Amid reforms, Muslims still under fire in Fergana Valley

But deputy foreign minister Sadiq Safaev says the government has done more than just use "repressive measures." He notes that 25,000 prisoners were released in an amnesty last year. Among them, for the first time, were some 860 religious and political cases. The government also spends money on education and other projects.

"If you take into account that Uzbekistan avoided civil war, millions of refugees, and heavy bloodshed, I think we might say [government policy] was mainly successful," Mr. Safaev says.

"As the world changed [after Sept. 11], the strategy must also change," Safaev says, to include "more aggressive reform ... and economic and political openness." Uzbekistan has recently been praised for a slight relaxation of its harsh policies.

These are just initial steps, however. "From their point of view, what they are doing works," says Matilda Bogner, head of the Tashkent office of the New York-based Human Rights Watch. "There is a point at which you can't intimidate a person any further," says Bogner. "If they think they are going to die, what's the point of keeping quiet?"

Widespread abuses have not kept the US from forming an alliance, though senior officials have testified before Congress that continued Uzbek repression could breed more terrorism in the future.

"The US could have more leverage, but those who make those decisions [in Washington] tend to sympathize with the Uzbek government, when it claims radical Islam needs to be suppressed," says John Schoeberlein, director of the Program on Central Asia and the Caucasus at Harvard University.

Ironically, the Islamist opposition was brought to prominence by vigilantes that sought order in the first lawless years of independence. The group "Adolat," or "justice" – led by Tohir Yuldashev, the political leader of the IMU – called for an Islamic revolution.

"At the beginning, there were 200 members, and Uzbek TV reported on how well Adolat was fighting crime," says Husniddin Nazarov, the son of a well-known cleric Abidkhan Nazarov, who disappeared several years ago. "They caught thieves and robbers and, it's true, they tortured and punished them brutally."

The vigilante work coincided with an influx of radical Islamic missionaries, arriving in Central Asia with suitcases of money and strict Wahhabi ideologies from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Unfettered, these "teachers" tapped into the post-USSR thirst for religion, and filled the gap with a new strain of Islam rarely seen before in Central Asia. Mosques and madrassahs sprang up.

The crackdown began in early 1992, after Karimov confronted protesters who had occupied a government building in Namangan. Karimov was visibly shaken by the crowd, returned to Tashkent, and ordered Adolat leaders arrested. Mr. Yuldashev and Juma Namangani – later the IMU military chief – fled to Tajikistan.

They were joined in exile by more and more young Uzbeks fleeing crackdowns, especially after six bombs in the capital Tashkent in February 1999 prompted a no-holds-barred wave of arrests.

"People are just so afraid, and morale is so low," says Ahmad Abdulaev, a human rights activist in Namangan. Such despair, experts say, coupled with the sorrow of families like Najmiddinov's, only broadens the appeal of those who preach for an Islamic utopia.

"The government should open schools for people who want to learn Islam. And there should be, in a word, democracy," says Yusuf, the former mufti. "The government has the right to watch over this process, to make sure there is no teaching of terrorism. But let them study.... It will take a long time to recover, but it also depends on if clerics are given the freedom to do it."

Page: 1 | 2