I’ve been putting off buying Ahmed Rashid’s latest polemic on Afghanistan (he covers Central Asia about as much as I do). It’s not that I don’t think it’s any good, though like Jihad it easily could be an over-praised piece of crap, nor is it that I’m necessarily tired of his galling racism that goes unreported in the gushing exuberance over the man who saw the Taliban coming along with William Malley, Armin Tarzi, Steve Coll, Steve Levine, Carlotta Gall, Nancy DeWolf Smith, and every other journalist stationed near Afghanistan from 1993-1996. I just don’t need Rashid to tell me that the Bush administration has blown chances to make the area a better place and the ISI supports the Taliban. If that isn’t obvious from current events, why would a book change things?
Regardless, it has been interesting to see him promote his book. Mainstream media attention has been relatively spare, with the requisite appearances on PBS and a surprisingly gushing plug from Barnett Rubin. Rashid recently sat down with Scott Horton of Harper’s, and had a chit chat about the region. Rashid’s analysis of Afghanistan and Pakistan certainly isn’t bad:
The Taliban and Al Qaeda turned the city of Kunduz into their last redoubt, but for Pakistan the stalemate in Kunduz was turning into a disaster as hundreds of ISI officers and soldiers from the Frontier Corps aiding the Taliban were trapped there… Musharraf telephoned Bush and asked for a huge favor—a U.S. bombing pause and the opening of an air corridor so that Pakistani aircraft could ferry his officers out of Kunduz. Bush and Vice President Cheney agreed, and the operation was top-secret, with most cabinet members kept in the dark… a large number of Taliban had been airlifted out with them.
Oh yeah, the Airlift of Evil. There wasn’t much that was top secret about that, seeing as it was reported by MSNBC, CNN, the BBC, even Seymour Hersch. Moving on, Rashid tries to tie his coverage of the Taliban to the rest of Central Asia:
The U.S. relationship with Uzbekistan has been complex, but under Bush it has come to focus entirely on the need to use Uzbekistan as a support base for military operations.
A real crisis in Uzbekistan is likely to develop over the succession to Karimov. He is old and ill… Any succession crisis that would divide the regime would be immediately exploited by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and other such groups because there is no democratic opposition in the country. These militant groups are in the process of creating an underground Islamist movement in Central Asia–what is now being termed the “Central Asian Taliban.” The shock waves from a destabilized Uzbekistan will be felt throughout the region.
Okay, so this is wrong, too, in a couple of levels. Number one: the U.S. is not focused entirely on the need to use Uzbekistan as a support base for military operations, or else it would not have reduced funding to the country over its human rights abuses, and it would not have complained so much about the Andijon Massacre that it was kicked out ot Karshi Khanabad. To accuse the U.S. of a pure interest-based relationship with Uzbekistan is not just silly and overwrought, it is ignorant.
And I must have missed that time the IMU somehow traveled from its shaky position in Waziristan (several rounds of violent in-fighting amongst Taliban groups have centered on the presence of those “savage, racially different” Uzbeks) and re-inserted itself into Uzbekistan and renamed itself the Taliban. Ignoring the fact that the IMU hasn’t shown up in Central Asia news for a few years, is it possible Yuldashev is more resourceful than any of us imagined? Or is Rashid confusing the IMU with, say, Hizb-ut Tahrir, and assuming all Islamic movements are equally violent, virulent, and extremist?
Judging from this interview, I’d say the latter. Remind me again why I need to spend money on this book?
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
{ 19 comments }
Yeah, you’re someone that can wait until this comes up as a bargain book on Amazon. However, there are people out there who, having not paid attention to Af/Pak for the last five years or so, could stand getting caught up on what’s going on there. He does say some interesting things about how Kashmir figures into the current situation, and why Pakistan is such an unfaithful partner in the WoT.
And no, the Uzbekistan parts (which only add up to about 15 pp) are so general as not to be very helpful. Just some very birds’ eye view stuff about Andijan. Don’t buy this book if it’s because “Central Asia” is in the title.
What Ian said really.
The stuff about IMU being a major threat seems to have been lifted from an Uzbek government press release.
Also, he cites himself as a source – a lot. Bit of a journalistic no-no, that.
So, is this, like, an anti-review?
Speaking of which, there’s been a bit in the news in Central Asia that I should have been covering. Classes were quite time consuming this summer, but I now have the Kazakh skills needed to start going through some “real” source material.
