Uzbek unrest shows Islamist rise

The Uzbek attacks may be the result of a "cross-pollination" of Islamic groups, says Rashid. "The big debate has been, especially in Hizb-ut-Tahrir, whether to use violence or not," he says. "This could be a splinter group that decided to go down the path of violence, or part of the IMU underground."

"The repression is enormous in Uzbekistan, and by it the government has driven many people into the arms of the extremists," says Marina Pikulina, an independent political researcher in Tashkent.

"When the militants seemed to target only policemen, I think they gained some sympathy," says Ms. Pikulina. "But not after it was clear they also killed randomly. People are very afraid now to get caught up between the government crackdown and the militants."

One tale making the rounds points to deep despair: A woman supposedly blew herself up Monday morning at the Chorsu market "with her 6-year-old son" says Pikulina.

"People say - and this is our only source of information, since the government does not tell us what happened - that this women's husband was accused of being a member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir and put into prison," Pikulina adds. "This is why the woman went to Afghanistan into a training camp and now killed herself. This was the action of a desperate woman, who did not see a way out."

The first explosion took place Sunday evening in the town of Bukhara, when 10 people were killed in an apparent bomb-making house. Two more attacks overnight hit police, killing three. Then Monday morning two women suicide bombers struck in Tashkent. Other attacks Tuesday morning included two suicide bombers who detonated explosive belts at a police checkpoint. Nearby, police shot a black-clad woman in the knees, as she approached a bus. She then detonated a bomb. Three accomplices escaped to the Soviet apartment block - one of four sites where gun battles reportedly took place that day.

The attacks could be the work of IMU sleeper cells that are believed to have been in place since 2000, and whose members may have been able to correspond with Yuldashev's core IMU group in Pakistan's border areas, says Makarenko.

The spike in violence is "good timing for the IMU to say, 'You are still vulnerable,' " says Makarenko, even as the US is getting "somewhat overconfident" by conducting numerous raids along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and has officially enlisted Pakistani help that officials say nearly netted the IMU chief last week.

"Yuldashev has been very busy the last couple years, building an infrastructure," says Makarenko. A more radical, ideological IMU is growing from "all the [Al Qaeda and Taliban] remnants scattered around the [Afghan-Pakistan] border, willing to latch onto anything."

With the US presence and the IMU's long-standing effort to topple Karimov, Uzbekistan was a logical target. "I think [IMU chiefs] said: 'We've built ourselves to an extent that we can afford to do this, and let's do it where they don't expect it,' " Makarenko adds. "Bombs going off in Afghanistan, who cares? But in Uzbekistan, you win global attention."

Rebels also win revenge against a leader who has not been shy about confronting believers. Karimov has never withdrawn his 1998 statement to parliament that Islamic extremists "must be shot in the head," and that "if necessary, I'll shoot them myself."

Allison Gill, a Central Asia researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch - which released on Tuesday a 300-page report detailing abuses in Uzbekistan - says rights campaigners fear an intensification of the crackdown on the devout.

"According to our knowledge, there has been hardly any serious investigation done after [these latest] attacks," says Ms. Gill. "This makes it very easy for prosecutors to manipulate evidence against the accused, which happens frequently in Uzbekistan."

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