The president of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, who has ruled the isolated Central Asian country for more than 25 years using old Soviet methods like forced labor for cotton harvesting, has been hospitalized with a stroke, his younger daughter announced Monday on Facebook. Later on Monday, Ferghana, an Uzbek website banned at home since 2005, reported that Mr. Karimov had died in the afternoon, citing sources outside the government. The report was widely repeated by independent news outlets in Russia. There was no official confirmation, however, and Russian outlets, such as the state-run RIA Novosti agency, quoted unidentified government officials in Uzbekistan as saying that the president remained alive and in stable condition.
The nightly news on the main Uzbekistan television channel did not refer to the story at all, mentioning the president as the active leader. Daniil Kislov, the Moscow-based editor of Ferghana, said a “Brezhnev scenario” was possible, referring to the delayed announcement of the Soviet leader’s death in 1982. Under the Constitution, upon Mr. Karimov’s death, the head of Uzbekistan’s Senate would run the country for three months to allow for new presidential elections. Presidential elections in Uzbekistan have always come with a known outcome. With no son or obvious successor, the announcement that Mr. Karimov, 78, was gravely ill, or perhaps dead, immediately focused attention on who might succeed him.
“This is the question that worries everybody now,” Mr. Kislov said. No successor is likely to replace the secret police as the central power in the country, he predicted. “Islam Karimov has built a very stable system of power, which is based on the power of the special services,” Mr. Kislov said in an interview. “Regardless of who is the main person in the country, the real power will be with the special services.”
Amid the conflicting accounts on Monday, there was no indication of public unrest or even disquiet in Uzbekistan, the largest country in Central Asia by far, with more than 31 million people. Reports from Tashkent, the capital, indicated that the mood was business as usual, with the exception of a heavy military presence guarding the hospital where Mr. Karimov is being treated. State television aired a program about canning summer tomatoes, Peter Leonard, an editor with EurasiaNet, wrote on Twitter.
The way the announcement was made, however, indicated that Mr. Karimov was in grave condition. For the first time ever, the government issued a statement about his health, reporting on Sunday that the president had been hospitalized without providing any details.
Then on Monday, his younger daughter, Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva, 38, the Uzbek ambassador to Unesco in Paris, posted her announcement on Facebook in Uzbek, Russian and English. “I would like to write here about the sad events that befell our family last weekend,” she wrote. “My father was hospitalized after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage on Saturday morning, and is now receiving treatment in an intensive-care unit.” Ms. Karimova-Tillyaeva said that her father was in stable condition and that it was too early for a prognosis. She asked for privacy, prayers and for “everyone to refrain from any speculation.” The announcement prompted just that, however, given that Mr. Karimov has avoided appointing a successor.
For years, people expected that it would be his older daughter, Gulnara Karimova, 44, a high-profile businesswoman, diplomat, pop singer and fashion designer whose fall from grace after being accused of graft in 2013 reached Shakespearean proportions. She was described in leaked American diplomatic cables as a “robber baron” and the least popular person in the country. Under investigation in Europe and the United States on suspicion of accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes in connection with telecom licenses in Uzbekistan, Ms. Karimova disappeared from public view. In 2014, it was revealed that she had been under house arrest for at least a year, with various associates arrested and jailed. She remains at home under guard.
Mr. Karimov’s wife, Tatyana Karimova, and Rustam Inoyatov, the head of the secret police, are expected to be hugely influential in the choice of a successor, but are unlikely to take such a public role themselves.
Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoev, seen as a Kremlin ally, is a more likely consensus candidate within a small ruling circle, as is Rustam Azimov, a deputy prime minister and finance minister.
Mr. Karimov, first appointed to run Uzbekistan in 1989 when it was still part of the Soviet Union, won an election to continue as president after it collapsed in 1991. He set about eliminating all political opposition, free news media and human rights organizations through killings, jail or exile. In the most notorious episode, hundreds of civilians, including women and children, were gunned down in 2005 while protesting social and economic woes in the city of Andijon. The massacre prompted Europe and the United States to distance themselves from Mr. Karimov for a time, and the United States imposed military sanctions. But Uzbekistan was a crucial supplier for Western troops propping up the government in Afghanistan against the Taliban, so ties were restored within a few years and remain stable.
“Karimov is known for being one of the wiliest, most ruthless authoritarian rulers, not only in the post-Soviet space but in the entire world,” said Steve Swerdlow, the director of Central Asia research at Human Rights Watch. The stability of Uzbekistan, the crossroads of Central Asia, is important to Russia, China and the United States. Some Uzbeks have turned up among the Islamic State fighters in the Middle East, but they are not considered a serious threat at home.
In Moscow, Dmitry S. Peskov, the presidential spokesman, wished Mr. Karimov a speedy recovery. He said it was not appropriate to speculate about the future of the country should Mr. Karimov die, according to the Interfax news agency.
Mr. Karimov has kept some distance from Moscow as well as from his neighbors, yet rules in a manner learned from his past as a Soviet official. Every year, for example, an estimated million Uzbeks are forced to leave their regular lives for a month to help with the public cotton harvest. In another annual rite, Mr. Karimov shows up at the public celebrations of independence day on Sept. 1 to glad-hand the crowd and perform a traditional national dance. It is, analysts noted, his way of showing the public that he is in good health. There will be no dancing this year. In fact, some analysts speculated that the public announcement about his hospitalization had been prompted by the need to explain why Mr. Karimov would not be dancing on Thursday.
