Comment - response

I got a brief comment on this post today:

rosignol said...

The Hizb ut-Tahrir website is at http://www.hizb-ut-tahrir.org/

They're of the 'trying to establish an islamic/sharia state' ilk.

Maybe I should hide my uninformed and/or unoriginal response in the comments section, but I think it's worth airing. I should preface my comments by saying that I really am no expert on the situation in Central Asia (those of you who are can probably already tell), so I'm happy to be set straight by people who are objective and know better.

Anyway, thanks for posting the link, but I must say, the comments from a witness to fighting apparently involving Hizb ut Tahrir in Dee's post (which she has since deleted from her site) and Karimov's statement blaming them notwithstanding, that I am not 100% convinced of the Hizb ut Tahrir's involvement in this. Consider that Dee's source likely heard Karimov's remarks and/or earlier government statements that all violent opposition to the government is conducted by Hizb ut Tahrir, and that this might have just been the first (or only) organization he thought of when he saw or heard about armed resistance to the government. Also - and much, much more importantly - I am not convinced that this organization's goals, or their involvement or non-involvement in organizing the uprising, is relevant to a discussion of why so many thousands of protesters turned out (surely they were not all fundamentalists with dreams of restoring the caliphate, starting with Andijan) and why the Uzbek authorities ultimately chose to deal with the situation as they apparently did, by firing without warning on those protesters.

The problem with the "Islamic fundamentalists caused this" idea that the Uzbek authorities and some others are trying to put out there is that it's just too easy for Karimov to chalk up this uprising to Islamic radicals rather than acknowledging the real causes - lawlessness on the part of law enforcement, desperate poverty, and economic/social repression. These seem to be acknowledged as the causes of the Andijan protest (if not the jailbreak that set the situation off) by a consensus of objective observers. It will be easier for Karimov to get away with this if the US and Russian governments don't call him out on it, and they have shown reluctance (in Russia's case, unwillingness would probably be more like it) to do so.

To explain why I think that the Uzbek authorities were firmly in the wrong in their actions, I would separate this into two issues:

1) Who organized the jailbreak and initial hostage-taking (by the "rebels" or "militants") in Andijan, and what might have been a reasonable government response; and

2) The peaceful (by all accounts I've seen they were peaceful except for some stone-throwing) protesters, who (by all credible accounts) were fired on without warning by Uzbek troops, and why the government felt that was a reasonable response to the situation.

Even if - and it's a big if, it seems to me - "Islamic fundamentalist terrorists" (as distinguished from Muslims who may have been opposed to the government for legitimate reasons, and may have felt that violence was justified because their chances of getting a fair shake through the legal system were nil) were behind (1), how does that justify (2)?

Karimov can fire the local police officials, but at the end of the day a general (speaking metaphorically) has to be held responsibile for the actions of his troops, especially since he was present and (we should therefore assume) directly involved in devising the government's response on Friday the 13th. And that response looks to have been excessive, whether or not Hizb ut Tahrir was involved.