17 May 2018: President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev visits the White House. Photo: Sipa USA / SIPA USA / PA Images. All rights reserved.Less than two years after being elected in December 2016, Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev was received in Washington in May 2018. The relatively short turnaround attests not only to Mirziyoyev’s growing credibility as a reformist, but also to just how much the international context has turned in illiberalism’s favour. Mirziyoyev’s predecessor Islam Karimov waited nearly five years after Uzbekistan gained independence from the Soviet Union to be received by the White House.
Much has been written and said already about Mirziyoyev’s first years in office, which has been defined as the Uzbek “thaw” or “spring”. Mirziyoyev has certainly striven to resolve or at least mitigate tensions in the region, mainly Uzbekistan’s persistent quarrels with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Border controls, strict visa regimes and high tariffs, on top of stagnant – not to say conflictual – governmental relations had turned the region into a place of relatively low intraregional trade at the global level. Were that not enough, Mirziyoyev’s international efforts have extended further, as he organised a major summit in March 2018 in Tashkent focused on drawing a roadmap for peace in Afghanistan.
Besides aiming towards external openness, Mirziyoyev has also sought to foster internal change by launching a manifesto for political reform, releasing political prisoners and journalists, restructuring the much loathed National Security Service and encouraging the fight against nepotism. He has also taken unprecedented steps towards liberalising Uzbekistan’s currency, the som, after Karimov’s failed attempts in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
