"We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals -- and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship... Bipartisanship is another name for date rape." -- Grover Norquist, a leading Republican strategist and onetime adviser to Newt Gingrich.
"I'm prepared to rip off the heads of 200 people, to sacrifice their lives, in order to save peace and calm in the republic ... If my child chose such a path, I myself would rip off his head."
-- Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan, on his deep commitment to the war against Islamic extremism.
The former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan used to be a backwater's backwater, a country of no strategic import tucked into the Central Asian plateau above Afghanistan. To American policymakers, it was just another ne'er-do-well ex-Communist state with an unpronounceable name.
That all changed after Sept. 11, when the US began casting about for allies in its war on terror. Suddenly, Uzbekistan and its pariah strongman, Islam Karimov, were being courted by the likes of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and touted as a linchpin of US operations in the region. In return for huge increases in American aid, Uzbekistan offered bases for US troops and an enthusiastic -- even ruthless -- commitment to the war on terror.
The Karimov regime, however, is no less ruthless in its treatment of homegrown opposition -- no matter how benign -- and to this the White House has turned a blind eye. Amnesty International, which released its annual report on human rights abuses worldwide yesterday, observes that life has gotten considerably harder for Uzbek dissidents in recent years. The reason is simple: Karimov now has America behind him. "The 'international war against terrorism' was used by the Uzbek authorities to justify the clampdown on religious and political dissent," the report states flatly.
Karimov's jails are packed with thousands of political prisoners -- many of whom were guilty only of wearing an Islamic-style beard, or praying at a mosque unsanctioned by the state, which is attempting to bring all religion under its control. In fact, just being related to a dissident is enough to get you in trouble: Security forces routinely imprison entire families. Even more horrific, researchers turned up evidence that prisoners had been boiled to death last year. While noting a few improvements in Uzbekistan's record, Amnesty pronounces the situation "dire." To wit:
"The bodies of Muzafar Avazov, a 35-year-old father of four, and Khusniddin Alimov, aged 34, were brought from Jaslyk prison in the Northern Karaklapakstan region to their families in Tashkent on 8 August. Muzafar Avazov was reportedly tortured to death; an eyewitness said the body showed signs of burns on the legs, buttocks, lower back and arms. Reportedly, there was a large wound on the back of the head, bruises on the forehead, and the hands had no fingernails. The authorities reportedly restricted viewing of Khusniddin Alimov's body."
Despite all this, the US gave nearly $500 million to Karimov last year, with some $79 million earmarked for the security services. This is far more than Uzbekistan used to get. In 1998, for example, before Karimov found his niche as a US client, Uzbekistan received just $36 million in aid. Karimov was even invited to the White House last year, where he palled around with president George W. Bush and signed a memorandum calling for closer ties between the two nations. NATO may be getting in on the act, too: Earlier this month, the Western military alliance announced that it might base troops in Uzbekistan.
Washington insists that its policy of engagement with Karimov's regime is paying off, and that the rule of law is slowly beginning to take hold in Tashkent. Human rights reports notwithstanding, a string of elections that the State Department has termed " neither free nor fair" makes a mockery of such optimistic assessments. And according to the London Guardian's Nick Paton Walsh, researchers on the ground say that, far from reining in Karimov's thuggery, American support has emboldened him.
"Matilda Bogner of Human Rights Watch's office in Tashkent said: 'I would deny there has been any real progress.
'The steps taken are basically window dressing used to get the military funding through the US Congress's ethical laws. Nothing has changed on the ground.'
Hakimjon Noredinov, 68, agreed. He became a human rights activist after a morgue attendant brought him his eldest son, Nozemjon. He had been left for dead by the security service but was still alive despite having his skull fractured. Nozemjon is now 33. He screamed all night after they split his skull open. He is now in an asylum, Mr Noredinov said. 'People's lives here are no better for US involvement,' he said.
'Because of the US help, Karimov is getting richer and stronger.'"
For the moment, none of these concerns matter much in Washington, Matthew Brzezinski writes in Mother Jones and the Guardian. While supporting Karimov and his heavy-handed tactics may be a smart short-term move, he continues, it could have unpleasant long-term consequences.
"The thinking in the state department seems to be that if the people of Uzbekistan have to pay the price for our safety, so be it. It's a surprisingly strong argument, given the current climate in America. At a time when civil liberties are being curtailed on the home front, why should the Bush administration or the American people worry about the plight of pious Muslims on the other side of the globe?
There is only one, equally compelling, response to that question ... By turning a blind eye to religious repression and supporting governments like Mr Karimov's that exploit anti-Islamic sentiment for political ends, could we be contributing to the radicalisation of young Muslim victims of torture and imprisonment? Could we inadvertently be sowing the seeds for a generation of future Bin Ladens?"
The attacks in Fallujah may be the work of a group of Baath loyalists, although those reports have not been confirmed. However the attacks were organized, they were certainly deliberate. And a number of reports suggest that the violence and the building resentment against American occupiers may be the tip of an iceberg of resistance.
