This article is the first of a two-part series that reviews key development during the past year in Central Asia. This article focuses on Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Click here for part two.

Uzbekistan remained the center of attempts by Central Asian Islamic militants based in Afghanistan to destabilize Central Asia. President Islam Karimov responded by a massive crackdown in the country imprisoning over 1500 people, who were alleged to sympathize with the rebels. However the crackdown also affected ordinary Muslims and their right to worship, which intensified criticism of Karimov by international human rights groups. Karimov tried to focus the world's attention on ending the civil war in Afghanistan, which he characterized as destabilizing for the entire Central Asian region.

On January 9, Uzbekistan held Presidential elections under a massive security blanket, as just a few days earlier six Uzbek Islamic fundamentalists had been executed for terrorist activities. However with the lack of political freedom and the fact that Abdulhasiz Dzhalalov - the only alternative candidate allowed to stand against Karimov - himself voted for Karimov, the US and other Western states condemned the elections as un-democratic. Karimov was re-elected with a 92 percent public turnout at the polls. A new cabinet was sworn in on February 16, with Prime Minister Utikir Sultanov retaining his post as Prime Minister. Karimov's appeal and amnesty offer in January for secular Uzbek political dissidents to return home from their exiles abroad met with no response.

The year was dominated by the anti-state activities of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), led by Tahir Yuldeshev and Juma Namangani, which has about 2,000 militants based in northern Afghanistan and recruits widely from all the Central Asian states, and the Xinjiang Muslim province of China. The IMU says it wants to overthrow Karimov and turn Uzbekistan into an Islamic Republic. In February the government claimed Yuldeshev was trying to unite all Uzbek opposition parties including the banned parties Birlik, Erk and Hizb-e-Tahrir, into a new alliance called the United Uzbek Opposition with its headquarters in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

On January 25, three IMU militants were killed during a clash with security forces near Tashkent. IMU militants arrived in Uzbekistan after crossing Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan from Afghanistan, which led to Uzbek demands that its two neighbors tighten security along their borders. At the end of January Uzbek border guards stopped all rail and road traffic to Osh, in southern Kyrgyzstan for several weeks and began to unilaterally demarcate its border in the Ferghana Valley with Kyrgyzstan, leading to a heightening of tensions between the two countries.

However as the threat from the IMU increased, all three Central Asian countries began to co-ordinate their military efforts more closely. At the end of March, Uzbekistan took part in the joint Central Asian-Russian military exercise