As seen from Tashkent, US policy is not much focussed on democracy or freedom. It is about oil, gas and hegemony. In Uzbekistan the US pursues those ends through supporting a ruthless dictatorship. We must not close our eyes to uncomfortable truth.

If he wanted to be taken seriously by anybody, let alone the British Government, he should have made more effort to sound less like those making the same tired arguments you can read on left-wing blogs anywhere.

It is a bitch to try to figure out a policy that actually works. I have mixed feelings about defense ties. I think they can be a long-term positive. But they can also bite us in the ass.

Unfortunately, what it seems to all come down to is whether or not the government to be engaged views itself as having incentive to reform. I think it’s become fairly obvious that Karimov doesn’t. Nazarbaev, on the other hand, does seem to, making engagement easier and more potentially fruitful. Tajikistan I unfortunately am not as well versed on, but my feeling is to give governments a shot. But the message needs to be made painfully clear that we are serious about the agreements we make and policy needs to be better coordinated.

I want to say before anything else that I respect you and this blog immensely, and I’ve been reading it daily since the summer. Congratulations on a fantastic year.

I’ll admit that I’m perhaps too willing to accept circumstantial evidence. Leased CIA planes that have done renditions to Egypt, Jordan, and other documented rendition destinations have been recorded landing in Tashkent. It’s not iron-clad proof that renditions to Uzbekistan took place and that those suspects were subsequently tortured and information gleaned from Uzbek interrogations was passed back to the US/UK; but it’s not comforting information, either, especially in light of the Murray documents.

I agree that there must be a better policy path than to criticize recklessly and get tossed out unceremoniously. The IREX and BBC fiascos should never have happened.

What I haven’t seen here or anywhere is a way to criticize effectively and engage morally with regimes like Karimov’s. Though Uzbekistan already looks like a lost cause, we have other relationships that could use scrutiny. Tajikistan, for one. It seems like military and law enforcement cooperation would be the first things off the table when dealing with such a putative narco-dictatorship.

Way off topic, but it also seems like you’d advocate for opening diplomatic relations with Iran. Am I wrong?

The point I’m trying to make is that I don’t find plausible the claim that our handing over of prisoners to the Uzbeks encouraged torture. Perhaps that is the case in other countries, but I’m just having a hard time being convinced that it was the case in Uzbekistan.

As I mentioned in my last comment, the argument I’ve had with Murray’s position in the past is over how to improve the situation. He has advocated criticism and disengagement. I’ve never understood how that would improve much but the way we feel about ourselves.

Here’s the link to the CBS story with the full comm

Nathan, I think we’re just coming at this question from different angles. I guess you can conceptually separate the idea of rendition from the idea of receiving and using intelligence obtained through torture. But I’m concerned and convinced that cloudy, self-contradictory policies towards specific countries encourage the bad behavior of which Central Asian citizens are the victims.

And let me clarify that I am in no way endorsing the detention of people indefinitely (nor releasing legitimate enemy combatants while the specific battlefield they came from is still hot.) I third, with your second, Brian’s call for good due process. Such a nice old American idea, quaint though it may be.

But again, Nathan, I’d like to ask you, what kind of frequency, numbers, etc. would convince you that rendition has negative policy effects in rendition partner countries? Five a year? Fifty? Given the facts that if an Uzbek leaked those numbers he’d probably be arrested, and if an American leaked those numbers the Justice Dept. would open an investigation, I’ll have to wait for a Sunshine Revolution in one or both of these countries before we can settle the bet.

Or I may be wrong. Maybe it’s all about fame.