirov, Director; Laiia Kashaeva, Office Manager ICC was established in 1994 to provide information and consultations to NGOs and small/medium-sized businesses in Samarkand. It provides legal consultations for NGOs, and consultations regarding the establishment offoreign partnerships, funds, and small businesses. ICC maintains a database of U.S. and European foundations and other grant-making organizations. It publishes its own newspaper, In/ormation for Initiatives, which includes a supplement for NGOs called "Grassroots."

ICC has a public e-mail node. which is free of charge for teachers and research workers of Samarkand State University. NGOs can aIso access email but must pay half of the cost. ICC also has a public library of over 3000 books and periodicals.

Urgench (62) Association of Women with University Education Al Khorezmi St. 23, k. 206 Urgench Tel: 4-23-50. 6--73-55 Contact: Ms. Khasanova The association supports small business and entrepreneurship in Urgench and Khorezm obJasts.

Ziatdin (36640) "Green Wave" Children's Ecology Organization Istiklol St. 20 704114 Ziatdin Pakhtachi district, Sarnarkand region Tel: 3-10-67 Contact: Bahodir D. Khudaiberdiev

Online Resources

Online Resources E-mail Lists CenAsla People with projects in Central Asia, as well as those with a general interest in the region, win find the CenAsia list to be an excellent resource. CenAsia includes: announcements of meetings and job openings; news of organizations working in the region; leads to other Internet resources related to the region; and references to print materials, such as journals and dictionaries. CenAsia is also a political discussion list and, unlike some discussion lists on the Internet, is distinguished by the high quality of discussion and the background and expertise of its participants. Archives of CenAsia are available at: www.sorO$.orgItajiklcenaslallndex.html

List address:

[email protected]

To subscribe, send the message: to:

subscribe cenasla firstname lastname [email protected]

CentralAsia-L CentralAsia-L is an announcement-only list sponsored by the Harvard Forum for Central Asian Studies. The list is moderated and carries announcements about conferences, cultural events, calls for papers for journals, new books, jobs, and academic programs. Archives of list postings are available at: www.fas.harvard.edu/-casww/Subscribe_CA-L.html

List address:

[email protected]

To subscribe. send the message: to:

subscribe centralasla-l [email protected]

Central·Asia-Studies-L The Central Asia Studies Listserv was established by the research schools of Social Sciences and Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, to provide a worldwide communications vehicle and a central electronic archive for anyone working on or interested in the study of Central Asia's history, politics, sociology, demography, economics, languages, culture, philosophy, and religion, and to place these within the broader framework of the changing global order. Subscription to the listserv is open and the discussions are unmoderated.

List address:

[email protected]

To subscribe. send the message: to:

subscribe central-asla-studies-l [email protected]

Ecostan News An English-language monthly bulletin reporting on the environment and environmental movements in Central Asia. A good source of information on non-

313

Online Resources

314

governmental organizations in the region. Back issues are available at: www.ecostan.org. (Archives were previously located at: di-145c.mit.edulproJedal leep). To subscribe, send a message to Eric Sievers at: [email protected]. For the Russianlanguage edition, send a message to: [email protected] Ferghana-Valley The Fergnana-VaHey discussion list is meant to serve as a too] for addressing development issues in the Ferghana Valley. It is provides a forum for local NGOs, local governments, business, scholars, and international organizations. The list is associated with the United Nations Ferghana Valley Development Programme ([email protected]).though it is open to all who are interested in the welfare of the Valley. Messages are in English and Russian. List address:

[email protected]

To subscribe, send the message: to:

[email protected] firstname lastname [email protected]

Kyrgyz Business News Kyrgyz Business News publishes an e-mail newsletter reporting on general business news in Kyrgp.stan. KBN is an on-line educational project of students at the Kyrgyz-American School in Bishkek. The on-Hne version ofKBN is available at: freenet.bishkek.sulkbn/kbn.html To subscribe, send the message: to:

sub$crIbe [email protected]

