Uzbek Independence
Uzbekistan declared independence on 31 August 1991, ten days after the coup in Moscow failed. The republic was the most populous in Soviet Central Asia and the one whose borders had been drawn most artificially. The delimitation of 1924 cut through the Fergana valley and left Tajik-speaking Samarkand and Bukhara — the two great cities of Persianate Central Asia — inside Uzbekistan, and Uzbek populations inside its neighbours, which is the origin of several later disputes. The economy had been organised around one crop. Cotton monoculture, imposed from Moscow and expanded relentlessly, required irrigation that diverted the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, and the Aral Sea lost most of its volume; the exposed seabed is salt and pesticide dust, and the fishing towns are stranded in it. The cotton affair of the 1980s, a corruption investigation into decades of falsified harvest returns, removed much of the republic's leadership. Islam Karimov, first secretary from 1989, opposed the coup late, declared independence promptly, and won an election in December with 86 per cent. He then governed for twenty-five years by banning the opposition, imprisoning Islamists and journalists, and keeping the state cotton procurement system with compulsory labour. The suppression of a protest at Andijan in 2005, in which hundreds were killed, ended the country's brief alignment with the West. Karimov died in 2016, and his successor has relaxed some of it. None of the Central Asian republics had asked for independence, and all five got it because the union dissolved above their heads. Uzbekistan has some 37 million people, the region's largest army, and borders every other state in it.
- Year: 1991 CE
- Category: Political
