Uzbekistan

Central Asia: Uzbekistan at Ten – Repression and Instability

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Uzbekistan plays a pivotal role in Central Asia. It is the region’s most militarily capable and populous country, and large Uzbek minorities live in neighbouring states. As it approaches the tenth anniversary of its independence, however, internal and external pressures threaten to crack the nation’s thin veneer of stability. While the government has been quick to blame outside forces for its woes and indeed to exaggerate the impact of these forces, it is clear that the most important factor driving the mounting instability is Uzbekistan’s failure to embrace real political or economic reform.

Evidence continues to mount that Uzbekistan’s “unique state-construction model” is falling apart. The last two years have witnessed bombings in the capital, Tashkent (February 1999) and armed incursions by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) into Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan (summer 1999 and 2000). However, the growing potential for civil unrest is driven by the twin prongs of severe political repression and economic despair, as protests this year in Tashkent, Andijan and Jizzakh over crop seizures and the detention of political prisoners make clear.

During the early stages of independence, many observers attributed Uzbekistan’s relative socio-economic and political stability to President Islam Karimov’s authoritarian policies. Despite the country’s often abysmal human rights record, and over the protests of human rights organisations and increasingly repressed opposition groups, most international financial assistance (including security aid) has continued to flow. Ironically, in looking past the Uzbekistan government’s frequent abuses out of concerns regarding Islamist radicalism in the region, the international community has inadvertently helped create exactly the conditions that it has always feared the most. Growing political repression and poverty now provide a fertile breeding ground for violence, instability and increasingly active Islamist extremist groups. The authoritarian approach has at best postponed, but not defused, a looming economic and political crisis.

It requires relatively enormous financial, human and other resources for the government of Uzbekistan to maintain authoritarian rule and keep control over competing internal factions based on regionalism, ethnicity, and patronage networks. The establishment of near absolute power by the executive branch has only been achieved though a brutal crackdown on moderate voices and through power-sharing arrangements with leftover Soviet-era bureaucrats in the “power” ministries. Tashkent’s authoritarian domestic approach has sparked a political crisis marked by mismanagement, the emergence of a strong Islamist opposition, broad economic dislocation, endemic corruption, growing dissatisfaction with the government, poor relations with neighbours and continuing regional turmoil.

A consolidation of anti-government forces is likely over time and raises concerns about the succession of power in Uzbekistan whenever Karimov’s rule ends. With no meaningful civil society and alternative political figures and groups operating underground in a highly secretive fashion, the potential for a bloody civil conflict in the struggle to replace the current leadership is real. If Uzbekistan implodes in violence, the reverberations will be felt across all of Central Asia, and pose security implications for Europe, China, Russia, the Middle East and the United States. The only way to defuse this unfolding crisis is to strengthen democracy and liberalise Uzbekistan’s still highly centralised economy. Since it is obvious the Karimov government will not make any moves toward reform without both substantial internal and external pressure, governments friendly to Uzbekistan need to rethink their current policy approach. The opportunity for avoiding conflict in the region may soon be gone.

RECOMMENDATIONS

TO THE GOVERNMENT OF UZBEKISTAN:

1. The government should permit opposition groups, including the Birlik People’s Movement and the Erk Democratic Party, to register as political parties.

2. The government should allow human rights groups such as the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan and the Independent Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan to register officially as non-governmental organisations and should direct the security services to stop intimidating their staff.

3. More resources should be channelled directly into improving national living standards, rather than enlarging the already considerable role of regional police and military forces.

4. The constitutional right to practice religion in private and public, freely and without interference, should be upheld. The government should implement the constitutional separation of state and religion and end its practice of designating state-sponsored Islamic leaders.

5. The separation and equality of the executive, judiciary and legislative branches declared by the Constitution should be upheld.

6. The government should combat unlawful practices by security agencies, such as the harassment of journalists and human rights activists.

7. The government should cease antagonising ethnic minorities, ending for example, deportation of ethnic Tajiks from the Uzbek-Tajik border area in the Surkhan-Darya Province that does not improve the security situation and only serves to increase tensions.

TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

8. The international community, in particular the United States, the European Union nations and Japan, must be more discriminating in their response to the problem of Islamist extremism, recognising that unquestioning support for secular dictatorships only antagonises Central Asian Muslim communities, thus encouraging extremism and an anti-Western orientation.

9. Government donors to Uzbekistan should make it clear that their assistance will be predicated on political liberalisation, including such measures as registering opposition parties and human rights organisations to encourage the establishment of a legitimate political opposition and an unhindered civil society.

10. The U.S. government, in keeping with the terms of the Cooperative Threat program and the Leahy Amendment to the Foreign Operations Assistance Act, should withhold security assistance until Uzbekistan’s human rights record, including performance of the security services, improves significantly, and, in keeping with the International Religious Freedom Act, should condition the future of the U.S.-Uzbekistan Joint Commission on Uzbekistan’s efforts to combat human rights abuses based on the religious convictions of its citizens.

11. The United States, the EU and Japan should demand an investigation into the case of the head of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan’s Qashqa-Darya Province office, Shovriq Ruzimorodov, who was detained by police and died while in custody.

12. The international financial institutions should condition their aid on the Uzbek government making considerable progress in opening the economy, developing the rule of law and fostering democracy.

Osh/Brussels, 21 August 2001

International Crisis Group's Central Asia Project, 21 August 2001