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Creating Jobs for the Poor in Uzbekistan
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MANILA, PHILIPPINES (2 November 2001) - An innovative project to create
jobs as well as provide safer drinking water in Karakalpakstan,
northwestern Uzbekistan, will be funded by a US$2.54 million grant from
the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The grant will be from ADB's Japan Fund
for Poverty Reduction (JFPR), funded by the Government of Japan.
Over 300,000 people should benefit in a region where 50 to 70 percent of
the 1.5 million population are poor and half lack access to drinking
water. Severe drought has added to the woes of a region with a high
unemployment rate, particularly among youth. The project is being
developed with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), local governments and
communities. NGOs will largely handle the income generating activities.
The project will:
Provide microcredit ($20 to $150 equivalent per borrower), medium sized
loans ($150 to $500) and enterprise loans ($500 to $10,000) to create
jobs.
Provide business training, lease equipment, and establish a collateral
fund with banks to guarantee small enterprises' credit needs.
Fund livelihood schemes and community-based social infrastructure
projects such as kindergartens and village water systems.
Provide potable water to drought-affected areas, encouraging a
competitive approach and alternative schemes for water generation and
purification.
Set up a project management office to undertake poverty reduction,
gender, and labor market impact assessments of project components.
The project could serve as a model for income generation and poverty
reduction approaches. "With the drought situation expected to last three
to five years or more, innovative approaches to poverty reduction are
urgently needed," notes Lourdes Adriano, ADB's officer working on the
project.
The total project cost is $3.28 million. Apart from the ADB grant, the
Ministry of Labor and Social Protection, the Government and the United
Nations Development Programme will finance the balance. The JFPR, which
was set up with an initial contribution of 10 billion yen (about $90
million) in 2000 and an additional commitment of 7.9 billion yen (about
$65 million) in 2001 from Japan, finances ADB projects, directly targeting
poor people and prioritizing innovative approaches.
Contacts
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E-mail: tmaekawa@adb.org
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0980 Metro Manila, Philippines
Tel: + 632 632 4444
Fax: +632 636 2444
Telex: 63587 ADB PN/29066 ADB PH
© 2002 Asian Development Bank
Persecution Charged in Ex-Soviet Republic
October 29, 2000
Persecution Charged in Ex-Soviet Republic
By DOUGLAS FRANTZ
Staton R. Winter for The New York Times
Suraye Ergashev, left, a mother of four, says her
husband was sentenced to six years in an Uzbekistan
jail for distributing Muslim literature.
ASHKENT, Uzbekistan — Beneath the silk head scarf, her eyes were
filled with thought and prayer, grief and anger. Her voice was
soft and urgent, as if spilling out the story of her husband
might somehow bring him home.
"He was just the imam in the mosque," Munira Nazarov said,
patting the youngest of her six children, a boy of 7. "He used
to talk to people about studying the Koran and other good books.
He didn't talk about politics."
Her husband, Obidhon Nazarov, the chief religious figure at one
of Tashkent's largest mosques, went into hiding in March 1998
after being followed for days by the security police. Unable to
find him, the authorities imprisoned his two brothers, a
brother-in-law and an uncle. They detained his wife for 10 days,
and men still pound on the door of his house with the butts of
their Kalashnikov rifles in the middle of the night.
A largely unnoticed war is being waged in this Central Asian
nation of 24 million. According to foreign and Uzbek human
rights advocates and religious leaders, 4,000 to 5,000 Muslim
men have been imprisoned in the last three years. There is
evidence of systematic torture, from beatings to extracted
toenails. Some prisoners have died.
Religious leaders and human rights advocates say the only crime
of the thousands detained is that they are pious Muslims. They
contend that the government of President Islam Karimov, which
has already banned opposition parties and silenced the
independent press, is using a trumped-up threat of radical Islam
to stamp out the last vestige of dissent.
"The repression of religious people is worse than it ever was
during the Soviet era," said Mikhail Ardzinov, chairman of a
banned human rights group who was detained and beaten in 1999,
when three members of his organization were imprisoned.
Government officials deny using torture, but they justify other
harsh steps by saying they are battling religious extremists
determined to turn the country into a state like Iran or, worse,
Afghanistan. President Karimov vowed in September to press the
crackdown, telling state television, "This plague and sickness
2
are capable of infecting the minds of young people."
Since the Soviet Union collapsed, there has been a slow
resurgence of Islam in traditionally Muslim Central Asia. The
governments have tried to control its growth, sanctioning
mosques and overseeing religious schools. But officials across
the region, who tend to have an authoritarian bent, fear Islamic
extremism, though the nature and seriousness of the threat are
not always clear.
Some dangers are concrete. Tajikistan fought a five-year civil
war against Islamic insurgents that ended in 1997, leaving at
least 50,000 dead. This summer, soldiers from Uzbekistan and
Kyrgyzstan battled 100 to 200 rebels from the Islamic Movement
of Uzbekistan. American officials say the group has ties to the
Taliban in Afghanistan and to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi
financier suspected of responsibility for terrorist attacks.
But in Tashkent, the targets of Mr. Karimov's campaign are
members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, or the Party of Liberation, which
says it promotes Islam as a religious and a social force. Its
leaders urge Muslims to pray five times a day and to study the
Koran to prepare for a future Islamic government.
The Hizb-ut-Tahrir criticizes the Uzbek government for
corruption and repressing Muslims, but has not, Western
diplomats say, promoted violence.
Chaasime Minovarov, deputy director of Uzbekistan's State
Committee on Religious Affairs, which monitors religious groups,
said thousands of men had been arrested for advocating replacing
the current government with an Islamic state. He said that
Hizb-ut-Tahrir has the same ideology as the gun-toting Islamic
Movement of Uzbekistan, but that the religious party may
ultimately be more dangerous because its members appear
nonviolent.
"When the time comes, they will become warriors and they will
start using weapons," Mr. Minovarov said. "The government of
Uzbekistan is trying its best to bring the influence of this
group to zero."
The Uzbek crackdown began in 1992, after the start of the
Tajikistan civil war. An Islamic-oriented political party and
two human rights groups were outlawed, and the government
tightened control over mosques. Imams were required to conclude
their sermons by praising Mr. Karimov, the former Communist
Party boss who has solidified his authority since he became the
country's first elected president in 1991.
Women wearing head scarves and men with beards, signs of Muslim
piety, were banned from state universities in 1997. Mass
roundups started the next year and increased after five car
bombings in February 1999 killed 16 people. The Islamic Movement
of Uzbekistan was blamed for the bombings, but any overtly
observant Muslim was in danger of arrest.
