Eccoli i terribili islamici uzbeki…

saluti_uyguri.jpg, image/jpeg, 475x370

Saad al-Faqih è un chirurgo saudita, nel 1991 ebbe la pessima idea di inviare al suo sovrano una "Letter of Demands", seguita l'anno successivo da un "Memorandum of Advice". Richieste, e consigli. Il buon uomo non ha mai minacciato alcuno, né si è mai interessato di armi o avvicinato ai qaedisti sauditi. Eppure con il consenso di altri paesi il suo nome è stato inserito nella lista Onu dei terroristi, ed i suoi conti correnti congelati. Il signor Saad vive in Inghilterra, ove non viene considerato un terrorista, ma un perseguitato in esilio. (Nella foto Saad al-Faqih).

Alcuni giorni fa, in Pakistan, il movimento Hizbut Tehrir, di estrazione intellettuale, cresciuto silenziosamente nella borghesia e nell'upper class pakistana, che predica un ritorno ad una maggiore moralità in nome della tradizione islamica, movimento dichiaratamente nonviolento, ha convocato una enorme manifestazione di protesta contro la dittatura di Musharraf. E' finita con l'esercito che ha sparato sulla folla.

Prima era successo lo stesso con le tribù wazire, che ospiterebbero Osama bin Laden, con gli abitanti del Balochistan che non erano contenti di farsi devastare e colonizzare il territorio, e accade da anni in Jammu e Kashmir.

Da pochi giorni l'Uzbekistan è in rivolta, una buona parte della popolazione ha raggiunto il limite di sopportazione, i 15 anni di dittatura di Karimov hanno reso insopportabile la vita in un paese che sarebbe ricco di risorse naturali e avrebbe la cultura sufficiente per godersele. Purtroppo, tutti questi paesi sono islamici, tutti sono retti da dittature e tutti sono militarmente alleati degli Stati Uniti nella war on terror.

Così, ogni opposizione viene stroncata e i pupazzi di Washington applaudono ai bagni di sangue come necessari tributi di guerra. Così feroci dittatori reprimono nel sangue istanze secolari di interi popoli, apparendo sui nostri media come paladini delle libertà. In Uzbekistan Karimov si accanisce da anni contro gli Uyguri, un popolo che come i kurdi è stato diviso da frontiere tracciate sulla carta.

Gli Uyguri sono spinti in Uzbekistan e nei paesi vicini dai cinesi, impegnati a popolare a forza lo Xinjiang con cinesi di razza Han, nella "corsa all' Ovest" per stare sul sicuro e non discutere sulle risorse della zona, tutte destinate a Pechino; ormai il 50% della popolazione dello Xingjiang è di etnia Han, e non si mischia con gli Uyguri, che sono esclusi dagli affari, va da se. Gli uyguri, popolazione di origine mongola che in Cina mette le bombe sugli autobus e non lo sa nessuno, perché i cinesi combattono gli islamici nella war on terror, ma gli Uyguri non li considerano tali, così a nessuno interessano scomode contabilità; sono il passatempo preferito di Karimov, il che però non solleva il resto della popolazione. Karimov ha messo tutti a lavorare, non accetta obiezioni, libere elezioni, tiene i guadagni per se ed i suoi amici, e chi non è d'accordo muore.

Ora, in Uzbekistan la popolazione è turcomanna, assai distante dall' estremismo islamico; in Arabia Saudita gli estremisti islamici sono indubbiamente al governo; in Pakistan il 50% dell'esercito stava con al Qaeda, Musharraf ha venduto le atomiche almeno ad Iran e Corea del Nord, e ha dimostrato che spara su chiunque, estremista o no.

Quindi quando si parla di estremisti islamici contro stati alleati nella war on terror, la cosa andrebbe quantomeno provata, specialmente se i ribelli hanno nomi che suonano russi, in particolar modo se si tratta di paesi a prevalenza islamica; o quasi esclusivamente islamici come Arabia Saudita e Pakistan. Fino a che non ci sia una dimostrazione convincente di quanto "terroristi islamici" siano gli oppositori occasionali, conviene ancora chiamare le cose alla vecchia maniera.

In Uzbekistan un dittatore ha mandato l'esercito contro la folla che protestava, e ha ucciso centinaia di dimostranti indifesi, e non certo terroristi. Bisogna dirlo, anche se in Uzbekistan c'è una grossa base americana...

mazzetta@reporterassociati.org

....e questi invece sono quelli dell'Izbut Teherir che vorrebbero realizzare il khilafah, che sarebbe un governo unico di tutti gli islamici, attraverso la politica e non attraverso il terrorismo.
Chi la fa, facile da ricordare, vedremo se diventerà un movimento veramente internazionale:
http://www.khilafah.com/home/

l'area uygura:
http://www.uyghuronline.com/img/uyghurmap.jpg
uzbeki:
http://www.uzbekconsul.org/uzbekistan/maps/
http://www.grida.no/db/maps/prod/level3/id_1284.htm
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/mapshells/central_asia/uzbekistan/uzbekistan.htm
la mappa più importante, cercate quanto sia diffuso lo "arabic":
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_map.asp?name=UZ&seq=10

Quando uno parla di integralismo islamico, non parla di quattro bimbetti che salutano festanti ad una macchina fotografica per una foto. Non ti dice niente Hizb ut-Tahrir organizzazione con legami con Al Qaida.A guidare la lotta contro il presidente Karimov c’è l’Hizb ut-Tahrir. Nato da una costola dei Fratelli musulmani egiziani, il movimento è stato fondato ufficialmente nel 1953 da un insegnante palestinese di Gerusalemme, Takeddine Al Nabahani, che ha presto raccolto seguaci in Libano, Siria e Giordania. Gradualmente l’Hizb si è diffuso in Nord Africa e nelle ex repubbliche sovietiche. Molti adepti vivono anche in Europa.
Obiettivo del partito è la creazione del Califfato, meta che deve essere conseguita dagli «anelli» (cellule) di cinque persone che diffondono il messaggio. In seguito ogni membro di un anello deve dare vita a uno nuovo. Ancora più radicale l’ideologia che ispira il Movimento islamico uzbeko (Miu), creato nel 1997 da Tahir Yuldashev e Ndzhuma Namangani. Quest’ultimo ha guidato la fazione fino al novembre 2001, quando si è diffusa la notizia della sua morte in uno scontro a fuoco in Afghanistan. Di recente, però, sono circolate voci sulla sua ricomparsa. Il Miu è entrato nell’alveo qaedista e numerosi mujaheddin sono ancora impegnati in azioni di guerriglia nel Waziristan, area dove si era nascosto anche Bin Laden. Una retroguardia forse abbandonata al suo destino dopo la sconfitta dei talebani.

l'Izbut Tehrir è in Pakistan, ed è una riedizione dell'Izbut Tehrir originale, e non è per nulla vicino ad al Qaeda, anche se lo dicono i servizi pakistani, chissà perchè. Vicino ad al Qaeda in Pakistan c'è il governo.

In Uzbekistan gli islamici sono poco più di una banda, non certo quelli che sono scesi in piazza.

Anche BBc dice che gli avversari dicono che il terrorismo islamico è un pretesto.
I vicini kirghizi, non fanatici islamici, simpatizzano con i rivoltosi.
Karimov mente platealmente, questo è facilmente desumibile dalla differenza tra i pochi rapporti e le sue versioni.


Uzbek president blames Islamists
Bodies laid out in Andijan
There have been wildly different estimates of the death toll
Uzbekistan's president has blamed Friday's unrest in the eastern city of Andijan on what he described as criminals and Islamic radicals.

President Islam Karimov was speaking for the first time since troops opened fire on demonstrators, killing many.

