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CENTRAL ASIAN VOICES: THE DILEMMAS OF U.S. - UZBEK RELATIONS
The story of the U.S. relationship with Uzbekistan is really quite a sad one, characterized by misunderstandings and miscues on both sides. The U.S.-Uzbek relationship is all of 16 years old, and involves one Uzbek president, Islam Karimov, who from the beginning has sought to get and then keep the attention of the U.S. However, he sought to do this in a very “old-style” way, by offering the U.S. a strategic partnership that focused on shared foreign policy goals rather than on shared political values.
First the civil war in Tajikistan, then the presence of these terrorist groups within striking range of Uzbekistan made Karimov even more leery of democratic reforms than his initial instinctive reticence. But nonetheless some key U.S. officials became convinced that they shared some important security goals with the Uzbek regime, and the US gained permission to send unmanned drones into Afghanistan from Uzbek territory in search of Osama bin Ladin, a practice eliminated after George W. Bush came to power.
The U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan eliminated Uzbekistan’s major security threat, and new opportunities for cooperation with the U.S. The prospect of U.S. pressure for economic reform was something that was viewed with real enthusiasm by certain pro-reform elements within the Uzbek political establishment of Uzbekistan, who accepted that some political reform, especially better protection of property was necessary for economic reform to succeed.
The World Bank and IMF did go to Uzbekistan and did offer a new economic reform package, whose benchmarks were not achieved, leaving these international financial institutions very frustrated with the Uzbek economic officials. For their part, the Uzbeks were angry at the World Bank and IMF officials, whom they believed had never made a sufficiently attractive offer to repel the criticisms of anti-reform elements that dominated the remnants of the old planned economy, especially those tied to the sale and production of cotton, who would stand to lose from economic reforms.
In this environment, it did not take long for the new U.S.-Uzbek “strategic” relationship to begin to sour, and for both sides to walk away unhappy. The Uzbeks had thought that they were getting a strategic friendship with the U.S. akin to what had been on offer in earlier decades, and that the U.S. would support the full-blown reform of the country’s security establishment, as well as provide massive economic and political assistance. The Uzbeks knew that most foreign aid packages were relatively small, but that “close friends” like Egypt and Israel (and Pakistan in earlier decades) were disproportionately rewarded, and they believed that they had taken a disproportionate risk by inviting the U.S. to open a base nearly in Russia’s back yard.
Would massive assistance have created a suitably attractive atmosphere in Uzbekistan for reform?
Personally, I do believe that the government of Uzbekistan would have supported major economic reforms and some political reforms—including creating an improved human rights environment—- had there been a more attractive economic assistance package provided to the Uzbeks.
While this is no excuse for their behavior, it is worth considering whether had the Uzbek government received the kind of security assistance they envisioned, the events in Andijian could have played out differently.
Retraining programs, which are necessary throughout the former Soviet Union are very expensive to put together and run on a mass scale, and the funding offered for these projects kept their scale small. You can’t transform those working in security services from the atmosphere of physical abuse that was commonplace in the Soviet Union simply by legislating that they now respect human rights.
And if the U.S. had been in the middle of a multi-year retraining program for the Uzbek armed forces, and the horror of Andijian had nonetheless occurred, would Tashkent have then refused to have an international enquiry launched by the UN or the OSCE.
Two years after Andijian U.S. authorities are still stuck between a rock and a hard place with regard to Uzbekistan. While the Uzbek regime does not enjoy its relative isolation, under E.U. sanctions and at risk of sanctions from the U.S as a “country of particular concern” on questions of religious freedom, the Karimov regime seems more securely rooted now than ever in large part because of the consolidation of its security forces in favor of the State Committee on National Security.
While President Karimov’s term ends in December if the recent constitutional change in Kazakhstan is at all indicative, and I think that it is, Karimov will also seek the amendment of his country’s constitution to permit him to remain in power for the rest of his life. The relative acquiescence of U.S. officials to changes in Kazakhstan’s constitution will make it difficult to mount an effective diplomatic protest in the Uzbek case.
Should the expected constitutional change be introduced the U.S. and its OSCE allies in the EU will confront a stark choice. The continual isolation of Karimov and his regime will effectively mean the continued isolation of the Uzbek people.
Moreover, given the strong position of the Uzbek security establishment (and its more classic bureaucratic organization), the transitional period in Uzbekistan is likely to be even more orchestrated, and possibly even more opaque than that in Turkmenistan, and could well last several years before there is any real likelihood of pro-reform elements receiving any autonomy of decision-making.
The majority of the Uzbek population and especially those living in rural areas are less educated today than they were 16 years ago, and they are less committed to secular values than the like-aged population was at the time of independence. The continued isolation of the Karimov regime means that in the next five to ten years the rural population will be even less exposed to secular ideas, and more removed from the technology-based forces of globalization.
If a half dozen top government officials can’t go to Europe, or visit their children studying there, then in their minds at least, it is logical that all Uzbeks should have more difficulty getting to Europe (or the U.S.) to study. Fortunately some of the restrictions against study in the U.S., which were indirectly applied, have been lessened, but those seeking independent study opportunities in the U.S. are still at a disadvantage when they return home.
So, who in the end is paying a bigger price for our limited engagement with the Uzbek government, the top elite or the ordinary population?
One of the big problems with our current application of the “stick” and promise of the carrot is that even in the best of times the “carrot” was far smaller and less tasty than the one the government in Tashkent expected to be offered. So its withdrawal is of less consequence than we would like, and the prospects for applying a larger stick are highly unlikely.The U.S. may try to isolate Uzbekistan, but neither Russia nor China will make the same choice, further diminishing the range of our options.
Martha Brill Olcott, Senior Associate
Central Asian Voices, July 25, 2007
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