State Erosion: Unlootable Resources and Unruly Elites in Central Asia 0801469457, 9780801469459

Table of contents :
State Erosion
Contents
List of Figures, Tables, and Maps
Preface and Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Rethinking the Resource Curse
2. Resources and Rents under Soviet Rule
3. Pathways to Failure: Tajikistan and Uzbekistan
4. Tajikistan’s Fractious State
5. Coercion and Rent-Seeking in Uzbekistan
6. Weak and Failed States in Comparative Perspective
Conclusion
Appendix
Notes
Index

Citation preview

STATE EROSION

STATE EROSION Unlootable Resources and Unruly Elites in Central Asia Lawrence P. Markowitz

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS

ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2013 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2013 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Markowitz, Lawrence P., 1970– author. State erosion : unlootable resources and unruly elites in Central Asia / Lawrence P. Markowitz. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-5187-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Tajikistan—Politics and government—1991– 2. Uzbekistan—Politics and government—1991– 3. Failed states—Tajikistan. 4. Natural resources— Political aspects—Tajikistan. 5. Natural resources—Political aspects—Uzbekistan. 6. Elite (Social sciences)—Political activity—Tajikistan. 7. Elite (Social sciences)— Political activity—Uzbekistan. I. Title. DK928.8657.M37 2012 958'042—dc23 2013018864 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Janet and Arnold

Contents

List of Figures, Tables, and Maps Preface and Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations

xv

Introduction

1

ix xi

1.

Rethinking the Resource Curse

16

2.

Resources and Rents under Soviet Rule

30

3.

Pathways to Failure: Tajikistan and Uzbekistan

51

4.

Tajikistan’s Fractious State

77

5.

Coercion and Rent-Seeking in Uzbekistan

100

6.

Weak and Failed States in Comparative Perspective

124

Conclusion

147

Appendix Notes Index

157 159 193

vii

Figures, Tables, and Maps

Figures Lateral movements of raikom first secretaries, Tajikistan, 1960–91

44

Lateral movements of raikom first secretaries, Uzbekistan, 1960–91

47

Governors appointed outside region of origin, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, 1961–2004

48

Number of incidents of state security fragmentation, Tajikistan, 1992

61

Number of deaths in incidents of state security fragmentation, Tajikistan, 1992

61

Number of deaths in incidents of state security fragmentation by province, Tajikistan, 1992

66

4.1.

Total seizures of heroin in Tajikistan (kilograms)

87

4.2.

Number of experts ranking regional courts among worst three in Tajikistan

93

2.1.

2.2.

2.3.

3.1.

3.2.

3.3.

5.1.

5.2.

Claims submitted to provincial economic courts, Uzbekistan, 2001–3

119

Land restitution by provincial prokurators, Uzbekistan, 2002

120

Tables 1.1.

2.1.

2.2.

Explaining state security outcomes in weak states with immobile capital

24

Infrastructure investments by province, Tajikistan, 1939–44

38

Gross income of collective farms, Tajikistan (as percent of total)

39 ix

x

VERSO RUNNING FIGURES, TABLES,HEAD AND MAPS

Infrastructure investments by province, Uzbekistan, 1933–39

41

Gross income of collective farms, Uzbekistan (as percent of total)

42

Regional factors promoting onset of state security fragmentation, Tajikistan

62

How experts rate local prokurators’ debt collection: regional differences in Tajikistan

72

How experts rate local prokurators’ enforcement of crop extraction: regional differences in Tajikistan

73

How experts rate local prokurators’ debt collection: regional differences in Uzbekistan

74

How experts rate local prokurators’ enforcement of crop extraction: regional differences in Uzbekistan

75

4.1.

State security agencies in postwar Tajikistan

79

5.1.

Central government subsidies to provincial budgets, Uzbekistan

105

State security outcomes in weak states with immobile capital

125

2.3.

2.4.

3.1.

3.2.

3.3.

3.4.

3.5.

6.1.

Maps 1.1.

Map of Uzbekistan

11

1.2.

Map of Tajikistan

12

Preface and Acknowledgments

In response to my request for a dependable research contact in Surkhandarya Province, my friend’s relative—a mid-level employee in Uzbekistan’s security apparatus—made an extraordinary offer. Having just detained a driver from Surkhandarya for (unwittingly) transporting narcotics in his taxi, he would assign the driver’s older brother to take me to the region, host me there, and bring me back to Tashkent. The driver was innocent, he noted, but would be held “in custody” for a few weeks until I was safely returned. With quiet composure and a steady look, he assured me that “nothing will happen to you, and you will not find a better guide.” As I weighed the moral (and legal) implications of advancing my career through the imprisonment of another human being, I considered the effect of adding the brother’s road rage to my usual taxi ride to the region—a nine-hour, seatbeltless journey over decrepit roads, traveling in excess of eighty miles an hour to the beat of blaring Uzbek techno music. I politely declined. Not long after he departed, I realized that what made this offer so extraordinary (and unsettling) was that it was not at all extraordinary to the person making it. It was a fairly typical, passing occurrence in his otherwise busy day. How were the security services of such a highly coercive state so malleable that such an offer could be so easily made? If this private use of state security could be done for an acquaintance (a foreigner no less), then what kind of actions would be taken for a relative, a supervisor at work, or an important political figure? With a quarter of a million people in Uzbekistan wearing uniforms, carrying guns, and claiming the authority to enforce rules in society, the question of what motivates their behavior seemed particularly pertinent. But my understanding of how the country’s law enforcement and security apparatus fit into the workings of the postcommunist state remained incomplete—in part because Uzbekistan is often credited with possessing too much coercive capacity by human rights and democracy advocates. As I investigated further into this overlap of coercion and corruption in Uzbekistan, I found it difficult to reconcile the view in policy and academic communities of a repressive state with numerous examples of a weak apparatus: that a district prokurator named as a defendant in a trial had arranged to be a judge on the case, leading to a conviction of the plaintiff on trumped-up charges; that police and prokurators earning fifty dollars a month drive luxury cars and remodel their homes; and that the two law institutes and the militsiya institute in Tashkent have witnessed a spike in applications because lucrative xi

xii

VERSO RUNNING PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS HEAD

careers await their graduates (while degrees are in less demand for professions such as medicine that eke out a subsistence living). It seemed that Uzbekistan manifested the bizarre contradiction of a highly corrupt law enforcement and security apparatus that nonetheless had far more coercive capacity than its Central Asian counterparts. To get a better grasp of the underlying processes at work, I began to look at Uzbekistan through the lens of Tajikistan, where security services had literally disintegrated during a brutal civil war. I realized that the coercive institutions of both countries were at the center of two very different paths of state development. The comparison seemed worth pursuing and, after many permutations, it evolved into the study of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan before you. From the outset, the project has benefited from the support of many institutions. During graduate school, the U.S. Fulbright-Hays Program, American Councils for International Education, International Research and Exchanges Board, and the Global Studies Program at University of Wisconsin–Madison all provided generous financial support, which enabled me to conduct field research in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and a Social Science Research Council fellowship afforded me time to write. Later as I developed the research into a book, grants from the National Council for East European and Eurasian Research, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Rowan University, and a postdoctoral fellowship from Georgetown University, each provided time for reflection as I developed various parts of the book. Some of the material used in the book has drawn on articles I have previously published: “Unlootable Resources and State Security Institutions in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan,” Comparative Political Studies 44, 2 (February 2011): 156–183 and “Local Elites, prokurators, and extraction in rural Uzbekistan,” Central Asian Survey 27, 1 (March 2008): 1–14. I thank the publishers for their permission to use this material. Along the way, many individuals have been helpful as I entertained, discussed, discarded, and retained various arguments. The book began in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where faculty and fellow graduate students created a wonderful environment that provided support, feedback, and critique: Melinda Adams, Jon Boyle, Alex Caviedes, Rachel DeMotts, Michael Franz, Kathryn Hendley, Eunsook Jung, Daniel Kapust, Lynda Kellam, Baharah Lampert, Joe Lampert, Simanti Lahiri, Tamir Moustafa, Travis Nelson, David Parker, Uli Schamiloglu, John Scherpereel, Ed Schatz, Mark Schrad, Patricia Strach, Aili Tripp, and Ayse Zarakol to name a few. At Wisconsin and beyond, Mark Beissinger has been my teacher, advisor, and colleague—and throughout it all he has carefully read my work, challenged my ideas, and encouraged me to keep my nose to the grindstone.

PREFACE ANDRECTO ACKNOWLEDGMENTS RUNNING HEAD

xiii

A number of individuals in Central Asia made it possible to learn Uzbek and Russian, to gain insight into the politics, culture, and society in the region, and to carry out systematic research, but unfortunately I cannot thank them by name. I thank the Academy of Sciences in both Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, as well as staff in local offices of IREX, American Councils, and the US embassies in both countries for providing critical institutional and logistical support while I conducted field research. Both in Central Asia and in the United States, I have benefited greatly from comments and suggestions over the years from others who work in the postcommunist region. They are too numerous to list, but I especially thank Eric McGlinchey and Scott Radnitz, who each read the manuscript in its entirety. While I was teaching at Georgetown University, Oberlin College, and Rowan University, many congenial colleagues helped me in the writing of this book. At Oberlin College, advice from Michael Parkin sharpened my use of statistical methods. As the manuscript approached its final stages, it has been improved substantially by constructive criticism from two anonymous, yet conscientious, reviewers at Cornell University Press and has been ushered ably toward production by its patient editor, Roger Haydon. Finally, I thank my family for being a constant source of support. My two children, Timur and Laylo, have sustained me during long hours of writing, perhaps more than they will ever know. Their mother Guli has been with “the book” for so many years, through so many stages of its development, that she has influenced nearly every part of it. Because of me, my brother Dan has learned more about Central Asia than he would ever admit, but he has never failed to offer encouragement. And my parents, Arnold and Janet, have supported me in more ways than I can possibly relate here, except to say that without them this book would not have been possible. I dedicate it to them.

Abbreviations

ABA / CEELI ACU CC CPSU CPT CPUz DCA GBAO GNR IMF KGB MTS MVD NBT RAPO SME SSR Tajik SSR Uzbek SSR USSR UTO

American Bar Association / Central and East European Law Initiative Aid Coordination Unit Central Committee Communist Party of the Soviet Union Communist Party of Tajikistan Communist Party of Uzbekistan Drug Control Agency Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast Government of National Reconciliation International Monetary Fund Committee for State Security Machine Tractor Station Ministry of Internal Affairs National Bank of Tajikistan Raion Agro-Industrial Association Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises Security Sector Reform Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic Union of Soviet Socialist Republics United Tajikistan Opposition

xv

STATE EROSION

INTRODUCTION

To be successful, social science must steer a careful course between Scylla of lovely but untested theory and Charybdis, the maelstrom of information unstructured by theory. —Barbara Geddes, Paradigms and Sand Castles

State failure is a central challenge to international peace and security in the post–Cold War era. It has emerged with alarming frequency in contemporary weak states, contributing to a rise in civil wars, insurgency, and terrorist attacks. Having rapidly gained currency in the 1990s, the problem of state failure—the collapse of the central government’s authority to impose order—has become a preoccupation in academic and policy circles. Prominent voices call for new (or renewed) attention to state failure as a primary foreign policy concern. The charge, they contend, is to commit to “fixing failed states” despite high costs or long time horizons.1 And commitments are being made. Large government-commissioned studies, multiyear development projects, and prominent nonprofit organizations have all cropped up to answer the call to prevent state failure and promote sustainable institutions.2 Annual assistance to fragile states totals $46 billion.3 The United States alone spends $1 billion on governance aid each year through its Agency for International Development, to which another $124 million was added in 2004 to establish the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization and an additional $649 million was set aside in 2009 to create a Civilian Stabilization Initiative.4 Designed to develop “a coordinated capacity across the 15 United States Government civilian agencies and the Department of Defense,” these constitute a significant investment in addressing weak and failed states.5 The international community has also expanded its involvement in postconflict reconstruction, sending more than 170,000 troops to projects in twenty countries—representing 1

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VERSO RUNNING HEAD INTRODUCTION

an increase of 600 percent in UN troop levels since 2002.6 And alongside these efforts, a growing industry of think tanks, academic specialists, and policy experts has emerged.7 The problem of state failure has absorbed an inordinate amount of attention and resources over the last twenty years, and it is likely to do so for much of the twenty-first century. Yet theorizing on the sources and dynamics of state failure remains surprisingly limited. Initial portrayals of a “coming anarchy” in the early 1990s predicted a new world disorder. These influential neo-Malthusian readings often presented state failure as an inevitable consequence of scarcity, crime, tribalism, and disease.8 While the literature on state failure has clearly moved beyond such assessments, the emerging debate has not spawned a level of theory building commensurate with the human and financial resources that practitioners have committed. Instead, scholarship on state failure has been pulled in three directions. During the 1990s, a small number of single-country studies examined state failure as it unfolded on the ground, demonstrating that elites pursuing concrete political and economic benefits often lay behind the façade of crisis and disorder.9 These works provided a rich empirical baseline from which generalizations could be formulated. Unfortunately this opportunity for theory building was missed and no enduring analytical framework(s) arose despite efforts to encourage crosscase comparisons in edited volumes.10 Another group of studies has broached state failure using large datasets to identify which variables—such as poverty, demographic pressures, factionalized elites—make states vulnerable to failure.11 These analyses put forward causal inferences linking an array of explanatory factors to state failure and developed ambitious forecasting models. Employing high-powered statistical methods without theories to guide them, however, proved premature. As one assessment found, “there is much to criticize in this relatively atheoretical search” for specific causal factors, and that “without a theory that rules out hundreds of variables in the task force data set,” forecasting models were limited.12 A third group of scholars has contributed to the study of state failure, but only in passing while they focused on other debates. Rigorous analyses of ethnic conflict or civil war have certainly provided analytical leverage in approaching state failure, but they have not advanced theory development on the subject.13 If successful social science “must steer a careful course between Scylla of lovely but untested theory and Charybdis, the maelstrom of information unstructured by theory,” then state failure research has too often been swept into the whirlpool of Charybdis. By inductively developing a general theory from empirical cases that can be applied to a select set of weak states, I seek in this book to make sense of “the maelstrom of information” surrounding state failure. Specifically, I make three contributions. First, I challenge a tendency in the literature to lump together

INTRODUCTION

3

weak and failed states, which often elides the very processes that perpetuate state decline in some cases and lead to state failure in others. Varieties of states and quasi-states abound, but an analytical distinction can be made between those that are weak and those that fail. On the one hand, many countries have become mired in state crisis, remaining palpably weak for decades but avoiding a full disintegration of state authority.14 On the other, state failure in countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia, and Liberia has introduced a level of violence that has pulled large swathes of territory outside government control, destroyed local governing structures, and brought about the collapse of national institutions. All too often, however, the latter is subsumed under long-term trends of the former. As William Zartman once noted, state failure often appears to be a “descending spiral” devoid of “clear turning points, warning signals, thresholds, or signal spots.”15 Although his subsequent work departs from this depiction, many studies have adopted this perspective. Analyses from Africa to Central Asia regularly warn that countries are “flirting with state failure,” “sliding into collapse,” or “on the road to failure.”16 But these same countries defy such predictions, sitting on the threshold of failure without crossing over the brink. We need to move away from images of a seamless descent and consider state failure as a highly irregular, disjointed process—an aggregate of individual moments when local-level state institutions may be transformed into formations of nonstate violence. Drawing on insights from the recent “micropolitical turn” in comparative research, I investigate the internal processes of state failure, uncovering the mechanisms that lead some states to fail and enable others (even so-called impending failures) to stay stable.17 Second, I question the assumption that state failure begins at the center and radiates outward. The breakdown of national institutions in the capital is frequently the point at which observers conclude state failure has occurred, but this misdirects our attention away from the origins and dynamics of the process. As this book demonstrates, state failure begins on the periphery and moves to the core in many cases. This should not be a surprise. Weak states by definition have a very limited governing presence in peripheral areas, where systems of authority are notoriously diffuse and difficult to control. Even the most ambitious projects to penetrate and transform societies have been undermined by social forces on the ground.18 As Joel Migdal has argued, many weak states contain “a field of interacting, at times conflicting, social forces” in which struggles for domination can challenge the viability of the state itself.19 The periphery of weak states, then, is fertile ground for the beginning of state failure. Examining this outside-in pattern, moreover, brings to light important dynamics of how state failure spreads across localities. Although a vibrant debate exists on how state failure spills over international borders, few scholars have examined its spread within states.20 One

4

VERSO RUNNING HEAD INTRODUCTION

of my goals in this book, then, is to explain how state failure starts, travels, and ends: how it proceeds from the regions to the center. Third, I reconsider the links between resource endowments and state failure. Several studies explore the effects of resource abundance, but most of them focus on fossil fuels (oil and gas) or mineral wealth (gold, copper, and diamonds).21 This book proposes expanding the resource curse argument to investigate how cash crop economies insert very different mechanisms by which resources promote state failure. In countries whose economies are structured around cotton, groundnut, or grain production, for example, subtle changes in the underlying patterns of rent seeking determine whether states keep or lose a monopoly of force within their borders. Often the causes of state failure have to do with local-level questions of how the territorial apparatus is staffed, to whom resource rights are allocated, and to which regions subsidies are directed. Historically, these questions were addressed in studies of “peasant wars” and rural insurrections that linked cash crops to collective action and conflict but not state failure itself.22 More recently, authors of works about state failure see cash crop economies as zones of resource scarcity (in which environmental degradation promotes economic stresses and social conflict),leading them to examine cash crops but not the resource rents they produce.23 This book demonstrates how cash crop abundance does constitute a type of resource curse, giving rise to a hidden politics of rent seeking that consolidates some states and pulls others into failure. To explore the problem of state failure more concretely, this book begins with an empirical puzzle: Why did Tajikistan’s state fail while Uzbekistan’s state remained weak but stable? During the 1990s, state failure and civil war in Tajikistan left its institutions—its police, prokurators, and offices of internal security especially—impoverished, internally divided, and incapacitated, while Uzbekistan’s state security apparatus centralized its personnel system, modernized its facilities, and extended its reach into communities through village and neighborhood organizations. The fragmentation of security institutions in Tajikistan began in May 1992, when elites in several regions formed “self-defense” forces from volunteers and local police units. Local law enforcement and security bodies joined independent militias mobilizing across Tajikistan, paralyzing the central government and leading to a five-year civil war in which nearly 50,000 people died and 800,000 people were displaced. In Uzbekistan, however, potentially unruly elites remained bound to the regime, averting civil war and supporting the construction of one of the largest and most cohesive state security apparatuses in post-Soviet Eurasia.24 Uzbekistan’s law enforcement and security offices enforce highly extractive demands on local citizens, impose unrivaled coercive controls across the country, and remain the primary institutions for adjudicating disputes in society.

INTRODUCTION

5

These two state security outcomes—fragmentation in Tajikistan and cohesion in Uzbekistan—have shaped each country’s long-term political development.25 Although Tajikistan has received significant international aid toward reconstructing its state, these efforts continue to be plagued by internal divisions within its security services. In many parts of the country, its coercive institutions are staffed by former commanders and regional actors who have used their position and influence to operate outside the central government’s control and even lead insurgencies against the regime. In Uzbekistan, security and law enforcement agencies have been entrusted with broad responsibilities in maintaining social order and promoting economic development. But critical to this “success” in empowering Uzbekistan’s state security apparatus has been a strategy of linking coercion to rent-seeking activities, which has eroded the rule of law, hindered economic growth, and fostered popular discontent. Uzbekistan has certainly consolidated state security institutions, but over time it has generated a wave of local protests that culminated in the 2005 Andijan uprising and the brutal crackdown that followed. As the experience of Uzbekistan suggests, state security cohesion built on the shaky foundations of rent-seeking elites can avert state failure in the short term, but it may be unsustainable in the long run. Why, then, did Tajikistan fail while Uzbekistan did not? What are the influences on agents of internal security and law enforcement that account for such contrasting trajectories? What explains their unwavering support for Uzbekistan’s embattled regime and their sudden defection to nonstate militaries in Tajikistan?

The Argument In this book, I advance a theory of state failure that explains the cohesion and fragmentation of security institutions as a consequence of resource rents, which critically influence how local elites leverage local offices of state security. I examine economies with low capital mobility—where resources cannot be extracted, concealed, or transported to market without state patronage and involvement. In countries defined by immobile capital (such as cotton, coffee, or cocoa producers), local elites commanding farms and factories confront a fundamental problem: how to convert their hands-on control over resources into rents. In order to generate a worthwhile profit, bales of cotton or loads of grain are simply too large and too heavy to extract, transport, and sell outside state surveillance. Local elites, working under constraints that prevent them from independently exploiting the resources under them, are therefore forced to seek out political patrons. This embeds rent seeking within state politics, raising age-old questions of corruption, favoritism, and political protection.26 To explain how cash crop rents

6

VERSO RUNNING HEAD INTRODUCTION

drive state cohesion and fragmentation, I identify two factors that structure the rent-seeking opportunities of local elites: local concentrations of resources and local access to political patronage. I argue that different rent-seeking opportunities either promote the co-optation of local elites to the regime or foster their competition over rents, which in turn lead them to differentially mobilize security institutions in their locality. In some localities, densely concentrated resources, access to patrons, and open rent-seeking opportunities promote the co-optation of local elites to the regime, encouraging them to use local law enforcement and security bodies as tools of extraction to exploit lucrative rent-seeking avenues. This leads to cohesive state security institutions, since local elites and security officials collude to exploit resources in the locality. When promoted across localities, as in Uzbekistan, these activities produce the macropolitical outcome of a coercive rent-seeking state, whose security institutions continue to apply coercion to extract resources as long as it receives a steady inflow of rents. In other localities, sparsely concentrated resources, a lack of patrons, and closed-off rent-seeking opportunities foster competition between elites and encourage excluded elites to use state security forces as instruments of nonstate violence. In particular, the loss of elites’ opportunities to convert their resources into rents can lead them to pursue alternative political orders that open up new avenues of rent seeking. Elites in these resource-poor localities have the least to lose in challenging central state authority and are the most prone to disaffection from the regime. These dynamics led to state failure in Tajikistan and, even after the civil war, they continue to encourage sporadic attacks on government officials and small-scale insurgencies. Although this argument emphasizes the importance of structural constraints, it does recognize the agency of elites. As I explain in chapter 1, resource concentrations and patronage are structural variables that merely alter the “relative bargaining power” of local elites as they vie for rent-seeking opportunities.27 Indeed, local elites are often quite adept at finding room to maneuver,28 and at times the skill, engineering, and even luck of elites will lead them to promote one state security outcome at the expense of another. At a critical moment in Tajikistan’s state failure, for example, some local elites chose not to mobilize local security bodies into nonstate militias despite intense pressures to do so. In addition to elite agency, external influences can also change dynamics on the ground. Unexpected shifts in international markets can make a commodity suddenly more (or less) valuable and ongoing instability in a neighboring country can make a locality critically important for border security.29 The latter can be seen in Uzbekistan’s special security precautions taken in Surkhandarya Province, which shares a ninety-mile border with Afghanistan. But these are largely exceptional

INTRODUCTION

7

circumstances and to focus on them is to miss the broader political economy of rent seeking at work. Most local elites in economies with low capital mobility must overcome significant structural obstacles to obtain a fungible value on the resources they control, and this has embedded rent seeking deep within state institutions. Whether this is a curse or a blessing for weak states is the central focus of this book. In rethinking the “resource curse” and its effects on state failure, this book addresses broader questions that will be of interest to students of political science, security studies, and the postcommunist region. For those knowledgeable of Central Asia and postcommunist countries, I offer insight into the interplay of rents and resources (especially at the subnational level), and I encourage specialists to view Tajikistan and Uzbekistan through the lens of weak states in the post– Cold War world. Many of the challenges facing the postcommunist state are also found in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Suggesting a perspective that might be of use to practitioners, including those working to promote the stabilization and reconstruction of failed states, I explore the often overlooked political economy of rent seeking that underpins the rise and fall of security institutions. For social scientists studying the state, this book contributes to theoretical debates on the role of institutions, on coercion and corruption in weak states, and on entrepreneurs of violence in civil war. Scholars such as Douglass North view institutions as rules of the game that regulate and order people’s behavior, promote responsible leadership, and constrain tyrannical and predatory rule.30 When institutions fail, social order is said to approximate “a natural state,” in which police and security forces operate without political controls, engaging in predation and corruption throughout the polity.31 According to this classic view, institutions are expected to follow. Rulers making claims on citizens (e.g., taxation and conscription) set the stage for popular demands for institutions that would constrain rulers, arising either through hard-fought concessions or by rulers preemptively making credible commitments to establish checks on their own power.32 In contemporary weak states, of course, such ruler-elite wrangling has not given rise to an effective set of formal institutional controls. Although in some countries this is because resource rents from oil or mineral wealth obviate the need for rulers to make concessions to the citizenry,33 rulers of states with low capital mobility have no such luxury and must enter into some bargain with elites. Yet ruler-constraining formal institutions are notably absent. What emerges in their place? Using the selectorate theory of Bueno de Mesquita et al., which proposes that the failure of institutions to constrain predatory rulers typically occurs in states with a small circle of ruling elites (called a “winning coalition”), some have pointed to the tight grip that ruling elites have on formal levers of power.

8

VERSO RUNNING HEAD INTRODUCTION

Premised on a simple logic of proportions, the theory holds that in regimes with large pools of elites and small winning coalitions, the pools of elites will remain loyal to the ruler because their chances of getting back into the winning coalition are small if they defect. Since each member of the winning coalition can be easily replaced, the ruler has no incentive to make concessions to elites.34 Many weak states, in Central Asia and beyond, do have small winning coalitions.35 However, not all of these states manifest ruler predation and brutality; some collapse into disorder. Using Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, I move beyond small winning coalitions and formal institutions to explore how informal bargains with rent-seeking elites strengthen rulers and how, when those bargains break down, winning coalitions disintegrate and state failure can ensue. We need to think of multiple “natural states” of social order where formal institutions fail to constrain predatory rulers: some in which informal arrangements empower a ruler to pursue unrelenting extraction and others that unleash intraelite violence and a full disintegration of state authority. The book also shines a light on the role of coercion in weak states. In early modern Europe, states forged a “monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force” to keep social order through law enforcement and internal security apparatuses that performed essential functions of extraction, surveillance, and control.36 The role of coercion, therefore, has been a central part of European state formation,37 as well as state formation outside Western Europe, providing important lessons for the study of state development today.38 Charles Tilly, for instance, argued that less monetarized economies, mainly rural commodity producers, manifested a pattern of coercion-intensive state formation: rural economies were more difficult to tax, and they give rise to larger, bulkier, and more coercive institutions of public order.39 Yet studies of contemporary weak states address coercion less frequently, perhaps because the line between those enforcing and those transgressing laws of the state is so blurred as to be indistinguishable.40 In focusing on coercion in those weak states with immobile capital, we can explore important permutations within the coercion-intensive trajectory. While Tilly has shown how different concentrations of capital generate different forms of coercive apparatuses, what explains the variation in how they function? Why are coercive institutions internally divided and fractious in some countries, while in others they are highly cohesive, defined by interlocking logics of coercion and rent seeking? As Gavrilis demonstrates in his study of border security institutions in Central Asia and elsewhere, highly politicized rent-seeking practices within coercive apparatuses can generate very different ways of functioning.41 In a similar vein, this study unpacks how rent seeking can penetrate the territorial infrastructure of cash crop economies, binding local offices of coercion to the regime in some cases and fueling their fragmentation in others.

INTRODUCTION

9

The book also connects to ongoing debates on the effects of patronage, corruption, and rent seeking in political development. Studies have long viewed these factors as inherently detrimental to political development. They are seen as having a divisive effect on the political arena, used to marginalize many in society by limiting access to state resources to a privileged few. As such, they reproduce social and political inequalities and stymie processes of economic and political reform.42 Recent work, however, has found corruption and patronage can also sustain some of the world’s most neopatrimonial regimes.43 This reflects an emerging debate in comparative politics on the role of informal politics generally, which can both enhance and erode formal institutions.44 In tracing out the effects of rent seeking on failed and weak states, this book not only identifies when corruption and patronage promote stability versus disorder; it also provides a specific venue where the effects of informal politics can be assessed—in the territorial apparatuses of weak states with immobile capital. Finally, the book provides insight into the political origins of warlords, pirates, and other nonstate actors in civil wars of the post–Cold War era. Although mobilized outside the state, many specialists of violence originate from within state security institutions. To the extent that state failure is the loss of a monopoly of force and entails the fragmentation of coercive apparatuses, it feeds the ranks of insurgent groups, criminal organizations, and warlord operations that have been examined by others.45 The argument here, then, suggests that the origins of these actors rest on a delicate politics of rent seeking that is multifaceted, highly contentious, and intimately local.

Method and Evidence The central argument of this book is explored through a comparative analysis of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Since these countries have many social, economic, and political similarities, yet they manifest starkly different paths of state development,46 this study utilizes a most similar design to investigate their divergent outcomes. The logic of this design enables me to eliminate competing explanations that are found in both Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, since the same factors in each country cannot account for state security fragmentation in one and cohesion in the other.47 One competing argument, emphasizing the continuity of coercive institutions since the Soviet period, points to historical legacies of Soviet neopatrimonialism.48 Yet this approach does not explain the rapid growth of Uzbekistan’s security apparatus or the atrophy of Tajikistan’s security institutions during several years of state failure and civil war. Another explanation contends a weak fiscal

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base and dependence on foreign aid is a precursor to state failure, because inflows of wealth organize societal cleavages and then abruptly cease. With the end of the Cold War, financial support to Third World regimes dried up, triggering intensified competition for resources among domestic groups.49 Yet Tajikistan and Uzbekistan were equally dependent on subsidies from Moscow and equally vulnerable to fragmentation once those subsidies ceased to exist. Still others contend that ideological and cultural factors can help sustain a regime, providing symbolic power to institutions that would otherwise decline.50 But extending these accounts to suggest an underlying logic at work in state security bodies does not capture the rapid changes they underwent in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan only months after departing from seventy-four years of shared Soviet cultural influence. Finally, many scholars argue that clan, region, or ethnicity have reconstituted cleavages among elites in post-Soviet countries.51 When ruling elites form coalitions based on these identities, they lay the foundation for stable state development; failure to strike an elite bargain, conversely, has led to state breakdown.52 While these arguments might apply to Tajikistan’s state security fragmentation, their focus on political negotiations in the capital fails to grasp how Tajikistan’s descent into violence primarily took place in distant provinces. In many instances, political elites in state capitals neither sanction nor direct locallevel developments. Within a most similar design, the book employs comparative historical analysis of national-level developments that has nested within it a microcomparative study of subnational outcomes.53 The former is used to explain cross-case variation: to track developments at the national and regional levels that brought about an overall transformation in state security institutions in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The latter is used to explain within-case variation: to trace out the causal paths along which state security outcomes emerged, spread, and came to predominate within each state in the 1990s;54 and to examine how those state security outcomes became established at the local level manifesting different characteristics within each country’s territorial infrastructure.55 This nested analysis is critical in unearthing the local interplay of rents and resources and examining how it has sustained a fractious state in Tajikistan and perpetuated Uzbekistan’s degenerative cycle of coercion and rent seeking. The bulk of the evidence for this book was collected during twelve months of field research in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in 2002 and 2003, with several extended follow-up trips. My field research centered on four broad data collection activities. First, I assembled a large database of elite turnovers, collected biographies of key political figures, and compiled regional economic data for each country from 1960 to 2003. These data—to be used primarily in determining farm chair tenures, farms’ economic profiles, and political elite mobility—were

MAP 1 Republic of Uzbekistan. UN Map no. 3777 Rev. 6, January 2004. Courtesy of UN Cartographic Section

MAP 2 Republic of Tajikistan. UN Map no. 3765 Rev. 11, October 2009. Courtesy of UN Cartographic Section

INTRODUCTION

13

drawn from various sources: national, provincial, and district newspapers; published (and unpublished) histories of individual collective farms and regions; the economic handbook Narodnoe khozaistvo; information on collective farms obtained from regional offices of the Ministry of Agriculture; and interviews with current and former farm chairs. Much of this material was not accessible in the cities of Tashkent and Dushanbe, requiring frequent and extended trips to local areas. In each locality, often long-ignored and much deteriorated newspaper collections in regional libraries, busy local-level administrators, and distant collective farms held critical pieces of information. As will be evident in the case studies below, I rely heavily on these databases and biographies, in combination with local and regional news sources, to provide a fuller picture of the resources, rents, and local elites that are at the center of eroding state institutions in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Second, I made extensive use of material from a variety of printed sources in determining each region’s enforcement of government policies and monopoly of violence. Much of the in-depth qualitative analysis of regional developments is drawn from a close reading of provincial and district newspapers, Russianlanguage newspapers published in Moscow, secondary sources by Russian scholars, local histories of the Tajik civil war, published and unpublished manuscripts about the Prokurator Office, and memoirs of political insiders. These sources also provided critical quantitative data as well. To assess the rise of coercive rent seeking in Uzbekistan, for example, I assembled descriptive statistics on prokurator injunctions, court judgments, and other actions relating to debt collection, contract enforcement, and dispute settlement. To assess the onset and spread of state security fragmentation in Tajikistan, I used this print material to construct a database of incidents of fragmentation across localities. These sources are listed in the Appendix. Third, to determine which trajectories of state security development were being perpetuated within each country’s localities, I conducted individual interviews of district prokurators and district governors (and their staffs), lawyers in provincial law offices, collective farm chairs, and journalists. One-on-one interviews emerged as the best means of gaining insight into a subject that was viewed by many as difficult to access. Given that there are more than 140 districts across Uzbekistan’s 13 provinces and more than 50 districts in Tajikistan, an array of interviews from selected districts afforded an opportunity to systematically evaluate local-level state security development. While lawyers and journalists provided relatively open assessments, those in district offices of governors and prokurators were more guarded and members of the latter group were far more accustomed to taking interviews than giving them. It was not unusual for these informants to try to direct me to less sensitive concerns and occasionally my willingness

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to point out inaccuracies or contradictions in an interviewee’s response and to demonstrate detailed knowledge of a locality was useful to elicit more accurate information. More often, however, information from one informant that appeared insignificant provided analytical leverage when compared across districts and even across provinces. In all, more than 150 such interviews were conducted, concentrated in the provinces of Navoii, Ferghana, and Samarkand as well as Tashkent city in Uzbekistan, and in Sughd, Khatlon, and Dushanbe city in Tajikistan. In both countries, these interviews were supplemented by strategically selected interviews in other areas. Finally, to determine how resources and patronage impacted the institutionalization of state security outcomes within the territorial apparatus across all regions of both countries, I conducted an expert survey of one hundred governance and rule-of-law specialists in Tajikistan (in 2007) and Uzbekistan (in 2008). Their ratings of local prokurators, courts, and police across regions provided a countrywide scale of institutional performance against which I could compare in-depth data from my selected regions. In addition to serving as a proxy measure of performance levels, their responses also provided insight into the various influences on local elites and state security actors. Taken together, these unique data provide the basis for my study of the processes through which units of state security are reconstituted on the periphery of weak states. Using this dataset, I examine the mediating effects of resources and patronage on elites and how those elites promote divergent trajectories of state security development in a context of low capital mobility.

Outline of the Book In chapter 1, I lay out the theoretical framework for comparing weak states with immobile capital. This framework defines immobile capital in further depth, introduces the variables that structure rent seeking, and specifies the mechanisms of resource exploitation driving local elites. In chapter 2 I analyze the Soviet origins of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan’s state weakness. This places the cases of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in historical context by examining how resources and patronage emerged very differently in each republic during the Soviet period. I unpack the transformations of state security apparatuses in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in chapter 3. I examine how the Soviet Union’s collapse set in motion the co-optation and competition of local elites around shifting rent-seeking opportunities, leading to the fragmentation of security institutions in Tajikistan and the cohesion of Uzbekistan’s security apparatus. In Tajikistan, fragmentation unfolded over four phases, leading to state failure and civil war. In Uzbekistan,

INTRODUCTION

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the regime’s rent-based co-optation of local elites and expansion of its coercive apparatus contributed to its descent into corruption and repression, which I term a coercive rent-seeking state. In chapters 4 and 5, I pursue a microcomparative study of the makeup of state security apparatuses in five regions across both countries. Selected according to their varying resource concentrations, these regional cases—Khatlon Province and Rasht Valley in Tajikistan, and the provinces of Samarkand, Andijan, and Navoii in Uzbekistan—exemplify how resource structure and patronage have embedded different state security outcomes within each country’s territorial apparatus. In chapter 4, I reveal the inner struggles of Tajikistan’s postwar reconstruction, in which the regime’s use of patronage to control “unruly” local elites has been stymied by elites’ limited access to rents, perpetuating an internally divided, fractious state. By contrast, in chapter 5 I trace intertwining forces of coercion and extraction around open rent-seeking opportunities in Uzbekistan, which has enabled the rise of alternative power centers under regional patrons, promoted predatory practices in state security bodies, and fostered mass discontent. I demonstrate the limits of coercive rent seeking as a path toward state reform by describing how unchecked rent seeking created conditions that led to the 2005 Andijan Uprising and its violent suppression. In chapter 6, I extend the argument to the population of approximately forty weak states whose economies are defined by low capital mobility. After explaining the selection of cases from that population, I illustrate the impacts of resources, patronage, and local elite rent seeking on state security using paired comparisons of six countries. Each pair—Syria and Lebanon, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan, Zimbabwe and Somalia—has confronted similar challenges, yet they have witnessed state security fragmentation in one and state security cohesion in the other. In chapter 7, I conclude this book by considering how understanding the distinct patterns of state failure in weak states with immobile capital can inform our study of regime change, ethnic violence, and security sector reform—both comparatively and in the postcommunist region.

1 RETHINKING THE RESOURCE CURSE

The spread of the state’s authority and the intrusion of the market, which may occur at quite different times, affect the bonds of the peasant to the overlord, the division of labor within the village, its system of authority, class groupings within the peasantry, tenure and property rights. —Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy

The Kolkhoz leadership lords over its co-villagers. It decides who can and cannot work, who will receive payments in kind and money and wages in a timely fashion, and which village-wide projects will be undertaken or ignored. —Russell Zanca, Life in a Muslim Uzbek Village

Rural Central Asia closely approximates the highly unequal, labor-repressive landholding economy that Barrington Moore believed to be susceptible to peasant insurrection. As anyone who spends time on farms in Tajikistan or Uzbekistan can attest, what Moore called “the spread of the state’s authority” is quite thin and what he aptly termed “the intrusion of the market” is at best rare and limited. Farms may be privatized and law-abiding on paper, but in practice they are well outside the reach of central state authorities and largely untouched by market reformers. Moreover, the farm chair is the arbiter of both state authority and market reform in the locality, making it a fait accompli that he/she “lords” over villagers. In this chapter, I construct a general model of state failure that fastens onto the same features of agrarian society that Moore found so important for social and political change—the limited reach of the state and the absence of the market. In weak states of the late twentieth century, whose economies were defined by low capital mobility, the concentrated resources under rural elites and the reach of the state through lines of patronage critically determined how struggles among elites draw security apparatuses into macropolitical processes of state decline and failure. Yet few studies have examined these dynamics. 16

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There is a vast literature on the link between economic endowments and intrastate conflict, with most works falling into one of two groups: those that link resource scarcity to violence and those that link resource abundance to violence.1 In contributing to the latter, this book takes the unusual step of exploring the agricultural sector as a source of state failure and civil war. Early work by Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler posited a strong correlation between primary commodity exports and civil war, but their studies collapsed agricultural production and natural resource production (oil, gas, timber, copper, and other products) into one category.2 Subsequent studies, holding Collier and Hoeffler to task for this conflation, have treated cash crops (renewable) and natural resources (nonrenewable) separately, finding that cash crops are generally not an engine of civil war. Some have contrasted the low barriers of entry of “lootable” resources (such as alluvial diamonds) with the high barriers of entry of “nonlootable” resources (such as cash crops), contending that the latter are difficult to access without technology and expertise. Others have noted that cash crops have low value-toweight ratios or that they are usually monopolized by state-owned enterprises.3 For all these reasons, cash crops are deemed to be subject to ruler control. This not only facilitates rulers’ revenue extraction. It also means unruly elites, without resources at their disposal, have little to fight over and few ways to finance civil conflict. The consensus among scholars, then, is that cash crop economies are far less prone to state failure and civil war.4 My argument challenges this consensus, drawing on a long literature that points to the highly varied consequences of rural modes of production on state development.5 Using these works as a point of departure, I contend that state failure and civil war can be the direct result of cash crop economies. As I demonstrate below, it is precisely the fact that cash crops have high barriers to entry and low value-to-weight ratios that make these economies vulnerable to state failure. Under certain conditions, these factors do not dampen conflict but generate highly contentious rent seeking that can divide elites and pull a state apart. The core logic of my argument runs as follows. Weak states are characterized by local elites who command large-scale economic operations at the local level— farms, factories, mines—that extract or produce commodities for the market. As the dominant economic and political actors in the locality, these elites are akin to Joel Migdal’s local “strongmen.” They command a wide range of economic activities that create webs of political influence in localities within which state offices operate. They are the factory directors, farm chairs, and enterprise managers who are running the day-to-day operations of the local economy. These local strongmen are able to translate their control over economic resources into political authority that enables them to “maintain their own rules and their own criteria for who gets what” in their localities.6 Consequently, the state apparatus—including

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local security offices—is heavily influenced by its relationships with these local elites. While powerful in their locality, elites controlling resources defined by low capital mobility differ markedly from elites in countries with resources that can be easily translated into liquid capital, such as “lootable” wealth noted in many studies. Without the possibility to turn resources—such as bales of cotton—into readily available income, opportunities for elites to engage in freelance incomegenerating activities are limited. Under such conditions, elite control over resources may be secure (even unrivaled), but they do not, on their own, possess the means to derive income from those resources independent of the state. Exploitative elites, therefore, require reliable patrons to provide political protection (and other benefits) that enable them to convert public resources into private wealth via resource rents. By resource rents (hereafter rents), I mean income derived from goods and commodities usually sold in informal markets, including revenues from the sale of the inputs and technology that go into the production of those goods and commodities (e.g., fertilizer and machinery parts).7 Whether local elites will promote the cohesion or fragmentation of state security institutions hinges on their rent-seeking opportunities: rent-seeking opportunities opened up to them engender their co-optation to the regime, while being closed off from rents encourages intensified competition with other elites and disaffection. By focusing on this pathway to state failure, this model helps us understand the way in which export agricultural economies perpetuate some weak states and draw others into failure. The chapter proceeds as follows. First, it elaborates on how economies of immobile capital constitute a particular type of weak state. Second, it introduces two variables—local resource concentrations and access to political patronage— that structure rent-seeking activity by local elites under conditions of low capital mobility. Third, it identifies mechanisms of resource exploitation that lead some rent-seeking elites to consolidate coercive institutions around state-sanctioned extraction and other elites to fragment security institutions into nonstate formations of organized violence.

Capital Mobility in Weak States Drawing on Carles Boix, I focus on capital mobility as a baseline in my analysis. As Boix writes, “Changes in the level of specificity, and hence the mobility, of capital also alter the incentives and strategies of various actors engaged in the choice of political institutions.” In landholding economies, it is the immobility of capital that defines the strategies of actors. Agricultural production in weak states

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constitutes a form of capital that is highly immobile, because it is (1) stationary (difficult to relocate), (2) monitored by the state (difficult to conceal), and (3) sensitive to tax (difficult to transfer into private wealth).8 These three features relate well to the structure of cash crops, such as cotton and grain production in Central Asia, making it very difficult for those commanding these resources to generate mobile capital. First, the sheer size and bulk of most cash crops make it difficult to relocate large quantities without government protection. One bale of cotton, for instance, weighs 500 pounds (230 kilograms), with an international market value somewhere between fifty cents and a dollar per pound. An attempt in 2002 by local elites in southern Tajikistan to smuggle sixteen truckloads of cotton into China proved impossible to arrange without the right contacts in the central government, and there was obviously no way of circumventing state surveillance with such a convoy. Similarly, a deputy provincial governor in Uzbekistan was arrested in 2003 for smuggling 250 tons of cotton into Kazakhstan without sufficient protection from above.9 Second, the centralized system of consolidating crop yields in state-run collection points severely constrains the independent rent-seeking agendas of local elites. In Central Asia, there are usually four collection points and one cotton cleaning facility per district, which makes it difficult to conceal large quantities of cotton without, at a minimum, the complicity of district and provincial officials.10 This is evident to anyone who has seen the massive stacks of cotton at these collection and storage facilities. Like cotton, many other crops must be processed before being delivered to market, which necessitates expensive technological facilities that are either government provided or operated jointly by local farms and factories. This processing of crop yields in effect funnels agricultural produce through easily monitored channels at the local level. Third, cash crop industries (including inputs such as water, fertilizer, and tractors) remain difficult to shift into private wealth without protection from central government authorities. In regions with an industrial or business economy, by contrast, products such as liquor, packaged foods, tools, and other items can be sold directly to local or national markets, generating capital that is easily diverted into personal coffers. This requires the central government to tax that revenue aggressively. In one district in Uzbekistan, for instance, the lead economist received three or four letters each month from various ministries demanding sums that absorbed roughly 80 percent of the district’s revenue from public enterprises (which amounted to a payment of $820,000 per month).11 In cash crop regions, however, low capital mobility make such tactics unnecessary, since profits from agricultural production are concentrated at the top of state monopolies in these industries through exclusive ties to international markets.

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In addition to these consequences of generating immobile capital, cash crops are distinct in how they are integrated into local economies. In contrast to the economic “enclaves” that oil or mineral wealth tends to produce, cash crops such as cotton or grain are dispersed over large areas of a country. Because they are produced solely for market and not for local consumption, they typically depend on labor-repressive systems of agriculture—a system that makes local elite control over coercive authority critical.12 As a result, cash crops constitute a type of immobile capital that is deeply embedded in local political economies and tend to tighten local elite control over security and law enforcement organs. Rulers’ attempts to extract that wealth depend on the strategies and commitments of local elites, and this, in turn, forces rulers to cede control over state security offices in many localities. These points apply directly to cash crops in postcommunist countries such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. They have emerged from a seventy-year history transformed by large-scale modernization projects that attempted to redesign landscapes into large urban spaces, fundamentally reorganize agrarian economies, and relocate populations.13 After half a century of agricultural development under communism, much of the region’s economy and many of its peoples remain enmeshed in rural livelihoods. As several studies have demonstrated, many rural reform projects in postcommunist countries have been derailed or diverted, leaving in place a system of labor-repressive agriculture under local elites.14 Hence, a situation of mutual dependence emerges. On the one hand, it is difficult for local elites to conceal and smuggle cash crops; on the other, it is difficult for rulers to extract cash crops without the compliance of local elites. Without an arrangement between both sets of actors, cash crops will die neglected and not harvested because neither rulers nor local elites can—on their own—convert them into rents. This problem was a regular complaint made to me by informants in Tajikistan, whereas such a lapse was rare in Uzbekistan. Beyond Central Asia, a similar dynamic—in which local elites cannot convert their resources into rents without patrons and protection within the state—occurs in many weak states with low capital mobility. As I discuss later, this widespread problem local elites confront accounts for much of the cross-national variation in how rural economies are governed in the developing world: outbreaks of violence plague some (Lebanon, Yemen, Burundi, Guinea-Bissau, Moldova, and Georgia) while the long-term absence of mobilized violence characterizes others (North Korea, Syria [pre-2011], Zimbabwe, Belarus, and Equatorial Guinea). Across these weak states, elites exploit the benefits of violence for purposes of generating rents in ways that are just as deplorable as those exploiting conflict diamonds, but they operate within specific constraints of immobile capital. Having outlined those constraints, I now turn to the patterns of rent seeking it fosters.

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Immobile Capital and Rent Seeking Immobile capital forces elites to rely on their ties to those in political office for patronage and protection, and this alters rent-seeking practices that are so central to political order. Rents were traditionally viewed as one of the negative effects of government intervention into the market, which creates artificial scarcities in export licenses, currency, and agricultural commodities that are then used to extort bribes, payments, and favors.15 But rents are not just sources of waste, they are critically important in these weak states where they are objects of intense political contestation between rulers and local elites. As Margaret Levi’s theory of predatory rule predicts rulers seek to minimize rent seeking and maximize their revenues; for local elites the reverse is true. Much depends, therefore, on the “relative bargaining power” of each. But Levi conceptualizes “relative bargaining power” only as a question of who controls resources—“the extent to which others control resources on which rulers depend and the extent to which rulers control resources on which others depend.”16 Rent seeking is relevant for her only insofar as it raises transaction costs, undercutting efficient revenue maximizing.17 In adapting Levi’s model to weak states with immobile capital, I build an important causal effect for rent seeking, much as other studies of the postcommunist state have done.18 I contend that elites and rulers bargain not over resources per se (which are clearly under local elite control) but over the rent-seeking opportunities through which elites derive fungible income from those resources. In Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, where a farm chair’s monthly salary is so low that it does not cover the cost of a cell phone, such rents are indispensable. The availability of rent-seeking opportunities, not the degree of resource control, is what motivates local elites. While elites control the resources, rulers direct the two key “rent arenas”— capturing and distributing rents.19 Through institutionalized monopolies such as agricultural marketing boards rulers purchase crop yields at below market prices, enabling them to sell crops in the international market for higher prices. This allows them to capture profits and to control how that income is disbursed. Even in countries where cash crop revenues are not sent off to personal overseas bank accounts, rulers may prefer to use that income to fund other state building agendas, including urban development projects.20 For local elites, therefore, rents are obtained primarily through diverting agricultural inputs and hiding crop yields that can be sold in informal markets—not by awaiting side-payments from the ruling elite.21 How then is rent seeking pursued by local elites? Like all social action, rent seeking is not a free-flowing activity, but is embedded within particular institutionalized settings. In weak states with low capital mobility, I argue that rent seeking by local elites is structured by two factors:

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the concentration of resources that local elites command and the access to patrons they enjoy. I address each in turn. First, the spatial distribution of cash crops within a country directs the pursuit of rent-seeking opportunities by providing some local elites with more resources to exploit than others. Hence they can generate more (or less) income. Resource concentrations also provide some elites with leverage in negotiating arrangements with the center, since the regime depends on resource-rich localities to meet its needs for revenue. This is especially true in cash crop economies that are commodity exporters. I therefore distinguish between localities with sparse and dense concentrations of resources, with elites in resource-rich localities better positioned to pursue rent-seeking opportunities and elites in resource-sparse areas poorly positioned to access rents. It is important to note that policies of investment and development—not inherent properties of the resources themselves—underlie differences in wealth distribution across localities. In explaining why and how the dispersion of cash crops within a state can be so uneven, local government officials in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan regularly asserted in interviews that natural resources (fertile soil, access to water, large open areas) and population density (an available labor force) explained the differences in where farms and factories were concentrated and how inputs were distributed. While natural resource qualities are important, I argue that targeted government investment and development is critical in leaving some localities with dense concentrations of a cash crop and other localities with sparse concentrations. As demonstrated in my analysis of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in chapter 2, cross-case and within-case variation in resource structure originated from targeted investment and policies of development during the Soviet period. To attribute the significant variation in resource endowments to some inherent property of the resource—that is, that Tajikistan’s concentrated targeting of Leninabad Province versus Uzbekistan’s more equitable dispersion of wealth across provinces is due to available arable land—would strip away much of the contestation between political elites that is so central the book’s argument. It is precisely the underlying politics of rent seeking, local elite mobilization, and contrasting integrations of security services in Central Asia that pushes rulers to adjust the distribution of resources across localities. Resource structure is not a given, it is the product of a history of contentious struggle between ruler and local elite.22 The second variable affecting how local elites pursue rent-seeking opportunities is access to political patronage. Patronage, traditionally understood as “the instrumental use of positions of power to distribute jobs, goods, and other public decisions to partisan supporters,”23 is pervasive within the apparatuses of weak states.24 In the postcommunist region, moreover, patronage is fueled by weak party competition, especially in single-party regimes in which party and state

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are fused.25 Unequivocally exemplifying this party-state fusion, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have witnessed the rise of well-developed patronage relations within its state apparatus (especially their territorial offices). And as elsewhere, politicians and bureaucrats have had little incentive to reform these patron–client ties as the benefits of patronage typically keep them in office.26 The consequences of patronage for local elites are critical. Because exploitative elites cannot derive rents from the resources under their control without government assistance (or without government simply turning a blind eye), they require reliable patrons. Access to patrons provides elites with several key advantages that enable rent seeking to flourish at local levels. First, political patronage provides local elites with longevity—that is, it enables them to remain in office (and hence retain control over resources and influence that accompany that office). As I demonstrate in chapter 2, because they enjoyed political protection, many farm chairs during the late Soviet period retained their position for thirty or forty years, often outlasting their immediate superiors. Second, patronage provides elites with discretion in administering and implementing decisions in their localities, leaving presidents and ministers to take a resultsfocused approach.27 For example, regional performance in agricultural production is assessed by crop yield, with little or no attention to the labor-repressive methods through which those crop yields were reached (e.g., mandatory busing of school-age children into the fields, squeezing banks to divert financing to state-operated farms and factories, pushing private farmers off their land). Local elites’ discretion also extends to how political and economic reforms are implemented on the ground and how judicial institutions preserve individual and property rights against an interventionist state.28 Third, patronage promotes local elites’ wide-ranging appropriation of budgeted and extrabudgetary funds, profits of privatization, unregulated public subsidies, and concealed production outputs that can be diverted into black market sales. This enables local elites to manifest the predatory image of the “grabbing hand,” which “consists of a large number of substantially independent bureaucrats pursuing their own agendas, including taking bribes . . . and impos[ing] on business a variety of predatory regulations.”29 Fourth, patronage also grants those local elites occupying positions within the territorial administration control to distribute prebends—the public access points to wealth (appointments of enterprise directors and farm chairs, licenses, contracts, public sector jobs), which are disbursed to supporters (often in return for bribes, kickbacks, and other favors).30 While provincial and district governors in many weak states do not have formal “proprietary officeholding” rights (e.g., recognized property rights over their positions) as in medieval Europe, their distribution of state assets provides many opportunities to build wealth and local power bases.31

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TABLE 1.1 Explaining state security outcomes in weak states with immobile capital STRUCTURAL VARIABLES AFFECTING LOCAL ELITES

Dense resource

+ Access to

concentrations

political

in locality

patrons

Sparse resource

MECHANISMS OF ELITES’ RESOURCE EXPLOITATION

STATE SECURITY OUTCOME

 Open rent-seeking  Co-optation of  Cohesion opportunities

+ No access to  Closed rent-

local elites  Competition

concentrations

political

seeking

among

in locality

patrons

opportunities

local elites

 Fragmentation

To specify the effects of political patronage on local elites, I delineate between open and closed of rent-seeking opportunities. In cases where elites are more secure within a patronage structure, they enjoy longevity, discretion, appropriation, and control over prebends. These political benefits provide an umbrella of protection, enabling them to freely convert their resources into fungible wealth. In cases where elites lose access to patronage, they face the threat of being marginalized within the country’s political economy, losing privileges of discretion, appropriation, limits on the prebends, and perhaps in danger of losing their position entirely. Without these benefits and protection, elites have little choice but to seek out alternative means of securing rents. As I elaborate below, elites with rent-seeking avenues open to them tend to abide top-down influence and support the regime, whereas elites with few rent-seeking opportunities tend to be vulnerable to competition from their counterparts in other localities and may challenge state authority.32

Mechanisms of Resource Exploitation If varying resource concentrations and patronage politics create the conditions that structure the rent seeking pursued by local elites, what translates those conditions into political action? In other words, the model so far has explained what pushes local elites as they bargain with others over rents, but it is still unclear how contestation over rents pushes elites to support the regime in some cases and become disaffected in others. When local elites are limited to rents only obtainable through political office, as they are in economies of immobile capital, they become highly dependent on political patronage. This, in turn, opens elites to specific mechanisms of resource exploitation—mechanisms that enable them to maximize the rents they

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can obtain by exploiting the resources they control. I identify two mechanisms, co-optation and competition, which have contrasting effects on how elites use state security apparatuses in their localities: co-optation reinforces the use of these actors to sustain rent seeking and extraction, while competition promotes their mobilization in nonstate militarized formations. In localities where resources are densely concentrated and access to patronage is provided, elites will have rent-seeking opportunities open to them (in large part because the regime needs their support to exploit the resources they command). These elites, in turn, are susceptible to co-optation by the regime. While patronage is the top-down private distribution of public benefits, local elites taking the client’s perspective view political patronage as a “problem-solving network” from which information, protection, and social mobility can be obtained.33 As the conduits along which “jobs, goods, and other public decisions” are distributed to “partisan supporters” on the periphery, patronage provides clear benefits to resource-rich elites by enabling them to convert their wealth into rents. Cooptation takes hold because patronage provides the necessary “problem-solving network” to local elites. As long as this continues, conditions will favor the subordination of state security to extraction since the more resources are extracted the more rents are accrued. Therefore, under conditions of low capital mobility, the greater a region’s concentration of resources and its access to patronage, the more its elites will enjoy open rent-seeking opportunities, leading to the co-optation of those local elites who use state security forces in resource extraction. In localities where resources are sparse and access to patrons constricted, rentseeking opportunities will be typically closed off to local elites, and they will have little to lose by challenging state authority. Excluded from rent-seeking opportunities, elites will tend to respond to competition from elites in other localities that have rent-seeking opportunities open to them. Moreover, during periods of transition, the possibility of altering the existing balance of power between political factions promotes the intensification of competitive pressures in resource scarce localities. Shifts in power among political elites have often stimulated political competition from excluded factions.34 As competition among peripheral elites intensifies, it can encourage elites to abandon the regime’s assurances of privileged access to state rents and lead them to mobilize local law enforcement and security bodies in nonstate militarized actions against central state authority. Among the many mechanisms that might explain how state security fragmentation spreads, I focus on competition because it provides the fullest explanation. Spillover effects do not explain the spread, which tends not to be across geographically contiguous localities and is rarely set off by factors such as refugee flows.35 In economies of immobile capital, peripheral elites remain focused inward on lines of patronage to the center that secure their access to rents. Mark

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Beissinger’s model of elite defection applies only in part because it is premised on the power of prior example—a dynamic that is not characteristic of how elites defect in promoting the fragmentation of local security bodies. Defecting local elites do not view those defecting before them as sources of inspiration but see that defection as a maneuver by competitors who are attempting to leverage new rent-seeking channels. Moreover, the diffusion of state security fragmentation is rapid, occurring over days or a few weeks, making it unlikely that repeated “demonstration effects” (in which one locality’s elite emulates those in another) have time to have an effect.36 Steven L. Solnick offers a third alternative in which reforms enacted increase information asymmetries between rulers and local elites, enabling the latter to defect and expropriate state assets. Opportunistic elites in a context of low capital mobility, however, cannot go far with assets that have little convertible value—a point that Solnick himself makes when referring to “asset specificity.”37 In such contexts, therefore, information asymmetries may be extensive but not lead to a spiraling collapse as principal-agent models would predict. A fourth argument is based on Timur Kuran’s concept of preference falsification. According to Kuran, individuals disguise their true preferences because they are wary of the costs of challenging the status quo. Fear of persecution diminishes, however, when two developments occur: the psychological costs of falsifying one’s preferences are raised (the greater the lie, the greater the discomfort people feel) and the chances of persecution are reduced when increased numbers of people defect. Once a threshold is reached, Kuran argues, a cascade of defection occurs.38 In weak states defined by immobile capital, local elites do abide top-down interference because they need the state to convert their resources into rents. But it would be a mischaracterization to claim that local elites’ “true” preferences are to defect and convert their resources into rents independent of the regime. If rent seeking through co-optation proves profitable then their true preference is the status quo or further co-optation (i.e., gaining better protection and patronage to access greater rents). Moreover, preference falsification is driven by fear of persecution by the regime. Local elites in weak states, though, rarely fear persecution. Rather they possess status and power and an expectation to translate both into personal wealth. In contrast to these mechanisms—spillover, emulation, opportunism, and preference falsification—I focus on competition as the means through which state security fragmentation spreads. I argue that competition ultimately prevails, however, when elite defection and the mobilization of nonstate organized violence in one locality pushes elites competing with that locality to pursue similar strategies of defection and mobilization. This tendency among dependent actors to adopt the political forms of their competitors has been shown to be a durable feature of institution building. Within a range of institutional environments,

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competition has driven the spread of particular practices.39 The modern state was adopted because it mobilized for war more effectively against other forms of statehood in early modern Europe.40 More recently, states competing within the global marketplace have adopted an independent central bank.41 I contend that competition can also precipitate the fragmentation of institutions. As competition for state power and access to rents diffuse state security fragmentation across localities, it can lead to the macropolitical outcome of state failure.42 Therefore, under conditions of low capital mobility, the sparser a region’s concentration of resources and the less access it has to patrons, the more closed off its rent-seeking opportunities will be, leading to competition among local elites who may fragment state security forces into nonstate agents of organized violence.