Some of the convictions of the thousands of detained people were
based on anti-state activities like distributing religious
material and proselytizing. Others were on narcotics offenses,
which human rights advocates and family members denounced as
spurious. In some instances, older men have been imprisoned in
what Interior Minister Zokiron Almatov described as a policy of
fathers paying for the sins of their sons.
Often the suspects are tried in groups of 10 to 15, with guilty
verdicts virtually certain. A Western diplomat who monitors the
issue said he did not know of a single instance in which someone
has been found innocent.
Sentences have been harsh, sometimes including death.
Azim Khodjaev, a father of two, died in prison last year. His
3
body showed signs of severe torture, including extracted
fingernails, said people who saw it. The family of Jurakhon
Azimov said that half of his face was smashed and that his body
was covered with bruises and razor-blade cuts. The official
cause of death was heart failure.
Furkhat Usamanov, 42, was convicted of possessing a
Hizb-ut-Tahir pamphlet and died in prison. People who saw his
body said he was bruised severely, but the authorities said he,
too, died of heart failure.
There are no reliable figures on how many prisoners have died in
custody, or how many are held. Acacia Shields, the Tashkent
representative of Human Rights Watch, which monitors abuses
worldwide, estimated that at least 4,000 had been arrested;
others put the figure at 5,000 or higher.
Reviews of court cases and interviews with families of inmates
produced evidence of torture, and Western diplomats have raised
the issue with the Uzbek authorities. Still, it is difficult to
know how widespread the torture may be or whether, as the
families claim, drugs and other evidence are routinely planted
by the police.
Mrs. Nazarov came to an apartment near the center of Tashkent
the other night, bringing her young son and another woman. Other
groups trickled in as darkness fell and finally there were about
20 people.
A dozen have husbands or sons in prison. Several knew one
another from worshiping at Mr. Nazarov's mosque, and some were
strangers. The details of the arrests and torture were
remarkably consistent.
Mukhabat Deminova said her son, Bakhtiyor, 31, had been taken
away with his friends, whom he had known since school days.
"They played football and went on picnics," she said. "The
police said they were planning a jihad, a holy war. They were in
court Oct. 2, and all 10 showed bruises and broken bones and
nails torn out."
Umida Azimova said her husband, Toyir Abdusamatov, had eluded
the police for several months and gave himself up after being
promised amnesty. Instead, he was convicted on anti-state
charges and sentenced to 16 years, though he said in court that
he was tortured into confessing.
"He was taken to prison, and I will be able to see him only once
a year for two hours," she said. "So many people die in these
prisons, and I am scared that he could be murdered."
The most notorious prison is in Zhaslyk in western Uzbekistan, a
place where international monitors are forbidden. Prisoners have
told their families that they are confined to their cells 23
hours a day and spend hours squatting, with their hands behind
their heads. Whenever they move a limb, they are required to
recite their thanks to President Karimov, their relatives say.
Suraye Ergashev's husband, Tulkan, was an imam arrested after
the February 1999 bombings and sentenced to six years for
distributing religious tracts. His uncle was sentenced to eight
years for the same crime.
"After he was arrested, the militia didn't allow my children to
go to school for a month, and they registered everyone who came
to visit us," Mrs. Ergashev said. "I have to take my four
children and go to the police every 10 days now."
Few devout Muslim women in Uzbekistan work outside their homes.
They said that they had little money and that the government
refused to pay the assistance owed to their children. They are
ostracized, and some have been forced to attend neighborhood
rallies where they are denounced as traitors.
4
Last month, Mr. Karimov signed an amnesty for political
prisoners, but it excluded people convicted of crimes against
the state, which covers the religious inmates. Sultan
Isokhodjaev went to the prosecutor who had convicted his son,
Abdu Rashid, and pleaded for help.
"He told me, `If he killed somebody, maybe I could help, but not
for this crime,' " Mr. Isokhodjaev said.
WSJ.com -- Business and Finance - Europe
October 30, 2000
Kyrgyzstan's Election Highlights
Changes in Longtime President
By STEVE LEVINE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan -- Once championed by the West as the democrat
of Central Asia, President Askar Akayev is now accused of joining
his neighbors in making elections in the strategic region largely
irrelevant.
Mr. Akayev, 56, an outwardly genial physicist with thick eyebrows
and a warm grin, faced five opponents Sunday in an election in which
he is seeking a third five-year term. Final results are expected
late Monday.
U.S. and European officials have criticized Mr. Akayev over a series
of episodes this year in which his critics were jailed, barred from
the ballot and blocked from the airwaves. Foreign and local analysts
say the process was so flawed that his opponents had little chance
to genuinely challenge him.
"Taken individually perhaps the cases can be explained, but the
pattern is very disturbing," said Jersy Wieclaw, head of mission for
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The Kyrgyz election follows a series of flawed votes in which all of
Mr. Akayev's neighboring peers extended their already long periods
of rule. One, Turkmenistan President Saparmurat Niyazov, was
declared president for life by his rubber-stamp Parliament.
The Two Akayevs
The U.S., which has staked much strategic importance and financial
assistance on the region because of its oil riches, has particularly
criticized the autocratic shift. A resolution passed by the U.S.
Congress this month accuses the Central Asian leaders of "serious
violations of human rights" and a tendency "to seek to remain in
power indefinitely and ... to manipulate constitutions, elections
and legislative and judicial systems to do so."
A country of 4.5 million people sharing a border with China,
Kyrgyzstan itself has scant natural resources apart from gold. But
the U.S., Europe and international lenders have provided it about
$1.5 billion (1.79 billion euros) since the 1991 Soviet breakup in
an effort to create an example of western-style democracy and
economic reform in the region.
Western officials continued to place much hope in Mr. Akayev despite
parliamentary elections in February and March that the U.S. State
5
Department called "seriously flawed." Today, however, it is common
to hear people speak of the "good Akayev" and the "bad Akayev." The
former refers generally to his early years, and the latter largely
to the past year or so.
Presidential spokesman Osmonokum Ibrahimov denied that there was a
bad Mr. Akayev. He said the criticism was a reflection of local
"psychological exhaustion" after the republic's economic
difficulties of the last decade. In fact, Mr. Ibrahimov said,
Kyrgyzstan has avoided the human-rights violations and wars its
neighbors have suffered because of Mr. Akayev's "gentle hands, his
gentle voice and his gentle manner."
"Akayev is the same, but people have changed," Mr. Ibrahimov said.
