ISAR | Past Successes: Events

October 29, 2002 Panel Discussion With

• Robert Kaiser, Associate Editor, Washington Post
• Kent Hill, Assistant Administrator for Europe and Eurasia, USAID
• Pat Scheid, Program Coordinator, Aga Khan Foundation USA

The October 29, 2002 Forum on Civil society in Central Asia was sponsored by ISAR: Initiative for Social Action and Renewal in Eurasia. ISAR, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC, has been working in Central Asia for the past ten years, supporting grassroots citizen initiative groups and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that address local environmental problems.

I want to welcome you to ISAR's forum series. It's very nice to see so many faces, especially on such a rainy day. Our topic today is civil society in Central Asia. We're pleased to have three distinguished speakers here to share their impressions about the work of NGOs and civil society organizations throughout Central Asia.

When we were planning this event we were looking for a map of the region. It's a challenge to find a map that is not crisscrossed with pipelines or covered in asterisks that show the geopolitical significance of the region. We all know that this geopolitical significance does exist and that pipelines do crisscross the region, but many of us who have worked in Central Asia for a long time also know that there is a lot of genuine civil society there. Despite the fact that many of these places today do not have democratic traditions or practices, and notwithstanding the authoritarian regimes that run these countries, there are noteworthy efforts toward decentralized decision making. We are here to look at how we can support those efforts.

Our first speaker is Dr. Kent Hill, Assistant Administrator at the US Agency for International Development for the Bureau of Europe and Eurasia, which covers 29 countries, from the Balkans to Central Asia, including all of the former Soviet Union. Before coming to USAID, Dr. Hill served as president of Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Massachusetts. He has been a professor of European and Russian history and has published books on Christianity in Russia and the former Soviet Union and more than 50 articles and reviews on these subjects. He is a noted expert on human rights and international religious freedom issues, and we are very happy to have him here with us today.

Thank you for having me. It's a challenge to address these issues in an in-depth way in just 10 minutes, but I would like to make a few observations, erring on the side of staying with general observations about how to promote civil society in Central Asia, and then I could say more about USAID during the question-and-answer period. I want to start by saying I'm impressed with this organization, ISAR, and I ve read the journal, Give & Take.

USAID has spent $850 million in the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia, and today we are now spending the largest amount yet, at $200 million. I want to clarify this, because sometimes you hear numbers used when people confuse the total US government assistance with USAID's portion. US assistance is more, so the $850 million is just the proportion of USAID, and that s $200 million this year. That's going to democracy efforts, health, virtually anything you can think of, and civil society is an important part of what USAID supports.

When I talk about Central Asia whether with insiders or outsiders, I find that the context around this subject is always a certain level of frustration. There is quite a variety of scenarios in how these countries have progressed, but what I encounter constantly are two misconceptions. The first misconception is what capitalism really means, and the second is what democracy is.

The term "capitalism" used in regard to the former Soviet Union is a misconception, because what actually has existed is more of a robber-baron type of looting of the economic resources of the country. So capitalism acquired a negative reputation, and appeared in a way that was not that different from what you would read in Marx. But capitalism at its best is more than unbridled greed; it has to be based on the values of fair play and the rule of law. So the term "capitalism" can be misused.

Then there is "democracy." Democracy is at the heart of civil society, but we should not make the mistake of equating it with elections and majority rule. These alone to do not add up to a real democracy-in fact, that definition would not be so different from fascism, which can be majority rule with a kind of election system. The way democracy is supposed to work in its most mature form is when it operates as a system in which minority rights are included. Majority rule alone won't protect minority rights, so democracy means a set of features including an economic context that allows a free economic system and vibrant civil society what we're gathered here to talk about.