The Christian Science Monitor reports that at the scene of the attack in Fallujah, a crowd of about 40 Iraqis spoke with a unanimous voice, saying:
"This would not be the last deadly assault on the US military in Iraq.
'We are going to do something much bigger than that,' warns Abdul Settar Hamid al-Fellahi, a driver in a long white robe. 'Like what the Palestinians do to Israel, that's what we will do to the Americans.'
The violence in Fallujah - which also injured nine US soldiers and damaged a helicopter - was only the latest in a series of assaults on US soldiers in Iraq this past week. US officials in Baghdad hope the attacks represent localized threats to coalition troops occupying Iraq. But military analysts say there is a danger that the incidents can't be dismissed as random, vigilante violence. ... "In a few days, if nothing improves in our country, you will see this every day," says Yaser Mahmoud.
"It's a popular resistance. We are going to have a jihad for our country," says Khaled Hilali, a retired, graying teacher who waited patiently to have his say. Within a few days of the Gulf War in 1991, he and others complain, Hussein quickly rebuilt damaged infrastructure."
It's not yet clear whether these attacks denote real organization, or simply the high level of tension on the ground in Iraq. In any case, it's not just the Iraqis who are tense. The AP reports that American soldiers are sweating from more than just the heat. "After more than six months in Kuwait and Iraq, tempers have begun to flare, both among the soldiers themselves and with the civilians they encounter," writes Chris Tomlinson. "'We were told that once we entered Baghdad and we won the war they would send in other units to do the peacekeeping,' one senior soldier said on condition of anonymity. 'Those who did the killing should not be the ones keeping the peace. They need to send us home.'"
Morale is down, it's hot, and even Saddam's worst enemies aren't pleased with the U.S. Bremer issued a decree last week that prohibited senior level Baath party members from holding posts in Iraq's new government. The move was intended to counter criticism that the U.S. was simply re-installing the old regime's bureaucrats. But the decree sparked a wave of vengeance killing against former Baathists. Evidently, many Iraqis felt that a ban from government jobs wasn't sufficient punishment for Saddam's torturers and killers. The Washington Post reports that vigilantes who don't trust the U.S. to bring them justicehave been taking their revenge on scores of Baathists, possibly more. The exact numbers are unknown and impossible to pin down in the chaos in Baghdad:
"The number of former Baath Party officials killed since the war ended is difficult to pin down in a city of 5 million people with only two functioning police stations, no recordkeeping and a destroyed government. Drawing on anecdotal evidence, however, former exile groups and Iraqis familiar with some of the killings say it could reach several hundred in Baghdad alone."
If basic security contines to improve in Fallujah and Baghdad, then the scope and size of problems like vigilanteism or an organized resistance should become clearer. But the U.S. may have a long way to go before Iraq can truly be filed away as "under control." The power dynamics are so complex, even observers on the ground seem to have trouble mapping all the nuances. For example, most American papers take it as a given that Fallujah is a former stronghold of the Baath party and a hotbed of support for Saddam. But The Boston Globe reports that residents of Fallujah say the links to Saddam are a media creation and that they bristle at any connection to the ousted leader.
The only information that seems unequivocal? Fallujah is pious, conservative and deeply angry with the Americans:
"Residents say there is no organized movement to force out the Americans, but they complain bitterly that their occupiers are far too heavy-handed and trample over their conservative Muslim traditions.
'There is no organized resistance in our city,' said Ammar Mohammed, a Fallujah native who works as a doctor in Baghdad. But, he said, the ambush 'shows our resistance to occupation and it avenges past U.S. attacks on our city.'"
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"So far the United States' threatening rhetoric against Iran, if anything, has actually benefited the hard-liners, because now they are appealing to the patriotism and religious sentiments of the Iranians."" -- Sadegh Zibakalam, a professor of politics at Tehran University.
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised ... Today, no nation can possibly claim that Iraq has disarmed. And it will not disarm so long as Saddam Hussein holds power." - George Bush, March 18
"We know where [the WMD] are, they are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north of that." - Donald Rumsfeld, March 30
"We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some [WMD], perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them." - Bush, April 24
"The Bush team's extensive hype of WMDs in Iraq as justification for a preemptive invasion war has bcome more than embarrassing -- it has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use of power." - Sen. Robert Byrd, May 21
"... Given time, given the number of prisoners now that we're interrogating, I'm confident that we're going to find weapons of mass destruction." - Gen. Richard Myers, May 27
"It's hard to find things in a country that's determined not to have you find them. It's also possible that they decided to destroy them prior to the conflict." - Rumsfeld, May 27
"For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." - Paul Wolfowitz, May 28
It's amazing how much can change over three months -- particularly in the shifting-sands permanent-war world of George W. Bush's Washington.
In March, during speeches before Congress, the UN, and the American people, Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Pentagon boss Donald Rumsfeld declared vehemently that Washington had undeniable proof Saddam Hussein was making and hoarding weapons of mass destruction.
