The United States is virtually silent on the brutal killing of at least 700 Uzbek protesters. Michael Gawenda explains why.

THE language used to describe Uzbekistan's record in the US State Department's latest annual report on human rights is morally neutral, which makes it all the more devastating. "Uzbekistan is not a democracy and does not have a free press … Some 5300 to 5800 suspected extremists are incarcerated. Prison conditions remain very poor, particularly for those convicted of extremist activities and a number of such prisoners have died from prison disease and abuse.

"The police force and the intelligence service use torture as a routine investigation technique."

Uzbekistan is a strong ally of the US in the war against terrorism. The large US military base in the country was a crucial staging post for the invasion of Afghanistan.

And the US has given Uzbekistan more than $US200 million ($265 million) in four years in military aid as part of the war on terrorism.

It is therefore not surprising the Bush Administration was silent when the State Department report on Uzbekistan was released. Nor was it surprising that the Administration remained silent for almost a week before it expressed any concern about the violence and deaths in Uzbekistan in the past week or so.

Indeed, ever since the September 2001 terrorist attacks the White House has had nothing but praise for Uzbekistan's President, Islam Karimov, a former Communist Party boss who seized power when the country gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

No one in Washington has ever doubted that Karimov is an old-style, brutal dictator who imprisons his enemies, real and imagined, and uses the threat of Islamic extremists - whose influence is growing - to torture and kill his political opponents.

No one doubts that he has destroyed the economy, once the powerhouse of Central Asia, leaving the vast majority of the country's 27 million people impoverished, with average incomes of $US300 a year, despite Uzbekistan's natural gas and oil reserves.

Yet when the US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, visited the nation's capital, Tashkent, 15 months ago, he praised Karimov as a key member of the coalition's global war on terrorism and offered him George Bush's best wishes.

"Our relationship is strong and has been growing stronger," he said.

Eight days ago and for the three following days, Uzbek security forces killed between 700 and 1500 protesters, including women and children, in the eastern city of Andijan and in the surrounding towns near the border with Kyrgyzstan.

Thousands of Uzbeks fled Andjian to escape the violence. Some, according to aid agency reports, made it over the border. Others were fired on by security units and stopped at the border by Kyrgyz patrols.

There were no television reports from Andijan or the other towns where people were killed and wounded. There were no pictures, no accounts by journalists, the Red Cross or other international aid agencies of what had happened, how many people had died or why they had been killed.

Karimov refused to allow the media, aid agencies or independent observers into the area.

And even when he allowed a group of foreign diplomats into Andijan this week, they were driven around in a bus, refused permission to talk to anyone but official spokesmen, and were accompanied by heavily armed security forces as their bus travelled through the mainly deserted streets.

Karimov had made it clear for some time that unlike the "weak" rulers of former Soviet republics such as Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Ukraine, he would never bow to demonstrators demanding democracy. Such demonstrations would be met with force. If that meant killing people, so be it.

It is far from clear what happened in Andijan and in the surrounding district, but it is clear that Karimov's claim that the protesters were all armed Islamic extremists who want to overthrow his Government and set up an Islamic caliphate across the Caucasus is not true.

There have been enough witness accounts to suggest security forces gunned down unarmed protesters, many as they tried to flee, and that women and children were not spared.

There have been reports that the security forces moved through the panic-stricken protesters and killed the wounded. Some witnesses claim women and children killed by the security forces were buried in mass graves.

Most observers agree that militant Islamic groups, some with suspected ties to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, are operating across the central Asian republics.

But even conservative commentators close to the Bush Administration believe the protesters are, in the main, Muslim moderates and secular human rights activists.

According to Ariel Cohen, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, unless there is reform in Uzbekistan and the people are given the hope of democratic institutions some time in the foreseeable future, radical Islam will become a real threat.

"But the time left for Uzbekistan to change course may be running out," he wrote in The Washington Times. "Decisive action is needed now."

Such action would require heavy pressure on Karimov from the Bush Administration, which so far has not been forthcoming.