Thousands of protesters reappeared on the streets of Andijan on Saturday, despite the bloodshed.

About 6,000 people have fled to the border with Kyrgyzstan, sparking clashes with Uzbek police.

Kyrgyz sympathy

The Kyrgyz authorities have closed all border crossings, but officials say the Uzbeks are on the border - many in the large market town of Korasuv.


UZBEK TENSIONS
Most populous central Asian former Soviet republic, home to 26m people
Ruled since independence in 1991 by autocrat Islam Karimov
Accused by rights groups of serious human rights abuses, including torture
Rocked by violence in capital Tashkent in 2004
Government says radical Islamic groups behind violence

Tough regime's unlikely allies
What lies behind protests?
Media clampdown stifles news

Several hundred have managed to enter Kyrgyzstan and others are trying to cross illegally.

The BBC's Ian MacWilliam in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, says the situation in Uzbekistan is drawing sympathy in Kyrgyzstan, where large protests brought down the government in March.

The Uzbek violence erupted after days of peaceful protest in Andijan, against the imprisonment of 23 local business leaders accused of Islamic extremism.

Mr Karimov has described what happened as an armed uprising, planned by Islamic militants linked to the banned Hizb ut-Tahrir movement, who wanted to overthrow the government.

He said the leaders of the uprising had been on the phone to Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan during the siege.

"Their aims are hatred and aversion to the secular path of development. These are unacceptable for us," he said.

Order to shoot

But the president denied giving the order for troops to shoot, saying that "no-one gave government forces the order to fire".

Witnesses said troops opened fire on unarmed civilians.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov
President Karimov is a staunch backer of the war on terror

Mr Karimov said about 10 soldiers, and "many others", were killed, but made no mention of protesters being killed.

It is not clear how many died, some people said they had seen at least 200 bodies.

The government said it was back in control of the city on Saturday, but huge crowds were back on the streets, shouting "killers, murderers" and demanding the president step down.

"What kind of government is this?" one of the protesters said to the Associated Press. "People were raising their hands up in the air showing they were without arms but soldiers were still shooting at them."

Bodies on trucks

On Saturday civilians dragged six bodies from an abandoned administrative building, placing them at the foot of a nearby monument to an Uzbek poet.


I think the West should rethink its relationship with Uzbekistan
Bauyrzhan Meirmanov, Shymkent, Kazakhstan

Uzbek crisis: Your comments

Witnesses said they had seen troops loading dozens of bodies onto trucks.

Hospital officials told the BBC that at least 50 had died and many more were wounded throughout the day.

Mr Karimov, an ally of both Washington and Moscow's war on terror, has taken a tough line on security since a spate of suicide bombings last year, blamed on Islamic extremists.

But critics say the president is using the threat of extremism as a cover to crush dissent.

What lies behind Uzbek protests?
By Jenny Norton
BBC, Tashkent

Protesters outside Andijan court, 11/5/05
Protests outside an Andijan court had been mounting all week
Most of the protesters who have crowded into Andijan's central square today are local people - men and women, old people and even some young children.

They have come to call for an end to the poverty and injustice which they say have become a part of their daily lives.

Unemployment is very high in eastern Uzbekistan and many young people feel they no longer have a future in the area.

Andijan has been particularly hard hit by the Uzbek government's continuing crackdown against Islamic groups.


UZBEK TENSIONS
Most populous central Asian former Soviet republic, home to 26m people
Ruled since independence in 1991 by autocrat Islam Karimov
Accused by rights groups of serious human rights abuses, including torture
Rocked by violence in capital Tashkent in 2004
Government says radical Islamic groups behind violence

Media clampdown stifles news

Hundreds of young men have been arrested, and it is common to meet people in the city who have husbands, brothers and fathers in jail.

Many men who have been released from prison complain of being mistreated.

They say vicious beatings are commonplace. All this has added to a growing sense of anger.

Some of the people leading Friday's demonstration in Andijan were set free when armed men stormed the town's prison in the early hours of the morning.

They include a number of prominent local businessmen who have been standing trial accused of belonging to an Islamic extremist group.

Their supporters have been involved in a peaceful protest which has been going on outside an Andijan court for the past four months.

At this stage the identity of the gunmen who stormed the prison is not known, and it is not clear what, if any, connection they have to the people organising the demonstration.

Gli Hizbut emergono anche in Afghanistan
in realta' le dimostrazioni non sono violente, almeno per lo standard afghano, e se la prendono anche con le Ong, con i pakistani e con l'Onu.
L'Hizbut Tehrir, secondo Raman, ha colto di sorpresa i servizi americani lavorando in silenzio, non così quelli pakistani ed indiani, che da tempo seguono il diffondersi dell'islam elitarista di questo movimento.
mazzetta


Afghan violence linked to Hizbut Tehrir
By B Raman

"This is the biggest protest campaign in Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban regime [in 2001]. This is bloody, widespread and countrywide.This also shows that they are fed up with the United States and they just needed a spark to vent their feelings."
- Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Pakistani journalist who is considered an authority on the tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, on May 12.

Yusufzai was talking about the violent anti-US and anti-Hamid Karzai demonstrations sweeping across Afghanistan since May 10, in protest against the alleged desecration of the Holy Koran by US guards at the Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba, where about 500 Afghans, Pakistanis and other Muslims have been detained by the US authorities without trial and without giving them any right of access to human-rights organizations.

The demonstrations, often culminating in violence, which started at Jalalabad near the Pakistan border, have since spread to the northern provinces of Parwan, Kapisa and Takhar, Laghman in the east, Logar and Khost in the southeast and the southern province of Kandahar. It also spread to Kabul itself on May 12. According to the latest reports, 10 out of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan have been affected by the demonstrations and the resulting violence. The anger of the demonstrators has been directed not only against the US and President Karzai of Afghanistan, but also against Pakistan and the United Nations and Western non-governmental organizations functioning from Afghanistan. Their offices have been attacked, causing considerable property damage everywhere.

Though no fatalities have been inflicted on the security forces by the demonstrators, seven civilians have so far been killed and over 80 injured as a result of firing by Afghan and American security forces to disperse the demonstrators. Reports of the demonstrations received from several towns indicate the following common features:
# The students spearheaded the demonstrations, in which a large number of educated people participated.
# The demonstrations were not spontaneous. They had been well-prepared, and were well organized and well orchestrated. Groups of students went from town to town instigating the local students to take to the streets.
# The demonstrators were not armed and confined their protests to shouting anti-US and anti-Karzai slogans, burning American and Pakistani flags and effigies of President George W Bush, Karzai and Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf and attacking properties like buildings and vehicles.
# The demonstrations were not instigated by the Taliban or the Hizb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar or al-Qaeda. However, elements from the Taliban and the Hizb, who were taken by pleasant surprise by the students taking to the streets, subsequently joined them.
# Many members of the police and the newly-raised Afghan army showed sympathy for the demonstrators and were reluctant to use force against them when ordered to do so by their senior officers.

Reports from Afghan sources indicate that the demonstrations have been organized by the Hizbut Tehrir (HT) and not by the Taliban, the Hizb or al-Qaeda. While one was aware of some HT activities in the student community in Afghanistan, the extent of its penetration not only in the student community, but also in the Afghan security forces, has come as a surprise.

In their preoccupation with fighting their so-called "war against al-Qaeda", the Taliban and the Hizb, American intelligence agencies and security forces seem to have remained oblivious of the subterranean activities of the HT, and have consequently been taken totally by surprise.

B Raman is additional secretary (retired), cabinet secretariat, government of India, New Delhi, and, presently, director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai, and distinguished fellow and convener, Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter. Email: itschen36@gmail.com

(Copyright 2005 B Raman)

hanno arrestato 2 uyguri 2 di nazionalità cinese.

