 All right, good afternoon everyone. I think there are a few people who are straggling in, but in some ways what I have to say is the least important so we can start and get it out of the way and hand it over to the real panelists. I'm Scott Smith, I'm the director for Afghanistan and Central Asia programs here at USIP. We became about one year ago, we expanded our Afghanistan-Pakistan program into a South and Central Asia program, but this is really the first time we've had an event that focuses somewhat directly on Central Asia, not entirely because we also want to bring in the Ukraine angle and let me explain a little bit why we made that decision and why we've designed the panel the way we have. In the, were you in the spring to? Jacob and Kathleen went to Kyrgyzstan in the spring and they came back saying, speaking to me as the Afghanistan person saying, there's a tremendous amount of anxiety in the region about what will happen after 2014 when US troops withdraw from Afghanistan, will there be a spillover effect? Will it affect the somewhat fragile Central Asian states? And so I was intrigued and I had that very much in mind when I and Dr. Wilder, my boss went last month to visit Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and bearing in mind what Kathleen had told me, I was surprised to hear that hardly anybody was talking in November about Afghanistan and the possible spillover effect. Everybody was talking about Maidan and Ukraine and what had happened there and what that might mean for the region. And I had a sense when you listened to me, we spoke to a lot of civil society actors and the word Maidan had become a sort of term that now means much more than just that place in Kiev. It had at least two different meanings. One was the warning that possible civil unrest or civil society mobilization could lead to the toppling of governments and the other warning was that whatever Russia's ultimate objectives are in the region and I'm not sure anybody's entirely sure about that, it showed that they were willing to use sort of decisive tools of confrontation that were a bit unexpected. I saw a quote from the Belarusian president who said that in an interview saying he wanted Russia to clarify its stance regarding his country, again to give you a sense of this anxiety. And he said, never before had military conflicts erupted so unexpectedly and fast. So I think that was sort of the sense also of Maidan and what it meant and those that we spoke to in these three countries of Central Asia also sort of had this feeling of, could we be next? What are the real intentions? We are also part of that one Soviet space. What are the next measures that are going to be used? They may affect us and our stability. So that's how we brought together sort of the Ukraine and the Central Asia bit and the order of the panel will be Bill Taylor who's now our acting president at USIP but also was between 2006 and 2009 US ambassador to Ukraine will sort of run us through a little bit what happened and what the motives perhaps were and what may happen next. Then I'll hand it over to Dr. Erika Marat who is assistant professor at the National Defense University and of course we have somewhere a list of everybody's full biographies if you want to get the sense of the illustriousness and knowledge that we have at this table. So she'll look at Central Asia in general also the implications of what's happening in Ukraine and particular also on the civil society and civil society organizations and I may have some things to add to that. Kathleen Kenes who is the director of our Center on Gender and Peace Building here at USIP also a Kyrgyz expert in her own right will speak about bringing the cascade down one more level to the sort of the country level of Kyrgyzstan. Kathleen and Jacob Zen co-authored a paper on the risks of extremism in Kyrgyzstan which I think we have copies of in the back and then Jacob will sort of drill down even further to the non-state level, the development of extremism, the effect then on Central Asians who are recruited to fight in Iraq and Syria and sort of what the implications are of that particular dynamic which takes us away from the state to state relations that we had at the beginning down to a more contemporary kind of conflict which are these sort of non-state actors fundamentally undermining the state system. And then after that we'll open it up to discussion of course and I hope that maybe what will also come out of the presentations as well as the Q and A afterwards is some sense of where should US policy be on this and do we look at the map in the way that we presented it here with Ukraine and Central Asia being parts of a contiguous zone of possible conflict or are we looking at Ukraine as a Ukraine issue and Central Asia as a withdrawal from Afghanistan issue and if we are looking at the latter should we look at it in the way of the former? Perhaps that will come out in the discussion but for now I'll hand it over to Bill. So Scott, thank you very much for inviting me to this discussion. I think it's gonna be a great one. I look forward to hearing in particular about the Central Asia pieces but as you can tell from the map that Scott has put up there Ukraine is not the center of this discussion. Central Asia's discussion is the center and these folks are the center of the panel discussion but there are some lessons to be learned and there are some ways to think about what's going on in Central Asia based on what we know about Ukraine so that's kind of my role here today. The first lesson I think we can take is that, which has implications for the Central Asians is that Russia under Mr. Putin is unpredictable and so neighbors of the Russians and as you can see there are a lot of them and they are, they do surround obviously should be prepared for something. Not entirely clear what but the unpredictability is very clear. I mean as the Belarusian president said, as Scott just quoted, this was not predicted. No one, I certainly didn't see anyone predicting that the Russians would invade Crimea. This was a surprise. Certainly to me and I think to most of us and the question is, as Scott says, kind of what's the motivation? Why? What can we say? What do we know? What can we speculate about Mr. Putin's motives on this thing and obviously a lot of people in this room have ideas about that. We up here probably have ideas but I don't think anybody really knows because I'm not entirely sure Mr. Putin himself has a firm idea, a grand strategy of what he wants out of this region or out of these individual encounters. My own view is that he's more of a tactician than a strategist. My own view is that he's an opportunist who will take advantage, has taken advantage of turmoil in Ukraine to move into an area that was significant for the Russians over a long period of time, that is Crimea, but that since 1954 has been part of Ukraine. It's been part of sovereign Ukraine. It was part of sovereign Ukraine when the Soviet Union disappeared and there was a Ukraine and there was a Kazakhstan and there was Russia and Crimea was part of Ukraine. It was sovereign and that did not stop Mr. Putin from that invasion. So in addition to Russia being unpredictable, the neighbors are vulnerable. All the neighbors are vulnerable. Mr. Putin has used various rationale for why he did this. One is to protect Russian speakers in Ukraine and for this he had to tell a story about how the Russian speakers in Ukraine were under threat and were being harassed or persecuted. The fascists were persecuting the Russians. The neo-Nazis had taken over in Kiev and this story, this line that the Russian propaganda machine has put out has been pretty effective in a lot of the parts of the world that we're talking about here today. You will hear I'm sure from people who have been to Central Asia that this message, this story, this line, this myth that the Russians have been, is out there and is very pervasive. There is another vulnerability that neighbors must face and that is the way, the tactics again that Mr. Putin has used in Ukraine that could well be used in Central Asia or in Belarus if Mr. Lukashenko is worried about it. And that is, it's a hybrid kind of a warfare. It relies on information that we've already talked about but also relies on military action, disguised and stealth by sending in military troops or security troops or special forces troops into a neighbor, in this case, Ukraine, first in Crimea, then in the Eastern, South Eastern part of Ukraine, without markings but clearly in uniform, well equipped, well armed, well led, well organized that can generate the kind of separatism that we see in South Eastern Ukraine. So that's, and he, Mr. Putin continues to deny. What, us? No, we're not, we're not, there are no military, US, there are no Russian forces in Ukraine, he said. Now, we recall that he also made that same statement about Crimea. He said, nope, there are no Russian military forces in Crimea. Two weeks later, he was in front of the press and it was, and he said, oh, there are Russian forces and they're to be congratulated, he said. So the question again for us is, what's he up to? Is it protecting Russian speakers? Another possibility, which is maybe a little bit reassuring for the Central Asians, is he is worried about those countries on his periphery that are making moves toward Europe. Obviously, Ukraine was making moves toward Europe. Mr. Yanukovych, the president of Ukraine, had been indicating that he was gonna go sign an association agreement with the Europeans. And then at the last minute, when Mr. Putin offered him $15 billion in lower gas prices, he did a U-turn, came back, didn't do it, and that prompted the Ukrainian people, civil society across the country to respond and they went to the streets in protest over that U-turn. So it was clear that Ukraine had intended to move to Europe and Mr. Putin was not pleased about that. That was just to the EU, that moved into the EU. The Georgians in 2008 have also indicated to the world and Mr. Putin that they're interested in not only the EU, but NATO and they have been, that's been another big challenge for the Russians. Moldova is a third country that has indicated an interest in moving towards the European Union. And Mr. Putin has also stirred up problems. He's had this long-term transnistria lever to keep Moldova unsettled. He now has southeastern Ukraine to keep Ukraine unsettled. He has South Ossetia and parts of Georgia as a lever to keep Georgia unsettled. So maybe the concern, again trying to figure out where Mr. Putin is coming from and going to, maybe his concern is that no country, no sovereign country on his border be