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MAJOR POWERS AND UZBEKISTAN: COMMON INTERESTS AND CONCERNS
ABDUMANNOB POLAT,
Independent consultant, Washington, USA
Is Uzbekistan Important?
Uzbekistan is a key geostrategic nation in Central Asia, because of its prime geographic location at the critical crossroads of China, Russia, the Middle East and southern Asia.
For over two millennia Central Asia, the heart of Eurasia, has functioned as the overland “silk road” - Western land route to and from China. The rapid rise of China over the last decade as a global power, as a U.S. competitor or even potential opponent will see Beijing try to reestablish its historic strong influence or control over the region, where it still has significant security and economic concerns. If the U.S., Europe and Russia are to counter Chinese efforts, they must have a strong presence in the region.
Another contender for Western influence in Central Asia is Russia, the region's historic neighbor and overlord. Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia is slowly and steadily reemerging as a great power and attempting to regain its traditional influence over the region. Currently Russia is a strategic ally of Uzbekistan and maintains close relations with all the other countries in the region.
Uzbekistan is also a major entryway to Afghanistan from the north. Almost six years after the overthrow of the Taliban, the nation produces more than three quarters of the word heroin (what mostly goes to Russia and Western Europe via Central Asia) and remains unstable, with its strategic importance to the U.S. and its allies underlined by strong international presence, including 15,000 American troops.
The natural resources of Central Asia and the Caspian ensure that U.S., Chinese and Russian and other important players’ interests in the region can only grow. Proven oil and natural gas reserves have been estimated at up to 3% and 4% of the world total, respectively. By 2012-15 the oil output of Central Asia and the Caspian will meet or exceed Venezuela's 2002 production, South America's largest oil producer. Some estimates rate the Caspian region's natural gas potential as even more significant than its oil potential. Regional proven natural gas reserves are estimated at 232 trillion cubic feet, comparable to those in Saudi Arabia. Uzbekistan is one of the top ten natural gas-producing countries in the world. Though the region’s energy resources are less than those in the Persian Gulf or Russia, they will definitely play a stabilizing role in world energy prices and supplies in the future.[i]Continued access to uninterrupted energy supplies is as crucial for sustaining American, Western European, and Japanese prosperity, as it is the Achilles' heel of Chinese and Indian economic growth. The energy reserves of Central Asia, the Caspian and its neighbor Iran underline their enormous strategic importance not only to China, Russia and the U.S. but to Japan, India and the European Union as well. As great nations vie with one another for the region’s vast energy reserves, Uzbekistan’s strategic position grants access - or prevents control - of existing and potential Central Asian pipeline routes linking Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and the West.
Uzbekistan has other mineralogical assets; it was the main supplier of uranium for the Soviet Union. The question of who controls these strategic resources of uranium is very important despite receiving little attention in the international or local press. Uzbekistan also produces about 70 metric tons of gold annually.
By virtue of demography and geography, Uzbekistan is the most crucial nation in the region. Uzbekistan's 27 million citizens have a strong sense of statehood and relatively secular and modernized culture with the potential to provide significant resistance to the threat of regional foreign domination or Islamist militancy (in June 1990 Uzbekistan was the first Central Asian republic to declare that its own laws had sovereignty over those of the Soviet government). It is the most populous country in the region and shares borders with all the other Central Asian nations. There are significant Uzbek minorities in all of the other Central Asian states, including Afghanistan.
With still a 99.3% literacy rate (as result of the Soviet legacy)[ii] and a modernized and industrialized post-Soviet economy, Uzbekistan is a major player in the part of the world, where Islam plays a potentially crucial role. A prosperous and democratic Uzbekistan could be an extremely important bridge between the Western and Muslim worlds.
In a darker turn of events, however, Uzbekistan and the region could see the rise of bloody conflicts, either internal or with neighboring countries aimed at establishing control over limited resources of wealth, water, energy, or land. Other possible scenarios in Uzbekistan include the establishment of a radical Islamic or an extremist nationalist regime. In the absence of an ongoing and sustained U.S., European and Russian presence, the region will likely move in a highly undesirable direction for their interests and threaten them. In contrast, a strong U.S. and European presence and ongoing positive engagement with Uzbekistan will help to promote Western interests by helping to construct a stable and more democratic nation, which in turn would further regional cooperation and the region’s greater integration into the international community.
