US double standard: Gaddafi bad, Karimov good

The US shows its hypocrisy by accusing “tyrants” of human rights abuses while not owning up to supporting dictators. Ted Rall

The US has warned Uzbek President Karimov that human rights violations were ‘immoral and harmful ‘ [EPA] “After four decades of brutal dictatorship and eight months of deadly conflict, the Libyan people can now celebrate their freedom and the beginning of a new era of promise,” President Obama said last week. The capture and death of Muammar Gaddafi prompted him and other US officials to congratulate the Libyan people on their liberation from a despot accused of terrible violations of human rights, including the 1996 massacre of more than 1200 prison inmates. The kudos was as much for the US itself as Libya’s victorious Transitional National Council. After all, the United States played a decisive role in Gaddafi’s death. First President Obama put together the NATO coalition that served as the Benghazi-based rebels’ loaned air force. When the bombing campaign was announced in February, Gaddafi’s suppression of the human rights of protesting rebels was front and centre: “The United States also strongly supports the universal rights of the Libyan people,” Obama said at that time. “That includes the rights of peaceful assembly, free speech, and the ability of the Libyan people to determine their own destiny. These are human rights. They are not negotiable. They must be respected in every country. And they cannot be denied through violence or suppression.” (No word on how police firing rubber bullets at unarmed, peaceful protesters at the Occupy movement in Oakland, California, fits into that.) And in the end, it was reportedly a Hellfire missile fired by a Predator drone plane controlled by the CIA – in conjunction with an attack by a French fighter jet – that destroyed the convoy of cars Gaddafi and his entourage used to try to escape the siege of Sirte, driving him into the famous drainage pipe and into the hands of his tormentors and executioners. US officials and media reports were right about Gaddafi’s human rights record: It was atrocious. They cautioned the incoming TNC to make human rights a priority: “The Libyan authorities should also continue living up to their commitments to respect human rights, begin a national reconciliation process, secure weapons and dangerous materials, and bring together armed groups under a unified civilian leadership,” Obama said. (No word on how Gaddafi’s execution fits in to that.) Hypocrisy reigns Yet, in the very same week, the United States was cozying up to another long-time dictator – one whose style, brutal treatment of prisoners, and notorious massacre of political dissidents is highly reminiscent of the deposed Libyan tyrant. Like a business that maintains two sets of records, one for the tax inspector and the other containing the truth, the United States has two different foreign policies. Its constitution, laws and treaty obligations prohibit torture, assassinations, and holding prisoners without trial. In reality there are secret prisons such as Guantánamo. Similarly, there are two sets of ethical standards in America’s dealing with other countries. Enemies are held to the strictest standards. Allies get a pass. This double standard is the number-one cause of anti-Americanism in the world. In yet another display that exposes US foreign policy on human rights as hypocritical and self-serving, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Uzbekistan to establish closer ties with the Central Asian republic’s president-for-life, Islam Karimov. Even as her State Department was ballyhooing the bloody conclusion of Gaddafi’s 42-year reign as a victory for freedom and decency, the former First Lady was engaged in the cynical Cold War-style of one of the worst human rights abusers in the world. In the human rights brief on Karimov, one major highlight is Central Asia’s Tiananmen Square, the 2005 massacre of between 750 and 1250 peaceful demonstrators at Andijan, a southern town along the restive border with Kyrgyzstan, near the ancient Ferghana Valley. Karimov personally ordered Uzbek militia, Interior Ministry troops and regular army units to surround a square and gun down the protesters, then travelled to the site in order to witness the carnage. A few dozen people managed to escape, scrambling across a border crossing. Shocked Kyrgyz sentries, who had a view of the killing orgy, admitted the refugees. Uzbek troops chased the escapees into Kyrgyzstan, dragged them back and executed them on the Uzbek side of the bridge. Prior to Andijan, the Clinton and Bush Administrations had a cozy relationship with Karimov, overlooking such untidy matters as the Uzbek leader’s habit of boiling political dissidents to death (more on that later), in light of the perceived high strategic value of his country. Uzbekistan