Foreign Policy In Focus - Self-Determination - Regional Conflict Profile

Regional Conflict Profile

Uzbekistan

By Jim Lobe

History

Fought over by neighboring empires eager to gain control of the fabled Great Silk Road between China, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean for centuries, present-day Uzbekistan consisted of three independent emirates and khanates (Bukhara, Kokand, and Khiva) when Imperial Russia took control of the territory. In April 1921, Tashkent became capital of the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Local Bolshevik authorities implemented a repressive secularization campaign. The Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) was created in December 1924.

During Soviet rule, Uzbekistan became a major cotton producer, made possible by massive irrigation projects that eventually contributed to the drying up of the Aral Sea and the disappearance of most of the country's fertile land.

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's "glasnost" policies relaxed curbs on religious practice and led to increased interest in and practice of Islam and a resurgence of ethnic pride and history. In 1989, ethnic Uzbeks attacked Meskhetian Turks (deported by Stalin to Uzbekistan and other parts of Central Asia in 1944) and other minorities living in the poor, densely populated Ferghana Valley, which lies in the far eastern part of the country.

Independence came in 1991. The Soviet Union's collapse changed little in the short term as the then-first secretary of the Communist Party, Islam Karimov, was elected president. Most opposition groups were not permitted to field candidates.

Karimov's first term was characterized by harassment and repression of independent political parties and independent nongovernmental organizations, including human rights groups. In 1995, Karimov cracked down hard on the outlawed opposition party, Erk, after charging its leaders with conspiring to overthrow the government. In the same year, his People's Democratic Party (PDP) swept the general election, and a referendum granting him a new five-year term was approved by 99.6% of the electorate, according to the official count. Opposition parties also were effectively barred from 1999 legislative elections. Karimov won yet another five-year term with 91.9% of the vote in 2000 presidential elections denounced as unfair and not free by western observers.

Since 1993, much of Karimov's domestic efforts have been directed toward repressing independent expressions of Islam. This campaign intensified in 1997 after the killing of two policemen in the Ferghana Valley, which prompted Karimov to frame his anti-Muslim efforts as part of the fight against terrorism. International human rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International, have become increasingly outspoken in assailing summary executions and disappearances, "routine" use of torture, arbitrary arrests and prosecutions, and public "hate rallies" against family members of detainees. In a memorandum submitted to the Bush administration last month, HRW cited estimates that 7,000 pious Muslims are currently serving lengthy sentences in prison for such offenses as "anti-state activity" or "attempted subversion of the constitutional order."

The campaign against independent Muslims intensified yet again after February 1999, when a series of bombs exploded near government buildings in Tashkent, killing 16 people. The government blamed the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). The IMU also was accused of kidnappings and armed incursions that took place in August 1999 along Uzbekistan's and Kyrgyzstan's common border and again in August 2000 along the country's border with Tajikistan. The government committed substantial military resources, including bombing raids, against suspected IMU hideouts in Kyrgyzstan (killing a number of Kyrgyz civilians) in 1999. U.S. officials believe there may be nearly a dozen armed Islamist groups besides the IMU, and that they are attracting growing support.

Ethnic Profile

(total population of about 25 million people)
Uzbeks: 71%
Russians: 8%
Tajiks: 5%
Kazakhs: 4%
Tatars: 3%
Karakalpaks: 2%

Main Actors

Registered (pro-government) Parties: All parties have been loyal to Karimov, who is variously described by Western analysts as "neo-Stalinist," an aspiring "post-modern Ataturk," and, more commonly, "authoritarian." He has described his rule as "Eastern democracy" with "collectivistic, paternalistic, and populist features" and has consciously revived the memory of the ruthless 14th century Turkic conqueror, Tamerlane, who made Samarkand his capital. Others have called his rule "national communism."

Unregistered Parties: By law, no parties whose aim is to "change the existing order" are permitted to register.

Birlik Popular Unity Movement: Founded in 1989 and led by Abdurrahim Pulat. Exiled in the United States, Birlik's is seen as the largest opposition party and calls for freedom of religion and greater emphasis on Uzbek national traditions.

