And the report is a detailed extension of yesterday’s preview.
The investigation has concluded that the acts in Andijan were a carefully planned action, organized by outside destructive forces and aimed against Uzbekistan’s independent policy and national interests, changing present constitutional order and creation of an Islamic state meeting their geopolitical demands.
The investigation has shown that starting from August 2004, the above-named destructive forces, with attraction of international terrorist and religious extremist organizations like Islamic Movement of Turkestan, Hizb-ut-Tahrir and one of its branches Akramiylar, planned organizing terrorist actions in Uzbekistan in May 2005 with the purpose of seizing power and overthrowing the constitutional order.
So, that’s pretty much a rehash of yesterday. But, I think it’s worth paying very careful attention to the wording and how it slightly differs from yesterday’s announcement on the report. With the explicit mention of the IMT, HT, and Akramiya, readers could be forgiven for coming away with the impression that the prosecutors are pointing the finger at them for the planning of Andijon. And while I’m not entirely sure what “with attraction” means, I think that a careful re-reading indicates that the official position is that unnamed “outside destructive forces” are the prime culprits and that the Islamist organizations in question merely provided support.
Moving on…
The scenario and the detailed plan of terrorist acts were carefully planned, including forming armed groups, their military training, provision with arms and ammunition, determining and reconnaissance of objects of attack, including military units and law-enforcement subdivisions, their arms and ammunition depots, etc.
The investigation has proven that the “screenwriters” chose the territory of southern provinces of Kyrgyzstan as a foothold for preparation to terrorist acts. There, from January to April 2005 foreign instructors taught diversion and terrorist skills to some 70 religious extremists.
“Screenwriters” is an interesting term. (A roundabout way of saying “Zionists” Matt? 
) Well, whoever and whatever they were, they are charged with having gone to great lengths to plan and outfit their soldiers.
In order to ensure swift seizure of power in Andijan, up to 20 attack groups consisting of 9 to 22 people each were formed. The heads of these groups carefully studied the plans of the objects of attacks, and prepared the necessary arms, ammunition and explosives beforehand.
In the night of 12 May, more than 60 trained and armed militants (Kyrgyz citizens) intruded the territory of Uzbekistan and took an active part in the terrorist acts.
And then, here’s where it starts to get good. To those who’ve been following the development of this yarn, the identity of the “outside destructive forces/screenwriters” should already be apparent. But hey, let’s hear again what clues the prosecutors have to offer up.
Simultaneously with the terrorist aggression, information war against Uzbekistan was being prepared. False “peaceful” demonstrations of citizens were planned in parallel with terrorist acts. For this, organizers of the acts wanted to draw as many people as possible in the streets, to create conditions and opportunities for criminal elements, mainly freed dangerous criminals, to riot in the streets of Andijan, carrying out pogroms, arsons, destructions and robbing. To put it shortly, they planned creating an unrestrained Bacchanalia on the principle of “the more fire and smoke, the more visibility of mass unrest, demonstrations of the rebelling people”.
The “screenwriters” of the above-named actions planned to create the visibility of a city seized by the rebelling “angry population”, against which the government troops allegedly carry out military actions, so that the omnipresent so-called “humanitarian” “charity” international organizations demanded according their plan to stop, as they say, the “massacre of the peaceful population”.
The main role to cover these events was assigned to mass media controlled by them.
OK, so there it is. The peaceful demonstrations leading up to the violence were all part of the plan because as far as I can tell large crowds were necessary cover for the planned violence and to give a gloss of legitimacy to it. (Incidentally, am I the only one who finds “Bacchanalia” to be the wrong term to be using there.)
After the violence was underway, the “screenwriters” then planned to call in the reinforcements–their hordes of prepositioned human rights activists and reporters–to unleash the information war against the poor Uzbeks.
With this purpose, representatives of a number of foreign human rights organizations, media and foreign charity societies, which were informed beforehand, started gathering in the territories adjacent to Andijan – Osh, Aravan, Karasu and Jalalabad – before the events, starting from 9-10 May.
Being present in this region, they were waiting for the start of the action, in order to capture the explosion in Andijan and spread the slander about the actions of the organs of authority and law-enforcement.
