Tomorrow the people of Uzbekistan will mark 25 years since their country’s independence from the Soviet Union. Until this week it appeared that they would have little to celebrate. That changed with reports yesterday that the long and brutal rule of their president, Islam Karimov, may at last be near its end.
Wedged between the Kazakh steppe and the mountains of Afghanistan, Uzbekistan has for most of Mr Karimov’s tenure been one of Asia’s nastiest dictatorships. He has created a police state worthy of the Stasi. He has authorised torture on a mass scale and the use of live fire on peaceful protests. Like his old Soviet neighbours, he has fostered rampant kleptocracy, creating an inner circle of cronies with too much to lose to