has huge energy reserves and a unique placement. (Uzbekistan is the only state in Central Asia that borders all the others. It also borders Afghanistan. In 1979, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan via the Uzbek town of Termiz.) Tashkent is the region’s biggest city, complete with its own metro system, European-standard international airport and daily nonstop flights to New York-infrastructure that became invaluable after America’s 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. US and NATO paid Karimov for the right to build airbases. After Andijan, the US gave into pressure by international human rights organisations to pull back. Covert aid continued, however. The airbases, including one known as Karshi-Khanabad (K2) were technically “closed” (though the personnel and activities continued). In late 2005 the US imposed low-grade trade sanctions. That’s all in the past now. In September 2011 Secretary Clinton lifted the sanctions, saying that the Karimov regime was “showing signs of improving its human rights record and expanding political freedoms”. As a goodwill gesture in advance of Clinton’s trip last week, Uzbek authorities released Norboi Kholjigitov, a human rights advocate jailed since 2005 on charges widely believed to have been politically motivated. Kholjigitov is said to be near death after years of abuse in prison. One step forward, two steps back. One week before Clinton’s arrival an Uzbek court found BBC journalist Urunboy Usmonov guilty of conspiring with Hizb ut Tahrir, an Islamist group that serves as an all-purpose national bugaboo (along with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a Tajik-based organisation with alleged links to the Afghan Taliban). The specific charge: “Failing to report on Hizb’s activities.” Usmonov received a three-year suspended sentence. He claimed to have been beaten and tortured in prison. The same day, newspaper reporter Makhmadyusuf Ismoilov, in jail since late last year for “insult and defamation” of Karimov, was subjected to a large fine and banned from journalism. In Tashkent, a US State Department official described Karimov’s most outrageous excesses as “a thing of the past”. In this case, the past isn’t merely prologue – it’s ongoing. According to a 2010 report by Human Rights Watch: “New research by Human Rights Watch reveals that the Uzbek government continues to intimidate and harass the families of Andijan survivors who have sought refuge abroad. The police regularly summon them for questioning, subject them to constant surveillance, and threaten to bring criminal charges against them or confiscate their homes. School officials humiliate refugees’ children. Five years after the massacre, on May 13, 2005, people suspected of having participated in or witnessed the massacre are still being detained, beaten, and threatened. The sentencing on April 30 of Diloram Abdukodirova, an Andijan refugee who returned to Uzbekistan in January, to ten years and two months in prison, shows the lengths to which the government will go to persecute anyone it perceives as linked to the Andijan events.” These Soviet-style persections did not prevent President Obama from personally calling Karimov last month on the occasion of Uzbekistan’s 20th year of independence. Karimov is one of three Central Asian strongmen (along with Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan and Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan) who have retained absolute power since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. He presides over an autocracy whose level of corruption and dysfunction is staggering – even by dismal regional standards. All media is state-controlled. Opposition parties are banned. With substantial reserves from the Caspian Sea oil bonanza and by some measures the world’s largest reserves of natural gas, Uzbekistan has the means to provide a comfortable living for all of its citizens. However, a tiny coterie of businessmen connected to the regime diverts nearly all of the proceeds of the nation’s patrimony to numbered accounts overseas, leaving most of the population unemployed and in abject poverty. Local militia (military police) are unpaid. So they pay themselves. They terrorize citizens with random raids, murders and countless checkpoints where motorists are shaken down. While arriving to visit a friend in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent a couple of years ago, I observed a dead body on the curb of the road in front of his apartment building. The man had been struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver several days earlier. His body was in a state of advanced decomposition in the 120-degree heat, but no one had called the cops. No one dared. New strategy As noted above, there are many reasons for the US to coddle the Uzbek dictator. But President Obama is especially