Risk, Fragility and Post-Soviet Fifth Columns

On April 22, Intiqam Aliyev, Azerbaijani human rights defender, was sentenced to seven and a half years for tax evasion, abuse of authority, illegal entrepreneurship and appropriation. On May 6, another well known-activist, Faraj Karimov, was given a six-year sentence on drug-related charges. Critics have claimed the sentences were politically motivated, particularly since they come at the time of a general crackdown on opponents of the Azerbaijani government.

Human rights groups, international institutions and governments have warned that such a crackdown would bolster radicalism, or that the actions could result in protests and instability. In her testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee in February 2015, Audrey Altstadt, professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, noted, “Critics oppose the regime, not the state. But the regime identifies itself with the state and claims that a threat to its own power is a threat to statehood. Under these conditions, endemic corruption, lack of democratic governance, and repression of critical voices undermine the stability of society and therefore put the country at risk.” She later states that the clamp-down on civil society is a “risky and counter-productive strategy for the regime itself.”

Altstadt makes a strong case, but to understand why the Azerbaijani government made these decisions, we need to look at Altstadt’s statement in two parts: 1) “critics oppose the regime, not the state” and 2) the Azerbaijan government’s decisions to crackdown on civil society are “risky and counter-productive.”

State and Regime

Despite Altstadt’s distinction between opposition to the regime and opposition to the state, the situation might not be so clear-cut in Azerbaijan. The president and the parliament are elected, but since the early ‘90s the elections have never passed international standards for being free and fair. Freedom House’s Freedom in the World Index currently lists the country as “Not Free,” receiving low scores on both political rights and civil liberties.

At the center of the system lies a combination of clan and patronage politics, which results in a highly centralized and personalized system and in effect closes the distance between the regime and the state.

This type of system makes it difficult to distinguish where the government ends and the state begins.

Civil Society as a Threat to the State

The Azerbaijan government has woven a narrative similar to that of Russia that the United States is drawing on democracy development programs to create a fifth column in the country. The narrative has the underlying logic that given the state and government are inseparable and opposition groups and parties are “radical” and “anti-Azerbaijani,” any change of regime—democratic or otherwise—would undermine the state. Thus liberal groups and organizations, particularly those receiving funding from the U.S. for democracy development programs have been attacked for their role in undermining the sovereignty of the state.

To fully grasp the narrative, we need to look at its history, which is intimately connected to the threat deriving from the color revolutions in Eurasia and the events of the Arab Spring. 
With the fall of the Soviet Union, U.S. and European funding for democracy development programs began to be provided to civil society organizations, founded on the theory that transition to market economics required a concomitant transition to democratic governance. From the beginning, many post-Soviet authoritarian governments had an uneasy relationship with the programs, even going so far as creating GONGOs (Government Organized Non-Governmental Organizations) in order to control the sphere of civil society and maintain low levels of opposition. As many of the fledgling governments became more established, they gave less room for civil society and democracy development programs. Kyrgyzstan’s Askar Akayev is a good example. The Kyrgyzstan government began its movement away from democracy in 1996, when the new constitution codified a strong president and weak parliament. And by 1999 Kyrgyzstan was designated by Freedom House as “Not Free.”

In 2002 and 2003, Azerbaijan was still designated as “Partly Free.” However, in December 2003, the country’s president Heydar Aliyev died. The election of his son, Ilham Aliyev, was followed by violent protests, giving evidence of discontent and a potential weakness in the regime. These events and the Rose and Orange revolutions (in Georgia and Ukraine respectively) demonstrated the susceptibility of the post-Soviet authoritarian regimes to instability, leading the Azerbaijan government to tighten its grip on power. The 2006 Tulip revolution in Kyrgyzstan hammered home this concern about unrest.

The situation was not helped when Azerbaijan’s leadership witnessed the Arab Spring in the Middle East in 2011, the 2012 post-election protests in Russia, the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine (and the subsequent descent into conflict over Crimea and Donbas) and the 2013 controversy over Ilham Aliyev’s election to a third term. 

The crisis in Ukraine and the increasingly aggressive activities of Russia (with the rationale of resistance to the encroachment of the U.S. and Europe) resulted in the leadership of a number of post-Soviet countries growing more concerned about being caught in the middle of a geopolitical struggle that seemed to be occurring in the civil society of post-Soviet space. 

In the lead up to the 2013 presidential elections, small protests began to pop up in Ismayilli, Quba and Nardaran causing unease in the Azerbaijani government.

By 2014, the head of the Azerbaijan President’s Cabinet accused the U.S. government of “forming a radical group of protesters.” Just recently, the Azerbaijan newspaper, a publication of the Azerbaijani parliament, published a piece claiming that the United States had created a fifth column in the country.

