Andijan and After

As the crisis in Uzbekistan is still unfolding, it’s probably too soon for anyone to make a clear judgment of precisely what has taken place in Andijan, and why. It is, however, certain that there has been large-scale loss of civilian life, and that this was the direct result of Uzbek government decisions – in particular, those of President Islam Karimov.

The outrage this atrocity has caused in the Western media and in Western public opinion can be compared to the outrage felt in the West at the atrocity in Beslan. In both cases, the sheer scale of the brutality served to bring the situation into the spotlight, and to reinforce the notion that the bloody events were part of the international “war on terror”. Just as at Beslan the blame for the bloodshed was placed by the Russian authorities on “Islamic extremists”, so at Andijan it is “Islamic fundamentalists” who are being blamed for provoking the violence.

It could be salutary to observe one or two points which may have an additional bearing on the events in Uzbekistan.

1) The uprising took place in the immediate aftermath of the May 9 commemoration in Moscow, when President Putin drew a comparison between Nazism and Islamic extremism, and by implication equated his government’s bloody intervention in Chechnya with the U.S. and Western campaign in Iraq.

2) At the same time, and almost in the same breath, Putin launched a fierce verbal assault on the Baltic States, producing an extraordinary and disturbing version of European history according to which in 1939 Germany “returned” the Baltic “territories” to the Soviet Union, and those “territories” became a part of it.

3) As a recent IWPR report points out, American engagement with the Central Asian states – key allies in the "war on terror" - is being misrepresented and exploited by regional governments, whose actions are fuelling instability in the region:

Authoritarian leaders especially in Uzbekistan, the main player, continue to ignore pleas for change in their human rights practices. They are misreading – sometimes wilfully – the signals sent by the United States that political reform is important, too, and continuing in the belief that as valued partners they can do pretty much as they like.

4) After Andijan, President Bush is trapped. As Angela Charlton, writing for RIA-Novosti, makes clear:

Karimov blames the latest violence on a group associated with the Islamist Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which the CIA has been tracking and worrying about for years. Bush will look soft on terrorism if he dismisses this charge lightly. But he has staked so much of his foreign policy on spreading "liberty" that he can't ignore the protesters' claims that they're fighting for justice and rule of law, not for Islamic fundamentalists.