The last few years have seen not a single case of evasion of military service. After doing the compulsory military service, young people are increasingly entering into a contract for further service.

The young people of Uzbekistan seem to be ready to sacrifice all their strength and knowledge to defend their homeland.

Burkhonnidin Ergashev, head of the Mirzo Ulughbek District defence department in Tashkent: "Those undergoing the check-up are physically mature young people. There are also many sportsmen among them. I think that they are strong enough to be sent to do military service."

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EurasiaNet: You maintain there are some differences in the characteristics of narcotics use today compared with that during the pre-Soviet times. Can you explain these differences as they pertain to Central Asia?

Kerimi: In the old days, opium – I will be talking about opium, because this is the main problematic drug – was used mostly as a folk remedy, as a panacea for illnesses, mental disorders, and physical diseases. It was ingested, and later – approximately in the 18th century – it started to be smoked. And at that time, the recreational meaning of its use became clearly visible. Since the late 18th century, opium use became a social phenomenon, in the sense that it created a lot of problems; the social response from the government at that time was just to destroy [opium] dens – the places where people used to smoke it – trying to prohibit consumption of the drug. It didn’t work, and the smoking continued. Under Russian administration, officials also tried to prohibit the spread of opium. Then, in the late 19th century, they tried to prohibit the importation of opium. At that time, official imports, as well as smuggled opium from Persia, was flourishing and the flow of opium was very heavy, and it spread into all of Central Asia.

EurasiaNet: So what’s the main difference between narcotics use today and narcotics use then?

Kerimi: I would focus on three features: First of all, there is the mode of use. Now, more and more, people inject opiates. Secondly, the characteristics of the opiate itself. Now it’s heroin, which is processed opium. And thirdly, it is no longer used as a remedy, it is just used for recreational purposes. These are the main characteristics of the patterns.

Of course, the consequences are also different. In the past, the most serious consequence was overdose, or drug dependence itself. This encouraged the impoverishment of addicts because people many could not afford opium. Nowadays, there are some other very serious consequences which should be added to these two, like HIV infection, hepatitis, and sexually transmitted diseases, which are flourishing among drug users. There are some other diseases which accompany this. They are not the direct consequence of drug use, but they are there. I am talking mainly about tuberculosis. Patients with tuberculosis are over-represented among drug users, and vice versa. If you go to a tuberculosis clinic, you can see – up to 90 percent of them are drug users, in Kyrgyzstan for example. In Turkmenistan it was approximately 30 percent.

So the cluster of disorders linked to the use itself – and I have to add some social characteristics to that: a very high rate of unemployment; a tendency towards criminal activity; and a history of family problems. It is interesting to note that the family problems are specific to Central Asia, because in our culture people get married at a young age. When we investigated the social and marital status of drug users, we found that some of them have never been married at all, just because they started to use drugs. So there are two kinds of family problems – they can’t be married and they can’t have normal family lives because they have started to use drugs; and vice versa – when they begin using drugs, they caused a divorce. There are big problems with their children, especially now, because these children are not receiving care, and in a sort of social inheritance, they are acquiring deviant behavior.

EurasiaNet: From your research, what are the trends – at what rate is drug use growing, as best you can estimate?

Kerimi: According to statistics … the incidence of drug use is going up very quickly. It’s a very high rate. Between 1991 and 1999, the rate absolutely skyrocketed. Somehow we forget that the main reason for the number of drug users is the availability of the drug. And it is available, and it is relatively cheap, and it is promoted by the dealers, because it’s in their interest to have more and more people involved. So now we’re having the situation where it’s a real commodity – it’s an economic commodity.

Also important to note is the social context in which this phenomenon is going on. And this is unemployment, it is poverty, it is this search for a new identity - because we lost the Soviet identity, and now the nations are trying to build up something new. If people don’t have jobs, and they have to earn money and they can do it through trafficking or dealing drugs, they’ll do that. If they want to get out from poverty, they will try to do anything – including an activity that’s criminal or on the edge of criminal.

EurasiaNet: Do you believe that the statistics that you read are accurate, or do you think that governments are not accurately reporting the situation, and if they’re not accurately reporting the situation, what are the factors behind the inaccuracy?

