The Neocon Ally in Uzbekistan Tortures "Thousands A Year"

President Karimov of Uzbekistan has been described in the press as a dictator who mistreats the population to contain an Islamic insurgency. Here is an excerpt from an interview of Craig Murry, a career diplomat who was recently rather unceremoniously removed from his position for reasons some say were more related to his agitating for human rights in one of the most brutal regimes on Earth.
Not surprising to me, but this government is being propped up by the millions of dollars that come its way because of its willingness to house a US military base. Where is Doublethink Dubya when there is a real need to export Democracy?
Craig Murray, Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan:

I’d had about three weeks of briefing in London, which concentrated very largely on security aspects, questions of Uzbekistan’s geo-strategic position, and the war on terror – human rights weren’t emphasised at all. After two or three weeks in Tashkent, I attended the trial of [Iskander] Khudaiberganov (who was later sentenced to death). He was charged, with five others, with involvement in a variety of crimes including plotting to overthrow the state, terrorism, the murder of two policemen and armed robbery. There was a range of charges and different combinations of the defendants were charged with different ones. Several charges were recycled. Eleven other people had already been convicted of the murder case.


This was the tactic of taking a genuine crime – someone had killed two policemen – and using that to imprison and perhaps execute a number of people. The defendants were held in a cage surrounded by armed guards with submachine guns and they were harangued from the bench by a judge who made anti-Islamic remarks viewed as great witticisms by his cronies in the court. Khudaiberganov’s real crime, I think, was that he had been taught in an Arabic school – one of a number that had been opened with Saudi Arabian money in Uzbekistan in the early/mid-1990s. These were closed following the bombings in Tashkent in 1999. People who had attended these schools were being arrested and charged. A large number are now in jail.


• Your involvement with dissidents in Uzbekistan grew deeper?


My diplomatic colleagues took the view that because of Uzbekistan’s role as a close ally of the US in the war on terror we didn’t mention its human rights record. When I called on the French or German ambassador, for example, I’d say, ‘The things I’m seeing here are absolutely appalling.’ They explicitly stated that there was an understanding that we didn’t broach these things because of the US-Uzbek alliance. No one in London had said to me there was any such understanding: I was under no instruction from any British minister not to mention these things so I decided we would. When I started to do things like go to the Khoudaiberganov trial, take notice of the photographs of Avazov and Azimov – who had been boiled to death – or get pathology reports - this was a tremendous ray of hope for the Uzbek human rights movement. Once people saw I took a genuine interest they started coming to me on a regular basis – particularly families of people arrested, tortured or wrongfully accused. We became a kind of focal point for the oppressed.

[...]
On the other hand, young people are being radicalised by lack of hope. The extraordinary economic policies of the government, aimed at diverting economic activity into the hands of the very few, either through state monopolies or private monopolies enforced by the state, are causing a great deal of poverty and hardship. People are desperate. They don’t see any future in Uzbekistan and they don’t see a democratic opposition. So they are starting to turn to more radical Islamic doctrine. Most Uzbeks who don’t live in major cities would never see any anti-government material. They’d have no access to anything other than official media and official views, except perhaps for an underground mosque or a local radical cleric. The danger is that lack of democracy will cause Central Asia to be radicalised.

[...]
I remember a case of a Jehovah’s Witness prosecuted last year; JWs are also much prosecuted and imprisoned in Uzbekistan. There was a long list of banned documents he had on his person like The Watchtower but, absurdly, they threw in some Hizb-ut-Tahrir leaflets for good measure.

[...]
But almost anyone who comes into the hands of the security services gets tortured, no matter where they come from. It wasn’t as bad in Soviet days as it is now. Certainly it has become more brutal and the police and the SNB (the secret police) act with no fear of reprisal at all. Torture is used to terrorise any potential political opponent. Thousands of people are tortured every year – not tens or dozens. There’s virtually nobody in Uzbekistan who doesn’t know somebody who has been tortured. It’s a regime that rules by fear.

