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History and Government
History: The territory of modern-day Uzbekistan and its close neighbours have seen many empires rise and fall. The Sogdians, the Macedonians, the Huns, the Mongolians, the Seljuks, the Timurids and the Khanates of Samarkand, Bukhara Khiva and Khorezm all held sway here at one time or another. Central Asia really came of age with the development of the Silk Road from China to the West. Samarkand and Bukhara lay astride this, the most valuable trading route of its day. The riches that it brought were used to build fabulous mosques and madrassars, most of which were destroyed by the Mongol hordes in the 13th century. Much of the damage was repaired and new cities were built by Timur the Lame in the 14th century. Timur conquered all before him and, at its height, his empire stretched from Moscow and Baghdad and as far west as Ankara in Turkey.
After his death, his empire crumbled – although his grandson, Babur, went on to found the Moghul Dynasty in India – and Central Asia was split into warring Khanates. The Russians had had their eyes on the lands over their southern border since Peter the Great sent his first military mission to Khiva in 1717. It was to be another 150 years before they started to make any considerable headway. In 1865, General Kaufmann took Tashkent and signed agreements with the Khans. There were Russian client Khans in Khiva until 1920. The Bolsheviks were resisted in Central Asia by bands known as Basmachi until the 1930s; they were finally suppressed and Moscow took control.
The history of Central Asia under Soviet rule is one of exploitation. Uzbekistan was used, as it had been under the tsars, as a place of internal exile. Stalin, fearing the power of the minorities in the Soviet Union, transported thousands of people in cattle cars into Uzbekistan and the surrounding republics. These included Germans, Koreans, Meshketi Turks, Chechens and Tatars. Part of the plan was to dilute the aboriginal populace and so weaken it. Another element of this plan was to create economies that could not function without Russia so, for instance, Uzbekistan was turned into a cotton monoculture and most of the cotton it produced was processed north of the Urals, in Russia and Ukraine. Uzbekistan assumed independence in 1991 upon the break up of the Soviet Union. Since then, the ex-communist People’s Democratic Party of Uzbekistan, in conjunction with allied smaller parties and under the undisputed leadership of Islam Karimov, have maintained a firm grip on power.
Karimov first came to power in 1989 and was elected president of the independent state in 1991. Since then he has been re-elected more than once – most recently in January 2000 – with overwhelming majorities and against nominal opposition. In April 2002, Karimov organised a referendum to extend the length of his current term from five to eight years. Domestic opposition is divided between secular democratic forces and Islamic parties. Erk (Freedom), Birlik (Democracy) and a third organisation, Adolat (Justice), comprising the secular opposition, have combined in the Democratic Opposition Co-ordinating Council. The most powerful Islamic forces are those associated with the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP), which has made considerable political headway in other former Soviet Central Asian republics.
The IRP is presently banned; the secular democratic parties find themselves banned more often than not. Only the PDPU and the allied Progress of the Fatherland party were allowed to contest the most recent election in 1995. Karimov maintains that the economy should take precedence over political development and only when the economy is strong enough will political plurality be allowed. This has been made more difficult by the events in neighbouring Tajikistan, where heavy fighting has been under way for much of the 1990s and Uzbek peacekeepers were engaged. The government also has been worried about occasional outbreaks of inter-ethnic violence in the Fergana valley region.
The government faces armed opposition from the militants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which has waged a campaign against the government for most of the last decade. The IMU has been formally classified as a ‘terrorist’ organisation by the USA, mainly in order to secure the Uzbek government’s support for its Afghan war (see below). For that reason, the West has been largely content to ignore growing domestic repression and the capriciousness of the Karimov regime.
Abroad, Uzbekistan’s most important bilateral relation is with Russia. There are also growing links with Turkey and Japan. But it is the USA that has made the greatest inroads in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. Uzebekistan had two key assets to offer – a shared border with Afghanistan and a close relationship with elements of the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance, specifically the ethnic Uzbek forces of General Dostam. Both proved valuable in the successful campaign to overthrow the Taleban regime and the Americans have now established a relatively small but permanent presence in the country.
Government: Under the 1992 constitution, the supreme legislative body is the 250-seat Oly Majlis. Executive power rests with the elected president. The day-to-day running of the country is carried out by the Cabinet of Ministers, which answers to the president, who is also Head of State.
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