Matthew Bryza: Azerbaijan Ambassadorship & a Tangled Web of Conflicts

President Obama appears to have run out of Non-Neocon candidates to appoint for crucial positions. After one year with no ambassador to fill the position in Azerbaijan, the President reached out to and appointed a young neocon with a tangled web of conflicts. I am talking about a neocon and his wife, a duo who for the last decade and a half have been attached to figures such as Michael Rubin, Barry Rubin, Daniel Pipes, Richard Perle, Robert Novak…We have here a fairly young to-be-ambassador neocon, whose lavish wedding in Turkey could not have been possible without the generosity of those involved in the Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline projects, and corrupt figureheads in Azerbaijan politics…This is about a shady neocon figure with a shadier role in the almost-forgotten Georgia-Russia incident a couple of years ago…We are talking about neocon Matt Bryza and his more-of-a-neocon think-tank damsel Zeyno Baran; President Obama’s choice for  the ambassadorship in Azerbaijan.

Last Thursday Mr. Bryza was on the defensive when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. While the general MSM coverage placed its main focus on Bryza’s questionable actions, actually lack of actions, on the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflicts and incidents involving the desecration of ancient Armenian gravesites in the town of Julfa in the Azerbaijani exclave of Naxcivan, very little coverage was given to his even greater baggage and background.  Here is one of those cursory coverages I’m talking about:

Bryza also pledged to not let his personal life affect his work. His wife, Zeyno Baran, is of Turkish origin, which some Armenian critics say leads to an anti-Armenian bias. Baran, who was present at the hearing, has also been cited as a source of potential conflict of interest for Bryza in terms of energy politics. She works for the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think-tank which receives funding from ExxonMobile and other energy companies. Azerbaijan is a key “southern corridor” country for planned increases in gas shipment from the Caspian region to Europe.

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Bryza’s neocon damsel’s past and present, and her various business and close associations are only the tip of a gigantic iceberg. But rest assured, our media and Congress will not go ‘there’, of course, without being forced to do so, that is.

So who is this quietly conceived hatched Neocon Larva, Matt Bryza?

As before I am going to start with the common pedigree chosen by our shallow MSM journalist friends and the like; the type that doesn’t raise many (if any) flags, at first glance:

Matthew J. Bryza is a diplomat who became Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs in June 2005. Two months ago President Obama appointed him as the US Ambassador to Azerbaijan. Here is a canned description of his job as a ‘diplomat’:

In this capacity, he is responsible for policy oversight and management of U.S. relations with countries in the Caucasus and Southern Europe. He also leads U.S. efforts to advance peaceful settlements of the separatist conflicts of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, and works with the Special Negotiator for Eurasian Conflicts to advance a settlement to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Additionally, Bryza coordinates U.S. energy policy in the regions surrounding the Black and Caspian Seas. He also works with European countries on issues of tolerance, social integration, and Islam.

In April 2001, Bryza joined the National Security Council as Director for Europe and Eurasia, with responsibility for coordinating U.S. policy on Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Caspian energy.

Bryza served as the deputy to the Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy from July 1998 to March 2001. In this capacity, Bryza coordinated the U.S. Government’s inter-agency effort to develop a network of oil and gas pipelines in the Caspian region.During 1997-1998, Bryza was special advisor to Ambassador Richard Morningstar, coordinating U.S. Government assistance programs on economic reform in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Bryza served at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow during 1995-1997, first as special assistant to Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, then as a political officer covering the Russian Duma, the Communist Party, and the Republic of Dagestan in the North Caucasus.

He worked on European and Russian affairs at the State Department during 1991-1995.Bryza served in Poland in 1989-1991 at the U.S. Consulate in Poznań and the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw, where he covered the Solidarity movement, reform of Poland’s security services, and regional politics.

At first glance the above description is about a good ole boring tie-wearing State Department bureaucrat who was docile and boring enough to last through four administrations: Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., and now, Obama; that and the fact that the guy has been climbing the ladder steadily and rather quickly. Taking a closer look, if we have enough interest and if we are paying attention, our man’s operational file stands out a bit:

Caucasus, Central Asia, Eurasia, Caspian Sea, Turkey, Russia, Dagestan, Georgia…

Look just a little bit closer and you’ll notice even more important key works associated with key operations falling within the real interest of the key people:

