State Security Service (SSS)
National Security Service (NSS)
Committee for State Security (KGB)
The National Security Service (NSS), under the direct command of the president through the Ministry of Internal Affairs, has the responsibility for suppression of dissent and Islamic activity and surveillance of all possible opposition figures and groups, as well as prevention of corruption, organized crime, and narcotics trafficking. Because it receives no effective oversight, the NSS is considered one of the most powerful security police forces in the former Soviet Union.
In 1989 a series of violent ethnic clashes involving Uzbeks brought the appointment of ethnic Uzbek outsider Islam Karimov as Communist Party chief. When the Supreme Soviet of Uzbekistan reluctantly approved independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Karimov became president of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Karimov accumulated powers that ensure full dominance of the government process for as long as he was president. Karimov used his direct control of the National Security Service to effectively limit opposition activity.
Islam Karimov died in September 2016. Rustam Inoyatov, the head of the feared and previously all powerful National Security Service of Uzbekistan, was removed from power and the agency’s mandate was reduced. Political prisoners were released and for the first time in 30 years, there were no imprisoned journalists in Uzbekistan.
In 2005 NSS forces numbered between 17,000 and 19,000. Conventional police operations are the responsibility of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Each governmental jurisdiction has a police force; the forces of larger jurisdictions are subdivided by function. The police forces reportedly are corrupt (particularly the tax and traffic police), and the level of public trust in them is very low. According to human rights organizations, both NSS and regular police use arbitrary arrest, intimidation, and violent tactics. At the community level, civilian police organizations of the mahallas aid the local police in crime prevention and deterrence of antigovernment activity.
In the early 2000s, widespread poverty and political repression created positive conditions for terrorist recruitment. Since the late 1990s, Uzbekistan’s secular government has been the main target of extremist Islamic groups, particularly the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which have the goal of establishing an Islamic state in Central Asia.
Control of religious activity in Uzbekistan is generally based on security grounds, requiring authorities to combat religious extremism and terrorism, which has served to justify the State Security Service's (SSS) involvement in monitoring and policing religious communities. However, international human rights organizations contend that the government has regularly used dubious allegations of links to extremist or terrorist organizations as a means to suppress dissent, and members of the SSS have been accused of using torture to extract confessions.
In September 2017 Journalist Bobomurod Abdullayev was arrested by officers from the former National Security Service (NSS), renamed the State Security Service (SSS) in January) and charged with plotting to overthrow the government. Human rights monitors, including Human Rights Watch, noted the openness of his trial, which took place in Tashkent in May; nonetheless, human rights observers believed there was clear evidence Abdullaev was tortured by the security services. According to Abdullayev’s open court testimony, police investigators beat him, kept him naked in a freezing cell, and did not allow him to sit down or sleep for six days. On May 7, Abdullayev was released from custody. Following an investigation of Abdullayev’s case and a criminal trial, a Military Tribunal convicted Colonel Nodir Turakulov and, on October 25, sentenced the former deputy head of the National Security Service (now the State Security Service), who was reportedly involved in torture of Abdullayev, to 16 years in prison. Turakulov was tried in accordance with the antitorture law.
The Chairman of the National Security Service (NSS or SNB - the Uzbek version of the KGB) General-Colonel Rustam Inoyatov was considered to be a possible successor to Karimov. He was born on 22 June 1944 and graduated from the Tashkent Faculty of Oriental Studies, learning Farsi and English. When he was promoted from the Uzbek KGB to the KGB USSR (1976-1981) he worked at Soviet embassies, and most likely his duties included monitoring Soviet ambassadors. Inoyatov is widely seen as the power behind the Uzbek throne and is likely to have a key role in any succession to Karimov.
He is also one of the heads of the influential Tashkent “clan,” which is allied with the Ferghana clan. These two clans are based in Tashkent, Ferghana, Andijan and Namangan through their alliance. Their major rival is the Samarqand clan based in Samarqand, Bukhara, Dzhizak and Navoi, via its alliance with the Dzhizak clan. Unlike the civil war in Tajikistan in the 1990s, the ‘civil war’ in Uzbekistan happened behind the scenes between these various clans. The Uzbek Government has denied the existence of clan politics.
