Uzbekistan is in the midst of a constitutional reform, and its initial draft called for the abolition of the considerable autonomy of the Karakalpakstan herdsmen. Protests broke out against this plan, which quickly escalated into violence and were promptly suppressed. Meanwhile, the central authorities just as quickly decided to leave Karakalpakstan’s autonomy (including the right to withdraw from Uzbekistan) intact. Such a proposal was made by the country’s president, Shavkats Mirziyoyev, who immediately arrived in the capital of the autonomy, Nukus, while the country’s parliament, which formally implements the reform, made appropriate changes in the draft of the new basic law.
It is the problem of Karakalpakstan and its peculiar history (the republic, of which only about a third of the less than two million inhabitants are ethnic Karakalpaks, the people most closely related to the Uzbeks, managed to stay in an autonomous status during the period of the USSR in the composition of several Soviet republics of the region, until it was finally added to the present-day Uzbekistan) along with these decisions are likely to be resolved. The just demands of the protesters have been met, the initiators of the protests with a high degree of credibility are awaiting a quick trial, but Tashkent’s attempt to implement the centralization of power has already been included in the category of minor misunderstandings.
At the same time, the large-scale riots that broke out suddenly are another reminder that almost all of Central Asia, with its borders drawn during the Soviet period, various autonomies, etc., is the realest ethnic, local separatism and also religious powder keg, which is more and more often balancing on the verge of exploding. To understand how serious the problem is, it is enough to remember the regular “revolutions” in Kyrgyzstan, the events of the beginning of this year in Kazakhstan, or the regular shootings on the Tajik-Kyrgyz border. Additional destabilizing factors are the spread of radical Islam and poverty on an impressive scale, as well as the desire of external players to create problems for the main powers of the region, China and Russia.
All together, this in turn creates a situation where any initially local protests or riots, regardless of their causes and the goals of the initiators, can cause a chain reaction, destabilizing the whole of Central Asia. Moreover, the greater the overall global instability, the more the possibility of such a pessimistic scenario for the region and its neighbors also increases.
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