In other news, the drought/dry spell in southern Kazakhstan/central Uzbekistan seems to be going strong. Is Afghanistan’s own weather situation connected? I’d imagine it doesn’t take much imagination to connect the hotter, drier summers with the shrinking of the Aral Sea. Friends in Shymkent [in south Kazakhstan] told me the thermometer has gone above 50 more times there than they can remember.
Any time the thermometer passes 50, baby Jesus cries…
Okay, so Rashid is not the world’s greatest CA expert – correct.
Yes, his writings are full of factual mistakes on CA. (His book on Taliban is still a worth while read, certainly when I went to Afghanistan during the war in 2001, I found much of value in it).
Still, it does not make anything better that your own comments, Joshua, on US and Uzbekistan are straight out of the mouth of Scott McClellan and co, at the tie of the Andijan massacre.
1) YOU WRITE: “Number one: the U.S. is not focused entirely on the need to use Uzbekistan as a support base for military operations, or else it would not have reduced funding to the country over its human rights abuses”
FACT: State Dep DID reduce funding for the Uzbek regime – after having completely outrageously ‘certified’ them for several years, 2001 and 2002 and 2003, despite perfect knowledge about the incredible human rights abuses. In my film’Andijan – a massacre: foretold, forgotten, forgiven’ (I have worked on it for three years, so I feel it is not too flippant to promote it a bit) I SHOW in detail the knowledge and the collusion of the US.
Besides, as soon as the State Dep cut down funding, Rumsfeld came to Tashkent and laughed it off in public and Gen Meyers immediately after INCREASED Pentagon funding. Which in effect – contrary to what you state – shows where the US interest were (are).
2) YOU WRITE “… and it [the US] would not have complained so much about the Andijon Massacre that it was kicked out ot Karshi Khanabad. To accuse the U.S. of a pure interest-based relationship with Uzbekistan is not just silly and overwrought, it is ignorant.
FACT: The first US reaction was to call express their worry about the ‘terrorists’ having been let out of prison in Andijan. NOT to complain about Karimov mowing down 8-1,000 people.
Again, I show this IN DETAIL in my film.
You can also find these statements on the US State Dep website for May 2005.
To write that the “US complained so much about the Andijan Massacre”….. is just a joke, sorry. The US – as well as the EU – has been shamefully SILENT and hesitant on Andijan. Note John McCain’s criticism of the Bush administration when he spoke at the (I believe) OSI event in May 2006 with Chris Smith.
Plus, anybody who WAS in Uzbekistan in the Spring of 2005 knows that the US already from early 2005, months before Andijan, was falling out with Karimov – or rather that HE was turning to Putin and Russia, note the gas deals from the Summer of 2004 already and the restrictions on the operations out of the base in Khanabad.
So, please get your own facts right first, before gunning TOO much for Mr Rashid.
Anyone interested in my film – ‘Andijan – a massacre: foretold, forgotten, forgiven’ – it will soon be for sale on DVD – are more than welcome to write to me at:
Michaelandersencentralasia@yahoo.com
I shall also be showing it at the Frontline Club in London next Friday the 15th August. Would be very happy to hear your comments and take up the debate there.
Dear Michael, neither the EU, USA nor UK was responsible for Andijon – the Uzbek government was. Alone. You’ll not hear much dispute with that here. There were many distasteful – and outrageous – aspects to the relationship between Uzbekistan and the West prior to Andijon. We’ve all read Craig Murray’s book but to blame it ALL on the West is simplistic. Many readers of this blog are knowledgable about and have firsthand experience of Uzbekistan. Josh and others have just as much right as anyone to criticize Rashid’s coverage of Uzbekistan. Incidentally, you DON’T dispute Rashid’s main point – namely that there is a massive Islamist underground ready to pounce at the first hint of cracks in the regime’s facade. I think that was Josh’s main bone of contention.
ps. do you attack Moscow and Beijing’s support for Karimov, or is it ALL our fault? look forward to the film.
Dear Nick, With all due respect: I did NOT put ALL the blame for Andijan on the West. Not in any way, I fail to see how you get that from my comments?!
Neither does Craig Murray, by the way, in his book. On the other hand, YOU write that the Uzbek government “ALONE” was responsible for the massacre. Well, no, sorry. In my humble opinion, and in the opinion of people who were there when our ‘message’ was communicated to Karimov, we DO share part of the blame. As Craig Murray – bring it on, guys, I know how you hate him on this site – says in my film “I believe the West is to blame, because we never told Karimov he couldn’t murder his own people”. In the film, Clare Short tells in detail how all the diplomats and Western governments KNEW in detail what was going on inside Uzbekistan – and we just closed our eyes for it.
