History of Uzbekistan

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Located in the heart of Central Asia between the Amu Darya (Oxus) and Syr Darya (Jaxartes) Rivers, Uzbekistan has a long and interesting heritage. The leading cities of the Silk Road - Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva - are located in Uzbekistan. As Russia extended its empire into Central Asia in the second half of the nineteenth century, Uzbekistan became part of Tsarist Russia and later of the Soviet Union. It declared independence from Soviet rule in 1991.

Contents 1 Early history 2 Middle Ages 3 Russian influence 4 Independence 5 See also 6 External links

[edit] Early history

Territory of Uzbekistan was populated in the II millennium BC. There are findings of early human’s tools and monuments in Ferghana, Tashkent, Bukhara, Khorezm (Khwarezm, Chorasmia), Samarkand regions.

The first civilizations to appear in Uzbekistan were Sogdiana, Bactria and Khwarezm (Chorasmia). Territories of this states became a part of Achaemenid empire in the 6th century.

Alexander the Great conquered Sogdiana and Bactria in 327 BC, marrying Roxane, daughter of a local Sogdian chieftain. However, as the story tells, the conquest was of little help to Alexander as popular resistance was fierce; causing Alexander's army to be bogged down in the region.

The territory of Uzbekistan was referred to as Transoxiana until the 8th century. See also: Sogdiana

[edit] Middle Ages

The area was conquered by Muslim Arabs in the 8th century AD. A century later, the Persian Samanid dynasty established an empire. The Samanids encouraged Persian culture in the area. Later, the Samanid empire was overthrown by the Kara-Khanid Khanate. Uzbekistan and rest Central Asia was invaded by Jenghis Khan and his Mongol tribes in 1220.

In the 1300s, Timur (1336 - 1405), known in the west as Tamerlane, overpowered the Mongols and built his own empire. In his military campaigns Tamerlane reached as far as the Middle East. He defeated Ottoman Emperor Bayezid I and rescued Europe from Turkish conquest.

Tamerlane sought to build a capital of his empire in Samarkand. From each campaign he would send artisans to the city, sparing their lives. Samarkand became home for many people; there used to be Greek and Chinese, Egyptian and Persian, Syrian and Armenian neighborhoods. Uzbekistan's most noted tourist sights date from the Timurid dynasty.

Later, separate Muslim city-states emerged with strong ties to Persia.

[edit] Russian influence

In 1865, Russia occupied Tashkent and by the end of the 19th century, Russia had conquered all of Central Asia. In 1876, the Russians dissolved the Khanate of Kokand, while allowing the Khanate of Khiva and the Emirate of Bukhara to remain as direct protectorates. Russia placed the rest of Central Asia under colonial administration, and invested in the development of Central Asia's infrastructure, promoting cotton growing, and encouraging settlement by Russian colonists.

Though stiff resistance to the Red Army after World War I was eventually suppressed, resistance groups called basmachi operated in the region reaching as far as the Pamir mountains until the 1930s. In 1924, following the establishment of Soviet rule, the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic was created from ethnic Uzbek areas of Central Asia, including most of the territories of the Emirate of Bukhara and Khanate of Khiva as well as portions of the Fergana Valley that had constituted the Khanate of Kokand.

During the Soviet era, Moscow used Uzbekistan for its tremendous cotton-growing ("white gold"), grain, and natural resource potential. The extensive and inefficient irrigation used to support the former has been the main cause of shrinkage of the Aral Sea to less than one-third of its original volume, making this one of the world's worst environmental disasters. The overuse of agrochemicals and the depletion of water supplies, have left large parts of the land poisoned.

[edit] Independence

On August 31, 1991, Uzbekistan reluctantly declared independence, marking September 1 as a national holiday. While the Baltic States led the fight for independence, Central Asian states were afraid of it. "The centrifugal forces pulling the Union apart were weakest in Central Asia. Well after the August 1991 coup attempt, all Central Asian countries believed that the Union might somehow be preserved," wrote Michael McFaul in Russia's Unfinished Revolution.

Islam Karimov, former First Secretary of the Communist Party, was elected president in December 1991 with 88% of the vote; however, the elections were viewed as not free and fair by international observers. After independence Karimov encouraged anti-Russian nationalist sentiment, and 80% of ethnic Russians - more than 2 million people - fled Uzbekistan.[4]

Activities of missionaries from some Islamic countries coupled with absence of real opportunities to participate in public affairs contributed to popularization of radical interpretation of Islam. In February 1999, car bombs hit Tashkent and President Karimov nearly escaped an attempt. The government blamed the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) in the attacks. In result of law-enforcement operations, dozens of hundreds of people suspected in complicity were imprisoned. In August 2000, the militant groups tried to penetrate to the Uzbek territory from the Kyrgyz soil; acts of armed violence were noted in the southern part of the country as well.

In March 2004, another wave of attacks committed reportedly by international terrorist network shook the country. An explosion in the central part of Bukhara killed ten people in a house used by alleged terrorists on March 28, 2004. Later that day policemen faced an attack at a factory, then at a traffic check point early the following morning. The violence escalated on March 29, when two women separately set off bombs near the main bazaar in Tashkent, killing two people and injuring around twenty, the first suicide bombers in this county. On the same day, three police officers were shot dead; and in Bukhara another explosion at a suspected terrorist bomb factory claimed ten fatalities. Police raided a militant's hideout south of the capital city in retaliation the following day.

President Karimov claimed the attacks were probably the work of a banned radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir ("The Party of Liberation"), although the group denied responsibility. Other possibly responsible groups include militant groups operating from camps in Tajikistan and Afghanistan and opposed to the government's support of the United States since September 9, 2001.

In 2004 British ambassador Craig Murray was removed from his post after speaking out against the regime's human rights abuses.

On July 30, 2004 terrorists bombed the embassies of Israel and the United States in Tashkent, killing 3 people and wounding several in the process. The Jihad Group in Uzbekistan posted a claim of responsibility for those attacks on a website linked to Al-Qaeda. Terrorism experts say the reason for the attacks is Uzbekistan's support of the United States and its War on terror.

In May 2005, several hundred demonstrators were killed after Uzbek troops fired into a crowd protesting against the imprisonment of 23 local businessmen. (For further details, see May 2005 unrest in Uzbekistan.)

In July 2005, the Uzbek government gave the US 180 days' notice to leave the airbase it leases in Uzbekistan. A Russian airbase and a German airbase remain. .....

[edit] See also

• History of present-day nations and states
• Gates of Tashkent

[edit] External links

• Background Note: Uzbekistan
• History of Uzbekistan