Quello che a qualcuno sfugge è che tra Pakistan e Afghanistan ci sono tantissime fabbriche di armi, tutti ci vanno per comprare armi, non certo per mettersi con Osama e diventare nemici di Bush.

Effetti secondari:

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav112102.shtml
EURASIA INSIGHT

US AIR BASE IN UZBEKISTAN CAUSES SIGNIFICANT CHANGES FOR LOCAL RESIDENTS
Kamol Kholmuradov 11/21/02

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It has been more than a year since US forces first deployed at Uzbekistan’s Khanabad air base as part of the campaign against terrorism. Over that span, the quality of life for area residents has changed dramatically. For many, proximity to the base has translated into jobs and rising income. But arrival of US troops has also caused economic dislocation – especially for area farmers.

According to local residents, when the first US military planes began arriving at Khanabad in October 2001 – less than a month following the September 11 terrorist attacks – they would land only at night and with all lights turned off. [For additional information see the Eurasia Insight archives]. Such precautions were taken presumably to lower the chances of a terrorist attack against an incoming aircraft with a surface to air missile, and to make it more difficult for area residents to see what was going on. These days, however, US aircraft take off and land at all hours.

The US deployment transformed the village of Khanabad, located near the base. Barbed-wire fences were erected that effectively cut the village off from the outside. Soldiers posted at checkpoints supposedly will not permit anyone who is not an officially registered village resident to enter Khanabad. But locals say quietly that "an exception" is made for those who offer either a payment or a gift to a sentry.

The base’s presence has altered the social habits of local residents, as the security measures make it difficult, if not impossible, to host visiting friends and relatives. "If we plan a big event, we have to inform the Makhalla (neighborhood) Committee well in advance," says one Khanabad resident. "If anyone dies, it is a doubly troubling for family members, as many of them will not be able to participate in burial ceremonies.

"Sometimes, they [soldiers at checkpoints] do not even let in people accompanying the deceased from the hospital if those people do not have [proper identification] with them," the resident added.

Local residents additionally complain that sentries around the town are prone to corruption, seeking payment for a variety of services. The sentries explain that long delays in the payment of their official salaries force them to seek "alternative" income, Khanabad residents say.

Despite the inconveniences, many village residents are glad to be living near the US base. Unemployment has declined dramatically in the area, as many previously out-of-work young people have found jobs "on American territory." About 70 percent of the village’s 5,000 residents are classified as young people, says Ota-ulla Ziyatov, chairman of the Khanabad Makhalla Committee. Local residents tend to be employed in the laundry and kitchen facilities. They also work in janitorial and repair capacities, keeping the base clean.

"Of course, the airbase had a certain positive effect on living standards in the village. Working conditions at the airbase are very good: villagers working there are provided with clothes, footwear and food. Monthly wages are between 70,000 and 100,000 Uzbek soms [$55-80 at the black market exchange rate – a relatively large salary for rural residents]," Ziyatov said. As an added benefit, Ziyatov continued, anecdotal evidence indicates that the village has experienced a significant drop in crime over the past year.

Locals who are now employed at the base echo Ziyatov’s sentiments. "I have worked as an electrician at the US base for two months now. Working conditions are better than on the Uzbek territory," says Shukur, a village resident.

Most of those working at the base are reluctant to disclose details concerning their salaries. They fear that if word gets out, soldiers at checkpoints may further increase the "tax" for entering the village.

Local farmers are less enthusiastic about the air base. Many of the best cow pastures are now off limits, behind barbed-wire fences. Area residents say that cows are vital to the village’s livelihood, not only for meat and milk, but also as a source of energy. In winter, they add, the pressure in local gas pipeline falls significantly, leaving residents without a reliable energy supply. Many villagers have already started purchasing coal to prepare for the onset of winter. Poorer residents rely on dried cow dung for heating.

"Some cannot afford to buy coal," says a village resident. "Our family lives from hand to mouth. It is very shameful, but we have to gather cow dung. It will help us survive another winter. After the base was barbed-wired, my son cannot gather enough. He used to gather it in the pastures. There is only one hope: maybe, they will hire him to work at the airbase."

Other residents say that the air base’s recent expansion caused a serious reduction in the village’s water supply. If the village’s irrigation system is not restored by the end of the year, area farmers say the winter wheat crop will be jeopardized. Some experts estimated the cost of restoring the irrigation system at about $30,000.

"The Americans were expanding the air base so they needed more land. The base used to occupy 300 hectares. They have recently taken 33 more hectares including the land our canal flowed from," said one village elder. "They promised to compensate but nothing has been done so far."

In general, the topic of compensation is a sore subject with area farmers. "What is most frustrating is that I spent almost a year knocking the doors of different government structures to get this land," said one farmer. "I had great plans connected with the land; I invested huge money in my farm. And now, just two years after I received the land, they take it away from me having only compensated a half of my investments."

Several farmers have applied to the local administration to receive land in other locations in return for the land taken over by the Khanabad air base. Regional officials have yet to review the matter, however, as they are preoccupied with the cotton harvest.

Rumors are now rife in the village that the Americans are planning another round of expansion, and will hire more locals to fill construction jobs. The increase in traffic of construction materials into the base is helping keep the rumor alive, area residents say.

Posted November 21, 2002 © Eurasianet
http://www.eurasianet.org

The Central Eurasia Project aims, through its website, meetings, papers, and grants, to foster a more informed debate about the social, political and economic developments of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is a program of the Open Society Institute-New York. The Open Society Institute-New York is a private operating and grantmaking foundation that promotes the development of open societies around the world by supporting educational, social, and legal reform, and by encouraging alternative approaches to complex and controversial issues.

The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent the position of the Open Society Institute and are the sole responsibility of the author or authors.

ormai con quella del terrorismo si può massacrare popoli interi!

chi è il vero terrorista allora?

qui sopra vedo analisti della banda neocons.

Tranne Mazzetta che ha postato un articolo illuminante.

050222-f-0000w-018.jpg, image/jpeg, 233x340

le basi:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/khanabad.htm
http://www.af.mil/photos/index.asp?galleryID=32&page=2
http://schema-root.org/region/asia/central_asia/uzbekistan/us_military_base/karshi_khanabad/
http://www.defense.gov/news/Jan2004/n01262004_200401264.html
un pirla del Wisconsin:
http://www.house.gov/markgreen/AfghanPhotos.htm
alcuni americani non sanno neanche dove sono:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2004/040726-us-bases.htm
il solito casuale profumo di petrolio:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/intervention/2004/1119scent.htm

Quelli che hanno assaltato i palazzi governativi armi alla mano non erano bimbetti.

Questa è un'operazione USA per occupare la regione.

E'vero che ci sono già basi USA; ma è anche vero che in data 6 maggio il presidente Karimov ha girato le spalle agli USA e ha rinsaldato la sua alleanza con la Russia.

L'agenzia cubana PRENSA LATINA afferma:

Secondo alcuni analisti i disordini sono riconducibili all'annuncio di Tashkent di ritirarsi da la GUUAM, organizzazione formata da Georgia, Ucraina, Azerbaijan, Moldavia.

L'alleanza spera di convertirsi in un blocco politico e militare col progetto di entrare a far parte della NATO, cosa che è stata rifiutata il 6 maggio scorso dal presidente Karimov.


http://www.prensa-latina.org/article.asp?ID={9E77B408-1669-47FB-8E36-DE9899BC1448}&language=ES

http://www.prensa-latina.org/article.asp?ID={5C12BBB3-D6C0-488F-B547-37FE6AD57DEC}&language=ES


Dunque una spiegazione logica è che si tratti di una operazione degli USA.

Gli estremisti islamici sono sempre delle black op filo-USA,; almeno fino a quando la Russia non li "copiano" il brevetto.

