Britain and the US support a dictator who boils victims to death
by George Monbiot
The British and US governments gave three reasons for going to war with
Iraq. The first was to extend the war on terrorism. The second was to
destroy its weapons of mass destruction before they could be deployed.
The third was to remove a brutal regime, which had tortured and murdered
its people.
If the purpose of the war was to defeat terrorism, it has failed. Before
the invasion, there was no demonstrable link between al-Qaida and Iraq.
Today, al-Qaida appears to have moved into that country, to exploit a
new range of accessible western targets. If the purpose of the war was
to destroy Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction before he
deployed them, then, as no such weapons appear to have existed, it was a
war without moral or strategic justification.
So just one excuse remains, and it is a powerful one. Saddam Hussein was
a brutal tyrant. While there was no legal argument for forcibly deposing
him on the grounds of his abuse of human rights, there was a moral
argument. It is one which our prime minister made repeatedly and
forcefully. "The moral case against war has a moral answer: it is the
moral case for removing [Hussein]," Tony Blair told the Labour party's
spring conference in February. "Ridding the world of [Hussein] would be
an act of humanity. It is leaving him there that is in truth inhumane."
Had millions of British people not accepted this argument, Tony Blair
might not be prime minister today. There were many, especially in the
Labour party, who disagreed with his decision but who did not doubt the
sincerity of his belief in the primacy of human rights.
There is just one test of this sincerity, and that is the consistency
with which his concern for human rights guides his foreign policy. If he
cares so much about the welfare of foreigners that he is prepared to go
to war on their behalf, we should expect to see this concern reflected
in all his relations with the governments of other countries. We should
expect him, for example, to do all he can to help the people of
Uzbekistan.
There are over 6,000 political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan.
Every year, some of them are tortured to death. Sometimes the policemen
or intelligence agents simply break their fingers, their ribs and then
their skulls with hammers, or stab them with screwdrivers, or rip off
bits of skin and flesh with pliers, or drive needles under their
fingernails, or leave them standing for a fortnight, up to their knees
in freezing water. Sometimes they are a little more inventive. The body
of one prisoner was delivered to his relatives last year, with a curious
red tidemark around the middle of his torso. He had been boiled to
death.
His crime, like that of many of the country's prisoners, was practising
his religion. Islam Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan, learned his
politics in the Soviet Union. He was appointed under the old system, and
its collapse in 1991 did not interrupt his rule. An Islamist terrorist
network has been operating there, but Karimov makes no distinction
between peaceful Muslims and terrorists: anyone who worships privately,
who does not praise the president during his prayers or who joins an
organisation which has not been approved by the state can be imprisoned.
Political dissidents, human rights activists and homosexuals receive the
same treatment. Some of them, like in the old Soviet Union, are sent to
psychiatric hospitals.
But Uzbekistan is seen by the US government as a key western asset, as
Saddam Hussein's Iraq once was. Since 1999, US special forces have been
training Karimov's soldiers. In October 2001, he gave the United States
permission to use Uzbekistan as an airbase for its war against the
Taliban. The Taliban have now been overthrown, but the US has no
intention of moving out. Uzbekistan is in the middle of central Asia's
massive gas and oil fields. It is a nation for whose favours both Russia
and China have been vying. Like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, it is a secular
state fending off the forces of Islam.
So, far from seeking to isolate his regime, the US government has
tripled its aid to Karimov. Last year, he received $500,000,000, of
which $79,000,000 went to the police and intelligence services, who are
responsible for most of the torture. While the US claims that its
engagement with Karimov will encourage him to respect human rights, like
Saddam Hussein he recognises that the protection of the world's most
powerful government permits him to do whatever he wants. Indeed, the US
state department now plays a major role in excusing his crimes. In May,
for example, it announced that Uzbekistan had made "substantial and
continuing progress" in improving its human rights record. The progress?
"Average sentencing" for members of peaceful religious organisations is
now just "7-12 years", while two years ago they were "usually sentenced
to 12-19 years".
There is little question that the power and longevity of Karimov's
government has been enhanced by his special relationship with the United
States. There is also little question that supporting him is a dangerous
game. All the principal enemies of the US today were fostered by the US
or its allies in the past: the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Wahhabi
zealots in Saudi Arabia, Saddam Hussein and his people in Iraq.
Dictators do not have friends, only sources of power. They will shift
their allegiances as their requirement for power demands. The US
supported Islamist extremists in Afghanistan in order to undermine the
Soviet Union, and created a monster. Now it is supporting a Soviet-era
leader to undermine Islamist extremists, and building up another one.
So what of Tony Blair, the man who claims that human rights are so
important that they justify going to war? Well, at the beginning of this
year, he granted Uzbekistan an open licence to import whatever weapons
from the United Kingdom Mr Karimov fancies. And his support goes even
beyond that. The British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has
repeatedly criticised Karimov's crushing of democracy movements and his
use of torture to silence his opponents. Like Roger Casement, the
foreign office envoy who exposed the atrocities in the Congo a century
ago, Murray has been sending home dossiers which could scarcely fail to
move anyone who cares about human rights.
Blair has been "moved" all right: moved to do everything he could to
silence our ambassador. Mr Murray has been threatened with the sack
(firing), investigated for a series of plainly trumped-up charges and
persecuted so relentlessly by his superiors that he had to spend some
time, like many of Karimov's critics, in a psychiatric ward, though in
this case for sound clinical reasons. This pressure, according to a
senior government source, was partly "exercised on the orders of No 10".
In April, Blair told us that he had decided that "to leave Iraq in its
brutalised state under Saddam was wrong". How much credibility does this
statement now command, when the same man believes that to help
Uzbekistan remain in its brutalised state is right?
Unterstützt Karimov, aber Saddam soll der böse gewesen sein?
Wo ist hier die Logik?
Allein schon wenn Bush die Worte wie "Menschenrechte" oder "Friedenspolitik" über seine Lippen bringt, könnte ich vor Aufregung platzen,weil er anscheinend noch nicht einmal die Definition davon kennt
Quelle:www.guardian.co.uk
