It’s amazing to see the roundabout justifications in the media regarding the Obama administration’s increasingly close relationship with Uzbekistan and its monstrous dictator Islam Karimov. As I’ve written previously, the Uzbek government is one of the worst human rights violators in the world. The Bush administration supported the regime handsomely in order to have military bases there and help supply American troops in Afghanistan. The Karimov regime engaged in wretched abuses against individuals caught up in the Bush administration’s War on Terror, and became known for widespread torture, including boiling people alive and raping people with broken bottles. Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, wrote an important book on this.
Turkmenistan
The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, has been pursuing closer ties with Turkmenistan, which both borders Afghanistan and has some of the largest proven gas reserves in the world. The United States sends supplies for the Afghan war through Turkmenistan, which is part of the northern corridor into Afghanistan, a crucial alternative to dangerous supply routes through Pakistan. Turkmenistan received $2 million in military aid in 2010, up from just $150,000 in 2009. Because of its strategic importance in Central Asia, the country has been graced by visits from top U.S. officials, including Gen. David Petraeus.
It seems not to matter to U.S. policymakers that Turkmenistan is run by one of the most repressive regimes in existence. Its current president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, was the dentist of the previous president-for-life, who died in 2006. The regime, alternatively described in the press as “Stalinist” and “hermit-like,” presides over the following impressively long list of human rights violations, according to a 2009 State Department report:
citizens’ inability to change their government; reports of torture and mistreatment of detainees; incommunicado and prolonged detention; arbitrary arrest and detention; denial of due process and fair trial; arbitrary interference with privacy, home, and correspondence; restrictions on freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association; restrictions on religious freedom, including continued harassment of religious minority group members; restrictions on freedom of movement for some citizens, including increased restrictions on those intending to study abroad; violence against women; and restrictions on free association of workers.
You give the white man a pass for being stupid 24/7. But I guess you have to appease the white man since you live at his house.
It is similar to paranoia that right wing uneducated whites have in America, that they need to keep machine guns and grenades at home in case socialist non white/american Obama sends the army to their house