Even before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Uzbekistan moved more swiftly than any other Central Asian nation to develop ties with the U.S. Uzbek-U.S. security and military cooperation even before 9-11 was relatively close. Tashkent allowed drone over-flights of Afghanistan to observe Al-Qaeda camps. Uzbek troops were a major component of the CentrAsBat joint military exercises and NATO’s other partnership and cooperation programs. Many Uzbek officers were trained in U.S. military facilities and many students from Uzbekistan attended American universities.
Common Interests and Concerns: Radical Political Islam in Uzbekistan
In the late 1990s, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) emerged, backed by the Taliban and with reported ties to Al-Qaeda. The IMU grew out of a number of radical groups that arose shortly before and after the 1991 collapse of the USSR, including the Islamic “Adolat” (“Justice”) and associated groups “Tavba” (“Repentance”) and “Islom Lashkari” (“Army of Islam,”). These groups led by Tohir Yoldosh (Tahir Yuldashev), emerged in Namangan, a province in Uzbekistan’s portion of the Ferghana valley, along with similar, less known groups in the valley. Initially most of these groups were non-violent (despite one calling itself the “Army of Islam”), while they advocated establishing an Islamic state. In late 1991and early 1992, “Adolat” was able to implement in Namangan some elements of Shariya, Islamic law. Most members of the group were collaborating with local government and became “narodnye druzhinniki” - volunteer aides to police (miliciya). There were reports that “Adolat” members detained thief suspects and alleged prostitutes, brought them to mosques, delivered them lectures, lessons on ethical norms and Islam. In some cases, however, they reportedly humiliated, intimidated, and, in a few cases, even beat suspects. During this period, crime rate dropped significantly in Namangan. People could leave their cars unlocked without fear of theft. “Adolat” became popular in the region. In March 1992 President Islam (Islom) Karimov’s government banned Namangan’s these Islamist organizations. After several of their members were jailed, remaining leaders, including Tohir Yoldosh, left to Tajikistan. With experience gained by Uzbek Islamists in Tajik civil war of 1992-97, they became militant and willing to use violence to achieve their goals, or as they saw it, in self-defense.
In early December 1991, during Uzbekistan's first popular presidential elections, these groups in conjunction with a number of moderate Muslim leaders organized peaceful demonstrations in Namangan. The day before the protests began, Karimov -- whom the Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic had elected president in March 1990 -- met with traditional “aktiv” - government-selected representatives, mostly government officials. In a sanitized report on Uzbek state TV evening news, nevertheless this event was presented as a meeting with local voters, while in reality four local representatives selected by Namangan’s mosques were barred from attending the gathering.
Karimov, who already had returned to Tashkent, flew back to Namangan and met with demonstrators led by Yoldosh, who had occupied the regional government building. During the meeting Uzbek leader was accompanied by only one or two bodyguards. Yoldosh produced a 10-point list of demands, including that Karimov should immediately declare Uzbekistan an Islamic state. President replied that Uzbekistan had a Constitution and such major changes should be first discussed publicly prior to being voted on by Parliament. [iii] Karimov did honor one of his promises to Yoldosh; after winning the elections, when he used both the Quran and the Uzbek Constitution during his swearing-in ceremony.
According to reliable reports, during the mid-1990s, Yoldosh established close ties to Muhammad Solih, leader of one of the Uzbek opposition groupsand Karimov’s chosen opposition candidate for the December 1991 presidential elections, who was then living in self-imposed exile in Turkey. After the Taliban’s failure to acquire political and diplomatic recognition from major world powers in the wake of its 1996 capture of Kabul and -- later -- most of Afghanistan, Yoldosh understood that he needed allies among “secular-democratic” opposition leaders like Solih in order to legitimize (in the eyes of his fellow Uzbeks and the world) a possible seizure of power from Karimov.Most prominent opposition leaders living in exile in Turkey refused Yoldosh’s offer to join forces, possibly remembering similar alliances from Tajikistan in early 1990s, when the small indigenous opposition with a secular-nationalist-democratic agenda allied itself to a “united” opposition dominated and led by Islamists. As a result, Yoldosh subsequently gained covert political support only from Solih and a small group of his associates.
It is impossible to determine what came first, whether government repression of these opposition groups radicalized them or that the Uzbek regime concluded that it had no choice other than to suppress alleged extremists. Expert opinion is divided, with some specialists arguing that Karimov and his predecessors actually tolerated and initially sponsored Uzbekistan’s swift Islamic revival during the late 1980s through the early-1990s, which inadvertently opened Pandora’s box.
