I wish some supporter of the the US invasion of Iraq would explain how the Bush Administration can rationalize sending millions of dollars in aid, and providing diplomatic cover, for a repressive regime like Uzbekistan. Didn't we invade Iraq to get rid of a cruel dictator who viciously attacked his own people? Or was it because of WMDs? Oh, I forgot, it was because of Iraq's connection to Al Qaeda. Just pick a reason and when it's discredited- Wash, Rinse, and Repeat. It works to help control that oily buildup. US looks away as new ally tortures Islamists Uzbekistan's president steps up repression of opponents Nick Paton Walsh in Namangan Monday May 26, 2003 The Guardian Abdulkhalil was arrested in the fields of Uzbekistan's Ferghana valley in August last year. The 28-year-old farmer was sentenced to 16 years in prison for "trying to overthrow the constitutional structures". Last week his father saw him for the first time since that day on a stretcher in a prison hospital. His head was battered and his tongue was so swollen that he could only say that he had "been kept in water for a long time". Abdulkhalil was a victim of Uzbekistan's security service, the SNB. His detention and torture were part of a crackdown on Hizb-ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation), an Islamist group. Independent human rights groups estimate that there are more than 600 politically motivated arrests a year in Uzbekistan, and 6,500 political prisoners, some tortured to death. According to a forensic report commissioned by the British embassy, in August two prisoners were even boiled to death. The US condemned this repression for many years. But since September 11 rewrote America's strategic interests in central Asia, the government of President Islam Karimov has become Washington's new best friend in the region. The US is funding those it once condemned. Last year Washington gave Uzbekistan $500m (£300m) in aid. The police and intelligence services - which the state department's website says use "torture as a routine investigation technique" received $79m of this sum. Mr Karimov was President Bush's guest in Washington in March last year. They signed a "declaration" which gave Uzbekistan security guarantees and promised to strengthen "the material and technical base of [their] law enforcement agencies". The cooperation grows. On May 2 Nato said Uzbekistan may be used as a base for the alliance's peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan. Since the fall of the Taliban, US support for the Karimov government has changed from one guided by short-term necessity into a long-term commitment based on America's strategic requirements. Critics argue that the US has overlooked human rights abuses to foster a police state whose borders give the Pentagon vantage points into Afghanistan and the other neighbouring republics which are as rich in natural resources as they are in Islamist movements. The geographical hub of the US-Uzbek alliance is 250 miles south of the capital, Tashkent. Outside the town of Karshi lies the Khanabad military base, the platform for America's operations in Afghanistan. The town of Khanabad has been closed for months by the Uzbek government. Locals say the restrictions are compensated for by the highly paid work the base brings. Journalists are not allowed in to see its runway, logistical supply tents and troop lodgings, all set on roads named after New York avenues. One western source said: "[The Americans] expect to be here for over a decade." This will suit the Uzbek government, which welcomes America's change in attitude as its own security forces continue to repress the population. Uzbeks need a permit to move between towns and an exit visa to leave the country. Attendance at a mosque seems to result in arrest. In the city of Namangan, in the Ferghana valley, there are many accounts of the regime's brutality. A fortnight ago, Ahatkhon was beaten by police and held down while members of the Uzbek security service stuffed "incriminating evidence" into his coat pocket. They called in two "witnesses" to watch them discover two leaflets supporting Hizb-ut-Tahrir. He was forced to inform on four friends, one of whom - an ex-boxer - is still in pain from his beating. Abdulkhalil and Ahatkhon prayed regularly. This seemed to have been enough to brand them as the Islamists the Karimov government fears. The Ferghana valley has been a base for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which the US and the UK say has links with al-Qaida. But the group is thought to have been crippled by the operations in Afghanistan. Analysts dismiss US claims that the IMU is targeting American military assets in the neighbouring republic of Kyrgyzstan. The fight against the IMU has been used to justify the repression of Islamists. But the Islamic order advocated by Hizb-ut-Tahrir fills a void left by devastating poverty and state brutality. Craig Murray, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, said: "The intense repression here combined with the inequality of wealth and absence of reform will create the Islamic fundamentalism that the regime is trying to quash." Another senior western official said: "People have less freedom here than under Brezhnev. The irony is that the US Republican party is supporting the remnants of Brezhnevism as part of their fight against Islamic extremism." The US is also funding some human rights groups in Uzbekistan. Last year it gave $26m towards democracy programmes. A state department spokesman said America's policy was "reform through engagement" and that Uzbekistan had "taken some positive steps", including "registering a human rights group and a new newspaper". Matilda Bogner of Human Rights Watch's office in Tashkent said: "I would deny there has been any real progress. "The steps taken are basically window dressing used to get the military funding through the US Congress's ethical laws. Nothing has changed on the ground." Hakimjon Noredinov, 68, agreed. He became a human rights activist after a morgue attendant brought him his eldest son, Nozemjon. He had been left for dead by the security service but was still alive despite having his skull fractured. Nozemjon is now 33, but screamed all night since they split his skull open. He is now in an asylum, Mr Noredinov said. "People's lives here are no better for US involvement," he said. "Because of the US help, Karimov is getting richer and stronger."
The terrain is a bit more difficult. Think Chechnya for a closer model. No vast oil for Cheney and Bush's friends.
yes no vast oil which bush and cheney are stealing right now...very good analysis. i mean thats all you hear about now, right? bush and cheney and their henchmen are over there pillaging iraq of all its natural resources, right? i'm really sure the iraqis would put up with that since they disagree with everything we do over there...your point is wonderful. you should come to UT so you can help the socialists hand out fliers on the west mall.
