Uzbek leader in intensive care with brain hemorrhage
ALMATY (Reuters) – Authoritarian Uzbek leader Islam Karimov, whose Central Asian country is a stage for the strategic rivalry between Russia, China and the West, is in stable condition in an intensive care ward after suffering a brain hemorrhage on Saturday, his daughter said.
Karimov, 78, who has run Uzbekistan since it was a Soviet republic and wields sweeping powers, has no obvious successor, a situation characteristic of the volatile Central Asia region that is still largely run by former Communist apparatchiks.
The absence of a strong political opposition or free media means any eventual transition of power is likely to be decided within a close circle of Karimov’s family and top officials.
“At the moment, it is too early to make any forecasts about his condition in the future,” his younger daughter, Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva, wrote on her Instagram page on Monday. “I will be grateful to everyone who will support my father with prayers.”
The government of Central Asia’s most populous country, with reserves of oil, gas and gold, said on Sunday that Karimov was undergoing hospital treatment, but gave no details.
A failure to reach consensus on a transition could destabilize the mostly Muslim nation of 32 million, long targeted by Islamist militants and strategically located north of Afghanistan, in the resource-rich region where Russia, China and the West vie for influence.
Since Uzbekistan became independent with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Karimov has – with some success – courted the West, Russia and China, maintaining political and economic links with all.
He has been criticized by groups and some governments over his human rights record, but argues that the country is at risk of becoming a conduit for Islamist militants moving from Afghanistan to Russia and western Europe. The Uzbek government has accused Islamists of being behind protests in the city of Andijan, where police and security forces fired into a crowd in 2005, killing 187 people according to official reports.
Karimov has no sons who might be regarded as heirs-apparent in the patriarchal culture. His elder daughter, Gulnara, has not appeared in public since several media reports in 2014 said she had been placed under house arrest. Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva is Uzbekistan’s ambassador to Paris-based UNESCO.
Among Uzbekistan’s ex-Soviet neighbors, only Turkmenistan, a more wealthy gas exporter with a much smaller population, saw a relatively smooth transition when Soviet-era leader Saparmurat Niyazov died in 2006. Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, then deputy prime minister, took over.
Poorer Kyrgyzstan, on the other hand, has gone through two violent revolutions accompanied by ethnic clashes. Another neighbor, Tajikistan, went through a devastating civil war in the 1990s after Soviet institutions crumbled.
Some of those who fought against the Tajik government at the time were members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a group that has been outlawed at home and pledged allegiance first to the Taliban, and then to Islamic State.