Suicide bombers, pitched battles, and a massive
police mobilization over the past
three days have thrust the Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan into the headlines
– and demonstrated why our endless "war on terrorism" is doomed to not only
fail, but to create the sort of "blowback"
that is a windfall for America's enemies.
Uzbekistan is a case study in tyranny, generously characterized by the U.S.
State Department as "an authoritarian state
with limited civil rights." The absolute ruler of the country is Islam Karimov, an
"ex"-Communist strongman who exercises total control over the state. The Uzbek
nation became independent of the former Soviet Union in 1991, over Karimov's
objections:
"If
we remain part of the Soviet Union, our rivers will flow with milk. If we don't,
our rivers will flow with the blood of our people."
Karimov has generated most of that flow: torture is a favorite
pastime of his political police, who use the same methods employed during
the Communist era to extract "confessions" and other "evidence" of alleged subversion
from political dissidents. 7000-plus political prisoners fill Karimov's jails,
imprisoned with false or zero evidence, without trial, subjected to torture,
and, all too often, capriciously executed.
"After the fall of the Soviet Union in August 1991," writes Adolat Ramzieva,
a U.S.-based Uzbek journalist, "Uzbekistan's transition from a Soviet communist
republic to non-communist tyranny was extraordinarily smooth." Seamless is more
like it. The Communist Party simply renamed itself the Democratic Party of Uzbekistan,
and, after getting rid of Muhammad
Salih, his only rival for power by exiling him, engaging in massive election
fraud, and banning his Erk (Freedom) party, Karimov, president of the Uzbek
Soviet Socialist Republic and a Politboro member, seized the reins of power
and refused to let go. A completely controlled "referendum," in 1995, led to
an extension of his term in office, and in January, 2002, a similar farce awarded
him 92 percent of vote, with nominal opposition. Political parties that aim
to "change the established order" are banned, including the "Birlik"
Popular Unity movement, which advocates democracy, religious tolerance,
and economic liberty, as well as Islamist groups which the Karimov regime blames
for the violence.
There are two main groups of Islamic fundamentalists: the Hizb-ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation),
which professes non-violence, and promotes the establishment of a transnational
Islamic "Caliphate" – essentially a restoration of the old Ottoman empire –
and the Islamic Movement
of Uzbekistan (IMU), a shadowy outfit said to have links to Al Qaeda. Although
these groups have distinctive histories, and important ideological and theological
differences, Karimov and his secret police make no distinction between the two:
Hizb-ut-Tahrir activists have confined themselves to handing out leaflets and
putting up posters, but these are crimes in Uzbekistan, earning the perpetrators
long jail sentences.
Aside from the weird personality cult
that always envelops these Central Asian "ex"-Communist leaders, the eerie retro-Stalinist
atmosphere that suffuses Uzbekistan is amped up by bizarre "hate rallies" called
to humiliate overly pious Muslim family members in front of the entire community
– much as "deviationists" were paraded around in dunce caps during China's "cultural
revolution" and Stalin's victims were forced to compose elaborate self-denunciations.
Following the explicit dictates of Maximum Leader Karimov, the doctrine of collective
punishment is the basis of Uzbekistan's "criminal justice" system: they don't just arrest
individual suspects, they round up the whole family – including extended
family members – and imprison them all.
In the wake of the Tashkent bombings, Karimov was quick to point to the Hizb-ut-Tahrir
and the IMU as the culprits. The former denied
any connection to the attacks, and Al Qaeda, as of this writing, has yet to
claim credit, while some
analysts say this may be the beginning of a popular uprising by a previously
unknown indigenous group. Whatever the case may turn out to be, of one thing
we can be absolutely certain: the government of Uzbekistan is not a credible
source of information.
There is no independent media in Uzbekistan, and whatever "news" comes out
of that land-that-time-forgot emerges in spite of the government's best efforts.
Free to torture prisoners, and extract whatever "confessions" are necessary
to convince the foreign public of the official story, the Karimov regime is
selling a narrative similar to the one created by Israel and its American supporters:
your fight is our fight because we battle a common enemy.
Karimov's brand of neo-Communism has its American defenders, first and foremost
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, whose recent Eurasian tour underscored
the U.S. commitment to the Uzbek regime. Rummy brushed aside human rights
concerns, but was coy about the possibility of establishing a permanent military
base in the country, averring that the U.S. sought to maintain its "flexibility"
in the region. In the wake of the bombings, one needn't wonder what direction
the DefSec's flexibility will take him, because it will surely be the wrong
one.