But then came the war, and the slew of false-alarm weapons "discoveries." Saddam was toppled, Iraq was occupied, but US arms hunters failed to find any hard evidence of the weapons their commander-in-chief so confidently asserted the Iraqi tyrant had cached. The CIA has announced its intention to review the intelligence decisions being made in the run-up to war, and left-leaning pundits across the country are wondering in ever-stronger voices whether the American people were hoodwinked by an administration dead-set on waging war.
Administration officials have done their best to avoid the issue, sinuously shifting the debate over justification to focus on the undeniably brutal nature of Saddam Hussein's regime. And that argument seems to have convinced most in America. It hasn't convinced the editors of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, however. In an editorial, they insist that the long-established nature of Saddam's brutal regime cannot simply wipe away the lack of any weapons evidence.
"The question of U.S. intelligence and WMD ... now goes to the credibility of the Bush administration and how much trust Americans, and the world, can put in what it says it has learned via "intelligence."
...
The American people rallied behind their president because they believed he'd made the case against Iraq. Well, he hadn't. Even if WMD are found, they won't be where the United States said they were. Those "chemical decontamination" trucks turned out not to have been. Those bunkers showed no signs of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
Were Americans snookered? Probably not, but they were badly served by ideologues in the administration who were so blinded by their preformed convictions that they surrendered their powers of critical judgment. More to the point, where or when might they do it again, and can the American people now trust them?"
Baltimore Sun columnist Jules Witcover asserts it is abundantly clear that the White House exaggerated the threat in a bid to win support for its war plans. The claims failed to convince the United Nations, just as they failed to convince most of the rest of the world. But they did convince the American people, thanks to what Witcover calls "a hard patriotic sell" by Bush, and the president is now trying to convince the American people that it just doesn't matter if the weapons are actually ever found. Witcover doesn't buy it.
"[W]hat about the obligation that Mr. Bush had to level with Congress in insisting that the threat from Iraq was so imminent that its constitutional power to declare war should be ceded to the head of the executive branch?
...
It will be most interesting to see what the CIA comes up with in its investigation into the quality and assessment of the intelligence used by the administration to persuade Congress and, unsuccessfully, the Security Council to sanction the invasion of Iraq.
If it reveals any intentional misrepresentation by the White House, the State Department or the Pentagon, the whole concept of 'anticipatory self-defense' and pre-emptive war will be undermined, and should be."
But will the CIA turn up anything significant? Richard Cohen of The Washington Post has his doubts. And even if the review finds evidence of intelligence failures, Cohen doubts that Pentagon boss Donald Rumsfeld will ever admit that mistakes were made.
"So where are these weapons? Rumsfeld was asked that question after he spoke here to the Council on Foreign Relations. He said they might have been destroyed in advance of the war. He was then asked how it was possible that the hapless Iraqi army, so inept in everything it did, was able to destroy all its chemical or biological weapons so that not a trace could be found -- and the United States never noticed. Rumsfeld ducked the question. Iraq is a big country, he said. As large as California, he said. Blah, blah.
...
In his speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Rumsfeld referred to something called a 'lessons learned activity.' This is Pentagon jargon for "doing a review" -- seeing where things went wrong. Both the CIA and the Pentagon are now doing this regarding the war in Iraq, but Congress ought to do the same. If there is a lesson learned after the war, it is that the Pentagon can hardy be expected to review what went wrong when the man at the top insists everything went right."
Still, while the lack of convincing weapons evidence may yet become a political headache for the president, it has already become a full-blown crisis for his staunchest European ally. British Prime Minister Tony Blair finds himself facing increasingly ugly questions about his government's case for war. As the BBC's Nick Assinder writes, "the dismay, anger and criticisms of the way Britain was taken into the conflict are probably at a post-war high."
"[B]ehind all this is the simple fact that weapons of mass destruction have not been found.
And, despite recent attempts to refocus onto the brutality of Saddam's regime as a good enough reason for having removed him, Tony Blair knows it was only the stated threat from such weapons that legitimised the war."
Of particular concern to Blair and others in his government now is a new BBC report in which an unnamed senior British official has claimed that a government dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was rewritten to make it "sexier."
"Published last September, the dossier warned that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to activate his biological and chemical weapons in just 45 minutes.
...
The intelligence official told the BBC the dossier had been 'transformed' a week before it was published on the orders of Downing Street. He said: 'The classic example was the statement that weapons of mass destruction were ready for use within 45 minutes.'
'That information was not in the original draft. It was included in the dossier against our wishes because it wasn't reliable.'"
Now, Blair's former foreign secretary, Robin Cook, is calling for an independent inquiry into the matter. In calling for the probe, Cook, who resigned from the Blair government over the war, has cited both the BBC report and Rumsfeld's comments about the possibility that Iraq destroyed its weapons.
Predictably, Blair quickly rejected Cook's suggestion, claiming that there is no need for an independent investigation at this point.
"I have said throughout and I just repeat to you, I have absolutely no doubt at all about the existence of weapons of mass destruction."
What remains to be seen, of course, is whether Blair, too, will find himself back-pedaling.
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