Wise choice in Uzbekistan

The Boston Globe - Boston.com - Editorials - News: "WHEN THE despot of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, demanded over the weekend that the United States pull out of an airbase it has been using since 2001 for operations in neighboring Afghanistan, the Bush administration was obliged to do something it should have done on its own. Nevertheless, once Karimov issued his demand, US officials refused, admirably, to complain or plead with him to change his mind. This is a noteworthy showdown because it has led the Bush administration to place human rights before military convenience.

The Uzbek dictator sent his note giving Washington 180 days to pull out of the airbase immediately after 439 Uzbek refugees were airlifted out of next-door Kyrgyzstan to Romania, from where they will be resettled in other countries. The refugees had fled a massacre in May during which Karimov's security forces killed as many as 700 people. The airlift of the refugees was a UN operation, but it probably would not have happened without a dynamic and welcome exercise of America's diplomatic influence. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was talking by telephone last Thursday and Friday with leaders in Kyrgyzstan, persuading them to ignore Karimov's bullying attempts to have the refugees extradited back to Uzbekistan.

US military officials, rather than complaining that their jobs were being made more difficult because of US solicitude for the resettled Uzbek refugees, have been saying that they can work around the inconvenience, using other bases that already serve US forces in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

This rare example of the administration taking a human rights concern seriously enough to sacrifice one of its regional military sites may lead to a short-term setback for US interests in Central Asia, a region with important energy resources. After the United States prodded Karimov to permit an objective international investigation of the May killings in the Uzbek town of Andijan, he aligned himself, ostentatiously, with Russia and China. As he well knew, they have come to resent the sprouting of US military bases in their Central Asian backyard. So he sought to punish the Americans for meddling in his internal affairs by cozying up to the two regional powers that care much less about human rights than they do about power-balancing in Central Asia. For the long run, however, it is Moscow and Beijing that have aligned themselves with a brutal and despised dictator -- and against the people of Uzbekistan. If the Uzbeks one day emulate the Ukrainians and Georgians in casting off an abhorred regime, they will likely revise their country's definition of friend and foe. When that day comes, America's moral choice will prove to be a smart strategic choice as well.

© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company."