Crackdowns and Increased Risk
Is Azerbaijan’s government putting itself at risk because of its decision to crack down on groups critical of the regime?
In his book Principles of International Politics, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita points out that on average democratic leaders stay in office for less than four years, while their authoritarian counterparts for roughly nine, suggesting a general increased longevity of authoritarian rulers.

Jack Goldstone et al. have pointed out that “…the risk of instability is lowest in full autocracies and full democracies, other things being equal. By contrast, hybrid regimes—partial autocracies and partial democracies—are substantially more vulnerable to crisis than their more ‘coherent’ counterparts.”

In 2003, Azerbaijan’s Partly Free designation set it squarely among the hybrid regimes, i.e. at higher risk. The options, then, were to move either toward democracy or authoritarianism. Given both Bueno de Mesquita’s point about longevity of leaders in the two systems and the need for stability, the more rational choice in the short-term was to tighten the government’s grasp.

Fragility
But the decision for the short term does not consider the fact that other risks can arise from strengthening the authoritarian elements of government. A highly centralized and personalized authoritarianism can produce fragility in the system in the longer-term. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his book Antifragile notes that nonlinear systems—in which most of the volatility can be attributed to one or a small number of events—are highly fragile.



Taleb and Gregory F. Treverton later explained, “The first marker of a fragile state is a concentrated decision-making system. On its face, centralization seems to make governments more efficient and thus more stable. But that stability is an illusion.”

Since the centralized system is able to hold volatility in check for such a long time, it does not have the benefit of self-correction that comes with handling small shocks often—as would be done in a more open system. Without that self-correction, the fragility in the system does not enable the state to handle slightly larger shocks, and the harm from these shocks may be increased exponentially—resulting in a non-linear system. Taleb and Treverton note that Lebanon, because it has constant small incidences of unrest, is better prepared to handle larger protests without sinking into chaos as Syria has.

Similarly, Azerbaijan’s ability to stave off opposition through heavy-handed policies may leave the country vulnerable to slightly larger unrest down the road.

The government may be able to hold volatility in check for now, and may decrease short-term uncertainty by removing opponents from the political field, but with the decline in oil prices, the fall in the value of the manat and the potential for shocks throughout the Azerbaijan economy (which has a low level of diversification)—some coming from Russia’s economic woes—the Azerbaijani government may need to keep Taleb’s and Altstadt’s thoughts in mind, even if the best bet in the short-term seems to be strengthening authoritarian elements of the government.

At the same time, recommendations from international Institutions need to keep in mind the interpretation, logic and the political calculus of the Azerbaijan government. To claim the separation between regime and state is to assume the depersonalization of the state, which is not necessarily the case. With the present form of government in place, the logic of “attacks on the regime are attacks on the state” hold. However, it is specifically this personalized authoritarian state that creates the interconnection, and thus the subsequent risk—not some external power or fifth column.

Airing the Dirty Laundry of Morocco's Sex Industry: Hiding from the Gaze of the Colonizer in the Postcolony

In an effort to protect its image, the Moroccan government banned the movie Much Loved (Zin Li Fik), which depicts the lives of sex workers in the country. But just days after the the premiere of the movie at the Cannes film festival the government released data from a 2011 report that acknowledged the presence of 19,333 sex workers, primarily in the cities of Marakech and Casablanca.

In the days following the release of the film, social media and Moroccan online news outlets buzzed with discussion of the topic. One op-ed piece in the Moroccan Times criticised the film not only for its depiction of this side of society and of sexuality, but for the filmaker's choice to do so on the international stage, rather than within the country itself.

The refrain of "don't air the nation's dirty laundry to an international audience" is common in postcolonial countries, and it takes the form of desiring not to acknowledge marginal behaviors and economic sectors (as in this case) or to bring internal political issues to international bodies (as some authors in Azebaijan have said about groups that requested European countries boycott the European games because of the county's human rights abuses).

These types of situations suggest the continuing of focus on the gaze of the colonizer and the desire to maintain uniformity of national identity and a strict adherence to normative representation of the body politic. The question, however, is whether the discussion would have ever arisen if the topic had not been brought to the international public sphere. The answer may reside in the openness of the society itself.

In a closed political environment, where the government has tight controls on what is being published or broadcast, controversial topics may never reach the fore of discussion and may find themselves swept into a corner. Morocco, a country with a rating of "Partly Free" in the Freedom in the World Index, has begun having discourse on the topic with both supporters and detractors of the filmaker weighing, and could utilize this chance to address the problem.

As public discussions move to the Internet, the relations of social media and governments become more significant for a society's ability to address its issues. Facebook's and Twitter's challenges with authoritarian governments that wish to suppress opposition, such as Turkey and Russia, and the increased ability of governments to block such websites, mean societies might have a decrease ability to mitigate risk of unrest through the self-correction of dealing with smaller issues.

