Islam Abduganiyevich Karimov (30 January 1938 – 2 September 2016) was an Uzbek politician who served as the first president of Uzbekistan, from the country's independence in 1991 until his death in 2016. He was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan from 1989 to 1991, the last to hold the post. The party was reconstituted as the People's Democratic Party of Uzbekistan (O‘zXDP); which Karimov led until 1996. He was the President of the Uzbek SSR from 24 March 1990 until he declared the independence of Uzbekistan on 1 September 1991.
He declared Uzbekistan as an independent nation on 31 August 1991. He subsequently won the presidential election on 30 December 1991, with 86% of the vote. Foreign observers and the opposition cited voting irregularities, alleging state-run propaganda and a falsified vote count. Karimov's first presidential term was extended to 2000 by way of a referendum, and he was re-elected in 2000, 2007 and 2015, each time receiving over 90% of the vote. Karimov initially developed strong ties with the West during the War on Terror, but following the Andijan massacre and subsequent Western condemnation, Uzbekistan moved closer to Russia and China internationally.
He ruled a repressive authoritarian regime in Uzbekistan where political opponents were assassinated, human rights were repressed, and dissent was prohibited. He died from a stroke on 2 September 2016, after being president of the country for 25 years.
Karimov was born in Samarkand to Uzbek parents who were civil servants. According to official data his father was Abdug'ani Karimov, an Uzbek, and his mother was Sanobar Karimova. He was sent to an orphanage in 1941, brought back in 1942, and then returned to the orphanage in 1945. In 1955, he graduated from high school. In 1960, he graduated from the Central Asian Polytechnic Institute (now Tashkent State Technical University) with a degree in mechanical engineering. He started his career as an engineer, eventually joining the Ministry of Water Resources of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1967, he earned a master's degree in economics from Tashkent State University of Economics.
From 1966 to 1986, he worked his way up the ranks in the Uzbek State Planning Committee, from chief specialist, to department head, to Minister of Finance of the Uzbek SSR, chairman of the State Planning Committee and deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Uzbek SSR. In 1986, Karimov assumed the post of first secretary of the Kashkadarya Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan Committee of the Communist Party of the Uzbek SSR. In 1989, he became first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Uzbek SSR, after his predecessor Rafiq Nishonov failed to quell inter-ethnic clashes and instability in the Fergana Region. From 1990 to 1991, he served as a member of the Central Committee and Politburo. On 24 March 1990, he was elected the first President of the Republic by the Uzbek Supreme Soviet.
On 31 August 1991, 10 days after the attempted coup in Moscow, Karimov declared Uzbekistan to be an independent republic, the second of the Central Asian republics to do so (after neighboring Kyrgyzstan); 1 September was declared Uzbekistan's Independence Day. The Uzbek Communist Party (UCP) changed its name to the People's Democratic Party of Uzbekistan (O‘zXDP). In the December 1991 presidential election, 86 percent of the public cast their votes for Karimov and 12.3 percent for his rival Muhammad Salih, chairman of the Erk (Freedom) Party.
Uzbekistan under the Karimov government was classified as a hard authoritarian state. The state's primary legitimacy claims are anti-Islamism and ethnic identity. Karimov's primary authoritarian measures that were implemented following the brief period of "thaw" and political tolerance include the thwarting of alternative political leaders from coalition building.
In 1992, he accomplished the hajj.
In 1995, a few months before Karimov's term was due to expire, his term was extended until 2000 through a referendum. Results showed 99.6 percent of voters favoured extending Karimov's term. The United States criticised the referendum for its "lack of public debate," and noted several instances where one person cast the votes of an entire family. Following the referendum, in 1996, restrictions on opposition were further tightened through the Law on Political Parties. This law ensured the right to meetings, publications and elections of opposition parties, but only to those who had registered with the Ministry of Justice. This policy allowed for government blockage of unapproved parties. Political parties based on ethnic, religious, military or subversive ideas were prohibited.