But when that kind of democracy does not appear overnight, people do feel frustration, and that s why it's right to focus on civil society, and why you can make progress despite authoritarian rulers. I make the flat statement that Alexis de Tocqueville "got it right" when he said that the most interesting part of the democracy he wrote about in the America of the 1830s was the existence of thousands of intermediary organizations. He looked at "NGOs,"-religious groups and other kinds of independent entities-and said that those only exist where there's a vibrant democracy. To get to that model, we have to think small. In other words, we have to acknowledge consciously that the seeds that are planted now are precisely what will eventually help make the kind of changes we re looking for.

As I said in my interview in Give & Take, efforts to support NGOs are extremely important. Long before 9/11 we were at work trying to encourage the birth of civil society in Central Asia. Supporting NGOs means creating a sense of hope and possibility that citizens organized around a task can make a difference. We have seen the tremendous power of a few people who are determined to do things, perhaps with a few outside resources, plus a lot of goodwill. And the journal lists just a few good examples of this. Recently a group mobilized in Kazakhstan to organize against a media law that they saw as introducing bad changes into society, and they had an impact. In Kyrgyzstan, a small NGO used an ISAR grant to build a drinking water pipeline in a place that had not had clean water. And these kinds of efforts are not just tangible help economically, but they have a broader impact. They unleash a sense that people can make a difference in what they do. We funded over 1000 projects last year, which is a lot more than used to exist.

We recognize the need to pour more funds into this. Currently we have a $20 million community action investment, which is really just another name for the practice of providing small grants to small groups of people. They pick a project, work together to solve the problem, and in doing so take a step toward civil society. Sometimes we don t know whether to call it civil society or economic assistance, because it does both.

So to summarize, in the context of the frustrations people have about Central Asian countries and their progress on democracy, I think we need to define democracy carefully and not settle for elections as the only measure, and keep in mind that the virtue we most need at this time is patience. I think that's something that will benefit us all, and so we need to plant seeds and do what we can in the locales where we're working. Most of all we need to remember that what we are striving for is to unleash forces that can t be controlled. My specialty is the USSR, and I use that as a model, because when Gorbachev talked about perestroika, the last thing he had in mind was what ultimately happened, but he unleashed forces that he couldn t control things that may have looked small at first, but in time made an enormous difference. Anything that brings a more open society, and that spreads wealth toward a larger number of people should be encouraged.

Thank you, Dr. Hill. Our next speaker is Pat Scheid, who is Acting Program Coordinator for Aga Khan Foundation USA. AKF is a private, non-denominational development agency committed to promoting sustainable solutions to the long-term problems of poverty, hunger, illiteracy and ill health, with special emphasis on the needs of rural communities in mountainous and other resource-poor areas. Currently, AKF is supporting over 110 development projects in 13 countries. Pat's professional focus has been primarily in NGO capacity strengthening, grants management, and policy dialogue across sectors, including food security and emergency response, agricultural development, education, health, and systems reform. Pat has a Master s degree in Organization Development, and in April began an independent consulting practice called New Paradigm. New Paradigm provides organizational effectiveness services to nonprofits and to people who dedicate their professions to social change.

Thank you. I'm happy to be here again at ISAR, and I appreciate the invitation. I'd like to focus on what we can do to effect positive change and to enhance civil society in Central Asia, and I'll start by concluding. That is, because our time is short I'll give you my conclusion first. Basically our experience has been that long-term, demand-driven investments in civil society are what is required. By "long-term" I mean 30, 40, even 50 years. I'll talk about how in Central Asia it is possible to tap "grassroots-up" reform. And the third area is human capacity building, where we need to examine issues of power and power sharing.

For an overview of the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) in Central Asia, you re welcome to take the brochures we've laid out that were created for an awareness campaign we're currently conducting in the US, one that is designed to give people in US cities a better understanding of Central Asia and our work there, and also to help us learn more about what communities in the US know and want to know. All of the Aga Khan Development Network organizations are founded by his Highness the Aga Khan.

