Uzbekistan Tests U.S. Policy Goals

In its struggle with Islamic extremism, the United States has had few better friends than President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, who has provided both intelligence and military facilities. But Karimov’s government has emerged as one of the toughest tests of the Bush administration’s campaign to promote democracy, especially in the Muslim world.

In the month since Uzbek armored personnel carriers rolled into the town of Andijon and troops opened fire on protesters, Karimov’s authoritarian government has refused U.S. calls for an independent international investigation.

Nonetheless, the Bush administration has been tepid in its criticism. Karimov’s record on democracy and the economy has been worsening in recent years, but he rules the most populated of the Central Asian nations and one of the most strategically located, and allows the United States to use its military bases.

The Uzbekistan case pits one of President Bush’s stated top priorities, demanding that dictators begin reforms that would defuse support for Islamic extremism, against one of his key military concerns, securing access to bases to support U.S. operations in Afghanistan.

Moreover, were Karimov to fall, he could be succeeded by a radical Islamic government that would be even less to U.S. liking, analysts said.

However, the United States is considering taking Uzbekistan to the United Nations for a human rights investigation, State Department officials said.

“We are considering all of our diplomatic options, including at the U.N.,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said last week.

The United States has been talking to other countries to drum up support for an international investigation, he added.

Karimov has allowed the U.S. military to use the Karshi Khanabad airfield and other bases in southeastern Uzbekistan for special operations in neighboring Afghanistan.

But critics say Uzbekistan under Karimov also illustrates the “freedom deficit” that the Bush administration cites as a root cause of terrorism.

Karimov has not lived up to pledges he made to increase democracy in a 2002 agreement he signed with Bush, and is using terrorism as an excuse to crack down on domestic opposition, critics charge.

On the other hand, Karimov has released some prisoners and allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross access to some of Uzbekistan’s notorious prisons for the first time.

Karimov has portrayed the crackdown in Andijon, which his government says left 173 people dead, as a response to a revolt by Islamic extremists. However, the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, says most of the protesters were unarmed and that the death toll could be as high as 750.

The U.S. Embassy’s reporting is consistent with the findings of Human Rights Watch, said a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The New York-based rights group last week called the Andijon killings “a massacre.”

Making matters more awkward is that the Pentagon is in negotiations with Uzbekistan for long-term access to its bases. The U.S. has paid Uzbekistan $15 million since 2001 in “reimbursement of services” for use of the Karshi Khanabad airfield, according to the Pentagon.

U.S. officials said there was no conflict in the Pentagon negotiating with the Uzbek government at the same time the State Department was pushing for an investigation of Andijon.

“It’s certainly not a contradiction to say that you will talk to them about access to a base, while not establishing a double standard with respect to democracy and human rights,” a senior State Department official said.

The International Crisis Group, Human Rights Watch and the rights group Freedom House wrote a letter Thursday to Bush calling on him to suspend negotiations over the bases until Karimov agreed to an international investigation of the Andijon killings.

The U.S. has demanded a “credible, transparent and independent investigation.” It has rejected a move by the Uzbek legislature, seen as a rubber stamp for Karimov, to conduct the investigation itself.

Increasing the pressure on Bush, four Republican and two Democratic senators sharply questioned U.S. military and diplomatic policy toward Uzbekistan in a letter last week to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The administration hasn’t decided on its strategy for getting Uzbekistan to agree to an international investigation of the crackdown.

“It could be a [U.N.] resolution, it could be a statement by the Security Council, it could be an action that the secretary-general himself takes -- or something else,” said the senior State Department official.

If the United States were to sponsor a U.N. resolution it is unclear whether Russia and China, two permanent members of the Security Council that support Karimov, would agree.

Analysts predicted that if the Bush administration has to choose between security and promoting democracy, it will choose security.

“This is going to be a case where we trade away the democracy interest for security interests, and as a result pay a price in credibility, in the Muslim world and elsewhere, in terms of our democracy policy,” predicted Thomas Carothers, who specializes in democracy promotion at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Paula R. Newberg, a democracy specialist who visited Uzbekistan in the fall, said she doubted the Pentagon would agree to relinquish the bases.

“There’s never going to be a moment when the military cannot argue that, at the behest of the president’s current policy, it is an emergency” that requires access to the bases, Newberg said.

The administration has not held Karimov to the democratization pledges in an agreement he signed in 2002, Newberg said.

Others argue that Uzbekistan is a tough case that will prove the Bush administration’s commitment to democracy.

“If you can’t act on the intersection of your values and your interests, as Bush said [in his second inaugural address] on Jan. 20, then your credibility goes down,” said Chris Seiple, an Uzbek watcher and president of the Institute for Global Engagement, a Christian think tank in Virginia. “If you can, your credibility goes up.”

The International Crisis Group has reported that the Karimov government is so unpopular at home that “the explosion point is dangerously near.”

Yet other analysts warn that if the United States backs away from Karimov, it could push him into the arms of the Russians and Chinese, who have been silent about the Andijon killings.

Immediately after the crackdown, Karimov flew to Beijing, where he was warmly received and reportedly signed a $600-million deal giving China access to Uzbek oil fields.

“The Russians and the Chinese are sticking with Karimov,” said Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “They don’t realize that if and when Karimov should be swept aside, the [successors] will be Islamic radicals” who will be as anti-Russian and -Chinese as they are anti-Western, he said.

But Seiple cautioned the U.S. not to repeat the mistake it made in Iran in 1979, when its support for the anti-democratic shah helped bring to power a hostile Islamic government that still bedevils Washington.

“We might have a base for another five years,” he said. “But if [Karimov] ends up like the shah of Iran, who cares?”