IT'S official: Islam Karimov, the long-serving and brutal dictator of Uzbekistan, is dead. After nearly a week of frantic speculation about his health, state television announced late on September 2nd that Mr Karimov had died from a stroke, six days after he was hospitalised and four days after unconfirmed reports surfaced of his death. The secrecy that shrouded the president’s illness and demise was typical of the paranoid regime that Mr Karimov constructed and presided over for decades. The fact that Turkey’s prime minister, Binali Yildirim, announced Mr Karimov’s death hours before his own government did shows how tentative Uzbekistan’s new rulers, whoever they might be, are about the transition that has now begun.
The funeral of Mr Karimov, who ruled Uzbekistan for 27 years, is to be held in Samarkand, the city of his birth, on September 3rd. As the blood-soaked leader of this gas-rich Central Asian country is laid to rest, two questions hover over his hapless people. Who will succeed him? And will they get a better deal? The regime they have suffered under for so long could hardly be worse. Of the five post-Soviet regimes in Central Asia, Uzbekistan’s is widely...Continue reading
from Asia http://ift.tt/2bMeFNZ
EmoticonEmoticon