At the time, Karimov publicly stated that he considered the referendum to be a re-election to a second term, which under the Constitution would have required him to leave office in 2000. However, the legislature passed a resolution opposing the decision, leading Karimov to announce he would run for reelection in 2000. In the election held at 9 January, he was reelected with 91.9% of the vote. The United States said that this election "was neither free nor fair and offered Uzbekistan's voters no true choice". The sole opposition candidate, Abdulhafiz Jalalov, implicitly admitted that he entered the race only to make it seem democratic and publicly stated that he voted for Karimov. According to dissident writer Alisher Ilkhamov from the Open Society Foundations, 99.6% had elected to keep Karimov in office after his term had expired, but ballots had been created such that it was much easier for voters to cast a "yes" vote than a "no" vote. Unmarked ballots, as well as ballots of those who did not vote, were automatically counted as "yes" votes, while a full black mark, under the supervision of authorities, was necessary to count as a "no" vote.
Karimov took fewer foreign visits, especially to the West, in comparison to his Kazakh counterpart. There were few foreign embassies in Tashkent as of 2016, with only 44 in all: 29 from countries not part of the former Soviet Union and seven from the West.
Under the Karimov government, a heavy regulation policy of NGOs led to the creation of paradoxically named GONGOs, or Government-Organised Non-Governmental Organisations. Trade unions became "an instrument of management rather than a means of interest group-based collective bargaining". The Karimov government required universities to serve a strictly pedagogical purpose and not as a branch of civil society; they had to provide students with skills for the workplace without an emphasis on the skill of critique of public issues.
Karimov had originally cultivated Islamic symbols after independence in order to coopt religious opposition. In May 1999, as a response to the threat of Islamic radicalism, the Oliy Majlis revised the 'Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations' to impose new restrictions on religious groups. The construction of mosques, for example, required permission and specific documentation. An assassination attempt on Karimov in 1999 elicited even more repression of Islamic groups. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Uzbekistan was considered a strategic ally in the United States' "war on terror" campaign because of a mutual opposition to the Taliban. Uzbekistan hosted an 800-strong U.S. troop presence at the Karshi-Khanabad base, also known as "K2", which supported U.S.-led efforts in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. The move was criticized by Human Rights Watch which said the U.S. government subordinated the promotion of human rights to assistance in the War in Afghanistan. U.S.-Uzbek relations deteriorated in May 2005 when Karimov's government strongly encouraged the abandonment of the U.S. base in the face of U.S. government criticism of the government killings of protestors in Andijan. In July 2005 U.S. military forces left Karshi-Khanabad.
Karimov mobilized against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Hizb ut-Tahrir, two Islamist organizations which have been designated as terrorist by his government. The Uzbek government sentenced Tohir Yoʻldosh and Juma Namangani, leaders of the IMU, to death in absentia. Namangani died in Afghanistan in 2001, and Tohir Yoʻldosh was killed in an air strike on 27 August 2009. From 1991 to 2004, the government imprisoned over 7,000 Uzbeks for "Islamist extremism", and silenced Imams like Muhammad Rajab, who advocated for more open democracy in the early 1990s. These fears of extremism arose out of discourse among the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) of a "Jihad against the Karimov regime". The government of Uzbekistan retains fears of "large-scale all-encompassing anti-state conspiracies" and "echoes of Basmachi" Among Karimov's anti-Islamist policies was the purge of Muslim leaders. Karimov led a crackdown on Adolat, a league of Muslim activists. Explicit fears of threats of Islamic extremism also led to a crackdown of displays of Islamic practice in public. The term "Wahhabis" became the umbrella term to refer to all strains of "extremist" Islam; it did not necessarily refer to the Islamic sect that originated in Saudi Arabia. Ordinary practicing Muslims have been targeted and jailed without trial, and frequent use of torture and occasional "disappearances" have been reported. In 2005 Karimov banned the Muslim call to prayer from being broadcast in the country; the ban was lifted in November 2017 by his successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev.