Wsj com East of the Oder February 8, 2002

The flow of migrants speeded up in the year 2000-2001, when the republic's agriculture-based economy was devastated by a severe drought. Harvests were destroyed and desperate farmers were forced to kill their livestock, as they could no longer feed them.
Farmers in the northern regions of the autonomous republic were hardest hit, and emergency water tanks had to be delivered to stop thousands dying of thirst. The standard of living, which in these places was already very low, became unbearable for many.
While water has returned to Karakalpakstan, its farmers have neither the energy nor the will to rebuild their lives there. And although Kazakstan has its own problems with poverty, it is still seen as a far more attractive prospect.

Another Takhtakupyr villager, who didn't want to be named, told IWPR that the people have lost faith in the Uzbek state, claiming it did not provide enough assistance to save the farmers from ruin during the drought, and has "never wanted to pay honestly" for their efforts.

"In Kazakstan, our lives will be incomparably better. Workers are well paid and migrants are treated with special attention. The state will help us out with work and housing," he said.
Olga Borisova is a correspondent for IWPR in Karakalpakstan.

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Uzbek Militants' Decline Provides Clues to U.S.

October 8, 2002

Uzbek Militants' Decline Provides Clues to U.S.

By C. J. CHIVERS

ASHKENT, Uzbekistan — The mountain trails crisscrossing this nation's

eastern borders were quiet this summer, except for occasional blasts of

Uzbek land mines killing civilians or livestock. The guerrillas the mines

were meant to deter have not appeared.

It is quite a change. For three years, bearded fighters from the Islamic

Movement of Uzbekistan descended during thaws to skirmish with government

soldiers. It was Central Asia's largest militant group, financed by Osama

bin Laden, given refuge in Afghanistan by the Taliban and included on the

State Department's list of terrorist organizations. Its incursions, and

the accusation that it was behind an assassination attempt on the Uzbek

president, Islam Karimov, in 1999, ensured that it was studied for signs

that the brand of Islam used by the Taliban might spread.

Then came the American-led campaign in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11

attacks. The group's Afghan training bases were destroyed. Its sources of

financing were driven further underground. American officials say its

military leader, Juma Namangani, was killed. Experts now agree it is

severely weakened, more a nuisance than a security threat.

"Their level of organization used to be pretty good," one intelligence

official said. "That level of organization no longer exists."

The decline is a major victory for the United States, helping to

strengthen relations with a new ally and extend American influence in

Asia. It also provides clues about the nature of Islamic militants and the

steps that can be taken to marginalize them.

Reporters from The New York Times collected hundreds of the group's

records from ruined residences and bases last fall. This material,

combined with interviews with intelligence officials, offers a detailed

insight into the group's miscalculations in fighting repression by

fomenting Islamic revolution. It is a militants' morality tale, a portrait

of the rise and fall of a movement that arose fighting social injustice

and then transformed itself into a jihad group as it pursued money and

contacts in the extremist world.

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, analysts say, made a deal with

militant Islam, and it lost.

Mr. Namangani's mansion in Mazar-i-Sharif, in northern Afghanistan, said

much about his life. One room was littered with ammunition; another was a

mosque. In the yard was a pull-up bar, with which he maintained his

hardened physique.

Mr. Namangani, a former Soviet paratrooper, was the military leader of the

Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and commander of the 055 Brigade, the

formation of foreign Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Like the man he

served, Tokhir Yoldesh, the movement's imam, he came from the Ferghana

Valley in Uzbekistan, the cultural center of an impoverished republic of

24 million that declared its independence from Moscow in 1991.

Islam had existed underground in the Ferghana throughout the years of

enforced atheism, and as the Soviet Union crumbled, several Islamist

political parties emerged. But Uzbekistan was hardly fertile soil for

Islamism. Although the country is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, its people

are largely tolerant and secular, with a yearning for connections to the

West. Nevertheless, they had been bitterly disappointed when state

socialism rapidly became a dictatorship under Mr. Karimov, and quietly

supported the Islamist parties' fight against repression.

Late in 1991, after Mr. Yoldesh and a few hundred supporters seized a

government building in the city of Namangan to demand more rights, the

president began an intense crackdown. Security services rounded up

suspected Muslim supporters, closed mosques and branded Islamists enemies

of the state.

Mr. Namangani and Mr. Yoldesh were forced into exile. Mr. Namangani fled

to Tajikistan, where he formed a battalion of 200 to 350 fighters that

carried out paramilitary activities during the civil war that broke out

there in 1992. Mr. Yoldesh settled, intelligence officials believe, in

northwest Pakistan, where he befriended militants and began to build an

Uzbek community in exile.