It remains to be seen what direction such trends will take, but hot-button topics like Much Loved's depiction of the Moroccan sex industry will provide insight into how the trend is developing.

Succession Concerns in Algeria

Roughly a year ago, Algeria had suffered pockets of protest surrounding the election of Abdullaziz Bouteflika to his fourth term as the president of the North African country. The protests, and the ailing health of the 78 year-old leader brought on discussion among political observers about the country’s ability to remain stable in the coming years. The decline in onshore petroleum reserves and in oil prices recently have aggravated the problem, leading some analysts to look into not only the potential for instability, but also the succession problem that looms over the political landscape.

Abdullaziz Bouteflika rose to power in 1999 at the end of the country’s civil war that began with the annulled election of Islamists to government in 1992.  Since then, Bouteflika has drawn upon income from oil and gas production to provide social services to the country and invest into infrastructure projects. At the same time, the security forces have come down hard on attempts to protest. 

In the capital city Algiers, a strong police presence is maintained to ensure stability, but outside the city remains a threat from groups associated with ISIS. In September 2014, militants kidnapped and beheaded French tourist Herve Gourdel to punish France for its actions against the Islamic State. In March 2015, 100 Turkish workers were evacuated from a roadway project east of Algiers due to a threat from militants associated with the Islamic state. In February, the US State Department issued a travel warning for its citizens about the Kabylie regions and the eastern wilayas, and the Saharan Desert regions of the south and southeast.

Such areas of insecurity make the concerns about Mr. Bouteflika’s health more significant. The lack of plans for succession could put the country in a position where a power vacuum is created, which could lead to violent clashes within the society. Some observers have noted that leaders of the Algerian government since the 1960s have been less elected by the public than selected by the security forces, which could decrease the succession issue. Moreover, the government is seeking to compensate for the loss of onshore reserves by seeking offshore wells to support the country’s economy.

Nonetheless, this situation is one that should be watched. Since the country has a long border with Libya and analysts have registered concern about the possibility of Libya’s becoming the next failed state, even a small loss of stability in Algeria could provide the opportunity militants need to expand their reach. 

The best way to ensure stability in the long term is to prepare now for the event of succession, in particular one that would ensure that the voice of the broader public can be heard.

Has Russia Gone Absolutely Nuts?: Cooperation in an Era of Global Paranoia

By Kerry Cosby

As a child of the '70s and '80s, I was raised on courtroom dramas. This is why, when I read articles about Russia’s insane foreign policy or the country’s paranoiac laws regarding foreign influence, I cannot help but imagine two TV lawyers battling over the claim that Russia needs to be institutionalized.

So what is the verdict? Does Russia require four padded walls and a straight jacket?

If the news media were the court in our version of Law and Order, the lead prosecutor would have already made a clever remark summing up the episode, the electronic metal bar would have fallen, and the screen would have faded to black.

But in reality, the situation is more complex and has more significant repercussions for global cooperation.

The Case Against Russia

The courtroom drama episode begins with our slick, well dressed prosecutor standing before the jury and calling their attention to the law being discussed in the Russian Duma. The law states that the political situation should be taken into consideration when determining what foreign schools will be a part of the Russian government’s study abroad program. He cues up a video of Russian PM from the nationalist Liberal Democratic faction, Valery Selevnyov who says, "For our money, we will get highly skilled agents of foreign espionage services."

The prosecutor follows up with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s September 27^th statement to the UN General Assembly. The video rolls of him asking, “Shouldn’t the General Assembly adopt a declaration on the inadmissibility of interference into domestic affairs of sovereign states and non-recognition of coup d’états as a method of the change of power?” (Certainly, the irony of Lavrov’s question would not be lost on the jury, given Russia’s role in South Ossetia in 2008 and Crimea and Eastern Ukraine today.)

But the video is not enough for us to conclude that these are mutterings of a government lost in its own fantasy of persecution?

So the prosecutor brings into evidence recent laws requiring some Russian non-governmental organizations receiving money from abroad to register as “foreign agents,” and the closing of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Just to bring the case home, he might even throw in Russia’s claims that the Hong Kong protests are being organized by Great Britain and the USA.

This might be enough to convince our jury that Putin and his crew are an insane authoritarian government, clinging to power and thus seeing shadows around every corner.

But, our prosecutor points out that insanity, by itself, is not a sufficient reason to lock someone up. If it were, most Hollywood celebrities would be in mental wards. The danger, he says, is that the paranoia has somehow infected the country’s people, 45 percent of whom believe an omnipotent shadowy group controls humanity.  He also points out that many of the Russian media’s conspiracy theories about Malaysian flight MH17—shot down over eastern Ukraine—spread like wildfire through Russian social media.