Turkistan-NewsleUer Turkistan-Newsletter is an electronic newsletter whose purpose is to report on the "Land of the Turks." In addition to news. the publication also contains book reviews, commentaries, articles. and letters from readers. Archives of list postings (in HTML or e-mail form) are available at: www.euronet.nUusersisotaiturldstan.htm List address: [email protected] To subscribe, send the message: to:

SUBscribe Turldstan-N [email protected]

UrGHUR-L ListProc Page Uighur-L is an open, unmoderated mailing list dedicated to discussions on "Eastern Turkestan" (the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China), the Uighur people. and related topics. Archives of list postings are available at: www.taklamakan.org/ulghur..f!u_archlve.html List address:

[email protected]

To subscribe. send the message: to:

SUBscribe UIGHUR..t. ma;[email protected]

Online Resources

315

Web Sites Asia-Pius www.intemews.ru/ASIA-PLUS An independent news service in Tajikistan. A selection of back issues is available at the site, plus information on how to subscribe to the regular Asia-Plus e-mail news service. Asian Studies WWW Monitor coombs.anu.edu.auJasia-www-monitor.html Published twice a month. the Monitor tracks Internet resources related to the field of Asian Studies. All resources listed are rated by the editorial staff in terms of the scholarly/factual content and usefulness to Asian Studies. The content is also distributed via an e-mail list. To subscnbe, send the message: 'subscribe asia-www-monitor your-emailto:

address [email protected]

CANGO.NET www.cango.net.k.g The Central Asian Non-Governmental Organizations network is a Web site and email network for NOOs in the region, managed by Counterpart International with support from USAID. The Web site contains a large, searchable database ofNGOs in the region, including brief descriptions of the organizations and contact information (follow the link "Countries" to search the database). There is also a large and growing on-line library of resources for NOOs in a wide variety of fields.

Center for Political and Strategic Studies www.cpss.org The Center for Political and Strategic Studies is a nonprofit organization seeking to increase Western knowledge and understanding of complex international and domestic events. CPSS publishes the newsletter Perspectives on Central Asia, copies of which may be downloaded from the site. The site also contains links to other sites with infonnation on Central Asia. For more infonnation, contact CPSS at: mail@ep$S.org.

Central and Inner Asia Seminar, University of Toronto, Canada www.utoronto.caldeeds/ciasf.lIldex.html Focusing on the cultures and activities of ancient and modern nomadic peoples of Central Asia. CIAS sponsors annual seminars and publishes papers on related topics. The site contains infonnation on future seminars and links to CIAS publications.

316

Online Resources

Central Asian Studies World Wide www.fas.harvard.edu/-casww The Central Asian Studies World Wide site provides resources and tools for scholars of Central Asia. The site seeks to provide infonnation useful to both ''beginners'' and "experts," encompassing all fields of the social sciences and humanities. The Harvard Forum fur Central Asian Studies sponsors the site. For more infonnation, contact: [email protected]

Central Eurasia Resource Page www.soros.orgicentraLeurasia.html A project of the Open Society Institute, the Central Eurasia Resource Page contains detailed sections on states in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Within each section is an excellent collection of links to Web sites. on-line news sources, articles, and print publications. The site is wen designed and easy to navigate.

Choynona Weekly News cwnews.cjb.netl or 128.138.13.157:99/umid_templnewsl A weeJdy Web newspaper published by a student group in Uzbekistan.

Coyne Airways Kyrgyzstan Links www.coyne--aviation.co.uklhtmlllinkkyr.htm Coyne Airways, an air cargo service operating throughout ~tral Asia and the Caucasus, maintains this page of useful links to sites about Kyrgyzstan. The site also contains links to similar pages for other Central Asian states.

Cyber Uzbekistan www.cu-online.comt-k_aluzbekistan Cyber Uzbekistan contains infonnation on news, politics, business, travel, and culture. A message board on the site is divided into three sections: Makhalia (friends and pen pals), Silk Road (business messages), and Uzbekistan on Line (general messages). Links to other sites with infonnation on Uzbekistan and Central Asia, classified advertisements, and education are also included.

