U.S. Government Reports
2006 Country Report on Terrorism (04/30/2007)
Uzbekistan
There remained a clear potential for Islamic extremism and acts of international terrorism in Uzbekistan. Supporters of terrorist groups such as al-Qaida, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), and the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), were active in the region. Members of these groups expressed anti-U.S. sentiments and have attacked U.S. interests in the past, including a 2004 suicide bombing at the U.S. embassy in Tashkent, which was clamed by the Islamic Jihad Group (IJU), now the IJU. U.S. Government personnel and facilities continued to operate at a heightened state of alert.
The Government of Uzbekistan did not provide safe haven for terrorists or terrorist organizations. However, the country's poor economic climate and repressive government policies created conditions in which large portions of the population were increasingly susceptible to extremist ideologies. Uzbekistan's porous borders, particularly in the Ferghana Valley, allowed for people and illicit goods to move in and out of the country with relative freedom. The government responded to these threats with even more repressive actions against regime opponents and those it deemed to be religious extremists. However, it failed to address the conditions terrorists might exploit to gain popular support and recruits for their cause.
Although Uzbekistan was among the first states to support U.S. efforts in the War on Terror, the Government of Uzbekistan ended virtually all counterterrorism cooperation with the United States in mid-2005. In November 2005, the United States fully vacated, at Uzbekistan's request, the Karshi-Khanabad airbase. Authorization for U.S. aircraft to overfly Uzbekistani territory ended in January 2006, although an agreement was signed in November allowing Department of Defense-contracted civilian aircraft to overfly Uzbekistan on a fee-per-flight basis.
Tashkent hosted the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's (SCO) Regional Antiterrorism Center Secretariat (RATS), which claimed to have begun to focus on operational activities such as developing a coordinated list of terrorist groups and facilitating joint counterterrorism exercises among SCO member states. In the past, the government participated in UNODC and OSCE programs aimed at ensuring that it enacted appropriate terrorism legislation. However, Uzbekistani participation in these programs has virtually ended, and the government has made little progress in this regard.
Released by the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism
April 30, 2007