Prior to the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) posed the greatest threat to the Karimov administration.
[1] Since the invasion, the IMU has been greatly weakened due to US military actions which cut off its supply of resources[2] and killed its leader, Juma Namangani.
[5] According to HRW, "In addition to hundreds of reports of beatings and numerous accounts of the use of electric shock, temporary suffocation, hanging by the ankles or wrists, removal of fingernails, and punctures with sharp objects, Human Rights Watch received credible reports in 2000 that police sodomized male detainees with bottles, raped them, and beat and burned them in the groin area.
Police made such threats in particular against female detainees in the presence of male relatives to force the men to sign self-incriminating statements.
[7] On February 16, 1999, six car bombs exploded in Tashkent, killing 16 and injuring more than 100, in what may have been an attempt to assassinate President Islam Karimov.
A week earlier Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Uzbekistan and met with President Islam Karimov.
A spokesman for the Uzbek Foreign Ministry said, "Concentrating 10,000 troops on the border would be a dangerous tactic for the Taliban, because they would become targets for US bombing raids."
[12] Furkat Kasimovich Yusupov was arrested in the first half of 2004, and charged as the leader of a group that had carried out the March 28 bombing on behalf of Hizb ut-Tahrir.
[12] Foreign commentators on Uzbek affairs speculated that the 2004 violence could have been the work of the IMU, Al-Qaeda, Hizb ut-Tahrir, or some other radical Islamic organization.
[citation needed] Ikrom Yakubov, a former major in the Uzbek secret police who defected, alleged that President Karimov himself ordered the troops to fire on the protestors, and that 1,500 were killed.
Earlier that day President Karimov visited Kazakhstan along with other regional nations' representatives as part of a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting.
An Uzbek court later found Muminov, accused of participating in the unrest in Andijan, guilty of membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir and sentenced him on 15 March to five years and six months in prison.
[19][20][21] Uzbek government officials said on 5 May 2006 that evidence proved that Huseyincan Celil, a Canadian citizen, and Guler Dilaver, a Uyghur wanted for terrorism in China and Kyrgyzstan, were the same person.
[23] The New York Times reported that the fence would be eight feet high with barbed wire and searchlights "along heavily populated towns and cities on the southern ridge" where drug smugglers operate.
[27] Drug trafficking in Central Asia is a major source of funding for terrorist organizations, second only to direct donations of military equipment and financing from state sponsors of terrorism.