Some key points made and substantiated by the author about what the Andijon Uprising was not: it did not involve any foreign terrorists from the IJU, Al Qaeda, or O'zbekiston Islomiy Harakati, it was not a popular uprising with widespread approval, and it was not a massacre orchestrated by the Uzbekistani goverment (61-64).
On this last point, there is no evidence to suggest that the Uzbekistani government ever gave an order to clear Bobur Square and, even if such an order were given, there was no command and control in place at the time to carry it out among all the different government units (62-63).
Andijon had a reputation as a rebellious city in the modern period, perhaps due to its pride as the birthplace of Bobur. It was always a potential trouble spot for the Qo'qon Khanate and fears of rebellion in Andijon were a big motivation behind the Khan's surrender to Russian suzerainy in the 1860s. The Russians feared revolts from both Andijon and Marg'ilon, building a Russian-only garrison town at Novomargilan, today's Farg'ona Shahri; they still faced two uprisings in Andijon in 1898 and in 1914 (15).
Andijon always had a reputation as a religious city during the Russian and Soviet periods, but one in which several different schools of Islam peacefully coexisted (15). During the early 1990s, Andijon became the center of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a non-violent Islamist extremist movement. Most of the members of Yimonga Yo'l, including Akrom Yuldashev, used to be members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, as were many who latter joined O'zbekiston Islomiy Harakati (16-17).
Namangan had a much more extreme reputation during the late 1980s and early 1990s, as Wahabbism flourished in the city. From 1990 until early 1992, downtown Namangan was under the effective control of Wahabbist extremists who enforced sharia law, led by Tohir Yuldashev and Juma Xo'jayev [AKA: Juma Namangani]. They remained in control of the city until a failed meeting with Islom Karimov in December 1991, during which they tried to convince him to enforce strict sharia, after which point Uzbekistani security forces drove them from the city. They fled first to Tajikistan, where they participated in the civil war, and then to Afghanistan, where they founded O'zbekiston Islomiy Harakati (15-16).
The Muslim group responsible for the 2005 Andijon attacks had around 80 adult male members at its peak during that year, likely had another 80 female members, and a wider number of sympathizers among the Andijon population (10).
The Muslim group refered to themselves as Birodarlar, roughly equivalent to 'the brothers'. They were generally referred to by the general population as "Yimonchilar" after the pamphlets they had distributed which discribed their religious practices as the "Yimonga Yo'l". The Uzbekistani government referred to the group as "Akromiya" as the imprisoned author of the pamphlets, Akrom Yuldashev; this term was never used by the group themselves (10).
Yimonga Yo'l was founded by Akrom Yuldashev, a former member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, who left the group because he believed it was too idealistic in creating a global caliphate and needed to be proceeded by an Islamization of everyday life (16). He was arrested in 1993 for starting the group, then amnestied, arrested again in 1998 on politically-motivated drug trafficking charges, amnestied again, and arrested again in 1999 on religious extremism charges in the aftermath of the 1999 Toshkent bombings, despite having no connection to O'zbekiston Islomiy Harakati (11).
In his pamphlet, Yuldashev adovacated for the creation of a modern Uzbek Islam that penetrated social and economic spheres. He was critical of the Arabic domination of Islam and wanted to build an authentically Uzbek Islam. He deemphasized personal faith obligations, even suggesting that salah isn't that important, compared to obligations to serve one's community. In particular, he stressed the creation of an Islamic economy (18-19).
Akrom Yuldashev's repeated amnesties is likely evidence that the original charges in 1993 and 1998 were false. Amnestying people who were wrongly arrested was a common practice in Uzbekistan to do justice without the state losing face from losing in court (27).
In the absence of Akrom Yuldashev's leadership, post-1999, Yimonga Yo'l created a faith community connected to a network of businesses and charities. They continued preaching and spreading the pamphlet written by Akrom Yuldashev, "Yimonga Yo'l" (11).