Uzbek government pressure on Yoldosh increased exponentially after the IMU’s first major alleged attack of February 16, 1999, when five to six cars with trunks full of homemade explosives detonated in the center of Tashkent within one or two hours. One of the vehicles exploded at the entrance of the building of the Cabinet of Ministers, at a time when Karimov’s limousine was expected to arrive for a high-level governmental meeting. Most reliable analysts believe that the attacks were organized by the IMU with the aim of killing Uzbek leader. It is believed that in the wake of his death, if the IMU came to power, the plotters hoped that Solih would become a figurehead President, whose presence would be acceptable to many in the country and abroad even as the IMU held real authority. After studying the events of 1999 February 16 it seems to the author that Solih was largely “out of the loop” on the operation and was uninvolved in the military planning of the attack or its execution and most likely only knew about it in the most general sense.
After the plot failed, the Uzbek government charged Solih as one of the conspirators, renewing previous accusations made since 1994 for his alleged role in “bodyguard” or terrorist training of 21 Uzbeks in Turkey. Turkish President Suleyman Demirel, while falsely denying that Solih was in Turkey, subsequently permitted him to immigrate to Norway as a political refugee. Solih was tried in absentia and sentenced to 15½ years imprisonment. As Solih did not get a fair trial, the level of his involvement in the plot and his previous ties to the IMU remain murky. However, after the failure of the February 1999 coup attempt, most analysts believe that Solih’s cooperation with Yoldosh began slowly dropping. Events after September 11, 2001 likely brought to the end their relationship completely.
Following the inevitable government crackdown in the wake of the failed coup, in August-September 1999 the IMU from its base of operations in Tajikistan attempted to transit southern Kyrgyzstan’s Batken region to operate in the Uzbek-populated parts of the Ferghana Valley, mounting operations into Uzbekistan itself the following year.
In response, Uzbekistan extended its anti-terrorist operations beyond its borders. Since the emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Tashkent openly supported the Northern Alliance forces opposing it, particularly the forces of Afghan Uzbek warlord General Abdul-Rashid Dostum. Besides its immediate concerns in neighboring countries, Karimov’s government also wanted to retain its distance from Moscow. These tactical and strategic imperatives smoothed the way for Uzbekistan’s subsequent cooperation with the U.S. In August 2000, after IMU fighters briefly detained four American mountain climbers in Kyrgyzstan, the Clinton administration added the IMU to its list of foreign terrorist organizations. Details of the incident remain unclear, including whether the U.S. climbers escaped or were released by the IMU guerrillas. There is little indication that the Americans were intentionally taken hostage; instead, it seems more likely that they were unfortunate enough to be “in the wrong place at the wrong time” during the military confrontation. While the incident initially landed the IMU on Washington’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, September 11, 2001 terror attacks on America and the IMU’s continued ties to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda even after the onset of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan in November 2001 eventually justified the 2000 finding.
The beginning in November 2001 of the U.S.-led “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan decimated the IMU elements there, with reports that IMU military commander Juma Namangoniy (Zhuma Namanganiy) was among the casualties. IMU remnants subsequently fled across the border to Pakistan’s turbulent NorthWest Frontier Province, where March 2007 clashes between Yoldosh and his followers and local tribesmen in Waziristan are a reminder that the IMU is hardly a spent force.
Based on these common goals, in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 and until the tragic May 2005 events in Andijan (Andijon), U.S.-Uzbek ties prospered and became much deeper. On October 7, 2001, less than a month after the terror attacks on New York and Pentagon, Karimov signed a bilateral agreement with Washington, allowing the U.S. military to use Uzbekistan’s Soviet-era Karshi-Khanabad (Qarshi-Honobod, or K-2) Air Base, less than one hundred miles from Afghanistan’s northern border, reportedly rent-free.
Despite the growing closeness between Washington and Tashkent in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, tensions remained in the relationship, particularly over the terms of the U.S. K-2 base lease, Washington’s support for Uzbek secular opposition groups and increasing State Department pressure to liberalize Tashkent’s human rights practices and political system. The strains increased after the 2003-2004 “colored” revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine and deepened after the March 2005 “tulip” revolution in neighboring Kyrgyzstan. The final rupture occurred followingthe May 2005 bloody confrontation in Andijan, which deeply soured U.S.-Uzbek relations, with massively negative reverberations that continue to poison relations to the present day. Was the tragedy in Andijan a massacre of peaceful demonstrators or suppression of militant Islamists? Many in Washington insist on the former interpretation, while Tashkent stoutly defends the latter version of events. What is the real truth of the matter?
