It's hard to know yet how serious this could become. Andijan is to the far east of the country, in the Ferghana Valley, a valley that connects with similar terrain in both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The horrific repression of the Karimov regime has no doubt contributed to the growth of some radical Islamist activity in those interconnecting valleys.

However, it does not sound as though the 23 men who were the focus of the prison raid (in which 2,000 were liberated!) are "terrorists" in the eyes of any but the murdering Karimov and, of course, his very good friends in Washington, who are talking nonsense today.

Until last year, the Uzbek opposition had always been entirely peaceful -- and for that, they met only increasing brutality from the monster who runs the country, emboldened by the backing he has been given by the Americans. Uzbekistan has been, apparently, a useful place for the U.S. to "render" people it wants interrogated -- and we hear that some of them are literally "rendered," as in boiled alive. I assume it is also vital to the U.S. because of its proximity to Afghanistan, and also in the game now being played between the U.S. and Russia over oil and access routes through the region.

Interest in the West will be slow to pick up because the bluidy mainstream media have never covered this story seriously. The American media especially have a lot invested in making any distant country they don't understand sound hopelessly exotic and incomprehensible, mainly because they don't understand, mainly because they haven't tried (and it would be expensive and dangerous to try).

And that suits the Bush admin just fine. The Bush admin know some of what is going on, but they sure as hell don't want anyone else to know.

A recent British ambassador, you might recall, was basically fired for sending back alarmingly honest reports to Whitehall that didn't fall into line with the Bush-Blair view of how Central Asia is to be treated.

The border with Kyrgyzstan at that point appears to be collapsing. Interesting. Kyrgyzstan has gone through a much more peaceful reform process recently.

But Karimov has Putin involved now. Strange move, for such a good friend of Dubya's and Condi's.

Timeline from BBC on Uzbekistan

And obviously, they have some common interests in fighting Islamist rebels. The rebels are of different kinds in different places, but Putin and Dubya have had some interest, up to now, in making them all sound the same, all "terrorists."

At the same time, Putin has been moving in a more and more conservative direction vis-a-vis the U.S. I think that he still feels competitive about Central Asia, and he can't be happy to see the U.S. making such tight alliances as they have with the Uzbeks and Tajiks especially.

The United States, as skdadl mentions, has very close ties to this brutal regime. The CIA has operated in the country since 1999, transfers of military equipment go back to 2000, and the large Karshi-Khanabad air base played a major role in the Afghanistan war, and is still an important military hub in the region.

The Uzbek military has also received lots of training assistance from the US and NATO, and its law enforcement agencies have received training and funds for 'anti-terrorism' operations.

(All this information is from William Arkin's book, Code Names, a useful reference that lays out American military cooperation, country by country.)

The American aid has come with calls for reform, but note this little two-step, which shows how seriously the United States takes human rights in Uzbekistan:

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In July, the U.S. State Department determined that Uzbekistan had failed to make sufficient progress on its human rights commitments as outlined in the U.S.-Uzbek Bilateral Agreement and therefore did not qualify for direct government assistance, cutting U.S. $18 million in aid. However, in August, the Department of Defense undermined the principled message this decision sent by pledging U.S. $21 million in new military aid. The U.S. continues to regard Uzbekistan as an important partner in the war on terror.

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Human Rights Watch

Finally, I came across this from the US State Department's backgrounder on Uzbekistan, and found it rather ironic:

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The U.S. has consulted closely with Uzbekistan on regional security problems, and Uzbekistan has been a close ally of the United States at the United Nations. Uzbekistan has been a strong partner of the United States on foreign policy and security issues ranging from Iraq to Cuba, and nuclear proliferation to narcotics trafficking.

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US State Department Backgrounder.

[edited to replace 'Micronesia' with Palau, and to note that Uzbekistan's bold UN support for the US policy on Cuba now appears to involve not showing up for the embargo vote, staying away along with El Salvador, Iraq, Morocco, Nicaragua and Vanuatu.]