Much of this activity went unnoticed until February 1999, when five bombs

exploded in Tashkent, killing at least 16 people and wounding more than

100 others. Mr. Karimov was said to have been spared only because he was

late for a meeting.

Although the group never claimed responsibility for the bombs, a month

later, it announced a jihad from a radio station in Iran. "Before

Uzbekistan becomes a ruin," it said, according to a copy of the

declaration found in Mr. Namangani's house, "we ask the regime of Tashkent

to resign unconditionally."

To prepare for war, the movement organized training, first in Tajikistan

and then in camps in Afghanistan, at which Mr. Namangani schooled

volunteers in small-unit tactics, marksmanship and rudimentary instruction

in making bombs that could be delivered in suitcases or trucks. The

training appeared effective.

"I had the pleasure of watching some I.M.U. units, and they were cheap

copies of the Soviet paratroopers," an American intelligence official

said.

But to finance the training, the movement began drawing on the networks of

trainers and money available in Afghanistan, analysts say, forcing it to

align itself with Al Qaeda. The group appeared to coordinate its

activities to follow Mr. bin Laden, or at least to impress him, with hopes

of receiving more money. This, the analysts say, ultimately proved to be a

fatal mistake.

Dr. Abdujabar Abduvakhitov, who has studied the group since its inception

and is now president of Westminster International University in Tashkent,

said the movement made a choice: to turn toward incitement and terror and

thus to get access to supporters in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and

Iran. But this path gave it a poisonous tone and led to a pledge of jihad

rather than simple reform, ensuring that the movement was repulsive to the

Uzbek people it hoped to attract.

"What they found was that through Islam, and Islamic slogans, they could

make more money and get weapons," he said. "But as they did these things,

they made themselves out of touch with the people at home."

In August 1999, six months after the Tashkent bombings, five men sent by

Mr. bin Laden met Mr. Namangani in Tajikistan, said an American official

familiar with the meeting. The next month the guerrillas appeared in

Kyrgyzstan, where they battled government troops, killing at least 18, and

took hostages, including Kyrgyz police officers, four Japanese geologists

and four American mountain climbers. (All the hostages either escaped or

were released for ransom.)

The campaign was quiet in the winter. But when the guerrillas returned in

2000, they crossed into Uzbekistan along its southeastern border with new

medical kits, tactical radios and night-vision goggles. "All of this

speaks to better funding, it speaks to better contacts," one intelligence

official said. "They had made an impression on bin Laden."

Most analysts say that at its peak the movement had about 1,500

guerrillas, with perhaps another 2,000 family members who left home with

the men — hardly enough to topple a government. But the incursions drew

extensive news coverage, in which Mr. Namangani's bands of fighters were

portrayed as almost magically skilled. They became a mythic presence, holy

warriors who embarrassed the Central Asian states.

But mythic status had a price: the adoption of radical Islam. By late last

year, the movement's material carried almost as much anti-Western and

anti-Jewish material as it did details of problems in Uzbekistan. In a

training center in Kunduz, the guerrillas stored pamphlets promoting

global jihad, most of them printed in Pakistan. They railed against Israel

and America, and against song, smoke, sex and drink.

One radio script, found in a home used by the movement's military leader,

complained that the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance wanted "to sell

Afghanistan to America's Jews," and that American soldiers waging war

there were the sons of servicemen in Vietnam who "tore open the stomachs

of pregnant women and took the baby child, bayoneted the baby and held it

up toward thirsty soldiers."

Michael Hickok, a former professor of terrorism and Central Asian studies

at the Air War College in Alabama, said: "It is a much more radical Islam

than Namangani had ever embraced before. It is a borrowing from the

Taliban. It's as if they had to pitch their message so it was consistent

with their hosts."

The final element of the movement's trade-off was in place by last spring,

analysts say. American intelligence officials said that early last year

Mr. Yoldesh entered an agreement with Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban

leader, to set aside the Central Asia campaign temporarily and use his

fighters against the Northern Alliance. If Mr. Namangani's men would fight

the Taliban's war, then the Taliban would offer more help for the

movement's actions in Central Asia.

The decision would be Mr. Namangani's undoing. He began the year fighting

the anti-Taliban forces of Ahmed Shah Massoud in northern Afghanistan.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, he found himself facing the United States.

In October, Mullah Omar appointed him commander of the 055 Brigade. It was

perhaps the worst job on the planet, requiring him talk into tactical

radios just as American warplanes showed up, with their laser-guided bombs

targeting electronic communications. He was fatally injured on Nov. 18

when a convoy in which he was traveling was struck in Kunduz Province,

United States officials said.

There were no subordinate commanders of Mr. Namangani's stature or

ability, intelligence officials say, and no one has emerged to replace

him. They also say Mr. Namangani's polyglot guerrilla formations are

scattered now, pushed into hiding in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran,

Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Some members are believed to have quit.