So, considering who the mass media and nongovernmental organizations in question are, it is fairly evident that this report again is pointing fingers at Western governments–the US and UK in particular one suspects–as “destructive forces” seeking to topple the Uzbek government. Throwing Kyrgyzstan in is a nice touch too–one reminiscent of the finger pointed at Kazakhstan after the 2004 bombings. (RFE/RL has more on that here.)
What I’m having a hard time digesting though is why the Uzbek government would charge Western governments with seeking to replace them with an Islamic regime, especially an Islamic regime made up of two organizations who are, to say the least, a source of considerable nuisance to the US and UK. Why? Who on earth is the audience for this and are they actually buying it?
Turnabout being the fair play that it is, it would be extremely satisfying to start accusing Uzbekistan of supporting the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan–something they roundabout are doing by throwing a wrench into Coalition operations there.
UPDATE: RFE/RL’s Daniel Kimmage has a great article on the “information war” against Uzbekistan.
The official Uzbek version of events in Andijon, then, explicitly states that religious extremists attacked state power and blames terrorists for virtually all of the violence. It implicitly suggests that the extremists enjoyed foreign support. And it has increasingly stressed that while the active phrase of the battle for Uzbek sovereignty ceased when security forces overcame the extremists in Andijon, it continues on another front. As Karimov said on 31 August, “After the Andijon events, after the terrorist assault on us, the biggest damage and the biggest attack on us has been an information war, information attacks started against us, ignoring the fact that many people died and pretending it was something normal.”
The “war,” as he termed it, rages over the events that occurred in Andijon and what they mean. For if official media have portrayed a terrorist attack and concluded that Uzbekistan has dangerous enemies, media not subject to government control have provided a radically different account and drawn entirely separate conclusions. Relying heavily on independently recorded eyewitness accounts and reports by international rights groups (themselves buttressed by eyewitnesses accounts), nongovernment media have focused less on the initial violence perpetrated by armed militants and more on allegations that security forces massacred unarmed demonstrators who gathered in central Andijon on 13 May, after armed men seized the local administration building. Their two most important conclusions have been that social and economic conditions in Uzbekistan, and in the Ferghana Valley in particular, have produced a potentially explosive situation, and that Karimov and his entourage are willing to use any and all means to suppress dissent.
And this is good too.
In any government-directed assault on nonstate media, the real question is not why the state does what it does, but rather why the state does not do certain things that it could. As the preceding makes clear, Uzbekistan’s ruling elite now feels that it is in danger, and it has identified control over the flow of information as a way to minimize that danger. The state’s repressive mechanisms are capable of much more than targeted harassment. As neighboring Turkmenistan demonstrates, they can be used to shut off the country entirely and reduce the entire media environment to whatever the press office of the presidential administration wishes it to be. This has not yet happened in Uzbekistan. Why?
There are no hard and fast answers, but past and present experience suggest several reasons. For one, despite Uzbekistan’s post-Andijon falling-out with the West, international prestige remains a consideration for President Karimov, who has always been acutely conscious of his role as the leader of a sovereign nation that is not only Central Asia’s most populous, but also historically rooted in traditions of high statecraft and culture.
For Uzbekistan, the antiterrorism alliance with the United States that emerged after 11 September 2001 rested not so much on a shared commitment to democratization and reforms — as the record of the past four years indicates — but on a strong sense of a partnership with the world’s remaining superpower. What this means in practical terms is that while Karimov will not yield to Western pressure on issues he sees as vital to his own security — like the demand for an independent international inquiry into the events in Andijon — he is unlikely to sanction a crackdown that irretrievably renders him a pariah.
And because of his concern for prestige, that’s exactly why we should seek to make him a source of embarrasment–a Central Asian Lukashenko–for Russia.
This post was written by...
Nathan Hamm – author of 2974 posts on Registan.net.
Nathan is the Founding Editor and Publisher of Registan.net, which he launched in 2003. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uzbekistan 2000-2001 and received his MA in Central Asian Studies from the University of Washington in 2007. Since 2007, he has worked full-time as an analyst, consulting with private and government clients on Central Asian affairs, specializing in how socio-cultural and political factors shape risks and opportunities and how organizations can adjust their strategic and operational plans to account for these variables. Nathan is currently seeking research, analysis, and consulting opportunities. He can be contacted via Twitter or email.
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