Unrest in Uzbekistan

May 19, 2005

by Robert Nolan

As more information surrounding the events of last week's government crackdown on protesters in eastern Uzbekistan emerges, it seems increasingly likely that Friday, May 13th will go down as an exceptional day of notoriety in a country where repression and violence have long been the norm. Indeed, recent events in the Central Asian country -- whose borders are said to have been drawn up by Stalin himself -- have come full circle, with the strong-armed government of Islam Karimov under increasing pressure to reform or step aside. While mostly peaceful revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia and neighboring Kyrgyzstan have escalated hopes for a people's revolution in Tashkent, observers warn that complex motivations behind the recent uprising, Uzbekistan's role in the U.S.-led war on terror and its status as an untapped source of oil and natural gas make instability, for better or worse, widely undesirable.

“An unclear chain of events

Nearly one week after the events of May 13th unfolded, it remains unclear exactly what provoked Uzbek troops to open fire on crowds of people gathered in Babur Square in the eastern town of Andizhan. The most frequently cited narrative in the international press involves protests surrounding the arrest of 23 businessmen suspected by the Karimov regime of ties to the country's Islamic resistance long active in the Ferghana Valley, where Andizhan is located. According to various reports, an increasingly angry crowd stormed government buildings and released the 23 they said were unjustly charged, along with 2,000 other prisoners, provoking unrestrained fire into crowds resulting in a widely disputed number of deaths. The conflict quickly spread to Pakhtabad, where further deaths were reported at the hands of government forces and rebels temporarily seized the eastern border town of Karasuv.

While the lack of information is partially due to press restrictions in the authoritarian state, much confusion has arisen out of the various accounts offered by government spokesmen, self-appointed opposition leaders and hundreds of refugees that have spilled across the border to Kyrgyzstan. Though Nigara Khidoyatova of the Free Peasants opposition party has said at least 745 people have been killed including women and children, the Karimov regime has confirmed the deaths of 169 “terrorists” including 50 foreign fighters, and claims no civilians have been killed. Furthermore, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting as well human rights groups operating in the region suggested mass arrests and the confiscation of film and other documentation from journalists has occurred over the past week.

“The government has one version, the opposition another,” British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said in support of a United Nations call for an independent investigation into the matter. “It is of critical importance for the stability of society in Uzbekistan, as well as for the credibility of the government of Uzbekistan, that we get to the bottom of what happened.”

Terrorism or economic discontent?

At the heart of any investigation will certainly be an examination of the goals of Uzbekistan's awakening opposition -- an assortment of those discontented by the country's dismal economic prospects, some frustrated by a long history of repression and others who seek the creation of an independent Islamic state. While few observers doubt the question of militant Islamist groups in the region, particularly in the Ferghana Valley, experts warn against indiscriminately categorizing recent upheavals as terrorist acts – an excuse long used by the Karimov regime to crack down on all forms of dissent and win the favor of the West.

“Today, some politically active Muslims simply refuse to co-operate with the authorities; others support the non-violent Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a banned Islamist group that wants an Islamic state; and a few back the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), an armed group allied to al-Qaeda,” the Financial Times reports. A Wall Street Journal editorial also draws attention to the complex nature of opposition, noting that, “In a place like Uzbekistan where only state-sponsored Islam is allowed, joining underground Islamic organizations can become a form of protest.”

Unofficial opposition groups have appealed to the international community on such grounds, noting that the 23 businessmen arrested in Andijan “were not religious extremists but successful businessmen who have carried out charitable activities and rendered assistance to needy people,” a BBC report states. The appeal added that the defendents “do not deny that they were and are still Muslims, and that they have rendered assistance to people, as proscribed by the Koran.”