[...]
After the March 2004 bombings in Tashkent, public opinion held that the government almost certainly did it. People made a point of coming and telling me their views, literally in the street. There may come a stage when desperation overcomes fear to some extent. There is more rumbling of discontent than previously, perhaps, but the broad façade of fear still holds.

[...]
• If the information gained from torture is being used to help shape British and US policies, where do we fit into all this?


We mustn’t fall for it, or accept Karimov’s line that he’s besieged by the same fundamentalists who are threatening London or New York. It worries me that there are those in the West who have an interest in accepting hyped up intelligence material. The existence of an external threat justifies the size and funding of the intelligence services, so it’s in their interest to accept material which unrealistically exaggerates the threat.


That’s what the Butler report shows happened over Iraq and those non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Western intelligence services were prepared to accept intelligence that turned out to be nonsense. Historically, since the fall of the Soviet Union, we know that western estimates of the strength, capability and numbers of the Soviet armed forces were vastly overestimated. There is a tendency by the intelligence services to welcome information that exaggerates a threat and not subject it to the scrutiny it deserves.

Complete Article
Our Man in Tashkent
Craig Murray interviewed. By Irena Maryniak.
This article was first published in issue 1/05 of Index on Censorship, Torture: A User's Manual.
Craig Murray, Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan, has been portrayed in the media as a colourful and dotty rogue with a penchant for bars, girls, Range-Rovers and outrageous breaches of diplomatic protocol. In August 2003, he was confronted with a series of disciplinary charges by the Foreign Office, which he was not permitted to discuss with anyone, and instructed to resign. He refused. The allegations were dropped within a few weeks but not before Murray had had a breakdown and a pulmonary embolism that nearly killed him. He was finally removed from his post in October 2004.
As an exercise in psychotherapy, he is now writing an autobiography so frank, he says, that it is unlikely ever to see the light of day: ‘mostly about sex and drinking’. Yet friends and supporters insist that he had his personal and professional life shredded for consistent, courageous criticism of US support for Uzbekistan’s ruthless and repressive regime, for highlighting its use of torture and bringing attention to the plight of its political and religious dissidents.
• Irena Maryniak You’ve talked in public about the rude awakening you had in Uzbekistan after arriving there from Africa in 2002. Surely you knew what it meant to be a British envoy in a difficult environment? Had you been adequately briefed?
Craig Murray I’d come from Ghana, which moved from dictatorship to democracy in my time and held an election which the opposition won. Things were getting better and I felt we’d really achieved something. I realised Uzbekistan was a dictatorship but I had no idea it was as brutal as it is. I’d had about three weeks of briefing in London, which concentrated very largely on security aspects, questions of Uzbekistan’s geo-strategic position, and the war on terror – human rights weren’t emphasised at all. After two or three weeks in Tashkent, I attended the trial of [Iskander] Khudaiberganov (who was later sentenced to death).
He was charged, with five others, with involvement in a variety of crimes including plotting to overthrow the state, terrorism, the murder of two policemen and armed robbery. There was a range of charges and different combinations of the defendants were charged with different ones. Several charges were recycled. Eleven other people had already been convicted of the murder case.
This was the tactic of taking a genuine crime – someone had killed two policemen – and using that to imprison and perhaps execute a number of people. The defendants were held in a cage surrounded by armed guards with submachine guns and they were harangued from the bench by a judge who made anti-Islamic remarks viewed as great witticisms by his cronies in the court.
Khudaiberganov’s real crime, I think, was that he had been taught in an Arabic school – one of a number that had been opened with Saudi Arabian money in Uzbekistan in the early/mid-1990s. These were closed following the bombings in Tashkent in 1999. People who had attended these schools were being arrested and charged. A large number are now in jail.
• Your involvement with dissidents in Uzbekistan grew deeper?
My diplomatic colleagues took the view that because of Uzbekistan’s role as a close ally of the US in the war on terror we didn’t mention its human rights record. When I called on the French or German ambassador, for example, I’d say, ‘The things I’m seeing here are absolutely appalling.’ They explicitly stated that there was an understanding that we didn’t broach these things because of the US-Uzbek alliance. No one in London had said to me there was any such understanding: I was under no instruction from any British minister not to mention these things so I decided we would.