allowed to choose its economic association, its security association, its political associations, and that Mr. Putin will take it on himself to make those decisions for those countries in his sphere of influence. The implications for the international community go beyond the implications for the immediate neighbors, which is our immediate discussion here today, but if a country decides that it is going to violate all of the norms, all the standards of international behavior since 1945, since World War II, which had as its core the sanctity of borders. We have assumed and have operated and have developed relationships and economics on the basis of the assumption that borders after World War II would not be changed by force. There have been some changes in borders in Europe, but not by force until Crimea. The Georgia, they're trying to set up these little independent countries was a step in that direction, but this was a clear violation of all of international law, of international standards after World War II. Western responses, and then I'm going to hand it to Erika to get to the real subject today. The West has responded to this to some degree, responded to the challenge in Ukraine. Early moves kicked the Russians on the political side, kicked the Russians out of the G-8s, now the G-7. Mr. Putin got the real cold shoulder in Australia for the G-20, left early. Said he had to get some sleep on the way home because he had a hard week coming up. So that is an area that probably means something to him. And so that is something that we have as a response. There's an economic response. The Americans put on, we put on sanctions on individuals around Mr. Putin. We put on sanctions on separatists and people around Mr. Yanukovych in Ukraine, who are causing these problems. The Europeans followed. The Americans took the first step, Europeans followed. And they put on similar sanctions. We later put on broader sanctions. And we sanctioned the Russian financial industry and the defense industry and the energy industry. And we did it in a way that made it difficult for those big, for companies, large companies, in those sectors to borrow money, to use the dollar. This has had a real effect as we can see. These sanctions have been effective. We've been lucky. The oil prices have plummeted. The Russians are particularly dependent on selling oil and gas. And so their economy has been devastated by the combination of the sanctions and the dropping in oil prices. And that will only get worse. Yesterday, the ruble dropped 10% in one day. So this is clearly having a major effect and it should be continued until he decides, Mr. Putin decides to leave Eastern Ukraine, come to some settlement, ideally leave Crimea, but those sanctions ought to be maintained. And we and the Europeans ought to continue to coordinate our sanctions policy. That's what's made them effective. Two other things that we ought to do in response. And again, I think this has implications for Central Asia. We ought to be providing financial support to the Ukrainians. The Ukrainian economy is in terrible shape. It's not quite as in bad shape as the Russian economy, but it is in terrible shape. They're related, obviously. We have a stake. The West has a stake. The United States has a stake. Europe has a stake in a Ukraine that makes it. And Ukraine is on the verge of not making it on not just because they've been invaded, but because their economy is in dire need of financial support. The IMF has already got a program. The IMF is back there taking a look to see if there is an additional tranche of funds that is necessary. The answer to that is clearly yes. The question, though, is the Ukrainian government, this new government, ready to take the hard steps, the hard reform steps that are going to be necessary to merit investment by the IMF, investment by the World Bank, investment by the Europeans, investment by the Americans. Are we, are the investors in the world, government and non-government, international financial institutions and others, are we going to invest in Ukraine in order to help them succeed against this Russian invasion? And if the answer is yes, then the answer is only yes if they take the economic reform steps that are necessary. Finally, we ought to provide security, help the Ukrainians provide their own security. Ukrainians are not asking for any troops from anywhere. And there's no country that I know of that's ready to send troops to Ukraine with the possible exception of the Poles and Lithuanians. I mean, they may. But NATO as an institution, as an organization, the Americans, the most of the Europeans, there's no talk of troops, but, and that's not what the Ukrainians want, that what the Ukrainians do want is support in terms of weapons so they can defend themselves, in terms of ammunition so that they can defend themselves, in terms of training, in terms of other military equipment, non-lethal, but I would say add the lethal bit to. Defensive weapons, anti-tank, anti-artillery, these kind of things are necessary. And if it's not US weapons or NATO standard weapons, there are East Europeans who still have Soviet era weapons that the Ukrainians can use. And so again, finance, money could deal with that. So I've tried to just give some indication of my sense. Having lived in Ukraine for three years, you get a, well, you'll forgive me for having this kind of skeptical view of the Russians. Anybody, any of these countries, Ukraine or others who live next to that country has this kind of concern about their motivations. I'd love to have the questions when we come, but Scott, back to you. Thanks, Bill. That's actually set it up perfectly, because I think that's exactly that sense of anxiety that is felt very much in Central Asia. I wanted to make just a quick point because a lot of the issues that you brought up were also addressed in an interview that the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov gave to a French newspaper, I think it was yesterday, and I thought I'd have a few points. One, on the change of the boundaries, he said that we support Ukraine's territorial integrity. Crimea was unique, but we recognize, but Ukraine, as we recognize now, is territorial integral. So that was apparently a one-off. And that's a change. That's a change. And he recognized that there is some change in the Russian position, I gotta believe because of the effect of the sanctions. Right, and then the sanctions, of course, were described as the tools of very weak leaders, not serious. As Russians, we will endure this. We've endured much worse in the past than we'll get through it. And then on Europe, because you mentioned the sort of reluctance to allow any of these countries to independently make a decision to commit to Europe, he commented on the fact that Europe had joined the American sanctions and basically said we underestimated the sense of independence of Europe. We now understand it's basically just a lackey of us. So lots of nice Cold War tones to make you nostalgic as well. For those who have made the comment that I wish we were back in the Cold War, things were much simpler then. We knew what to do and how to react. Now we can kind of get a sense that it wasn't quite so simple. Anyway, we'll hop from the Black Sea to the Caspian and points eastward. Erica, go ahead. Sure. This is a really great point for me to begin, sense of anxiety among neighbors. The sense of anxiety is clearly present in Central Asian countries as well. And today I'm gonna talk about political, some economic and social implications on Central Asia from what's going on in Ukraine. And I have to say that Ukraine and Central Asia are not really that much connected. There are sometimes flights, direct flights from Central Asia to Ukraine and during summer months there are some labor migrants in Ukraine. But much of the influence that we see in Central Asia from what's going on in Ukraine comes from Russia's policy in Ukraine, Russia's domestic policy and Russia's policy related to Ukraine but in Central Asia. So first let me talk briefly about economic implications. Central Asian countries are world leaders in remittances, migrant remittances, Tajikistan leading all countries in the world and a share of GDP that remittances make up. Was Russian ruble losing its value by what, 50% as of last hour? The remittances also basically decreased by half because labor migrants, they earn in rubles but then they exchange to dollars and send money back home. There are also reports in the media that some migrants are denied payment and having really weak rights in Russia. That really hurts a lot of migrants. So the question is, will the migrants return to Central Asia, mostly young male migrants? Or will they, or more people will actually go to Russia because the situation's so bad and Russia but it's even worse back at home. And in 2008 what we saw was that actually more people go to Russia to earn just a little bit whatever living that they can do. There are some optimists saying that Russia's domestic sanctions against on people, de facto on people. So sanctions banning imports of food products from Europe will open up opportunities for entrepreneurs from Central Asia, more people will be, more Central Asians will be able to export vegetables, fruits, not products. However, it's unclear whether this will actually materialize because it's something seasonal and there are signs that those domestic sanctions in Russia will not hold for too long. So these are economic implications briefly. Let me move on to political implications and this is something that I find more interesting. So Central Asian, I think Jacob is gonna talk more about it, is really dependent on Russian media. I would argue that Kremlin propaganda promulgated through Russian media is a much stronger threat to sovereignty of Central Asian countries compared to Russia's hard actions in Central Asia. There is really no indigenous ability in Central Asia to report on international events and a lot of conversations that you see in Central Asia, including in countries, including Kyrgyzstan, let's say in Bishkek or in Almaty in Kazakhstan where the public is more politically engaged and connected to alternative media sources. You see a lot of this anti-Western pro-Kremlin rhetoric going on and in addition to that, of course, also facilitated by Kremlin media, we see how conversations are started about what's going on in Ukraine and implications to Central Asia started from two different ways. Top-down initiated by Russian officials and then bottom-up initiated by movements like Rusky-Mir in Kyrgyzstan. So top-down in August Putin said that Kazakhstan is part of Rusky-Mir, very politicized idea