Brief: Bloody Confrontation in Andijan
The incident represented the biggest confrontation between Uzbek security forces, armed rebels and anti-government protesters since the country gained independence in December 1991. The trouble began on the night of May 12, 2005 when an armed group, most likely supporters of the 23 defendants on trial, who had been held in detention since 2004, attacked a police station and then a military base. Following their success, they then took their weapons acquired in the previous assault and stormed the prison in Andijan, the most high-level and secure penal facility in the country, where the defendants were being held. They released more than 500 prisoners, some of whom joined the rioters. The gunman then assaulted Andijan’s provincial security service and police (“Upravlenie Vnutrennix Del Oblasti”) headquarters and seized the governor’s office. Rebels killed dozens of police and soldiers, took dozens more hostage, captured a huge amount of ammunition and about a hundred submachine guns. The next day, their numbers swelled by one-two thousand unarmed protesters, The militants continued to attack military symbols of the government and seized three government BTR military vehicles.[iv] The rebels gained control over main square of Andijan and surrounding areas for nearly a day. Insurgents used both hostages and volunteers as human shields. Many of the volunteers were women and children, who perhaps did not realize the imminent danger their actions placed them in. After fruitless negotiations by phone between the leaders of the rebellion and the Minister of Internal Affairs, government troops suppressed the insurgency, perhaps brutally and indiscriminately, but effectively - killing hundreds, including many unarmed protesters.
Conservative Ferghana Valley
May 2005 tragic confrontation in Andijan in the Ferghana Valley was happening in a vacuum. The southern Kyrgyz cities of Jalalabad and Osh are about 45-65 miles from Andijan; located just across the border. According to some data, these two cities contain Uzbek majorities. Uzbeks there have close familial ties to their ethnic brethren in Uzbekistan, especially in Andijan. These two cities in Kyrghyzstan were centers of the March 2005 uprising in southern Kyrgyzstan, which ended with President Askar Akayev fleeing the country after nearly 15 years in power. Cultural, economic and trade connections between the two cities and Kyrgyzstan’s and Tajikistan’s other neighboring settlements with significant Uzbek minorities and Uzbekistan’s portion of the valley, particularly to Andijan, are very close.
For centuries, the Fergana Valley, now divided between the post-Soviet states of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, had been a unique territory with integrated economic and cultural ties. Before its Russian conquest and colonization, which began in the 1860s, the Ferghana Valley was the epicenter of the Kokand khanate, one of the three states in Central Asia. After its conquest, the Russians maintained the Ferghana Valley as a unified administrative territory, but after the 1917 revolution, in 1920s and 30s, the Soviet government arbitrarily divided the Ferghana Valley between the Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Tajik republics. Despite Moscow’s arbitrary divisions, the borders in reality remained administrative lines, porous and largely non-existent, similar to the borders between current American states or Russian provinces. As result, inhabitants of the Kyrgyz and Tajik parts of the Valley, particularly ethnic Uzbeks, were closer in many ways to Uzbekistan than to their fellow citizens in Kyrgyzstan’s north and Tajikistan’s mainland - mostly mountainous regions, both throughout the Soviet period and post-Soviet independence.
Travel difficulties have added to the problems of post-Soviet Kyrgyz and Tajik authorities in asserting national sovereignty and maintaining centralized control in Ferghana Valley. Mountain passes in both countries out of Ferghana Valley to the east and south towards Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain difficult except during the brief summer season. As a result, even now the major transportation links between these territories with Bishkek and Dushanbe consist largely of air flights, while rail and road transportation out of the Ferghana Valley transits Uzbekistan. The resultant geographical conundrum combined with the hardening of the arbitrary Soviet-era frontiers means that the valley’s western corridor is its sole easily accessible route, which runs towards central Uzbekistan, though even this route, because of convoluted frontiers, briefly transits Tajik territory. Tashkent nevertheless in 1996-1998 had to build a tunnel through its highest mountain pass to the Valley to ease transportation links, which made the passage, nearly impassible a decade ago during the winter, open nearly year-round. An understanding of these geographical peculiarities and realities is crucial to interpreting many developments in the Valley, including the May 2005 disturbances in Andijan.
