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The Economics Of Facilitating Regime Change in Uzbekistan

Angelique van Engelen - 5/25/2005

There is a growing feeling in the international community that it has been the West's support for Uzbekistan's dictator Islam Karimov that's helped boost this man's legitimacy beyond respect for human life. That the US and the UK are to blame in particular for the violent crackdown on protests in the Uzbekistan town of Andijan in which depending on who you believe between 169 to 1,000 people were killed by government troops. This makes it the bloodiest crackdown in the world since the 1989 Tiananman Square horror if you skip the Sudan´s Darfur massacres which run up body counts of 500 on a good day. Even if it has not been as televised as the Chinese clampdowns, a crime of similar magnitude still took place. If Western support has made Karimov into who he is, the rules of logic support the idea that the West can also finish him off.

Easily. If all cases in international relations textbooks were as simple as the relationship between the US and the UK and Uzbekistan, the comlexities of world politics would soon be straightened out a lot. Because the West-Uzbekistan love affair is remarkably straight forward: The US has an airforce base in the country that is not really all that crucial to its presence in the region and for which it pays dear. Karimov has been friendly with the US for a few years, yet has been strongly criticized not only by those wet human rights people, but even by the UN for its poor record on human rights. Meanwhile, the power structures surrounding the war on terror have pretty much been established and its not likely that Uzbekistan is going to play a vital role in future. Also, the Caspian oil myth has been brought back to its real proportion and the 243 billion barrels of crude which Central Asia is meant to be hosting, worth around $4 trillion won´t need all the drastic suckering that the US thought was necessary when the region initially emerged on its radar screen in 1989 as a result of the oil find.

Reason enough to think over the real consequences of policies that are meant to spread democracy and start paying heed to the upsetting news reports from Uzbekistan. "He should be made a pariah, his regime stripped off all forms of aid, and all military assistence withdrawn. When he is overthrown, which he sooner or later will be, whoever succeeds him will have little reason to love the West,`the Economist writes in its recent issue.

It is the road map for deconstrucing this dictator. The key to the know how for spreading "the untamed fire of freedom" for real! A former UK ambassador has been campaigning vehemently in vain for years to this end. He´s sacrificed his career over the issue of human rights atrocities in this country. He was so appalled over the Uzbek human rights record -having learnt of two cases in which the Karimov regime boilt dissidents alive- that he quit his pluchy Tashkent job within weeks of arriving and ran for Member of Parliament in the recent domestic UK elections simply to get the attention for the Uzbek human rights case that he said the UK foreign office did not want to assign it when he demanded it as ambassador.

Still, most of the people arguing the case for a Karimov 'elimination' unwhittingly employ a convenience of argument similar to the one that belies the questionable US relationship with this country. Because relying on the argument that since the US has air force bases in two neighboring countries and it doesn't really need Uzbekistan for saying that the time is ripe end cosy but uneasy relationships is really making yourself guilty of the same hypocracy that riddles axis of evil rhethoric; so long as we´ve ensured we´ve encapsulated ourselves in those areas where we should be encapsulated we´re free to go to town on everyone else.

Adding to this is the argument that ditching the Uzbek leader would also not undo the suffering condoned by the US and the UK over the last few years. For one, it's a known fact that people who were suspected of terrorist activities would often be sent by US and UK forces on 'one way trips' to Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, for 'questioning'. What kind of justice is going to prevail here if the US now simply is allowed to say thank you very much but we'll service Afghanistan from other locations now, must dash, toodles.

But then, logic simply does not apply to a situation where innocent people are shot dead when exercising merely democratic rights. The Uzbek authorities' claim that they have a real problem on their hands with the Islamic fundamentalist insurgent groups might not entirely be void of meaning. What would be a solution to the problem? A revolution? What if it turns out really Islamist dominated? We´d all be a bit scared then, wouldn´t we?

Of the population of Uzbekistan about 88% is Muslim and only a tiny percentage of that is member of a particular sect of Islam that is supposedly Wahhabi, or fundamentalist, which in itself does not equal ´terrorist´. Off hand, it seens unlikely that this group will be able to get a population going and seize power. Although, judging from reports from Kyrgyzstan, it´s not completely inconceivable either that a small group can effect big changes when the right strings are pulled at the right time. But assuming that history is allowed to run its course the natural way, it is unlikely that the insurgents that Karimov is handling so strictly are going to be supported by the Uzbeki population at large.

The former UK ambassador Craig Murray confirms this on his blog "True, there is a small Islamic fundamentalist political movement in the country, but in the current rebellion all the classic jihadist tactics - like suicide-bombs or targetting civilians - have been scrupulously avoided", he says. If a situation is set to change drastically at all, it´s far more likely that revolutionary forces are driven by poverty stricken people living on Soviet-style collective farms, earning less than $2 a day.