From Battaglia Comunista 6, June 2005

The following text is translated from the paper of our sister organisation in Italy. The "Great Game" it refers to is the one played out by rival imperialist powers for more than two centuries in Central Asia. Today, in some ways, the stakes are higher as these states have added oil production to their strategic significance. Uzbekistan, like the other three Central Asian states, has been wooed by both Russia and China on the one hand and the USA on the other. The European states are also playing their own game here and events in Uzbekistan since June have only underlined this. In the last few weeks, the Russians and Chinese have put enormous pressure on Karimov to get rid of the US base at Karshi-Khanabad and on July 29th he obliged by sending a note to the US asking them to withdraw from the base within six months. Karimov is not just responding to Russian and Chinese pressure. Uzbekistan receives $100 millions a year in aid from the USA, but, after the massacre in Andijan, the US has cut this by about a fifth. After all, Bush is having difficulty making the idea of war for democracy in Iraq stick. He could not ignore the blatant murder committed by Karimov without undermining the whole edifice of US foreign policy. Karimov has tried to play the US ally in the war against terror but, as the US no longer appears ready to ignore human rights abuses (which it has actually benefited from as the article makes clear), he is playing a clever game of making the US pay strategically. There is no doubt that the Uzbek request for the US to leave "K2", as they call it, is a setback to US domination in the region. Karshi-Khanabad has not only the biggest runway in the region but is also linked directly by good roads to Afghanistan which is geographically very close. Rumsfeld has tried to make light of the Uzbek request but there is no doubt that heavy negotiations are going on behind the scenes. European Union Foreign Ministers have played a hypocritical game of saying that they are "studying possible measures" against the Karimov regime, which means that they don't intend to do anything. The article refers to the fact hat the earliest and clearest condemnation of the massacre in Andijan came from the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. This was in fact only another piece of hypocrisy as he knew he had to appear to be "ethical" given that the British Government had just sacked its own Ambassador in Uzbekistan for voicing criticism of the torture in Tashkent. Once the event had slipped onto the back pages, the British could join their European counterparts in saying and doing nothing whilst waiting to see what influence they could gain in an area where the US was suffering a setback. One thing is clear. We can expect more revolts from the super-exploited in Uzbekistan and more support for the Karimov regime by the imperialist powers who hope to gain a base in an area which has grown in international importance since September 11th 2001.

After the "Tulip Revolution" in Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia has come dramatically to the attention of the media. After days of non-violent demonstrations in the Uzbek city of Andijan, in the Fergana Valley, the situation unexpectedly came to a head on the night of 13th May. Rebels assaulted an army barracks and, in possession of arms and protective equipment, attacked a local prison, freeing hundreds of prisoners, accused of common crimes or terrorism. Then, protected by the protesting crowd, they occupied the town hall, taking several civilians and functionaries hostage. At that point violent repression was unleashed by the forces of order, aided by Special Forces deployed in the area. The result was over 700 corpses of soldiers, hostage takers and civilians, including children and old women. After several days of clashes, and at least another 300 victims in the city of Kara-Su and Pakhta-Abad, every means of access to the region was blocked. It is still difficult to precisely reconstruct the facts and the number of victims, given that journalists were immediately invited to "leave" the area.

The Roots of Protest

The main objective of the protests during the days before 13th May, which had seen the participation of thousands of people, was the freeing of 23 prisoners accused by the government of collusion with Islamic terrorism. In fact, for several months the inhabitants of the region had been complaining at the new tax policy of the government, which is choking the small enterprises spread throughout the area. Alongside widespread unease with the authoritarian policies of the President, Karimov, who is quick to incarcerate any political opposition with the accusation of terrorism, social conditions close to desperation also serve to foment rebellious feelings in Uzbekistan.

More than 60% of the population live in densely populated rural areas. Inflation has reached 24.2%, unemployment is as widespread as poverty, which affects 28% of the population. Recently the minimum legal monthly wage has been set at $7, well below $1 per day, the United Nation's poverty line. Nevertheless, Uzbekistan is the world's third largest exporter of cotton, an important producer of gold, gas and oil, and an exporter of machinery and chemical products in Central Asia. It is also home to one of the main proletarian nuclei in the area, working in huge aeroplane and car factories. Still its abundant mineral and energy resources have not found a commercial outlet, since the surrounding countries have not given Uzbekistan access to the sea.