YES, in the film we critisize, OF COURSE, the disgusting Russian and Chinese applauding of Karimov. (Nice try, Nick – and no, while we are at it, Gazprom did not pay for the film…..) On a more serious note, the fact of the matter is that our policy since Andijan less and less distinquishes itself from that of the Kremlin. Note our recent ‘coe back’ there. This is also the feeling of human rights defenders in Uzbekistan.
Finally, on Rashid’s analysis: No, I believe he is exaggerating, quite a bit, the ‘extremism potential’ in Uzbekistan. On the other hand, in a country of 26 million people – with SO much hate kept under wraps for so long – it doesn’t take many percent of the population to go ‘mad’ in order for it to develop into a bloodbath…… I hope that that is too pessimistic, but…..
You bought the book so we don’t have to!
How come no one ever seems to talk about Turkmenistan and the Taliban, or is this old article superseded by some news which passed me by?
Let’s see, an article published before the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, and before the death of Turkmenbashi? No, I can’t think what news has happened since then in the region.
How is this connected to the discussion, again?
Ian, wasn’t directly connected to the topic, but it is related to Central Asia. I doubt I know anything about it that Joshua and Nathan don’t already know, but that doesn’t mean I can’t ask about something.
The Taliban may be out of power, but they are hardly out of the news. The news, however, only points to the Pakistan connection. Turkmenbashi’s death does not, inherently, mean a change in policy towards the Taliban, but you are implying it did.
Michael, you don’t think you’re maybe, just maybe, oversimplifying and dodging? I’m not going to repeat in great detail points about changes in US aid to Uzbekistan that I’ve already made in much more detail elsewhere on this site. Suffice it to say though that the US-Uzbek relationship from 2001-2005 was far more complex than you portray it above (or than Murray does in his book). And though standards to determine whether or not the US response to Andijon was sufficient and appropriate are obviously subjective, it is worth noting that the straw that broke the camel’s back and got the US booted from K2 was the US military’s provision of material assistance to Andijon refugees.
And for the hell of it, I feel that it’s worth pointing out that the incident of Defense undermining State by replacing withdrawn aid doesn’t really say as much about US foreign policy at the time as it does about how dysfunctional US foreign policy has been for much of Bush’s tenure. He let the departments work at cross-purposes, and in the case of US-Uzbek relations, this allowed the Uzbeks to play different parts of the administration off one another.
I can only speak for myself, but I don’t hate Craig Murray. I’ve had fairly pleasant correspondence with him, and my copy of Murder in Samarkand came with a rather nice note from him. I simply disagree with him. For example, I find statements like, “I believe the West is to blame, because we never told Karimov he couldn’t murder his own people,” to, at the most benign, set up an impossible standard by which the West is always to be held responsible for the actions of friendly governments in the developing world. Such talk denies the agency (mere collateral damage in the rush to remove blame!) of rulers like Karimov and suggests that it is the West’s job to tell governments like Uzbekistan’s what is and is not permitted. I confess, this confuses me, as it’s hard to keep track of where the line is that divides the bad imperialism of a Bush or Blair from the good imperialism of a Murray. Come on, does that quotation which you so eagerly toss out like a powerful totem not smack of condescending paternalism? I don’t want to say that the West hasn’t made big mistakes in Central Asia, but to suggest it is to blame for everything terrible that took place there from 2002-2006 is too cute by half.
“I believe the West is to blame, because we never told Karimov he couldn’t murder his own people”.
It is funny and it is also shows arrogance. Some people still seriously think that without “West’s” will the Earth will stop rotating and if “West” tels so people around the World will stop being hungry or greedy.
Michael, I think we probably agree on more than we disagree – but I just don’t buy the whole ‘the West is partly to blame’ schtick. Not because I believe Western policy in the region is purer than driven snow – of course it isn’t – but too often people seem keen to believe the worst of the West at the expense of having anything constructive to say about Uzbekistan. It diverts attention from the wickedness of the acts in Andijon by removing the act of agency from the state.
I agree that Andijon was inevitable because I’d heard so myself from informed commentators at an FCO-organised symposium in London in March 2005. No specifics were mentioned, other than astute observations from one speaker that market closures and other economic sanctions in the Fergana region in the Fall of 2004 and winter of 2005 would force things to come to a head.
Add into the mix the arrest and sham trial of the 23 businessmen, the dubious scholarship by Babajanov and others on Akromiya, and popular discontent with state economic policies, and you have a recipe for disaster. Then consider the brutal state response and it’s hard to blame anyone but the Uzbek government (although I hope you have solved the mystery of who the gunmen who launched the jailbreak were).
