Creating Islamism

In Kommersant Daily, Leonid Gankin describes how Islamism came to Uzbekistan:

The population of Uzbekistan was rather religious during the Soviet rule, in the Fergana Valley especially. That’s why any protest movement there was inevitably to take on an Islamic slant, which in fact happened. When the country found itself in turmoil during the years of the USSR’s collapse, the people of the Fergana Valley stood up for Islamic slogans. Today these slogans can amaze with their mildness. For instance, the locals demanded that Friday (the time when they went to mosque) be made a day off. They also wanted cattle be slaughtered in keeping with Muslim rules so as the faithful Muslims could buy meat at state-run shops. At that time, the meat of the animals slaughtered in the way their region kept it was sold only at markets, and they could not afford buying it there.

Islam Karimov took these innocent demands as a personal challenge. The protests were brutally suppressed. It is then that Islamites emerged in the Fergana Valley, took up arms and hid in the mountains. During the civil war in Tajikistan they supported the Taji opposition, later left for Afghanistan and tried to penetrated into the territory of Uzbekistan from there. After the American intrusion into Afghanistan the Uzbek militants fought alongside the Talibs.

There also existed a secular, democratic opposition - yet this was ruthlessly crushed in the first year of Uzbekistan's independence. "Opposition leaders were murdered in dark gateways, thrown into prisons and tortured. Nowadays those of them who managed to escaped, live out their days abroad," the article's author notes. So if an an election were held now, it's fairly clear that, in the absence of any other alternatives to Karimov's repressive regime, Islamists would win a rather large number of votes:

This alternative is by no means pleasant, and the way-out is not clear at all. Except the US intervenes and makes Islam Karimov embark on the path of democracy. But this may happen only if Washington understands that the strategic alliance with the dictator is not only immoral but it is also myopic, since there is no certainty what this regime can do next, while geopolitical consequences of its overthrown may be disastrous. But the current administration fixed all its attention on the war on terrorism and the energy security and will not want to lose an important ally. Thus, one should not lay much hope on Washington, let alone Moscow.