Indeed, even when the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, finally broke the Administration's silence, she called for political reform, saying the US had been "encouraging the Karimov Government to make reforms, to make the system more open, to make it possible for people to have a political life". But there was no condemnation of the killings. At first the Administration called on Karimov to hold an inquiry into the violence. Then, reluctantly and under pressure, it supported the demand from the European Union and the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, for an independent inquiry.

No one in the Administration would comment on reports in The New York Times two weeks ago that the CIA was sending terrorist suspects to Uzbekistan for detention and interrogation.

While the State Department report on human rights abuses in Uzbekistan said torture was regularly used in interrogations, it did not spell out what sort of torture.

That has been left to international human rights groups, which say that thousands of alleged extremists have been subjected to torture that ranged from beatings to the boiling of body parts, electric shock to the genitals and the plucking off of fingernails and toenails with pliers.

Anonymous Administration officials have told some journalists in Washington that "quiet" pressure is being put on Karimov to "ease domestic repression", but given that the Administration counts Uzbekistan as an ally in the war on terrorism, it's unlikely that Karimov and his Government will opt for democratic reform any time soon.

"They think the Pentagon and the CIA will protect them," Tom Malinowski, of Human Rights Watch, told The Washington Post recently. "So the Uzbeks are not inclined to listen to American diplomats when they get lectured on democracy."

Not just American diplomats. Bush, at the beginning of his second term, talked about a foreign policy based on support for liberty and democracy, with the US standing shoulder to shoulder with those demanding freedom.

Karimov, having been lavishly praised by Bush and Rumsfeld, and having been told many times just how important an ally he was, must have wondered what exactly Bush was talking about.

America will stand with the allies of freedom to support democratic movements in the Middle East and beyond, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. (Applause.)

Uzbekistan’s Growing Police State
By Anora Mahmudova, AlterNet. Posted May 27, 2005.

Back in 1996, I heard a Peace Corps volunteer in Feghana exclaim that if American workers were not paid their salaries on time, there would be riots all over. But his Uzbek colleagues, university teachers, did not see their salaries for months and waited patiently. They would say at least they have jobs, when so many are unemployed.

By 2004 people could not stay silent any more. They have been picketing their factories, organizing impromptu demonstrations in the bazaars when government decided to raise taxes yet again. Finally, the biggest demonstration involving thousands of people in Andijan ended in a massacre of hundreds of men, women and children.

The US's main Central Asian ally in the "war on terror," and designated torturer for suspects handed over by Washington, has just refused Kofi Annan's request to allow a UN inquiry team into the massacre of 800 peaceful demonstrators shot dead in the main square in Andijan. So far, there have been no threats of intervention by Washington.

Instead, "balanced" statements by the State Department say that Uzbekistan should open up and work toward democracy -- and that both sides should show restraint -- putting the massacred and their murderers on a par. Even calls for an independent inquiry are unenthusiastic.

The massacre reminds many of events in Tien An Men square more than 15 years ago -- no cameras, no access to verify the number of dead. Only eyewitnesses who fled to neighbouring Kyrgyzstan tell of the horrors of that day.

Where's Uzbekistan?

While Westerners know where China is, for many Uzbekistan is another obscure country with a Muslim population. Since it gained independence in 1991, Uzbekistan's economy, as well as its human rights record, has been steadily deteriorating. More than half of the population lives in rural areas, where they work year-round and are paid in flour and oil instead of cash. Their children are poorly fed and are forced to pick cotton, unpaid, when the harvest time comes instead of going to school.

The situation in the cities is not much different: the average salary is $15 a month, enough to feed a family of four for a couple of days. As a measure of how desperate living standards are, when the international community wanted cheap labour to build reactors in North Korea, they hired Uzbek construction workers. Undercutting Kim Jong Il is quite a feat.

Uzbek President Islam A. Karimov, who often scolds the journalists for not being bold and writing about social issues, has never tolerated a free press. Today, Afghanistan has more independent newspapers and TV stations then Uzbekistan. After the events in Andijan, authorities expelled all journalists from Andijan, taking away their tapes, notebooks, and equipment, and none have been allowed back in. The local media -- which the government controls -- has been reporting the tragedy as a small incident organized by a bunch of armed criminals and that all is under control now.

