The abuse rained down heavier than usual after I posted this last Monday. How dare I support the brutal Karimov regime? (I don’t.) How dare I say that the people who are revolting in Uzbekistan are jihadists? They’re just reacting to years of oppression. All right. But this just came in from AP (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist). How to explain it? It is hard to get reliable information, but I suspect that jihadists are trying to co-opt the legitimate opposition to Karimov. That sort of thing has happened before.
May 18, 2005 – A Muslim rebel group claimed Wednesday it had seized control of a small Uzbek town on the border of Kyrgyzstan and vowed to build an Islamic state. Diplomats and U.N. officials toured a nearby city where government troops fired on demonstrators, reportedly killing hundreds.
The leader of the rebel group, Bakhtiyor Rakhimov, said his forces controlled Korasuv, a town of 20,000, and were ready to fight any government troops that came to crush his rebellion. An AP reporter in Korasuv saw no sign of government officials in the town.
“The town is in the hands of people. People are tired of slavery,” Rakhimov told The Associated Press while leaning down from the back of a horse. “We will be building an Islamic state here in accordance with the Quran.”
The group claimed to have 5,000 militants.
The government of President Islam Karimov quickly shrugged off Rakhimov’s claims.
“It’s all sheer nonsense, everything is normal there,” Uzbek Interior Minister Zakir Almatov said when asked whether the government would move against the insurgents in Korasuv….