ANDIJON (Uzbekistan): Sanjab Valiakhunov’s family can’t find him, no matter how hard they search. “In the last three days I was everywhere. I was at the morgue, at the hospital. He’s not there,” his sister, Rakhat Valiakhunova, said on Thursday, in despair after clashes here last week left a death toll of at least 169 by official count, and hundreds more according to human rights activists and others.

“They didn’t let me into the morgue, though,” she added. “They just said, ‘Your brother is not here,’ as if they know my brother. Or maybe they just don’t have any bodies in the morgue and don’t want to admit it. I know that many families have been going around town looking for their loved ones and can’t find them.”

This brutalized eastern Uzbek town continues to mourn its dead and missing as officials seek to bring back a semblance of normality. Dozens of roadblocks have been taken down. And while seven armoured personnel carriers maintained a commanding presence on major streets, vehicle and pedestrian traffic had resumed even in the city centre.

There were other signs too that the government of President Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan’s Communist boss before the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and authoritarian ruler of the country ever since, had re-established at least short-term control in this tense region.

Government authorities reappeared on Thursday in the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border town of Korasuv, which they had fled after rioters burned buildings there on Saturday. BBC television and the Associated Press reported the arrest of a farmer turned Islamic leader, Bakhtiyor Rakhimov, who a day earlier had told journalists that residents had taken control of the town and would use it as a base to build an Islamic state.

In Andijon, Mutabarkhon Valiakhunova, 65, sat on a sofa in a room adorned with carpets and dark red wallpaper, crying in fear for her son.

“I hope he’s hiding someplace,” she said. “You know how they can arrest anyone now.” Neither mother nor sister said they had any reason to believe that Valiakhunov participated in Friday’s clashes here, which ended with a bloody crackdown by government troops against protesters and armed militants. But they feared that he somehow was caught up in the chaos.

Unidentified men had stormed a prison in the predawn hours Friday to release inmates, including 23 local businessmen who were on trial for alleged Islamic extremism. Gunmen then seized a government building in central Andijon, and a large protest rally ensued in a city square.

When troops arrived and began shooting, groups of people moved in several directions, and shootings took place in several locations, according to journalists at the scene and eyewitnesses who spoke later with Western media.

Valiakhunova said her 27-year-old son, a confectionary employee, was not at all an Islamic extremist. “Yes, he was religious, but he went to the mosque very seldom,” she said. “I don’t believe he was there (at Friday’s protest). I don’t want to find his body. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service