The debate about Uzbekistan over the past week has been weirdly unreal. The Uzbek people are rebelling because they live in grinding, binding poverty and have no freedoms at all. Many still live on Soviet-style collectivised farms and earn less than $2 a day. True, there is a small Islamic fundamentalist political movement in the country, but in the current rebellion all the classic jihadist tactics – like suicide-bombs or targetting civilians – have been scrupulously avoided, with only the police feeling the force of their rage. Yet all it has taken is for Islam Karimov to cry “terrorism!” and most Western politicians and journalists have acted as though the “war on terror” is the reason why Britain and America are deeply enmeshed with the Karimov tyranny.

Yes, the Uzbek KGB provides us with some intelligence on apparent al-Qa’ida cells, but according to a man who has read all of it – Craig Murray, Britain’s ambassador to the country post-9/11 – it is “totally useless”. This is hardly surprising, since Karimov is “systematically” using torture, according to the UN. Information acquired via electrodes is as useful as the European confessions of witchcraft in the 16th century.

Any benefit to the “terror war” from reading this junk is far outweighed by the damage to that same “war” caused by our association with Karimov. All experts on the region agree that Karimov’s Stalin-era policies of criminalising Islam, no matter how mild or pluralistic, is directly fuelling jihadism. As one member of the European Parliament’s Uzbekistan relations committee explains: “By supporting Karimov, we are helping to create the very thing we fear – Islamic fundamentalism. Islam has never been strong in central Asia. Even before the Russians came, alcohol was widely drunk, prayer observed fitfully. Now, a visitor sees neither beards nor headscarves… yet official persecution is giving fundamentalists their opening in the region. Ordinary Uzbeks, constantly told that all opponents of the regime are Islamic radicals, are understandably wondering whether there might not be something in this ideology.” And by shovelling cash to Karimov and building bases on Uzbek soil, we are ensuring angry Uzbeks will ultimately blame us for their oppression – and possibly make us pay a blood-price for it. Jihadism was born in the Middle East when the West supported savage dictators; why repeat the mistake?

No; the reasons for our governments’ connections to Karimov are rather different. Uzbekistan’s first uprising – the first of many – is right now being crushed by US-trained troops and with US funds, in return for access to the last great oil-grab in history. The Republican regime in the White House wants to be part of the global scramble for the final untapped stash of fossil fuels on earth, before the carbon-burning party winds to an end. Central Asia holds up to 243 billion barrels of crude, worth around $4 trillion – enough to meet the West’s energy needs for years – and Uzbekistan is in the region’s dead (and I mean dead) centre. A strategic decision was clearly taken that, if this requires them to fund and fuel Karimov, the butcher of Uzbekistan – and inadvertently recreate the Middle East in central Asia – so be it.

This isn’t just my view. In 1998, Dick Cheney – when he was still CEO of the oil firm Halliburton – explained, “I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian [central Asia’s source of oil].” Three years later, Cheney was responsible for the National Energy Report, which recommended that “the President make energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy”. Their words. Their intentions.

At a time when oil supplies are either vulnerable to jihadist coups (as in Saudi Arabia, where our governments still back and arm the odious House of Saud) or are simply running dry, the oil industry is ravenous for new supplies. In some places – like Iraq – this thirst will lead the US to overthrow tyrants but, in just as many places, like Uzbekistan, it will lead them to prop up oil-and-pipeline-friendly tyrants, with the British government following closely behind. The question “do they let us buy and sell their oil?” determines policy, not the question “do they terrorise their people?”

So we ignore the voices of the Uzbek people; nobody wants to know the price for our carbon-economy. The rote condemnations offered by the US and British governments over the past few days do not match their actions. (The US call for “peaceful resistance” – in a country where people regularly “disappear” for joking about the leader – is preposterous). Look at the plight of Craig Murray as British ambassador. Whitehall’s man in Tashkent did everything a representative of democracy should: he spoke out against Karimov’s butchery, and offered dissidents support and protection. He was repaid with the sack, and a vicious smear campaign. There is no point having a fake argument about whether Karimov is a necessary but ugly ally in the “war on terror”, when the real argument is about whether it is worth trading the human rights of 25 million Uzbeks for access to remaining oil supplies.

