Muslims call the shots in Uzbek town

KORASUV, Uzbekistan — The bearded 42-year-old farmer, astride a horse with a colorful saddle and wearing a traditional Uzbek embroidered black-and-white skull cap, snapped his fingers as he gave orders to an assistant.

"We will be building an Islamic state here in accordance with the Quran," rebel leader Bakhtiyor Rakhimov told The Associated Press as he watched two roads converging at an intersection. "People are tired of slavery."

It was unclear how many people Rakhimov commands. But there was no sign of any Uzbek government officials Wednesday in this town of about 20,000 people on the border with Kyrgyzstan.

Rebels cherishing the prospect of a strict Islamic state were firmly in control of Korasuv, throwing up a new challenge to the government as it tried to prove to skeptical diplomats that its troops didn't fire on civilians in the nearby city of Andijan.

The government of President Islam Karimov dismissed the rebel leader's claims as "nonsense." Rakhimov maintains he has 5,000 followers ready to fight any troops that try to crush the rebellion.

The Uzbek officials apparently fled the town when rioters attacked police and government offices Saturday, a day after the violence in Andijan.

The rebels in Korasuv did not appear to be armed. "We don't have weapons, but if they come and attack us we will fight even with knives," Rakhimov said.

Regardless of officials' attempt to shrug it off, the insurgency in Korasuv ratchets up the stakes for Uzbekistan, a U.S. ally in the war against terrorism. Observers of the impoverished Central Asia region have long feared that any social unrest could be used by Islamic groups to promote their own goals.

The uprising in Andijan that set off the violence Friday focused largely on social and economic demands. But it may have provided the opening Islamic militants have craved.

"While one cannot call Uzbekistan an Islamic country, and other sources of the conflict in Uzbekistan are social and clan-based, Islam as a very strong ideology, a strong factor, will be ready to fill the ideological voids created by the regime of Islam Karimov," Russian analyst Stanislav Belkovsky said in Moscow.

"So I consider that in the coming two to three years, an Islamic revolution and the Islamization of Uzbekistan is unavoidable. Of course this will be accompanied by bloodshed," he said.