Eurasia Research Centre euraslanews.comlercJhomepage.htm The Eurasia Research Centre home page contains links to news and analysis of the nations of Central Asia and other regions of the world, as well as its publication. EurasiaNews. The EurasiaNews archives are searchable, and the site also contains links to other searchable international news archives. The ERC is associated with the "International Relations and Security Network-A Swiss Contribution to Partnership for Peace, Coordinated and Developed by the Center for Security Studies and Conflict Research at the Em (Swiss Federal Institute ofTechno)ogy). Zurich."

Online Resources

317

Harvard Forum for Central Asian Studies www.fas.harvard.edul-centasia From this web site you can obtain information about Central Asian studies at Harvard University-md much more. The site contains archives oftbe CentralAsiaL Announcement List for Central Asian Studies (as well as the Central-AsiaHarvard-List. a similar announcement list covering only Harvard related matters). The site received a Five Star rating ("Essential") by the Asian Studies WWW Monitor (http://coombs.anu.edu.aulasia-www-monitor.htrnl), which called it "a well organized, rich, no-nonsense on-line research tooL" It contains literally hundreds of announcements of conferences, job opportunities, new publications, etc., making it perhaps the richest and most concentrated source for information on Central Asian studies worldwide. Human Rights tn Turkestan www.euronet.nVuserslturkfedlerk.html Human Rights in Turkestan contains information, articles, and analysis on the human rights situation throughout Central Asia. Information Consultative Centre of Ashgabat wwwoicctm.org ICCM was founded in 1996 to promote the development ofNGOs in Turkmenistan. The site contains an on-line database (go to "Active NGOs in Turkmenistan'') with contact information for many NGOs in Turkmenistan. But it does not appear to be kept up routinely. When we visited this page, the last indicated update was nearly nine months before. There is also a listing of Western organizations providing funding and assistance to NGOs in Eurasia. The site is sponsored by the Eurasia Foundation. Interactive Central Asia Resource Project www.rockbrldge.netipersonaVbichellwelcome.htp

The Interactive Central Asia Resource Project is a comprehensive index of Central Asian-related resources available on the Internet, with more than 500 separate links. For each link there is a brief but informative annotation which provides a sense of the resources available as well as background on the person maintaining the site and how frequently it is updated. For Central Asia as a whole, and for each country in the region, there is a page with annotated links divided into major categories, such as Culture and Language, Health and Environmental Issues, Politics and Economics, and General Information. There is also a list (including e-mail addresses) of people who have a professional interest in the region. International Center for Not-for-Profit Law wwwJcnl.org/nis.html Variations of a law on public associations adapted from the Soviet law are currently in effect in all Central Asian countries. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan have adopted new civil codes which contain provisions regulating noncommercial organizations. In all countries NGOs and/or governments are making efforts to develop and adopt other NGO draft laws, which would regulate

318

Online Resources

the NGO sector more comprehensively, The implementation of each country's Law on Public Associations is different from country to country; from the most NGOfriendly approach of Kyrgyzstan to the most restrictive and repressive of Turkmenistan. ICNL's complete catalog of related documents for the region can be found at this site.

International Takiamakan-lJighur Human Rights Association www.taldamakan.orgliooex.html International Taklamakan-Uighur Hurnan Rights Association site contains archived information, articles. and events related to the human rights situation in Taklamakan region. For further information. contact Mr. Abulajiang Layli Namen (Baret) at; [email protected]

Political Resources on the Net www.agora.stm.itlpoliticlasia.htm The Asia section of the Political Resources on the Net site contains sections on all the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Within each section there are links to political parties and organizations, news agencies, articles, statistics, and other information.

Radio Free EuropelRadlo Liberty www.rferl.org RFEIRL was originally established by the U.S. government after WWII to serve as an alternative source for news about events in their own countries for the people of Eastern Europe and the USSR. RFEIRL has continued to broadcast news of the region with the support of regional leaders such as Vaclav Havel. RFE/RL's Web site is very large, with lots of news, including RealAudio files ofRFE/RL's broadcasts, an archive of its NewsUne daily news briefs. feature articles. special reports, and more. News reports are available in English and Russian.