"The focus of the people has changed."
Silencing Rivals
Foreign officials and local critics agree that Mr. Akayev is more
tolerant than his neighbors. But they still accuse his
administration of ordering judges and other officials to exclude
some opponents from the parliamentary and presidential elections.
Two court cases have attracted particular attention. In one, a judge
last month sentenced Topchubek Turgunaliev, 58, the former rector of
a Bishkek university and one of Mr. Akayev's most vocal critics, to
16 years in prison for allegedly plotting to assassinate him. Mr.
Turgunaliev was an ally of Mr. Akayev's in the early 1990s, and this
is the third time he has been sentenced to prison since turning
against the president. In 1996 he received an 18-month suspended
sentence for insulting Mr. Akayev, and in 1997 he was sentenced to
four years in prison for alleged embezzlement. One diplomat who
studied the latest case said the evidence appeared thin and that
"the sentence sends a terrifying message to any opponent."
In the second case, Feliks Kulov, Mr. Akayev's most serious
political opponent, is being tried for a second time in secret
proceedings on charges of abusing his power when he headed the local
successor agency to the KGB. Mr. Kulov, 52, was acquitted of the
charge in August, and international human-rights groups have accused
the government of subjecting him to double jeopardy.
A dapper man with cropped silver hair, Mr. Kulov had announced plans
to oppose Mr. Akayev for president, Ultimately, he refused to take a
much-criticized but required examination in the Kyrgyz language.
Instead Mr. Kulov ran on the ticket of presidential candidate
Omurbek Tekebayev. Mr. Kulov would be prime minister if Mr.
Tekebayev were to win.
"He is an autocrat," Mr. Kulov said of Mr. Akayev. "He took all the
power. But he answers for nothing he does."
Write to Steve LeVine at steve.levine@wsj.com
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The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition
March 27, 2001
Business and Finance - Europe
6
IMF Pulls Back From Uzbekistan,
Saying the Economy Is Corrupt
By STEVE LEVINE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan -- After years of struggle to reform what its
representative calls a corrupt economy geared toward enriching a favored few,
the International Monetary Fund will effectively shut its office here next
month.
The IMF will not replace its Uzbekistan representative, Christoph Rosenberg,
when he returns to Washington April 14 after three years here. As many foreign
companies have done in recent years because of Uzbekistan's difficult investment
environment, the IMF will leave only a local assistant to answer telephones and
correspondence, Mr. Rosenberg says.
"We are being responsible to our budget. The international community is making a
statement here," Mr. Rosenberg said in an interview, adding, "Uzbekistan's
policies are not sustainable, and we are concerned about its increasing economic
isolation."
The Foreign Ministry declined to comment. But the IMF's departure escalates a
history of tension between Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov and the
international community.
The areas of disagreement have ranged from human rights -- international
activists say Uzbekistan's government is among the world's most brutal -- to an
economy that has changed relatively little since the Soviet era.
Foreign companies have viewed Uzbekistan as potentially the most promising
market in Central Asia. With about 24 million people, it has some 45% of the
region's population, a large cotton crop and moderate reserves of gold, oil and
natural gas.
But Mr. Karimov has rejected policies that foreign economists say could build a
sizable middle class of consumers, and just a few large Western companies, among
them Newmont Mining Corp. of the U.S. and the U.K.'s British American Tobacco
PLC, have maintained substantial operations. Uzbekistan's per-capita foreign
equity investment is the lowest in the former Soviet Union, at an average of $4
(4.50 euros) per person for 1999 and 2000.
Many of the companies have shifted their regional focus to neighboring
Kazakstan, which has a population of just 15 million but a more liberal
investment climate.
One key area of disagreement with the IMF is Mr. Karimov's refusal to permit the
free exchange of the local currency, the som, into hard currency. This has left
local and foreign businessmen holding the equivalent of millions of dollars in
profits that they can neither repatriate nor use for dollar-denominated imports
of equipment or other products.
The restriction has helped drive a black market in som. The exchange rate on the
street is about 900 to the dollar, far from the official per-dollar rate of
about 340.
Several times since the 1991 Soviet collapse, Mr. Karimov promised to enact free
convertibility. In 1996, for example, he was on an agreed schedule toward doing
so by year's end, but then abruptly reversed course when export earnings from
cotton and gold sales plummeted. Last year, he again canceled currency reforms.
Mr. Rosenberg says that some state officials and others close to Mr. Karimov are
reluctant to see the system change. State cotton officials, for example, produce
cotton cheaply, then reap enormous earnings on the world market, he says.
"This is a complete corruption of the economy because there are so many ways of
playing the exchange rates ... Any system of this kind generates enormous
profits for the select few who are favored by the government," says Mr
Rosenberg. "Those getting rich on this system appear to be very influential."
Among the former Soviet republics, Belarus and Turkmenistan have also lost their
IMF offices because of the slowness of reforms. Last month, however, the fund
held new negotiations with Belarus, which tentatively agreed to some monetary
reforms, and Mr. Rosenberg says Uzbekistan's relationship with the organization
could likewise improve.
7
Foreign businessmen and bankers almost uniformly refuse to speak of their
complaints on the record, fearing government reprisals. This made the
often-outspoken Mr. Rosenberg popular with many of them; they view him as
something of a spokesperson.
"This is a clear signal to the Uzbeks that there is a limit to how much time and
effort can be put in without any result," says a foreign banker who asked not to
be identified.
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WSJ.com
October 18, 2001
International Commentary
What Uzbekistan Owes
Its Antiterror Allies
By Elizabeth Andersen and Acacia Shields. Ms. Andersen is the executive director
of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch. Ms. Shields, the
group's Central Asia researcher, was based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan from 1999 to
2001.
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan -- As the assault on Osama bin Laden and his Taliban
protectors in Afghanistan continues into its second week, Uzbekistan,
Afghanistan's neighbor to the north, is emerging as one of the most stalwart
regional supporters of the U.S.-led military campaign. While other states in the
region remained equivocal and non-committal, Uzbekistan welcomed an early
October visit from U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and announced that
the U.S. could use its air space and several of its airfields. More than 1,000
U.S. troops are already stationed in Uzbekistan and last Friday the two
countries announced the formation of a "qualitatively new relationship."
Uzbekistan's enthusiasm for the antiterror campaign should be no mystery. It's
an opportunity to reinforce its independence from Russia and enlist the U.S. in
battle against its own Islamic insurgency -- the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan,
which is based in Afghanistan. What the U.S. gets is more ambiguous. In the
short run, it will benefit from the use of Uzbek bases. But if it becomes too
closely affiliated with Uzbekistan's corrupt and abusive government, the
unintended consequences could haunt the U.S. after its immediate goals in
Afghanistan are met.
