One Year Later, Still No Clear Answers to Andijon An array of human rights advocates and two prominent U.S. politicians came together on May 9 to commemorate and call attention to the one-year anniversary of Andijon—an event described by many Western observers as the massacre of innocent protesters by government forces in Uzbekistan. “One Year After Andijon: What’s Next for Uzbekistan and the U.S.,” held at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was sponsored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group and many other nongovernmental organizations and featured Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) as the main speakers. Even one year later, the events of Andijon remain hazy and the figures of the dead and wounded are hotly contested. The official government casualty count stands at 187, but estimates by outsiders range anywhere from 300 to 750 or possibly even 1,000 killed in the violence. What is clear is that on May 12, 2005, an armed crowd stormed the Andijon prison in an attempt to free hundreds of prisoners held on charges of belonging to a banned Islamic extremist group, which began with the trial of 23 local businessmen also accused of involvement in Islamic extremism and acts against the state. Critics say that Islamic fanaticism is often used as a pretext by the Uzbek government to punish successful entrepreneurs and quell political opposition. Following the prison seizure, government forces fired on thousands of protesters outside in what they say was a response against rioting jihadist militants. Eyewitnesses and many Western nations, however, paint a starkly different picture, claiming that Uzbek security forces shot indiscriminatingly at innocent civilians who were simply protesting the repressive regime, slaughtering hundreds of men, women and children to regain control of the city and end the popular uprising. One of those eyewitnesses was Galima Bukharbayeva, who spoke at the conference about her experience. “I just had no idea it’s possible to conceal a crime like this,” she said, referring to Andijon, a city of 2 million people. “I really had a big belief that the international society would stand by us, but one year later, things are worse.” Her comments were followed by the BBC documentary “Forced Silence,” which revealed an eerily quiet city sealed off from foreigners and littered with buildings scarred by bullet-hole pockmarks and hesitant eyewitness testimony that disputed the official government version of Andijon, calling the dead protesters “ordinary working people.” Echoing those sentiments, congressmen McCain and Smith denounced the iron-fist rule of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, who has widely been accused of a steady Soviet-style crackdown on democracy since assuming power back in 1991. “One of the things that despotic regimes, dictators, authoritarian regimes around the world always count on is forgetfulness,” Smith said of the “sober” anniversary. “After 15 years of independence, we should be seeing some separation of powers and a strong civil society. Instead we see super presidents who have overwhelmed legislatures and judicial systems,” added the stanch human rights advocate on Capitol Hill. McCain, Smith’s outspoken human rights counterpart in the Senate, also blasted the Karimov regime: “In the wake of the Andjian massacre, there was much discussion of the ‘dilemma’ that Uzbekistan supposedly posed to U.S. policymakers. The government there had provided genuine assistance to us in the war on terror and was particularly helpful during the height of our operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan. But I argued one year ago that the regime had by then become part of the problem, not the solution,” said McCain, who traveled to Tashkent along with Sens. Lindsey Graham and John Sununu shortly after the massacre. “In the end, Uzbekistan answered this question for us. It expelled U.S. forces from the Karshi-Khanabad military base in southern Uzbekistan and unilaterally abrogated our 2002 agreement on counter-terrorism cooperation. Tashkent launched a campaign of anti-American propaganda after its massacre, staging rallies to denounce the United States, and accusing the U.S. of fomenting Islamist extremism in the guise of promoting democracy. President Karimov suggested that the U.S. was behind the ‘colored revolutions’ in other countries, and the government even blamed the United States for Andijon, saying that rebels received money from our embassy in Tashkent,” added McCain, who is now introducing legislation called the Andijon Accountability Act of 2006, which would impose targeted sanctions against certain Uzbek officials. Offering a grim assessment of U.S.