CHAOS IN KWAREZM

There are "two Islamist movements in Uzbekistan, the IMU (Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a designated terrorist group) and Hizb-ut-Tahrir. What Uzbekistan dictator Islam Karimov has done with the stupidity of only which a Soviet apparatchik is capable, is to drive moderate Moslems into their arms"

"The Massacre of Andijan that took place last Friday, May 13, with Uzbek soldiers murdering hundreds of men, women, and children in cold blood, is only Karimov’s latest effort to do so. When he took power, he promptly blew the most monumental opportunity in the Moslem world to create a modern Islam.

As the head of the Soviet Communist Party in Uzbekistan, Karimov seized power as the USSR dissolved into its constituent Republics in 1990. His primary goal since then has been to hold on to that power at all costs, turning Uzbekistan into a police state. As a Soviet apparatchik, he has no understanding of economics, no appreciation for the consequences of destroying the environment, and no capacity to prevent his paranoia from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Karimov’s standard rationale for power is holding up the boogeyman of terrorist Islam. 'I am the only thing in the way, I am the only man capable of preventing a Taliban takeover of Uzbekistan,' he claims. On the contrary, he may have made it inevitable."