Rent Seeking during the Soviet Collapse As the Soviet Union broke up, bargains were struck between regimes and opposition forces (including local elites). A range of institutional outcomes during the Soviet collapse were products of such negotiated arrangements, with the development of territorial infrastructures often hinging on the relative bargaining power of rulers and elites.43 Some local elites have stymied central government controls over regions, forcing regimes to make concessions to localities as they restructured their national and provincial institutions, redistributed financial assets, and concentrated political authority. At other times, rulers held sway over the negotiated outcomes, dictating terms that favored their concentration of power and state rents.44 The introduction of political and economic reforms under perestroika and glasnost in the late 1980s led to a significant loss of institutional control over local actors within the Soviet state apparatus and set in motion a struggle among elites over political positions and state rents within each republic. This occurred in several arenas within the Soviet state. Deep within Soviet bureaucracies, for instance, information asymmetries between “principals” and “agents” permitted the latter to divest the state of its assets independent of top-down controls and, in some cases, a “bank run” on public resources helped tip the balance toward defection and fragmentation.45 At the apex of many republics, competing claims on state rents between regional groups, clans, or other entities were an integral element of postindependence politics.46 In dealing with local elites, republican leaderships were forced to rely on informal sources of influence to rein in potentially unruly elites. Certainly, attempts were made by republican leaders to garner the backing of Moscow, but after June 1989 Soviet leaders—their attention focused on other postcommunist disputes—largely left Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to their

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own devices. Once the threat of Moscow’s intervention was removed and formal institutional controls had weakened, regimes’ ability to manipulate patronage (and through it, rent-seeking opportunities) became a critical means of applying leverage over local elites. At the same time, perestroika (and the broader collapse) generated considerable uncertainty among local elites as fundamental changes threatened their long-standing access to state rents (or, alternatively, created new access among historically excluded elites). In the context of calls for economic overhaul, wide-ranging anticorruption campaigns, and the abolition of one-party rule, the dramatic rises and reversals in the political fortunes of local elites created a smaller-scale crisis at the local level. As they—and their political patrons who ensured their access to state rents—were removed, reinstated, and often removed again, local elites became increasingly susceptible to the shifting landscape of rent-seeking opportunities. This profoundly shaped the political calculations of local elites, bringing their co-optation or competition into sharp relief. At the helm of newly independent states, rulers found themselves in a far weakened condition, managing an apparatus that was increasingly held together through open access to rents. Throughout the first decade of independence, ongoing bargaining between regimes and local elites continued, gradually stabilizing and developing into durable, institutionalized forms of state. The territorial infrastructures of particular postcommunist states were not simply defined by path-dependent processes such as “increasing returns” whereby continued positive feedback effects make it more and more costly to divert from that pattern.47 They were shaped by contestation between rulers and local elites over resources and rents. Rulers actively pursued remedial state building, attempting to restore state capacity at the local level and reclaim authority over regions lost during the communist collapse. Their initiatives were met with resistance from local elites who subverted or countered those efforts to hold onto the gains they had acquired. Over time, state-building initiatives and responses by local elites institutionalized those outcomes into patterns of state development, determining whether postcommunist states would be internally cohesive yet rooted in coercive rent-seeking practices (e.g., Uzbekistan) or internally fractious with ongoing civil conflict (e.g., Tajikistan). This chapter has presented a general theory of state failure. Focusing on the interplay between resources and rents in weak states with immobile capital, it demonstrates that the effects of economic structure on local elites are mediated by an underlying politics of rent seeking. Together, resources, patronage and rent seeking provide a more accurate picture of why local elites in some cases promote the fragmentation of state security institutions while their counterparts in other

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cases pull their local security organs into a cohesive state security apparatus. Beyond these transformational effects on state security, these factors carry longterm implications for state building in weak states. As shown in the examples of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan below, contestation over rent-seeking opportunities among local elites can produce long-lasting changes to the overall formation of weak states.

2 RESOURCES AND RENTS UNDER SOVIET RULE

The successor states of the former Soviet Union fit well within the broader universe of postimperial orders. Like the image of the African colonial state as Bula Matari (crusher of rocks), the Soviet state swept away many pre-Soviet institutions. In place of those institutions emerged a Soviet system that deeply embedded neopatrimonial relationships down to the lowest levels of the state. Crawford Young’s description of the postcolonial state in Africa holds true of the post-Soviet state as well: “The formal Weberian traits evoked by an image of an integral state— impersonality of office, uniform application of rules, predictability of behavior, rationality of organizational structure—were interpenetrated by a radically different set of patrimonial practices.”1 Despite the image of a Weberian state apparatus, many patrimonial practices define post-Soviet infrastructures. To some, the postSoviet region may seem in comparison quite distinct. After all, the Soviet Union was premised on an historically unique application of communist ideology that fused party and state; it was an empire in an era when empires were less accepted; it was an “affirmative action empire” that implemented advantages to its minorities; and it was a global superpower that used its military to project power more than to conquer distant lands.2 Yet the long-term consequences of Soviet rule have close parallels to the consequences of colonialism in Africa and Asia, especially for the deep-seated legacies of neopatrimonial politics in postcolonial and postSoviet territorial apparatuses.3 Building on these parallels with other postimperial contexts, in this chapter I demonstrate that, while the sources of state weakness in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are specifically Soviet, they have consequences that apply more broadly to other countries confronting dangers of state failure. 30

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Specifically, I investigate two aspects of Soviet state building at the local level—resource distribution and patronage politics—that have fundamentally shaped the nature of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. First, I examine how the collectivization of agricultural production in the 1930s localized large-scale economic operations under collective farm chairs within the Soviet system. Over time, economic and political changes entrenched these chairs as local strongmen within each Soviet republic. Farm chairs acquired informal authority by virtue of the significant economic resources under their individualized control. But there were also large differences in the concentration of resources under farm chairs across provinces. To a significant degree, whether a region was important or not depended on how collectivization and infrastructural development was carried out in the early Soviet period. Second, I track the development of patronage relations within the Soviet territorial administration, which arose from the devolution of political authority to district and provincial committees of the Communist Party in each republic, and examine the nomenklatura system, which was used to recruit and select political elites. Because district and provincial party committees embodied political authority and served as points of access to state rents, they were highly sought after by local economic actors (such as collective farm chairs), who viewed them as a means of converting their resources into rents as well as a way to influence government policies. Just as the authority of collective farm chairs was not uniform across the USSR, patronage flourished in highly uneven ways across the mid-level institutions of the Soviet state administration. Differences in the political ties linking district and provincial party elites to the central republican leadership not only gave some regions access to state rents over others but also enabled republican leaders to use patronage as leverage over some regions more than over others. In Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, varying concentrations of resources and different patterns of patronage politics produced divergent trajectories of political development in these two republics. In Tajikistan, Bolsheviks built the Soviet state in ways that led to a concentration of wealth and power under elites from Leninabad Province. As a result, elites in other regions, such as the southern regions of Kuliab and Kurgan-Teppe, were unable to build their own regional patronage bases and consequently became dependent on patronage ties to Leninabad for access to rents from the center. Localized concentrations of wealth in Kuliab and Kurgan-Teppe, especially, provided a foundation for local strongmen to emerge as powerful actors at the local and regional levels in the republic. Yet, without a patronage base, they were unable to significantly alter the republic’s national politics. While this arrangement benefited Leninabad, it had two broad effects. First, southern elites’ limited access to state rents generated competition with

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other regional elites from eastern districts in the Karategin Valley and GBAO. Second, it left the central leadership with limited top-down influence to control these local elites and minimize their competition for rents. Together these developments would define how perestroika was received by local elites, and how changes to their access to rents unleashed competitive pressures that led to state security fragmentation and, ultimately, state failure in Tajikistan. In Uzbekistan, the distribution of resources and access to rents were more even across the regions of the republic. While some have argued that resources and power were pooled around Ferghana, Samarkand, and (to a lesser degree) Tashkent, there was considerable dispersion of both across nearly all provinces— particularly when viewed in comparison to Tajikistan. As the Soviet state was constructed in Uzbekistan, agricultural centers of the Zarafshan Valley and the Ferghana Valley emerged after collectivization as the primary areas in which economic resources were developed. And political elites from these areas consistently occupied key posts in republican institutions. But resources were also concentrated in other parts of the republic and access to rents were spread across provinces. This enabled the central leadership to use top-down patronage, if need be, to rein in local elites throughout the republic. These ties linking local strongmen to patrons within the center remained intact over time, surviving Moscow’s crackdown in the late 1980s and facilitating state security cohesion and the spread of coercive rent seeking across the country by the mid-1990s. Through a comparative historical analysis of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan under Soviet rule, in this chapter I identify specific features of the development of resources and patronage in both republics—and how these shaped the rent-seeking opportunities of local elites in these republics in the years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union. I do this in four parts. First, I establish how collectivization and cadre policy localized resource concentrations and patronage relations in the USSR generally. In the second and third parts, I track those developments in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, highlighting the divergence between the two republics. Finally, I turn to the final years of the Soviet period, during which a rapid drop in institutional constraints on local elites led leaders in Dushanbe and Tashkent to rely on patronage to assert their control at the local level. In leading up to the Soviet collapse, this chapter prepares the way for my analysis in chapter 3 of the transformational changes to state security institutions in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Resources and Patronage in the Soviet Union Collectivization and Limited Capital Mobility Within the Soviet system, the agricultural sector was primarily organized around the collective farm (kolkhoz) and the state farm (sovkhoz). As the institutions

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into which rural populations of the Soviet Union were collectivized in the 1920s and 1930s, these farms were critical instruments of social control through which state power was extended over the countryside.4 As a result, the regime came to rely on farm chairs as agents of the state for mobilizing rural labor, distributing resources, utilizing technical equipment, and fulfilling agricultural production plans. This provided farm chairs with informal authority as large-scale operations and economic resources were placed under their control. Similar to enterprise managers in charge of natural resource extraction or heavy industry in other parts of the Soviet Union, chairs of collective farms emerged during the Soviet period as powerful local actors. Even at the height of state power under Stalin, farm chairs were able to establish circles of mutual protection at the local level.5 In particular, the managers of collective farms enjoyed more autonomy from the state. In contrast to the stricter budgetary controls exercised over state farms, for example, collective farms could purchase (and therefore own) all the inputs used in agricultural production, determine the wages of farm workers, sell products to the state, and retain surplus income.6 During the Stalinist period, responsibility for exercising control over collective farms was divided between the district (raion) party committee, or raikom, and the machine tractor station (MTS). Although these organizations commanded considerable formal authority, effective administrative controls over collective farms were not established. Rather, “the old, episodic ‘campaign style’ of party guidance in fact remained a central feature [of local control] on the village scene [and] by the time of Stalin’s death agricultural policy and administration had settled into a drearily stereotyped pattern.”7 In an attempt to bring the administrative apparatus closer to agricultural production, Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, instituted reforms that effectively devolved authority to lower levels of the state and to collective farms. Although Khrushchev’s plan was designed to reduce administrative agents’ shirking of responsibilities by assigning them specific (as opposed to overlapping) duties, these changes unintentionally provided collective farm chairs with increased maneuvering room within the Soviet state apparatus.8 Moreover, the Communist Party leadership responsible for exercising control over the rural economy was often burdened by limited resources. As a result, raikom and obkom (provincial party committee) secretaries became less involved in the day-to-day operations of rural enterprises and farms, leaving them to local management. Party leaders’ involvement primarily arose if farms failed to meet plan targets—producing a “distinct pattern of crisis intervention” in agricultural production.9 By the late Soviet period, therefore, the state had been unable to design and enact reliable supervisory mechanisms over agricultural production. Although Brezhnev reversed many of Khrushchev’s reforms and sought to promote cadres

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with a technical agricultural background to run collective farms,10 few substantial changes were made to address the system’s ineffective administrative structure. As Peter Rutland notes of the Brezhnev era, “Because a stable, successful structure of economic administration had not been established, party organs continued to exercise many of the direct managerial functions which they had taken on in the 1930s.”11 In a sign that collective farms were acquiring greater influence over agricultural policy, several interfarm associations and agro-industrial complexes—such as the Raion Agro-Industrial Association (RAPO)—were created in the 1960s.12 Ostensibly formed to enhance coordination of agricultural activity, they established an institutional base from which farm chairs could extend their authority over an entire district’s rural economy. By the end of the Soviet period, the local apparatus of state administration responsible for carrying out agricultural policy had suffered significant “institutional decay,” which Andropov and Gorbachev in their reform efforts had failed to overcome.13 On the contrary, farm chairs and other enterprise managers had emerged as Soviet style local strongmen, with few checks on their authority. Converting their unrivaled control over resources into rents, however, required protection and access to the patronage networks spanning the state’s institutional framework.

Patronage Networks Although patronage flourished during the Brezhnev era, it did not originate under his leadership.14 Rather, it traces back to several developments during the construction of the Soviet state. First, political power at the lower levels of the state was concentrated within district and provincial committees of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). As the state offices representing the executive branch of the Soviet state, responsible for implementing government policies, these committees exercised significant on-the-ground influence. Second, party committees exercised considerable influence over distributions of resources from the state to local economic units within their jurisdiction. As such, they constituted entry points into the state for local strongmen seeking to obtain access to inputs—raw materials, technological equipment, and specialized labor—for their industrial, agricultural, or resource extraction operations. Third, the nomenklatura system established a means by which posts within the local state apparatus were filled by those who were already occupying key positions in republican and provincial party committee posts. This kept personnel decisions restricted to those with connections to politicians within the state. As Fainsod writes, the formal state apparatus concealed “a constellation of power centers . . . with fields of influence extending through the Party, the police, the

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administrative and military hierarchies.”15 Obkom and raikom secretaries were among the most crucial of these “power centers” within the Soviet state, exercising virtually unrivaled political power in their jurisdictions.16 As a result, patron-client relations formed between regional politicians and managers of local enterprises (such as heads of factories, mines, and farms), in which protection and access to resources was exchanged for illicit incomes. As described by Il'ia Zemtsov, regional politicians in the Soviet state were in a position to extract unusually large sums of money from local economic actors within their jurisdiction. The secretary of the party committee of an industrial region accumulates sums that far exceed his formal salary. This illicit income is derived from obligatory tributes and dues from various enterprises and from sums given by administrative organs—the police, judges, prokurators. The secretary of the party committee of a rural region accumulates about as much, the loss of industrial income being compensated for by payments from collective and state farms.17 In exchange for this income, party secretaries provided protection for those within their jurisdiction—particularly from organs of local law enforcement that were formally responsible for exercising control and surveillance over these economic operations. The fact that police, judges, and prokurators also paid bribes to obkom first secretaries demonstrates how informal relationships encompassed and undermined formal mechanisms of social and political control— what were known as “family circles” of local elites.18 These administrative organs themselves may have received bribes or favors from local economic heads, which they passed on to obkom first secretary.19 In addition to providing protection from instruments of political control, such as inspections, party secretaries also passed on a portion of their income to higher ups in the state apparatus to ensure the distribution of production inputs and local budget funds from the republican center. These ties served as the foundation for “parallel authority structures” that extended upward to the republican central committee first secretary, who was in turn beholden to Moscow.20 As Rigby describes it, the system was one that institutionalized patronage within the Soviet state: At the same time, however, it enabled the regional and republican bosses installed by Moscow to progressively pack the leading positions in all local organizations with “cadres” personally beholden to them. The monopoly which the latter collectively enjoyed and mutually shared over access to jobs, goods, services, and privileges of all kinds turned them into a myriad of interlocking charmed circles, the totality of which are

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often seen as constituting the dominant social group in the USSR—the “nomenklatura.”21 Some have even gone so far as to characterize the political elite within the nomenklatura system as constituting a social class, separate from the rest of Soviet society.22 In many Soviet republics, places on provincial and republican nomenklatura were reserved for particular nationalities (sometimes Russians)— especially in provinces with high-concentrations of agricultural, industrial, or resource-extraction operations.23 Patronage politics at the base of the Soviet state was by no means static. Local political offices were often where political careers were established in the context of shifting alliances, which had yet to congeal into long-term relationships. Moreover, provincial and district committee politics were where conflicts were waged in an effort to establish one’s political credentials—to rise from obscurity—within the party. To acquire a foothold within the local state apparatus was to secure recognition from above (whether it was through merit or favoritism). As Niazi writes, “alliances were formed” and “destinies of adversaries were decided” not only based on local and regional identities, but also on whose career advancement would provide access to rents for the locality.24 The emergence of local strongmen within agricultural enterprises (especially collective farm chairs) and the proliferation of patronage networks within provinces occurred throughout the Soviet Union, becoming critical sources of state weakness in all post-Soviet states. Although a common feature of Soviet state development in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, they took on very different forms, promoting interregional competitive pressures in the former while facilitating co-optation in the latter.

Resources in Soviet Tajikistan and Uzbekistan Uneven Resource Concentrations in Tajikistan Granted the status of a union republic within the USSR in 1929, Tajikistan was originally attached as a province of neighboring Uzbekistan and, during those years (1925–29), was headed by a member of the Samarkand elite.25 Aside from a brief interlude in the 1930s, during which Pamiris of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO) were favored by Moscow, Tajikistan’s internal politics remained heavily influenced by its connections to Uzbekistan for most of the Soviet period. Since the end of World War II, the republic’s central and regional political offices were dominated by elites who originated from Leninabad Province—the province most closely tied to Uzbekistan in cultural and economic

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terms. As a result of Moscow’s preference toward cadres from Leninabad and its dependence on them to run the republic, Tajikistan’s development clearly favored Leninabad at the expense of other regions. Leninabadi dominance in republican politics significantly distorted the patterns of investment and economic development in Tajikistan. With the exception of the regions of GBAO and Ura-Teppe, more than 90 percent of the farming population in every region of Tajikistan was collectivized by 1939.26 Yet, as table 2.1 shows, investment toward developing agricultural capacity—funds spent on construction and irrigation projects—clearly favored certain regions over others. Between 1939 and 1944, funds earmarked from the state budget for Leninabad Province totaled 7,838,400, GBAO 680,000, Kurgan-Teppe Province 525,900, Kuliab Province 64,900, and Garm Province 24,100 rubles. It is evident that Leninabad received a disproportional amount from the state budget. Moreover, both Leninabad and Kurgan-Teppe were allowed to develop a much larger economic base, demonstrated by the fact that both provinces were able to summon nearly 20 million rubles each, whereas Kuliab, GBAO, and Garm could scarcely raise a fraction of that amount. The manner in which Tajikistan’s infrastructure developed was, therefore, a consequence of the political decisions made in Dushanbe and Moscow, and those decisions fundamentally altered the landscape of economic and political institutions in the republic. As a result of receiving this investment, the provinces of Leninabad and Kurgan-Teppe became centers of cotton production, their collective farms enjoying a higher income—both in monetary terms and in the form of agricultural inputs from the center (seed, minerals, and farming equipment). One of the greatest sources of interregional tension in the republic was in Kurgan-Teppe’s Vakhsh River valley. This province was transformed into Tajikistan’s primary cotton-producing region through large infusions of resources—including a massive irrigation development project totaling more than 15 million rubles alone (see table 2.1).27 For Kuliabi elites in particular, the provision of land and leading positions within collective farms in Kurgan-Teppe, as well as the concentrated allocation of resources to the region, generated a sense of being marginalized and resentment against those benefiting from this investment (particularly those who had been transplanted from Garm).28 As table 2.2 shows, elites in Kurgan-Teppe Province commanded the lion’s share of the republic’s agricultural wealth, with its collective farms bringing in more than 40 percent of all monetary income of collective farms in the republic. It is followed by Leninabad Province, whose farm income averaged 24 percent of the total (though this was compensated by the region’s large industrial base). Collective farms in Kuliab Province, whose economic base is split between animal husbandry and cotton production, brought in only 13 percent of the republican

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TABLE 2.1 Infrastructure investments by province, Tajikistan, 1939–44

YEAR OF CONSTRUCTION

TOTAL COST (RUBLES)

AMOUNT FROM STATE BUDGET (RUBLES)

1940–41

11,148,700

5,335,900

5,812,800

714,900

684,500

30,400

1939–42

6,808,700

0

6,808,700

1940

5,025,000

1,200,000

3,825,000

1940–42

1,818,800

0

1,818,800

1940–42

1,945,800

618,000

1,327,800

27,461,900

7,838,400

19,623,500

1939–42

15,976,200

0

15,976,200

1941

588,000

250,800

337,200

1940–41

969,800

0

969,800

Piazi canal, Jirghatal District

1940–42

1,183,800

275,100

908,700

Construction of Stalinabad

1944

761,500

0

761,500

NAME/DESCRIPTION AND LOCATION OF PROJECT

Large Ferghana canal, Konib-

AMOUNT OTHERWISE FINANCED (RUBLES)

adam District Water transfer system, Konibo-

1941

dom District Construction projects, Konibodom District Northern Ferghana canal, Asht District Irrigation and water projects, Asht District Taksan-Kyariz canal, Penjikent District Leninabad Province Irrigation project, Vakhsh District Besh-Tegerman canal, Kolkhozobod District Construction projects, Kolkhozobod District

Right-Bank canal Kurgan-Teppe Province

19,479,300

525,900

18,953,400

United canals, Kuliab District

1940

38,600

4,600

34,000

United Waterway canal, Farkhar

1940

513,400

60,300

453,100

552,000

64,900

487,100

1940

1,288,800

494,900

793,900

1940

517,600

185,100

332,500

1,806,400

680,000

1,126,400

154,000

24,100

129,000

154,000

24,100

129,000

District Kuliab Province Barzudskii canal, Roshan District Small construction, Miscellaneous GBAO Small construction, miscellan. Garm Province

1942

Source: Data drawn from R. F. Akhmetzyanova, N. I. Gertsman, L. A. Dusmatova, Iz istorii kolkhoznogo stroitel’stva v Tadzhikskoi SSR 1938–1958 (Dushanbe: “Irfon,” 1985), pp. 137–38.

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39

total income and several of the districts located in Karategin Valley (Garm, Komsomolobod, and Jirghatal), known for their fruits and vegetables production, generated virtually no income. Therefore, the allocation of local economic units in the agricultural sector was unbalanced across regions. By the end of the Soviet period, the concentration of cotton-producing collective farms in Leninabad and Kurgan-Teppe had promoted an infusion of resources into those regions, to the exclusion of other localities. Moreover, there was little attempt to compensate for the imbalance in investments in cotton production with a more equitable disbursement of other funds. If anything, the pattern of local budget allocations over time seemed to reinforce the economic disparities across regions—with the greatest benefits being distributed to the city of Dushanbe and the regions of Kurgan-Teppe and Leninabad. Between 1966 and 1990, local budgets of these areas averaged roughly 66 percent of the republican total.29 In more ways than one, the distribution and allocation of resources across the republic remained skewed in favor of Leninabad and Kurgan-Teppe, while excluding Kuliab, GBAO, and the districts within the Karategin Valley (previously under Garm Province).30

Even Resource Distributions in Uzbekistan In Uzbekistan, by contrast, Bolsheviks constructed Soviet power around several competing territorial bases, which were incorporated into administrative TABLE 2.2

Gross income of collective farms, Tajikistan (as percent of total) 1958

1964

1966

Kurgan-Teppe Province

41.7

41.7

42.6

Leninabad Province

22.2

24.7

24.0

Kuliab Province

12.7

14.9

13.6

6.8

5.0

4.9

Hissar District

5.0

3.7

4.6

Lenin District

4.9

3.5

4.1

Regar District

Ordzhonikidzeabad District

4.0

3.1

3.3

Gorno-Badakhshan Province (GBAO)

1.8

1.7

1.9

Garm District

0.4

0.8

0.7

Komsomolabad District

0.2

0.3

0.2

Jirghatal District

0.2

0.2

0.2

Source: Narodnoe khozaistvo Tadzhikskoi SSR (Dushanbe: “Irfon,” multiple issues).

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divisions of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) upon its creation in 1924. Competition between political leaders from these three areas, fostered by Moscow as a means of maintaining its control over the republic, came to define economic development in Soviet Uzbekistan. Collectivization, which was completed in Uzbekistan by the late 1930s, had several parallel developments with Tajikistan.31 First, it had concentrated enormous resources under farm chairs, reshaping the problem of political control around collectivized agricultural units and their managers. Second, mechanisms of control were similar to those employed in Tajikistan. For many years centrally enforced rapid turnovers prevented chairs from extending their tenures and solidifying their local bases for any significant periods of time. During the 1930s, for instance, turnovers of farm chairs and their brigade leaders proceeded at an extremely high rate in Uzbekistan.32 Then, in the years following World War II, there was far more stability among collective farm chairs, availing them of opportunities to develop economic power bases autonomous from the state. Veterans from the war returned home to fill leadership positions on collective farms, the most powerful of them holding their positions well into the Brezhnev era.33 And, it became the norm, under Brezhnev, for collective farm chairs—even those without protection from political elites at the republican level—to remain in office for fifteen years or more. In this sense, Uzbekistan reflected Tajikistan and other Soviet republics. Yet the way in which collectivization was carried out distributed resources far more evenly than those in Tajikistan. As table 2.3 shows, investments in irrigation during the Second Five-Year Plan (1933–37) totaled 27.1 million rubles in Uzbekistan, and investment patterns also show that infrastructure was highly developed in several provinces where significant cotton production was planned: Ferghana, Samarkand, Tashkent, and Khorezm. Investments in these regions in 1938 alone amount to more than 7 million rubles, which is a significant amount when viewed alongside the total investments in Uzbekistan for the five years prior. These regions were clearly targeted for special attention, both in Moscow and by Uzbekistan’s republican leadership. The pattern of these investments ensured the economic importance of these regions in the republic. It is not surprising that by the late Soviet period local observers often viewed the republic—at least in terms of designing economic plans—as subsets of economic regions centered on these same provinces.34 Moreover, it was clear that Moscow was interested in developing the agricultural potential of enterprises in the Ferghana Valley. In 1939, a massive infusion of funds was directed to construct the Large Ferghana Canal. As table 2.3 shows, this project alone required approximately half the amount

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41

TABLE 2.3 Infrastructure investments by province, Uzbekistan, 1933–39 DESCRIPTION AND LOCATION OF PROJECTS

YEAR OF CONSTRUCTION

TOTAL COST (RUBLES)

Uzbekistan

1933–37

27,100,000

Total

1933–37

27,100,000

Total irrigation investment, Khorezm Province

1938

2,055,000

Total irrigation investment, Ferghana Province*

1938

1,665,000

Irrigation repairs, Samarkand Province

1938

1,000,000

Total irrigation investment, Tashkent Province

1938

868,000

Total irrigation investment, Bukhara Province

1938

720,000

Remaining investment split between other seven provinces

1938

922,000

Total

1938

7,230,000

Large Ferghana canal, Ferghana Province

1939

5,000,000**

Southern and Northern Ferghana canals, Tashkent canal,

1939

10,000,000**

1939

15,000,000

Kattakurgan water transfer facility (Samarkand), TashSakin canal (Khorezm), and Su-Eli and Lenin-Yab canals (Karakalpakistan) Total Source: Aminova 1981, pp. 184–208. *Includes districts that were later part of Namangan Province (Pap and Chust). **Author’s calculated estimates.

invested in major irrigation projects in the provinces of Khorezm, Karakalpakistan, Samarkand, Tashkent, and in other parts of Ferghana Province. Thus, while elites from Samarkand Province remained in the republic’s top leadership posts for much of the late Soviet period, they could not ignore the importance of Ferghana Province (and other regions in the Ferghana Valley) simply because of its sheer size and its contribution to Uzbekistan’s economic output. As a result of these investments, the concentration of economic resources and the productive power of agricultural enterprises were fairly even across the republic. As table 2.4 shows, farm chairs in eight of the republic’s thirteen provinces generated an income of approximately 8–16 percent of the total. In addition, only three provinces had extremely limited resources—Navoii, Syrdarya, and Jizzax—within their borders, preventing collective farm chairs from generating a significant profit. Of these, Jizzax and Navoii would be dependent on Samarkand and Syrdarya dependent on Tashkent for protection from central control and access to state rents.

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TABLE 2.4 Gross income of collective farms, Uzbekistan (as percent of total) 1965

1970

1975

1980

1982

Samarkand Province

11.7

12.1

14.5

15.7

15.9

Tashkent Province

12.5

10.8

12.1

12.1

12.4

Andijan Province

12.6

11.7

13.2

9.0

8.8

Bukhara Province

8.2

10.7

7.5

11.7

12.0

Khorezm Province

10.9

10.0

9.4

9.1

9.8

Ferghana Province

10.3

9.3

9.5

9.1

8.1

Surkhandarya Province

8.7

9.3

9.5

8.0

8.6

Namangan Province

9.2

8.3

8.6

8.6

8.5

Kaskadarya Province

5.1

7.2

5.5

5.4

5.2

Karakalpakistan Province

4.0

3.9

4.0

3.8

3.1

Navoii Province

2.2

2.6

2.4

4.0

4.8

Syrdarya Province

2.8

2.7

2.8

2.8

2.5

Jizzax Province

1.6

1.5

1.0

0.7

0.4

Source: Narodnoe Khozaistvo Uzbekskoi SSR (Tashkent: Uzbekistan, multiple issues).

Patronage Politics in Soviet Tajikistan and Uzbekistan Patronage in Soviet Tajikistan As elsewhere in the Soviet Union, patronage ties had begun to envelope local and regional party committees well before the Brezhnev era in Tajikistan.35 Devolution of authority within Tajikistan’s state administration enabled patronage networks to grow and undermine surveillance and control over local economic activity. Politically and administratively, four regions of Tajikistan were major points of center-periphery power struggles that fostered the distinct shape of the republic’s patronage ties: Leninabad, Kuliab, Garm, and Gorno-Badakhshan. The northernmost region of Leninabad, however, remained the primary base of political power throughout the Soviet period. Leninabad’s political dominance in Soviet Tajikistan had several consequences for patronage in the republic. First, Leninabad maintained its favorable position as the most urbanized and industrialized area of Tajikistan in part by abolishing all other oblasts (i.e., downgrading them to district status) by 1956, except the Autonomous Oblast of Gorno-Badakhshan (GBAO), whose status could only be altered by Moscow.36 At the time, eliminating provincial apparatuses in other parts of Tajikistan was framed as a necessary way for Leninabadi elites to extend direct oversight and control over district-level operations in order to counter prevalent corruption,

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43

inefficiency, and other abuses in southern areas of Tajikistan.37 However, it also undermined the ability of economic elites (especially those connected to the cotton industry) to construct regional patronage structures from which political cadres might compete with elites from Leninabad for positions in national institutions—a means of political control used elsewhere in the Soviet Union at the time.38 In this sense, Leninabad used obkom and raikom first secretaries as their “prefects” in eastern and southern Tajikistan who represented Leninabadi regional interests more than the interests of Moscow’s central leadership and the Soviet state. Even during the various years that Kuliab, Garm, GBAO, and Kurgan-Teppe enjoyed provincial status, their provincial (and in some cases district) apparatuses were often staffed by officials who supported Leninabad’s republican leadership and the status quo. Second, Tajikistan’s leaders used the nomenklatura system to foster the dependence of other regions on political elites from Leninabad Province. Because party education was critical to obtaining top posts in provincial and national institutions, the most promising cadres were sent to Tashkent High Party School. With shared ethnic ties, proximity to Tashkent, and patrons within leading central institutions, Leninabad’s political elite controlled access to the school and few elites from areas outside Leninabad were able to attend prior to the 1970s.39 Third, Leninabad retained a tight grip over Tajikistan’s major cotton-producing regions in the south. By installing a cohort of elites as collective farm chairs and raikom first secretaries who were from Leninabad directly, of Leninabadi extraction, or ethnically Uzbek, most of the large-scale, wealth-producing bases in Kurgan-Teppe remained under the control of Leninabad’s political elite. A similar, though less direct, influence from Leninabad was extended over political and economic leaders in Kuliab. In short, elites in Kurgan-Teppe and Kuliab remained dependent on or closely tied to their counterparts in Leninabad. Using lateral movements by raikom first secretaries within a province between 1960 and 1991 as an indication of regional patronage, figure 2.1 displays the disparity between the provinces of Tajikistan. Lateral movements refer to the appointment of an individual from one raikom first secretary position to another within the same province, which indicates the individual had a patron at the provincial level since competition for these positions was rigorous. As such, this indicates the ability of provincial leaders to build patronage bases.40 Whereas 26 percent of all turnovers of raikom first secretaries in Leninabad moved from one district to another, similar movements in Kurgan-Teppe and Kuliab amounted to only 13 percent and 9 percent, respectively. Moreover, nearly all of those who moved laterally in Kurgan-Teppe, moreover, were transplanted in from Leninabad or other regions. In Leninabad Province, collective farm chairs and cotton-processing factory managers fostered the development of a powerful regional patronage base,

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far more so than in other regions of the republic. While farm chairs in Leninabad cemented patron-client ties through personal relationships with the obkom first secretary and raikom first secretaries (including those outside their district),41 those in Kurgan-Teppe and Kuliab cultivated no such ties and were forced to become dependent on Leninabad for inputs and investments (such as seed, minerals, water, and technological equipment).42 By the end of the 1970s, these inequalities had created two sets of pressures on the republican leadership. First came a call for a broader representation of political elites at Tajikistan’s republican level and a more even distribution of resources—particularly from elites originating from the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast and districts in the Karategin Valley. Their claims intensified as cadres from these areas—benefiting from korenizatsiia (nativization) policies of the 1970s that provided them new educational opportunities—constituted a rising share of the pool of available political cadres.43 Leninabadi elites responded by opening positions to them within Tajikistan’s less powerful ministries, such as its educational institutions. Second, elites in Kurgan-Teppe and Kuliab provinces increasingly chafed under their dependence on Leninabad Province and its politicians in the top posts of the republic. Under Brezhnev’s “stability of cadres” policy, which removed purges as a mechanism of political control over other regions, Dushanbe was forced to accommodate Kuliab by upgrading it to provincial status in 1973. The attempt by Tajikistan’s central leadership to continue to directly run the

As percent of total turnovers

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Leninabad

Kurganteppe

Kuliab

Province FIGURE 2.1

Lateral movements of raikom first secretaries, Tajikistan, 1960–91

Source: Calculated from author’s database of political elites. The sources for this database are listed in appendix.

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45

region by appointing a member of Leninabad’s elite as governor of the province failed when he was assassinated in 1974, and a member of Kuliab’s own provincial elite was appointed instead.44 Gradually, an unofficial pact between Leninabadi elites and those from Kuliab emerged, in which the latter provided raw cotton in exchange for “funds of investment in the region of Kuliab, . . . the integration of a party of elites from this region, and . . . promises of autonomy from the Uzbeks of Kuliab.”45 In practice, though, this accommodation was not carried out. Despite the elevation of Kuliab’s status from district to province, the center’s manipulation of patronage politics in Kuliab continued. Through the continued role of Uzbeks at the provincial level, the appointment of regional politicians born in the province but without a real client base in the region, and by limiting the ability of district governors to gain reappointment in other districts in Kuliab, the central leadership largely constrained the mobility of elites from Kuliab to the province. For instance, provincial party committee (obkom) first secretaries technically came from within Kuliab’s elite after 1974—Ahmedjan Hisamitdinov (1974–82), Izzatullo Hayoev (1983–86), and Sulton Mirzoshoev (1990–92)—but Hisamitdinov was an ethnic Uzbek and Hayoev spent most of his career in the regions of Garm and Gorno-Badakhshan.46 As shown in figure 2.1 this prevented these elites from forming autonomous client bases within Kuliab. Only 9 percent of the raikom first secretaries were transferred to similar posts in the province, indicating the absence of a regional patron. Thus power-sharing reforms made in Tajikistan in the 1970s, although ostensibly built around shared benefits derived from the kolkhoz system, kept power in the hands of the Leninabadi elite. Limited patronage extended to Kuliab and Kurgan-Teppe only served to provide protection for a growing informal economy outside state surveillance and control, while perpetuating their dependence on Leninabad. Even more clear-cut are the cases of Garm and GBAO, to whom patronage was not extended, leaving their elites excluded from power and wealth in Tajikistan. These pressures would emerge with devastating force under Gorbachev’s reforms.

Patronage in Soviet Uzbekistan Competition for central posts differed in Uzbekistan, where Moscow alternately promoted members of the Samarkand axis and the Tashkent-Ferghana axis. After each regional faction gained leadership of the republic, a series of purges of cadres from the other faction resulted.47 Yet Moscow also ensured that accommodations were usually made for members of other regions in several primary posts.48 As a result, several factors mitigated against interregional competition.49

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First, because Samarkand was largely excluded from top positions in the republic until the late 1950s, competition arose within the leaders of the TashkentFerghana axis. At the end of the Stalinist period, and as part of Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization, Nuriddin Mukhitdinov rose rapidly from a secretary in Namangan’s obkom in 1948 to CPUz first secretary in 1955. At the time, Mukhitdinov’s primary rival was Sabir Kamalov, a member of the Stalinist cadre, which continued to occupy key central posts. Although both Mukhitdinov and Kamalov were born in Tashkent, the former had risen to power through Namangan and the latter through Ferghana. Upon Mukhitdinov’s promotion to Moscow in 1957, he was succeeded by Kamalov. Under Kamalov, Namangan Province was broken up and its districts combined with Ferghana and Andijan—perhaps in part as a means of reducing the patronage base of his rivals Mukhitdinov and Olimov. This cleavage within eastern Uzbekistan’s elite helped weaken interregional competition later on. Second, the rise of Samarkandi elites was gradual. With Kamalov’s dismissal and the appointment of Sharaf Rashidov, elites from Samarkand slowly worked their way into Uzbekistan’s top leadership positions. For much of Rashidov’s early years as first secretary of CPUz the central state apparatus continued to be staffed by elites from Ferghana and Tashkent (such as Yadgar Nasreddinova and Rakhmankul Kurbanov). It was only after the occurrence of an interethnic riot in Tashkent—the “Pakhtakor Incident” in 1969—that Rashidov was able to solidify his power and pin much of the blame for the riot on Kurbanov and Nasreddinova. Third, administrative units in Uzbekistan were not eliminated by opposing factions. Under Rashidov two provinces, Jizzax (in 1974) and Navoii (in 1982), were created to increase his patronage base. Both were broken up after his disgrace, and then returned to provincial status by Islam Karimov, whose postindependence politics included a public rehabilitation of Rashidov. Whereas the ruling faction in Tajikistan sought to eliminate the provincial statuses of their opponents (those of Garm, Kuliab, and Kurgan-Teppe), the strategy under Rashidov was to reinforce Samarkand’s patronage by establishing new provinces. As a result, the patronage ties within and across provinces of the Ferghana Valley were allowed to remain. Fourth, there was a difference with Tajikistan in how regional provinces were staffed. Despite the ongoing competition for power within national institutions, one regional faction did not try to directly staff other regional apparatuses with agents that represented their own interests. During the late Soviet period, for instance, when elites from Samarkand enjoyed dominance in central institutions, other regional apparatuses were never consistently staffed with elites from the region.50 As a result, any province within Uzbekistan that enjoyed a significant concentration of economic resources was able to foster the development of its own

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47

patronage base linking local enterprise managers with the obkom secretariat. As figure 2.2 shows, in the last thirty years of the Soviet period, raikom first secretaries in many provinces in Uzbekistan were able to transfer to the same position in another district. There is a relatively even proliferation of local patronage ties across provinces, with lateral raikom first secretary turnovers in Andijan, Samarkand, Namangan, Surkhandarya, and Khorezm ranging from 23–25 percent of the time. To the extent that there is inequality, it appears to favor Ferghana Province, where lateral movements were nearly 33 percent of all turnovers. In short, rather than an effort by one regional axis to dominate the others, an even distribution of patronage gave local elites roughly equivalent access to state rents within the republic. Finally, the nomenklatura system encouraged a diffusion of patronage in the republic. By 1967, 590 gorkom and raikom secretaries and raispolkom chairs passed through the Tashkent High Party School’s interrepublic programs of study, coming from all provinces. The same year, the school created six-month “inter-oblast courses” in Tashkent, Ferghana, and Samarkand, and in its first year approximately nine hundred staff members of district party committees and soviets were trained at the three sites.51 For elites from across Uzbekistan, these interrepublic and interregional courses were sites at which contacts could be

Percent of total turnovers

35 30 25 20 15 10 5

Qa

sh

qa

da

ryo Bu kh Ka ara rak alp ak ist an Na vo ii Sy rd ary o

nt ke sh

zax

Ta

Jiz

m rez

an

Kh o

ng

ma

Na

da

nd rka Su

rkh

an

an dij

ma Sa

an

a

An

rgh Fe

ryo

0

Province FIGURE 2.2 1960–91

Lateral movements of raikom first secretaries, Uzbekistan,

Source: Calculated from author’s database of political elites. The sources for this database are listed in appendix.

VERSO RUNNING CHAPTER 2 HEAD

80 70 60 50 40 30 20

Uzbekistan Tajikistan

10

01 20

96 19

91 19

19

86

81 19

76 19

71 19

19

19

66

0

61

Percent of all territorial administrators appointed

48

Year FIGURE 2.3 Governors appointed outside region of origin, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, 1961–2004 Source: Data calculated from author’s collection of biographies of governors, which were drawn from publications and interviews. Coding of appointments was made using full biographies on the basis of where an appointee was educated and made their career prior to being appointed.

established and relationships formed.52 It is noteworthy that neither of Moscow’s reformist CPUz first secretaries in the 1980s, Inamzhan Usmanhodzhaev (1983– 88) and Rafiq Nishanov (1988–89), attended the school. The school’s graduates constituted a pool of important nomenklatura elites during the Soviet period and after independence, when graduates were appointed to ten out of thirteen posts of provincial governor in the early 1990s. As a consequence, multiple centers of patronage emerged in Uzbekistan, spanning most of its provinces. The stark regional inequalities that marked Tajikistan’s politics were, therefore, less acute in Uzbekistan.

Institutional Controls under Perestroika During the Soviet period, resources and patronage produced a range of rentseeking opportunities for local elites, but those opportunities did not lead to transformational state security outcomes because institutional controls from Moscow were intact. While there was a steady decline in the enforcement of public policies in the late Soviet era, the effects of rent seeking—co-optation and competition—were held in check until the late 1980s. At that time, perestroika

RESOURCES AND RENTS RECTO UNDER RUNNING SOVIET HEAD RULE

49

undermined many formal controls and forced republican leaderships to rely on top-down patronage to try to rein in local elites. The degree of this change in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan was profound (see figure 2.3), as evidenced by patterns of governor appointments in each republic. Governor appointments (or obkom first secretary appointments during the Soviet period) can be used to interpret the level of central state power over the regions. For most of the Soviet period the two republics closely track one another, illustrating how changes made in Moscow were reflected in each republic. Both experienced some stability during the Brezhnev era and then witnessed an effort by central leaderships in each republic to reassert their authority. Compared to the 1970s, in the 1980s the number of first secretaries appointed to posts outside their home region rose by 20–30 percent, demonstrating the effect of perestroika reforms under Mikhail Gorbachev. As the figure demonstrates, the dramatic decline in central authority occurred simultaneously in both republics between 1987 and 1991. As the Soviet state collapsed, formal constraints on local elites broke down, leading central leaders of both republics to rely on top-down co-optation to keep increasingly unruly elites under control. In order to do so, state leaders in both made political concessions to localities in the early 1990s by replacing anticorruption appointees of the late 1980s with governors who had made their careers locally. In Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the percent of appointees sent to positions outside their region of origin dropped from 50–60 percent in the late 1980s to 0 percent by 1993. This drop demonstrates how quickly central state power over the regions in both republics evaporated during the breakup of the Soviet state, and how important patronage and the manipulation of rent-seeking opportunities available to local elites were to retain control in a rapidly changing political environment. But as the next chapter shows, the leverage leaders had over local elites through patronage varied greatly between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, carrying profound implications for the long-term development of each republic. Major differences between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan’s economic and political makeup by the end of the Brezhnev era were due to the vastly different ways in which the Soviet state was established and built in each republic. Varying concentrations of local economic resources were determined by patterns of collectivization and infrastructural development (particularly irrigation). In Tajikistan, collectivization and infrastructural investments favored Leninabad and KurganTeppe provinces, excluding other localities. In Uzbekistan, these same processes were executed differently, distributing resources to a broader set of provinces. Moreover, the devolution of political authority to regional and local party committees differed greatly between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In the former,

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patronage and political power was concentrated in Leninabad, while regional patronage bases were undercut in Tajikistan’s resource-poor eastern regions and severely limited in cotton-growing regions of Kurgan-Teppe and Kuliab. Conversely, patronage bases in the latter—in Samarkand, Ferghana, Andijan, Namangan, Surkhandarya, Tashkent, and Khorezm—were allowed to flourish. This helped ensure that local elites across the country would “buy in” to supporting the regime. Where these lines of patronage—as in Tajikistan—were far more attenuated, regime support would be less secure. For most of the Soviet period, however, these pressures on local elites were so submerged as to be inscrutable. Few would have predicted at the time that these subtle differences would lead to such dramatically divergent paths in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. This is partly because the formal institutional structures of the Soviet state held in check the powerful pressures of interregional competition in Tajikistan and top-down co-optation in Uzbekistan. It is also partly due to local elites’ uncertainty and confusion about shifting rent-seeking opportunities during the collapse of the Soviet state. In the next chapter I examine how resources, patronage and rent seeking combined to produce state security fragmentation in Tajikistan and state security cohesion in Uzbekistan.

