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safeguard Uzbekistan’s heavily Tajik regions. Similarly, Rakhmonov is more interested in
holding his internal rivals at bay than in leading a potentially destabilizing pan-Tajik effort to
“regain” Bukhara and Samarkand.
In other words, the present relative stability within and between Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan is due to the nature of their regimes: both are led by “careerist” elites more interested
in keeping power than in acting out risky scenarios of national revival and transformation. This
explains both the limited escalation of Uzbekistan’s involvement since the Karimov government
has fallen out with Rakhmonov, and the fact that diffusion of ethnic conflict into Uzbekistan has
not occurred on a significant scale. Similarly, diffusion into Kyrgyzstan is unlikely for as long as
its potentially restive Uzbek minority is not roused by support from Uzbekistan proper. While the
Taliban remained in power in Afghanistan, it increasingly supported Islamist movements in
Central Asia--particularly in strategic Uzbekistan. The weak successors of the Taliban have no
ideological or “careerist” stake in providing such support. Iran continues to prefer the status quo
to a destabilizing cycle of escalating ethnic conflicts.
Conclusions
Consider again the two basic factors hypothesized to affect diffusion and escalation of
ethnic conflict. Diffusion during the Soviet period was feasible due to the Center’s declining
coercive threat. It was partially motivated and facilitated by international cultural diffusion of
national self-determination ideologies and alternative national development models. These
ideologies and models influenced both titular nationalist movements and minority counter-
movements. Majority decisions to undertake such movements, and minority decisions to resist,
were affected by the anticipated consequences of international economic integration—which was
Convention