Uzbekistan in 1993

A republic of Central Asia, Uzbekistan borders the Aral Sea to the north, Kazakhstan to the north and west, Turkmenistan to the southwest, Afghanistan to the south, and Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to the east. Area: 447,400 sq km (172,700 sq mi). Pop. (1993 est.): 21,901,000. Cap.: Tashkent (Uzbek: Toshkent). Monetary unit: Russian ruble (the monetary systems of Uzbekistan and Russia were unified on Sept. 17, 1993), with (Oct. 4, 1993) a free rate of 1,165 rubles to U.S. $1 (1,765 rubles = £ 1 sterling). President in 1993, Islam Karimov; prime minister from January 8, Abdulhashim Mutalov.

Political power in 1993 remained firmly in the hands of Pres. Islam Karimov and his People’s Democratic Party, the name adopted by the former Communist Party of Uzbekistan. The crackdown on all political opposition, begun in 1992, continued throughout 1993; this included a ban on all opposition publications. Foreign criticism of the government’s human rights record was ignored or rebuffed.

The Uzbek nationalist Birlik (Unity) Movement, the most influential opposition group, had its activities banned for the first three months of the year while alleged legal violations by its members were investigated by the state prosecutor. Both Birlik and the Erk (Freedom) Party were effectively prevented from registering as political parties and hence from functioning legally.

The Uzbek opposition also faced harassment in the form of physical assaults and arrests on trumped-up charges of insulting the president or seeking to overthrow the constitutional order. Some of the oppositionists who were put on trial in 1993 were granted amnesty after sentencing, but six who were accused of having sought to organize an alternate parliament under the name Melli Majlis (Popular Assembly) were sentenced to terms of 10-15 years in labour camps. Physical intimidation was also used against former vice president Shukrulla Mirsaidov, who had clashed with Karimov over economic reform.

Karimov rejected rapid introduction of a market economy as a danger to the country’s stability. In 1993 the government began to take tentative steps toward privatization of some state assets, but the president insisted that the pace would have to be slow in order to avoid potentially explosive social dislocation. He had a certain amount of justification for his concerns, as the severe social problems, including widespread unemployment, that accumulated in Uzbekistan in the last years of Soviet rule remained unsolved. During 1993 government officials announced that Uzbekistan was considering introducing its own currency; in September, however, it opted for the economic union and inclusion in a new ruble zone.

To prevent the penetration into Uzbekistan of Islamic fundamentalism from Tajikistan, or from Afghanistan via Tajikistan, Karimov became the most vocal supporter of Commonwealth of Independent States intervention in the Tajik civil war. He sent his new army to help Tajikistan’s government put down the Islamic resistance and to attempt to seal the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border to Tajik opposition groups armed and trained by Afghan fundamentalists. On October 12 a law reinstating the Latin alphabet for the Uzbek language went into effect.

This updates the article Uzbekistan.

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country in Central Asia. It lies mainly between two major rivers, the Syr Darya (ancient Jaxartes River) to the northeast and the Amu Darya (ancient Oxus River) to the southwest, though they only partly form its boundaries. Uzbekistan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest and north, Kyrgyzstan...
Uzbekistan in 1993
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