3 PATHWAYS TO FAILURE: TAJIKISTAN AND UZBEKISTAN

During my second visit to southern Tajikistan’s Amirshoev Farm, after failing to catch up with the farm chair (whose BMW outran my driver’s twenty-year-old Jiguli), I turned to others at the farm to interview. Amirshoev is the furthest farm from Kuliab’s district center, requiring a thirty-minute drive over deteriorated roads through well-maintained cultivated fields. Situated deep in Khatlon Province, in the foothills not far from the Afghanistan border, the farm has its own bazaar, apteka (pharmacy), and several shops clustered in the center, constituting a self-sufficient village. With a worried glance in the direction of his departed boss, the secretary (who was initially quite knowledgeable of the farm’s history) directed me to the “head of a local soviet.” My introduction to that individual evoked an angry outburst, questioning why I came to him. Surrounded by a growing crowd of suspicious faces, I asked to speak with the former farm chair. On learning that he (with his wife and three children) had been assassinated by gunfire in a 1998 ambush by “competitors” while driving on the desolate road between Kuliab and Kurgan-Teppe—and that the current chair was his brother— my driver promptly declared that he was leaving (with or without me). As I later learned, this farm operated independently of the district center and was reportedly involved in a range of illegal (and/or illicit) economic activity from which it generated revenue that remained untouched by provincial or national elites.1 As indicated by its distant location, its self-sufficient revenue base, the untimely end of its former chair, and the cool reception I received, Amirshoev Farm existed outside the top-down patronage from central (or even district) state authorities. Amirshoev Farm illustrates the weak top-down patronage and restricted rent 51

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seeking that left local elites susceptible to state security fragmentation in many localities in Tajikistan. By contrast, most farms in Uzbekistan remained embedded within a top-down patronage system that encourages the co-optation of local elites into coercive resource extraction. As a prominent Samarkand Province journalist explained, Provincial governors are pressured by the president to fulfill their cotton and grain plans. They then transfer that demand to their district governors making it clear that they don’t care how the plans are fulfilled as long as the targets are met. The district governors then do the same to shirkat hojaligi [former collective farm] heads. . . . The shirkat hojaligi heads at the bottom spend most of their profit on bribes or purchasing crops to make it look like they are meeting plan targets.2 After the first grain harvest in 2003, for example, Samarkand’s provincial governor reportedly demanded two hundred tons of wheat from each shirkat hojaligi in the province for a Korean investment project. But as one local lawyer noted, “This fund is not legal. There are no documents or forms to be filled out. Nobody knows what this fund is or where the money is going. That is because it is all going to the governor.”3 Local economic operations, therefore, found themselves doubly squeezed—first by the extractive demands of the central state, then by rent-seeking elites who have marshaled local and regional law enforcement offices to execute their demands on enterprises and farms in the province. While damaging to the region’s economy, rent-seeking opportunities were opened to local elites in Samarkand Province because it secures their political support and motivates them to leverage local state security services in extraction. Across Uzbekistan, similar patterns emerged, partly explaining the drop in net transfers in profits from cotton production from 4.7 percent to 1.8 percent of the country’s GDP between 2000 and 2004.4 These examples illustrate the very different rent-seeking activities of local elites by the end of the 1990s. In Tajikistan’s Khatlon Province, elites who lacked the opportunity to convert their resources into rents operated independent of the state, while in Uzbekistan’s Samarkand Province local elites were enmeshed in a system of rent appropriation that made them highly dependent on protection and patronage from regional and central politicians. How did these divergent patterns of rent seeking arise? Why did one pattern promote state security fragmentation whereas the other reinforced state security cohesion? In this chapter I examine the process by which resource structure, patronage, and rent-seeking opportunities produce dramatic transformations of state security institutions. Focusing on Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in the final years of the Soviet Union, I explore how shifting rent-seeking opportunities (the loosening

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and tightening of access to state rents) altered the calculus of local elites in each republic, leading to intraelite competition, state security fragmentation, and civil war in the former and the co-optation of local elites into lucrative rent seeking, state security cohesion, and the rise of a coercive state in the latter. In a period defined by anticorruption reforms, mass arrests and dismissals of political elites, unprecedented political and economic liberalization, and large demonstrations that often turned violent, local elites’ long-standing patterns of access to power and wealth in each republic became openly contested. In Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, where cotton and grain production generated capital with limited mobility, these shifting rent-seeking opportunities were critical in mobilizing local elites. In Tajikistan, the opening and closing of rent-seeking avenues alternately enhanced and eroded local elites’ position in the republic’s patronage politics. These rises and reversals of fortunes generated uncertainty throughout the republic’s elite, especially among those in resource-poor areas who found themselves increasingly threatened with permanent exclusion from accessing rents. Moreover, exclusion from state rents also gave local elites autonomy from central government controls, making them vulnerable to competitive pressures from their counterparts in other regions. In Uzbekistan, the regime expanded rent-seeking opportunities evenly across regions. As local elites’ fortunes rose and their access to state rents became more secure, they became less susceptible to competitive pressures across the republic. Yet, access to state rents fostered a deeper dependence on the center, leaving them open to co-optation and top-down controls by the regime. This chapter demonstrates how these changes in rent-seeking opportunities promoted the onset and spread of particular state security outcomes across localities in each country. In contrast to existing assessments of Central Asia in this period, which often emphasize weak national identity, clan politics, localism, or regional identity, I argue that these subnational developments in rent-seeking access are the critical link explaining why Tajikistan’s declining state succumbed to failure, while Uzbekistan’s declining apparatus cohered around resource exploitation. In focusing on the major changes that state security institutions underwent in the late Soviet period, this chapter highlights three aspects of state failure. First, state failure occurs on the periphery of weak states and is not simply the product of developments at the center. While undoubtedly shaped by events in their capitals, state security transformations in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan originated and played out in the localities and provinces of each country. In Tajikistan, for example, incidents of fragmentation in many localities occurred in spite of (not because of) political maneuvering in the capital, outpacing power-sharing initiatives and eventually overwhelming central state authority

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altogether. Elite pacts in Tajikistan’s center—for instance, the 1992 Government of National Reconciliation—had negotiated regime transition, but they were unable to halt broader pressures of state security fragmentation that pulled the country into civil war. Second, state security outcomes in localities vary, producing multiple locallevel patterns within a single state.5 We should, therefore, consider local security outcomes as one of many arenas of state-society interactions that are multifaceted and fluid rather than homogenous and static. While shaped by long-standing structural conditions (i.e., local concentrations of resources), state security outcomes are always contingent on how the politics of rent seeking play out in each locality and how that rent seeking intensifies either the competition or co-optation of local elites. Third, these cases belie notions of a seamless descent into state security fragmentation or a lock-step march toward cohesion. State security transformations are highly irregular, disruptive processes, with each transformation in state security significantly different in how it emerges and comes to predominate within a state. State security fragmentation, for instance, spread rapidly through Tajikistan, a consequence of the explosive power of competitive pressures on elites. By contrast, top-down co-optation of elites in Uzbekistan’s localities occurred in a far more incremental fashion. While elites responded quickly to the loss of rent-seeking opportunities in Tajikistan, it took time for them to cultivate rent-seeking opportunities in Uzbekistan—to secure access to patrons, displace other elites, and ensure protection from prosecution by independent or overzealous law enforcement officials. In short, the timing of state security development varies in large part because of the shifting access to state rents and dynamics of competition and co-optation. The remainder of this chapter uses cases of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan—two highly similar countries whose economies are characterized by low capital mobility—to explore the logic of the argument and identify its empirical implications under conditions of transformational change. In the first section, I trace out the shifting politics of rent seeking in each case during the final years of Soviet power when political and economic reforms were being implemented across the USSR. In the second, I examine the onset and spread of state security outcomes in each case, focusing on (a) which localities were more susceptible to the initial fragmentation of security and law enforcement bodies than others and (b) why one state security outcome spread at the expense of another, eventually coming to predominate within the state. In the third section, I provide a first cut at evidence on how state security outcomes are institutionalized within territorial infrastructures over time.

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Perestroika and the Politics of Rent Seeking As the reforms of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) under Mikhail Gorbachev took shape across the USSR, their application in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan brought forth political and economic forces that were largely hidden during the late Soviet period. Restructuring led to political purges of long-standing elites within these republics, engendering mobilization from old guard elites who suddenly found themselves without a set of patrons to ensure their access to state rents. At other times, such purges were reversed, bringing back into office cohorts of old guard politicians (usually from cotton-rich areas) and, conversely, generating a reaction from local elites who were traditionally excluded from rent-seeking opportunities. As Gorbachev-era reform policies played out on the Central Asian periphery, they carried unusual weight on the politics of rent seeking in each republic.

Closed Off Rent-Seeking Opportunities in Tajikistan Between 1987 and 1992, changes in Tajikistan’s political environment led to profound shifts in rent-seeking opportunities. During glasnost, ideological divisions widened between political elites in the center, juxtaposing those who sought to dismantle the political-administrative system and its ties to the republic’s lucrative cotton economy against those elites who sought to preserve that system. Those ideological divisions became increasingly tied to regional interests. This was primarily due to purges of conservative political elites throughout the republic, which threatened the entrenched interests of Tajikistan’s powerful collective farm chairs and other “rural grandees.”6 In response, the latter attempted to retain their privileged access to state resources by making claims on the center in regionalist terms. As a result, reformist and conservative positions in the center became increasingly defined by regionally based assertions for power. Resourcerich local elites’ renewed access to state rents, and the exclusion of elites from resource-poor regions of Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO) and the Rasht Valley exacerbated interregional competition in Tajikistan, setting the stage for state security fragmentation. During the final years of the Soviet Union, there were three attempts by Tajikistan’s resource-poor elite to gain political power and (through it) secure access to rent appropriation. The first attempt began in the spring of 1987, when Tajikistan’s Communist Party first secretary Kahhar Makhamov introduced reforms designed to limit and eventually eliminate the influence of the republic’s old-regime elite. Makhamov’s attacks on the patronage networks within the

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Communist Party—particularly those in the provinces of Kuliab, Kurgan-Teppe, and Leninabad—removed many long-standing elites from political positions within the state apparatus. Many posts were filled with reformist politicians who came from the Rasht Valley and GBAO in eastern Tajikistan, whose view of political and economic reform was closely tied to regional inequities.7 For instance, Kuliab and Kurgan-Teppe were merged into Khatlon Province, and then placed under obkom first secretary Izzatullo Halimov, whose patronage base originated in Komsomolobod and Garm districts located in Rasht Valley. Halimov oversaw the removal of its oblispolkom chair, Habibullo Tabarov, on charges of corruption,8 and in the purges that followed, Russian cadres replaced elites as raikom first secretaries in Khatlon’s major cotton-producing localities such as the Vose and Farkhar districts.9 By contrast, first secretaries of GBAO’s obkom and the raikom apparatuses within the Rasht Valley—after a significant period of having outsiders run their regions—benefited from the appointment of local cadres. In addition to being displaced from key posts at the national and regional levels, rural elites in Kuliab became the focus of a second anticorruption tactic— a series of prokuratorial investigations beginning in 1987. However, the major cases in Kuliab never got to court, due to local elites’ capture of prokurator and police organs. Lenin Kolkhoz of Vose District, for example, had become the center of a large investigation during the late 1980s. The largest collective farm in Tajikistan, Lenin Kolkhoz produced seventeen thousand tons of cotton, one thousand tons of meat, and ten thousand tons of milk each year, and its chair from 1945–93, Mirali Makhmadaliev, had emerged as an unusually powerful local elite.10 The investigation focused on Lenin Kolkhoz and the cotton-processing plant in Vose District allegedly in response to complaints from workers of the plant and farmers on the kolkhoz about the falsification of raw cotton yields, bribery, and embezzlement of state funds. Because of the political influence of Makhmadaliev in Vose District, investigators were concerned for their safety and forced to reside in the provincial capital, Kuliab City, where they summoned informants for interviews and assembled evidence. Even with these precautions, the republican prokurator’s office was forced to halt the investigation twice over a two-year period, because members of the Kuliab provincial police force were used to beat and terrorize the petitioners and informants. Moreover, the reach of Makhmadaliev had extended to the national-level offices of Tajikistan’s law enforcement apparatus. Lieutenant colonel of Tajik SSR MVD, V. A. Shushakov, appointed by the Prokurator General of Tajikistan to head the investigation, had continually rotated investigators and thwarted the group’s progress to such a degree that he was forced to flee the republic and go into hiding after he was dismissed.11

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While few cases displayed such overt influence by a local elite over law enforcement agencies, reformers noted a general trend in which those under investigation were able to produce delays by prokurators, get local police forces to interfere in investigations, and bring about “an unwillingness of individual courts to take upon themselves the responsibility for carrying out acquittals or guilty sentences.”12 As a consequence, the use of one of the most conventional methods of political control in the Soviet Union—coercion through law enforcement organs—had failed. In fact, none of the twenty-one criminal cases initiated during Prokurator Mikhailin’s time in office (1988–90) brought a prosecution, nor were any of the investigations even carried out to completion.13 By 1990, moreover, there was a growing radicalization among reformist groups as they reacted to Makhamov’s concessions to conservative forces that were stalling reform in the republic. Ultimately, his decision to abandon reform altogether in Kuliab, Kurgan-Teppe, and Leninabad, prompted some reformists to call for the full abolition of the structural underpinnings of Tajikistan’s political economy. Their self-professed goals at the time were the dismantlement of structures of the administration of agricultural and industrial enterprises to be accompanied, in the political domain, by the abolition of administrative regions of Tajikistan, the explicit goal of which was to bring down the social foundations of the [power] of the Communist leaders, and to bring an end to the political “localism” that arose from it.14 Ultimately, when reform was abandoned by the end of 1990, the return of many former elite and the continued exclusion of Tajikistan’s eastern areas once again constricted the latter’s rent-seeking opportunities. By 1991, Makhamov had moved away from reformist groups.15 The second attempt by elites from GBAO and the Rasht Valley to acquire political power and secure access to rents resulted from the August 1991 coup to unseat Gorbachev, which prompted massive daily demonstrations in front of the Supreme Soviet in Tajikistan lasting several weeks. These demonstrations forced Makhamov to resign, and his interim replacement, Kadriddin Aslonov, openly favored the interests of reformers from Tajikistan’s eastern regions. He issued decrees banning the CPSU and appointing Mamadaez Navjuvanov as minister of internal affairs (which replaced Kuliab’s influence over that ministry since 1980 with someone from GBAO). In banning the Communist Party, Aslonov was removing the institution through which patronage was distributed to political and economic elites in Tajikistan’s resource-rich regions. Conservative deputies in Tajikistan’s legislature responded by calling an emergency session and replacing Aslonov with conservative hard-liner Rahman Nabiev.

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The third attempt occurred when Nabiev tried to revive the republic’s Sovietera political and economic system. In March 1992, Nabiev reversed Aslonov’s decrees, restoring the CPSU and publicly dismissing Navjuvanov.16 These reversals, particularly the latter (which occurred on public television) sparked a series of protests led by residents from GBAO under the banner of La'l-i Badakhshan (Ruby of Badakhshan), who feared they would be excluded from power. Having twice gained access to positions of power and the system’s rents, the GBAO and Rasht Valley elite called on their supporters to mobilize against the political and economic power of “cotton barons” from provinces of Leninabad, KurganTeppe, and Kuliab. As Olivier Roy notes of these groups in the crowd, “All were officially demanding Kenjayev’s resignation, but the real issue was the rising power of the excluded regionalist groups (Gharmis and Pamiris) against the Communist establishment . . . localist conflicts were exported to the capital.”17 These demonstrations went unchecked by repression from the state because Navjuvanov refused to enforce the state of emergency that the Supreme Soviet imposed in September 1991.18 Under perestroika, therefore, initial purges of local elites focused on cottonrich regions, which opened up rent-seeking opportunities for elites from resource-poor areas for the first time in nearly fifty years. Empowered by this new political influence, they pushed for an abolition of the entire system of expansive cotton production, concentrated political power in local and regional offices, and sought to secure lucrative state rents. That radicalization—which went far beyond Makhamov’s program of reform—led to an abandonment of anticorruption reforms in Tajikistan in 1990. The return of the former elite, which displaced elites from resource-poor areas, pushed the latter to counter with a second push for reform. Mass protests that followed forced Makhamov from power and led to a ban of the Communist Party of Tajikistan (CPT). When old guard elites used their control over the Supreme Soviet to regain control over the republic and reinstate the CPT, proreform elites made a third and final push for political control in May 1992, leading to a coalition government that many traditional elites in Leninabad, Kuliab, and Kurgan-Teppe found illegitimate. After half a century, the stable, though highly unequal, system of political power in the republic was challenged. Amid the confusion and uncertainty, rent seeking was central to the motives of many political elites—from both resourcerich and resource-poor regions—who were alternately granted and denied access to state rents. These waves of appointments, followed by reversals, intensified competitive pressures among local elites throughout the republic. Those originating from resource-poor regions were particularly open to competitive pressures as their exclusion from state rents rendered them less dependent on the

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center and more threatened by rising fortunes of other elites in cotton-rich regions who were (again) accessing state rents.

Open Rent-Seeking Opportunities in Uzbekistan In contrast to Tajikistan, local elites in Uzbekistan enjoyed a far more balanced concentration of resources, enabling large-scale purges of its political elite and anticorruption reforms to pass in the mid-1980s without being linked to regional inequities. These purges targeted some regions more than others, such as Samarkand, Bukhara, and Jizzax, but they were applied across all localities removing provincial and district political elites as well as collective farm chairs.19 Moreover, the abandonment of anticorruption measures in 1989 was followed by a dramatic expansion of local elites’ access to state rents across all regions. Under the guise of economic reform, a series of concessions to local elites in the early 1990s opened new rent-seeking opportunities, facilitating the co-optation of local elites to a far greater degree than in Tajikistan. The shift toward expanded access to state rents across Uzbekistan traces back to June 1989, when an outbreak of interethnic violence occurred between Uzbeks and Meskhetian Turks in the densely populated eastern provinces of the country’s Ferghana Valley. Attacks on and massacres of Meskhetian Turks began in the cities of Marghilan, Ferghana, and Kuvasai on June 3 and 4, 1989, spread to the city of Kokand on June 7, and on to the city of Namangan by June 11. The violence led to a massive investigation involving more than two hundred law enforcement officials resulting in 265 arrests and 120 cases brought to trial.20 These events brought two major changes to Uzbekistan’s political setting. First, the violence in Ferghana became a frequent reference in the state’s call to justify the development of an expansive coercive apparatus and legitimize its use of repression against opponents. After independence, these security offices became increasingly engaged in monitoring economic activity. Between 1992 and 1995, for example, there was a 90 percent rise in the number of applications made by prokurators to the Economic Court (which deals with economic legal proceedings) that were awarded judgments.21 Since 1995 (and especially from 1995–99) prokurator offices were given new responsibilities to monitor and control agricultural production, small business development, and other economic activities within their localities.22 Second, the violence brought to power a new CPUz first secretary, Islam Karimov, who “proved much more sensitive to local Uzbek concerns, and especially to the underlying roots of social protest.”23 This new leadership took steps to significantly expand local elites’ avenues for converting their resources into rents. In 1992, independent businesses opened in each locality allowed district and

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regional governors to extend their control over a growing retail trade.24 By 1994, the distribution of government subsidies to agricultural enterprises through two state banks, Pakhtabank (for cotton) and Gallabank (for grain), came under the influence of local elites. A massive outflow of delinquent loans followed, amounting to more than 20 billion Uzbekistani so'm (over US$500 million).25 Few loans were repaid.26 For a short time, tax incentives and liberalized foreign trade gave local enterprises more freedom to negotiate sales of portions of their crops directly with commercial clients.27 Across the country, the early outflow of state funds provided many collective farm chairs, state company heads, and regional governor staff members with disposable income that enabled them to illegally farm state land with impunity, purchase large tracts of land from district governments and start small plantations, and enter into favored business arrangements with local authorities.28 By the mid-1990s, these concessions had created a class of rural elites, highly dependent on state patronage, allowing a continuous flow of rents to be secured.29

The Transformation of State Security As Tajikistan and Uzbekistan experienced the massive transformations of the late 1980s and early 1990s, local elites in Tajikistan found themselves under very different circumstances than their counterparts in Uzbekistan. In Tajikistan, these circumstances led elites to promote the fragmentation of state security offices in their localities in order to challenge the system that ceased to provide access to those rents. In Uzbekistan, top-down rent-seeking opportunities encouraged elites to use their leverage over local state offices of coercion to sustain a system of rule and resource extraction that garnered them a steady flow of rents.

Competition and Fragmentation in Tajikistan Well before Tajikistan was torn apart by civil war, it experienced state failure as local state security officials armed or merged into independent militias. The fragmentation of state security institutions across Tajikistan’s localities was sudden and unexpected, but highly patterned. As shown in figure 3.1, most incidents of localized fragmentation occurred in a tightly compressed period between May and August 1992. Moreover, state security fragmentation was front loaded, concentrated in May and June, then diminishing over time. In contrast to this decrease, levels of violence increased through the summer and fall of 1992 as political disorder deepened and the country slid into civil war. In figure 3.2, the number of deaths in incidents involving local officials remained quite low

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throughout the early summer but escalated dramatically between September and December, reaching two hundred, three hundred, and ultimately five hundred deaths per week.30 In what follows, I examine the onset and spread of state security fragmentation across localities in the republic to explore these developments in a more fine-grained fashion. 20

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To see which localities were more susceptible to state security fragmentation, I assess several explanatory variables to identify meaningful relationships between them and the onset of fragmentation in Tajikistan’s localities. I categorize state security fragmentation onset (when local law enforcement and security bodies first armed or joined independent militias) by date, and I ran a simple multivariate regression analysis (see the results in table 3.1). Causes identified in standard accounts, including weak state capacity (measured by high crime rates) and proximity to Afghanistan had no statistically significant relationship with the initial onset of state security fragmentation. The highest levels of crime in 1991, for instance, were in Kuliab District where seventy-one highway patrol officers had not been paid in three months and 25 percent of the police force had not obtained appropriate housing.31 Yet Kuliab’s law enforcement bodies fragmented into regional militias only in response to the fragmentation of security apparatuses in other localities. Contrary to spillover accounts, proximity to Afghanistan also has no relationship to the onset of state security fragmentation. The two factors that were statistically significant with the onset of state security fragmentation were regions’ distance from the capital and their low resource

TABLE 3.1

Regional factors promoting onset of state security fragmentation, Tajikistan (Multivariate regressions with state security fragmentation onset as the dependent variable)

VARIABLE

ESTIMATED COEFFICIENT

Distance from the capital

.136 (.061)**

General crime rates

.164 (.593)

Irrigated land Proximity to Afghanistan First onset of state failure Constant R squared

–.017 (.008)** .040 (.086) N/A 4.378 (.397)*** .391

Significance levels: *=.10, **=.05, ***=.01; n=49. Note: Distance from the capital was based on a three-staged gradation: regions bordering the capital; regions with one region between it and the capital, and remaining regions. Proximity to Afghanistan was also based on a three-staged gradation: regions bordering Afghanistan; regions with one region between it and the border; and remaining regions. General crime rates (in 1991) and irrigated land (in thousands of hectares) drawn from Gosudarstvennyi komitet statistiki respubliki Tajikistan, Regiony Tadzhikistana: Nezavisimomu Tadzhikistanu 10 let (Dushanbe: Author, 2001), pp. 103–104, 114–115.

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wealth (measured as irrigated land).32 This evidence suggests that state security fragmentation begins in resource-poor regions (which were, in this case, far from capital cities) and works inward toward more centrally located resource-rich areas. Localities vulnerable to early onsets of state security fragmentation, therefore, are geographically and economically marginalized, commanding limited resource wealth and far less dependent on consistent flows of political patronage that allow elites to access state rents. Elites in these localities, therefore, lacked the resource base to leverage their role in the national economy for political patrons that would enable them to convert their meager resources into rents. As a result, they were acutely vulnerable to competitive pressures from elites in other regions whose economic base enabled them to wield political influence and access rentseeking opportunities. To determine how low concentrations of resources and few patronage ties promoted the spread of state security fragmentation in Tajikistan, I use process tracing to track the transformation of law enforcement and security bodies into independent agents of organized violence over four distinct phases. I find that competition (a) promoted local revolts, (b) produced reactions against those revolts, (c) drove violent conflict between civil authorities, and (d) was overtaken by forces arising from the violence of civil war. In the first phase, competition—that had been exacerbated by mass demonstrations in Dushanbe throughout early 1992—initiated localized revolts by opposition militias in Garm District, which were armed and aided by local law enforcement. Traveling toward Dushanbe, the militia rapidly expanded as local police stations joined and armed it in districts of Jirghatal, Kofarnikhan, and Komsomolabad.33 The militia was outwardly focused, seeking to assert its regions’ position vis-à-vis cotton-growing localities, though tactically it was organized at first to block roads into Dushanbe from Tajikistan’s southern regions. As figure 3.3a indicates, state security fragmentation in these regions led to a handful of deaths in early May, with very little violence occurring until the fall and winter months. In the second phase, old guard elites’ calls for restoring their access to rents were transformed into calls for self-defense, particularly in Kuliab and Leninabad. After several days of violence in Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s ruling hardliners established a coalition government (Government of National Reconciliation) in an attempt to mitigate rising competitive pressures. This initiative was quickly rejected in Kuliab and Leninabad, whose elites saw the new government as solidifying their exclusion from political power. In Kuliab, regional authorities assembled independent defense forces out of the district’s various police units and a special account was established for contributions to fund these forces.34 As figure 3.3b shows, incidents of state security fragmentation did produce some violent

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clashes in June, but Kuliab remained relatively peaceful until October. Driving this fragmentation were competitive pressures that led Kuliab’s elite to view itself under attack.35 The rise of militia formations in Kuliab was also intensified by the mobilization of personnel and arms in neighboring Kurgan-Teppe Province, where opposition forces were attacking progovernment protestors returning from Dushanbe and targeting local prokurators for assassination and kidnapping to deter investigations into their illegal arms collections.36 At the same time, members of the opposition were acutely aware of progovernment forces’ ability to mobilize state security organs under militia banners. As opposition leader Shodmon Yusuf lamented, “Today we are witnessing how the government of the president and the current government in the localities—organizations that [are] organs which should protect the people—are in fact not fulfilling this task and in some rayons have even committed crimes together with their [allied] groups and fought against ordinary people.”37 While initially a response to mobilization in the Rasht Valley, therefore, state security fragmentation in Kuliab Province intensified competitive pressures on both sides, pervading each set of elites’ assessments of the other and reinforcing a sense of having “their backs to the wall” that continued well into the war and undermined their support for power-sharing settlements.38 By early June, Tajikistan entered the third phase of state security fragmentation in which competition was driving conflict between regional civil authorities. Across the country, “self-defense units” were being established, patterned after those set up in Kuliab along lines of organization, geography, and mobilization. Organizationally, they were all formed under the authority of civilian administrators—district administrators, farm chairs, and religious leaders (mullahs)— with armed formations led by field commanders (who, in turn, were made up of assorted security service and law enforcement officials, local administrators, and crime bosses). Moreover, self-defense units typically were centered on district political offices or other institutional centers such as mosques and collective farms. In fact, locations of mobilization on both sides tended to reflect which had occupied the district apparatus—and which had not. In localities where old guard elites remained in control of district political offices—in Vakhsh, Kolkhozabad, Kommunist, Kalininabad, Kumsangir, and Jilikul—supporters of the opposition organized mostly around mosques and farms. In other localities, the opposite occurred.39 As one report noted, “The police of Kurgan-Teppe [city] were split from the initial events. Those who supported the president, and these were basically those from Kuliab, deserted the buildings of the UVD [Provincial Police Department]. The remaining ones stayed and declared their neutrality.”40 The patterns by which each side armed itself also reflected the depth of competitive pressures on local elites and the circumstances that enacted them. In some localities local

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police units voluntarily handed over their weapons. In other localities, local police stations previously neutral were pressured by armed formations entering from outside. As forces from Kuliab Province entered Kurgan-Teppe Province, police units in Kolkhozabad and Vakhsh districts handed over their weapons voluntarily, while those in Pyandzh District did so under duress and then “went into hiding fearing reprisals against them.”41 During this phase, the flow of weapons from local police into the hands of independent militia forces closely tracked lines of patronage that clustered some district political elites around open rentseeking opportunities and excluded others.42 As figure 3.3c indicates, the spread of state security fragmentation into Kurgan-Teppe Province produced sporadic yet significant flashes of violence from late June until December. As Tajikistan descended into civil war in the fall of 1992, a fourth and final phase occurred when field commanders and militia leaders displaced civil authorities’ control over armed formations on the ground. By October and November 1992, all civilian institutions were literally signed over to the militias in each region.43 While this allowed progovernment militias to be united under a single command and (with foreign assistance) defeat opposition forces, it represented a point at which the conflict was transformed from one driven by competitive pressures between local elites to one propelled by individual motivations, networks, and other forces that become prevalent in the violence of civil war.44 As figure 3.3d shows, throughout the fall and winter, the number of violent deaths accompanying local incidents of state security fragmentation in Kurgan-Teppe, Dushanbe, and several free-standing districts were highly concentrated, illustrating how dynamics of violence had overtaken the competitive pressures that had driven the spread of state security fragmentation. Local militias often operated independently from the progovernment Popular Front or from United Tajik Opposition. Across Tajikistan, local power centers emerged “where the heads of the various militias function[ed] both as military leaders and providers of economic well-being for the people living in the areas under their control. Competition between the warlords over economic resources—such as aluminum, cotton and drugs—intensifie[d] the instability in Tajikistan already sustained by widespread political and criminal violence.”45 Moreover, much of the retributive violence carried out by militias involved local law enforcement and internal security officials.46 Thus, while state security fragmentation originated in regions with sparse resources, the timing, nature, and local dynamics of its spread highlight the shifting salience of competition on the local political and economic elites leveraging state security actors in their localities. The civil war formally concluded when a peace agreement between the United Tajik Opposition (UTO) and the Rakhmon regime was struck in 1997, ending a drawn out standoff between the two sides. With Uzbekistani and Russian

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FIGURE 3.3 Number of deaths in incidents of state security fragmentation by province, Tajikistan, 1992

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assistance, armed formations united under the Popular Front of Tajikistan (PFT) and Popular Front of Tajikistan-Hissor (PFT-H) pushed opposition forces back to the capital and entered Dushanbe in December 1992. At that time, Emomalii Rakhmon was installed as head of state, only later officially elected president. By 1993, as the civil war shifted to a low-intensity conflict, fighting between government and opposition forces gradually diminished. While the central government was unable to establish control over opposition strongholds in Tajikistan’s eastern mountains, opposition forces lacked the military capability to recapture the capital.47 What Zartman has termed a “mutually hurting stalemate” emerged, preparing the way for a negotiated peace settlement between the two sides in June 1997.48 But the peace agreement had only ended the war, leaving in place an inexperienced regime running an extremely fragile state.

Co-optation and Cohesion in Uzbekistan In Uzbekistan, no localities experienced the onset of state security fragmentation, despite the fact that many regions experienced outbreaks of interethnic or localized violence that could have drawn in local law enforcement and security bodies. Between 1989 and 1992, there were forty-two mass violent events in Uzbekistan, seven of which involved concerted efforts to seize weapons and at least one attempt to bring about the resignation of the local or republican government.49 Many of these incidents were potential early onsets of state security fragmentation, yet none of them involved local law enforcement or security bodies joining, arming, or otherwise aiding those mobilizing. The worst episode of civil violence during this period was a two-week conflict between Uzbeks and Meskhetian Turks involving hundreds of deaths and tens of thousands displaced. While local law enforcement and security organs were slow to respond, perpetrators of the violence were unable to obtain weapons from local police stations.50 In fact, of the forty-two mass violent events, only one occurred in a region with sparse concentrations of resources; the remaining forty-one occurred in Tashkent Province, Tashkent City, and in the Ferghana Valley—localities with densely concentrated agricultural and industrial resources. As a result, the fragmentation of state security forces was averted in resource-rich regions where patronage and open rent-seeking avenues secured the support of local elites. This outcome might have been different in resource-poor regions, where the loyalty of local leaders and law enforcement remained in doubt in the early 1990s amidst “attempts to destabilize the situation.”51 Over time, it became increasingly unlikely that local law enforcement and security bodies would fragment as they had in Tajikistan, yet these were areas in which competitive pressures on local elites persisted and many elites were only weakly constrained by top-down patronage.

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Those in Kashkadarya, Karakalpakistan, and Khorezm, for instance, continued to resist central state policies of extraction and economic development.52 Overall, though, the opportunities for generating income deterred large-scale disaffection. In dramatically expanding local elites’ access to rents, the central government was able to retain their compliance and avert the spread of competitive pressures similar to those in Tajikistan. Across Uzbekistan, district and provincial governors pursued local-level rent-seeking activities. Because the regime’s increasing use of repressive methods of resource extraction and social control benefited them, local elites abided these constraints. This shored up (in the near term) a foundation upon which a cohesive state apparatus could be built. At the same time, the center’s growing reliance on an expanded security apparatus infused local resource extraction and rent seeking with a highly coercive character. Far from being complacent actors, law enforcement and security organs have aggressively taken advantage of the rent-seeking possibilities opened before them. As one lawyer explained in 2003, “The Prokurator’s Office has not always been this way. Perhaps seven to eight years ago they began to realize that they are no longer responsible to someone above them—that is, Moscow—who would check on them. Slowly, after independence, they began to realize the opportunities they had [to enrich themselves].”53 But their incorporation into patronage structures and rent-seeking activities—especially in resource-rich regions—has subordinated their coercive power to provincial governors and local elites. “On paper,” a lawyer explained, “the national security service, the provincial governor, the tax inspectorate, police, courts, state companies, and other state institutions are all accountable to the prokurator’s office. But in reality, all of these organs— the prokurator’s office as well—look to the governor for any final decision or policy.”54 In most provinces, “fines,” or bribes extracted by law enforcement from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), were paid directly to the governor, who then doled out a portion to the other agencies in the province. Police and prokurators were regularly employed to reinforce cotton and grain production, mobilize rural labor, and control the use of technology, land, and inputs. Barring unusual circumstances (e.g., national security threats), law enforcement and security bodies rarely interfered with or operated independent of the governor in economic activities in a province.55 While their counterparts were fragmenting in Tajikistan, they were gradually being utilized as instruments of extraction. As resource extraction became more coercive and the instruments of coercion became more corrupt, Uzbekistan’s solution for averting state security fragmentation has increasingly fostered discontent. Rising popular dissent not only targets governors but also offices of local law enforcement and security bodies; the most prominent of these riots and protests occurred in Ferghana Province (November 2004), in Jizzax Province (March 2005), and most notably, in Andijan

70

VERSO RUNNING CHAPTER 3 HEAD

Province (May 2005).56 As long as the regime relies on patronage, open rent seeking, and co-optation of local elites to retain influence over its regions, security and law enforcement services will continue to be mobilized to support a highly coercive system of resource extraction—and income disparities will continue produce discontent that focuses on the avarice of local elites and the violence of law enforcement and security forces.

Emergent Paths of State Security Development By the late 1990s, long-term developments of each country’s territorial infrastructure began to take shape. This section examines subnational data to better understand each country’s emergent path of state security development. To determine how resources and patronage impacted the institutionalization of state security fragmentation within Tajikistan’s state apparatus, I examine results from a survey conducted in 2007 of fifty local governance and rule-of-law specialists in Tajikistan. As their ratings of local prokurators and police across regions show, the state apparatus that emerged from state failure and civil war was highly fractious. Since the end of civil war in Tajikistan, the regime has sought to reestablish state power by renewing top-down patronage ties to local elites. Postwar power sharing has crafted a ruling support base of former adversaries through the distribution of rents. As one observer remarked, “A new coalition of warlords from Kulob, Gharm, and the Pamirs has presided over a massive redistribution of wealth.”57 Attempting the co-optation of local elites, however, has yielded mixed results. This is particularly so at the district level, where “the enforcement of decisions often stops . . . while different non-state actors (like warlords, politically well-connected and influential individuals, or NGOs) fill the authority gap at the community levels thus contributing to the fragmentation of the state.”58 In practice, however, an “authority gap” exists in some but not all localities. In localities where the reach of the state has been restored, local law enforcement bodies “have become a weapon in the hands of government for the elimination of those commanders, businessmen, and politicians that do not ingratiate themselves.”59 In localities where rent seeking has not bound local elites to the regime, law enforcement agencies “openly serve the interests of commanders [chinovnikov]” and not those of the central government.60 Some contend that the regime’s limited success in applying top-down patronage on these elites is partly because Tajikistan’s 1997 peace agreement integrated former militias without demobilizing or disarming them. Postwar local elites, it is argued, are thinly disguised former militia commanders with loyalties bound up in civil war relationships.61 Yet specialists surveyed in Tajikistan seem

PATHWAYS TO FAILURE: TAJIKISTAN RECTO AND RUNNING UZBEKISTAN HEAD

71

to disagree. In assessing how local prokurators enforce the extraction of crop yields (especially grain and cotton) and collect debts owed to the center they claim that several regions of the former opposition—Kofarnikhan, Faizabad, and GBAO—render tribute to central authority in a roughly equivalent way to those regions that “won” the war and initially dominated the postwar regime. Their survey responses rank regions with sparse resources—Varzob, Tavildara, Garm, Tajikabad, Darband, and Jirghatal—much lower in performing their duties (see tables 3.2 and 3.3). Cross-regional differences in on-the-job performance between resource-poor and resource-rich regions are statistically significant. Resource endowments, patronage, and access to state rents continue to shape local elites and have perpetuated an internally fractious state apparatus. In 1992, Tajikistan witnessed the fragmentation of state security institutions into autonomous agents of organized violence. At that time, yawning disparities in concentrations of resources between regions and shifting access to rents made it extremely difficult to contain competitive pressures among elites. This context of uncertainty during a period of transition set in motion processes of competitive mobilization that diffused the fragmentation of state security across the country. In postwar Tajikistan, moreover, resistance to central government authority continues to be shaped largely by the lack of rents distributed to elites in regions with sparse resources. (This is further investigated in chapter 4.) To determine how resources and patronage impacted the institutionalization of state security cohesion within Uzbekistan, I examine results from a second survey conducted in 2008 of fifty local governance and rule-of-law specialists in Uzbekistan. As their ratings of local prokurators and police across regions show (tables 3.4 and 3.5), the regime’s expansion of rent-seeking opportunities across all regions has promoted cohesion to such a degree that differences between regions were small. This data suggests that Uzbekistan does have a far more cohesive state security apparatus than that of Tajikistan. Aside from substantially higher levels of performance in the area surrounding the capital, assessments in this expert survey found no regional differences in how prokurators pursue debt collection and crop extraction that were statistically significant. While experts rated local prokurators in resource-poor regions as generally less likely to adhere to central directives (in Kashkadarya, Syrdarya, Khorezm, and Karakalpakistan) and local prokurators in resource-rich regions slightly more likely to carry out their responsibilities (in Tashkent, Ferghana, Andijan, Samarkand, Bukhara, and Surkhandarya), the opportunities to pursue rent seeking in resource-poor and resource-rich regions alike have generally reinforced the rise of a more internally cohesive territorial apparatus. At the same time, the regime’s reliance on coercive pressures as a means of controlling local elites has set in motion path-dependent processes producing

---

SUGHD

---

.25

TURSUNZ.

---

.10

.35**

LENIN

---

.04

.06

.31*

GBAO

---

.10

.14

.16

.41**

HISSAR

---

.08

.02

.02

.08

.33**

KHATLON

---

.06

.02

.08

.04

.14

.39**

KOFARN.

---

.17

.23

.15

.25

.21

.32**

.56***

SHAHRINAU

---

.07

.10

.16

.08

.18

.14

.24

.49***

FAIZABAD

---

.09

.02

.19

.25

.17

.27*

.23

.34**

.58***

VARZOB

---

.04

.13

.06

.23

.29*

.21

.31*

.27*

.37**

.62***

TAVILDARA

How experts rate local prokurators’ debt collection: regional differences in Tajikistan

0 ---

.04

.13

.06

.23

.29*

.21

.31*

.27*

.37**

.62***

GARM

---

.06

.06

.10

.19

.12

.29*

.35**

.27*

.37**

.33**

.43***

.68***

TAJIKABAD

---

.04

.02

.02

.06

.15

.08

.25

.31*

.23

.33**

.31*

.39**

.64***

DARBAND

---

.04

.10

.06

.06

.10

.19

.12

.29*

.35**

.27*

.33**

.31*

.43***

.68***

JIRGHATAL

Note: Entries in table are differences in how 50 experts in Tajikistan rated regions’ prokurators on a five-point scale (1=well below average, 2=below average, 3=average, 4=above average, 5=well above average). Statistical significance based on two-tailed difference of proportions tests: * = .10; ** = .05; *** = .01

Jirghatal

Darband

Tajikabad

Garm

Tavildara

Varzob

Faizabad

Shahrinau

Kofarn.

Khatlon

Hissar

GBAO

Lenin

Tursunz.

Sughd

TABLE 3.2

72 VERSO RUNNING HEAD

---

---

.20

---

.02

.18

LENIN

---

.26

.24

.44***

GBAO

---

.20

.06

.04

.24

HISSAR

---

0

.20

.06

.04

.24

KHATLON

---

.02

.02

.02

.08

.06

.26

KOFARN.

---

.08

.10

.10

.10

.16

.14

.34**

SHAHRINAU

---

.02

.10

.12

.12

.12

.18

.16

.36**

FAIZABAD

---

.04

.06

.14

.16

.16

.04

.22

.20

.40**

VARZOB

---

.12

.16

.18

.26

.28*

.28*

.08

.34**

.32**

.52***

TAVILDARA

---

.10

.02

.06

.08

.16

.18

.18

.02

.24

.22

.42**

GARM

---

.14

.04

.16

.20

.22

.30*

.32**

.32**

.12

.38**

.36**

.56***

TAJIKABAD

---

.06

.08

.02

.10

.14

.16

.24

.26

.26

.06

.32**

.30*

.50***

DARBAND

---

.04

.02

.12

.02

.14

.18

.20

.28*

.30*

.30*

.10

.34**

.34**

.54***

JIRGHATAL

Note: Entries in table are differences in how 50 experts in Tajikistan rated regions’ prokurators on a five-point scale (1=well below average, 2=below average, 3=average, 4=above average, 5=well above average). Statistical significance based on two-tailed difference of proportions tests: * = .10; ** = .05; *** = .01

Jirghatal

Darband

Tajikabad

Garm

Tavildara

Varzob

Faizabad

Shahrinau

Kofarn.

Khatlon

Hissar

GBAO

Lenin

Tursunz.

Sughd

TURSUNZ.

How experts rate local prokurators’ enforcement of crop extraction: regional differences in Tajikistan

SUGHD

TABLE 3.3

RECTO RUNNING HEAD 73

---

TASHKENT

---

.25

NAVAI

---

.02

.23

SAMARKAND

---

.21

.19

.44*

FERGHANA

---

.02

.19

.17

.42*

JIZZAKH

---

.22

.24

.03

.05

.20

BUKHARA

---

.15

.07

.09

.12

.10

.35

ANDIJAN

---

.01

.14

.08

.10

.11

.09

.34

SYRDARYA

---

.01

0

.15

.07

.09

.12

.10

.35

SURKHAN.

---

.01

0

.01

.14

.08

.10

.11

.09

.34

NAMANGAN

How experts rate local prokurators’ debt collection: regional differences in Uzbekistan

---

.02

.01

.02

.01

.16

.06

.08

.13

.11

.36

KASHKA.

---

.13

.15

.14

.15

.14

.29

.07

.05

.26

.24

.49**

KHOREZM

---

.01

.14

.16

.15

.16

.15

.30

.08

.06

.27

.25

.50**

KARAKALP.

Note: Entries in table are differences in how 50 experts in Uzbekistan rated regions’ prokurators on a five-point scale (1=well below average, 2=below average, 3=average, 4=above average, 5=well above average). Statistical significance based on two-tailed difference of proportions tests: * = .10; ** = .05; *** = .01.

Karakalp.

Khorezm

Kashka.

Namangan

Surkhan.

Syrdarya

Andijan

Bukhara

Jizzakh

Ferghana

Samarkand

Navai

Tashkent

TABLE 3.4

74 VERSO RUNNING HEAD

---

TASHKENT

---

.02

NAVAI

---

.02

.04

SAMARKAND

---

.11

.13

.15

FERGHANA

---

.09

.02

.04

.06

JIZZAKH

---

.05

.14

.03

.01

.01

BUKHARA

.15

-----

.01

.04

.13

.02

0

.02

SYRDARYA

.16

.11

.02

.13

.15

.17

ANDIJAN

---

.02

.17

.01

.06

.15

.04

.02

0

SURKHAN.

---

.23

.31

.06

.22

.17

.08

.19

.21

.23

NAMANGAN

---

.21

.02

0

.15

.01

.04

.13

.02

0

.02

KASHKA.

How experts rate local prokurators’ enforcement of crop extraction: regional differences in Uzbekistan

---

.10

.11

.12

.10

.05

.11

.06

.03

.08

.10

.12

KHOREZM

---

.03

.13

.08

.15

.13

.02

.14

.09

0

.11

.13

.15

KARAKALP.

Note: Entries in table are differences in how 50 experts in Uzbekistan rated regions’ prokurators on a five-point scale (1=well below average, 2=below average, 3=average, 4=above average, 5=well above average). Statistical significance based on two-tailed difference of proportions tests: * = .10; ** = .05; *** = .01.

Karakalp.

Khorezm

Kashka.

Namangan

Surkhan.

Syrdarya

Andijan

Bukhara

Jizzakh

Ferghana

Samarkand

Navai

Tashkent

TABLE 3.5

RECTO RUNNING HEAD 75

76

VERSO RUNNING CHAPTER 3 HEAD

an expanded and increasingly independent coercive apparatus. Informed estimates put the country’s internal security forces at 250,000, about 1 in 10 persons in 2003.62 Sunk costs in these institutions have made the price of weaning Uzbekistan’s state agents off lucrative rents prohibitively expensive and vested interests have made it politically risky to establish institutions—for instance, an effective economic administration—that would challenge these actors. Instead, the regime’s early commitment to a dependence on patronage and extending rent-seeking opportunities to local elites has led it to use its law enforcement apparatus in place of other economic and political institutions that would ordinarily be utilized. As I examine further in chapter 5, the roles of prokurators and police continue to be subordinated to resource extraction, carrying implications for how well the regime retains control over its regions.63 In this chapter, I have traced the emergence of two state security outcomes: one leading to the fragmentation of state security institutions into free-standing agents of violence and another drawing those institutions into coercive, rentseeking behavior. Through the examples of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, I have demonstrated that in countries defined by low capital mobility these state security outcomes are a consequence of the shifting rent-seeking opportunities made available to political elites who leverage local offices of state security. In Tajikistan, state security agents armed and joined independent militias and paramilitary units amidst competitive pressures unleashed by anticorruption reforms in the late Soviet period. In Uzbekistan, the steady widening of access to state rents averted those competitive dynamics among elites and enabled top-down patronage to have an abiding effect. Rent-seeking opportunities opened to local elites bound them to the regime, and they used law enforcement and security bodies in their localities to pursue those opportunities in resource exploitation. I also examined the different trajectories of state development emerging in these countries, contributing to the rise of a divided state apparatus in Tajikistan and a cohesive, yet rent-based, set of institutions in Uzbekistan.

4 TAJIKISTAN’S FRACTIOUS STATE

Since the war ended in 1997, Tajikistan’s central government has struggled to establish its monopoly over organized violence. Throughout the republic, criminal gangs engaged in drug smuggling, political rivals of President Rakhmon posed threats of a coup d’etat, Islamist groups exploited links to Afghanistan, and former civil war commanders staged insurgencies, kidnapped international aid workers, and assassinated state officials. Tajikistan’s extremely weak postwar state has led some observers to forecast precipitous decline if not imminent failure. As one report concluded, “The Rakhmon regime could, theoretically speaking, collapse at any moment. This is because the institutional structures which usually support any political regime are missing in the case of Tajikistan.”1 Others have noted that, amidst a chaotic postwar environment and foundering institutions, Tajikistan’s government has gradually reasserted political control and extended social stability.2 Neither of these outcomes, however, adequately describes Tajikistan’s emerging state. While Tajikistan is still not consolidated around a single political authority, it is no longer mired in intrastate conflict and disorder. As this chapter shows, Tajikistan has emerged as an internally divided, fractious state in which resources and patronage have continued to produce starkly different rent-seeking opportunities to local elites. Initially, the formula for stabilizing and ruling Tajikistan after civil war entailed ceding control over state security institutions to key personalities (table 4.1) and nominally absorbing smaller militia forces into various ministries of the national government.3 Over time, however, Tajikistan’s fractious state apparatus has remained dependent on the co-optation of elites in some areas and locked in conflict with disaffected elites and nonstate militia forces in others. 77

78

VERSO RUNNING CHAPTER 4 HEAD

Over the 1990s and early 2000s, the regime established political and social stability, but the postwar state did not see the rapid return of a consolidated security infrastructure. The regime confronted threats of insurgency, political intrigue within its ruling circles, and unruly commanders with its fragmented state security apparatus. In many parts of the country the center had little, if any, authority. How, then, did postwar stability emerge in Tajikistan at a time when the state faced severe internal threats and lacked a monopoly over the use of violence? Mary Kaldor has argued that a cohesive state security apparatus is indispensable for an effective state and the “fragmentation of the instruments of physical coercion” will lead to “the failure to sustain physical control over the territory and to command popular allegiance, [and will] reduce the ability to collect taxes and greatly weaken the revenue base of the state.”4 Yet a relatively stable Tajikistan remains in place. Several explanations have been put forward to account for Tajikistan’s postwar political recovery. One account claims that stability is due to an outsourcing of security functions to Russia.5 There is some evidence to support this. Russia has stationed a battalion of infantry troops in southern Tajikistan since the early 1900s, its border troops patrol Tajikistan’s 860-mile border with Afghanistan (until 2005), and its leadership has closely advised the Rakhmon government (especially in the immediate postwar years). In the late 1990s, Russia’s presence and political backing of the Rakhmon regime no doubt helped establish a baseline of stability in the country and prevented a recurrence of civil war. The long-term influence of Russia as an external guarantor of stability, however, is less important, and it remains difficult to assess how much of its influence extends down to the local level in Tajikistan. Another explanation attributes postwar stability to an effective “broker”—in this case, President Rakhmon—who has mediated conflicts between regional and clan divisions.6 As stipulated in the 1997 peace agreement, Rakhmon initially appointed opposition leaders to 30 percent of the country’s national positions. At the same time, he has used resource allocations and patronage to reward supporters and has used coercion to punish opponents among former commanders from both sides of the civil war. But developments since 2000 cast doubt on Rakhmon as a broker, since he has gradually pushed out opposition elites from his government and has kept “power ministries” related to state security under his relatives or close associates. The Rakhmon government’s postwar record suggests it views the role of a “broker” as a temporary measure—a necessary but intermediate means of incorporating opposing elites into its governing structures until they can be brought up on charges or otherwise eliminated. They are then replaced by appointees who are personally loyal to the president.7

TAJIKISTAN’S RECTO FRACTIOUS RUNNING STATE HEAD

79

TABLE 4.1 State security agencies in postwar Tajikistan STATE SECURITY AGENCY

Ministry of Interior

SIZE

30,000

(Police)

LOCATION OF PERSONNEL

KEY PERSONALITIES AND DESCRIPTION

Dushanbe, provinces,

Under Yakub Salimov until

districts

1995. Includes two combat units: OMON special police in Dushanbe and a 2,300-strong rapid reaction force under General Sukhrob Kasymov based in Varzob District till 2007.

Ministry of Security (for-

Dushanbe primarily

mer KGB)

Deals with political opposition and religious dissent; reputed to hold kompromat on many political figures.

National Guard

2,000

Dushanbe

Presidential guard under Ghaffor Mirzoev till 2004.

Ministry of Emergency 2,000 Situations

Dushanbe, former Opposition districts

Ministry established by the 1997 peace agreement; placed under Mirzo Ziyoev till it was disbanded, and Ziyoev dismissed, in 2006.

1st Motorized Infantry 2,000

SW Khatlon Province

Under Mahmud Khudoberdiev,

Brigade of Ministry

based in districts around Kur-

of Defense

gan-Teppe city with 5,000 in reserve.

Committee on the Protection of State

5,000–6,000 Borders areas of Tajikistan

Border Ministry of Defense

Under several persons appointed by Rakhmon, including Ghaffor Mirzoev briefly in 2004.

6,000–7,000 Dushanbe

Mostly conscripted low-grade rural recruits; under Sherali Kharullaev (1995–2007).

Sources: Anna Matveeva, “Tajikistan: Evolution of the Security Sector and the War on Terror,” in Facing the Terrorist Challenge: Central Asia's Role in Regional and International Co-operation, ed. Anja Ebnöther, Ernst M. Felberbauer, and Martin Malek (Vienna: Bureau of Security Policy, Austrian Ministry of Defense, DCAF, PfP Consortium, April 2005); Kirill Nourzhanov, “Saviours of the Nation: Warlord Politics in Tajikistan,” Central Asian Survey 24, 2 (June 2005), pp. 109–130; Erica Marat, The Military and the State in Central Asia: From Red Army to Independence (London: Routledge, 2010).

A third argument holds that postconflict stability in Tajikistan is not just a product of making political appointments and distributing resources but also a matter of defining conceptions of “the state” itself. The nature of postwar politics in the country has been shaped by the regime’s ability to define the boundaries and nature of the state in its public discourse. Critical to reasserting control over

80

VERSO RUNNING CHAPTER 4 HEAD

the country has been getting the idea of the state accepted in the minds of the political elite, international aid and diplomatic community, and the mass public.8 Alongside these arguments, in this chapter I explain Tajikistan’s rapid postwar stabilization and its fractious state as a consequence of the co-optation and competition of local elites in the context of immobile capital. Whereas constricted prewar rent-seeking opportunities generated competitive pressures that mobilized elites against one another, several factors since the end of the war—reintegration of entire units of former commanders, opening of new rent-seeking opportunities, and the lack of investment in state security institutions—have reduced competition among Tajikistan’s local elites in some areas while institutionalizing it in others. Postwar bargains with former commanders, sparse resource concentrations, and new sources of capital (in the form of foreign aid and drug trafficking rents) have led to a piecemeal extension of rent-seeking opportunities to warlords-turned-businessmen. As Tajikistan emerged from state failure, few elites in localities with sparse resources were offered rent-seeking opportunities to bind them to the regime. As a result, these elites were susceptible to competition from other regions and were prone to defect from the regime, manifesting sporadic confrontations with the center. In localities with concentrated resources, by contrast, opportunities opened to local elites to convert their resources into rents presented comparably lucrative options that led these elites to back the fledgling regime. As part of their co-optation, these elites were encouraged to use local state security bodies in resource exploitation, particularly in cotton-growing areas. The overall nature of postwar Tajikistan’s coercion-intensive trajectory—resting on a mix of co-optation and competition among local elites—was one of internal division and “fractious” state formation.9 In this chapter I outline how resources, patronage, and rent-seeking opportunities have facilitated the rapid reconstruction of Tajikistan’s failed state. In the remainder of the chapter, I explain why rent seeking and coercion remained uncoupled in postwar Tajikistan, enabling pervasive rent seeking within the state but without the widespread incorporation of security institutions. I then identify two subnational patterns: open rent seeking and co-optation in Khatlon Province and closed off rent seeking and contestation in the Rasht Valley. Finally, I conclude with an assessment of Tajikistan’s postwar development—reconciling its rapid return to political stability, on the one hand, and its largely vapid processes of state reconstruction, on the other.

Rent Seeking and Coercion after Civil War By the mid-1990s, the Rakhmon regime, confronting threats to its survival, took measures to consolidate its power. A combination of political, economic,

TAJIKISTAN’S RECTO FRACTIOUS RUNNING STATE HEAD

81

and coercive reforms were undertaken to garner support for the regime through promises of amnesty, political position, and access to state rents as well as to eliminate intransigent and potentially threatening opponents. First, a decision was made early on to grant former civil war commanders amnesty and reintegrate them (often en masse) into state security institutions. In allowing them to join state security bodies, however, the regime turned nonstate violent actors into governmental ones, securing their loyalty but only by opening to them rent-seeking avenues. Reintegration escalated the regime’s dependence on patronage and cooptation to control unruly commanders, and state authority over these actors was premised on the regime’s willingness to provide those rents. Second, economic reforms and new sources of revenue concentrated wealth under the regime. On the one hand, rents from its traditional resource bases of cotton, energy, and aluminum were shared between the regime and selected resource-rich localities; on the other hand, new revenue streams from foreign aid and drug trafficking were channeled directly through the regime, giving the center little incentive to share rents with local elites. Third, because the regime lacked control over key parts of its security apparatus in the mid-1990s, it devoted little investment in developing Tajikistan’s coercive capacity. This in turn reduced the utility of state security institutions as instruments of resource extraction and rent collection among local and regional elites. Together, these postwar developments—reintegration before demobilization, restricted rent seeking opportunities despite new streams of capital, and weak coercive capacity—attenuated the link between state security institutions and rent seeking in many regions. As a result, postwar state building efforts to retain political control produced various combinations of coercion and rent seeking across the republic, giving rise to a stable but internally fractious state.

