Why is the Obama administration sanctioning one post-Soviet dictator with an atrocious human rights record and not another?
Barack Obama has signed a new bill banning some top Belarusian officials from visiting the United States -- and requiring Washington to monitor restrictions on press freedom and human rights abuses in Belarus -- because President Alexandr Lukashenko wantonly jails political opponents and journalists.
Sound familiar?
Those are hallmarks of Uzbekistan strongman Islam Karimov’s regime, where journalists are regularly imprisoned and critics tortured. Says the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ): “He personally oversaw the May 2005 massacre in the city of Andijan, and his regime virtually annihilated the independent press after it spread the word about those brutalities.” But instead of censure, Karimov “has received stunningly cordial treatment from the Obama administration,” including, in the past few months, a friendly phone call from the president and a visit from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. From CPJ:
There are scores of examples to position the Uzbek leader as far more brutal and dictatorial than Lukashenko's regime. The human rights abuses include forced child labor; arbitrary detentions and torture of detainees; harassment of lawyers and imprisonment of rights defenders; absolute state control over the media and Internet; and eviction of the last international monitor--Human Rights Watch--from its offices in Tashkent. All of these and other issues are listed in the U.S. State Department's own 2010 Human Rights report for Uzbekistan, which brands the country as "an authoritarian state."
Yet, in September, Karimov received a warm phone call from Obama, and heard appraisal on his "progress" in human rights from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her October visit to Tashkent. Also last year, the U.S. Congress removed what was left of the 2004 arms embargo imposed against Uzbekistan in connection with its grave human rights record.
So why the double standard? The answer, as EurasiaNet readers know, is that Uzbekistan is essential to prosecuting the war in Afghanistan.
Because Pakistan does not offer a reliable supply route to Afghanistan, Washington has turned to post-Soviet Central Asia for a transit corridor. Most supplies for the NATO war effort now arrive via the Northern Distribution Network, a web of rail and truck traffic that ultimately bottlenecks in Uzbekistan before crossing over into northern Afghanistan.
But no geopolitical or military interest should justify any kind of support--be it a phone call or a courtesy handshake--of such a repressive regime. Policymakers and executors in Washington must realize that by dealing with Karimov and equipping his army, they are participating in the repression. They're helping him to stifle the media and perpetuate abuses. Karimov already showed the world in 2005 what his army and special forces will do with weapons and training received from the West.
This isn’t the first time a respected watchdog has slammed the hypocrisy in Obama’s realpolitik. With Uzbekistan increasingly essential to the war, it won’t be the last.
David Trilling is Eurasianet’s managing editor.
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