These attacks are a windfall for Karimov, politically and financially: terror
in Tashkent, whatever its source, means more "foreign aid" dollars, the near
certainty of increased direct U.S. military intervention, and a full-fledged,
fully-funded marriage-of-convenience
between Lady
Liberty and one of the last Stalinist
despots on earth. The
dowry
should eventually
be worth billions.
By the way, this weird alliance of the reds with the red-white-and-blue is
not an Uzbek anomaly: the Iraqi
Communist Party is one of the biggest supporters of the American occupation,
in spite of their pro forma opposition to the invasion. It makes a twisted kind
of sense that we would make common cause with militant secularists, particularly
Commies, in what amounts to a vast social engineering scheme to "transform"
the Middle East and eliminate the supposed "root causes" of Islamist radicalism.
Karimov's American supporters – yes, incredibly, he has them! – have been
singing his praises for months, the most
vocal being ex-leftist
Stephen Schwartz, fired from
the Voice of America for his
nutty views, formerly with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and
now, seemingly, a full-time publicist for one of the most un-democratic and
flamboyantly repugnant regimes in the world. In his new role as attorney for
the Karimov regime, Schwartz writes:
"Since September 11, the United States no longer accepts the claim that
the free exercise of terrorist agitation, incitement, and organization outweighs
the benefits of legal sanction. Here, the "fallacy of prior restraint" has been
replaced by a reliance on the doctrines of "probable cause" and "preemption."
That is, extremist rhetoric provides sufficient probable cause to take preemptive
action to prevent bloodshed."
Karimov is justified in cracking down on Hizb-ut-Tahrir, interrogating and
jailing Muslims who grow beards or wear the veil, closing mosques, and outlawing
opposition political parties, because, as The Schwartz puts it,
"By their radicalism, groups like HT that do not presently carry out acts
of violence nonetheless prepare an environment conducive to violence."
If the neocons can't quite yet implement this new principle of intellectual
"prior restraint" in the U.S., Schwartz and his fellow neo-authoritarians are
glad to see it being given a dry run in Uzbekistan. For the author of The
Two Faces of Islam, a book that posits Saudi Arabia's Wahhabist sect
as the epicenter of world evil, Uzbekistan, which bans all expressions of Wahhabism,
is a kind of utopia. He has recently traveled there and now regales his readers
with tales of Karimov's Orwellian
domain as an "aspiring democracy," a "transitional" society, and, anyway,
he grandly announces, "Uzbekistan cannot afford to assure liberty
for the enemies of liberty." Human rights advocates who criticize the modern-day
Tamerlane are "naïve," says Schwartz: "In the struggle to liberate Islam
from the grip of the Wahhabi-Saudi mafia, Karimov should have our backing."
He wants us to back this,
and this,
and this – not just with
rhetoric, but with American tax dollars There is only one possible response
to such a moral obscenity: Ugh!
My longtime readers won't be too shocked to learn about the Karimov-neocon
connection: I first exposed
it in January 2001. Even less surprising are the corporate connections,
particularly to Big Oil, which figure
greatly in determining U.S. policy in Uzbekistan.
Nor is this strictly a Republican agenda. The Clinton administration set up
a whole new government agency, and a Cabinet-level position – the Special Advisor to the U.S.
President and Secretary of State for Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy – to
make sure American companies get in on the Great Silk
Road to oil riches.
U.S. intervention in Uzbekistan on behalf of a ruthless dictator: it's good
for corporate America, good for the War Party, but is it in our national interest?As
Richard Clarke quipped in his best-selling book:
"It was as if Usama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were
engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting 'Invade Iraq, you
must invade Iraq.'"
Can't you hear it, now, that same familiar refrain, over the din of reports
from the latest front in our endless "war on terrorism"? "Invade Uzbekistan!
You must invade Uzbekistan!"
But of course we have already invaded Uzbekistan, and set up a base
likely to become permanent, aligning ourselves with a neo-Communist tyrant who
imagines he can contest Russia's traditional sphere of influence by signing
on as an American protectorate, and even dreams of a "Greater Uzbekistan." If
U.S. policy continues along these lines, and the only alternative to Bin Laden
is Karimov, then Uzbekistan is soon going to be exporting a new item, aside
from oil and rugs: a fresh generation of terrorists.
– Justin Raimondo