THE full horror of what happened in eastern Uzbekistan on Friday May 13th has yet to emerge. But an opposition leader claims to have compiled a list of 745 people gunned down by government troops in Andizhan and Pakhtabad. Of these, more than 500 were slaughtered when the soldiers opened fire on a crowd protesting in Andizhan against President Islam Karimov, the Central Asian republic’s authoritarian leader. Mr Karimov's prosecutor general has claimed that the death toll in Andizhan was rather lower, at 169, of which 32 were security-forces members—and that no civilians were fired on. There have also been reports of troops firing on civilians as they fled into neighbouring Kirgizstan to escape the conflict.
Though such protests have been seen before, it was the worst violence in Uzbekistan since it became independent in 1991, on the break-up of the Soviet Union. Since then, Mr Karimov, who had been the local Communist Party chief, has kept himself in power through rigged elections and occasional shows of brute force. He has also sought backing from America and its allies by posing as a bulwark against Islamist militancy in the region. After the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks, Mr Karimov allowed America to use Uzbekistan’s airbases to attack the Taliban in Afghanistan.
This puts the Bush administration in a dilemma—inclined to support those protesting against a brutal regime but reluctant to side against an ally in the war on terror. America's initial response was simply to call on both the government and the demonstrators to show restraint. However, Britain took a notably harder line, calling the shootings “a clear abuse of human rights”. And, as more details of the bloodbath emerged on Monday, America hardened its stance, condemning “the indiscriminate use of force against unarmed civilians”. The secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, called on Mr Karimov to make democratic reforms, saying the conflict showed how Uzbekistan needed the “pressure valves that come from a more open political system”.
By contrast, China gave its hearty backing to Mr Karimov. Apparently pleased by his re-staging of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Beijing said in a statement to the French News Agency that it was “happy” to hear that he had restored order to the country.
Mr Karimov has insisted that his troops were not ordered to open fire and blamed the violence on Hizb ut-Tahrir, a banned Islamist group. In fact the unrest, which has been building up for some months, seems to have been triggered by the trials of 23 local businessmen in Andizhan. The men are accused of belonging to Akramiya, another illegal armed group, which is a splinter from Hizb ut-Tahrir. However, locals believe the charges were trumped up by officials, with the aim of seizing the businessmen’s property.
What began as peaceful demonstrations in support of the defendants early last week turned violent when, on Thursday night, armed men stormed the jail where the 23 businessmen were being held, letting out all the prisoners. Clashes then flared up between the security forces and the demonstrators, in which government buildings were seized and officials taken hostage. The army then moved into the town to crush the revolt.
There have been a number of violent incidents in Uzbekistan in recent years, and Mr Karimov has usually held Islamist groups responsible. In 1999, bombs in the capital, Tashkent, killed at least 12 people. Last year, troops stormed a suspected militant hideout, killing up to 23 people. Islamist radicals are indeed active in the country, especially in the Ferghana Valley—the volatile region in which Andizhan is situated. But not all the unrest can be blamed on them. Last year, there were big protests over draconian new laws to regulate market traders. In March, hundreds of farmers whose land had been confiscated stormed government buildings in Jizzakh province. Earlier this month, another group of farmers who had lost their land, from Kashkadarya province, set up a “tent city” near the American embassy in Tashkent.
While playing up the Islamist threat, Mr Karimov has ignored the fact that much of the country’s unrest is due to poor living standards. The government says its confiscation of farm land is justified by the farmers’ failure to pay their debts. But this is due to the regime’s agriculture policies, under which farmers have to buy all their supplies from the state and receive well below market prices for their produce. Economic conditions across the country seem to have deteriorated to the extent that people are now willing to risk defying the notoriously brutal Uzbek security services.
The next domino to fall?
The violence in Andizhan and elsewhere in the Ferghana Valley comes only a matter of weeks after riots in next-door Kirgizstan, following that country’s flawed parliamentary elections, forced the resignation of President Askar Akaev. He in turn was the third long-serving leader of a former Soviet state to be forced out by “people power” in 18 months, following the popular uprisings in Georgia and Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, Kirgizstan’s revolution received little coverage in Uzbekistan’s state-controlled media, which attributed the protests in the neighbouring country to “criminal elements”.
Uzbekistan’s protesters would seem to stand little chance against Mr Karimov’s security forces, who have shown they will stop at nothing to crush dissent. Furthermore, no popular, reformist figure like Georgia’s Mikhail Saakashvili or Ukraine’s Victor Yushchenko has yet emerged for the Uzbek opposition to rally around. Nevertheless, the anti-government protests in Georgia, Ukraine and then Kirgizstan all eventually prevailed, despite initial expectations that regime change was unlikely.
So will Mr Karimov be the next strongman in the region to fall? Certainly it is notable that protesters are increasingly focusing their discontent on the president himself, and demanding his resignation, instead of blaming local officials. Pressure within the regime for a change of leader is likely to grow, particularly if vested interests in the political hierarchy start doubting Mr Karimov’s ability to guarantee their privileges.
However, even if rising protests do eventually force him to step down, the outcome may not, in the first instance, be a more democratic, liberalising government. In the absence of a charismatic opposition leader, power may instead pass to a supporter of the current regime from among the country’s dominant clans. If so, there may be little hope of economic reform, just a redistribution among the elite of the spoils of power. This would do nothing to alleviate the growing economic and social concerns of a population that seems increasingly willing to challenge those in authority.