of Rusky-Mir, meaning in a political, ethnic Russian world. And of course Kazakhstan, I have it in my next slide, all those red dots, red lines in northern Kazakhstan are Russian population, I think Russian population. So Putin said that Kazakhstan never had their own state and Kazakhstan is part of Rusky-Mir. And then it was followed to a leader by Zhirinovsky, an opposition leader, quote-unquote opposition leader, of course, who went even further and he hinted that after Ukraine, Kazakhstan is the next land grab for Russia. And in Kazakhstan what you see is the reaction among commentators in peace, Kazakhstan in peace, is that although Zhirinovsky is not part of the ruling coalition, he still is a part of one line of Kremlin agenda, trying to test the waters in Kazakhstan, the reaction. So the reaction in Kazakhstan was very antagonistic. There were some movements to send textbooks, history textbooks to Putin to explain that Kazakhs before the Soviet Union, they had some sort of statehood in Kazakhstan. And there were quite a lot of statements against Zhirinovsky's ambitious statement as well. In Kyrgyzstan what we see is the opposite is we don't see so much statements made by political officials in Kremlin, but what happens is there's some type of bottom-up encouragement and I don't want to sound to conspiracy theory driven, but then there are movements like Ruskimiir who protest regularly in front of Ukrainian embassy in Bishkek and basically they scan all the statements that are promulgated by Kremlin usually, that it's junta that's ruling Ukraine, they're anti-fascists, they are for the fallen heroes of Novorossiya, new Russia in Ukraine. And so this Ruskimiir, I wasn't able to trace down whether they were registered before crisis in Ukraine or right in Kyrgyzstan, but it's clear that they became more active in the past few months. Another protest that they staged was in front of the US embassy in Bishkek demanding that President Atanbaev does not meet, does not host philanthropist George Soros doing his visit to Bishkek. The president nevertheless went on and met with Soros, but you can see from those pictures, this is not necessarily what we conceive of a politically active population in Central Asia in general. So there are, of course, few questions about which were not covered by the media, which still remain unclear how these protests were organized. So the implications that we see from these discussions about why did Kremlin officials make the statements of why do we see this bottom-up Ruskimiir movement? The implications that we see is that in Kazakhstan there is greater censorship online on forums. There are several forums that were shut down because conversations were percolating about possibility of secession of some parts of Kazakhstan. In Kyrgyzstan, we see that some pro-Russian, openly pro-Russian MPs becoming bolder in terms of what agenda they bring on the table. There are a couple of MPs who now are pushing for Kremlin-style ban on homosexual propaganda and also ban on foreign funding to NGOs in Kyrgyzstan and labeling them as foreign agents. So basically, word-to-word with Russian Duma adopted last year. At the same time, in a social realm, we see the rising tension and uncertainty about inter-ethnic relations between ethnic Russians and ethnic majority groups. And although ethnic Russian communities, they're not as oppressed as other ethnic minority groups in Central Asia. Whenever we hear nationalists taking the stage, both in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and other parts of Central Asia, all minorities suffer because usually, ethnic nationalists, they use this opportunity to promote the national language, change educational curriculum and elevate the status of the ethnic majority, political status of ethnic majority. And we do see day-to-day occurrences of discrimination against this background of, against the background of nationalists fearing territorial secessions, Ukraine's territorial secessions in Kazakhstan in particular. So with all this, I want to conclude that the way Yoramaydan and civil war are discussed in Central Asia, they are full of conspiracy theories. They are seen as Western financed campaigns to destabilize region, to increase US presence, military presence, political presence, just like in Libya, just like in Iraq, just like in Afghanistan. They see the part of one narrative, coherent narrative. There is a lot of controversy in terms of how Yoramaydan is interpreted. For instance, some political parties, presidential political parties in Kyrgyzstan, they say that they want to prevent Yoramaydan at the same time, they threaten the current regime with mass movement. So there is a lot of confusion about what it means. And then finally, in Kazakhstan, when some nationalists talk about the possibility of land grabs on the part of Russia, they forget about the Yoramaydan part in Ukraine, how it all started, how the destabilization of Ukraine began. And they forget that Kazakhstan today is a much more close society compared to Ukraine even under Yanukovych. So again, to sum up, there was this lack of political thinking, analytical thinking about what Ukraine means, but it's very much filtered by Kremlin message. Before you take this picture away. One of the things that was mentioned to us in Kyrgyzstan was that there's apparently a vibrant cottage industry of renter crowds for mobilizations. And that women have a higher price because police are unwilling to use violence against them. So this picture may or may not be evidence of that phenomenon. The other thing that I wanted to underline was your point about propaganda. And Russia today, the television station has moved in very quickly, very aggressively into these spaces. And somebody told us a little bit tragically that instead of all of these young journalists who have been trained by USAID funded journalism training programs, they're all now working for Russia today using their skills to actually implement what really is a very effective propaganda line, which sees us as instigators of instability in all of the places that you mentioned. And I was asked that I gave a talk to a group of undergraduates. And one of the questions was, when you do something wrong and you break it, you should have to pay for it. And what are you Americans going to do for all of the things that you've broken? So this kind of message is permeating. Kathleen. Well, I am going to very quickly run through what I would actually, as I'm sitting here reflecting, is almost my, how long has this been? 24-year-old history with Central Asia. I began working on my doctorate in Kyrgyzstan. And the world fell apart, as I knew it, because I had one set of questions based on the Soviet Union. And I was there when it fell apart. And I had to come up with a new thesis. And so everything I think about in terms of this region is always about transition, adaptability, and resilience. So to begin, where are we? We know the area. But I thought I would just start with a few caveats. For those of you who may know very little about Central Asia. But just to explain that these are five very distinct countries. There is a recent article was, is there something central to Central Asia? And I would say not much. These are countries that have, especially since the breakup of the Soviet Union, really taken on different political trucks and economic efforts. They do have something in common. And when you combine their particular index on corruption, it's about 157 out of 174. So we have governance issues. We have institutional reform issues that may be familiar from the other countries further north of Central Asia. But what do we need to think about in terms of cascading risk, especially with what Bill laid out here is a fairly unpredictable storyline. We're struggling to predict what could be some of the possible ways to prepare. And we see pivot points here. Certainly in Uzbekistan and in Kazakhstan, we are looking at political succession. We do not know what that exit ramp is going to look like. Will it be sudden? Will it be a smooth transition? But these are important things to have on our radar as at least policy analysts or policy shapers to think through what kind of opportunities may be presented for the leadership that we see illustrated in Putin. And certainly the pressures of the sanctions on Russia. We know that depending on which of the five countries, and certainly Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, anywhere from 30% to 40% of the population and primarily they're under 35, mostly men, but not always, are leaving at some part of the year to work in Russia. We know that and Jacob will talk more about it, but there are some issues with that time in Russia in which human rights abuses. We are hearing more and more about instances of radicalization while these young people are away. So we have other potential pivot points to contemplate. The impact on remittances is breathtaking. And I really appreciate your slide there, Erika. I worked for the World Bank for over a decade and we spent a lot of time focusing on migrants and remittances in Central Asia. It's the floor. And as this kind of impact on Russia, it is going to be felt and it is going to be big. And we don't know how quickly in an already very impoverished set of countries, Tajikistan among the most impoverished, but with high level of populations living in rural regions, living on sustenance agriculture, we are looking at very serious possible human outcomes here. So at the same time, the Central Asian countries are feeling a lot of pressure on this custom union that Putin has basically said either you're in or you're out and it is a big kind of everyday conversation on the streets where people are concerned about the kind of tax revenue that Russia is going to take in this custom union. So just some possible pivoting points to put out there. And then I just want to, sorry, I guess I had that all laid out for you, but I'm speaking faster than my slides. But I want to reflect just for a minute, because as an anthropologist, we become fairly immersed in a country. And this has been the country that I have followed for a long time and was there as this unraveling of Soviet identity occurred. And the repeated and repeated is probably a thin word to explain what it looked like on the ground with the international interventions from every upper income country. I have a paper I wrote years ago about just every week a new group came to town, a new embassy, Chinese food. I mean, it was just an amazing process to watch from the ground level of the internationalization. So much to the point that Kyrgyzstan was really considered the poster