The Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Russia-led would-be NATO of the East, has generally focused on physical security threats, e.g. forming a "rapid reaction force" and holding joint military exercises among member militaries (Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan). But the organization is fighting the information war, as well: Last week CSTO General Secretary Nikolay Bordyuzha announced that it has "revealed" 2,000 objectionable websites across the CSTO space, and is moving to shut them down:
“This operation, which received the name of “PROXI”, was the first experience of fighting against criminals in the virtual space on a scale of the whole CIS,” Mr. Bordyuzha continued. “Thanks to our joint efforts, we’ve revealed about 2 thousand Web resources who spread information which may cause political damage to our states. They stirred national or religious hatred or supplied information for terrorist groupings. On the basis of the data that we’ve collected, about one thousand proceedings have been instituted.”
Bordyuzha is pretty blunt about the political nature of the operation:
“For some time past, practically all post-Soviet republics saw cases when certain political forces widely used Web resources to manipulate people’s moods - Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, and, recently, Kirgizstan. Today, some people use the Web to stir nationalistic feelings – or, to calm down people whom they consider to bee too active. In fact, information can be a weapon now....
An information war against terrorism and drug trafficking is no less important than other forms of fighting against these evils. From now, operations to close extremist Web sites will be constantly held.”
No word on what these "extremist" websites in fact are, but given the focus on the "color revolution" countries, we can assume that the common denominator is that they are critical of Russia. Anyway, this a surprisingly overt expression of the politicization of the CSTO military relationship.
Joshua Kucera, a senior correspondent, is Eurasianet's former Turkey/Caucasus editor and has written for the site since 2007.
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