Part of the Solution?
The Bush administration has repeatedly said that the antiterrorism effort would
be multifaceted, emphasizing effective diplomacy as much or more than the
military efforts. The U.S. needs to be asking Uzbek President Islam Karimov not
just for a landing strip, but also for a dramatic turnaround in his own domestic
policies. Otherwise, by continuing to impoverish and alienate its own people,
Mr. Karimov's government may contribute more to the problem of instability and
violence in Central Asia than to the solution.
Mr. Karimov is a holdover from the Soviet times and his political and economic
performance bears the stamp of that era. On the economic front, 10 years of
independence have brought the Uzbek people crippling poverty. The pace of
economic reform is so slow that the IMF gave up and removed its representative
8
in March. In its most recent country strategy for Uzbekistan, the European Bank
for Reconstruction and Development concluded that it could justify only limited
future investments in the country.
In politics Mr. Karimov similarly resists reform and rules with an iron fist.
The government recognizes no political parties other than those aligned with the
president, and organized political opposition is not tolerated. The state
exercises tight control over the media, including through pre-publication
censorship. There are no independent news outlets. Journalists critical of the
government are routinely threatened by state authorities and have been driven
out of the country under threat of arrest.
There is no freedom of assembly: Police violently disband any attempts at public
demonstrations and arrest the participants. Torture is rampant, with police and
agents of the National Security Service (the successor to the Uzbek KGB)
regularly hanging criminal suspects and political detainees by their feet or
wrists, beating them with batons or bottles filled with water, applying
electroshock to their bodies, and raping or threatening to rape them. Police
torture has resulted in at least 15 deaths in custody in the past two years
alone.
Since 1997, those most brutally victimized have been Muslims who practice their
faith outside of government control, their families, and their defenders. Local
human rights activists estimate that 7,000 independent Muslims are currently
serving terms in Uzbekistan's prisons. Charged with "antistate activity" for
studying the Koran, following a disfavored imam, or possessing religious
literature not sanctioned by the state, these men face prison sentences up to 20
years.
As the Bush administration has acknowledged, the key challenge facing the
collation is to fight terrorism without being seen as fighting the peaceful
expression of Islam. Uzbekistan's policies, which make no such distinction,
undermine that goal.
Alternative Views
Thus Uzbekistan's most important contribution to the global antiterror effort
might be to clean up its own act: create the legal, political, and social space
for the peaceful expression of alternative views; implement electoral reform
along the lines suggested by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe; make meaningful progress toward freedom of association, including the
registration of local human rights organizations and other civil society groups;
repeal the repressive religion law and cease arbitrary arrest and detention of
peaceful religious believers; release those unlawfully imprisoned; and allow the
development of free and independent media. An antiterror coalition that aims to
defend democracy, human rights, and the values that came under attack on
September 11, can expect no less of the nations that seek to join.
Meeting in Tashkent recently, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Mr.
Karimov assured reporters that there was no quid pro quo for America's use of
Uzbekistani territory. Certainly no favors need be bestowed on Uzbekistan, which
benefits handsomely from the partnership. But if the U.S. and its allies are
looking beyond the immediate military campaign to the long-term stability of the
region and its likely impact on their antiterrorism efforts, they should be
demanding more of the Karimov government in return.
-- From The Wall Street Journal Europe
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9
WSJ.com
November 6, 2001
Business and Finance - Europe
For Western Business,
Uzbekistan Beckons
By GUY CHAZAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan -- With Uzbekistan now playing host to U.S. troops, its
capital of Tashkent is humming with U.S. companies drawn to a country that has
emerged as Washington's staunchest ally in Central Asia.
Companies such as Lucent Technologies Inc. and Datron World Communications Inc.
have expressed interest in the Uzbek market since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
on the U.S., according to Western officials in Tashkent. Other firms are bidding
for contracts to supply the 1,000 troops now deployed at an Uzbek air base -forces that may increase as the U.S. looks to send more troops into Afghanistan.
Motorola Inc. and Harris Corp. were already negotiating multimillion-dollar
communications-equipment deals with the Uzbek defense ministry, and have seen
their contracts expedited since the September attacks, these officials say. The
companies declined to comment.
But despite the enthusiasm of these new arrivals, businessmen with more
experience in Uzbekistan advocate caution. They say that over the long term,
real investment will begin to flourish only if the country overhauls its
economy, which remains largely unreformed since the break-up of the Soviet
Union.
"The alliance with the U.S. is going to help, but it has to go hand in hand with
policy changes," says Robert Horton, head of the Tashkent office of Chevron
Texaco Corp., which has a $9.2 million oil-refining joint venture in the
country. Uzbekistan is still far less appealing than other ex-Soviet republics
like Kazakstan that have pushed ahead with market reforms, he says.
Despite having the largest population in Central Asia, at 24 million, and a
reputation for relative political stability under hard-line president Islam
Karimov, Uzbekistan has been something of an economic pariah. After independence
in 1991, the nation, strategically located on the ancient Silk Road, was
expected to be the powerhouse of Central Asia. With rich gold and other mineral
resources, it was spared the economic dislocation suffered by its ex-Soviet
neighbors. It earned valuable hard currency from exports of cotton and gold and
reached close to self-sufficiency in energy and grain.
But its overall economic performance since independence has been disappointing.
Under Mr. Karimov, industry and agriculture, trade and banking are still largely
state-controlled. Soviet-era factories are propped up by subsidies; bureaucracy
and corruption stifle free enterprise.
"Meetings with investors were like visits to a cancer clinic," recalls one
Western diplomat who served in Tashkent in the late 1990s.
Some foreign companies like energy group Baker Hughes Inc. voted with their
feet, closing down their offices in Tashkent, while others scaled back, cutting
staff and replacing expatriates with local hires. Even a company like Coca-Cola
Inc., whose investment was supposed to be a rare success story, has suffered.
Three senior managers of the local bottling franchise left the country in August
after investigations were launched into their Tashkent plant. Customers now say
deliveries are so badly disrupted that local prices for the beverage have
doubled. A company spokesman said the hold-up in production is due to a
bureaucratic snag.
Other problems confronting business: draconian currency controls imposed in 1996
as a temporary measure after a poor cotton harvest, but which are still in
force. And, barring a little tinkering, the government has resisted strong
pressure from the International Monetary Fund and other agencies to liberalize
exchange-rate policy. Despairing of improvement, the IMF, which suspended its
10
aid program in 1996, effectively closed its office in April.
