Country Profile: Uzbekistan

Foreign Military Relations: 
In the early 2000s, Uzbekistan has focused its military relations on 
bilateral links rather than commitments to multilateral organizations. It has sought to balance 
such links among the competing interests in the region. In 2000 Uzbekistan signed a bilateral 
military agreement with Turkey, implicitly to discourage Russian hegemony in Central Asia. In 
2002 a strategic partnership agreement with the United States aimed at post–September 11 
cooperation against Islamic extremism, but that agreement required domestic reforms that 
Uzbekistan did not carry out. The subsequent establishment in Uzbekistan of a U.S. base for 
operations in Afghanistan improved bilateral relations, but the extension of that arrangement 
increased apprehension among Uzbekistan’s neighbors and in Iran and Russia. The United States 
vacated its base and severed military relations in 2005 following the Andijon riots and 
curtailment of the base agreement by the Karimov government. In 2004 Uzbekistan signed a 
comprehensive strategic partnership with Russia, continuing the rapprochement of the two 
countries that began in 2003 and shifting Uzbekistan’s military policy away from Western 
alliances. Late in 2005, a mutual security agreement with Russia created conditions for the 
basing of Russian forces in Uzbekistan, although no timetable was established. Uzbekistan also 
moved closer to Russia by signing the Collective Security Treaty of the Commonwealth of 
Independent States (CIS), a move it previously had eschewed. In the early 2000s, bilateral 
military negotiations with China sought a second linkage with a major regional power. 
Uzbekistan has discussed multilateral security arrangements with the other members of the 
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO, including China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, 
and Tajikistan). 
External Threat:
As the dominant military power in its region, Uzbekistan faces no 
conventional military threats. The major external security concern is the Islamic groups that have 
sworn to replace the secular government of Uzbekistan with an Islamic state. This genuine threat 
also has been a pretext for increased domestic repression by the Karimov regime. In 1999 and 
2000, the Uzbekistani military repulsed (with difficulty) guerrilla forces of the Islamic 
Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) as they attempted to move into Uzbekistan. In 2001–2, the IMU 
suffered severe losses in Afghanistan, and its known terrorist activities since 2001 have been 
outside Uzbekistan. However, in 2006 IMU activity reportedly resurfaced in the Kyrgyzstani and 
Tajikistani regions of the Fergana Valley, very close to Uzbekistan.