dissertationThis dissertation’s foci are the Central Asian states of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, two postcommunist states that are similar in territorial and population size; per capita income; history of Soviet subjugation; pro-Russian sentiments; reliance on remittances; and ratification of liberal treaties, including the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment (UNCAT). Related to the latter, the two states distinctively differ vis-à -vis allowance of independent monitoring of places of detention and ratification of UNCAT’s Optional Protocol (OPCAT). Although torture remains problematic in both states, Kyrgyzstan shows more promise in institutional attempts to combat its practice, including collaboration with international bodies, such as the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan ratified UNCAT in the mid-1990s, but only Kyrgyzstan ratified OPCAT (in 2008), and by 2014 formulated its UN-sanctioned National Prevention Mechanism (NPM), a body (in the case of Kyrgyzstan, made up of government and civil society entities) meant to pay unannounced visits to places of detention as a torture prevention instrument. This dissertation reasons that Kyrgyzstan’s relative progress in the liberal antitorture norm is explained through its political culture as manifested in its nomadic past; its historical memory of resistance (as demonstrated by the 1916 Ürkün incidence); less deference to authority (as demonstrated by two “revolutionary†regime changes in 2005 and 2010); and higher degree of syncretism in religion, with the Kyrgyz practice of Islam, as compared to Tajikistan, being far less dogmatic and more pragmatic. The dissertation also argues that Tajikistan’s abysmal record of progress in adhering to UNCAT and its unwillingness to ratify OPCAT, nor allow other bodies, such as the ICRC, access to its places of detention, is linked to its political culture of subservience to authority, the country’s historical memory of defeat (as demonstrated by the anti-Soviet Basmachi losses during the 1920s and 1930s), and the ethnic Tajiks’ far more dogmatic adherence to Islam. Tajikistan’s lack of progress in the liberal antitorture norm is also explained through the Afghanistan contagion effect, which served as a catalyst for the 1992-1997 Tajik civil war that stymied the country’s socioeconomic and political progress. The ongoing malicious drug trade emanating from Afghanistan has also more negatively affected Tajikistan, which shares a 1,350 km border with Afghanistan, than Kyrgyzstan, which shares neither a direct border with Afghanistan nor, as opposed to Tajikistan, has strong cultural ties with Afghanistan