Caspian Basin, Caspian Energy, Energy Diplomacy, Islam, Oil & Gas Pipelines…

You and I know that ‘they’ don’t put just any good ole boring bureaucrat in positions dealing with the above key regions and dealing with the above key operations and issues. Right? Right. So back to the real question: who is this Matt Bryza? How did he get his start? Whose protégé was he to make it this far this fast? Who are his buddies? The answers to some of these questions take time and real effort to discover, since you won’t find them by browsing through MSM news archives or biographical synapses posted here and there…

Let’s start with the key person leading to Bryza’s acceptance and entry as a larva into the nest of the major neocon players, and his speedy ascent thereafter:

Richard Morningstar & His Closeted Neocon Status

From Morningstar’s commonly cited pedigree sheet we know that he and Bryza collected degrees from Stanford University, which later led to their mentor-protégé relationship. In 1997 Bryza  became special advisor to Ambassador Richard Morningstar, coordinating U.S. Government assistance programs on economic reform in the Caucasus and Central Asia during 1997-1998. Digging a little bit more:

In 1998 Bryza was Morningstar’s chief lieutenant in managing U.S. Caspian Sea energy interests as Deputy to the Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy, where he remained until March of 2001, and he worked on developing what are now U.S. and Western plans to circumvent Russia and Iran and achieve dominance over the delivery of energy supplies to Europe.

Interestingly, last year, one year before Obama appointed Bryza as an Ambassador to Azerbaijan, on April 20, 2009, Morningstar was appointed to the role of supporting U.S. energy goals in the Eurasian region. Morningstar was special advisor to the Clinton administration on Caspian energy; time to reunite the old mentor and his protégé for the next attempt on the Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline.

Morningstar’s status as one of the power player neocons has been long closeted.. During the 90s he was working with and serving one of the main agendas of Neocon players such as Elliott Abrams, Dick Cheney, Frank Gaffney, Paul Wolfowitz …People tend to pay attention only to the top 25 signatories and contributors of Project for the New American Century-PNAC. Yes, that infamous list also includes the Neocons shining star for Central Asia & the Caucasus, Mr. Richard L. Morningstar.

Conn Halinan’s counterpunch article in 2004 aptly highlights an important fact when it comes to the Haliburtons, Perles and Wumsers and their Project for the New American Century (PNAC) as it relates to Central Asia:

The recent move of oil companies and the U.S. military into Central Asia is a case in point. It was President Bill Clinton, not George W. Bush, who crafted that strategy. It was not the Republicans who brought Halliburton and Cheney into the Caspian region, but Clinton advisor Richard Morningstar, now a John Kerry point man.

Halinan is right on target: Clinton appointee Morningstar paved the way for Dick Cheney’s Halliburton’s positioning in Central Asia, and did darn many other good deeds for the main signatories of the Neocon Wet Dream in that region.

Morningstar is also known as one of those who take their allegiances to Israel above anything else. You may remember the questions surrounding Douglas Feith’s and Rahm Emanuel’s Israel citizenship status. I haven’t seen anyone questioning Mr. Morningstar’s status in Israel; at least not on the record, but Morningstar and his family are known as staunch supporters of Israel with close ties over there. Morningstar’s mother’s, the late Jane Morningstar, obituary in the Boston Globe provides only a little initial glimpse; others with far deeper knowledge of Morningstar’s real Israel connections would currently rather whisper…Time may raise the volume on these closeted facts, or may not.

The latest articles regarding Matt Bryza’s connection to the Neocons are limited to his connection through his wife, Zeyno Baran. Either intentional censorship or ignorance glosses over his close neocon ties which started long before his marriage, going back to his early years under his mentor Morningstar, and accelerating steadily, assisting his speedy career ascent.  Just check out his event calendar to see how his name pairs up with tneocon brand names when it comes to functions, speeches, think-tank gatherings…

Matt Bryza & His Neocon Damsel

In 2007 Matt Bryza married Zeyno Baran, a Turkish-American neocon who’s been working for the Hudson Institute and before that for the Nixon Center. Here are a few of her titles and areas of expertise highly valued and marketed by her current neocon mentors and bosses such as Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Conrad Black, Abram Shulsky…: Director of the Center for Eurasian Policy, Director of International Security and Energy Programs, Director of the Caucasus Project.