By 2005, the members of Yominga Yo'l were concentrated in Andijon, but had a presence in Marg'ilon, Qo'qon, Toshkent, and Jizzax. The largest presence was in southern Andijon, in Bog'i Shamol, where they owed a large tract of land donated in 1993 by an original member, Bahrom Shakirov (18).
Bo'gi Shamol was home to many of the businesses that formed the core of Yimonga Yo'l, including a bakery, shoe factory, hairdresser, kindergarten, and cafeteria (19).b
After Yuldashev's arrest in 1999, some of the group's most important members were the Shakirov brothers, the children of Bahrom Shakirov. These included Sharif Shakirov, Hassad Shakirov, and Shokur Shakirov (18).
The business network around Yimonga Yo'l included over 40 businesses and employed over 2000 people, most of them not actually directly linked to the organization. All of the businesses contributed to a shared 'mutual benefit fund' used to fund a number of charities, including an orphanage, medical services, a daycare, and a fund for covering the costs of weddings, funerals, and social security. Members of Yimonga Yo'l paid one fifth of their wages into this mutual benefit fund (19).
The Uzbekistani government generally had a good relationship with the Yimonga Yo'l organization, even though they kept arresting Akrom Yuldashev, and President Islom Karimov supported their program of "Islamic socialism" and had praised the group before. Local governments sometimes purchased from the group's businesses and appreciate the jobs and the social services provided by the group (19-20).
The main friction that existed was the suspicion that Yimonga Yo'l's business subtracted the zakat deductions from payroll from their taxes and, thus, unreported its actual taxable income. The mahalla governments meant to collect taxes — this was the system prior to 2008 — generally overlooked this because of the positive impact of the group. Complaints about the group mainly came from businessmen in competiton with Yimon Yo'l (20-21).
There were some members of the security services who considered Yimonga Yo'l as a potential extremist group, like Hamas or Hizb ut-Tahrir. However, most recognized that Yimonga Yo'l was not a threat. Moreover, in the security environment of early 2000s Uzbekistan, there were much more serious threats coming from Al Qaeda and its affiliates (21).
The issues between the provincial government and Yimonga Yo'l began in May 2004 when Governor Kobil Obidov was dismissed from his position, arrested, tried for corruption, and sentenced to house arrest. His replacement, Saydullo Begaliev, almost took action against the Yimonga Yo'l and arrested 23 prominent businessmen who were members of the group's commercial network in June 2004 on charges of forming an illegal group and promoting religious extremism (21).
The decision to crackdown on Yimonga Yo'l was suggested to Governor Saydullo Begaliev by someone upon his coming to power, but it is unclear who gave this advice. It either came from businessmen within the Ferghana Valley who had disputes with Yimonga Yo'l enterprises or from Toshkent (12). Evidence would indicate that the arrest was a local initiative because national media continued to praise Yimonga Yo'l's charitable work (22).
There were protests organized, initially by the families of the arrested businessmen but growing in size. By February 2005 and through May 2005, there were hundreds of protests from Yimonga Yo'l, its sympathizers, and human rights organizations. The trial garnered international media attention and by May 2005, the protests grew to over 1000 people, including many angry former employers of Yimonga Yo'l businesses (22).
During the same time as the protests against the arrest of the 23 Yimonchi businessmen in Andijon gained steam, there was the Tulip Revolution in the neighboring Kyrgyz Republic and a series of attacks launched by the Islamic Jihad Union [IJU], a spliter group of O'zbekiston Islomiy Harakati operating from North Waziristan. The recent revolution and the heightened security threat from the IJU placed all the security services on edge in May 2005 (23-24).
Russian media at the time speculated that the Tulip Revolution had been organized by the USA, potentially from the US base at Manas. This raised concerns in Uzbekistan, which was hosting its own US base at Qarshi-Xanabad (23).
