Ten Questions For The Alt-Media Community To Contemplate About Karakalpakstan

The purpose of this thought exercise is to challenge the dogma of the Alt-Media Community’s gatekeepers who’ve indoctrinated their audience into falling for the fallacy that every protest in the Global South is a CIA-orchestrated Color Revolution. Honestly answering these ten questions in sequence reveals that this interpretation is a “narratively/politically convenient” canard that can only be upheld by concocting conspiracy theories on the spot for distracting from the solid points conveyed through this exercise.

Most of the Alt-Media Community (AMC) has been indoctrinated into thinking that any protest in the Global South is a CIA-orchestrated Color Revolution due to how traumatized they’ve been by prior ones in the past. This has resulted in community influencers deliberately oversimplifying their interpretation of relevant events in order to advance this “narratively/politically correct” explanation, most recently about Uzbekistan’s Karakalpakstan Crisis. The prevailing narrative is that the CIA supposedly tried unsuccessfully seizing control of this sparsely populated, geographically distant, and largely impoverished swath of mostly arid land in northern Uzbekistan as part of a proxy war against Russia.

This sounds plausible on the surface since Color Revolutions have previously been weaponized in such a way for geostrategic ends like during the 2013-2014 “EuroMaidan” spree of urban terrorism that ultimately resulted in the rise of Neo-Nazis in Kiev. Upon scratching that same surface and digging below just a little bit, however, it becomes clear that what transpired in Karakalpakstan wasn’t a classic Color Revolution, nor is it all that comparable to January’s Hybrid War of Terror on Kazakhstan. The author explained all of this at length in four detailed pieces over the past 24 hours that are available here, here, here, and here, which should at least be skimmed before proceeding any further.

In a nutshell, the Karakalpakstan Crisis was completely avoidable and attributable to the political authorities’ failure to receive feedback on the draft constitutional reform from the country’s ubiquitous and omnipotent military-intelligence services who’d have informed them of the locals’ predictably negative reaction to removing their region’s autonomy. Genuinely grassroots protests then erupted despite the internet being mostly shut down in the week-long run-up to that event, after which criminal elements exploited the critical mass of mostly peaceful demonstrators as human shields for protecting them during their unsuccessful seizure of government buildings.

Despite this regional regime change attempt failing and the conspirators not being anywhere near as well-equipped or -trained as those who were responsible for January’s Hybrid War of Terror on Kazakhstan, the AMC is still convinced that this was a full-fledged foreign-backed Color Revolution. Their oversimplistic explanation also doesn’t account for President Shavkat Mirziyoyev visiting the Karakalpak capital of Nukus within 24 hours of the violence ending, meeting with civil society and political representatives, and promising that their autonomy won’t be removed, which the leader of this fiercely sovereign country wouldn’t have ever done under foreign pressure.

Considering this factual sequence of events, the AMC should ask themselves the following questions:

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1. Is It Possible For Any Protest In The Global South To Ever Be About Anything Legitimate?

The AMC has practically delegitimized any form of protest in those countries whose governments are considered to be close to Russia, China, and/or Iran, yet isn’t it possible that they aren’t perfect and that sometimes there might be genuine grievances that inspire people to rally (even illegally)?

2. Why Wouldn’t A Minority Group Rally (Even Illegally) When Faced With The Loss Of Their Autonomy?

The Karakalpaks are a proud minority whose identity is inextricably connected to their language that’s distinct from Uzbek and protected in their home region by its constitutional autonomy, so why wouldn’t they rally (even illegally) when they feel (rightly or wrongly) that their identity might be under threat?

3. Why Did The Central Government Even Consider Removing Karakalpakstan’s Autonomy?

It was entirely predictable that the locals would erupt in rage at reports that their region’s autonomy would be removed and thus possibly threaten their precious linguistic rights, so why did Tashkent even consider doing so in the first place when the rest of Karakalpakstan’s autonomy is mostly symbolic?

4. Does The CIA Really Control/Pay Every Single Person In Every Single Global South Protest?

Isn’t the innuendo (if not outright accusation) that such protests are fully controlled by the CIA and that all those participating in them are foreign agents just as paranoid and pathological as the Mainstream Media (MSM) claiming the same vis a vis all “politically inconvenient” Western protests and Russia?