Se Sparta piange Atene non ride...
le analisi dei tuoi amici paleostalinisti cubani sono simili a quelle dei comunisti spagnoli (dai quali derivano)durante la guerra di Spagna ...
allora contro gli anarchici ed i trozkisti , oggi, con la stessa "serietà marxista", contro gli islamici!
Purchè il dogma rimanga! Quale poi? La dittatura? almeno allora c'era il mito della "dittatura del proletariato" rapprsentata da Stalin...oggi, caro "rivoluzionario" , chi rappresenta il tuo proletariato? Putin? Milosevic? Genghiz Khan?
Non ti rendi conto di dove sei arrivato! Difendere quel pezzo di merda e giustificare le sue ruberie e massacri...

Ah, dimenticavo il precedente del patto Robentrop-Molotov, anch'esso giustificato da analisi del tipo cubano...

sarà ma me la spiegazione ++++ logica sembra quella di smazz, non so perchè, ma di solito lo considero anche più attendibile di Granma......

Tantomeno terroristi.....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4548371.stm

Analysis: Uzbekistan's 'Islamists'
By Paul Tumelty
BBC Monitoring

Uzbeks mourn victims of recent clashes
Fundamentalists or well-doers? Protesters rallied against the trial of 23 Islamic businessmen
The unrest in the eastern Uzbek region of Andijan was sparked by protests linked to the trial of 23 local businessmen which began in February this year.

Prosecutors allege that the men are members of a heterodox Islamic sect known as Akramiya, named after Akramjon Yoldoshev, a mathematics teacher from Andijan.

In 1992 he authored a pamphlet entitled "Iymonga Yol", or the "Way to Sacred Islam", in which he addressed questions of morality and stressed the superiority of the Islamic worldview. As a result, he attracted a group of followers that became known as Akramiya.

It remains unclear whether the group has a distinct structure, or indeed comprises a group at all, but the Uzbek authorities have repeatedly claimed Akramiya is an anti-constitutional extremist organisation who wish to impose Sharia law and an Islamic State in Central Asia.

Others state that Akramiya is a splinter group from Hezb-e Tahrir (Party of Liberation), a trans-national Islamic group that seeks to re-establish the Caliphate in Central Asia, though by peaceful means.

'Helping the poor'

In April 2005, the regional newspaper Andijonnoma stated that followers of the group propagate the idea that the solution to all problems in life - social and economic - can be found in the Koran or Hadith.

Its slogan is "use wisdom in the right way" and the paper states that the group aims to create an "Islamic environment" to attract followers by setting up small business enterprises in the spheres of construction, production and farming, providing members and followers with jobs and money.

In mid-March 2005, an unrecognised youth group in the Andijan region appealed to the international community to "help their 23 friends and colleagues" charged with involvement in the Akramiya group.

The appeal stated that the defendants "were not religious extremists but successful businessmen who have carried out charitable activities and rendered assistance to needy people".

Their statement outlined that the Andijan youth movement itself was established in 1994 with the aim of advancing economic reform in the country and they began to implement their plans in 1999.

A limited liability partnership "Qurilishsavdotaminot" (construction company) was set up and other enterprises were established later.

In 2004, all the heads of these enterprises, the 23 defendants, were arrested by officers from the Andijan regional branch of the National Security Service.

The appeal further stated that the "defendants and their friends do not deny that they were and still are Muslims, and that they have rendered assistance to people, as prescribed by the Koran".

'No incitement'

Those on trial may share the views of Akramiya's founder Akramjon Yoldoshev, but his book's main aim, they say, is to prevent the young from joining organisations such as Hezb-e Tahrir.

Other independent sources similarly claim that Yoldoshev's book does not address political questions.

On 11 March Yoldoshev's wife Yodgora testified at the trial on behalf of the defence.

She stated that, although she did not know the defendants, she was attending to refute allegations that her husband's book incited extremism.

Her husband, she said, was arrested for the first time on 3 March 1998, charged with possessing drugs and sentenced to two years and six months in prison, but was released following an amnesty in December that year.

Following his release, Yoldoshev appealed to the justice department to have his book published officially. He was subsequently re-arrested on 17 February 1999 and sentenced to 17 years in prison.

Yodgora Yoldoshev's states that her husband forbids her to criticise the authorities, and especially not the president, as he says that "one becomes ruler at Allah's will. Acting against the ruler means acting against Allah's will."

On 29 April the Ferghana.ru website announced that the 23 defendants had gone on hunger strike and by 11 May reports emerged of a 4,000-strong protest outside Andijan's town court.

Whatever the true aims or beliefs of the followers of Akramjon Yoldoshev, it now appears that events have taken over. As one Uzbek source told the BBC: "The people are tired."

Come al solito in ogni conflitto c'è sempre la solita corsa a decidere chi è l'amico e chi è il nemico.
Mi pare che siamo come al solito al palo.
I dittatori filorussi, non sono meno stalinisti, dei buoni governanti dell'est che hanno aderito all'Europa.
Gli americani fomentano le bande islamiche da anni, ma non per questo i moderati cristiani ortodossi sono meno fetenti.
Ora il vero nodo rimane come al solito, in questo scontrero tra poteri reazionari, integralisti, dov'è la visione autonoma delle classi lavoratrici, l'idea di uguaglianza, di giustizia sociale, di fratellanza?
Questi che dovrebbero essere i nostri alleati in una idea di cambiamento democratica, di solidarietà, internazionalista.... le stanno prendendo da tutti.
Quindi il nemico del mio nemico non è neccessariamente mio amico.

By BAGILA BUKHARBAYEVA Associated Press Writer
The Associated PressThe Associated Press

ANDIJAN, Uzbekistan May 15, 2005 — An estimated 500 bodies have been laid out in a school in the eastern Uzbek city where troops fired on a crowd of protesters to put down an uprising, a doctor said Sunday, corroborating witness accounts of hundreds killed in the fighting.

The doctor, who said she had seen the bodies, said residents were coming to Andijan's School No. 15 to identify dead relatives, who had been placed in rows. Soldiers were guarding the school, said the doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for her safety.

The doctor also said she believed some 2,000 people were wounded in the clashes on Friday, but it wasn't clear how she arrived at that estimate. The doctor spoke with The Associated Press by telephone; most outside journalists left Andijan Saturday after several reporters were detained by police.

Thousands of terrified Uzbeks trying to flee into Kyrgyzstan burned a government building Saturday and attacked border guards, a second day of violence triggered by a brazen jail break to free accused Islamic militants and a massive demonstration against economic conditions under the iron-fisted rule of President Islam Karimov.

There was no immediate word on casualties in Saturday's violence in this former republic of the ex-Soviet Union. Witnesses on Friday had said 200 to 300 people were killed in the gunfire; the doctor's report of 500 dead raised that estimate.

Andijan is Uzbekistan's fourth-largest city, about 30 miles from the country's easternmost border in the narrow finger of territory that protrudes deep into Kyrgyzstan, where an uprising in late March ousted that country's only post-Soviet leader.

The Uzbek unrest began late Thursday night when protesters freed as many as 2,000 prisoners, including the 23 members of the Akramia Islamic group on trial on charges of being members of a group allied with the outlawed radical Islamic party Hizb-ut-Tahrir. It seeks to create a worldwide Islamic state and has been forced underground throughout most of Central Asia and Russia.

Karimov's hardline secular regime has a long history of repressing Muslims who worship outside state-approved mosques.

In the course of Friday, thousands of people swarmed into the streets of Andijan, clashing with police and seizing the administration building, which was later taken back by government forces. Demonstrators did not call for the ouster of Karimov but instead complained bitterly about the dire economic conditions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin telephoned Karimov on Saturday to express concern that the violence could destablize Central Asia, the Kremlin press service said in a statement.