Amnesty and the Politics of Reintegration The UN-brokered peace agreement that ended the war in 1997 was largely a consequence of international pressure from several states (including Russia, Central Asian states, Iran, and the United States).10 Multiple cease-fire violations since 1992 had demonstrated the difficulties of establishing a resolution that was acceptable to both sides. As a result, the peace agreement prioritized amnesty and the reintegration of militants at the expense of disarmament, demobilization, and transitional justice.11 Amnesty and reintegration, moreover, remained a primary strategy of Tajikistan’s central leadership, repeatedly used to get insurgents to lay down their arms and to accept a modicum of regime control over territories in dispute. In practice, the General Agreement on the Establishment of Peace and National Accord in Tajikistan settled two major issues. First, it incorporated

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thousands of fighters into the country’s military—an attempt to reign in the multiple private armies, paramilitaries, and armed gangs that emerged during the conflict. Among Popular Front of Tajikistan (PFT) supporters, many guerilla armed groups were incorporated into Tajikistan’s security forces and national army. Their incorporation into formalized armies notwithstanding, much of the state’s use of force in the immediate postwar period was focused on terrorizing many of those local areas that had supported the opposition.12 At the same time, a large number of United Tajik Opposition (UTO) fighters were incorporated into the Tajikistan army and the civil service after the war, though they repeatedly faced accusations of assisting drug smuggling from Afghanistan and using their posts in the army as “cover” for criminal activity.13 Second, the agreement set aside a portion of the positions within Tajikistan’s executive branch for the opposition. While the central leadership was to remain firmly in the hands of the Kuliab-based Rakhmon government—in that it received 70 percent of the top executive positions, including the “power ministries” (ministries of Defense, Foreign Affairs, Internal Affairs, and National Security)—30 percent of all executive posts were to be given to UTO representatives. Excluded from the agreement were many political elites from Leninabad Province, although Abdumalik Abdullazhanov was appointed prime minister.14 Over time, this allotment of posts has been a source of contestation, as Rakhmon’s government has been accused of reneging on this portion of the bargain.15 But this served as a workable power-sharing compromise at the time. Amnesties to former combatants were viewed as critical to bringing the UTO to the negotiating table in 1996–97. Commanders on both sides who threatened to act as “spoilers” of the agreement were rapidly integrated into existing state structures (law enforcement and security agencies, and other government institutions) without dismantling old security forces. The terms of reintegration were points of contention, halting peace negotiations on several occasions.16 Entire units of former fighters—totaling about six thousand combatants—were integrated into local police and security forces in late 1997 and early 1998. In districts where the UTO commanded a strong presence (Kofarnihan, Khorogh, Vanch, Rasht, Komsomolobod, Tajikobod, and Lenin), UTO formations donned police uniforms with little organizational change. Another two thousand fighters under senior UTO commander Mirzo Ziyoev formed the newly created Ministry of Emergency Situations (of which Ziyoev was minister).17 In districts where progovernment forces were located—in Khatlon Province and districts of Hissar, Tursunzade, and Shahrinau—they were similarly absorbed into local law enforcement.18 Amnesties may have been necessary to establish the peace, but they have failed to “create the political conditions for the strengthening of law-abiding state institutions.”19 In contrast to postwar reintegration settlements implemented in

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Latin America, which first demobilized, then reintegrated autonomous militaries defined by a strong esprit de corps, Tajikistan’s police and security reforms absorbed paramilitary forces that remained bound by informal ties often based on personal loyalty to particular commanders and on the availability of rents.20 When former Popular Front of Tajikistan (PFT) field commander Gaffor Mirzoev—who commanded several thousand troops as head of the presidential National Guard—was transferred to Tajikistan’s Drug Control Agency (DCA) in 2004, he took most of those troops with him.21 Likewise, the August 1995 dismissal of another former PFT commander, Minister of Interior Yaqubjon Salimov, required one-third of the police force to be purged.22 Amnesties, therefore, enabled these parochial interests to prevail within state security institutions in postwar Tajikistan, attenuating formal political control over state security bodies, and making the regime far more dependent on providing rents to many of them. Patterns of reintegration not only preserved former militia structures within the state security apparatus, but they also engendered violent competition for access to rents. As described by John Heathershaw, reintegration was a twofold process, entailing the nationalization of commanders’ political and military power in return for the privatization of state resources that were made available to them as rents from government positions.23 So-called bidding wars broke out among urban and rural militias in the mid-1990s, often between groups from the same side during the war who had turned inward.24 In many cases, the “limited nature of rents and resources available . . . inexorably led to turf wars” as each side sought “to cull weaker elements in their own camp.”25 By the mid-1990s, the problem of permitting open rent seeking led the regime to fear that some elites were able to “retain substantial private armies and use administrative resources to build extensive patronage networks.” In some cases, elites were believed to command “solid grassroots support in their patrimonies, which can be transformed from zones of ostensible peace and tranquility into strongholds of anti-governmental resistance overnight.”26 And, in fact, several mobilized militias, even full-fledged insurgencies, have posed significant challenges to the postwar government.27 Reintegration has made the regime’s postwar survival far more premised on its provision of rents to both former opposition and progovernment elites. While amnesty and reintegration ended the civil war, it forced the regime to rely on opening rent-seeking opportunities to a wide circle of elites. As we will see, this was done selectively, often calibrated to cut out elites on whom the regime did not depend.

Resources and Rents While much of Tajikistan’s reintegration depended on granting privileged access to rents, there was a tight limit on the distribution of those rents. Emerging postwar

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bargains rested on the ability and willingness of the regime to extend access to rents in the cotton sector and from new resources—revenues from foreign aid and the drug trade from Afghanistan into Russia. Where resources remained under the control of local elites, the latter received rent-seeking concessions; where resources were not directly controlled by local elites, few opportunities for rent seeking came their way. Following Levi’s model of revenue-maximizing rulers, the regime’s primary goal was to centralize its hold on rents and resources in the republic. Before the war, privatization of assets remained in the hands of national elites within the Communist Party of Tajikistan. As Dudoignon has pointed out, “Even during those fatal months of 1992, on the eve of civil war, a regime dominated by engineers of cotton culture, metallurgy and mine industries, educated in the main party schools of the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] had managed to maintain its control over the key resources and political positions of the country in spite of endless, hostile street demonstrations.”28 With the conclusion of the war, however, the regime’s weak hold over Tajikistan’s economy has enabled local actors to acquire assets and create new political arrangements. This was true for Tajikistan’s key industries: cotton, energy, and aluminum. Laws defining export quotas were altered forty times in 1994 and from 1994 to 1996 seventy-one export contracts were granted exemption from state controls due to pressure from senior government officials.29 Tajikistan’s sole smelter was in warlord hands for several years in the 1990s, and in the first half of 2000, more than six hundred tons of illegally traded aluminum was seized by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD).30 In contrast to the concentrated rent seeking that characterized these industries during the Soviet era, therefore, Tajikistan’s postwar regime has been confronted with highly diffuse control over many areas of its economy. A fundamental political and economic task of the government, then, has been to concentrate and control revenue from these three main resource bases. Tajikistan’s cotton industry was largely revitalized through World Bank refinancing and commercial loans that were channeled through Tajikistan’s Agro Invest Bank to the Tajik companies directing (alongside provincial and district governments) local-level cotton growing operations. While these bank loans provided start-up capital investment (tens of millions of dollars annually) for global cotton traders such as Switzerland’s Paul Reinhardt Corporation and US-based Dunnavant Enterprises to purchase agricultural inputs and finance cotton production,31 two of the five major Tajik companies in cotton production (that jointly monopolize roughly three-quarters of the industry)—Khima and the Sonomi 21st Century—were owned by the head of the National Bank and Rakhmon’s brother-in-law, respectively.32 This cotton financing constituted roughly 90 percent of all agricultural lending in Tajikistan.33 Although these investments were guaranteed by the National Bank of Tajikistan (NBT), audits of

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NBT accounts in late 2007 revealed that IMF funds and other foreign aid were being used to cover losses incurred by Agro Invest Bank since 2001—losses totaling $220 million that have been linked to lending to cotton enterprises as far back as 1996.34 The steady flow of foreign loans, nominally guaranteed by the NBT, but using capital provided by the IMF, not only enabled the rebirth of Tajikistan’s cotton industry to be a risk-free endeavor for the government. It also diverted more than $200 million into the hands of the central leadership, while residual investor-provided financing and inputs (among other things seed, fertilizer, fuel) were a source of rents for local elites. In contrast to Uzbekistan, however, cotton-producing regions only constituted half of the republic’s localities. Cotton rents, therefore, were insufficient on their own to support the regime’s postwar bargains with elites—and were only provided to those elites in cotton-growing districts. Despite inflows of aid, one study of 869 farms across five districts found that the largest 20 farms held half (49 percent) of the area’s external debt.35 As financing and inputs are channeled into these large farming units, their large arrears indicate the extent to which local elites access rents with impunity—mostly in cotton-rich localities such as those in Khatlon Province. Tajikistan’s leadership has also cultivated large amounts of foreign aid (relative to its economy) that has flowed into the country over the last fifteen years. Initially focused on humanitarian assistance, this aid is now earmarked for a wide range of projects; yet lack of transparency in its primary industries and ministries has enabled a small circle of elites to access this wealth. Reportedly, concerns over the gross misallocation of this aid gave rise to the Aid Coordination Unit (ACU) inside the Presidential Apparatus, which recorded eighty-nine organizations in 2005 and about US$832 million in agreements. Yet ACU’s has been unable to effectively monitor development aid—in part because all loan sources go through the Ministry of Finance, which are untouched by ACU monitoring.36 However this is an artificial delimitation of responsibility, since the president appoints the minister of finance and he can enact genuine monitoring controls (on his own or through the ACU) if he wanted to do so. As one report has found, “Given the high fragmentation of aid, and the lack of unity, supervision and overall direction of the use of foreign aid, ‘cheap funding’ creates too much of a temptation for authorities and actually nurtures corruption.”37 A recipient of much of this postconflict development aid, the Rakhmon leadership has at its disposal capital without being dependent on other elites to secure it. Consequently, it sees little reason to distribute that wealth more broadly. A third area of economic activity that the regime has used to generate rents has been the emerging drug trade. In cooperation with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Tajikistan established the Drug Control Agency (DCA) in 1999 and

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initially appeared to be a regional leader in drug seizures. In 2003, it was taking approximately 90 percent of all Afghan drugs confiscated in Central Asia in 2003. Since then, as the regime has asserted indirect control over the trade, these seizures have dropped each year, declining from 5,600 kilograms in 2003 to 1,132 kilograms in 2009 (see figure 4.1).38 There has also been a decline in drug-related crimes, from 1,949 cases in 2001 to 631 cases in 2006.39 Some contend that, rather than eliminate drug trafficking, the DCA has become an instrument by which Tajikistan’s leadership is attempting to establish control over the drug trade, “forcing out political rivals that had maintained alternate smuggling routes.”40 There is considerable evidence that the government has been able to derive lucrative earnings from this trade, flowing to the highest levels. Senior government officials, such as Tajikistan’s ambassador and trade representative to Kazakhstan, a deputy minister of defense, and former minister of interior Yaqub Salimov appear to have received significant drug trafficking revenues—all of whom were arrested for involvement in the drug trade (though most observers attribute the timing of their arrests to political, not legal, reasons).41 Likewise, many within Tajikistan’s border control receive a high proportion of rents from the drug trade.42 Others note that Russian troops are equally, if not more, culpable than local border control agents.43 But the drug trade benefits those in critical decision-making positions within the Rakhmon government. As Gavrilis has shown, the profits from drug trafficking have led Tajikistan to resist imposing border controls, an omission that has enabled the continued flow of drugs across its territory.44 As demands for rents after amnesty and reintegration intensified, Tajikistan’s postwar regime generated income from its weak cotton industry, foreign aid, and an emerging drug trade. Rent-seeking opportunities were provided to elites in cotton-growing areas, because the regime needed their co-optation to continue to generate revenue from the cotton sector. In resource-poor regions, however, rent-seeking opportunities have been far more limited because foreign aid and drug trafficking rents were sources of capital that flowed directly to the regime. Even where the drug trade passed through eastern Tajikistan, the ability of the regime to concentrate distribution networks meant it was less dependent on local elites for that revenue. It therefore did not need to succor the co-optation of these elites using a share of the rents. Some limited rent-seeking opportunities were afforded to local elites. For instance, a legal change in the mid-2000s on subnational government permitted customs and drug enforcement officials and members of the military to serve as elected representatives in provincial, district, and city councils (legislatures). This has enabled individuals—many of whom are former field commanders— in charge of border control points, drug enforcement offices, and other security

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6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000

FIGURE 4.1

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Total seizures of heroin in Tajikistan (kilograms)

Source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “The Paris Pact Initiative Regional Database” (Geneva: UNODC/ROCA, 2010), available at http://www.dbregional.info/?act=ca; Letizia Paoli et al., “Tajikistan: The Rise of a Narco-State,” Journal of Drug Issues 0022–0426/.07/04 (2007), p. 956.

bodies in Tajikistan’s districts and provinces to simultaneously access protection and patronage by holding political office.45 But genuine access to state rents has not been extensively provided and many elites have continued to pursue alternative avenues outside Dushanbe’s control. While there is collusion among customs officials, local law enforcement agencies, and border patrols on the collection of minor payments from people crossing closed borders, most of the income from drug trafficking has remained in the hands of the politically connected.

Diminished Coercive Capacity A third development was the regime’s deliberate efforts to keep its coercive institutions weak, primarily by keeping it underfunded. State failure and the civil war, however, had already eviscerated the capacity of its state security apparatus, leaving it internally divided, demoralized, and subordinated to local elites. First, law enforcement and judicial offices were often targeted in outbreaks of violence as important centers of state power, particularly in the early stages of state disintegration. As was true throughout the countries of the former Soviet

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Union, “by injecting themselves into interethnic conflicts, peacekeeping troops and law enforcement officials became targets of both sides of hostilities” and “the weapons they carried became prized resources.”46 For instance, several local prokurators were targeted for assassination and kidnapping in Kurgan-Teppe Province as local militias armed themselves and sought to deter investigations into illegal arms collections. Kurgan-Teppe city prokurator Ghaibulloev was assassinated; a militia attempted (but failed) to kidnap Kabodiyon District prokurator Kurbonali Mukhabbatov; and a militia kidnapped the son of Provincial Prokurator Kodirjon Jabbarov.47 This violence continued throughout the summer and culminated in the assassination of Prokurator General Nurullo Khuvaidullaev in August 1992 for refusing to leave office.48 One legacy of the war, therefore, is a high level of political violence targeting local and national state officials, which has severely undermined their capacity to effectively carry out their responsibilities. Second, as state failure shifted into civil conflict, law enforcement agents—due to their training, access to arms and munitions, and their positions of authority within localities—were often mobilized into nonstate armed formations. This left law enforcement agencies and judicial institutions undermined and divided by the social and political cleavages driving the conflict. The rise and spread of state security fragmentation across Tajikistan’s localities entailed a fundamental shift in authority within local state offices. Police forces were often split as they armed and joined opposing local militias. The way state failure unfolded in Tajikistan, then, has left law enforcement and judicial institutions highly politicized, permeated by cleavages in society, and thus internally divided. Third, a shift in the balance of power during the conflict, in which local civil authorities ceased to control militia forces, led to the subordination of local law enforcement bodies to mafia groups, private militias based on clan or localism, and other independent armies, which made them dependent on personal fealty to warlordlike figures. Even after the major battles, especially between 1992 and 1995, urban violence escalated among militia captains vying for spoils in Dushanbe. This “time of troubles” entailed a surge in violence as rapidly proliferating urban militias sought positions in government during the immediate postconflict period. Amid seemingly anarchic conditions, a war of attrition between militias, who were competing for political positions that would provide access to rents in the new order, commenced.49 Early on, then, competition for rents through violence structured the emergent forces gaining positions of influence in Tajikistan’s new state. This has left Tajikistan’s internal police and security units highly militarized and operating outside institutional checks of civilian control. A presidential decree in 1999 designed to force the MVD to consent to prokurator oversight, for instance, has had little effect because “in the end, militia are

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armed people, and some procurators are afraid of them.”50 As a result, state security institutions in many areas of Tajikistan have been closely linked with organized crime—building on relationships forged in the civil war that were expected to serve them well in pursuing new rent-seeking opportunities after the war.51 State security institutions in Tajikistan have received very little investment, training, and prestige. Reforms to police, prokurators, and internal security bodies have neither empowered these organs nor linked them to monitoring economic activities as in Uzbekistan, partly because large portions of the Tajikistan’s state security apparatus remain under the de facto control of former commanders from the civil war whose allegiance to the Rakhmon regime is weak. As a consequence, the regime has not invested in strengthening the coercive capacity of these institutional bodies. While this undercuts the state’s extractive capacity, it ensures the security of the Rakhmon leadership, which fears the ends to which an empowered coercive apparatus might be used. Thus, for local and regional elites—though less so in cotton-producing areas where coercive apparatuses are essential to continuing Soviet-era labor-repressive agriculture—state security bodies offer little and tend not to be essential in maintaining social order, resource extraction, and rent-seeking activities. For state security forces, those who are not linked to a former commander are left to pursue less lucrative income sources, such as harassing shuttle traders, interfering with returned migrants from Russia, and extorting bribes from alleged perpetrators of petty crimes.52

The Emergence of a Stable, Yet Fractious State Consequently, the state has remained less dependent on its state security apparatus, able to concentrate rent seeking without depending on the extensive use of coercion in resource extraction. Already weakened by state failure and civil war, state security institutions have been sidelined by the regime. As a result, informal hierarchies of authority beholden to local commanders remain firmly in place, minimizing the power of state security institutions from establishing authority and control over the country’s cotton industry, drug trafficking, or the energy sector—each of which remains largely under the control of the Rakhmon regime. But the power of state security institutions vary widely across regions of Tajikistan, depending on concentrations of resources and how those resources have empowered local and regional elites. As Anne Matveeva explains, “In the mountainous parts, such as Gharm and Gorno-Badakhshan, there is greater freedom and less apprehension of security officials, who also are aware of limitations placed on their power. In cotton-producing areas of the south, by contrast, the population is terrified of the security and police agents.”53

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State security institutions in cotton-growing areas are utilized to an extent in resource extraction, but their role remains limited in resource-poor regions where they often get pulled into sporadic conflicts between the regime and local elites.

Co-optation and Rent Seeking in Khatlon Province In Khatlon Province—a part of Tajikistan with concentrated agricultural resources—the regime has extended patronage to local elites and opened rentseeking opportunities. As a result, those elites remained bound to the regime and promoted the emergence of a relatively cohesive state security apparatus in the region. As one lawyer explained, “The heads of the districts were the first persons at that level. And the district heads, district prokurator, and head of UVD [police] always walked in ‘single file.’ That is to say, they always supported one another and rarely interfered with each other.”54 Within Khatlon Province itself, however, there is considerable variation, both in the structural mix of its resources and rents and in the makeup and mobilization of its security institutions. Major cotton-producing districts in Khatlon, such as the districts of Shaartuz, Kolkhozobod, Jiliqul, Vose, Kuliab, among others, generate lucrative rent-seeking opportunities for local elites. A portion of the rents derived from these resource-rich districts, in turn, travel upward through the state apparatus. Khatlon’s provincial governor, Amirsho Mirzaliev, reportedly received annual payments ranging from $50,000 to $100,000 (depending on the district’s resource base) from district governors. During his five-year tenure (2001–6), he “managed an increase in regional debt from $70 million to $300 million. Yet this did not prevent him from purchasing a two-story residence in Kurgan-Teppe City and a popular restaurant ‘Obi Toza’ for $500,000.”55 Kuliab District, for example, has several large farms, including Hammadoni Farm, which was run by Jabbor Zardiev (from 1982 to 1995), who resided primarily in Kuliab City and in Dushanbe (as he was simultaneously a deputy in the national parliament).56 Zardiev later became mayor of Kuliab City and one of the most influential persons in Khatlon Province. As a local lawyer explained, Zardiev was able to amass significant wealth while being protected in his position: In his years as mayor, Zardiev has distributed plots of land. In this I think he “worked” for the most part for his own fortune. Incidentally, after that, as they dismissed him, the Prokurator General brought criminal charges in connection with this distributed land. A large part

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of this land was set aside for agricultural purposes, but was not used for these needs. They built private residences there, or several other objects. It demonstrated to everyone that punishments were promulgated and investigated only after a shift in city leadership occurred. The makeup of such a system is such that, while any leader has power, no prokurator and no part of the Prokuratura can move against him.57 While no prokurator did move against district and provincial leaders during Mirzaliev’s tenure, the year after his dismissal (e.g., 2007) a total of forty-six criminal cases in Khatlon Province related to illegal use of irrigated lands were opened by the provincial prokurator.58 Zardiev returned to run Hammadoni Farm and, amidst investigations, his continued influence enabled Hammadoni Farm to be in tax arrears to the government for 1,369,554 somoni ($300,000) by August 2008, despite efforts by district and provincial authorities to compel payment.59 Similarly, another large farm in Kuliab District, Amirshoev Farm, also appeared to be independent of the district center, fairly wealthy, and wary of visitors. The gangland-style assassination of the head of Amirshoev Farm in 1998, while traveling between the cities of Kuliab and Kurgan-Teppe, points to intraregional competition and illicit economic activity.60 A similar pattern has emerged in Vose District. As during the Soviet period, the republican leadership has pressured regional politicians to mobilize labor in their localities, including students, journalists, and shopkeepers. Vose district governor Karim Faquerov, for instance, ordered all markets and shops (except for one) to remain closed from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. during the cotton harvest in 2004.61 But, according to many in the district, patronage and protection from above has enabled farm chairs to “steal from their own people,” diverting funds from farms into the own pockets.62 As long as collective farms remain protected by the patrons in regional and national offices, they continue to rack up debt, and they continue to mobilize local authorities to impose strict controls over private farmers that force them to grow cotton and sell it to the state at extremely low prices. By 2005 private farmers in Vose District faced “mounting debt” backlogged from previous years in the district totaling an estimated US$18 million.63 Growing debt has become a widespread problem, leading local bank branches in the district (and throughout Tajikistan) to set up repayment schemes with labor migrants abroad to cover debts that are impossible to repay.64 Across Khatlon Province, cotton-growing districts gave rise to increased rent-seeking opportunities after the war, which served as a means of co-optation that the government used to bind local elites to the regime. There are, of course, resource poor districts in Khatlon Province, such as Shurobod, Soviet, and

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Muminobod, but even these are somewhat better than districts in the Rasht Valley or Gorno-Badakhshan. Moreover, elites from these poorer districts can rise into Khatlon’s provincial administration and benefit from the flow of rents through that apparatus.65 Since the end of the war, these rent-seeking opportunities served to consolidate Khatlon’s provincial elite into a base of support for the regime. As late as 1994 and 1995 when the fighting had largely ended in Khatlon Province, local militia commanders still wielded enormous influence on the ground. Refugees returning from Afghanistan—especially those identified as “Gharmis” or “Pamiris” with regional ties to the opposition—were regularly targeted with violence. Localities run by hardline progovernment elites, such as the city of Kurgan-Teppe and the districts of Bokhtar and Vakhsh, regularly used their position to threaten and attack these groups. Documented attacks in localities run by more moderate progovernment elites—districts such as Kumsangir, Panj, Shahrituz, Kabodian, and Jilikul—were far fewer, but these elites were often driven out of office.66 Although the central government made appointments to top local and provincial positions, “those local authorities were either complacent in preserving the order or complicit in perpetrating the violence.”67 Throughout the mid-1990s, in fact, the state was unable to reassert its control over large swathes of Khatlon Province. Gradually, local elites in Khatlon Province obtained access to significant rents, enabling them to leverage state security bodies in their localities to mobilize rural labor, secure inputs, and divert profits. As a result, local political and economic elites—aided greatly by efforts by the regime to eliminate or reintegrate these independent militias—slowly gained control over local state security bodies and promoted the regime’s monopoly of violence in Khatlon Province. By 2003, a survey of five hundred women working on farms across eight districts of Khatlon Province, which asked respondents who they would look to for protection, found that more than 60 percent of the women identified the farm chair, 30 percent said nobody would protect them, and 3 percent identified trade unions or law enforcement bodies.68 That so few respondents would identify law enforcement organs as a protector is not surprising given the lucrative combinations of rents and resources that empowered local elites and gave them influence over state security institutions in the province. In fact, of thirty-five experts who ranked court performance across Tajikistan, twenty-four respondents identified courts in Khatlon Province as among the three worst regions (and seventeen ranked Khatlon Province as the single worst) in the country. As figure 4.2 shows, no other region was placed among the worst three regions by so many respondents. In fact, the gap between Khatlon’s courts and other regional courts in Tajikistan are much larger than the gap in regional court performance within Kyrgyzstan or within Uzbekistan.69 Resource-rich districts in Khatlon Province,

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fa

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at lo n rn ih on G a Fa rm izo bo d Su gh d G BA O H i Tu ss rs or un za Ta de vi ld Sh ara ah rin a Jir u gh at a Ru l da k Va i rz D ob ar ba Ta nd jik ab ad

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FIGURE 4.2 Tajikistan

Number of experts ranking regional courts among worst three in

especially Kuliab, Kabodiyon, and Shaartuz—were also singled out by legal specialists as localities with powerful district governors and weak, ineffective security institutions.70 Because these localities are “cotton areas where investors and other rich people can solve problems with money,” law enforcement and judicial organs typically “work for partial interests (and make decisions for those interests).”71 As rent seeking took hold in the province, district governors and farm chairs were increasingly able to mobilize law enforcement in their resource extraction and rent-seeking operations, making these elites the arbiters of security for the everyday person. As the case of Khatlon Province indicates, the loss of the state’s monopoly on violence during the civil war enabled local commanders to mobilize their own armed forces at will, often to protect the diversion of wealth into their private coffers. But as a major cotton-producing region, Khatlon’s local elites were provided sufficient rent-seeking opportunities to extend co-optation through resource extraction and use their access to rents to pull local militia groups (usually the smaller, weaker ones) into resource extraction activities. In this way, open rent seeking enabled local elites to reestablish the state’s monopoly of violence in the region. At the same time, it has led to the rise of nascent rent-based regional leadership in Khatlon Province, which has undermined

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rule-of-law institutions, and promoted predatory behavior among local security bodies.72

Competition and Violence in the Rasht Valley The districts located in the Rasht Valley (especially Rasht, Komsomolobod, and Jirghatal) were mountainous, had sparse resources, and were primarily known for their fruits and vegetable production. Historically, elites in these districts generated virtually no income. During the civil war, moreover, the Rasht Valley experienced severe levels of fighting, which destroyed parts of its infrastructure that linked economic trade across isolated villages. By 2002, significant portions of solkhozy in the valley had been privatized with assets being acquired by those with money and influence. Economic opportunities in the Rasht Valley were few, with roughly 62 percent of the population dependent on foreign remittances from migrants abroad (primarily in Russia).73 Likewise, elites’ political influence was traditionally quite limited. Districts in the valley were at one point elevated to a province during the Soviet period, but it was broken up into separate districts in the 1950s as political elites from Leninabad Province sought to consolidate their influence over the republic. In part because of these political and economic conditions, the districts of the Rasht Valley were among the first to break from the regime in 1992 and they have remained a primary center of opposition to the government since the civil war. The worst fighting of the war ended in late 1992, but it was not until May 1993—with the assistance of a brigade of Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs Special Forces—that troops loyal to the Rakhmon government were able to occupy and drive out opposition forces in Kofarnikhan, Rasht, and Romit districts in the valley. Even then, for the next five years, the area remained under the control of the opposition. In the wake of civil war, Rasht and its neighboring districts were purposely kept as independent districts (probably to minimize their influence in national politics). As a result, opportunities for local elites to move into positions in the capital were blocked until the mid-2000s and have opened up only gradually since then. This has also diminished a critical means by which the Rakhmon government could use access to state rents to extend top-down influence on local elites in the area. In sharp contrast to pyramids of patronage in Khatlon Province, “spheres of influence of local patrons are limited, rarely larger than that of a district. In terms of actors, the Rasht Valley is controlled by local power holders, most of them former combatants from the civil war.” Exemplifying the limited

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state presence in the Rasht Valley, people frequently avoid the judicial system and other organs of the state, preferring to use informal authorities such as local mullahs and village elders.74 Weak top-down patronage has enabled a diverse stratum of local power holders to emerge. Local elites are a motley combination of former collective farm chairs or district politicians, former field commanders, emerging drug barons, and local religious figures. Some have roots in the Soviet era, but for most their credentials and legitimacy are primarily based on their role in the civil war. A range of identities and interests defines elites in the Rasht Valley, moreover, because they have not been absorbed into top-down patronage influences. In Rasht District, for instance, “criminals turned warlords turned politicians” are still significant and often work against establishing accountable and impartial state structures in the region.75 At the same time, the district also contains important religious and financial interests that are connected to “higher levels of corruption” within the state apparatus, giving rise to “a mixed system” in which “some leaders brought to power more or less work effectively” while others who are not beholden to the center work less effectively.76 By contrast, Kofarnihan District is more consistently under the influence of religious leaders, though they themselves are often divided into competing groups.77 Despite Kofarnihan’s proximity to Dushanbe, “state laws are fundamentally weak there, there are more religious rules” at work.78 Other districts such as Tavildara and Jirghatal that are situated deep in the Rasht Valley are “estranged from the center’s surveillance and control and from the influences of the central government.”79 By contrast, Varzob’s state offices work marginally better in part because “the region is located in proximity to the state capital and because of long-standing efforts to improve supervision” there.80 The diversity of interests at play in Rasht Valley, in short, has arisen in a context where few rent-seeking opportunities have been extended to local elites. Initially, attempts by the regime to combat and eradicate local elites have entailed a combined strategy of coercion and co-optation that was intended to open rent-seeking opportunities to some local elites. This was the unspoken logic of the power-sharing arrangement contained within the 1997 peace agreement. Many former field commanders of the UTO were absorbed into local police forces, other law enforcement and judicial offices, and district administrations. Others were given control over and ownership of key local economic operations such as collective farms and local factories. Still others simply operated within the drug trade without government interference. As the Rakhmon government established its control over resources, and over rents that were generated from cotton, aluminum, and drug trafficking, it saw little

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reason to share those rents with local elites upon whom they did not depend. As a consequence, the promise of inclusion into government and greater access to state rents was not kept by the regime. Increasingly, a strategy of co-optation gave way to coercion, leading to open conflicts over who holds key government positions in Rasht Valley. At first, the Rakhmon government sought to appoint its officials to run local administrations, but this was often rejected by local power holders. One of Rakhmon’s first appointees to run the Rasht District, for instance, was assassinated. Over time, however, the regime has taken more aggressive steps to extend its influence over key positions in the Rasht Valley. In March 2004, for instance, there was a standoff between the district administration (which was loyal to Dushanbe) and former opposition figures (who often worked with nongovernmental organizations in their localities). For example, Sherali Mirzoev, a former field commander of the UTO, had become head of a local NGO office in Tajikabad District but was regularly in conflict with the local district administration. Likewise, attempts by the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) to hold conferences in Rasht were blocked by the administration. Also in 2004, there were reports that elites from the Rasht Valley who had been dismissed from their national posts, such as Makhmadrozi Iskandarov, were attempting to organize a political bloc with backing from former field commanders, warlords, and others linked to drug trafficking through the region.81 Shortly afterward, before the 2006 presidential election, Iskandarov and others were arrested. On February 2, 2008, an attempt by OMON police to arrest former militia commander-turned-police captain, Mirzohuja Akhmadov, led to a firefight at the Rasht District police station. According to Akhmadov, this was the eighth attempt to arrest him.82 In July 2009, former UTO commander-in-chief, Mirzo Ziyoev, was killed under suspicious circumstances in a conflict with militants in the Rasht Valley. After joining the postwar national government as minister of emergency situations in 1997, Ziyoev was the most prominent example of power sharing within the Rakhmon government. Ziyoev was peremptorily dismissed in 2006, and he returned to Tavildara District, allegedly in retirement. Government and militant reports of Ziyoev’s death differ greatly, but independent observers have noted that Ziyoev’s dismissal and untimely death follow a continued pattern in which former opposition forces are steadily sidelined by the regime.83 On August 22, 2010, twenty-five prisoners escaped from one of Tajikistan’s high security prisons with several allegedly fleeing into eastern districts of the Rasht Valley. On September 19, a military convoy sent into the region to recapture the escapees was ambushed by militants, leading to a three-month

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military operation in the valley. Three former commanders from the civil war were accused of orchestrating the ambush: Mirzohuja Akhmadov, Mullo Abdullo, and Alouvddin Davlatov. After the civil war, Colonel Akhmadov was made head of the Rasht District anti–organized crime directorate within police force, and he ran the region independent of the center. Foreign dignitaries visiting the region were required to clear their visit with him, not the central government. Mullo Abdullo was an Islamist insurgent who reportedly had returned to Tajikistan in 2009 after hiding out with Taliban forces in Afghanistan for ten years. Aluviddin Davlatov, a deputy in Akhmadov’s anti–organized crime unit, had reactivated his forces upon the arrival of troops in September 2010. Akhmadov—who has had several violent confrontations with the central government—quickly negotiated an amnesty with the regime in exchange for aiding in capturing the other two. Subsequent military operations putting thousands of untrained troops against experienced militants proved devastating: these led to heavy losses by the government, with estimates of more than one hundred killed, leaving Tajikistan with thirty-two soldiers in its only counterinsurgency special forces unit. Davlatov and Abdullo (along with twenty-five other warlords) were eventually killed in mop-up operations several months later that only succeeded because they were guided by Akhmadov against his old comrades in arms.84 As these examples show, local elites tied to the regime are often in open conflict with local elites in the Rasht Valley who remain disaffected. For the most part, however, the regime’s increasing use of coercion over co-optation demonstrates that it has failed to credibly bind local elites through the extension of rent-seeking opportunities. Another resource-poor region initially targeted by the regime for co-optation has been Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO), but there too the use of coercive measures has increased and has marginalized its local elites in a context of centralizing flows of rents. In July 2012, the murder of Major-General Abdullo Nazarov, provincial head of Tajikistan’s national security service in GBAO, was followed by a state of emergency in the region, a large military operation from Dushanbe, and a firefight in Khorog (the regional capital) that led to seventy deaths.85 Both Major-General Nazarov and the local elites accused of organizing his murder—Tolib Ayombekov, Imomnazar Imomnazarov, Yodgor Mamadaslamov, and Mamadbokir Mamadbokirov— were all former commanders during the civil war and were believed to be involved in the GBAO’s narcotics industry. A popular interpretation of the violence suggests that the excessive use of force, allegedly intended to arrest the organizers of the murder, was in practice an effort by the regime to consolidate its control over lucrative drug trafficking operations in the region. This case of asserting central control over local elites who command local drug routes, moreover,

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has parallels with the Akhmadov example above: like Akhmadov, Ayombekov was a local commander within the state’s security apparatus (he was head of the Ishkashim District border guards unit); like Akhmadov, Ayombekov came in conflict not with nonstate drug runners but other members of the security services (his immediate supervisor, Nazarov); and like Akhmadov, Ayombekov had a history of opposition to the regime, which had used a mix of co-optation and coercion in its ongoing efforts to extend its control over him. In both the Rasht Valley and GBAO, the regime resorted to coercion partly to consolidate its control over rents from drug trafficking operations. Mostly, though, the sparse resources under local elites provide little incentive for the regime to engage in power-sharing arrangements like those governing Khatlon Province. This chapter has examined postconflict state reconstruction efforts in Tajikistan since the civil war and how those efforts have led to a stable, yet internally fractious state. As the cases of Khatlon Province and the Rasht Valley show, different parts of the country experienced different state security developments. The former manifests co-optation through open rent seeking and the latter is defined by disaffection and conflict in a context of closed-off rent seeking and state efforts to rule through coercion. Under the guidance of the international community, postconflict reintegration of armed forces ended the civil war, but it led former commanders and many local elites to expect an open season on rent seeking in return for their support for the regime. Economic developments, however, concentrated rents under the center’s control, giving it little incentive to share those rents to elites more broadly—especially to elites in resource-poor regions. Localized rent-seeking avenues were extended to elites in cotton-growing regions, but revenue from foreign aid and the drug trade flowed directly to the Rakhmon leadership, and thus the co-optation of elites in many regions has been—from the regime’s perspective—unnecessary. The initial survival of Tajikistan’s postwar regime depended on its ability to provide rent-seeking opportunities to former commanders and a wide range of actors. Providing resource-rich elites with access to rents continued because it was needed to offset the favorable relative bargaining position of those elites and to reestablish rule over them through co-optation. Over time, though, local elites in resource-poor regions commanded little that the regime needed and the relative bargaining position in those areas favored the center. Few rents were offered to them. As a result, a pattern has emerged in the Tajikistan case in which rent seeking was largely decoupled from the exercise of state coercion (which was true even to some degree in Khatlon Province where coercive rent seeking was quite weak). This is particularly true in resource-poor

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regions such as the districts of the Rasht Valley, where the regime has focused more on coercion than co-optation, and this has led to divisions and conflicts among elites and with the regime. This stands in sharp contrast to the fusion of coercion and rent seeking in Uzbekistan. Together, resources, patronage, and selective rent-seeking opportunities have perpetuated a stable yet internally fractious state in Tajikistan.

5 COERCION AND RENT-SEEKING IN UZBEKISTAN

On May 13–14, 2005, state security forces suppressed an uprising in Andijan city, resulting in the deaths of hundreds—possibly seven hundred—civilians (including many women and children).1 The crackdown after the uprising spread well beyond Andijan Province, resulting in a wave of arrests, a refugee crisis in neighboring Kyrgyzstan, and a turn away from Western engagement in Uzbekistan’s foreign relations.2 For Uzbekistan’s domestic and international politics alike, the 2005 Andijan uprising was a pivotal event, dramatically demonstrating the farreaching consequences of the regime’s tenuous hold over regional politics. The 2005 Andijan uprising was also crucial test for the government, which suddenly faced prospects of widespread demonstrations against the state. In a matter of days, peaceful protests were eclipsed by armed assaults on government buildings in Andijan, a spontaneous mass demonstration in the city square, and violent state repression. How did it happen? What underlying developments led to such catastrophic events? And how did one of Central Asia’s largest, most cohesive state security apparatuses witness the outbreak of protests overwhelming regional authorities, leading to such a dramatic application of force? The uprising began with months-long protests against the arrests and trial of twenty-three prominent local businessmen who were accused of being part of an extremist religious group, Akromiya, and plotting to overthrow the state. After four months of peaceful and well-organized protests outside the courthouse in Andijan, several demonstrators were arrested on the eve of the verdict and friends and relatives of those arrested (perhaps sensing an impending guilty verdict) overran several police stations and a military garrison on May 12, 2005. 100

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Having armed themselves, the group then attacked the National Security Service headquarters in Andijan (Uzbekistan’s successor agency of the KGB) but was repulsed. It then stormed the prison holding the twenty-three defendants, freeing them and approximately five hundred other prisoners. On the morning of May 13, the armed group took control of the provincial seat of government (hokimiyat), and over the day several thousand people gathered on the main square in front of the building. Mostly comprised of city residents, these demonstrators made speeches calling for the acquittal of the arrested businessmen, for social and economic problems in Andijan to be resolved, and for President Karimov to come to the province to address their concerns directly. The government responded with overwhelming military force against the demonstrators. Explanations of the Andijan events vary widely and point to a range of factors—backlash effects against a predatory state, opposing business interests, or conflicting clan structures. Some have described the uprising as a revolt of those in the bazaar economy against newly imposed taxes and tariffs on consumer imports and against restrictions on the thriving Central Asian shuttle trade economy generally.3 In May 2002, excessively high tariffs on consumer imports reached 90 percent; in December 2002, smaller enterprises engaging in wholesale import trade were outlawed; in 2003, stalls at major bazaars were auctioned at prohibitively high rates for small shuttle traders; and in November 2004, a law was passed requiring traders to use cash registers and put their earnings in bank accounts.4 But why did the revolt happen in Andijan? All provinces enforced the same restrictive laws during these years. The laws made all traders more vulnerable to predatory tax officials, police, and prokurators. And these laws generated popular protests among local traders and prominent businessmen in the bazaars in every region of Uzbekistan. Others point to clan or regional identity. As noted earlier in the book, some have argued that, in contrast to postcommunist economies undergoing reform— where “winners” have used captured economic assets to weaken administrative controls5—the lack of economic liberalization in Central Asia has led elites to divest the state of its resources through informal social structures, such as clan or regional groupings.6 These explanations, however, require fine-tuning since “winning” can involve multiple logics of action that are shaped by a wide variety of factors. Moreover, a clan politics analysis to the crisis does not account for how similar structures in the neighboring provinces of Ferghana and Namangan failed to produce an uprising there. A third set of explanations identifies local power struggles within Andijan’s provincial administration.7 Certainly, contestation for political position and economic resources in Andijan were central in the developments that preceded the uprising. But analyses of underlying power dynamics within Andijan’s murky

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politics are too proximate to the immediate events and do not place them in a broader analytical framework. Finally, some contend that powerful business interests drove the uprising. Far from autonomous businessmen occupying a private sphere, however, the business elites on trial were highly dependent on regional authorities and largely acquiescent as long as they continued to receive patronage from the provincial governor’s office.8 Most of them ran large quasi-public enterprises that were only profitable because they, as the enterprise directors, enjoyed privileged access to hard currency loans and state subsidies that were lucrative sources of income when converted into local currency on the black market. As elsewhere in Uzbekistan, members of Andijan’s so-called business class were in fact clients of provincial authorities who commanded “government-linked business enterprises” but not broad-based societal support.9 As a result, a focus on businessmen in this case is limited and only tells a part of the broader forces and agents involved. As a complement to the latter account, this chapter explains the Andijan Uprising as a consequence of unchecked rent seeking. While rent-seeking opportunities opened to local elites bound them to the regime during the turbulent years of the Soviet collapse, it ultimately undercut their long-term commitment to the regime. In the turbulent years following independence, rent-seeking opportunities open to local elites served to commit them to the regime, producing a cohesive state security apparatus in Uzbekistan. But over the 1990s, the regime increasingly depended on top-down patronage to ensure the co-optation of potentially unruly elites. This, in turn, drew local state security offices, which were often dependent on regional and local elites, into resource extraction and rent-seeking activities. As coercion and rent seeking became intertwined, state security institutions found themselves submerged within regional patronage systems. On the one hand, unchecked rent seeking enabled the rise of powerful patrons around whom alternative power centers formed. On the other hand, this projected predation onto the local level, inspiring fear and resentment from the public and creating conditions of inequality and discontent. Together these developments—growing independence of regional elites and the public unrest coercive rent seeking generated—led to the Andijan uprising and its brutal suppression in 2005. This chapter traces the rise of coercive rent seeking in Uzbekistan, its particular subnational patterns, and its production of regional power centers. The interlocking forces of coercion and rent seeking promoted a cohesive state apparatus in the short run but over time it has drawn Uzbekistan into a self-destructive cycle of corruption, repression, and disaffection that is extremely difficult to break. The remainder of this chapter consists of three parts. First, I explain how coercion and rent seeking became linked in postindependence Uzbekistan.

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Second, I elucidate patterns of “stationary” and “roving” coercive rent seeking using the examples of Samarkand Province and Navoii Province (respectively), briefly reflecting on the patterns of prokurator-governor relations and modalities of subnational rule in Uzbekistan. Finally, I apply coercive rent seeking to explain the 2005 Andijan Uprising.

Rent Seeking and Coercion Interlocked Over the 1990s, the regime initiated economic, political, and coercive reforms designed to reassert its authority over the regions that had been lost during the Soviet collapse. But these initiatives generated resistance from regional and local elites who used these reforms to consolidate the gains they had acquired in the immediate postindependence years. These reforms produced the unintended effect of further linking coercion and rent seeking: economic reforms channeled rents under provincial governors; political reforms energized a scramble for rents within provincial administrations; and coercive reforms enmeshed state security apparatuses in local extraction operations. Together, these led to the rise of coercive rent seeking in Uzbekistan. By the mid-1990s, the repercussions of Uzbekistan’s weakened state infrastructure began to be felt at the national level, and the central leadership increasingly took steps to prevent its further loss of control over the regions. In 1994, President Karimov had summoned all district, city, and provincial governors to Tashkent to foster greater allegiance and provide them a sense that they too have a stake in Uzbekistan’s political and economic development.10 By 1995, Karimov was organizing commissions and dispatching his closest advisors to conduct inquiries into the disappointing economic performance of collective farms. The reports from these inquiries would provide support for his dismissal of several provincial governors in the second half of the 1990s. In 1997, the central leadership in Uzbekistan initiated a concerted effort to strengthen state capabilities at local and regional levels. An array of measures were applied—including economic, political, and coercive controls—in Uzbekistan’s first experiment in postindependence state building. At the core of this effort was a broader mandate granted to law enforcement organs that focused their surveillance and control functions on the very agents that had acquired influence over them—local elites and their patronage ties to regional politicians. Though comprehensive in scope, this experiment has failed to achieve its goal of constructing a more effective state infrastructure. Instead, these state-building initiatives unintentionally reinforced the pursuit of rents by territorial elites in three ways. First, economic and fiscal reforms

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centralized control over economic activity in many areas, reducing the amount of rents available to elites outside the purview of provincial governors. Second, a policy of appointing more provincial governors from the center or other regions to direct anticorruption “clean-up” campaigns reinforced efforts by local and regional elites to resist an intrusive central government and reassert their influence over local rent-seeking activities in the wake of these campaigns. Third, institutional reforms developing more robust coercive powers of the state inadvertently put a stronger coercive apparatus in the hands of regional politicians—providing territorial elites with a new instrument of resource extraction and rent seeking. Together, these reform initiatives interlocked the coercive power of the state with processes of rent seeking, institutionalizing them within the state apparatus. I address each in turn.

Economic Reforms and Channeling Rents After several years of loosened economic controls as a strategy of opening rentseeking opportunities to local elites, the central leadership instituted economic policy changes in the late 1990s that included retrenching economic reforms, closing off its borders, and tightening state controls in the economy. By 1997, import controls were applied through the newly created Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations (established in 1994), countering earlier concessions that granted de facto control over cross-border trade to provincial governments. At the same time, bank offices in Tashkent took over regional branches’ roles in the state’s new credit scheme as a means of regulating the distribution of credit to local agricultural enterprises,11 and credit to small and medium-sized enterprises through Uzbekistan’s Biznes-Fond—averaging 130 projects per region and totaling an annual 4.68 billion so'm ($5 million) by 2003—was also centralized through central offices.12 Finally, the center’s control over state-monopolized cotton and grain exports was enforced more systematically. The center also reduced regions’ autonomous fiscal bases. In 1997, the center cut subsidies to regional budgets to half of what they were in 1996, although losses varied across regions (table 5.1). Several regions lost subsidies altogether in 1997 and only regained them incrementally in subsequent years. Calculated as percentage of each region’s expenditure, the mean went from 26.6 percent in 1996 to 13 percent in 1997 and 1998. This abrupt drop in subsidies from the center was an attempt to weaken regional patronage bases by starving regions of funds. It had the effect of making rents scarce, giving territorial elites an incentive to seek out alternative strategies of rent seeking. District and regional governor office staff later confirmed that the loss of fiscal support from the center reflected broader trends in resource distribution and many viewed the late 1990s

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TABLE 5.1 Central government’s subsidies to provincial budgets, Uzbekistan PROVINCE

AS A PERCENTAGE OF EACH PROVINCE’S EXPENDITURES 1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

Jizzax

51.4

39.4

48.8

51.6

49.9

46.1

Karakalpakistan

48.8

36.1

29.2

38.8

46.5

52.3

Surkhandarya

42.3

36.9

26.1

39.9

47.8

46.3

Namangan

41.6

22.4

17.6

35.3

37.9

36.2

Andijan

36

14.1

6

23.3

28.2

22.8

31.2

13.1

9.5

26.7

21.4

32

Syrdarya

24.1

20

16.2

22.4

25.8

20.8

Tashkent City

28.8

0

10.1

0

8.1

6.8

Khorezm

25.5

0

0

9.4

17.8

21.2

Ferghana

Samarkand

17.7

0

8.6

0

7.5

12.7

Kashkadarya

8.4

0

0

7.8

0

22.9

Bukhara

1.9

0

0

0

0

6.7

0

0

3.3

0

0

0

Tashkent

14.8

0

7.6

0

0

0

Mean

26.6

13

13.1

18.2

20.8

23.3

Navoii

Source: Calculated from data obtained from the Ministry of Finance.

as a period of difficulty.13 By the end of the 1990s, access to easy rents under provincial administrators was far more limited, cutting into local elites’ ability to convert their resources into rents. While designed to rein in local elites, these policies in practice concentrated rent seeking under provincial governors. Tightened economic controls in the name of reform effectively ensured that provincial governors would be the gatekeepers of rent-seeking opportunities for the local elite.

Cadre Reforms and the Scramble for Influence The second change was a more aggressive approach to the selection of regional governors. In response to continued losses of state resources in procurement, financing, and export, President Karimov directed First Deputy Prime Minister and head of the country’s Agro-Industrial Complex, Ismail Jorabekov, to create and chair a commission to investigate the shortcomings in agricultural production in the regions.14 The commission’s findings led to two waves of dismissals of provincial governors between late 1995 and 2003 for mismanagement and corruption.15 While poor weather conditions contributed to low crop yields, the dismissals constituted the center’s first attempts to assert authority in the regions. From the perspective of local elites, however, these appointees’ anticorruption

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programs were a familiar challenge by the center—one to be resisted and waited out. A well-worn method of political control during the Soviet period, cadre reforms in postindependence Uzbekistan did not last and merely left behind displaced elites who redoubled their efforts to recover lost positions of influence— setting in motion a scramble for rents after the center’s appointees were removed. In the first wave (1995–97), new appointments were charged with improving the agricultural sector, but the appointment of four of the six new regional governors to regions where they had built their careers illustrated the center’s ambivalence toward undercutting patronage bases in the regions.16 In the second wave (1998–2002), regional governor appointments in three provinces—Kashkadarya, Samarkand, and Surkhandarya—brought individuals who had built their careers in Tashkent City.17 But the use of central appointees was internally undermined, the appointments were reversed, and more intensive rent seeking followed as members of the old guard reestablished themselves. Bakhtiyor Hamidov, appointed governor of Kashkadarya Province, was clearly from the central apparatus.18 That he had unusual favor of the center can be seen in the extra funds made available to him through the regional budget. In contrast to his predecessors, who had received virtually no funds from the center (none at all between 1997–99), subsidies in Hamidov’s first budget year (2001) increased to 15,713.7 million so'm—amounting to 23 percent of the region’s annual expenditures. Hamidov, however, was overly focused on extracting resources and paid too little attention to bringing in investment. Perhaps viewing his assignment to Kashkadarya as a demotion, he was reputedly corrupt, which did not improve his reception in the region.19 At the start of 2003, central leaders replaced Hamidov with local strongman Nuriddin Zayniev, who previously had been director of the Muborak Oil and Gas Lines Administration in the region. In this capacity, Zayniev oversaw the construction of a large chemical complex at the Shurtan gas-condensate field in Muborak district, which was funded by foreign loans estimated at a cost of US$1 billion beginning in 1997. Although the complex was constructed through a foreign consortium of Swedish, Swiss, and Japanese subsidiaries of Uzbekneftgaz (the government’s gas and oil association), nearly US$400 million went to local contractors for construction.20 Zayniev’s appointment, especially in the wake of Hamidov’s excesses, suggests that the central leadership has retracted its efforts to influence local politics in the region and has returned to ruling the region through its patronage structures. Likewise, Erkin Roziev, appointed to run Samarkand Province, came from Tashkent. On his appointment as governor of Samarkand in 1998, he claimed to have been sent to clean up corruption in the region.21 As we will see below, he pursued a frontal assault on local elites in the province, but within three years he was removed from office for “corrupt activities and poor performance.”22

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A young and energetic governor from Jizzax Province, Shavkat Mirzoyoev, replaced him. A long-time favorite of the president, Mirzoyoev enjoyed the highest subsidies from the center as governor of Jizzax Province (1996–2001), despite the fact that GDP per capita in the region had steadily declined under his leadership from 94.3 percent (1995) to 72.5 percent (1998) of the national average.23 It was well-known that he enforced his policies through “unwritten rules” and “after his time as governor, law enforcement organs were seen as the governor’s toy.”24 Moreover, on being promoted to governor of the Samarkand Region, subsidies to that region increased from 8,994.5 million so'm in 2000 to 21,104.8 million so'm in 2001—an unprecedented increase of 235 percent. While Mirzoyoev had distinguished himself in the center’s eyes for his ability “to get jobs done,” he had also privately earned the nickname “Tyson” (after boxer Mike Tyson) among his subordinates for reputedly aggressive methods of enforcing his directives.25 While a fuller examination of Mirzoyoev can be found below, his promotion suggests a return to ruling through the region’s patronage base. In a similar fashion, Bakhtiyor Olimjonov, formerly minister of agriculture (1999–2000), was appointed governor of Surkhandarya Region to clean up the region, succeeding Jora Noraliev. Noraliev possessed a very restricted professional background, based entirely in his native Jorqurgan District in the region.26 After seven years in office, he was dismissed for failing to meet cotton and grain targets or implement economic reforms, and for permitting “nepotism, cronyism, and bribery” to foster in the region.27 His replacement from Tashkent, however, proved ineffective in maintaining control over the province’s borders with Afghanistan and Tajikistan, which had become points of conflict during his tenure. This, as well as impending U.S. military action in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, led to a greater recognition of the strategic importance of Surkhandarya. Olimjonov was replaced in February 2002 by Toshmirzo Qodirov, who as provincial prokurator had been willing to impose provincial security through heavy-handed use of coercion.28 In the wake of these appointees, a scramble for political influence and rents ensued, either to recover lost rents under the previous provincial administration or to protect against future shakeups by building a support base. After anticorruption campaigns in Samarkand Province and Ferghana Province, for instance, each region’s communal services debts to the center tripled, from 2 billion to 6.5 billion so'm in the former and 2.5 billion to 7.1 billion so'm in the latter.29 As part of its broader state-building initiative, the central leadership employed fiscal and cadre controls to reassert state power in the regions. However, these measures were by no means sufficient on their own to strengthen the state’s territorial infrastructure and enhance its capacity to enforce rules at regional and

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local levels. To supplement them, the center turned to one of its most prominent resources of political control—the successor agencies of the Soviet-era coercive apparatus.

