Gulnara Karimova: Uzbek Oligarch, Pop Musician, U.N. Representative

In the United States, the rich are often a few steps removed from the havoc they wreak on society. For instance, the trader in commodities derivatives is a step away from the commodities trader, who's a step away from the bulk buyer of actual, physical commodities, who's a step or more a way from the farmer who grows or raises the commodities. While the derivatives cowboy may take some interest in how corn is grown in America, when it comes to the realities of the field and plow, he couldn't be more ignorant. That ignorance means he can operate free from any bounds of conscience when making trades. And, at least in theory (if not in practice) American capitalists don't have the power of the state as a trump in the hole. But for the oligarchs who benefited from the breakup in the Soviet Union, extracting value from their positions are a bit more hands-on.

Want to corner a market? Send out a few batches of armed thugs. Anybody want to publicly disagree with your strong-arm tactics? Have a confession tortured from them and put on a show trial. All that get you roundly criticized by media, NGOs or the United Nations? Take up the cause of token economic reform like microloans, put in some charity appearances, write some poetry and maybe make a music video. At least, that's what I've gleaned from the hideously fascinating Gulnara Karimova, "businesswoman" and heiress to the strongman of Uzbekistan.

For those of you trying to place Uzbekistan, its northern border bisects the shrinking Aral Sea, with its southern border meeting Afghanistan (the Afghanistan-Uzbekistan "Peace Bridge" was built by the Soviets to prosecute their Afghan war, closed by the Taliban, then re-opened by the Americans less than two months after September 11th, 2001 to prosecute our Afghan war). The Greeks, the Persians, the Mongols, the Turks and the Russians have all passed through cities like Bactra, Samarkand and Tashkent in successful wars of conquest—though Tamerlane did strike back with gusto throughout central Asia. The Soviets took over shortly after the Tzar first annexed the region, and held sway until 1991—when it was seized by party apparatchik Islam Karimov, Karimova's father, in the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The half-Uzbek, half-Tajik Islam Karimova was raised in a state orphanage before becoming President of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. A little over a year later he declared independence from Moscow following a failed anti-Gorbachev coup, slapped a new name on the local Communist Party and shortly after that won the country's presidential election with 86% of the vote against a nominal opposition party. Karimova then extended his term for another five years in 1995, and then won again in 2000 and 2007 in even bigger landslides. Relations with the U.S. were warm after the American military wanted an air base and bridge convenient to northern Afghanistan. But Karimov kicked the Yanks out after widespread condemnation of the Andijan massacre in 2005, when Uzbek troops opened fire on protesters, killing hundreds or possibly even thousands.

Craig Murrary, a British diplomat, backed up United Nations findings of systemic torture with accounts of dissidents being boiled alive. China, India and Russia had fewer scruples, and form the crux of current Uzbek geopolitical alliances.

Gulnara has managed to profit from her father's position by assuming control of national industries, including gold, telecommunications and tea. For instance, by controlling the flow of tourist visas to the United Arab Emirates, Karimova has been implicated in thousands of Uzbek girls being flown to Dubai to work in the sex trade. Following her nasty divorce from Mansur Maqsudi, a U.S. citizen she married after two meetings in 1991, Karimova fled with the couple's children to Moscow. She then assumed control of Maqsudi's Coca-Cola concession through military and legal force imposed by her father (later using similar tactics to corner the tea market).

"She said if I do divorce her she was going to destroy my family, destroy my business and make sure I could never see my kids," Maqsudi told the Washington Post in 2004. "And if you look at it, that's exactly what happened."

New Jersey courts eventually put out an arrest warrant for Karimova for failing to appear in court, and granted custody of the children to Maqsudi. Gulnora has since seen her diplomatic passport revoked by U.S. officials.

But even an international warrant didn't seem to stand in the way of Karimova's recent trip to the film festival at Cannes and a bit of gladhanding with former President Bill Clinton. Harper's Monthly has argued that's because Karimova has friends and protectors keeping her out of Interpol's clutches through GlobalOptions, a sort of international private intelligence agency.

After all, Karimova still serves in a diplomatic capacity for Uzbekistan, controls a significant portion of the country's capital (which may be funneled to Switzerland through Citibank accounts and shell companies), and she may well succeed her father as president, with Russian support (though the BBC has reported that Karimova has since remarried a foreign minister, who may also have designs on the presidency).

In order to combat the public image of herself as ruthless thug, Fashion Institute of Technology alum Karimova has been busy buying airtime on CNN to promote Uzbekistan as a center of fashion—complete with a Fashion Week and performances by Rod Stewart and Enrique Iglesias—and promoting local arts and crafts and culture.

To be sure, Karimova has her worries and preoccupations. Which industrialist oligarch the daughter will be married off to, should she currently be single, and whether the son should take up in the military in order to bolster his credentials before assuming power later, by coup if necessary, with the backing of Russia or the United States if convenient. Should she sidle up to the Russians or the Americans this week, or maybe even the Chinese? Should she tout free market reforms or should "slow growth" be the mantra this week? The power of both the state and of capital does come with its thorny issues, after all.

But it is the facile justifications of family and health that make it easy for the ruling class, even at less than a safe remove from reality, to exist without too much cognitive dissonance to wrinkle their weary brows. In a 2004 interview with Viktoriya Panfilova of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Panfilova asked: "What do your parents think about your career?" Karimova responded:

My parents always advise me to grasp all the subtleties of what I do. In this sense they are ordinary parents thinking about their child's future. And my father and mother are no exception in this sense. As for my professional career, like any parents, they are pleased for me in their own way, and sometimes they criticize me too.

"I'm just looking out for me and mine" works as well for Karimova as it does for anyone to quiet the conscience, even when you and yours would never have to work another day in a hundred lifetimes. After all, the occasional expiatory fete "for the children" and press photographers has to be organized and attended by somebody, and all the teachers and students are out in the fields picking cotton, or they would have been sent invites, promise.

Jackson West wouldn't be surprised if his old Kyrgyz roommate on Rivington partied with Gulnara back in the 90s.