child for international aid, for its openness, its willingness, and its very rapid development of civil society, even though initially it was quite hesitant. But in that parisity, I would add the criminal rings, the mafias, whether they're related, and these are old stories. This is nothing new, whether it's drugs from Afghanistan, arms now, big fear, arms coming across the border. Or we know human trafficking is rich, and it's not just about women and girls, boys being among the number one trafficked human being in Central Asia, Afghanistan. But it's also an interesting country. It's had political upheavals, some violence, as we know, in 2010. But it also had the first woman president in the Central Asian states, first parliamentarian government. But it has lots of issues to come with how it's going to manage water with Uzbekistan and those relationships, the same Fertajikistan with Uzbekistan and others. So we have decades of interesting transition going on. Now I would be remiss here at the Institute if I didn't conclude gender. And I want to because I wrote a paper many years ago that women are the canaries in the coal mine in Kyrgyzstan. They're kind of the indicator of the health of society. And what we are seeing over these last, especially five years, a gaining divide generational divide and a gender divide. And in this case, men and women, ideas about what roles they should play in everyday society. Certainly symbolic women's issues have become institutionalized by legislation. There's been great debate about marriage age. Polygamy was the very first legislation that came out in 92 in Kyrgyzstan and certainly in Tajikistan. Big debates about the symbolic value and meaning of hijab. And most recently, just a few weeks ago, about LGBT rights in Kyrgyzstan. So transition has become a way of life. The search for identity is paramount. And I would suggest to you that it is caught in between these notions or wrinkles of strong nationalistic ideals. What is Islam? And what is secularism? And I will share with you and then turn to Jacob here shortly that in June, we went with these questions in mind. What is the relationship between gender, nationalism, Islam, secularism? And by the way, does any of it add up to concerns about extremism? And we decided to explore this with young people. And so we held a peace game at Kyrgyz National University as a way of listening, if you will, and getting their read on what their world was like and how they were navigating these very different terrains. And there was one young man who stood up and we thought captured the confusion and opportunity, whether it would be for a new way of identity or perhaps even extremist notions. And he said, for 70 years, we knew nothing about religion. And then in 1992, we were free to practice whatever religion we wanted. But we lack a core understanding, and certainly as he spoke about his own faith of Islam, in what is educated Islam, what is customary Islam, and what is extremist Islam. And I think he captured that gravitas of being suddenly open, the doors are open, and you can choose from many different ideas and ideologies. But where do you get your basis as to what is a good practice for everyday Kyrgyz and what is extremist practice? So finally, they certainly spoke to the increasingly politicized space for civil society organizations. They're concerned, especially as young people, what that will look like. A concern to do more dialogues between secular and religious leader, that there is a big gap and it's also a generational gap. And people hold on to those differences quite readily. They really felt like they need real economic development, not international. They need to find out how they can sustain themselves. And finally, they want to play an active role in identifying what is this extremist ideology on the internet and how do they deal with it. So in final, I would end with a Kyrgyz proverb, which is it takes 50 years for a new generation to appear, and it takes 100 years for a new land, or we might say state, to appear. And maybe we have to take the long view moving forward in this region in spite the risk. I'll turn it back to Scott and then to Jacob. Jacob. Thank you very much. It's been a real privilege this year that I've had the opportunity to work closely with Kathleen and the Center for Gender and Peace Building at USIP. In March, I spent a month traveling on a ground level view of the region, all of the countries of Central Asia except for Turkmenistan including Afghanistan and Xinjiang China. In June, as Kathleen mentioned, we held a peace game in Kyrgyzstan where we gained the views of young people and shared ideas about extremism. And we completed a report that includes some of the findings of the peace game in these travels, which is available outside called Preventing Violent Extremism in Kyrgyzstan. And today at this panel, I'd like to summarize some of the main assessments that I've been able to establish throughout this year of collaboration with the Center. As my colleagues have said, Central Asia is certainly an evolving region. And while previously all roads may have led to Moscow, it's probably true now that as many, if not more, roads are leading to Beijing. And this is definitely a change that we've seen over the past 20 years where China has taken on a more assertive role in the region. And part of it has been done through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or the SCO, which China values very highly because it's the only international organization named after a Chinese city. And at first, its intention was to regulate the borders between China and Central Asia. And that has been done since they've all been demarcated, pretty much. However, now it takes on a more anti-terrorism tone. And that's in part to keep China's own Xinjiang region stable because China needs the cooperation of Central Asian countries to prevent Uyghur groups that want separatism from Xinjiang, from gaining traction and using bases in Central Asia. And China also has concerns that if Central Asia becomes unstable, then it can affect China's great investments in the region. China is implementing this new Silk Road economic belt, which coincides more or less with the United States Silk Road plan, although the US hopes on a more North-South basis, whereas China is certainly a more East-West basis. But this does present a potential area of cooperation. However, there are concerns about whether the US Silk Road vision will have adequate funding and whether Afghanistan can maintain its stability in order to enable Afghanistan to prosper from increased trade, as well as Central Asia to benefit from increased connectivity to the world, and therefore reduce its reliance on Russia and China. There are, for example, in Kathleen and in my research, there are some people who fear that China will swallow up the region with economic investment and roads and therefore create economic preponderance in Central Asia while there are others who fear that Russia, through its security initiatives like the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the current Eurasian Economic Union, seeks to politically swallow up the region, which would leave Central Asia without much sovereignty. So this is one reason why the United States is very welcome to play an active role in the region across all corners. But shifting now to, and as Kathleen mentioned, Central Asia as a region is not monolithic. Each country is increasingly seeking its own identity. A good example comes from Kazakhstan. The president earlier this year mentioned that he would consider in the future renaming the country Kazakhili, which would mean Kazakh nation in Kazakh. There's no strict agenda for this, but it reflects the idea to disaggregate, say, Kazakhstan from the other stands and to reflect on the country's own language and own history. Yesterday, the president of Kazakhstan said that next year they will celebrate the 550-year anniversary of the Khanate in Kazakhstan. Again, this is dating back to the pre-Russian era, and that's likely in response to President Putin's statement that Kazakhstan was never a state. And if one visits the presidential palace in Astana, one can see many emblems and murals dating back to both the pre-Islamic and pre-Russian days, which again highlights the fact that these countries want to reclaim their own identity. Now, shifting to the security angle, Afghanistan is a country which NATO and US forces will begin withdrawing troops between 2014 and 2016. And obviously, this presents some security risks. It is relevant to note that the Taliban developed out of a majority Pashtun movement based in the Afghan-Pakistan borderlands. That's where it is traditionally the strongest. However, it did control more than 90% of Afghanistan before 2001, and even today has strong presence along particularly the Turkmen border in Faryab province and therefore is already on the borders of Central Asia. And while the Taliban as a political movement has never been overt in seeking to infiltrate Central Asia, it did in the past allow safe havens for Central Asian militant groups like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan to train and operate right on the Central Asian borders. So that is a concern. The Taliban could also work with organizations like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan to send drugs up into Central Asia to make money, essentially, and with the amount of weapons that will be available potentially in Afghanistan after the withdrawal, weapons could filter into Central Asia to mafia groups and create general insecurity. However, whether or not Afghanistan becomes a source of instability will likely depend on how the political system functions. Thus far, the most recent election has turned out more or less positive. I'm sure Scott could talk more on that, but the Afghan political parties came to some agreement to preserve the political stability, and it's important to remember on that note that in Iraq, the reason why Islamic State Group was able to gain power was ultimately because the politicians of Iraq never came to a reasonable agreement, and a lot of people in Ambar province of Iraq gave up on politics, and that's when the Islamic State came in, crossed the Syrian border, and that's why the crisis exists today. It likely could have been averted if the politicians had come together in a more effective way. In terms of Central Asia itself, there are two main types of extremist groups that we can see. One type is sort of the non-group group, which are just people that don't have any official name to their group, but that carry extremist tendencies, and this is something we