A few experts predict that with its guerrilla units disrupted the movement

may now become smaller, bent more on terror and less on conventional

fighting. But others see several obstacles, especially the movement's

alliance with Al Qaeda, which has earned it revulsion at home. In

addition, Mr. Yoldesh, never a military leader, is thought to lack the

skills and charisma to train fighters.

Most important, they say, the movement's former underwriters in Pakistan,

Afghanistan and Al Qaeda are no longer in a position to offer much help.

Having alienated their base at home, and with their benefactors largely

overwhelmed, the experts now say the group does not appear to be a

significant regional threat.

Copyright The New York Times Company | Permissions | Privacy Policy
Country Guide / The Times of Central AsiaDaily news from

Central Asia!

Wednesday, Nov 27, 2002

State Structure:

Government type: republic; effectively authoritarian

presidential rule, with little power outside the

executive branch

Administrative divisions: 12 wiloyatlar (singular -

wiloyat), 1 autonomous republic (respublikasi), and 1

city (shahri); Andijon Wiloyati, Bukhoro Wiloyati,

Farghona Wiloyati, Jizzakh Wiloyati, Khorazm Wiloyati

(Urganch), Namangan Wiloyati, Nawoiy Wiloyati,

Qashqadaryo Wiloyati (Qarshi), Qoraqalpoghiston (Nukus),

Samarqand Wiloyati, Sirdaryo Wiloyati (Guliston),

Surkhondaryo Wiloyati (Termiz), Toshkent Shahri,

Toshkent Wiloyati.

Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan

The highest representative body of the state is the Oliy

Majlis. Uzbekistan's Supreme Assembly. This body

Exercises legislative powers.

The Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan shall

consist of deputies, elected by territorial

constituencies on a multi-Party basis for a term of five

years.

Oliy Majlis adopt and amend the Constitution and laws of

Republic of Uzbekistan, legislatively regulate customs,

currency and credit systems, problems of the

administrative - territorial structure, and alteration

of frontiers of the Republic of Uzbekistan and approve

of the state's budget.

Oliy Majlis nominates elections to Oliy Majlis of

Republic of Uzbekistan and local representative bodies,

elect of the Constitutional Court, Supreme Court, Higher

Arbitration Court of the Republic of Uzbekistan,

ratifies of the decrees of the President on the

appointment and removal of the higher officials of

country, ratifies a modification of organs of state

management, ratifies the international treaties and

agreements and realizes other activity.

The right to initiate legislation in the Oliy Majlis of

the Republic of Uzbekistan is vested in the President of

the Republic of Uzbekistan, the Republic of

Karakalpakistan through the highest body of state

authority, the deputies of the Oliy Majlis of the

Republic of Uzbekistan, the Cabinet of Ministers of the

Republic of Uzbekistan, the Constitutional Court, the

Supreme Court, the Higher Arbitration Court and the

Prosecutor General of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

The Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan shall pass

laws, decisions and other acts. Any law shall be adopted

when it is passed by a majority of the total voting

power of the deputies of the Oliy Majlis.

Promulgation of the laws and other normative acts shall

be a compulsory condition for their enforcement.

The President of the Republic of Uzbekistan

The President of the Republic of Uzbekistan is the head

of state and the executive authority in the Republic of

Uzbekistan. He is also a Chairman of the Cabinet of

Ministers and elected for a five-year term.

The President of the Republic of Uzbekistan shall:

Form the administration and lead it, ensure

interaction between the highest bodies of state

authority and administration, set up and dissolve

ministries, state committees and other bodies of

administration of the Republic of Uzbekistan;

Appoint and dismiss the Prime Minister, his First

Deputy, the Deputy Prime Ministers, the members of the

Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Uzbekistan,

the Procurator General of the Republic of Uzbekistan

and his Deputies;

Present to the Oliy Majlis of the Republic of

Uzbekistan his nominees for the posts of Chairman and

members of the Constitutional Court, the Supreme

Court, and the Higher Economic Court, as well as the

Chairman of the Board of the Central Bank of the

Republic of Uzbekistan, and the Chairman of the State

Committee for the Protection of Nature of the Republic

of Uzbekistan;

Appoint and dismiss judges of regional, district, city

and arbitration courts;

Sign the laws of the Republic of Uzbekistan;

Serve as the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of

the Republic and is empowered to appoint and dismiss

the high command of the Armed Forces and also to

confer top military ranks;

Establish the national security and state control

services, appoint and dismiss their heads, and

exercise other powers vested in him.

The President of the Republic of Uzbekistan issues

decrees, enactments and ordinances binding on the entire

territory of the Republic on the basis of and for

enforcement of the Constitution and the laws of the

Republic of Uzbekistan.

