trade, they suffered along with the Kyrgyz and other ethnic groups in the economic collapse of the 1990s. In such a volatile situation, government-owned and private media outlets had a crucial role to play. If they succumbed to nationalist or ethnic rhetoric, they could exacerbate tensions. If they served as a voice of reason, they could help build bridges between the ethnic groups. The 1990 riots had unnerved Western governments who feared that Central Asia could descend into the kind of ethnic and religious conflict that wracked the former Yugoslavia. Foreign aid came flowing in to Kyrgyzstan—to develop a market economy, to privatize state-owned property, to draft laws and train legislators and judges, to build civil society, and to support media and raise professional standards in journalism. The Osh Media Resource Center was one of these initiatives.
Let’s Make a Deal
Kuban and I spent two days visiting newspapers and TV stations. The media owners were concerned about staying in business: the economy was in a slump, businesses were not buying advertising, and local government officials and the mafia were squeezing them for payoffs. The journalists were concerned about poor pay and working conditions. Most earned less than $50 a month, and needed two or three jobs to put food on the table. Both groups welcomed opportunities for training, agreeing that standards in the profession needed to be raised. Everyone said it was important for Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Russian media to work harmoniously together. Memories of the June 1990 clashes were still vivid.
After Kuban left, I hired a student from Osh State University as my interpreter and began planning for the center. The library director, Ismailova Ibragimovna, was proving to be a tough negotiator. The library’s budget had been slashed, and she was struggling to pay the staff and maintain the building. There was no money for books and newspaper and magazine subscriptions. A new center with computers, radio equipment, satellite TV and—perhaps most exciting of all in 1995—an Internet connection, promised to bring in new patrons and raise the profile of the library with the oblast administration. UNESCO and USIS had agreed to fund the newspaper and magazine subscriptions. I expected Ibragimovna to enthusiastically support the project.
Instead, she held out for more. Perhaps she thought the donors had deep pockets; perhaps she thought she could play hardball with a green Westerner on his first job in Central Asia. The agreement with USIS and UNESCO was not in writing, and did not specify the size or location of the room for the center. Ibragimovna started by showing me a windowless second-floor room, not much larger than a broom closet. She claimed all other rooms in the library were occupied. Even a casual visitor would have concluded otherwise because several rooms were, if not exactly unoccupied, at least underused. When you opened the door, a couple of staff members invited you to join them for tea; there were no shelves, typewriters, and certainly no books in the room. I decided to call Ibragimovna’s bluff and said that the room she offered was unsatisfactory. The center had to be located in a larger room with windows on the first floor. The donors would pay for repairs and painting, new desks and furniture, and install a security system.
Ibragimova thought for a moment. “Maybe I can find such a room,” she said. “But it will not be easy. I know you need to hire a manager for the center. My daughter needs a job.”
I suppose I should not have been shocked, but this was the first time I had come face-to-face with an attempt to parlay influence into a job. And the request needs to be put into cultural context. In Kyrgyz society, kinship ties are the ones that really bind. Your family comes first, then your tribe or clan. In a traditional nomadic society, there’s a duty to help a family member who falls sick or loses livestock in a winter storm. However, when this value system moves from the yurts and mountain pastures to the city, to government agencies, universities, and private companies, it can breed corruption and nepotism—jobs, government contracts, and sweet business deals for relatives, bribes for university admission and diplomas, and payoffs to officials and the police. In the city, the extended family grows to include political supporters and business associates.
Politicians in Central Asia are regularly accused of corruption for using their positions to enrich themselves and their relatives. Often their response, at least in private, is that they are upholding traditional values. Because they had the ability or good fortune to attain power and wealth, it is now their responsibility to help less fortunate family members. How far this responsibility goes is another matter. Is it a moral duty to find a job for a family member who lacks the basic qualifications? To bribe a judge to get your brother off on a drug-trafficking charge? To award a government contract or a commercial network TV license to your daughter? Still, the conflict in value systems is real enough. Conduct that in the West would be considered corrupt or at least ethically questionable may be regarded as a moral duty in Central Asia. In other words, not doing whatever you can to help relatives may be unethical.
I agreed to meet Ibragimovna’s daughter. She was a second-year university student with no background in journalism and no interest in the field. I gave her as much advice as I could muster on a career in retail fashion. I promised to revise her résumé and have it translated into English. She told her mother how helpful I had been and said she wasn’t interested in the manager job after all. The next day, Ibragimovna was able to find a spacious first-floor room with windows for the center.
I then proposed that we draft a job description for the manager, translate it into Kyrgyz, Russian, and Uzbek, distribute it to media outlets, NGOs, and government offices, and run an advertisement in the local newspapers. Ibragimovna seemed surprised. “That’s not the way we do things here,” she said. “Why don’t you just go ahead and pick someone you like? That’s how I choose my staff.” I said that I was dealing with donor funds, and we had to follow the rules—an open search process, with written applications and interviews. With a mild protest, but also with a sense of curiosity, Ibragimovna joined me and a UNESCO representative in interviewing eight of the twelve applicants. The unanimous choice was Renat Khusainov, a twenty-eight-year-old university teacher with a background in journalism and computers, who was fluent in Russian, Kyrgyz, and English. He was a Tatar, a member of an ethnic minority. At the end of the discussion, Ibragimovna looked me straight in the eye. “Is ethnic origin an issue in this appointment?” she asked. “Well, it’s not an issue for me if it’s not one for you,” I shot back. She smiled. “This is a very good day for the library,” she said.
On the Road to the Sacred Mountain
After three nights at the grim Hotel Intourist, I moved into an apartment a few blocks south on Kurmanjan Dakta. The apartment was sparsely furnished but within easy walking distance of the library. Most important, the heating was working. In almost every Soviet city, a central thermal plant supplied heated water to radiators in houses, apartments, businesses, and public buildings. Or at least it was supposed to. Lack of fuel, maintenance, or some combination of the two meant that the system was notoriously unreliable. In winter, parts of Osh were without heat for days because of frozen pipes and equipment breakdowns. Most government officials lived in the city center where the system was better maintained. I was lucky to be in the right neighborhood.
Unfortunately, the heat never came on in the restaurants, where the few diners huddled in overcoats and fur hats. Even though soup and a main course cost as little as $1.50, and it was difficult to pay more than $4, few could afford to eat out. Apart from the occasional wedding reception, the restaurants were almost deserted. At the Ak-Burra Restaurant, a lonely attendant sat by the huge empty cloakroom. The cavernous upstairs dining room probably hadn’t changed much since the Soviet era when the local party brass went out to celebrate—ornate pillars, heavy red drapes, chandeliers, long mirrors, and paintings in fake gold frames. At 8:30 p.m. on Friday, only one other table was occupied. A sad-faced waiter handed me a five-page menu, but when I tried to order he told me that the kitchen could serve only kotelet (ground meat) with noodles, flat lipioshki bread, and green tea. On other nights, there was beef stroganoff with mashed potatoes and garnish and, sometimes soup and funchosa, a cold, spicy noodle salad. Most restaurant patrons came to drink and dance. Almost every restaurant had a stage for a live band, which belted out pop tunes at a decibel level that made conversation almost impossible.