heard a lot about in our travels and work, and this is exemplified by in 2010 there were clashes in Ashton Jalalabad, but these weren't by groups, but by uneducated people, largely unemployed, who were easily able to be provoked by political manipulation. And because of this lack of education, sometimes alcoholism, you can easily find mafias to carry out attacks on political rivals. The second type of group are fitting in the trend of the jihadist movement that we see. Two types of groups that are within Central Asia are, for example, Hezbetahir and Tablighi Jamat. These groups are not overtly violent. It's rare that they carry out attacks. However, the countries in the region see them as violent extremists because of their regressive attitudes towards women where women should not get educated and should stay at home. Their disinterest in national identity, encouraging people not to study the Quran in their native language, which is a problem, because if they study in Arabic and they don't know Arabic, then they can't read it to wear beards and avoid traditional style dress, and because ultimately they seek to create a caliphate, which would subvert the national governments, and therefore the governments do not like any group that does not respect the sanctity of borders, which is a parallel between, say, the situation in Ukraine where the sanctity of borders have been usurped and these other groups which also seek to violate the sanctity of borders. There are other groups that are based outside of the region, such as the IMU, as mentioned earlier. This group controlled some territory in Central Asia in the late 90s. Due to political crackdown, it shifted towards Afghanistan where it received haven from the Taliban. Now it's based in Pakistan. Notably, it has recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. One reason why the IMU likely pledged allegiance to the Islamic State is because many Central Asians have been going to Syria instead of Pakistan or Afghanistan, and therefore the IMU wants those fighters to eventually come back to Pakistan and Afghanistan to continue its insurgency one day in the future. We've also seen a trend of what we call family jihad from Central Asia, whereas Central Asian men often leave the region and take their entire families with them knowing that they have no intention to ever return home. And originally, this was something we saw in the Afghan-Pakistan region. Now we saw it in Syria where some videos have emerged of more than 100 Kazakhs with their wives and children in the region. It's believed that many of these Central Asians are some of the first ones to be killed in Syria because they're not experienced fighters. They might become radicalized on the internet or by unequated imams. And when they get to Syria, they're not of use, like, say, people with experience in Chechnyan fighting, and therefore they're sent to the front lines and killed, and that's why there are many orphans from the Central Asians, such as the recent videos shown by ISIS of Kazakh children that are becoming indoctrinated from the region. There are other smaller groups based in northern Afghanistan that likely seek to utilize the drug trafficking to make money. And on that note, it's important to recognize that many of the borders in Central Asia were established during the Stalinist era. They're very difficult to sustain in the long-term future without regional cooperation. And in particular, I'm talking about these more than, I think, seven to nine enclaves, parts of Tajikistan in Kyrgyzstan, parts of Uzbekistan in Kyrgyzstan, parts of Kyrgyzstan in Uzbekistan made by Stalin to keep the region difficult to become a defendant. But now these countries are independent, and some of these enclaves are particularly of concern because, for example, the Tajik government does not have much of a mandate in the two Tajik enclaves in Kyrgyzstan, and that makes it easier for drug networks to operate in those region based in Afghanistan. That's also where the IMU held territory, and as Kathleen has written about for a long time, and whose rules rules, it's not clear whether the national governments or local groups are deciding how to regulate these fairly unregulated border regions. So this is why it's important for the countries of the region to come together to prevent a future conflict based on the various activities that happen in those enclaves. So to conclude, the U.S. is a country that is wanted in the region because it allows the countries to have a multi-vector policy to prevent from Russian or Chinese domination. The U.S. is very influential in Afghanistan and is involved in global counter-extremism programs, and that's why another reason why Central Asian countries want the U.S. involved. And third, a lot of the issues in Central Asia come internally, such as issues related to succession, regionalism, corruption, a lack of political openness, and the U.S. has a lot of experience dealing with this in other theaters of the world and can likely provide that type of collaboration to those countries. So thank you very much. Thanks. Before we open up to questions, I just wanted to make two points. First, on the question of extremism, it was interesting to me that during our time there, this was the issue on which there seemed to be the most diverse set of opinions between some people saying it's a total myth, you may see more outward signs of religiosity, but that's not the same thing as extremism, and there's unlikely to be any sort of internal extremist movement emerging out of Central Asia. Maybe in Moscow they become radicalized for other reasons, but so on, and the one has a great minimization of the problem, and on the other hand, we're people who were genuinely afraid of the flow of guns, the flow of arms, the flow of traffickers, and whatever else may come out of Afghanistan if it cannot manage to hold itself together, as you say. I'll withhold my comments on Afghan political stability, maybe for another occasion. The second point I wanted to make was the economic union that you mentioned, Kathleen, and also you, Erika. There's an economic dimension to it, but what we got from civil society was a fear that it was also a political tool to control and limit and constrain the political space in which civil society operates. Erika mentioned that as part of joining the union, these countries sort of have to adopt a code for public organizations that is modeled on the one that was passed by the Duma, and among the things that this code has is restrictions on money you receive from outside, and these civil society organizations are entirely dependent on money from the West in particular, so the union is seen as also a tool of clamping down on some of these organizations in the guise of economic cooperation, which brings me back, I try to walk this discussion back, so we remember where we started with Bill's points, and as you had pointed out, that one of the motivating factors might have been the sphere of these countries on the fringe, what we don't call the periphery, but the sort of sphere of influence space of actually joining Europe, and I think it's because they've also understood that these economic unions have political components, and therefore to join even an economic organization has all sorts of consequences politically that they don't necessarily want to face, so seeing that from their perspective, you can understand why, how powerful this economic union mechanism is, and how difficult the decision is for the countries in the region to join or not to join, because obviously there's a huge risk, Kathleen pointed out of them saying, of them refusing to join with consequences from the Kremlin. So with that attempt to kind of rebalance and remind where we started as well, the floor is open, there'll be roaming microphones, so. Is that how we do it these days? Okay, I'd like to tie back to points that started with the beginning of the conversation with Ambassador Taylor and then ended with Jacob's line, and it turns to Russia, and sort of whether they're a welcome figure or not, or more of a meddling. The Uzbekistan's president, Karimov, the other day announced that he would welcome Russian military presence in the effort to combat extremism, and so this goes again back to the extremists, to the myth or reality. How should the US respond, or how do you respond to instances where Russia's invited in, and the military's invited in? Well, recognizing that this could have that destabilizing impact and the separatist outcome. Maybe three or four questions at a time, and then also identify yourself first, and then we'll ask each panel to respond to whichever points they want to. A couple of points following on Ambassador Taylor's questions. A big driver here is Russia's demographics. Russian population is flat for many years, some years even negative, but if you look inside the components of that population, Muslim birth rates are very high, and white classical Russian birth rates are very low. And when you project this out, you find that Russia is a Muslim nation by the 2050s. Not many people notice that, but Putin does notice it. He takes Crimea, he gets a million free Russians. He takes Southeast Ukraine, he gets two million free Russians. He takes Transnistria, he gets two or three million free Russians. He takes Northern Kazakhstan, he gets 15 million free Russians. And I think that's a big driver here. Also, he gets a nice chunk of the Black Sea exclusive economic zone, and nobody has noted that. So these are just some drivers that have escaped the discussion, and I think they're very important. And it can give an idea of what will Putin's next target may be, and why. My name is Karina Roshayan. I'm from International Broadcasting Bureau, USIM, which oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Analytical Science. My questions, I have two questions probably for Erica or the rest. Since Erica is Russian speaker, and also one aspect of expertise is blogs and social media, have you seen any engagement and movement between the Central Asian and Ukrainian bloggers and anything overlapping in that blogosphere? And the second question is, do you see any parallels in ISIS and the Russian world? Are there any commonalities, anything that is noticeable in your view? Scott, I can start with Hannah's question on Karimov's invitation of the Russians into Uzbekistan. I think this is not our problem. I think if a country wants to invite the Russians in, knowing what this means, we don't think the Americans or the international community more broadly has much to say about that. But I'd be interested in your thoughts or anybody disagrees with that. But that would be my