Human rights inch ahead in Uzbekistan

Farmer Gulomiddin Mamadaliev wept as he scythed the wheat this year.

The seeds had been planted by his son, Alimuhamad, who later was detained as a suspected Islamic militant and, on the day of his arrest, beaten to death.

But for the grieving father, this year's harvest of sorrow also holds a tiny grain of consolation: Two weeks ago, the Uzbek secret police who killed his son were sent to jail.

It is a rare turn of justice in this country, where President Islam Karimov rules with an iron hand, and the rights of the accused, and other human rights hold little currency. The Mamadaliev case and another, in which four policemen were each sentenced to 20-year terms in January for killing one suspect and maiming another, are recent moves in Uzbekistan that point toward a liberalization for the first time in Karimov's 12-year rule.

Most of the changes have taken place since Sept. 11. Looking for help in waging its "war on terror," the US began courting Uzbekistan and other repressive Central Asian regimes whose proximity to Afghanistan made them key allies.

But critics charge that the recent progress is only window-dressing by Uzbekistan to please its new ally – and that the US is compromising demands for more far-reaching improvements in human rights at the expense of short-term military needs.

"The Uzbek government is serious in recognizing the need to satisfy the US on this ... but it is not sincere," says John Schoeberlein, head of the Program on Central Asia and the Caucasus at Harvard University. "Basically, it's just PR."

Uzbekistan abolished censorship in mid-May, and on Wednesday Karimov ordered the creation of an independent agency with the task of ensuring media freedom. The first official registration of a human rights group took place in March, under strong US pressure – and just days before Karimov visited Washington. For the first time, some 860 prisoners held on political and religious charges were included last fall in an annual amnesty.

Washington and Tashkent signed a strategic partnership deal in March that reportedly commits Uzbekistan to clean up its rights record – and shifts Uzbekistan away from Russia and toward the West. Some 1,800 US Special Forces troops now use the former Soviet base at Khanabad. Meanwhile, US aid to Uzbekistan has tripled to $166 million this year.

Central Asia, including the lush Fergana Valley – source of much of this region's Islamic militancy in the past decade – is where ancient empires overlapped or collided, and where the Silk Route brought new ideas from China and Europe. For decades part of the Soviet empire, the Central Asian states have been led since the USSR's collapse by authoritarian communist-era stalwarts like Karimov. Uzbek prisons are now filled with 6,500 religious and political inmates, often held on flimsy evidence, whom the state calls "terrorists."

US officials say that closer ties are giving the US greater influence over these regimes, and thus a way to press for change. "Human rights and democracy are as essential today, if not more, than they were before the [Sept. 11] terrorist attacks," Lorne Craner, asst. secretary of state in charge of democracy and human rights, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week.

Local rights activists praise the US Embassy here for providing support in efforts to create a civil society, promoting human rights groups, and even intervening in harassment cases. But they know there is a broader US military agenda, too, that requires close ties with Karimov.

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