Islam Karimov and NATO Secretary General, January 2011.
Scott Horton, a US lawyer and specialist on international law, has a first-rate article on NATO and Uzbekistan which was his testimony at a recent public hearing in Germany on the severe human rights situation in Uzbekistan and what Europeans can be doing about it.
He rightly calls NATO to conscience for its dealings with Uzbekistan -- isn't NATO founded on the principle of democratic governance and civilian oversight of the military and basic principles of human rights? By dealing with the authoritarian and abusive Islam Karimov, isn't NATO undermining its own goals? Indeed, it is.
Yes, we get it that this is a relationship of exigency and transaction -- the need to get supplies to NATO troops over land or air through the Northern Distribution Network. Or more importantly, to get the heavy equipment and people out as we've seen more recently.
But does NATO have to gush, and invite Karimov to Brussels? Was that really the only way to get him to cooperate?
Horton then makes an argument I've made in the past in confronting the Realpolitik of Joshua Foust and calling the notion that "human rights have to take a back burner"
I put it more emphatically as describing Foust's argument as immoral, and pointing out that putting democratic principles at the heart of your policy is in fact a moral act, as international law itself cannot force you to do this. There is no UN treaty body that can sanction a state for failing to pressure another state to abide by its human rights commitments, nor could there be in a polarized world. The closest international law comes is with things like the concept of "non-refoulement," not returning refugees back to their persecutors to certain torture, jail or death. There are European nations that have not done even that minimum, as we've seen.
I've always said that the US military officials should call Tashkent's bluff. Do they want to help with stopping the Taliban, or not? Do they want the Taliban and related radical groups to spread to their country, or not? If they really are sincere about "regional security," then, they should cooperate. Uzbekistan deflects this conversation with bromides like, "We are not for a military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan." That's a great sentiment -- too bad the Taliban don't share it.
Not unsurprisingly, because Scott's article was so on the mark, Joshua Foust went into a rage in Registan, bashing Scott and Human Rights Watch for good measure.
Unfortunately, Foust is VERY VERY VERY WRONG about this, to use his own sort of invective. Indeed, whenever you see Foust pulling his VERY VERY VERY business, you know he is lying through literalism (Fisking) and trying to bluff his way out of the Big Lie with a screech. It's like the time he claimed that I was VERY VERY VERY VERY SEXIST, when I dubbed Sarah Kendzior, moderator at Registan who banned me and suppresses others, "an office wife" at Registan for her curious coddling of Foust and others in their illiberal attacks on the human rights movement. Sexist? Except, what was sexist was playing that old subordinate role to an abusive man, not calling out what in fact was a situation that itself was profoundly sexist. Foust slams Martha Brill Olcott in a disgusting post, just like he and others slammed the Russian journalist who reported on Zhanaozen; I come to her defense and I'm banned. Who's the sexist?
In any event, Foust plays the usual game here of trying to isolate and freeze some factlets from the realm where he is said to be an expert
You know, I've never really understood this whole realm of defense analysis, much less the ethically-challenged field of "Human Terrain" Foust comes from. I'm happy to study the issue further. But I have to ask: how is it that grown men in our armed forces find the need to get "expertise" from 20-somethings or even 30-somethings in Washington-based think tanks who have never spent a day in their lives in armed service, in or out of combat?
I mean, punditocracy and academia are great and all, and DOD experts are a hallowed tradition in our country and provide full employment for our university youth. Sure, we can't just have the military decide everything without civilian involvement, and robust civilian debate is of course required. But when the debate boils down to some specific hardware or military tactic discussion, can we really trust somebody like Foust to know what he is talking about? He has no military rank, even working for a lot of brigadier generals and such at the American Security Project think-tank.
Foust has a number of beefs with Horton which are really philosophical in nature but which he tries to reduce to a "fact-check," like so many "progressives" in our age.
