Islom Karimov’s political career started in a period of intense turmoil; within his first term he had been kidnapped by radical Islamists in Namangan,11 and had to prevent a civil war in Tajikistan from engulfing his country.12 Perhaps because of this he built a state dominated by an omnipresent concern for security.13 This was reflected through a massive security apparatus, constructed on the bones of the KGB and designed to root out all perceived threats to domestic stability.14 The economic and social security of the population was no less important to Mr. Karimov, who strongly resisted the ‘shock’ liberalization undertaken by neighbouring republics after seeing the poverty and unemployment among older Russians and Kazakhstanis that these policies left in their wake.15 As a result, many major businesses in Uzbekistan remain only partially privatized, with most essential services and the majority of agricultural output still controlled through joint-stock companies in which the government owns a majority.16 Despite predicating his entire election campaign on the notion that he can maintain the political project started by Mr. Karimov, in only a few months of governing, Mr. Mirziyoyev has shown that his administration will diverge in significant ways from this status quo. Mr. Mirziyoyev has shown himself willing to advance the policies of liberalization and reform espoused by O’zLiDeP in areas widely exempted from change during the Karimov government. Mr. Mirziyoyev has already taken steps to chip away at the most powerful of the law enforcement bodies and state-owned firms that buttressed the state system constructed by Mr. Karimov. In September alone, Mr. Mirziyoyev signed into law a bill that will rob the powerful Procuracy of the inspectoral powers that it had used to harass businesses into paying protection,17 introduced penalties for police or MXX officers (Milliy Xavfsizlik Xizmati, the successor to the KGB) found wiretapping without a warrant,18 and forced the Border Guards to withdraw from disputed territories.19 Each one of these moves on their own would represent a significant move against the security forces and apparatchiks that featured prominently in the decision-making process of the Karimov government. Together these reforms reflect a determined effort to fight back against the abuse and rampant securitization that has followed the establishment of domestic tranquillity in the Republic. Mr. Mirziyoyev has also announced plans to break up state control over the core industries, promising to begin the process of privatization by selling off a minority of shares in strategic sectors – which had previously been exempt from privatization due to concerns of national resource security – including the state monopolies on electricity, railroads, natural gas, and oil, and the country’s largest mining facilities and smelters.20 Combined, the firms to be partially privatized make up the majority of Uzbekistani exports and a huge amount of national infrastructure which had previously been sacrosanct.21 Together, the reforms of the security forces and the state-owned monopolies signal a major change in Uzbekistani politics: nothing is off limits. Whereas previously, omnipresent concerns about the country’s security in the face of revolution in three of its six neighbours had prevented the powers-that-be from pursuing a broad-based reform process,22 the actions of Mr. Mirziyoyev indicate a belief that Uzbekistan has survived the gauntlet of the 1990s and early 2000s and – with the existential threat of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan finally dead 23 – is now ready to embark on the next stage of the gradual reform process envisioned by Mr. Karimov. The radicalism of the reform process started — and temporarily suspended, presumably to not aggravate any other vested interests until after the December elections — by Mr. Mirziyoyev belies a substantial overlap and genuine ideological continuity with the nationalist thought of Mr. Karimov and other key thinkers in his government, such as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdulaziz Kamilov.24 The difference between the Karimov administration and the presumably soon-to-be Mirziyoyev government is that Mr. Mirziyoyev appears to believe that the goals of the Uzbekistani nationalism created by Mr. Karimov can be achieved in the current era. In Uzbekistan on the Threshold of the 21st Century and other official collections 12
of his speeches and ideas, Mr. Karimov develops a conception of Uzbekistani nationhood based on a mythicized past,25 the country’s ‘inevitable’ march towards its future as a great power,26 and the ‘natural’ morality (ma’naviyat) of the Uzbek people, contrasted to the corruption and immorality that often characterized urban life in the USSR.27 This ideology propelled Mr. Karimov to undertake a reform process that left most of the Soviet-era institutions intact in the hope that gradual reform would allow not only economic change, but also societal change as the Uzbek people ‘rediscovered’ their ancient values and morals, thus avoiding the severe economic collapse and social strife that accompanied reform in the rest of the former Soviet Union.28 By reusing the same language and rhetoric as Mr. Karimov, Mr. Mirziyoyev appears to be following the path for Uzbekistan constructed by Mr. Karimov, only Mr. Mirziyoyev is more willing to force Uzbekistan down its ‘natural’ path towards greatness.29 By addressing the ills of corruption, incompetence, mismanagement, and unnecessary bureaucracy — and by identifying these as issues using the same rhetoric and framing as Mr. Karimov — Mr. Mirziyoyev is propelling Uzbekistan along the same trajectory as the previous government: away from its Soviet past of Kafkaesque bureaucracy, thieving apparatchik, and omnipresent police, and towards an ‘authentically Uzbek’ future of efficiency, stability, and pure intentions derived from a rediscovered ‘natural morality’ endemic to the culture and people of Uzbekistan. In the run-up to the elections on 4 December, there will be only hints and glimpses of the new order that Mr. Mirziyoyev seeks to establish across Uzbekistan, as neither national nor international politics can become disquieted during his caretaker government lest he risk losing the public’s faith in his ability to steer the country, a disaster that could potentially cost him the election. Undertaking massive reforms before the elections would be a sure-fire way to scare the public, anger powerful local elites under threat from anti-corruption purges, and drive voters into the arms of Sarvar Otamuratov, Hotamjon Ketmonov, or Narimon Umarov. Assuming that Mr. Mirziyoyev will win the presidential elections – a risky wager, as the conditions that made previous presidential elections uncompetitive were contingent on the participation of the late Mr. Karimov30 – it will still likely take some weeks for any distinct changes in government policy to become manifest. The actors that Mr. Mirziyoyev seeks to move against as he guides Uzbekistan away from the last relics of its Soviet past are very powerful: the MXX, the national police, several government ministries, the Procuracy, and industrial leaders. Each must be reformed gradually and individually, lest they oppose his government through parliamentary action. The Prime Minister’s visits to Jizzax province and the Mirzo Ulug’bek district of Toshkent City – during which he fired scores of officials for gross corruption and mismanagement – presage a campaign of similar visits to other areas of the country to be conducted when Mr. Mirziyoyev is secure in his power.31 The brashness of Mr. Mirziyoyev’s policies towards such major stakeholders in the political system during his interim administration suggest that he will not hold any punches if he does get into power. From the introduction of new checks on the power of law enforcement to an end of official toleration for low-level corruption, Mr. Mirziyoyev seems prepared to rid Uzbekistan of the ‘unnatural’ and ‘foreign’ abuses of power that persist as a legacy of colonial rule in flagrant contrast to the ‘high ma’naviyat’ of the Uzbekistani people. Samuel Phillips is a second-year student of Politics and Leviathan’s Chief Copy Editor