Research Centre for Turkestan and Azerbaijan www.turldye.netlsota/sota.html The Research Centre for Turkestan and Azerbaijan (SOTA) was founded in 1991 and is dedicated to research and analysis of the Turkic peoples of the former Soviet Union. The center is also concerned with the promotion of human rights. dernocratic governments. and peace throughout the Turkic World. The site contains information on publications; articles and analysis on politics, history, and culture; and links t9 other sites related to the region. Links are also available to SOTA·hosted sites dedicated to the Karaims and Tatars of the Crimea.

Russian and Eastern European Network Information Center reenic.utexas.edulreeniclreenic.html The Russian and Eastern European Network Information Center contains a collection ofImks to Web sites with information about East and Centra] Europe, Russia, and the newly independent countries of the former Soviet Union. The site includes information organized by state or region, as wen as a listing of Web resources. listservs, databases, news, libraries, and archives. REENIC is supported

Online Resources

319

by the Univemty of Texas at Austin Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies and the College of Liberal Arts. Silk Road Foundation www.slfk-road.com Founded in 1996, the Silk Road Foundation is dedicated to preserving the art and culture ofInner Asia, as weI) as encouraging the study ofthis region. The site provides links to information on news, travel, art, culture, and other topics related to the region. For more information, contact: [email protected] South China Morning Post www.scmp.comlnewslchinaltopchina.idc Published in Hong Kong. the South China Morning PO$t site is a good source for news on the Xinjiang region of the People's Republic of China, where a large Uighur population exists. Tajikistan Update www.angelfire.comlsdltajikistanupdate The Tajikistan Update contains sections on news (including archived news stories), culture, discussion and chat groups, analytical articles, and a message board. The site also contains a useful map directory. For more information, contact the host, David Straub at: davidstraubOgeocities.com Uzbekistan Subject Index www.columbia.eduiculsipaiREGIONAUHlluzbekisthtmi The Uzbekistan Subject Index contains a selection oflinks under the following headings; general information. business and economics, culture, environment, government agencies, human rights, law and legislation, news, and travel. The site is maintained by the Harriman Institute at Columbia Univemty in New Yark. World Uighur Network News www.uygur.com The World Uighur Network News reports on current political, cultural and economic developments in Eastern TurkistanlXinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and Uighur-related issues. It is published by the East Turkistan Information Center. Current and back issues are available from the English·:·language page at the Center's Web site. For further information, contact AbduljeJil Karkash at: [email protected]

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Online Resources

Internet Access Centers The International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) has administered Internet programs in the NIS since 1991 and began administration of the USIA-sponsored Internet Access and Training Program (IATP) in 1995. The IATP program is a broad one, with country coordinators being responsible for: • Developing training materials and cwricula, Internet resources, and local language on-line development; • Assisting local institutions to establish on-line presence, including Web sites, electronic publications, and listservs; • Training and supervising a staff that consists of trainers, web masters, systems administrators, and other program personnel; • Implementing program outreach and publicity to targeted audiences. including local alumni ofUSIAprogratris; • Administering open grants competitions; • Coordinating the work of "Internet Working Groups." lREX is administering IATP programs in the capitals of all the formerly Soviet Central Asian republics except Tajikistan. (Other cities with IREXIIATP programs are Yerevan, Baku, TbiHsi, Chisinau, Minsk. and Kyiv.) Through the IATP, IREX has established several public "Internet Access Sites" in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. The number of these sites will expand as the IATP develops; visit the IREX Web site (www.irex.org. or specifically, www.irex.org/programs/iatp/iatpsites.htm) for the most current listing. The following Central Asian Internet Access Sites had been established as of early 1999. Almaty

Almaty Power Engineering Institute ul. Baitursynova, d. 126, kom. 228 TellFax: 3272-67-79-00 The National Library of Kazakhstan pro Abai, d. 14 Tel: 3272-69-65-86 Contact: Vladimir Shatskikh E-mail: [email protected] Kazakh State University ul. Timiriazeva, d. 70, kom. 22 Tel: 327247-19-70 Contact: Anna Parentieva E-mail: [email protected]

Kazakhstan Institute of Scientific and Technical Information (KasGozINTI) ul. Bogenbai Batyra, d. 221 Tel: 3272-42-33-02 Fax: 3272-42-80-59 Contact: Ualisber Tukaev E-mail: [email protected]

