Terrorism in Uzbekistan - 2001

2001

The Uzbek government agreed on 7 October 2001 to allow US troops and planes to use Uzbekistan's airspace and stay at Karshi-Khanabad airbase, and to convene "urgent" bilateral security talks with the United States if Taliban fighters spread fighting north into Uzbekistan. They agreed in a joint statement to seek to "eliminate international terrorism and its infrastructure. For these purposes, the Republic of Uzbekistan has agreed to provide the use of its airspace and necessary military and civilian infrastructure of one of its airports, which would be used in the first instance for humanitarian purposes." A week earlier Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Uzbekistan and met with President Islam Karimov. Karimov agreed to assist the US in the War on Terror by lending Karshi-Khanabad for "humanitarian" search and rescue missions. Taliban officials warned the Uzbek government that they would be attacked if they helped in the US invasion. 1,000 US troops were sent to Karshi-Khanabad between Rumsfeld's visit and the second agreement of 7 October. At the same time the Taliban sent 10,000 troops to the Afghanistan-Uzbekistan border. An spokesman for the Uzbek Foreign Ministry said, "Concentrating 10,000 troops on the border would be a dangerous tactic for the Taliban, because they would become targets for US bombing raids." State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Uzbekistan is "a country that we've worked with for many years in the past to help them with border security, to help them with anti-terrorism efforts and (there are) terrorism and threats coming at them from Afghanistan."