The U.S.-allied Uzbek leader blamed the fighting on Islamic extremists. During a news conference in the capital, Tashkent, he said 10 government troops and "many more" militants died in the fighting Friday. At least 100 people were wounded, Karimov said without specifying who started the shooting.

Uzbekistan hosts a U.S. air base in the Karshi-Khanabad region, 90 miles from the Afghan border, to support military operations in that country after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. The number of troops there has reached several thousand at times. The base is more than 430 miles southwest of Andijan.

The White House on Saturday declined to comment, although press secretary Scott McClellan on Friday urged both the government and demonstrators to "exercise restraint."

After the shooting in Andijan on Friday, Lutfulo Shamsutdinov, head of the Independent Human Rights Organization of Uzbekistan, said he saw the bodies of about 200 victims being loaded onto trucks near the square. A witness in central Andijan told The Associated Press that "many, many dead bodies are stacked up by a school near the square."

Disturbances flared Saturday in the village of Korasuv, 30 miles to the east, when 6,000 Uzbeks trying to flee into Kyrgyzstan were blocked at the border. Some in the group set fire to a police station, vandalized police cars and attacked border personnel, a Kyrgyz official said. Uzbek helicopters were seen circling overhead.

In Andijan, hundreds of angry protesters gathered Saturday at the site of Friday's bloodshed, placing six bodies on display from the scores witnesses said were killed in fighting. Clusters of bystanders watched as men covered other bloodied bodies with white shrouds.

Demonstrators, some with tears in their eyes, condemned the government for firing on women and children. Residents said a group of hundreds later went to a local police station to confront the heavily armed authorities, who sent a helicopter buzzing low over the crowd to scare them away.

Karimov said he ordered authorities not to take any physical action against the demonstrators Saturday.

"In Uzbekistan, nobody fights against women, children or the elderly," he said.

An Andijan resident reached by telephone said Sunday that the city had been largely quiet overnight, aside from a volley of gunfire that lasted a few minutes. The resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said protesters had left the square at the center of the uprising and that the streets were still full of government soldiers.

In Friday's standoff, Karimov claimed the government had offered the demonstrators free passage out of the city in buses with their weapons, seized in attacks on a police station and military outpost.

But a protest leader, Kabuljon Parpiyev, said Interior Minister Zakir Almatov did not sound willing to negotiate when they spoke by phone Friday.

"He said, 'We don't care if 200, 300 or 400 people die. We have force and we will chuck you out of there anyway,'" Parpiyev quoted Almatov as saying.

Earlier Saturday, soldiers loaded scores of bodies onto four trucks and a bus after blocking friends and relatives from collecting them, witnesses said.

Daniyar Akbarov, 24, joined the protests Saturday after being freed from the prison during the earlier clashes.

"Our women and children are dying," he said, tearfully beating his chest with his fists. Akbarov said he saw at least 300 people killed.

The focus of the jailbreak was 23 men charged with membership in a group allegedly allied with Hizb-ut-Tahrir.

The men are alleged members of Akramia a group named for their founder, Akram Yuldashev, an Islamic dissident sentenced in 1999 to 17 years in prison for allegedly urging Karimov's ouster. He has proclaimed his innocence. The group forms the heart of the city's small business community.
Top Stories


The trial of the 23 has inspired one of the largest public shows of anger at the government in years, and the largest outbreak of violence since Uzbekistan became an independent country after the 1991 Soviet collapse.

Associated Press reporter Burt Herman contributed to this report from Tashkent.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

When People Power Is a Problem
Washington Wary of Uzbekistan's Uprising

By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 17, 2005; 8:24 AM

Not all rebellions against tyranny are created equal, it seems.

When the people of Ukraine took to the streets to overturn a rigged election, U.S. officials hailed the Orange Revolution.




Bush Shakes Hands with Islam Karimov
President Bush, right, shakes hands with Uzbek President Islam Karimov during their March 2002 Oval Office meeting at teh White House to discuss a long-term military partnership. (Alex Wong - Getty Images)

When the Lebanese public rose up against Syrian occupation, a U.S. State Department official dubbed the movement the Cedar Revolution.

But when popular protests in the Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan were violently crushed over the weekend by the government of President Islam Karimov, the Bush White House responded not with a media-genic brand name but with a mild statement urging both sides to show restraint.

"We have had concerns about human rights in Uzbekistan," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "but we are concerned about the outbreak of violence, particularly by some members of a terrorist organization that were freed from prison."

That claim drew scorn from The Herald in Scotland.

"It is a long way from Uzbekistan, where a popular uprising in the city of Andijan has been put down with perhaps the loss of 500 civilian lives, to Washington, from whence George W. Bush issues the clarion call for the spread of freedom and democracy across the world. But distance is no excuse for the muted response from the White House."

Karimov gets special treatment from Washington, the editors of the Glasgow daily charged, because he allows the U.S. military to use the Karshi-Khanabad airbase in the war on terrorism.

Andijon, Uzbekistan
"The American response (or lack of it) to the popular revolt in Andijan, and the brutality with which it has been quelled, confirms that the Bush administration supports the spread of democracy only where it suits American interests," the editors said.

The democratic bona fides of the protesters in Andijan in eastern Uzbekistan, where the unrest started, are questionable. The White House concern about "some members of a terrorist organization" was echoed by Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who said that the Taliban "has played a role" in the unrest.

According to an Agence France Presse account, published in the U.S.-based Muslim Uzbekistan, the uprising began when dozens of men attacked a local garrison last Thursday, seized weapons and then assaulted a prison where 23 Muslim businessmen in Andijan were being held. The businessmen were freed, along with 2,000 other prisoners. Eyewitnesses said supportive city residents streamed into the town square shouting "Democracy and Jobs!" and "Karimov Resign!" according to the report.

According to Forum 18, a Norwegian religious rights site, the 23 men were charged with belonging to Akramia, said to be an offshoot of the banned Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir, the London-based group that advocates the establishment of an Islamic caliphate to replace current Arab governments. The group's Web site does not advocate violence but its ideological agenda resembles al Qaeda's with denunciations of the "corrupt" West, the "perversion" of the Jews and the treachery of "colonialist" Arab regimes.

But the father of one the businessmen in jail told Forum 18 that Akramia was a much less political offshoot of Hizb-ut-Tahrir that is being prosecuted for its local popularity.

"All of the detainees were devout believers and entrepreneurs," the man told Forum 18 in February. "They set up a mutual benefit fund and tried to help one another in commercial matters, following Islamic teachings." Their companies gradually became well-known throughout Andijan for promoting a higher minimum wage and charitable activities, he said.




Bush Shakes Hands with Islam Karimov
President Bush, right, shakes hands with Uzbek President Islam Karimov during their March 2002 Oval Office meeting at teh White House to discuss a long-term military partnership. (Alex Wong - Getty Images)

Karimov said the armed protestersrefused to negotiate, according to the pro-government UzReport.com When they tried to escape, the troops pursued them and opened fired, resulting in the deaths of about 10 policemen and a greater number of rebels, along with 100 wounded.

Two eyewitnesses told Reuters a different story on Sunday. They said that troops riding an armored personnel carrier fired a machine gun into a crowd of rebels, protesters and onlookers including women and children.

"The first to be killed were 10 police who were being held hostage and begged the soldiers not to fire, said the witnesses, a local businessman and a driver who asked not to be identified."

Daniil Kislov, director of the independent Central Asian Information Center, confirmed that the rebels had engaged in looting before the government troops opened fire but otherwise blamed the government. He told Fergana.ru, a regional news site, that his staff had seen 110 corpses.

