The history of the Central Asian states since independence dawned in 1991 centres around the leaders of the five countries.

Even casual observers of the region remember how Nursultan Nazarbayev was Kazakhstan’s president, Islam Karimov was Uzbekistan’s leader and Saparmurat “Turkmenbashi” (head of the Turkmen) Niyazov was Turkmenistan’s demigod. Yet the people behind the scenes who supported this trio and carried out their instructions in the first 10-15 years of independence are now nearly forgotten.

As it happens, two of those people lately died – and, notably, their passing seems for the most part to have been overlooked by the current leaderships of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Turkmenistan’s Iron Lady

Gurbanbibi Atajanova was one of the most feared people in Turkmenistan. Her cold stare and pitiless voice were among the last things many people saw and heard before they were locked away in prison.

Atajanova worked in the prosecutor’s office in the last years that Turkmenistan was a Soviet republic. The country’s president Niyazov was first party secretary of the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic from late 1985, and he stayed on as president after the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991.

Niyazov clearly knew Atajanova as he appointed her assistant prosecutor-general shortly after Turkmenistan became independent, then named her the country’s prosecutor-general in April 1995.

Atajanova became Niyazov’s hatchet-woman, an Iron Lady who rooted out dissent during the years when his rule was becoming increasingly bizarre and erratic as he developed his cult of personality.

Niyazov regularly shuffled his top officials. Some only stayed in their positions for a few months, but Atajanova remained in her position for 11 years.

Niyazov (seated, with the man who would later succeed him, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, to the right) appointed Atajanova prosecutor-general in 1995. She retired in late 2005, but months later found herself facing charges of corruption as the tables turned (Credit: public domain).

During those years as prosecutor-general, she often appeared on state television, publicly listing crimes allegedly committed by fallen government officials. They were usually in the same room, sitting crestfallen, as Atajanova condemned them.

Following the reported assassination attempt on Niyazov in November 2002, Atajanova led the investigation, rounding up dozens of suspects, and often their family members.

The alleged ringleader was former foreign minister Boris Shikhmuradov, who had left for Russia and in 2001 publicly came out in opposition to Niyazov. He was apprehended inside Turkmenistan shortly after the reported attempted hit.

Put on TV, Shikhmuradov confessed he was part of a “criminal group,” saying: “When we lived in Russia, we took drugs and, while in a state of intoxication, prepared people and recruited mercenaries to carry out a terrorist attack.” He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in December 2002. It remains unclear if he is alive or dead. He has never been heard from since.

Other suspects also confessed in front of the cameras to their role in the alleged assassination attempt. Some of them also vanished after they were incarcerated.

International rights groups, and the OSCE media representative of the time harshly criticised “the same methods that were used during the Stalinist show trials of the 1930s in the Soviet Union.”

During the course of March 2003, Atajanova oversaw the convictions for corruption of 34 former government officials, including two deputy prime ministers, a defence minister and energy minister.

Atajanova played a key role in orchestrating the staged confessions and show trials. She also helped to discredit the people she was about to send to prison. They were, according to Atajanova’s televised statements, not just criminals. They were reprobates with drug or alcohol problems, who cheated on their spouses and generally had immoral characters.

Atajanova retired at the end of 2005 on health grounds, but after only a few months she became a victim of the perverted system of justice she helped to create. Detained in April 2006 on charges of taking millions of dollars in bribes, and of having stolen money seized by the state, Atajanova was convicted and sent to prison.

In a state TV broadcast, new prosecutor-general Mukhammet Oshukov took 15 minutes to read out the charges against  Atajanova, stating that she had 25 cars, 36 homes, thousands of cattle and sheep, and, oddly, 30,000 buckets.

President Niyazov, present in the courtroom, asked: "For what reason did you steal 30,000 buckets?"

Atajanova did not explain, but she pleaded to Niyazov: “Forgive me! I am sorry! For the rest of my life I will live by your policies, follow your path, do your honest work.”

But her words were in vain. Atajanova, sentenced to prison, was sent to a women’s penitentiary in northern Dashoguz Province. She died there on September 26 aged 78.

Uzbekistan’s first Grey Cardinal

At the end of September, Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Water Resources posted a brief and perfunctory message (below) on Telegram announcing the September 28 death of “Ismail Khakimovich Jurabekov, Advisor to the Minister, state and public figure” at the age of 94.

Jurabekov amounted to much more than the brief post by the ministry revealed. Very much a Grey Cardinal, he is remembered as the official who helped propel Uzbekistan’s first president, Islam Karimov, through the ranks of the Communist Party leadership when Uzbekistan was a Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR).

Jurabekov is remembered as the man who helped put Islam Karimov in power (Credit: Uzbek ministry of water resources).

Nicknamed the “Iranian” (his family originated from Iran), Jurabekov was from Samarkand. He became a very influential figure there and by 1985 was a top official on the Uzbek SSR’s agriculture committee. Later on, he was made first deputy chairman of the Uzbek SSR’s Council of Ministers.

Karimov grew up in a state orphanage in Samarkand. How Karimov caught Jurabekov’s eye is unclear, but Jurabekov helped push Karimov up the party ladder and eventually become first party secretary of the Uzbek SSR in June 1989.

As president, Karimov (above) rewarded his patron Jurabekov. How much power Jurabekov exercised behind the throne remains a key point of contention in Uzbekistan (Credit: kremlin.ru).

After independence, Karimov rewarded his patron, at first putting Jurabekov in charge of Uzbekistan’s agro-industrial complex, then promoting him to deputy prime minister and also agriculture and water resources minister in 1994. When the Ministry for Emergency Situations was created in 1996, Jurabekov was appointed its head and kept that post also until September 1997.

Jurabekov’s ties to Uzbek SSR government officials allowed him to strengthen his influence and expand business horizons. When Uzbekistan became independent in late 1991, there were already rumours that Jurabekov was a leading figure in the country’s criminal underworld as head of the so-called Samarkand clan.

The speculation increased after independence. Some even said that Jurabekov, not Karimov, was the real power in Uzbekistan.

Karimov might have feared this was the case. He sacked Jurabekov from his government posts in 1998, with some observers saying it was with the strong backing of Tashkent area organised crime leaders. But Jurabekov had become so powerful by that time that when bombs went off in Tashkent in February, 1999, in what officials said was an assassination attempt on Karimov, there was speculation that Jurabekov might have played a part, looking to retaliate for his dismissal from government positions.

The authorities eventually blamed the plot on the leader of a secular political party who had fled to Turkey years earlier and was allegedly working with Uzbekistan’s top two Islamic extremists, said to have been somewhere in the mountains of Tajikistan when the bombing happened.

Before the end of 1999, Jurabekov obtained a new post as presidential advisor on agricultural issues. Observers discussed how he may have pushed himself back into the government.

Jurabekov remained in the advisor post until his retirement was announced in February 2004. In February 2005, state newspapers published articles criticising Jurabekov’s poor performance in the agriculture sector and accusing him of abusing his authority while in the advisor post.

Jurabekov was charged with theft and abuse of office. He admitted the crimes but was given his liberty due to his advanced age (73 at the time) and alleged health problems.

Jurabekov went on to live another 21 years and in 2021, he was appointed advisor to the water resources minister. He remained in that position until his death.

Few will mourn the deaths of Atajanova or Jurabekov. Indeed, the authorities of their countries seemed to largely ignore their passing. But the big roles these two notorious figures played for many years in the direction the Turkmen and Uzbek governments took after gaining independence cannot be scrubbed from the record.