[This interview originally
appeared in The Independent in September 2006.]
Next Stop, Central
Asia
Air Force Major Jill Metzger may be
headed home, but the U.S. is in Kyrgyzstan to stay
By J.P. Trostle
Ted Rall is best known as a political
cartoonist and columnist, but he is also a reporter who has covered
Central Asia for nearly a decade. He broadcast live daily reports
from Afghanistan during the 2001 war, and has written about the region
for the Village Voice, POV and other magazines. Rall has collected
his experiences in "the Stans" in a new 300-page book "Silk Road to
Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?" which he describes as
blend of graphic journalism, travelogue and analysis. Rall spoke last
week with J.P. Trostle (who was also his editor on "Silk Road), to
discuss the recent disappearance of Henderson native Maj. Jill Metzger
- and why the United States has a military base in Kyrgyzstan in the
first place.
J.P. Trostle: I supposed I shouldn't
be surprised by this, but with all the news-worthy stories that come
out of Central Asia, what is it that finally grabs the attention of
our national media? A missing blonde, blue-eyed American woman.
Ted Rall: Which is, of course,
the way our domestic news works as well. I did a cartoon years ago
called "Murder Mystery Misses" about the same phenomena, about hot
chicks getting killed or kidnapped and how that somehow always leads
the news over seemingly more important stories, and Central Asia is
no exception to this rule. When I started doing "Stan Watch" on KFI
radio in LA [Rall had a radio talk show there in the late 1990s],
I had a number of spoofs on the show that were meant to lampoon Americans
disinterest in foreign affairs. So I choose news updates of the most
remote part of the world that I could possibly think of -- the Central
Asian republics -- and the joke turned on me because people really
started following it and were really interested and really wanted
to know what was going on. And so it ended up being revelatory to
me that there were a lot of Americans who were very interested in
international news, even from seemingly remote places, that weren't
finding it in their local newspaper or television news.
The circumstances of Metzger's
strange disappearance and reappearance are still being investigated,
but there are some odd discrepancies in her story that no one has
cleared up yet. What do you think happened?
Well I have absolutely no idea.
Certainly it's possible that she was kidnapped by a criminal gang.
Kyrgyzstan has disintegrated into chaos, anarchy and warlordism since
the 2005 Tulip Revolution -- which was backed by the CIA and deposed
Central Asia's only democratically elected president -- and criminal
gangs have taken residence in a way they never were able to under
the regime of [Kyrgyz President] Askar Akayev.
On the other hand, the fact she
was released without a ransom demand, seemingly uninjured, makes me
think she was out, that this was a lost weekend and she made up a
story to explain her absence, but I really -- I think its one of those
two things, I don't know which.
While much of Central Asia is
inhospitable -- both in terms of terrain and governments -- wasn't
Kyrgyzstan considered fairly safe for Westerners?
Yes, it was. I mean Bishkek has
had a dodgy nightlife for as long as I can remember, at least since
the economic collapse in the late '90s. Certainly street crime was
always an issue; muggings by ethnic Russians were a problem. But the
Kyrgyz were a famously friendly people -- Kyrgyzstan is known as the
Switzerland of Central Asia -- and anti-Americanism has no foundation
there. Even today I think very few Kyrgyz really are anti-American,
though it's starting to change since the Tulip Revolution because
the American role there was so pronounced in overthrowing Askar Akayev.
And what followed has been so bad for the average Kyrgyz, certainly
the politics have changed, but I doubt that has manifested itself
in the anti-American kidnappings you see in Iraq.
So that was why we had a military
base there in the first place?
Well the official reason for the
base in Kyrgyzstan -- and the fly-in rights to Tajikistan and a military
base called K2 [Karshi-Khanabad], which was closed recently in Uzbekistan
-- was ostensively to service airplanes operating in Afghanistan as
part of the war on terror. But most people, or more cynical people
-- of whom I would be included -- would consider that part of a generalized
American strategy to derussify the former Soviet Republics of Central
Asia which are geopolitically important, and economically important,
because of their access -- either direct or indirect -- to Caspian
Sea oil, which are the largest untapped oil reserves in the world.
Yeah, the first time I saw a
map of the oil pipelines coming out of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and
Uzbekistan, it all suddenly made sense.
Military bases certainly exist
to exert American military power outwards but they also serve to promote
economic interests inward, because once the United States establishes
a military base in your country they have a level of political and
economic influence they didn't have before -- and you literally have
military troops from a foreign government on your soil that can over
throw you if you don't do what they want. I think that's the primary
reason why we have that Kyrgyz base.
Now, it's interesting about [Manas
Air Base] because ever since the Uzbeks forced the U.S. to close K2
in early '06, the Kyrgyz have asked for a 200-fold increase in the
rent the United States pays for their military base. And furthermore,
the Kyrgyz have made a lot of noise in expanding their relationship
with Russia, their former Soviet master, so the Kyrgyz are flexing
their muscles now, and the Americans are threatening to take out the
Kyrgyz regime that they installed in the first place.
No discussion of Central Asia
would be complete without talking about buzkashi!
(laughs) No, it wouldn't. Buzkashi
is -- awesome. Buzkashi is the world's most violent sport. It involves
É it is essentially dead-goat polo. The participants gather on a field
and the decapitated carcass of a goat is thrown out into the field,
and the object is to grab it and drag it across a goal line. It's
every man for himself, although there are sometimes there are sometimes
groups of two or three or more who form alliances for the purposes
of a match. It can be played with as few as a half dozen and as many
as a thousand players.
What makes it interesting is that
there are no rules whatsoever. Anyone can stop you from doing that
using any mean necessary, up to and including -- in Afghanistan --
shooting you with an automatic weapon. In [other] Central Asian republics,
although guns are not prohibited they are considered gauche. But certainly
stabbings are not unheard of, and whipping and blinding and pushing
people off their horses in order to have them trampled to death are
all considered perfectly acceptable -- and, in fact, desirable --
ways to play the game. It's a sport that goes back to Genghis Khan,
probably earlier than that, and it used to be played with the headless
body of a prisoner of war. It sounds absolutely barbaric, but it also
requires incredible skill as a horseman and it's amazing to see people
put not only their honor but their lives on the line in such tight
quarters with such fine animals.
On the net:
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A37606