Among the 250,000 diplomatic cables leaked from the U.S. government and published by WikiLeaks are several from Tashkent. In the initial weeks of the sensational revelations from around the world, which infuriated and embarrassed the U.S. and those who had made what they thought were confidential reports to American diplomats, nothing was revealed about or from Tashkent. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travelled to Astana for the summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, she had to face Central Asian leaders about whom many unflattering things had been said in the cables, but nothing was yet published about Uzbekistan. President Islam Karimov himself did not attend the summit, and did not provide any explanation for his actions. The independent news service Uznews.net speculated that possibly the Uzbek leader had failed to gain some concession from his rival for influence in the region, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarybayev.
Secretary Clinton then stopped over in Tashkent for four hours to meet with President Karimov and human rights activists, accompanied by Robert Blake, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs and Michael Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. On the eve of her arrival, Clinton was asked by the Dutch Helsinki Committee at a town hall meeting in Astana whether she would raise the issue of political prisoners in her meetings in Uzbekistan. One political prisoner’s release was doled out as a concession before her arrival, Farkhad Mukhtarov, a human rights activist who had already served more than half of his four-year sentence.
After her meeting with President Karimov, Clinton held a press conference reiterating the importance of human rights, then met with a group of human rights activists, lawyers, and relatives of prisoners of conscience at the U.S. Embassy in a gesture of support. Uzbek human rights defenders gave her a list of persons imprisoned for political or religious reasons, and also asked about the accreditation of Human Rights Watch, which continues to not be registered in Uzbekistan. She replied that she had raised these issues with President Karimov.
Clinton's visit was part of a long-term effort by the U.S. to restore relations with Tashkent, broken after the 2005 Andijan massacre, protests by Western governments, and the eviction of the U.S. from a military base in Uzbekistan, as well as the closure of U.S. NGOs. The top priority on the agenda has been obtaining Uzbekistan's cooperation on the Northern Distribution Network (NDN), the supply route for NATO troops in neighboring Afghanistan. As Joshua Kucera, writing for EurasiaNet's The Bug Pit blog commented, "The U.S. is walking a tightrope in Uzbekistan, relying on the country heavily for its role as a transport hub for military cargo to Afghanistan but wary of embracing a government with one of the worst human rights records on the planet." While some Uzbek officials are under a Congressionally-mandated visa ban for their connection to serious human rights abuses, and the State Department designated Uzbekistan as a "country of particular concern" again last year due to systematic violations of religious freedom, the president has opted for a waiver of sanctions given the exigencies of the need for a strategic partnership with Tashkent.
Two weeks after Clinton's trip, the Guardian published several cables from Tashkent that not surprisingly highlighted the antics of President Karimov's notorious elder daughter, Gulnara Karimova, and her reputed shady business dealings, with the names of the sources redacted. Journalists have often reported rumors of Karimova's extensive business dealings with corporations close to the state, particularly Zeromax, the conglomerate now seized by the government after going bankrupt. A cable reported from the U.S. Embassy dated January 28, 2005 comes closer to any other known source to making the alleged connection between Karimova and a local mafia boss to acquire his share of Zeromax, apparently related to Uzbekneftegaz's transport of crude oil from Kazakhstan.
Beyond the murky business deals and also some colourful descriptions of the high life of Lola Karimova, the president’s younger daughter, is a cable referenced by the Guardian which helps explain the difficult nature of U.S.-Uzbek bilateral talks on human rights and why the U.S. can seem reluctant to press hard on even severe abuses. It turns out that last year, Secretary Clinton presented the "Women of Courage" awards to a number of activists, including Mutabar Tajibayeva, a human rights advocate in the Ferghana Valley described by the State Department as among the "most vocal activists in Uzbekistan, a country in which human rights issues remain a serious concern." A cable that followed indicated Karimov's vehement reaction to the award, alarming the U.S. Embassy: ""We have a number of important issues on the table right now, including the Afghanistan transit (NDN) framework,” said the cable writer
According to the leaked cable, on March 18, 2009, Ambassador Richard Norland submitted to a "personal tongue-lashing" from Karimov with an "implicit threat to suspend transit of cargo for U.S. forces in Afghanistan via the Northern Distribution Network," and advised Washington, "Clearly, pressuring him (especially publicly) could cost us transit." For some time after, the U.S. appeared to mute its criticism and stopped having human rights advocates to the Embassy, a position that drew criticism from civil society leaders in Tashkent.
Human Rights Watch, in calling on Clinton to make human rights a priority on the agenda in Tashkent, suggested that Uzbek government officials personally profit from the NDN, given state control of business in Uzbekistan.
The question is how to pin down those actual relationships, and then determine whether there are any U.S. corporate ties. The Bug Pit blog has noted that of all the American companies involved in the NDN, FMN Logistics has received the most publicity, because of its apparent links to Zeromax, which in turn was reported to have been controlled by Karimova. FMN's CEO, Harry Eustace, Jr., denies the allegations, and said his company had only slight connections with Zeromax and never met Karimova. He said that FMN's only connection to Zeromax was to buy "rail code," which provides access to Uzbekistan's busy railroads. He said FMN had shipped about 1,500 containers to Afghanistan since March 2010, about .05 percent of total traffic, although Pentagon records of total shipments of 25,000 would make the FMN percentage closer to six percent. FMN's niche market is shipping supplies like bottled water, pasta, fruit juice, toilet paper, and other subsistence items sourced in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to Afghanistan.
Later, a source contacted the Bug Pit to reveal some emails that appeared to tell a different story, showing closer connections to Zeromax than indicated, and also a discussion with the now-jailed Miradil Djalalov, the managing director of Zeromax, involving a proposal to work as a fuel supplier with Zeromax subsidiary UzGazOil and another subsidiary, Muzimpex. Eustace, Jr. said the emails were merely sent by a disgruntled former business partner to make him look bad, and the discussions with Zeromax had never come to anything; FMN has never sent fuel to Afghanistan, he said.
Catherine A. Fitzpatrick compiles the Uzbekistan weekly roundup for EurasiaNet. She is also editor of EurasiaNet's Choihona blog. To subscribe to Uzbekistan News Briefs, a weekly digest of international and regional press, write [email protected]
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