A decade ago, when Uzbekistan's first president, Islam Karimov, was still alive, it would have been difficult for a Western journalist to research and write a book covering the country, its society, and its political regime.
In that sense Joanna Lillis's forthcoming book Silk Mirage: Through The Looking Glass In Uzbekistan is an achievement of the "New Uzbekistan" touted by Karimov's successor, Shavkat Mirziyoev, who surprised longtime observers of the country by rolling back some of his mentor's authoritarian excesses.
But if a chapter on freedom of speech previewed by RFE/RL is anything to go by, it is unlikely to be one Uzbek officials will boast about.
Lillis's reporting -- the product of more than two decades living and working in the region -- captures how many who recall the promise of the early Mirziyoev years following Karimov's death in 2016 now see that promise fading.
A 'Breath Of Freedom' Too Short
The chapter titled Red Lines begins with a journalist who seemingly crossed more than one red line just trying to bring information to the public.
For some time under Karimov, Anora Sodiqova headed a small newspaper that covered social issues and the everyday problems of citizens in the nation of more than 35 million.
Back then, straying into overtly political territory would have been a fast track to an Uzbek jail, and even the cautious reporting of Sodiqova and her colleagues sometimes attracted the attention of zealous state censors.
By the time of the fatal Sardoba dam burst in May 2020, the first major disaster of the Mirziyoev era, Sodiqova was putting her experience to use for a state media outlet.
When she traveled through the region most affected by the dam break, she was amazed to find locals claiming everything was fine and insisting they had not been affected.
Digging deeper, Sodiqova learned there was a good reason for this: Locals had been told by provincial officials not to complain to the press.
This was precisely the kind of behavior Mirziyoev had explicitly condemned in his public speeches, instead exhorting journalists and bloggers to "expose the shortcomings" of bureaucrats whatever they were.
But when Sodiqova wrote about the attempt to suppress information on Facebook, she was immediately sacked.
Her next journalistic endeavor, as the founding editor of a hard-hitting, often corruption-focused outlet called Rost 24, proved short-lived.
Setting up Rost in 2022, she ended up being bounced out of her own startup due to "pressure and blackmail," Sodiqova told Lillis.
That was in 2023, as officials prepared for a referendum on constitutional changes that forged a path for Mirziyoev to stay in office at least as far as 2037.
Sodiqova stands out in the chapter as an interviewee who speaks frankly and without anonymity.
Other journalists and bloggers Lillis spoke to seemed to do one or the other, with one unnamed blogger complaining in a cagey cafe meeting that media freedoms were going "back to the future" after the initial "breath of freedom" sounded by Mirziyoev.
'Paranoia' Over Islam
If releases of Karimov-era political prisoners meant the Mirziyoev era celebrated the first year in two decades without journalists behind bars in 2018, then the sentencing of blogger Otabek Sattoriy to a 6 1/2-year jail term in 2021 was the beginning of a very different trend.
After that, there was no let-up in the arrests, with a series of repressive laws -- such as one criminalizing insults to the president -- further chilling the environment.
Lillis's book will be the first tome in English covering post-Karimov Uzbekistan.
Another, titled Nowy Uzbekistan (New Uzbekistan in Polish), was published in Warsaw in 2023.
Its author, journalist Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska, was refused entry to Uzbekistan, where she had lived for several years, in 2021.
Lillis, a correspondent for The Economist, held accreditation in Uzbekistan from 2019 to 2023 but has not had it extended since then despite submitting applications for renewal.
Silk Mirage is her second book on the region after Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan is also an authoritarian country but typically enjoys some distance from Uzbekistan in the annual indexes of Western rights groups, even after the Mirziyoev "thaw."
Lillis, who has lived in the oil-rich country since 2005, argues that the differences between the two countries are partly due to the differences between their two founding presidents.
While Karimov was naturally "prickly" and hostile to outside influences, Nursultan Nazarbaev, the president of Kazakhstan until 2019, was "bolder and somewhat more worldly," she said, initially tolerating some political opposition as he sought international acceptance and acclaim.
But another important distinction between the two was the bigger role Islam played in Uzbekistan's society, with the government facing challenges from extremist groups early in independence that "fueled Karimov's paranoia about threats to his power," Lillis told RFE/RL in an interview.
Here, too, the Mirziyoev administration promised a break with the unrelenting crackdowns of the past, and among the hundreds of bloggers who came to prominence in the first years of his reign, some were religious conservatives.
They have fared variously.
While some have shot to prominence with obvious support from the state, sometimes trashing liberal views, others have faced state punishments just like their secular colleagues.
Lillis believes Uzbekistan's reversion to type in some areas is logical insofar as "fostering an environment in which genuine freedom of expression prevailed could, in the mindset of authoritarian leaders, present a threat to the regime."
At the same time, the journalist hopes her book, which she said documents both "heartening changes" in Uzbekistan after Karimov and the first president's brutal legacy, will be "a timely reminder about why commitment to reform is -- while enormously challenging -- so important" for the country.