Baran and her colleagues and mentors are closely associated with the Turkish Ultra-Nationalist (Ulusalcis) movement and figures, including the military figures involved in the Ergenekon scandal:

The think tanks actively engaging the Turkish Ulusalcıs are AEI, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Hudson Institute. The institutional relations between the American neo-cons and the Turkish Ulusalcıs are run by the office of Dick Cheney, Richard Perle of AEI and Zeyno Baran of the Hudson Institute on the American side and, on the other side, by Mustafa Süzer, former owner of Kentbank and a close associate of Perle, and İlhan Selçuk, “big brother” of Cumhuriyet. Süzer’s meetings with Dick Cheney were disclosed in the Turkish press and never denied by either side. Selçuk is also reported to have spoken with Cheney’s advisors and established a back-channel with the US vice president’s office through Elçin Poyrazlar, the Washington representative for Cumhuriyet. Writing in the Yeni Şafak daily, Taha Kıvanç claimed that this back-channel had already been established before the American occupation of Iraq and that Selçuk had promised the Americans Turkey’s support in return for American neo-con support for the Turkish Ulusalcıs to come to power in Ankara.

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It was also claimed that State Department diplomat Matthew Bryza, long-time boyfriend and, more recently, husband of Zeyno Baran, was the person who wrote the declaration read by Fried that gave the Turkish military the “green light” by saying that the Americans were not on any side of the discussion. The extent to which Bryza was influenced by his wife is not known, but the similarities in their rhetoric against the AK Party are striking. Baran, who was already a controversial figure due to her involvement in the infamous Hudson Institute meeting, her article in Newsweek that predicted a military coup in 2007 and her involvement with the colored revolutions in Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Ukraine…

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Despite her deranged mother,  who has been calling Turkish reporters, harassing and asking them to write about her daughter’s IQ level (her claim on that went from ‘over 100’ to ‘120,’ and during the Bryza-Baran wedding to ‘158’ IQ points!!), the overly ambitious Zeyno Baran’s idiotic move to preempt Ergenekon by publicly ‘predicting’ the attempted coup backfired, and cast doubt on this Nuevo Neocon’s intelligence and tactfulness. What she wanted: to grab attention and score points among her neocon mentors and colleagues. What happened: she exposed the mutually dependent relationship between her bosses and the ultra-nationalist rogue Turkish generals, and brought into the light the active role played by US neocons in the coup plot in Turkey. This major booboo alone was enough to take 15 points off her average IQ. Later in this article we’ll go over another major Baran booboo on the financial sources of her lavish wedding, leaving her very few remaining IQ points…

The Lavish Wedding, the Wedding Financiers, and the Mafia

In 2007, after several years of a personal and close work relationship, Matt Bryza and Zeyno Baran were married in Turkey. The ultra lavish wedding and its highly interesting list of 400 plus guests made the front-page of many Turkish newspapers and magazines, but that publicity was nothing compared to the subsequent media coverage, and of course, the cost to two brave Azerbaijani journalists who exposed the ‘real financiers’ of Bryza-Baran’s lavish wedding and it’s true implications. Let’s start with the ‘highly costly’ wedding, the ‘special guests,’ the exposed financiers, and those who tried to expose them. Here is a snapshot of the costly wedding:

The location:  In one of the most expensive club houses in Istanbul. To rent the space Bryza-Baran were given a ‘special’ discount by a ‘very special’ Turkish mafia connected friend (the infamous owner of the Galatasaray Soccer Team); Instead of $80K the rent was reduced to around $35K.

Number of Guests: around 450; many power-players from the Caspian energy field, including political figureheads from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Georgia, and of course the USA.

Wedding Security: 250 policemen were hired and put in place for protection; several K-9 police dogs were brought in for search purposes. In addition to all this Bryza-Baran hired 20 additional private bodyguards.

The Groom’s Best Men & Witnesses: One of the three best men and witnesses for Matt Bryza was none other than Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov.

The Designer Gown & Suit: The couple purchased their gown & tuxedo from the famous designer Vakko; the total cost for this is said to be over $10K

The famous quote of the wedding: This couplehood was formed by the Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline Project- – - Turkish Energy Minister, Hilmi Guler.

This is just a snapshot of the ultra lavish wedding, which nearly 300 state and private security personnel were hired to serve. The estimated cost for Mr. Bryza’s lavish story-book wedding in Turkey ranges from $150,000 to $250,000. Customarily this amount would have been paid by the bride’s parents. However, neither Mrs. Baran-Bryza’s mother, father, or step-father could or would dish out this amount. Of course, a bill in this amount paid by Matt Bryza would have raised way too many eyebrows here in the US. So what happened? Who did finance this wedding extravaganza?

Be careful. Be very careful. Because when two journalists tried to answer these same questions they ended up being attacked, beaten up, stabbed,  arrested, tortured…and one of them  had to escape the country. That’s right. In Turkey, between Bryza-Baran’s rouge powerful general friends and of even more powerful mafia babas, they made sure no journalist dared venture into these questions. Here in the United States no real bodily force or threat was necessary, since the State Department’s stenographers in the MSM censored the entire episode. However, in Azerbaijan two brave journalists dared, and this is what happened to them:

Did a high-level Azeri official pay for Matthew Bryza’s 2007 wedding to Turkish author Zayna Baran? A swift crackdown on two journalists who reported at the time that the wedding ceremony for President Obama’s current nominee for the US ambassadorship to Baku was funded by Azerbaijan’s Economic Development minister suggests some misconduct.

In 2007, the editor of opposition newspaper Azatliq, Genimet Zahid and correspondent Adil Khalil were sued over an article entitled “Azerbaijanis Paid for Matthew Bryza’s Wedding.” The article alleges that Azeri Economic Development minister Haydar Babayev paid for a significant portion of Bryza’s wedding, which took place in Istanbul the same year. At the time, Bryza was the US co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group, the body tasked with mediating a peace deal for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

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During the appellate process, both of which were ruled in favor of the minister, Khalil was severely beaten and stabbed. Reportedly he fled to France. Meanwhile, Zahid was sentenced to four years in jail on a separate charge of “hooliganism.”Zahid’s lawyers last fall appealed to the International Court of Human Rights, arguing that charges against their client was a violation of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects freedom of expression. The appeal to the court also charges that the journalists were not granted a fair trial.

The swift action by Minister Babayev signals that the Azadliq article had merit. The editor’s unwillingness to retract, coupled with the swift court rulings and the subsequent attacks on the journalists, suggest that there was more to Bryza’s Istanbul nuptials than a mere wedding ceremony.

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Think about it for a second. The exposé written by the Azerbaijani journalist duo was most damaging to whom? In a country ruled by despots, father Aliyev and now Aliyev the son, riddled by corruption and atrocities, this piece of information does nothing in terms of touching, even coming close to touching, those in power; has no effect – one scandal among thousands. But how about Bryza-Baran? A neocon operator ready to be appointed as Ambassador to Azerbaijan; not wanting anything to interfere with his confirmation. A mini neocon woman working under a powerful group of Neocons whose eyes have been set on the region; getting ready to make their pipeline dreams come true-fruits of which will be collected by their upper echelon bosses.  How did it go? Did Bryza call his wedding financiers, his best man, his government official guests of honor in Azerbaijan, and ask them to shut these journalists up before the ‘facts’ reach here and get distributed? Or was it Bryza’s mentors and colleagues making the request?

Don’t wait for any new developments to reach here from Azerbaijan: With one of the journalists sitting in jail, the other one hiding in fear somewhere in France (where Turkish ultra-nationalist operators have quite a reach), and of course, the rest of the journalist community getting the message loud and clear, thus not willing to touch upon the scandal…well, it won’t happen. How about here in the US? Not a single reporter is going to follow up on this massive scandal and it’s far reaching implications. When it comes to State Department operatives: ‘can’t touch this.’

Matt Bryza: Highly Criticized Role in Russia-Georgia Conflict

Let me first provide a little bit of background on Bryza’s role in the region, especially in Georgia and Azerbaijan:

During his four-year stint as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs he has focused on the South Caucasus, and during that period Georgia’s war budget has ballooned from $30 million a year when U.S.-educated Mikheil Saakashvili took power after the nation’s “Rose Revolution” in 2004 to $1 billion last year, a more than thirty fold increase. In the same year, 2008, Azerbaijan’s military spending had grown from $163 million the preceding year to $1,850,000,000, more than a 1000% increase. Much of the money expended for both unprecedented build-ups came from revenues derived from oil sales and transit fees connected with the BTC pipeline Bryza was instrumental in setting up. Read more ?

Our first post on the American Turkish Council’s new chairman, Richard Armitage, focused on his early years and his involvement with Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle. Our second post focused on Armitage’s history in Washington and his involvement with the Iran-Contra Affair. This post will focus on Armitage’s role as the Deputy Secretary of State for the second Bush administration and the 11 September attacks.

In 1999 Richard Armitage joined an “advisory team” put together by Condoleezza Rice for the George W. Bush presidential campaign. Other members of this “advisory team” included Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Zoellick, and Donald Rumsfeld all of whom, along with Armitage, were signatories to the 1998 PNAC letter to President Clinton that advocated regime change in Iraq through the bogus “Weapons of Mass Destruction” argument. It should have been no surprise, therefore, to see where these “advisors” were to lead as soon as they were appointed to key positions in the Bush administration in early 2001.

