AbduMannob Polat, former chairman of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, writing for the Jamestown Foundation
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Last week I participated in a conference in Tashkent, the capital of post-Soviet Central Asia's most populous country, Uzbekistan. Hosts were the Uzbekistan Institute for the Study of Civil Society (ISCS), who provided the photos in this post. Full disclosure: the Brussels-based European Institute of International Relations (IERI, for which I do pro-bono work) was a co-sponsor, as were the OSCE and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), organizations with strong democracy-building and rule of law credentials.
The round table was primarily focused on how Uzbekistan has coped with the international financial crisis. Rather well, it would appear: the IMF (whose Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn visited Uzbekistan and other Central Asian states last month) forecast 7% GDP growth for the country in 2009, down only slightly from 2008's 9% figure.
Some of Uzbekistan's success in weathering the financial storm is down to its isolation; "double land-locked" among other land-locked Central Asian neighbors, it had already survived the wrenching transition from Soviet central planning after the breakup of the USSR in the '90s. As one Uzbek banker said, the country's mere 6% of mortgage exposure meant there was "no bubble to burst." It has also helped that the country's President, Islam Karimov, is an economist by training, and has recently penned a book on the crisis.
Though economic in thrust, the conference's sub theme of political reforms was ever-present. That picture of me on the right is of a very jet lagged neophyte's first hours in Tashkent, trying to answer the local press' insistent questioning about my opinion on Uzbekistan's upcoming (December) parliamentary and local elections. "Langue de bois" or diplospeak comes in handy at times, but I was honestly able to plead ignorance based on my almost total lack of information on the question.
Other participants were more forthright, with probably the best line from the NDI director: "democracy is the best defense against extremism." The extremism is Islamic, and was a reference to Uzbekistan's darkest hour in 2005, when long-simmering tensions came to a head in the city of Andijan. A bloody confrontation between government forces and opposition elements - over which the jury is still out, though a 2007 Jamestown Foundation report provides dispassionate analysis - resulted in Uzbekistan's sidelining by Western governments and NGOs, which is only now starting to be relaxed.
Part of the thaw is plain power politics: Uzbekistan lies astride a critical supply route leading to Afghanistan, and can be a much-appreciated island of stability in a turbulent region. As AbduMannob Polat, former chairman of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan (and author of the Jamestown study), writes: "A prosperous and democratic Uzbekistan could be an extremely important bridge between the Western and Muslim worlds." A truism, to be sure. The conditional tense is crucial: we aren't there yet. But Uzbek bodies like the Civil Society Institute, with crucial assistance from institutions like the OSCE and NDI (also from the European Union and the Council of Europe), are engaging with the outside world.
As longtime campaigners for the rule of law in Uzbekistan know, the transition from centuries of Czarist then Communist rule does not come overnight. There are ups, and there are downs. Dialogue helps, and "constructive engagement" - though dismissed by purists as providing cover and abetting repression - can also be a way of maintaining a positive influence, and has born fruit. Uzbekistan has an active ombudsman in the person of a respected parliamentary deputy, and the country banned capital punishment in 2008.
I have no illusions that the ways of Uzbek politics are every bit as labyrinthine as those of the Middle East, of which I know enough to know what I don't know, to paraphrase an ex-US Secretary of Defense. But there is a window opening up, as much for Uzbekistan as for the West. And it's not just the West: Uzbekistan still must deal gingerly with overtures from its former overlords in Moscow, and President Karimov currently chairs the SCO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
"Great Game" aficionados will put this down to East-West jockeying for influence in a resource-rich, strategically located country, and that cannot be denied. But that will happen anyway. Uzbekistan, despite what a NY Times correspondent intimated recently, is not Chechnya. The question is: are ordinary Uzbek citizens better off with - or without - the presence of Western institutions pressing for rule of law and human rights? How "righteous" is it to leave them on their own? Engagement, however problematic and trying on the nerves, can bring results.