Uzbek violence continues; 23 killed in latest attacks

By Seattle Times news services

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The eruption of Islamic militant violence in Uzbekistan, where hundreds of U.S. troops were based during the conflict in neighboring Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks, is troubling for the U.S. because it has cultivated the country's repressive leader as a key ally in the war on terrorism, despite concerns over his government's human-rights record.

Yesterday's confrontations came as Uzbek police swept Tashkent seeking suspects in bombings and shootings that killed 19 people Sunday and Monday. Officers cornered a group of armed militants yesterday near the home of Uzbek President Islam Karimov.

The Associated Press reported two of the militants jumped out of a car and blew themselves up, killing three police officers and injuring five. A third bomber killed herself after police shot her, AP reported.

Police then surrounded a nearby apartment building where 17 suspected militants were hiding. After a siege that lasted several hours, the militants inside the building detonated explosives and killed themselves, according to a statement from the Uzbek Interior Ministry read on Uzbek state TV.

	Uzbek President Islam Karimov

This week's violence is the first major wave of attacks to hit Uzbekistan since 1999, when a series of bombings in Tashkent killed 19 people and wounded 100. Uzbek authorities said those attacks were an assassination attempt on Karimov and blamed the bombings on the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or IMU, a group the U.S. says has ties to al-Qaida.

The IMU, whose name means Party of Liberation, espouses fundamentalist Islamic ideas and the establishment of a caliphate in Central Asia based on Islamic law. Monday, the group denied responsibility for the violence in Uzbekistan.

The Karimov government allows the U.S. to use an Uzbek air base for its Afghan operations. Uzbekistan, meanwhile, is expecting $50 million in aid and military assistance from the U.S. in April.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday phoned Uzbek Foreign Minister Sadyk Safayev and offered to lend Uzbekistan assistance as it investigates the attacks. Powell's spokesman, Richard Boucher, stressed that the IMU has become a threat across Central Asia.

The IMU has been active in Central Asia since 1997, reportedly establishing ties with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and later securing financial backing from al-Qaida. Using the mountains of neighboring Tajikistan as its base, the group kidnapped tourists and staged raids into Uzbekistan that targeted police and Uzbek troops.

The U.S. attacks on Taliban and al-Qaida forces in Afghanistan forced IMU members into hiding; many of them sought refuge in tribal areas in Pakistan along the Afghan border. The IMU was largely destroyed during the U.S. war in Afghanistan in 2001, with its military commander, Juma Namangani, killed in a bomb strike.

The group's survivors, including political leader Tahir Yuldash, integrated fully into al-Qaida and fled to the tribal areas on the Afghan-Pakistan border, according to former members and regional officials. Yuldash was reported to be among the militants besieged by Pakistani troops in South Waziristan earlier this month, but his whereabouts remain unconfirmed.

Uzbek authorities quickly blamed this week's attacks on a different Islamic radical group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, though Karimov's government has yet to describe what evidence it has.

The group's spokesman, Imran Waheed, said from London that Karimov was using them to deflect international criticism of his government's human-rights abuses. "These bombings are very convenient for the Uzbek government as a diversionary tactic," Waheed told The Associated Press.

Central Asian affairs experts and human-rights groups say that while Hizb ut-Tahrir supports the establishment of an Islamic state across Central Asia, it has never been linked to terrorist acts in the past and preaches nonviolence.

"The destructive actions have been committed by dark forces who dislike the independence of our country and peaceful life of our people," Karimov said on state television, the Russian news agency Tass reported. "The forces wanted to break peace, destroy the situation and seed panic and fear in our people's hearts."

A new report issued by New York-based Human Rights Watch accuses Karimov's government of illegally jailing thousands of Muslim dissidents — many of them members of Hizb ut-Tahrir — solely because they practice faith outside state-run mosques and madrassas (religious schools).

Many of those jailed have been tortured, and Human Rights Watch said it had documented the torture deaths of at least 10 dissidents over a five-year period.

Karimov's human-rights record has been cited as one of the worst in the world, and analysts say the Bush administration could use more of its influence to promote democracy there.

"The perception in Uzbekistan was that when the U.S. military moved in, it was going to provide more stability from the terrorists and force the Uzbek government to protect human rights. But it hasn't done either of those things," said Pauline Jones Luong, a Central Asia specialist at Yale University.

Compiled from the Chicago Tribune, The Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Reuters reports.

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