Posted yesterday at Jamestown, an intriguing response from US Embassy officials to three Eurasia Daily monitor articles about recent Kyrgyz opposition to the Ganci base in Bishkek. If you’re reading this site, chances are you’ve read the articles concerned (here, here and here) by Jamestown analysts John C.K. Daly, Erica Marat, and Roger McDermott. In reply to the accusations from US Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Marie Yovanovitch of “significant factual inaccuracies, misleading statements, and false conclusions,” the three analysts post some impressive rejoinders, including:
As authors deal with materials available at the time of writing, it is most disingenuous for government officials to subsequently request revisions based on materials that were not available when writing, but rather, to acknowledge such an effort at post-publication revisionism compromises the Jamestown Foundation’s commitment to true scholarship on important contemporary issues.
I’m not going to try recap all the details but the exchange is well-worth reading for anyone with an interest in recent issues and details surrounding the airbase. One detail I found I had missed was that Zachary Hatfield, the US soldier involved in the airbase shooting, was convicted of deliberate homicide by the Kyrgyz Prosecutor-General and Ministry of Interior on May 7, 2007. Ambassador Yovanovitch apparently missed that too. Another thing I learnt is the word – aspersion : a sharp critical remark, designed to damage sb’s reputation.
Local media sources in Central Asia are often unsourced and contradictory to begin with, whether or not they’re influenced by external or internal interests. Given that, I’m regularly impressed at the fine balancing job (or crude, depending on how you view it ) that Eurasianet and EDM pull off in compiling sources. For anyone who’s charged that most English news writing in Central Asia is heavily (indirectly) influenced by the US State department, this would seem proof to the contrary.
I’m sure there are readers out there that have plenty of opinions to hash out on related issues. Get your aspersion on!