We define Central Asia as not only the former Central Asian Soviet republics, but also northern Pakistan, and even western China and Iran-a very large area with something of a common culture and communities, where there has historically been lots of cultural exchange. Defined this way, Central Asia has regional needs. AKF has worked on issues such as health, education, rural development, and institution building. We have founded the University of Central Asia, a new institution that will serve the region's 30 million people. We have reached agreements with the governments of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and are working on Uzbekistan. The idea is to look at human capacity development, and the degree programs we will offer include programs in Mountain Studies that will allow students to explore what it means to do development work in mountain areas. We also have a continuing studies program that will focus on how to give people skills that help them improve their livelihoods.

The AKF network is made up of the NGOs that provide these services. NGOs in the network promote pluralism and democracy.

I want give some examples of the kind of "grassroots-up" reform that we do. Often, when we think about reform in the health sector or in education, we think of activists or multinationals that change systems on a national scale. These are important, but there other ways to look at reform as well, some particularly applicable in Central Asia. Since the 1990s, we have supported reform at the district and oblast level, starting in the Gorno-Badakhshan Oblast of Tajikistan. One critical ingredient was that we were invited in and asked to help. The main concern at the time was food security, after the Soviet system broke down. The agricultural system, as one consultant said at the time, was one of the most ineffective he had observed anywhere in the world. We identified people in the state farm system who were reform-minded, who knew what wasn't working, and said let's do something about it. We looked at how to better target inputs to improve agricultural productivity. We ve been successful in this regard, as food self-sufficiency is now up to 70 percent, where before the region relied on outside sources for 85 percent of its food resources. So this has been a major success. We started from a minimal level, and found that when properly applied a small amount of resources can make a difference. We worked with people who were already reform-minded, and then, before you know it, others who came to observe these successes had invited us to come and get involved in their farms in other districts. We didn't pay so much attention to the current legal framework, which over time changed anyway, partly as a result of what we demonstrated. When people saw that our way worked, oblast government leaders observed and then decreed that the oblast would also conduct reform this way, and then later the national government instituted reforms (funded by the World Bank) that became the basis for the country's agricultural reform. This worked because it came from the bottom-up, not the other way around.

AKF has also worked in health reform and in basic service provision, since the country's health resources drastically declined. The health sector reforms meant rationalizing pharmaceutical policy and management. At the district level, this meant figuring out how to manage the overprescribing of drugs, which was totally unsustainable. The average number of medicine prescriptions was 72 percent per encounter, and now overprescription is down 76 percent, antibiotic overprescription is down 48 percent, and providers are changing to more patient-oriented, preventive care.

We saw the same kinds of grassroots-up reform with Tajikistan's national curriculum, which started in schools at the district level, eventually adopted nationally. If you locate those who have an appetite for reform, and work on developing their skills, change will trickle up to a national level.

I'll just add that we are pleased by the community action investment of USAID, we welcome a program that really looks at community level investments. I think the lesson to take away is how do we inspire and generate that level of community investment through our programs? What do we need to require from communities? Some contribution in labor certainly, but perhaps also in dollars, or rubles as the case may be? Because when what is available internally or externally is not enough, how do you generate local investment? People are willing to invest at levels you would not expect once they see what they can get out of it. There is great potential for improvement in social services and economic livelihood. Generating that is critical. I'll close with that and welcome questions later.

Thank you Pat. Our final speaker is Robert G. Kaiser, associate editor and senior correspondent of The Washington Post. He has worked at The Post since 1963 and has served in many positions, finally as the paper's managing editor from 1991 to 1998. He is the author or co-author of six books, including Cold Winter, Cold War (1974) and Russia, The People and the Power (1976). His writing has also appeared in the New York Review of Books, Esquire, Foreign Affairs and many other publications.

It's nice to be here. I believe that I've been invited because I had the good fortune of spending five weeks in Central Asia, visiting all five of the former USSR "'Stans." You can read what I wrote about my trip at washingtonpost.com. What I hope I can contribute today is the view of a journalist who goes to places to report what they are like, what they feel like, why life in these societies is difficult or how they are developing, and what hopes we might hold for their future.

