I get my sense of our “policy” from what I have read on sites such as yours. If you can point me to an actual official policy, or one gleaned from your contacts with the “highest levels” I would appreciate it.

Until then I will assume our “policy” towards Uzbekistan is as incoherenet and ill-informed as is our approach to the war on terror.

And as for not tilting to Russia? well… http://www.neurope.eu/view_news.php?id=73862

What is wrong with this entire discussion is that it takes the too common perspective that Central Asian states are this passive mass to be “won” by great powers. The fact of the matter is that the US never had the influence that people seem to think it did. And Russia does not dominate the way people think either. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are both fiercely independent countries. (Daragh, you forget that Uzbekistan was a cheerleader for integration as well until Russia demanded sovereignty over economics. Kazakhstan lost its zeal for reintegration at about the same point, and is now for much lesser forms of integration.) They play Russia, the US, Europe, and China off one another. They make one agreement with Russia on Monday, and by Wednesday they’re talking agreeing to a big project with the US or China. The influence of outside powers is greatly overestimated.

It’s especially hard to peg Kazakhstan as being on one side or another. It ships most of its oil and all of its gas through Russia, has agreed to even more, etc. But it also kept Iran out of the SCO, sent troops to Iraq, participates in NATO, and has been buttering up the US to support its SCO chairmanship bid.

By the way, if you want to measure Kyrgyzstan’s change, start with Bakiev coming into office, not Putin. Bakiev is incredibly weak, and in need of any support he can get. He’s not shown much willingness to burn any bridges. Anyway, it’s all kind of a moot point as Kazakhstan’s star is rising faster in Bishkek than anyone else’s.

Maybe they have Uranium.

And Tajikistan? Well, fine, the West may hae gained a considerable degree of influence in Dushanbe post 9/11, but it is of little importance considering the region as a whole.

The West’s reaction to the Andizhan massacre, while absolutely the right moral position to take, had the effect of completely eroding almost all Western influence in Central Asia and cementing Sino-Russian hegemony in the region.

in addition to being contradictory (“completely” and “almost” together?) is demonstrably untrue. The US still has a very good relationship with Kazakhstan and a fair deal of influence in Astana. The US also has some influence in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, the latter of which will listen to anyone willing to offer monetary support. Granted, in no case is the relationship as close as the one that existed with Uzbekistan, but regional politics is not all that regional.

I do, however, agree with your point about the realpolitik, and just to be clear, Germany’s motivation is to secure energy supplies for Europe. They say that they also want a region-wide EU policy that promotes democracy and human rights, but they say precious little about Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, making it quite clear that they are more interested in the three states with sizable energy reserves.

There are really no good options as regards Uzbekistan. One should not expect the government to reform so long as Karimov is at the helm, and given the structure of divisions among the Uzbek elite, I would not expect much change after he is out of office.

David, the figure of 200 is roughly the number at which the Uzbek government places the dead. No one knows the true figure. I don’t think it’s 700, but I’d bet it’s more than 200.

I also think you’ve got US policy a bit wrong. True, Boucher visited Tashkent. There have been a few diplomatic visits of late, and it’s hard to say who wants whom. The US position has pretty clearly been that we’ll cooperate where possible, but we’re not going to go out of our way. I recently saw the Uzbek ambassador to the US, and that is pretty much the Uzbek position on the US as well. And during the strategic partnership, the US criticized Uzbekistan on human rights, spurring his move toward Russia in part.

I’ve heard as high as 700. Where is the 200 from?

Not for nothing, but the US has been sniffing around Karimov’s table too in recent months. Richard Boucher visited there not too long ago to deliver a spineless, nonsensical message of drek. And what’s more he was rebuffed by Karimov, who subsequently met with Putin at Sochi (the Russian Crawford).

To say that the US was kicked out of theor airbase for protesting the massacre is begging the question. I really think that the only reason we protested at all was because we knew that Karimov was warming up to Putin even then, and we hoped that by raising our voice to a schoolmarmish scold we would spur elements in Uzbekistan to stage a true revolution. (There really is this weird and misplaced idealism about what these color revolutions were or are. Democracy triumphant? Not so far…)

The Carnegie Endowmment has had a video of the massacre on their site for a while. You can see it here…

http://wm.nmmstream.net/carnegie/uzbek/uzbek.asx

It’s a government job, so you can hear a lot of “Allah Akhbar” in the background, you know, to make it seem like this was all radical fundamentalists ready to overthrow a democratic government…

One final thing: in Craig Murray’s “Murder in Samarkand,” he tells how after the Rose Revolution, the ousted Eduard Shevardnadze (former Gorbachev Foreign Minister and architect of Perestroika) flew to Tashkent and warned Karimov of the danger of the spread of the color revolutions and to watch out for those foreign NGOs.

There’s a picture of them together.

That Shevardnadze would be cozy with Karimov was surprising (to me anyway…I’d heard about the corruption etc.) and sad.

I actually sincerely hope someone gets around to it. I can’t do it, but I understand there’s all sorts of stuff about the Seljuk sultans in there, which I could really do with to complete my paper on Bashi-ism and monuments. I don’t care a jot for assessments of artistic merit, or whether Bashi knew historical truth from his elbow, and enough other people have laughed at the books that I don’t feel I have to join in – but I am interested in the stories he insisted every schoolchild, job candidate and driver should know. He clearly had his reasons.

Germany still has a miltary base there that is supposed to be essential for NATO operations in Afghanistan. So they wanted the new minister of defense off the list.

And if I read it correctly Germany is probably under some pressure from the US to maintain that base.

And yeah, if we can see a list of the 4 that Germany is talking about exempting it might be helpful. If its some state apparatchik who can serve as a go-between, then the harm may be mild relative to the potential good. If its Karimov’s daughter (Gulnora, described as the Uzbek Paris Hilton which does not begin to describe her repellence) then the line should probably be held.