222
BESHIMOV, SHOZIMOV, BAKHADYROV
but did not get recognized by the authorities. At this time the Islamic opposition
established the organizations
Adolat (Justice) and Islom Lashkarlari (Warriors of
Islam), and took up arms. The epicenter of Islamic political activity could be found
in the traditionally pious Ferghana Valley. In 1991 Islamists in Namangan and
Andijan publicly stated their goal of making Uzbekistan an Islamic Republic. The
government tried to establish a dialogue with religious segments of the population,
and entreated them not to encroach on the established constitutional order or to use
Islam for political purposes. When the radical Islamists rejected this request the
government responded harshly, prosecuting many Adolat members in 1993. Some
of them fled to Tajikistan and Afghanistan, where they took part in the civil wars.
In 1998 they created a terrorist organization, the IMU, for the purpose of over-
throwing the Uzbek president. The IMU’s history can be divided into two phases:
first, its activity in the Ferghana Valley before its members fled to Afghanistan and,
second, its actions after it united with the Taliban and al Qaeda. During the second
stage, under the Taliban’s influence, IMU fighters banned music, cigarettes, sex,
and alcohol, and generally adopted an anti-American, anti-Western stance. Such
puritanism repelled many potential followers in the Ferghana Valley.
39
In 1998 and
1999 IMU fighters twice tried to enter Uzbekistan through Kyrgyzstan, and in 2000
they penetrated into the Saryassiysy and Uzunskoye regions of the Surkhandarya
province. However, U.S. military operations in Afghanistan in 2001 effectively
destroyed the IMU’s resources there.
In 1992 missionaries from Hizb ut-Tahrir emerged in Uzbekistan. This extrem-
ist organization openly opposed that country’s
government,
and called for the
formation of an Islamic caliphate in the Ferghana Valley and throughout Central
Asia. Many of the early leaders of Hizb ut-Tahrir were well-educated people. For
example, Farhad Usman, who was killed by the police in 1999, was the son of a
well-known religious family from Tashkent; Amin Osman, who died under torture
in 2001, had been a prominent Uzbek writer. The authorities’ opposition gave this
organization an aura of intrigue among many, and the absence of alternative chan-
nels of political expression enabled the Hizb ut-Tahrir to attract supporters among
those discontented with the government.
40
Dr. Babadjanov has detailed in Chapter 13 the circumstances surrounding the
tragedy of May 2005, in the city of Andijan. The “Andijan events” remain controver-
sial, and several versions of what occurred exist.
41
Early reports by the International
Crisis Group and Human Rights Watch claiming 700 or 800 deaths
42
have not been
upheld by subsequent research, and the Russian organization Memorial’s estimation
of up to 200 deaths generally has been accepted as correct.
43
A substantial number
of these deaths occurred at the hands of the insurgents themselves, who—earlier
claims to the contrary notwithstanding—are now known from their own films of
the event to have been heavily armed.
What cannot be denied is that a majority of mass demonstrations against the Uz-
bek government, and especially those by radical Islamists, occurred in the Ferghana
Valley. This can be explained by several developments. Most of the Wahhabi-minded
A NEW PHASE: 1992–2008 223
imams arrived in the Ferghana Valley in the late 1980s and early 1990s from the
large Uzbek
community in Saudi Arabia, which numbers
approximately half a
million people. They are the descendents of immigrants from tsarist Russia and
basmachi
, mainly from the Ferghana Valley. The Uzbek sector of the valley itself
could not help but be affected by Islamist activities in Tajikistan during the civil war
there and, via Tajikistan, by Afghanistan. As a result, it was in the valley that two
competing visions of state-building came into frontal conflict: that of the prevail-
ing authoritarian nationalism and that of the Islamists’ super-national theocracy.
Against the Islamists’ terrorism the government has brought decisive force of its
own, which may have the effect of renewing the cycle of conflict. Sarah Kendzior
notes that the Uzbek government also has enlisted mainstream theologians, politi-
cal scientists, and select experts on Islam in its fight against the fundamentalists.
44
This may have been effective in suppressing calls for immediate violence against
the state, but it could have the unintended effect of making Hizb ut-Tahrir more
attractive,
45
since the latter nominally opposes violence while embracing the same
radical ends as the militants.
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