Online Resources Bishkek

The National Library of the Kyrgyz Republic uL Sovetskaia, d. 208 Tel: 3312~2647~39 Contact: Igor Lebedev [email protected] http://freenet.bishkek.sulmain.html Education Information Center ul. Tynystanova,257,kab.202 Tel: 3312-22-86-90 Contact: Eugene Dronov

321

Tel: 3323-1346-56 Contact: Zamir Raev E-mail: [email protected]

Osh Osh State University Tel: 3322-22-29-12 Contact: Victor Tsoy E-mail: [email protected]

E~mail:

[email protected]

Tashkent

Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University ul. Kievskaia, 44, kom. 1/113 (computer labs: kom. 210,317) Tel: 3312-22-16-77 Contact: Konstantin Arsienko E-mail: [email protected]

Academy of State and Socia] Construction Uzbekistanskaia, 45, 10th floor Tel: 371245-69-21 x 151 Contact: Tuligoon Nishenbaev E-mail: [email protected] http://www.assc.ac.uz

Kyrgyz-American School ul. Abdymamunova, 205 Tel: 3312-26-2342 Contact: Konstantin Arsienko E-mail: [email protected] Kyrgyz-Turk "Ala-Too" University J0 mikrorayon, ul. Kamskaya 10 Tel: 331242-76-96 Contact: Gokhan Ozgur E-mail: [email protected] Resource Center at InterBilim society ul. Razzakova, 16 Tel: 3312-66-04-25 Contact: Vladimir Folomeev E-mail: [email protected] Jalalabad

Jalalabad State University

Institute of Cybernetics Akadmicheski Gorodok Tel: 3712-45-87-04 Contact: Zilfira Adillova E-mail:[email protected] http://www.ic.ac.uz The Institute of Regional and Strategic Studies Khaklar Dustligi 4 Tel: 371245-14-52 Contact: Maxim Emm E-mail:[email protected] http://www.iss.ac.uz University of World Economy and Diplomacy Buyuk lpak Yuli 54. kor. B, kom. 34 Tel: 3712-67-83..Q3 Contact: Alex Vostrikov, Trainer E-mail: [email protected] http://www.uwed.ac.uz

Appendices

About the Authors Jay Cooper is Director of Counterpart International in Kyrgyzstan and training coordinator for the project, "NGO Support Initiative in Central Asia." He is a director and co-founder of Center InterBilim, an NGO support group registered in Bishkek in 1994. In 1996 he was a member of a World Bank pre-appraisal mission in Tajikistan, in connection with a Joan to the government of Tajikistan for the establishment of a Social Investment Fund. Previously he was directof'Of several Peace Corps projects in Africa. He has a B.A. degree from the University of Akron in Ohio.

Renel Hanks is Assistant Professor of geography at Oklahoma State University and editor of the Journal ofCentral Asian Studies. He received his B.A. degree from the University of Missouri and his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. He has contributed a chapter on the Uzbeks to An Ethnohistoncal Dictionary a/the Russian and Soviet Empires (Greenwood. 1994); co-authored (with Eric Fournier) Geographic Perspectives: Culture, Environment and the Global Economy (Kendall Hunt, 1995); and has a forthcoming article in the Journal of Third World Studies titled, "Directions in the Ethnic Politics of Kazakhstan: Concession. Compromise, or Catastrophe?" Scott Horton is a partner with Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler LLP, an intemationallaw firm with offices in New York and Moscow and affiliated offices in St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Kyiv, Tbilisi, Erevan, Baku, Tashkent, Bishkek, and Almaty. He founded the finn's practice in the CIS countries and today is responsible for its work throughout the Central Asian and Transcaucasus regions. Mr. Horton commenced his law studies at the Universities ofMainz and Munich in Germany and took a J.D. degree from the University of Texas in Austin in 1981. His current practice encompasses the representation of major philanthropies, advice to foreign heads of state (including at various times an five of the Central Asian republics) on legal reform issues, representation of multilateral development banks in secured finance and equity investment projects, and representation of Western natural resource companies in exploration and development projects. He is an adjunct professor at the Columbia University School of Law and the author of more than two hundred articles and monographs on legal developments in nations in transition. Mr. Horton has been a lifelong activist in the human rights area, having served as counsel to Andrei Sakharov, Elena Bonner, Sergei Kovalev, and other leaders of the Russian human rights and democracy movements for over twenty years and having worked with Human Rights Watch, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, and the Intemational League for Human Rights, among other organizations. He is currently president Gfthe International League and a director of the Moscowbased Andrei Sakbarov Foundation. He is also a directGr of the Open Society Institute's Central Eurasia Project, the Intemational Center for Not-for-Profit Law, the CGuncil on Foreign Relation's Center for Preventive Action, and numerous other NGO organizations.