Kerimi: My absolutely sincere belief is that the governments don’t do any cheating. They just get the numbers which are supplied by registration – taken from narcological surveys, police surveys, and so forth. And in terms of the healthcare system, there are numbers and referrals. So they have registered cases. And police also have seizure numbers and arrests. Of course all this does not provide a whole picture, but I am not so inclined to only stick to the exact figures, because first of all you can always make some estimate – some rapid assessment – and secondly, what is more important is the dynamics within the group of drug users. I’m talking about age of onset, I’m talking about demographic indicators, I’m talking about many other things which are much more important than just the number itself; and there are techniques which allow us to estimate these things.

EurasiaNet: Does the new pattern of drug use, specifically the injecting of drugs, have social consequences? Does it create problems between generations?

Kerimi: This is a very interesting question, and it is a complicated one. I can talk about my country [Turkmenistan]. Here we have two distinct sub-populations of drug users. One, which I call "classical," people with traditional use – they smoke raw opium or they ingest it – and they have rather mild consequences. I can’t say that it is absolutely harmless, there are a range of consequences, but in comparison with what is going on now with injection drugs, it is not as serious. On the other hand there is a group of people who are injecting drugs. These two groups clearly understand that they are different. Those traditional users look with some contempt and disgust at the intravenous users, and the intravenous users have a very deep feeling of guilt and shame because they know that they violate social norms. Smoking and eating opium is a quasi-tolerated behavior: it’s not encouraged, it’s not praised, but somehow it has a tradition. But injecting is very new, and if you are injecting drugs it’s almost equivalent to being a criminal – I might be exaggerating, but it’s very dangerous, it’s very bad, if people learn that you are an injection drug user, it’s very difficult for you to be treated well.

EurasiaNet: Does this new development in narcotics use threaten to have a very significant destabilizing impact on Central Asian society?

Kerimi: It is difficult for me to judge this in terms of political stability, because I am not a specialist in assessing the whole situation from an economic and political point of view, but I think yes. From the reports which are available from the republics, it seems like it has a serious impact on the economic situation, so it is worsening the situation. Again, because crime is going up, because of economic loss.

EurasiaNet: Where do you see the drug use trend heading? Do you see it leveling off or even decreasing, or will it increase, and at what rate?

Kerimi: Well, I think it will depend on the efforts made by the countries. And it is in our hands, whatever pessimistic picture we can see now. It is in our hands. Because if we know that there are some levers for influencing the situation, like availability, the social context, we can do something. If nothing is done, it will get worse.

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A major route into the Tavildera Valley is a treacherous dirt road that clings to a sheer mountain slope. Far below the path, a roaring river looks like a thin brown muddy thread. Even in spring, the temperature struggles to climb above freezing, and the Valley is so narrow that helicopters are unable to operate in many areas. That road is littered with the hulks of destroyed tanks and trucks that belonged to government forces. The valley was one of the strongholds of the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP) during the 1992-97 Tajik civil war, and was the scene of several futile government offensives against the opposition forces.

Halfway down the valley, in a long narrow gorge, lies the village of Sangor, where Namangani’s forces maintain a fortified camp with a permanent garrison of about 50 guerrillas. Half a dozen men could hold off an army at the mouth of the gorge, which offers ample cover from artillery and aerial bombardment. Namangani himself is now reported to be in Afghanistan, along with the bulk of his forces. However, officials and citizens alike are bracing for a resumption of hostilities this summer.

Last November, Namangani caused a stir by arriving in Sangor from Afghanistan with 400 men. ‘’Every day there were lines of people coming to see him – Arabs, Chechens, Uighurs, Pakistanis, Kashmiris and Central Asians from every nationality – they all want to join him for the jihad in Central Asia,’’ says a farmer in Tavildera village, who asked not to be identified.

While in Sangor, Namangani also held strategy sessions with thousands of ‘’sleepers’’ -- his loyalists who continue to live in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. These unarmed supporters of the IMU have the job of creating safe houses, bases and stocking up supplies for the IMU guerrillas when they launch their summer raids.

In an effort to strengthen his ties with the local Tajik population, Namangani reportedly has gotten married for a second time. His new bride is a Tajik widow from the civil war with two sons. By doing so he increased his local prestige as well as implemented the Islamic precept of marrying widows of jihad. His first wife, also a Tajik, and his daughter live in northern Afghanistan.