By late Monday, the BBC was reporting that violence had erupted in other towns in eastern Uzbekistan and that "several hundred people" had been killed. Aljazeera.net put the death toll at 700.

The cause of the rebellion, most online observers agree, is Karimov's authoritarian rule. Last year, Human Rights Watch said that the Uzbekistan government's repressive policies are "creating enemies of the state."

But journalist Azamat Alikov writing in Eurasianet.org says there is a personal element too.

The "fabulous wealth" of the president and his family has stirred animosity, he says. Karimov's 32-year old daughter, he reports, is a Harvard graduate who has "built up a gigantic business empire, which includes everything from nightclubs and restaurants to travel agencies, a cement plant, and a mobile-phone provider."

In the Persian Gulf, the pro-Western Khaleej Times says, "Karimov is trying to play on the US concerns on terrorism by blaming the weekend violence on 'fundamentalists and terrorists.' However, the West would do well to avoid helping the tottering tyrant. It's people's power that is at play in Uzbekistan."

Slaughter in Uzbekistan


Tuesday, May 17, 2005; Page A20

THE OUTSIDE world still has much to learn about the bloody events since Friday in the Uzbek city of Andijon and the region around it. But what is known suggests that President Islam Karimov responded to a large rebellion involving both armed militants and thousands of ordinary citizens with a military assault in which scores -- some reports say many hundreds -- of people were indiscriminately gunned down. If so, the assault would be in keeping with Mr. Karimov's long-standing practice of responding to a real, if limited, Islamic extremist threat by brutally suppressing all opposition and rejecting any steps toward economic or political liberalization. It should raise the question of why the United States continues to support such criminal and self-defeating policies by partnering with the very military that carried out the attack.

The first step by the administration and other Western governments must be to demand, as the Bush administration and Britain did yesterday, that Mr. Karimov not only allow access to the blockaded city but that he also accept an international investigation to determine what happened. What is known so far suggests that the violence was preceded, and likely provoked, by the government's prosecution of 23 men from Andijon, many of them prosperous private businessmen, on charges of supporting an obscure Islamic extremist group. For weeks there were peaceful demonstrations outside the courthouse; as the trial came to a close last week several thousand people gathered. On Thursday night, armed militants broke into the prison where the defendants were held, freeing them as well as up to 2,000 other prisoners, including some extremists. They also took over the government administration building, and the next day a crowd numbering in the thousands gathered outside. According to Uzbek journalists at the scene, most were there to protest political and economic conditions.




By his own account, Mr. Karimov traveled to the city early Friday and oversaw fitful negotiations with the militants in the government building. When these failed, he ordered army units into the square, where -- according to eyewitness accounts -- they opened fire on the crowd from armored cars. At a nearby school, where some militants may have taken refuge, troops opened fire on another large crowd: The Associated Press quoted "a respected local doctor" as saying 500 bodies were laid out there Sunday. Other civilians were reportedly fired on and killed while trying to cross the nearby border into Kyrgyzstan.

At a news conference over the weekend Mr. Karimov predictably depicted all of the protesters as Islamic militants, adding that "attempts to develop democracy" would only play into the hands of such extremists. Yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice rightly pointed out that the problem in Uzbekistan is just the opposite: It is the lack of "pressure valves that come from a more open political system." Mr. Karimov habitually ignores such prodding from the State Department, and understandably so, since he has the Pentagon's unconditional support for a "strategic partnership" by which the United States operates at an air base outside Tashkent. Last summer the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, publicly criticized cuts in U.S. aid to Uzbekistan. If President Bush really wants to influence Mr. Karimov, he will need to forge a policy that connects the military relationship to the dictator's domestic policies -- and order uniformed U.S. officers to follow it.

Uzbekistan. Federazione internazionale di Helsinki: Andijan fino a 1000 vittime

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The Times of Central Asia

Uzbekistan. Agenzia Ferghana

Uzbekistan. Committee for Freedom of Speech and Expression

Uzbekistan. Eurasianet.org

Uzbekistan. Uzland

Uzbekistan. WorldNews

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Uzbekistan_soldati
I militari uzbeki

Vienna, 19 maggio 2005

L'intervento delle forze di sicurezza a Adigian e Pakhta-Abad in Usbekistan la scorsa settimana potrebbe avere causato fino a mille vittime tra la popolazione civile, ha reso noto oggi un portavoce della Federazione internazionale di Helsinki per i diritti umani, con sede a Vienna. Ieri le autorità uzbeke hanno portato un gruppo di diplomatici stranieri in giro per la città di oltre 300.000 abitanti ma persino i media russi (poco favorevoli agli insorti) scrivono oggi che la visita è stata orchestrata in modo da dar lustro unicamente alla rassicurante versione ufficiale sui "banditi islamici". I diplomatici non hanno ad esempio potuto visitare la scuola numero 15 in via Sholpon, dove sarebbe avvenuta la carneficina più terrificante. Dopo due ore di perlustrazione, gli osservatori sono stati ricondotti all'aeroporto.

Intanto, dopo Andijan, dove venerdì l'insurrezione è stata repressa con un bagno di sangue, il regime del dittatoriale presidente uzbeko Islam Karimov ha ripreso oggi il saldo controllo di un'altra città ribelle, Kara-Suu, al confine con il Kirghizistan. Una raffica di arresti nella notte e poi stamattina, dopo qualche sporadico sparo e sotto la copertura degli elicotteri militari, le truppe in tuta mimetica sono ritornate padrone della situazione.

In manette è finito - insieme con il suo braccio destro - anche Baktior Rakimov, il capopopolo di Kara-Suu, che negli ultimi giorni dava sfogo alla sua ambizione di trasformare l'Uzbekistan in un califfato musulmano. A differenza di Andijan, dove i soldati agli ordini di Karimov hanno sparato sulla folla facendo strage la riconquista di Karu-Suu è in apparenza avvenuta senza ulteriori massacri ma il dubbio è d'obbligo perché la città rimane off limits per i giornalisti stranieri.

http://www.chinaview.cn 2005-05-19 11:24:55

ALMA-ATA, May 18 (Xinhuanet) -- The Uzbek government Wednesday took foreign diplomats and journalists to the eastern town of Andijan, showing them a prison and the local administration building, said news from the central Asian country.

After visiting for more than two hours, the diplomats and journalists flew back to Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan.

British Ambassador David Moran said a more thorough survey was necessary.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov said Tuesday his country does notneed an international investigation into last Friday's violence in Andijan as it is the internal affair of the country.

Militants attacked the army barracks, seized weapons and ammunition, stormed a prison and freed the inmates, he said, noting they also seized government offices and killed law enforcement officials.

Karimov accused foreign journalists of slanted coverage of more than 500 killed in the Andijan riots, saying such false reports were misleading.

Violence culminated days of protests last Friday as thousands of armed protesters plunged Andijan into chaos, releasing prisoners and clashing with security forces.

Uzbekistan's Prosecutor-General Rashid Kadyrov said Tuesday that 169 people had been killed in the violence, of whom 32 were government troops and the others.

Friday's unrest in Uzbekistan was the worst since the former Soviet republic won independence in 1991.

Karimov blamed a branch of the outlawed radical Hizb ut-Tahrir group for the turmoil. Enditem

OVER ONE MILLION TO FLEE UZBEKISTAN FOR KYRGYZSTAN



14:21
Print version

MOSCOW, May 17 (RIA Novosti) - "More than one million people may flee Uzbekistan," Kyrgyzstan's human-rights commissioner Tursunbai Bakir Uulu told a press conference today, reports the country's Kabar news agency.

The Kyrgyz ombudsman has been watching Uzbek developments since 1991. In his words, popular unrest is not uncommon there. "But Uzbekistan is not Kyrgyzstan, which searches for peaceful ways of stopping popular uprisings. The President of Uzbekistan will use force to suppress popular unrest. Our country will then be filled to overflowing with Uzbek refugees," Tursunbai Bakir Uulu said.

