A burned out car in central Andijan, Uzbekistan. Photograph: Efrem Lukatsky/AP
The death toll following the uprising in eastern Uzbekistan is still in question and the situation continues to unfold, and on the blogs there is disagreement over the cause of the bloodshed. The foreign office reckons that hundreds have died since the violence erupted on Thursday.
The former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, argues that the White House is attempting to characterise those killed in Andijan as terrorists rather than pro-democracy protesters. This allows them to be ignored as US firms to use Uzbekistan as a conduit for valuable oil and gas.
The appalling human rights record of Uzbek president Islam Karimov is well documented. And the contradiction between George Bush's crowd-pleasing speech in praise of Georgia's rose revolution last week and the pointed refusal by the White House to come out in support of the people of Andijan gets big play.
Plutonium Page on Daily Kos is staggered by the words of White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "The people of Uzbekistan want to see a more representative and democratic government. But that should come through peaceful means, not through violence," McClellan said.
"Not through violence? Talk about a double standard. Unseating a dictator without violence? Like we did in Iraq?" Plutonium retorts.
Rafael Behr on the Observer blog accuses the Bush administration of turning a blind eye to Karimov's brutal repression of his own people in order to benefit from Uzbekistan's help in the war on terror. A democratically elected Islamist government might not be so much use, you see.
Nathan at Registan.net has posted and linked extensively on the uprising. He waves away claims that the protests are fuelled by Islamic fundamentalism: "It's mostly the economy and the country's fairly secular – two things that can be divined by paying attention to what Uzbeks have to say."
Registan links to the diary of Dee Warren, a US Peace Corps volunteer who was evacuated from Andijan as the scale of the revolt and the government response became clear. She blogged earlier about how democratic revolutions in the region - orange, rose, tulip, etc - seemed likely to impact Uzbekistan. However she said of the current protests:
It would be 'reductionist' to interpret this as a purely religious movement, or a drive for democracy. I maintain that the worsening economic situation for the general population, coupled with increased taxation, systemic corruption, and a host of other factors converge into a force of disobedience that leave no other choice, no other outlet for people who need to find a way to improve their lives, even if it means risking it. There's not much else to lose ...
But according to this report by the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, the Russian foreign minister claims foreign radicals are behind the violence. "I do not think any country will tolerate foreign forces seizing arms depots, staging violence, raiding administrative buildings, and taking hostages on its territory," the agency quotes Lavrov as saying, a statement that seems to condone the action taken by security forces in violently suppressing the protests.
