Uzbekistan

Ethnic Uzbekistani people, like this woman in Termez on the Afghan border, keep alive Uzbekistan's long history and tradition. However, the capital Tashkent is a modern city dependent on the cotton industry and cotton textiles.

Country in central Asia, bounded north by Kazakhstan and the Aral Sea, east by Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, south by Afghanistan, and west by Turkmenistan.

Government

The 1992 constitution provides for a directly elected president, serving not more than two consecutive five-year terms, and a 250-member supreme assembly, the Oli Majlis, to which deputies are elected by a majority system, with a second ballot ‘run-off’ race in contests in which there is no clear first-round majority. A prime minister and cabinet are drawn from the legislature but are subordinate to the president, who may, with the approval of the Constitutional Court, dissolve the Oli Majlis. For administrative purposes, the country is divided into 12 regions.

History

The Turkmen are Turkic-speaking descendants of the Mongol invaders who swept across Asia from the 13th century. Part of Turkestan, Turkmenistan was conquered by Tsarist Russia 1865-76, with the emir of Bukhara becoming a vassal. The Tashkent soviet gradually extended its power 1917-24, with the emir of Bukhara deposed in 1920. Uzbekistan became part of the Turkestan Soviet Socialist Republic in 1921 and a constituent republic of the USSR in 1925, although guerrilla resistance continued for a number of years.

Some 160,000 Meskhetian Turks were forcibly transported from their native Georgia to Uzbekistan by Stalin in 1944. After World War II Uzbekistan became a major cotton-growing region, producing two-thirds of Soviet output. The Uzbek Communist Party (UCP) leadership, who controlled the republic like a feudal fief, were both notorious for the extent of their corruption and for their obedience to Moscow. In return, Uzbekistan received large subsidies.

Growth of nationalism

From the late 1980s there was an upsurge in Islamic consciousness provoking violent clashes with Meskhetian, Armenian, and Kyrgyz minority communities, particularly in the Fergana Valley, which had become a hotbed for Wahabi Islamic militancy. In September 1989 an Uzbek nationalist organization, the Birlik (‘Unity’ People's Movement), was formed. The UCP, under the leadership of Islam Karimov, responded by declaring the republic's ‘sovereignty’ in June 1990 and replacing Russian administrators with Uzbeks.

Independence recognized

President Karimov did not immediately condemn the August 1991 anti-Gorbachev attempted coup in Moscow. However, once the coup was defeated, the UCP broke its links with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and on 31 August 1991 the republic declared its independence. Uzbekistan joined the new Commonwealth of Independent States in December 1991; Karimov was directly elected president, capturing 86% of the vote. In February 1992 the republic joined the Economic Cooperation Organization, founded in 1975 by Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey, and admission to the United Nations was granted in March; US diplomatic recognition was also achieved at this point.

Authoritarian secular rule

President Karimov embarked on a strategy of gradualist market-centred economic reform, although foreign investment was also encouraged. He adopted an authoritarian, secular style of rule, and was determined to prevent the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. Inter-ethnic conflict within the republic was suppressed through a firm approach, with the nationalist Birlik party suspended and the Erk Party hounded. Communist Party cells were banned from the armed forces, the police, and the civil service, and the UCP changed its designation, becoming the People's Democratic Party of Uzbekistan (PDP). Nevertheless, the former UCP apparatus and personnel remained very much in control, with opposition groups either harassed or, in the case of the Islamic Renaissance Party, banned.

A coalition of clergymen, led by the mufti of Tashkent, called for fresh multiparty elections and an end to communist domination. Ethnic Russians, formerly preponderant in the industrial workforce and bureaucracy, began to leave the republic, with adverse economic consequences. In January 1992 several people died in student-led food riots in Tashkent after prices had been liberalized. Aided by an inflow of funds from Saudi Arabia and despite the secularist stance of President Karimov, a revival of Islamic teaching and studies commenced. A government crackdown on Islamic fundamentalists was announced in 1993.

In 1994 Uzbekistan agreed to form a single economic zone with neighbouring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and a treaty on economic integration and policy coordination was signed with Russia. Links with Turkey were also strengthened, with Turkish being taught in schools alongside Uzbek and English and in place of Russian. In the January 1995 assembly elections, from which opposition parties were banned from participating, the ruling PDP emerged with a clear majority. Karimov's term was extended for a further five-year term by plebiscite in March 1995, and in May he called for the five former republics of Soviet Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) to form a unified Turkic republic of ‘Turkestan’. In December 1995 Otkir Sultonov was appointed prime minister.

In August 1996 an agreement was signed with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to create a Central Asian single market economy by 1998.

In January 1997 a new law prohibited political parties based on ethnic or religious lines and required prospective parties to have at least 5,000 members, spread over eight provinces. President Karimov was re-elected for another five-year term in January 2000.

In September 2000, Islamist rebels, allegedly funded by international terrorist organizations, and involved in drug trafficking, crossed into Uzbekistan from Afghanistan, via Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. They were reportedly seeking to establish an Islamic state in east Uzbekistan.

In October 2001, the government gave the USA permission to use Uzbek airspace for its military action against Afghanistan in the war on terror. It was claimed that around 6,000 troops from the rebel Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) were fighting alongside the Taliban regime. The following month the leader of the IMU, Djuma Namangani, was killed in fighting in Afghanistan. A border delimitation agreement was also signed with Kazakhstan.