"We must enlist the services of international organizations because the Kyrgyz economy won't make it possible to accommodate even 1,000 Uzbek refugees. We can only provide land plots for their traditional tents," Bakir Uulu added.

"The Uzbek-Kazakh border is sealed tight. Uzbekistan maintains tense relations with Tajikistan. This is why Uzbek refugees will once again pour into Kyrgyzstan," Bakir Uulu stressed.

The latest refugee tide was caused by clashes in Andizhan and Karasu.

Gunmen seized a prison and several administrative buildings in Andizhan in the early hours of May 13. Uzbek troops subsequently stormed the municipal-administration building, establishing control over it.

Talking to journalists May 14, President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan said ten law-enforcement officers had been killed. "The number of victims among criminals is, of course, greater," Karimov added.

Foreign news agencies quoted doctors and human rights activists as saying that hundreds of people had died.

On May 14 all-out riots spread to Karasu, Uzbekistan. The rioters burned down several local administrative buildings, including a prosecutor's office, a police station and a tax inspectorate. They did not voice any political demands at all.


World
EXPERTS: CONSEQUENCES OF UZBEK UPRISING



13:44
Print version

MOSCOW, May 17 (RIA Novosti) - Russian experts fear that the events in Andizhan, Uzbekistan, where last week government troops suppressed mass protests, could provoke a wave of revolts in Central Asia. But they cannot agree on whether or not President Islam Karimov was right in using military force against the rebels, Gazeta reported.

Colonel General Leonid Ivashov, vice-president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems: The crisis may spread to neighboring regions, including Tajikistan. If the army keeps shooting at people, this may inflame the Ferghana Valley (the most densely populated region of Central Asia, where 7 million people live; it is divided between Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan). The Chinese variant, when the authorities not only harshly suppressed the opposition's uprising (on Tiananmen Square in 1989), but also offered a development strategy, seems improbable. The events in Adnizhan were not provoked by external forces, but are the expression of the people's desire for minimum justice.

Alexander Torshin, deputy speaker of the Federation Council: Do not dramatize the situation, though destabilization of the region is possible. If the situation in Uzbekistan is not controlled and refugees flee it, instability will spread to neighboring countries.

Nurali Latypov, a Ferghana-born adviser to the Moscow mayor: The probability of the escalation of the unrest should not be ruled out. The fact that people died there is a tragedy, but the alternative would have been the fanning of passions among the highly volatile young people of the Ferghana Valley. At the time of clashes between the Kyrgyz and the Uzbeks in the valley 15 years ago, Karimov prevented a catastrophe. Without him, rivers of blood in Osh would have turned into a sea of blood and there would not have been a democratic Kyrgyzstan.

Akhmed Bilapov, first deputy chairman of the State Duma committee for the CIS and compatriots: I would advise against making rash conclusions about Karimov's guilt in the bloodshed. The president of Uzbekistan did the only possible thing in that situation: The East does not forgive weakness



May 17, 2005
MORE THAN ONE MILLION MAY FLEE UZBEKISTAN FOR KYRGYZSTAN

Sourse: RIA Novosti
Uploaded/Updated: Tue, 17 May 2005 14:46:17 GMT

"More than one million people may flee Uzbekistan," Kyrgyzstan's human-rights commissioner Tursunbai Bakir Uulu told a press conference today, reports the country's Kabar news agency.

The Kyrgyz ombudsman has been watching Uzbek developments since 1991. In his words, popular unrest is not uncommon there. "But Uzbekistan is not Kyrgyzstan, which searches for peaceful ways of stopping popular uprisings. The President of Uzbekistan will use force to suppress popular unrest. Our country will then be filled to overflowing with Uzbek refugees," Tursunbai Bakir Uulu said.

"We must enlist the services of international organizations because the Kyrgyz economy won't make it possible to accommodate even 1,000 Uzbek refugees. We can only provide land plots for their traditional tents," Bakir Uulu added.

"The Uzbek-Kazakh border is sealed tight. Uzbekistan maintains tense relations with Tajikistan. This is why Uzbek refugees will once again pour into Kyrgyzstan," Bakir Uulu stressed.

The latest refugee tide was caused by clashes in Andizhan and Karasu.

Gunmen seized a prison and several administrative buildings in Andizhan in the early hours of May 13. Uzbek troops subsequently stormed the municipal-administration building, establishing control over it.

Talking to journalists May 14, President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan said ten law-enforcement officers had been killed. "The number of victims among criminals is, of course, greater," Karimov added.

Foreign news agencies quoted doctors and human rights activists as saying that hundreds of people had died.

On May 14 all-out riots spread to Karasu, Uzbekistan. The rioters burned down several local administrative buildings, including a prosecutor's office, a police station and a tax inspectorate. They did not voice any political demands at all.


Uzbek crackdown set to fuel unrest
By Malcolm Haslett
Central Asia analyst

With the Uzbek city of Korasuv back in the hands of government forces, it seems that the outbreak of unrest in eastern Uzbekistan has been contained.

The Uzbek public have been shocked by the brutal shootings
But will the situation in the country, and indeed in the whole Central Asia region, ever be the same again?

The toll of the recent protests is disturbing.

The government says 170 people died but unofficial sources say 500 or more were killed, in what the authorities justified as a crackdown on Islamic militancy.

The true figure may never be known, but the many different photographs of dead bodies, sometimes dozens of them, bear ample testimony to the carnage that ensued.

And this story is now widely known in Uzbekistan itself.


UZBEK TROUBLES
Most populous central Asian former Soviet republic, home to 26m people
Ruled since 1991 independence by autocrat Islam Karimov
Accused by human rights groups of serious abuses, including torture
Rocked by violence in capital Tashkent in 2004
Government says radical Islamic groups behind violence

In pictures: Town retaken
Profile: Islam Karimov
Yes, many Uzbeks are frightened by the prospect of militant Islamic groups taking power and forming a fundamentalist caliphate in the Ferghana valley.

Most Uzbeks do not want that, and in the past have been prepared to support President Islam Karimov, even with his defects, in taking tough measures against Islamist groups.

The problem is that the recent actions of the security forces have themselves been brutal. And popular support for the president, particularly in eastern Uzbekistan, will have been severely shaken.

Click here to see a map of the region

There are some extreme Islamist groups in Central Asia who are quite prepared to use violence to take power. But there are other Islamic groups which are non-violent. And other groups, still, who would just like a more democratic government.

Yet President Karimov has persistently lumped them all together and tried to stamp on all dissident activity, religious, economic and political, whether it be violent or peaceful.

Thus the sort of moderate opposition which in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan was able to channel popular anger into largely peaceful protest and regime change just does not exist in Uzbekistan. They have been driven out by the president, accused of joining forces with violent revolutionaries - something they have always denied.

Peaceful protests against economic or social injustice - like the farmers' protest outside the US embassy in Tashkent earlier this month - have been broken up with quite unnecessary force.

Swapping partners

The situation in Uzbekistan is highly polarised, and very unstable, largely through the fault of the government itself.


Islamic radicalism was probably not at the root of the recent violence in Andijan, but the danger is that militant Islamist groups may be able to harness and exploit the social frustration

President Karimov has always swung back and forth between developing relations with the West or sticking with the traditional 'big power' of the region, Russia.

For a long time he clearly hoped to loosen Russian political and economic domination of his country and attract significant investment for his country from the West.

But in recent years, irritated by constant Western lecturing about the need for human rights and democracy, he has veered sharply towards Moscow.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov gestures speaking at a news conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Tuesday, May 17, 2005
President Karimov has swung between the West and Russia
He recently withdrew his country from the GUUAM grouping of former Soviet states, led by Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, which have successfully loosened their ties with Russia and turned towards the West.