Namangani’s November appearance in Tavildera caused the Tajik government to come under great pressure from neighboring Central Asian states. At the end of January this year, a Tajik government delegation, led by his former IRP comrades, persuaded the IMU militants to return to Afghanistan. Russian helicopters allegedly helped transport Namangani and his fighters back to their Afghan strongholds. ‘’But he will be back,’’ says a resident in Garm. ‘’He told me, ‘there is no road back, I have to continue fighting as people are waiting for me in Uzbekistan.’’

Born Jummaboi Khojaev, Namangani first saw the Tavildera Valley in 1992, when a crackdown on Islam, launched by Uzbek President Islam Karimov, caused him to flee his hometown of Namangan in the Ferghana valley. Namangani fought for the IRP during the Tajik civil war, and prior to that, he served in the Soviet army, fighting for three years as a paratrooper in Afghanistan, where friends say he was emotionally influenced by the stubborn resistance put up by the Afghan Mujaheddin. ‘’Afghanistan changed his beliefs and he became a practicing Muslim. He was inspired there, ‘’ says a resident of the Karategin valley who knows him well. Together with his political mentor Tahir Yuldeshev, 34, they formed the IMU in Afghanistan in 1998, calling for a jihad to topple Karimov.

‘’Namangani knows these mountains and he knows the tactics of these Soviet trained armies, so he can react well to whatever they try to do,’’ says a Western military official in Dushanbe. ‘’His tactics are brilliant.’’

In the Karategin valley, where he fought in and around the former IRP base in Garm, he is also well known. After the ceasefire in the Tajik civil war in 1997, he lived for a year in Hoit, north of Garm, accepting the orders of the IRP to cease all military activities. According to local people who met him frequently during this period, he set up a trucking business with some local Tajiks and also acquired farmland. He lived with his first wife but his home was also a camp with dozens of dissident Uzbeks who had fought with him during the civil war. There were also Arabs in his company.

‘’There were always Arabs with him, during the civil war, during his time in Hoit and now of course – I have never seen him without Arabs,’’ says a local resident of Garm who would frequently travel to Hoit to meet him. Namangani’s Arab connections go back to Namangan in 1990, when Saudi Arabia and private Wahabbi organizations funded his party, Adolat. Saudi groups also funded the construction of mosques and madrassas in the Ferghana valley, as well as supplied free Korans and religious literature.

Many of Namangani’s Arab acquaintances fought in the Afghanistan conflict. After the withdrawal of the Soviet army from Afghanistan in 1989, many of these Arabs found themselves at loose ends and in search of a new cause. The IMU’s jihad in Central Asia is just such a cause. The US has now declared the IMU as a terrorist group because of its connections with Osama Bin Laden, who is also based in Afghanistan.

In Hoit, Namangani’s home also served as a refuge for Uzbek Islamic radicals and their families -- who fled the crackdown in the Ferghana Valley. ‘’When he left for Afghanistan in 1998, there were six bus loads of just women and children – the families of the fighters who left first,’’ said another Garm resident.

Namangani has never given interviews and he has never been photographed by journalists. For many observers the most intriguing question is how he supports his armed operations. Many Tajik officials, and even poor farmers, believe the Russians are playing a double game. While officially opposed to the IMU, Russian border guards are perceived to turn a blind eye to his forays from Afghanistan. Many locals reason that Moscow desires to keep up pressure on Karimov to accept Russian troops on Uzbekistan’s soil.

Some Tajik officials also say he is supported by Islamic radicals in Pakistan. Some officials and foreign diplomats believe Namangani arrived in Central Asia in November by flying from Karachi to Bishkek on a charter flight in heavy disguise, having shaved his beard. From Bishkek, he supposedly drove through Osh to Tavildera. None of this can be substantiated, although during the Tajik civil war, both Yuldeshev and Namangani traveled to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and Chechnya to forge links with Islamic movements there.

‘’When we were in the civil war we took help from anyone who gave it to us, now Namangani will take help from anyone who is against Uzbekistan,’’ says Sharif Himmatzade, a former IRP fighter and now a member of the Tajik parliament.