There are some pockets of good news. The Uzbek government, eager to sell more
gold abroad to help pay off its foreign debt, has encouraged investment in the
mining sector, where foreign companies often enjoy tax holidays and are less
affected by the currency controls.
Newmont Mining Corp., based in Denver, has been operating at the Muruntau gold
deposit, one of the biggest open-pit gold mines in the world, since 1995.
Newmont's joint venture, which recovers gold from Muruntau waste, won a $30
million loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in
January to extend its life until 2013; last month, Newmont said it had reached
agreement with the government to increase its stake in another joint venture to
develop two gold deposits 50 miles southeast of Tashkent.
International lenders also are showing more interest. The EBRD aims to invest up
to $300 million in all five central Asian republics next year, compared with
$220 million this year. The IMF is sending a delegation next month for its most
wide-ranging discussions with the Uzbek authorities since halting its aid
program.
Many in Tashkent speculate that Uzbekistan's military cooperation with the U.S.
may be rewarded with a new IMF loan with eased conditions. Foreign businessmen
say this would send the wrong signal. "Visible rewards for good behavior don't
get down to the core problem," says Charles Rudd, a U.S. businessman who has
worked in Uzbekistan for 13 years. "Unless there's major reform here, you're
always going to be throwing good money into a bad hole."
Write to Guy Chazan at guy.chazan@wsj.com1.
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In Uzbekistan, Whatever It Takes
December 16, 2001
In Uzbekistan, Whatever It Takes
By MATTHEW BRZEZINSKI
One by one, the defendants file into the large steel cage. There are 10 of
them, young men in their mid-20's. Some wear jeans and sweatshirts -- and
defiant expressions. Others appear bruised and frightened.
Soldiers in desert camouflage fatigues and black jackboots ring the cage,
which runs along one wall of the Akmal Ikramov District Court. Outside,
sheep graze next to Tashkent Police Station No. 2, and anxious relatives
mill around a fountain, waiting for the courthouse to open its doors.
Today is the last day of hearings, and the verdicts will be handed down.
The mothers, grandmothers, sisters and wives of the accused murmur prayers
and recite verses from the Koran, though many of them know that praying
won't save their sons and husbands.
Judge Rustamov Nizam is presiding, and in these parts of Central Asia he
has a reputation for dispensing swift justice. He sits at a raised
plastic-laminate table, beneath the blue, white and green seal of
Uzbekistan with its crescent and stars, looking supremely self-confident
11
-- as if he has the power over life and death, which he does.
''Silence,'' he commands, and a hush falls over the courtroom. This
afternoon, the 10 defendants will get their only chance to say their
piece, to beg the court's forgiveness and to ask for clemency -- not that
it's likely to be forthcoming. They all stand accused under Article 159 of
the criminal code of undermining the constitution. But their real crime is
religious fanaticism, of wanting an Islamic state. It's a serious offense
in this former Soviet cotton colony, where the government of the onetime
Communist Party boss, Islam Karimov, has ruled with an iron fist since the
days when the Red Army used Uzbek bases to occupy neighboring Afghanistan.
Today, thanks to a three-year crackdown following a terror attack, leaders
of the Islamic opposition are all either in jail or in exile.
In many respects, President Karimov is no different from the region's
other strongmen, whose abysmal human rights records and bizarre notions of
democracy appear to have been inspired more by Genghis Khan than by George
Washington. But Uzbekistan is America's newest ally in the war against
terror, and any rumblings in the State Department over Karimov's
heavy-handed ways have been silenced since the Uzbek leader allowed
American troops to use his desert nation as a beachhead for their assault
on Afghanistan. The trade-off -- for a regime that was frequently snubbed
by the Clinton administration -- is political legitimacy. In exchange for
that precious commodity, Karimov granted access to a key air base in
Khanabad, a few hundred miles north of the Afghan border, where more than
1,000 special light infantry rangers were immediately deployed. Until last
week, his generosity had not extended to the ''Bridge of Friendship,'' the
main link with Afghanistan, which had remained closed to all traffic -including essential food shipments.
But Uzbekistan, meanwhile, is free to continue its decadelong policy of
persecuting anyone perceived as a threat to Karimov's authority. It just
so happens that with all political dissent crushed, the targets of the
current crackdown are about the only people left in the country who don't
see eye to eye with the president: militant Muslims. That, of course,
makes it a whole lot easier for Washington to look the other way.
''The accused Aliev will rise,'' Judge Nizam says. Mohamed Aliev stands in
the steel cage. He is a slim young man, with shorn dark hair and a blue
Adidas T-shirt. ''We are charged because of our beliefs,'' he begins.
''Because we are part of Hizb-ut-Tahrir. But we are not against the
constitutional order.''
The judge interrupts him impatiently: ''You are confessing guilt but
saying you're not guilty.'' Aliev doesn't know it, because like most of
the other defendants he is not represented by legal counsel, but simply
admitting membership in Hizb-ut-Tahrir is tantamount to treason in
Uzbekistan, as the fundamentalist Islamic movement seeks to replace the
secular state with the Caliphate, or religious rule.
''I demand that medical experts examine us to prove that we were beaten
and tortured,'' says another defendant, Sayeed Ahbat, when it is his turn
to address the court. Nizam cuts him off brusquely. ''If he was beaten,
then he needs to write a statement of complaint -- I will not allow you to
speak anymore,'' Nizam says, raising a pudgy hand. ''Next.''
Mohamed Sharatin rises unsteadily to make his statement. He is tall,
handsome and athletically built. Tears stream down his broad face, which
is purple and red in parts and badly swollen. ''I beg forgiveness,'' he
begins, to which the judge nods approvingly. ''I confess to reading
Hizb-ut-Tahrir literature.'' Sharatin's crime was to be caught in
possession of a leaflet from the radical organization, which labels Bush a
''war criminal'' and calls on the faithful to rise up against the great
''Satan'' that is America. ''But I was simply curious and did not force
anyone else to read it.''
Sharatin's curiosity could cost him 19 years in Jaslyk, the notorious
penal colony opened two years ago in the salt beds and sand flats south of
the shrunken Aral Sea. Specifically constructed to house the growing
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influx of religious prisoners, the new desert gulag has developed such a
reputation for torture and tuberculosis that dissidents say the only way
out of Jaslyk is in a body bag -- if the pretrial interrogation, or a
firing squad, doesn't kill you first.