I never believed the West had any influence over Karimov – and still don’t. And it’s not clear what exactly could have been done to prevent any of this whole sad and bloody mess happening. Long before Andijon – as you rightly note – human rights abuses were legion, as indeed they are in numerous regimes around the world which have distinctly unfriendly relationships with the West (Iran, N Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Belarus etc). International opprobrium hasn’t worked in their case, and it still hasn’t in Uzbekistan’s.
I wonder if you ever met the late, great Paul Bergne, who was the first British ambassador to independent Uzbekistan and who protested against the Karimov regime’s human rights abuses and other shenanigans. The point is, good cop or bad cop, the Uzbek government as it stands just won’t listen.
Let’s avoid hyperbole. To state that the U.S. had control, or no power, both seem pretty hard to swallow.
If it only took 300,000,000 in military contracts to switch Thatcher to support Star Wars, how much do you think it would take to influence Karimov? The answer is pretty clear “You can use our air bases, for a while, for X dollars.”
Did this actually give Karimov cover for any atrocity he could think to commit? Obviously not.
Does any rational dictator think “I am an important, bribed U.S. client, and therefore they will look harder the other way when I am being especially not nice?” Of course.
Foust’s point is correct. If Karimov had been less bloody, but not necessarily benign, America would still be there today, and Karimov would still be getting (at least) certain fees and monies for his “trouble.”
Hey, Michael [always feels weird to say that] – looking forward to the movie, though you’ll certainly be hard pressed to find a tougher audience than readers of Registan, as we’ve done our best to stay at least slightly more informed than the average “Western” citizen, let alone non-Western citizen.
And, for the record, and I can’t speak for Josh, but as another writer for Registan, I don’t hate Craig Murray, either. I think his personal life is his own, and his professional life as a civil servant is understandably up for review. He has spoken his mind, and I respect that. What he chooses to do with himself after hours I have less respect for, if rumors and stories I’ve heard are even half-truths.
Still waiting for my signed copy of Death in Samarkand, Mr. Murray.
If I keep on this path of Central Asian studies, our paths may yet cross. I doubt it will be unpleasant! Friends of Uzbekistan and Central Asia should themselves be cordial, at least.
Nathan expressed what I wanted to about the substance of Mr. Andersen’s remarks quite admirably.
But I want to put out on the record as well, that while I may poke fun at some of the seamier aspects of Mr. Murray’s post-Uzbekistan life, I certainly don’t dislike. In fact, I’d rather my criticisms of him have been rather less harsh than Nathan’s. I also don’t think he was wrong about how abhorrent Karomiv’s regime is, I just also happen to think the FCO was right to fire him and his book was a bit self-serving.
Then again, my look at these kinds of books are influenced by far too much knowledge of DC politics; by those standards, it is downright neutral in tone.
“On the other hand, in a country of 26 million people – with SO much hate kept under wraps for so long – it doesn’t take many percent of the population to go ‘mad’ in order for it to develop into a bloodbath…… ”
Yes. This is what will happen without that it has to be highjacked by the Salafists or the Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Lootings, burnings, score settlings and stand-by executions/ explusions of regime satraps, SNB informers, certain minorities who are know to support the regime and of diplomats/reps of countries, organizations and companies who have de facto legitimized the regime.
There’s indeed too much cropped-up hatred and frustration.
Maybe the country has to go through that as a catharsis, as a way to wash off the years-long humiliation.
A little late, I wanted to join this debate on the conflicting assessment of U.S. overtures to Uzbekistan if I may. Not least because I pre-ordered Rashid’s book a couple months ago and don’t want to think I flushed my money down the toilet.
Parsing through the minutae of historically debatable incidents passed is no doubt interesting, but I like to think Rashid’s comments were a little more forward-looking in tone. When he argues that U.S. relations with Uzbekistan are concentrated exclusively on military cooperation, he is a little unfair but nonetheless not totally off the mark. If the sphere of shared interests is so narrow that is because Tashkent will entertain no other variant.
Yet notably, U.S. diplomats usually make the effort, while conceding that security cooperation is of foremost concern, of garnishing that menu with the usual suspects.
Below, for example, is a snippet from comments by U.S. ambassador Richard Norland made during his high-profile meeting last month with Islam Karimov:
“It is necessary to cooperate in all fields, in particular, in resolving regional issues, including the Afghan reconstruction. Our collaboration covers such aspects as implementing economic reforms, as well as cultural and humanitarian projects. Cooperation in ensuring human rights is also developing. We are sure that mutually beneficial partnership will successfully continue.”
