Washington Post - 03.18.2002

 

The Washington Post

Our Cold War Hangover

By Jackson Diehl

Islam Karimov, strongman of Uzbekistan and newly minted U.S. strategic ally, had just finished delivering a paean to democracy over the conference table at Blair House. So the follow-up question from the assembled journalists seemed logical enough: Does this mean, Mr. President, that you might be willing to hold free elections in your country?

Central Asia's leading autocrat returned an indignant stare. "Do you mean to say that so far we have not had democratic elections in our country?" he demanded. "I do not agree with that."

Although he may have been raised on the politics of the Soviet politburo, Karimov is quickly learning the art of American clienthood, as practiced by friendly dictators. First, be quickest among your neighbors -- Karimov's are Afghanistan and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia -- to volunteer bases and staging areas to the Pentagon. Next, serenade Washington with speeches about your love of capitalism and democracy, while releasing a political prisoner or two to appease the State Department. Finally, sit back and count the U.S. aid money that rolls in -- $160 million for Uzbekistan this year -- while quietly sustaining the repression that keeps you in power.

The master of this routine is Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, who was in town the week before Karimov. In fact, he might well be Karimov's model. The Egyptian dictator delivered a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations proclaiming that "democracy in Egypt is an ever-evolving goal, constantly growing, taking root in our midst, building on a growing maturity." He did this despite running unopposed for his four six-year terms as president -- he claimed to have received 94 percent of the vote in the last referendum. He is openly grooming his son as his successor. Mubarak did release one of his most famous political prisoners just before coming to Washington; this year he will collect $700 million in American economic aid, more than twice the amount budgeted for Afghanistan.

Karimov must figure that if Mubarak can do it, so can he. After all, he released three well-known political prisoners before his visit and met a State Department demand that he allow the legal registration of an Uzbek human rights group. Moreover, in the last referendum he staged to extend his presidential term just two months ago, Karimov was modest; he awarded himself a mere 91 percent of the vote.

This is the old politics of the Cold War -- which Karimov seems to be trying, and Mubarak never forgot -- when thugs could be our thugs if they opposed Communists and at least pretended to favor democracy. That's why the Bush administration's handling of the Uzbek president last week was interesting. In the new global war on terrorism, Karimov is the most conspicuous new U.S. client -- and the administration's management of him suggests that it may be prepared to revise some of the old Cold War rules.

Certainly much of the old logic still applies. Access to Uzbekistan's Khanabad air base has been important to the Afghan campaign, and Karimov's most dangerous enemy, the terrorist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, has fought side-by-side with al Qaeda and the Taliban. On the other hand, Karimov's economic mismanagement and political repression, which includes the arrest and torture of thousands of democratic activists and devout Muslims with no connection to terrorism, are breeding more extremism -- Uzbekistan, like Egypt, has been the source of a disproportionate number of al Qaeda recruits. So while the United States has a military interest in allying itself with Karimov, it also has a military interest in liberalizing his regime.

So far the Bush administration seems disinclined to act directly on this linkage -- no one has suggested that the continuation of the U.S.-Uzbek military relationship will be conditioned on Karimov's political behavior. Unlike most of its Cold War predecessors, however, the Bush administration seems to have accepted and internalized the dangers of the relationship. For one thing, senior officials, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell, have been speaking publicly about Karimov's bad record and making the point that his policies risk making the problem of terrorism worse.

Even more interesting was the "declaration of strategic partnership" that Powell and Uzbek Foreign Minister Adulaziz Kamilov signed -- a 20-page agreement that is quite remarkable in its detail. The accord gives Karimov what he wants -- a vague U.S. pledge to support Uzbekistan against "any external threat," along with promises of military training and hardware. But in exchange, the Uzbek ruler committed himself, in writing, to a long list of political and economic reforms. These include "establishing a multiparty system," "ensuring free and fair elections" and "ensuring independence of the media." There are also promises to reform the judiciary and carry out the free-market economic program that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have been unsuccessfully pressing on Uzbekistan for years.

As administration officials see it, the agreement could be used the way the Helsinki accords once were with the Soviet Bloc -- even as the State Department delivers demarches holding Karimov accountable for his promises, U.S. aid can be explicitly targeted at developing the civil society and democratic institutions that Karimov has formally committed to. It might not work -- the dictator might go on insisting, as he did at Blair House last week, that he already has created a democracy.

In the handling of Karimov, however, is the shape of a policy that might just take the United States past the bad theater and tokenism that governed such relationships in the Cold War and the disasters that resulted in places such as Iran and Nicaragua and Zaire. A version of that Uzbek agreement, in fact, would be well worth trying with another of America's ugly friends: Hosni Mubarak.