Scott calls out the immoral drone war -- yes, immoral, because drones are in essence immoral, and not merely if you backdate them to the "war on terrorism" policy which is how Foust prefers to do it. Drones have had too many misses and killed too many civilians and it's ok to ask a lot of questions about the ethics involved in them. Says Scott:
NATO’s drone war, which is effectively an aggressive targeted-killings operation, has also prioritized IMU personnel on Afghan soil and in Waziristan and other parts of Pakistan. It’s likely that these strikes involve considerable dialogue between U.S. drone operators, the CIA and JSOC, and Uzbek intelligence, concerning targeting, strike assessments, and impact. In sum, the U.S. and NATO are fighting Islam Karimov’s war for him, at no expense to him, while wielding weaponry far more sophisticated and lethal than anything that Uzbekistan commands.
Foust calls this statement "worrying ignorance or active deception on Horton’s part". Gosh, if Horton has got it wrong, it could only be the result of malicious mendacity, eh? Or ignorance that can't be forgiven and is "worrisome" if it comes from a lawyer and not an expert in "human terrain," eh?
But we actually have no reason to discount what Horton is saying. What, the US never targeted the IMU?! Please. They triumphantly declared victory over it a few years ago when they helped assassinate its leader. You're really, really sure that NATO or US forces haven't targeted and/or killed an IMU figher in recent years?
There are 5,000 Uzbeks fighting in Afghanistan. What, not a single drone or a single campaign is ever, ever supposed to touch them -- and never has? Foust claims that if the Taliban and Al Qaeda are the main targets for NATO, then the IMU is irrelevant. That seems VERY VERY VERY VERY unlikely, Foust! I'm not willing to believe the IMU is the "tiny, marginalized force" Foust thinks it is because he is so wrong about so many other things in Central Asia, always and everywhere diminishing and minimizing the threat of terrorists in this region.
But even if we somehow concede his claims, the idea that the IMU "isn't prioritized" is a silly argument against Horton. The IMU is on the US list of terrorist organizations, and that's recognized by the EU. And the IMU is sometimes fighting together with these other forces, and the whole reason they are even in Afghanistan is to help them win. Hello!
As for this technical "distinction without a difference," -- "NATO is not operating drones in Pakistan or in Afghanistan. They are primarily operated by the United States Air Force in Afghanistan and the CIA in Pakistan" -- the war is always described as "NATO's war". It is a multi-national force that the US has taken great pains to put together to appear as "NATO" and not merely "the US". That's why Canada, Great Britain, Germany and others have suffered terrible losses as well. If the US technically operates the physical drones in this war, that doesn't mean that somehow NATO is uninvolved or can't take credit -- or responsibility. The US drone targets are the NATO war targets.
Says Foust:
The CIA and JSOC do not receive or coordinate on targeting data with the Uzbek security services — Horton initially presents this as speculation but then treats it as factual. It is not. The CIA has its own assets and gathers its own intelligence in Pakistan. JSOC does not operate drones in Pakistan, and in Afghanistan has its own sources & collection. Neither has a need for the SNB.
Horton has covered his back by indeed presenting it as his theorizing -- and it certainly makes sense. What, Foust has personal, inside, credible knowledge that the CIA and JSOC do NOT receive intelligence from the Uzbek government? Really? We're sure? They don't have a need for the SNB? They never, never talk, even informally? That sounds VERY VERY VERY VERY implausible. Sure, it's great if bloggers "get their facts" like journalists, but how do you expect to get something like that from the CIA outside of a WikiLeaks type of leak? It's reasonable to conclude that various bodies of our government do indeed get intelligence from the Uzbeks for a variety of purposes. That's what the transactional relationship is all about.
I also have to pause a minute here and think about the RealPolitik school here. Foust has earnestly spent months educating us to the fact that because of this dire necessity of the NDN, we have to "put human rights on the back burner" and mute our criticism. He implies that the US cannot be constrained by any moral or even international human rights considerations in this "transactional" relationship. So why would these various agencies stop at receiving SNB intelligence?! Makes no sense. In for a penny, in for a pound, I would think with a relationship like that. If human rights isn't the constraint, what would be the reason not to flush as much intel out of these goons as one could get?
Foust claims, "The SNB has not provided the U.S. with intelligence since about 2002 or so. It might be a year or two later but pretending like a thing that happened 8 years ago is directly relevant to new policies today is pretty damned silly."
And he knows that...how? Is this something that the State Department officials in South and Central Asia tell him when they have their chats "about blogging and human rights"?
