Islam Karimov and Hillary ClintonFrom the start of the Afghan War in 2001, the US has pursued a policy contrary to what the region needs for peace. Be it empowering warlords in Afghanistan or trusting Pakistan's military and intelligence agency, the US has riddled the past 10 years with counter-productive steps.
Soon the US Congress will pass a law authorising aid to Uzbekistan for equipment for its military. In support of this deal, The Atlantic has published an article by Joshua Foust, which argues in favor of the deal, which tries to quash the concerns of activists over Uzbekistan’s track record on human rights.
To challenge Foust’s rationalisation, I present it in full --- the text is italicised --- interspersed with my critique.
Why the U.S. Should Work With Uzbekistan
The U.S. inked a new deal with the government of Uzbekistan last week.
The Obama administration has pushed for, and the US Congress is poised to pass, a law allowing the United States to give Uzbekistan aid to buy equipment for its military, known as Foreign Military Financing (FMF). Such financing for Tashkent has been suspended since 2004 because of concern over the Central Asian nation's record on human rights.
This is sparking worry and concern in the human rights community. The International Crisis Group, for example, is spearheading a letter-writing campaign regarding the questionable ethics of the policy:
We, the undersigned organizations, deplore the recent move to provide direct security assistance to one of the world's most repressive governments. We call on you to stand behind your strong past statements regarding human rights abuses in Uzbekistan, including those made on the eve of your visit to Tashkent last December to meet with President Islam Karimov. We strongly urge you to oppose passage of the law and not to invoke this waiver. Furthermore, we call on you to publicly reiterate the serious concerns the US government has regarding Uzbekistan's abysmal human rights record.
But this letter is shortsighted. In an ideal world we could wish away the war in Afghanistan and make sure every country in the region knows we are deeply displeased with their human rights violations, but in the real world people must make difficult choices. They have to prioritize. And the deal in Uzbekistan is meant to satisfy one purpose only: Afghanistan.
The premise of this argument is flawed: because it addresses only the issue with which Foust is concerned, setting aside all others. This deal does not just give the US the possibility of a new supply line into Afghanistan --- it also strengthens a ruthless dictator, hell-bent on ensuring the continuity of his brutal reign, as he represses any resistance.
The choice is not between ignorance of Uzbekistan’s human rights record and possible stability in Afghanistan --- it is a choice between enabling the oppression of an entire nation for a chance to maybe move towards a military resolution in another.
My counter-argument might be tangential if US-supplied weapons were not used against peaceful protesters elsewhere. But there is the current example of Bahrain, where rights groups claim that US-supplied weapons have been used against protesters. Britain has already suspended private defence contracts from UK companies to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, after Riyadh sent its own troops to Bahrain to support the crackdown on demonstrations. Then there is the heavy use of US-made tear gas in Egypt in the early days of the revolution against the Mubarak regime
This is what most of my human rights activist friends are afraid of. True, the absence of a US voice against human rights abuses is going to be unfortunate, but the presence of US weapons to crush democracy movements isn’t just unfortunate, it’s unacceptable.
Right now, most of the supplies heading into Afghanistan still must go through Pakistan. And Pakistan, as we all know, is a horrific supporter of international terrorism: the Taliban, the Haqqanis, AQ Khan's global nuclear proliferation network, most of the groups in Kashmir, even, potentially, the Uighurs. In country after country in Central and South Asia, the terrorism leads to Pakistan.
Now if all of these things were based on knowledge obtained in 2011, the argument would make a bit sense and there would be some merit to the sudden US decision to pamper Uzbekistan's leader Islam Karimov. Sadly, that is not the case.
Pakistan's role in terrorist infiltration into Indian Kashmir was evident when the Kargil War happened in 1999. The training, arming, and despatch of the Taliban to Afghanistan by Pakistan happened before that. The continued support of Pakistan's army and intelligence services for the Taliban after the US military intervention was not much of a mystery either. AQ Khan’s nuclear proliferation network was exposed in 2003, after the Libyan deal with the West to dismantle its nuclear programme.
Knowing all the above, the US still chose to use Pakistan as a supply route for years without reversing course. Now we are to believe that these are the reasons --- suddenly coming to light --- why the US must bolster Karimov.
Pakistan is able to get away with its intransigence for three reasons:
- It has nuclear weapons. This is something no one can change, and it is a near-perfect safeguard against any retaliation by India, and against most forms of intervention by thUnited States or the international community.
- Geography matters. Both Pakistan and Iran contain the most efficient routes from Afghanistan to the nearest coast. Again, in a world of reality Iran is a non-option, which leaves us Pakistan.
- Pakistan is essential to regional peace. Because of its nuclear weapons and its geography, and also its direct sponsorship of international terrorism, the Pakistani government can play a unique role in the eventual peace of South Asia. No one has yet figured out how to make it do that, but it is nevertheless important if only as a veto power.
