Despite reports of an 8% increase in GDP last year, living standards and employment do not appear to be rising, with an estimated 5-6 million Uzbeks going abroad to find work each year.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan has been operating over the border in Afghanistan for more than two decades, while an estimated 2,000 to 4,000 central Asians are fighting with Islamic State (Isis), most of them thought to be Uzbeks.
If Karimov's fourth term is spent battling an Islamist threat, Uzbeks will be waiting a long time for the promised era of "complete freedom" to begin.
Sadykjan Makhmudov, a lawyer based in Osh province in the south of the country, who helps people arrested on religious grounds (almost all of whom are Uzbeks), says that evidence is often fabricated, and prison conditions are appalling.The media and the religious authorities have been enrolled to educate the population about the "true values" of Islam and advocate a moderate approach.
Leaderless, many of the Uzbeks try to keep a low profile.A minority across Kyrgyzstan, a poor country landlocked between powerful neighbours, Uzbeks are concentrated in the south.
Waziristan has become home to Afghan warlords, feral Uzbeks and assorted local thugs guilty of atrocities against Pakistani troops and civilians.
He was jailed, like dozens of ethnic Uzbeks, after unrest in southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010.
Authorities say that most of those from Kyrgyzstan are ethnic Uzbeks, who officially account for 14% of the population.
It also notes that in the years since the violence Uzbeks have been disproportionately prosecuted and condemned.
See articleKyrgyz horrorStreet-fighting in Osh, the largest city in southern Kyrgyzstan, between ethnic Kyrgyz and minority Uzbeks escalated rapidly into a pogrom.
But since 2001 surprisingly few Arab jihadists have been encountered, willingly or otherwise, by Western soldiers in Afghanistan or by the Pakistanis next door.The foreigners fighting in Waziristan are mostly Uzbeks, mainly from a hapless militant group, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which was chased into Afghanistan in the late 1990s.