The rumored end of the trial of the 23 Yimonchi businessmen on 13 May 2005 prompted several key members of Yimonga Yo'l, including Kabul Parpiyev, Sharif Shakirov, and Hassan Shakirov, to action against the local government. In addition to the likely end of the trial, presumably ending in the incarciration of all the businessmen, three Yimonchi were arrested in an unrelated tussle with police over a parking ticket on 11 May, and some Yimonchi may have wrongly believed this was the prelude to a larger crackdown on the group (24-25).
On 12 May 2005, Paripiyev, Sharif Shakirov and around 50 other Yimonchi armed with AK47s and other small arms attacked the provincial headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the No.34 Barracks of the Ministry of Defense, both at Navoi Prospekt. These attacks killed 4 police and 5 soldiers and wounded another 4 police (27).
The Yimonchi gained control of the armories at both the facilities and stole over 50 AK47s, 4 sniper rifles, over 2,000 rounds of ammo, a number of fragmentation grenades, and a Zil130 military truck (28).
Now better armed, the Yimonchi took their cars and the Zil130 truck and travelled south to prison UJa-64/T-1, where they rammed the gate open with the truck at 00:20 of 13 May. The Yimonchi killed 3 prison guards and, allegedly with the cooperation of a sympathetic warden, released 527 of the the 734 inmates. Many prisoners were armed and urged to join the Yimonchi at Bobur Square to protest; of those released, only 93 prisoners voluntarily returned to jail (28).
After the prisonbreak, there was a dispute over whether to flee to the Kyrgyz Republic through the nearby and poorly guarded border at Paxtabod. Some of the group fled to the Kyrgyz Republic, while a core group around Paripiyev called others to join them and do more in Andijon (29-30).
The group left the prison and travelled on Navoi Prospekt in the direction of the provincial government building. On the way, they passed and attacked the MXX office at around 01:00. Either they came under fire while passing by the MXX building or, more likely, they deliberately attacked the building to free one of the Yimonchi arrested on 11 May 2005 who was being held there, along with another 6 Yimonchi arrested on separate charges (30).
The MXX troops defended the building successfully against attack over the course of 2 hours. They requested assistance from Ministry of Internal Affairs police who never arrived. At around 03:00, the Yimonchi called off the attack. Around 15 Yimonchi and 2 MXX officers died in the combat. During the chaos, some prisoners also attacked the nearby Galla Bank and killed the security guard there (30-31).
At the same time as the battle was going on at the MXX building, a smaller portion of the group had continued travelling to the provincial government and capturing it from the only person there, a single night watchman who they took hostage (31).
At around 05:00, Paripiyev and his group barricaded themselves into the area around the provincial capitol building and Bobur Square, moving buses and cars to intersection and setting them on fire to create roadblocks (31). In total, the group included 83 armed men and around 80 Yominchi women who tried to rally to crowd to the cause and shouted 'Allahu akbar' (33).
Around 06:00, provincial government employees started arriving for work and were taken hostage, one by one. Small numbers of confused police also showed up to investigate and were similarly arrested (31-32).
Paripiyev clearly intended to start a riot or a larger rebellion against the government, but failed to do so. To this end, he set fire to some surrounding buildings, including the Russian Theater and the Bakir Cinema. This did attract crowds, who were mainly very confused by what was going on and disturbed by the crowd of armed men in Bobur Square, and firemen, who were prevented from putting out of the fires and some of whom were taken hostage (32-33).
All of the news agencies in the city were waiting for approval from higherups, so nothing about the incident was reported on the morning of 13 May 2005 until approval was given from Toshkent around 10:30. As a result, many Andijonlik went to Bobur Square to see for themselves just what was happening (34).
In total, the Yominchi group ended up taking around 30 hostages, including police, firemen, provincial government employees, the chief of the tax agency, two human rights defenders, and the provincial prosecutor. Some of the hostages were abused, one human rights advocat was shot while trying to escape at around 16:00, and the provincial prosecutor, Ghani Abdurahimov, was beaten to death (33-34).
