A few weeks ago, this blog looked at the case of Voice of America Uzbek service reporter Abdulmalik Boboyev, who was arrested on charges that most observers saw as trumped-up. The question then was, would the U.S. step up to defend him, given that the U.S. relies heavily on Uzbekistan for the Northern Distribution Network to ship military cargo to Afghanistan? The Pentagon surely remembers that in 2005, Uzbekistan kicked the U.S. out of the Karshi-Khanabad airbase after the U.S. criticized the killing of hundreds of protesters in Andijan. So would it risk it this time?
Now the case is more or less resolved, and it's worth looking at how the U.S. did, and if they did in fact pull their punches on the Boboyev case for the sake of military expediency.
In the end, the picture is mixed. Although the U.S. public statements weren't overly strong, and didn't come from a high level (for example from Obama or Clinton), they were consistent and made the point. Robert Blake, the State Department's top diplomat for Central Asia, made the point regularly (and met again with Boboyev last week). And although Boboyev was convicted on most of the charges he faced, he didn't get any jail time. I asked Alexander Cooley, an expert on Central Asia and military bases at Barnard College, on his take. He said the U.S. did a "reasonable job":
Boboyev is an interesting example as he had been awarded a prize by the US Embassy in Tashkent for his reporting on US-Uzbek relations. In this case, US State Department officials did a reasonable job of communicating their concerns and warning of the terrible political fallout that would ensue if Boboyev were to serve jailtime and be banned as a journalist. He was subsequently convicted for defamation and undermining public security, but was fined and not jailed, thus avoiding the worst. But most other current cases lack this element of US interest that would prompt robust engagement from US officials.
I had interviewed Cooley for a piece I wrote exploring more generally the relationship between the NDN and human rights; it was published last week at The Diplomat:
The Northern Distribution Network has only strengthened the US military's role in Uzbekistan, says Alexander Cooley, a political scientist at Barnard College. ‘So, even if certain officials within the State Department still want to push the rights agenda, the Uzbek government knows that it can appeal to the US military which is focused on strategic issues and downplays issues of democracy, rights and governance,’ he says.
And as it happens, another story that I wrote on the same topic also was published last week in The Atlantic. For that story I talked to Nigara Khidayatova, an Uzbek human rights activist, on her perception on how the U.S. was balancing human rights and the NDN (the article was written before the Boboyev case):
Khidoyatova told me she still counts the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent as one of her strongest allies, and credits its diplomats for winning the release (in November 2009) from prison of one of her allies, Sanjar Umarov. Yet she also says that the Americans have become “passive” about the human-rights situation in Uzbekistan since the new freight route started up, and that the embassy’s cooperation with nongovernmental organizations has declined.
But like many liberals in Uzbekistan, Khidoyatova is afraid of undue Russian influence, and of the potential for radical Islam to spill over from Afghanistan; both are checked by the U.S. military presence. “I understand that the situation in Afghanistan is very difficult. And we don’t want the U.S. to leave Central Asia,” she says. “They have different priorities in Uzbekistan now, but maybe in the future our time will come again.”
Joshua Kucera, a senior correspondent, is Eurasianet's former Turkey/Caucasus editor and has written for the site since 2007.
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