short answer to that one. On the demographic question that Peter raises, yeah, maybe that's part of his calculation. But again, if I'm right, he's an opportunist and a tactician, not a strategist. He doesn't have a long-term view about. He may have this kind of hope or vision. But in terms of strategy on how to get from here to there by annexing parts of his neighborhood that has a lot of Russians in it, I'm just not sure your point about the Black Sea and the energy resources there is a powerful one as well. And the Ukrainians were just starting to develop the offshore natural gas, offshore Crimea. Natural gas reserves. And again, I don't think that's the main motivation. I think he's more opportunistic. He did because he could. But this is certainly one of the motivations that is there for at least the people around him. Sorry, a couple of words on Karimov and Russian military. So there is Russian military presence in the region already since 2004. There is a US, sorry, Russian military base in Kyrgyzstan. It doesn't really mean that it's used in any specific way. The only time that Russian military base was actually engaged in any activity was helping President Akayev to flee. The country was his family in 2005. Since then, even when Kyrgyzstan asked for some Russian military help during ethnic strife violence in June 2010, Russia preferred not to intervene. Regarding blogosphere in Central Asia and Ukraine, unfortunately, not really. There are not so many ties between bloggers in Central Asia and Ukraine. Of course, they're always exposed to each other's content. But the connections are more stronger between Central Asian bloggers and Russian bloggers. So even in blogosphere, a lot of social media users tend to take the message from Russian coverage, which is more diverse in blogosphere compared to TV or radio. Can I just make one blogging point? Because I see Bob Reno here who gave me an article last week that an interesting anecdote. It was apparently an Afghan blogger or journalist who had been among those early on in the Maidan protests who had urged them to go and protest and then was a little bit shocked at what he thought he had provoked by the end of it. But that's just an anecdote, not so much a systematic connection. Well, thanks, Scott. In response to Karimov's recent gesture towards Putin by allowing, say, Russian cooperation on extremism or terrorism, it might be well seen within the broader context of Uzbekistan's foreign policy. Because Uzbekistan is not signing up thus far to the Eurasian Economic Union. And it's not part of the CSTO. So it's definitely on Russia's bad list. So in a bilateral way, it might be able to compensate for that somewhat by collaborating bilaterally on security. But also Uzbekistan has traditionally played a sort of balancing act between the West and Russia and China. So by cozying up to Putin, it might be hoping to get something in return from the US, such as weapons after the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And I'm not sure if the Russian population of Muslims will exceed that of European Russians. But I do know Russia is concerned about China in the Far East and potential population shifts in the long term in that region. And that's one reason why Russia is really developing in the Far East. And in response to ways that Russia might control Central Asia is through the concept of frozen conflicts, which Ambassador Taylor mentioned. And Kazakhstan's northern region has a large Russian population, so there might be a way to try to pull them in. Tajikistan has a regional issue between the Gorno-Badakhshan region and Dushanbe. And Russia could leverage the Pamir region or Gorno-Badakhshan to pressure Dushanbe and possibly create a frozen conflict there. And even Kyrgyzstan has big bifurcations between the North and South. So some type of frozen conflict could potentially be created there, as in 2010 was largely a North-South political conflict. And related to the third question, ISIS versus Ruski Mir, there's probably three key similarities. One is that both are sort of revivalist movements. One is to recreate Soviet identity, Russian-Ukrainian brotherhood, Russian-speaking brotherhood, this sort of greatness. And ISIS is large about creating the caliphate that existed hundreds, if not 1,000 years ago, in some type of Islamic brotherhood. Both have seen foreign fighters. ISIS, of course, tried to recruit them from the Muslim world, although it's essentially an Iraq-Syrian conflict. Russia has also featured some Turkmen and Armenians that have gone to fight in Eastern Ukraine to make it seem like a Pan-Soviet issue, although this is mostly a Ukrainian issue. And thirdly, the issue of the media. While ISIS is more on Twitter and Facebook, Russia is more doing it through conventional media on Russia today, state media. But yeah, those are some smarts. And I just wanted to follow up on Peter's interesting comment about Russian demography. I would add to your plausible idea there the idea that northern Kazakhstan is connected to the Caspian Sea. And in late October, the literal states there, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, Iran, and Azerbaijan signed an agreement that they would not allow any external militaries there. So I think getting, if you want to talk Black Sea, then we have to talk Caspian Sea in terms of building this plausible idea. I find it quite provocative in the fact that he may be a very good tactical player, but he has very big ideas in mind. My name is Rudy Porter. I'm from the Solidarity Center. We work on labor rights issues. You mentioned that Central Asia is heavily dependent on remittances of migrant workers. We saw in the US during the recession of 2007 to 2009 an outflow of undocumented workers, a great decrease in remittances to Mexico. Russia is now apparently in recession. What is the effect on Central Asia of a Russian recession? How you doing? So just trying to tie together the- Yeah, just trying to say who you are. Ian McGarty, I'm just interested in the topics here, nothing, no affiliation. Trying to link the identity aspect of it to the investment aspect of it. I know a lot of these Central Asian states are heavily investing in mega projects that sort of align themselves similarly to what the Gulf states have done. And it is creating some sort of opulent identity in sort of their own identity that is distinct from their Soviet past. I'm just wondering where is the investment going to go? Because there's a lot of places in Baku and Tashkent that these buildings are unoccupied. They're not creating any revenue similar to those in the GCC. I'm wondering where could the investment go? Are there other industries other than these massive mega projects that the money could be filtered into in a productive and utilitarian way as opposed to building these things for opulence and identity separate from Soviet identity and then creating no profit from them? Just wondering where else can the investment go? Well, those are two good economic questions and maybe we should pause there and see if we'll start on with you, Jacob, if you have any thoughts on either of those and work our way back. All right, thank you, Scott. Related to the ruble crisis ongoing and possible recession, if a lot of, say, Tajiks, as Kathleen and Erika showed, flow back to Tajikistan, those would create a very big strain on an already difficult economy in the country because you'd have many young men returning and this could cause further joblessness in the country and that, in a way, is related to extremism because when people are unemployed, they're likely more vulnerable to find a different cause to make them feel useful or meaningful and Russia has actually used that as a lever in the past, in some cases, threatening to cut the visas to Tajiks or Kyrgyz and saying all them will have to go back home and then you'll have to deal with it so this is definitely something to take a look at and in terms of investment, I know some countries, especially Kazakhstan, are hoping that countries like the US can get involved more in the innovative industries like computer technology and take advantage of the US success in Silicon Valley and create that market open in Central Asia as well as some agricultural industries which we haven't explored because it's very difficult for the US to compete with, say, infrastructure with a country like China but maybe in the sort of intelligent economy we might be able to do some of that especially as education levels rise. So on remittances, it's always a very controversial subject in 2007, 2009, as you said, there were a lot of expectations that those migrants will come back and create this breeding ground for riots, extremism and some of it did happen, a lot of migrants did return for winter time to Central Asia. However, what happened and it was very much in line with World Bank's predictions is that more people, because even though the situation in the host country, host nation is bad, the situation is in the country that sends migrants is even worse. So when things are bad, more people in fact are willing to work for less payment and Central Asian migrants were exploring other parts of Russia like far east of Russia to try to settle in and work for whatever money they could earn. I think this will be the case now as well and maybe Central Asian migrants will diversify between Russia, Kazakhstan, China, Turkey and try to find other opportunities because there are none at home. Let me add something quick on the question of the effect of the recession but more from a political point of view because I had said at the very beginning or the end of my opening remarks about whether or not from a US policy perspective we look at this connection or do we look at them rather separately and I think that there's no question that not necessarily our sanctions against Russia but Russia's counter sanctions against us are having an effect on the Central Asian countries. If there is also a recession, then you'll have all of the possible effects that we've talked about and that was what people were anxious about when it came to extremism in my sense when we were there was not so much now but what if there is a big return of lots of their 400,000 young Tajik men in Russia working? What if they all have to come back now and a lot of them have been rendered extremely bitter by really humiliating treatment often in Moscow. So what if they come back, bitter, desperate, unemployed? It is a ripe fodder for recruitment by extremists and so forth. If not another kind of social movement that has to do more with desperation than extremism. So you have that kind of and that would obviously not be good for our