Human rights defenders say Washington's "war on terror" is providing cover for a crackdown on basic freedoms in former Soviet states that offer bases and support for US action in Afghanistan, and may figure in any military strike against Iraq.
Groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have urged Washington to do more to stop a wave of repression sweeping the desert and mountain states of Central Asia, where increasingly autocratic leaders are accused of using the fight against extremism to justify the arbitrary arrest, imprisonment and torture of opposition activists and journalists.
Turkmenistan this week jailed environmental activist Mr Farid Tukhbatullin, the day after Turkmen President Mr Saparmurat Niyazov promised the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe that he would free the campaigner.
Mr Tukhbatullin was accused of concealing prior knowledge of an alleged assassination attempt, from which Mr Niyazov escaped unharmed last November.
The alleged attack prompted the arrest of dozens of opposition figures, and led to the summary trial and imprisonment of over 50 people. Some rights groups said torture was used to elicit confessions delivered at proceedings redolent of Stalin's show trials.
Oil and gas-rich Turkmenistan, which has strategic borders with Iran and Afghanistan, is "one of the most repressive countries in the world," Human Rights Watch said this week, as it queried a US State Department decision to omit the nation from a list of states whose attitude to religious freedom was of "particular concern".
Also missing from the list was Uzbekistan, which borders Afghanistan and serves as a base for US troops operating there, despite the fact that "the government has persecuted thousands of individuals whose peaceful practice of Islam falls beyond state controls," HRW said, highlighting "arbitrary arrest, unfair trials and torture of hundreds of independent Muslims." Uzbekistan says it is fighting extremist groups.
An advance copy of a United Nations report this week said torture was "pervasive and persistent" in Uzbekistan, and that if the country's leaders did not know about it, "it can only be because of a lack of desire to know." Uzbek authorities have arrested a string of opposition journalists in recent weeks, and blocked Internet sites carrying statements by an unknown author that accuse President Islam Karimov of rights abuses, vote-rigging and leading a political elite comprising "drug dealers and bandits".
Mr Aaron Rhodes, executive director of the respected Helsinki Federation, told Russia's Izvestia newspaper yesterday that "It's hardly possible to say that civil society exists in Uzbekistan. . .the state tries to control absolutely everything."
In neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, from where US troops fly into Afghanistan, critics of President Askar Akayev say a controversial referendum last month concentrated huge power in his hands, and complain of increasing harassment of journalists and opposition figures.
"A number of governments jumped on the 'anti-terrorism' bandwagon and seized the moment to step up repression, undermine human rights protection and stifle political dissent," Amnesty International said in its World Report last year.
Human Rights Watch agreed, and placed the onus on Washington to respond.
"The Bush administration says it wants to promote human rights in the Muslim world," HRW reported. "But it can hardly say it's trying if it's afraid to state the simple truth about some of its partners." In recent days, Washington has shown signs of answering such criticism.
The State Department has expressed "concern" over arrests of journalists in Uzbekistan, and condemned the imprisonment of ecologist Mr Tukhbatullin.