focused on one. “The object of Obama’s interest is the ‘Northern Distribution Network, the Central Asian roads over which diesel and other US military supplies now increasingly travel [into Afghanistan],” writes Russell Zanca inForeign Policy. “The administration is correct in thinking that NDN, as it is known for short, will run more smoothly through secular Uzbekistan than supplies have moved through Pakistan. But a question for practitioners of realpolitik is why the US  considers it necessary to validate the unpopular Uzbek leadership now that it is politically expedient to do so.” It also prompts another question. The US is scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan by 2014. If they’re really leaving, why do they care so much about the NCN? Is a soon-to-be abandoned supply route worth dealing with a man like Karimov? The dichotomous US approaches to Gaddafi and Karimov – kill one, pay millions to the other – were pointed out in an eerily-prescient Uznews.net piece published on February 22, 2011, at the commencement of the NATO air campaign in Libya. “The regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya is using the whole power of its armed forces, including artillery, air forces and foreign mercenaries, to crush the ongoing protests in the country; Uzbek President Islam Karimov used similar tactics in Andijan in 2005,” reported Uznews. “The developments in Libya are reminiscent of the government crushing of a rally in Andijan on 13 May 2005. Gaddafi, like Islam Karimov, is not allowing foreign journalists into the country, blocking the internet and telecommunications and calling protesters ‘terrorists’. He appeared on national television yesterday and called foreign news channels ‘dogs’. Like Karimov, he is not considering negotiations as an option and is not willing to fulfill even parts of demands of protesters; he is offering a bloodbath instead … Like in Libya now, according to Uzbek opposition leaders, Uzbek authorities also hired foreign mercenaries: one of them was Tajik Colonel Makhmud Khudoyberganov, who was living in Uzbekistan after a failed coup d’état in Tajikistan in 1998.” Surely Secretary Clinton read her own State Department’s recent report on Uzbekistan, which accuses the Karimov regime of “Instances of torture and mistreatment of detainees by security forces; incommunicado and prolonged detention; arbitrary arrest and detention; denial of due process and fair trial; restrictions on freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association; governmental control of civil society activity; restrictions on religious freedom including harassment and imprisonment of religious minority group members; and government-compelled forced labour in cotton harvesting.” ““But we have also learned over the years that after a while, after you’ve made your strong objections, if you have no contact, you have no influence.” Hilary Clinton on countries with poor human rights records “Amnesty International and other groups have documented specific cases. In the summer of 2002, Amnesty International reported, Fatima Mukhadirova, a 62-year-old Tashkent shopkeeper, was sentenced to six years of hard labour after denouncing the government for the death of her son, Muzafar Avozov, in a Tashkent prison,” says a May 1, 2005 report inThe New York Times. “An independent examination of photographs of the body, conducted by the University of Glasgow, showed that Mr Avozov died after being immersed in boiling water, human rights groups reported. The examination said his head had been beaten and his fingernails removed.” According to Uzbeks, live boiling was a common practice. Roadblocks ahead “The relationship between the US and Uzbekistan is problematic,” the 2005 Times article quoted a Human Rights Watch official as saying. “It can be useful that the US is powerful enough to push for certain concessions. That being said, the US should not be saying that Karimov is a partner, is an ally, is a friend. The US should send the message that Uzbekistan won’t be considered to be a good ally of the United States unless it respects human rights at home.” During Clinton’s trip to Tashkent last week, she defended the US policy of engagement. “I can assure you that we have raised all of the human rights issues in Uzbekistan and elsewhere,” she said in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, another country with a poor human rights record. “But we have also learned over the years that after a while, after you’ve made your strong objections, if you have no contact, you have no influence.” Clinton didn’t say why contact and influence were good for Karimov’s Uzbekistan, but not Gaddafi’s Libya. Ted Rall is an American political cartoonist, columnist and author. His most recent book is The Anti-American Manifesto. His website is rall.com. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera

Pakistan, India and Afghanistan–vs–American Games

Pakistan, India and Afghanistan

By Kuldip Nayar

The writer is a syndicated columnist and a former member of India’s Rajya Sabha

Cussedness in relations between India and Pakistan is lessening. So I infer from the return by Islamabad of an army helicopter which had strayed across the Line of Control. But I fail to understand why India and Pakistan have deferred even a home secretary-level meeting when they should be talking. After all, it was not a summit demanding all attention, nor a discussion beyond the much-hypedvisa rules for easy travel. Granted both sides have no urge or desire to normalise relations. But they could have at least discussed the fallout of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Afghanistan and Pakistan. She has not toned down her threat or ultimatum.

It is apparent that Washington wants to seal safe havens in Waziristan to which the militants retreat after attacking the US and Nato forces in Afghanistan. Hillary Clinton has even told Pakistan without naming it that it cannot “keep snakes in its backyard and expect that they will not bite the neighbours”. New Delhi, normally a victim of snake bites, has correctly cautioned America to be patient. Maybe this attitude impressed Pakistan to return the helicopter and officers. America, too, needs to introspect about its role because the sufferings of Pakistan are not entirely of its own making. The militancy is more than two decades old. Washington initiated it because it wanted to bleed the Soviet Union to death. It succeeded. America is again in touch with the largest militant outfit, the Haqqanis, against which it has asked Pakistan to act. But then, Pakistan is also talking to the Haqqanis. Pakistan has changed its policy from chastising the Taliban to talking to them because America is doing so.

Both do not trust each other. Pakistan is suspicious that America is not trying to outsmart it. Islamabad’s trust in Washington is zero after it eliminated Osama bin Laden without even a whiff of hint to Pakistan.

The dominant elements at Islamabad wrongly believe that the Haqqani network is at their command to needle Afghanistan or India. The Haqqanis have a different agenda and Pakistan should have known it from the unending blasts and attacks on its soil.

Hillary Clinton’s advice to Islamabad to eliminate them in days or weeks and not in months or years is a tall order. The British could not do so, nor could the Soviet Union. Pakistan is in comparison a small power. Also, Islamabad has to think of the nation’s reaction. The fundamentalists have acquired a solid support over the years and even the military has not remained immune from their influence. As for the public in Pakistan, it is sick of terrorism and what it has done to the society. This makes it all the more necessary for India and Pakistan to discuss America’s long-term policy in the region. There should be no two opinions on Afghanistan’s sovereignty and independence. Unfortunately, Islamabad is suspicious of New Delhi’s intentions and believes that it is trying to surround Pakistan through Afghanistan. The entire hypothesis is preposterous. Kabul is New Delhi’s strategic partner, not its strategic depth which Islamabad expects Afghanistan to be.

America is going to be more aggressive as the days go by and probably will not quit Afghanistan altogether. This is as dangerous for Islamabad and Kabul as for New Delhi. Washington’s presence in the region is ominous. Therefore, India and Pakistan should first meet to clear their apprehensions and then include Afghanistan in the talks to discuss how to oust foreign troops from the region.

As the first step, the three should join hands to defeat terrorism, which has taken roots in the region. Maybe Islamabad, not London, should convene the meeting and invite the countries concerned, including Iran, to discuss how to eliminate terrorism. New Delhi should help Islamabad in this endeavour.

There is no alternative to good relations between India and Pakistan. The earlier the two countries realise this, the better it would be for them and the region. America has made it clear by attacking countries, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, that it will use its might to serve ‘its purpose’, whatever that means. The countries, either in the Middle East or South Asia, have not reacted to Washington’s blandishments. The region does not look like it is waking up.

Published in The Express Tribune

US and Islamists: It takes two to tango

[SEE:  America’s “Islamists” Go Where Oilmen Fear to Tread ]

Brahma Chellaney

When Libya’s interim government announced the official ” liberation” of the country on October 23, it also declared that a system based on the Islamic sharia, including polygamy, will replace the dictatorship that Col Muammar Qaddafi ran for 42 years.

“We as a Muslim nation have taken Islamic sharia as the source of legislation, therefore any law that contradicts the principles of Islam is legally nullified,” declared interim leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil.

Swapping one evil for another may seem a cruel political comedown after seven months of relentless NATO air strikes in the name of promoting democracy in Libya – an air war that enabled the ragtag rebel militias to triumph but left a vast trail of death and destruction.

