TASHKENT, Uzbekistan -- His worst fears have been realized, President Islam Karimov darkly informed his nation: The violent religious fanaticism of Afghanistan's Taliban and the Iranian-supported Hezbollah have indeed spread to this former Soviet state in Central Asia.

The assertion was made soon after six bombs blew up near government buildings in downtown Tashkent last month, killing 16 people and injuring 130, and changing all the calculations in tightly policed Uzbekistan. Karimov quickly announced the arrest of 30 people, pronouncing them radical Islamists who had been trained in neighboring Afghanistan and Tajikistan -- as well as Chechnya.

Uzbek exiles and human rights activists offered a different version, accusing Karimov of persecuting innocent people for his personal political purposes. The government, they said, actually rounded up as many as 500 citizens, using the bombings as a pretext to crack down on anyone suspected of opposing the president. Uzbekistan, they said, was on the way to becoming the most repressive regime of the former Soviet Union.

Widespread repression

"If Islamic fundamentalism becomes a danger," said Mannarov Abdufattakh, an Uzbek exile in Moscow, "it will be on the conscience of the Uzbek leadership. They are repressing everyone. This is only the beginning. Now they have a purely totalitarian dictatorship."

Uzbekistan -- bordering Afghanistan and one country away from Iran -- is the largest country in Central Asia, with 23 million people. And Karimov has made it clear he longs for his country to dominate the region.

He has assaulted Russian influence, which holds Tajikistan in sway, by threatening to drop out of the security pact signed by the former Soviet states. He has declared that Uzbekistan is creating a market economy and democratic system as he reaches out to the West, reminding the rest of the world that while Afghanistan and Tajikistan destroyed themselves with civil war, Uzbekistan was quiet and safe.

People kept disappearing here, or being arrested on unlikely charges, and that made erstwhile allies wary. But the country was quiet.

"We've cooperated when it's in our mutual interest," a U.S. State Department official says, exchanging information on Afghanistan, terrorism and drug trafficking.

That cooperation has developed even though the latest State Department human rights report calls Uzbekistan an authoritarian state where no opposition party has been permitted since 1993. Police, the report says, torture and arbitrarily detain citizens on false charges, "frequently planting narcotics or weapons on them."

A State Department official calls the religious persecution "misguided," saying Karimov fears any activity he cannot control.

One Westerner in Tashkent says Karimov is motivated by a desire for "pure, white-knuckled control." Until the bombings, his control was absolute.

'I am a small person'

Hardly anyone dared to speak up. One of the few who did was Mukhtabar Akhmedova. A few days before the bombings, Akhmedova, a 60-year-old woman, sat on a cushion on the floor of her home in Tashkent and declared a modest but relished victory over the president and his government. "I'm a small person," she said, "but I am still independent. I think I'm the last independent person in Uzbekistan."

A few days after that conversation, she disappeared.

Akhmedova was once associated with the outlawed Islamic Renaissance Party and watched as its members were beaten, arrested and hounded either underground or out of the country.

"From the very beginning of his presidency," Akhmedova said, "Karimov has repressed people. He managed to keep power through his despotism. As soon as there is opposition, he starts to do away with it."

First he destroyed political opponents, she said, then he turned on religion. His first victim, she said, was Abdullah Utaev, leader of the outlawed Islamic Renaissance Party, who disappeared in 1992.

Last year, the head of a Tashkent mosque disappeared. Wearing a beard or praying too much is enough for arrest, Akhmedova said, and some people never return.

"They're in prison, kidnapped or dead," she said.

Devotion to Islam and criticism of the president have been enough to warrant harassment, a prison term and kidnap attempts against her, Akhmedova said.

Her son emigrated to Germany in 1994 with his wife and two children. Uzbek officials offered to pay her way to join him, she said.

"Leave?" she said. "I wouldn't give them the satisfaction. As long as I'm here, they'll feel as tense as they make so many other people feel."

Everything changed

Then the bombs blew up, and everything changed.

At first, there was no trace of Akhmedova. Then, she contacted acquaintances in Moscow, calling from a secret location to say that she had gone into hiding, certain that the bombings would set off a mass roundup.

She packed up her book of telephone numbers and other records and first went to terrified relatives before seeking more permanent refuge. Her frightened relatives burned her records. "They will kill us if they find these here," they said.

Several of Akhmedova's friends were picked up.

"At least 200 were detained in Tashkent alone," Vitaly Ponomarev, acting director of the Society for the Assistance of Human Rights in Central Asia, said in Moscow.

He said that last year, the government drew up a list of people suspected of having opposition sentiments, and now those people are being arrested.

Though once the center of a great Islamic culture in the storied cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, where centers of Islamic learning were set up as early as the ninth century, Uzbekistan was resolutely atheist during the years of Soviet rule.

Only a small percentage of Uzbeks are deeply religious or even educated about Islam. Pork shashlik is a favorite dish at the sidewalk grills in Tashkent and other cities. The nation manufactures a highly respected vodka. Though many women in the provinces wear brightly colored scarves on their heads and the traditional dress of a long shift with pants underneath, women in Tashkent tend to dress in stylish Western clothes.

Freedom and security

Before the bombings, many Uzbeks were willing to trade freedom for security.

"We are lucky," said Alexander M. Boltayev, a businessman in the 2,000-year-old city of Bukhara. "In the first years after independence, we thought we needed more democracy than we had," he said. "Now we look around the region and understand -- we need a hard hand."

All you have to do is look at Russia, nearly destroyed by corruption and economic chaos, he said, and at neighboring Tajikistan, torn apart by internal warfare, and Afghanistan, with its fearsome Taliban.

Then the bombs exploded, and with them any sense of security. No one knows whether the bombs were the beginning of an anti-government campaign or the last gasp of an opposition pushed to extinction.

Karimov has begun blaming political opponents, operating from outside the country. Others speculate that he pushed religious groups so hard they have finally started fighting back. Or perhaps he set off internecine warfare when he abruptly removed a few high-level officials recently, alienating one of Uzbekistan's powerful clans.

A few arrests are still being announced.

And Akhmedova is silent.

Pub Date: 3/19/99