Newly released documents appear to make a connection between executives from a Swedish company accused of bribing its way into Uzbekistan’s telecoms market and Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the country’s strongman, Islam Karimov.
Mahfuza, a mother of three in a small town in the Ferghana Valley, has better things to do than spend her afternoons at crowded, smoke-filled Internet clubs.
When members of Team Uzbekistan returned from the London Olympic Games last month, they were hailed at the airport by cheering crowds and enthusiastic television news coverage. But sports fans are grumbling, complaining that Tashkent’s lumbering, centralized way of managing sports is to blame for a disappointing medal harvest.
President Islam Karimov's administration in Uzbekistan wants school-age children to be in school and studying. Yet a new rule imposed on schools and universities indicates that officials are worried Uzbek youngsters are learning too much.
Officials in Uzbekistan are trying to reap some positive PR from the Central Asian nation’s recent successes on the football pitch. Yet, while the government lauds athletic achievements, critics say Tashkent’s top-down approach to sports exposes some of the country’s broader problems, including corruption.
When Uzbek émigrés created a new opposition group last May in Berlin called the Popular Movement of Uzbekistan (PMU), they hoped it would mark the start of a process that replicated the experiences in North Africa and the Middle East and bring Uzbek leader Islam Karimov’s 22-year rule to an end.
The recent sentencing of a executive connected with a troubled British gold mining venture in Uzbekistan offers fresh evidence that Tashkent has foreign investors in its cross-hairs. Some observers suspect a behind-the-scenes power struggle is responsible for a string of incidents involving foreign-operated companies in Uzbekistan.
