Critical Approaches to Security in Central Asia by Edward Lemon

Author:Edward Lemon [Lemon, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367086756
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 41879953
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

Explaining the distortions in the discourse of danger

There is a striking discrepancy between our findings of moderate possession and impact of small arms in Kyrgyzstan and the conventional assessments of SALW in Kyrgyzstan, which we presented at the start of our paper. How can this discrepancy be explained? In the introduction we noted that three problems tend to appear in analysis of insecurity in Central Asia: (1) generalisation for all of Central Asia based on trends in one country, (2) exaggeration of crisis signs and (3) failure to take into account stabilising factors in Central Asian societies. These deficiencies emerge in part because of methodological challenges such as the nature and availability of sources. They also appear to reflect a discursive inclination to dramatise the situation in Central Asia. Above we claimed there were two features in the discourse on Central Asia which encourage a dramatisation of the situation in Central Asia: one is the underlying expectation of danger, such as armed political upheaval, without the necessity to justify this assertion; the second feature is the frequency with which assertions of trends in one country are transformed into general statements for the region as a whole.

One key method-related problem facing researchers on Central Asia is the limited availability of sources and the biased nature of many sources. Western analysts have difficulties with accessing printed local newspapers, while the online news bulletins tend, arguably, to unjustly select stories related to dramatic incidents involving radical Islamists or criminal groupings. Stories presenting stabilising trends are by contrast often ignored. Moreover, some of the news briefs on Central Asia might themselves be incorrect. During our field work in Tajikistan the Asia Plus correspondent in Kuljab, near the Afghan border, noted that the scale of fighting along the border between Russian soldiers and drug traffickers was nearly always exaggerated by spokespersons for the Russian army. The correspondent noted that there is an incentive for the Russian army to do this so as to maintain the ’Emergency Situation‘ status in the border regions and to legitimise their presence there. Similarly an IOM representative who had lived and worked in the Rasht valley, Tajikistan, when the IMU had bases there, claimed they were never more that 50-60 fighters, maximum.37 In other reports however, IMU has been estimated to have up to 5000 fighters.38 Local military and government officials have an incentive to exaggerate the numbers: if there were few IMU fighters then the difficulties they created for the Kyrgyz and Uzbek armies would be even more embarrassing. There would also be less reason for financial and material support to local military structures.

A similar point can be made for the use of elite interviews as source material. During the research interviews we conducted we found there was a tendency by local government officials and representatives of international organisation to emphasise the conflict potential in the region. It is not impossible that the focus on conflict potential stems from the fact that it is this very conflict potential which has spurred the inflow of aid money to the region.

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