Indeed, many reports have pointed out that protests in Babur Square were aimed not at the overthrow of the government, but at harsh economic conditions and widespread poverty. “At the Andijan protest, only social and economic demands could be heard as speaker after speaker complained about stark poverty and widespread unemployment and the government's stifling of private business,” the AP reports. “They denied having any Islamic agenda.” While few observers would totally dismiss the influence of the region's armed Islamic resistance on opposition objectives, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Valery Loshchinin points to a witch's brew of conditions that have led to popular angst in an interview with Mayak radio. “The difficult socio-economic conditions, certain weaknesses of power…the Islamic factor – all this combined with popular discontent over living standards make the situation so explosive.”

The limitations of “people power”

While Stratfor.com writes recent events indicate “that the population is probably more angry than fearful of President Islam Karimov and his clan,” what happens next is anyone's guess – and has many countries with various interests in Uzbekistan on edge. One fact consistently pointed out by the region's observers, however, is that unlike the conditions that fostered recent upheavals in Ukraine, Georgia, and neighboring Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan's long history of repression and lack of an organized opposition make it quite a different nut to crack.

According to Justin Burke of Eurasianet, democratic movements in Georgia and Ukraine, “Both featured well-managed anti-government protests, in which highly organized student groups functioned as shock troops, acting under the direction of cohesive opposition political leadership,” adding that “Those two revolutionary efforts also benefited by having clearly defined and charismatic leaders – Mikhail Saakashvili in Georgia and Viktor Yuschenko in Ukraine – espousing relatively clear political programs” that helped smooth the transition of power. Such conditions, experts say, do not exist in Uzbekistan.

Many analysts fear that the overthrow of the Karimov regime would result in a power vacuum that could lead to bloody chaos at worst and uphold the status quo at best. “Uzbekistan's protesters would seem to stand little chance against Mr. Karimov's security forces, who have shown they will stop at nothing to crush dissent,” The Economist writes. “In the absence of a charismatic opposition leader, power may instead pass to a supporter of the regime from among the country's dominant clans. If so, there may be little hope of economic reform, just a redistribution among the elite of the spoils of power.”

Indeed, one editorialist in Belarus reported that judging by the amount of bloodshed in Uzbekistan thus far, “one should not speak of a ‘velvet revolution' but rather a ‘sandpaper' one.”

U.S. balancing act

Furthermore, some analysts question the international community's commitment to regime change in Uzbekistan, particularly considering Karimov's role as an anchor of stability in a geo-politically critical and energy-rich part of the world. “Tashkent may be the home of a vicious regime, but Uzbekistan has been the only pilar of stability in an otherwise weak and geographically shattered and isolated region,” the analysts at Stratfor.com write, noting the strategic importance of Uzbekistan to American, Russian and Chinese interests.

American policy towards Uzbekistan has quickly been thrust into the spotlight, with groups questioning the U.S. alliance with the Karimov regime as part of its global war on terrorism along with its much-professed commitment to democracy and human rights in the region. One of the administration's biggest critics is former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, whose outspokenness on Uzbek human rights violations has earned him the ire of the British government. “Karimov is very much Bush's man in Central Asia,” Murray writes in the Guardian, citing U.S. military bases in Uzbekistan, foreign aid to the regime and Karimov's 2002 trip to the White House. “There is not a senior member of the U.S. administration who is not on record saying warm words about Karimov. There is not a single word recorded by any of them calling for free elections in Uzbekistan.”

That, however, may soon change as U.S. policymakers weigh their options in what most agree is a complicated equation. American officials have become increasingly outspoken regarding events in Uzbekistan in recent days, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice seeking to turn attention away from Uzbekistan's role in the war on terrorism and toward reform. Indeed, some have gone so far as to attribute, at least in part, the uprising in Uzbekistan to President George Bush's speech in neighboring Georgia. “Now, across the Caucasus, in Central Asia, and in the broader Middle East, we see the same desire for liberty burning in the hearts of young people,” he told a crowd in Tbilisi. “They are demanding their freedom – and they will have it.”

Whether or not the U.S. will have the final say on the outcome of recent events in Uzbekistan is unclear, but the Wall Street Journal opines that the task at hand is to “identify pro-democracy forces that deserve U.S. backing with the hope that even the Uzbeks will some day be able to make the transition to democracy.”

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