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Kathleen Collins
Political Science
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No one knows
better than Kathleen Collins that research isn't all about poring
over books, Web sites, and microfiche. Sometimes it means traversing
dangerous terrain and putting everything on the line.
Collins, assistant professor of political science, is an expert
on Central Asian clan politics. She gained her expertise gathering
data from the field—at some personal risk.
In regions where Islamic culture is especially conservative, Collins
several times found herself grabbed by disapproving men in public
bazaars when she was walking alone—despite adopting conservative
dress and often a headscarf. Even in more secular areas, foreigners
are targets of ordinary crime, she says. In northern Kyrgyzstan
, she was mugged. “They knocked me down to steal my purse, coat,
gloves, and passport belt,” she says. “I was black and blue for
a month.”
Such is the lot of the Western female researcher in the Islamic
former Soviet states of Uzbekistan , Kyrgyzstan , Tajikistan , and
Kazakhstan , as well as Azerbaijan , in the Caucasus . “It's extraordinarily
hard research to do,” Collins says. “Mostly, people are very kind
to me. But just practical things—traveling alone, taking a bus or
a cab, the way you dress—all of those things become real security
issues.”
Collins persists because the region is so poorly understood. “There
has been little empirical research on the question of Islam and
Islamic mobilization,” she says. “Think tanks and journalists often
make unfounded arguments which are taken seriously by policy makers.”
While doing research for her recent book, Clan Politics and
the Transformation of Regimes in Central Asia , Collins began
noticing a post-Soviet, Islamic resurgence in the region. Her current
project examines that trend, which she says stems partly from disillusionment
about the United States ' failure to support nascent pro-democracy
movements in the area. Last year, for instance, Azerbaijan held
an election that most observers believe was fixed. Yet despite pledges
of support by the American ambassador, the U.S. State Department
did not publicly criticize the electoral fraud or back opposition
protests.
For most of the last decade, Central Asians did not generally consider
Islam and democracy antithetical, Collins says. “In the early 1990s,
the idea of democratization was much stronger than any sort of religious
resurgence,” she explains. But as U.S. democratization efforts failed,
people's high hopes for democracy and a better life were dashed.
“In part, I am finding that the increasing attraction—especially
among youth—to Islamist ideas is driven by this disillusionment
with democracy and the West,” says Collins.
By focusing so intensely on the Middle East, the United States
has neglected Muslim Central Asia , Collins believes—and does so
at its own peril. “Think about where these trends might take us
over the long term. What is this region going to look like?” she
says. “Where are these corrupt, authoritarian governments going?
What will happen when these weak states fall apart?
“Hopefully, we won't see a dramatic rise in anti-American Islamism,
as in Pakistan , or state collapse, civil war, and the creation
of another Afghanistan or Somalia in this region. But that is not
out of the range of possibility.”
By Kevin Featherly
Reprinted with permission from the Fall 2006 edition of Reach,
a publication of the College
of Liberal Arts.
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