Islam, Principles, and the Tashkent Airport

Those that have travelled to Russia may know that obtaining a visa is only half the battle in having the right to remain in the country; the other requirement is that one must be registered with the internal affairs office or stay at a hotel and have the hotel pass the information as to the whereabouts of the person onto the local militsiya (or OVIR -- office of visas and registration -- in other former Soviet countries). This requirement that dates from Soviet times also holds true for most of the Central Asian countries, though the Caucasian countries were quick to realize the stupidity of such a rule in terms of persuading foreigners outside the NIS to invest and vacation in their countries and have since done away with it. Both Georgia and Ukraine no longer have visa requirements for most citizens of western origin. In addition, visas for both Armenia and Azerbaijan are easily obtainable for 30 or 40 dollars, respectively, and do not require additional registration in-country. In contrast, the Central Asian countries, in particular Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, all have visa prices in excess of 100 dollars, their western embassies and consulates are nearly impossible to get information out of, and even after obtaining a visa, these governments require registration for stays as short as one month. It bears noting that not even following September 11 in the United States are three-month visa holders required to provide any specifics of their whereabouts to the US Citizenship and Immigration Service other than a single address that I would expect is never verified upon a visitor's entrance. It should be no suprise then that the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants in the US enter the country legally on legitimate visas and simply overstay their visas, which is the most significant reason why the process for obtaining a non-immigrant visa to the US is so difficult to begin with and places the burden of proof, perhaps unfairly, on the visa petitioner to disprove to the consular officer that he or she is an intending immigrant.

In light of this treatment, the government of Uzbekistan contends it is simply treating US citizens as the US embassy in Tashkent treats citizens of Uzbekistan who try to obtain tourist visas to the United States -- a process that includes an interview with such unpalatable questions as, are you a prostitute and are you being trafficked. However, I would imagine that it's probably easier for an Uzbekistani with significant assets in Uzbekistan (in excess of 30,000 dollars in fixed assets) to obtain a three-month tourist visa to the United States than it is for a US citizen to obtain a one-month tourist visa to Uzbekistan and the requisite registration, if not staying at a hotel. This may seem farcical, but if you don't believe me, ask a sampling of Americans to repeat the word Uzbekistan, and the most likely word you'll hear back is Pakistan. This is not because Americans are stupid but because of this syllogism: Uzbekistan was part of the former Soviet Union, the Soviet Union was closed off to Americans for nearly fifty years, and therefore Uzbekistan was closed off to Americans (and arguably still is). Even the most foolhardy Americans of them all -- Peace Corps volunteers and Christian missionaries -- can no longer be spotted in the country as they once were simply because visas to Uzbekistan have become so hard to come by.

In the aftermath of the massacre of innocent civillians in Andijan by Uzbekistan's military and the souring of Uzbekistan-US relations, my usual trick for obtaining a visa to Uzbekistan is to pay a company in Washington, D.C., to process a 100 dollar one-month tourist visa for an extra 40 dollars, meaning that the actual price I pay for having the right to step foot in Uzbekistan is nearly the same as it costs for an Uzbekistani to visit the United States these days. Why not simply submit the visa application to the embassy myself? Because contrary to what is posted on Uzbekistan's US embassy and consulate websites, one cannot obtain a tourist visa this way, and I imagine part of the reason is that the 40 dollars I pay to the private US company qualify as legal "grease payments" under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and so the Uzbekistan embassy essentially requires a kickback before it will agree to process any of my visa paperwork. Most of the visas to the other former Soviet countries are "sold" in a similar fashion, and while I have no doubt that there are corrupt US foreign service officers out there finding ways to siphon money off of the right to issue a US visa, I am sure that much of the hundreds of dollars I have already spent on visas to countries in the former Soviet Union have gone to line the pockets of many an underpaid diplomat and borderguard. Because of this, I have no patience for registration requirements in the former Soviet Union and often prefer to run the risk of having to bribe my way out of a situation that stems from my lack of registration. While bribing by foreigners ultimately may not be the best of ways to get a country like Uzbekistan to change from the outside in, it definitely beats submitting to a totalitarian system of command and control held over from Soviet times. In other words, by not submitting to registration requirements, like the millions of unregistered Tajiks, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and Azeris who live and work illegally in Russia these days, I am performing a small act of civil disobedience to challenge what I regard to be a rule that offends the principle that a government that kills its own citizens without contemplation or any semblance of due process should not have the means to know the whereabouts of those it has the potential of killing.

In visiting Uzbekistan this past month, my previous track record for evading detection for lacking proper registration had been a hundred percent. I evaded detection last October, in part, because when I was flying out of the Tashkent airport, I had the good fortune of being accompanied by hordes of German tourists, some of whom were also holding US passports, and I assume the borderguards mistook me for a member of their tour group. However, this time, I pushed my luck too far by choosing to fly on an airlines that rarely sees a western face and at a time of day when the Tashkent customs have nothing better to do than harass anyone with the slightest semblance of impropriety. Consequently, a Russian borderguard not much older than 18 spotted the faded "United States" on my nearly decade-old passport as I was attempting to pass through customs at the Tashkent airport and called out to his Uzbek commanders, "vot amerikanskiy passport!", as if to suggest that being a US passport holder was illegal in and of itself.