The Aga Khan Foundation's definition of the region is better than mine, which was confined somewhat arbitrarily to those five republics. I should note that in my interviews with 4 of the 5 presidents of these countries, each one thought they should expand their own definition of Central Asia to include Afghanistan, since what happens there affects their own countries. But I group these countries together because all five of them are Soviet places. All are run by a former secretary of the communist party, except Kyrgyzstan, where the president was not an apparatchik but chair of a collective farm, but still a very Soviet man. Russian was the more comfortable language for all of them, and, more to the point of this event, they all grew up in that Soviet world where civil society is hostile.

We take it for granted in democratic societies that institutions make things happen, that they have influence, that they are independent. That is a very foreign idea in Central Asia. These are very foreign places for us Americans, and I would have to say that as Americans we often are not good at understanding exotic places, and that holds very true in Central Asia. For example, the fact that in each of these countries a role is played by unparsed and unparsable ancient clans and geographic alignments, a factor that baffled the Soviets and now baffles the United States. When I asked president Karimov about his clan affiliation and how that affected his decision-making, he just shrugged. They don't share this, they have been good at stiff-arming us on this, and so it remains quite mysterious, and a person from outside would have unjustified hubris to claim to understand how it works.

Also, these are new countries. Only up close can you absorb what that means. Until the developments of 1991, they never even thought of becoming independent nations. They had no postal service, no ministry of defense-we could list the institutions they didn't have all afternoon-they had very little and it is quite miraculous that they have survived without disasters or famine. That's important to keep in mind. They don't know what it means to be a nation, that is, they don't have the same patriotic impulses, though that is less true in Uzbekistan, where there is a stronger sense of what it is to be Uzbek. But the most attractive parts of Uzbekistan were not part of it until Stalin arbitrarily created borders, those are and were all Tajik. Part of the cultural reality was adopted with the nation states. In an ideal world they would all be Turkestan again, and could work together to exploit their own talent, energy, and oil. They'd be better off if they were all in one unit. But they are divided across linguistic tribal lines that never existed. Even though they all have intermarried among each other and mingled through the centuries, there is still something fundamental in the people which is at odds with the creation of these five nation-states. By the way it's a nice footnote to history that Stalin said they could never survive as independent countries.

There is no money in these places. The budget of Tajikistan is one-sixth that of the state of Maryland. They can't pay for anything-roads, schools, and so on, and so they are still running down the Soviet infrastructure they inherited from the USSR. They are facing crises in about 10 years with their airplanes, and so on, and how will these be replaced? No one is even thinking about these problems, because survival from one week to the next is so complicated.

There is no real democracy anywhere in this world, something else that is important to understand. They have lousy economic policies-a function of the residue of Soviet experience. There is no room for real entrepreneurship, except in Kazakhstan which has a little. The tax system is a very bureaucratic structure written with a mentality that is hostile to small business. I should mention that in most of these generalizations I make an exception for Turkmenistan, which is run by a lunatic, and is a particular case.

Kyrgyzstan was a leader in all respects in the early 1990s, in seeking WTO membership, doing everything the IMF instructed it to do, but it is now the second poorest country in the region. They got going with some entrepreneurs taking hold, but most of them subsequently have left and gone to Kazakhstan.

More hearteningly, a new generations is growing up which has nothing in common with its Soviet parents. These people are the future of these countries. It has long been my feeling that we won't know the future of these places until they are run by people who had no connection to the nomenklatura of the USSR, and that's still 20 to 40 years away. So these are just the early days, but even so many signs are heartening on many levels. People growing up now can completely escape the psychological confinement of the Soviet era, and so they think and act in a different way.

