Descent Into Chaos

by Ahmed Rashid

  Once again a president’s family was profiting. Karimov’s daughter Gulnora Karimova was reputed to be a major shareholder in many of the largest state-owned and private companies in the country.6 “The degree to which Karimova appears to have embedded herself and her allies in Uzbekistan’s economy far exceeds that of her regional counterparts,” said a recent report.7 The Karimov family learned little from the events in Kyrgyzstan, where Akayev’s family’s alleged corruption was to lead to his downfall. “Poverty, corruption, repressive security agencies, price controls on cotton sales, steep taxes on small businesses and restrictions on small traders have created a disgruntlement that has nothing to do with religion. Karimov’s cronies have monopolized industries for their own advantage,” wrote the Central Asia scholar Martha Brill Olcott.8

  As with other autocrats in the region, Karimov thought that as long as he stayed with the United States on the big regional issues, Washington would not bother with how he ruled. Thus Uzbekistan and Georgia were the only countries in the former Soviet Union that backed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Karimov exploited his new leverage to persuade the Bush administration to add Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) to its list of terrorist groups, a list that included the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. In January 2003, Germany banned HT, accusing it of spreading anti-Semitic propaganda. However, Karimov’s key leverage over Washington was the assistance his security services provided the CIA in its rendition program.9

  In April 2003 at a meeting of the United States-Uzbekistan Joint Security Cooperation Council in Washington, D.C., both countries pledged long-term cooperation, and Uzbekistan promised again to pursue democratic reforms. Yet its crackdown on political dissent had already reached new heights. Human rights groups said that eleven prisoners had died as a result of torture in Uzbek jails that year, even as the State Department claimed that the country was making progress in human rights. No longer were just the accused tortured, but also their families if they dared ask where relatives were imprisoned. In May the Uzbek parliament granted the president perpetual immunity from prosecution.

  The signs of increased crackdowns were inescapable in January 2004, when the Uzbek government issued new laws restricting the one hundred Western media and foreign NGO offices operating in the country. All NGOs were now ordered to register anew. The silence from Washington was deafening. The State Department, which was eager to take a public position against the measures, was once again overwhelmed by the Pentagon and the CIA when it came to policymaking for Uzbekistan. Rumsfeld continued to heap praise on Karimov. Visiting Tashkent in February 2004, as major U.S. NGOs were being thrown out of the country, he spoke of “the wonderful cooperation we’ve received from the government of Uzbekistan” and promised $57 million in aid for 2004.10 As if on cue, just a few hours before his arrival, the government freed a sixty-two-year-old woman, Fatima Mukadyrova, who had been arrested after accusing the authorities of torturing her son to death.

  When the cities of Tashkent, Bukhara, and Chorsu were hit by suicide bombers in the last days of March 2004, there was widespread suspicion among Western diplomats that the government’s secret services had orchestrated the drama. Female suicide bombers tried to target the police but mostly managed to kill civilians. In four days of bombings, police raids, and shoot-outs, forty-seven people were killed, including ten policemen. The government immediately blamed HT, the IMU, and al Qaeda, closed its borders, and arrested more than four hundred people. Two weeks after the attacks, the Islamic Jihad Union, a previously unknown group whose members had broken away from the IMU and been trained by al Qaeda in Waziristan, claimed responsibility for the attacks.

  The government then moved to completely shut down Western NGOs, starting with the Open Society Institute in April, even though George Soros’s foundation had contributed $22 million in aid to Uzbekistan since 1996. The U.S. Democratic Party’s National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute were also shut down. "NGOs have no future in Uzbekistan, they went far beyond their declared charters and aim at certain mercenary goals,” Karimov thundered.11 In fact, as in Kyrgyzstan, the popular revolutions in Tbilisi and Kiev had unnerved the Uzbek regime.

  To counter possible U.S. pressure, Karimov now assiduously courted Russia, which made no demands about respecting human rights. In June 2004, President Putin visited Tashkent to sign a security pact with Karimov. Both sides pledged to “coordinate their efforts in order to create a reliable and effective defense system in Central Asia.” Russia’s oil and gas giants Gazprom and Lukoil signed deals to invest $1 billion each in developing Uzbekistan’s energy resources and increasing its gas exports to Russia. 12 Uzbekistan was back to playing the great game among the big powers, using Russia to show the United States that it was not alone, that it had other friends.

  The mass arrests and the closure of the NGOs forced the U.S. State Department to become more declaratory, and on July 13, 2004, it suspended $18 million worth of U.S. military and economic aid to Uzbekistan because of continued human rights violations. Rumsfeld was furious with Powell for taking such a measure, and the internal battle between Powell and the military continued. In the next few weeks, in separate visits to Tashkent, CENTCOM chief Gen. John Abizaid and Gen. Richard Myers pledged continued military support to Uzbekistan. Myers brazenly contradicted State by pledging $21 million in military aid to Uzbekistan. The U.S. military, which was heavily dependent on the K2 base, where now eighteen hundred U.S. troops and twenty C-130 transport aircraft were based for supplying U.S. bases in Afghanistan, also continued to train the fifty-three -thousand-strong Uzbek army. The CIA was equally determined to continue its secret relations on renditions with the Uzbek security services.