325

326

Appendices

Ulil Ikramova is Program Officer and Coordinator for the Eurasia Office in Tashkent. She manages a series of Fotmdation Central Asia COJrnpetltlO!1IS focused on nongovernmental She has worked with a diverse group of international the Union's T ACIS program, AEC Holland and the U.S. Peace Corps. Ms. Ikramova from the in Moscow and earned her Ph.D. in her master's of World in where she later served as dean of the Department. An alumna of the Musklc Fellowprogram, Ms. lkramova studied public administration at the of Nebraska-Omaha and internships with Winrock International, Voice of America's Central Asia and the Central Asia Institute at Johns j:.:J"",lr'n"

.Katsiev is Director of Internews Almaty in Kazakhstan. After more than ten years with Kazakh State TV, where he served as division chief and chief the formed the first television station in ""(Hlni",,, the first Internews journalism training seminars in Kazakhstan. Mr. Katsiev continues to teach at Internews seminars in Central Asia and joined the Internews Almaty staff in 1995. Erldnbek Kasybekov is a consultant to the of Labor and Social Credit program funded by Protection under the Social Sector 1995 and 1997 he worked with the World Bank. Between NGOs as an NGO trainer. He has also been part of a group attached to the President's Office to a "National to Overcome !'n·tJprlv___ Dr. obtained a in from Institute ofthe Siberian Departand a Ph.D. fmm the of Sciences in Novosibirsk. Between 1985 and 1996 ment of the Russian Academy of he was a senior researcher at the Institute of Biology of the Sciences.

Alia Kazakina is a Russian attorney who as a Ncw York She has been associated with Pa~tter'SOll. R.. l~""n LLP in New York since 1990 and has focused on CIS corpOl'ate transactions and On"fPT'T1rU10 NGOs. In with honors from InHu"r,,,hr In eight years of work !IS an attorney in St. Pel:ersbmrlZ she had a diverse civil labor, commereiallaw, and criminal law matters, and she matters in the district court, mtmi(cip.al court, and the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. Ms. Kazakina is a author on CIS issues. In she worked with Justice Ernest Ametistov ofthe Russian Constitutional Court on a ofthe Law on Public Associations in Russia, her articles are "Between Ruler and Ruled: Freedom of Association in the Russian Federation" (LawMarch Organizations in yen, Committee for Human with Tax and Other Issues" June 1997); "The Ncw Russia Russian Criminal Code Combats Economic Crimes" (Doing Business in Eastern

About the Authors

327

Europe, January 1997); "'New Russian Arbitration Rules Prompt Rethinking" (Doing Business in Eastern Europe, July 1995). Kathryn A. MeConneD is Creative Services Manager, Document Sales Division. U.s. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. In this position she develops and manages marketing strategies for a publishing operation with $81 million in annual sales and 12,000 titles in print. Ms. McConnell obtained a B.A. degree in journalism, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Minnesota and an M.B.A. from Marymount University in Virginia. She has served as a management consultant! trainer to Counterpart Foundation and as an advisor to the National Forum Foundation. Aziz Niyazi obtained a Ph.D. (Candidate of Historical Science) and is presently

Senior Research Worker at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is also Deputy Director of the Institute ofIslamic Studies and Deputy Chief Editor of the bulletin Russia and the Muslim World. His academic interests include problems of ecology and stable development, Islam, and ethnic and regional conflicts. Abdummanob Polat is Chairman of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan and

