It may be years before we have an authoritative account of what went on in Andijan on May 13, 2005, one that includes accounts of both the Uzbek government and of the demonstrators. Given Uzbek authorities' refusal to allow an international inquiry by either the U.N. or the O.S.C.E., the task may fall to historians of some future generation.

Bakhtiyar Babadjanov, of the Institute of Oriental Studies in Tashkent, discussed the ideas and structure of the radical Islamic political group Akramia.