Word: uzbek
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Uzbek president Islam Karimov doesn't take kindly to criticism. He's branded opponents as Islamic extremists and imprisoned over 6,000 of them in a penal system where, according to the U.S. State Department and the U.N., torture is "routine" and "systematic." But after the Uzbek military reportedly killed at least 500 people after an uprising in Andijan two weeks ago, Karimov is under fire from a source that's more difficult to suppress: the international community. The British have called for an investigation into the shootings, as have the U.N. and the European Union. Craig Murray, the ambassador...
Some leaders sneak out of their country during an uprising; others become paralyzed by mass demonstrations. But when Uzbek oppositionists rose up in the eastern city of Andijan last week, Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov sent in the armor. Communications with Andijan were cut; foreign TV news broadcasts to Uzbekistan, including from Russia, were replaced with light entertainment. The insurrection started when a group of armed men raided a local military base for weapons, then hit the local jail. There they freed inmates, including 23 well-known local businessmen accused of belonging to Akromiya, an offshoot of the banned Islamist...
...elections were crucial. Eight million Afghans swarmed to the polls, defying Taliban threats of sabotage and terror. "It was a moral and psychological defeat for the Taliban," Olson told TIME. Karzai helped the process along, clipping the wings of regional warlords such as Ismael Khan in Herat province and Uzbek strongman Rashid Dostum, enemies of the Pashtun tribes that are the main backers of the Taliban...
...fear in many Afghans in his northern stronghold of Shebarghan. Dostum's idea of campaigning is to sit on a thronelike chair in his rose garden and scowl at a line of deferential tribal elders, officials and militia commanders who will be expected to deliver votes from among the Uzbeks. Those who don't obey suffer--such as one Uzbek man whose wife was kidnapped when he refused to rejoin Dostum's forces...
...plans to shift operations away from the hinterlands of Pakistan to Somalia and Sudan. And just last week, Pakistan's military said it launched an air and ground attack against a suspected al-Qaeda training camp in the tribal area of Waziristan, killing more than 60 recruits and their Uzbek and Chechen trainers...