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114 4 Uzbek Violence Uzbekistan at first glance appears politically stable. In contrast to the elite turmoil in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbek elites thus far have proven remarkably deferential to President Islam Karimov. When one investigates deeper, though, potential weaknesses in the Karimov state begin to emerge. I focus on two of these weaknesses: the increasingly tense relation between state and Islam in Uzbekistan and the looming challenge of Karimov’s aging Soviet-era political elite. At the local level, in cities and villages, Islamic civil society has already demonstrated an ability to mobilize populations to meet the many needs the central Uzbek state does not. This Islam-centered mobilization, though not oppositionist in nature, nevertheless exists largely outside the control of the central government. As such, it poses a threat to Uzbek autocratic rule. Uzbekistan’s aging political elite is also a challenge to Karimov’s continued hold on power. The united Soviet political elite Karimov inherited is an ever shrinking portion of the Uzbek population, and it remains unclear if the Uzbek president will be able to find ready recruits among younger generations who have been less acculturated into Soviet-style patronage politics. Since the early 1990s, however, Karimov has effectively limited direct challenges to his authority. The Uzbek political opposition enjoys no representation in the Uzbek parliament and with few exceptions has been driven out of the country or into Uzbek jails. Karimov himself has maintained his hold of the presidency through a mixture of carefully choreographed elections and referenda. He used a December 1991 ballot to change his formal title from Uzbek first secretary to McGlinch_pages.indd 114 8/2/11 3:45 PM Uzbek Violence 115 Uzbek president. He convened a referendum in February 1995 to extend his first term in office to 2000 rather than stand for election in 1996, as stipulated in the constitution. Karimov’s concern was not that he would not be reelected—he was with 90 percent of the vote—but rather constitutionally imposed term limits that potentially could force him from power after his second term in office. Karimov subsequently added more time to his presidential clock through a January 2002 referendum that, like the February 1995 ballot, added more years to the constitutionally stipulated five-year term. Predictably, in 2007, when Karimov had exhausted the extra two years in power he had won through the 2002 referendum, he dispensed with the constitution and ran for office again. As in 2000, Karimov won with 90 percent of the total vote. As far as any discontent or dissent from within Uzbekistan’s political elite in response to his machinations, there was not a peep. Just the opposite in fact. Karimov’s “challenger” in the January 2000 ballot, Abdulhasiz Dzhalov, informed the press after casting his own ballot: “I voted for stability, peace, our nation’s independence, for the development of Uzbekistan. . . . I voted for Karimov.”1 Such orchestrated stability is what our understanding of the perestroika legacy model would lead us to expect. Karimov, thanks to Gorbachev’s intervention to restore political order after Uzbekistan’s 1989 ethnic riots, entered into the post-Soviet period with a large proexecutive political elite. This large executive -oriented elite has enabled Karimov to maintain a loyal winning coalition while expanding the Uzbek state’s repressive capacity and his family’s own wealth. Gulnara Karimova, when not in Madrid serving as her father’s ambassador to Spain, applies her considerable wealth to bring international stars to Tashkent.2 For example, in return for one million dollars, the singer Sting accepted Karimova ’s invitation to perform at Tashkent’s opera hall in October 2009 and to accompany the president’s “tiara-wearing” daughter to a fashion show.3 The entertainer Julio Iglesias was Karimova’s escort to the fashion show the previous year, and at the opera the two performed a duet version of “Besame Mucho.”4 Karimova funded these indulgences—and her father abided them—through her control of Zeromax.5 According to Zeromax’s now defunct Web site, the company invested in “oil and gas, agriculture, textiles, construction, mining and logistics,” and its operating revenues for 2008 were three billion dollars. How much of these revenues directly accrued to Karimova is unclear. In May 2010 the Uzbek government shuttered Zeromax and assumed direct control over what had been the company’s most lucrative asset, Uzbekistan’s natural gas exports. Although Karimova may no longer have direct control of what was once Zeromax’s vast riches...

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