We must be honest: that is what the current policy amounts to. At the best of times, trading human lives and human dignity for oil would be repellent, but right now, it would be near-suicidal. Islamic fundamentalism will pose a genuine threat to free societies in the coming age of DIY-WMD, where the technologies of destruction are terrifyingly easy to acquire. We need to undercut the causes of Islamic fundamentalism – particularly Western-backed tyranny in the Muslim world – now.

Even more importantly, the petrol-based economy which these excursions into central Asia are designed to prop up is an environmental disaster for all humans, and finding a new set of dealers for our fossil-fuel habit is not the solution.

More than 60 years on, that serves as a pretty good expression of American, and therefore British, attitudes to Islam Karimov, the tyrant of Tashkent who has ruled the central Asian republic of Uzbekistan since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.

That he is a sonofabitch is beyond dispute. Like so many despots before him, Karimov has looked to medieval times for ever more brutal methods of oppression. Hence the return of the cauldron, boiling alive two of his critics in 2002. Uzbekistan holds up to 6,000 political prisoners; independent economic activity has been crushed; religious practice is severely restricted; there is no free press; and the internet is censored. On December 26, when the world was marvelling at Ukraine’s orange revolution, Karimov was hosting an election that was not nearly as close – he had banned all the opposition parties.

But, hey, what’s a little human rights violation among friends? And Karimov has certainly been our friend. Shortly after 9/11, he allowed the US to locate an airbase at Khanabad – a helpful contribution to the upcoming war against Afghanistan. Since then he has been happy to act as a reliable protector of central Asian oil and gas supplies, much coveted by a US eager to reduce its reliance on the Gulf states. And he has gladly let Uzbekistan be used for what is euphemistically known as “rendition”, the practice of exporting terror suspects to countries less squeamish about torture than Britain or the US. This was the matter over which the heroic Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Tashkent, fell out with his employers: he argued that Britain was “selling its soul” by using information gathered under such heinous circumstances.

Brushing Murray’s qualms to one side, London and Washington remained grateful to Karimov. A procession of top Bush administration officials trekked to Tashkent to thank the dictator for his services. Donald Rumsfeld, not content with that 1983 photo of himself shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, praised Karimov for his “wonderful cooperation”, while George Bush’s former Treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, admired the autocrat’s “very keen intellect and deep passion” for improving the lives of ordinary Uzbeks.

And perhaps this egregious example of sonofabitchism would have remained all but unnoticed had it not been for the past few days. For having ugly friends can only work if people don’t look at your companion too closely – and this week the world saw Karimov in action. When opponents took to the streets last Friday, the dictator ordered his troops to open fire. Uzbek official figures speak of 169 dead; human rights groups estimate the toll at between 500 and 750 – most of them unarmed.

When crowds demonstrated in Lebanon, Ukraine and Georgia, the Americans welcomed it as “people power”. But the brave stand in Uzbekistan brought a different response. Washington called for “restraint” from both sides, as if the unarmed civilians were just as guilty as those shooting at them. In the past couple of days, the tune has changed slightly. Now the state department wants Tashkent to “institute real reforms” and address its “human rights problems”. It is at least possible that Washington may soon decide Karimov has become an embarrassment and that he should be replaced by a new, friendlier face – but one just as reliable. Less of a sonofabitch, but still ours.

Sonofabitchism has always been an awkward business, even in Roosevelt’s day; it hardly squares with America’s image of itself as a beacon in a dark world. But the contradiction – some would call it hypocrisy – is all the greater now. For this is the Bush era, and the Bush doctrine is all about spreading democracy and “the untamed fire of freedom” to the furthest corner of the globe. If that’s the rhetoric, then it’s hard to reconcile with a reality that involves funneling cash to a man who boils his enemies.

Maybe Bush should just break with the past and fight his war for democracy with pure, democratic means. But that would frighten him. Allow elections in countries now deemed reliable – say Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco – and who knows what havoc might be unleashed? Washington fears it would lose its friends, only to see them replaced by the enemy itself: radical Islamists, the force most likely to win democratic contests in large swaths of the Arab world.

That is the conundrum. And yet the case that America, and Britain for that matter, should not only talk the democratic talk but walk the democratic walk is powerful – and not only in pure, idealistic terms. This argument has realpolitik on its side, too.

First, despots make bad allies – who all too often become adversaries. Let us recall two men who once played the role of America’s sonofabitch. In the 80s, the US backed Saddam against Iran and Osama bin Laden against the Soviets. The US gave those men the guns that would eventually be turned on itself.