Reforming State Security: The Prokuratura Despite the mixed record of institutional performance of the prosecutorial and police apparatus during the Soviet period (see chapter 2), the government of Uzbekistan viewed these bureaucracies as potential instruments of state building.30 During the 1990s, these offices were refashioned to serve as an internal check on concentrations of power within the executive branch, particularly against provincial and district governors, or hokims. In what follows, I focus on the role of prokurators as an example of broader trends occurring across Uzbekistan’s coercive apparatus. Reforms began in the late 1990s, when orders were issued within the Prokuratura and resolutions were passed by Parliament attempting to strengthen the institution internally. In May 1997 and November 1998, the Prokurator General issued orders specifying the role of the Department of General Control in defending of property rights and strengthening the controls that provincial prokurators could exercise over their subordinates at the district level. In October 1998 and June 2001 Parliament established the Department of Tax and Customs Crimes and the Department on Economic Crimes and Corruption within the Prokuratura.31 Similar changes were encoded in a 2001 revision to the law “On the Prokuratura,” which also emphasized new functions of prokurator surveillance in protecting the rights of small and medium entrepreneurs, independent farmers, and private businesses.32 Invested with state authority and given an expanded scope of responsibilities, the Prokuratura has become, in informal terms, one of the most powerful offices within Uzbekistan’s state apparatus. Indeed, many prokurators viewed themselves as guardians of Uzbekistan’s political development during the “transition phase”33 and, institutionally, uniquely positioned to implement government reform. As one local prokurator explained, “The prokurator stands apart from other organs of the state. It is not part of the state itself. As you know we have three branches of the state. . . . In our system of government, the president stands apart from all of these—he stands between them, maintaining a balance between them. Alongside the president is his assistant, the prokurator general and its local offices.”34 While this description is somewhat exaggerated, the Prokuratura is one of several organs of the state directly under the president (as chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers), along with ministries of Interior, Defense, Justice, National Security, Foreign Affairs, and the Border Protection Committee. Second-tier ministries and committees within the state are directly managed by the prime minister.35

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Uzbekistan’s central leadership had many reasons to expect the Prokuratura to succeed in reforming the state administration. A noticeable “brain drain” in the 1990s notwithstanding, the technical competence of prokurators in Uzbekistan remains comparatively high. Judges and prokurators at all levels in Uzbekistan were trained at law institutes in Tashkent.36 Uzbekistan’s administrative apparatus also does not suffer from conditions of overexpansion that have made oversight functions so unwieldy elsewhere.37 Finally, decentralization policies that have empowered local elites and introduced new modes of local autonomy in other countries have not been initiated in Uzbekistan. Given that leaders are reticent to introduce decentralization where a local elite “is already imbricated in the governing structures and practices of the state,” a strategy of decentralization was deemed too risky.38 In fact, Uzbekistan’s formal institutional structure has been crafted in a manner that progressively centralizes power.39 Yet, rather than promote effective and transparent bureaucratic practice within local infrastructures, reforms to the Prokuratura have deepened forms of predation and corruption at the local level—often in ways that run counter to the central government’s interests.40 As one journalist wrote in 2002, prokurators considerable influence over various stages of the judicial process provided them with “extremely wide functions of a repressive nature,” including “the right to supervise the implementation of laws, to launch criminal proceedings, to conduct investigations, issue an arrest warrant, arrange prosecution on behalf of the state at trials, and has the right to protest if the prokurator finds the verdict unsubstantiated or too lenient.”41 With their expanded powers and a broad mandate to monitor local economies, coercive institutions quickly became instruments of extraction and rent seeking used by provincial administrators so that local law enforcement bodies were often serving the very offices they were supposed to monitor. This infused a high degree of coercion into local rent-seeking operations.

The Rise of a Coercive Rent-Seeking State During the 1990s, the center became increasingly dependent on the state’s coercive apparatus—ultimately fusing coercion and rent seeking by empowering state security organs that were already enmeshed in rent-seeking relationships with local and regional elites. By 2003, the center’s dependence on coercive rent seeking to control its regions was acutely felt. One political commentator went so far as to state that “Uzbekistan’s political system is best described as feudal. . . . The center only rarely, very rarely, countermands regional elites.”42 Within the central leadership itself, there are indications of a concern about the “growing power of governors” and frustration over the failures of the center to undermine that power.43 In the personal opinion of a senior staff member within the president’s apparatus, district and regional governors constituted the foremost

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problem for the central leadership in the country.44 The brunt of the effects of coercive rent seeking fall on the rural poor, especially populations of women and children who are transformed into mobilized labor forces during the late summer and fall during which crops are harvested.45 While the institutionalization of coercion and rent seeking had come to predominate within the state apparatus, it varied in important ways across provinces. Thus, while Uzbekistan’s agricultural sector remains part of a largely untransformed command economy in which cotton and grain are part of a state monopoly, methods employed in rent seeking at the regional and local levels differ in important and substantive ways. As I demonstrate below, varying resource concentrations and access to patrons has promoted two patterns of rent seeking in Uzbekistan that closely match Mancur Olson’s “stationary” and “roving” types of taxation.46 Olson argued that rulers expecting to remain in office act as “stationary” bandits, maximizing their taxation of society but only insofar as it does not undermine tax yields in the future. Conversely, rulers with little time in office act as “roving” bandits, taxing society without constraint. In Uzbekistan, prokurators in some localities engage in rent seeking that matches the stationary bandit model, in which only a portion of income is extracted from the population so that residents retain sufficient financial resources to reinvest in the local economy and generate more revenue that will be taxable in the future. In other localities, rent seeking resembles a roving bandit model, in which the population is taxed to the fullest extent possible, leaving little capital and little incentive for residents to produce or accumulate anything of value. What promotes these different forms of coercive rent seeking? I argue that, returning to the model outlined in chapter 1, resources and patronage condition these emergent state forms. Regions whose elites have sparsely concentrated resources and few patrons will have limited rent-seeking opportunities. Under the state-building reforms described above—in which the state’s coercive apparatus has an expansive mandate—the balance of power in resource-poor regions will shift from less-important local elites to newly empowered local law enforcement and security offices. This enables “roving” rent seeking to predominate. In regions whose elites have densely concentrated resources and strong patrons, expanded rent-seeking opportunities secure the balance of power clearly in favor of local elites. These elites, in turn, benefit from state-building initiatives that effectively provide them greater coercive capabilities to pursue resource extraction, amass rents over time, and construct a patronage base independent of the central government—that is, pursue stationary rent seeking. Opening rent-seeking opportunities across many of Uzbekistan’s resource-rich regions bound local elites to

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the regime in the short run, but stationary rent seeking—when allowed to develop unchecked—eventually led local political elites into a confrontation with the center.

“Roving” Rent Seeking in Navoii Province The case of Navoii Province illustrates how the extractive capacity of lower-level offices of the state is shaped by the scarcity of resources in a region. Navoii’s local economic managers commanded sparse resources, which prevented them from exercising significant influence over local state offices. Although its agricultural lands were collectivized with the remainder of the republic in the 1930s, Navoii Province has never received sufficient infrastructural investment to develop its agricultural production. Most of its land is steppe, unsuited for farming and located far from the Zarafshan Valley (the nearest source of water). As a result, Navoii’s collective farm chairs have averaged only 1 percent of Uzbekistan’s collective farms’ gross income.47 In addition, farm chairs and other local economic leaders in Navoii Province (the region’s gas and mineral extraction operations notwithstanding) had very weak patronage ties to regional politicians. This was partly due to Navoii’s short history as an administrative unit (established in 1982). But it was also because Navoii’s political elite have been consistently divided between politicians originating from Samarkand Province and Bukhara Province. Both during and after the Soviet period, any influence commanded by Navoii politicians came through their connections to provincial elites in Bukhara and Samarkand.48 For the most part, access to local resources and political influence were not used to develop Navoii’s regional networks but exploited to gain a more prestigious post outside the province. Politicians tended to see their appointments to Navoii Province as a means of acquiring necessary experience in an outpost from which one could build a career (and move on elsewhere) rather than a location to resettle. Since 1995, Navoii’s provincial hokims have reflected its dual dependence on Bukhara and Samarkand—Hayot Gafforov (1995–98) had made his career in Samarkand Province and his successor, Ghaibulla Dilov (1998–2001), was from the provincial elite in Bukhara. In short, Navoii Province from the Soviet period to the present has continued to be run by transplanted cadres who lack both the desire and opportunity to establish a patronage base in the region. Not surprisingly, Navoii Province was one of the earliest locations to experience the central state’s new assertion of its authority in the mid-1990s. Well before crackdowns were initiated elsewhere in Uzbekistan, administrative reforms were being felt in Navoii. It was also far more intensive. Under Gafforov, 90 percent

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of district and city governors and 100 percent of administrative apparatus heads and leaders of cultural, social, and economic affairs were replaced. Those in the provincial administration (primarily deputy governors and their staffs) were constantly turned over: those in charge of the agro-industrial complex were replaced seven times; those dealing with the fruit and vegetables and finished goods production, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, transportation and education were replaced four times; and the heads of the province’s gas production company were replaced three times. Several deputy governors were dismissed for using their position to secure the appointment of relatives to positions in Tashkent, including former Hatirchi raikom first secretary and deputy provincial governor on grain production J. Rizaev and provincial deputy governor of economic affairs A. Halimov. Criminal charges were brought against lower-level officials, such as Navoii’s Gallabank head I. Sa’dinov, Navoii Grain Products director A. Adizov, and Navbakhar district deputy governor E. Ernazarov.49 Throughout the 1990s, particularly in the latter half of the decade, law enforcement and judicial organs operated with considerable independence from the regional and district administrations, consistently uncovering (real or imagined) criminal activity in the province. Compared to the average across other provinces in the republic, Navoii Province had 24 percent more reported criminal activity (based on the number of crimes per 1,000 persons),50 with a 3.4 percent rise in the number of crimes between 1997 and 1998 alone.51 Of these, approximately 80 percent were repeat offenders, indicating that few new criminal actors were emerging in the province.52 Actively engaged in debt collection, prokurators (working with other law enforcement agencies in Navoii) were able to reduce debt in the province by 230 million so'm in 1997, at a time when their counterparts in other provinces, such as Samarkand, struggled to minimize debts in their province.53 There are indications, moreover, that law enforcement organs in Navoii Province have benefited disproportionately from local revenue sources. In 1999 and 2000, law enforcement agencies established 530 posts throughout the province to monitor agricultural production (especially cotton and grain), staffed by 123 policemen—each with their own horse—all of which were provided at the expense of the Navoii branch of Ministry of Internal Affairs.54 The negative effects of prokurators “roving” banditry in Navoii Province are evident among the province’s nascent entrepreneurs, the least protected and, thus, the most preyed on set of economic actors. In one accounting that examined 188 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), of the 271 in the province in 1997, 44 were found to have gone bankrupt and 116 had suffered major economic losses.55 In contrast to state-owned enterprises and state farms in the region, independent farmers and SMEs generated considerable

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income—totaling 29.3 billion so'm in goods and services produced in 1999 alone—that was more accessible for taxation or through the exaction of fines and penalties.56 For example, land taxes across Navoii’s districts were difficult to collect in 1998—collections amounting to 39 percent in Hatirchi District, 46 percent in Navbakhar District, and 52 percent in Navoii District.57 In the first nine months of the same year, however, the Navoii City Tax Inspectorate conducted 1,991 inspections of entrepreneurs and found violations in 1,866 of them.58 When asked whether the governor can protect entrepreneurs from the interference of law enforcement agencies, a local business owner claimed that ‘the [provincial] governor can only talk about the value of entrepreneurship and improving our economy, but they are unable to actually protect them [entrepreneurs].’59 In comparing prokurator-governor relations in Navoii to Andijan Province, whose governor had remained in office for more than a decade, a lawyer familiar with the government offices in Navoii observed that ‘in Andijan the [provincial] governor is a Hero of Uzbekistan and what he says goes. He can call people at the national level if there is a problem. The hokimiyat here is a different situation. This governor and his district governors do not have that kind of power. The prokurator, on the other hand, is powerful here.’60 Navoii’s prokurators, having established themselves as autonomous from governors in the province, prey on the region’s local businesses and economic enterprises. As another lawyer in the province noted, ‘The Prokuratura engages in extremely unlawful activities and the [provincial] governor cannot do anything to stop it.’61 The expanded role of law enforcement in Navoii Province has led to the emergence of roving bandit behavior among its law enforcement agencies, particularly prokurators within the region. As such, Navoii illustrates an outcome that differs substantially from that in Samarkand, which exemplifies regions where the independence and capacity of prokurators have been stymied by provincial politicians whose informal power is rooted in their ties to local enterprise heads. Whereas in other provinces, such as Samarkand, prokurators have become instruments through which the local and regional elite have exercised their power over political offices and economic resources, prokurators in Navoii have subjugated the regional and district administrations. Strengthened by reforms made to law enforcement organs in the late 1990s and unchecked by local elite and regional elites, Navoii’s prokurators, police, and tax inspectorate employ the use of force to confiscate assets without regard to their contribution to production outputs over the long term. For the most part, economic managers or regional politicians simply strive to stay out of a prokurator’s path.

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“Stationary” Rent Seeking in Samarkand Province The case of Samarkand Province illustrates how an attempt to extend state power to the regional level inadvertently strengthened local elites’ control over extractive processes and entrenched patterns of stationary rent seeking. Since the Soviet period, Samarkand Province has benefited from a formidable resource base and an economic elite with extensive patronage ties to regional politicians. The province’s 199 collective and state farms numbered second in the republic only to Tashkent Province, and Samarkand Province consistently produced the highest percentage of agricultural goods in the republic between 1976 and 1990 (roughly 13 percent of the total).62 Moreover, district hokims held their positions for more than a decade during the Soviet period and, even as recently as the late 1990s, several district hokims had been in office since the Soviet period.63 In November 1998, Erkin Roziev was appointed hokim of Samarkand Province in an attempt to combat the growing power of these “old guard” elites. Roziev’s reforms were twofold. First, he initiated a purge of regional and local officials, reaching down to the level of individual farms. In Jomboy District, for instance, half of the district’s eighteen economic heads were changed, and none of the replacements were drawn from the regional hokim office’s nomenklatura (list of favored positions). These dismissals were “intended to close off the path to the illness of connections and granting privileges to acquaintances.”64 Evidence suggests, however, that many of these dismissals were not truly carried out. Even as late as 2001, a report on Roziev’s visit to Jomboy District lamented that “Deputy District Hokims in charge of personnel dismiss only those at the margins and they sit on their hands, not speaking their minds.”65 Similar purges were carried out in Ishtikhan District, where Roziev replaced thirty-two members of the district’s elite, again drawing none of the replacements from the provincial hokim office’s nomenklatura.66 In addition, “dozens of cadres from Ishtikhan District” who had “intended to work in the leadership positions of organizations at the provincial level” were dismissed for advancing the interests of their own locality: “They agreed to look upon the fates of their own districts and villages without any favoritism. This was not the case, and [only] occasionally did they intend to make a strike against the ‘unwritten’ rules.’”67 These dismissals, however, generally failed to undercut entrenched patterns of mutual protection, bribery, and deference to “unwritten rules” in local government offices; in most cases, replacements simply engaged in the same behaviors as their predecessors.68 Second, Roziev attempted to strengthen the authority of local prokurators in the province, particularly in policing the misuse or theft of state assets.69 But while Roziev’s efforts provided prokurators with greater room to maneuver, their

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role in enforcing the law was limited to Roziev’s sphere of influence. Outside his regional administration and selected localities, district prokurators received little protection from Roziev. Moreover, Roziev’s time in office was too brief to effect a change in the relationships and attitudes among local state officials. As a result, prokurators were not susceptible to punitive measures (or rewards) from the center and remained vulnerable to local elite influence. At the same time, both reform initiatives did not appear to significantly undercut the fiscal base of Samarkand’s local elites. For example, Roziev constantly locked horns with local leaders over the province’s growing “communal economy” debt to the central government.70 After making several efforts to reduce the region’s debt to the center, he stepped up efforts in 2001, hoping to cut Samarkand’s deficit to 500 million so'm (about US$500,000).71 Yet he continually faced resistance from local elites who were “not cooperating.” In February 2001, he threatened to prosecute local leaders for failing to make communal payments: ‘We stand in first place in the republic for arrears in communal payments. Why are city and district hokims, provincial leaders and neighborhoods not cooperating to improve repayment? This work looks like a role for law enforcement offices. The time has come for every person in this province to answer for his/ her own actions.”72 But in a province where law enforcement officials were themselves ensnared in informal power relationships with city and district leaders, the latter had little to fear from the region’s disempowered prokurators and police. In fact, little progress was made by the middle of 2001, causing Roziev to pressure elites by publicly stating his dissatisfaction with local-level communal economy debt collection: ‘To speak openly, the results of communal service spheres are not satisfying anyone. [This is] because reforms in this branch are being implemented with great difficulties. . . . The provincial hokim’s office is taking visible measures to reduce the debt in the communal sphere. But city and district hokims, who are not remaining steadfast [in their support of] reforms on this problem, have not dealt with this issue. The hokims of Samarkand City and Narpay District, in particular, should think seriously about this.”73 Meeting with city and district hokims several months later, Roziev again made it clear that “full responsibility” for collecting payments for communal services “would be placed on the laps of city and district leaders.”74 Ultimately, Roziev’s debt collection efforts failed and the region was forced to draw 30 percent of its expenditures from the republican budget in 2001.75 Roziev was dismissed in September 2001. Having regained control over regional affairs, Samarkand’s political and economic leaders aggressively resisted taxation by the new provincial hokim and by prokurators. On the issue of communal services, they immediately criticized the limited provision of natural gas to Samarkand’s outlying localities,76 and, within a year, the region’s deficit in the communal economy tripled (from under

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2 billion so'm in April 2001 to 6.5 billion so'm in December 2002).77 The province’s rural elite also curbed the hokim’s “excessive” levels of extraction in the agricultural sector. As described by an advocate, “Earlier, when the hokim had just arrived in the province, he collected nearly all the cotton and wheat harvested, even though the law says that all crops exceeding delivery targets remain with the farmers. Only in the last year or so has he started to collect less—but he still takes more than the 50 percent stated in the law.”78 Even this hokim, whose reputation for extracting maximum wealth from a locality preceded him, was shaped by longer-term incentives that characterize stationary rent seeking and a portion of the province’s income was left untaxed so that it might be reinvested. Shortly after Roziev’s dismissal, the autonomy of law enforcement agencies was quickly curtailed, and the institution’s temporarily enhanced power was usurped by the hokim and local elites. At a meeting with organs of surveillance in mid-2002, for instance, the chair of the provincial commission on inspections declared a reduction in surveillance in the region.79 In particular, prohibitions against surprise inspections by prokurators and tax collectors were enforced by the commission.80 The constricted activity of law enforcement agencies was immediately felt at local levels, forcing district prosecutors to be more “deferential” toward local political and economic elites.81 Interviews with senior staff in nine of the province’s fourteen district prokurator offices revealed little willingness and ability of prokurators to act against district hokims. In the new environment of reduced autonomy, disempowerment, and lost status, it was rare for prokurators to even issue protests against decisions of district hokim offices, and in several cases informants noted that decisions made by the hokim’s office were not even received for review. As an assistant prokurator explained, they requested decisions from the district hokim’s office infrequently because they were “busy with real problems”82—indicative of the malleability of the Prokuratura as a monitor of government offices responsible for revenue extraction. In fact, most prokurators perceived their primary role to be assisting the hokim in meeting district production quotas by mobilizing labor forces on collective farms.83 In cases where district prokurators did intervene, district hokims did not feel bound to respond to them. In one instance, a district hokim admitted that he had refused to act on a protest issued by the local prokurator because the dispute (over land use) was not worthy of his attention. His ability to ignore the prokurator points to the shift in the balance of power that had come to favor the hokim over the prokurator.84 As district hokims and local elites acquired more power at the local level, independent farmers have found it much more difficult to acquire land, grow the crops they wanted, and retain the output they produced. Collective farm chairs, protected by district hokims, often interfered with impunity in land allocation,

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the distribution of key agricultural inputs (such as seed and water), and the rental of technological equipment to independent farmers. Whereas under Roziev (from December 1999 to June 2001), prokurators in Samarkand Province returned roughly 60.8 hectares per month to plaintiffs, they averaged only 19.9 hectares per month for 2002, the year following his dismissal.85 Additional constraints on prokurators are visible in credit allocation as well. In contrast to regions where prokurators operate with greater autonomy, Samarkand’s district hokims influence local credit allocations. In practice, this means that many entrepreneurs who apply for credit are refused by the district hokim. Even those who pay a bribe may receive formal approval from the district hokim but on arriving at the bank, they are given the runaround, and their application is delayed indefinitely. Yet prokurators who are responsible for enforcing credit distribution rarely intervene due to pressure from district hokims.86 After steady increases in the number of independent farmers under Roziev, a slight drop in number from 7,964 (in 2002) to 7,805 (in 2003)87 indicates the returning influence of rural elites over credit allocation, land distribution, and control over natural resources. Although Roziev’s reforms made an impact in a handful of localities, his success in emasculating local elites and empowering prokurators was sporadic and fleeting. Many of the old elite returned to district hokim offices or as collective farm chairs in the wake of Roziev’s dismissal, and prokurators resumed previous patterns of capture and collusion with local elites.88 If anything, the expanded range of functions now assigned to prokurators served to deepen elite influence and institutionalize stationary rent seeking within the regional territorial administration.

The 2005 Andijan Uprising Like Samarkand, in Andijan Province stationary rent seeking was the prevalent pattern. Unlike Samarkand, the regional leadership under Governor Kobiljon Obidov remained unchanged for eleven years—the longest tenure of any governor in Uzbekistan at the time of his dismissal in 2004. Obidov’s longevity in office allowed him to construct a long-term, sustainable system of coercion, extraction, and rent seeking that was unrivaled in any region. As a result, Obidov and his supporters were stationary bandits able to operate without interference from the center for more than a decade. During this period (1993–2004), coercive rent seeking in Andijan Province led to three changes in the region’s political economy. First, policies under Obidov actively promoted cotton production above all other objectives. Andijan had the highest levels of raw cotton production (measured as tons per hectare planted)

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for most of the 1990s, significantly outpacing other regions by the year 2000.89 In 2002, the provinces of Namangan and Ferghana had fulfilled 90 and 87 percent of their cotton production plans (respectively), while neighboring Andijan Province fulfilled 140 percent of its plan.90 Widely known for exceeding plan targets, Obidov was believed to have bolstered production levels with cotton smuggled in from other provinces.91 He also allowed communal services debts to the center (e.g., electricity, gas, water) to grow to astronomical levels, amounting to billions of so'm by 2004 and essentially using this sector to subsidize part of the province’s agricultural production.92 Second, industry under Obidov generally declined—even to the point that several large factories and firms in the province closed down93—yet a select few with privileged access to Obidov enjoyed unique economic opportunities. Compared to their counterparts in Ferghana and Namangan provinces, Andijan’s entrepreneurs confronted more complex regulations and onerous registration requirements, producing higher rates of bankruptcy.94 In addition, Andijan offered limited protection for private entrepreneurs in provincial courts—only those protected by Obidov were favored. As figure 5.1 shows, Andijan Province had far fewer claims submitted by entrepreneurs to the province’s Economic Court than any other province—as few as one-tenth of the claims submitted to Karakalpakistan. Overall claims to Andijan’s Provincial Economic Court, moreover, declined under Obidov in the late 1990s while rising as much as 40 percent in Ferghana Province’s Economic Court.95 As elsewhere in Uzbekistan, selected economic leaders who were protected by Obidov were rewarded with positions representing localities of Andijan Province in the national legislature. But Andijan had far more economic elites among its parliamentary deputies than any other province. Under Obidov, Andijan experienced significant decline in entrepreneurial activity, but key economic leaders were able to gain a foothold.96 Third, Obidov eviscerated the independence of courts, prokurators, and police, enabling him to operate with impunity far more (and far longer) than other governors. Although provincial police and prokurators technically are appointed by their central ministries, Obidov’s influence reputedly reached high enough to determine who was appointed provincial police chief and prokurator in Andijan Province.97 As one official explained of Obidov, “If he says something should be left as it is, it’s left alone. If he says something should be taken care of, it’s done.”98 As a local lawyer noted, in Andijan “the provincial prokurator’s power is not worth a penny. . . . The provincial prokurator could not work independently because the governor gave his Mers [Mercedes] to the prokurator. That is why the prokurator used to do anything the governor said.”99 Obidov’s position of dominance over state security offices in Andijan, in turn, advanced rent seeking in the province. While law enforcement in neighboring Ferghana Province had

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Number of Claims Per 1000 Entrepreneurs

25 20 15 10 5

ax An di jan

Jiz z

N

ha n

da r

y am a an ga n

a da y Sy r

Su rk

Ka r

ak

alp

.A Ta O sh ke nt Sa m ar ka nd Bu kh ar a Fe rg ha na

0

Province FIGURE 5.1 Claims submitted to provincial economic courts, Uzbekistan, 2001–3 Source: Insan va qonun (multiple issues, 2001–3). Data represent number of claims of entrepreneurs brought by the Judicial Administration within each provincial government to Provincial Economic Courts.

prosecuted “shirkat hojaligi in nearly every district” for selling cotton on the black market, for example, no such crackdown occurred in Andijan.100 As shown in figure 5.2, the redistribution of illegal land expropriation (in which land is taken from independent farmers by shirkat hojaligi) in Andijan Province was dramatically low. An indicator of the extent to which prokurators worked independent of regional authorities, the variation across regions is considerable, reflecting the real-world impacts of open rent seeking and unchecked resource exploitation on private farmers. As the primary agents of the state empowered to monitor land distribution, prokurators can issue protests and taqdimnomalar (warnings) (as well as use their influence informally) to return land improperly allocated by district governors or unlawfully occupied by the heads of shirkat hojaligi. In provinces where resource concentration was sparse, rent seeking remained underdeveloped and rates of land restitution by prokurators was far higher than other provinces. The rates in the regions of Navoii and Karakalpakistan are roughly four or five times higher than those of most other regions. By contrast, rates of land redistribution in most of the provinces where rent seeking flourished were quite low—Khorezm, Namangan, and Tashkent—and were the lowest in Andijan. Overall, prokurators, courts, and law enforcement offices were significantly sidelined under Obidov, whose tenure in office coincided with coercive rent seeking taken to a farther extent than in other regions.

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As a Percentage of Land Planted

0.3 0.25 0.2 0.15 0.1 0.05

st as hq an ad ar yo Si rd ar Fe yo rg ha na Jiz za Sa x m a r Su ka rk ha nd nd ar y Bu o kh a N am ra an g Ta an sh ke Kh nt or ez m An di jan

Q

ok i

Q

or a

qa

lp

N

av

oi i

0

Region FIGURE 5.2

Land restitution by provincial prokurators, Uzbekistan, 2002

Source: Shavkat Yagdarov, “Asosiy maqsad—halqimizga xizmat qilish,” Qonun himoyasida (February 2003), p. 4.

It is in this context of unusually intensive rent seeking—overemphasis on meeting targets of agricultural production, reserving access to lucrative entrepreneurial opportunities to a privileged few, and emasculating rule of law and state security institutions—that we can best understand the arrest of the twentythree businessmen that led to the 2005 Andijan Uprising. The twenty-three businessmen reportedly cultivated close ties with Obidov. Coinciding with Obidov’s appointment as provincial governor in 1993, these entrepreneurs set up a business community combining business activity with Islamic teachings of a local religious figure, Akram Yuldashev. By Obidov’s dismissal in 2004, this business park had more than forty enterprises, employing more than two thousand people (by some accounts up to five thousand people), and providing significant charitable donations to local schools, hospitals, and other institutions. In short, these businessmen—through competitive wages, profitable entrepreneurial activity, and weekly philanthropy—had developed a significant support base among the local population.101 Yet this would not have been possible without the protection and patronage from Obidov. Indeed, a relative of two of the twenty-three businessmen, Shakirjon Ibragimov, was planning to convert a residential part of Andijan city into a commercial district that would be largely under his control to set up a large bazaar.102 The Ibragimov family’s influence in Andijan’s business community dated back to the early 1990s. Zakirjan Ibragimov was director of

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Andijan’s “Namuna” Trade Association and served under Obidov’s wing while both were members of Parliament from 1994 until 1999.103 His brothers included the directors of the Kholis bazaar and Andijan Tikuv Poyafzal, as well as the chair of Andijonbank (in which the Ibragimov’s held a combined 18.91 percent of the bank’s capital).104 By the mid-2000s, Obidov’s influence in Andijan was unparalleled and posed a threat to the central government. Having allowed Obidov to stay in office— largely because he maintained social order and generated consistently high cotton yields—the center had enabled his patronage base to become too extensive. The costs and risks of keeping him in power outweighed the political and fiscal benefits that his established authority brought. His dismissal and the dismantling of his patronage base quickly followed. Events leading to the uprising began, therefore, when Obidov was dismissed and his successor, Saidullo Begaliev, took steps to purge members of the provincial apparatus protecting the province’s emerging business elite. Many in the former Obidov administration faced criminal charges and, Begaliev “cracked down on the entrepreneurs who had been supported by Obidov. They were told to sell their businesses for a pittance either to him or his people, or face legal proceedings.” They reportedly resisted this political pressure and were arrested a month after Begaliev took office, charged with engaging in extremist activities as members of Akromiya.105 When the twenty-three businessmen were arrested and tried, four months of protests followed outside the courthouse. On May 12, 2005—on the eve of an expected guilty verdict—the arrest of several demonstrators prompted friends and relatives of the businessmen to lead attacks on key government buildings, acquiring arms, and basing themselves in the hokimiyat. The events seemed to generate a spontaneous opportunity for the public to protest and on May 13 several thousand men, women, and children gathered on the public square. Although troops were slow to gather in the city center, security forces from outside Andijan Province had reportedly coalesced at the city’s airport. According to one report, vodka was distributed among some troops prior to the security forces’ assault on the administration building in the evening on May 13.106 Although local police provided support, most of the assault on the demonstrators was carried out by external security agencies, particularly special divisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), National Security Service, and Ministry of Defense.107 As the example of local security forces in Tajikistan in 1992 (see chapter 4) demonstrated, the “loyalties” of local police units in areas that have well-developed rent-seeking practices often become subverted by local political elites. It appears that the central leadership in Uzbekistan was not taking any chances with local authorities.

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The repression was a brutal application of state violence that indiscriminately targeted armed individuals and civilians in Andijan’s main square. In the wake of the violence, approximately 540 refugees fled during the night into Kyrgyzstan, producing Central Asia’s first post-Soviet refugee crisis.108 Domestically, the crackdown continued for several weeks, perhaps months, afterward. Outside Uzbekistan, this use of force led to international condemnation of the regime and a sharp turn away from the country’s open foreign policy.109 By 2007, that condemnation led the government to drive out much of the international presence in the country, including nongovernmental organizations, multilateral and bilateral aid programs, and all but the major international agencies. The expulsion of the United States from its Karshi-Khanabad (K2) Base in November 2005 after four years of collaboration illustrates the far-reaching consequences of the uprising.110 More important, however, the uprising laid bare how open access to state rents had empowered local elites under Obidov by enabling them to build their own pyramids of patronage. Left unconstrained, coercive rent seeking in Andijan grew and the center lost control over the province. Harsh measures imposed to reassert that control, including dismantling Obidov’s clientele, produced a reaction that opened the door to mass protest. As in other parts of Uzbekistan, the predatory behavior of local politicians, police, and prokurators had fostered animosity toward the state. But only in Andijan had an opening been created, first by allowing a local elite to solidify itself under a long-standing patron and second by removing that patron and directly confronting his base of local elites. In this chapter I have investigated the failure of Uzbekistan’s state building initiatives in the 1990s and how this has led to interlocking coercion and rent seeking within the territorial apparatus. Using the cases of Samarkand Province and Navoii Province, I have sketched out the emergence of two patterns of extraction among local prokurators, which resemble ideal type notions of stationary and roving rent seeking. The empirical outcomes traced in these cases highlight key features of Uzbekistan’s emerging political economy of development. I then applied this argument to the Andijan Uprising and its aftermath. First, these cases illustrate the powerful influence of local elites over politics at the subnational level. Moreover, their influence depends largely on attributes found in other weak states: resource endowments concentrated under local elites and dense patronage ties linking those elites to regional politicians. As the different responses of elites to state-building initiatives in Samarkand and Navoii show, local economic power and political patronage can be valuable should that local elite mobilize in defense of their vested interests and rent-seeking privileges. Second, republicwide institutional reforms granting prokurators greater power resulted in unintended consequences at the district and provincial level.

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Concurrent with targeted privatization in Uzbekistan, specific initiatives were designed to strike at the resource base of district and regional elites by subjecting the distribution of public goods—business licenses obtained from district hokim offices, loans distributed to entrepreneurs by local banks, and access to land and minerals allocated by collective farm chairs—to more effective surveillance and control by the Prokuratura. In practice, however, the ability of local prokurators to carry out those expanded responsibilities hinged on their position vis-à-vis local elites. In Samarkand Province, reforms not only failed to institutionalize state authority in local prokurator offices but effectively placed expanded prokurator powers in the hands of local elites and provincial politicians. In Navoii Province, broadened powers granted to local prokurators inadvertently promoted heightened levels predation and extortion over local elites. Third, local level patterns of rent seeking varied markedly within the state’s macrolevel extraction imperatives. In Samarkand, prokurators engaged in stationary rent-seeking practices, seeking to maximize its taxation of income but without undermining regional economic growth in the intermediate term. In Navoii Province, scarce resources and attenuated patronage encouraged roving rent-seeking practices among local prokurators, who effectively taxed local economic actors to the hilt. As a result, unchecked rent seeking led to higher rates of bankruptcy among independent farmers and local businesses and continued economic decline among shirkat (cooperative) farms. In Andijan Province, the center’s use of patronage to rule the region gave rise to a local elite under the protection of an extremely powerful provincial governor (Obidov). Having allowed this elite to become entrenched, the regime faced a series of small but well-organized protests when it attempted to remove these elites. After years of open rent seeking in Andijan Province, the local elite were not easily removed. Protests that followed the arrest and trial of some of the elite’s most prominent members suddenly opened the way for mass demonstrations that harnessed the discontent among the population. Because coercive rent seeking creates cohorts of powerful and predatory regional elites, it also creates conditions for local elites to drift outside the center’s control while simultaneously fostering economic inequalities and social injustices that provide fuel for mass protest. As long as these conditions are perpetuated, the mix of coercion and rent seeking as a means of rule and revenue will continue to generate challenges to the regime in the future.

6 WEAK AND FAILED STATES IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

The core argument of this book is that weak states defined by low capital mobility have specific political ramifications for local elites. Those elites may command resources, but they cannot convert their resources into rents without patrons and protection within the state. This promotes various combinations of rent-seeking opportunities for local elites, which can be decisive during moments of political, economic, or social crisis. In some cases, a coercive rentseeking state emerges, which leads to cycles of coercion, extraction, dissent, and repression. Other cases succumb to state failure and are defined by fractious state apparatuses, unable to bind the “loyalty” of local elites to a national project of state building. In the preceding chapters, I used Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to develop this argument and elaborate these two paths. This chapter extends the argument to the subset of forty or so weak states whose economies are defined by low capital mobility. Using proxy indicators of these state security outcomes, I have identified similar patterns in more than two-thirds of these weak states since 1955 (see table 6.1). Approximately fifteen countries have experienced state security fragmentation (often leading to state failure), while across the same period thirteen countries have avoided fragmentation and witnessed the rise of cohesive state security apparatuses underpinned by rent seeking. These are long-lasting state formation trajectories, and there is little overlap between the two groups.1 At the same time, another eleven countries have managed to avoid either of these trajectories, despite their low capital mobility. How, then, can the vulnerability of weak states with immobile capital be assessed? How can we determine whether these 124

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states, when confronting a major crisis, will experience state security fragmentation or cohesion? And what forms of state will emerge? In this chapter I approach the problem of state failure by examining how state security infrastructures withstood a crisis. In particular, I examine how they confront a type of crisis that is traditionally seen as a “cause” of state failure, such as ethnic conflict or economic decline. In doing so, I attempt to assess the standing vulnerability of weak states when these developments occur. For purposes of consistency with my study of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, I selected crises that— similar to the Soviet collapse—weakened institutional controls over local elites and generated uncertainty over elites’ access to rents. Using paired comparisons TABLE 6.1 State security outcomes in weak states with low capital mobility* STATE SECURITY FRAGMENTATION AND FRACTIOUS STATEHOOD** (N = 17)

STATE SECURITY COHESION AND COERCIVE RENT-SEEKING*** (N = 15)

NEITHER OUTCOME MANIFESTED (N= 11)

Bangladesh

Belarus

Burkina Faso

Burundi

Bhutan

Egypt

Chad

Chad

Guinea-Bissau

Ethiopia

Equatorial Guinea

Kenya

Fmr Yugoslavia

Eritrea

Malawi

Georgia

Iran

Mauritania

Kyrgyzstan

Iraq

Nepal

Lebanon

North Korea

Niger

Lesotho

Pakistan

Rwanda

Moldova

Syria

Solomon Islands

Somalia

Uzbekistan

Sri Lanka

Sudan

Turkmenistan

Tajikistan

Zimbabwe

Uganda Yemen * Total cases of contemporary coercion-intensive weak states were drawn from the 2008 Failed State Index ranking of the 60 or so weakest states. Then, cases with “lootable” wealth have been removed. See The Fund for Peace (2008) for full list; see Richard Snyder, “Does Lootable Wealth Breed Disorder? A Political Economy of Extraction Framework,” Comparative Political Studies 39, 8 (October 2006), pp. 943–968. Along with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the specific cases examined in this chapter are in bold. ** These cases are from 1955–2002 (except for Kyrgyzstan, which I examine in this chapter). Political Instability Task Force Report (2003). *** These cases are categorized in this column based on their cohesion and their use of repression. Based on reports by Freedom House, including Jennifer Dunham, Bret Nelson, Aili Piano, Arch Puddington, Tyler Roylance, and Eliza Young, eds., Worst of the Worst 2012: The World’s Most Repressive Societies (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2012).

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of six cases, I ask whether some states’ combination of resources and patronage makes them better equipped to manage those crises, and whether other states’ particular combination fares much worse. As I describe below, Lebanon (1975), Somalia (1991), and Kyrgyzstan (2005 and 2010) experienced very different crises, yet in all three cases uneven resource distributions and limited access to patrons in many localities translated their crises into state security fragmentation (and state failure). Conversely, even resource distributions and local elites’ access to patrons enabled cohesive security institutions in Syria (1982 and 2011), Belarus (2006), and Zimbabwe (2000) to survive similar crises intact. Through these cases, three types of crises are examined: ethnic dissent, regime change, and economic decline.

Ethnic/Religious Dissent in Syria and Lebanon Like Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Lebanon and Syria contain similar baseline points of comparison. Both have ethnic and religious divisions, both were part of the French mandate, both are geographically and topographically similar, as they exist alongside one another. Yet Lebanon’s coercive institutions fragmented in 1975 and the country was engulfed in civil war while Syria developed a powerful state security apparatus in the 1970s that supported its government for forty years. Moreover, the rise of a cohesive security apparatus in Syria was by no means a foregone conclusion in 1970. Syria’s ethnic and religious divisions were no less than in Lebanon. Ethnicity in Syria was not a base of state power: 60 percent of the population were Sunni Arab Muslims, 13 percent were Christian, 12 percent were Alawite, 9 percent Kurdish, and 5 percent Druze. Basing a state on conceptions of Arab nationalism or Islam also would leave out significant groups in the population: an eighth of the population are non-Muslim, 10 percent are not Arab (the Kurds), and about 20 percent of those Muslim could be deemed heretics (the Druze and Alawites).2 In the years after 1946, when it became independent of French rule, Syria was highly unstable, suffering more coups than any other country from 1949 to 1970 and earning the label “the world’s most unstable country.” Yet, since Hafiz al-Assad came to power in a coup in 1970, the regime has not been overthrown by internal forces for forty years, and throughout the 2011 “Arab Spring” it exhibited an initial durability well beyond the expectations of many observers. How did “the world’s most unstable country” develop into such an example of consistent, long-term state power? How did it overcome its divisive domestic environment? And why has Lebanon failed to do the same?

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Resources and Patronage Despite its ethnic diversity and history of political instability, Syria has constructed a powerful state apparatus—crafted around the Ba’ath Party and state security institutions—that penetrates into society, exercising control over its population. Under Hafiz Al-Assad, the Alawites’ hold over key institutions in the state and military was initially due to the concentration of Alawites among its officer corps and Assad’s familial control over its top posts.3 Over time, however, tribal and family ties were supplemented by a consistent flow of patronage to other groups, weaving together an expansive cadre of elites supporting the state security apparatus. Even before the 1970 coup that brought Assad to power, the Ba’ath Party drew heavily from rural populations, focusing on land reform throughout the 1950s and developing extensive social roots in Syria’s rural regions. After 1970, building party and state in Syria entailed the social transformation of rural sectors through mass mobilization, establishing a new rural elite based in local party committees, and redistributing resources from local notables to cooperatives and peasant unions.4 These reforms in the early years of the Assad regime (1970–78) produced widely accessible rent-seeking opportunities through the use of public lands.5 By the 1990s, “the spread of patronage networks through the institutions of the modern state . . . serve[d] as an extremely useful means of control, and it has been cultivated as such. Patronage binds strategic groups such as the military and parts of the bourgeoisie to the regime; it even helps create a regime basis in societal groups which otherwise would not be among the regime’s supporters; and given its highly selective nature, it also contributes to the fragmentation of these groups.”6 Thus patronage in Syria is used to secure the backing of existing supporters (e.g., Alawites) and is used to reach out to and cultivate the support of former or potential adversaries. Access to services, jobs, licenses, and political influence was provided through lines of patronage to all major groups. Likewise “the regime has not pursued social or economic development policies that would have specially advanced or favoured the Alawites or the coastal region from which the majority of Syria’s Alawite community originates.”7 By 1984, geographical distribution of Ba’ath Party members, which in total ranged from 4.6 percent to 16.53 percent of the population in the various provinces, contained no major disparity across Syria’s fourteen provinces.8 Lebanon has been characterized, by contrast, by stark regional disparities. In 1960, a study found that Beirut and Mount Lebanon Province contained only 5 percent of the country’s localities that were underdeveloped, while North Lebanon Province, South Lebanon Province, and Bisqa contained 46 percent, 30 percent, and 35 percent respectively.9 “While this can be attributed in part to

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Lebanon’s uneven historical communal development, the state did not attend to the economic and social needs of the peripheral areas. Whatever attempts were made to develop these areas, particularly during the Chehab regime, they fell short of bridging the development gap between rural and urban areas.”10 This primarily impacted the Shia community, which was the least urbanized. And initially, their demands on the state were largely based on economic terms, focused on irrigation, dams, schools, hospitals, and the like. As described by Hanf, “They did not articulate these concerns as Shi'is, as members of a community, but as inhabitants of depressed areas, as agricultural laborers and tenants exploited by large landowners, as badly paid industrial workers and as unskilled laborers without any social security.”11 Moreover, the Shia community were affected disproportionally by Lebanon’s rural economy decline in the decade preceding the civil war. By 1974, the rural sectors only constituted 9 percent of the country’s economy. Over time, mobilization became infused with ethnic and religious content because the problem of sparse resources was exacerbated by limited access to patronage. The distribution of top civil service posts in prewar Lebanon was highly uneven due to a fifteen-year boycott by Muslim communities of the Lebanese state during the French mandate and a corresponding low university enrollment from those communities. In 1958, Christians occupied 61 percent of top civil service posts, Sunnis held 26 percent, and Shiites and Druze each retained a mere 6 percent. Despite a principle of parity established in 1958—for every Christian appointed, a Muslim also would be appointed—the system of patronage clearly favored Maronites, who continued to hold command of the army, directorates of military intelligence and state security, governorship of the Central Bank, and chair of the Conseil d’Etat.12 Thus by the 1970s Syria was making rents available to elites across the republic, while Lebanon skewed rent-seeking opportunities in favor of its Christian (especially Maronite) communities.

State Security Institutions in Syria and Lebanon This difference in how Syria and Lebanon allocated resources and patronage directly impacted state security institutions and their capacity to withstand societal cleavages and internal dissent. Both countries faced a crisis of mobilized dissent—the 1982 Hama uprising in Syria and the 1975 Shia uprising in Lebanon—but these led to different trajectories of state development. In Syria, state building under Hafiz al-Assad entailed the incorporation of the geographic and ethnic periphery into its security apparatus. Syria’s top military council shifted from being predominated by Sunni Arabs in the years after independence to a broader representation of Alawite, Ismaili, Druze, and Sunni Arabs.13

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State security institutions consisted of four bodies: two—state security and political security—were departments of the Ministry of the Interior, and two— military intelligence and branches of the air force—were subordinated to the Ministry of Defense. Except for the air force, these bodies exercised local surveillance through regional branches and a central branch in Damascus. But in each locality, these organs were subordinated to the regional leadership of the Ba’ath Party. Over time, however, these organs grew, and “the role of some security branches expanded hugely even at the expense of the administration to which they were subordinated. . . . These branches (enjoying legal immunity) always went beyond their competence, thus becoming an influential factor in political and administrative decisions.”14 The number of people working in security and army institutions constituted almost half (roughly 43 percent) of Syria’s total public sector employment.15 Syria’s Ministry of Defense owned two of the country’s largest companies, Military Construction Establishment and Military Housing Establishment, employing nearly 10 percent of the country’s population.16 The military also organized volunteer militias attached to the Ba’ath Party, the Peasant Union, and the trade unions, and ran mandatory military training programs in high schools and universities.17 Large, well-funded, and integrated deeply into society, security institutions also assumed a uniquely privileged position within the state apparatus that opened a wide range of rent-seeking opportunities. As one observer noted, “Military persons and others working with the ubiquitous security apparatus were visibly privileged and can usually deliver wasta (mediation), and that dealing with the security services has become part of people’s daily lives and strategies of survival.” Yet it became mired in corruption. According to one assessment, “Officers are pampered: army cooperatives provide them with cost-price articles and with duty-free foreign imports not obtainable elsewhere in the country; interestfree loans allow them to buy villas and speculate in very lucrative real estate; and they receive generous salaries, free medical care, liberal travel allowances, and miscellaneous other fringe benefits.”18 An important source of rents that fed into Syria’s security apparatus was Syrian intervention in the Lebanese civil war in 1976, which opened up new rentseeking opportunities. Military intervention led to a rise in corruption and rent seeking within the state apparatus as a whole, but especially within its security institutions.19 Herein lies a critical difference between Syria and Uzbekistan, since the latter only briefly (though definitively) intervened in Tajikistan during its civil war. Had Uzbekistan engaged more substantially in the Tajik civil war, it is likely its security apparatus would have exploited its command over resources and access to external rents—especially over Tajikistan’s massive aluminum smelter in the Tursunzade District (a region near Uzbekistan and heavily

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Uzbek in population). Such unrestrained access to lucrative external revenues would have accelerated corruption within Uzbekistan’s state security apparatus and deepened its rent seeking, especially at the national level. Shortly after the intervention, in August 1977, President Assad formed a Committee for Investigation of Illegal Profits “to investigate crimes of bribery, imposition of influence, embezzlement, exploitation of office and illegal profits.”20 The committee uncovered corrupt practices implicating “high-placed military officers in the direct entourage” of the president, including his brother, Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Rif ’at al-Asad, who was seen as one of the standard bearers and main beneficiaries of corrupt practices in Syria.”21 Because this threatened to undermine the very basis of the regime, however, the committee’s work was suspended. Likewise, in September 1979, another corruption probe was initiated, then halted, when it “became clear that it would implicate personal friends and relatives for whom [President Assad] had secured choice governmental and military positions.”22 In sum, Syria’s regional security environment has led to militarization, but—in contrast with the emergence of extractive capabilities in early modern Europe— war preparation has not led to enhanced resource extraction, primarily because resources for war preparation came from regional and international funding sources. To the contrary, preparing for conflict with Israel and intervention in Lebanon “provided a substantial rent income that not only spared the government the need to bargain with citizens but enabled it to bind strategic groups to the regime by means of domestic rent distribution.”23 A critical turning point in the development of Syria’s state security apparatus was the internal dissent it faced in 1982. That year, a wave of disturbances throughout Syria in cities of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, and Hama crested in a large urban uprising in Hama, spearheaded by the Syrian branch of Muslim Brotherhood. Unprecedented in scale and perceived as “a last-ditch battle which one side or another had to win,”24 the battle of Hama was a deep political crisis and a test of whether state security cohesion based on rent seeking would withstand sectarian and regional pressures. “Loyalties in the Ba’th Party and the armed forces and other security institutions involved in the armed confrontation were tested to the limit.”25 Despite large-scale atrocities, their capacity to brutally repress the uprising without divisions was characterized by the regime in the 1985 Ba’ath Party Organizational Report as proof of their “internal cohesion and unity . . . despite the presence of quite a high-percentage of non-party members amongst the ranks of these forces.”26 Some soldiers did desert to the insurgents, although not in large numbers.27 The regime and its security establishment had survived this wave of internal threats by using rent-seeking avenues to bind political and military elites from different groups to the regime. By 2000, long-term

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observers of Syrian politics generally felt that the “disintegration of the security apparatus” was “not very likely.”28 Similarly, the regime’s security institutions have held up in the face of prodemocracy demonstrations and subsequent civil war as part of the Arab Spring. The use of repression and military mobilization against regime opponents despite these revolts (and significant international pressure) has been sustained in Syria partially due to its coercive rent-seeking trajectory of state formation since the 1970s. Certainly, the regime and the security apparatus miscalculated their capacity to control the visibility of events unfolding in 2011. Likewise, miscalculations in the use of violence created a backlash against the regime.29 But state security institutions have been—as in 1982—a reliable base of initial support for the Assad leadership as it faced significant internal revolt. Cemented through rent-seeking practices, Syria’s security establishment had become interwoven with the Ba’ath Party’s dense network at the regional and local levels, so much so that “the dividing lines between the party as a political organization and the security apparatus have become blurred.”30 By the 1990s, Syria had become a “strong security state. The regime is firmly in control of society and, quite importantly, of its own apparatuses and the informal clientelist networks it has established or allowed to emerge.”31 In the wake of the Arab Spring, Syria’s protracted civil conflict over the fate of the Baath Party and the Assad regime is a testament to the cohesion and entrenched nature of its state security institutions. In Lebanon, however, state security fragmentation rapidly unfolded in 1975, in a two-year war that led to the paralysis of most the country’s formal institutions. During the early 1970s, as law and order broke down, violence and crime proliferated, worsened by ineffectual law enforcement institutions. Moreover, local elites waged “bloody rivalries to stay in power” that included “the employment of private militias to achieve one’s own justice and to control an area.”32 Lebanon’s independent state was unable to lock in its monopoly of violence. As government agencies retreated from the public sphere, “armed people” (musallahin) looted banks and shops; set up roadblocks and checkpoints . . . kidnapped and, at times, killed members of other militias or unarmed civilians; and took over prisons and mental institutions and set their inhabitants free. . . . The state lost control over its borders, and its presence in several districts, particularly the north, south, and Biqa’, was at best nominal.”33 Throughout the mid-1970s, demonstrations, protests, and violent clashes by excluded groups—primarily Druze and Shia communities—wracked the country in various cities. In particular, mobilization on a religious basis was exacerbated by the crisis of Palestinian refugee camps in the country. By 1975, Lebanon’s government was confronting state security fragmentation and militia-led violence.

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Although it had long been a key instrument of national unity, the army fragmented into partisan factions in reaction to several episodes: in 1973, when it was ordered to move against Palestinian refugee camps outside Beirut; in 1975, when it was ordered to crack down on demonstrators in Sidon; and in 1976, when it was sent to defeat Palestinian and Druze radicals who were besieging the city of Damur. By 1976, competing factions of the army even fought one another.34 Although organized around ethnic identities, opposing camps “have political aims; the largely Christian camp, a status quo coalition, sought to preserve the traditional Lebanese political system, and the largely Muslim camp, a revisionist coalition, sought to transform or overthrow that system.”35 Despite the confessional identities expressed in the conflict, descent into state failure was due to the limited rent-seeking avenues made available to the Muslim “revisionist coalition.” In March 1976, state security fragmentation proliferated across Lebanon. “The vacuum in the areas of public services and internal security, led to the rapid ‘privatization’ of these spheres. Scores of militias (paramilitary groups formed by veteran political parties and new creations) purchased, or received in exchange for patronage large shipments of small and heavy arms. . . . Soon, militias were able to offer an alternative to the state’s crumbling institutions, which were no match for the militia’s size, firepower, and ruthlessness.”36 Lebanon’s gradual trend of rural migration into Beirut increased during this time, so that “urban” militias were in fact first- and second-generation migrants. “The militias, which were led by political bosses, their sons, their former clients, and their henchmen, [but] their cadres, however, came from the ranks of the state’s crumbling security forces, and particularly from the army’s low- and middle-ranking officers and non-commissioned officers.”37 In Lebanon, therefore, restricted rent-seeking options encouraged competitive patronage pressures to prevail on community elites, fragmenting the country’s security forces and leading to state failure.

Regime Change in Belarus and Kyrgyzstan Emerging from the ruins of the Soviet Union, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan faced similar challenges of political and economic development. As was true of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, both built future states and regimes on post-Soviet institutional foundations. Yet, as movements of so-called democratic revolution emerged and put pressure on regimes across Eurasia in the early 2000s, Belarus avoided elite factionalization while Kyrgyzstan became mired in it. Bordering Ukraine, and with close linkages to Western Europe, Belarus seemed the more likely country to experience mobilization but it did not.38 Instead Kyrgyzstan’s regime—located deep in Central Asia—was twice overwhelmed by elite-led protests (in 2005 and

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2010), leaving a legacy of intraelite divisions, state paralysis, and ethnic violence.39 While both republics faced pressures for regime change, Belarus’s distribution of resources and patronage enabled the regime to rely on the co-optation of its local elites to sustain an unusually high level of cohesion within its coercive apparatus; conversely, scarce resources and few patrons limited rent-seeking opportunities in southern Kyrgyzstan. This fostered a divided elite that was susceptible to competitive pressures, protest, and mobilization, producing recurring state security fragmentation in 2005 and 2010.