The information blockade has proved very effective. I have spoken to people in towns only 30 miles away who are unaware of what happened in Andijan. Local TV stations and newspapers ran transcripts and showed hours of footage of press briefings by Karimov, taking their cue from his speeches. With Uzbekistan's long track record of ignoring deaths in custody and gruesome torture reports, I cannot be very optimistic about the attention span of its Western allies.

No one can be sure of the death toll, but it is certain that official figures, and indeed official versions of what happened, can be completely discounted. While the Uzbek government is adamantly denying that this kind of massacre occurred, claiming that "only" 169 people were shot, an army source told the BBC that 500 were killed when troops opened fire on protesters on May 13. This figure was echoed by a city doctor who was observing the bodies dumped in a local school and eyewitnesses interviewed by journalists and human rights groups.

The door-to-door account by Nigora Hidoyatova, a brave member of the Ozod Dexkon (Free Farmers) party revealed more than 800 dead. Many more are said to be dying of wounds in a local hospital due to the lack of necessary medicines -- a perennial condition in Karimov's police state. Meanwhile, countless graves with small numbered plaques sprang up in the city cemetery, indicating that the authorities have been hastily burying the dead.

While for many years observers have been predicting a bloody confrontation in Uzbekistan, nobody expected even Karimov to order shootings of innocent men, women and children.

"How can I give an order to shoot my own dear people!" he exclaimed at a press briefing, blaming journalists for reporting allegedly false news about peaceful demonstrators. He further went on to blame "Islamic extremists" who want to create another Taliban-like regime.

Under pressure from the international community, the government allowed a group of diplomats and journalists to visit Andijan. However, since they were not allowed to speak to anyone, except for the chosen and "trained" few and were escorted to their plane after only two hours of "observing" the city, it was a fruitless exercise.

Uzbekistan emerged as a close ally in the war on terror after it allowed Americans to set up a military airbase near the Afghan border at the time the U.S. was planning to fight against the Taliban. Karimov has ruled Uzbekistan since 1986, first, as a Communist Secretary, and later, as elected president. Subsequent elections were moslty rigged and no serious opponent has run against him, since he banned their parties and exiled their leaders. The Parliament rubber-stamps all of the president's decrees. They held an emergency session after the events in Andijan and have repeated the "facts" already aired by the authorities and condemned the "criminal acts of those who want to derail Uzbekistan from its democratic path."

Since 2001, Uzbekistan has received hundreds of millions in aid to improve its security -- army and police. Even though the U.S. State Department has verbally criticized the regime's human rights record, the Bush Administration turned a blind eye to the "friendly" dictator and kept the military aid flowing. Last year, when the State Department cancelled 11 million in aid due to the abysmal human rights record, the Pentagon reissued it from a different budget under a different name.

As long as Karimov labeled those who opposed him as "religious extremists and terrorists," he got away with the imprisonment and torture of thousands of dissidents. By some estimates Uzbekistan has over 7,000 political prisoners, while the rest of the population is plunged into extreme poverty. Unemployment is high and corruption is a part of ordinary Uzbeks' lives. Private enterprises are heavily taxed and draconian laws on convertibility of the local currency make foreign investments unprofitable.

Not a single political opposition party is registered, and any independent media outlet is closed as soon as it opens. Intrepid journalists as well as human rights activists are silenced by threats, jailing and beatings. Government and secret police recruit minders to report on their neighbors, colleagues and fellow students in return for social privileges. And as we know, the regime has enough clout to secure the recall of a British ambassador who refuses to toe the Tashkent line.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted that there have been many deaths in Andijan and excessive use of force by the government troops but fell short of directly asking Karimov for an explanation. Unlike Jack Straw, who condemned the violence and called on the government of Uzbekistan to conduct a full independent inquiry, Ms. Rice appealed to Uzbekistan's government to open up its political system and to reform.

This is either naïve or cynical and implies continuing support for Karimov. He, on the other hand, has already declared openly that no other power in the world can dictate how he should bring about democracy to his country.