As for democracy, I'm in sympathy with Kent Hill's description, but here for this forum I would describe it in a more functional way. You can't find among Central Asia's leaders people who actually believe in their bones that government exists because people decided to create it, that it has no basis to exist or claim any resources or powers that haven't been given to it, that it exists only with the consent of the governed. People see the state as separate from them, with special rights and powers that are appropriate for it to have. You could see it yesterday, in how the Russian state behaved [[in gassing the terrorists and hostages in the Moscow theatre crisis]] in the interest of the state. That the state is all-powerful is a perverse impulse or thought which is still strong all over Central Asia.

Our ability to affect these places is an interesting, complicated subject, which we could discuss at length, but I had the good luck after my Central Asia trip to go to Eastern Europe to visit some the of countries that are about to be brought into NATO-Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Romania. And based on that, I would say that modesty about how much we in the West can do to effect change is misplaced. These countries shaped up under the whip of joining in NATO, and the EU besides. These two impulses led to their forming something like a real democracy, and the fact of their new commitments explicitly and implicitly gives us much leverage.

With that background, civil society work is extraordinarily exhilarating. Because it is about individuals who have taken responsibility for something. Civil society means: will there turn out to be people who will stand up and say "I'll do that."? It has happened in Russia and in Central Asia.

It is great fun to encounter a group with a sense of its own capacity to make things happen. One of the most exhilarating experiences I had was in Dushanbe meeting with the League of Women Lawyers of Tajikistan, a program sponsored by the OSCE and founded in 1999. The group was all women, who were wonderfully feminist in an unusual way, and only about half were ethnically Russian. They included private lawyers but also judges and government prosecutors. They are a genuine interest group, and they get women to come to them for legal help on domestic and other cases. They have been winning 80 percent of their cases (and they have tried 198 cases). Many of these are divorces, in a place where women could not easily get divorces in the past.

Some of their cases are more complicated. I was beguiled by this one: a 75-year-old woman named Tatiana Ravkina was someone whom a member of the NGO had met on the street. She was begging, and the woman asked why she had to beg. She said that her husband had died, leaving her with a large, valuable apartment in the center of the city. The old woman had found some people in a "nice" family, who told her they would swap apartments with her in return they would look after her needs. They had done so, and then after 4 months, they had said: the deal's off. The NGO had to take this woman through three courts, but eventually they got back her apartment and got her some money. This was obviously just a fabulous success story.

I left there with a bounce in my step. That is real civil society. We don't have enough examples of this, but I saw more than a few.

Thank you. We'll open up the floor for questions, and if you could just state your name and affiliation, we can start now.

Question [[Name and affiliation inaudible]]: Dr. Hill, regarding your advice about thinking small and being patient. Can you say a bit more about this? Do you mean in terms of strategy? Programs? Or in the impacts we should aim for? Some economic projects in Central Asia are quite large, such as those dealing with water management and water prices. We can t force them to work together, and as Robert Kaiser put it well, if cross border work has ended, is there is a place for large projects? Authoritarian rulers don't seem to be thinking smaller, so what will get in under the radar screen and work like yeast, to create momentum that will be difficult to stop?

Hill: Before I get into US foreign policy, I want to be frank about what I see as our virtues and what we're not best at. The strength of the US has been that we are quick to be generous and compassionate, we do well at moving quickly. On the other hand, our attention span is not long, so when the headlines shift to another part of the world, we have a tendency to run over to that problem. As much as I care about September 11, at the same time I have to struggle with the Balkans, where throughout the 1990s a whole lot of people died, and it s not as if these countries have graduated from needing assistance. It s like when the US left Afghanistan sort of hanging, we paid horrendous horrendous dividends from that policy. So we have to realize that when we get countries moving in the right directions we shouldn't withdraw support so quickly. That's what I meant by patience, and I make the case as Pat said, it could be 40 years. I hope less, but we have to have a commitment regardless of whether we see immediate results.

Question from Dee Aronson, US Dept of State BECA, FSA/Flex exchange program: Mr. Kaiser, on your trip you met with some alumni from our programs, and although the doom and gloom you've just told us about may be true, can you comment more on the successor generation? Are programs like ours that are supporting them well spent? Do they make a difference?