The Uzbekistani security forces tried to mobilize to deal with the situation in Andijon during the morning of 13 May, but did so without any coordination. The provincial Ministry of Internal Affairs did a bad job and the Border Guards, MXX, and Ministry of Defense all coordinate separate responses. Nobody seemed to actually know what areas were controlled by Yimonga Yo'l and troops of different security forces kept either missing entirely or accidentally barreling directly into Yimonchi barricades (34-36). This lack of proper planning and identification resulted in at least one incident of friendly fire (45).
There are numerous pieces of footage to indicate that soldiers were poorly trained and ill disciplined and that officers exercised poor command and control over their forces. In particular, there was a lot of random firing in the direction of Bobur Square, resulting in at least one civilian death (36).
A factor adding difficult to coordination of forces was that, since the cities of the Ferghana valley had been designated 'strategic' by the USSR, no maps had ever been made of them (45).
By early afternoon, the Ministry of Defense had finally determined where the Yominchi positions were and established a perimeter manned by soldiers, except for one position in the north manned by Border Guards (36).
Command of the situation was personally assumed by Minister of Internal Affairs, Zakir Almatov. Later in the day, he was joined by President Karimov, who met with residents to assure them that the government was in the control of the situation (36-37). Karimov, however, returned to Toshkent soon afterwards (41).
Around 13:00, Zakir Almatov called into the provincial government building and spoke to Paripiyev. This was the first time that anyone actually knew who had taken control of the building. People were surprised that it was Yimonga Yo'l, which was regarded as a benign group (37).
The initial conversation was followed up by two more around 15:00 and around 17:00, during which Parpiyev demanded that Akrom Yuldashev and the 23 Yominchi businessmen be released. Phone recordings indicate that Almatov complied and offered free passage for the whole group to the Kyrgyz border. Parpiyev then refused this offer and announced he had plans to march on Toshkent; it is possible this refusal resulted from the fact that Akrom Yuldashev could not be immediately released because he had been transferred from a prison in Bekobod to one in Toshkent earlier that day (43-44). Another is that none of the Yimonchi trusted the promises of the Uzbekistani government (47).
By the afternoon of 13 May 2005, the efforts by Hassan and Sharif Shakirov to attract more supporters paid off and a crowd of around 2,000 people had entered the area near Bobur Square. In front of this crowd there were a number of speeches by Yominchi and freed prisoners, including Sharif Shakirov and Akrom Yuldashev's wife, Yodgory. The speeches were rambling and many did not actually focus on the Yominga Yo'l or their points (39-41).
As part of their plans to start a popular uprising, the Shakirov brothers had contacted a German journalist, Marcus Bensmann, and an Uzbekistani Internet journalist, Galima Buxarbayeva (42-43).
Around 15:00, the Yominchi forced several hostages, including the provincial tax assessor and the prosecutor to speak before the crowd. After this, the prosecutor was seized by members of the crowd and murdered (40).
Many of the members of the crowd were not interested in the speeches or Yominga Yo'l (61-62). At least some of them had shown up because of a rumor that President Karimov was going to address the crowd, although it actuallity he had returned to Tashkent (41).
By late afternoon, especially after rejecting Almatov's offer again at 17:00, Parpiyev and other Yimonchi discussed the idea of breaking out of the government cordons, potentially using the hostages as human shields to secure their escape. Their rebellion had clearly failed to become Uzbekistan's 'Tulip Revolution', so they decided to flee. At around 17:20, Parpiyev led a group of 24 Yimonchi and 30 hostages out of the north exit of the provincial government building onto Cholpon Street, where they were joined by a crowd of around 300 onlookers and supporters (47-49).
The group was haltered around 1km north on Cholpon Street at a portion of the cordon manned by Border Guards between School No.15 and Cholpon Cinema. One of the hostages, a captain in the MXX, stepped forward and negotiated the safe passage of the group, to which the Border Guards responded that they needed to phone their superior officers (49-50).