Armitage was appointed as the number 2 man at the State Department but not without protest from a certain former Republican congressman:

“General Colin Powell has named Richard Armitage to the key position as his deputy secretary of state.

“Mr. Armitage served in the Pentagon back in the 1980s and, in the process, caused so many problems that by 1989 he twice had to withdraw his name from consideration for high-ranking positions in the first Bush administration.

“Simply stated, the U.S. Senate would not confirm him for any job.

“The FBI agent in charge of compiling the ‘file’ on Armitage said at the time, ‘The Armitage file is the thickest file ever for any nominee for any position.’”

“Now, 12 years later, the new Bush administration is again trying to ram Armitage through the confirmation process. Powell wants him because ‘Rich Armitage is my best friend in the world.’”

Both Armitage and Powell had served in Vietnam and it’s worth remembering that prior to his performance at the UN National Security Council in early 2003, Colin Powell was best known for helping to cover up the My Lai Massacre.

Armitage was confirmed by the Senate as the Deputy Secretary of State in late March, 2001, in plenty of time to implement the plan for regime change in Iraq that he had supported in 1998 and which PNAC had argued for in September, 2000:

“Further, the process of [US military] transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

The “new Pearl Harbor” that was so desired by Armitage and the rest of the PNAC crowd occured on 11 September, 2001. Immediately after 11 September, Armitage threatened to “bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age”:

“During last week’s US media blitz to promote his new book, Musharraf claimed soon after 9/11, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage warned Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, head of ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service, the US would ‘bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age’ if it did not immediately turn against its Afghan ally, Taliban, and allow the US to use military bases in Pakistan to invade Afghanistan. Read more ?

Mizgin’s Desk Reports:

What’s happened to all the defenders of democracy?

Surely you remember them? They were the ones crying foul in the immediate aftermath of the 12 June presidential elections in Iran. The defenders of democracy twitterized the ensuing protests, including some twitters from questionable sources. This leads one to wonder how much outside support for a Moussavi-faced regime change had to do with actual democracy, particularly since the same defenders of democracy, just a week before the elections, were calling for the vaporization by nuclear weapons of the very same protesters.

As the twitters tweeted out over the results in Iran, another presidential election rounded the corner in another part of the globe–on 23 July in Kyrgyzstan. In the absence of massive twitterers in the case of the Kyrgyz presidential elections, we had to rely on more mundane sources of information, like the NY Times:

The leading opposition candidate in Kyrgyzstan essentially withdrew from the presidential race on Thursday even before voting had concluded, asserting that widespread fraud had assured the incumbent’s victory.

The candidate, Almazbek Atambaev, a former prime minister, called on the public and international organizations to reject the election as unlawful. Mr. Atambaev instructed supporters who were working as observers at polling and vote-counting stations to leave, and he demanded that a new election be organized.

[ . . . ]

Mr. Bakiyev has accused the opposition of airing phony charges of vote-rigging in an effort to explain away its lack of popularity. Voting on Thursday, he declared that the voting would be fair, saying that the Kyrgyz people cared about democracy.

As noted in the piece, the OSCE monitored the election process in Kyrgyzstan and published their observations:

The observers noted instances of obstruction of opposition campaign events as well as pressure and intimidation of opposition supporters. The shortcomings observed contributed to an atmosphere of distrust and undermined public confidence in holding genuinely democratic elections.

Election day was marred by many problems and irregularities, including ballot box stuffing, inaccuracies in the voter lists, and multiple voting. The process further deteriorated during the vote count and the tabulation of results, with observers evaluating this part of the process negatively in more than half of observations.

The VOA has more:

He [OSCE spokesman Jens-Hagen Eschenbächer] said observers noted incidents of ballot box stuffing, multiple voting, and even vote buying. In addition, he said, OSCE representatives were not allowed to monitor the vote count.

“The observers were not allowed to be present and monitor the count. There were two cases for examples where the ballots were not counted at all and just packed,” he said. “The form was filled in with the result but the votes were not counted. We had three observer teams who saw people in front or near polling stations handing out money in exchange for promises to vote for a candidate,” he added.

Why did the great defenders of democracy fail to twitterize this obviously questionable election? Could it be they remain on tenterhooks with regard to the extension of the lease to the US of Manas Airbase?