So the U.S. is fighting its own war. Nor Karimov’s. If the U.S. were “fighting Karimov’s war for him,” it would be targetting the activists, rights reporters, and journalists the regime treats as its primary threat. Not the IMU. So Horton is wrong on that anyway.
No. This is VERY VERY VERY VERY wrong. That's because by arguing a series of narrow points that are refutable anyway, as I've shown, you don't arrive at the conclusion that therefore, the US and NATO fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan isn't in Karimov's interest.
To be sure, Karimov's main war is against his own people who won't cow down to his autocracy. But most of the people he's jailed are Muslim believers. A good many of them are devout religious believers who have done no wrong and have been tortured. Now he has 5,000 of them in thrall, often sentencing them to new sentences as they reach the end of their term. If they started out as unknowing farmers, today, after years in jail and exposure to hardened Islamists, and acquiring enormous resentments over this time, understandably, they do constitute a force just as perilous as the Muslim Brotherhood tortured by the Egyptian prison system and released over the years -- or becoming martyrs. This does constitute a social and political problem. Karimov is fully to blame for creating this problem that he ostensibly was solving in the first place by jailing people outside of strict state controls. Now what? Anybody have any really good ideas how to solve this? I'm for reviewing the cases impartially and releasing as many as possible. And then?
Surely no one would disagree that if extremism is any kind of problem in Uzbekistan, exaggerated or not, it's better to have the Taliban defeated or at least routed some from regions where they can't serve as a magnet for Uzbek extremists or meddler in regional affairs.
Moreover, Karimov has a situation where 5,000 other people were extreme enough to leave their country and go fight in Pakistan and Afghanistan. That's a lot of people, when you think of it. They are driven not only by external influences that may have trained them but the internal oppression of their own country. If all these people return to Uzbekistan or neighbouring Central Asian countries tomorrow, does anyone doubt they would create mayhem?
So regardless of whether you identify Karimov as the main creator of the problem he needs to solve now with "Karimov's war" which is "fought by NATO," there is a grim reality to it that Foust, as Mr. RealPolitik, should concede. If the Taliban and Al Qaeda are not defeated, and continue to flourish, they constitute a constant bulwark of support and a source of mayhem for Uzbekistan, either drawing fighters to their side on their territories, or spreading into Uzbekistan to destabilize the regime. Any regime. Karimov's, or whoever follows, for better or worse. It's a legitimate national security issue, regardless of whether you have a liberal in charge or a tyrant.
My beef with human rights groups is that they seldom want to concede the very real issue of extremism and terrorism in these countries, so eager are they to explain away the reason for them as the oppressiveness of the regime itself. The regime indeed needs to be dismantled and called on its exacerbation of the problem. Human rights groups don't have a good way of addressing the illiberalism that comes with allowing extremists to flourish, however, and they should -- they could be part of changing the chemistry of these countries if they would be more insistent on enforcing all human rights for all.
Why is Horton accused of "speculating wildly"? He is no more wild in his speculation than Foust, claiming with such assurance that a) the US long since ceased receiving intelligence from the SNB, even though we now have warmer relations than ever and b) claiming that US actions on drones or any other issue are somehow isolated and unrelated to NATO. They're not. NATO understands this better than Foust; that's why they invited Karimov to Brussels.
Foust always deploys a tactic of pretending that he applauds something that a target "gets right" and then skewers him with his "factual mistakes". But the entire attack is unjustified. Horton called NATO to account -- rightly. The technical ownership of drone attacks is irrelevant. The prioritization of the IMU is irrelevant. What matters is that NATO is fighting a war against the Taliban -- and that does a favour for Uzbekistan, as it increases its security and prevents more spread of militarism and terrorism to its soil.
You can have an argument about whether wars actually achieve those goals, and conclude that this one doesn't. But that's not the reasoning Karimov deploys when he mouths platitudes about not seeking military solutions. All Karimov does is substitute the militarized Interior Ministry and National Security Service as the method to deal with the threat rather than war against the region's organized extremists, the Taliban, and their terrorist friends, Al Qaeda.
What will this region look like when the US and NATO troops all withdraw, leaving Karimov and the other tyrants in the region to test their theories of "non-military solutions to conflict"? I guess we'll get a chance to see what that's about soon.
(PS Horton has a two part series here and here with a former CIA agent.)