When I started to do things like go to the Khoudaiberganov trial, take notice of the photographs of Avazov and Azimov – who had been boiled to death – or get pathology reports - this was a tremendous ray of hope for the Uzbek human rights movement. Once people saw I took a genuine interest they started coming to me on a regular basis – particularly families of people arrested, tortured or wrongfully accused. We became a kind of focal point for the oppressed.
• Are the dissidents in Uzbekistan an extreme opposition?
The two main strains of opposition are the Erk and Birlik parties – both parties with a long history. They are both moderate parties and would, I think, adopt a more Islamic stance than the current government – though that’s probably more true of Erk than of Birlik. But neither is extreme nor bears any resemblance to the Taliban. They’re not trying to impose that kind of society.
• So why are they such a threat?
They’re a threat to a kleptocratic government that wouldn’t be able to steal any more money if it lost power. They’re absolutely no threat to the security of anyone; I’ve no doubt of that. They would probably be unlikely to countenance a US base on Uzbek soil – but if the Uzbek people, given a democratic opportunity, wanted to elect a government with that view, that’s the right of the Uzbek people.
On the other hand, young people are being radicalised by lack of hope. The extraordinary economic policies of the government, aimed at diverting economic activity into the hands of the very few, either through state monopolies or private monopolies enforced by the state, are causing a great deal of poverty and hardship. People are desperate. They don’t see any future in Uzbekistan and they don’t see a democratic opposition. So they are starting to turn to more radical Islamic doctrine.
Most Uzbeks who don’t live in major cities would never see any anti-government material. They’d have no access to anything other than official media and official views, except perhaps for an underground mosque or a local radical cleric. The danger is that lack of democracy will cause Central Asia to be radicalised.
Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HUT), the underground Mosque movement, is very attractive to young people as an alternative to the government . It originated in the Middle East but perhaps its strongest support is in Central Asia. It’s almost a revolutionary millennarian sect (though that’s a Christian concept) looking to establish a Caliphate. But that’s more a desire for a kind of religious heaven on earth than a practical political ambition.
• Are they being specially targeted?
The numbers of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, IMU (Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan) and others are played up by Karimov’s regime as the excuse for a crackdown on all dissent. There are several thousand members, certainly. People also regularly have Hizb-ut-Tahrir leaflets planted on them in order to secure a conviction, because it’s a banned organisation. Sometimes the leaflets are genuine; sometimes they’re leaflets the state itself has printed.
I remember a case of a Jehovah’s Witness prosecuted last year; JWs are also much prosecuted and imprisoned in Uzbekistan. There was a long list of banned documents he had on his person like The Watchtower but, absurdly, they threw in some Hizb-ut-Tahrir leaflets for good measure.
• Many torture victims are reportedly members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Are they treated particularly harshly?
Hizb-ut-Tahrir do seem to be singled out. But almost anyone who comes into the hands of the security services gets tortured, no matter where they come from. It wasn’t as bad in Soviet days as it is now. Certainly it has become more brutal and the police and the SNB (the secret police) act with no fear of reprisal at all. Torture is used to terrorise any potential political opponent. Thousands of people are tortured every year – not tens or dozens. There’s virtually nobody in Uzbekistan who doesn’t know somebody who has been tortured. It’s a regime that rules by fear.
After the March 2004 bombings in Tashkent, public opinion held that the government almost certainly did it. People made a point of coming and telling me their views, literally in the street. There may come a stage when desperation overcomes fear to some extent. There is more rumbling of discontent than previously, perhaps, but the broad façade of fear still holds.
• How effective do you think this UN-Uzbek action plan to eliminate torture is likely to be?
I’ve seen nothing to indicate that the Uzbek government is serious about it. It took 18 months just to draw up the plan, with long deadlines for other actions. In the meantime torture still continues. This is a very effective totalitarian state. The state machinery works very well. At the moment it tortures because it knows it’s allowed to. It would only take a serious instruction from President Karimov and torture would stop. There is that efficiency and discipline in the system. The fact that it doesn’t stop means they don’t want it to stop.
