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An iron fist, without the
glove
By Sergei Blagov
MOSCOW - More or less peaceful regime
changes in neighboring Kyrgyzstan, as well as
Georgia and Ukraine, could have given protesters
in Andijan, Uzbekistan's fourth-largest city, a
sense that the Uzbek regime was vulnerable as
well. But instead they faced bullets, with
hundreds of people killed in an uncompromising
crackdown on any hint of a "franchised
revolution".
There had been ominous signs
for Uzbekistan authorities. Uneasiness among residents
of the Ferghana Valley, Uzbekistan's main
agricultural region and a hub of Islamic
extremism, has been growing for some time. Since
early 2005, human-rights activists in the region
have contacted foreign media outlets, indicating
plans to stage protests throughout the valley.
And just a few days ago, Uzbekistan moved
to abandon the pro-US regional cooperation
organization, GUUAM. The grouping was set up in
1997 by Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova
with a view to enhancing energy and economic
cooperation among its  founding members.
Uzbekistan joined in 1999.
Before
Ukraine's Orange Revolution in late 2004, GUUAM
was widely seen as a political deadweight.
However, the new administrations in Georgia and
Ukraine have expressed renewed interest in GUUAM,
seeing it as a potential vehicle to promote
integration with Western economic and political
structures.
The regime changes in Georgia,
Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan over the past 18 months
seemingly affected Uzbekistan's decision.
Strongman President Islam Karimov did not want to
remain in partnership with Georgia's Mikhail
Saakashvili and Ukraine's Viktor Yushchenko.
Distancing Uzbekistan from GUUAM appears to be
part of Karimov's strategy to diminish
revolutionary pressures on his regime.
Uzbekistan said GUUAM had drifted away
from its initial goal of economic cooperation,
focusing too much recently on security issues.
Uzbekistan regretted that GUUAM had turned into
what it said was a "political organization".
Coincidence or not, the Andijan riots ensued just
a week after Karimov's decision to quit GUUAM.
Karimov has defended his heavy-handed crackdown
and mentioned only 10 fatalities. Other sources
indicate up to 500 were killed, including many
civilians.
"The organizers of the unrest
were 'Akramites', a new offshoot of the Hizbut
Tehrir [HT] group. Its goals are hatred and denial
of the secular way of development," Karimov told a
press conference in the capital Tashkent. "They
are brainwashing young people with ideas of
creating a unified Islamic state," he said. "Their
aim is to unite the Muslims and establish a
caliphate," Karimov said.
The HT claims to
be non-violent, but the ultimate goal of the
clandestine, cadre-operated, radical Islamist
political organization is jihad against
non-believers, the overthrow of existing political
regimes and their replacement with a caliphate, a
theocratic dictatorship based on religious Islamic
law.
Following a series of simultaneous
bombings in Tashkent in February 1999 and an
alleged assassination attempt against Karimov,
blamed on Islamic militants, the authorities
pledged a tough crackdown. Karimov reportedly
promised to shoot and kill extremists himself, if
necessary.
Karimov is the longest serving
post-Soviet politician. A native of Samarkand and
once a finance minister in the Uzbek Soviet
Republic, he came to power in 1989 and led the
country to independence in 1991. He is considered
one of the toughest leaders in Central Asia, and
is in no mood to surrender his almost absolute
powers.
Nonetheless, presumably
anticipating Western criticism over civilian
casualties, Karimov tried to distance himself from
the reported atrocities. Karimov claimed that on
Saturday no order had been given to shoot on a
crowd. "No one ordered [troops] to fire at them,"
Karimov told a news conference.
The Uzbekistan
strongman has seemingly learned from the recent
revolution in Kyrgyzstan, which demonstrated that
control over the military and police are crucial
in the event of any uprising. Unlike Kyrgyzstan's
ousted president Askar Akayev, who did nothing in
the face of mounting protests, Karimov rushed to
Andijan and personally directed the crackdown on
demonstrations.
In the meantime,
apart from violence, Uzbekistan authorities have also
relied on an information blackout. No footage of
the events in Andijan was released in
Uzbekistan. Foreign journalists in the city of Andijan
were ordered to leave. Broadcasts by foreign TV
news channels, including Russian, were cut off
on Friday. Authorities have jammed foreign
television channels inside Uzbekistan.
Uzbekistan is one of America's strongest
allies in Central Asia. At the March 2002 meeting
in Washington between President George W Bush and
Karimov, the two countries signed the Declaration
of Strategic Partnership. According to State
Department "background notes", last updated in
February, "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" and "is a
strong supporter of US military actions in
Afghanistan and Iraq and of the global war against
terror". The note said the US "values Uzbekistan
as a stable, moderate force in a turbulent
region".
On the other hand, Uzbekistan has
been wary of US criticism on its human-rights
situation. US State Department spokesman Richard
Boucher said on Friday, "We've been very clear
about the human rights situation there, been very
factual about it, but unfortunately the facts are
not pretty. We think everybody should be doing
everything they can to avoid violence, to calm
down the situation and to deal with these
differences peacefully," he said.
Facing
American criticism, Uzbekistan officials appear
increasingly suspicious of US intentions, as they
consider Washington to be a supporter of the
regime-change trend in the former Soviet Union
states.
At the White House, spokesman
Scott McClellan urged "both the government and the
demonstrators to exercise restraint at this time".
"The people of Uzbekistan want to see a more
representative and democratic government, but that
should come through peaceful means, not through
violence."
The Kremlin also supports
Karimov, hence Russia promptly denounced the
riots. President Vladimir Putin and Karimov
discussed the situation by telephone on Saturday
and expressed "serious concern" over possible
destabilization in Central Asia.
"We
are receiving
disquieting information that everything that
happened there was pre-planned," Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov said Sunday. "According
to our information, the group that had prepared
all this and tried to bring it to fruition
included various representatives, including
the Taliban," Lavrov said. Lavrov also suggested
the United Nations and the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) should investigate the riots.
Uzbekistan is a member of the SCO, which
groups together Russia, China, Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The group
drafted "the Shanghai anti-terror convention" and
decided that the organization would have a
regional anti-terrorist force to tackle jointly
such threats as terrorism, separatism and
extremism. There have been no reports that
Uzbekistan sought assistance from the force.
However, in the wake of the riots in Andijan,
Kazakhstan has increased border security, and
Kyrgyz border guards followed suit along the Uzbek
frontier.
Beijing could have reasons for
concern about the Uzbekistan riots as well. There have
been reports of cooperation between the militant
groups and Uighur separatists, who, like the HT,
have never formally advocated violence.
As
it is evident that a soft approach does not work
with franchised revolutions, Karimov's
heavy-handed response could become a model for
similar situations. On the other hand, the riots
in Uzbekistan once again contradict claims that
the American-led offensive in Afghanistan had
effectively destroyed the hotbed of Muslim
radicalism in the region.
Sergei
Blagov covers Russia and post-Soviet states,
with special attention to Asia-related issues. He
has contributed to Asia Times Online since1996.
Between 1983 and 1997, he was based in Southeast
Asia. In 2001 and 2002, Nova Science Publishers,
NY, published two of his books on Vietnamese
history.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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