As nasty as Saddam, but on our side.

United Kingdom

Craig MurrayThe Washington Post (U.S.)

The U.S. has been subsidizing Uzbek torture, said Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, in The Washington Post. When I complained, the U.K. government forced me out. Uzbekistan’s ruthless leader, Islam Karimov, runs a police state where millions of people “toil on vast, state-owned cotton farms” for subsistence wages. Under the pretext of stamping out a nascent Islamic resistance movement, Karimov’s secret police torture “anyone showing religious enthusiasm.” As a diplomat, I was shown photos of some of those tortured to death, including one man who had his fingernails pulled out before he was “boiled alive” in 2002. Yet until last year, the U.S. showered Karimov with money and praised him as a reliable ally in the war on terror. The reason was obvious. “U.S. officials were justifying their support for Karimov with the argument that he was a bastion against Islamic militancy.” Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic, is conveniently situated just north of Afghanistan, and Karimov was canny enough to offer the U.S. the use of his military bases for the 2001 invasion. In return, he got $500 million to play with, of which $200 million went to the army and secret police. “In other words, when the prisoner was boiled to death that summer, U.S. taxpayers had helped heat the water.” And the U.K. watched in silence.

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