Most of what I hear about is GI's dying, and Iraqis complaining because the United States can put a man on the moon but can't make it safe for kids to go to school nor provide gasoline to citizens of a member of OPEC.
ok...and...where do you see that bush and cheney's henchmen are stealing iraqi oil? you do realize that this was just one of the conspiracies that was thrown around right and that we aren't actually stealing their oil and that we never had plans to....
I never said stealing oil. You said it, you prove it. What is happening is Cheney and Bushies friends and political supporters are rewarded with contracts for rebuilding Iraq's without competitive bidding - because heck, there isn't time to do it right. Correct me if I'm wrong but Cheney is helping himself, IIRC, he still hasn't divested fully. How are we paying for this? We were planning on selling Iraq's oil and paying ourselves out of this. That does not work with Uzbekistan, especially since it turns out, hey, we need some Federal welfare to help out Iraq for a few or ten years like the Marshall plan, and at this point, we barely have enough for Iraq, and maybe a town or two in Afghanistan.
Do you have a better explanation of why we are in Iraq instead of N. Korea, Uzbekistan, or any of the other dozen nations that are doing the same thing that Iraq was?
9-11. Saddam evil. 9-11. Or is it... 9-11. WMDs. 9-11. Or maybe... 9-11. Democracy in Middle East. 9-11. Or perhaps... 9-11. Scare the Palestinians into line. 9-11. Or it could be... 9-11. al Qaeda in Iraq. 9-11.
yes because we had fought a war with iraq and they failed to comply with what they were supposed to do after the war and they continued to be deceptive during the weapons inspections why are we in afghanistan? for their natural resources? not because they were harboring a terrorist who was financing a war against us? why do we defend taiwan from china? because taiwan is so economically valuable to us? if we were so hardcore for only our economic gain then bush would have made a hell of a lot more concessions to china. why did we take out milosevic (sp?)? because the balkans are so amazingly developed? not because it was the right thing to do to get the guy? why is bush pushing for aids funding for africa? because its so beneficial to us? you guys realize we can't do everything at once. there are a hell of a lot of problems in the world and we can only tackle them one at a time. also, it's not as if we can try to take out every evil dictator in the world...geez yall can see how many problems are caused when we take out one, saddam. we can't be the saviors of the world and we have to deal with the things that we feel are security threats to us 1st. also...well i am running out of time so here is my last point because my gf is yelling at me to take her to eat...its not exactly if it is the proper thing to do to go in and invade north korea when negotiations are still a valid approach since everyone in the region is pushing NK to get its act together. gotta go...hope that made some sense
and woofer...when you say oil was the big incentive then you imply that we only did it for oil and that bush and cheney did it because they were trying to help out their friends and not because there were other things that had been going on for over a decade.....ok getting yelled at again...bye
The only bad thing about Afghanistan is we are underfunding and understaffing our effort because we wasted a lot of capital of Iraq. You can put words into my mouth (afghanistan is not justified because no oil?) but I am not saying them. Besides we screwed the pooch by not chasing the mofos into Pakistan because we didn't have the cojones to finish the job. Our natural allies in that region have the world's largest democracy and we side with the dictator. Not sure how this got into this but on Taiwan/China, curiously, the Bushies have been siding more with the mainland point of view recently and telling Taiwain to dampen its democracy. re: North Korea - the situation is no different than Iraq except it's a tremendously more difficult military operation to pull off with a lot more guaranteed allied civilian deaths so the neocons picked the *easy* target, Iraq, as their shining example. The Bushies railed against foreign interventions and the Kosovo *nation building* in particular. Their turnabout on Iraq is hilarious. There is no real AIDS funding for africa. They are not sending much of that money because no one will agree to the fundamentalists right wing christian strings they attached to it. It's a good political tactic to announce something that may please a couple of constituents ( fundies and those who are deceived by appearances ). They can make a sound bite out of it which in order to debunk takes more than a sound bite which is not how you win in American politics. The Bushies are pretty good at this soundbite good, real explanation bad for most folks. No, they did it for a lot of reasons real and imaginary *and* because there was oil to fund their plan afterwards. We've already gone over this - the neocons explained themselves at the American Enterprise Institute web site (which is if what one believes in order to put the Bushies in the best possible light - their public explanations back then were goofy ) what the fantasy land scenario they were operating under pre-Gulf War 2. Unfortunately, they only planned for the best case scenario.
Wait, you make fun of Neocons wanting to bring "Democracy" to the middle east, then turn around and bash a benevolent and half-assed dictatorship?
Uzbekistan does have a good deal of natural gas, 66.2 trillion cubic feet in estimated reserves, which is roughly 1/3 of the U.S. reserves (in a country roughly 5% of the size of the U.S.)
*You* said that, not me. I'm making fun of the fact they said it would be easy and that they had WMD and that they implied they had something to do with 9/11. Check Wolfie and Rummie's, and that other guy who resigned's pre war statements on "cakewalk". I see nothing benevolent about a dictatorship sharing nuclear weapons tech with loonies around the world and tolerating and supporting muslim fundies who attack the foundations of local democracies, and *preventing* the US from going into those *ungoverned* areas to get the Taliban. If there is a war on terrorism, it's a shame that there are lines we can't cross, and we don't go all out just because some two bit dictator's hold on power is tenuous.
Yeah, the assasination attempts were just their way of thanking him. Pakistan was alone in doing this? And it all happened during his rule because he's the bad guy? I know what you mean, how dare he try to protect his country's sovereignty, how dare he listen to what his people want.
Also why do you always bring up India when refering to Pakistan in the context of Afghanistan? India doesn't even border Afghanistan, and India is even more territorial than Pakistan. India would ever allow American troops in its territory. In addition, Musharraf is taking a lot of heat from the opposition and from common people for what they feel is him making the country bend over backwards to please the U.S.