Taken together, these three reasons explain why the U.S. chose to work with Pakistan, rather than around it. It was better, or so it seemed in 2001, to help the Pakistani Army's shipping and trucking businesses with ISAF transit fees, and use that to try to get the government to even out its policies. Furthermore, maintaining free and open access for the government agents, military officials, and intelligence agencies made keeping track of everything much easier. Plus, when it wanted to, Islamabad could mysteriously find a very important terrorist, like Khaled Sheikh Muhammed, and hand him over to U.S. interrogators. It seemed awesome.
Those three facts sound fair, but the article ignores three other facts that Washington also chose to overlook when it committed itself to working with Pakistan:
1. The Durand Line. The US ignored the bitter dispute between Afghanistan and Pakistan over the Durand Line that cuts right across the Pashtun population, a cause long promoted by Afghan nationalists against Islamabad. The outcome is that if Pakistan allows a "peaceful" Afghanistan, it will have to deal with Kabul’s irredentist claims over its territory.
2. The Islamisation of Pakistan. In effect, the US chose an ally which has been and is still going through a process of Islamisation since the 1970s. Gen. Zia ul Haq and his successors have effectively transformed Pakistan from a secular state into one where not just the population, but increasingly, the military’s sympathies lie with radical Islamists and jihadists and not with Western interests.
3. Indo-Afghanistan Friendship. Washington set aside the reality that any de jure regime taking power in Afghanistan, if it is not controlled by Pakistan, will pursue its irredentist claims by forming an alliance with India. This would effectively lock Pakistan between two rivals.
Whatever the incentives to form the alliance with Pakistan and use it as the main route into Afghanistan, the US Administration shielded its eyes from the assessment that it is not in Pakistan’s interest to give peace a chance in Afghanistan.
If the US wanted to work with Pakistan instead of around it, it should have taken the time to listen to Pakistan’s concerns regarding Afghanistan clearly. It needed to understand Pakistan’s national interests and ensure that those were guaranteed. Instead, Washington chose to ignore Pakistan and now analysts like Foust are crying foul because Islamabad still pursue those interests.
America's dysfunctional relationship with Pakistan is no longer awesome. It looks more like that of a drug dealer and an addict than two countries warily working toward some common goal. But so long as the U.S. war in Afghanistan relies on Pakistani supply lines, Washington's hands are tied. It can't risk cutting off U.S. troops, and Pakistan knows this. So, Washington has little choice but to find an alternative.
What exactly made the US realize this? What changed? Did a dramatic event suddenly enlighten the suits in DC as to why Pakistan continues to sabotage any semblance of peace in Afghanistan?
No, after ignoring the Pakistan dilemma for years, Washington's officials woke up one day and decided enough was enough and another route had to be found.
The biggest reason why the U.S. government has been pushing the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) trade route through Central Asia for well over three years is so that it can develop an alternative to the Pakistani supply lines. And Uzbekistan is the only other country bordering Afghanistan with access to Eurasian railways and a reasonably high-volume rail network.
Neither Tajikistan nor Turkmenistan have the infrastructure or geography (or politics!) to support a U.S. supply line into Afghanistan. And China's only border with the country is way up at the tail end of the Wakkhan Corridor, with the nearest city as isolated as Kashgar -- that's hardly an option either. Nowhere else has the equivalent of Termez, right over the border from Mazar-i Sharif. Which means Uzbekistan.
And Islam Karimov.
This is the same Islam Karimov who forced the US to vacate the Qarshi-Khanabad Airbase, a base used to supply US troops in Afghanistan, in November 2005. Karimov had butchered several hundred to several thousand of his fellow countrymen for protesting a few months earlier, and President George W. Bush had denounced the repression.
Karimov does not really like people denouncing him, so the US had to close shop in Uzbekistan. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out how the relationship was rekindled: there was an understanding that the next time unarmed and innocent Uzbek protesters are massacred, the US will look the other way.
The NDN will ensure that the U.S. will almost completely stop relying on Pakistan for supplying its troops in Afghanistan in the near future. But with the 2014 deadline for withdrawal looming and Afghanistan slowly drifting into the hands of the Taliban, does the US really want to make a deal with Uzbekistan with which it will be saddled even after 2014?
Changing the supply route does not change much on the ground. Pakistan will continue to send Taliban insurgents into Afghanistan. The Afghan government will continue being corrupt. The warlords will continue enjoying their free rein. The only thing that changes is that Islam Karimov will have American weapons to oppress Uzbeks.
It's not hard to see why people would object to Uzbekistan's human rights record --- it is atrocious, and there is no excuse for it. If all we look at was Uzbekistan's human rights record, it would seem like madness to "reward" Uzek President Islam Karimov's regime with military training and equipment. But the reality of Security Assistance or SA, as it's known, is actually more complex.