[ 14 May 2005: Message edited by: sgm ]

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Lots of UN critics like to point to things like Cuba's presence on the UN's Human Rights panel as evidence the organization is fundamentally flawed. For the US State Department, however, Uzbekistan's human rights record does not preclude its being a 'close ally' at the UN in legitimately advancing its foreign policy assault on Cuba (in the mid 90s, Uzbekistan used to vote with the US and Israel to make up the three 'no' votes opposing the annual General Assembly resolution calling for an end to the embargo--I don't think they even do that much any more. The last I saw, the US was able only to count on Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau.)

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The US military presence may well have acquired a permanent character. President Bush has never publicly criticised Uzbekistan's denial of freedom to its citizens.

Meanwhile, the US State Department's website carries reports on the "systematic" use of torture by the Uzbek government, but also, somehow, manages to call it "a stable and moderate force".

Russia's approach is not terribly different. Moscow has had a mixed relationship with Tashkent, but the line from Russian diplomats appears to be that secular rule at any cost is better than the threat from Islamists.

Russia asserts that it has a historic right to a say in an otherwise poorly-defined "sphere of influence". Recently, this has taken on an almost paranoid tone about "anti-Russian plots" being played out across the territory of the former Soviet Union.

It seems unlikely that President Karimov's regime faces the prospect of being swept away by popular unrest. It may be that change will only come from outside.

But the powers that could influence Uzbekistan's development tolerate the status quo, for their own, very different reasons.

The cost of that is ever-increasing repression, unalleviated poverty and ultimately, the likelihood of violent unrest.

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However, I'd like to suggest that a secular dictator is perhaps the lesser of two evils compared to an Islamic regime. Not because it would be Islamic but because I think theocracies are one of the scariest forms of leadership.

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Originally posted by RookieActivist:
However, I'd like to suggest that a secular dictator is perhaps the lesser of two evils compared to an Islamic regime. Not because it would be Islamic but because I think theocracies are one of the scariest forms of leadership.

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It might be argued that secularist repression is less bigotted as it does not identify religious groups for specific repression. Yet, looking at the history of the USSR, Turkey and of course Iraq one can see secular states that targetted specific culutural, national or religious groups for very brtual repression, precisly because they wanted to stamp out the source of potential nationalist division within the country.

Turkey's repression of Kurds is a case in point. Turkey officially does not even recognize the exitence of a Kurdish people, and the larget part of their military budget is aimed at enforcing that view.

I think that both religious, and secular ideologies can be put at the service of repressive regiemes. The ideology, wether it be Christianity, Islam or some kind of secularist politcal philosophy, serves the power, even though it often seems that the power is at the service of the ideology -- that is exactly what the idealogues would like us to believe.

[ 16 May 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

I see in the report in this a.m.'s G&M that Craig Murray, the British ambassador who was called home and disciplined last year for speaking openly about U.S. machinations in Uzbekistan, is defending the 23 businessmen whose liberation was the spark for this revolt. Against Karimov's spin, Murray is repeating what the people of the valley say, that the 23 were small businessmen, attempting to organize economic relief only for the people of this impoverished region, and hoping to see the border with Kyrgyzstan reopened for the trade the region depends on.

Karimov, of course, is afraid of the liberalization that may be taking place in Kyrgyzstan since their president was driven out in a mainly peaceful democratic uprising.

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Soldiers later moved in among "literally hundreds" of bodies, finishing off some of the wounded with a single bullet, said one witness to Friday's killings outside School No. 15.

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And remember this:

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Soldiers later moved in among "literally hundreds" of bodies, finishing off some of the wounded with a single bullet, said one witness to Friday's killings outside School No. 15.

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We're reading that in other sources too.

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Originally posted by skdadl:
I agree, and I also think that kurichina is right about the history in Uzbekistan as elsewhere -- that secular dictators wipe out secular opposition, which is precisely what strengthens the cause of bin Laden-like opportunists or fanatics.