The crowd stayed on Cholpon Street until around 18:00 waiting for the Border Guards to get confirmation and let them pass. At this point they got tired of waiting and someone started shooting. The MXX captain tried to calm the crowd, but was shot by a Yimonchi. The Border Guards openned fire on the crowd with a machine gun, killing hostages, Yimonchi, and supporters alike. Those were survived fled back south or hid in the surrounding streets (50-51).
As soon as gunfire started to be heard from the Border Guard checkpoint in the north, everyone back at Bobur Square started firing: Yimonchi and security forces alike, despite the presence of a crowd of some 2,000 people in the area. Shooting in this area continued until around 20:00 (51).
There was a thunderstorm in Andijon between 21:00 and 22:00 that night, during which time many who had survived fled the square and Cholpon street (51).
Parpiyev and a large group of around 600 other surviving Yimonchi and their families took advantage of the thunderstorm to flee north toward the Kyrgyz border. The group got into a firefight with Border Guards around 06:00 on 14 May, during which another 8 Yimonchi were killed, but eventually managed to cross at a different point (52).
Another group of Yimonchi escaped from the area and went to Qorasuv on the border with the Kyrgyz Republic. There, they happened to be in the same place as a separate uprising against the government beginning on 14 May and continuing until the government forces recaptured the town on 20 May. There is no evidence they participated in this second incident at Qorasuv (52-53).
Uzbekistani security forces remained at the scene all night, but did not actually enter Bobur Square or the provincial administration building until the morning of 14 May, just before 05:00 (52, 63).
Parpiyev managed to escape to the Kyrgyz Republic and remained on the run, giving a series of interviews as he went during which he mocked the Uzbekistani government and refuted MXX claims of foreign involvement. He remained in the Kyrgyz Republic until at least June 2005 and then was in Kazakhstan by August 2005. Parpiyev was finally captured in Shymkent, Kazakhstan, in late November 2005 by a joint operation of the MXX and its Kazakhstani equivalent (53). As of 2016, he is still in jail in Uzbekistan (59).
Of the 600 or so Yimonchi, sympathizers, and their families who crossed into the Kyrgyz Republic, 439 were registered as refugees and resettled in Romania and the USA. 15 of this group, including Hassan Shakirov were arrested by the Kyrgyz government and deported back to Uzbekistan to face trial in June 2005 (54).
The total number of those killed in the Andijon Incident was probably close to the figure of 211 given by the Uzbekistani government. This includes 29 active members of security forces, 14 hostages from the security forces, 12 other hostages, 40 Yimonchi, and 116 civilians. Additionally, there were around 250 civilians wounded in the shooting who required hospitalization; an unknown number of security forces were also wounded (55-56, 58).
Accurate accounting for the number of dead is very difficult due to confusion at the time, the difficulty of distinguishing those who died in the chaos of the uprising from those dying of other violent causes in Andijon, and the fact that many families likely retrieved the bodies of their loved ones and buried them before they could be catalogued by the government (56).
The official number also remained subbornly still despite new investigations conducted later on because of fear that new numbers would embarrass those who had presented the old numbers and because the Karimov government wanted to stick with one number, despite knowing it was incorrect, to face down international pressure. For these terrible reasons, the official death toll remained 189 for a long time despite being accompanied with a list of 211 names (57-58).
This number is wildly different from the account of between 500 and 1,500 killed given by Western and Russian media sources and human rights groups (55). These groups also spread rumors of mass graves in the southern hills of Andijon, actually in the vecinity of Bo'gi Shamol. This likely was a mass grave, but one created by the families of the Yimonchi (56-57).
The reason that the number was so much lower than this was probably due to the dispersion of the crowd and the ability of many to escape down narrow alleyways once they left the main square. Many of the leading Yimonchi managed to escape, as did journalists interviewing them. It is also, therefore, likely that most members of the crowd were able to similarly escape the area (58-59).
Although the Yimonga Yo'l movement still exists online to some extent, its actually infrastructure and organization was destroyed by the events in Andijon in May 2005 and their aftermath (59-60).
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