The Western powers that militarily effected the regime change in Libya, in fact, have not sought to stop its new rulers from establishing a theocratic system founded on Islamic jurisprudence. For these powers, such a political turn is an unavoidable price to pay to have their own men in power. The Islamist embrace indeed helps protect the credibility of men who otherwise may be seen as foreign puppets in their own society.

This is the same reason why the US, Britain and France have condoned the rulers of the oil sheikhdoms for their longstanding alliance with radical clerics. For example, the US-backed House of Saud not only practices the century-old political tradition of Wahhabi Islam but also exports this fringe form of Islam, with the result that the more liberal Islamic traditions elsewhere are being gradually snuffed out. The plain fact is that the US-led strategy is driven by narrowly defined geopolitical interests. The imperative to have pliant regimes in oil-rich countries trumps other considerations.

With the US support they enjoy, the most-tyrannical regimes – the monarchies – have been able to ride out the Arab Spring, emerging virtually unscathed. Libya has the world’s largest reserves of light sweet crude – the top-notch oil that American and European refineries prefer – and the NATO-scripted regime change there was clearly not about ushering in an era of liberal democracy. Having been born in blood, the new Libya faces uncertain times. The only certain element is that its new rulers will remain beholden to those that helped install them.

More fundamentally, America’s troubling ties with Islamist rulers and groups was cemented in the 1980s when the Reagan administration openly employed Islam as an ideological tool to spur the spirit of jihad against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan . It was at a White Houseceremony attended by some “holy warriors” from the Afghanistan-Pakistan belt in the mid-1980 s that Reagan proclaimed the mujahideen as the “moral equivalent of America’s Founding Fathers.” Two such moral equivalents, Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, later became America’s nemesis.

Make no mistake: international terrorism and the modern-day Frankenstein’s monsters are the haunting byproducts of the war against atheism and communism that the US was supposed to have won. Yet the lessons from that war have already been forgotten, including the need to keep the focus on long-term goals and not be carried away by political expediency. The current attempt to strike a Faustian bargain with the Taliban, for example, ignores the very lesson from the creation of this evil force.

It has been argued by exponents of the US policy approach that because a war runs on expediency, with strange bedfellows involved as partners, unsavory allies are unavoidable. Paradoxically, the US practice of propping up malleable but Islamist rulers in the Middle East creates a street-level situation not only laden with strong anti-US sentiment but also support for more authentically Islamist and independent forces. So, if elections are held, it is such autonomous Islamists that often emerge as winners, as the diverse cases of Gaza and Tunisiaattest.

Let’s be clear: The global fight against terrorism can succeed only by ensuring that states do not harbour militants or contribute in any way to the rise of virulent Islamic fundamentalism extolling violence as a sanctified religious tool. Yet today, history is in danger of repeating itself.

The brutal killing of Gaddafi by his NATO-backed captors and the macabre public display of his body for several days were redolent of the manner former Afghan President Najibullah was dragged out of the UN compound in Kabul by the Taliban in 1996 and hung from a traffic barricade. What followed was unending bloodletting. So, it is fair to ask: Will Libya become another jihadist haven?

Brahma Chellaney is the author of ‘Asian Juggernaut’ and ‘Water: Asia’s New Battleground’

Istanbul–The Division Conference

[SEE:  The Istanbul Conference: Helping the Devil Get His Way In Central and South Asia]

Pakistan opposed to regional solution on Afghanistan

Indrani Bagchi, TNN

New Delhi: Pakistan is blocking the establishment of a regional monitoring group to oversee cooperation on Afghanistan’s economic and security future. As leaders from 12 nations head to Istanbul on November 2 to help Afghanistan become a stable and independent state, Pakistan is building up opposition to the key decisions at the conference.

Foreign minister S M Krishna will represent India at the conference, the first time India will be at the table. Last year, Pakistan had successfully weighed in with its close allies and host, Turkey, to keep India out. Turkish president Abdullah Gulbore the brunt of New Delhi’s unhappiness when he visited India soon after.