So the US can go ahead and side with atrocious human rights abusers to fulfill its needs? Whatever happened to the Beacon of Freedom and Democracy? Rewarding Karimov isn’t just about giving a butcher the knives to cut up the carcass--– in this case the people of Uzbekistan --- it is also about blackening the good name of Americans. Then again, if the US can continue selling arms to Bahrain while that country’s regime is putting doctors in prison for treating injured protesters, then, we can expect this as well.
Recent studies have indicated that SA arrangements lead to an increased professionalism (pdf) in a host country's security forces. Look at Egypt, where U.S.-trained professionalism is widely credited, at least partially, with the military's decision not to open fire on the protesters at Tahrir Square earlier this year. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of SA as a cure-all for unprofessional and abusive security services, but the value SA can provide shouldn't be dismissed out of hand
No discussion about Security Assistance (SA) can ever be had without a mention of the School of the Americas --- now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. WHISC has been a training and education facility for foreign --- mainly Latin American --- military officers and soldiers in Fort Benning, Georgia, run by the Department of Defense. Since its establishment in 1963, the facility has produced more dictators than any other educational facility in the world.
The list is so extensive and the crimes committed by men who have graduated from this school so horrendous that this article would turn into a monograph if they were all listed. SoA Watch, an organization that has been demanding the closure of SoA/WHISC for years, has a more detailed database.
The same U.S.-trained professionalism of the Egyptian military that gets praise above is also responsible for some 12,000 Egyptians being arrested and brought before military tribunals, with over 8,000 convictions. That is more than the total number of civilians brought to military trial during Mubarak’s 30 year old rule. And while we’re at it, let’s not forget that the U.S. also tried to sweeten the deal with Pakistan by giving it approximately 2 billion dollars annually since 2001 in SA --- the same Pakistan with which it cannot work anymore.
We’re talking 20 billion US dollars in American taxpayer money, squandered in the hopes that SA would work with Pakistan. Now more will be squandered in hopes that Uzbekistan will somehow come around.
When it comes to improving the situation in Uzbekistan, there are almost no options left. International isolation only made things worse -- the country is now more repressive and less respectful of human rights than it was in 2004, the last year the U.S. and EU maintained extensive contacts with the regime. Blanket engagement did not work very well, either, but the human rights situation there never got this bad.
The human rights community might want to consider whether it is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. I don't think Uzbekistan has any prospects at all for turning into a model country, even if its elderly dictator Karimov dies and a new regime, devoid of his family members, takes over. The Western narrative of the repression in Uzbekistan has become overly personalized in Karimov himself (and his daughters). As a result, people tend to lose sight of the larger, systemic problem behind that family, driven by a class of elites at the top of Uzbek society.
When dealing with a system we lack the means to topple or significantly change, maybe the best we can hope for is marginal improvement. Over time, small improvements in Uzbekistan's human rights record could add up for its people. And maybe small improvements are all we can hope for at this point.
So now it’s not about US national interests, it’s about human rights activists recognising that this might actually help human rights in Uzbekistan? The problem here is that there really aren’t that many demonstrable examples of how SA has actually improved more countries rather than messing them up. The reason for that is quite simple: too many variables are involved in the improvement of human rights in any given country.
Democracy, justice, education, economic improvement and peace all work together so that respect for human rights could start to blossom. These are just some of the variables and there are others I haven’t mentioned. Giving a dictator weapons in return for ignoring his/her human rights record because you need to supply troops in another country while hoping that it will improve human rights there is not just simplistic, it is ignorant of facts about the history of human rights.
If the US really wanted to help human rights around the world, it would have pulled a few strings on the rulers of Bahrain or stop its perennial ally Saudi Arabia from committing human rights abuses that make you laugh half the time and cry the other half. Those are countries over which the US has some leverage. Walking into the Russian sphere of influence and then hoping to bring about some kind of change by selling weapons is a fool’s errand.
Must I add that SA hasn’t worked in improving human rights in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia either, even after decades?
From two perspectives, the U.S. partnership with Uzbekistan makes sense: it is a far better choice of transit country than Pakistan, and this partnership at least has a small chance of maybe improving things a bit. That's not the same thing as selling out to a vicious thug. Sometimes there are no perfect choices, only degrees of imperfect ones. A security partnership with Uzbekistan is one of those imperfect choices.
The real argument that has not been mentioned in favour of choosing Uzbekistan as a means to supply US troops in Afghanistan is simple: the US will do this because it can. It will ignore ground-based realities on why Pakistan has failed to fulfill U.S. wishes. It will strengthen a dictator in Uzbekistan who boils people to death, alive. It will waste more U.S. taxpayer money. All because it can.