President Karimov has led Uzbekistan in the opposite direction, reaffirming close ties with Russia.

While the US and Britain have led a chorus of criticism of recent events in Andijan, questioning the official version that this was a dangerous Islamic-inspired rebellion, Russia has largely gone along with the official Uzbek view.

It seems unlikely that he will openly break with the West by, for example, demanding the withdrawal of the US base at Kahanabad, opened during the military operation against the Taleban.

But at the same time, it does seem probable that President Karimov, never one for compromise or diplomacy, will persist in snubbing Western demands for meaningful democratic reforms.

He is likely to try and maintain his tight grip on Uzbek society and intolerance of independent political or social activity.

Control slipping

Yet this may now be more difficult to achieve. Many people in the eastern Ferghana valley managed to give vent to their anger and disgust at the authorities' actions there.

And even before the recent tragic events there were signs that Uzbeks generally are losing their fear of what may happen if they protest.

Farmers, journalists and traders are among groups which have mounted public protests in recent months. And violent suppression of protests will not eradicate the root causes of this widespread social discontent.

Islamic radicalism was probably not at the root of the recent violence in Andijan, but the danger is that militant Islamist groups may be able to harness and exploit the social frustration of the Uzbek population for their own ends.

In Midst of Deadly Uzbek Protest, a Baffled Businessman

By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 19, 2005; Page A17

SUZAK, Kyrgyzstan, May 18 -- As the door to his prison cell was battered open on Friday night, Odil Maksataliev said he jumped back in surprise. Eight armed men burst in.

Maksataliev had never seen them before, but they seemed to recognize him immediately. "We know that you are one of the businessmen who was put here for no reason, and we've come to set you free," he recalled one of them announcing.



Then they hustled him outside into the early morning darkness, running past the bloodied bodies of two prison guards who lay still on the ground. A fleet of cars was waiting.

So went a jailbreak in the city of Andijon, touching off uprisings in several other cities in Uzbekistan, the Central Asian country that has been ruled by Islam Karimov since it gained independence in 1991 with the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Twenty-three local businessmen accused of forming a terrorist cell were freed by the gunmen, along with about 2,000 other inmates.

Within hours, the businessmen were featured guests on the speaker's platform at an unprecedented demonstration in the city's central square against Karimov's autocratic rule. But the rally ended in a bloodbath when Uzbek security forces directed a barrage of gunfire at the protesters.

On Wednesday, Maksataliev stood in a tent encampment on a grassy hillside near the city of Suzak in neighboring Kyrgyzstan with several fellow businessmen and about 500 other people who had fled Uzbekistan.

Wearing a dusty tracksuit and clutching a small sheet of paper documenting his application for political asylum in Kyrgyzstan, Maksataliev seemed indistinguishable from the other bedraggled escapees.

But his story addresses the continuing controversy over who is behind the revolt in the mostly Muslim Uzbekistan, which hosts a U.S. air base used in the war in neighboring Afghanistan.

U.S. and British authorities on Wednesday demanded an impartial international investigation into the violence. Karimov, meanwhile, has asserted that the businessmen, the men who freed them and most of the protesters were violent Islamic radicals who want to turn the country into an extremist theocracy.

Restriction of worship is a common complaint in Uzbekistan. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan group created by Congress, this month reported "severe violations of religious freedom" in the country.

Uzbek authorities "crack down harshly on Muslim individuals, groups, and mosques that do not conform to government-prescribed practices or that the government claims are associated with extremist political programs," a report said. "This has resulted in the imprisonment of thousands of persons in recent years."

But Maksataliev and others in the camp said he and his 22 fellow defendants had little interest in religion or politics. By their account, they were simply successful businessmen who were targeted by a paranoid government that perceived anyone with prestige as a threat. Most of the people in the square were peaceful, ordinary citizens, the men said.

"They were not terrorists," said Maksataliev, 45. "They were just people who had had enough."

Maksataliev is a burly man with salt-and-pepper stubble on his chin and the look of a boxer. But when he spoke about the ironworks factory that he founded five years ago, his voice thickened with the emotion of one speaking of a lost child.

"We employed 54 workers," he said wistfully. "It was really professional. They were all given uniforms, a free lunch and money for transportation."

In 2003, his company and those belonging to many of the 22 other businessmen took top honors at an exposition showcasing businesses in Andijon. Looking back, Maksataliev wonders if that was the moment when he aroused the suspicion of authorities.

"Maybe Karimov was afraid of us because we were growing stronger and we all knew each other and were helping each other like a network," Maksataliev said. "I think he worries that this means we could someday take him out of power."

Sometimes, Maksataliev added, he did think about the need for more democracy -- "especially when I would watch Russian television and watch Vladimir Zhirinovsky speak about how we Uzbeks are like sheep, just led by one person." Zhirinovsky is an ultranationalist Russian politician.

But Maksataliev said he was far too busy building his business to act on such ideas. So he was completely shocked, he said, when one morning last June, Uzbek officials packed in two cars forced him off the road on his way to work and bundled him off to the city's interrogation center.

He was kept there without being charged for more than a month, he said.

Then he was transferred to a 6-by-13-foot cell in Andijon's main prison and held there with five other inmates. One was a thief, he said, another a drug dealer.

Human rights groups allege that the Uzbek government has engaged in extreme forms of torture and executions such as boiling prisoners alive.

Maksataliev said that he was not physically mistreated and that his family was allowed to visit him frequently. But he said he suffered the mental torture of watching his business collapse as Uzbek authorities spent seven months combing his records for evidence of malfeasance.

Meanwhile, authorities were arresting more and more prominent businessmen.

Then one day, Maksataliev was informed that he was being charged with forming an Islamic terrorist network with the 22 other businessmen, and of being a follower of Akram Yuldashev, an Uzbek writer imprisoned by the government in 1999.
"I had never even heard of Akram," Maksataliev said.

Maksataliev is Muslim but said he is not especially observant. "I don't even pray five times a day," he noted, referring to a main tenet of Islam. "I employed lots of non-Muslim Russians in my company, many of whom drank alcohol. Would I have done that if I were a fundamentalist?"

The trial lasted three months and had a farcical quality, Maksataliev said. Scores of witnesses were brought in and asked whether Maksataliev was a terrorist. Only two answered yes; one was mentally unstable, Maksataliev said, and the other was a disgruntled former employee whom he had fired.

The prosecutor asked the judge to sentence Maksataliev to three years in prison. The judge's decision was still pending when the men sprang him from jail.

Maksataliev said that once on the street, he agreed to go to the demonstration out of gratitude to his rescuers and in hopes that Karimov would come, listen to the crowd's concern and accept the freeing of the prisoners.

He saw his family briefly at the demonstration, but told them to go home when the shooting broke out.

Now, he said, he worries he made the wrong decision. "I am here," he said. "But they are surely being followed by the government. The government could even kill them."

On Wednesday, with international condemnation over the deaths growing, the Uzbek government allowed foreign diplomats to visit Andijon, but only under close supervision. They were not allowed to see the main scene of violence.

U.S., U.N. and British officials called on Wednesday for an independent investigation, to be led or supported by international organizations.

Information obtained by the United States portrays a "very disturbing picture" and the deaths of "very large numbers" of civilians by the "indiscriminate use of force" by Uzbek security forces, State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher told reporters Wednesday.

The crisis requires a "credible investigation," he added. U.S. officials have said privately that they think about 300 people died in the shooting.

At a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called on Karimov to immediately allow full access to Andijon for humanitarian groups and foreign diplomats and then move quickly to address the causes of discontent by introducing an "open and pluralistic society."

Staff writer Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.