Lessons from Kyrgyzstan;

None of the economic models implemented in central Asia have fulfilled the aspirations of the people.  In Kyrgyzstan, US had full freedom through its institutions to promote democracy, which only resulted in Akaev downfall. If things go wrong leaders from Georgia and Ukraine can escape to the West .But after the Tulip revolution the Kyrgyz leaders , even those who have come into power  are wiser with Russia playing a stabilizing role .On Putin’s advice acting President Kurmanbek Bakiyev and the other strongman Felix Kulov have agreed to maintain peace and unity at home. Kulov was also reconciled with Akaev. Certainly, Russia , China and SCO would now play a more important role in Kyrgyzstan .

Bakiyev extended support to Karimov over Andijan and said ,"This violence happened because of those known as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Hizbut Tahrir. In no way this can lead to a good life. There should be peace. I do not support the views of those who want to establish a state under the rule of a religious body." The Kyrgyz and Uzbek security authorities are now working closely to stabilize the situation. Supported openly by US Embassy and other US organizations , the regime change in Kyrgyzstan has brought little gains to its people .

Double standards of USA and the West;

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer joined others to increase pressure on Karimov to accept an international probe into the uprising. "We'll have to put up the pressure now," de Hoop Scheffer said. "The government in Uzbekistan, President Karimov really should accept the international inquiry ... They owe that to the international community."

The UN had also called for an international probe, which was backed by the Europe Union (EU). With Karimov as its strategic ally in its war against terrorism, USA took some time to react . Washington has "been quite clear that we're concerned about arrests that are going on in [the eastern Uzbek city of] Andizhan," said the US State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher. "We think the government is trying to silence activists and journalists through these arrests. And once again, freedom of speech and open access is necessary for a credible investigation," he added lamely.

What about the USA ?

In its annual report on "The State of the World's Human Rights," Amnesty International said the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "has become the gulag of our times" and accused U.S. officials of flaunting international law in their treatment of detainees. It urged foreign governments to use international law to investigate Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld , Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other alleged American "architects of torture" at Abu Gharib, Guantanamo Bay and other prisons where detainees suspected of ties to terrorist groups have been interrogated.

William Schulz, executive director of the U.S branch of the Amnesty International said the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment legally bind the countries that have signed them to exercise "universal jurisdiction" on people suspected of violations." If those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them," added Schulz .

The Agency warned that , "The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998." There is no statute of limitations on crimes such as torture, Schulz said. Amnesty International called on President Bush and Congress to appoint an independent, bipartisan panel, modeled after the Sept. 11 commission, to investigate the "various allegations of abuse of terrorist suspects." The call has been supported by many former Congressmen and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations , Thomas Pickering. 

Among others, USA’s strategic partner , President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, also demanded an investigation of allegations that US interrogators abused the Koran at Guantanamo Bay.

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, called the charges "unsupported by the facts."
The well-publicized abuses of detainees have been a "stain on the image of the United States abroad," he conceded, but the exposures only reinforced the administration's commitment to human rights. "We hold people accountable when there is abuse," he said.

Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice dismissed demands for an independent investigation of conditions at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, and labeled as ''absurd" the Amnesty International report equating the facility with Soviet-era gulags.” The United States is as open a society as you will find," Rice said, and the administration is being held accountable ''by a free press, by a Congress that is a separate and coequal branch of government, and by its own expectations of what is right."

''The United States of America is one of the strongest defenders of human rights around the world," Rice said. She added that personnel at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba have shown great respect for detainees' religion.”

Too much is now known around  the world  with US credibility in tatters .British MP George Galloway , while putting to sword false accusations against him of money transactions with Saddam Hussein , instead accused that the US senate subcommittee for creating a mother of all ‘smoke screens’ to hide unaccounted disappearance of $8.8 billion Iraqi oil revenues and wastage of hundreds of billions of US taxpayers money in a war that has become a quagmire .US media ignored the exposure of US administration and dared not take on Galloway who won defamation case against a British paper. When US installed President Hamid Karzai , complained of US abuse of detainees in Afghanistan , US media drowned it in accusations of record poppy production , where the fault lies mostly with the West. Even personal security to Karzai is provided by US mercenaries. 

Yes, people have protested against high unemployment, low wages, rampant corruption, poor living conditions and constant repression in CARs . However, what happens when Iraqis do the same in Iraq now under US led occupation? Does western media cover it honestly ? US media is almost totally under US corporate control , which could become a danger to democracy in USA.

Conclusion;

Andréa Grozin a CIS Institute expert on Central Asia , thinks that Uzbekistan needs outside help to battle poverty, corruption, and lack of resources. He added that “Islam Karimov has considerably run out of options for himself as a leader --- as a person and a president, and not his regime. I won’t agree with a majority of rights activists who say that this is the end of his regime and change is just around the corner, all but a velvet revolution. Uzbekistan is not Kyrgyzstan, and certainly not Georgia and Ukraine.’

“The regime would not have maintained itself on guns alone and on the will of Islam Karimov, if it did not have the wide support of considerable groups of society. I am very skeptical about democratizing Uzbekistan and the Fergana Valley in particular. Mass consciousness there is for the large part not disposed towards modernization. Values accepted worldwide are often not applicable here” He added that ” It is no secret that outbursts of social discontent occur practically every month in Uzbekistan, although without the use of firearms. In the last six months, according to my own estimates, there have been more than ten such outbursts.”

”This is not the last uprising. No matter how harshly it is suppressed, problems and unresolved issues will still remain: overpopulation, lack of resources, in the first place of land and water. In essence, Uzbekistan has built itself a late-Soviet model state capitalism with the lower elements of a market that existed in the East under Leonid Brezhnev. At the same time, its neighbors — Kyrgyzstan, despite the fact that it is a poor, mountainous country, and especially Kazakhstan — are demonstrating much more rapid rates of economic development.”