What is certain is that he receives help from the Taliban and funding from Osama Bin Laden, who has also helped him buy two helicopters, which are presently based in a IMU camp in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. More funding comes from the lucrative drug trade in Afghanistan, as the IMU’s network also helps in the smuggling of Afghan heroin to Russia and Europe. In addition, a growing amount of aid is coming from the Uzbek emigre community in Saudi Arabia. ‘’These Uzbek Saudis are very rich, they hate Karimov and they have enlisted Arabs across the Gulf states to help Namangani,’’ says a Tajik politician who knows Namangani well.

The political aims of the IMU remain vaguely defined, and the nature of the organization’s Islamic beliefs, specifically the vision for an Islamic state in Uzbekistan, is also largely unknown. ‘’The IMU’s weakness is that jihad is their only criteria, they have no political structure to speak of,’’ says Moheyuddin Kabir.

Despite the area’s reputation as an IRP and now IMU bastion, a notable feature of life in the Karategin and Tavildera valleys is the lack of overt Islamicization in comparison with Afghanistan or Pakistan. Farmers admit that the IRP attempted to impose an Islamic system during the civil war, but they jokingly add that they have now slipped back into their old ways. At every stop villagers greet guests with vodka and brandy. Mosques are not the center of village life, and there are no madrassas in either valley except one in Tajikabad north of Garm.

Local people tolerate Namangani’s presence because his men are polite and pay for the food and goods they buy. There is little enthusiasm among local residents for the creation of an Islamic state. Namangani has pledged to the government that he will not interfere in Tajikistan’s politics, or attempt to revive the Islamic movement in Tajikistan – he asks only that he be left alone in his mountain bases so that he can continue his war against Uzbekistan.

(By Ahmad Rashid, the author of "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia." Based in Pakistan, he writes frequently on developments in Afghanistan and Central Asia.)

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Meanwhile, the Al-Jazira satellite TV channel of Qatar reports that the Taliban is getting ready for a spring offensive on positions of the Northern Alliance in the Takhar province.

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Owing to severe drought, in 2000 Karakalpakstan [northwestern Uzbekistan, Aral Sea region] received only 42 per cent of the average annual amount of water. The shortage adversely affected, above all, the quality of drinking water. According to the regional environmental hygiene and epidemiology station, 59.3 per cent of the Karakalpakstan's population was provided with piped water, 78.5 per cent in towns and 44.2 in rural areas. The mineral content of the water fluctuated between 0.85 and 2.1 grams per litre, and the water hardness reached 17.0 milligram equivalent per litre.

More than half of the Karakalpak population uses water from open reservoirs, 80 per cent of which do not meet sanitary requirements. Many settlements lacked even that sort of water in 2000. The water was delivered from far afield and distributed at a rate of 12-15 litres per person as a daily norm.

Agriculture, the main sector of the local economy, also received a serious blow. Many plantations of rice and cotton in the nine northern districts and on virgin lands on southern farms perished. Farmers were not able to grow enough vegetables. Because of the drought, there was not enough water for cattle to drink, let alone for the pastures where grass withered, leading to forced slaughter of cattle.

According to forecasts by hydrometeorological service experts, 2001 is expected to be a dry year in Central Asia.

Bearing in mind that there are rather large reserves of fresh underground water in the northeast of the southern Aral Sea region, miniworkshops should be built urgently to bottle underground water to supply the population with drinking water.

There is another problem, the irrational use of water reserves. Water is being used inefficiently in agriculture, above all, in irrigation farming, which consumes about 90 per cent of water resources. According to the Vodoproyekt [Water planning] Institute, only 40 per cent of water reaches the plants, 40 per cent is lost in the irrigation system and 20 per cent during watering.

Another major reason for the present situation is that Uzbekistan was initially orientated to cultivating industrial crops, whilst about half of food supplies was imported, including wheat. Realignment of the agricultural system to increase the areas sown to grain crops whilst at the same time preserving cotton plantations is fraught with many complications. The structure of crops needs to be changed.

"Green" farming can play a great role in improving soil fertility. Instead of run-off watering, new types of halophilic [saline-soil loving] fodder plants, which thrive in arid conditions, need to be introduced. The plants should be introduced in rotation with local salt-resistant plants, which are capable of removing a great amount of salt from the soil.

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Over video of the cathedral interior, and the Uzbek spiritual head addressing the congregation in Uzbek with Russian translation overlaid, the correspondent quoted the chief mufti as saying: "Representatives of various religions are living in accord in our independent state. Today, I want to congratulate all Christians on this wonderful and bright spring holiday."

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