Uzbekistan's jails aren't confined to suspected religious fanatics. In
1995, for instance, when one of the country's former ambassadors to
Washington fell out of favor with Karimov, his pregnant niece was hauled
in on smuggling charges. Rather than release her on bail pending trial, as
Uzbek law requires for expectant mothers, authorities aborted the fetus in
a prison hospital.
The rest of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir defendants make their statements. Finally,
a defense attorney, Rustam Rakhmatulaev, addresses the court. He speaks
for barely two minutes, since the outcome of most trials here is a
foregone conclusion. ''All the defendants have requested forgiveness under
interrogation,'' he begins. ''None of them said anything bad about the
president,'' he adds hopefully. Insulting Karimov, whose photograph hangs
in the courthouse, as it does in hotel lobbies, storefronts and schools,
and whose specter seems to hover everywhere in Uzbekistan like an unseen
presence, is punishable by up to five years in prison.
''I request that the court be lenient,'' Rakhmatulaev says, concluding his
summation. Uzbekistan's courts, however, are not inclined to mercy; not,
at least, in instances in which religion threatens to impinge on affairs
of state. Since the government declared its war on militant Islam in 1998,
some 7,000 people, according to Human Rights Watch, have been imprisoned.
Many of those were tortured and, in some cases, even killed for their
religious beliefs. The campaign had drawn worldwide criticism for its
arbitrariness and brutality; that is, until Sept. 11 changed the way most
Americans look at the world.
And as Nizam calls for a recess before handing out a passel of 19-year
sentences, it suddenly dawns on the relatives of the accused that they may
not be seeing their sons or husbands for a long, long time. The families
press forward, crying out, trying to reach through the steel bars for one
last hug. The soldiers spring into action, linking arms and forming a
human chain between the defendants and their loved ones. Slowly they push
the wailing mothers, sisters and wives out of the courtroom.
Outside, Savara Umarova stands stunned by the fountain. ''My brother will
be an old man when he gets out,'' she says, her voice shaky and barely
audible. ''He's not a terrorist. He's just a believer.''
The toppling of the twin towers has indeed muddied the waters for critics
of Uzbekistan's human rights record. They strongly suspect that the Bush
administration's embrace of Karimov could backfire, as have past marriages
of convenience to dictators like Manuel Noriega of Panama or the shah of
Iran. It's hard to tell if the new relationship will prove quite that
disastrous. But for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union,
Washington is pursuing a strong, overarching foreign policy goal; in this
case, fighting world terrorism (and, of course, getting rid of Osama bin
Laden and his Taliban cohort). And as we saw repeatedly during the cold
war, such single-mindedness often leads to moral compromises, which often
end up doing more harm than whatever is gained in the original pact.
''If Uzbekistan is going to be a strategic partner,'' Rachel Denber of
Human Rights Watch says, ''then the burden is greater than ever for the
Bush administration to use the leverage that it has to clean up the
appalling human rights record. Otherwise, the people of Uzbekistan will
draw the conclusion that the United States condones torture, unlawful
arrests and other abuses.''
Nevertheless, Washington is likely to be very circumspect in criticizing
its new partner in Central Asia. ''We have serious disagreements with the
Uzbek government on human rights and an absence of democracy as we define
it,'' says Joseph Presel, a career diplomat who served as American
ambassador in Tashkent. ''On the other hand, Uzbekistan has been very
13
helpful to us in the present circumstances, and it is my belief that the
best way to foster the developments that we all want is through close and
continuous engagement.''
It is unclear what engagement will accomplish in a country where the
K.G.B.-schooled secret police have a hard time distinguishing
pro-democracy demonstrators from hard-core Muslim militants. But nothing
is simple in Central Asia. The fact is that the police-state tactics so
criticized by the human rights establishment have allowed this isolated
nation of 24 million to remain an oasis of relative stability in one of
the most troubled corners of the globe. And Karimov's zero tolerance
policy for Muslim extremism is not without its supporters both here and,
increasingly, in Washington.
''I, too, am a believer,'' Feruza Insavaileov informs me when I call to
tell her about the trial and ask if she can recommend someone to interpret
from Uzbek, a Turkic tongue, into Russian, the lingua franca in
post-Soviet Central Asia. ''But I support what the government is doing,''
she adds. ''I'll explain over lunch, if you want.''
We meet at the Aladdin restaurant in Independence Square, one site of a
bloody 1999 bombing spree by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan -- the
Afghan-based terrorist group that first announced itself a year or so
earlier by decapitating a police chief and sticking his head on a stake.
Security is tight around the grimy government buildings that surround the
square, and Feruza, when she turns up, is pretty enough to turn many of
the militiamen's heads. Twenty-three, and an administrative assistant two
years out of college, Feruza says she has a story to tell that might
better help me understand the ''complicated'' human rights situation in
Uzbekistan. It's about her kid brother, she explains, and how he narrowly
escaped a fate similar to the 10 convicted Hizb-ut-Tahrir members.
The story begins shortly after the collapse of Communism, when, after
decades of imposed atheism, Uzbeks were suddenly free to explore their
Muslim roots. At the time, missionaries were pouring into Uzbekistan from
places like Pakistan, Egypt and, especially, Saudi Arabia, which flooded
the country with Korans and started building hundreds of mosques.
In the Insavaileovs' neighborhood in one of the leafier suburbs of
Tashkent, an abandoned mosque had reopened next to the cemetery, and one
day a mysterious stranger showed up there. ''Some said he was from
Pakistan or Tajikistan, and others were sure he was from right here in
Tashkent,'' Feruza recalls. ''In any event, he had a long beard and torn
robes, like the prophet.''
This stranger aroused the curiosity of many of the neighborhood kids and
was apparently very charismatic. Soon, Feruza's 12-year-old brother,
Eldor, and his friends were bringing the holy man food and spending more
and more time at the old mosque.
''At first, I thought it was cute,'' she says, ''but then Eldor started
acting strange.'' There was the constant praying and sermons about the
evils of alcohol and tobacco. That Feruza's family could live with. But
suddenly television and radio were also treacherous foreign inventions,
and young Eldor wanted to throw the new color TV out of the house. Things
just got weirder from there. ''It was like he was being brainwashed,'' she
recalls.
Feruza invites me over to her house to meet Eldor and the rest of her
family to get the full story. The Insavaileovs live in Kibray, about a
25-minute drive from the capital, just past the new presidential palace
Karimov is building for himself. Their home is built around a large
courtyard, with an ornate gazebo in the center, cherry trees, grapevines
and a hand-cranked well. There is also a barn, where the family keeps its
cows -- Zoya and Milka -- and 14 chickens. A satellite dish the size of a
small automobile sits on the flat tile roof.
