Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov, who diplomatic sources said on Friday had died aged 78 after suffering a stroke, saw himself as the protector of his Central Asian nation against the threat of militant Islam. To his critics, he was a brutal dictator who used torture to stay in power.
Karimov, who steered his former Soviet republic to independence from Moscow in 1991, tellingly chose Tamerlane, the 14th century Central Asian ruler and conqueror with a penchant for mass murder, as Uzbekistan’s national hero.
Karimov brooked no dissent during his 27 years at the helm, stubbornly resisted pressure to reform the moribund Uzbek economy and jealously guarded his country’s independence against Russia and the West. In a typically feisty rebuff to Western calls to respect human rights, Karimov said in 2006: “Do not interfere in our affairs under the pretext of furthering freedom and democracy, Do not...tell us what to do, whom to befriend and how to orient ourselves.”
Under his rule, Uzbekistan, a country of 32 million people straddling the ancient Silk Road that links Asia and Europe, became one of the world’s most isolated and authoritarian nations.
Karimov regularly warned of the threat posed by militant Islamists to the stability of the Central Asian region, but his critics accused him of exaggerating the dangers to justify his crackdowns on political dissent. “Such people must be shot in the head,” he said of the Islamists in a speech to parliament in 1996. “If necessary, if you lack the resolve, I'll shoot them myself.”
Diplomatic danceUzbekistan’s relations with the United States and the European Union were frozen after his troops brutally suppressed a popular uprising in the eastern town of Andizhan in May 2005. Hundreds of civilians were killed, according to reports by witnesses and human rights groups.
Karimov shut down a U.S. military air base in Uzbekistan, established after the 9/11 attacks by al Qaeda on the United States. The West imposed a set of sanctions on Uzbekistan and slapped a visa ban on senior Uzbek officials, prompting Karimov to seek improved ties with Soviet-era overlord Russia. But as the West slowly softened its stance on Uzbekistan, a producer of cotton, gold and natural gas, Karimov provided a vital transit route for cargo supplies for the U.S.-led war in neighbouring Afghanistan. — Reuters