The country has been governed since 1989 by Islam Karimov, once local First Secretary of the CPSU, who, since independence, has continued to base his autocratic power on the repression of any opposition, in particular the centrifugal splinter groups of Islamic fundamentalism. To achieve this he has adopted a policy of defence of the secularity and multi-ethnicity of the state, to the point of banning religious symbols and clothing from public places. His regime is notorious for torturing with boiling water, an inhuman technique that the USA has profited from on several occasions by sending Afghan prisoners to Uzbekistan for "interrogation".

As regards the Andijan events, the government has been quick to brand those responsible as terrorists linked to Islamic fundamentalism. While not accepting this simplistic version, it is still difficult to believe that the armed assault on an army barracks, the use of arms for the liberation of hundreds of prisoners and all the following events occurred without a precise political leadership and without careful preparation. This is even less likely if one considers that Uzbekistan is located within that difficult geopolitical balance, which has been labelled the "New Great Game" for the control of Central Asia and the Caucasus, the heart of as yet hardly tapped energy reserves.

A Little Player in the Great Game

Tashkent's primary objective is to increase the export of crude oil, so far limited by alternatives to the Central Asia-Central Russia pipeline, which connects Uzbekistan to Russia and other post-soviet republics. The project of alternative pipelines naturally stimulates the appetite of the capitalist centres and the local power-wielders, ready to fight to control the quotas of finance capital destined for this task. The Central Asia Oil Pipeline is the most ambitious project, already being nurtured by Unocal and supported by the Federal American government, which is seeking to integrate the already existing infrastructure in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, to transport oil in the Indian Ocean, crossing Afghanistan and Pakistan. Moreover, Uzbekistan could also send its oil through a 3000 km long pipeline, which, if it is built, would link Kazakhstan to China.

After 9/11, Uzbekistan allowed the USA to use the military base of Karshi-Khanabad, which has so far been used for the operations in Afghanistan. The American government knew how to reciprocate, giving military and economic aid to the tune of $500 million in 2002. The figure has slowly decreased, whilst Karimov increasingly sought an understanding with Moscow, strengthening important political, economic and military agreements. Only a few days before the Andijan revolt, Uzbekistan had finally left GUUAM. That organisation, including Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldovia had taken on an even more obviously anti-Russian character after the so-called "rainbow revolutions" which brought about regime changes in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan over the last year and a half.

Karimov's double game is obvious, but it is equally clear, both to Washington as well as to Moscow, that at the moment there is no alternative to Karimov. The quick show of support obtained from Putin and his foreign minister Lavrov is not at all surprising, and even Condoleeza Rice, similarly motivated, has limited herself to a simple request for moderation, reminding us that "no-one can ask a government to negotiate with terrorists". Only the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, has adopted a firmer position, talking about a serious violation of human rights.

The main suspect as regards the Andijani events however, seems to be the trans-national organisation Hizb-ut-Tahrir al Islam (Islamic Liberation), based in London, and in particular its central Asian agency Akramiya, active in Eastern Uzbekistan, where the traditions of conservative Islam are more rooted. Founded in Andijan in 1996 by Akram Yuldosev, Akramiya aims for the constitution of the Caliphate - an Islamic super state extending from the Atlantic borders of Africa as far as Indonesia; to clarify; the area that contains all the greatest oil deposits in the world. Yuldoshev is in prison, but the organisation is held responsible by the government for all guerrilla activity and terrorist attempts in Tashkent since 1999. Recently Baktior Rakimov, at the head of the Kara-Su revolt has also ended up in prison. He also has the ambition to turn Uzbekistan into a Muslim Caliphate founded on Sharia. Fergana's separatist movement, amongst others, not only receives support from Islamic organisations. According to Mikhail Chernov, analyst of the RBC Daily, the USA would also be very interested in dividing the valley from the rest of the country, to make the link between Moscow and its bases in Tajikistan difficult, and to install a pro-Western Islamic regime to use as a base to stir up Islamist insurgency in western China. Lately, Ozod Dekhonlar (Free Peasants) are winning consensus, the main supporters of the movement Uzbekistan Rebirth. Their exponents would like to reproduce the Kyrgyzstan events and to this end seek out contacts within Karimov's entourage, hoping to install in Tashkent a leadership more in accordance with Washington's interests. In every case, Karimov and his power apparatus, the nationalist, clerical, reactionary opposition and the various expressions of the international bourgeoisie, can at best direct considerable quotas of financial profit linked to the oil flows towards Moscow or Washington, but none of them can help the proletariat of Central Asia to attain social and economic emancipation. In the absence of an authentic communist party, capable of upholding at an international level a programme of social revolution, the exploited of the area will inevitably remain trapped in bloody power games from which they have absolutely nothing to gain.