Resources and Patronage Belarus achieved significant levels of urbanization and industrialization under Soviet rule,40 and it received large amounts of capital investment into its industrializing economy. As Belarus became a center of Soviet manufacturing from the 1950s onward, it produced tractors, farm equipment, consumer products (such as television sets), as well as microchips and semiconductors that were mostly for the Soviet military. The industrial core was concentrated in three eastern provinces of Belarus—Vitebsk, Mogilev, and Gomel—mainly centering around ten plants and dozens of their subsidiaries involved in mechanical engineering, the petrochemical industry, radioelectronic production, and ferrous metallurgy. There are also automotive and power electronic industries concentrated in the central region of Minsk. The two remaining western provinces, Brest and Grodno, were transformed in the 1960s through a Soviet land improvement program that drained large marshes and developed a modernized agriculture sector in these regions. Much of the rural population from these regions also worked in the manufacturing sector in eastern Belarus. In the 1980s, moreover, new electronic and petrochemical factories were beginning to be built in these regions.41 Benefiting from both agricultural and industrial investment during the Soviet period, Belarus emerged with a relatively even distribution of resources across its localities. The political apparatus reflected this balanced distribution of resources as local concentrations of production generated politically and economically powerful elites across localities in Belarus. As one observer explained, “Belarus’ administrative-cum-territorial division is conducive to effective control of the society from the top town. People living in administrative areas where rural, district and regional soviets are elected are not so much united by local interests, as by their employment in industrial and agricultural enterprises.”42 In short, the structure of Belarus was closely linked to top-down flows of patronage to elites who were at the head of these local economic operations. In the early 1990s, even before Alexander Lukashenko’s rise to power, post-Soviet state development

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entailed remarkably few institutional changes. The Soviet-era Council of Ministers and the government apparatus remained in place, and aside from some changes made to the military, “institutional sclerosis was the absolute norm” with many of the same persons and structures unaltered by the late 1990s.43 As president, Lukashenko has implemented a set of “administrative-disciplinary” measures through which he assigned government officials to take responsibility for factory and farm operations, keeping well-known enterprises under “direct presidential rule” or run by a “presidential council of the labor collective” that reports directly to a deputy prime minister. Firms and factory plants that fall under “direct presidential rule”—such as commercial firms of Torgekspo and Mahmoud Esembaev—received partial or full exemption from taxation.44 By providing these rent-seeking opportunities, Lukashenko in effect had the country’s most lucrative assets placed under presidential control.45 As he has consolidated and developed his institutions, Lukashenko also used coercion to retain his hold over economic managers. Every few years several top officials of major enterprises are put on trial. “In 2001 alone, more than 400 directors of different enterprises were the targets of criminal prosecution.”46 Over time, he has taken steps to extend his patronage ties in order to incorporate elites from various regions, including members of the former Kebich government. Elites have been recruited into Lukashenko’s government based on “different forms of patronage . . . [and ultimately] personal considerations are decisive in the appointment” of new officials.47 Originally, “the personal networks of Lukashenka and his closest entourage were not sufficient to fill all the main offices of the Belarusian state,” so Lukashenko has used political patronage to exercise influence over a wide range of national, provincial, and local elites. Political appointments have drawn from all six provinces, primarily from four major professional fields: industrial managers, agricultural enterprise heads, security services (police, KGB, and armed forces), and intellectuals. Incorporating members of the former Kebich government, however, brought much-needed expertise into the presidential administration. Through the deft use of patronage—as a means of incorporating local and provincial politicians, industrial and agricultural enterprise managers, and members of the republic’s security services—Lukashenko has constructed the foundations for a system of rent seeking to emerge. While some have concluded that “the apparent cohesion of the official Belarusian political elite is closely related to the personality of Lukashenka,”48 access to state rents is the critical mechanism binding these elites to the regime. As long as these economic and political elites can still access rent-seeking opportunities, their “apparent cohesion” will sustain the regime.

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In contrast, economic development in Kyrgyzstan during the Soviet period concentrated industry in the north and around the capital Bishkek, while exploiting arable land in the south for agricultural development. Investment flowed into southern Kyrgyzstan, but focused mainly on agricultural development, often leaving local elites excluded from ruling circles of power.49 Moreover, southern provinces were densely populated, included a large minority of ethnic Uzbeks, and were traditionally tied to their regions’ agricultural economy. In northern provinces, the population was mostly Kyrgyz, consisted of a smaller population, and tended to be clustered around urban areas where wealth was concentrated. These differences have reinforced intraelite competition along north-south lines. Moreover, Kyrgyzstan is a poor country, and its major sources of income in the immediate post-Soviet period would take years to develop. Gold was limited, water remains regulated by regional agreements, and tourism failed to materialize. By the mid-1990s, Kyrgyzstan had suffered from the effects of a weakening state, which had eroded Askar Akayev’s legitimacy. Crime, demonstrations, and the breakdown of public services were often detailed in the press. Corruption seemed to undermine economic progress, as many of the country’s political elite were increasingly linked to illicit businesses and mafia groups. Southern Kyrgyzstan became increasingly difficult to govern as investment in the region declined as other—more urban—parts of the country received infusions of funds. Over the 1990s, southern Kyrgyzstan became a major hub of opium and heroin trafficking, as a relay point from Tajikistan and Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north. At the same time, an increasingly assertive, yet fragmented parliament became a site of competing economic and political interests. After the 1995 parliamentary elections, several features of Kyrgyzstan’s divided political landscape emerged, and internal fissures weakened the Akayev government’s use of topdown patronage pressure to keep unruly southern elites in line. First, clan and regional divisions that dominated public life had penetrated the politics of the 1995 Parliament. Second, parliamentary elections—for the newly established bicameral legislature of 105 seats—brought in more conservative regional and local elites who predominantly represented ethnic Kyrgyz (85/105), had economic and political bases relatively autonomous from the president, and were generally more suspicious of political and social change (and had interests in maintaining the status quo). Third, the leadership took steps to enhance the powers of the president through a referendum in 1996. By Akayev’s third term in office (from 2000–5), growing trends of corruption and mismanagement led to increasing criticism of the regime—both in Parliament and on the streets. Criticism culminated in a conflict in the Aksy District in southern Kyrgyzstan when police

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opened fire on protesters storming several government buildings. Indicative of an increasingly divided elite, the 2002 Aksy conflict was a precursor to the fall of the regime in 2005.

State Security Institutions in Belarus and Kyrgyzstan In 2005, Belarus faced significant internal and external challenges from prodemocracy groups seeking to generate mass protests and elite divisions similar to those that occurred in Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003), and Ukraine (2004). Led by former officials who had broken with Lukashenko’s government, these groups made concerted efforts to get other elites to defect from the regime. Likewise, the Lukashenko government faced pressure from outside actors—the United States, European Union, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe among others—to hold free and fair elections. Despite these pressures, Belarus’s political elite has remained highly unified in its support for Lukashenko, and there has been no internal cleavage or particular rallying point that divided the elite. This elite backing, secured through a long-standing policy of open rent seeking, has enabled Lukashenko to rely on political support for his use of coercion against opposition groups. It has enabled him, in short, to “preempt” the threat of democratic revolution with the backing of Belarus’s political elite.50 Two contributing factors aided the regime’s use of rent seeking to glue together Lukashenko’s self-described “presidential vertical” structure. First, Belarusians possessed high levels of ethnic homogeneity, which have limited the potential for regional or ethnic cleavages from emerging in society.51 Second, Belarus avoided privatization during the Soviet collapse that created “powerful quasi-independent oligarchic” elites in other cases (such as Ukraine, Moldova, and Kyrgyzstan). In short, “The combination of national unity and the maintenance of autocratic state power made it easier for Lukashenka to prevent serious elite defection even in the absence of strong formal or informal political organization.”52 Essential to holding central political power over local elites, however, was Lukashenko’s use of top-down patronage, which was interwoven with formal institutional controls. “Also expanding is the number of administrative posts reporting directly to Lukashenka throughout the country which effectively override other authority. It is known, in fact, that the president has fired many local elected officials and at one time sought, without success, the Supreme Soviet’s approval to abolish local soviets.” Or, as described by Vasil'Bykau, “It is not the law or the Constitution that reign supreme in the country but the unpredictable will of the president, with his ‘vertical structures’ and bulletproof-vested, blackmasked bodyguards.”53 As Belarus has moved toward open rent seeking and its

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state security institutions have become more cohesive, they steadily expanded. By 2006, the security apparatus consisted of more than 110,000 forces.54 Belarus is a case of open rent seeking in which state power is so concentrated under Lukashenko’s personal authority that some have argued for viewing Belarus as a sultanistic regime.55 But this overstates the degree of power under Lukashenko and does not capture the often-fluid, ultimately self-destructive nature of state power that is built on binding local elites and coercive apparatuses to the regime through access to state rents. “Their new-found prominence notwithstanding, the loyalty of the power organs to the Belarusian president cannot be taken for granted, and Lukashenka is demonstrably anxious to ensure that his security people do not follow the Russia example of becoming influential players in their own right . . . [and] of central concern is the Ministry of the Interior and the KGB.” The president exercises control over these organs through the Council of Security, which is used to purge suspect officials, cultivate presidential cronyism, and use these allies to reinforce top-down patronage on local elites.56 In Kyrgyzstan, however, in large part because of a divided political elite and weakened state institutions, mobilization against the regime succeeded. Mobilization led to two governments being deposed in crises that have each led to state security fragmentation—first as part of the 2005 “Tulip Revolution” and then during the 2010 interethnic violence. Both have left the country internally divided and fractious.57 During the latter unrest, especially, there were a series of incidents in which state security bodies were either overrun by mobilizing nonstate forces, remained neutral and failed to intervene, or openly joined/armed them. In just several days, many cities and villages experienced ethnic violence that was driven to a large extent by state security fragmentation. In the events leading up to the violence, state security forces often failed to intervene to maintain public order: the May 13 storming of Jalalabad’s Provincial Administration Building; the May 14 burning of the homes of recently deposed President Kurmanbek Bakiev; the May 19 attack on the Kyrgyz-Uzbek University of People’s Friendship; and the cluster of light ethnic clashes in the first week of June leading up to the June 10–14 violence. In all, nearly a dozen instances of state security fragmentation occurred prior to the violence.58 There were a couple of instances in which state security forces retained public order—often at great risk to themselves—but the vast majority of these violent events were marked by state security fragmentation. Several factors of Kyrgyzstan’s weakening state helped promote state security fragmentation during the ethnic violence. First, by Akayev’s later years, and especially during Bakiev’s time in office, the regime increasingly relied on a limited circle of elites—a regional version of “ethnic security maps” to keep control over

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state security forces in the country. Second, Bakiev’s regime permitted security bodies to intervene in political matters far more than during the Soviet era or under Akayev’s rule. Bakiev implemented rapid changes to security structures in 2008 and 2009. He replaced all ministers of security institutions with close supporters and relatives (including his brother Zhanysh, who was appointed head of the National Security Service). He dissolved the US-backed Drugs Control Agency (which many believed was getting too close to the regime in its investigations) and established a special unit to protect top government officials. This protected officials while granting them free reign in controlling drug trafficking activities in the country.59 In December 2009, Bakiev also disbanded the National Guard, Kyrgyzstan’s elite military force that had trained with the United States and carried out counterinsurgency and counternarcotics operations. The National Guard was merged with Janysh Bakiev’s state security service to form a presidential guard known as Arstan (“The Lion”).60 As one opposition party leader noted of security services, “We are not sure what side they will come down on if we call for their assistance.” Instead, opposition politicians during Bakiev’s time in office preferred the use of druzhinniki (volunteers who were paid by private actors).61 In the wake of the April 7 overthrown of Bakiev’s government, changes in the state security offices—ministries of defense, interior, state security committee, and prosecutor’s office—rarely went below the level of deputy minister. “Given the previous regime’s placement of Bakiyev’s loyalists in all key security positions, this situation presents the government with a dilemma: risk unrest by replacing disloyal security officials or risk subversion by allowing them to remain.”62 Third, state security forces lacked training and equipment, even if they were predisposed to stopping the violence. All security forces were subordinated to the commandants of Osh and Jalalabad provinces, respectively, as each province issued a state of emergency decree. But the army and Ministry of Interior troops deployed to Osh and Jalalabad “lacked sufficient equipment and training. None were equipped to deploy less than lethal force. None had been trained in dealing with violent civil disorder. The Rules of Engagement appeared to be either nonexistent or confined to an order given by police and militia units who were called up to ‘fire in the air’ to deter and disperse crowds.”63 In several cases, security forces lacked a capacity in numbers, training, and equipment to counter mass mobilization and ethnic violence.64 “In Osh, eyewitnesses described pitched gun battles, adding that rampaging crowds forcibly seized military vehicles and armaments from overmatched security forces.”65 Ultimately, this led Interim President Rosa Otunbayeva to note, “We have been left with a demoralized police force, stuffed with Bakiyev personnel. . . . We have

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security forces, many of whom joined one side in this conflict in the south.”66 Under the State of Emergency Decree, Ministry of Defense troops were given the order to prevent disorder “by all available means.”67 Armed forces in Kyrgyzstan historically focused on military threat from Uzbekistan, which had biased them against the Uzbek minority—who they saw not as citizens, but as potential threat to the Kyrgyzstan state and as foreign nationals living on Kyrgyz soil. This encouraged the use of extraneous violent of both sets of perpetrators of ethnic attacks. Finally, the military also failed to intervene to stop violent attacks because they were under the influence of and misused by political leaders. Military personnel under the command of the Provisional Government numbered two thousand, but these were poorly trained and improperly deployed. A critical role was played by mayor of Osh City, Melis Myrzakmatov, a businessman and former parliament member from Bakiev era ruling AkZhol party. Receiving few rents from the regime, Myrzakmatov initially backed Bakiev, but quickly supported the Provisional Government, organizing an April 15 rally in support of Provisional Government—well organized and staffed with sportsmen who broke up an attempt by Bakiev to organize a counterrally at the same time and place. According to ICG interviews, the “power agencies, police, security and others, took their orders from him [Myrzakmatov], not Bishkek.”68 When threatened with removal, however, Myrzakmatov refused to recognize fully the authority of the Provisional Government and was believed to have strong influence over Osh police “because he controlled major criminal networks in the Osh area.”69 As Marat notes of Myrzakhmatov’s influence, “One-person rule protected the police from the multiple influences and pressures exerted by the criminal underworld, political leaders, and international organizations, each pulling in different directions. Yet, the greatest pressure on the behavior of local security forces comes from the conflicting commands given by local and national political leaders.”70 “Myrzakhmatov is said to control an informal ‘army’ of martial arts sportsmen as well as former military and law-enforcement personnel. This physical manpower is the basis of his strength, allowing him to mobilize supporters against government forces when needed. Myrzakhmatov’s control in Osh is so strong that the current government in Bishkek must create parallel state structures to be able to compete with his influence over the city’s local government structures (including law-enforcement).”71 In the end, four days of violence claimed hundreds of lives, leaving Kyrgyzstan’s interim government visibly shaken, and ushering in a period of uncertainty about the viability of Kyrgyzstan’s state. After two episodes of state security fragmentation, Kyrgyzstan has evolved into an internally divided, fractious state.

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Economic Decline in Zimbabwe and Somalia As two weak African states, Zimbabwe and Somalia have long been on the margins of the global economy, often buffeted by sharp economic downturns as shifts in the international marketplace undercut commodity export revenue. In the late twentieth century, both countries experienced sharp economic decline culminating in an economic crisis. In Somalia, decades of weak economic performance were dramatically worsened in the late 1980s with the loss of US economic aid at the end of the Cold War. In Zimbabwe, several years of economic decline became acutely felt as the country was hit with hyperinflation and financial crisis in the 2000s. While both countries faced an economic crisis, their responses differed greatly. Zimbabwe’s open rent-seeking opportunities to its political and military elites enabled Robert Mugabe’s ruling party, ZANU-PF, to remain intact and retain its hold on power even in the face of pressure from opposition groups at the time. In Somalia, a highly militaristic regime under Siad Barre could not prevent the elite defection of its former political allies as groups in the longignored northern regions mobilized against the regime. Whereas the Mugabe regime could rely on top-down cooptation through rents to hold together its ruling coalition, the Barre regime’s policy of limiting rent seeking to certain groups promoted competitive pressures between clans—first among excluded groups and then to insiders who saw their interests threatened. As a result, state security fragmentation led to state failure in Somalia, while Zimbabwe’s embattled regime has remained in power.

Resources and Patronage Resources in Zimbabwe’s late colonial economy were evenly spread across sectors, with agriculture, mining, and manufacturing averaging 18 percent, 8 percent, and 18–19 percent, respectively, of total economic output.72 After independence, Zimbabwe’s leadership sought to establish control over its relatively lucrative economy by wresting it from local whites, multinational corporations, and foreign-controlled companies based in South Africa. In 1986, for example, 80 percent of its foreign trade went through South Africa’s transportation system.73 Zimbabwe’s postcolonial agricultural development has been heavily impacted by the conflict between white farmers and the government—a struggle over who will wield agrarian power in the country. The country’s four thousand white commercial farmers continued to dominate the agricultural sector well through the 1980s. The government established a range of institutions to gain control over an economy that was largely outside the hands of Zimbabwe’s government in 1980. In addition to extending an price-setting apparatus to control agricultural products,

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it created a Minerals Marketing Corporation (to govern its emerging mining sector), a Wages and Salaries Review Board, and controls on foreign investment in its manufacturing sector.74 Through these early actions considerable efforts were made to place these sectors under the control of the Mugabe government. By the late 1980s, Mugabe had consolidated his political control as well, signified in 1987 when he combined different posts within the executive under him, giving him a stranglehold on patronage: “His control of appointments to all senior posts in the civil service, the defense forces, the police, and parastatal organizations gave him a virtual stranglehold on government machinery and unlimited opportunities to exercise patronage.”75 The postcolonial leadership was built on officials who gravitated to this patronage, constituting a “new elite” whose wealth “came from backhanders and bribes,” including members of Zimbabwe’s security apparatus. General Solomon Mujuru, Mugabe’s trusted army commander, reportedly “made a personal fortune from defense procurement contracts,” and after twelve years of government service, he had amassed sizable business interests enabling him to retire in 1992 as one of the country’s wealthiest persons.76 As in other cases of coercive rent seeking, rents remained among security elites and never reached the rank-and-file ex-combatants from Zimbabwe’s liberation army. Yet that patronage went far beyond the state’s coercive apparatus, extending across Zimbabwe to reward ZANU-PF supporters who backed the regime. In the rural sector, ZANU-PF local elites were won over through agricultural subsidies, favors to state owned enterprises, contracts to select companies, redistributive transfers of funds to rural areas, and a pricing structure of agricultural commodities favorable to local elites.77 Those practices intensified over the 1980s, institutionalizing a centralized system of rent management under Mugabe’s leadership that incorporated local elites not only in agriculture but also in commercial, manufacturing and mining sectors that covered much of Zimbabwe’s territory. Somalia’s resources, on the other hand, were highly uneven, favoring the south’s arable land while the north remained largely a pastoral economy. This unequal development traces back to colonial developments in Somalia’s economy, which mobilized southern populations as wage laborers to work an export agricultural system producing cotton, sugar, bananas, and oil. By the 1960s, nearly half of Somalia’s export earnings were from this rural economy in the south.78 In particular, the land between the Juba and Shabelle rivers in the south received disproportionate investment and constitutes roughly 46 million hectares of farmable land—about 72 percent of the country’s total.79 Over several decades, moreover, Somalia’s pastoral economy—its main export is livestock— has remained under the control of foreign-based Somali nationals with powerful trading networks, making this a resource difficult to control. Much of the revenue from this trade, which grew substantially during the 1970s, was difficult for

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the regime to extract.80 There was little central government management of the economy’s disparate sectors but the regime, not being dependent on northern elites for revenue, had little incentive to allocate opportunities for rent seeking to them. Conversely, export earnings from agriculture in the south encouraged the regime to open rent seeking avenues to its elites. The long-standing regional disparities in resources, moreover, influenced the origins of Somalia’s independent state. Because of different paces of decolonization between the north and the south, Somalia’s constitution was negotiated primarily by the south and was widely backed by the south compared to lukewarm support in the north. Several inequalities in the 1960 constitution clearly favored the south,81 and in the first government elites from the south took the presidency, prime ministership, more than two-thirds of the cabinet posts, and the heads of the military and police.82 As elites in the Somali state competed for influence, many wealthy Somalis sought to ensure their wealth by establishing lines of patronage. In the 1960s, “the state was seen as the most strategic place to insure wealth,”83 turning Parliament into “a sordid marketplace” of particular elite interests.84 The public sector expanded enormously in the early years of independence, employing 72,000 Somalis (or 43 percent of the entire country’s workforce). After Barre took power in a 1969 coup, he instituted efforts to erode clannism in Somali politics. He also drew on several clans across the country to fill his most important positions.85 Several developments, however, increased southern regions’ influence in Barre’s regime and promoted conflict among elites over the concentrated rents arising from Somalia’s arable south. First, a liberal economic policy toward the south in the 1980s (that removed price controls) advanced growth in the farm sector, while a flood of Saudi Arabian livestock led to a decline in profits from livestock exports.86 This led to a rise in land values and increased wealth among southern elites. Second, drought in the 1970s and the 1977–78 Ogaden War with Ethiopia displaced nomadic peoples in the north who were resettled in the south, which gave the state a pretext to appropriate large tracts of land in the north, and further cut into rents among northern elites. Third, a rising upper class in the south gained title to fertile plots of land, creating a guaranteed source of rents from the political elites’ absentee ownership of expropriated land. Finally, urbanization led to a growth in demand for food and wood that would make land increasingly lucrative.87 After several years of Barre’s socialist experiment in the early 1970s, however, Somalia began to experience long-term economic decline, largely due to the 1977–78 Ogaden War and the political crisis in the Somali state.88 Somalia sank into external debt—with massive funds owed to the USSR, Western donors, and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank—and it experienced a long-term drop in livestock exports to Saudi Arabia.89 Economic decline hit

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the agricultural sector in the 1980s as well. While the livestock sector received increased state spending, peasant farming was neglected to such a degree that Somalia became the sub-Saharan country most dependent on imported food.90 By the late 1980s, it was entering an economic crisis.

State Security Institutions in Zimbabwe and Somalia Initially, Zimbabwe postindependence security forces were highly divided, split between different armies. But they were brought together and integrated under Robert Mugabe’s rise to leadership. Mugabe quickly appealed for unity, appointed the former commander of colonial security forces (who was seen as an impartial figure) to oversee the integration of troops, and deferred a decision on who would lead the new eighty-thousand-strong army. This helped move toward an integrated armed force, establish a sense of stability after Zimbabwe’s brutal war of independence, and reassured remaining members of the white community to stay and support the economy. Although several events challenged the cohesion of the army and security forces—including a 1980 conflict within rival factions in the army, a 1981 revolt of ZAPU-backed soldiers, and the repression of an allegedly dissident region, Matabeleland—the state security apparatus remained intact.91 Over the 1980s, moreover, the security forces expanded significantly, with the Ministry of Home Affairs absorbing security functions and policing (similar to its colonial-era predecessor) and its budget allocation growing accordingly.92 However, there were early indications of coercive rent seeking. As one observer noted, “some priorities of the police have been politically influenced by officials of the ruling party and that the force has become increasingly politicized and deferential to ZANU officials. Party membership may not be a requirement for promotion within the force, but officers are encouraged to become members and ministers sometimes stress the proper political role of the force.” In particular, police in the region of Matabeleland were more repressive than in areas where support for the regime was stronger. Torture was widespread until 1985 and “police posts in Matabeleland were filled with strongly anti-ZAPU officers.”93 By 2000, Zimbabwe became defined by coercive rent seeking, combining coercion and corruption to ensure support for the regime. As one study described the ruling party elite, “The nature of their domination . . . is in essence autocratic and neopatrimonial. . . . An entire elite connected to ZANU-PF benefited from Mugabe’s tenure in power and accumulated personal wealth at the expense of the nation and its economy, and still today a subtle blend of intimidation and patronage ensures its loyalty.”94 These characteristics of coercive rent seeking have arisen in Zimbabwe as a consequence of consistently using rents to bind local elites to the regime.

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Zimbabwe was drawn into a severe economic crisis over the 2000s that was devastating to the economy. Between 2002 and 2009, the country’s manufacturing dropped 91 percent, its agricultural output declined 86 percent, and hyperinflation led the government to allow citizens to use other currencies alongside the Zimbabwean dollar. A concurrent food crisis and cholera outbreak further eroded the regime’s legitimacy. Many citizens questioned whether policy decisions by the Mugabe government had exacerbated the economic crisis, such as its much-vaunted land reform program of indigenization that transferred large tracts of Zimbabwe’s agricultural land to ZANU-PF insiders (mostly within a 24-hour period).95 Yet the regime outlasted these crises and the Mugabe leadership has remained in power. Political pressure led to the inclusion of opposition parties into a ruling coalition, but the regime remains firmly in the hands of the ZANU-PF through its informal networks linking the party to an array of national and local actors in the security sector, the state bureaucracy, traditional local leaders, and youth groups, among others. This has provided the ZANU-PF with an ability to reconfigure its hold on power during this economic crisis. At the center of these personalized networks are coercion and patronage that are “interdependent mechanisms of creating and building power.” ZANU-PF organized violence was found to include military personnel of all ranks (some retired), the Central Intelligence Organization, and members of Parliament among the local elites manning an informal coercive apparatus in rural areas that is woven together in an intricate web of patronage relations.96 Over time, a culture of violence has arisen out of the regime’s rent-seeking practices, which has imbued the ruling party’s government. The regime frequently uses its primary resource—its coercive capacity—to suppress dissent and penalize collectively populations for their elites’ disaffection from the regime. In particular, the use of violence during electoral cycles has given way to regularized repression and a long-term campaign against political opponents to the regime (mainly ZAPU and its affiliates).97 In exercising this violence, the regime has mobilized several militia groups—ZANU-PF youth and women’s leagues, the national war veterans association, and “green bombers” of the National Youth Service—to force people to the polls, to take land from white farmers, and to intimidate opposition groups, among other political tasks. These serve as an extended arm of the central government that has become increasingly necessary to retain control in a broader context of Zimbabwe’s coercive rent seeking. Somalia, by contrast, has been wracked by state security fragmentation and the full collapse of its state structures. After Barre assumed power in 1969, he politicized the armed forces by relying on it to support many parts of the state. Although Barre created a civilian government after his military coup, many civilian

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institutions were run by former military and police. In 1981, sixty-eight of the eighty-five new district and provincial governors (party secretaries) appointed were from the military or police—a pattern that continued into the early 1990s.98 Anticipating a war with Ethiopia, Barre had increased the size of the armed forces threefold in the 1970s (up to thirty thousand), but after Somalia’s humiliating defeat in the Ogaden War the army began to experience a “deterioration of discipline even among the senior officers.” During the 1980s, the army was recruiting “along clan lines, with new recruits being put into units from their own areas and under officers from their own clans. As a result, by the late 1980, there was no difference between regular army units and clan militias.”99 By 1990, moreover, most of the army came predominantly from Marchau and was viewed by many as an instrument of repression not as a national armed force. Rebel groups emerged in the northwest and southern regions of the country. The onset of state security fragmentation occurred after protests were violently suppressed on July 14, 1989. A campaign of repression, political motivated mass arrests, and summary executions in the months that followed “was part of deadly policy to punish communities in areas seen as supporters of mutinous units of the army or opposition forces operating in these localities.”100 Members of one group, of Ogaden lineage, had previously been part of the Somali state bureaucracy and armed forces, but as conflict and resistance spread in the south, competitive pressures diffused state security fragmentation across the country. Ultimately, the Barre government lost control of much of the countryside in the south and northwest.101 When the state collapsed, the remnants of the national army simply became Barre’s personal militia—one of several operating freely in Somalia. Widespread fighting between clan-based militias, violence by armed gangs, and looting and terror waged against unarmed civilians swept through Somalia’s capital and farming regions in the south, producing hundreds of thousands of refugees in Kenya and Ethiopia.102 Violence in 1988 and 1989 claimed around fifty-five thousand civilian lives, with most victims from the opposition clans in the north.103 By 1991, the country was entering state failure and the near collapse of its political institutions. In this chapter I have extended the book’s argument beyond Central Asia in three ways. First, I use proxy indicators to estimate which countries among the world’s coercion-intensive weak states had manifested state security fragmentation and which had manifested cohesion around rent seeking. Of the forty possible cases, about one-third experienced fragmentation, one-third witnessed cohesion around coercive rent seeking, and one-third exemplified neither outcome— a range of outcomes that suggested a need to further investigate state security institutions in the development of weak states. In all these cases, we should

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consider how coercion is intimately tied to rent seeking, and how the two foster different logics of state formation. Second, I applied the theory to six countries, using paired comparisons, across Eurasia, Africa, and the Middle East. Using paired comparisons, these brief case studies underscored how seemingly similar countries—such as Syria and Lebanon—can possess quite different mixes of resource concentrations and rent-seeking opportunities, which leave their respective regimes in very different positions to deal with crises that may occur. As such, I demonstrated how varying resources, rents, and patronage matter not only for Tajikistan and Uzbekistan but also explain divergent paths of state formation in these other cases. In weak states defined by low capital mobility, therefore, subnational variation in these factors are underlying differences that, while often overlooked, remain critically important for the long-term processes of state development. Third, I extended the argument across three different crises—challenges to weak states that arise from ethnic/religious dissent, regime change, and economic crisis. In each pair of cases we saw how resources and patronage shaped rentseeking opportunities that led local elites to respond as the book’s theory would predict. These crises were tumultuous periods in which formal institutional controls over local elites were weakened and uncertainty over access to state rents were heightened. Regardless of the nature of the crisis that may hit a weak state, however, a crucial determinant for the cohesion or fragmentation of its state security institutions was the opening or closing of rent-seeking opportunities and the consequential strategies pursued by local elites. In some cases co-optation through patronage relations bound local elites to the regime; in other cases competition over opportunities rescinded by rulers led to the defection of local elites and the rise of nonstate actors of organized violence. Through these six cases (and in covering three different types of crises), I have provided additional empirical support for the theory outlined in this book. I also demonstrate how the theory can travel, though only to the forty weak states whose economies are defined by low capital mobility. Limiting the population of cases in this manner does reduce the scope of the theory, and some may find the argument less useful precisely because it does not purport to explain prominent cases of state failure in countries such as Sierra Leone and Democratic Republic of Congo. Yet I also extend the predictive power of the argument beyond most theories of state failure, which seek to explain all weak states. The theoretical model of state failure presented here puts forward clearly defined causal variables and specified mechanisms that do explain these six cases as well as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Accordingly, my empirical investigation into these additional cases suggests that an explanation focused on resources, patronage and rent seeking can apply to weak states with low capital mobility.

Conclusion

In the eyes of local elites, the dramatic events during the collapse of the Soviet Union have long ceased to threaten their access to rent-seeking opportunities. The disruptive economic reforms, large-scale political purges, and sweeping mass demonstrations of the early 1990s are already part of history in many postcommunist textbooks. Even memories of Tajikistan’s horrific civil war have begun to fade as years pass. But economies of immobile capital have remained remarkably durable, continuing to shape the bargains struck between rulers and local elites. Underpinned by resources and patronage, a subtle political economy of rent seeking pervades the postcommunist region, fostering intense competition among some local elites and ensuring the co-optation of others. As in weak states elsewhere, political order often rests on the surprisingly fluid foundations of the postcommunist state. In this book, I have studied this interplay of resources and rent seeking at the local level through these examples of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Using these contrasting cases, I showed how some weak states may be pulled into state failure and civil war, while others may develop highly cohesive and expansive state security apparatuses. In Tajikistan—where local elites in large swathes of the country commanded sparse resources, accessed little patronage, and saw precious few rent-seeking opportunities—the regime found it could not use co-optation to retain local elite support during the tumultuous early 1990s. As these elites were increasingly disaffected from the government in Dushanbe, they became highly susceptible to competitive pressures as they jockeyed for greater access to avenues of rent seeking. By 1992, these pressures led to the widespread defection of state 147

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security actors to nonstate militias, diffusing state security fragmentation across the country’s localities over several weeks. State failure and a five-year civil war followed. In Uzbekistan, by contrast, resources and patronage were far more evenly distributed across provinces and, consequently, rent-seeking opportunities were opened to local and provincial elites across the country in the early 1990s. These avenues enabled local elites to convert their resources into rents, making them dependent on the regime and opening them to co-optation. Their support for the regime enabled Uzbekistan to consolidate and extend its hold over local security services and construct one of Eurasia’s largest security apparatuses. Alongside the expansion of rent-seeking opportunities to local elites, the regime invested heavily in law enforcement and security services, granting them broad responsibilities over administrative, political, and economic affairs. While promising in the short term, provincial patrons and local elites drew state security bodies into resource extraction and rent-seeking activities. This has produced a highly coercive state apparatus, but one that is held together at the local level by mutually beneficial resource exploitation and rent seeking. These transformational changes have also ushered in long-term consequences for their overall trajectory of state formation. A fractious state apparatus has emerged in Tajikistan, while in Uzbekistan cohesion around coercive rent seeking has become the state’s defining feature. Few would have expected such different paths from these countries, but at the center of these processes is the shared dynamic of state erosion—the gradual destruction of states by patrimonial practices embedded deep within their core institutions. In Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and other weak states with low capital mobility, local elites cannot convert their control over resources into rents, forcing them to seek out patrons and direct their rent-seeking activities inside the state apparatus. This fosters an erosion of institutional structures that will pose significant obstacles to state development in the long run. Indeed, despite significant international assistance provided to Tajikistan and the fiscal, personnel, and coercive resources brought to bear in Uzbekistan, the task of “nation building”—constructing an effective and accountable state infrastructure—in both countries remains stymied to a surprising extent by local elites and their informal relationships permeating territorial administrations. The remainder of the chapter consists of three sections. First, I revisit the argument, elaborating on its contribution to understanding state failure in weak states, both comparatively and in the postcommunist region. Second, I apply the argument to questions of regime change, ethnic violence, and security sector reform to highlight insights that might be gained from a focus on weak states with immobile capital. Finally, I briefly conclude with implications for the study of the state.

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Understanding State Failure Over the past two decades, scholars and policymakers alike have paid increasing attention to explaining and forecasting state failure.1 Groups such as the US government’s Political Instability Task Force, the World Bank Institute Governance and Anti-Corruption Group, and Harvard University’s Intra-State Conflict Program have assembled a comprehensive list of causal factors that push countries into state failure. A variety of crises—such as rapid economic decline, a sudden inflow of refugees, outbursts of mass protests or social mobilization, and the spread of security threats across porous borders—can lead to a decisive turn toward state failure. But, as Robert I. Rotberg concludes, “No single indicator provides certain evidence that a strong state is becoming weak or a weak state is heading pell-mell into failure.” At best, “a judicious assessment” of all available indicators can provide “quantifiable and qualitative warnings”2 that state decline or failure may occur. Despite the extensive research on what makes state failure more likely, therefore, observers continue to struggle to translate tipping point conditions into microlevel processes actually driving the loss of monopolized force within a state. There are several reasons for this, which my theory of state failure has sought to address. First, the scope of these studies is often too broad empirically, attempting to cover the entire population of cases. By contrast, this book used Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to derive a general model of state failure, but one that only applies to weak states characterized by low capital mobility. As such, the argument in this book is premised on defining the forty or so weak states with immobile capital as a subset of cases marked by a distinct politics of rent seeking. Like those who posit a link between “lootable wealth” and state failure and civil conflict, I set forth in this book an analytical framework that elaborates on the unique challenges and opportunities that arise from rent seeking in cash crop economies—carrying specific implications for how weak state apparatuses wield coercion, pursue extraction, and ultimately preserve political order. As global commodity markets become increasingly interconnected, as climate shifts affect food production, and as populations increase, the local politics of rent seeking in many of the world’s major cotton, cocoa, and coffee producers will become all the more salient for state development.3 These countries with immobile capital, therefore, constitute a separate class of weak states for whom minor shifts in rent seeking may carry profound ramifications for political development. Second, delimiting the scope of the theory was critical for honing the argument and making its propositions falsifiable. To apply the argument to all weak states would require incorporating so many explanatory variables as to render its predictive power useless—as many have noted of existing searches for universally

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applicable indicators and causes of state failure.4 Third, by making the focus on immobile capital in weak states the point of departure of the theory itself, the book specifies a causal logic about what drives processes of decline and failure. All too often, studies of state failure are missing a story behind the observable developments, and they do not pull together disparate events into a compelling narrative. Unpacking a specific causal logic not only helps us understand the underlying sources and dynamics of state failure, it suggests a course of action that might arrest failure and rebuild states after conflict has occurred. Fourth, many comprehensive, global studies of weak and failed states identify causal factors, such as economic crisis or cross-border security threats, which are extraordinarily complex developments in their own right. Rather than reduce each to a single causal variable, we would be better served immersing a set of cases of state failure—positive and negative—within these processes to estimate the impacts of microlevel causes at work. In chapter 6, I illustrated the complexity of these developments through paired comparisons of weak states to estimate the impacts of resources, patronage, and rent seeking in a context of immobile capital. Finally, advancing our study of state failure may not only demand a delimitation of the range of cases, but also a definition of types of failure. Just as democratization debates have benefited from conceptual innovation, so might debates on state failure consider specifying the multiple dimensions of failure.5 As a small step in that direction, this book has focused on the fragmentation of state security institutions and their implication for states’ monopoly of violence.

Empirical Applications Beyond theoretical, conceptual, and methodological implications, a focus on weak states with immobile capital can also contribute to a range of empirical issues in contemporary world politics. Building on my paired comparisons of weak states in chapter 6, I identify ways in which my argument offers insights into ongoing debates of regime change, ethnic violence, and security sector reform.

Regime Change In the wake of the Arab Spring, some have asked if a similar set of developments could occur in Eurasia. While many observers see little evidence that such changes are near on the horizon in Central Asia and the Caucasus,6 this book points to an important dimension of politics in weak states that would shape how they would weather such a set of transformational events. As Lucan Way has argued, the organizational power of incumbent regimes explains their capability to withstand

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pressures of regime change. Way posits that “post-Soviet autocracies have been able draw on one or more important sources of authoritarian strength—a single, highly institutionalized ruling party; an extensive, battle-tested, and well-funded coercive apparatus; or state discretionary control over the economy—that have allowed leaders to suppress protest, starve the opposition, and discourage defection of allies.”7 While he does not discuss what fuels these engines of “authoritarian strength” (the party, coercive apparatus, monopolized economic controls), this book suggests that a complex interplay of resources and rents sustains them at the local level. Consider the following short comparative assessments. The cohesion present in Uzbekistan’s state apparatus, although rooted in the provision of rent-seeking opportunities to local elites, would make the regime more resilient against mass protests and international pressure to initiate regime change. With expanded and empowered security institutions that enjoy steady access to rents, the state has a reliable instrument for extraction and coercion. Similarly, Syria’s ability to withstand significant internal and external pressure for regime change during the Arab Spring illustrates the importance of binding local elites to the state. Despite large defections from the regime, its core political and security institutions remain standing (at the time of writing). Syria has benefited from a complex assortment of revenues—including oil and gas exports, income derived from black market sales in Lebanon, military and financial aid from Russia—and its established lines of patronage has enabled that wealth to sustain open rent-seeking opportunities that incorporate local and regional elites to the regime. Uzbekistan’s revenue sources include commodities such as cotton, gas, oil and mineral wealth, but it lacks resources outside its domestic economy and cannot use its geopolitical position as leverage in negotiations with domestic and international actors. These advantages, while present in Syria, are less evident in Uzbekistan. As such, we might expect that Uzbekistan’s cohesive state apparatus will enable its regime to withstand for some time internal and external pressure for regime change. Indeed, it might use its coercive capacity to preempt and punish regime opponents, leading movements to be “late risers” compared to other movements in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, or Kyrgyzstan.8 Given its propensity to use state violence in the past (i.e., its 2005 crackdown in Andijan)—much like Syria’s prior history of state violence (i.e., its 1982 crackdown in Hama)—the Uzbekistan leadership could confront demands for rapid regime change with significant state-imposed violence.9 But the Karimov regime does not, at present, possess the deep pockets of the Assad regime and should commodity markets cease to provide revenue, the former would be more vulnerable than the latter. Having a fragile order supported by an uneven distribution of rents, by contrast, Tajikistan is more vulnerable to mobilization targeting the regime. Like

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Algeria, its leadership has promoted the idea that the country cannot afford another civil war; but unlike President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, President Emomalii Rakhmon lacks vast oil and gas revenues from which to build state institutions (including security services).10 A closer comparison is Lebanon, whose fragile resource and patronage base leaves it susceptible to fragmentation and recurring state failure. Just as Lebanon’s fate is greatly influenced by its neighbor Syria, so Tajikistan’s outcome would depend in part on developments in Uzbekistan. Like Lebanon, Tajikistan’s postwar regime has not “spread the wealth” across its regions, concluding that it has little reason to provide elites in eastern localities with rent-seeking opportunities (or access to political power). While this yielded larger financial returns in the short term, it leaves the Rakhmon regime at risk since regime change in neighboring countries could generate uncertainty over rent-seeking opportunities within Tajikistan. Competition among local elites could be difficult to contain given the country’s weak components of “authoritarian strength” and the way it has limited access to rent seeking to a privileged group within the elite.

Ethnic Violence The central argument of the book can also inform studies of ethnic violence in weak states, especially those exploring how elites promote violence. The question of how to accommodate competing elites in weak, neopatrimonial institutional orders has long been recognized as more complicated in culturally plural societies.11 In facing the imminent loss of rent-seeking avenues, elites may oppose a policy, target other ethnic groups, or carry out an attack on the regime itself. These acts of disaffection may not entail the fragmentation of state security apparatuses into nonstate organized violence, nor do they necessarily bring about state failure. In many cases, the sudden loss of rent-seeking opportunities usher in periods of localized violence within weak states, sufficient to enable local elites to reassert their claims over rents without undermining the viability of the state apparatus itself. When those claims are imbued with ethnic content and rhetoric, or target a particular group, they foster ethnic violence. By focusing on the shifting politics of rent seeking, and on the mechanisms of competition and cooptation that motivate elites, this book might be used to supplement other elite-based approaches to violence. One approach points to the uncertainty and fear accompanying processes of state failure, which provide receptive conditions for elites to promote violence themselves or be recruited into violence. The classic scenario of a security dilemma, for instance, leads two groups into violent conflict when each group’s attempts to enhance its own security inadvertently undermines the security of

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the other group.12 Arguments that are premised on insecurity in a context of state failure illuminate important background conditions to violence, but they pay little attention to how persons within dissolving state structures flow into the ranks of mobilized groups. The role of the state in these studies exists only insofar as it is “absent and unable to serve as a security guarantor,” without considering how it “may take sides or even initiate ethnic violence.”13 In fact, state breakdown opens political elites to a variety of social and political forces that fragment state structures from within and draw state offices into civil conflict.14 The argument contained in this book—particularly the emphasis on competition between rentseeking elites—offers a concrete scenario through which state failure descends into spiraling conflict between ethnic groups. Another prominent approach specifies the strategic use of ethnicity by elites. In a context of weak institutions, some contend that elites use ethnicity in coalition-building because of its mobilizational appeal.15 These political maneuvers have the effect of making ethnicity more salient, thereby raising the prospect of violence. While revealing some of what drives electoral competition and party politics, these works have focused less on how elites use ethnicity as they compete for resources within a neopatrimonial state. Elites promoting ethnicity for a stake in the state more often engender an “ethnicisation of bureaucracy,” in which “ethnic ties are reinforced and politicised, given that distribution struggles are being waged via ethnic clientelist networks.”16 In institutionally weak states, elites are embedded in webs of political relationships at the intersection of clientelism and ethnicity.17 As this book has demonstrated, such webs lead not only to violence outside the state but also promote the fragmentation of security services (or, alternatively, the rise of a cohesive apparatus in which coercion and rent seeking are intertwined). As described in the cases of Kyrgyzstan and Lebanon in chapter 6, enjoining ethnicity into competition over rent-seeking opportunities can bring devastating effects. An additional set of studies contends that elites strategically manipulate the rise and decline of ethnic violence to overcome obstacles to collective action among their supporters.18 Political elites in India, for example, have used violent riots to gain an upper hand in elections.19 Others have shown the utility of violence in former Yugoslavia, either in “playing the ethnic card” or, where such strategy failed to mobilize supporters (as in Serbia), using violence as a means of demobilizing opposition.20 Regardless of whether the goal is to turn people out onto the street or keep them at home, elite manipulation requires mass publics who have few outlets of unbiased information, who discount the role of elites behind the rhetoric, who have a capacity to vilify ethnic others, and who are susceptible to top-down claims of an impending threat.21 Such conditions are facilitated in weak states whose cash crop economies hinge on labor-repressive

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apparatuses under local elites. Like parts of sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia has approximately two-thirds of its population in rural areas where agriculture has not been commercialized, access to independent media is limited, and most people depend on local elites. This political economic structure plays an important facilitating role in elite attempts to foster (or dampen) collective violence.22

Security Sector Reform As Margaret Levi has urged, the study of state failure should provide some practical insights for those working on stabilization and rehabilitation of weak and failed states. Levi notes that “we know quite a lot about how to govern communities, and we are learning why states fail. The next step is to figure out how to prevent them from failing and how to rebuild them if they do.”23 There is, of course, a vast literature on nation-building generally,24 but this book provides some perspective on those aspects of nation-building related to security sector reform. Since the end of the Cold War, statecentric notions of security have given way to diverse definitions of security. As a result, there is no consensus on what security sector reform (SSR) is as a contested concept or as a set of policies,25 and the literature on it explores a wide range of questions. Are local or international actors best suited to carry out the conflict prevention or postconflict state building? Should state security reform entail changes to law enforcement and courts, as well as military organizations? How should it overlap with and support electoral reform, small arms control, and institutions of transitional justice? How does SSR intersection with demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration after a conflict, and how should this be sequenced?26 Rather than attempt to address some of these questions, a main contribution of this volume is to emphasize the underlying political economy in weak and failed states—especially the importance of resources, patronage politics, and rent seeking—that is typically overlooked in dealing with failed states. One of the most comprehensive manuals, the 255-paged OECD DAC Handbook on Security System Reform, devotes little if any space to these concerns, not venturing at all into the political or economic factors and processes that drive “stakeholders.”27 Considerable work on SSR, of course, does delve into the political economic forces in failed states, though much of it centers on mineral wealth, narcotics, and fossil fuels, neglecting the role of legal and licit cash crop economies. For those concerned with the latter, this book provides an analytical framework through which local elites might be engaged, which is increasingly seen as essential for providing local ownership of state building projects.28 This carries implications not only for Central Asia but for other postconflict reconstruction efforts and

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military-to-military assistance programs. In cash crop economies, state-run labor-repressive landholding systems hinge on and reinforce local elite control over law enforcement and security services in each locality. These coercive institutions—mobilized in resource extraction—are likely to be infused with rentseeking behavior, predisposed to political influence, and susceptible to being mobilized as nonstate organized violence. This presents many obstacles to SSR projects, which do not recognize these locally salient motivations and influences of their state security partners. In Afghanistan, for instance, NATO has sent Provisional Reconstruction Teams alongside its International Security Assistance Force, and the US Department of Defense has worked closely with the Border Management Program of Central Asia, all efforts to rebuild the state and diminish threats of internal conflict, terrorism, and narcotics trafficking. While it is understood that rents from the narcotics trade sustains the regime, there is little focus on the viability of the state if it were based on nonillicit agrarian production.29 In fact, a standard refrain is to wean the country off drug production with the assumption that SSR and state building would proceed apace. As detailed in the chapters above, however, the provision of resources (investment, infrastructure, and inputs) and access to patronage to promote cash crop production (other than narcotics) may generate their own complications for governance and reconstruction at the local level. Once local elites (i.e., former warlords and militia commanders) are in a position to operate farms and factories in Afghanistan’s cash crop economy, the regime will need to rein them in mainly through the provision of open rentseeking opportunities. Co-optation through rent seeking will bind local elites to the regime and thus rebuild the Afghan state in the near term, but multiple pitfalls remain. First, the regime would have to establish monopolized controls over its agricultural sector. While cash crops make this more feasible than other types of commodity export economies, Afghanistan would be starting this construction from scratch. Second, the highly contentious, war-torn history of Afghanistan, which often pitted local elites of various kinds against one another, raises challenges for co-optation through rent seeking. Rural elites entering the cash crop economy would be exposed to competitive pressures, and light shifts in rent-seeking opportunities would be acutely felt. Third, the ability and willingness of a ruler in Afghanistan to extend open rent seeking to the country’s many resource-poor localities would be difficult to sustain over time. Like Tajikistan’s Rakhmon government, the Kabul government would likely see little reason to extend patronage, power, and rent-seeking opportunities to elites in resourcepoor localities. These empirical applications of my argument—regime change, ethnic violence, and state security reform—only extend to those weak states with low

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capital mobility. This is an admittedly small number of countries but these are the cases in which many studies on these topics will be explored. As such, this book is relevant insofar as it offers a new look at the forces motivating local elites, whose political calculus involves accessing rents and whose actions are defined by the limitations imposed by immobile capital. This book has argued that weak states with cash crop economies can seem deceptively stable and functional, leading scholars and practitioners to overlook the deleterious effects that their low capital mobility has on state offices. It has examined two of these states—Tajikistan and Uzbekistan—where a distinct political economy of rent seeking infused their territorial infrastructures, drawing local-level state security institutions into resource extraction, rent seeking and even mobilized violence. While cash crop economies are traditionally viewed by scholars as impervious to disorder, the interplay of rents and resources in and across localities can promote vastly different macropolitical outcomes. In one, local elites’ cooptation by the regime has promoted the rise of cohesive territorial apparatus premised on interlocking coercion and corruption. In another, local elites’ competition has led to state failure, civil war, and fractious state apparatus. Along with unpacking this outside-in pattern of state failure, I have also emphasized the fluidity of subnational politics in weak states. Instead of constituting rigid institutional apparatuses, the subnational level is a highly contentious sphere of politics in weak and failed states. While our natural inclination is to locate the drivers of change in the hands rulers, the analysis here proposes that local elites in a context of immobile capital operate within structural constraints that shape their strategic bargaining with rulers. As the examples of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in this book reveal, these structural and strategic factors combine to erode institutions from within and they can be decisive in perpetuating state power or leading a country into state failure.

