Kyrghyzstan revolt unlikely to spark domino effect
By Deborah Haynes
BLACKBURN: The toppled regime in Kyrghyzstan was the most relatively democratic in the region and its demise will likely prompt other Central Asian states to clamp down harder on opponents rather than spark similar uprisings, Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan said. In addition, the United States has no interest in seeing true democracy spread through the oil-rich area because this might affect a planned build-up of US military bases there, said Craig Murray, who claims he lost his job at the Foreign Office after criticizing human rights abuses in Uzbekistan. “A key fact to remember is that (Kyrghyzstan’s deposed president Askar) Akayev, by the standards of the region, was not bad,” Murray said in an interview on Friday in Blackburn, northern England, where he is preparing to stand against Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in an upcoming general election. “He was pretty bad — he was undemocratic, he rigged the recent election — but he did allow opposition candidates to stand and put out literature and for many, many years he allowed a relatively free media, which has been essential in informing the revolution in effect,” Murray, 46, said.
“I think unfortunately the lesson (other regimes) will take is that if you start to reform then you will get toppled and the best thing is not to allow any free media or any opposition and just keep the lid on.”
Kyrghyzstan’s regime collapsed on Thursday after opposition protesters took over the seat of government and the presidency in a dramatic escalation of rallies against a disputed parliamentary election earlier in the month.
Murray, who spent almost three years as Britain’s ambassador to Uzbekistan before losing the title last October, noted how the United States only spoke out in support of democracy in Kyrghyzstan once the revolution had succeeded.
He alleged that Washington had no interest in such scenes playing out in countries such as Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan as this might upset a plan to set up US air bases, known as lily pads, across Central Asia to enable the military to deploy at short notice to potential hot spots such as Iran and China.
“The plan — and this is a physical plan it exists in the Pentagon — involves a series of lily pads... surrounding the wider Middle East which gives (the United States) the opportunity to project enormous military power very, very quickly anywhere in that region,” Murray said.
To facilitate its growing military presence, Washington had forged good ties with the authoritarian regimes in place and hoped to maintain them, he claimed.
“The Americans do not want democracy in Central Asia. We are sitting here hoping that democracy will spread to Uzbekistan and the Americans are sitting there hoping it doesn’t,” said Murray.
Plans to build a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan and out to the Arabian Sea to extract the region’s wealth of natural resources, could also be put in jeopardy were more democratically-elected governments to take power, the former diplomat said.—AFP
