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Khaleej Times Online >> News >> NEWS MAKERS Islam Karimov (AFP) 14 May 2005 TASHKENT - Uzbek President Islam Karimov, whose rule is being challenged by protesters in the eastern city of Andijan, is a Communist-era strongman who has run a repressive regime in this impoverished former Soviet republic for more than a decade. Dour and round-faced, the 67-year-old Karimov is considered to be one of the most autocratic leaders in the former Soviet Central Asian region. In a country of 24 million people which gained independence after the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse, Karimov banned opposition parties from taking part in parliamentary election in December. The 67-year-old leader, an ally of Washington in the US-led war on terror who also enjoys unequivocal backing from Moscow, has succeeded in shutting down most independent media in a country where ”making offensive statements” about him leads to a prison term. Being found in possession of a simple tract of the outlawed Islamic Hizb ut-Tahrir, which seeks to create an Islamic state out of the Central Asian former Soviet republics, is also punishable with prison. The crackdown on radicals sparked the riots in Andijan, where around 50 people were killed after gunmen took over government buildings and the prison in protest of the trial of 23 alleged Islamic extremists. Karimov is regularly accused of cautioning torture and police brutality, which the New York-based Human Rights Watch says is widespread here. Critics say Karimov uses his crackdown on extremism to silence any opposition to his rule. The former head of the Uzbek Communist Party and president of the Soviet Republic, Karimov was first elected in 1991 in a vote that most observers slammed as being neither free nor fair. Karimov, a mechanical engineering and economy graduate, had his stay in office extended a 1995 referendum and was re-elected in 2000. The presidential term has since been extended again from five to seven years. This mainly Muslim state looked set to become a regional leader due to its size, population, resources and location, but under Karimov’s strongly secular leadership it has retained much of its Soviet legacy. Soviet-style policies have contributed to poverty in rural regions, especially in the Ferghana Valley where Andijan is located, where women and children labour in the fields picking Uzbekistan’s white gold, cotton. A secretive leader who rarely smiles in public, Karimov’s hardline policies have also created friction between Uzbekistan and neighbouring Central Asian states. In a bid to ward off extremists, Uzbekistan unilaterally mined its borders with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, causing the deaths of both Kyrgyz and Tajik civilians. The recent overthrow of regimes in Ukraine, Georgia and neighboring Kyrgyzstan is believed to have emboldened opposition to Karimov, but the leader recently said that he was not worried. “It should not be tolerated that one takes power using the excuse of democracy. Westerners must know that we are in the East, and that mentalities are different,” he said casting his ballot in the controversial December election. Karimov continues to provide US forces with a major airbase near the Afghan border granted for the US-led overthrow of Afghanistan’s Taleban leadership in 2001.
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