Appendix RUSSIAN-LANGUAGE NEWSPAPERS

Newspapers Published in Russia Interfax ITAR-TASS Izvestia Komsomolskaia pravda Pravda Postfactum

Newspapers Published in Uzbekistan Andizhanskaia pravda (Andijan Province) Bukharinskaia pravda (Bukhara Province) Dzhizakhskaia pravda (Jizzax Province) Karakalpakistanskaia pravda (Karakalpakistan ASSR) Kashkadarinskaia pravda (Kashkadarya Province) Khorezmskaia pravda (Khorezm Province) Namanganskaia pravda (Namangan Province) Nezavisimaya gazeta Pravda vostoka Surkhandarinskaia pravda (Surkhandarya Province) Syrdarinskaia pravda (Syrdarya Province) Tashkentskaia pravda (Tashkent Province) 157

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Newspapers Published in Tajikistan Dushanbe Radio Kommunist Tadzhikistana Kuliabskaia pravda (Kuliab Province) Kurgan-Tyubinskaia pravda (Kurgan-Teppe Province) Leninabadskaia pravda (Leninabad Province)

Periodicals Narodnoe khozaistvo Uzbekskoi SSR Narodnoe khozaistvo Tadzhikskoi SSR Vedomosti, Deputaty verkhovnogo soveta Tadzhikskoi SSR Vedomosti, Deputaty verkhovnogo soveta Uzbekskoi SSR Vedomosti verkhovnogo soveta Tadzhikskoi Sovetskoi Sotsialisticheskoi Respubliki Vedomosti verkhovnogo soveta Uzbekskoi Sovietskoi Sotsialisticheskoi Respubliki

Uzbek-Language Newspapers Newspapers Published in Uzbekistan Dostlik bayrog'i (Navoii Province) Haqiqati Andizhan (Andijan Province) Haqiqati Bukhara (Bukhara Province) Haqiqati Ferghana (Ferghana Province) Haqiqati Kashkadarya (Kashkadarya Province) Haqiqati Khorezm (Khorezm Province) Haqiqati Namangan (Namangan Province) Surkhan darya (Surkhandarya Province) Zarafshon (Samarkand Province) Qonun himoyasida (Uzbekistan’s Prokuratura General) Insan va qonun (Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Justice)

Newspapers Published in Tajikistan Haqiqati Kurgan-Teppe (Kurgan-Teppe Province) Haqiqati Leninabad (Leninabad Province) Soviet Tojikiston

Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. Ashraf Ghani and Claire Lockhart, Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Francis Fukuyama, StateBuilding: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004); Gerald B. Heiman and Steven R. Ratner, “Saving Failed States,” Foreign Policy 89 (winter 1992–93), 3–20. 2. J. J. Messner, ed., The Failed States Index 2011 (Washington, DC: The Fund for Peace, 2011); Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay, and Massimo Mastruzzi, “Governance Matters VIII: Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators, 1996–2008,” Policy Research Working Paper Series 4978 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009); Susan E. Rice and Patrick Stewart, Index of State Weakness in the Developing World (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008); Jack A. Goldstone et al., Political Instability Task Force Report: Phase IV Findings (McLean, VA: Science Applications International Corporation, 2003). 3. OECD-DAC International Network on Conflict and Fragility (INCAF), Ensuring Fragile States Are Not Left Behind: 2011 Fact Sheet on Resource Flows in Fragile States (Brussels: OECD, 2009). 4. Stephen D. Krasner and Carlos Pascual, “Addressing State Failure,” Foreign Affairs 84, 4 (2005), 153–163. 5. Nina M. Serafino and Martin A. Weiss, Peacekeeping/Stabilization and Conflict Transitions,” RL32862 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, September 18, 2008), 1. 6. OECD, “Concepts and Dilemmas of State Building in Fragile Situations: From Fragility to Resilience,” Journal on Development 9, 3 (2008), 28. 7. Charles T. Call with Vanessa Wyeth, eds., Building States to Build Peace (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2008); Simon Chesterman, You, the People: The United Nations, Transitional Administration, and State Building (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Simon Chesterman, Michael Ignatieff, and Ramesh Chandra Thakur, Making States Work: State Failure and the Crisis of Governance (New York: United Nations University, 2005); Roland Paris, At War’s End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Stephen D. Krasner, “Sharing Sovereignty: New Institutions for Collapsed and Failing States,” International Security 29, 2 (2004), 85–120. 8. Robert D. Kaplan, “The Coming Anarchy: How Scarcity, Crime, Overpopulation, Tribalism, and Disease Are Rapidly Destroying the Social Fabric of Our Planet,” Atlantic Monthly 273, 2 (1994), 44–76. For a recent critique of this approach, see Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown Publishers, 2012). 9. Luis Martinez, The Algerian Civil War, 1990–1998, trans. by Jonathan Derrick (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Stephen Ellis, The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War (New York: New York University Press, 1999); William Reno, Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); David Keen, The Benefits of Famine: A Political Economy of Famine Relief in Southwestern Sudan, 1983–1989 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 159

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10. Robert I. Rotberg, ed., When States Fail: Causes and Consequences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Barbara F. Walter and Jack L. Snyder, eds., Civil Wars, Insecurity, and International Intervention (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); William I. Zartman, Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995). For an exception, in which a theory of state failure is drawn from case studies, see William Reno, Warlord Politics and African States (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998). 11. Messner, The Failed States Index 2011; Goldstone et al., Political Instability Task Force Report. 12. Gary King and Langche Zeng, “Improving Forecasts of State Failure,” World Politics 53 (2001), 627; Others have criticized these cross-national studies for not clearly defining state failure, aggregating highly diverse countries, and assessing factors as discrete variables without a well-developed conceptual framework. See Charles T. Call, “The Fallacy of the ‘Failed State,’ ” Third World Quarterly 29, 8 (2008), 1491–1507; Jack A. Goldstone, “Pathways to State Failure,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 25 (2008), 285–296; Tiffany O. Howard, “Revisiting State Failure: Developing a Causal Model of State Failure Based on Theoretical Insight,” Civil Wars 10, 2 (2008), 125–147. For an exception, in which a theory of state failure is constructed on the basis of interacting variables, see Robert H. Bates, When Things Fall Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 13. Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review 97, 1 (2003), 75–90; Nicholas Sambanis and Paul Collier, eds., Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis. Vol. 1: Africa; Vol. 2: Europe, Central Asia, and Other Regions (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005); Roger Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Barry Posen, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,” Survival 35, 1 (1993), 27–47. 14. Robert H. Jackson and Carl Rosberg, “Why Africa’s Weak States Persist: The Empirical and Juridical in Statehood,” World Politics 35 (1982), 1–24; Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 15. Zartman, Collapsed States, 9. 16. Johan Engvall, “Flirting with State Failure: Power and Politics in Kyrgyzstan since Independence,” Silk Road Paper (Washington, DC: Central Asia-Caucasus Institute—Silk Road Studies Program, July 2011); James M. Dorsey, “Letter from Sana’a: On State Failure’s Door,” Foreign Affairs, February 16, 2010. International Crisis Group, “Tajikistan: On the Road to Failure,” Asia Report No. 162, February 12, 2009; Ian Bremmer, “Beware State Failure in Somalia, Yemen, and Tajikistan,” The Call Blog at Foreign Policy, July 6, 2009. 17. Charles King, “The Micropolitics of Social Violence,” World Politics 56, 3 (2004), 431–455; Stathis N. Kalyvas, “The Ontology of Political Violence: Action and Identity in Civil Wars,” Perspectives on Politics 1, 3 (2003), 475–494. 18. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 19. Joel S. Migdal, State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 100. 20. Boaz Atzili, Good Fences, Bad Neighbors: Border Fixity and International Conflict (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); George Gavrilis, The Dynamics of Interstate Boundaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, eds., The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Mohammed Ayoob, The Third

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World Security Predicament: State-Making, Regional Conflict, and the International System (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995). 21. Michael L. Ross, The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012); Pauline Jones Luong and Erika Weinthal, Oil Is Not a Curse: Ownership Structure and Institutions in Soviet Successor States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Richard M. Auty, ed., Resource Abundance and Economic Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 22. Elisabeth Jean Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Samuel L. Popkin, The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979); James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); Eric R. Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper and Row, 1969); E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York: W. W. Norton, 1959). 23. Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 24. By 2003, police per population in Uzbekistan exceeded that of all other Central Asian republics, Russia, and states such as Sri Lanka and Jordan. Author’s interview with TACIS Team Leader, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, April 2003. 25. I define the cohesion and fragmentation of state security offices as two poles of institutionalization: cohesion exists when local state security bodies cooperate through the overarching coercive apparatus that constrains and coordinates their actions; fragmentation exists when local state security bodies arm, join, or otherwise support nonstate agents of organized violence. For more on cohesion/fragmentation, see Kristin M. Bakke, Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, and Lee J.M. Seymour, “A Plague of Initials: Fragmentation, Cohesion, and Infighting in Civil Wars,” Perspectives on Politics 10, 2 (2012), 265–284. 26. Rent seeking is defined here as any attempt to maximize income from a resource in excess of the market value. Robert D. Tollison, “Rent Seeking: A Survey,” Kyklos 25 (1982), 30. 27. Margaret Levi, Of Rule and Revenue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 28. Subrata Kumar Mitra, “Room to Maneuver in the Middle: Local Elites, Political Action and the State in India,” World Politics 43, 3 (1991), 390–413. 29. For an overview of Central Asia’s cotton exports to international markets, see Richard Pomfret, Central Asian Economies since Independence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 143–152. 30. Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 31. Douglas C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast, Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 32. Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990 (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992); Douglass North and Barry Weingast, “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth Century England,” Journal of Economic History 49 (1989), 803–832; Levi, Of Rule and Revenue, 1988. 33. Ross, The Oil Curse; Luong, Oil Is Not a Curse; Hazem Beblawi, “The Rentier State in the Arab World,” in Hazem Beblawi and Giacomo Luciani, eds., The Rentier State: Nation, State and the Integration of the Arab World (London: Croom Helm), 85–98.

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34. In the late nineteenth century, for example, Leopold II’s reign in Belgium was tempered by a large winning coalition (a popularly elected legislature), while his simultaneous rule over the Congo Free State, implemented through a mere handful of elites on the ground, was one of unrestrained violence, brutality, and kleptocracy. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson, and James D. Morrow, The Logic of Political Survival (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), 208–213. 35. For a moderated application of this argument to Central Asia, see Eric McGlinchey, Chaos, Violence, and Dynasty: Politics and Islam in Central Asia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011). 36. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 54–55, emphasis in original. On the origins and differentiation of coercive institutions in state formation, see Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 172–197; David Bayley, “The Police and Political Development in Europe,” in ed. Charles Tilly, The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 328–379. 37. Victoria Tin-bor Hui, War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Thomas Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States; Brian M. Downing, The Military Revolution and Political Change: Origins of Democracy and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); Michael Mann, Sources of Social Power, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), especially 44–91. 38. Dan Slater, Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Fernando Lopes-Alves, State Formation and Democracy in Latin America, 1810–1900 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000). 39. Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, 89. 40. Frances Hagopian, Traditional Politics and Regime Change in Brazil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Catherine Boone, Merchant Capital and the Roots of State Power in Senegal, 1930–1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Thomas Callaghy, The State-Society Struggle: Zaire in Comparative Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984). John Sidel’s work on the Philippine state examines coercion, but only as an instrument used by local bosses, and not as an outcome in state decline. John Thayer Sidel, Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999). 41. Gavrilis, The Dynamics of Interstate Boundaries, 93–129. 42. Nicholas Van de Walle, African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979–1999 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Michael Bratton and Nicholas Van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Rene Lemarchand and Keith Legg, “Political Clientelism and Development: A Preliminary Analysis,” Comparative Politics 4 (January, 1972), 149–178; James Scott, “Patron-Client Politics and Political Change in Southeast Asia,” American Political Science Review 66 (March 1972), 91–113. 43. Keith Darden, “The Integrity of Corrupt States: Graft as an Informal Political Institution,” Politics and Society 36, 1 (March 2008), 35–59; Jason Brownlee, “… And Yet They Persist: Explaining Survival and Transition in Neopatrimonial Regimes,” Studies in Comparative International Development 37, 3 (fall 2002), 35–63.

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44. Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky, “Informal Institutions and Comparative Politics: A Research Agenda,” Perspectives on Politics 2, 4 (2004), 725–740; Scott Radnitz, “Informal Politics and the State,” Comparative Politics 43, 3 (2011), 351–371. 45. Kimberly Marten, Warlords: Strong-Arm Brokers in Weak States (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012); Antonio Giustozzi, Empires of Mud: War and Warlords in Afghanistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Jeremy Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Vadim Volkov, Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002); William Reno, Warlord Politics and African States. 46. Both republics were territorial constructs of the Soviet Union since the 1920s; both were agricultural producers within the Soviet economy, highly dependent on annual subsidies from Moscow and consistently running large deficits. Both contain remarkably similar social cleavages, including ethnic, regional, and local bases of mobilization (such as clan or village). In both, moreover, long-term institutional decline and weak oversight during the late Soviet period enabled corruption, bribery, and neopatrimonial practices to thrive within their state infrastructures. 47. James Mahoney, “Strategies of Causal Assessment in Comparative Historical Analysis,” in eds. James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 337–372; Adam Przeworski and Henry Teune, The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry (New York: WileyInterscience, 1970). 48. Mark R. Beissinger and Crawford Young, Beyond State Crisis? Post-Colonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia in Comparative Perspective (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002); Alena V. Ledeneva, Russia’s Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking, and Informal Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Alexander Cooley concludes that “regionally and locally controlled security organs [of the former Soviet Union] have survived relatively intact and, in fact, have become the primary security forces in the independent Central Asian states.” Alexander Cooley Logics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires, States, and Military Occupations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 112. See also International Crisis Group, Central Asia: The Politics of Police Reform, 10 December 2002, available at http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3efdde7f4. html. Accessed May 14, 2010. 49. B. R. Rubin, “Russian Hegemony and State Breakdown in the Periphery: Causes and Consequences of the Civil War in Tajikistan,” in B. R. Rubin and J. Snyder, eds., PostSoviet Political Order (London: Routledge, 1998), 128–161; Barnett R. Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); Samuel Decalo, Coups and Army Rule in Africa: Motivations and Constraints (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). 50. Stephen E. Hanson, Post-Imperial Democracies: Ideology and Party Formation in Third Republic France, Weimar Germany, and Post-Soviet Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Laura L. Adams, The Spectacular State: Culture and National Identity in Uzbekistan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); Andrew F. March, “From Leninism to Karimovism: Hegemony, Ideology, and Authoritarian Legitimation,” PostSoviet Affairs 19, 4 (2003), 307–336. 51. Olivier Roy, The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations (New York: New York University Press, 2000); Kathleen Collins, Clan Politics and Regime Change in Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Edward Schatz, Modern Clan Politics: The Power of “Blood” in Kazakhstan and Beyond (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004); Rubin, “Russian Hegemony and State Breakdown in the Periphery”; Pauline Jones Luong, Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia

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(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; Shahram Akbarzadeh, “Why Did Nationalism Fail in Tajikistan?” Europe-Asia Studies 48, 7 (1996), 1105–1129. 52. For a broader statement on this, see Cynthia Enloe, Ethnic Soldiers: State Security in Divided Societies (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980). 53. Evan S. Liberman, “Nested Analysis as a Mixed-Method Strategy for Comparative Research,” American Political Science Review 99, 3 (August 2005), 435–452. 54. Alexander George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005); David Collier, “Understanding Process Tracing,” PS: Political Science & Politics 44, 4 (October 2011), 823–830. 55. To do so, I evaluate the performance of security institutions in selected regions along two dimensions—in terms of their local monopoly of violence and their enforcement of rules (i.e., the recovery of debts owed to the center, the settlement of land tenure conflicts and disputes among entrepreneurs, and the enforcement of contracts between agricultural enterprises and the state). CHAPTER 1

1. On resource scarcity, Colin H. Kahl, States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). On resource abundance, Michael L. Ross, “How Do Natural Resources Influence Civil War? Evidence from Thirteen Cases,” International Organization 58, 1 (2004), 35–67; Richard M. Auty, ed., Resource Abundance and Economic Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 2. Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” Oxford Economic Papers 56, 4 (2004), 563–596; “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” World Bank Working Paper Series 2000–18 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000). 3. The view that cash crops do not promote civil war was a shared conclusion among contributors to a special journal issue on the subject of resources and civil war: James D. Fearon, “Primary Commodity Exports and Civil War,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, 4 (2005), 483–507; Michael L. Ross, “What Do We Know about Natural Resources and Civil War,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, 4 (2005), 337–356; Richard Snyder and Ravi Bhavnani, “Diamonds, Blood, and Taxes: A Revenue-Centered Framework for Explaining Political Order,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, 4 (2005), 563–597. For an earlier work supporting this view, see Philippe Le Billon, “The Political Ecology of War: Natural Resources and Armed Conflict,” Political Geography 20 (2001), 561–584. 4. Even where attention is paid to cash crops as drivers of conflict, there are different conclusions as to how this works. Jeremy Weinstein argues that rebel groups governing cash crop economies are more inclusive toward the local population and that builds social and political institutions: “Where the realization of revenues from economic endowments requires civilian labor, rebel groups tend to build structures that are more broadly participatory.” Others have found, by contrast, that renewable resources “allow for subgroups to split and finance themselves independent of other factions” and foster conflict through division and exclusion. Jeremy Weinstein, Inside Rebellion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 173; Macartan Humphreys and Habaye Ag Mohamed, “Senegal and Mali,” in Nicholas Sambanis and Paul Collier, eds., Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis. Vol. 1: Africa (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005), 247–302. 5. Catherine Boone, Political Topographies of the African State: Territorial Authority and Institutional Choice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Victor V. Magagna, Communities of Grain: Rural Rebellion in Comparative Perspective (Ithaca: Cornell

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University Press, 1991); Robert Brenner, “The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism,” Past and Present 97 (1982), 16–113; Michael Hechter and William Brustein, “Regional Modes of Production and Patterns of State Formation in Western Europe,” American Journal of Sociology 85, 5 (1980), 1061–1094; Jeffrey M. Paige, Agrarian Revolution: Social Movements and Export Agriculture in the Underdeveloped World (New York: Free Press, 1975); Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: New Left Books, 1974); Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966) 6. Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 255–256. I use local elites instead of local strongmen in part because some farm, factory, and enterprise directors in Central Asia are women. 7. Bribes, kickbacks, favors, and other forms of corruption also generate income in exchange for political appointments, operating licenses, government contracts, among other things. But I consider these to be examples of “corruption of the administration of laws,” which are important insofar as they enable elites to derive rents from resources. For purposes of clarity and consistency, I do not refer to these as rents. Susan Rose-Ackerman, Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Corruption: A Study in Political Economy (New York: Academic Press, 1978). 8. Charles Boix, Democracy and Redistribution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), especially 38. 9. Author’s interview with local elite, Khatlon Province, Tajikistan, November 2002; Author’s interview with journalist, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, March 2003. 10. Author’s interview, journalist, Dushanbe, Tajikistan, December 2002; Author’s interview, Chief of Economic Department, Ministry of Agriculture, Dushanbe, Tajikistan, December 2002. 11. Author’s interview with Deputy District Governor (in charge of economic affairs), Samarkand Province, Uzbekistan, June 2003. 12. Marcus Kurtz, “The Social Foundations of Institutional Order: Reconsidering War and the ’Resource Curse’ in Third World State Building,” Politics & Society 37, 4 (December 2009), 479–520; Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 13. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Robert Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and Terror-Famine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 14. Russell Zanca, Life in a Muslim Uzbek Village: Cotton Farming after Communism (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2011); Jessica Allina-Pisano, The Post-Soviet Potemkin Village: Politics and Property Rights in the Black Earth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Katherine Verdery, The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003); Erika Weinthal, State Making and Environmental Cooperation: Linking Domestic and International Politics in Central Asia (Boston: MIT Press, 2002); Stephen Wegren, Agriculture and the State in Soviet and PostSoviet Russia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998). 15. Gordon Tullock, The Social Dilemma (Blacksburg, VA: University Publications, 1974); “Rent Seeking as a Negative-sum Game,” in James M. Buchanan, Robert D. Tollison, Gordon Tullock, eds., Toward a Theory of a Rent-Seeking Society (College Station, TX: A&M University Press, 1980), 16–36. 16. Margaret Levi, Of Rule and Revenue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 17.

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17. Levi, Of Rule and Revenue, 23–25. See also Robert H. Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981). 18. Anna Grzymala-Busse, “Beyond Clientelism: Incumbent State Capture and State Formation,” Comparative Political Studies 4, 4–5 (2008), 638–673; Anna Grzymala-Busse, Rebuilding Leviathan: Party Competition and State Exploitation in Post-Communist Democracies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Venelin I. Ganev, Preying on the State: The Transformation of Bulgaria after 1989 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007); Alena Ledeneva, How Russia Really Works (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006); Michael McFaul, “State Power, Institutional Change, and the Politics of Privatization in Russia,” World Politics 47, 2 (1995), 210–243. 19. Naazneen H. Barma, Kai Kaiser, Tuan Minh Le, and Lorena Vinuela, Rents to Riches? The Political Economic of Natural Resource-Led Development (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012). 20. Bates, Markets and States. 21. For details on this in Soviet Central Asia, see Boris Z. Rumer, Soviet Central Asia: “A Tragic Experiment” (New York: Unwin Hyman, 1989). 22. In my model, however, I hold resource structure constant to simplify the causal inferences of its effect on rent-seeking activities by local elites. 23. Simona Piattoni, ed., Clientelism, Interests, and Democratic Representation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 6. 24. For a sampling of this vast literature, see Javier Auyero, Poor People’s Politics: Peronist Survival Networks and the Legacy of Evita (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001); John Willerton, Patronage and Politics in the USSR (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); S. N. Eisenstadt and Luis Roniger, Patrons, Clients, and Friends: Interpersonal Relations and the Structure of Trust in Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Rene Lemarchand, “Political Clientelism and Ethnicity in Tropical Africa,” American Political Science Review 66, 1 (1972), 68–90; James C. Scott, “Patron-Client Politics and Political Change in Southeast Asia,” American Political Science Review 66, 1 (1972), 91–113. 25. Grzymala-Busse, Rebuilding Leviathan; Ganev, Preying on the State; Conor O’Dwyer, Runaway State Building: Patronage Politics and Democratic Development (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006). 26. Barbara Geddes, The Politician’s Dilemma: Building State Capacity in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 27. Grzymala-Busse, Rebuilding Leviathan; Ganev, Preying on the State. 28. Caroline Humphreys, The Unmaking of Soviet Life: Everyday Economics after Socialism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002); Vadim Volkov, Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002); Kathryn Hendley, Trying to Make Law Matter (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); Louise I. Shelley, “Post-Soviet Organized Crime: Implications for Economic, Social and Political Development,” Demokratizatsiya 2, 3 (1994), 341–358. 29. Timothy Frye and Andrei Schleifer, “The Invisible Hand and the Grabbing Hand,” American Economic Review: Proceedings and Papers 87 (1997), 354–355; Douglass Marcouiller and Leslie Young, “The Black Hole of Graft: The Predatory State and the Informal Economy,” American Economic Review 85, 3 (1995), 630–646. 30. Alisher Ilkhamov, “The Limits of Centralization: Regional Challenges in Uzbekistan,” in Pauline Jones Luong, ed., The Transformation of Central Asia: States and Societies from Soviet Rule to Independence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 159–181. On prebends, see Richard Joseph, Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria: The Rise and Fall of the Second Republic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

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31. On proprietary office holding, see Thomas Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 32. For similar distinctions in studies of rent seeking, see discussions of monopolistic and competitive corruption in Anne Krueger “The Political Economy of Rent-Seeking,” American Economic Review 64, (1974), 291–303. 33. Javier Auyero, “From the Client’s Point(s) of View: How do Poor People Perceive and Evaluate Political Clientelism,” Theory and Society 28 (1999), 297–334. 34. Kurtz, “Social Foundations of Institutional Order”; Boix, Democracy and Redistribution; Michael Bratton and Nicolas Van de Walle, “Neopatrimonial Regimes and Political Transitions in Africa,” World Politics 46 (1994), 453–489. 35. Boaz Atzili, Good Fences, Bad Neighbors: Border Fixity and International Conflict (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, eds., The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). As I show in Tajikistan, however, incursions by militias into a locality could trigger local state security actors to join them. 36. Mark R. Beissinger, “Structure and Example in Modular Political Phenomena: The Diffusion of Bulldozer/Rose/Orange/Tulip Revolutions,” Perspectives on Politics 5, 2 (2007), 259–276; Mark R. Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 37. More specific assets are equivalent to those with immobile capital and less specific assets are comparable to those with high capital mobility—a difference illustrated by stealing satellites versus rubles (to use his analogy). Steven L. Solnick, Stealing the State: Control and Collapse in Soviet Institutions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). 38. Timur Kuran, “Now Out of Never: The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989,” World Politics 44, 1 (1991), 7–48; “Sparks and Prairie Fires: A Theory of Unanticipated Political Revolution,” Public Choice 61, 1 (1989), 41–74. 39. Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields,” American Sociological Review 48 (1983), 147–160. 40. Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 41. Simone Pilillo and Mauro F. Guillen, “Globalization Pressures and the State: The Worldwide Spread of Central Bank Independence,” American Journal of Sociology 110, 6 (2005), 1764–1802; John W. Meyer, John Boli, George M. Thomas, and Francisco O. Ramirez, “World Society and the Nation-State,” American Journal of Sociology 103, 1 (1997), 144–181. 42. For a related argument but one with different scope conditions of weak states and different assumptions (such as genuine competition for public office), see Robert H. Bates and E. L. Ferrara, “Political Competition in Weak States,” Economics and Politics 13, 2 (2001), 159–184. 43. Gerald M. Easter, “Politics of Revenue Extraction in Post-Communist States: Poland and Russia Compared,” Politics and Society (December 2002); Venelin Ganev, “The Dorian Gray Effect: Winners as State Breakers in Postcommunism,” Communist and PostCommunist Studies 34 (2001), 1–25; David Woodruff, Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); Joel Hellman, “Winners Take All,” World Politics 50, 2 (1998), 203–234. Cynthia Roberts and Thomas Sherlock, “Bringing the Russian State Back In: Explanations of the Derailed Transition to Market Democracy,” Comparative Politics 31, 4 (1999), 477–498.

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44. Allina-Pisano, The Post-Soviet Potemkin Village; Kathryn Stoner Weiss, Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Yoshiko Herrera, Imagined Economies: The Sources of Russian Regionalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Pauline Jones Luong, Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Power, Perceptions, and Pacts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Daniel Treisman, After the Deluge: Regional Crises and Political Consolidation in Russia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999). 45. Steven Solnick, Stealing the State: Control and Collapse in Soviet Institutions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 46. Kathleen Collins, Clan Politics and Regime Change in Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Pauline Jones Luong, Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 47. James Mahoney, “Path Dependence in Historical Sociology,” Theory and Society 29 (2000), 509; James Mahoney, Legacies of Liberalism: Path Dependence and Political Regimes in Central America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Paul Pierson, “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics,” American Political Science Review 94, 2 (2000), 251–267; Paul Pierson, Politics in Time (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). CHAPTER 2

1. Crawford Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 290. 2. Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); Valerie Bunce, Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Destruction of Socialism and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); William E. Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Mark R. Beissinger, “The Persisting Ambiguity of Empire,” Post-Soviet Affairs 11, 2 (1995), 149–184. 3. Mark R. Beissinger and Crawford Young, Beyond State Crisis? Post-Colonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia in Comparative Perspective (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002). 4. Moshe Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power: A Study of Collectivization (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968). 5. Fainsod writes: “Management had its prerequisites, illegal and quasi-legal, and many kolkhoz chairmen sought to protect them from exposure by installing their own clique in strategic positions in the kolkhoz, by absorbing the chairman of the village soviet, the store manager, and other leading village personalities into a common network of shared privileges, and by bribing the relevant raion [district] officials where possible to keep quiet.” Merle Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), 270–271. 6. Valentin Litvin, The Soviet Agro-Industrial Complex: Structure and Performance (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), 1. 7. Robert F. Miller, “Continuity and Change in the Administration of Soviet Agriculture since Stalin,” in James R. Millar, ed., The Soviet Rural Community (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971), 79–80. 8. First, in 1953, functions originally assigned to the inspection apparatus of the USSR Ministry of Agriculture were transferred to a system of inspectors at the provincial level, placing them under the authority of specialized organs within obkom offices. This turned the ministry into a coordinating apparatus with much less authority to intervene in

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agricultural production. Second, in March 1954, collective farm chairs were placed on the nomenklatura of provincial party (obkomy) and republican central committees, which reflected the fact that a much larger proportion of farm chairs were members of the party. Third, farm chairs received more autonomy when Khrushchev (in the late 1950s) abolished machine-tractor stations—“the spearhead of Party control in the countryside”— and transferred their personnel and equipment to collective farms.” T. H. Rigby, Political Elites in the USSR: Central Leaders and Local Cadres from Lenin to Gorbachev (Worcester, UK: Billing & Sons, 1990), 104; Merle Fainsod, How Russia Is Ruled (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 550; Robert F. Miller, “One Hundred Thousand Tractors”: The MTS and the Development of Controls in Soviet Agriculture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970). 9. Cynthia S. Kaplan, The Party and Agricultural Crisis Management in the USSR (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 111. 10. Yu. Denisov, “Kadry predsedatelei kolkhozov v 1950–1968 gg.,” Istoriia SSSR 1 (January–February 1971), 38–57; Jerry F. Hough, “The Changing Nature of the Kolkhoz Chairman,” in Millar ed., Soviet Rural Community, 73–103. 11. Peter Rutland, The Politics of Economic Stagnation in the Soviet Union: The Role of Local Party Organs in Economic Management (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 143. 12. Ibid., 145–148; R. F. Miller, “The Politics of Policy Implementation in the USSR: Soviet Policies on Agricultural Integration,” Soviet Studies 32, 2 (1980), 171–194. 13. Neil J. Melvin, Soviet Power and the Countryside: Policy Innovation and Institutional Decay (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). 14. John Willerton, Patronage and Politics in the USSR (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 15. Fainsod, How Russia Is Ruled, 235. 16. Jerry F. Hough, The Soviet Prefects: The Local Party Organs in Industrial Decision-Making (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969). 17. Il'ia Zemtsov, The Private Life of the Soviet Elite (New York: Crane, Russak, 1985), 36. However, with the breakup of the Soviet Union, formal monthly salaries of regional politicians have declined dramatically, in terms of real purchasing power. This has made them dependent on informal sources of income. 18. Fainsod, How Russia Is Ruled. 19. For instance, Zemtsov (The Private Life, 39–40) notes, “The party leadership of the region, city, or republic, and the police and the public prokurators—all of whom regularly receive bribes—warn Soviet businessmen in good time of impending inspections.” 20. Gregory Gleason, “Fealty and Loyalty: Informal Authority Structures in Soviet Asia,” Soviet Studies 43, 4 (1991), 613–629. 21. Rigby, Political Elites in the USSR, 4. 22. For examples, see Alec Nove, “Is There a Ruling Class in the USSR?” Soviet Studies 27, 4 (1975), 615–638; Mikhail Voslenskii, Nomenklatura (Moscow: MP “Oktiabr’ ” & “Sovetskaia Rossiia,” 1980). 23. John Miller, “Nomenklatura: Check on Localism?” in T. H. Rigby and Bohdan Harasymiw, eds., Leadership Selection and Patron-Client Relations in the USSR and Yugoslavia. (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983), 62–98, 85; Kerstin Zimmer,” The Captured Region: Actors and Institutions in the Ukrainian Donbass,” in Melanie Tatur, ed., The Making of Regions in Post-Socialist Europe—the Impact of Culture, Economic Structure and Institutions, vol. 2 (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag fur Sozialwissenschaften, 2004), 231–348; Charles King, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the politics of culture (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2000). 24. A. Sh. Niiazi, “Tadzhikistan: konflikt regionov,” Vostok 2 (1997), 101.

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25. Olivier Roy, The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 113. 26. A. I. Kosheleva and T. A. Vasiliev, Administrativno-territorial'noe delenie Tadzhikistana (Stalinabad, 1948), 20–22, as cited in R. F. Akhmetzyanova, N. I. Gertsman, L. A. Dusmatova, Iz istorii kolkhoznogo stroitel'stva v Tadzhikskoi SSR 1938–1958 (Dushanbe: “Irfon,” 1985), 46–47. 27. V. I. Bushkov, and D. V. Mikul'skii, Anatomiia grazhdanskoi voiny v Tadzhikistane: etno-sotsial'nye protsessy i politischeskaia bor'ba: 1992–1995 (Moskva: Institut Etnologii i Antropologii RAN, 1996). 28. Roy, The New Central Asia. 29. Leninabad Province averaged 30 percent, Dushanbe 20 percent, Kurgan-Teppe 16 percent, Kuliab 10 percent, and GBAO 5 percent. Calculated from figures collected from Vedomosti, Deputaty verkhovnogo sovieta Tadzhikskoi SSR, various issues. 30. These districts include Faizabad, Garm, Jirgatal, Komsomolobod, and Tavildara. 31. R. Kh. Aminova, Pobeda kolkhoznogo stroia v Uzbekistane (1933–41) (Tashkent: “FAN,” 1981), 31. 32. In 1934, 2330 collective farm chairs were replaced across 67 districts in the republic. Of that total 359 farm chairs were changed two or three times, and several four or five times. The number of replaced brigade leaders within collective farms was around 4,000 during the same year. Aminova, Pobeda kolkhoznogo stroia, 147. 33. Author’s database and collection of biographies of collective farm chairs. 34. In one analysis, the following economic regions are presented: Zarafshan Valley (comprised of the provinces of Samarkand, Bukhara, Jizzax, and Kashkadarya); Tashkent area (Tashkent and Syrdarya Provinces); and Ferghana Valley (made up of Ferghana, Andijan, and Namangan Provinces). For an example, see K. N. Bedrintsev, Economicheskoe raionirovanie Uzbekistana (Tashkent: “FAN,” 1966). 35. Jabbar Rasulov, Otchetnyi doklad TsK KP Tadzhikistana XV S'ezdu Kommunisticheskoi Partii Tadzhikistana (Dushanbe: “Irfon,” 1964), 67–68; Teresa RakowskaHarmstone, Russia and Nationalism in Central Asia: The Case of Tadzhikistan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970). 36. Rakowska-Harmstone, Russia and Nationalism in Central Asia, 52, 183; Roy, The New Central Asia, 213. 37. Rakowska-Harmstone, Russia and Nationalism in Central Asia, 52. 38. Across the USSR, between 1955 and 1960, twenty provinces were abolished while only one was created. “Changes in the Territorial-Administrative Structure,” Current Digest of the Soviet Press 13, 22 (1961): 10–12. 39. Analysis based on author’s collection of biographies. 40. The use of lateral movements of elites as an indicator of patronage is well established in studies of the Soviet Union. While I use more detailed evidence to interpret lines of patronage in my case studies, tracking lateral movements provides a less subjective and more simplified baseline of comparison. 41. Interview, former collective farm chair, Hojand District, Leninabad Province, December 2002. 42. A significant number of tractors, for instance, did not begin arriving in Vose District of Kuliab Province until the 1950s (well after collectivization had been completed). Interview, former collective farm chair, Vose District, Kuliab Province, November 2002. 43. A. Sh. Niiazi, “Tadzhikistan: konflikt regionov,” Vostok 2 (1997), 94–107; similar demographic shifts occurred in other Soviet republics. For Moldova, see King, The Moldovans. 44. The assassination of an obkom first secretary in the Soviet Union during the 1970s is a remarkably brazen act that illustrates a sense of impunity among the perpetrators,

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who likely believed they were beyond the reach of the state. Guissau Jahangiri, “Anatomie d’une crise: le poids des tensions entre regions au Tadjikistan,” in Stephane A. Dudoignon and Guissau Jahangiri, eds., Le Tadjikistan existe-t-il? Destins politiques d’une ’nation imparfaite,’ ” special edition of Cahiers d’Etudes sur la mediteranee orientale et le monde turcoiranien (CEMOTI) 18 (July–December 1994): 37–71. 45. Ibid., 40. 46. Analysis based on author’s collection of biographies. 47. D. Carlisle, “The Uzbek Power Elite: Politburo and Secretariat (1938–83),” Central Asian Survey 5, 3/4 (1986), 91–132. 48. Kathleen Collins, Clan Politics and Regime Change in Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Carlisle, “The Uzbek Power Elite”; Roy, New Central Asia, 109–112. 49. The following history is drawn from Carlisle, “The Uzbek Power Elite”; Roy, New Central Asia. 50. The one exception is Bekhtosh Rakhimov, who was appointed obkom first secretary of three provinces during the course of his career—Khorezm, Samarkand, and Andijan. Rakhimov was born in Samarkand’s Narpay District, where he worked (after serving in World War II) as schoolteacher and principal, a raikom instructor, raispolkom deputy chair and chair (1945–52). After attending Tashkent High Party School, he became its secretary of Party Organization (1952–60), at which time he most likely came to know Rashidov. Upon Rashidov’s appointment as CPUz first secretary in 1959, Rakhimov served two short stints as raikom first secretary in Narpay and Kattakurgan districts (1960–62) before becoming obkom first secretary of Khorezm (1962–68), Andijan (1968–74), and Samarkand (1974–82) provinces. Author’s collection of biographies. 51. M. G. Vakhabova, Torzhestvo Leninskogo kooperativnogo plana v Uzbekistane (Tashkent: “Uzbekistan,” 1970), 331. 52. A related concept that draws implicitly on networks is Bayart’s concept of a “reciprocal assimilation of elites,” through which African political and societal elites forged social ties that came to constitute a transregional social foundation of state power. Such social interactions among elites facilitated the proliferation of patronage ties by establishing personal relationships alongside professional ones. See Jean-Francois Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (London: Longman, 1993), 150–180. CHAPTER 3

1. Author’s interview with journalist, Dushanbe, November 2002. 2. Interview with journalist, Samarkand Province, Uzbekistan, July 2003. 3. Interview with Lawyer A, Samarkand Province, Uzbekistan, July 2003. 4. Maurizio Guadagni, Martin Raiser, Anna Crole-Rees, and Dilshod Khidirov, “Cotton Taxation in Uzbekistan: Opportunities for Reform,” ECSSD Working Paper No 41 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005). 5. On subnational variation in state formation, see Catherine Boone, Political Topographies of the African State: Territorial Authority and Institutional Choice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 6. Stephane A. Dudoignon, “Political Parties and Forces in Tajikistan, 1989–1993,” in Mohammad-Reza Djalili, Frederic Grare, and Shirin Akiner, eds., Tajikistan: The Trials of Independence (New York: St. Martin’s Press), 70. 7. Hikmatullo Nasriddinov, Tarkish (Dushanbe: Afsona, 1995), 33–34; A. Sh. Niazi, “Tajikistan: konflikt regionov,” Vostok 2 (1997), 94–107. 8. Tabarov, who had held key posts in Kuliab Province since 1958 (including raikom first secretary of Vose and Moscow districts, and raikom komsomol first secretary

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of Farkhar District), was a prominent representative of the regional elite. Shortly after his conviction, Tabarov was able to use his patronage ties to not only gain amnesty but get appointed director of a state farm in Yovon District of Kurgan-Teppe Province. Author’s database. 9. Author’s collection of biographies. 10. Interview, Avazov Abdi, Vose District, November 2002 (Abdi was former deputy chair of Lenin Kolkhoz and later chair of Vose District’s Moscow Kolkhoz for twenty-seven years); Interview, journalist (specialist on agricultural issues), Dushanbe, December 2002. 11. “Soobshchenie,” Kommunist Tadzhikistana, November 30, 1989, 2; “Qonun ko'p, ijro-chi?” Soviet Tojikistan, June 13, 1991, 3. 12. P. Gayrat, “Vremya bi'v Nabat?” Kommunist Tajikistana, August 1, 1989, 4. 13. Sattor Shodi, “Haqiqat va mashaqqat,” Soviet Tojikistan, June 21, 1991, 1–3. 14. Stephane A. Dudoignon, “Une segmentation peut en cacher une autre: regionalisms et clivages politico-economiques au Tadjikistan,” in Stephane A. Dudoignon and G. Jahangiri, eds., Le Tadjikistan existe-t-il? Destins politiques d’une ‘nation imparfaite,’” special edition of Cahiers d’Etudes sur la mediteranee orientale et le monde turco-iranien (CEMOTI), 18 (July–December 1994), 98. 15. In a sign of his growing wariness of reformists, Makhamov appointed Safarali Kenzhaev as his top law enforcement advisor. Kenzhaev, an orphan who viewed Leninabad Province as his adopted region of origin, was later seen as a hardliner generally opposed to reform. In the heady days surrounding the August 1991 failed putsch, however, even he was not above suspicion. In his autobiographical account, Kenzhaev claims that he was privately accused by Makhamov at one point of having ties to the opposition—which points to the uncertain allegiances within the political elite at this time. Safarali Kenzhaev, Perevorot v Tadzhikistane (Dushanbe: “Irfon,” 1996), 1–15. 16. Shahram Akbarzadeh, “Why Did Nationalism Fail in Tajikistan?” Europe-Asia Studies 48, 7 (1996), 1105–1129. 17. Olivier Roy, The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 139–140. 18. Bess Brown, “Whither Tajikistan?” Report on the USSR 6, June 12, 1992, 1–6 19. Kathleen Collins, Clan Politics and Regime Change in Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 214. 20. “KGB informiruet,” Pravda vostoka, June 18, 1989; “Pomoch'narodu v bede,” Pravda vostoka, June 16, 1989; “Ekho Ferghanskikh sobytiy. Nakazanie neotvratimo!” Pravda vostoka, January 4, 1990. 21. Draft of manuscript on prokurators in Uzbekistan by district prokurator staff member, Uzbekistan, name withheld, 42. 22. Interview with former deputy district governor, Tashkent city, Uzbekistan, March 2003. 23. James Critchlow, Nationalism in Uzbekistan: A Soviet Republic’s Road to Sovereignty (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), 178. 24. The World Bank, Uzbekistan: An Agenda of Economic Reform (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1993), 120. 25. World Bank, Uzbekistan Rural Finance Project Interim Report (Tashkent: Draft copy, July 30, 1997), 52; unofficial estimations are far higher than these official figures. Interviews with professors of finance and a TACIS staff member, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, March–April 2003. 26. Arthur Andersen, “Specialized Joint Stock Commercial Bank ‘Pakhta Bank,’ ” Financial Sector Development Agency Long Form Audit Report, December 31, 1999; author’s interviews with district governor staff in five provinces, Uzbekistan, April–August 2003.

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27. Gregory Gleason, Markets and Politics in Central Asia (London: Routledge, 2003), 125–126; Alisher Ilkhamov, “Divided Economy: Kolkhoz System vs. Peasant Subsistence Economy in Uzbekistan,” Central Asia Monitor 4 (2000), 5–14. 28. Interviews in Ferghana and Samarkand Provinces, Uzbekistan, April–July 2003. 29. Tomamaso Trevisani, “After the Kolkhoz: Rural Elites in Competition,” Central Asian Survey 26, 1 (2007), 85–104; Alisher Ilkhamov, “Neopatrimonialism in Uzbekistan: Interest Groups, Patronage Networks and Impasses of the Governance System,” Central Asian Survey 26, 1 (2007), 65–84. 30. Author’s database of violent incidents, which were compiled from news reports and histories of the Tajik civil war. 31. Kuliabskaia pravda, February 1, 1992, and March 28, 1992; interviews with former collective farm chairs, Kurgan-Teppe and Kuliab provinces, October 2002. 32. I do not test for mountainous terrain, because it is found to prolong guerrilla warfare already underway rather than initiate dynamics of violence in weakened state security apparatuses immediately preceding civil conflict. Carles Boix, “Civil Wars and Guerrilla Warfare in the Contemporary World: Toward a Joint Theory of Motivations and Opportunities,” in Stathis Kalyvas, Ian Shapiro, and Tarek Masoud, eds., Order, Conflict, and Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 179–218. 33. Kirill Nourzhanov, “Saviours of the Nation or Robber Barons? Warlord Politics in Tajikistan,” Central Asian Survey 24, 2 (2005), 109–130. 34. Foreign Broadcast Information Service, May 29, 1992. 35. Nezavisimaya gazeta, June 5, 1992. 36. Gholib Ghoibov, Ta'rikhi Khatlon az oghoz to imro'z (Dushanbe, Donish, 2006), 695; Kenzhaev, Perevorot, 237–238. 37. “National Salvation Committee Leader Interviewed,” Dushanbe Radio as cited in FBIS-SOV-92–121, June 23, 1992. 38. United States Institute of Peace, Special Report: The War in Tajikistan Three Years On (Washington, DC: USIP, 1995), 4. 39. See Kenzhaev, Perevorot, 251–253, 262; author’s database; Roy, New Central Asia. 40. Izvestia, September 9, 1992. 41. See Foreign Broadcast Information Service, June 19, 1992; and Nezavisimaya gazeta, June 20, 1992. 42. Christina Wille, Stina Torjesen, and S. Neil MacFarlane, “Tajikistan’s Road to Stability: Reduction in Small Arms Proliferation and Remaining Challenges,” Occasional Paper No. 17 (Geneva: Small Arms Survey, 2005). 43. Nourzhanov, “Saviours of the Nation.” 44. For a discussion of these motivations, see Idil Tuncer Kılavuz, “The Role of Networks in Tajikistan’s Civil War: Network Activation and Violence Specialists,” Nationalities Papers 37, 5 (September 2009), 693–717. See also, Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 45. Bobi Pirseyedi, The Small Arms Problem in Central Asia: Features and Implications (Geneva: UNIDIR, 2000), 62–63. 46. See the numerous incidents in Human Rights Watch/Helsinki Watch Memorial, Human Rights in Tajikistan: In the Wake of Civil War (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993). 47. As early as the summer of 1993, government officials conceded that nearly three hundred guerrillas had escaped after fighting in February 1993 into the districts of Garm, Tavildara, or Komsomolabad in the Karategin Valley. MVD Minister Yaqub Salimov was forced to admit that, “despite our desperate attempts, we have failed to root out these bandits. … We have been unable to control Tavildara for the past six months.” “Return of ’Kulyabis'to rule Tajikistan revives clan rivalries,” Agence France Presse, July 2, 1993.

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48. I. William Zartman, Ripe for Resolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). 49. Data drawn from Mark R. Beissinger’s database of mass violent events, available at http://www.princeton.edu/˜mbeissin/research.htm. 50. Pravda vostoka, June 18, 1989; interviews with local residents, Marghilan Province, Uzbekistan, April 2003. 51. Kashkadarinskaia Pravda, December 19, 1992. 52. Interviews with district governor staff, Kashkadarya and Navoii provinces, Uzbekistan, April–August 2003; interviews with specialists on local and legal issues in Uzbekistan, January 2008. 53. Interview with lawyer, Tashkent City, Uzbekistan, August 2003. 54. Interview with Lawyer B, Samarkand Province, Uzbekistan, July 2003. 55. Interview with Lawyer C, Samarkand Province, July 2003; interview with journalist, Tashkent City, Uzbekistan, March 2003. 56. Cory Welt, “Uzbekistan: The Risks and Responsibilities of Democracy Promotion,” PONARS Policy Memo 365 (Washington: CSIS, 2005). 57. Nourzhanov, “Saviours of the Nation,” 124. 58. Antoine Boisson, “State-Building, Power-Building, and Political Legitimacy: The Case of Post-Conflict Tajikistan,” China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly 5, 2 (2007), 140. 59. Interview #11 with specialist on local and regional legal issues, Dushanbe, Tajikistan, August–September 2007. 60. Interview #2 with specialist on local and regional legal issues, Dushanbe, Tajikistan, August–September 2007. 61. Stina Torjesen and S. Neil MacFarlane, “R before D: The Case of Postconflict Reintegration in Tajikistan,” Conflict, Security, and Development 7, 2 (2007), 311–332. 62. Interview with TACIS Team Leader, Tashkent City, Uzbekistan, April 2003. 63. International Crisis Group, Central Asia: The Politics of Police Reform, December 10, 2002. CHAPTER 4

1. International Crisis Group, “Tajikistan: On the Road to Failure,” Asia Report No. 162 (February 12, 2009), 19. 2. Anna Matveeva, “Tajikistan: Evolution of the Security Sector and the War on Terror,” in Anja Ebnöther, Ernst M. Felberbauer, and Martin Malek, ed., Facing the Terrorist Challenge: Central Asia’s Role in Regional and International Co-operation (Vienna: Bureau of Security Policy, Austrian Ministry of Defense, DCAF, PfP Consortium, April 2005), 133–155. This assessment is shared by many people in Tajikistan as well. Interviews with local business owners, Dushanbe, August-September 2007. 3. These include Mirzokhuja Nizomov (head of the State Customs Committee), Hakim Kalandarov (deputy chairman of the State Committee of Border Protection), and Salamsho Muhabbatshoev (chairman of the State Oil and Gas Committee). Kirill Nourzhanov, “Saviours of the Nation: Warlord Politics in Tajikistan,” Central Asian Survey 24, 2 (June 2005), 124 especially. 4. Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity Press/Stanford University Press, 1999), 52. 5. Matveeva, “Tajikistan: Evolution of the Security Sector and the War on Terror.” 6. Kathleen Collins, Clan Politics and Regime Change in Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 7. For a similar assessment, see Henry E. Hale, “Regime Cycles: Democracy, Autocracy and Revolution in Post-Soviet Eurasia,” World Politics 58, 1, October 2005, 133–165. 8. John Heathershaw, Post-Conflict Tajikistan: The Politics of Peacebuilding and the Emergence of Legitimate Order (London: Routledge, 2009).

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9. Pauline Jones Luong and Anna Grzymala-Busse, “Reconceptualizing the State: Lessons from Post-Communism,” Politics and Society 30, 4 (December 2002): 529–554. 10. By 1994, the United Nations peace mission UNMOT (United Nations Mission of Observers in Tajikistan) was brought in to monitor a cease-fire between the United Tajik Opposition and the Government of Tajikistan. UNMOT was expanded in 1997 to help implement the peace agreement. 11. Stina Torjesen and S. Neil McFarlane, “R before D: The Case of Postconflict Reintegration in Tajikistan,” Conflict, Security, and Development 7, 2 (2007), 311–332. 12. Vladimir Gubarev, “Instability in Tajikistan,” Moscow Times, November 17, 1994, 592; Johan Engvall, “The State under Siege: The Drug Trade and Organised Crime in Tajikistan,” Europe-Asia Studies 58, 6 (September 2006), 846–847. 13. Vladimir Davlatov, “Tajik Opposition Threat,” Institute for War and Peace Reporting 8, February 23, 2005, available at http://iwpr.net/report-news/tajik-opposition-threat. 14. In negotiations, representatives of Leninabad’s political elite—Abdullazhanov, Jamshed Karimov, and Abduzhalil Samadov—sought to be included in the power-sharing deal in which political elite from Kuliab, the UTO, and Leninabad would receive a 40-40-20 distribution of government positions. Although accepted by UTO, this proposal was rejected by the Kuliab representatives, because an alliance between UTO and Leninabad would be sufficient to outnumber and isolate Kuliab. Not only does this highlight the fluidity of cross-regional patronage ties (in this case the Leninabadi elite were seeking inclusion as a client of either elite from Kuliab or from the UTO), it also stresses how sensitive the Kuliab elite remained about being isolated as they were prior to the war. See K. Abdullaev and C. Barnes, eds., The Politics of Compromise—The Tajikistan Peace Process (London: Conciliation Resources, 2001). 15. Abdullaev and Barnes, eds., Politics of Compromise; International Crisis Group, “Tajikistan: An Uncertain Peace,” ICG Report No 30, December 24, 2001. 16. On the use of spoilers, see Stephen J. Stedman, “Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes,” International Security 22, 2 (1997), 5–53. UTO representatives were frustrated by delayed government appointments and dissatisfied with the size of detachments of UTO troops to be integrated into Tajikistan’s military and police forces (successfully demanding that entire platoons and companies be integrated rather than groups of five to ten fighters as put forward by Rakhmon’s representatives). See Abdullaev and Barnes, Politics of Compromise; L. Bezanis, “Tajik Update,” RFE/RL Report, March 3, 1997. 17. S. Torjesen, C. Wille, and S. N. MacFarlane, “Tajikistan’s Road to Stability: Reduction in Small Arms Proliferation and Remaining Challenges,” Occasional Paper No 17 (Geneva: Small Arms Survey, 2005), 13. 18. Torjesen and McFarlan, “R before D.” 19. Jack Snyder and Leslie Vinjamuri, “Trials and Errors: Principle and Pragmatism in Strategies of International Justice,” International Security 28, 3 (winter 2003/4), 5–44. 20. Charles Call, “War Transitions and the New Civilian Security in Latin America,” Comparative Politics 35, 1 (2002), 1–20. 21. Institute for War and Peace Reporting, “Tajikistan: Fall of Praetorian Guardsman,” RCA No 306, August 10, 2004. 22. Nourzhanov, “Saviours of the Nation”; Letizia Paoli et al., “Tajikistan: The Rise of a Narco-State,” Journal of Drug Issues 0022–0426/.07/04 (2007), 969. 23. Heathershaw, Post-Conflict Tajikistan. 24. Jesse Driscoll, “Commitment Problems or Bidding Wars? Rebel Fragmentation as Peace-Building,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 56, 1 (2012), 118–149. 25. Nourzhanov, “Saviours of the Nation,” 125. 26. Ibid., 124. 27. A prominent example is Colonel Mahmud Khudoiberdiev, an ethnic Uzbek from southwestern Tajikistan who was stationed with the Russian 201st Rifle Division and

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defected to the Kuliab Popular Front in 1992. Though given command of Tajikistan’s First Rifle Brigade in the army, he had operated independent of the regime in southwestern Tajikistan for most of the mid-1990s, engaging in a series of openly rebellious activities from 1994–98 and openly seeking to extract concessions from the Rakhmon government. On three separate occasions he mobilized troops, even forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Mahmudsaid Ubaidullaev, presidential apparatus Chief Izzatulla Hayoev, and Khatlon provincial governor Abdujalol Salimov in February 1996. See Oleg Panfilov, “Emomali Rakhmonov lishilsia riada storonnikov,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, February 6, 1996, 1. Likewise, Rakhmon’s early supporters, senior militia commanders and regional strongmen, were consistently sidelined by the regime or in internecine conflicts. Sangak Safarov and Fayzali Saidov, for instance, killed each other in the spring of 1993 and the dismissal and arrest of several Safarov deputies gradually followed: Yaqubjon Salimov (minister of interior removed in 1998); Qurbon Cholov (a well-placed border guard officer, fired in 2002); and Ghaffor Mirzoev (head of Presidential Guard, dismissed and arrested in 2004). Others affiliated with the Kulob Popular Front of Tajikistan (PFT) were likewise removed from office or died under questionable circumstances, including former PFT-Hissor chief Safarali Kendzhaev, Uzbek strongman and former Tursunzoda District governor Ibodullo Boimatov, and Colonel Mahmud Khudoiberdiev. Oleg Panfilov, “V Dushanbe stalo spokoinee. V Kalininabade ubit presedatel'Kuliabskogo oblispolkoma,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, October 30, 1992, 3; Igor Rotar, “Ob osvobozhdeni Dushanbe my podumaem pozzhe. Kuliabskii lider provel press konferentsiiu,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, November 14, 1992, 3; D. Atovulloev, “Pamir: Khronika bespredela,” Charoghi ruz 1, 110 (2005), 2–3. Some former commanders with large private armies, such as Mirzo Ziyoev and Mahmudsaid Ubaidullaev (mayor of Dushanbe), have survived by carving out large patrimonial spheres of influence while remaining bound to the regime. But even these are not secure, and Ziyoev was eventually dismissed in 2008 and killed under mysterious circumstances in 2009. Most of those that refused to comply with the regime’s consolidation of power were arrested or killed in operations conducted by internal security forces between 1998 and 2004. At least thirty-six groups have been under criminal investigation since the end of the civil war. B. Hamidov, H. Boboev, and G. Usmanova, “Bandy—porozhdenie grazhdanskoi voiny,” Crime Info 16 (2004), 5. 28. Stephane A. Dudoignon, “From Ambivalence to Ambiguity? Some Paradigms of Policy Making in Tajikistan.” Tajikistan at a Crossroads: The Politics of Decentralization (Geneva: CIMERA, 2004), 133–134. 29. Kirill Nourzhanov, “Alternative Social Institutions and the Politics of NeoPatrimonialism in Tajikistan,” Russian and Euro-Asian Bulletin (August 1996). 30. Shirin Atkiner, Tajikistan: Disintegration or Reconciliation? (London: Royal institute of International Affairs, 2001), 74. 31. Richard L. Meyer et al., “Rural Finance in Tajikistan,” Rural Finance in Central Asia (TA No. 6078-Reg) (Dushanbe: Asian Development Bank, December 2004), 47–48. 32. Sumie Nakaya, “Aid and Transition from a War Economy to an Oligarchy in PostWar Tajikistan,” Central Asia Survey 28, 3 (September 2009), 265–266. 33. Meyer et al., “Rural Finance in Tajikistan,” 33. 34. International Crisis Group, “Tajikistan: On the Road to Failure” Asia Report No. 162, February 12, 2009), 13–14; “Banker Accused of Huge Fraud in Tajikistan,” Guardian, April 14, 2009, accessed at www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/apr/14/tajikistanchairman-central-bank-fraud. 35. Meyer et al., “Rural Finance in Tajikistan,” 49–50. 36. Sabina-Margarita Dzalaeva, “Foreign Aid Management and the State Budget Cycle in Tajikistan,” NISPAcee News 2007 14, 1 (winter 2007), 1–6.

