GEORGIE ANNE GEYER The most important 'stan' is suffering

WASHINGTON -- In my two visits to Uzbekistan -- another of those "end-of-the-world" places that seem so much a part our consciousness these days -- I learned that the Uzbeks had no small opinion of themselves.
Unlike some of the other Central Asian "stans" -- Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan -- Uzbekistan had always thought of itself as the "center," not only of the region, but of the world. This bit of, shall we say, excessive ethnic egocentrism dates back to the 14th- and 15th-century reign of the Turkic emperor Tamerlane, who ruled from Russia to the Mediterranean to the borders of China and created, at horrendous human cost, the great capital of Samarkand.
Though in later centuries, the wars of the Red Bolsheviks and the White Monarchists would rage across central Asia, and the legendary cities of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva would become rather unlikely parts of the Soviet Union, the Uzbeks never lost their sense of being the center of the world. When I was there, in 1967 under the Soviets and in 1992 when it had become independent, Uzbeks still talked as though their country was at least as important as Washington or London.
Violent eruption
But nasty events erupted there recently, with perhaps as many as 500 Uzbeks slaughtered by the brutal military and police of President Islam Karimov in the Fergana Valley, where a corner of Uzbekistan meets Kyrgyzstan. Even today, Uzbekistan is the largest and most important of the "stans," all of which are increasingly restive, at least in part as an unexpected result of President Bush's push for "democratization" in the Middle East.
The problems that had long been simmering in the tyrannical regime of Uzbekistan -- where torture is sometimes so horrible that people have been known to be boiled to death -- erupted on May 13 when groups of men in the small city of Andijan in the Fergana Valley area attacked the jail, freeing dozens of prisoners.
The increasingly hated Karimov government immediately -- and brutally -- reacted. As groups of citizens gathered in the square to hear what had happened, soldiers reportedly fired randomly into the crowd, killing hundreds. Three days later, the government took a group of foreign journalists to an empty and "quiet" city to show how "normal" things were.
The Fergana Valley has always been a trouble spot, with both Uzbek and Kyrgyz Muslim fundamentalists often causing problems. This time, the government again tried to blame the outbreak of violence on the fundamentalists. After all, that theory fit right in with the approach of the Bush administration, which has established an American base in Uzbekistan to fight fundamentalist terrorism with the blessing of none other than Islam Karimov.
But this time the situation was considerably more complicated. A group of respectable local businessmen -- indeed, veritable pillars of that fragile community -- had been arrested by Karimov and were in that jail. Much of the intent of the jailbreak seemed to be to get them out -- and much of the reason they were in was because, in them, Karimov saw an alternate power center being set up in Fergana against his dictatorship.
The fact that these businessmen were the best hope for the area -- they had even formed a business group putting out glossy pamphlets on their products, treating their employees well and speaking up for human rights -- was the real reason for their incarceration. Today, most of those businessmen who are still alive are on the other side of the Kyrgyz border, awaiting they know not what.
On the list
The International Crisis Group, in its monthly report "Crisis Watch," had put Uzbekistan on its May listing of "deteriorating situations." It mentioned journalists being beaten by unknown assailants, and this new opposition coalition of political activists and business entrepreneurs. It also noted that the government is still forcing farmers to grow specific crops such as the hated monoculture of cotton, which was imposed by Moscow for decades and which has destroyed the soil and soul of the country once known as the "center of the world."
These events, which are surely only the beginning, should give the administration pause about the complications -- and contradictions -- of what they are doing.
Universal Press Syndicate