Director of the Union of Councils' Central Asian Human Rights Information Network. He received a PhD. in mathematics from Lomonosov State University in Moscow, was an associate professor ofrnathernatics at Tashkent State University from 1979-93, and has authored 35 publications in the field of mathematics. He is also the author of about 60 articles on democracy, human rights, and political development in Uzbekistan (in Uzbek, English, and Russian). \ Olivier Roy is a senior researcher at Centre Nationale de Recherches SCientifiques (CNRS) in Paris and a consultant for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After

studies in Philosophy and Oriental Languages (persian), Roy obtained an "Agregation de Philosophie" and a Ph.D. in political science. Roy was a consultant for UNOCA (United Nations Office of the Coordinator for Afghanistan) in 1988, and was Special Envoy for the OSCE (Office of Security and Cooperation in Europe) in Tajikistan (August-December 1993). then head ofOSCE's Mission for Tajikistan (February-November 1994). Dr. Roy's research fields include political Islam, the Middle East, and Central Asia. His main publications are Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan (Cambridge University Press, 2d ed. 1990, translated from the French); The Failure ofPolitical Islam (Harvard University Press, 1994, translation of L 'Echec de l'Islam Politjque, Le Seuil, 1992); Genealogie de I'Islamisme (Hachette, 1995); and La Nouvelle Ask Centrale ou fa Fabrication des Nations (Le Seuil, 1997). M. Holt Ruffln is Executive Director of Center for Civil Society International. which he founded in 1992. The organization maintains a large Web site containing several thousand files related to civic initiatives in the nations of the former Soviet Union (http://www.friends-parmers.orgl.-..ccsil) and sends out an electronic bulletin daily. known as "CivlISoc," to approximately 1,400 subscribers worldwide. Mr.

328

Ruftin is co-editor of The Post-Soviet Handboo/;;: A Guide to Grassroots el"(J,'IlZ,CJlUlnS and Internet Resources in the NIS of Washington revised and Internet Resources for Economic Educators NaIlOTlllt Council for Economic Education and 1997). He holds a B.A. from Stanford and an M.P.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School at Pri.nceton S. Ji'rederick Starr is Chairman of the Central Asja~Caucasus lnstitute at Johns Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in D.C .. His which has resulted in 18 books and 180 l)UI)I.ls:tlea t".. "t ..,hf" and elements in modern and domestic po1icy, and the relation of to the Central Asia Dr. Starr was director of the Kennan Insitute for Advanced Russian Studies at The Wilson Center in for U years ofOberiin and of the Institutee He is a of four and a Fellow ofthe American " ~.an~,,,,,,,, of Arts and Sciences. He also serves on the Board of Advisors of Center InternationaL Eurasia Stable" He is work for a new to the Aga Khan and the government of Tajikistan. Kate Watters is Director of Programs at ISAR: Initiative for Social Action and Renewal in Eurasia. As she is for programs working with includinllboth ISAR's DC~hased and field programs in West NIS, Central and the Caucasus. Ms. Watters worked at the Center on East-West as the director Investment and Communications at Duke and the editor of tile Journal Nationalities. She holds a B.A. in Russian and Literature from the University of Massaclmsetts at Amherst and an MeA. in Russian Area Studies from Daniel C. Waugb is Associate Professor of history and international studies at the fashingt()D \ •.,,,,,,,.,,,,,,,, where until recently he chaired the l'..~t;S;SIWI, ]:{"'rAn""" and Central Asian Studies in the Jackson School of International Studies. After a B.A. in from Yale, he went on to an M.A. in Re~iconaJ Studies and a Ph.D. in Russian at Harvard His research intercsts concern and he also is currently studying the British consuls in in the early 1920s. He nal1:icinated in a 111 1991, is ~"TT_tl" _~~"n.~~~ to teach a course on the "Silk " and has traveled in Central Asia---·in part to his interests as an active mountaineer. Professor is a member of the Board of Directors of Center for Civil International.

