Islam Karimov, president of the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan, died last week. Many questions surround his illness and the handling of his death, but mysteries are the norm when autocrats come to the end of their lives. Typically, such leaders are loath to prepare for their own passing for fear of either encouraging the people identified as their successors or creating enemies among those who are not. Given the country's geographic location, size and large Islamic population, the country's next leader will be a critical player in regional politics.

Trained as a mechanical engineer and an economist, Karimov worked his way up the Communist Party bureaucracy in Uzbekistan, taking the position of first secretary of the Central Committee of the Uzbek Communist Party in 1989, and a year later he joined the Central Committee and Politboro. In 1990, he was elected first president of the republic by the Uzbek Supreme Soviet, a position that allowed him to declare Uzbekistan's independence from the Soviet Union just 10 days after the aborted coup there in August 1991.

He was elected first president of Uzbekistan in December 1991 with 86 percent of the vote. He extended his five-year term for a four more years in 1996 in a controversial referendum, and was then re-elected as president in 2000 with 91 percent of the vote. He won a third term in 2007, even though the Uzbek Constitution only allowed a president to serve two terms, and was re-elected again in 2015.