Kaiser: I hope you saw Style section piece I wrote about alumni 

Aronson: Yes, but it didn't mention State! [Laughter.]

Kaiser: Yes, well, 40 percent of that story got cut, and that included the part which mentioned ACCELS and State, that's the news business. But it's a wonderful program, particularly for the kids who go to the US for a year of high school. It's a shrewd program in many ways. These kids do not go to BCC or Walt Whitman, they go to small towns in places like Nevada, really small towns where they become absorbed in their communities. And unlike here in DC, these kids are appreciated in such places, where it's exciting to have somebody from another country. And it's really important to people for the future in Central Asia. Uzbekistan has seen the benefits of foreign education and sent many people to Europe and the US. It s confusing when you ask those leaders: if you don't respect people like that now, why would you later? Karimov told me I don't know what the effect of these people will be, but it will be "explosive." Maybe he imagines there will be some puff of smoke and then the next generation will take over? That's the problem, these leaders can't imagine a realistic transition process by which they will be replaced by folks who can get things done. The downside of exchanges is that once these young people are trained and educated, they are frustrated by conditions in their countries, and they leave. A considerable portion of them end up working in Moscow or Vienna or New York City, becoming a Diaspora from all these Central Asian countries. There are probably over a million of then, from countries whose total population is only 60 million. It's a chronic problem, and you always hear whines of complaint about the loss of talent to the brain drain. Deng Xiaoping was asked about it when 70 percent of Chinese visitors to the US were not coming home in the 1980s, and his clever answer was "Yes, but we got 30 percent back." And since then a great many have gone back and gotten positively involved in the country, so this could happen for the Central Asian republics as well.

Question from Alisher Ashurov, of Tajikistan, from the World Bank: My question is about interest in joint projects. My country Tajikistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, because we are landlocked with no free movement for imports and exports. Couldn't Tajikistan have a territory it could use for a port in Pakistan or in Afghanistan? Not only Tajikistan, but other Central Asian countries as well, because the development of Central Asia depends on this.

Scheid: My comment on that would be that we are committed to regional approaches, and we do see that the development of Central Asia is a regional issue, so we are encouraging cross-border work in issues like migration, energy, and food security. It's critical to look regionally, not only at the commonalities between the five "'Stans" of the former Soviet Union, but to look beyond historical descriptions and look at linkages between other countries, especially those to the south.

Kaiser: I would add that the tragedy of the new nationalism is preventing cooperation and participation in economic affairs. It's interesting that Karimov, Rakhmonov, Nazarbayev, all told me that they need a highway through Afghanistan so they can import things through Karachi to break their landlocked dependence on Russia.

Question from Jon Elkind, independent consultant formerly with National Security Council: My comment to Mr. Kaiser is one of thanks for the service to your readers that you did in that series. It was a remarkable introduction to details about the region for many of us. My second question is to Mr. Hill. The USAID role in Central Asia has been so important in so many ways, not least of which is in the civil society arena. I'd appreciate it if you could say a little more about how much in the way of resources you are putting toward civil society issues in the period ahead, and what do you think important areas of opportunity are?

Hill: I can answer that in two ways: The question that has been most troubling for USAID and State is the concern that with the coalition on terrorism, the money flowing in would not come with enough conditionality, that the US would look the other way on human rights. As the former head of a human rights NGO, I have been curious about gauging this as well and seeing how it would go. I remember a high-security meeting in Central Asia that I attended with Ambassador Beth Jones, where we had an Uzbek general on that side, and our general on this side. It was a high-security meeting, and for the first half hour of a couple-hour meeting, Ambassador Jones made the point that human rights had to be addressed first. So she spoke about this for 20-30 minutes with them, but are you willing to make aid conditional on it? That s a tougher question, and I think historically we can see that there are times when you don't back off, but I can testify from the inside that I have been pleasantly surprised at that high level of commitment to it. The question becomes, how do you make progress? With the world's eyes on Central Asia, some might say it doesn't matter if the Uzbek president merely makes the case to us that things are good, but I think that s an important step even if they lie about it, because then that shows that they've accepted the assumption that there ought to be these things. I've been with others, where they don't even think that's a good idea. So it's important that things are put on the record, because it gets increasingly difficult to ignore when they don't match up.

