Uzbek unrest threatens Russia

MOSCOW — “Uzbekistan is to Russia what Mexico is to the United States,” Elizaveta Isaev, professor of Russian politics, said to me as we walked along Old Arbot Street.

“Just as the United States cannot control its southern border with Mexico, so a radical Islamic victory in Uzbekistan, coupled with our Chechnya problem, would create a perhaps uncontrollable Islamic threat to Russia,” she continued. “How would Americans feel if Che Guevara were reincarnated on the U.S.-Mexican border?”

On May 13, the government of Uzbek President Islam Karimov repulsed an attempted revolt in the northern city of Andijan. Human rights groups claimed that about 1,000 people were killed by Uzbek security police — they called it “a massacre” — but the government in Tashkent rejects these figures.

Prodded by human rights groups, NATO, the European Union, the United Nations and initially the United States called for an independent international probe into the Andijan events. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov opposed such an investigation, and subsequently a U.S.-Russian agreement blocked any call for a human rights inquiry. Absorbed by events in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush administration is seeking to avoid overreach in Uzbekistan.

But the explosiveness of the situation in Uzbekistan was underscored by the fact that on June 3, amid intelligence reports of an imminent assault on the Israeli and U.S. embassies in Tashkent, both evacuated nearly all their staff.

Angered by the possibility of any U.S. involvement in its internal affairs, the Karimov government retaliated by curtailing American use of Uzbekistan’s air base at Karshi-Khanabad, a logistics hub used to funnel supplies for military operations against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Rather than risk a deepening of great power disputes over Uzbekistan, the United States shifted its flight patterns from Karshi-Khanabad to airports in neighboring Kyrgyzstan.

Muslims comprise 88 percent of Uzbekistan’s population of 26 million, and the country is considered a breeding ground for radical Islamic terrorist groups. The United States has identified four insurgent groups operating in Uzbekistan: al Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Islamic Jihad, and the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement. A fifth must be added to these, and this group is Hizb-Ut-Tahrir — the Party of Liberation, which seeks to establish an Islamic caliphate in Tashkent.

“America is separated from the Muslim world by oceans, but Russia sits on top of a volcano,” Mrs. Asaev observed. “Because Russia lies north of the majority of the Islamic world, we have 300 million Muslims on our southern flank.”

Four major players are competing against each other in Central Asia: The United States, Uzbekistan, Russia and China. Central Asia is now a battlefield of great power diplomacy, and has re-entered the spotlight of history. It is a regional replay of the Cold War.

Washington’s diplomacy in Uzbekistan is conflicted.

On the one hand, after September 11, the Uzbek government allowed the United States to establish a military base on its soil. Not only does this base play an important role in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it also positions U.S. power on the borders of Russia and China. The base in Uzbekistan is a vital link in the encirclement of both Russia and China, the Americans have another base in neighboring Kyrgyzstan, and it is against U.S. interests to do anything to undermine its continued use of these assets.

On the other hand, Mr. Karimov is a Soviet-style authoritarian, and a barrier to President Bush’s ambition to democratize the world. But the United States cannot move aggressively to topple this KGB clone, because his departure could bring a fundamentalist Islamic government to power. Since 88 percent of Uzbeks are Muslims, and since at least five radical Islamic groups are active in Uzbekistan, a U.S. attempt to democratize that country could bring about the installation of an anti-American radical Islamic government just north of Afghanistan.

Above all, Washington needs to avoid re-creating the Sino-Soviet alliance of the Cold War. It must not do anything in Uzbekistan that might revive the Sino-Soviet entente.

The choices facing Mr. Karimov were narrowed by recent upheavals in Georgia, the Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. Popular insurrections in these ex-Soviet republics overthrew authoritarian governments, and Mr. Karimov fears that a movement to the left, a retreat from his hegemonic control, would ultimately also lead to his departure from office.

Story Continues →