interest in Afghanistan or our interest in the region itself and I always ask myself the question when earlier in the year we began to consider what should our counter moves be to Putin's moves in Ukraine and I was always wondering, are we not constrained a little by the fact that we still depend on that Russian space for the Northern distribution network and to get out all of the stuff that we have in Afghanistan that we're trying to get out? That route through Russia has been an important part of our Afghanistan strategy since we obviously haven't been able to rely on the Pakistani. So I always wondered if it entered into our calculations because it was another screw that could have been tightened on us if they felt that we had gone too far but in the end I don't think that they used that tool but it's another reason to once in a while at least see this as part of the same space or a much more connected space than we might tend to see it otherwise. More questions. Hello, Jimeta from Middlebury Partners and my question is about since they are all Turkey countries how do you see the position of Turkey and other US Li? Mark? Yeah, East Progressive Stage, fewer questions but more difficult. So based on our recent experience in country trips, I think we can say that the idea of pan-Turkishism never really shot off the idea that these countries would unite around ethnic identity or linguistic identity never really came through. Turkey gained influence based on its schools in the region perhaps but not that much more than that, China still overwhelmingly a bigger investor in the region and Tajikistan itself is not a Turkic country and I think if anything some of the countries in Central Asia look at Turkey with skepticism because most of the countries in Central Asia as Kathleen and I noted in the report operate by a Cevetsky or secular system and although Turkey was traditionally emblematic of a country that embodied secularism, today there's some confusion when countries look at Turkey and see the president Erdogan's increasingly Islamic style rhetoric which doesn't jive as much with the tradition of secularism. So I think the countries are not that interested in getting much closer to Turkey than they are today and that fact that most of the Central Asian militants in Syria which has become a major concern have transited through Turkey. So a lot of the countries are afraid that Turkey's playing a double game by allowing some logistics networks to Syria in the country while at the same time publicly being against ISIS. I would add I remember the wave of the Turkic brothers who came in 1992, 93 and there was great skepticism even early on, they felt one that there was a kind of sense that they were going to somehow rescue the Central Asian states and that I think some found it at some level offensive. They didn't feel the same connection as they did with their neighbors, whether it was Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan. I would say though that Turkmenistan has been the most successful partner for Turkey and that's related to the enormous cotton industry and I think they have been good economic partners. What we actually saw was really the profound mount in which China was, what was once a fearful Kyrgyzstan toward China, the term that was used was winning with silence. There was this idea that they were a good business broker, they didn't expect anything to change. They brought in their own Chinese teams, they built these beautiful buildings and then they left. They didn't leave an imprint, they didn't require them to sign up for any kind of program. They thought they were good partners, by contrast I would add. Hi, I'm Colin Cleary, I'm on detail from the State Department here at USIP. I just wanted to turn it around from risk to opportunity and I wondered, let's say Ukraine is able to stave off this assault and the aggression and the governance is able to improve and rally and civil society and governance get their act together. What might be the reverberations in Central Asia from that? I think the reverberations will be very positive, especially for civil society groups, they will be very encouraging because take the example of Georgia, both governments and civil society groups often agree that Georgia's experience after the Rose Revolution was quite successful and a lot of civil society groups and a lot of ambitious public employees, they do want to be like Georgia but they just feel like they don't. The state, the system where they live is not conducive to that. So if Ukraine does become successful and gets, as you said, its act together, it will be great encouragement indeed for both reform-minded public servants and civil society groups. I guess a related part of that answer might be how does that affect what Putin then does afterwards if he sees that he's created something which is more cohesive that he was trying to undermine? Does that mean that there's less pressure on Central Asia or you can make the argument, it might mean that he would put more pressure on Central Asia hoping that the strategy would work better there than it did in Ukraine? No, I think Cole's got a great question, not just for Central Asia but Scott, your elaboration that is the implications for Putin's experiment or Putin's attempt of a successful Ukraine is really a challenge, an amazing challenge, this is what he doesn't want. He doesn't want to see a successful democratic, European-oriented government emerge from a civil society unwilling to accept dictatorship or a lack of freedom which he has instigated in Russia, so I think this is an opportunity and it's another reason, frankly, that exactly as Erika says, we want to see Ukraine succeed. If there, oh, is that a question? Yeah, okay. Oh, we have two more. My name is Yuri, I am from the Russian Embassy. I'm from what has been said, I understand that Central Asia faces a lot of challenges, drug trafficking, unemployment, social instability and et cetera in the center. The two questions, the first question is, what's the biggest challenge for Central Asian government in future? And the second question is, is it possible for Central Asian governments to tackle the challenges alone without international help? Thank you very much. Sure, thank you for this question. Well, we can't look at Central Asia as one model if governments really vary across states and the types of challenges they face also vary. So for Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, as Kathleen mentioned, the challenge is power transformation, transfer from current aging leaders. For Kyrgyzstan, it is about holding yet another round of free and competitive elections next year, parliamentary elections. For Tajikistan, it's trying to fight off the margins of their society to try to make peace with radicalized opposition groups. But if you ask what's the role of Russia in, or international community, you understand. But let me comment on this. If you say what's, okay, if not you, but if in terms of Russian's role in helping those countries to move ahead towards peaceful transfer of power or more democratic society, unfortunately the answer is over the past decade it has been quite discouraging. And I know for a fact from Kyrgyzstan, there have been a lot of pressure not to decentralize the political system as much as it is the centralized now and to introduce some Kremlin-style limitations to activity of political opposition and civil society groups. And I personally also think that Russia will try to play a big role, and by Russia I mean Kremlin, a big role in defining who will be the next leaders in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and how this transfer will proceed. Just one more caveat here, I'm sorry. My views here are my personal nod of my institution. Thank you. I think I'd only add to that that because of the election in 2015, because of the economic impacts of sanctions and counter sanctions, because of what may happen in Afghanistan, I think 2015 is going to be sort of a little bit of a delicate year for a lot of these central Asian countries and those where you don't have elections planned, I think everybody also has another sense of anxiety of as you mentioned, what happens if for whatever reason we need a new leadership and often the rules are not very clear about how that is supposed to happen. So with all of these things together and the neighborhood, it is somewhat heated situation, I think that it is going to be a year where there'll be a great deal of caution on everybody's part. And the goal is stability and staying together first before attempting reforms. And I think reforms are always a little bit threatening, so to answer your second question is can they, maybe they might not want to for the next 12 months or so. But obviously there are factors that can make this easier or a more difficult decision. Thanks. Hi, Lisa Bauer with USAID. I think it seems like there's a lot of similarities when you look at the 2010 transition in Kyrgyzstan and what's been going on with the political transition in Ukraine with just populations not identifying with their political leadership and feeling empowered from their past histories to be able to protest and to be able to take a stand and say we want something different. When you look at the rest of the Central Asian neighborhood, you don't quite see that same background of history and that same freedom maybe in social media and civil society really for populations likely to do that in the future, but I wanted to turn that question to you and say kind of given Ukraine, given Kyrgyzstan, do you see the likelihood that that might happen in any of the other neighbors in the coming year or two years? Sorry for monopolizing the microphone here. It's generally not possible to predict protest. Even if you know the country really well and observe all the trends there, it's impossible to predict a protest and we've seen protests that did topple governments. I admit not much democracy in the Middle East with the Arab Spring as it was called. So I would not exclude a possibility for protest in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In fact, we did see protests around labor laws, labor conditions around local authorities policies. We did see a lot of, not a lot, but we did see instances of rural protest. So whether that protest will move more to the center and what would be the reason for them, it's impossible to predict, but I would not rule out this possibility entirely. Maybe I would add that my instinct, again from speaking with the civil society organizations, and it was more prevalent in some countries than in others, was these organizations are also afraid of pushing things