Feruza's father, Malik, greets us with a traditional Muslim prayer of
welcome, followed by Russian-style vodka toasts. He is an onboard mechanic
and navigator with Uzbekistan's cargo air carrier, and his job has taken
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him around the world: delivering food for the United Nations to
sub-Saharan Africa, gold to Switzerland, sacrificial lambs to Saudi
Arabia, generators to China.
Feruza's mother, Zera, an economist, joins us at the table, which is laden
with fruit and traditional Tatar and Uzbek dishes. Soon the conversation
turns to Eldor's flirtation with fundamentalism. ''Since we didn't know
much about being Muslim, we initially approved of Eldor's interest in
religion,'' Zera says. ''At first, he was teaching us what the proper
prayers were, about Ramadan, things like that.''
After a few months of this, though, his behavior changed. ''Eldor became
very aggressive toward women,'' Feruza recalls. ''He started insulting us
and calling us immodest.'' Eldor began insisting that his sister wear a
hijab, or scarf, and a robe to cover her limbs. ''He complained about the
way Mom and I wore our hair, said it was sacrilege.''
It wasn't just at home that Feruza encountered this type of animosity. At
the university, some boys who had gone abroad to study in madrasas
returned with very different notions about how women should behave. It was
becoming a national problem in Uzbekistan in the mid- to late 1990's,
agrees Frederick Starr, a leading Central Asia scholar in Washington.
''Saudi foundations were paying for young Uzbeks to study in Pakistan or
Medina, and these kids were coming back with their heads filled with crazy
ideas,'' he says.
For Eldor, of course, the crazy ideas were available right in his own
neighborhood. ''We started worrying about losing our boy to a cult,''
Malik recalls. ''It was as if he was becoming a different person.'' The
family didn't know what to do at first. They consulted with the leaders of
their mahallah, the powerful neighborhood organization in Uzbekistan that
governs everything from family disputes to real-estate transactions. The
neighborhood elders were equally stumped.
Around this time, the Karimov government was also grappling to find a
solution to the growing problem of extremism. ''Obviously, it would be
political suicide for us to be against Islam, because we couldn't oppose
90 percent of the population,'' says the deputy foreign minister, Sodyq
Safaev. ''But we couldn't allow the Islamization of politics or the
politicization of Islam. That would lead to chaos. We had to fight these
foreign imports.''
Fortunately for Eldor, the family struck upon a solution well before the
big government crackdown. By mutual agreement, it was decided that he
would no longer visit the holy man and would avoid the mosque altogether.
This proved to be the right choice. ''Where is Eldor now?'' I ask Feruza.
''He's probably tinkering with the car again,'' her mother suggests. ''Try
him on his cellphone.''
Sure enough, he shows up a few minutes later in a dirty U.S.A. T-shirt,
hands covered in motor oil. Cars, apparently, are one of his new passions,
now that he's 19 and earning good money in sales for a textile mill. ''The
new Mercedes C-Class Kompressor is my favorite,'' he says with the
salesman's ready smile. ''But it's hard to get in Uzbekistan.''
He is also into Hollywood movies and pronounces Angelina Jolie's latest
action thriller ''excellent.'' Looking at him, it's hard even to imagine
the Eldor of old. He doesn't really want to discuss those confused times
-- though he will talk your ear off about Pentium III chips -- but
concedes that ''many of the things the imam told us at the mosque were
wrong.''
The Insavaileovs, not surprisingly, are much relieved that their son saw
the light. ''I'm glad Karimov is locking these Wahhabis up,'' Malik says.
''They are a menace to society.''
''Don't get me wrong,'' Zera says. ''I'm not against religion. I'm a
believer. I just don't think I need to be covered from head to toe in a
burka to prove it. It's like anything in life, moderation is best.''
That message, thanks in part to heavy doses of propaganda in the
15
state-controlled media, appears to have gotten through in most parts of
Tashkent, including some very unlikely places, as I discover the next day
at the cockfights. The bouts are held every Sunday in an abandoned
warehouse in the Kuluk industrial sector of town. It's not far from the
women's prison and a psychiatric institute where a political activist was
recently sent for protesting, among other things, the government's
decision to bulldoze some homes to make room for a road.
The atmosphere around the ring is spirited, drawing hundreds of vocal
gamblers, many of whom, with their black leather jackets, scars and
tattoos, look downright scary. Several of these toughs take an unusual
interest in the photographer I am traveling with, viewing his presence
with clear suspicion. Finally one man jabs an accusing finger at the
photographer's black beard. ''Wahhabi?'' he demands in a decidedly
unfriendly tone. ''Yevrey,'' the photographer shoots back -- Jewish.'' The
tension lifts immediately, and relieved grins crease the men's faces.
''Ah,'' one says, smiling. ''I'm a Muslim. Welcome.''
It's an odd but telling exchange, one that you would be hard pressed to
witness in most other corners of the Muslim world. But Uzbekistan, because
of its Soviet past, is a strange cultural crossroads: part Europeanized
Politburo puppet, part proud inheritor of Tamerlane's 14th-century Golden
Horde.
All this makes Islam an important part of the country's identity,
especially since the break from Moscow in 1991. Devotion, far from being
banned, is actively encouraged. Men openly walk around in dopas, the
colorful Muslim caps. At Tashkent's tiny airport, hundreds of ghostly
figures move about the predawn gloom: pilgrims in white robes making the
hajj to Mecca. The city's huge central mosque -- erected by the Sheik
Zainudin Foundation of Saudia Arabia in 1993 -- is nearly full to its
10,000-space capacity for Friday prayers. And on Saturday mornings you
will find all 139 modestly veiled pupils from the Khadichi Kubra madrasa
for girls studiously poring over their lessons. What you won't find there
is any of the revolutionary rhetoric that has given madrasas in places
like Pakistan the nickname ''Jihad U.''
''There is freedom of religion in Uzbekistan,'' Presel, the former
ambassador, says. ''As long as you practice mainstream Islam.'' It's when
you cross the line, he adds, that things can get a little dicey.
''His feet are still swollen, but he's put on a little weight and looks
better,'' Irina Mikulina, a defense attorney, is reassuring the wife of a
client she has just visited in jail. ''I brought him your letter, and the
food.''