Second, pragmatic pacts with the devil don’t work. For one thing, by repressing their peoples, tyrannies foment, not prevent, terrorism. But such deals in the name of democracy also taint the very cause they are meant to serve. Thus liberal reformers across the Middle East now struggle to make their case to Arab publics who have grown suspicious that “democracy” means US occupation, a sell-off of oil and Abu Ghraib.

Third, if democracy really is the panacea the Bush doctrine insists it is, then shouldn’t it be trusted to work its magic? Put another way, surely a government that truly represented its people would bring the freedom and stability Washington yearns for – regardless of its political complexion?

Perhaps most reassuring to policymakers would be this fact. Even Middle Eastern democrats themselves are not calling for an overnight revolution; they know that in their stifled societies the only public sphere that exists, besides the state, is the mosque. It is for that reason that if elections were held tomorrow in, say, Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood would take power.

But if the west made the vast financial and military aid it already gives to these regimes conditional on perhaps a three-year programme of gradual liberalisation – lifting emergency laws, allowing proper funding of political parties – then soon some space would open up, terrain occupied neither by the despots nor the mullahs. Different parties and forces could start organising for a future ballot in which they had a decent shot at success.

Difficult though it is to be sure of the facts – that is one of the troubles with tyrannies – Mr Karimov’s forces seem to have killed large numbers of his opponents since the start of an uprising in Andizhan on Friday. Some reports say more than 500 have died.

Mr Karimov, who has ruled since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, has blamed criminals and Islamic radicals linked to the Hizb-ut-Tahrir movement. That is probably a self-serving attempt to paint all the government’s critics as terrorist fanatics. More likely, Uzbeks are inspired by the overthrow in March of Askar Akayev, president of neighbouring Kyrgyzstan.

Unlike in previous uprisings in Ukraine and Georgia, western nations concerned about central Asia do not have the option of backing a pro- democracy movement and letting history takes its course. Unrest in Uzbekistan is driven almost entirely by domestic discontent with Mr Karimov’s cruelty and economic mismanagement, and even if he were ousted there is no guarantee that a democratic government would take his place.

One of the few westerners to emerge from recent events with any credit is Craig Murray, the former British ambassador in Tashkent. He resigned after protesting about his government’s use of dubious information obtained under torture from detainees in Uzbekistan. The US, on the other hand, has been uncharacteristically quiet, with the White House admitting that Uzbeks want a more democratic government but suggesting lamely that this should not be achieved by force.

Unfortunately for US policymakers, Uzbekistan is not an irrelevant tinpot dictatorship. It is the most populous state in central Asia, is seen as a vital ally in the war on terror, and is home to a US air base that made an important contribution to the success of US military operations in Afghanistan. The problem is that Uzbekistan, in the words of Human Rights Watch, also has a “disastrous” human rights record. This combination has led to hand-wringing in Washington.

Speaking to the BBC, Dana Rohrabacher, the Republican congressman, half-heartedly defended US ties with Mr Karimov by comparing them with US support for Stalin during the second world war, and argued that critics of Uzbekistan should bear in mind its support for the war against terrorists.

But how? This is not Georgia, Ukraine or even Kyrgyzstan. There, the opposition parties could fight elections. The results were fixed, but the opportunity to propagate their message brought change. In Uzbek elections on December 26, the opposition was not allowed to take part at all.

And there is no media freedom. On Saturday morning, when Andijan had been leading world news bulletins for two days, most people in the capital, Tashkent, still had no idea anything was happening. Nor are demonstrations in the capital tolerated. On December 7 a peaceful picket at the gates of the British embassy was broken up with great violence, its victims including women and children. So how can Uzbeks pursue democracy by “peaceful means”?

Take the 23 businessmen whose trial for “Islamic extremism” sparked recent events. Had the crowd not sprung them from jail, what would have awaited them? The conviction rate in criminal and political trials in Uzbekistan is over 99% – in President Karimov’s torture chambers, everyone confesses.

But the torture by no means ends on conviction. In prison there is torture to make you sign a recantation of faith and declaration of loyalty to the president. And there is torture to make you sign evidence implicating “accomplices”. It was at this stage that the infamous boiling to death of Muzafar Avazov and Husnidin Alimov took place in Jaslik prison in 2002. I expect the government will take care that the 23, if not already dead, die in the mopping up.

You may think I exaggerate. Read the 2002 report by Professor Theo van Boven, the UN special rapporteur on torture, in which he denounced torture in Uzbekistan as “widespread and systemic”. Human Rights Watch last year produced a book with more than 300 pages of case studies. One of the uses of Uzbek torture is to provide the CIA and MI6 with “intelligence” material linking the Uzbek opposition with Islamist terrorism and al-Qaida. The information is almost entirely bogus, and it was my efforts to stop MI6 using it that led ultimately to my effective dismissal from the Foreign Office.

The information may be untrue, but it is valuable because it feeds into the US agenda. Karimov is very much George Bush’s man in central Asia. There is not a senior member of the US administration who is not on record saying warm words about Karimov. There is not a single word recorded by any of them calling for free elections in Uzbekistan.

And it’s not just words. In 2002, the US gave Uzbekistan over $500m in aid, including $120m in military aid and $80m in security aid. The level has declined – but not nearly as much as official figures seem to show (much is hidden in Pentagon budgets after criticism of the 2002 figure).

The airbase opened by the US at Khanabad is not essential to operations in Afghanistan, its claimed raison d”tre. It has a more crucial role as the easternmost of Donald Rumsfeld’s “lily pads” – air bases surrounding the “wider Middle East”, by which the Pentagon means the belt of oil and gas fields stretching from the Middle East through the Caucasus and central Asia. A key component of this strategic jigsaw fell into place this spring when US firms were contracted to build a pipeline to bring central Asia’s hydrocarbons out through Afghanistan to the Arabian sea. That strategic interest explains the recent signature of the US-Afghan strategic partnership agreement, as well as Bush’s strong support for Karimov.

So the Uzbek people can keep on dying. They are not worth a lot of cash, so who cares? I travelled to Andijan a year ago to meet the opposition leaders, and kept in touch. I can give you a direct assurance that they are – or in many cases were – in no sense Islamist militants. They died an unwanted embarrassment to US foreign policy. We will doubtless hear some pious hypocrisies from Jack Straw. But when I was seeking funding to support the proto-democrats, the Foreign Office turned me down flat.

The US will fund “human rights” training in Uzbekistan but not help for the democratic opposition, in contrast to its policy elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. When Jon Purnell, the US ambassador, last year attended the opening of a human rights centre in the Ferghana valley, he interrupted a local speaker criticising repression. Political points, Purnell opined, were not allowed.

The western news agenda has moved the dead of Andijan from the “democrat” to the “terrorist” pile. Karimov remains in power. The White House will be happy. That’s enough for No 10.

The Uzbek regime has attempted to portray the dissidents as Islamic militants. The White House has been keen to parrot this, saying the demonstrators include ‘Islamic terrorists’. This is how they justify continued support to their favourite dictator, and a regime which has literally been known to boil opponents alive. But the charge is simply a lie. Those demonstrating are not Islamic militants. They simply want freedom, democracy and above all a chance to make a living away from the continued Soviet economic system of Uzbekistan.

I know this because I know them. A year ago I travelled to Andizhan as British Ambassador, to attend a meeting of an organisation called the ‘Democratic Forum’. This was an attempt to set up an umbrella grouping of supporters of democratic change, with the aim of contesting parliamentary elections held in Uzbekistan last December. At least two of the people at that meeting were among the 23 ‘Islamic militants’ whose imprisonment sparked the current uprising. In fact they were businessmen who wanted capitalism and democracy to come to Uzbekistan.

The Uzbek government tried hard to stop me getting to Andizhan that day. We were stopped at repeated police road blocks, one of which I physically overturned to get past, to the consternation of the Uzbek security services, who couldn’t shoot Her Majesty’s Ambassador.

We had been followed for miles by a car containing four leather jacketed men. When we stopped for tea they stopped too and sat at the next table. At the last police check point they overtook us. As we entered Andizhan City they emerged at speed from a side street and tried to ram us. Only the brilliance of our Embassy driver, Sasha, saved us from this unfortunate ‘Accident’.

