A LAND OF LITTLE HOPE.

ASIA; UZBEKISTAN

This article focuses on the author's experiences visiting Uzbekistan. I first seriously considered visiting Uzbekistan five years ago, while sitting on the balcony of a teahouse in the remote western Chinese city of Kashi. Few from outside Central Asia had seen these cities along the Silk Road leading to Uzbekistan, and for me Uzbekistan was a landscape of dreams. But getting there seemed impossible. A year later, jet-lagged and bleary-eyed, I tumbled off a plane in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent. I was now a reporter for a Canadian newspaper dispatched to cover the terrorist conflict against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Uzbek capital was nothing like I had imagined. Grey and dreary Soviet-style apartment blocks pierced the dusty skyline. Propaganda posters depicted Uzbekistan's president, Islam Karimov, often near statues and images of the newly rehabilitated medieval tyrant Timur the Lame, or Tamerlane. Not surprisingly, when I interviewed Uzbeks in 2001 about their government, their answers were clipped, wooden and invariably praised Karimov. There is a growing Islamist movement in Uzbekistan. But Karimov is as much to blame as anyone for its emergence. Traditional Islam in Central Asia is influenced by Sufism, a form of Islamic mysticism that urges tolerance of other religions and direct communication with God, without the intervention of mullahs or scholars. Instead of supporting Uzbekistan's indigenous Islamic revival, Karimov arrested hundreds of ordinary Muslims, closed mosques and religious schools, and labelled all pious Muslims opposed to his regime "Wahhabis," the name of the extremist Islamic movement originating in Saudi Arabia. On May 13, it appears this suppressed dissent finally boiled over. About 30 men in the eastern city of Andijon seized a police station and military garrison, before assaulting a local prison where they freed scores of inmates, including 23 local businessmen accused of Islamic extremism.