BACKGROUND: Armed opposition groups advocating violence to achieve their political goals emerged in Uzbekistan around the mid-1990s. Among them, the most organized one was the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a group mainly based in the Ferghana Valley seeking the overthrow of the Uzbek government and the establishment of a fundamentalist Islamic state. It has since been implicated in a variety of violent activities against the Uzbek security forces, including a series of bombings in Tashkent in 1999. While pursuing the same objective as part of its plan to create an Islamic caliphate consisting of all the Central Asian states and the Arab Middle Eastern countries, the Hizb-ut-Tahrir (Liberation Party) has rejected violence for toppling the Uzbek government. This position, which makes it distinct from the IMU and other armed Central Asian opposition groups, encouraged the Tajik government in 2002 to consider legalizing its branch in Tajikistan. Its aim was to create an unarmed alternative to the underground armed groups as a means to curb their growth. Despite this reality, the Uzbek government has indiscriminately suppressed both the IMU and the Hizb-ut-Tahrir since the 1990s. In particular, the harsh treatment of the latter’s members and sympathizers have drawn strong protest on the part of international human rights groups.

IMPLICATIONS: The Uzbek government has yet to produce any concrete evidence to back its blaming the Hizb-ut-Tahrir for the terrorist acts. Unless the group has secretly changed its policy of non-violence, there are no grounds to charge Hizb-ut-Tahrir with masterminding the recent wave of violence. Neither does the IMU\'s modus operandi entirely fit the recent violence. The bombing of Tashkent’s bazaar resulting in the deaths of scores of Uzbek civilians is not consistent with the group’s past violent activities, which mainly targeted Uzbek security forces and government officials. The use of suicide bombers is also uncharacteristic of the IMU, and represents the first time this tactic has been used in Central Asia. Furthermore, the suppression of the IMU in Uzbekistan and its heavy losses in Afghanistan where it allegedly fights on the side of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda has severely weakened the group and restricted its operation inside Uzbekistan. If it indeed carried out the mentioned terrorist acts, it could have been an act of revenge for the reported recent killing of one of its leaders in Pakistan’s South Waziristan region where the Taliban and al-Qaeda have been operating since 2001. In late March the Pakistani forces killed and arrested scores of those groups’ members in their effort to uproot them from their country. Despite the Uzbek government’s accusation, it is not yet clear which group was behind the terrorist acts. Such reality raises the possibility of the involvement of non-regional terrorist groups in the mentioned incidents on behalf of or in cooperation with an Uzbek group or as an independent move to expand the war in Afghanistan and Iraq to a pro-American country (Uzbekistan), for instance. The tragic events in Tashkent and Bukhara provided an opportunity for the Uzbek government to arrest many political opponents regardless of their type of activities and political views particularly those suspected of backing the Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Such mass arrests of opponents most of whom have not advocated violence will unlikely help the government curb political violence and terrorist activities perpetrated by those who subscribe to violent political ideologies. However, they could alienate many Uzbeks dissatisfied with the state of affairs, i.e., unemployment, poverty, lowering of the living standards, rampant government corruption and the growing authoritarianism. Against a background of political repression, their growing dissatisfaction will certainly provide a suitable ground for the expansion of violent political ideologies and the growth of those groups promoting them as the only option to achieve the desired political, economic and social changes.

CONCLUSIONS: No matter who planned and implemented the attacks, the failures of the Uzbek security forces have been exposed. Terrorism tends to flourish in spaces where popular dissatisfaction with the government has no possible political outlet. In Uzbekistan, this dissatisfaction is growing in tandem with the Karimov regime\'s iron-fisted approach to any form of opposition. Added to the frustrations of poverty, there is a very real risk of radicalizing non-violent groups who feel that they have no other options. By lumping Hizb-ut-Tahrir in with the IMU and Al Qaeda without any evidence, and by treating them with the same brutal methods, Tashkent may be making more enemies than it is eliminating. A more flexible policy towards dissent and allowing more avenues for open expression could help the Uzbek government prevent the expansion of political violence and terrorism. The current strategy, cloaked in the rhetoric of \"fighting terrorism\" amounts to little more than the suppression of all forms of political opposition. Recent violence in Bukhara and Tashkent suggest that this strategy is failing, and raise the question whether an even more draconian approach would only exacerbate the problem.

AUTHOR BIO: Dr. Hooman Peimani works as an independent consultant with international organizations in Geneva and does research in International Relations.