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37. Rustam Aminjanov, Martin Kholmatov, and Firuz Kataev, “Case Study on Aid Effectiveness in Tajikistan,” Working Paper 13 (Washington, DC: Wolfensohn Center for Development, Brookings Institution, October 2009), 45. 38. The drop in Tajikistan’s heroin seizures cannot be explained by a drop in opium production. Opium cultivation in Afghanistan has risen from 80,000 ha in 2003 to a peak of 193,000 ha in 2007 before leveling off at 123,000 ha in 2009 and 2010. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and Ministry of Counter-Narcotics of Afghanistan, “Afghanistan Opium Survey 2010, Summary Findings” (September 2010), 2, available at http:// www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Afghanistan/Afg_opium_survey_2010_ exsum_web.pdf. 39. David Lewis, “High Times on the Silk Road: The Central Asian Paradox,” World Policy Journal 27, 1 (spring 2010), p 40; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “Total Drug-Related Crimes at the National Level, Number of Police-recorded Offences” (Geneva: UNODC, 2009), available at www.unodc.org/unodc/eng/data-and-analysis/crimedata.html. 40. Lewis, “High Times on the Silk Road,” 40. 41. Johan Engvall, “The State under Siege: The Drug Trade and Organised Crime in Tajikistan,” Europe-Asia Studies 58, 6 (September 2006), 846–847. 42. Erica Marat, “The State-Crime Nexus in Central Asia: State Weakness, Organized Crime, and Corruption in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan,” Silk Road Paper (Washington, DC: Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Silk Road Studies Program, 2006), 43–45; Nancy Lubin, “Who’s Watching the Watchdogs?” Journal of International Affairs 56, 2 (spring 2003), 47. 43. Gregory Gleason, “Why Russia Is in Tajikistan,” Comparative Strategy 20, 1 (2001), 77–89. 44. George Gavrilis, The Dynamics of Interstate Boundaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 45. Francis Conway et al., “Tajikistan” Sub-National Government Assessment—2009,” Local Governance and Citizen Participation Program in Tajikistan (Washington, DC: USAID, May 2009), 1. 46. Mark Beissinger, “Nationalist Violence and the State: Political Authority and Contentious Repertoires in the Former USSR,” Comparative Politics 30, 4 (July 1998), 411. 47. Safarali Kendzhaev, Perevorot v Tadzhikistane (Dushanbe: “Irfon,” 1996). 48. Nezavisimaya gazeta, August 28, 1992, 3; Izvestia, September 4, 1992, 3. 49. Jesse Driscoll, “Exiting Anarchy: Militia Politics after the Post-Socialist Wars,” Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 2009. 50. International Crisis Group, “Central Asia: The Politics of Police Reform,” Asia Briefing No. 42 (December 10, 2002), 16. 51. Engvall, “The State under Siege.” 52. Torjesen et al., “Tajikistan’s Road to Stability,” 29. 53. Anne Matveeva, “Tajikistan: Stability First,” Taiwan Journal of Democracy 5, 1 (July 2009), 167. 54. Interview #51 with lawyer, Dushanbe, August–September 2007. 55. Faiziddin Hatloni, “Slova—nichto, delishki—vse: Pochemy E. Rakhmon ne boretsia s Khatlonskimi kaznokradami?” Charoghi ruz 3, 115 (2007), 20. 56. Interview with staff, Hammadoni Farm, Kuliab District, Khatlon Province, October 2002. 57. Interview #52 with lawyer, Dushanbe, 2007. 58. “Khatlon Oblast Prosecutor Office opened forty-six criminal cases on the facts of improper exploitation of irrigated lands,” Avesta news agency, January 23, 2007, available at http://www.avesta.tj/en/articles/26/86005.html.

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59. Ahmad Ibroghimov, “Hammadoni Does Not Pay Taxes,” Khatlon-Press (August 24, 2008), available at http://www.khatlonpress.tj/index.php?option=com_content&task=vie w&id=214&Itemid=54&lang=en. 60. Interview with former state farm director, Kuliab District, Khatlon Province, October 2002; Author’s visits to Amirshoev Farm, Kuliab District, Khatlon Province, October 2002. These impressions are based on a comparison with visits to many other collective farms in Hissar District, Khatlon Province, and Sughd Province from October– December 2002. 61. Zafar Abdullaev, “Tajik Cotton Harvest in the Balance,” Institute for War and Peace Reporting 322 (October 29, 2004), available at http://iwpr.net/report-news/tajik-cottonharvest-balance. 62. Interview with former collective farm chair, Vose District, Khatlon Province, November 2002. 63. Valentina Kasymbekova, “Tajik Farmers Face Mounting Debt,” Institute for War and Peace Reporting 368 (April 14, 2005), available at http://iwpr.net/report-news/tajikfarmers-face-mounting-debt. 64. Turko Dikayev, “46 Farms in Vose Repay Cotton Loans Provided by Amonatbonk,” Asia-Plus, January 31, 2009, available at http://asiaplus.tj/en/news/26/46246.html. 65. For more on these districts, see Gunda Wiegmann, “Socio-Political Change in Tajikistan,” Ph.D. diss., University of Hamburg, 2009, 63–64. 66. Human Rights Watch/Helsinki, Return to Tajikistan: Continued Regional and Ethnic Tensions 7, 9 (May 1995), 1–30. For example, Khoja Karimov, a field commander in the Popular Front with tied to local government offices in Jilikul District “perpetrated a number of attacks to drive supporters from office through intimidation and violence. In March 1994, Karimov, leading thirty armed men, beat the local police chief in a local bazaar. During the same month, Karimov invaded a house party for returning refugees at the house of the Chair of the local executive committee and threatened to burn down the house. The police chief was replaced by a Kuliabi and the Chair resigned his position soon after. Karimov’s harassment extended into Shahrinau District, also inhabited by many returned refugees, forcing the director of a cattle farm to go into hiding.” Ibid., 8–15. 67. Ibid., 13. 68. Nargis Zokirova, “Tajikistan: Farm Slavery Exposed,” Institute for War and Peace Reporting 207 (May 27, 2003), available at http://iwpr.net/report-news/tajikistan-farm%E2%80%9Cslavery%E2%80%9D-exposed. 69. International Crisis Group, “Kyrgyzstan: The Challenge of Judicial Reform,” Asia Report No 150 (April, 10, 2008); Author’s field notes, Uzbekistan, 2003. 70. Interviews #9, #11, #32, #49, and #59 with lawyers, Dushanbe, August–September 2007. 71. Interviews #49 and #11 with lawyer, Dushanbe, August–September 2007. 72. The emergence of coercive rent seeking in Khatlon is partly why its elites hold many key posts in Tajikistan’s national government but wealth rarely trickles down to the region’s mass public, who are just as impoverished and just as likely to immigrate to Russia as any other part of the country. Interviews in Khatlon Province, October–November, 2002. 73. Wiegmann, “Socio-Political Change in Tajikistan,” 66, 131. 74. Ibid., 66, 143, 102–103. 75. Christoph Zürcher and Jan Koehler, “Introduction: Potentials of Disorder in the Caucasus and Yugoslavia,” in J. Koehler and C. Zürcher, C., eds., Potentials of Disorder (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 16. 76. Interviews #2, #16, and #19 with legal specialists, Dushanbe, August–September 2007.

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77. Interviews #2, #4, #5, #16, and #19 with legal specialists, Dushanbe, August– September 2007. 78. Interview #6 with legal specialist, Dushanbe, August–September 2007. 79. Interviews #42, #46, #47 with legal specialist, Dushanbe, August–September 2007. 80. Interview #38 with legal specialist, Dushanbe, August–September 2007. 81. Wiegmann, “Socio-Political Change in Tajikistan,” 133–136, 144. One area of dispute among elites is the issue of war crimes committed during the civil war. Reportedly, the government has begun to quietly investigate alleged perpetrators, and Iskandarov prepared a list of three hundred cases that he wanted investigated (including the attempted assassination of Tajikabad district governor). 82. IWPR, “Murder Invokes Ghosts of Tajikistan’s Past,” RCA No 533, February 20, 2008. 83. IWPR, “Taming Tajikistan’s Eastern Valleys,” RCA No 584, July 31, 2009; Sophie Roche and John Heathershaw, “Tajikistan’s Marginalized Youth,” Opendemocracy.org, October 20, 2010. 84. This summary is drawn from International Crisis Group, “Tajikistan: The Changing Insurgent Threats,” Asia Report No. 205 (May 24, 2011), p. 7; John Heathershaw and Sophie Roche, “Islam and Political Violence in Tajikistan: An Ethnographic Perspective on the Causes and Consequences of the 2010 Armed Conflict in the Kamarob Gorge,” Ethnopolitics Papers 8 (March 2011). 85. Lola Olimova, “Unprecedented Clashes in Southeast Tajikistan,” RCA No 680, July 12, 2012; “Tajikistan: Accused Warlord Speaks Out on Gorno-Badakhshan Violence,” Eurasianet.org, October 24, 2012; Navruz Nekbakhtshoev, “The View from Ishkashim. Violent Conflict in Badakhshan: Social Order amidst Chaos and When Master Frames of War Mislead,” Registan.net, August 6, 2012; On history disputes in GBAO, see Lola Olimova, “Special Report: Trouble in Tajik Mountain Province,” RCA No 547, June 27, 2008. CHAPTER 5

1. Reports of the number of people killed vary widely, ranging from the government’s official tally of 187 people up to an Andijan policeman’s informed estimate of 4,500 people. Most estimates hover around 700 or more. See “Preliminary Findings on the Events in Andijan, Uzbekistan, May 13 2005 (With Information as of June 13 2005),” OSCE-ODIHR, June 20 2005, available at www.osce.org/item/15234.html; “ ‘Bullets Were Falling Like Rain,’ The Andijan Massacre, May 13 2005,” Human Rights Watch 17, 5(D) (June 2005), available at http://hrw.org/reports/2005/uzbekistan0605/; International Crisis Group, “Uzbekistan: The Andijon Uprising,” Asia Briefing no. 38, May 25 2005. For higher estimates, see Dilya Usmanova, “Andijan: A Policeman’s Account,” IWPR RCA Issue 392, November 20, 2005, available at http://iwpr.net/report-news/andijan-policemansaccount-0. 2. Human Rights Watch, Burying the Truth: Uzbekistan Rewrites the Story of the Andijan Massacre, September 18, 2005, available at http://www.hrw.org/reports/ 2005/09/18/burying-truth; Abdumannob Polat, “Reassessing Andijan: The Road to Restoring U.S.-Uzbek Relations,” Occasional Paper (Washington, DC: Jamestown Foundation, June 2007), 1–25. 3. Cory Welt, “Uzbekistan: The Risks and Responsibilities of Democracy Promotion,” PONARS Policy Memo 365 (Washington, DC: CSIS, 2005); Eric McGlinchey, “Autocrats, Militants, and the Rise of Radicalism in Central Asia,” Current History (October 2005), 336–342. 4. Scott Radnitz, Weapons of the Wealthy: Predatory Regimes and Elite-Led Protests in Central Asia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010); 58–62; David Lewis, The Temptations of Tyranny in Central Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 34–35.

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5. Joel Hellman, “Winners Take All: The Politics of Partial Reform in Postcommunist Transitions,” World Politics 50, 1 (1998), 203–234; Venelin Ganev, Preying on the State: The Transformation of Bulgaria After 1989 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007). 6. Kathleen Collins, Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Edward Schatz, Modern Clan Politics: The Power of “Blood” in Kazakhstan and Beyond (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004); Pauline Jones Luong, Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 7. “Andijan Massacre Linked to Local Power Struggle—Source,” Eurasianet, September 28, 2005, available at http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/ eav092905.shtml. 8. On the state dependence of Andijan’s economic elite, see Radnitz, Weapons of the Wealthy, 169–176. 9. Lewis, The Temptations of Tyranny, 33. 10. “Otvetsvennost'rukovoditelia,” Kashkadarinskaia Pravda, March 31, 1994, 1. 11. Arthur Andersen, “Specialized Joint Stock Commercial Bank ‘Pakhta Bank,’” Financial Sector Development Agency Long Form Audit Report, December 31, 1999; Interview, deputy district governor, Tashkent City, August, 2003. 12. Data obtained from Biznes-Fond. 13. Interviews, Samarkand and Ferghana provinces, April–July 2003. 14. “Uzbekistan,” Central Asia Monitor 2 (1996), 11–12. For more on Jorabekov, including his position as the “Gray Cardinal” within the republican political elite, see Collins, Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia. 15. Those dismissed in the first wave included Polat Abdurahmonov (Samarkand Province); Temur Hidirov (Kashkadarya Province); Abduhalik Aydayqulov (Navoii Province); Marks Jumaniyozov (Khorezm); Burgutali Rapighaliev (Namangan)—elites who had ushered Uzbekistan through the turbulent Soviet collapse and first years of independence. See “Uzbekistan,” Central Asia Monitor 2 (1996), 11; Author’s database. 16. New appointees included Alisher Mardiev (Samarkand); Shavkat Mirzoyoyev (Jizzax); Nuhmanjon Mominov (Namangan); and Ozod Parmonov (Kashkadarya). 17. These were Bakhtiyor Hamidov (Kashkadarya), Erkin Roziev (Samarkand), and Bakhtiyor Olimjonov (Surkhandarya). 18. After many years heading republicwide rural construction organizations, he had served as chair of the State Planning Committee (1991–94), minister of finance (1994–97) and minister of macroeconomics and statistics (1997–2000). Author’s collection of biographies. 19. Interview, journalist, Tashkent, March 2003; Interview, lawyers, Kashkadarya Province, July 2003. 20. “Uzbekistan,” Central Asia Monitor 2 (1997), 17–18. 21. Lawrence R. Robertson and Roger D. Kangas, “Central Power and Regional and Local Governments in Uzbekistan,” in Daniel R. Kempton and Terry D. Clark, eds., Unity or Separation, Center-Periphery Relations in the Former Soviet Union (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 277. 22. “Uzbek Leader: Corrupt Officials ‘My Enemies,’ ” eurasianet.org, September 13, 2001. 23. Interview, journalist, Tashkent, March 2003; Data compiled from issues of Human Development Report Uzbekistan (1998, 2000). 24. Interview, Advocate A, Jizzax Province, June 2003. 25. Interview, Advocate B, Jizzax Province, June 2003. 26. After working as a school director (1961–71), then as an instructor in Jorkurgan Raikom (1971–74), he graduated from Tashkent High Party School. After graduation, he

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managed two collective farms in Jorkurgan District (1976–88), became raikom secretary and then first secretary/district governor (1988–93). Having spent only two years of his life outside his home district (raion), Noraliev was appointed governor of Surkhandarya Province (1993–2000). Author’s collection of biographies. 27. “Uzbek Head Sacks Regional Governor: ‘Nepotism, Cronyism, Bribery’ Rife,” eurasianet.org, March 23, 2000. 28. Nonparticipant observation in Surkhandarya Province in 2001, 2002, and 2003 suggest corruption at border controls at the region’s border with Kashkadarya Province and with Tajikistan. Additionally, interviews with residents and village and neighborhood (mahalla) leaders in Surkhandarya in August 2001 revealed a shared sense (as well as several specific examples) of the consistent use of arbitrary imprisonment of both citizens and low-level state officials. 29. S. Husainov, “Muammo yechimidan darak yoq,” Zarafshon, December 10, 2002, 2; “Iqtisodiy islohotlarinii chukurlashtirish bugunning bosh vazifasi,” Zarafshon, May 9, 2001, 2; “Chorak yakunlari qanday bo'ladi?” Ferghana haqiqati, May 17, 2003, 3. 30. For a discussion of issues on reforming the procuracy in the postcommunist context, see Stephen Holmes, “The Procuracy and its Problems,” East European Constitutional Review 8, 1–2 (winter/spring 1999). 31. Local prokurator’s manuscript on the history of the Prokuratura in Uzbekistan (author’s name withheld); E. S. Ibragimov, Prokuratura suverennogo Uzbekistana (Tashkent: Akademiia Ministerstva vnutrennikh del respubliki Uzbekistan, 2000), 70. 32. Pravo database. 33. Interview, district prokurator, April 2003. 34. Interview, district prokurator, August 2003. 35. Dmitriy Pashkun, Structure and Practice of the State Administration in Uzbekistan, Discussion Paper No. 27 (Budapest: Open Society Institute, 2003), 31. 36. Author’s collection of biographies. 37. Uzbekistan’s public administration made up just 1.5 percent of total employment by 1998–99, compared to higher percentages in Poland (2.7), Czech Republic (3.5), Slovakia (4.2), and Hungary (7.9). Figures drawn from Uzbekistan v tsifrakh 1998 (Tashkent: Minmakroekonomstat Respubliki Uzbekistan, 2000); Trud i zaniatost'v Respublike Uzbekistan (Tashkent: Minmakroekonomstat Respubliki Uzbekistan, 2001); and Anna Gryzmala-Busse, ‘Political Competition and the Politicization of the State in East Central Europe,’ Comparative Political Studies 36, 10, (2003), 1123–1147. 38. Catherine Boone, Political Topographies of the African State. Territorial Authority and Institutional Choice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 375. 39. Pauline Jones Luong, Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Power, Perception, and Pacts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 40. For example, prokurators protests in defense of small entrepreneurs and private farmers rose only slightly after the introduction of the 2001 law “On the Prokurator”— from 193 protests (1.8 percent of total protests) in 2000 to 256 protests (2.4 percent) in 2001 to 593 protests (5 percent) in 2002. Office of the Prokurator General of the Republic of Uzbekistan, “Mahlumotnoma. O'zbekiston Respublikasi prokuratura organlari tomonidan tadbirdorlar huquqlarini himoya qilish borasida kiritilgan protestlar tahlili yuzasidan [Announcement. Analysis of protests entered in defense of the rights of entrepreneurs by organs of the prokurator of the Republic of Uzbekistan],” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan Diplomatic Note No. 20/13024 to U.S. Embassy in Uzbekistan, August 30, 2003 (facsimile). 41. Sergei Yezhkov, “Faktor ustrasheniia,” Pravda Vostoka, October 2, 2002, 2. Before 2008, police could detain individuals up to three days without reason, up to six days if declared a “suspect,” and it was only through an order from a prokurator that an arrest

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warrant can be issued (American Bar Association and Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative 2003: 14). Consequently, prokurators are in a position to use an arrest warrant as an instrument of extortion once someone has been detained. Interview, journalist, Tashkent, March 2003. Although Uzbekistan adopted habeas corpus in 2008, it is rarely properly implemented. Human Rights Watch, “No One Left to Witness: Torture, the Failure of Habeas Corpus, and the Silencing of Lawyers in Uzbekistan,” 2011; available at http:// www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/uzbekistan1211webwcover.pdf. 42. Interview, Sergei Yezhkov, Tashkent, March 2003. 43. Interview, head, Political and Economic Section, US Embassy, Tashkent, August 2003. 44. Interview, department head, Apparatus of the President, Tashkent city, May 2003. 45. For an overview of the social impacts of Uzbekistan’s (and Tajikistan’s) laborrepressive system, see What Has Changed? Progress in Eliminating the Use of Forced Child Labour in the Cotton Harvests of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 2010); Deniz Kandiyoti, “Rural Livelihoods and Social Networks in Uzbekistan: Perspectives from Andijan,” Central Asian Survey 17, 4 (1998), 561–578. 46. Mancur Olson, “Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development,” American Political Science Review 87, 3 (September 1993), 567–576. I thank Venelin Gnev for suggesting these concepts. 47. Data drawn from Narodnoe Khozaistvo Uzbekskoi SSR (Tashkent: Uzbekistan, multiple issu'es). 48. When Navoii Province was established, three of its eight raikom first secretaries remained in office even though they were appointed by other obkom first secretaries. These politicians were likely beholden to their patrons in Bukhara and Samarkand. For a critical view of the excesses and mismanagement of these elites, see Sharof Habibov, “Inqirozdan chiqish. Yoki so'ngan shuhratning qayta tiklanishi,” Dostliq Bayrog'i, January 21, 2000, 5. 49. “Yuksak ma'naviat—jamiat taraqqiyotining asosi,” Dostliq Bayrog'i, November, 17 1998, 1–3. 50. Ibid. 51. “Ma'naviy barkamollik—hayotimiz mezoni. Viloyat hokimi Gh. Dilov ma'ruzasi,” Dostliq Bayrog'i, November 20, 1998, 1–5. 52. S. Umarova, “Jinoyatchilik neg o'sayapti?” Dostliq Bayrog'i, December 15, 1998, 6. 53. N. Sadridinnov, “Muammolar bartaraf etiladi,” Dostliq Bayrog'i, May 19, 1998, 5. 54. Yo. Umarov, “Maysalar paykhon dalalar,” Dostliq Bayrog'i, March 3, 2000, 2. 55. “Karvondan keyin qolmang. Yoki ayrim korkhonalar nega bankrotga uychayapti?” Dostliq Bayrog'i, October 9, 2000, 5. 56. “Kichik va o'rta biznes: U rivojlanish yo’lidan bormokdami?” Dostliq Bayrog'i, March 10, 2000, 3–4. 57. Abdulla Mamatov, “Soliqlarni qachon to'laisiz?” Dostliq Bayrog'i, December 11, 1998, 7. 58. Sh. Dovidov, “Qonunni buzish tadbirkorga qanchaga tushadi?” Dostliq Bayrog'i, December 1, 1998, 6. 59. Interview, entrepreneur, Navoii Province, July 2003. 60. Interview, Advocate A, Navoii Province, July 2003. 61. Interview, Advocate B, Navoii Province, July 2003. 62. Data drawn from Narodnoe Khozaistvo Uzbekskoi SSR (Tashkent: Uzbekistan, multiple issues). 63. Examples of the former group include M. Juraev (Ishtikhan District, 1970–80); I. Hidirov (Oqdaryo District 1968–75, then Bulunghur District 1975–84); I. Turapov (Kattakurgan District 1974–81, then Narpay District 1981–85). Examples of the latter include U. Mahmatmurodov (Urgut District 1986–98), F. Hoshimov (Siab District 1988–98),

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K. Isroilov (Jomboy District 1992–98). Author’s database of local elites. This database (and individual elite biographies) were drawn from national, regional, and district newspapers as well as published (and unpublished) histories of individual regions—research yielding over four hundred biographies of central and regional officials and large databases of elite turnovers at all government levels covering Uzbekistan from 1960–2003. 64. “Imkoniyat faqat tashabbus orqali yuzaga chiqadi,” Zarafshon, March 8, 2001, 2. 65. Ibid. 66. These dismissals included long-standing local elites, such as Murod Juraev (former Ishtikhan raikom first secretary, 1970–80), Bahodir Valiev, Tursun Boboqulov, Yahyo Boboev, and Jo'rakhon Karimov. Boboev would resurface as a collective farm chair in Ishtikhan District immediately after Roziev’s dismissal. Author’s database; data obtained from Samarkand Province Branch of Ministry of Agriculture and Water Management. 67. “Pushaymon chora bo'lolmaydi',” Zarafshon, April 17, 2001, 2. 68. Interview, senior official in presidential administration, Tashkent City, May 2003. 69. In Ishtikhan District, investigations revealed how collusion among collective farm chairs enabled them to grow crops for personal sale, extort money from independent farmers in return for the use of agro-technology (i.e., tractors and combines) for which they had already paid, and force independent farmers to plant crops on their land for the district. The district prokurator prosecuted 98 persons in 2000 and issued several warnings (taqdimnomas) to the district hokim’s office for violating contracts with eight independent farms. “ ’Rahbarning mas'uliyatsizligi uchun ham javobgarlik bor'—deydi Ishtikhan tuman prokurori Il'ich Kholbekov,’” Zarafshon, June 4, 2001, 2. 70. The communal economy is the sphere in which natural gas, electricity, and water are supplied to local communities in return for credit. Theoretically, profitable harvests and production cycles during the year will generate local income to pay for them. District hokims are responsible for extracting payment from each village, regional hokims from each district, and the center from each region. Over the years, however, the center has met with little success in reducing regional debts in this sphere. 71. “Naqd pul kam emas,” Zarafshon, June 14, 2001, 1. 72. “O'tgan yili ishimizdan nega kongil to 'lmadi?” Zarafshon, February 24, 2001, 2. 73. “Iqtisodiy islohotlarinii chukurlashtirish bugunning bosh vazifasi,” Zarafshon, May 9, 2001, 2. 74. “Tadbirkorlar yolida to'siqlar bo'lmasligi kerak, mahalliy hokimliklar bu haqda jiddiy o'ylab ko'rishlari lozim,” Zarafshon, August 14, 2001, 1. 75. The 2001 regional budget amounted to 62 billion so'm in expenditures and 44 billion so'm in income—requiring 18–20 billion so'm (30 percent) to be supplied by the center. I. Vafoev, “Moliyaviy ahvolni yahxshilash mumkin,” Zarafshon, October 11, 2001, 5. Note: In informal exchange markets in 2001, one billion so'm equaled approximately one million US dollars. 76. “Quruq gapdan amaliy ishga o'tailik,” Zarafshon, October 20, 2001, 1. 77. Moreover, by December 2002 Samarkand city’s share of the debt was reduced to 36 percent of the total debt, suggesting that districts’ deficits were allowed to increase substantially after Roziev’s tenure in exchange for higher crop production output. S. Husainov, “Muammo yechimidan darak yoq,” Zarafshon, December 10, 2002, 2; “Iqtisodiy islohotlarinii chukurlashtirish bugunning bosh vazifasi,” Zarafshon, May 9, 2001, 2. 78. Interview, Advocate A, Samarkand Province, July 2003. 79. “Tekshirishlar kamaydi,” Zarafshon, August 15, 2002, 1. 80. Interview, Deputy District Hokim A, Samarkand Province, July 2003. 81. Interview, Deputy District Hokim B, Samarkand Province, June 2003. 82. Interview, assistant district prokurator, Samarkand Province, June 2003. 83. Interview, district prokurator, Samarkand Province, June 2003.

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84. Interview, district hokim, Samarkand Province, June 2003; interview, Advocate B and Plaintiff, Samarkand Province, June 2003. Lawyers for the plaintiff brought the case to the provincial prokurator, but the plaintiff himself claimed that two earlier attempts were derailed by the district hokim’s influence. 85. Author’s calculations of data drawn from: H. Joraev, “Har qarichi hisobda,” Zarafshon, June 14, 2001, 5; Shavkat Yagdarov, “Asosiy maqsad—halqimizga xizmat qilish,” Qonun himoyasida (February 2003), 4. 86. Interview, Advocate C, Samarkand Province, July 2003. 87. N. Hasanov, “Hamma ham fermer bo'lavermaydi,” Zarafshon, February 3, 2003, 1–2. 88. Author’s fieldwork in Samarkand Province in May and June of 2003. 89. In 2001, Andijan produced 3.49 tons of cotton per hectare, well above all other provinces, which ranged from 1.34 to 2.74 tons per hectare. Sel'skoe khoziastvo Respubliki Uzbekistan 2001 (Tashkent: Minmakroekonomstat Respubliki Uzbekistan, Gosudarstvennyi department statistiki, 2002). 90. Interview with deputy district governor, Ferghana Province, Uzbekistan, April 2003. 91. For instance, excess fuel smuggled into Kyrgyzstan brought income that was used to buy cotton and grain from other districts and provinces necessary to meet quotas. Interview, professor, Tashkent Finance Institute, April 2003. 92. Kudrat Sharipov, “Population Welcomes Actions of New Andizhan Khokim Begaliyev for the Time Being,” Ferghana.Ru, July 13, 2004, available at http://enews.fergananews.com/article.php?id=501. 93. Interview, Advocate A, Andijan Province, May 2003. 94. Interview, staff member of Provincial Administration, Andijan Province, April 2003. 95. B.O. Mahmatov, “Qonun ustivorligi—adolat mezoni,” Ferghana haqiqati, January 24, 2002, 5; Insan va qonun, multiple issues. 96. Vedomosti, Deputaty verkhovnogo soveta Uzbekskoi SSR (multiple issues). 97. Interview with staff member in provincial government, Andijan Province, Uzbekistan, April 2003. 98. Interview with City Governor, Ferghana Province, Uzbekistan, May 2003. 99. Interview, Advocate B, Andijan Province, May 2003. 100. A. Soliev and I. Ashurov, “Bebaho oyligimiz ayoqosti-bo'lmasin,” Ferghana haqiqati, September 25, 2001, 3. 101. Alisher Ilkhamov, “The Phenomenology of ‘Akromiya’: Separating Facts from Fiction,” China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly 4 (2006), 39–48; Radnitz, Weapons of the Wealthy. 102. “Political Purge in Uzbekistan Indicates President is Afraid of his Own Nation,” Eurasianet, October 18, 2006, available at http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/ insight/articles/eav101906.shtml. 103. Author’s database of political elites. 104. Arthur Andersen, “Open Joint Stock Commercial Bank ’Andijonbank,’” Financial Sector Development Agency Long Form Audit Report, December 31, 1999, 24. It was the closure of “Kholis” bazaar in 2004 after Obidov’s dismissal that prompted protests in Andijan leading to the arrest of the twenty-three businessmen. 105. “Andijan Massacre Linked to Local Power Struggle—Source,” Eurasianet, September 28, 2005, available at http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/ eav092905.shtml. 106. BBC World News, “How the Andijan Killings Unfolded,” available at http://news. bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/4550845.stm.

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107. Rustam Burnashev and Irina Chernykh, “Changes in Uzbekistan’s Military Policy after the Andijan Events,” China and Eurasian Forum Quarterly 5, 1 (2007), 67–71; Usmanova, “Andijan: A Policeman’s Account.” 108. BBC World News, “How the Andijan Killings Unfolded.” 109. Matteo Fumagalli, “Alignments and Re-alignments in Central Asia: Rationale and Implications of Uzbekistan’s Rapprochement with Russia,” International Political Science Review 28, 3 (2007), 253–271. 110. Alexander Cooley, Base Politics: Democratic Change and the U.S. Military Overseas (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 230–232. CHAPTER 6

1. The only exception is Chad, which experienced state failure in the early 1980s and has developed a cohesive rent-seeking apparatus. I categorize Iraq as a case of coercive rent-seeking since its apparatus was swept aside by foreign invasion and occupation in 2003, not state failure. In fact, the state apparatus and the Baath Party remained cohesive despite significant domestic and international pressures. I also categorize Somalia and Sudan as cases of state failure because they manifest coercive rent seeking only over a portion of their territory and only after state failure had led to state dismemberment: South Sudan is a de jure independent state and Somaliland is a de facto independent state. On Somaliland as a de facto state, see Daniel Byman and Charles King, “The Mystery of Phantom States,” Washington Quarterly 35, 3 (2012), 43–57. 2. Barry Rubin, The Truth about Syria (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 28. 3. Hanna Batatu, “Some Observations on the Social Roots of Syria’s Ruling Military Group and the Causes for Its Dominance,” Middle East Journal 35, 3 (summer 1981), 340. 4. Raymond A. Hinnebusch, “Rural Politics in Ba'thist Syria: A Case Study of the Role of the Countryside in the Political Development of Arab Societies,” Review of Politics 44, 1 (January 1982), 110–130. 5. Bassam Haddad, “The Formation and Development of Economic Networks in Syria: Implications for Economic and Fiscal Reforms, 1986–2000,” in Steven Heydemann, ed., Networks of Privilege in the Middle East: The Politics of Economic Reform Revisited (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 6. Volker Perthes, The Political Economy of Syria Under Asad (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995), 181. 7. Ibid., 184. 8. Raymond A. Hinnebusch, Authoritarian Power and State Formation in Ba'thist Syria: Army, Party, and Peasant (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990), 184. 9. These numbers exceed 100 percent because they combine two levels of underdevelopment. Michael C. Hudson, The Precarious Republic: Political Modernization in Lebanon (New York: Random House, 1968), 65–66. 10. Farid El-Khazen, The Breakdown of the State in Lebanon, 1967–1976 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 258. 11. Theodor Hanf, Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon: Decline of a State and Rise of a Nation (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993), 107. 12. Ibid., 93–95. 13. Alastair Drysdale, “The Syrian Armed Forces in National Politics: The Role of the Geographic and Ethnic Periphery,” in Roman Kolkowicz and Andrzej Korbonski, eds., Soldiers, Peasants, and Bureaucrats: Civil-Military Relations in Communist and Modernizing Societies (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982). 14. Radwan Ziadeh, Power and Policy in Syria: Intelligence Services, Foreign Relations, and Democracy in the Modern Middle East (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 23–24.

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15. Ibid. 16. Volker Perthes, “Si Vis Stabilitatem, Para Bellum: State Building, National Security, and War Preparation in Syria,” in Steven Heydemann, ed., War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 172, n32. 17. Ibid., 155. 18. Drysdale, “The Syrian Armed Forces in National Politics,” 70. 19. Nikolaos Van Dam, The Struggle for Power in Syria: Politics and Society Under Asad and the Ba’th Party (London: I. B. Tauris, 1996), 73. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Press Statement of Hammud al-Shufi, Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations, September 27, 1979, cited in Van Dam, The Struggle for Power in Syria, 101. 23. Perthes, “Si Vis Stabilitatem, Para Bellum,” 159–160. 24. Patrick Seale, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 332–333. 25. Van Dam, Struggle for Power in Syria, 113–114. 26. As cited in ibid., 114. 27. Seale, Asad of Syria, 333. 28. Perthes, “Si Vis Stabilitatem, Para Bellum,” 168. 29. Taken aback by the speed and scale of protests, “a bewildered security apparatus responded according to ingrained bad-habits”—acts of state violence against women, children, and unarmed protestors that worked in the 1982 Hama uprising. Peter Harling, “Syria Following the Script,” Foreign Policy, March 30, 2011. 30. Perthes, “Si Vis Stabilitatem, Para Bellum,” 154. 31. Perthes, Political Economy of Syria under Asad, 262. 32. Elizabeth Picard, Lebanon, A Shattered Country: Myths and Realities of the Wars in Lebanon, trans. by Franklin Philip (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1996), 50. 33. Oren Barak, “Lebanon: Failure, Collapse, and Resuscitation,” in Robert I. Rotberg, ed., State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror (Cambridge: World Peace Foundation, 2003), 309. 34. Picard, Lebanon, A Shattered Country, 107. 35. Itamar Rabinovich, The War for Lebanon, 1970–1985 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 45. 36. Barak, “Lebanon: Failure, Collapse, and Resuscitation,” 317. 37. Ibid., 317–318. 38. Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 39. Scott Radnitz, Weapons of the Weak: Predatory Regimes and Elite-led Protests in Central Asia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010); Eric McGlinchey, “Exploring Regime Instability and Ethnic Violence in Kyrgyzstan,” Asia Policy 12 (July 2011), 79–98. 40. The urban share of the republic’s overall population rose from 22.2 percent in 1959 to 65.4 percent in 1989. By 1990, only 20 percent of the population was working on collective/state farms or in forestry, while 42 percent were worked in construction/ industry and another 38 percent in service and professional jobs. Kathleen J. Mihalisko, “Belarus: Retreat to Authoritarianism,” in Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott, eds., Democratic Changes and Authoritarian Changes in Russia, Belarus, and Moldova (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 234. 41. Grigoy Ioffe, Understanding Belarus and How Western Foreign Policy Misses the Mark (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2008), 107–109.

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42. Pyotra Natchyk, “Local Government,” in Ruta Vainiene, Elzbieta Krolikowsk, Jozef Ploskonka, and Vladislav Romanov, eds., Belarus: Reform Scenarios (Warsaw: Stefan Batory Foundation, 2003), 36–37. 43. Mihalisko, “Belarus: Retreat to Authoritarianism,” 250. 44. Ibid, 269. 45. Vitali Silitski, “Preempting Democracy: The Case of Belarus,” Journal of Democracy 16, 4 (October 2005), 86. 46. Andrei Sannikov, “The Accidental Dictatorship of Alexander Lukashkenko,” SAIS Review 25, 1 (winter–spring 2005), 78. 47. Olga Belova-Gille, “Difficulties of Elite Formation in Belarus after 1991,” in Elena A. Korosteleva, Colin W. Lawson, and Rosalind J. Marsh, eds., Contemporary Belarus: Between Democracy and Dictatorship (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 59. 48. Ibid., 65. 49. Kathleen Collins, Clan Politics and Regime Change in Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Pauline Jones Luong, Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 50. Silitski, “Preempting Democracy.” 51. David R. Marples, Belarus: A Denationalized Nation (New York: OPA, 1999). 52. Lucan Way, “Authoritarian State Building and the Sources of Regime Competitiveness in the Fourth Wave: The Cases of Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine,” World Politics 57, 2 (January 2005), 255. 53. Mihalisko, “Belarus: Retreat to Authoritarianism,” 257. 54. These include the special police (Otriad Militsii Osobogo Naznacheniia [OMON]), a highly secretive personal presidential guard of two hundred elite forces with special training and equipment, a SWAT team (Alma, or Diamond) within the Ministry of Interior, and a rapid reaction detachment (Spetsial'nyi Otriad Bistrogo Reagirovaniia [SOBR]). Ethan S. Burger and Viktar Minchuk, “Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s Consolidation of Power,” in Joerg Forbrig, David R. Marples, and Pavol Demes, eds., Prospects for Democracy in Belarus (Washington, DC: German Marshall Fund of the United States, 2006), 34–35. 55. Steven M. Eke and Taras Kuzio, “Sultanism in Eastern Europe: The Socio-Political Roots of Authoritarian Populism in Belarus,” Europe-Asia Studies 52, 3 (May 2000), 523–547. 56. Two examples are Major-General Valentin Agolets and Viktar Sheiman. Agolets was appointed minister of interior in late 1995 after a shakeup at the ministry—despite the fact that he had been relieved a year earlier as first deputy commander of Belarus’ internal forces “for gross irregularities involving his living quarters and possessing a suspiciously large amount of cash and valuables.” Sheiman, who had also replaced KGB staff after an internal purge, was chief of Lukashenko’s bodyguard detachment during the 1994 presidential election campaign and before that chief of staff of an airborne assault force in Brest region. Mihalisko, “Belarus: Retreat to Authoritarianism,” 257–258, 280 n66, 258. 57. Due to space constraints, I focus on the latter. 58. For example, the Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission found that “in spite of the presence of police, special forces and high ranking security officials including the Head of the Provincial Department of Internal Affairs Stalbek Bakirov and Deputy Minister of Interior Suyun Omurzakov, three family houses belonging to Bakiyev were set on fire.” Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission, Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry into the Events in Southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010 (OSCE: Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission, May 3, 2011), 14–15. 59. Erica Marat, “Kyrgyzstan’s Fragmented Police and Armed Forces,” Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies 11 (2010), 4.

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60. International Crisis Group, “Kyrgyzstan: A Hollow Regime Collapses,” Asia Report No. 102, April 27, 2010), 8. 61. International Crisis Group, “The Pogroms in Kyrgyzstan,” Asia Report No. 193, August 23, 2010), 5. 62. Ibid., 5. 63. Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission, Report of the Independent International Commission, 67–68. 64. Ibid.; Marat, “Kyrgyzstan’s Fragmented Police and Armed Forces”; Alisher Khamidov, “Kyrgyz Security Forces Ill-Equipped to Stop Osh Interethnic Clashes,” eurasianet. org, June 11, 2010. 65. Alisher Khamidov, “Violence Spreading in Southern Kyrgyzstan; Uzbekistan Reacts Slowly to Refugee Crisis,” eurasianet.org, June 12, 2010. 66. Graeme P. Herd, “Kyrgyzstan’s Regime Change: Causes and Possible Consequences,” GCSP Policy Paper No. 4, July 2010. 67. Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission, Report of the Independent International Commission, 68. 68. ICG, “The Pogroms in Kyrgyzstan,” 5. 69. Marat, “Kyrgyzstan’s Fragmented Police and Armed Forces,” 4–5. 70. Ibid., 5. 71. Ibid., 5. 72. Jeffrey Herbst, State Politics in Zimbabwe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 23. 73. Ibid., 35. 74. For more on this state building process, see Ibid; Pierre du Troit, State Building and Democracy in Southern Africa. Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa (Washington, DC: USIP, 1995). 75. Martin Meredith, Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe (New York: Public Affairs, 2002), 79. 76. Ibid, 82. 77. Martin Dawson and Tim Kelsall, “Anti-Developmental Patrimonialism in Zimbabwe,” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 30, 1 (2012), 52. 78. David D. Laitin and Said S. Samatar, “Somalia and the World Economy,” Review of African Political Economy 30 (1984), 60–62. 79. Ben Wisner, “Jilal, Gu, Hagaa, and Der: Living Well with the Somali Land,” in Ahmed I. Samatar, ed., The Somali Challenge: From Catastrophe to Renewal? (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994), 39. 80. David D. Laitin and Said S. Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), 100–128, especially 102. 81. Ibid., 71–75. 82. Terence Lyons and Ahmed I. Samatar, Somalia: State Collapse, Multilateral Intervention, and Strategies for Political Reconstruction (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1995), 12. 83. Lyons and Samatar, Somalia, 13. 84. I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of Somalia: Nation and State in the Horn of Africa (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985), 205–206. 85. Lyons and Samatar, Somalia, 15. 86. Abdi Samatar, “Empty Bowl: Agrarian Political Economy in Transition and the Crisis of Accumulation,” in Samatar, ed., The Somali Challenge, 72, 85. 87. Lee V. Cassanelli, “Somali Land Resource Issues in Historical Perspective,” in Walter Clarke and Jeffrey Herbst, eds., Learning from Somalia: The Lessons of Armed Humanitarian Intervention (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997).

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88. Ibid., 119. 89. Ibid., 119–129. 90. Ibid., 15. 91. James MacBruce, “Domestic and Regional Security,” in Simon Baynahm, ed., Zimbabwe in Transition (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1992), 211–213. 92. Ronald Weitzer, Transforming Settler States: Communal Conflict and Internal Security in Northern Ireland and Zimbabwe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 143. 93. Ibid., 145. 94. Daniel Compagnon, A Predictable Strategy: Robert Mugabe and the Collapse of Zimbabwe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 5. 95. Booker Magure, “Foreign Investment, Black Economic Empowerment and Militarized Patronage Politics in Zimbabwe,” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 30, 1 (2012), 67–82. 96. Norma Kriger, “ZANU PF Politics under Zimbabwe’s ‘Power-Sharing’ Government,” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 30, 1 (2012), 11–26, especially 13. 97. Compagnon, A Predictable Strategy, 46–50; Adrienne LeBas, “Polarization as Craft: Party Formation and State Violence in Zimbabwe,” Comparative Politics 38, 4 (2006), 419–438. 98. Samuel M. Makinda, Seeking Peace from Chaos: Humanitarian Intervention in Somalia (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1993), 23. 99. Ibid., 24. 100. Ibid., 20. 101. Lyons and Samatar, Somalia, 18–19. 102. Ibid., 21–23. 103. African Watch Committee, Somalia: A Government at War with Its Own People (New York: Africa Watch Committee, 1990), chapters 7–10. CONCLUSION

1. Jack A. Goldstone et al., Political Instability Task Force Report: Phase IV Findings (McLean, VA: Science Applications International Corporation, 2003); Gary King and Langche Zeng, “Improving Forecasts of State Failure,” World Politics 53, 4 (July 2001), 623–658; Robert I. Rotberg, ed., When States Fail: Causes and Consequences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). 2. Rotberg, When States Fail, 25. 3. Koray Çaliskan, Market Threads: How Cotton Farmers and Traders Create a Global Commodity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Carol Off, Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the World’s Most Seductive Sweet (Toronto: Random House of Canada, 2006); Robert H. Bates, Open-Economy Politics: The Political Economy of World Coffee Trade (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Gwendolyn Mikell, Cocoa and Chaos in Ghana (New York: Paragon, 1989). 4. On efforts to reduce explanatory variables, while retaining universal application, see Jack A. Goldstone, et al., “A Global Model for Forecasting Political Instability,” American Journal of Political Science 54, 1 (2010), 190–208. 5. David Collier and Steven Levitsky, Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research, World Politics 49, 3 (1997), 430–451. 6. Scott Radnitz, “Waiting for Spring,” Foreign Policy, February 17, 2012. 7. Lucan Way, “The Real Causes of the Colored Revolutions,” Journal of Democracy 19, 3 (2008), 66. See also Lucan Way, “Authoritarian State Building and the Sources of Regime Competitiveness in the Fourth Wave: The Cases of Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine,” World Politics 57, 2 (2005), 231–261.

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8. Mark R. Beissinger, “Structure and Example in Modular Political Phenomena: The Diffusion of Bulldozer/Rose/Orange/Tulip Revolutions,” Perspectives on Politics 5, 2 (2007), 259–276. 9. See discussion in chapter 6. 10. Lawrence P. Markowitz, “Tajikistan: Authoritarian Reaction in a Post-Conflict State,” Democratization 19, 1 (2012), 98–119. 11. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976). 12. Paul Roe, “The Intrastate Security Dilemma: Ethnic Conflict as a ‘Tragedy’?” Journal of Peace Research 36, 2 (1999), 183–202; Barry Posen, “Ethnic Conflict and the Security Dilemma,” Survival 35, 1 (1993/94), 27–47. 13. Adria Lawrence and Erica Chenoweth, “Introduction,” in Adria Lawrence and Erica Chenoweth, eds., Rethinking Violence: States and Non-State Actors in Conflict (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010), 7–8. 14. Rotberg, When States Fail. 15. Daniel N. Posner, Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Kanchan Chandra, Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Head Counts in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Robert H. Bates, “Modernization, Ethnic Competition and the Rationality of Politics in Contemporary Africa,” in Donald Rothchild and Victor A. Olorunsola, eds., State versus Ethnic Claims: African Policy Dilemmas (Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 1983), 152–171. 16. Andreas Wimmer, Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict: Shadows of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 66, 101–106. 17. For more on this intersection, see Daniel Corstange, “Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Lebanon and Yemen,” Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2008. 18. Russell Hardin, One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 19. Steven I. Wilkinson, Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 20. On these competing accounts of elite manipulation in former Yugoslavia, see Anthony Oberschall, “The Manipulation of Ethnicity: From Ethnic Cooperation to Violence and War in Yugoslavia,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 23, 6 (November 2000), 982–1001; V. Gagnon Jr., The Myth of Ethnic War in Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004). 21. James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Violence and the Social Construction of Ethnic Identity,” International Organization 54, 4 (autumn 2000), 845–877. 22. Catherine Boone, Property and Political Order: Land Rights and the Structure of Politics in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Catherine Boone, “Politically-Allocated Land Rights and the Geography of Electoral Violence in Kenya,” Comparative Political Studies 44, 10, (2011), 1311–1342. 23. Margaret Levi, “Failed and Failing States,” Perspectives on Politics 3, 2 (2005), 311–312. 24. Francis Fukuyama, ed., Nation-Building: Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); Noah Feldman, What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation-Building (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); James Dobbins et al., America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2003). 25. Barry Buzan, People, States, and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1991); Boutros Boutros-Ghali, “An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-keeping,” A/47/277– S/24111 (New York: United Nations, 1992); United Nations, Human Development Report 1994: New Dimensions of Human Security (New York: UNDP, 1994).

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26. See, for instance, Melanie A. Civic and Michael Miklaucic, eds., Monopoly of Force: The Nexus of DDR and SSR (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 2011); Sean McFate, “The Link Between DDR and SSR in Conflict-Affected Countries,” Special Report 238 (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2010); Albrecht Schnabel and Hans-Georg Ehrhart, eds., Security Sector Reform and Post-conflict Peacebuilding (Geneva: United Nations University, 2005). On Central Asia, see Merijn Hartog, ed., Security Sector Reform in Central Asia: Exploring Needs and Possibilities (The Netherlands: Centre of European Security Studies, 2010). 27. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD DAC Handbook on Security System Reform (Paris: OECD, 2007). 28. See, for example, Michael Barnett and Christoph Zurcher, “The Peacebuilder’s Contract: How External State-Building Reinforces Weak Statehood,” in Roland Paris and Timoth Sisk, eds., The Dilemmas of State Building (New York: Routledge, 2008). 29. George Garvrilis, The Dynamics of Interstate Boundaries (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Index

Afghanistan, 155 Akayev, Askar, 135 – 136 Akhmadov, Mirzohuja, 96 – 98 Akromiya, 100, 102 Alawites, 126 – 132 amnesty, 81 – 83. See also Tajik civil war Andijan uprising, 5, 39 – 41, 45 – 48 causes of, 117 – 121 explanations of, 100 – 102 Aslonov, Kadriddin, 57 – 58 Assad, Hafiz, al-, 126, 130 Ayombekov, Tolib, 97 – 98 Ba’ath Party, 126 – 132 Bakiev, Kurmanbek, 137 – 139 Barre, Siad, 140 – 142, 144 – 145 Begaliev, Saidullo, 121 Beissinger, Mark, 25 – 26 Belarus, 20, 132 – 139 Boix, Carles, 18 – 19 Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, 7

economic reform, 80 – 81, 83 – 85, 104 – 105 elites, 6, 17 competition of, 5 – 7, 60 – 68, 94 – 98 cooptation of, 5 – 7, 68 – 70, 90 – 94 Ferghana Province, 14, 32, 39 – 41, 45 – 48, 59 – 60, 68 – 71 foreign aid, 84 – 85 fractious state, 70 – 71, 77 – 80 Gafforov, Hayot, 111 – 112 Garm District, 36 – 39, 42 – 46, 55 – 59, 60 – 68, 70 – 71, 89, 94 – 98. See also Rasht District Gorbachev, Mikhail, 55 Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO), 32, 36 – 39, 42 – 46, 55 – 59, 60 – 68, 70 – 71, 89, 97 – 98 Government of National Reconciliation, 63 Hamidov, Bakhtiyor, 106 Heathershaw, John, 83

cadre reform, 105 – 108 capital mobility, 5 – 6, 18 – 20 cash crops. See resources coercion, 8, 103 – 111 coercive rent seeking, 4 – 5, 109 – 111 collective farms, 10, 13 – 14, 16 – 17, 168 – 169n8 during perestroika, 55 – 60 during Soviet period, 32 – 34 in Tajikistan, 51 – 52, 56, 90 – 92 in Uzbekistan, 52, 59 – 60, 111 – 112, 114 – 117 Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 31 – 34, 57, 84 Communist Party of Tajikistan, 58, 84 Communist Party of Uzbekistan, 59 corruption, 9. See also rent seeking cotton production, 19 infrastructure investment in, 37 – 41 in Tajikistan, 55 – 59, 84 – 85, 90 – 93 in Uzbekistan, 59 – 60, 114 – 117 courts, 34 – 35, 92 – 93, 119 – 120

Iskandarov, Makhmadrozi, 96 Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, 96

Kamalov, Sabir, 46 Karalkapakistan, 41 Karategin Valley, 39, 44 Karimov, Islam, 59, 103, 105 Karimov, Khoja, 178n66 Kenjaev, Safarali, 172n15 Khatlon Province, 14, 46, 51 – 52, 56, 90 – 94 Khorezm Province, 39 – 40 Khudoiberdiev, Mahmud, 175 – 176n17 Kuliab Province, 31, 36 – 39, 42 – 46, 55 – 59, 70. See also Khatlon Province Kuran, Timur, 26 Kurgan-Teppe Province, 31, 36 – 39, 42 – 46, 55 – 59. See also Khatlon Province Kyrgyzstan, 20, 132 – 139

Davlatov, Aluviddin, 97 drug trade, 85 – 87, 97 – 98, 135 Dushanbe, 63 – 65

Lebanon, 20, 126 – 132, 151 – 152 Leninabad Province, 31, 36 – 39, 42 – 46, 55 – 59

Jizzax Province, 46

193

194

VERSO RUNNING HEAD INDEX

Levi, Margaret, 6, 21, 154 Lukashenko, Alexander, 133 – 134, 136 – 137 Makhamov, Kahhar, 55 – 59 Makhmadaliev, Mirali, 56 Matabeleland, 143 Migdal, Joel, 17 Mirzoev, Gaffor, 83 Mirzoyoev, Shavkat, 107 Moore, Jr., Barrington, 16 Mugabe, Robert, 140 – 141, 143 – 145 Mukhitdinov, Nuriddin, 46 Mullo Abdullo, 97 Myzakmatov, Melis, 139 Nabiev, Rahmon, 57 – 58 Navjuvanov, Mamadaez, 57 – 58 Navoii Province, 14, 39 – 41, 111 – 113 Nazarov, Abdullo, 97 nomenklatura, 31, 35 – 36, 43, 47 – 48, 114 Noraliev, Jora, 107 North, Douglas, 7 Obidov, Kobiljon, 117 – 123 Olimjonov, Bakhtiyor, 107 Olson, Mancur, 110 patronage, 5 – 7, 21 – 25 consequences of, 23 definition of, 22 as problem-solving network, 25 during Soviet period, 34 – 36 in Tajikistan, 42 – 45, 87 – 89 in Uzbekistan, 45 – 48 perestroika, 27 – 28, 48 – 49, 55 – 60 police, 4, 34 – 35 in Tajikistan, 56 – 59, 60 – 68, 70 – 71, 87 – 89 in Uzbekistan, 59 – 60, 68 – 71, 112 – 113 Popular Front of Tajikistan, 65 – 68, 82 – 83 prokurators, 4, 10, 13 – 14, 35 in Tajikistan, 60 – 68, 70 – 71, 87 – 89 in Uzbekistan, 68 – 69, 71, 76, 108 – 109 Rakhimov, Bekhtosh, 171n50 Rakhmon, Emomali, 77 Rashidov, Sharaf, 46 Rasht District, 94 – 98. See also Garm District regime change, 150 – 152 relative bargaining power. See Levi, Margaret rents, 18. See rent seeking rent seeking, 5 – 7, 21 – 23 as roving bandits, 110 – 113

as stationary bandits, 110, 113 – 117 during Soviet collapse, 27 – 28, 55 – 60 in Tajikistan, 55 – 59, 80 – 87, 90 – 96 in Uzbekistan, 59 – 60, 103 – 117, 120 – 123 resources, 4, 5 – 7, 17 – 20 concentrations of, 22 lootable versus unlootable, 17 – 18 as mechanisms of exploitation, 24 – 27. See also elites during Soviet period, 32 – 34 in Tajikistan, 36 – 39, 83 – 87, 90 – 95 in Uzbekistan, 39 – 42 Roziev, Erkin, 106, 114 – 117 Russia, 78 Safarov, Sangak, 175 – 176n27 Salimov, Yaqub, 83, 86 Samarkand Province, 14, 32, 39 – 41, 46 – 48, 52, 59 – 60, 68 – 71, 113 – 117 security sector reform, 154 – 155 selectorate theory, 7 – 8 small- and medium-sized enterprises, 69, 104, 108, 112 – 113 Solnick, Steven L., 26 – 27 Somalia, 140 – 146 state building, 78 – 80, 87 – 89, 103 – 109 state failure definition of, 1 theories on, 2 – 4, 53 – 54, 149 – 150 See also state security state security agencies in Tajikistan, 77 – 79, 82 – 83, 94 – 98 agencies in Uzbekistan, 101, 108 – 109, 111 – 117, 121 – 122 cohesion and fragmentation of, 4 – 6, 54, 60 – 70, 124 – 126, 161n25 Sughd Province, 14. See also Leninabad Province Syria, 20, 126 – 132, 151 – 152 Tajik civil war, 4, 65 – 68 commanders in, 63 – 68, 81 – 83, 86, 95 – 98, 175 – 176n27 postwar settlement of, 68, 78, 81 – 83 Tashkent city, 46, 68 – 70 Tashkent High Party School, 43, 47 – 48 Tashkent Province, 32, 39 – 41, 45 – 48, 68 – 71 Tilly, Charles, 8 Ubaidullaev, Mahmudsaid, 175 – 176n27 United Tajik Opposition, 65, 82 – 83, 95 – 96

RECTO RUNNINGINDEX HEAD

violence entrepreneurs of, 9 interethnic forms of, 46, 58, 68, 131 – 132, 152 – 154 monopoly of, 8, 92 – 93, 77 – 78, 164n55 in Tajik civil war, 65, 87 – 89, 94 – 98 Way, Lucan, 150 – 151

Young, Crawford, 30 ZANU-PF, 140 – 144 Zardiev, Jabbor, 90 – 91 Zartman, William, 3, 68 Zayniev, Nuriddin, 106 Zimbabwe, 20, 140 – 146 Ziyoev, Mirzo, 82, 96, 175 – 176n27

195