Cabinet of Ministers

The Cabinet of Ministers is appointed by the President

of the Republic of Uzbekistan and approved by the Oliy

Majlis. Karakalpakistan head of government is an ex

officio member of the Cabinet of Ministers.

The Cabinet of Ministers issues enactments and

ordinances in accordance with the current legislation.

This is binding on all bodies of administration,

enterprises, institutions, organizations, officials and

citizens throughout the Republic of Uzbekistan.

Judicial Authority in the Republic of Uzbekistan

The judicial system in the Republic of Uzbekistan

consists of the Constitutional Court of the Republic,

the Supreme Court, the Higher Economic Court of the

Republic of Uzbekistan, along with the Supreme Court,

and the Economic Court of the Republic of

Karakalpakistan. These courts' judges have been elected

for a term of five years. The judicial branch also

includes regional, district, town, city, Tashkent city

courts and arbitration courts appointed for a term of

five years.

The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Uzbekistan

hears cases relating to the Constitutionality of acts

passed by the legislative and executive branches.

The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Uzbekistan

judges the constitutionality of the laws of the Republic

of Uzbekistan and other acts passed by the Oliy Majlis

of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the decrees issued by the

President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the enactments

of the government and the ordinances of local

authorities, as well as obligations of the Republic of

Uzbekistan under inter-state treaties and other

documents; Confirm the constitutionality of the

Constitution and laws of the Republic of Karakalpakstan

to the Constitution and laws of the Republic of

Uzbekistan; Interpret the Constitution and the laws of

the Republic of Uzbekistan.

The Supreme Court of the Republic of Uzbekistan is the

highest judicial body of civil, criminal and

administrative law. The rulings of the Supreme Court are

final and binding throughout the Republic of Uzbekistan.

The Supreme Court of the Republic of Uzbekistan has the

right to supervise the administration of justice by the

Supreme Court of the Republic of Karakalpakistan, as

well as by regional, city, town and district courts.

International organization participation: AsDB, CCC,

CIS, EAPC, EBRD, ECE, ECO, ESCAP, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO,

ICRM, IDA, IFC, IFRCS, ILO, IMF, Intelsat, Interpol,

IOC, ISO, ITU, NAM, OIC, OPCW, OSCE, PFP, UN, UNCTAD,

UNESCO, UNIDO, UPU, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WToO, WTrO

(observer).

Head of the State (As of March, 2001)

President - Islam A. Karimov

Islam Karimov Biography

Cabinet members of the Republic of Uzbekistan

Prime MinisterOtkir Sultonov

Deputy Prime MinisterRustam Azimov

Deputy Prime MinisterValeriy Otaev

Deputy Prime MinisterDilbar Guliamova

Deputy Prime MinisterMirabror Usmanov

Deputy Prime MinisterAnatoliy Isaev

Deputy Prime MinisterHamidullah Karamatov

Deputy Prime MinisterTurop Holtoev

Deputy Prime MinisterRustam Yunusov

Minister of Foreign AffairsAbdulaziz Kamilov

Minister of Foreign Economic RelationsElyor Ganiev

Minister of Internal AffairsZokirjon Almatov

Minister of Higher & Secondary Specialized

EducationSaidakhror Ghulomov

Minister of HealthFeruz Nazirov

Minister of CultureHairullah Jurayev

Minister of EducationRisboy Juraev

Minister of DefenseKodir Ghulomov

Minister of LaborShavkatbek Ibragimov

Minister of FinanceMamarizoh Nurmuradov

Minister of Energy & ElectricityIrgash Shoismatov

Minister of JusticeAbdusamat Polvon-Zoda

Minister of Emergency SituationsBahodir Kasymov

Minister of social maintenanceOkiljon Obidov

Chairman of the National Security Service Rustam

Inoyatov

Chairman of the Constitutional CourtBahodir

Eshonov

Chairman of the Supreme CourtUbaydulla Mingboev

Chairman of the State Committee for

CustomsSaid-Azim Oripov

Chairman of the State Taxation Committee Botir

Hojaev

Chairman of the State Geology & Mineral Resources

CommitteeNurmuhammad Ahmedov

Chairman of the State Committee for architecture &

construction Azamat Tohtaev

Chairman of the National Bank for Foreign Economic

ActivityZainutdin Mirhojaev

Chairman of the State Central BankFayzulla

Mullajonov
Detailed information on Uzbekistan provinces

Economic Overview:

Uzbekistan is a dry, landlocked country of which 10%

consists of intensely cultivated, irrigated river

valleys. More than 60% of its population lives in

densely populated rural communities. Uzbekistan is now

the world's third largest cotton exporter, a large