The prosecutor stands beside the jury with one hand on the jury box and one pointing at the Russian bear seated at the defendant’s table, and tells them that this is an insanity that needs to be contained before it infects everyone.

They’re All Already Insane

The defense, an uncompromising, short-haired blonde steps up to the jury and declares that we may want to hold back our desire to paint Russia with the madman brush.

This concern about outside interference can be seen in more than just Russia. Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan have also created “foreign agent laws” and shut down representatives of international non-governmental organizations.  In September 2014, the head of Azerbaijan’s President’s Cabinet gave an interview in which he accused the head of the Baku office of the National Endowment for Democracy of “forming a radical group of protesters."

China itself has voiced concern about foreign interference in domestic affairs. Recently, on the subject of the Hong Kong protests China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Hua Chunying stated, “I’d like to reiterate that Hong Kong is China’s Hong Kong, which is a special administrative region of China. Hong Kong affairs fully fall within China’s domestic affairs. We hope that relevant countries can be prudent in their words and deeds, refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of Hong Kong in any way, stay away from supporting the illegal acts such as “Occupy Central”, and do not send out wrong signals.”

Turkey has claimed that external forces have interfered with its election—not foreign governments, but independent groups abroad. Since March 2014, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (previously Prime Minister) has been in a bitter battle with the Internet, recently expressing the feeling that he was “increasingly against the Internet every day." In March, leaks and allegations of corruption began appearing on YouTube and Twitter, for which Erdogan blamed US-resident and founder of the Gulen Movement, Fethullah Gulen. Most recently this battle took the form of a new law passed by the Turkish Parliament that expands the powers of the High Council for Telecommunications (TIB) to block websites or gather Internet user information.

If Everyone’s Crazy, Then No One Is

Our Defense attorney feels confident about her argument now. She stands directly in front of the prosecutor in a demonstration of her and the case’s strength, and announces that it would be easy to say these are simply the reactions of authoritarian leaders to challenges to their rule. But that would be looking too narrowly at the issue. A better assertion would be that this is the reaction of nation-states to the ever increasing interconnections of a globalized world, particularly one that has recently entered a multi-polar era.

As evidence, she points to the fact that the process has occurred even in democratic countries. In 2012, amid allegations that voter identification laws put barriers in front of poor and minority voters, Texas Attorney General threatened to arrest OSCE election monitors dispatched for the 2012 general elections. Abbot wrote in an open letter, “If OSCE members want to learn more about our election processes so they can improve their own democratic systems, we welcome the opportunity to discuss the measures Texas has implemented to protect the integrity of elections. However, groups and individuals from outside the United States are not allowed to influence or interfere with the election process in Texas.” Abbot’s stance was supported by conservative groups and news outlets.

But U.S. conservatives do not have a monopoly on the fear of foreign groups and countries.  In September, the New York Times published an article on the influence foreign states exert on the U.S. through funding to U.S. think tanks.

Moreover, as a parallel to Russian citizens’ belief in a shadow group controlling humanity, according to a survey conducted by Public Policy Polling, 28 percent of American “voters believe that a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government, or New World Order.”

Cooperation Among Paranoiacs

The defense would probably have won the case, but the television audience might have hoped to see Russia hauled away by men in white coats. Such a verdict would certainly provide more hope for global cooperation.

Given that the most significant issues we face are global ones (climate change, global terror networks, ebola), the paranoiacs will need to work together to solve them. For this to happen, even if each of the countries are wary of each other, they will need to seek to restore trust in international organizations, and transnational civil society—although both may need to be re-envisioned for the post-American era.

International structures, such as the United Nations, IMF and World Bank, will need to address concerns about their democratic deficit. The UN would need to examine the possibility of including principles of deliberative and/or electoral democracy, through structures such as a Parliamentary Assembly (directly elected by the citizenry of member nations) or by bringing transnational civil society among the representatives of nation-states themselves in the decision-making bodies.  They will need to create forms in which open participation in debate becomes possible.  And at some point, the UN will have to tackle the problem for democratic governance that the Security Council poses.

Transnational civil society will need to deal with the fact that it is perceived as a pawn of the “West,” living off funding from U.S. and European aid organizations.  Such an act would require that boards and decision-makers be from a wide range of national backgrounds. The civil society organizations will need to find more varied funding sources, and perhaps consider alternatives to the professionalized management structures that have become so widespread since the 1980s.

Nations themselves cannot be separated from this process.  For such distrust of international institutions and civil society to be overcome, nation-states should prepare their citizenry to participate in international debate and help them to better understand international systems of governance. They will need to integrate ideas of deliberative democracy into their education systems and reinforce the idea of deliberation in their own politics.