Moscow: The death of Uzbek leader Islam Karimov after 27 years in charge with no clear successor lined up plunges his homeland into uncertainty and poses serious questions for a region dominated by strongmen. A day after Karimov, 78, — who ruled the strategically important Central Asian nation with an iron fist — was buried in his hometown Samarkand, a heavy police presence remained on Sunday on the streets of the capital Tashkent. National flags with black ribbons attached were lowered as the country marked a second day of official mourning and people began looking to a future without the only leader the country has had since it gained independence in 1991.
“We don’t know who will come after Karimov,” one taxi driver in the Uzbek capital, a former army officer in his fifties, said. “Will the prosperity that he has brought us continue?” Long lambasted by rights groups as a brutal despot who crushed all dissent, Karimov was one of the Communist Party bosses who managed to cling to power in their homelands after the collapse of the Soviet Union. While decision-making in the tightly-controlled system he presided over for more than a quarter of a century is almost impenetrable, experts agree that Karimov’s long-term replacement looks set to come from the small inner circle who have divvied up economic control of the country.
Karimov referred to Gulnara as the ‘Uzbek princess’
For now the frontrunner appears to be Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev, known as a technocrat enforcer, after he headed the committee that organised Karimov's funeral and led the tributes The questions now hanging over Uzbekistan bring into sharper relief the futures of other countries across the ex-Soviet region next door to conflict-wracked Afghanistan, where rule by strongmen autocrats is the norm. Alexander Baunov of the Carnegie Moscow centre wrote, “Change is coming for sure to Uzbekistan and the rest of Central Asia. The only thing that is unclear is what kind of change.”