While negotiations for the event is yet to yield an “outcome document” (a negotiated, agreed text), there are two stated goals – to commit to non-interference/neutrality on Afghanistan and to set up a mechanism of senior officials to monitor it. Pakistan has cited “national security”, maintaining its old position that it needed to have a “friendly’ government in Kabul as a defence against India. Pakistan’s opposition is to having so many countries – primarily India- enjoying similar status in the contact group on Afghanistan.

The US, Pakistan’s principal backer, has decisively turned away from accepting Islamabad’s arguments. Turkey, Pakistan’s close friend and mentor, too is pushing the regional framework that includes all Afghanistan’s neighbours. Hillary Clinton, who will represent the US at the conference, will push the New Silk Road concept that is aimed to help Afghanistan to its feet, and one that includes all its neighbours. This too has seen opposition from the Pakistani army.

Pakistan, said sources, is trying to marshal support from an unlikely group of countries that may have implications for India. Iran, which is opposed to the idea of US military presence in Afghanistan, has been seen to be supporting the Pakistani position, even though Teheran detests the Taliban and the al Qaeda. A curious fellow opponent is Russia. Moscow is worried about a Talibanised Afghanistan, but it is equally sceptical of a continued US presence there.

Highly placed sources in government say there have been recent “exploratory” talks between Pakistan and Russia on Afghanistan. Russia, like Iran and India, used to be the triad that supported the Northern Alliance in the 1990s when Taliban ruled Kabul with Pakistan’s help. But in a changing geopolitical environment, Russia is finding itself much closer to China, which Russians have admitted to as being “need-based”. Russia’s economic ties with China have increased exponentially, and in regional groupings is now closer to China than ever before.

While China has little to object in the Istanbul plan, China is bound to support Pakistan. The Chinese objection has centred on a stated apprehension that the new contact group could replicate or undermine its creation, Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Pakistan foreign office spokesperson repeated this line, “The existing regional organizations and arrangements may also be urged to prioritize support in their respective domains for achieving the aforesaid objectives…”

Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Iran, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the UAE, the US and the UK will attend the Istanbul conference, which precedes the 90-nation Bonn conference in December.

Assad: Western Action Against Syria would Cause ‘Earthquake’

by Naharnet Newsdesk

Syrian President Bashar Assad has warned that any Western action against his country would cause an “earthquake” that would inflame the region, in an interview published in a British newspaper.

The Sunday Telegraph said Assad warned of “another Afghanistan” if foreign forces intervened in Syria as they did with the Libyan uprising that led to the killing of Moammar Gadhafi.

“Syria is the hub now in this region. It is the fault line, and if you play with the ground you will cause an earthquake — do you want to see another Afghanistan, or tens of Afghanistans?,” the paper quoted Assad as telling it.

“Any problem in Syria will burn the whole region. If the plan is to divide Syria, that is to divide the whole region,” he said in his first interview with a Western journalist since Syria’s seven-month uprising began in March.

His comments come after mass protests calling for the imposition of a Libya-style no-fly zone on Syria and renewed violence on Friday and Saturday in which dozens of security forces were reportedly killed.

Assad said “many mistakes” had been made by his forces in the early part of the uprising against his regime but insisted that his forces were now only targeting “terrorists.”

“If you sent in your army to the streets, the same thing would happen. Now, we are only fighting terrorists. That’s why the fighting is becoming much less,” he told the Sunday Telegraph.

He described the uprising as a “struggle between Islamism and pan-Arabism (secularism), adding: “We’ve been fighting the Muslim Brotherhood since the 1950s and we are still fighting with them.”

Assad also said that Syria had responded differently to Arab leaders in countries like Egypt, Tunisia and Libya where regimes have been overthrown this year, insisting that he had begun reforms.

“The pace of reform is not too slow. The vision needs to be mature. It would take only 15 seconds to sign a law, but if it doesn’t fit your society, you’ll have division … It’s a very complicated society,” he said.

Source Agence France Presse