Uzbekistan Boycotts NATO
Politics and Society, Uzbekistan3 Comments
Uzbekistan reportedly boycotted Thursday’s meeting of NATO’s Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. According to Reuters:
A NATO official said that although Uzbekistan — which borders Afghanistan — had not formally announced that it would not attend, it had made it clear that no one would be coming from the foreign ministry in Tashkent.
“The information available suggests clearly that the Uzbek delegation is not coming,” said the official, who declined to be named.
However, at the meeting the Kazakh foreign minister, according to this report:
“… took the floor on behalf of the whole Central Asian region … ”
It may be the case that the Kazakh and Uzbek FMs cooked-up some deal to present a unified front, but perhaps it is more likely that (bearing in mind the natural bias of KazInform) it indicates an element of struggle for prestige amongst Central Asia’s most two important countries. I wonder if the folks in Astana aren’t a little pleased the regime in Tashkent has got itself into a tangle with NATO.
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I can’t believe the government of Uzbekistan is acting so foolish and arrogant when it comes to dealing with US and Europe. Basically, the current government is digging its own grave by being so close-minded. I saw the plight of people in Uzbekistan when I visited in September. People are clueless about this situation and they are fed daily hate propaganda toward the West especially USA and Europe. It is American’s fault that there’s strained relations with US etc.
Well, the history shows that dictatorships and repressive regimes will not last long and there will be a revolution either bloody or through peaceful means. I long for the day when Uzbek people will be finally free from the oppresive and corrupt regime of Karimov and his despicable peons.
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Turgai Reply:
August 16th, 2010 at 10:47 am
@Zack, By buttering up such regimes for the sake of their real and, as often, imaginary, interests, the US, NATO and the EU reap as they sow. What did they expected then?
Regimes like that basically play on colliding interests and on the incompetence of external actors to buy time and squeeze the most out of them. They’re smart, you know. Karimov and many of the regime’s other key figures are former Soviet apparatchiks and, as such, able to get through Byzantine intrigues. And his spawn use their calendar babe charms to wind foreign academics, jetset figures and diplotwats around their finger.
But in the end, they indeed dig their own grave. What the mobsters in Tashkent do is basically not different from the behaviour of scores of propped-up African dictators and warlords like Mobutu, Savimbi and Siad Barré, who were once useful against ‘Communism’, understood their strategic importance very well and eventually became so arrogant and embarassing that they shot themselves in the foot. We know what happened then and at the detriment of whom.
Like the Tashkent regime, they were also quite good at playing with feeling of guilt games about ‘colonialism’ and ‘patriotism’ when it suited all when they had no scruples to loot and sell out their fiefdoms to fioreign interests when it suited them even better. They’re smart but they’re also doomed. And they know it.
Ironically, I know European left-wingers who think Karimov is great because he booted out the US military five years ago. :) This says more about the desperate state of the left than about Karimov though.
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Lol! WTF.
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