The Same Old Game in Uzbekistan

As they say, hope springs eternal. But when it comes to Uzbekistan, it's getting ridiculous.

Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov, the former Soviet Union’s most malignant president, is engaged in one of his customary mid-rule alliance shifts. After a few years of bedding with Vladimir Putin, he’s showing some leg to his former intimate, Washington. He has released some political prisoners. He’s allowing Human Rights Watch to re-open its Tashkent office. He's again allowing NATO to use Termez as an entry point to Afghanistan.

All of this has triggered remarks by some human rights activists and State Department officers that Western sanctions against him are working.

But Karimov’s about-face is predictable. He has with regularity shifted between Russia and the United States since the 1991 Soviet breakup. What does not change are his main policies – iron-fist rule, torture and repression of his people, and impoverishing, Soviet-like economic policies.

It seems a quaint notion now, but in 1996, for instance, Karimov desperately wanted what was then regarded as the ultimate recognition in this part of the world – an official state visit to the White House. Washington rubbed its hands with glee, getting Karimov “in exchange” to agree among other things to currency reform, and to allow exiled opponents to return home. Within months of his Oval Office visit with President Clinton, however, it was back to the old Karimov – the currency reform was canceled, and opponents were arrested or forced back out of the country.

Now, Human Rights Watch says that Karimov’s release of political prisoners just before last week’s visit of a European delegation to Tashkent is proof that “sustained international pressure on Tashkent is effective.”

It means nothing of the sort. What it does mean is that Karimov remains a cynical – and shrewd – geopolitical player who knows precisely how to push the right buttons in both Moscow and Washington.

Photo: DGtal Plus Art & Photo
Rights: Creative Commons

Who's Afraid of Vladimir Putin?

In a long interview I did last night for Bob Brinker's show Money Talk, a man asked me whether I think that Vladimir Putin is the most dangerous man on Earth. I replied that I could think of five men more dangerous.

But the exchange raises a question: How has Putin -- a glad-hander of rogues to be sure, a petro-nationalist definitely, an intolerant autocrat at home as well -- managed to earn the impression of a menacing figure abroad? He hasn't started any wars; as far as I know, he hasn't sold nuclear weapons or fissible materials to anyone he shouldn't have.

A more sensible view of the 55-year-old Putin -- whose party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections yesterday, and appears likely to be the country's leader for some years to come -- is that he's a politician who one underestimates at one's peril. He is indisputably dangerous to his domestic enemies, both directly and in the atmosphere of impunity toward murder that he has created at home.

Human Rights Watch should harangue him about his human rights policy. The British should continue to demand the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi in last year's Alexander Litvinenko assassination. And Washington and the European Union should move to prevent Gazprom from gaining a bigger foothold in the European natural gas market.

But Putin is not likely to provoke a war. I also don't think he believes he's contributing to Iran's nuclear weapons capability -- he lives in the neighborhood, and could be among those to suffer most directly in a nuclear exchange.

Photo: azrainman
Rights: Creative Commons