too far and then destabilizing. In Tajikistan, there's very much a mood of, we rushed to democracy before we were ready and what we got out of it was a civil war. We don't wanna make that mistake. We want to have certain reforms. Well, there's an auto-correction mechanism, I think that works on a lot of these civil society groups because they realize that A, their societies are fragile and B, they are tainted in many cases with this perception of being agents of outside influence and they don't necessarily want to draw too much attention to that or be put in a position where they can be blamed for a situation they never wanted to cause at the beginning. So I think there's kind of a self-censorship on their action phenomenon that makes it, it's me think that the possibility of protests that are so serious that they create political change are not likely, especially not next year for the reasons I mentioned in answer to the previous question. Oh, sorry. Richard Lewis, I'm just a fan of USIP. Real quick, we're worried about the influence of Afghanistan on sort of the rest of the area based on what's gonna happen there. I read an article a couple of years ago which was unusual, it talked about all the positive economic indicators in Afghanistan, at least in comparison to the days of the Taliban. Could you talk about that in the economy in Afghanistan? Yeah, very briefly, I think that a lot of the positive economic indicators and indicators in Afghanistan anyway you need to be taken with a little grain of salt. A lot of those positive indicators were linked directly to the massive amounts of money that the international community was putting into Afghanistan. Now that that flow has decreased, the indicators are not looking so good. I think the economy retracted this year in Afghanistan for the first time. For a variety of reasons, there's a fiscal gap in the government, arrives at the end of every month wondering if it can pay the wage bill of the government yet. For, you've seen in the last two, three weeks there's been a huge uptick in Kabul of insurgent attacks, some targeting international NGOs and other international targets and that obviously doesn't create a very good business climate. And finally to go back to Jacob's point from before, he's absolutely right that there was a political agreement that was coupled together out of an election that was extremely divisive and that could not be resolved through accounting of votes but that political agreement has not led yet to a cabinet or governing team that can actually begin to implement a lot of the pro-business and anti-corruption policies that the current president says he wants to implement but they're still in that period of trying to negotiate and fight among themselves to figure out who gets what cabinet position. So I don't expect to see an uptick in economic confidence or indicators in the very near future. What the fact that will have on stability in Central Asia, I mean, or even Afghanistan, I'm not so sure. I don't think that there's going to be a certain level of chaos for a while. I don't really fear that there's gonna be a spillover that will have a big effect on the region but it will continue to have quite a negative effect on Afghanistan's prospects. I'm Terrell Henry with Senate Foreign Relations Committee. So China is now the largest trading partner with I think four to five Central Asian nations and their FDI already has surpassed if it will soon for all these countries. So the saying is that the flag follows trade. So I'm curious, how long would China be satisfied to kind of outsource the security situation to Russia and what it will look like if they want to play in one of that space? And secondly, kind of non-sequitur, but if there is a deal with Iran in the next year or so and sanctions start to be rolled back, what are the implications of that for Central Asia? Sure, I'll take a stab at the China notion. Well related, so China is clearly the predominant economic outside power in Central Asia and it has increasingly stepped up its security coordination with the Central Asian states largely through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Although even though that's a security-based organization, China has used it as a launchpad for economic initiatives. So when Xi Jinping went to the Central Asian capitals last year, he did it on the platform of the SEO summit. And that was basically an economic initiatives he was doing even though SEO was basically a security organization. But in other contexts, China has been willing to be the economic player and sit back and allow others to take the lead on security like in Africa, China has a lot of investments, but it's largely the US or France that acts as the security broker. So it is possible that China could allow Russia to have sort of the security condominium in Central Asia so long as China's economic interests are not affected. Although at some point, if China feels that its economic interests are getting affected by political changes or changes in the security environment, it's unclear whether China will at this point seek to play a more assertive role in terms of security. And I'll leave Iran to my colleagues, but only say that if the Iran space opened up economically, it could likely provide another avenue for Central Asian countries to export goods through Afghanistan to Iran, to those ports, especially since it's very difficult to export goods by road through Pakistan, at least at this point. Yeah, I think that the Iran question is a very good one and it's on the minds of people in the region also because in 1979, you had the toppling of the Shah and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and I think that's totally changed the political patterns of actors in the region because it's a major, the lack of US-Iranian relations is a major black spot on the map where things would be happening quite a lot, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union and the independence of these countries. Iran would have been the vector that then we're trying to make Afghanistan and Pakistan the vector of now through the New Silk Road Initiative, which I don't think will hugely change things in the near future, but just sort of sitting right there with instability on one side and geographical, logistical difficulties on the other, a deal that ended up with a normalization of relations within an opening of trade routes, I think would vastly change a lot of calculations. Yeah, maybe this will be the last question. Leander Bernstein, Riyanovosti Russian Press. I have a question about counter-narcotics efforts in the region, especially given a somewhat recent report by the Special Investigator General of Afghanistan Reconstruction showing that Afghan poppy, opium poppy production was at the highest levels ever in 2013 and U.S. is leaving. Counter-narcotics used to be an area where the United States and Russia cooperated relatively well, so just what are the prospects in this coming period given the challenges of drug production, trafficking. Mr. Zen, you mentioned the Silk Road potentially opening up weapons and narcotics trafficking, so if you could just address that as you. Yeah, I don't think the prospects are very good for cooperation between the U.S. and Russia on counter-narcotics in Afghanistan, maybe for three reasons. The first reason is the prospects aren't very good for cooperation on very many things at this point in the relationship. The second point is even when there was a greater willingness to at least rhetorically talk about cooperation on this issue, nobody really knows what to do about the narcotics problem in Afghanistan. We have, USIP has done some interesting work on this and our position is not a very, I should say our position, but the feeling among those who look at this is that it may well be that the best thing is not to do anything on this, because each of the measures that we've tried to take in some ways made the problem worse. So if there were some very clear ideas, especially that would involve the cooperation of Russia and the U.S., then it might change, but I think there are not very many clear ideas. And the last point is the one idea that, again, that had come out rhetorically, I think from several years ago, from the Russian government was this sort of kordo sanitaire around Afghanistan, but how do you create that, especially since, according to some very interesting recent report, I think it was by Christian Bluer on the Central Asian Space after 2014 in Afghanistan, then the drug trafficking networks are quite closely connected to government officials in the countries through which they transit. So there's already a kind of a built-in incentive not to be too cooperative in that space. So if different answers could be found to those three objections, that would be more optimistic, but it's been 10 years that we've been trying to address this issue, and nobody has really come up with any good ideas, and those ideas that have been come up with and that have been implemented obviously haven't really worked. I mean, the last thing is maybe if there is a government in Afghanistan that does begin to address the corruption issues, and you can begin to stop more of it at the source, then you might have additional opportunities, but we see everywhere in the world it's a huge problem, and we're not immune to it here as well. If you look at Mexico and Central America right now, just to finish on a totally remote note, but in many ways, the huge amount of violence that's been happening in Mexico has been, and more than Afghanistan I think is for some years in terms of numbers of people killed, has been the fact that we successfully shut down the air route that brought Colombian cocaine from Colombia to the US in the 80s, and then the Mexican government more recently successfully began to dismantle the tops of the distribution networks in Mexico, but that just led to a fragmentation and smaller groups fighting against each other with a lot of collateral damage that we've seen in the newspapers. So if anybody has a better idea for something that hasn't been tried, except to say just say no, because our consumption is maybe the beginning part of the problem, we could try and think of it, but is that an idea that will solve the problem? We've never authorized a technical slip. Yeah, I mean, that's a different topic, but let me just ask my panelists here if they have any last words to say on, then let me thank them and thank all of you for coming. I'm quite pleased with the level of interest and we will have more events on this topic because I think the chess board will keep changing. So thank you very much for coming.