-Uzbek relations, the former prisoner of war concluded: “The evidence today is incontrovertible: Uzbekistan is no longer a country friendly to the America, nor is it a regional partner.” However, an interesting dissenting voice from the audience spoke up amid the accusations. When asked why a representative from Uzbekistan was not present, Bakhtier Ibragimov, deputy chief of mission at the Uzbek Embassy, stood up to announce that no one from the embassy had actually been invited to participate in the event. He said the panel failed to delve into the illegal prison seizure—which has been widely condemned—that preceded the shootings, arguing that critics only examined the end results of that seizure. And in addition to footage shot by the BBC and other news organizations, Ibragimov said the government has its own footage of Andijon, and he urged the audience to look at video depicting Islamic militants throwing Molotov cocktails and taking protesters hostages. Finally, he defended the government’s decision to refuse any international investigation into the massacre, noting that Western diplomats were invited to join the government’s Parliamentary Commission on Andijon. “I think that if the Western [governments are] really in a position to get to the bottom, instead of calling for independent investigations they would have joined that Parliamentary Commission,” he said, likening calls for an outside investigation to a foreign country coming in to investigate the U.S. Congress. “It’s important to know the other side—not just one side of the story,” Ibragimov concluded. However, the embassy never responded to interview requests by the Diplomatic Pouch. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), front page, and Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) were the highlighted speakers at the conference “One Year After Andijon: What’s Next for Uzbekistan and the U.S.”

Wolfowitz Reflects on Turkey A standing room-only crowd gathered at the St. Regis Hotel to hear Paul Wolfowitz—former U.S. deputy secretary of defense and now head of the World Bank—for his views on Turkey’s relationship with the East and West during the Brookings Institution’s second annual Sakip Sabanci lecture and research award—named in honor of one of Turkey’s foremost business and philanthropist leaders and an ardent supporter of modern reforms. Speaking a bit of Turkish to the students from Sabanci University who joined the event by video conference from Istanbul, Wolfowitz reflected on his 30-year relationship with Turkey, which began with a visit in 1966. “I expected, when I arrived, to see a country that was much more like its neighbors in the Middle East than its neighbors in Europe,” Wolfowitz recalled. “Instead I saw a country that was embracing the best of both worlds, a country that took pride in its rich civilization and Islamic heritage, and at the same time, a country that was moving toward becoming a part of modern Europe.” Serving as a bridge between the East and the West continues to be Turkey’s biggest blessing and at the same time curse—as it confronts Islamic extremism and heavy resistance by its European neighbors to eventually become part of the European Union. Nevertheless, Wolfowitz pointed to the dramatic progress since his initial visit, including the country’s promotion of women’s rights—noting that Turkey granted women the right to vote in 1930, well before France and Switzerland—and the higher living standards enjoyed by today’s population. But combining his trademark of realism with idealism, Wolfowitz didn’t shy away from pointing out Turkey’s shortfalls. “Even though [the economy] was growing by as much as 4 [percent] to 5 percent per year up until the late 1990s, Turkey suffered from extremely high inflation, huge fiscal imbalances and a buildup of systemic risk in the banking system,” Wolfowitz explained. “All of that came to a head in the crisis of 2001 that sent the economy reeling. The banking system virtually collapsed, and scores of enterprises went bankrupt. In just one year, from 2000 to 2001, the average per capita income declined by a full 13 percent. Unemployment nearly doubled,” he said, noting that despite an economic resurgence, unemployment—not terrorism—particularly among women, continues to be the public’s top concern today. Wolfowitz said this gap between women’s employment in Turkey and that of Europe must be resolved if Turkey stands a realistic chance of ever joining the EU. In addition to this, he outlined two key steps for EU membership: improving quality education throughout all levels and nurturing a healthier private sector beyond just the oil industry. Citing the World Bank’s annual “Doing Business” report, Wolfowitz noted that “people trying to start a business in Turkey need 28 percent of their average annual income to start a new business. That compares to zero in Denmark, 5 percent in Romania, or 10 percent in Chile and Brazil…. By World Bank estimates, if Turkey were to improve its business environment, it could reduce unemployment by anywhere between a full percentage point to as much as four percentage points.” Although Wolfowitz’s economic forecasts were eagerly listened it, they could not erase the shadow of his tenure in the Pentagon as one of the prime architects of the U.S. invasion of Iraq—a topic that cropped in the question-and-answer session. When asked if he would have done anything differently as deputy defense secretary in his dealings with Turkey in the days leading up to the Iraq war, Wolfowitz demurred on discussing the sharp divide between Ankara and Washington on the topic. “There is too much to do looking forward, frankly, and that is where you can fix things, and that is where you can do things,” he said. “I think whatever differences anyone may have about the past—I don’t think anyone in their right mind could want anything other than this new Iraqi government to succeed.” President of the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz, left, and President of the Brookings Institution Strobe Talbott attend the second annual Sakip Sabanci lecture and research award at the St. Regis Hotel.

