Asia Times: ANALYSIS : Bombs mark end of era for Uzbekistan



	February 20, 1999	atimes.com

Central Asia / Siberia

ANALYSIS : Bombs mark end of era for Uzbekistan
by Dilip Hiro

LONDON - The six bomb blasts that killed 15 people in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent have dealt a fatal blow to the stability that had been the hallmark of Uzbekistan.

The most populous and strategic state in Central Asia has been governed with an iron hand by President Islam Karimov, now 60, since its independence seven years ago.

One of the explosions occurred a few minutes before Karimov arrived at the government offices to preside over a cabinet meeting. This left little doubt that he was the main target of the attackers.

''The aim was to eliminate the president, to destroy the peace of our people and, if necessary, intimidate the people and bring panic to their hearts,'' Karimov said.

What still remains unclear is who carried out the well co- ordinated attacks and why. So far no group has claimed responsibility.

Uzbek Radio blamed ''extremist forces who hate our country's independence.'' And the National Security Chief, Rustam Inayatov, pointed his finger at ''extremists outside the country and people linked to them inside the republic."

Within this framework, diplomats and regional analysts have been sifting through the possibilities - ranging from Islamic militants and mafia-style gangsters to Tajik nationalists and Russian commanders posted in Tajikistan.

Each of these groups - except for the Russian officers stationed in Tajikistan - had a reason to strike against the Karimov government in retaliation for damage it had caused the various groups.

The group that has been most under pressure by the Karimov regime is the one wedded to establishing an Islamic state in Uzbekistan, which is 90 percent Muslim. An offshoot of the all-Union Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP), established in the final years of the Soviet Union, the group is known locally as Adalat (justice) and has a strong base in the Fergana Valley, where one-third of the republic's 22 million people live.

A militant secularist, Karimov has been relentless in suppressing Islamic extremists. Security forces have arrested several charismatic Muslim clerics; one disappeared on his way to the local airport and another died in custody.

About a year ago the Fergana Valley city of Namangan, a stronghold of Islamists, caught the headlines when masked men decapitated a police officer hated for his brutality. In a resulting police action three more police officers died in a gun battle.

Karimov acted swiftly, imposing curfews in Namagan and other Fergana Valley towns, and arrested scores of residents as extremist Islamists. A hastily-passed law imposed strict state control over mosques which had mushroomed in Uzbekistan in the past decade.

These actions appeared to have contained any immediate threat by extremists - but it is often the case when an emerging, popular movement is suppressed that the radicals within it resort to terrorism.

In this case Muslim militants would have had little difficulty in acquiring guerrilla skills from neighoring Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Afghanistan has long harbored military training camps for militant Muslims from various parts of the world. And in Tajikistan, armed Islamists have been battling the secular government intermittently since 1992.

Last November, following an unsuccessful uprising in the northern region of Hojand, led by an ethnic Uzbek and former colonel, Mahmoud Khodabardiyev, Tajikistan's President Imamali Rahmanov accused Tashkent of sponsoring the attempted coup.

As evidence, his government produced televised confessions by captured rebels that they had been trained in Uzbekistan. The alleged purpose of the coup was to undermine the national unity government in Tajikistan, formed after a peace treaty in 1997 ended the five-year civil war.

Analysts agree it is possible that Tajik nationalists, aggrieved at Karimov's intrusion in their country's politics, have struck back.

The situation in Tajikistan is complicated by the presence of 25,000 Russian troops there. In periodic clashes that occurred previously in Tajikistan, some analysts maintained the Russian commanders had given arms and expertise to the feuding factions to keep the pot simmering, thus making their presence in the republic indispensable.

Two weeks ago, to the chagrin of the Russian defence ministry, Karimov withdrew Uzbekistan from the Collective Security Pact of the 12-member Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a loose grouping of former Soviet republics.

Karimov did this in protest at what he sees as Moscow's attempts to transform the CIS into a super-state dominated by Russia, a scenario he considers ''neo-colonialist."

Little wonder that despite the pleas of the visiting delegation of the Russian parliamentarians, headed by Igor Stroyev, chairman of the Russian Federal Council, Karimov refused to reconsider his decision.

But some analysts see a major flaw in the reasoning that suggests a connection with the blasts. They argue that the time between Karimov's decision and the explosions was too short. The well-orchestrated act, involving a series of simultaneous car bombs, would have needed a long planning period.

Unconfirmed reports from Uzbekistan say five people have been arrested of suspected complicity in the explosions - the most dramatic blasts in Tashkent since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. But until someone has been charged with the offense, speculation continues whether the terrorists behind the attack were religious or secular.

Karimov gave no clue in his statement.

''Let the attackers know that we have the strength and trust that we have chosen the right path,'' he said. 'We trust in our chosen path and will continue to work for this. By these [terrorist] means no one can divert us from our chosen path."

Does the ''right path'' mean national independence, which, Karimov reckons, Russia is trying to undermine? Or does it mean a secular state, which the Islamic militants are trying to subvert?

The answers to these queries have yet to emerge from Uzbekistan.

(Inter Press Service)