The government of Uzbekistan announced on September 2 the death of Islam Karimov, the 78-year-old president who had ruled the country for the past 26 years. The passing of the president of Uzbekistan, a strategically vital state in Central Asia and the region’s most populated country, will have major implications both domestically and regionally.

The event comes amid intense and growing political struggle between different political factions backed by regional and international powers, an unraveling social fabric, rising separatist rhetoric and the growing influence of armed extremist groups.

Complex social fabric

Uzbekistan’s population of 32 million is divided between several ethnicities including Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Tajiks, Tatars, Karakalpaks and Russians. The country’s social fabric is far more complicated than that of its neighbors and is the result of conflict across centuries between different tribes in the region.

Three major social groups can be identified in Uzbekistan:

• Tajiks: Around 6 million Tajiks live in the country, located around Samarkand and the hills of Transoxiana, the area between the Amudarya and Syrdarya rivers. Despite speaking the Persian language, they were able to integrate into the country along with the Uzbek majority’s Sunni Muslim faith. They are descended from the inhabitants of the Emirate of Bukhari.
• Ferghana: The Ferghana Valley and nearby Tashkent are the most densely-populated area of Uzbekistan, together are the home to some 10 million people speaking Kazakh, Uzbek, Farsi, Tajik, and Kyrgyz. These groups’ behaviour, with roots in the city of Kokand, have been prey to significant Islamist radicalization in recent years.
• Khwarezm: The city of Khwarezm is home to 5 million inhabitants - Khwarezmians – who have different customs and traditions from the Uzbeks and Tajiks.

Karimov was able to keep Uzbekistan under control and suppress these tribal divisions for the past 26 years amid difficult circumstances. Karimov’s ability to sustain his power was owed to the lack of a political alternative that could be agreed upon by all sides. His death adds to a list of factors, with deep historical roots, that are contributing to a growing crisis in Uzbekistan’s loose social fabric, as follows:

Uzbekistan’s different ethnic groups hold deep collective memories of historical struggles between the country’s various cities and their surrounding states, which facilitated/ allowed the Russian Empire’s expansion into Central Asia.

The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union exacerbated these divisions by changing the demographic makeup of these states through enforced movements of population from other areas, according to the rulers’ interests.

The policies of persecution, marginalization, and isolation practiced by Karimov to keep Uzbekistan under control have created an incubating environment to extremist thought and the growth of separatist sentiment.

Manifold political struggles

Karimov’s death sparked intense speculation about who would replace him in power, particularly since the president apparently gave little thought to the question. He was dazzled by power and clung onto his office with an iron grip. He even pushed his daughter, Gulnara Karimova, out of the political scene and placed her under house arrest in 2012. Western officials had described her as her father’s potential successor.

The political struggle in Uzbekistan, an extension of a complex social fabric characterized by the tribal and communal behavior, can be defined as a struggle between three political camps competing for the presidency:

• The Samarkand-Transoxiana camp: As an extension to the Tajik ethnic group, this camp has dominated Uzbekistan’s political life since its independence, enjoying control of the army, security and intelligence services. It included Karimov until his death, as well as the head of the intelligence services Rustam Inoyatov and Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev.
• The Tashkent camp: Based on support from residents of the Ferghana Valley, this camp includes Chairman of the Senate Nigmatilla Yuldashev and Finance Minister Rustam Azimov. It differs from the previous camp in that under the constitution it is able to temporarily take power by appointing the Senate chairperson to the position of being an interim president following the death of a sitting president.
• The Khwarezm camp: This is the least empowered political group to compete for the presidency of Uzbekistan, in light of the restraints placed on its dissident leader, head of the Popular Movement of Uzbekistan, Mohammad Salih, and his son Taymur.

The political struggle in the country after Karimov is limited to the first camp (supported by Moscow) and the second (close to Washington) with the former most likely to emerge victoriously.  Rustam Inoyatov, who accompanied Karimov throughout his political career, holds considerable influence due to his position as the head of the intelligence services. He may be powerful enough to take office and clamp down on the country, yet at the age of 72, he may be more likely to select another person for the role.

