Kazakh delegation visits Bukharian community

Here are my thoughts on two events I covered last week, the visit of a high level delegation from Kazkahstan to the Bukharian Jewish community (this posting) and Ari Kagan being honored at Manhattan Beach Jewish Center (next one). Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving!When a delegation headed by the two top officials from the Kazakhstan Assembly of Nations toured the Bukharian community in Queens last week, the obvious news peg was the Borat movie and I went with gthat theme in order to get the piece published in the Jewish Week. Here is the link to the Jewish Week piece,

http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13307

which also included glowing statements from the co-chairman of the Assembly of Nations, Zhumatai Aliyev and Sergei Diachenko who said--Borat to the contrary--that Kazakhstan is a wonderful place for Jews to live and do business, and that the richest man in Kazakhstan, Alexander Mashkevich, head of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, is a Jew, etc. etc. What got cut from the article by editors who as always were intent on saving space was a serious discussion on the close ties being cultivated between the Bukharian community and the Kazakh government. Both Aliyev and Diachenko and the country's ambassador and deputy ambassador to the U.N. Yerzhan Kazykhanov and Barlybay Sadykov spoke proudly of the close relationship between Kazakh president Nursultan Nazerbayev and Israeli-Bukharian billionaire Lev Leviev, who owns a gold mine there and got special dispensation from Nazerbayev to open Jewish schools in the country despite a law forbidding religious schools.

Sadykov noted that a number of Bukharian Jewish leaders have visited Kazakhstan and written and spoken glowingly about the place, including Rafael Nektalov, editor of the weekly Bukharian Times, who seved as an election monitor of last December's election, in which Nazerbayev got 90 percent of the vote in an election that Human Rights Watch said was full of abuses by the government of opposition groups. Nektalov and other Bukharian leaders previously defended Uzbek President/dictator Islam Karimov even after his forces fired on demonstrators in 2004 killing several hundred and even the Bush Administration protested strongly-which led Karimov to kick US forces out of the country. Seeing Karimov's isolation from the West the Bukharian leaders seem to have now moved toward embracing Nazerbayev instead--he has a somewhat better odor than Karimov and besides, billions of dollars from the West are flowing i nto Kazakhstan for oil, natural gas and a panoply of minerals, rather than to Uzbekistan, the homeland of the Bukharians. Indeed, a number of Bukharian Jews have moved to Kazakhstan in recent years because of business opportunities and because the place is safer and less effected by islamic fundamentalism (at least so far).

Sadykov told me that the Kazakh government is interested to preserve and develop our close ties with the Bukharian community, "Because we believe that cultural and economic interaction will benefit both sides.” Sadykov said that while Bukharian Jews are not directly involved in lobbying on behalf of Kazakhstan in Washington, “Those Bukharian Jews who have visited Kazakhstan have reflected (in the media) on what they have seen in our country.”

The visit of the Kazakh delegation to the Queens Gymnasia and the Bukharian Museum was a warm and fuzzy event, and then everyone went to a wonderful midday banquet at the Bukharian Cultural Center at tables groaning with wonderful food and drink in which, I should readily admit, this reporter participated with gusto, even taking the micropphone at one point to make some sentimental comments recalling my first vist with Rafik Nektalov in Samarkand back in 1990. I love Bukharian food culture and dance and like Rafik and many of the other community leaders (mazel tov, by the way, to Aron Aronov for realizing his longstanding dream of opening his magnificent Bukharian Museum, which will preserve for future generations the story of the now nearly finished saga of Bukharian Jewish life in Central Asia).

Nevertheless, I would be remiss if I didnt use this blog to raise the question of why the Bukharian Jews are so anxious to build strategic ties with Central Asian strongmen like Karimov and Nazerbayev and dismiss as irrelevant concerns about the human rights situations in those countries. To be sure, its probably too much ask the Bukharian Jews to be more fastidious about abuses of democracy in Kazakhstan than the Bush Administration, which is happy to woo Nazerbayev despite what Human Rights Watch characterizes as sustained persecution, violations of freedom of expression and freedom of the media, and harassment of non-governmental organizations. harrassment of the non-governmental organizations. But dont our Jewish values raise basic moral questions about embracing authoritarian regimes? And, morals aside, there is also a very pragmatic question--if the emigre Jewish community is so totally identified with dictators, what happens to the Jews left there if and when those strongmen fall?

Its really the same issue we see concerning the ongoing struggle within the larger Russian Jewish community in New York about ties with the Putin regime. Isn't there something troubling about declaring oneself a 'Russian compatriot' under the aegis of an increasingly dictatorial regime which appears to sanction the elimination with extreme prejudice of political opponents like martyred journalist Anna Politskaya and this former FSB guy who just got poisoned? Are we to climb in bed with a bunch of ruthless KGB thugs who are terrifying Russians into obedience?

Let us never forget that Russian and Bukharian Jews came to America seeking democracy and freedom of conscience. Having achieved that freedom, should Jews from the FSU living in America now embrace the new generation of oppressors who succeeded the Soviet ones and deny freedom to those who remain behind in Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other states of the FSU? I am ready to grant that there are serious and valid reasons for building such ties, but there are important moral concerns that need to be vetted on an ongoing basis in the Russian community here and should not be swept under the rug amidst the concluding of multi-million dollar business deals and chummy vodka and cognac toasts