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Uzbekistan
External Security Conditions
Although its forces are small by international standards, Uzbekistan
is rated as the strongest military power among the five Central
Asian nations. In 1992 the Karimov regime sent military forces
to Tajikistan to support forces of the old-guard communist Tajik
government struggling to regain political power and oust the coalition
government that had replaced them. Karimov's policy toward Tajikistan
was to use military force in maintaining a similarly authoritarian
regime to the immediate east. Although Tajikistan's civil war
has had occasional destabilizing effects in parts of Uzbekistan,
paramilitary Tajikistani oppositionist forces have not been strong
enough to confront Uzbekistan's regular army. In the early 1990s,
small-scale fighting occurred periodically between Tajikistani
and Uzbekistani forces in the Fergana Valley.
In the mid-1990s, no military threat to Uzbekistan existed. An
area of territorial contention is the Osh region at the far eastern
end of the Fergana Valley where Kyrgyz and Uzbeks clashed violently
in 1990 (see Recent History, ch. 2). The Uzbeks have used the
minority Uzbek population in Osh as a reason to demand autonomous
status for the Osh region; the Kyrgyz fear that such a change
would lead to incorporating the region into Uzbekistan. The primary
role of the Uzbekistan Armed Forces is believed to be maintaining
internal security. This is possible because Uzbekistan remains
protected by Russia under most conditions of external threat.
As defined in the 1992 Law on Defense, Uzbekistan's military
doctrine is strictly defensive, with no territorial ambitions
against any other state. Although its policy on the presence of
CIS or Russian weapons has not been stated clearly, Uzbekistan's
overall military doctrine does not permit strategic weapons in
the inventory of the Uzbekistani armed forces. Battlefield chemical
weapons, believed to have been in the republic during the Soviet
period, allegedly have been returned to the Russian Federation.
In 1994 Uzbekistan, like most of the other former Soviet republics,
became a member of the Partnership for Peace program of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO--see Glossary), providing the
basis for some joint military exercises with Western forces.
Data as of March 1996
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