In this regard, the acting President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, 59, is one prominent contender. The third most powerful man in Uzbekistan during Karimov’s rule, he enjoys strong support from Moscow, which sees him as open to integrating Uzbekistan into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU or EEU), in contrast with Karimov, who rejected the idea. Moscow also sees him as willing to revive the country’s membership in the Collective Security Treaty Organization, from which it withdrew for two periods, from 1994-1999 and 2006 to the present. Moscow can apply pressure through exploiting the leverage of having two million Uzbek migrants in Russia, who sent home around $6 billion in remittances in 2014.

China is supportive of the Russian position, especially as Beijing tends to avoid direct interference in countries perceived as under Russian influence.

Potential jihadist expansion

Throughout his long rule, Karimov cracked down on Islamist extremist movements with an iron fist, particularly the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan taking security measures to exterminate radical Islamists of various branches in the southern region of Ferghana.

He adopted similar approach towards his other opponents, using excessive force to smash up popular demonstrations in Namangan in 1993 and Andijan in 2005. However, this turned out to be counter-productive, creating an environment of oppression that incubated extremism. This was exacerbated by economic persecution against vulnerable groups, which led to poverty, marginalisation and an unequal distribution of the benefits of development.

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan can be expected to escalate its actions following Karimov’s death, for the following reasons:

The movement aims to overthrow the government in Uzbekistan and establish an Islamic state throughout Turkestan, stretching from the Caspian Sea to Xinjiang province in northwest China. Karimov’s death is perceived as an opportunity for the movement to launch new strikes and extend its operations.

Islamists in Uzbekistan, as well as in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, have shown their ability to exploit political disruption to sow chaos and violence.

The power struggle in Uzbekistan could provide an incentive for the movement, giving it a space for manoeuvring action and a chance to broaden its influence across Ferghana and in other regions. That also strengthens the possibility that some of its 5,000 or so fighters will return from Syria and Iraq.

That could be just the beginning. It is possible to foresee a jihadist expansion across Central Asia through the Ferghana region, especially since the movement announced its allegiance to ISIS in October 2014. The two share similar ideologies, supporting the creation of an Islamic caliphate, which would turn the region into a potential rear base for ISIS in light of its setbacks in Syria, Iraq and Libya’s Sirte.

In addition to declaring the allegiance of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, ISIS announced the establishment of an Emirate of the Caucasus in August 2015 setting off alarm bells in states across the region - especially in light of possible jihadist reactions to Karimov’s death, which can be summarized according to the following:

With that in mind, the regional states need to overcome the problems plaguing their own tense relations. In the case of Uzbekistan, this means solving disputes with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan over territorial borders of the Ferghana valley and better management of water resources from the Amudarya and Syrdarya rivers. Uzbekistan fears that hydroelectric projects planned by its neighbours will restrict water flow into its own territory, threatening its irrigation of cotton, of which Uzbekistan is one of the prime global exporters.

States in the region must also coordinate their efforts to prevent the spread of jihadism, particularly the return of battle-hardened fighters from Iraq and Syria. However, given regional governments’ lack of capacity to prevent that, they must make use of alternative protective structures such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization to promote stability.This will strengthen the roles of Beijing and Moscow in the region at the expense of Washington. The US has already faced crises in its relations with the states in the region since it began its gradual withdrawal from Afghanistan, which Central Asian leaders saw as a brazen American abandonment of their security.

The growth of separatism

The Republic of Karakalpak lies north of the city of Khwarezm, on the western border with Kazakhstan, with an estimated population of around 300,000 people. It currently enjoys self-government and a strong economy due to its significant natural gas reserves.

The possibility of a political vacuum in Uzbekistan, or state failure to keep outlying regions under control, could prompt greater calls for Karakalpak to declare its independence entirely from Uzbekistan, especially given its strong economic position and fears among its policy-makers of an internal jihadist threat with the rise of the Islamic Movement in Uzbekistan after Karimov’s death.

In conclusion, Uzbekistan is not the only state in Central Asia that needs to keep potential crises in check. Its current challenges could be an indication of what Kazakhstan, its vast and wealthy northern neighbor, could face with the demise of President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Like Karimov, he has ruled with an iron fist while struggling with health problems.