• If the information gained from torture is being used to help shape British and US policies, where do we fit into all this?
We mustn’t fall for it, or accept Karimov’s line that he’s besieged by the same fundamentalists who are threatening London or New York. It worries me that there are those in the West who have an interest in accepting hyped up intelligence material. The existence of an external threat justifies the size and funding of the intelligence services, so it’s in their interest to accept material which unrealistically exaggerates the threat.
That’s what the Butler report shows happened over Iraq and those non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Western intelligence services were prepared to accept intelligence that turned out to be nonsense. Historically, since the fall of the Soviet Union, we know that western estimates of the strength, capability and numbers of the Soviet armed forces were vastly overestimated. There is a tendency by the intelligence services to welcome information that exaggerates a threat and not subject it to the scrutiny it deserves.
• Your clash with the FCO seems to have been largely over the level of cooperation with Washington. You are unhappy about the US playing down human rights abuses, supporting Karimov, giving him generous aid in return for the use of military bases in Uzbekistan. Do you feel the Uzbek people are being used as pawns in the war on terror?
US policy in Central Asia shows no concern at all for the welfare of the inhabitants of Uzbekistan and doesn’t do any more than pay lip service to the need for fundamental freedoms. I’m still waiting for a convincing explanation for why, apparently, we went to war to topple a dictator in Iraq and establish a democracy while the US is funding a dictator in Uzbekistan.
That seems to me to be a dichotomy that ought to be addressed. I think US policy is ridiculously myopic in Uzbekistan: by supporting Karimov we’re creating an Islamic terrorist threat to the west that didn’t exist before.
The regime is operating a poor economic policy which is still entirely state centred, corrupt and suffers from all the deficiencies that caused the Soviet system to collapse. Its fall has been postponed by the high levels of US aid over the past three years. We might well have seen positive change in Uzbekistan were it not for the support given to Karimov.
• How far do you think it’s the strategic issue that’s decisive? Or does the oil and gas issue determine the way Central Asia is being approached by Western powers?
They come together: the US wants a strategic projection into military force in Central Asia because the region is rich in oil and gas. Uzbekistan itself isn’t a key player. It has gas reserves but not much oil. The surrounding states have a lot more oil than Uzbekistan, but the Uzbek link does mean that the US has a very effective projection of military force into the centre of the area.
Plus it is part of the policy of surrounding the entire oil and gas area known as the ‘wider Middle East’ of which, in this context, Central Asia forms a part. I don’t think you can divorce the military-strategic aspect from the oil and gas aspect. They’re absolutely linked and that’s what’s driving US policy.
• Isn’t there any sense in which you felt, as a diplomatic envoy, that you might be letting the side down by stepping out of line?
I was voicing what is still the official British line on human rights. We don’t approve of boiling people to death; we don’t approve of torture. But we contradict ourselves internally by being willing to accept intelligence material obtained under torture with a rather specious argument that we didn’t encourage the torture. If you keep receiving material, when you know it is obtained under torture, then you are encouraging it.
• How did being in Uzbekistan affect you personally? Close involvement with dissent, torture and death must have had a huge impact.
At times it brought you close to despair, even though there were times when we succeeded in helping individual cases. I feel I’ve been tested. Particularly on this issue of receiving intelligence under torture: whether there are circumstances in which we should. I feel happy to have discovered that I have points of principle beyond which I’m not prepared to go and that I’m willing to lose my job for them.
I worry that more people aren’t prepared to do that. The people who are sitting in the FCO making up excuses to keep receiving material obtained under torture are fairly decent people. This is a slippery slope. There’s a strong argument that there are more active Islamic terrorists in the world now than there were three years ago, and beyond any doubt, individual liberties in the Western world have been curtailed.
• This article appeared in issue 1/05 of Index on Censorship, Torture: A Users' Manual. Craig Murray was interviewed in London by Irena Maryniak. He is standing for parliament in the 5 May British general election as an independent candidate, contesting the seat presently held by UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.