I kept up relationships with the Andizhan opposition after my visit. They came to my office several times. Andizhan had been a comparatively wealthy town and its middle class had been particularly hit by government anti-enterprise measures taken from November 2002. Alarmed that slight economic liberalisation was leading to the start of an independently minded middle class, the Uzbek government had clamped down on the private sector. Borders were physically closed to private trade, and in the Ferghana Valley near Andizhan cross-border bridges were dynamited. Bazaars were closed by the security forces. Laws were passed ending cash trading and forcing all business transactions to go through state-owned and controlled banks. The economic effects were catastrophic, especially in a dynamic trading town like Andizhan.

There was no outlet for the resulting discontent. There is absolutely no media freedom in Uzbekistan. The Democratic Forum got nowhere. The opposition were banned from the parliamentary elections, which were farcically contested between five government ‘parties’ all supporting the President. We are Back in the USSR.

Outrage among human rights groups followed claims by the White House on Friday that appeared designed to justify the violence of the regime of President Islam Karimov, claiming – as Karimov has – that ‘terrorist groups’ may have been involved in the uprising.

Critics said the US was prepared to support pro-democracy unrest in some states, but condemn it in others where such policies were inconvenient…

The aid paradox was highlighted by the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who criticised coalition support for Uzbekistan when they were planning invading Iraq, using similar abuses as justification.

Murray said yesterday: ‘The US will claim that they are teaching the Uzbeks less repressive interrogation techniques, but that is basically not true. They help fund the budget of the Uzbek security services and give tens of millions of dollars in military support. It is a sweetener in the agreement over which they get their air base.’

The government of the central Asian state shut down foreign broadcasts and tightened security at important buildings in an attempt to stop the unrest in the eastern valley from spreading.

Neighbouring Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan – which all share part of the restive valley – closed their borders as the tide of popular discontent sweeping through the former Soviet region flared into violence.

Yesterday’s clashes in Andijan were sparked by the arrest of 23 Muslim businessmen, facing what human rights organisations claimed were trumped-up charges of religious extremism.

The defendants, who were freed in a storming of the Andijan jail, were accused of having links to the outlawed Hizb-ut-Tahrir party.

This radical Islamist group, whose purported heartland is in the Ferghana valley, is accused of mounting attacks in Uzbekistan that killed more than 50 people last year, allegations the group denies.

Yevgeny Primakov, a former Russian prime minister, told Interfax news agency: “The events in the Ferghana valley pose a great danger to stability in the region. It is critical not to allow a split between the north and the south of Uzbekistan.”

Uzbek authorities have been displaying more signs of nervousness and intolerance. They cracked down on media and dissidents after Georgia’s “rose revolution” in 2003 that ousted President Eduard Shevardnadze. Many foreign non-governmental organisations were banned.

Up to 6,000 political dissidents are in jail, and the government, suspicious of both religious groups and business, has closed down private enterprises.

Allison Gill, Human Rights Watch’s representative in Tashkent, said protests had arisen more often owing to economic issues and government interference than in response to political or religious grievances.

She said the 23 men arrested in Andijan were subscribers to the Akramiya religious ideology. The movement gives Muslims a set of rules for life – including requirements to strive for success and give tithes to the poor.

“Akramism is compromised mostly of successful businessmen – like the 23 in jail,” Ms Gill said, adding that rights monitors were aware of 50 arrests over suspected links to Akramism this year.

Protests about the trial began 10 days ago when the men’s employees gave out leaflets. “It looks like last night the employees whose jobs were threatened went to free the defendants.”

She doubted that much of Uzbekistan would learn of the unrest but said she would not be surprised if it spread to other towns. Uzbekistan’s poor human rights record has received little publicity since the US recruited the country as an ally in its “war on terror” in October 2001 – setting up a military base in the southern town of Khanabad to aid operations in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Hundreds of millions of dollars of aid flowed in, with critics accusing the US of turning a blind eye to the torture record of the regime of the president, Islam Karimov.

The White House last night urged restraint but added that some of the prisoners who had been freed were from a “terrorist organisation”. They did not elaborate, and the US embassy in Tashent could not say who they were referring to.

“We don’t know who they are talking about,” said Ms Gill. “The use of the word terrorist is unjustified and plays into Uzbek government policy by justifying torture by calling it anti-terrorist measures.”

One leading critic of the abuses, the former British ambassador to Tashkent Craig Murray, highlighted a case in which one prisoner was apparently boiled alive.

Mr Murray believes that his publicising of the abuses eventually cost him his job. He said that the unrest would spread, but it would take time. Of the news blackout, he said: “I have spoken to three people in Tashkent who have no idea about Andijan.”