Erk (Freedom) Party: Founded in 1990 primarily by urban intellectuals, headed by Salai Madaminov Muhammed Solih, who broke from Birlik, it was banned in late 1993 when the government closed down its newspapers and removed its deputies from the parliament. Solih, who ran against Karimov in 1991, has lived in exile since 1993, when the government accused him of having links to the IMU and the Taliban and plotting to murder Karimov. Solih, the opposition's most prominent figure in exile, has strongly denied the government's charges.

Islamic Rebirth Party (IRP): Created in 1990, its declared goal is the adoption of Islamic precepts in Uzbeki life through constitutional means and equal rights for all citizens. It was outlawed by the constitution, which bans religious parties, and its founding leader, Abdullah Utayev, disappeared in 1992. The party subsequently became inactive.

Party of Liberation (Hizb-ut-Tahrir): An Islamic group that supports the creation of a "transnational" Islamic Caliphate. It professes a preference for non-violence. Membership in this group or even possession of its materials can lead to arrest, according to HRW.

Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU): Formerly Adulot (Justice) party, the IMU is now an armed Islamist group widely believed to be based in Afghanistan or Tajikistan and to enjoy Taliban support. It is led by Jumaboi Khojiev (Namangani is his nom de guerre), an ethnic Uzbek who fled the country in the early 1990s and fought with the United Tajik Opposition in Tajikistan, and Tohir Yuldashev, who also fled Uzbekistan in the early 1990s after he was threatened with arrest. The IMU, which is alleged to have ties with the Bin Laden Al Qaeda organization and to include many non-Uzbeki fighters in its ranks, was accused by Karimov of carrying out the 1999 and 2000 bombings, kidnappings, and cross-border incursions. The IMU and its followers are referred to as "Wahabis" by the Uzbek government and press.

External Relations

Uzbekistan has tried both to assert political and strategic leadership over the other former Soviet states in the region--an effort that has earned it considerable resentment and hostility from its neighbors--and to maintain independence from Moscow. Karimov refused to join a customs union formed by Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan in 1996 and even pulled out of the 1992 Commonwealth of Independent States' collective security treaty in 1999. Uzbekistan subsequently joined a security group consisting of Georgia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan. Throughout the 1990s, it sought closer military ties with NATO, particularly the United States, Germany, and China in order to keep its dependence on Moscow to a minimum.

In June 2001, however, it became a member--along with Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan--of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), an accord to cooperate in the fight against religious and ethnic militancy in the region while promoting closer economic ties.

Karimov has resisted economic reforms urged by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. In frustration, the IMF withdrew its resident representative from Tashkent in April 2001. Rural poverty has grown steadily over the past decade.

U.S. Policy

Despite criticism of Karimov's authoritarian rule and human rights record, the United States has maintained generally good relations with Uzbekistan over the past decade, providing it with some $263 million in economic and military aid between 1992 and 2001. Washington has appeared to be chiefly interested in Uzbekistan's cotton, mineral, and gas resources, as a key target for expanding U.S. influence in Central Asia, and as a bulwark against drugs and radical Islamism. In 1998, according to the former head of U.S. Central Command, retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, Karimov offered to host U.S. troops, with whom Uzbeki forces conducted joint exercises. The U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division deployed more than 1,000 soldiers to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan on October 2, 2001.

Washington, which put the IMU on its terrorism list in September 2000 and has charged it with drug smuggling, has also provided antiterrorism and border assistance despite, as one senior U.S. official said recently, its understanding that Karimov's repression constitutes "the underlying cause for the extremism."

Despite the intensifying repression against Muslim believers, the quasi-governmental U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom failed to name Uzbekistan as a country "of particular" concern last year under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, which gives the president the power to impose a variety of sanctions, and it again avoided naming the country in its August 2001 recommendations. During the past year, on the other hand, Washington persuaded Tashkent to give the International Committee of the Red Cross access to its prisons and to release a prominent human rights activist.

Sources for More Information

Nichol, Jim, "Central Asia's New States: Political Developments and Implications for U.S. Interests," Congressional Research Service, Updated July 23, 2001.