The idea that the U.S. would ever engage in covert activities to bring down a government is so inconceivable to Nathan Hamm, of “registan.net,” that he’s shocked — shocked! — that anybody would take the memo purportedly by U.S. ambassador to Kyrgyzstan Stephen Young seriously. It’s an “obvious” forgery, he crows, with the Leisurely Professor (and the world’s leading advocate of State Department libertarianism) chiming in. But as I wrote in my column:
“It is difficult to see how the embassy can maintain this stance of high moral dudgeon in the context of its own actions: regardless of whether or not the memo is real, in whole or in part, they have made its declared provenance all too believable.”
The stupidity and arrogance of U.S. foreign policy is doubly underscored in the example of Kyrgyzstan, where the wide distribution of the Young memo is creating ill will and resentment against the U.S. as fast (or faster) than the distribution of dollars is creating compliant yes-men — and fueling the growing Islamist elements. As John Laughland points out in an excellent piece:
“The US has spent $746,000,000 in Kyrgyzstan since 1992, and that all our old friends – the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, the International Foundation for Election Systems, Freedom House “and other American sponsored NGOs” are active in this small poor country. As the ambassador says, “The amount of money we spend in Kyrgyzstan per capita is far and away the highest rate of any of the Central Asian states … our partnership with Kyrgyzstan has made those assistance programs among the most effective of all those countries of the former Soviet Union.
“As it happens, the NGOs are particularly numerous in the Ferghana Valley, where the trouble started. The National Democratic Institute has offices in Jalalabad and Karasuu, a tiny town on the Uzbek border; USAID has an office in Osh; and so does the US Peace Corps.[5] USAID funds many things – click here for a summary – including blatantly biased media outlets like Internews.[6] The Eurasia Foundation, chaired by Martti Ahtisaari, Madeleine Albright, James Baker and Lawrence Eagleburger, has offices in Bishkek and Osh.[7] (Its funders include Philip Morris, Yukos, Citigroup and of course the ever generous US taxpayer.[8]) Oddly enough, there is a similar plethora of NGOs across the border in the Uzbekistan part of the Ferghana valley, many of whom pursue political goals underneath the veneer of charitable work: the “Ferghana Valley Peace Building Project,” for instance, promotes both water and “a gender specific strategic action plan”.[9]
“Within the US embassy in Bishkek itself, the “Democracy Commission” finances media outlets including radio and TV stations.[10] Freedom House opened an office in Bishkek in November 2003, and it now prints sixty different journals and newspapers in Kyrgyzstan. (The Freedom House office in Tahskent is headed by a former US diplomat, Robert Freedman, whose last posting was in Ukraine.) Although Ambassador Young claims that US support for NGOs is non-political, the Assistant Secretaries of State Elizabeth Jones and Lorne Craner travelled to Bishhkek for the inauguration of the press, which was funded by the US State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, as well as the Open Society Institute (George Soros) and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. In fact, the printing press itself is legally operated by the “Media Support Center Foundation,” a body which is referred to as “a Kyrgyz NGO” but which is in fact chaired by US Senator John McCain, with former US National Security Adviser Anthony Lake on the board.”
Who do these people think they’re kidding? Now that the country is on the brink of civil war, with TWO rival parliaments and criminal elements rampaging through the capital, Bishkek, one might forgive the Kyrgyz people if they’re less impressed by their pending “liberation” than Glenn Reynolds and Nathan Hamm.