The name of the president of Uzbekistan is known to anyone who knows at least something about what is happening in Central Asia. It is certainly different with the Uzbek prime minister whose name one would be hard pressed to remember without surfing the Net first. Can you remember it? I couldn't. Search in the Net identified him as Shavkat Mirziayev, number two man in the Republic of Uzbekistan.

As it happens, there are no number two, three, or four men in Uzbekistan. There is just Islam Karimov, the first and only president. Karimov has been guarantor of the Uzbek Constitution for sixteen years. He has never missed a chance to remind the Uzbek people that he alone, Karimov, is up to the job of ruling the country. Andijan was probably his strongest argument. The people eventually became convinced that its ruler was someone truly extraordinary and irreplaceable. And so did Karimov himself. His faith in himself and his capacities has reached the proportions where Karimov was essentially left all alone. Five parties sitting on the parliament of Uzbekistan have the word "democratic" in their names but opposition in the country is history - and has been history for some time already. Critics of the regime were either jailed or had the presence of mind to hit the road.

The president of Uzbekistan has deserved this hard-won solitude. It has its own price of course, and Karimov is compelled to pay it now whether or not he wants it. The price in question comes down to presidency for life. His opponents scattered and associates properly intimidated, Karimov cannot even be sure of his own survival in retirement.

Cold comfort as it probably is, but Karimov is not alone in this self-imposed seclusion. At least two neighbors suffer from the same malady - Emomali Rakhmon in Tajikistan and Nursultan Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan. Each deliberately established a power vertical in his respective country so that everything was decided and all strings pulled by the head of state himself, so that all others were reduced to doing their bidding. As a matter of fact, Kazakhstan became an unquestionable leader this summer. Snap parliamentary election there a short while ago produced a single-party parliament. Nur-Otan, the president's political party, carried the day with a catchy slogan "Nur-Otan - Nursultan! Nur-Otan - Kazakhstan!"

Total distrust in everyone even including the inner circle is an inevitable aftereffect of the state development of this kind. President Nazarbayev, for one, distrusts even his own kin. He had his daughter Dariga divorce Rakhat Aliyev, diplomat and media tycoon who fell into disgrace and whose name the president ordered put on the international list of wanted criminals. He had Timur Kulibayev, his other son-in-law, sacked as assistant CEO of a major state holding...

"Nazarbayev does not understand why he has to step down one fine day," Kazakh opposition activist, one of the few remaining, told this correspondent this summer. With the understanding or not, Nazarbayev will have to go one day. Central Asia knows of only two examples when leaders stepped down. One episode occurred in Kyrgyzstan where President Askar Akayev's regime was toppled in the revolution of 2005 and Akayev himself fled the country. The second happened in Turkmenistan where Saparmurat Niyazov the Turkmenbashi finally escaped solitude by quietly slipping into death while asleep. Revolution on the one hand and demise on the other. No other option seems to exist.

Vladimir Soloviov. Kommersant, September 19, 2007, p. 9. Translated by Ferghana.Ru