Uzbekistan Tells US to Get Troops Out

During the Cold War, the US had as allies some governments that weren’t particularly nice. From the beginning -- during the Korean War, the US sent troops to die for a foreign dictator (Syngman Rhee, Butcher of Jeju). It was the “lesser evil” argument against global communism. Today, the Bush administration is trying to fight a war on terror (Fascislam actually) and at the same time, trying to spread democracy. The problem is that his allies in the first fight are his enemies in the second. For that reason, he has just been told by his Uzbekistan allies to get US troops out of their country. The American media has largely ignored this, but who lost Uzbekistan?

After the Soviet Union went out of business, Uzbekistan became an independent nation near Afghanistan, and ever since, it has been under the authoritarian rule of Islam Abduganievich Karimov, who was also First Secretary of the Uzbekistan Communist Party before independence – in short, he was Moscow’s governor. He is not a nice man. The Clinton administration said his most recent referendum to extend his rule as president (which he one with 91.9% of the vote) “was neither free nor fair and offered Uzbekistan's voters no true choice.” Worse, the UN says torture is "institutionalized, systematic, and rampant" under his regime.

On May 13, 2005, President Karimov’s troops fired on demonstrators, killing an official 176 (all of whom were described as “terrorists” – which is odd since terrorists rarely attend demonstrations in their official capacity). Unofficially, 500-1,000 were shot dead including children (who can be little terrors but not little terrorists). The Bush administration decided it couldn’t very well say it was building democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan while remaining silent on Uzbekistan. It complained in public, and in July, the government of Uzbekistan told Mr. Bush to get his people out of the Kharsi-Khanabad airbase within six months. On Friday, the Uzbek Senate voted unanimously to insist on a date for Yankee departure.

And what have the US airmen been doing at Kharsi-Khanabad? According to Reuters, “Washington won use of the base shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, using it as a hub for operations in Afghanistan and praising its authoritarian ex-Soviet host nation as an ally in the global war on terrorism.” Since operations against the Fascislamists in Afghanistan are continuing, the loss of the base there hampers the US fight against that ideology and the fight for security in the region. Worse, the price of heroin on the streets of New York is likely to fall thanks to this move, as more Afghani poppies can now be cultivated. Rising supply means falling prices, but also more money in the pockets of warlords who aren't necessarily on America's side.

At the same time, this wasn’t just a case of Mr. Karimov throwing his weight around. Nuriddin Zainiyev, Mr. Karimov’s hand-picked governor of Kashkadar Region where the base is located, told parliament before the vote, “Wherever American bases crop up, so does a fundamentalist mood and so do enemies of America, and we don't want to be caught between the two.” That doesn’t seem much like propaganda so much as a fact that supports Mr. Karimov’s argument against having US bases in Uzbekistan. The question now is whether Mr. Bush can use diplomacy (a tool he usually ignores) to save the situation. If not, President Bush will have lost Uzbekistan in the fight for democracy in the Muslim world.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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