One of his commanders began to assiduously examine every page in my passport, and of course, this particular customs official knew exactly what to inquire about, asking me what hotel I had stayed at. I tried to fend off his inquiry by saying I couldn't remember, that it was either Grand Orzu or Orzu, but he sensed my unease and pressed further. He asked me for a receipt from a hotel, any hotel, which of course I didn't have because I hadn't stayed at any hotel, so I told him I had lost all my receipts. Expressing his skepticism, he continued with his line of questioning. Why don't we call a hotel and ask what nights you stayed, he suggested innocently, all the while knowing he had caught me in my white lie. I relinquished, shrugged my shoulders, and followed him into his adjoining office for additional interrogation. I decided to give him what he wanted -- an admission. I conceded I had been in the country a month without registration and that I knew from my previous stays in Uzbekistan that I needed registration but that I simply ran out of time given that I was travelling around Uzbekistan so much. Nonetheless, he insisted on fining me, and using some mysterious head calculations, arrived at the figure of 750,000 soum, which amounts to a little less than 700 dollars.

At this point in the questioning, my flight was less than an hour away from its departure, so I was beginning to become "nervnichiy" since if I missed the flight to Baku, I would miss all my nonrefundable, prepaid flights to Tbilisi and onwards to Paris, Chicago and Columbus. I explained this minor detail to him, which only elicited more tsk-tsking and snickering as opposed to the slightest degree of empathy. I then offered him the sole 50 dollar bill in my wallet as a settlement price, and he increduously repeated the sum as if I was joking (I had only entered the country with 100 dollars on hand, and Uzbekistan's export law in regard to currency is such that one cannot leave with more hard currency than the person entered with, so how I was expected to pay a 700 dollar fine upon leaving the country -- in completely non-convertible soum of all currencies -- without breaking another law was a terrific example of the usual Kafkaesque dilemmas that abounded during Soviet times). Not enough, he answered. Finally, my interrogator left the office for unknown reasons, and a second customs official took watch of me. I tried offering him the 50 dollars, but he, too, said it was not enough. Finally, the grand inquisitor returned, and I realized that it was time to pull out all the stops, or I was going to miss my flight at best and at worst, end up in an Uzbek jail until I could persuade someone on the outside to empty my US bank accounts of all their worldly contents. As a last resort, I showed my nationalist card and told the officials that I planned to marry an Uzbek and that I was in Uzbekistan to arrange the marriage. After another ten minutes or so of contemplation, which essentially involved me sitting in a room hitting my head against the wall as the "chinovniki" joked with other travellers and flirted with the female gaurds, they returned, agreeing to bestow their leniency upon me since they did not care to see me miss my many prepaid flights and wished me the best in marrying one of their own. However, my hunch was was that the real reason was that I was a guest in their country, and as much as they wanted to fine me or at the least scare me, they felt somewhat bound by their Islamic duty to empathize with me.

Once again reminded of my insignificance in this world, even as an American in a backwater country as Uzbekistan, I humbly uttered "katta rahmat", picked up my passport and backpack, and headed through the final customs gauntlet of having my passport stamped and bags examined once more. I breathed a sigh of relief, thanking my lucky stars that Uzbeks see their highest duty on this earth to treat a guest with the utmost dignity and respect. The value of the "mehmon" (guest) to Uzbeks and Tajiks, and to most Muslims for that matter, is as important as the value of the individual to Westerners, and in this, lies my great hope that rule of law will someday to triumph over rule of force in countries like Uzbekistan. That is because, the customs officials in choosing to release me when they could've easily arrested me as their laws required, demonstrated a loyalty to a principle that guests should be treated with respect, even if their actions go against the laws of a despotic leader who uses guns and US dollars to instill necessity and fear in people and to obscure the notion that anyone under his yoke has free choice.

As illogical as it may sound, this fealty to principles, albeit Islamic principles, may one day help create a liberal system of law in the great Islamic crescent stretching from North Africa through Central Asia to Southeast Asia. I do not wish to imply that all Muslims are one of the same and share all the same principles, but I am suggesting that for those who view Islam or any religion for that matter as not providing an important basis in establishing the rule of law in such countries as Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. A similar anology existed in Soviet times: much of what was wrong with the Soviet Union stemmed from the replacement of principled law with political law; much of what was right with the Soviet Union stemmed from the Soviet ideology -- a principle -- that communist ideas could unite people faster and stronger than history, ethnicity, or religion could tear them apart. The fact that the Soviets lacked principles in their application of law should not imply that Soviets were a principleless people. Of course, they weren't, even as much as the Soviet apparatchiks failed to act on those principles. And, as much as I may detest the failure of officials in the government of Uzbekistan to stand up for enduring principles of their own as opposed to temporal self-aggrandizement, in particular the unfair singling out of US citizens and companies for harassment and arbitrary appropriation of their property in Uzbekistan these days (see case of Newmont Mining), ultimately it bears noting that there are people in the government of Uzbekistan willing to look beyond the interests of a despot to something more important and unseen in directing their individual behavior. This, if anything, gives me hope, and suggests that the sign that sits atop large Soviet apartment building on the road to the Tashkent airport, "Tashkent tinchlik and dostlik shahr" (Tashkent -- city of peace and friendship), is not as far from the truth as it may seem.