  In his defense, Karimov continued to cite the threats he faced from Islamic extremists. Those threats again appeared to be justified when on July 30, 2004, simultaneous suicide attacks took place in Tashkent, on the U.S. and Israeli embassies and the state prosecutor’s office—just four days after the start of the trial of fifteen suspects involved in the March bombings. Three policemen were killed and nine people injured as the government accused the Islamic Jihad Union of carrying out the attacks. There were also rising tensions in the Ferghana Valley due to growing poverty and the influence of underground Islamic movements. An explosion was waiting to happen and it took place in Andijan, an important town in the Ferghana Valley, where the population had been incensed by Karimov’s earlier decision to turn the main mosque into an art gallery.

  On May 13, 2005, armed men stormed a jail in the town to free twenty-three traders and businessmen on trial for belonging to the Islamic group Akramia—followers of Akram Yuldashev, a local trader and preacher who was also on trial. The next day thousands of demonstrators gathered in the central square to hear speeches by the freed men and to protest rising prices. Some of the speakers even asked Karimov to come to the square to hear their complaints. Instead, heavily armed security forces were flown in from Tashkent and in the evening opened fire on the crowd, killing at least 850 people, although as many as 1,500 may have died. “From the sky there was a storm of rain, from the streets a storm of bullets,” said Mohammed Mavlanov, a shopkeeper in Andijan. “You could see blood all over the asphalt and women and children falling down all around like grass when you cut it with a scythe.”13

  Security forces quickly removed the bodies of the slain and covered up signs of the shootings. The government claimed that only 187 people were killed, mainly foreign terrorists, while 10 security personnel had died. Meanwhile, hundreds of survivors from the square fled to the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border, where an unknown number were mown down by Uzbek border guards as they tried to cross into Kyrgyzstan. The protests and violence spread to villages along the border until government forces regained control of them a week later. Around the world people were stunned, and there was enormous international condemnation of the massacre. Washington remained silent for two days until it finally condemned the government for firing on unarmed civilians.

  Only
China and Russia endorsed Karimov’s actions and invited him to visit. Without offering any evidence, Russian defense minister Sergei Ivanov claimed that the rebels were led by Afghan Taliban. Karimov said the militants wanted “to unite the Muslims and establish a caliphate. Their aim is to overthrow the constitutional government.”14 He rejected calls by Europe, the United States, and the UN for an international investigation into the killings. Human Rights Watch said that “the killing of unarmed protestors . . . was so extensive and unjustified that it amounted to a massacre. ”15 Along with Amnesty International, it urged tougher international action and sanctions on the regime.

  In early June, Condoleezza Rice joined European countries in stepping up criticism of Uzbekistan. Rice was determined to take control of U.S. policy toward Uzbekistan away from Rumsfeld and the Pentagon. Rumsfeld snapped back that there had been no debate on the policy in the cabinet. The Pentagon blocked attempts by European members of NATO, who wanted a NATO condemnation of the massacre.16 Rice’s tough statements led to an immediate response from Tashkent, which suspended night flights for U.S. aircraft out of the K2 base.

  Some 560 Uzbeks who had escaped into Kyrgyzstan sought political asylum under the auspices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The Kyrgyz authorities came under severe pressure from Uzbek security services to return the refugees, and acute tensions between the two countries developed. Uzbek security agents penetrated the refugee camps in Kyrgyzstan and threatened people to get them to return home. Terrified, the Kyrgyz government began to return a few refugees, despite protestations from the UNHCR. The fate of the refugees hung in the balance until on July 27, 455 Uzbek refugees were flown out of Bishkek by UNHCR to several other countries, including the United States and Canada, which granted them asylum.

  Two days later the Uzbeks formally evicted the United States from K2, giving U.S. forces 180 days to pack up and leave. The eviction did not include the German military base at Termez, although all NATO countries who had condemned Uzbekistan were barred from using it.17 Karimov showed his pettiness and vindictiveness by going further, banning UNHCR from Uzbekistan and giving the army a 20 percent pay raise.18 Russia and China gloated at the decisive setback the United States had received in Central Asia. Russia moved swiftly to reassert its influence in Uzbekistan, signing a military pact in November that for the first time allowed Russia to establish military bases in Uzbekistan. The same month, the EU imposed mild sanctions on Uzbekistan, which included an arms embargo and a ban on twelve senior Uzbek officials seeking to travel to Europe. It was too little too late, for Karimov had already weathered the storm of international protest and had shown that with support from Russia and China, he was not alone.

  The Uzbek authorities stepped up prosecution of hundreds of dissidents from Andijan and the Ferghana Valley. In their trials, which were broadcast on television, many of the accused, who had been tortured and traumatized in jail, came up with fantastical stories as to how the uprising took place; the BBC and Voice of America, it was said, had been involved in trying to topple Karimov. Regional countries accused of helping the rebels included Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. The public was repeatedly told that the whole world envied Uzbekistan while the government had nothing to blame itself for. Some 250 people were eventually sentenced for participating in the uprising and were given jail terms of between fourteen and twenty years. The Andijan massacre placed Karimov beyond the pale of civilized behavior. No government in recent memory had carried out such a wanton and deliberate act of killing so many of its own people.

