EurasiaNet Eurasia Insight - Government Response to IMU Threat Fuels Radicalism in Uzbekistan

EURASIA INSIGHT

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO IMU THREAT FUELS RADICALISM IN UZBEKISTAN

7/24/01

The widely expected raids by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) have yet to materialize this summer, yet the Uzbek government is taking no chances. President Islam Karimov’s administration continues to build up military capacity, while pressing on with a campaign of repression. However, such action, undertaken in the name of preserving stability, is having the effect of fueling radicalism, according to some observers.

During the decade since Uzbekistan gained independence, the government has moved to deprive opponents of a political outlet for dissension from the official viewpoint. Mainstream opposition political movements, including Birlik and Erk, were crushed, and their leaders either arrested or hounded into exile. In recent years, Islamic radicalism has filled the void created by the absence of a political opposition.

"Total persecution and a crackdown on secular opposition in the early 1990s created the vacuum inside Uzbekistan that is now being filled by radical ideology," Vitality Ponomarev, Director of the Information Center for Human Rights in Central Asia, told the Kommersant Daily on June 21. "Karimov himself is responsible for this."

Even if the Karimov administration recognizes that the IMU is partly a product of its own making, reversing course at this stage will not be easy. Having long relied on the strategy of coercion, the government has lost its powers of persuasion, and is bereft of compelling arguments in favor of religious moderation. For example, Abdusattor Ironov, a prosecutor in Namangan Oblast, admitted in an April 20 newspaper interview that government efforts to build support for officially sanctioned religious guidelines were not working. Authorities have organized "explanatory discussions about the essence of religious extremism," Ironov told the Adolat newspaper, adding that such propaganda activities were ineffectual due to already "growing fanaticism" in many area villages.

A leading source of discontent lies in the disastrous state of the Uzbek economy. Karimov, in comments published by Narodnoye Slovo on June 20, acknowledged poverty’s role in the Islamic insurgency. The president said Islamic militants were able to find recruits because of the "disastrous socioeconomic status of people, demographic problems in some troubled regions, mass unemployment and economic insecurity, especially among young people."

Karimov has paid increasing attention to pressing economic issues in recent weeks. For example, he has decreed a roughly 40 percent rise in the minimum wage and in pension benefits, effective August 1. In addition, Uzbekistan loosened some currency restrictions July 1. The president has also called for structural economic change. "Uzbekistan will not survive if it produces only raw materials and semi-finished goods," Karimov said on Uzbek television July 17.

Yet the government has not followed up reformist rhetoric with substantive action. Structural change would seem to require the devolution of decision-making authority � power that the government appears reluctant to give up. At the same time, investor interest in Uzbek industry appears low. According to an Uzbek radio report July 12, several regions, including Tashkent, failed to achieve their privatization goals for the first half of 2001. Nineteen large agricultural, chemicals and food processing facilities all failed to attract bids.

There are indications that the government’s failure to adequately address economic issues, combined with the crackdown against freedom of religious expression, has pushed the population close to the breaking point. In late June, a riot occurred in the southern Dzhizak region, as local inhabitants opposed government actions to requisition grain.

In early July, demonstrations broke out in several locations, including Tashkent, with protesters calling for the end of mass arrests of Islamic believers. The Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan estimates that about 7,000 believers have been imprisoned for allegedly expressing views not sanctioned by authorities.

In an interview broadcast by Iranian radio, Otanazar Oripov, a leader of the Erk Party of Uzbekistan, predicted further popular unrest, regardless of what the IMU does. "In the present circumstances, the government is not capable of overcoming all shortcomings immediately," Oripov said. "It is quite natural that protests will grow. However, we cannot forecast in what form these protests will manifest themselves."

The Central Eurasia Project aims, through its website, meetings, papers, and grants, to foster a more informed debate about the social, political and economic developments of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is a program of the Open Society Institute-New York. The Open Society Institute-New York is a private operating and grantmaking foundation that promotes the development of open societies around the world by supporting educational, social, and legal reform, and by encouraging alternative approaches to complex and controversial issues.

The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent the position of the Open Society Institute and are the sole responsibility of the author or authors.