To be fair, Washington's prevarication has been put in the shade by neighboring powers such as Russia and China who have dismayed human rights organizations by expressing their support for Karimov's regime, and condemning a group of "Islamic fanatics" for destabilizing the region.

The European Union and NATO took a different position, condemning excessive force by government troops and calling for a full independent inquiry into the bloodshed. Even so, both EU and NATO officials expressed hopes that both sides on the conflict would restrain from using force.

While the international community waits in hope that it can persuade Karimov to open up, hundreds or possibly thousands of innocent Andijanis are being imprisoned, tortured and their human dignity and spirits crushed because they wish to stand up for their fundamental human rights. Weeks before the Andijan massacre, President Bush said "We will not repeat the mistakes of other generations, appeasing or excusing tyranny and sacrificing freedom in the vain pursuit of stability." It will be interesting to see if he was serious.

Anora Mahmudova is an Uzbek journalist based in the U.S.

Uzbekistan kicks US out of military base

Pentagon given six months to quit as Washington's relations with hardline dictator sour in wake of civilian massacre

Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Monday August 1, 2005
The Guardian

Uzbekistan has given the US six months to close its military base there, in its first move to sever relations with its former sponsor.

The air base near the southern town of Khanabad, known as K2, was opened weeks after the September 11 attacks to provide vital logistical support for Operation Enduring Freedom in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Analysts have said that Uzbekistan agreed to the base, the first Pentagon presence in what is a former Soviet stronghold of central Asia, because of a large US aid package and Washington's silence about the country's appalling human rights record.


A US defence department spokesman said at the weekend: "We got a note at the US embassy in Tashkent on Friday; the gist of it was that we have 180 days to cease operations at the K2 airfield."

He added that the defence and state departments were evaluating "the exact nature" of the request. "K2 has been an important asset for the war in Afghanistan," he said. "We will have to evaluate what to do next."

The US presence in Uzbekistan has been under intense moral scrutiny after the massacre by Uzbek troops of hundreds of civilians in the southern city of Andijan in May.

The White House was at first muted in its criticism of the massacre, but the state department has grown increasingly vocal in condemning the attack and calling for an independent investigation.

The Pentagon has sought to renew the leasing agreement for the base, for which it has paid $15m to the regime of President Islam Karimov since 2001.

Critics have accused the US of propping up one of the world's most brutal regimes in exchange for the base's short-term benefits. The Uzbek authorities are accused of killing and jailing ordinary Muslims under the guise of fighting religious extremism and terrorism, and the state department says torture is used by police in Uzbekistan as a "routine investigation technique".

A former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who was sacked after criticising western support for the Uzbek regime, said: "The US has managed to hand the dictator Karimov the propaganda coup of kicking out the world's greatest power. Western policy towards Uzbekistan has been unsustainable for a long time."

He said the Uzbek decision to curtail relations with Washington was "due to a change-around in economic policy. There has been no significant investment from the west for a while; it's all Russian and Chinese state-owned companies."

"Karimov took the decision years ago not to have democracy and capitalism, it just took the US a lot longer to work that out.

"If they had any dignity they would have jumped before they were pushed."

He said the move would put pressure on other central Asian states to turn away from the west, towards China and Russia, because of their reliance on Uzbekistan's resources.

Uzbekistan's demand for the Americans to leave the base prompted a senior state department official to cancel a planned visit to the capital, Tashkent, according to the New York Times.

R Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, was due to hold negotiations about the future of the base with the Karimov regime, and was to echo demands for an international investigation into the Andijan massacre.

The Uzbek government continues to maintain that 187 people in Andijan, mostly criminals, were killed when troops suppressed a prison breakout. Human rights groups say unarmed protesters were fired on, the injured were killed, and that up to 800 people may have died.

The New York Times also quoted a senior state department official as saying that the Uzbek demand was connected to US support for neighbouring Kyrgyzstan's refusal to send home those who had fled Uzbekistan after the Andijan massacre.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has phoned the Kyrgyz government about 29 of those who fled, now being held in the southern city of Osh, and asked that they be ferried out by the UN to a neutral third country.

Her intervention sparked the Uzbek demand for the base to be closed, the official said.