On the surface, Central Asia would appear to be ripe for a popular uprising modeled on the Arab Spring. The "stans" are home to repressive governments, high unemployment, inequality, and widespread corruption. Over a year has passed since the wave of protests began to spread across the Arab world. Yet there's been no comparable sign of popular discontent in this other Muslim-majority region.
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On the contrary, Central Asia's regimes appear to be thriving. In January, Kazakhstan's ruling Nur Otan party won over 80 percent of the votes in parliamentary elections, and on February 12 Turkmenistan's incumbent President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov won a national poll with a resounding 97 percent. Even his opponents endorsed him. The point is not that these elections accurately reflected the popular will; far from it. Yet in neither country, despite the incumbent's blatant violations of election laws, did citizens challenge the results as they recently did in Russia.
Central Asia has some of the most repressive states in the world. Freedom House's "Freedom of the World" index rates Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, as "not free," while Kyrgyzstan barely squeaks into the "partly free" category. The region even has the dubious honor of having placed two presidents on Foreign Policy's 2010 list of the "Worst of the Worst" dictators. With the possible exception of Kyrgyzstan, which certainly boasts greater freedoms than its neighbors but also suffers from unacceptably high levels of instability and violence, the voices of ordinary Central Asians are rarely heard.
It did not have to be this way. Western intelligence during the Cold War always saw the region as poised for revolt, a potential dagger aimed at the heart of the "evil empire." During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA had copies of the Koran translated into Uzbek and smuggled across the border in the hopes of starting an anti-Soviet jihad among the USSR's Muslims.
Needless to say, history did not vindicate that plan. Instead, the most vocal opponents of Soviet rule appeared in the Baltic region, while the Central Asian republics lay low. In fact, in a critical referendum of the remaining Soviet republics in March 1991, over 90 percent of all five Central Asian countries voted to stay part of the Soviet Union rather than go their separate ways. They were eventually forced into independence when Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus failed to agree on forming a truncated union and the USSR fell apart.
Having done little to push back against the Communist regime, Central Asian societies had few means to shape the course of politics in their own new states.
Instead, the transition process was controlled -- some would say hijacked -- by Soviet Central Asia's political elites. Four of the five founding Central Asian presidents had been the Communist Party first secretaries of their respective republics. They had risen through ranks of the Party by being disciplined and loyal, not creative, compassionate, or rebellious. They already controlled the levers of power and vast networks of patronage, so it was not difficult for them to assume control of the new governments upon attaining independence. This process was delayed in Tajikistan, where the old guard was challenged in 1992 by rival elite factions, leading to a struggle for power and five years of civil war. The new president, a former collective farm chairman, was able to consolidate power only after the end of the war.
The new leaders had plenty of tools to keep democracy at bay. They inherited a sophisticated intelligence apparatus, with legions of citizens recruited to inform on their neighbors. Since private property was illegal in the Soviet Union, the state ran the economy and managed the republics' lucrative resources, including oil, gas, gold, and cotton. Having been handed such gifts, Central Asia's new leaders found no reason to allow political competition or privatize their economies more than absolutely necessary.
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