Her client, Imam Abduvahid Yuldashev, is serving a 19-year sentence under
Article 159, which is something of a catchall provision in Uzbekistan's
harsh criminal justice system. The Muslim cleric recently received 20
lashes with a bamboo baton on the sole of each foot for committing some
minor prison infraction. He couldn't walk for a week, Mikulina says, but
that was nothing compared with what he suffered during pretrial
interrogation. ''The police put a lighter to his genitals,'' she says
matter-of-factly, as if this sort of thing happened all the time. ''At
first, he wouldn't tell me about it. He was too modest.''
The imam was luckier than some victims of police interrogations here, who,
according to Human Rights Watch, are sent home wrapped in sheets soaked
with blood, along with dubious explanations from the coroner's office
attributing the cause of death to heart or kidney failure. Electric shock,
beating and burning are routine tools of Uzbekistan's anti-Islamic
inquisition, says Acacia Shields, a Human Rights Watch researcher who
recently returned from a two-year posting in Uzbekistan. She adds that
another tactic to elicit confessions involves stripping the accused's
female relatives and threatening to gang-rape them in front of their loved
ones.
Even some senior Uzbek officials acknowledge privately that the methods
16
are at times excessive. ''We treat Muslim extremism as a cancer that has
to be cut out,'' one says. ''But sometimes we act more like butchers than
surgeons. It's, how would your Pentagon put it?'' he adds slyly, ''the
collateral damage of dealing with such a large-scale problem.''
That's small consolation to Mikulina's clients, like Yuldashev. The
34-year-old cleric first ran afoul of the law in 1999, during the big
roundup that followed the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan's bombing spree
in Tashkent, which hospitalized hundreds and killed 16. Ten thousand
people were detained in one week alone, Mikulina says, and the arrests
were often arbitrary. Yuldashev was accused of Wahhabism, but his real
crime, the attorney says, was preaching at a mosque where another
outspoken imam had fallen out of favor with the authorities. Everyone
associated with that imam and a dozen of Yuldashev's pupils were charged
and promptly convicted, so that in the close-knit community where the
Yuldashevs live you now see only very old men and very young boys -- as in
wartime.
Several female relatives of the imam's imprisoned followers have gathered
at his damp apartment to hear news from Mikulina about their loved ones.
Mikulina does her best to reassure the veiled women, and her tough,
no-nonsense manner seems to give them some strength. Away from her
clients, however, she is not so upbeat. ''I'm losing hope,'' she told me
on the way to the Yuldashevs'. ''Especially since the events of Sept. 11.
Who is going to come to the defense of orthodox Muslims now? The
government can do whatever it wants to them, and most people in the West
will probably just cheer.''
She has a point. Watching Yuldashev's young wife, Omina, shyly prepare
pomegranates and rice pilaf, or plov, as it is known here, I find myself
not worrying about how much of a sacrifice this costly display of
hospitality is for a family with no income but about the dirt on the
unwashed fruit and the flies on the greasy plov. Casting an eye around the
barren apartment, I wonder how anyone can choose to live without
furniture, television or radio, as this family's adherence to the strict
Wahhabi sect requires. And looking at Omina struggle with her four
disheveled children, I feel more baffled than sympathetic.
Under her hijab, she is a very pretty young woman, blemished perhaps by
her rare smile, which reveals a dowry of a dozen gold teeth. We don't
speak much. Omina is too modest to talk to men, and I am the first male to
set foot in the apartment since her husband's arrest. Only when she shows
me photos of her husband do her dark eyes light up with real emotion. The
photos themselves tell the story of a life transformed. The first shows a
burly paratrooper with sergeant's stripes striking a virile pose in Red
Square: Yuldashev as an 18-year-old conscript. Another, around 1991,
captures a mustachioed young man on the make, in flared jeans, a suede
jacket and an open-collar shirt. All that's missing is a few gold chains,
and it could be an outtake from ''Saturday Night Fever.'' The third, most
recent, photograph is a mosque ID in which Yuldashev appears intense
beneath a long, pointed beard, a black robe and a dopa on his head. ''My
husband is not a threat to anyone,'' Omina says. ''He is a good Muslim.''
It is hard to say for certain who here harbors revolutionary intentions
and who is simply a victim of circumstance in the state's struggle to
control people's minds. ''Karimov is far less concerned with keeping the
world safe from Islamic terrorists than keeping himself in power,'' says
Shields of Human Rights Watch, adding that the crackdown on religion is a
thinly veiled attempt to stamp out dissent. Opposition parties are banned
in Uzbekistan, and Karimov, when he does bother to run for re-election (he
side-stepped a competitive ballot in 1995), hand-picks his challengers.
(The last, in 2000, proclaimed loudly that he was voting for Karimov.)
In Washington, however, many are willing to give the Uzbek president the
benefit of the doubt. ''Karimov would probably win a free and fair
election,'' Presel says. ''The sad part is that he is unwilling to take
the chance.''
17
As for the crackdown on religion, that, too, has some justification, say
people who follow the region. ''Left unchecked, extremism could become a
serious problem in Uzbekistan,'' says Glen Howard, a security expert on
Central Asia. ''Civil war, maybe, like in Tajikistan,'' speculates
Abdumannob Polat, an exiled opposition leader, when I ask him what the
ultimate result would be if the government halted its campaign against
fundamentalism.
While it remains to be seen if Washington will live to regret its alliance
with the Karimov government, for now relations are rosy, and the Uzbek
leader is basking in the glow of frequent photo ops with top White House
officials. Indeed, cashing in on his enhanced prestige, Karimov just
proposed a referendum to extend his current five-year term by two years.
Even Mikulina concedes that a majority of Uzbeks support Karimov's
hard-line stand, though many get only a skewed picture of what is really
going on because of the state's tight grip on the media. Omina Yuldashev
found that out the hard way when she turned to her mahallah for financial
assistance after her husband's arrest. Not only did community leaders turn
her down, but they also subjected her to a humiliating mock trial and hate
rally, in which neighbors denounced her and hurled insults at her jailed
husband. ''They said I was an enemy of the people,'' she recalls.
Not so the Insavaileovs, whose mahallah just named them ''family of the
year,'' an honor Feruza's parents cherish, prominently displaying the
award photograph in their dining room. And as for Eldor, he has found a
new idol to worship: Bill Gates. He even mailed the Microsoft founder a
fan letter some months ago, telling him how much he admires the way he
runs his company and crushes the competition. He is still waiting for
Gates to write back.
Matthew Brzezinski last wrote for the magazine about John Tobin, the
American student falsely accused of espionage by Russia.
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