Uzbekistan is taken over by Islam Karimov, a dictator who remains in office until his death in 2016. He is a kleptocratic autocrat who claims he will make Uzbekistan great again, calls news media “the enemy of the people,” hides national crises from the public, persecutes political opponents and minorities, and has “an intense yet strange relationship with Russia.”
And he had a glamorous fashionista daughter who kept inserting herself into political affairs despite her utter lack of qualifications.
Sarah Kendzior, Hiding In Plain Sight
Sources
Laura Adams, The Spectacular State: Culture and National Identity in Uzbekistan
“Reclaiming Ma’naviyat” by Sarah Kendzior, Ethnographies of the State in Central Asia: Performing Politics
https://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/uzbekistan0304/2.htm#_Toc65397894
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/kim-kardashistan-a-violent-dictators-daughter-on-a-quest-for-pop-stardom/260885/
Sarah Kendzior, Hiding In Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America, p.4
Photo: Saeima