The MVD controls the police, which are responsible for law enforcement and maintenance of order within the country. The NSS, headed by a chairman who is answerable directly to the president, deals with a broad range of national security questions, including corruption, organized crime, and narcotics. Corruption among law enforcement personnel remained a problem. Police routinely and arbitrarily detained citizens to extort bribes. Impunity remained a problem, and officials responsible for abuses were rarely punished.
High and growing unemployment, as well as continuing high levels of corruption, had a negative impact on the economy and contributed to social unrest. These factors likely played a role in precipitating a violent uprising in May 2005 in the city of Andijon, which in turn led to a wave of repressive government reaction that dominated the remainder of the year. The Andijon uprising grew out of a series of daily peaceful protests in support of 23 businessmen on trial for Islamic extremism between February and May. By May 10, according to eyewitnesses, the protests grew to between 500 and 1 thousand participants. On the night of May 12-13, an unknown number of unidentified individuals seized weapons from a police garrison, stormed the city prison where the defendants were being held, and released several hundred inmates. According to witnesses and press reports, armed men also attacked and occupied the Hokimiyat (regional administration) building and took hostages. Armed men also attacked a Ministry of Defense garrison, as well as the city Hokimiyat and a theater in Andijon.
On May 13, according to several witnesses including locals, and foreign and domestic journalists, a crowd of several thousand civilians, mostly unarmed but encircled by armed civilians, gathered on the square in front of the regional Hokimiyat building, where several demonstrators spoke through a megaphone to protest injustice and economic hardship. That evening, according to several eyewitness accounts, government forces fired indiscriminately and without warning into the crowd. There were credible reports of many more civilians killed while fleeing the scene. The total number of dead was estimated, depending upon the source, at between the government's total of 187, including 31 members of government security forces, and over 700. The government portrayed the events as an attempted coup by Islamic militants seeking to establish a caliphate.
The government continued to use an estimated 12 thousand local neighborhood committees as a source of information on potential extremists. Committees served varied legitimate social functions, but also functioned as a link between local society, and government and law enforcement. Neighborhood committees' influence varied widely, with committees in rural areas tending to be much more influential than those in cities. Each neighborhood committee assigned a posbon (neighborhood guardian) whose job it was to ensure public order and maintain a proper moral climate in the neighborhood. In practice this meant preventing young persons in the neighborhood from joining extremist Islamic groups. Neighborhood committees also frequently identified for police those residents who appeared suspicious and, working with local MVD and NSS representatives, reportedly paid particular attention to recently amnestied prisoners and the families of individuals jailed for alleged extremism.
Although the law prohibits such practices, police and the NSS routinely tortured, beat, and otherwise mistreated detainees to obtain confessions or incriminating information. Police, prison officials, and the NSS allegedly used suffocation, electric shock, deprivation of food and water, and sexual abuse, with beating the most commonly reported method of abuse. Torture and abuse were common in prisons, pretrial facilities, and local police and security service precincts. Several cases of medical abuse were reported, including forced psychiatric treatment on political grounds and alleged sterilization of women without notification or medical need.
Persistent rumours of growing dissatisfaction with Karimov’s policies among mid-level officials, including within the security services, sparked speculation in 2006 about a possible “palace coup”. Dissent within the security services, on which Karimov relied more than ever, could be dangerous, yet his control seemed assured. Among those said to be closest to him prior to the Andijon uprising were Interior Minister Zokirjon Almatov and the chief of the National Security Service, Rustam Inoyatov. There were rumours of intense inter-service rivalry, and shortly after the Andijon events, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) was stripped of its internal forces, which were reportedly divided between the NSS and the Ministry of Defense.
The NSS controlled the information flow to President Karimov, and by 2008 Foreign Minister Norov was under significant stress due to pressure from NSS Chairman Inoyatov. Norov did not have regular access to President Karimov, and Inoyatov was trying to prevent Norov from developing a closer relationship with Karimov as was the case when Kamilov was Foreign Minister.
