ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- When Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke of Moscow taking "preventive measures" against "pro-Western" NGOs in the Central Asian region last week, he may not have known that he was speaking on World NGO Day.
It is not a date well-celebrated in Russia, where some of the most vocal and politically active nonprofits have been designated "foreign agents" and "undesirable organizations" in recent years or simply shut down.
Indeed, when Shoigu referenced what he called the "complicated" situation in Central Asia, he mentioned "more than 100 large pro-Western nongovernmental organizations operating in the region" alongside potential militant incursions from Afghanistan and an expected rise in narcotics production in Central Asian countries in the coming years.
In other words, he sees NGOs as an existential threat to the region -- or at least Russia's interests in it.
"Against the backdrop of the special military operation, these NGOs significantly increased their anti-Russian activities in order to reduce military-technical, economic, and cultural cooperation between the Central Asian states and the Russian Federation," Shoigu complained on February 27, using the Kremlin's term for Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Russia's paranoia about NGOs potentially undermining Moscow's influence in neighboring countries is not new, according to analysts.
"The Russian leadership believes or convinces itself that Western countries, through networks of NGOs, are trying to destroy regimes in undemocratic countries," said Temur Umarov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia-Eurasia Center in Berlin.
"The more Russia is in isolation from and in conflict with the international community, the more its rhetoric will focus on fighting Western influence everywhere from the Internet and schools to the territory of other countries," argued Umarov.
Leaving aside the fact that Shoigu's comments more than hint at the kind of external interference that he accuses NGOs of perpetrating, there is the obvious fact that most of the Central Asian countries are at least in line with Russia -- and in some cases well ahead -- when it comes to cracking down on civil society groups.
So, which Central Asian countries might Shoigu have had in mind?
Kazakhstan Pushes Back, Kyrgyz Lawmakers Push On
The only country that responded to Shoigu's statements was Kazakhstan.
"I don't know about any preventive measures," Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Roman Vasilenko told journalists the day after the Russian official made his comments.
"Supporting the civil sector and supporting NGOs are a top priority for President [Qasym-Zhomart] Toqaev, for the government, and for the Culture and Information Ministry, which is responsible for this area," Vasilenko added.
"If I remember correctly, there are 18,000 NGOs in our country; they operate in accordance with our legislation and are a very important part of our society. That means that civil society is supported by the state of the Republic of Kazakhstan."
Since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Kazakhstan, which has remained neutral in the conflict, has used diplomatic statements to put some distance between itself and its northern neighbor.
But the reality is that Kazakhstan has not always been the most comfortable place for NGOs.
Just ask Dina Smailova (aka Tansari), head of the women's rights group NeMolchi.KZ (Don't Be Silent).
Renowned for defending victims of domestic violence and rape -- including incidents in which police were allegedly involved -- Smailova currently lives abroad and will face recently levied charges of large-scale fraud if she returns to her homeland.
In connection with the case against her, hundreds of private Kazakhs who donated to NeMolchi.KZ have reportedly been called in for questioning by police -- a drive Smailova says is motivated by authorities' need to back up the accusations.
Kazakhstan also keeps close tabs on civic organizations that receive foreign funding, publishing regularly updated lists of such groups while repeatedly refusing registration for others.
But Kazakhstan might end up becoming the most NGO-friendly country in Central Asia by default, now that Kyrgyzstan, the longtime holder of that title, is following Russia's lead in the most literal sense.
On February 22, the Kyrgyz parliament passed the second of three readings of a controversial bill that would allow authorities to apply stringent regulations to organizations deemed "foreign representatives," echoing a law on foreign agents that Russia passed in 2012.
And echoing might be putting it too mildly.
An analysis carried out by the nonprofit Legal Clinic Adilet showed that the wording of the draft legislation is more than 90 percent copied from the Russian original, which Moscow has since expanded to make it even more punitive.
Falling In Line With The Neighbors
The Russia connection to Kyrgyzstan's draft law doesn't end there.
Journalists from the Politklinika outlet found in 2022 that the law's initiator, Nadira Narmatova, owned the deeds to the building that houses Russia's consulate in Kyrgyzstan's second-largest city, Osh.
Did this fact not make Narmatova herself a "foreign agent," Politklinika asked in its investigation, only somewhat tongue-in-cheek.
When that question was put to her again in the parliament last month by one of the few lawmakers opposed to the law, Narmatova admitted that she continued to lease the building to Russia but took umbrage at the suggestion that this prejudiced her views on NGOs.
"This bill has nothing to do with my personal life. We are late [passing it]. If we had adopted the law 10 years ago there would not have been questions like yours and there would not have been sellouts working for the state," said Narmatova in comments reported by RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service on February 22.
But Narmatova is arguably a sideshow in all of this because without a nod from Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov the bill would not be making the progress it has.
Japarov has shown since he came to power in 2020 that he doesn't need a command from Moscow to jail activists, journalists, and political opponents who try to obstruct his agenda.
In this sense, said Umarov of Carnegie, Russia is only "supporting the leadership of Kyrgyzstan, which has taken the course of autocracy."
More than 29,000 NGOs are currently registered in Kyrgyzstan -- a country of 7 million people -- almost twice the number that are registered in Kazakhstan, which has a population of nearly 20 million.
Turkmenistan is still Central Asia's civic wasteland, while authorities in Tajikistan, the region's poorest country, may be heading in the same direction.
An analysis by the Tajik independent news website Asia-Plus in August 2023 showed that NGO liquidations there outpaced registrations 711 to 217 over the period covering all of 2022 and the first half of 2023.
One NGO shuttered by a court over alleged violations of its charter in 2023 was the Independent Center for Human Rights Protection, a prominent nonprofit that offered free legal services to activists and journalists under arrest.
Uzbekistan, the region's most-populous country with around 35 million people, has about 9,000 NGOs, according to Yuksalish, a government-backed think tank, which sent them all its best wishes on World NGO Day.
But as independent Tashkent-based civil campaigner Irina Matvienko noted in a 2021 opinion piece for Open Democracy, "the majority are actually government-organized nongovernmental organizations, or GONGOs," while the amount of funding that NGOs can legally source from abroad remains pitifully low.
Uzbek rights defender Agzam Turgunov -- released from a nine-year stint in jail in 2017 -- learned last week that his application to register a would-be rights organization called Human Rights House had been scuppered for a 14th time after a Tashkent court agreed with the Justice Ministry's objections to its registration.
"Preventive measures" by Russia? They are hardly necessary.
