TASHKENT - Rural poverty, fiercely competing ideologies and iron-fisted government come together today in Uzbekistan, as they have for centuries, in a unique mix of elements for a perfect storm of upheaval like that which rocked the eastern city of Andijan on Friday.
But while some ascribe the tension in the Central Asian ex-Soviet republic to an underlying battle between a secular government in the capital and a rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism in the regions, many see the root cause as basic economics.
Whichever the case, the threat to stability in Uzbekistan and the surrounding strategic region is highlighted by the continuing rule over the country of President Islam Karimov, a Soviet-era holdover who brooks no opposition and who is supported by both Russia and the West alike.
In a country where the average wage is around 25 dollars per month, where one in three adult workers is either unemployed or underemployed and where Western experts say long-promised economic reforms have yet to show any results or even be implemented, social anger is a basic fact of life.
"Overall, it looks from a distance to be about general widespread anger with this government," said David Lewis, an expert with the think-tank International Crisis Group who is based in the capital of neighboring Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek.
This discontent, exacerbated in the 14 years since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the decline in living standards it precipitated for most people, has provided fertile ground for Islamic-oriented opposition movements that abound in the region, experts say.
Lewis stressed however that, at least in Uzbekistan today, the distinction between Islamist and pro-democracy movements is a fine one.
"We always think these two things are a contradiction. They are not necessarily, in Uzbekistan," Lewis said.
He admitted that "there is a bit of an Islamic tinge" about Friday`s insurrection, but added: "That is part of the environment they are living in. You would not expect nice-speaking democrats" there.
The violent insurrection that erupted Friday in Andijan came after weeks of increasingly large and angry protests outside a courthouse in the city where 23 people, most of them proprietors of struggling small businesses, were being tried on charges of "Islamic fundamentalism."
As recently as Wednesday, one protestor warned that if authorities continued to press the case or handed down any sentences there would be consequences.
"If they are not acquitted we will hold a big protest," Abdusalom Karimov, a 36-year-old employee in a local confectionery factory owned by one of the defendants, told AFP.
"Winning would mean we can live and work peacefully. Losing would mean our deaths."
His was a view typical of many in Andijan, where the men on trial, respected in the local community for trying to improve economic conditions, were accused by the authorities of being members of the Akromiya Islamic movement, an offshoot of the better-known Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Hizb ut-Tahrir, banned by the authorities in Uzbekistan, says it favors creation of an Islamic state throughout the Central Asian former Soviet republics like the Arab caliphate that introduced Islam to the region in the eighth and ninth centuries.
One of those freed from a prison in Andijan by the insurgents said religious extremism was a only a pretext being used by the authorities that support Karimov to retain economic control of the country, and denied that the insurgents in the city were "extremist" at all.
"We are believers, but nothing more," the 35-year-old man said, asking not to be named.
Uzbekistan lies across much of the legendary Silk Road trade route linking Western markets to the Far East that passes through Ankara, Tehran, Ashgabat, Samarkand, Tashkent, Lanzhou and Xian.
Its geographic location and wealth of vital resources, notably natural gas, make Uzbekistan a coveted prize in the continuing jockeying for influence in the region between Russia and the United States as well as China, Iran, India, Pakistan and others.
05/13/2005 14:19 GMT