The National Security Service also had penetrated the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), and an unspecified number of NSS officers there were monitoring Norov's every move. Inoyatov had "kompromat" (compromising information) on Norov obtained from Norov's days as an Ambassador in Europe, where he was allegedly involved in unspecified "shady dealings." The NSS officers in Uzbekistan's embassies overseas reported to Inoyatov on the behavior of Uzbekistan's Ambassadors. Inoyatov had not revealed the "kompromat" in question to Karimov, but was using it as leverage against Norov.
In January 2018, Rustam Inoyatov, the head of the National Security Service (NSS) that was later renamed the SSS, was dismissed following President Mirziyoyev’s criticism that “every ordinary issue has been considered a threat to national security.” In February 2018, Aydarbek Tulepov was similarly dismissed from his post as the deputy chairman of the Muslim Board of Uzbekistan (MBU). The NSS reportedly had tasked him to monitor the MBU. The work of others assigned to watch the activities of mosques was also temporarily discontinued.
Throughout 2018, the government under President Mirziyoyev continued to pursue an ambitious agenda of political and economic reform. Government officials highlighted efforts to address human rights concerns and emphasized a commitment to end torture, although allegations of torture persisted during the year despite a 2017 presidential decree banning the use in court of evidence obtained through torture. In August and September 2018, at least eight bloggers were arrested in various cities in response to their writings and criticisms of the government regarding religious issues, such as restrictions on wearing hijabs. However, as many as 30 people in total reportedly were detained, but chose not to go public about their detention for fear of further retribution against either themselves or their families. Preceding the arrests, both police and SSS officers raided bloggers’ homes without obtaining a warrant and confiscated computers, mobile phones, and books. Many of the bloggers were subsequently fined and given jail sentences of 15 days, and authorities in Tashkent prohibited a public demonstration that planned to protest hijab restrictions in early September 2018.
The Decree of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan "On measures to improve the system of state security in the Republic of Uzbekistan" of 14 March 2018 noted that reliable protection of state structures and inviolability of state borders, strict observance of human rights and freedoms, interethnic harmony in society, religious tolerance, peace and tranquility are important conditions for building a democratic legal state and accelerated socio-economic development of the country.
The National Security Service of the Republic of Uzbekistan had a special place in the system of protecting the constitutional system, sovereignty, territorial integrity, economic and defense potential of the country against external and internal threats.
"At the same time, the National Security Service did not create a law that clearly defines the status, functions and powers of the National Security Service, and entrusted it with all the aspects of national security. At the current stage of development of the country, effective implementation of tasks on reforming the state and all spheres of public life requires the formation of a qualitatively new system of state security.
"For the purpose of radical improvement of activity on protection of the constitutional system, sovereignty, territorial integrity and interests of the Republic of Uzbekistan from external and internal threats, and also in line with the tasks of the Strategy of Action on five priority directions of development of the Republic of Uzbekistan in 2017-2021:
"1. To reorganize the National Security Service of the Republic of Uzbekistan as the State Security Service of the Republic of Uzbekistan. To determine that the State Security Service of the Republic of Uzbekistan is the successor of the rights, obligations and agreements of the National Security Service of the Republic of Uzbekistan. To determine the State Security Service of the Republic of Uzbekistan as a special authorized body protecting the constitutional system, sovereignty, territorial integrity and interests of the Republic of Uzbekistan against external and internal threats."
In accordance with the Decree, the National Security Service of the Republic of Uzbekistan was reorganized into the State Security Service of the Republic of Uzbekistan. The issue of the concept of "national security" in the name of the Office is related to the need to eliminate the factors that have contributed to the unjustified extension of its powers. Because any local problem could be considered a threat to national security. This amendment draws the Office's attention to real threats of national importance. The term 'national security' clearly defines the scope of security and identifies areas for action in this area.
A completely new system of selection and training of personnel will be created, and the social protection of servicemen will be strengthened. These measures will allow the State Security Service to involve more advanced and patriotic youth. In this context, the status of the military as a serviceman, which means that all restrictions and duties associated with military service, should be applied to them.
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