Romania Organizes First Black Sea Forum On June 5, Romania hosts the Black Sea Forum for Dialogue and Partnership—an initiative the country launched in December 2005 to examine the future identity of this geopolitically strategic though divergent region. Prior to the high-level summit, Romanian Ambassador Sorin Ducaru and Phillip Henderson, vice president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, held a press breakfast to highlight the upcoming forum. Both men stressed that the forum would not just be another seminar on the Black Sea region, pointing to the fact that this venture marks the first time that a comprehensive framework of dialogue and interaction among all the actors involved in the region would be discussed at the highest political levels. Among those invited are heads of states and government ministers from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine, as well representatives from the European Union, NATO and the United Nations. Romanian Ambassador Ducaru said the focus will be on the region’s leaders to take “ownership” of the Black Sea’s potential as a crossroads where the trans-Atlantic community, former Soviet states and greater Middle East all merge. “Frankly until then, this wasn’t a concept—the Black Sea region,” Ducaru noted. The ambassador said that in addition to exploring the area’s geopolitical importance and democratic transformations, the forum will try to “find ways to adapt the essence of the region to new realities.” This means addressing a range of other issues including energy security, trans-border crime and trafficking, European integration, conflict prevention, environmental challenges and business opportunities—all with the ultimate goal of not only establishing better relations among the country representatives but also of producing tangible projects in the near future. Although he conceded that many countries in the region—which includes Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Russia—are fractured by vastly different agendas and objectives, Ducaru said the forum could nevertheless be effective in finding some common ground to extreme positions. “The whole scope of this is to make those lines less relevant,” he said of the overlapping and oftentimes competing interests in the region, which includes institutions such as EU and NATO. He added that the forum could also give a voice to those nations not currently represented in the European Union and other entities. The forum coincides with the unveiling of the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation by the German Marshall Fund (GMF), which follows the success of the organization’s 10-year Balkan Trust for Democracy. GMF is working to raise $30 million from public and private donors in an effort to build democratic institutions and stimulate regional cooperation in the Black Sea region. The Black Sea region encompasses Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine.

Two Kiwis in D.C. New Zealand Ambassador Roy Ferguson made a recent visit to the National Zoo to greet a fellow “kiwi”—in this case a newborn kiwi chick named Manaia, a Maori (indigenous people of New Zealand) name that means “guardian spirit of the sky.” The baby kiwi bird—New Zealand’s national icon—was born on Feb. 13, 2006, the day the ambassador arrived in Washington to take up his posting at the embassy. As such, he likes to refer to them as the two new kiwis in D.C. Joining the ambassador was the sixth-grade class from Shepherd Elementary School, which has been adopted by the New Zealand Embassy under the Washington Performing Arts Society’s Embassy Adoption Program. When asked about the unique features of the kiwi (a nocturnal bird that doesn’t fly), one group of students thought the birds were the height of three men. The bird is too young to be on public display, and because it has only recently come out of its incubator, the event was a treat for students and the ambassador alike. New Zealand Ambassador Roy Ferguson, left, and Senior Bird Keeper at the National Zoo Kathy Brader pose with sixth-grade students from Shepherd Elementary School. photos: Tony Alexander and the New Zealand Embassy

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