Suspicions that Islamist extremists are regrouping in the valley
JUST as Uzbekistan has once again become a transit route for supplies to American and NATO forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, two violent incidents have suggested the country itself may be susceptible to Islamist militants. In late May the tightly controlled official press reported a suicide-bombing in Andijan. It was said to have killed a policeman and the bomber. This followed a reported attack by militants on a border post in the city of Khanabad. Details are sketchy; there are no independent media in the country.
In the past, Islamist groups would claim such attacks, and according to a Russian news agency they did again this time. But some used to suspect that the government itself was creating an alleged Islamist threat that would justify repression. And one side-effect of America’s attack on the Taliban in 2001 was the nearly complete destruction of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a small but tough group of militants whose members included citizens of several ex-Soviet republics as well as Uighurs from the restive western Muslim region of Xinjiang in China. Uzbekistan’s dictator, Islam Karimov, demanded that America include IMU auxiliaries in Afghanistan among its targets, in exchange for access to bases in his country. The IMU’s charismatic commander, Juma Namangani, was killed in Afghanistan in 2001 along with most of his fighters. The survivors scattered to the four winds (see article).
Now, Uzbekistan is back in focus, because of America’s and NATO’s need to find new supply routes into Afghanistan. The Khyber Pass from Pakistan is often closed because of militant attacks. And this year Kyrgyzstan’s government has threatened to block NATO’s access to its Manas airbase. Now Uzbekistan’s airport in Navoi, as well as rail and road links, are to be used for the transit of what America says are non-lethal goods. This may make the country a bigger target for insurgents.
The attacks have also raised fears of increased tensions in the heavily populated, largely agricultural Fergana Valley that straddles Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Andijan, one of the valley’s biggest cities, was the site of a massacre by Uzbek troops in 2005. America’s calls for an independent investigation of the incident led to its eviction from the airbase in Karshi, which it had used for operations in Afghanistan from 2001.
Mr Karimov, whose regime has been in power since independence from the Soviet Union, has presided over an economy that is still largely closed and state-controlled. In agriculture, for example, the government tells farmers what crops they must grow and instructs them to sell the harvest back to the state for much less than the world market price.
Yet since last autumn many Uzbek farmers have lost land they had worked for years. Ostensibly to rationalise agricultural production, Mr Karimov decreed in October that landholdings should be consolidated. This gave local governors—the hakims, who often rule with an iron fist—a pretext to seize land and pass it on to cronies or those wealthy enough to offer bribes. In the past decade many farmers had signed 49-year leases, as Soviet-era collective farms were dismantled.
This land grab left many farmers landless, jobless and desperately poor. Some have gone back to work what was once their land. Yet there was already a vast surplus of workers, because of a bulge in the working-age population. Many Uzbeks have sought jobs in Kazakhstan and Russia but opportunities have been limited of late by the global slowdown. So remittances, the lifeblood of many families and a big source of income for the country, have fallen sharply. If Islamist extremists are regrouping in the Fergana Valley, they have plenty of discontent to prey on.