In Ferghana, the resources of the region have been exhausted by the Soviet Union's policy of internal colonialism. There is also the serious demographic explosion in the Ferghana Valley with nine times the population density of the rest of the country. There are no opportunities for development, high unemployment, a severe lack of land. The people are horribly marginalized. Uzbekistan is integrating itself into the world system at the same time it sees itself as part of the Islamic world and a civilization stretching from the Middle East, Afghanistan and into Xinjiang, China.
People are unable to return to traditional structures now that reforms have fallen through.
And the only way people feel stable in this environment is through traditionalism, anti-modernization, and fundamentalism. This is how drug and weapon traffickers in Afghanistan are able to gain a foothold here. Central Asia is a strategic point, in fact it is the main transit corridor. Traffickers use Islam to exacerbate the instability to allow them to control the drug corridor. This is also occurring in Tajikistan with the radicalization of Islam there.