“You know what this is for,” Emilbek Kaptagaev recalled being told by the police officers who snatched him off the street. No other words, just blows to the head, then all went black. Mr. Kaptagaev, an opponent of Kyrgyzstan’s president, who is a vital American ally in the war in nearby Afghanistan, was found later in a field with a concussion, broken ribs and a face swollen into a mosaic of bruises.

[ . . . ]

The United States has remained largely silent in response to this wave of violence, apparently wary of jeopardizing the status of its sprawling air base, on the outskirts of this capital, which supports the mission in Afghanistan. Indeed, the Obama administration has sought to woo the Kyrgyz president since he said in February that he would close the Manas base.

In June, President Obama sent a letter to Mr. Bakiyev praising his role in Afghanistan and the campaign against terrorism. Mr. Bakiyev allowed the base to stay, after the United States agreed to pay higher rent and other minor changes.

The lack of criticism of Mr. Bakiyev underscores how the Obama administration has emphasized pragmatic concerns over human rights in dealings with autocratic leaders in Central Asia.

Kurmanyek Bakiyev came to power after the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)-sponsored “Tulip Revolution”, from Pepe Escobar at Asia Times in 2005:

One thing is already certain: the Tulip Revolution will inevitably be instrumentalized by the second Bush administration as the first “spread of freedom and democracy” success story in Central Asia. The whole arsenal of US foundations – National Endowment for Democracy, International Republic Institute, Ifes, Eurasia Foundation, Internews, among others – which fueled opposition movements in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine, has also been deployed in Bishkek. It generated, among other developments, a small army of Kyrgyz youngsters who went to Kiev, financed by the Americans, to get a glimpse of the Orange Revolution, and then became “infected” with the democratic virus.

Practically everything that passes for civil society in Kyrgyzstan is financed by these US foundations, or by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). At least 170 non-governmental organizations charged with development or promotion of democracy have been created or sponsored by the Americans.

The US State Department has operated its own independent printing house in Bishkek since 2002 – which means printing at least 60 different titles, including a bunch of fiery opposition newspapers. USAID invested at least $2 million prior to the Kyrgyz elections – quite something in a country where the average salary is $30 a month.

For more on the neoconservative NED, check RightWeb. Among the neoconservative luminaries directing the great defenders of democracy at the NED are former senator-turned Turkish lobbyist Richard Gephardt; Obama’s “special representative” for the current Af-Pak disaster, Richard Holbrooke; former PNAC member Vin Weber; and Mr. “End-of-History” himself, Francis Fukuyama.

That should be enough to scare anyone’s socks off right there but wait–there’s more. There are other great defenders of democracy working to secure US hegemony in Kyrgyzstan and the rest of Central Asia. Among those is the Fethullah Gulen movement.

A year ago, Gulen, who’s resided in the US since 1998, petitioned the Federal District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania to obtain a permanent residency card which had been denied by both the USCIS and Administrative Appeals Office. Apparently, the USCIS believed that the CIA was funding, at least partially, some of the global Fethullahci activity, from Turkish daily Milliyet:

Among the reasons given by the US State Department’s attorneys as to why Gülen’s permanent residence application was refused, is the suspicion of CIA financing of his movement.

[ . . . ]

“Because of the large amount of money that Gülen’s movement uses to finance his projects, there are claims that he has secret agreements with Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkic governments. There are suspicions that the CIA is a co-payer in financing these projects,” claimed the attorneys.

[ . . . ]

Among the documents that the state attorneys presented, there are claims about the Gülen movement’s financial structure and it was emphasized that the movement’s economic power reached $25 billion. “Schools, newspapers, universities, unions, television channels . . . The relationship among these are being debated. There is no transparency in their work,” claimed the attorneys.

At the time, Luke Ryland covered the case extensively. However, the fact that the court ruled in favor of Gulen should come as no surprise since others who worked hand=in-glove with The Agency also received green cards–people like Mehmet Eymür, who ran the Turkish intelligence service’s (Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı – MİT) Special Intelligence Department (Özel İstihbarat Dairesi-ÖİD) under Tansu Ciller at the time the Susurluk scandal broke open.

Or to Abdullah Catli, a state assassin who was wanted by Interpol and was found dead in the crashed Mercedes at Susurluk. Catli was an international heroin trafficker as well as a member of the Gray Wolves, an extreme Turkish nationalist organization that had its roots in the CIA’s Turkish Gladio program. As a Gray Wolf, Catli was an old acquaintance of Mehmet Ali Agca, the would-be assassin of John Paul II. In fact, it was Catli who gave Agca the gun that Agca used in the papal assassination attempt. Catli went by the name Mehmet Ozbay on his green card and lived in Chicago for about 10 years, from the mid-1980s until 1995.

