WikiLeaks revealed that the Uzbek government was closely linked with a suspected mafia boss, Central Asian Newswire reported. The cables, said to be sent by U.S. diplomats, alleged that Uzbek ministers have ties to alleged mafia kingpin Salim Abduvaliyev. One dispatch describes a party held by Abduvaliyev's wife and attended by the wives of several top government officials. The cable outlines Abduvaliyev's alleged role in arranging corrupt government contracts: "Tenders and government positions can be fairly easily secured by paying the right amount of money to the appropriate individual," says a cable.
This is a widespread practice, and Joshua Kucera of EurasiaNet's blog The Bug Pit asks the question as to whether these corrupt practices extend to U.S. government contracts related to the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) to ship goods to NATO troops in Afghanistan. An Associated Press report said the accusations "could reawaken concerns over U.S. dealings with the authoritarian Central Asian nation" -- many businesses have ties to the state. In December, President Karimov personally dealt with the dismissal of a regional governor widely reported to be corrupt and inconsiderate of the public's needs, and last May, oversaw the state seizure of Zeromax, a large conglomerate which has been scrutinized for its possible connections to the NDN and Pentagon contractors and associated with the president's own daughter, Gulnara Karimova. Such moves suggest that the Uzbek leader is not unmindful of the problem of blatant abuses, but makes political rather than judicial responses.
On January 14, Karimov gave a speech on the occasion of Motherland Defenders Day, calling for the modernization of the armed forces and "to widely use the experience of foreign states, including NATO's member countries, in training officers and sergeants." Uzbekistan has been seen as swinging back and forth between allegiance to Moscow and closer ties to the West; the speech may have prepared public opinion (such as it is) for an unexpected January 24 invitation to Brussels, said to have emanated from NATO rather than the EU.
Karimov's first trip to NATO headquarters in the years since sanctions were imposed over the 2005 Andijan massacre was secretive -- no press conferences were held -- and attracted the outrage of human rights and civic groups. They barraged European officials with a wide variety of protests on issues from journalists in jail to forced child labor in the cotton fields. In the end, the EU response to these concerns was meager, although José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, raised the accreditation of the Human Rights Watch representative in Tashkent and permission for a monitoring mission of the International Labor Organization (ILO) to address child-labor practices, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
Meanwhile, NATO and Tashkent seemed to be speaking from different scripts, as The Bug Pit reported. NATO's statement focused on Uzbekistan's assistance to the NDN as a key hub, and Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen expressed NATO's gratitude for the support of Uzbekistan and other Central Asian partners to the mission in Afghanistan. The NATO statement on the meeting then focused on democratization, a principle of the NATO Partnership for Peace program in which Uzbekistan has participated for 17 years, uninterrupted even by such egregious violations of such principles entailed in the firing of troops on unarmed demonstrators in Andijan. It's not exactly clear how the Western military alliance's "partnership tools" could promote democratization given the reluctance to criticize Tashkent, but in any event, the Uzbek statement on the meeting simply eliminated any mention of democracy.
In fact, the Uzbek statement also made no mention of the NDN or Uzbekistan's role as a key hub in NATO’s war effort, and instead, focuses on Uzbekistan's proposal for "6+3 talks" involving regional leaders in a peace settlement in Afghanistan, a concept that the U.S. has routinely dismissed and which NATO did not address. The Uzbek statement also mentioned cooperation on removing the threats of proliferation of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction (which Uzbekistan does not possess) and its collaboration in fighting terrorism and the illicit drug trade (which some analysts would say it has fostered rather than reduced by its brutal methods, including torture).
While Karimov's failure to mention the NDN in his public statement for domestic audiences could be deference to public opinion and an unwillingness to draw Central Asia into the Afghan war, it's more likely just part of his geopolitical balancing act where he keeps all great powers vested in the region guessing as to his actual allegiances. The Uzbek leader got his birthday trip (he turned 73 on January 30) to Brussels on his own terms (short, with little opportunity for demonstrations, and without press), and now could afford to continue to deal with NATO on sufferance.
With long practice in such dialogue, Uzbek government officials have become highly manipulative in their dealings with Western critics of human rights abuses, simulating concern for improving a poor record, and deftly deflecting questions about the ongoing gap between promises and actual practices. Listeners of Radio Ozodlik, the Uzbek Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty may at first have been surprised when Uzbek Senator Svetlana Ortikova admitted the practice of torture in Uzbek prisons. But then she proceeded to claim that when officials are caught abusing prisoners, they are immediately arrested and brought to trial, and even sentenced to prison. Since failure of the state-controlled judiciary is what got many peole behind bars and tortured in the first place, the claim seemed dubious, but Ortikova maintained, despite persistent questioning, that judges were independent.
Vasila Inoyatova, chairwoman of Ezgulik, the human rights group, has reported concerns about the apparent increasing use of rape of women prisoners as a form of torture to extract confessions, Radio Ozodlik reported. Dr. Vakhid Karimov, a prominent physician, interviewed by Ozodlik, claimed sexual violence was rare, and denied the reports of rapes in women's colonies, saying they were “impossible” because the guards were female. A warden who requested anonymity also claimed there were no such cases. Yet Inoyatova nevertheless stuck to her story, noting that three employees had been fired from one facility after sexual attacks, and that in some cases of rape the women had later given birth in prison, notably Raykhon Soatova, a prisoner whose family tried and failed to obtain justice for her after an alleged rape in prison led to her giving birth. When the International Committee of the Red Cross visited the colony where Soatova was held, she was sent to an isolation cell and they were denied access to her.
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