American University of Central Asia President to Depart, or Maybe Not?
Embattled AUCA President Andrew Kuchins intends to go back to the United States, but the Kyrgyz government may not let him leave.
The Board of Trustees of the American University of Central Asia (AUCA), a Western-style university in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, announced on June 7 that the university’s president, Andrew Kuchins, intended to leave Kyrgyzstan at the conclusion of the academic year to spend time with family in the United States.
The Kyrgyz Prosecutor-General chimed in quickly, per RFE/RL reporting, commenting that if Kuchins tries to leave Kyrgyzstan he will be detained at the border.
Kuchins was summoned by the Kyrgyz Interior Ministry in late April over what the authorities alleged was an attempt to import narcotics.
The Kyrgyz authorities claim that customs officials intercepted a package sent from Dubai for Kuchins marked as “documents,” but found instead “pills of white and yellow colors, capsules of blue and red-white.” Upon examination, the authorities concluded that the pills contained “psychotropic substances.”
Kuchins’s car and home were searched, and he was given a “notice of suspicion” for “illegal manufacture of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and their analogues without purpose of sale.” Regardless of this distinction – “without purpose of sale” – some regional media ran with headlines alleging he was a suspected drug dealer.
In an April 24 statement, Chair of the AUCA Board of Trustees David Lakhdir said that the contents of the package were medicine that was “approved for use in the United States, was prescribed for his use by his doctor in the U.S. for a medical condition, and was sent to him by mail from one of the largest U.S. pharmacies in the ordinary course of its business.”
The authorities’ accusation immediately drew attention for several reasons, including AUCA’s prominence and the sense among many academics of inordinate state pressure not just on AUCA but on academics in Kyrgyzstan more broadly.
Kuchins, a U.S. citizen, is a well-respected figure in the field of Russia and Central Asia studies. Before being appointed president of AUCA in the summer of 2019, Kuchins was a senior fellow and research professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies. He also directed the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Reconnecting Eurasia project from 2013 to 2015, and spent time directing the Carnegie Endowment fo International Peace’s Russia and Eurasian Program after running the Carnegie Moscow Center in the early 2000s.
AUCA has long drawn negative attention from nationalistic elements in Central Asia, even as it stands as one of the region’s most prominent and (importantly) U.S.-accredited institutions of higher education. The university was established in 1997 with support from the U.S. government and George Soros’ Open Society Institute (now the Open Society Foundations), which tees it up to be drawn into various conspiratorial narratives regarding both the West and Soros.
As Eurasianet outlined in an April 26 article, AUCA “has long been in the crosshairs of militant conservative elements” in Kyrgyzstan. With instruction in English and students encouraged to engage in open discussion, as Eurasianet’s Ayzirek Imanaliyeva wrote, the university “has over the years emerged as a focal point for progressive thought and activism in Kyrgyzstan.”
Just as university campuses in the United States have drawn the ire of conservative elements, which deride them for promoting liberal values, so too has AUCA in Central Asia.
A number of YouTube videos have emerged in recent months pegging AUCA as at the center of a conspiracy to train “future NGO representatives and LGBT activists,” “introducing Western ideology and “destroying the [Kyrgyz] nation” or exerting influence in Kyrgyz politics on behalf of the U.S. Embassy.
U.S. authorities have remained quiet, publicly, about Kuchin’s case.
Kuchins was not detained back in April when he was questioned for several hours, but according to local media he was instructed to not leave the city while the investigation progressed. 24.kg reported in early June that the case has been sent to court, but Kloop reporters were unable to verify that with court officials.
The allegation against Kuchins is strange enough all on its own, but detaining Kuchins – a U.S. citizen – would escalate existing tensions between the United States and Kyrgyzstan significantly.