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Originally posted by skdadl:
I agree, and I also think that kurichina is right about the history in Uzbekistan as elsewhere -- that secular dictators wipe out secular opposition, which is precisely what strengthens the cause of bin Laden-like opportunists or fanatics.

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It wasn't as clean and neat as a chemical equation. The "secular" oppressors (for which read "liberal bourgeois") wiped out the socialist and communist opposition to prevent them from coming to power (usually done at US behest or with its distant blessing); in short, it was done to protect entrenched capitalist interests.

Reductionist politics based on economics of either kind offer a clarity that is tempting, but miss other aspects if human social structures, which I would hope can be incorporated into political critiques that capture the full breadth of human aspirations.

I am not saying this because I reject the Marxist analysis of capital, which I think is invaluable, but more to highlight other forces that impact the movements of history: culture, religion, nationalisms, language, should all be part of the prism through which we see the world reflected.

I think it has been the mistake of traditional marxists to ignore them, and the consequences have been very deterimental to the goals of the movement. The plight of the central Asian republics, from Monglia to Afghanistan, and from Tadjikistan to Chechnya, underscore what has been the result of the the attempt by European Marxists operating from the USSR to impose a universal docterine upon some incredibly complex social milieus.

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Originally posted by skdadl:
I agree, and I also think that kurichina is right about the history in Uzbekistan as elsewhere -- that secular dictators wipe out secular opposition, which is precisely what strengthens the cause of bin Laden-like opportunists or fanatics.

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Some people appear to have been forcibly removed; others are being blackmailed through threats against family still in Uzbekistan. The UNHCR are attempting to protect the refugees, but have too few people on the ground to be fully effective.

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Prague, 13 July 2005 (RFE/RL) -- The UN's high commissioner for human rights says witnesses of the Uzbek government's crackdown in Andijon consistently describe the event as a "mass killing."

In her report, Louise Arbour says the possibility of mass killing by Uzbek security forces cannot be ruled out. The report says numerous testimonies by Uzbek asylum seekers in Kyrgyzstan are consistent -- lending credibility to the allegations.

Arbour's spokesman, Jose Diaz, explained the findings to RFE/RL.

"Their findings are coming from testimony -- consistent and credible testimony -- that tells of grave human rights violations, mostly of the right to life, reportedly committed by Uzbek military and security forces," Diaz said. "Our team concludes from the interviews that they conducted with Uzbek asylum seekers that the incidents could amount to mass killing of civilians."

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Link.

As this NYT story on the 'debate' over American military-to-military cooperation with Uzbekistan and similar regimes shows, supporters of the cooperation argue such cooperation can exercise a restraining influence over the other country's military and security forces: Link.

I doubt the current American administration will do much to change its policy of support for Uzbekistan's government. The Karshi-Kanabad base (K2) in Uzebkistan is a vital US military hub for coordinating actions in Afghanistan and other places in the region.

Uzbekistan's recent musings about the future of this key American base may be intended to show the US it had better continue its support (and, implicitly, that criticism had better not be strong):

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The Uzbek Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the air base at Karshi-Khanabad, which American forces use to support operations and supply humanitarian aid to neighboring Afghanistan, was intended only for combat operations in northern Afghanistan during the overthrow of the Taliban regime after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.

"Any other prospects for a U.S. military presence in Uzbekistan were not considered by the Uzbek side," the ministry said.

Uzbekistan also claimed that the United States had not paid takeoff and landing fees for all flights to and from the base, and had offered virtually no compensation for additional costs incurred by the Uzbek authorities for security of the base, new infrastructure, ecological damage and inconvenience to the local population.

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I'd like to suggest that a secular dictator is perhaps the lesser of two evils compared to an Islamic regime.

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Not because it would be Islamic but because I think theocracies are one of the scariest forms of leadership.

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