5. How Could The CIA Orchestrate The Unrest When The Internet Was Shut Down A Week Prior?

The AMC conveniently ignores reports that Karakalpakstan’s internet was mostly severed in the week prior to Friday’s Nukus Incident when clinging to their claim that the CIA orchestrated the unrest, yet how could they do so when it was impossible to propagate incendiary narratives through cyberspace?

6. Why Was The Unrest Quickly Contained If It Was Really A Long-Planned Regime Change Plot?

The Hybrid War of Terror on Kazakhstan took a Russian-led CSTO peacekeeping operation to quell yet the Nukus Incident was controlled by local security forces within just a few hours, so how could the latter outcome occur if it was really a long-planned regime change plot like the former clearly was?

7. Couldn’t The Crisis Have Simply Been An Opportunistic Crime Under The Cover Of Real Protests?

Bad actors of all sorts – drug gangs, terrorists, and foreign agents – abound in Central Asia, so couldn’t the crisis have simply been an opportunistic crime clumsily plotted in the week between the draft reforms’ publication and the Nukus Incident then committed under the cover of real protests?

8. Why Didn’t The Joint Regional Officials’ Statement Specify The Criminals’ Foreign Connections?

Isn’t it suspicious that the regional officials’ joint statement briefly clarifying the sequence of events only vaguely referred to foreign forces and mostly only in the context of them waging information warfare at that instead of specifying who they were if it was truly a full-fledged foreign-backed Color Revolution?

9. What Explains President Mirziyoyev’s Promise Not To Remove Karakalpakstan’s Autonomy?

Why would the leader of fiercely sovereign Uzbekistan, whose country closely cooperates with Russia on military-intelligence matters, backtrack on removing Karakalpakstan’s autonomy if it wasn’t done in the face of genuinely popular grassroots protests for the most part but was an entirely foreign-backed plot?

10. Couldn’t The AMC Have Gotten It Wrong In Concluding That The Crisis Was A Color Revolution?

No government, person, or movement is infallible, so couldn’t it be possible that the AMC’s influencers got it wrong in concluding that the crisis was a Color Revolution considering that the answer to the nine preceding questions very clearly points in that direction?

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The purpose of this thought exercise is to challenge the dogma of the AMC’s gatekeepers who’ve indoctrinated their audience into falling for the fallacy that every protest in the Global South is a CIA-orchestrated Color Revolution. Honestly answering these ten questions in sequence reveals that this interpretation is a “narratively/politically convenient” canard that can only be upheld by concocting conspiracy theories on the spot for distracting from the solid points conveyed through this exercise. What happened was avoidable, completely predictable in hindsight, and the result of foreign-connected criminals opportunistically exploiting the state’s own “trigger event” linked to the relevant reform.

It wasn’t a full-fledged foreign-backed Color Revolution that was planned long in advance since the criminals couldn’t have known that the region’s autonomy was at risk of being removed, nor could they have predicted the timing thereof even if they suspected it. Speculative preparations in advance of this potential scenario were also scuttled by the state severing most of Karakalpakstan’s internet immediately after the draft reforms were published in the week ahead of the Nukus Incident, which cut off foreign spies’ primary means of propagating incendiary infowar narratives for encouraging people to illegally protest en masse and thus unwittingly function as the criminals’ human shields during the siege.

Per the core mechanics of Color Revolutions, the most effective are always those that are genuinely grassroots at the get-go and organically organized in response to genuine grievances like the case of the Karakalpaks fearing the loss of the language rights that are inextricable to their identity following the reportedly planned removal of their region’s autonomy. “Seed funding” ordinarily helps optimize the organization of protests by also paying for cohorts who work closely with the regime change plot’s core members (who are either foreigners or foreign-connected), but this modus operandi doesn’t seem to have occurred in Karakalpakstan owing to the Uzbek military-intelligence services’ omnipotence.

Rather, a fast-moving sequence of unexpected events unfolded whereby an unforeseen “trigger event” unwittingly initiated by the targeted state itself was opportunistically exploited by a combination of drug gangs, terrorists, and foreign spy agencies (indirectly at the very least with respect to the information warfare that the regional authorities’ joint statement implied that they waged). This clumsily improvised regional regime change was organized in less than a week during an almost near-total internet blackout and explains why it failed within hours, though President Mirziyoyev’s subsequent promise not to remove Karakalpakstan’s autonomy implies sympathy with the majority of misled peaceful protesters.

This being the reality, the last question is whether the AMC’s influencers will correct the record or not?