  Karimov’s seven-year presidential term expired in January 2007, but he remained in power unconcerned about legalizing his tenure. On December 23, 2007, Karimov ran for president for the third time. In another Soviet-style rigged election, he was elected virtually unopposed, winning 88 percent of the votes cast. International monitors condemned the poll as farcical. Now aged seventy and reported to be seriously ill, Karimov was still refusing to give up power as he took the presidential oath for another seven-year term. While Turkmenistan had managed a peaceful transition following the death of Niyazov, there is every reason to believe that Karimov’s death or departure will lead to serious instability and violence, with potentially grave consequences for the region. The ruling elite is sharply divided, while some Karimov loyalists may try to put forward his daughter Gulnora Karimova as president.

  Since 9/11 the IMU and other Islamic extremist groups, some of them linked to al Qaeda and the Taliban but others quite independent, have developed a strong underground base inside Uzbekistan. Since 9/11 hundreds of young Uzbek militants have traveled to Waziristan for training and have fought in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. The IMU leader Tahir Yuldashev remains in Waziristan and has reestablished links with Uzbekistan. After 9/11 no more than five hundred to six hundred Uzbeks were taking refuge in Pakistan’s tribal areas. By 2008 that number had grown to between three and four thousand Uzbek and Central Asian militants in the tribal areas under IMU command, indicating that new recruits were constantly arriving for training. Moreover, new splinter groups such as the Islamic Jihad Union, which worked directly under al Qaeda, had also appeared. In September 2007, German authorities arrested three German Muslims who had trained with the Islamic Jihad Union and al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas and had returned to Germany to try to bomb the U.S. air force base at Ramstein, from which U.S. troops are flown to Iraq and Afghanistan. Another half a dozen extremists who had also trained with the Union were still being sought by the authorities. These included a Siberian Russian who had converted to Islam and had come from Siberia for training in the tribal areas.

  U.S. policy toward Uzbekistan and Central Asia was one-directional, ham-fisted, and without an ounce of nuance. The Bush administration had claimed to be advancing human rights and democracy in Central Asia, even as the CIA was becoming dependent on Uzbekistan’s security services for handling rendered prisoners and the Pentagon directed 80 percent of U.S. aid to the Uzbek military rather than to economic development. Once the Uzbeks had handed over the K2 base to the Americans, it would have been difficult but not impossible for the United States to use its aid, training programs, and personnel as leverage to push for reform and encourage a cadre of reformers to emerge from within the Uzbek elite. Instead, the Bush administration treated the country as a mere dumping ground for rendered prisoners and a logistics base for Afghanistan. Uzbekistan and its people—their hopes and aspirations—did not exist for anyone in Washington.

  After the United States was evicted, nobody in Washington got up to ask, “Who lost Uzbekistan?” The question is important in the geostrategic context, given the massive gains made by China and Russia, the enormous setback to democracy, the continued sufferings of the Uzbek people, and the spread of Islamic extremism. U.S. aid for Central Asia declined by 24 percent in 2008 as the Bush administration yielded influence in the region to China and Russia. Uzbekistan’s trade with Russia ballooned from $2 billion in 2005 to $3 billion in 2007. Russian oil and gas companies began to make serious investments in the Uzbek oil industry and to buy increasing quantities of gas from Uzbekistan.

  When I introduce Central Asia in this book I describe how the Central Asian regimes and their peoples wanted different things from the American presence in the region. The Bush administration’s lack of a strategy ensured that the regimes won and that public sympathy turned against the United States as Washington failed to support democracy or economic reforms. The United States lost a major opportunity to influence Central Asia for decades to come while gaining greater access to its energy resources. In 2001 the United States held a pivotal position in Central Asia, yet five years later it was forced to yield that position to Russia and China. Ultimately President Bush was responsible for losing Uzbekistan and Central Asia, as the U.S. administration pursued one-track policies that put torturing prisoners above the need for nation building.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Taliban Offensiv
e Battling for Control of Afghanistan, 2006-2007

  On the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as divisions between Washington and some European capitals grew, the twenty-six countries that make up NATO began discussions at headquarters in Brussels about how NATO could take over command of the International Security Assistance Force outside Kabul on a permanent basis and expand a peacekeeping presence beyond Kabul.

  French president Jacques Chirac, German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, and his intellectually charged and charismatic foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, had led European opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Fischer now took the lead in trying to persuade NATO to help the United States out in Afghanistan. Fischer, a former radical leftist from the late 1960s, had trimmed his politics sufficiently to become leader of the Green Party and to persuade it to ally with Schröder’s Social Democrats. When the Red-Green Coalition won the 1998 German general elections, Schröder appointed Fischer as foreign minister—a post he was to hold until November 2005. Underlying the discussions at NATO were how the relationship between the United States and Europe could be salvaged despite Iraq and whether Afghanistan could bring the two together.