Fethullah Gulen is definitely in august company.

But what does Fethullah Gulen, our second great defender of democracy, do in Central Asia? Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Fethullahci (followers of Gulen, sometimes more loosely referred to as “Nurcular”) expanded Gulen’s educational system into Central Asia. His high schools and universities can be found throughout the region, including Kyrgyzstan. But what is their purpose? Gülen schools aim to educate the children of the elites:

Although revenues raised by school fees are often used to enable access by less-privileged students, it remains an inescapable fact that the movement’s educational model is elitist. In Turkey this is contributing to the creation of a parallel and Gulen-inspired elite. In post-communist Central Asia, the main location of Gulen’s overseas educational activities, successful applicants are usually the children either of the wealthy or of government officials.

[ . . . ]

Although Gulen schools represent only around ten percent of Central Asia’s education system, it could be that–in a tacit partnership with the Turkish state–the movement’s activities will over the longer term intensify the emotive and material bonds between Turkic peoples–or their elites–and states. The Gulen network’s Central Asian elites could in time take on the forms of their Turkish counterparts, thereby encouraging the emergence of a pan-Turkic world linked by overlapping and fused identities. This could in turn ease the development of economic interactions, and even encourage closer state-to-state relationships. Such an evolution would not quite accord with the kind of “Turkish model” that Ankara’s secularists have sometimes hoped might be adopted in Central Asia, but it might dovetail with the pan-Turkic aspirations of nationalist elements in Turkey.

That would be the expansion of “pan-Turkic aspirations of nationalist elements” of NATO’s Turkey in a region whose countries enjoy overwhelming membership in the SCO. In addition, education of the children of the elites helps to ensure a pro-Turkish–and pro-NATO–indoctrination in the next generation which will eventually come of age and step into positions of power. By 2006, the Gulen’s ideology had diffused throughout the Kyrgyz educational system:

Foreign Islamic groups are becoming increasingly active in Kyrgyzstan, such as Tablighi Jamaat from Pakistan, and followers of the Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen, (Assistant professor of politics and government at George Mason University Eric)McGlinchey said. Gulen’s thinking was “pervasive” throughout the Kyrgyz educational system, especially Manas University and the Osh Theological Institute. “Kyrgyz are turning elsewhere to define who they are as Muslims and it’s a wide-open playing field and we’re not quite sure where they’re going to turn in the future,” he said.

The Russians, suspicious of the activities of the Fethullahci in Russia, closed Gulen schools in 2007 and, in 2008, banned Gulen’s movement from the country altogether, citing connections to the Gray Wolves. Apparently, the Russians didn’t want a CIA-backed Turkish-style stay-behind program established among them. Perhaps they remembered how Zbigniew Brzezinski baited them into Afghanistan in 1979 and are now more wary of falling into an American-backed Islamist trap.

Since Russia’s ban, Turkish schools in Central Asia, including Gulen’s, have become more and scrutinized as regional governments suspect a hidden agenda. For more on the Fethullahci and how the movement is becoming the third power in Turkey, see this analysis (PDF) from Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst.

The US and Turkey are not the only powers aiming to create a Strategy of Tension in Central Asia. We shouldn’t forget that the great defenders of democracy from the NED are neoconservative PNAC’ers who were also behind the 1996 “Clean Break Strategy” that went on to forge a tight military relationship between Turkey and Israel–united with the bond of US military hardware “sales”. “Sales” of course is a very loose term particularly when one realizes that 80% of US military sales to Turkey under the Clinton administration were paid for by the US taxpayer. In this case, the term “military gifting” might be a more appropriate choice of words.

The third of our great defenders of democracy at work in Central Asia is Israel, coming to the region since the fall of the Soviet Union:

Israeli officials and business leaders find Central Asia attractive as an investment opportunity for a variety of reasons, including the region’s abundant natural resources, and its large pool of relatively cheap but skilled labor. The region also represents a potentially important market for specialized goods, such as machinery, chemicals and plastics. And in helping to build local economic opportunities, Israel additionally hopes to reduce the desire for Jews in Central Asia to emigrate. At the same time, Israel can offer Central Asian officials a unique trade conduit to world markets. Israel has free trade relationships with the United States and the European Union, as well as with Canada, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Jordan and Turkey.