Anyone with eyes to see, though, should understand that the words “mutually beneficial partnership” are implicit code for Washington accepting to adopt a line that is less intrusive and limited within reason to areas that will not upset the petulant Uzbek leadership. Norland’s words suggest that the United States’ Afghan-related engagements in Uzbekistan will in the near term continue to have a largely civilian flavour. That is pretty much in line with the much-publicized use of the Termez air base by unspecified U.S. non-military personnel.
This perfectly benign desire, in my view, to gain access to Uzbek facilities is no act of U.S. callousness but a mere issue of practicality and a safe area to resume some form of engagement with an otherwise hermit state.
That is my long and verbose way of saying that to all practical intents and purposes, the United States’ relations with Uzbekistan _are_ almost entirely focused on ensuring access to Uzbek facilities as a jump-off base for security (or reconstruction, if you prefer) operations.
As for the second part of the excerpted Rashid quote, he once again takes the aggravatingly broad sweep approach of somebody not immersed in former Soviet Central Asian affairs, but his larger observations about the frightening possibilities in a post-Karimov Uzbekistan are perfectly legitimate.
On point of fact, he does not refer exclusively to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), but also hints at other religiously affiliated groups. I am still undecided about what real impact Hizb ut-Tahrir could really have in a post-Karimov scenario, but it is beyond dispute that similar faith- and patronage-based movements do wield tremendous influence. Karimov is unaccountably brutish in several ways, but his latterly renewed hardline approach toward Hizb ut-Tahrir is not borne exclusively from some pathological affinity for Stalinist practices. He genuinely fears that disparate loci of authority and influence have some vaguely conceived potential to split his country apart – before or after he finally decides to go ahead and croak.
Rashid cavalierly does throw in the supposedly common-use term of Central Asian Taliban (a very unhelpful term indeed) at the peril of looking silly. But surely, the virtual operative extinction of the IMU logically leads to development of a transnational organisational strategy that can exploit temporary regional weaknesses at any given point in time. The radical and violent elements of the Uzbek opposition are not likely all to be dead and vanquished. To follow Rashid’s reasoning to its complete conclusion, such a group could seize the opportunity of Karimov’s death.
My own opinion is that the thesis _is_ compelling but ultimately unconvincing. Then again, my inner knowledge of Central Asian terrorist/insurgent networks is sketchy. Consequently, my views, and those of many others I suspect, are fruit of speculation and hypothesis based on the slimmest flow of information.
Confoundingly, those that do talk up this international terrorist network angle the most are regional titans, like China and Russia, primarily within an Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) framework. That should make anybody sceptical, but as the recent Kashgar attacks may demonstrate in the fullness of time, the transnational Central Asian terror matrix scenarion may not purely be the imaginings of state-endorsed security analysts in Beijing and Moscow. It is quite conceivable that the United States’ repeated invocation for some degree of observer status within the SCO reflects a sense of discomfort at a lack of Western input on this slice of the security sphere.
I read it. It’s a useful collection of facts for somebody (like me) who hasn’t been paying much day-by-day attention to Afghanistan. Although, because he’s aiming at the bestseller lists and doesn’t have a very clear focus, he spends much of his time outlining the background of, e.g. Kashmir or Pakistani nuclear weapons. Don’t know enough about Afghanistan to comment on the factual accuracy – there may have been mistakes, but I didn’t notice them.
As analysis, I was underwhelmed. He sees everything in terms of personalities, so there’s very little analysis of economic or institutional factors. His sections on Pakistan paint Musharraf as the root of all evil – which has some truth, but hardly works as a complete explanation of recent Pakistani politics.
Why you have to read it – because it’ll be a significant sourcebook for pundits who don’t know much about Afghanistan. And if you don’t want to pay for it, can’t you somehow wangle a review copy?
Your thinking about the IMU is exactly on. Not only has it experienced significant setbacks following the ramping up of border security cooperation among Karimov, Bakiyev, and Nazarbayev, but it really doesn’t even have a strong base of popular support in the Fergana Valley at this point. HuT is more of a concern to Karimov, as it too has expressed a clear interest in overthrowing him personally, but HuT is not a threat to the security of the region in any way other than representing the possibility of destabilization in one of the relatively more stable parts of a troubled region. Who knows what democratic elections in Uzbekistan might unleash; the idea certainly hasn’t progressed too far in Kyrgyzstan no matter what the Bakiyev clan has to say.