Over the last 18 months, the former Soviet Union has witnessed a surge of democratic upheavals. In November 2003, Georgians peacefully ousted their authoritarian president and installed a reformist government. A year later, Ukrainians followed suit and, just two months ago, Kyrgyzstan joined the group of democratic hopefuls in a region that is severely deprived of freely elected governments.
Unfortunately, this newest wave of democracy has found its sudden end in Uzbekistan. The Bush administration’s reaction to the bloody repression of Uzbekistan’s popular uprising was equivocal, indicating that the United States continues to value the preservation of power more than the protection of human rights and democracy.
Since its independence in 1991, Uzbekistan has been controlled by a brutal – and, some might add, paranoid – autocrat. Under the rule of Islam Karimov, independent newspapers have been shut down, opposition leaders arrested and so-called Islamic extremists tortured and murdered by the hundreds. Given the level of repression, it is remarkable that Uzbek citizens every so often take to the streets in protest of Karimov’s poor human rights record and the country’s deplorable economic situation. In the past, the government reacted to these protests by arresting key leaders. This time, however, visibly unnerved by the overthrowing of his colleagues around him, Karimov cracked down, leaving about 500 to 800 innocent civilians dead.
The sorry tale began in Andizhan, in eastern Uzbekistan, where demonstrators criticized the arrest of 23 popular businessmen charged with plotting an Islamic revolution. These charges were most likely fabricated. The Karimov regime repeatedly incarcerates opposition leaders and entrepreneurs who are in competition with the country’s well-protected clans, claiming that they are Islamic fundamentalists. When the demonstrations failed to gain the release of the accused, citizens freed the businessmen along with other inmates from the local prison. Thereafter, thousands of citizens occupied government buildings and gathered on the streets, protesting the government’s lack of political and economic reforms. Karimov wasted little time with negotiations, and within 24 hours deployed the military, which indiscriminately shot into the crowd. On May 13, the rebellion of the citizens of Andizhan was crushed within a few hours.
Curiously, the Bush administration, which likes to portray itself as the unfaltering promoter of democracy worldwide, needed days to come up with an official statement that reluctantly condemned the murder of innocent civilians. As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice explained, the United States needed more time to investigate the circumstances. In reality, Bush’s foreign policy advisers are playing for time, hoping that the media is quickly turning its attention to the next hot spot.
This strategy might save the Bush team from major embarrassments, taking into account that Uzbekistan is a strategic ally in the region and host of a U.S. air base used for the campaign in Afghanistan. On several occasions, top U.S. officials courted Karimov, lavishly handing out aid. In the meantime, the Bush administration slammed Belarus and Turkmenistan for their poor human-rights record, all along knowing that Uzbekistan’s record was not any better (and probably worse than that of Belarus).
Critics might call the Bush administration cynical. Yet it was not the Bush administration that forged a strategic alliance with Uzbekistan, but its predecessor, under Bill Clinton. From the mid-1990s on, the U.S. focused its attention on Uzbekistan, realizing that it was the only Central Asian country both powerful and acquiescent to U.S. interests in the region. What we are seeing now is the continuation of traditional power politics.
The unsettling conclusion remains: The U.S. is not really the democratic force in the world that some want us to believe. Celebrating Georgia’s new democratic government and hailing Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko is just a perfunctory gesture to shed a positive light on the Bush administration, whose role in the democratic transitions of these countries has been fairly unimpressive.
Furthermore, by remaining on the sideline with Uzbekistan, President Bush tacitly indicates that his government is most interested in deepening the hold of the United States in the former Soviet Union. That this strategy stands in blatant disregard to its declared goals – the protection of human rights and the promotion of democracy worldwide – doesn’t seem to matter. But maybe we were just a bit naïve to believe that the United States will ever move beyond naked power politics.
Christof H. Stefes is assistant professor of comparative
European and post-Soviet studies in the Political Science Department at CU-Denver. He worked as a USAID sub-contractor in Uzbekistan in 2000.
