Neighbors and history conspire for disaster
Ahmed Rashid
LAHORE,
Pakistan The Uzbekistan massacres
Growing Western pressure on Uzbekistan's president, Islam Karimov, to
allow an international investigation into the massacre of hundreds of civilians in Andijon
is not matched in the region. Not a single one of Uzbekistan's many neighbors has
condemned the massacre, while some, like Russia, have actually condoned Karimov's actions.
The massacre may well lead to greater confrontation between Western powers and the
region's autocrats, but it is also likely to lead to greater militancy among the region's
Muslims against regimes still steeped in the Stalinist view of dealing with Islam.
For a variety of reasons Russia, China, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan
and the other four Central Asian republics have declined to criticize Karimov. That may
well have given him the strength on May 20 to reject the West's calls for a UN-led
investigation.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia criticized both the United
States and Afghanistan in his defense of Karimov, telling Itar-Tass on May 15 that
"various groups from Afghanistan from the Taliban camp" were responsible for the
uprising in Andijon. That is so far from the truth as to be laughable. Russia of course is
waging several wars against Islamic opposition movements in the Caucasus, particularly the
Chechens.
China's silence too is due to the campaign of suppression against its
own Muslims, particularly the Uighur people, who inhabit the western province of Xinjiang
on Central Asia's border. Human Rights Watch has shown how the campaign, which prevents
Muslims from even carrying out their basic religious obligations, has been ordered by the
most senior Chinese leadership. China has given Karimov the benefit of the doubt because
it may well face similar uprisings in the future.
Ruling autocrats in Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan back
Karimov and have taken measures in the past similar to Uzbekistan's, blocking Muslims from
the full range of religious freedoms. Kyrgyzstan's new interim regime is too weak to
denounce Uzbekistan and has closed its borders fearing a huge influx of Uzbek refugees.
All these former and present Communist states continue to be guided by
the Stalinist principles of seeing all religious expression as a threat, while using
ethnic nationalism to divide and rule Muslim populations. In 1924 Stalin converted the
heartland of a common Muslim homeland and identity in Central Asia, known as Turkestan,
into five separate ethnic Soviet republics, in an attempt to prevent wider Muslim
opposition to Communism.
He then clamped down hard on Islam itself. For the next half-century,
the Soviet state used terror and labor camps to kill and subdue Muslims while producing
rules, regulations and an entire ideology and intellectual scripture showing that any
religious expression, even excessive trips to the mosque, were traitorous to the state and
to Communism.
It is this ideological legacy that still guides the leaders of China,
Russia and Central Asia, making them incapable of differentiating between ordinary Muslims
at prayer and Islamic extremists. China's role in Xinjiang is particularly perverse,
considering that China has shown an ability to change in many other fields.
It is this mind-set that needs to be tackled first if there is to be
any real lasting stability in the region, and there is no doubt that greater
democratization will play a role here. While the West has applauded democracy's evolution
in the region, slow as it is, it has done little to influence the way these regimes deal
with Islam. In fact, since Sept. 11, 2001, all these regimes have played off the West's
own paranoia about Islam to their advantage.
More localized uprisings could follow the Andijon massacre because of
the significance of the city, which for centuries has been a crossroads for goods and
ideas for the entire region. Shutting Andijon off from the outside world with tanks and
soldiers as Karimov has done is not just a horror for the people, but a rejection of
Uzbekistan's own history.
Andijon was a center of resistance to occupation first by Tsarist
Russia and then by the Soviets. In May 1898, 22 Russian soldiers were killed there in an
uprising that spread to other cities in the Ferghana Valley until it was brutally
suppressed by Russian reinforcements. At the same time, Andijon was a center for Sufi
spiritualism that was carried to Central Asia, India and China.
Andijon was an example before and could serve as an example again,
unless neighboring regimes understand that the steps Karimov took were not a salvation for
regime survival but a path spiraling toward regime destruction and regional instability.
International Herald Tribune, May 25, 2005
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