Uzbekistan’s portion of Ferghana valley region remained staunchly conservative after the 1991 collapse of Communism, unlike many other parts of the republic, including cosmopolitan Tashkent. The Ferghana Valley is the epicenter of religious conservatism, particularly since Russian colonization began in 1860s. It was one of the cores first of anti-Russian and then anti-Soviet resistance espousing Islamic and national independence slogans until mid 1930s, even after Moscow finally quelled revolts, labeled by Soviets as “basmachi” (‘bandit’).Despite the fact that a strong Soviet social-political order was imposed during the following decade, Ferghana valley retained its primacy as one of Central Asia’s major centers of Islamic education and learning, even though the only regional Islamic higher and special secondary education institutions permitted, and in reality, controlled by the Soviet government, Tashkent’s Islamic Institute and a madrassa in Bukhara, were outside the valley. Valley representatives dominated both “officially” approved clergy and “underground” and independent Muslim educators.
Gorbachev’s late 1980s “glasnost” policy fostered the reemergence of Islam in many parts of the Soviet Union, most notably in the Ferghana Valley.Muslim movements there ranged across the spectrum, from moderate and largely loyal to the existing state system to militants and radicals. Uzbek Ferghana Valley moderates included Muhammad Sodiq Muhammad Yusuf, head of the official Islamic clergy of Central Asia and Kazakhstan in 1989-93 and still regarded, even by his opponents, as Uzbekistan’s and region’s undisputed preeminent religious scholar and leader. Radicals from Ferghana included IMU leaders Yoldosh and Namangoniy, both from Namangan province and Andijan’s Abduvali qori Mirzaev, who was labeled by both government and majority of public to be the leader of Islamic fundamentalism and Wahhabism in Uzbekistan, if not in all Central Asia. Mirzaev, known by most Uzbeks simply as Abduvali qori, had headed Andijan’s largest mosque since the late 1980s, when the Uzbek government relaxed its restrictions on religious life, until 1995. His Friday sermons and audiocassettes of his fiery sermons were very popular, particularly among more independent and opposition-minded Muslims. In August 1995 Abduvali qori disappeared after checking in at Tashkent airport to fly to Moscow, where he was scheduled to address an Islamic conference. Passengers aboard the Moscow-bound flight and who saw him checking-in did not see him board the aircraft. Since then, no reliable information has surfaced about what happened to him. Another well-known and respected Muslim opponent of Uzbek government, who also had deep roots in Ferghana Valley, is Obidkhon qori Nazarov (also known simply as Obidkhon qori). He came to Tashkent from Namangan region as a young man. He, like Abduvali qori in Andijan, was very popular among independent-minded Muslims, his religious audiocassettes had significant circulation and many labeled him as a leader of Muslim fundamentalism and Wahhabism in Tashkent, though he denied any ties to this movement and ideology. In early 1990s, he was heading one of the most popular mosques in Tashkent. His Friday sermons gathered so many people (by some estimates, 10-15 thousand men) that Muslims had to listen to Islamic lessons and pray standing, because there was not space to traditional, mainstream praying movements (such practice aloowed in Islam, if gathering is too crowded and there is not space). In mid-1990s, Uzbek Muslim’s authority, controlled by the government, fired Obidkhon qori from his mosque. He spent 1998-2006 in hiding, first in Uzbekistan and later in Kazakhstan, and was subsequently allowed to settle in Europe as a political refugee.
Kokand and Marghilan were other Uzbek Ferghana Valley cities where influential Islamic groups emerged. Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation), a self-professed non-violent and extremist Islamic party working towards establishing a global caliphate, also has strong roots in Ferghana valley.
This article is a revised version of the part of the author’s report "Reassessing Andijan: The Road to Restoring U.S.-Uzbek Relations", published by The Jamestown Foundation, June 27, 2007
October 15, 2007
[i]. Caspian Sea Region, U.S. Department of Energy Information Administration @ http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/caspian.html.
[iii]. The author has a videotape of this meeting shot by demonstrators.
[iv]. “Vosstavshie zakreplyayutsya v Andizhanskom xokimiyate, na ix storone 3 BTR”: www.centrasia.ru, 13 May 2005.
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