Political turmoil continues in Uzbekistan — and as the death count rises the government there has received moral support from a neighbor: Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Over the past two days government security forces facing angry mobs have opened fire on demonstrators, killing scores of civilians in demonstrations the country’s President has blamed on “criminals” and “Islamic extremists.” And, according to the Washington Post, as the U.S. expresses cautious support for the government of this California-sized Central Asian country, President Islam Karimov is also receiving moral support (will it morph into more than that?) from Russian President Putin:
Uzbekistan is a U.S. ally in the war on terrorism, and the U.S. military uses an air base in the country to support operations in neighboring Afghanistan. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Friday that a “more representative and democratic government should come through peaceful means, not through violence.”
Russian government officials are backing Karimov, and the Kremlin Web site said President Vladimir Putin was “seriously concerned about the danger of destabilization.”
The AP adds this detail:
Russian President Vladimir Putin phoned Uzbek President Islam Karimov to express concerns that Central Asia could be destabilised by fighting that broke out Friday after protesters stormed a prison and occupied the local government offices before government forces put down the uprising.
And this:
Thousands of terrified Uzbeks waiting to flee across the border into Kyrgyzstan stormed government buildings, torched police cars and attacked border guards Saturday in a second day of violence spawned by an uprising against the iron-fisted rule of U.S.-allied President Islam Karimov.
The Uzbek leader blamed Islamic extremists for the revolt and said his troops were forced to shoot demonstrators Friday as they tried to break through police lines. Witnesses counted more than 200 civilians dead.
Karimov said 10 government troops and “many more” militants died and at least 100 people were wounded in Friday’s fighting in the eastern city of Andijan, which lies in the fertile but impoverished Fergana Valley, just a few miles from the Kyrgyz border.
Soldiers loyal to Karimov fired on thousands of demonstrators Friday to put down an uprising that began when armed men freed 2,000 inmates from prison, including suspects on trial for alleged Islamic extremism.
The problem for the government: history has shown over the past few years in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union territories that tiny chips in government authority and legitimacy in the eyes of a sizable portion the populace lead to a growing clamor for it to step down and for a new one to take its place via new elections. Karimov flatly blames the violence on Islamic extremists who are trying to fan a volatile situation. China View reports:
Uzbek President Islam Karimov blamed a branch of the outlawed radical Hizb ut-Tahrir group on Saturday for the turmoil in the eastern town of Andijan as thousands of Uzbeks sought to flee the Central Asian country.
“The organizers of the unrest were ‘Akramites,’ a new offshoot of the Hizb ut-Tahrir group. Its goals, which are unacceptable forus, are hatred and denial of the secular way of development,” Karimov told a press conference in Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan.
“According to the information we have, they are brainwashing young people with ideas of creating a unified Islamic state,” Karimov said.
The Hizb ut-Tahrir group, a banned radical Islamic movement, was also held responsible by the Uzbek government for murdering dozens of people in the country last year. Ten government troops and many protesters were killed and at least 100 people wounded in the violence, the Uzbek leader said, adding that no one ordered the soldiers to fire on the crowd, referring to the reported death of women and children in the incident.
“In Uzbekistan, nobody fights women, children and the elderly,”he said, declining to give an exact number of casualties.
The protesters’ say they want to get 23 men on trial for alleged extremism released and that they’re being repressed for religious reasons. The secular government has cracked down on Muslims in some ways. And, reports say, some warned that Uzbekistan could have trouble with them after neighbouring Kyrgyzstan’s authoritarian leader was kicked out of power in March.
Meawnwhile, the latest reports put the death toll even higher: at 500.
This U.S. is in a ticklish situation, because the country is important to its interests. On the Monterey Institute of International Studies’ Center for Nonproliferation Studies’ website Kenley Butler writes:
Since the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, the five Central Asian nations—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—have found themselves at the center of U.S. attempts to form an anti-terrorism coalition against the Taliban and Usama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Of the five countries, Uzbekistan has emerged as the most important with regards to U.S. military cooperation. The staging ground for the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Uzbekistan shares a border with Afghanistan and has large air bases near the Afghan border.
Uzbekistan’s importance to the Western coalition was underscored by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s meeting with Uzbek President Islam Karimov in Tashkent on October 5, two days before the U.S. missile strikes on Afghanistan began. At the meeting, the United States and Uzbekistan agreed to cooperate in three main areas. First, Uzbekistan opened its airspace to U.S. military aircraft. Second, the two parties agreed to exchange intelligence. Third, Uzbekistan agreed to lend the United States one of its air bases for the use of cargo planes, helicopters, and personnel involved in search and rescue and humanitarian operations. According to unidentified Uzbek government sources, advance U.S. military and engineering personnel are on the ground at Khanabad air base, near the Uzbek city of Karshi, which is located 500 kilometers south of Tashkent and 200 kilometers north of the Afghan border.
Bottom line: stability in Uzbekistan is important to the U.S. and to Putin — but, more likely than not, for different reasons.
UPDATE: The lively tabloid site Sploid has this excellent summary.
And The Hindustan Times (the New Delhi newspaper at which TMV interned as a college student) has a Press Trust of India story that says Moscow believes the Taliban is behind the violence:
Russia on Saturday said it suspects Taliban and other Islamic militants to be behind the unrest in Uzbekistan’s Ferghana valley, in which many civilians are reported to have been killed in military operations in Andijan in the east of the Central Asian country.
“The sources in the foreign ministry and defence and intelligence agencies have confirmed the concentration of Islamic militants, including Afghan Taliban on the meeting point of Uzbek, Tajik and Kyrgyz borders in Ferghana Valley,” government-run radio Mayak (Beacon) said.
“The unrest in Uzbekistan’s Andijan was planned in advance and followed a predetermined scenario,” Russia’s First Deputy Foreign Minister Valery Loshchinin told NTV television.
Unrest in Uzbekistan is due the weakness of power, social problems and the extremist pressure, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Uzbek President Islam Karimov today called up his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and briefed him on yesterday’s developments in Andijan.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.