As for the totals, in 2002 we will spend $200 million in the region, with $48 million to economic restructuring, $35 million to energy and water, $26 million to democracy, NGOs, civic initiatives, and access to information, $39.3 million to quality of life and health, and $53 million spent on crosscutting programs. If I were to identify how to count those, I would say that that amounts to $75 million toward making a positive impact on civil society in some way.

Question from Julia Stachowiak, Johns Hopkins University: I have a question about HIV in Tajikistan regarding a project we're doing there. OSI says that 50 percent of Tajik economy is heroin, and that perhaps 30 percent of the rest are dependent on that. We know about the interdiction efforts, but economically what could replace that? Any ideas? And what about the impact on that young generation you spoke about?

Hill: If you look at the map, and follow the drug path (during what was happening under the Taliban), you also find the areas where AIDS is exploding. There is a clear connection between both serious problems. Afghanistan is critical, the same questions have to be asked there. So yes, if you get serious on drugs, you have to be doubly committed to economic reform, to provide alternatives economically, or you won't solve it. Last year we provided winter seed for Tajikistan to fight hunger, even though people don t usually think that for Central Asia, hunger and food problems are an important thing. As Mr. Kaiser said, it wasn't just civil society but the economy that the Soviets bottled up. So on drugs and AIDS, I would contradict what I said before somewhat, because these are big matters, where you have to think big.

Kaiser: When I spoke about this with Rakhmonov, he said to me almost plaintively, "The world has an obligation to do something, and we have a moral right to a better life." I didn't debate that with him, I just ruminated on it. There are no jobs for young people. The most appealing job there is an NGO job, perhaps one paid by Soros or ISAR. I always ask about this. In Uzbekistan I asked a guy, "Do you have a job?" No. "Does your brother have a job, is he looking?" They say no, there is no place to look.

Scheid: I agree that economic development is important, and we have to find out how to engage civil society in community education. People are concerned about the impact of these issues and they are searching for alternatives, they see a need for a combination of counseling and employment.

Question from Stanley Kober, Cato Institute: Regarding fostering change, how intrusive can you be without appearing to be imperialist? Particularly in Pakistan, anti-American parties have done fairly well, so does that foreshadow anything, and are we then even more dependent?

Hill: That's exactly why I stress the point of not working with narrow definitions of democracy. Elections may only bring extremists from the left or the right who don't respect other elements of democracy, so it's as important that we stress equality or more of the other aspects of democracy such as culture, minority rights, a vibrant civil society, and a free economic system, so that we don't focus on only elections. That can end with something that you can t deal with easily. Part of it you can t avoid if people like that come to power, but you can nurture it.

Kate Watters: We are out of time and will have to end on that note. I'd like to thank our guests and thank you all for coming.

For more grassroots stories from Central Asia: Civil society programs, rule of law projects, and environmental protection efforts have been a crucial step in the formation of a democratically minded populace. For, while national governments remain firmly authoritarian, a grassroots civil society has been emerging throughout Central Asia. This quiet revolution is, in fact, the strongest buffer against surges in religious and ethnic hostility in the region, which would threaten stability, tolerance and any potential democratic reform. The investment needed to encourage people to improve their own lands and their own lives is far smaller than the huge outlays required to exert military power, yet it is far more effective over the long term. The ostensible goals of both investments are the same -- a more stable and peaceful world. The events of September 11 remind us that the strongest force is a population that has the skills, confidence, and resources to look after itself.