[ . . . ]

[Avigdor] Lieberman’s visit to Kyrgyzstan sought to establish parameters for trade. The two sides discussed the establishment of direct air links between the two states, as well as the possible opening of a Kyrgyz Embassy in Israel. Israeli delegation members explored potential deals in transport communication and tourism.

Israel’s relations with Central Asian states continue to focus on conditions for Jews living in the region, including the Jewish community in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. [For additional information see the Eurasia Insight archives]. Since the 1991 Soviet collapse and subsequent economic upheaval, many Central Asian Jews have emigrated. Israel was among the first states to recognize the independence of the Central Asian states. Kyrgyzstani President Askar Akayev was the first Central Asian leader to visit Israel in 1993. Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev has visited Israel twice, most recently in April [2001].

According to that piece, the Israeli government also engages in education through an organization that falls under the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, MASHAV. Somewhat like the Clinton arrangement with “military gifting”, it would appear the US taxpayer is funding MASHAV through USAID:

Through the MASHAV Cooperation Agreement, recently developed and funded by USAID/CAR, Agriculture Consulting Centers devoted to agribusiness development have been established in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

And this isn’t just in Kyrgyzstan but throughout most of Central Asia. Even the Peace Corps has gotten a piece of the USAID-MASHAV action:

In 1999 the U.S.-Israeli-Kyrgyz MASHAV Agri-Business Consulting Program was established to address the agricultural side of the region’s income problem. The program led to the construction of a greenhouse at the Oasis Agricultural Site where agricultural producers in the region receive both formal and one-on-one training from agricultural experts.

[ . . . ]

After much study, the owner of Oasis Site and a group of farmers in the region concluded that constructing a fish farm was the answer. The farm would host regular sessions where experts and local residents could meet and learn how fish farms are constructed, maintained and managed to reach sustainable profitability. Unfortunately, the group did not have the funds to build such a farm.

To resolve the problem, the Oasis owner and a local professor took their concern to a Peace Corps volunteer serving in the area. Through the Peace Corps Partnership Program, which collaborates with individuals across America and facilitates their donations to specific community development projects, funds were raised to build the fish farm and buy fish to fill it.

However, agricultural support for small- and medium-sized businesses and Peace Corps-sponsored fish farms aren’t the only capitalistic enterprise at work in Kyrgyzstan. There’s a lot more going on–like the arming of Kyrgyz commandos by Israel:

Several private Israeli companies have agreed to render technical assistance to the special units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Kyrgyzstan. This assistance will include equipment, police jeeps, and also special gear used for dispersal of demonstrations and in operations against terrorists, in particular in mountainous area. Moreover, the Israelis will take part in creation of the educational antiterrorist center in the territory of republic. It will train and prepare officers of the commando of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and National Security Service (SNB). An option to involve Israeli instructors ex-servicemen of the elite divisions of police, army and Israeli General Security Service (SHABAQ) in the process of training is also considered. AIA was informed of that by the personal secretary of one of members of the Israeli delegation, which visited Bishkek this month.

Both sides tried to avoid publicity of such negotiations in every possible way. As a result, neither in Israeli, nor in Kyrgyz mass-media there were no information published on the issue. The reason of such privacy is dictated both by the level and the agenda of negotiations, and the person, who was behind the organizing of the meeting.

This secretive arrangement took place in 2006. How many more secretive military-type agreements have been reached by now is anyone’s guess,

US involvement in Central Asia, along with the involvement of its two most powerful allies in the region, should come as no surprise to anyone. Just as Adolf Hitler publicly announced his intentions for Germany’s future when he published Mein Kampf, so the Americans have done the same with a small book published in 1997, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard (the entire book available for download here). The goal of US Eurasian policy, according to Brzezinski, is as follows:

“For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia… Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia – and America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.

[ . . . ]

“. . . [H]ow America ‘manages’ Eurasia is critical. Eurasia is the globe’s largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent. About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world’s GNP and about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.” (pp. 30 – 31)

Earlier I mentioned that Russia’s ban on the Gulen movement was, perhaps, a sign of Russia’s refusal to take more American-sponsored Islamist bait like it did when Brzezinski and the Carter administration offered it in 1979. Perhaps Russia and the rest of the SCO countries remember Operation Gladio and are taking action to ensure that a similar stay-behind program does not become established in their territory or sphere of influence. Perhaps Russia, along with Kyrgyzstan, is offering bait of its own by allowing the US to continue to occupy the Manas Airbase. This time around, though, it’s the Russians making the offer and it may very well turn out to be that Afghanistan becomes America’s second Vietnam.