About the Authors

329

Evgeny Alexandrovieh Zhovtis founded the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights in 1993. with the assistance of the American organization Union of Councils. He has been its Executive Director since then. He graduated from Kazak Polytechnical University with two degrees, one in mining engineering, the other in economics. From 1977 to 1991 he worked in the Institute for Mining Research of the Academy of Sciences of Kazakhstan and authored more than 50 articles. From 1989 to 1992, he participated in the activities of the Almaty affiliate of the public organization "MemoriaL" From January 1992 to June 1996. he was vice~president of the Independent Trade Union Center of Kazakhstan, responsible for public information and consultations. Mr. Zhovtis is on the board of directors of the Almaty affiliate of the international foundation for legal and political research. Interlega1. He is also a member of the Expert Council attached to the Republican Commission on Human Rights under the president of Kazakhstan. He has published widely on problems of democratization, economic transformation. human rights, and the rule oflaw in Kazakhstan. He is a recipient of the U.S. and European Union Award for Democracy and Civil Society.

Glossary of Foreign Words and Special Terms Ail Okomoto

council in It consists elected by direct vote. The village council chairman is supposed to be elected hut it can that at the tjme of the election of the the arrives from the district Int>:rVt'oP" the election.

Klwkim

Mlmn!Q" akimat

Astana

The term in Kazakhstan for the local government administration. Also known as akimiat in as akimiat or in Uzbe~astan, and as in Turkmenistan. The new capital before that as Ts,:hnogt'oo.

until

Awlad

Extended

CAU

Central Asian Union·-the nations Uzhekistan

CiS

Commonwealth

and

or dan, and

Indlep,mdent States,

CiTES

Convention on International Trade in bndarlgeJred

FSU

Shorthand for the countries of the former Soviet Union.

Greens

A commonly used term for environmental activists.

Hectare or ka,

An area 100 meteJrS x 100 meteJrS square. Approximately 2,5 ac,es.

leNL

International Committee for Not-for-Profit Law

Imam

A Moslem cleric,

l~han

A Sufi

to Mecca-..one of tile five pillars of the Moslem faith.

.fnF"'.I""

Kenesh

leader.

The

Kolkhoz

Collective farm.

Mahalla Maktab

N .. i"~,hf1it'h,~,,rl or~~an:izal,torls

Medresseh Alurid

oflslamic societies.

An underf,,>Tound school where people would learn the tenets of Islam the Soviet Islamic senljmuy, A follower of an ishan,

NGO

Nomenklatura

stratum in Communist

made up of high

""c'.""'''''' in the party and government institutions.

Oblast

A sub-national unit that might the United States or departments in France.

330

to states in

Glossary

331

Ulama

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the European institution that evolved from the Marshall Plan. Parliament of Uzbekistan. Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europ&-an institution which has evolved out ofthe 1975 Helsinki Accords. A pious Sufi elder; can be synonymous with ishan. A Muslim cleric who is able to recite the entire Qu'ran from memory. The Koran. Districts, often within municipalities. A term used in the same way we would use "national" in the United States, as in the "President of Kazakhstan's Republican Commission on Socia] Security," or "Uzbekistan's Republican Fund Yodgorlik." Islamic law. Islamic courts. The unit of currency in Kyrgyzstan. Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth ofIndependent States, a program of the European Union which operates analogously to USAID. The unit of currency in Kazakhstan. Refers to that sector of society composed of associations, religious organizations, political parties, trade unions, charities, etc.-as distinct from the two other major sectors, business and govemment. An elite within Islam of highly educated theologians.

USAlD

United States Agency for International Development.

Wahhabi

Member of an Islamic"political movement founded in Saudi a Arabia by Abdul Wahhab in the eighteenth century, which adheres closely to the Qur'an (Koran). It advocates a return to the ''true'' Islam that existed during the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Since 1953, "Wabhabiism" has been the official ideology of Saudia Arabia. It has fonowers in many countries. Islamic foundations, controlled by clerics, which help maintain mosques, support schools, and provide general welfare support. The Moslem practice of giving alms to the poor, another of the five pillars of the faith. Nature preserve.

OECD Oli(y) Majlis OSCE

Pir Qori

Quran, Qu'ran Raton Republican

Sharia Shariat Sam TACIS

Tenge Third sector

Waqf Zakat, zakot

Zapovednik